Blah blah blah wiki sucks 'cause it doesn't agree with me whine whine. Pony up your own sources or admit you've arrived at your conclusions based on irrationality and emotion.
Please, tell us what new regulations Clinton signed into law that required banks to comply with the CRA. Back it up with sources or shut up.
Modern economic research shows that human beings are not primarily motivated by self interest, but by ideals of fairness and reciprocity that benefit the species as a whole. What is rational for the individual may not be what is rational for the species, and vice versa. Evolution operates on more than just an individual level, in fact what makes an individual "more competitive" in a simplistic sense might not be what gets selected for. For instance, those feelings of fairness and reciprocity most of us have. In an experimental game called the Dictator game, one person is given a large sum of money. They can give all to none of it to player B. What they do give is multiplied by a small percentage and then person B can give all to none of it back to person A, but the gift is again multiplied. Well, rational actor theory says the most rational choice for each individual is to keep ALL the money given to them. The most rational act for the species in general is for person A to give all the money to person B, and person B to give a proportional amount back, because this maximizes gains for the species as a whole. And, surprise surprise, this is close to what most people do, exchanging not all but a large chunk of the money and increasing overall reward.
Also, given imperfect information about the world, perhaps just doing what has worked up until now for your ancestors is not a bad strategy in general, especially for the less intelligent.
Clinton called for making mortgages more readily available, and signed what, exactly? Let's at least be honest about what Clinton's changes to the Community Reinvestment Act actually did. From the wiki page:
In July 1993, President Bill Clinton asked regulators to reform the CRA in order to make examinations more consistent, clarify performance standards, and reduce cost and compliance burden.[55] Robert Rubin, the Assistant to the President for Economic Policy, under President Clinton, explained that this was in line with President Clinton's strategy to "deal with the problems of the inner city and distressed rural communities". Discussing the reasons for the Clinton administration's proposal to strengthen the CRA and further reduce red-lining, Lloyd Bentsen, Secretary of the Treasury at that time, affirmed his belief that availability of credit should not depend on where a person lives, "The only thing that ought to matter on a loan application is whether or not you can pay it back, not where you live." Bentsen said that the proposed changes would "make it easier for lenders to show how they're complying with the Community Reinvestment Act", and "cut back a lot of the paperwork and the cost on small business loans".[36]
By early 1995, the proposed CRA regulations were substantially revised to address criticisms that the regulations, and the agencies' implementation of them through the examination process to date, were too process-oriented, burdensome, and not sufficiently focused on actual results.[56] The CRA examination process itself was reformed to incorporate the pending changes.[40] Information about banking institutions' CRA ratings was made available via web page for public review as well.[36] The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) also moved to revise its regulation structure allowing lenders subject to the CRA to claim community development loan credits for loans made to help finance the environmental cleanup or redevelopment of industrial sites when it was part of an effort to revitalize the low- and moderate-income community where the site was located.[57]
It should be noted that compliance with the CRA is entirely voluntary, if you don't want the tasty government tax credits, don't comply. The idea that Clinton somehow brought on the mortgage crisis by forcing banks to lend to poor people is simply ludicrous.
I don't believe you. I have never seen a wealthy person in America advocating for a higher tax rate on the rich. I see them advocating for a lower tax rate for themselves all the time. What you are claiming seems 180 degrees from what` I see.
I am aware that the top 1% pay less than ever before, the top tax rate used to be 90%. However, as the top 1% make over 20% of the income, they should be paying even more.
You are confusing capitalism with the free market, but otherwise, excellent post. I also disagree with the "only system that does not completely break down when greed is present" part, but you knew that.:) The free market does not exist in a vaccuum, it needs government oversight, but that can be bought, so in the end, any democratic free market system that allows both the unchecked accumulation of personal wealth and the unlimited use of personal wealth to buy propaganda and laws will end up failing, as the wealthy buy laws that favor them. This is NOT an argument for doing away with democratic governance, though. It's an argument against the unlimited accumulation of personal wealth. Society has a vested interest in making sure no individual member controls too great a share of natural resources.
As for the idea that raising the tax rate lowers government income, that is only true if we are on the left hand side of the Laffer Curve. And the odd thing is, we are always on the left hand side, according to those in the owning class. No matter how much we lower taxes, lowering them some more will always increase revenue, which is patently ridiculous. Most studies say the Laffer Curve shows that revenue peaks at a top marginal tax rate of 60-70%, far higher than we have today, so, tax away!
And we are not punishing the successful. Nobody makes money on their own, they do it with society's help. Society enables the storage of surplus wealth, an individual can not do that. And it is the cooperation of society that enables the successful to be successful. Society has a say in what rewards its members get, and if we feel that someone's success means that they owe us a little more, well, that is our right as fellow members of society. The successful benefit more from the social contract, obviously, than the poor do, so they should pay their fair share. If they don't like it they are free to search for a better deal elsewhere, or attempt to change things democratically like everyone other citizen.
Meanwhile, I'll be here letting people know that they can vote in their own best interests, not in the interests of the rich.
I don't feel any guilt in taking back what was taken from me. Most rich people got rich the old fashioned, by stealing. Or buying laws that transfer wealth upwards. Oh, there is a serious class war going on, and the upper class is winning, so I say: 1.) We live in a Democracy. 2.) We are in the majority. 3.) Therefore, we are in a position to rain down a nuclear firestorm of class warfare, legally, and without violence.
We've let them win. For thirty-odd years now, middle and lower class incomes have remained the same, while nearly all the increase in GDP has gone to the top 1%. And we live in a Democracy, so we have no one to blame but ourselves. But we can change things, and bring back the powerful and wealthy middle class we had in the fifties, when the top tax rate was 90%. Bring it back. Tax those criminals until their wallets bleed.
Not any more than usual. I don't play EVE or other online games, so it's not personal in that sense. It's just that overvaluing goofy things that other people don't is pretty much the definition of being a geek. I'd hazard a guess that most people here are pretty obsessively into something that most normal people would consider "nothing of value."
The meme is basically a slight against all geek-kind.
This is one of the more condescending and snotty memes out there, like "FTFY" it exists only to mock. Basically it is saying "I militantly don't care about this, and neither should you." Value is a funny thing, by definition it means whatever you want it to mean. There is no 'value' outside of the human mind. In your own mind, you are the absolute master of value, you can place whatever valuation you like on anything you like. So, when you say "Nothing of value was lost" All you are saying is that nothing you value was lost. Which is likely just as true of, oh say, those floods in Pakistan, nothing you value was lost.
But obviously, these PLEX were valuable to quite a few people, not to mention a gaming company.
I don't think greed is anything like "The desire to get more out of a process." That's just a desire for efficiency. I thought greed was specifically "A selfish or excessive desire for more than is needed or deserved, especially of money, wealth, food, or other possessions."
You see, you left out two important components of the definition of greed, one, the desire itself is selfish and/or excessive; and the desire is for more than is needed or deserved. But this definition likely angers certain people, who will say things like,"Excessive by whose standards?" or "Why should anyone be allowed to say what someone else needs or deserves?" and to them I say, we do. Society. Other people you happen to be sharing the planet with, we have the right and the power to say, "That's too much, buddy, didn't your momma teach you to share?"
And that is perhaps the best thing that can be said about greed, like it or not, the rest of us humans have the power to stop greed from paying off, if we want to. And most of us do, despite what the greedy would have you believe most people are not greedy and in fact despise greedy people.
Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind.
--Gordon Gekko, speaking the Mantra of unbridled capitalism. Greed may not get the outright worship it got when Wall Street came out, but many still consider greed to be a positive thing.
Both cops work for the same department. Both want the same thing out of you. Neither one is your friend. It's a negotiating tactic. Their boss wants something from you, so one of them is going to offer you a cup of coffee and a donut, then while he's out of the room getting it, the other one is going to bash your face in. When the friendly guy comes back with the coffee and the donut, he's going to apologize for his partner and explain to you that he has little control over his 'crazy' partner, and for everyone's sake, you'd better just play along.
Sure, one guy gives you some crappy coffee and a stale donut while the other guy gives you a chair to the face, but they are both working for the same rich asshole, trying to get the same thing from you: your cheap and silent obedience.
Money is power. Beyond a certain amount, all that money really does is give you power over others, and give them less power over you. You can get money in several ways, including lending for profit, and performing useful work.
Without regulation, and assuming your government takes pains to protect property, a free market can be used to control others. Monopolizing a certain resource, for instance, or dumping your externalities onto someone with no ability to fight the imposed costs. Remember, if I offer you the option of working for me, or starving because I've monopolized jobs in the area, that is coercion even if you 'freely' accept slavery over starvation. If you try to protest or rebel against this injustice, the government will be there with guns enforcing my property rights over your right to life.
Please explain how the European socialist countries of today are famously bloody, use threats of force, and extreme violence. Use examples from the last thirty years.
Please explain how The Mondragon Corporation, a huge Basque cooperative in Spain, uses violence, is unproductive (they turned the poorest region in Spain into one of the wealthiest in under fifty years) or is environmentally damaging.
You seem to be myopically focused on the authoritarian regimes of the previous century that called themselves communist or socialist. I could play the same game, look at that United Soviet Socialist Republic, why, that is proof that Republics are all bloodthirsty hellholes of oppression and violence.
From the introduction to the wikipedia article on capitalism:
"Capitalism is an economic system in which the means of production are privately owned; supply, demand, price, distribution, and investments are determined mainly by private decisions in the free market, rather than by the state through central economic planning or through democratic planning; profit is distributed to owners who invest in businesses, and wages are paid to workers employed by businesses. Capitalism also refers to the process of capital accumulation."
The defining attribute of capitalism is not private ownership of the means of production, many other systems have that feature. The defining feature of capitalism is in the name: lending capital for interest.
Usury is the sin of lending money for unfairly large amounts of interest. Capitalism is an economic system of lending money for as much profit as possible. Capitalism makes labor subservient to money. It lets people expand their power over others, not by working, but by lending. This unfair adjudication of risk and reward, and the subsequent consolidation of power into fewer and fewer hands, is why many religions, at one time or another before the rich took them over, considered usury a fairly serious sin.
The rich do not have to work to earn a living, they just sit back and let the money roll in. Supposedly the return they get is for the risk, but there is no risk involved. The rich can buy politicians, laws and experts who, in practice, reduce the risk to near zero. The average investor faces at least some real risk, but not the truly wealthy.
How does me selling my stocks to another third party raise capital for the corporation whose stock we are trading in? How often can a company dilute its current stock value by offering new stock, without suffering a shareholder revolt? If I believe in the products a company makes, and trust the management, why would I invest in it? All that 'good company, good management' bullshit is a sure sign that that company is not competitive with the big dogs, who do not suffer the expensive handicap of having trustworthy management and expensive products.
Although, it would be truly hilarious if, contrary to stereotypes, he were tremendously under endowed. Then he could whip it out and say, "See, white men? You have nothing to fear from my tiny penis!" and we could all live in interracial harmony and peace.
Seriously though, that whole attempt to denigrate the black race by dehumanizing them kinda backfired, "Those blacks are ANIMALS! Huge, hulking, sexy animals with magnificent physiques and throbbing, oh God damn it, why didn't we think this through? Ladies! It isn't true! It was meant as an insult! Where are you going?"
The truth is, race is and always has been a red herring used in the class war by the aristocracy, as a means of keeping the proletariat divided.
He isn't a US citizen, so, is he breaking any Australian laws by publishing US state secrets? If not, then publishing more state secrets is not a crime either. He has not made any statements about the contents or use of the 'insurance' file, so it would be hard to pin extortion on him.
According to The Register, there is a huge encrypted file up on wikileaks now, called 'insurance.' The US goes after wikileaks or Julian Assange, the key to that file goes out to the world. And according to Assange, everything dangerous was redacted out of the Afghanistan documents. Cryptome's John Young speculates that the 'insurance' file contains all the redacted bits.
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Blah blah blah wiki sucks 'cause it doesn't agree with me whine whine. Pony up your own sources or admit you've arrived at your conclusions based on irrationality and emotion.
Please, tell us what new regulations Clinton signed into law that required banks to comply with the CRA. Back it up with sources or shut up.
Modern economic research shows that human beings are not primarily motivated by self interest, but by ideals of fairness and reciprocity that benefit the species as a whole. What is rational for the individual may not be what is rational for the species, and vice versa. Evolution operates on more than just an individual level, in fact what makes an individual "more competitive" in a simplistic sense might not be what gets selected for. For instance, those feelings of fairness and reciprocity most of us have. In an experimental game called the Dictator game, one person is given a large sum of money. They can give all to none of it to player B. What they do give is multiplied by a small percentage and then person B can give all to none of it back to person A, but the gift is again multiplied. Well, rational actor theory says the most rational choice for each individual is to keep ALL the money given to them. The most rational act for the species in general is for person A to give all the money to person B, and person B to give a proportional amount back, because this maximizes gains for the species as a whole. And, surprise surprise, this is close to what most people do, exchanging not all but a large chunk of the money and increasing overall reward.
Also, given imperfect information about the world, perhaps just doing what has worked up until now for your ancestors is not a bad strategy in general, especially for the less intelligent.
Clinton called for making mortgages more readily available, and signed what, exactly? Let's at least be honest about what Clinton's changes to the Community Reinvestment Act actually did. From the wiki page:
In July 1993, President Bill Clinton asked regulators to reform the CRA in order to make examinations more consistent, clarify performance standards, and reduce cost and compliance burden.[55] Robert Rubin, the Assistant to the President for Economic Policy, under President Clinton, explained that this was in line with President Clinton's strategy to "deal with the problems of the inner city and distressed rural communities". Discussing the reasons for the Clinton administration's proposal to strengthen the CRA and further reduce red-lining, Lloyd Bentsen, Secretary of the Treasury at that time, affirmed his belief that availability of credit should not depend on where a person lives, "The only thing that ought to matter on a loan application is whether or not you can pay it back, not where you live." Bentsen said that the proposed changes would "make it easier for lenders to show how they're complying with the Community Reinvestment Act", and "cut back a lot of the paperwork and the cost on small business loans".[36]
By early 1995, the proposed CRA regulations were substantially revised to address criticisms that the regulations, and the agencies' implementation of them through the examination process to date, were too process-oriented, burdensome, and not sufficiently focused on actual results.[56] The CRA examination process itself was reformed to incorporate the pending changes.[40] Information about banking institutions' CRA ratings was made available via web page for public review as well.[36] The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) also moved to revise its regulation structure allowing lenders subject to the CRA to claim community development loan credits for loans made to help finance the environmental cleanup or redevelopment of industrial sites when it was part of an effort to revitalize the low- and moderate-income community where the site was located.[57]
It should be noted that compliance with the CRA is entirely voluntary, if you don't want the tasty government tax credits, don't comply. The idea that Clinton somehow brought on the mortgage crisis by forcing banks to lend to poor people is simply ludicrous.
My tasteless comparison was by way of illustrating GPs "Meh, it didn't happen to me, it's not important" attitude.
I don't believe you. I have never seen a wealthy person in America advocating for a higher tax rate on the rich. I see them advocating for a lower tax rate for themselves all the time. What you are claiming seems 180 degrees from what` I see.
I am aware that the top 1% pay less than ever before, the top tax rate used to be 90%. However, as the top 1% make over 20% of the income, they should be paying even more.
You are confusing capitalism with the free market, but otherwise, excellent post. I also disagree with the "only system that does not completely break down when greed is present" part, but you knew that. :) The free market does not exist in a vaccuum, it needs government oversight, but that can be bought, so in the end, any democratic free market system that allows both the unchecked accumulation of personal wealth and the unlimited use of personal wealth to buy propaganda and laws will end up failing, as the wealthy buy laws that favor them. This is NOT an argument for doing away with democratic governance, though. It's an argument against the unlimited accumulation of personal wealth. Society has a vested interest in making sure no individual member controls too great a share of natural resources.
I'll check that out.
Are you denying that most of the gains in GDP have gone to the top 1%? Or do you think that is fair?
It's wiki, but the article on income inequality in the United States is quite well referenced.
As for the idea that raising the tax rate lowers government income, that is only true if we are on the left hand side of the Laffer Curve. And the odd thing is, we are always on the left hand side, according to those in the owning class. No matter how much we lower taxes, lowering them some more will always increase revenue, which is patently ridiculous. Most studies say the Laffer Curve shows that revenue peaks at a top marginal tax rate of 60-70%, far higher than we have today, so, tax away!
And we are not punishing the successful. Nobody makes money on their own, they do it with society's help. Society enables the storage of surplus wealth, an individual can not do that. And it is the cooperation of society that enables the successful to be successful. Society has a say in what rewards its members get, and if we feel that someone's success means that they owe us a little more, well, that is our right as fellow members of society. The successful benefit more from the social contract, obviously, than the poor do, so they should pay their fair share. If they don't like it they are free to search for a better deal elsewhere, or attempt to change things democratically like everyone other citizen.
Meanwhile, I'll be here letting people know that they can vote in their own best interests, not in the interests of the rich.
I don't feel any guilt in taking back what was taken from me. Most rich people got rich the old fashioned, by stealing. Or buying laws that transfer wealth upwards. Oh, there is a serious class war going on, and the upper class is winning, so I say:
1.) We live in a Democracy.
2.) We are in the majority.
3.) Therefore, we are in a position to rain down a nuclear firestorm of class warfare, legally, and without violence.
We've let them win. For thirty-odd years now, middle and lower class incomes have remained the same, while nearly all the increase in GDP has gone to the top 1%. And we live in a Democracy, so we have no one to blame but ourselves. But we can change things, and bring back the powerful and wealthy middle class we had in the fifties, when the top tax rate was 90%. Bring it back. Tax those criminals until their wallets bleed.
Not any more than usual. I don't play EVE or other online games, so it's not personal in that sense. It's just that overvaluing goofy things that other people don't is pretty much the definition of being a geek. I'd hazard a guess that most people here are pretty obsessively into something that most normal people would consider "nothing of value."
The meme is basically a slight against all geek-kind.
This is one of the more condescending and snotty memes out there, like "FTFY" it exists only to mock. Basically it is saying "I militantly don't care about this, and neither should you." Value is a funny thing, by definition it means whatever you want it to mean. There is no 'value' outside of the human mind. In your own mind, you are the absolute master of value, you can place whatever valuation you like on anything you like. So, when you say "Nothing of value was lost" All you are saying is that nothing you value was lost. Which is likely just as true of, oh say, those floods in Pakistan, nothing you value was lost.
But obviously, these PLEX were valuable to quite a few people, not to mention a gaming company.
I don't think greed is anything like "The desire to get more out of a process." That's just a desire for efficiency. I thought greed was specifically "A selfish or excessive desire for more than is needed or deserved, especially of money, wealth, food, or other possessions."
You see, you left out two important components of the definition of greed, one, the desire itself is selfish and/or excessive; and the desire is for more than is needed or deserved. But this definition likely angers certain people, who will say things like ,"Excessive by whose standards?" or "Why should anyone be allowed to say what someone else needs or deserves?" and to them I say, we do. Society. Other people you happen to be sharing the planet with, we have the right and the power to say, "That's too much, buddy, didn't your momma teach you to share?"
And that is perhaps the best thing that can be said about greed, like it or not, the rest of us humans have the power to stop greed from paying off, if we want to. And most of us do, despite what the greedy would have you believe most people are not greedy and in fact despise greedy people.
Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind.
--Gordon Gekko, speaking the Mantra of unbridled capitalism. Greed may not get the outright worship it got when Wall Street came out, but many still consider greed to be a positive thing.
Both cops work for the same department. Both want the same thing out of you. Neither one is your friend. It's a negotiating tactic. Their boss wants something from you, so one of them is going to offer you a cup of coffee and a donut, then while he's out of the room getting it, the other one is going to bash your face in. When the friendly guy comes back with the coffee and the donut, he's going to apologize for his partner and explain to you that he has little control over his 'crazy' partner, and for everyone's sake, you'd better just play along.
Sure, one guy gives you some crappy coffee and a stale donut while the other guy gives you a chair to the face, but they are both working for the same rich asshole, trying to get the same thing from you: your cheap and silent obedience.
Money is power. Beyond a certain amount, all that money really does is give you power over others, and give them less power over you. You can get money in several ways, including lending for profit, and performing useful work.
Without regulation, and assuming your government takes pains to protect property, a free market can be used to control others. Monopolizing a certain resource, for instance, or dumping your externalities onto someone with no ability to fight the imposed costs. Remember, if I offer you the option of working for me, or starving because I've monopolized jobs in the area, that is coercion even if you 'freely' accept slavery over starvation. If you try to protest or rebel against this injustice, the government will be there with guns enforcing my property rights over your right to life.
Please explain how the European socialist countries of today are famously bloody, use threats of force, and extreme violence. Use examples from the last thirty years.
Please explain how The Mondragon Corporation, a huge Basque cooperative in Spain, uses violence, is unproductive (they turned the poorest region in Spain into one of the wealthiest in under fifty years) or is environmentally damaging.
You seem to be myopically focused on the authoritarian regimes of the previous century that called themselves communist or socialist. I could play the same game, look at that United Soviet Socialist Republic, why, that is proof that Republics are all bloodthirsty hellholes of oppression and violence.
From the introduction to the wikipedia article on capitalism:
"Capitalism is an economic system in which the means of production are privately owned; supply, demand, price, distribution, and investments are determined mainly by private decisions in the free market, rather than by the state through central economic planning or through democratic planning; profit is distributed to owners who invest in businesses, and wages are paid to workers employed by businesses. Capitalism also refers to the process of capital accumulation."
The defining attribute of capitalism is not private ownership of the means of production, many other systems have that feature. The defining feature of capitalism is in the name: lending capital for interest.
Nice to meet you online, Karl Marx!
Because good old Karl said "The free market is a good thing." Durr hurr.
Usury is the sin of lending money for unfairly large amounts of interest. Capitalism is an economic system of lending money for as much profit as possible. Capitalism makes labor subservient to money. It lets people expand their power over others, not by working, but by lending. This unfair adjudication of risk and reward, and the subsequent consolidation of power into fewer and fewer hands, is why many religions, at one time or another before the rich took them over, considered usury a fairly serious sin.
The rich do not have to work to earn a living, they just sit back and let the money roll in. Supposedly the return they get is for the risk, but there is no risk involved. The rich can buy politicians, laws and experts who, in practice, reduce the risk to near zero. The average investor faces at least some real risk, but not the truly wealthy.
How does me selling my stocks to another third party raise capital for the corporation whose stock we are trading in? How often can a company dilute its current stock value by offering new stock, without suffering a shareholder revolt? If I believe in the products a company makes, and trust the management, why would I invest in it? All that 'good company, good management' bullshit is a sure sign that that company is not competitive with the big dogs, who do not suffer the expensive handicap of having trustworthy management and expensive products.
Although, it would be truly hilarious if, contrary to stereotypes, he were tremendously under endowed. Then he could whip it out and say, "See, white men? You have nothing to fear from my tiny penis!" and we could all live in interracial harmony and peace.
Seriously though, that whole attempt to denigrate the black race by dehumanizing them kinda backfired, "Those blacks are ANIMALS! Huge, hulking, sexy animals with magnificent physiques and throbbing, oh God damn it, why didn't we think this through? Ladies! It isn't true! It was meant as an insult! Where are you going?"
The truth is, race is and always has been a red herring used in the class war by the aristocracy, as a means of keeping the proletariat divided.
He isn't a US citizen, so, is he breaking any Australian laws by publishing US state secrets? If not, then publishing more state secrets is not a crime either. He has not made any statements about the contents or use of the 'insurance' file, so it would be hard to pin extortion on him.
Being a martyr isn't even the half of it. Anything happens to Julian or the wikileaks site, then this happens: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/08/02/wikileaks_insurance/
According to The Register, there is a huge encrypted file up on wikileaks now, called 'insurance.' The US goes after wikileaks or Julian Assange, the key to that file goes out to the world. And according to Assange, everything dangerous was redacted out of the Afghanistan documents. Cryptome's John Young speculates that the 'insurance' file contains all the redacted bits.
What the hell are you smokin,' boy?
-- Ethanol-fueled
Troll weed, obviously. At least I amuse myself...
With which the owners of this site can buy technology, so yeah, it's technology related.