Interest rates pushed housing prices up, no doubt. But two simple rules would have prevented the bubble from getting catastrophic.
1) Leave Glass-Steagall in place (it was repealed in 1999). Banks are banks, insurance companies are insurance companies, investment firms are investment firms. Whining about losing "profit opportunities" are ignored, and intra/intercompany shenanigans greatly reduced. From 1987, defending the Act:
Securities activities can be risky, leading to enormous losses. Such losses could threaten the integrity of deposits. In turn, the Government insures deposits and could be required to pay large sums if depository institutions were to collapse as the result of securities losses.
2) Force companies that lend to keep the mortgage, without any side bets or leverages, until it is paid off.
And, if you really want to stop these cycles from developing, you have to implement usury laws once again, to prevent continued capital flood into financial services. No one is going to build a factory until it offers a competitive ROI.
Although, it will still cost them far less than the American Empire they've been supporting for 60 years. And for some reason, I don't suspect the nightly news will mention it. Strange.
America's a wacky place. Spending less than 100 billion saving people who were dumb with mortgages is cause for Panic! Hyperbole about Socialism! Quick, throw a tea party! Fox News anchors weeping on air for their fallen values system!
Spending 1,000 billion on warfare every year is Patriotic! Go team! USA! USA! USA! Post some videos about shock and awe! Let's run some swell pieces on brand new weapons systems designed specifically to "protect freedom," and never mention their price tag...
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you meant income taxes. But you're still misinformed.
In order to help pay for its war effort in the American Civil War, the United States government imposed its first personal income tax, on August 5, 1861, as part of the Revenue Act of 1861 (3% of all incomes over US $800; rescinded in 1872). Congress also enacted the Revenue Act of 1862, which levied a 3% tax on incomes above $600, rising to 5% for incomes above $10,000. Rates were raised in 1864. This income tax was repealed in 1872, but a new income tax statute was enacted as part of the 1894 Tariff Act.
Heh, not that anyone said that. But suppose I, for example, supported this view. I'd probably point out that corporations employ far more people and contribute more to the economic well being of the US (or your place of residence) than individuals do. So corporations do more, hence they deserve more.
Is it your opinion that without corporations people would cease working? Just because it's the dominant form of organization doesn't mean it's irreplaceable, or even efficient compared to a federated system of independent workers.
Let me defer to an old, dead white man.
In this respect England exhibits the most remarkable phenomenon in the universe in the contrast between the profligacy of it's government and the probity of it's citizens. And accordingly it is now exhibiting an example of the truth of the maxim that virtue & interest are inseparable. It ends, as might have been expected, in the ruin of it's people, but this ruin will fall heaviest, as it ought to fall on that hereditary aristocracy which has for generations been preparing the catastrophe. I hope we shall take warning from the example and crush in it's birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country.
-Thomas Jefferson
(emphasis mine)
What proof do you have that statistical evidence proves anything?
That is the dumbest thing I've read all morning. I guess you make stock investments without looking at a history of the stock market or of your own bank account? Do you plan to send your kids to a school without looking at a history of their past performance, compared to other nearby schools?
Requesting "statistical evidence" is the last refuge of someone who can't reason. 2 years ago you could have asked 'what statistical reason do you have to believe the current housing/credit/overextension bubble will crash?'. It's a meaningless question.
Actually, had you asked Dean Baker this question in 2006, he would have showed you this graph, based on historical norms of housing values adjusted for inflation. I believe this would be called statistical analysis. Perhaps it's something you should look into.
Corporate tax is a scam. When corporations take in a profit, they do what with it? They invest it back into the company, they expand, they pay it out as a dividend, or they pay it to their workers. All but one of those directly benefit society. The last one gets taxed already. Those "fat cats" you rabble rousers love to harp on pay a shitload of taxes on that money already.
Corporations have the privilege of limited liability and funding through stock offerings. If they don't want to pay corporate tax rates, they can form business partnerships which don't offer these benefits, and don't require them to pay corporate tax rates. But you ain't even on my level. I'm going to let my homie Reagan ride on your bitch ass.
Millions of working poor will be dropped from the tax rolls altogether, and families will get a long-overdue break with lower rates and an almost doubled personal exemption. We're going to make it economical to raise children again. Flatter rates will mean more reward for that extra effort, and vanishing loopholes and a minimum tax will mean that everybody and every corporation pay their fair share. And that's why I'm certain that the bill I'm signing today is not only an historic overhaul of our tax code and a sweeping victory for fairness, it's also the best antipoverty bill, the best profamily measure, and the best job-creation program ever to come out of the Congress of the United States.
-Ronald Reagan, before signing the 1986 Tax Reform Act
I know when a Democrat says the same thing it's socialist. As usual, modern right wing rhetoric is so blatantly hypocritical it's become a comedy.
Effectively when you tax a corporation, you're taking money away from the entities most likely to create jobs and expand the economy, and you give it to the entity most proven to waste money.
Oh, damn, I forgot. Military spending is a total waste of money. What are your plans for reducing that? It represents the largest slice of federal spending.
You are taking the absolutely most valuable money in the economy and destroying it.
I know! If we invest in education or health care, it's just like lighting the bills on fire. Whereas every time a tax break is given to a company already profiting billions, another angel gets its wings.
I don't agree with whining about the "super rich" either, as they pay most of this country's tax burden, but at least that's not as absolutely destructive as going after corporations and large businesses.
They have a majority of the country's wealth. Why shouldn't they pay a majority of it's taxes?
So please, spend your proletariat rage on the rich people, not the corporations. Having a tax revenue highly susceptible to boom and bust cycles is a lesser evil than slowing down the cornerstone of the modern economy.
It's adorable. Asking a corporation to pay it's fair share of taxes is "proletariat rage," and programs that help people like the Earned Income Tax Credit are socialist. So much for principles, huh?
Why do you believe corporations should have equal or more rights than a person? What statistical evidence have you read that proves to you that less corporate tax leads to a more productive and healthy society?
If you keep insisting that corporations don't deserve all of their tax breaks and special treatment by the government, the really greedy ones may be put out of business. Then, the network of Fortune 1000 CEOs might make less money, and they might have to actually work, or not even receive hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses when their businesses are failing.
This may lead to the end of large, bureaucratic, inefficient mega corporations which exploit people and resources for short term profit, using monopoly tactics and sleazy practices like bribing politicians or using tax havens or ripping off their customers. You might end up with unions, four week vacations, the right to health care, and a lower poverty rate!
I'm tired of seeing people duped into clamoring for corporate taxes as though they'll somehow benefit from it. Can we replace everything on TV with basic economic and political education for a month? People need figure stuff like this out. Politicians drag out the same tired tricks over and over and the sheeple eat it up like it's free candy.
Ahh. And do you think America being one of the least educated industrialized countries and also the home field of unregulated capitalism is some sort of coincidence?
Dumb and politically powerless people work harder for less money. That's why businesses love America, and why American businesses love outsourcing. They don't give a shit about their employees or society at large. There here to boost their stock price at all costs before they bail out of the next meltdown, all made possible by the working population they exploit.
If a company in America doesn't want to pitch in their fair share of taxes, fuck'em. That is, unless you don't believe in competitive markets. I forgot how these principles apply for proponents of the free market. It seems to depend on the conversation.
In this case, it's the Center for Disease Control, at least for Americans.
And in my opinion, just as important as slowing the infection to avoid overwhelming our hospitals, is also making sure the whole country isn't ill at once. It'd be a virtual petri dish, since you'd have a bunch of people spreading to the virus one another while their immune system is down, increasing the likelihood that it could mutate into something bad.
The Spanish Flu did the same thing. It was a mild flu that spread amongst a bunch of people, mutated, and then wiped out a few tens of millions as soon as it was colder. It's a different world for industrial nations than it was in 1918, but not so for southeast Asia, Africa, South America, etc.
The market is only effective at maximizing profit, regardless of the consequences for human rights, or the environment, or whatever.
For instance, if there's a market for selling drugs that kill people for enormous profit, the market will kill people, buy off scientists to claim that their product does not kill people, buy politicians who will support their operations, and sell those drugs to children in countries where there is no effective legislation. If you think that petrochemicals, genetically modified crops, pharmaceuticals, growth hormones, soft drinks, and fast food franchises are any different than cigarettes, I think you're completely naive.
Just like a democracy functions only with a check against corruption with a strong and critical news media, markets only function with a strong and legitimate regulatory body that checks against greed and exploitation of irreplaceable resources.
Corporatism and unregulated markets are tyrannical. The people with the most money control society with near impunity, a fact they forget to mention in Econ 101 when they talk about voting with your dollars.
Trustees Reports issued over the last several years have indicated that Social Security's Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI) Trust Funds would become insolvent sometime in the next 30 to 40 years under the intermediate set of economic and demographic assumptions provided in each report. Various proposals have addressed this long-range solvency problem. These proposals are generally intended to restore, or largely restore, solvency for the long-range period (the next 75 years).
So, we need to come up with some changes to the system in order to keep it solvent in 40 years. This is not an emergency. Recent market events have once again illustrated what a terrible idea it is to tie retirement to something as volatile as the stock market.
And, like all of the fiscal nightmare scenarios cooked up lately, it's easily fixed by reducing our military spending. Here are the contracts we awarded just yesterday, which totals $1,250,643,816.00. And that only reports contracts worth less than 5 million dollars.
It will probably be some silicon like material that will shrink or expand with more or less current. Either that or a layer of air/water between two surfaces, where the bottom surface can attract or repel the top one. Both would be preferable, so you could have check boxes or something like that dip and navigation buttons stick out.
The trick will be making it taut enough to feel right, or just training people not to mash down on the buttons like monkeys.
Leadership by example and leadership by force are two different ideas. Telling someone that they will give up their resources or die, and telling them that they are welcome to buy technology from you probably would elicit different responses.
I know this doesn't jive with your jingoistic bias. But, that's reality for you.
So allow me to turn the question around on you: Why are you not complaining now that the current administration is putting us further and faster in debt than the last administration?
Because they are investing in education and infrastructure - things that can make a society more productive and efficient - rather than overspending on weapons and colonialism, which can weaken them. And in the case of Iraq, the trillions being spent were exacerbating the problem instead of mitigating it. It didn't help that for the first time in our history, we went to war and cut taxes at the same time. That's not only colossally stupid, it's also immoral.
Anyway, if you invest money instead of throwing it in a fire, it can make sense to go deeper in debt in the short term for greater long term benefits.
Or to put it another way: Which tea party were you at?
All of my favorite political demonstrations are sponsored by the good and decent Americans at News Corporation. It's the only way you can be sure that it's "grass roots" and patriotic, unlike those other people who are committing treason by providing aid and comfort to our enemies when they are protesting.
I know. That's why the "free" is in quotes. Whenever you hear someone talk about how the market should be free, they usually mean, free to allow powerful interests engage in anti-competitive practices. That's how taxpayers end up subsidizing private providers of Medicare, because they can't compete with government provided services of comparable quality. It isn't "fair" that they aren't allowed to make money, so we should keep the market "free."
Interestingly, it looks like India's health care system, a mix of private and public initiatives, is doing very poorly compared to the universal system in Singapore. India's healthcare system is not providing good service for their population, so I don't know why you consider it evidence of the "free" market working it's magic. According to Wikipedia, "Most public health facilities lack efficiency, are understaffed and have poorly maintained or outdated medical equipment." It's no secret that rich people can get good health care, it's just that most western people are very rich when they're shopping in India.
A friend of mine was a rep for a larger company. She was an ex college cheerleader and they picked her up straight out of college, and with bonuses, she was making close to 80k in her second year. This didn't include all the expenses her company paid for - car, housing, gas, expense accounts for taking clients to dinner. And according to her, she was not unique in her history as a cheerleader, or her pay grade.
I saw the analytical software she had to gauge her performance against others in her region. It was mind-boggling how much data she had, how many prescriptions had been written by which doctor, doctors who hadn't purchased her brands yet, growth rates... and that seemed to be just the tip of the iceberg. But nowhere, nowhere did it tell her if patients had recovered or not, or if any of them had passed away. If they were dead, it was just the loss of one prescription.
She always talked about competing for growth rates, and the bonuses that it included. Basically, doctors who sold a lot of drugs were invited to gatherings in the Caribbean, expenses paid of course, where all of the top sales reps would also be enjoying the conference as well.
The whole thing was really sickening. I talked to one doctor that said he felt pressured to prescribe pills, not necessarily by the drug companies, but by his patients. They come in, malnourished, overweight, smoking, and not getting any exercise, and ask for help with their cholesterol. What he should tell them is that they need to stop smoking, prescribe an hour of exercise a day, and a new diet. Instead, he writes them a script, is one step closer to getting a free vacation, and his patients get to continue abusing themselves guilt free.
This is one of the many reasons we need to move to a system where the incentive is to keep people healthy instead of keeping them sick. As the baby boomers continue to age, this dogmatic adherence to the "free market" could quite possibly bankrupt us.
More revenues for society to not mean the society is healthy, especially if wealth is being concentrated among fewer people. Plus, saying that revenues went up since we started cutting taxes in the 1980s is meaningless. If revenues didn't go up, you wouldn't be beating inflation.
Obviously, there is some point at which raising tax rates becomes damaging to an economy. Our rates seem to be just fine - we just need a simpler tax code that closes loopholes for corporations, since they pay some of the lowest effective tax rates in the industrialized world.
Elements of the Laffer Curve theory would explain why American businesses are doing so well, and middle class American citizens are not.
From what I understand, a collapse of the dollar would immediately lead to the pricing of oil in Euros instead of dollars. Both Iraq and Iran and Venezuela have threatened to sell oil in Euros instead of dollars, but if I remember correctly, it is still OPEC policy to only sell oil in dollars. I've read that a war against the Euro is one of the reasons we were drawn so easily into Iraq, but I digress.
Once oil is sold in Euros, lets say 100 Euros per barrel, and the dollar craters in value, it would cost possibly thousands of dollars to bring a barrel of oil into the United States. So even if oil triples due to lack of supply after that collapse (and inevitable war in the Gulf region), Europe is paying 300 instead of 100, but America is paying $9,000 instead of $3,000. At that price, gasoline would be $215 a gallon. (I know these figures are totally made up - I have not read any "predictions" that say they would be this high.) I doubt the Pentagon would allow anyone to touch the oil reserves - you'd see a shitload of bikes on the road, with a few ambulances and humvees.
China doesn't have the military capability to step in behind America. They spend 200 billion a year on their military, which has a larger number of troops with less than stellar equipment. Their economy would also partially collapse, as the demand for their products from the US disappear and Europe and the rest of the world would greatly reduce their imports as well.
Russia may have enough leftover equipment and proximity to take over Iraq and Afghanistan, but who knows where China would land in that scenario. Plus, China couldn't dump their US holdings slow enough to retain their full value, as any move in that direction would cause everyone else to sell theirs.
This is my totally uneducated opinion, but I'd be very interested to see what contingency plans our government has cooked up for this type of scenario. Maybe it was already put into play in 2001.
I meant to expand on this, but China doesn't actually have all of our money, just the most out of any foreign country, along with Japan. I still think they hold enough to do some damage, though, if they switch entirely to Euros or something else.
If China allowed the dollar to tank, the American economy would make the current crisis look like paradise. Oil would be unaffordable. Our reserves would be locked up for military use. The power vacuum left by a rapidly destabilized American military would fuck shit up. You'd probably have dozens of wars spring up, especially in the middle east, as Europe and Asia battle over the energy reserves currently under our control. Israel would probably end up dropping a pre-emptive nuke to make everyone think twice about moving in their direction. Who knows which way Russia would swing.
So, the world isn't going to let America fail at the moment, since no one knows how better or worse off they'd be. That's why the dollar is up since the crisis. China may have all of our money, but we still have more military power than the rest of the world combined.
And gold? Gold isn't going to get you to the border, or to any place of safety. You should buy a dirtbike and a shitload of ammunition if you think the dollar is going to fail. Gold won't buy much more than cash if everyone is starving.
Plus, your fears about spending are basically groundless. During WWII we drove up our deficit to unbelievable highs - wars are expensive, that's why taxes should go up when a country goes to war. McCain said in 2003: "The tax cut is not appropriate until we find out the cost of the war and the cost of reconstruction." That was, of course, before he starting toeing the line for the real political power in the GOP.
We can afford national healthcare, stimulus packages, more education, and ponies if we reduce military spending, which is currently at a trillion dollars a year. Empire is what is bankrupting the country, not social spending.
Slashdot Mirror
I blve we r the smartest gen ever! My parents r dum and read 2$ newspprs 4 hours. I can read 30 secs on tw and get same info 4 0$ on my cpu!
Interest rates pushed housing prices up, no doubt. But two simple rules would have prevented the bubble from getting catastrophic.
1) Leave Glass-Steagall in place (it was repealed in 1999). Banks are banks, insurance companies are insurance companies, investment firms are investment firms. Whining about losing "profit opportunities" are ignored, and intra/intercompany shenanigans greatly reduced. From 1987, defending the Act:
Securities activities can be risky, leading to enormous losses. Such losses could threaten the integrity of deposits. In turn, the Government insures deposits and could be required to pay large sums if depository institutions were to collapse as the result of securities losses.
2) Force companies that lend to keep the mortgage, without any side bets or leverages, until it is paid off.
And, if you really want to stop these cycles from developing, you have to implement usury laws once again, to prevent continued capital flood into financial services. No one is going to build a factory until it offers a competitive ROI.
Although, it will still cost them far less than the American Empire they've been supporting for 60 years. And for some reason, I don't suspect the nightly news will mention it. Strange.
America's a wacky place. Spending less than 100 billion saving people who were dumb with mortgages is cause for Panic! Hyperbole about Socialism! Quick, throw a tea party! Fox News anchors weeping on air for their fallen values system!
Spending 1,000 billion on warfare every year is Patriotic! Go team! USA! USA! USA! Post some videos about shock and awe! Let's run some swell pieces on brand new weapons systems designed specifically to "protect freedom," and never mention their price tag...
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you meant income taxes. But you're still misinformed.
Heh, not that anyone said that. But suppose I, for example, supported this view. I'd probably point out that corporations employ far more people and contribute more to the economic well being of the US (or your place of residence) than individuals do. So corporations do more, hence they deserve more.
Is it your opinion that without corporations people would cease working? Just because it's the dominant form of organization doesn't mean it's irreplaceable, or even efficient compared to a federated system of independent workers.
Let me defer to an old, dead white man.
In this respect England exhibits the most remarkable phenomenon in the universe in the contrast between the profligacy of it's government and the probity of it's citizens. And accordingly it is now exhibiting an example of the truth of the maxim that virtue & interest are inseparable. It ends, as might have been expected, in the ruin of it's people, but this ruin will fall heaviest, as it ought to fall on that hereditary aristocracy which has for generations been preparing the catastrophe. I hope we shall take warning from the example and crush in it's birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country.
-Thomas Jefferson
(emphasis mine)
What proof do you have that statistical evidence proves anything?
That is the dumbest thing I've read all morning. I guess you make stock investments without looking at a history of the stock market or of your own bank account? Do you plan to send your kids to a school without looking at a history of their past performance, compared to other nearby schools?
Requesting "statistical evidence" is the last refuge of someone who can't reason. 2 years ago you could have asked 'what statistical reason do you have to believe the current housing/credit/overextension bubble will crash?'. It's a meaningless question.
Actually, had you asked Dean Baker this question in 2006, he would have showed you this graph, based on historical norms of housing values adjusted for inflation. I believe this would be called statistical analysis. Perhaps it's something you should look into.
Corporate tax is a scam. When corporations take in a profit, they do what with it? They invest it back into the company, they expand, they pay it out as a dividend, or they pay it to their workers. All but one of those directly benefit society. The last one gets taxed already. Those "fat cats" you rabble rousers love to harp on pay a shitload of taxes on that money already.
Corporations have the privilege of limited liability and funding through stock offerings. If they don't want to pay corporate tax rates, they can form business partnerships which don't offer these benefits, and don't require them to pay corporate tax rates. But you ain't even on my level. I'm going to let my homie Reagan ride on your bitch ass.
Millions of working poor will be dropped from the tax rolls altogether, and families will get a long-overdue break with lower rates and an almost doubled personal exemption. We're going to make it economical to raise children again. Flatter rates will mean more reward for that extra effort, and vanishing loopholes and a minimum tax will mean that everybody and every corporation pay their fair share. And that's why I'm certain that the bill I'm signing today is not only an historic overhaul of our tax code and a sweeping victory for fairness, it's also the best antipoverty bill, the best profamily measure, and the best job-creation program ever to come out of the Congress of the United States.
-Ronald Reagan, before signing the 1986 Tax Reform Act
I know when a Democrat says the same thing it's socialist. As usual, modern right wing rhetoric is so blatantly hypocritical it's become a comedy.
Effectively when you tax a corporation, you're taking money away from the entities most likely to create jobs and expand the economy, and you give it to the entity most proven to waste money.
Oh, damn, I forgot. Military spending is a total waste of money. What are your plans for reducing that? It represents the largest slice of federal spending.
You are taking the absolutely most valuable money in the economy and destroying it.
I know! If we invest in education or health care, it's just like lighting the bills on fire. Whereas every time a tax break is given to a company already profiting billions, another angel gets its wings.
I don't agree with whining about the "super rich" either, as they pay most of this country's tax burden, but at least that's not as absolutely destructive as going after corporations and large businesses.
They have a majority of the country's wealth. Why shouldn't they pay a majority of it's taxes?
So please, spend your proletariat rage on the rich people, not the corporations. Having a tax revenue highly susceptible to boom and bust cycles is a lesser evil than slowing down the cornerstone of the modern economy.
It's adorable. Asking a corporation to pay it's fair share of taxes is "proletariat rage," and programs that help people like the Earned Income Tax Credit are socialist. So much for principles, huh?
The point is not to punish wealthy people. The point is to institute policies that lead to a more equitable society.
But, you are right, in that people who lead lives of privilege view any move towards equality as an assault on their lifestyle.
Why do you believe corporations should have equal or more rights than a person? What statistical evidence have you read that proves to you that less corporate tax leads to a more productive and healthy society?
If you keep insisting that corporations don't deserve all of their tax breaks and special treatment by the government, the really greedy ones may be put out of business. Then, the network of Fortune 1000 CEOs might make less money, and they might have to actually work, or not even receive hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses when their businesses are failing.
This may lead to the end of large, bureaucratic, inefficient mega corporations which exploit people and resources for short term profit, using monopoly tactics and sleazy practices like bribing politicians or using tax havens or ripping off their customers. You might end up with unions, four week vacations, the right to health care, and a lower poverty rate!
You fell for it! Bravo, douchebag.
I'm tired of seeing people duped into clamoring for corporate taxes as though they'll somehow benefit from it. Can we replace everything on TV with basic economic and political education for a month? People need figure stuff like this out. Politicians drag out the same tired tricks over and over and the sheeple eat it up like it's free candy.
Ahh. And do you think America being one of the least educated industrialized countries and also the home field of unregulated capitalism is some sort of coincidence?
Dumb and politically powerless people work harder for less money. That's why businesses love America, and why American businesses love outsourcing. They don't give a shit about their employees or society at large. There here to boost their stock price at all costs before they bail out of the next meltdown, all made possible by the working population they exploit.
If a company in America doesn't want to pitch in their fair share of taxes, fuck'em. That is, unless you don't believe in competitive markets. I forgot how these principles apply for proponents of the free market. It seems to depend on the conversation.
In this case, it's the Center for Disease Control, at least for Americans.
And in my opinion, just as important as slowing the infection to avoid overwhelming our hospitals, is also making sure the whole country isn't ill at once. It'd be a virtual petri dish, since you'd have a bunch of people spreading to the virus one another while their immune system is down, increasing the likelihood that it could mutate into something bad.
The Spanish Flu did the same thing. It was a mild flu that spread amongst a bunch of people, mutated, and then wiped out a few tens of millions as soon as it was colder. It's a different world for industrial nations than it was in 1918, but not so for southeast Asia, Africa, South America, etc.
The market is only effective at maximizing profit, regardless of the consequences for human rights, or the environment, or whatever.
For instance, if there's a market for selling drugs that kill people for enormous profit, the market will kill people, buy off scientists to claim that their product does not kill people, buy politicians who will support their operations, and sell those drugs to children in countries where there is no effective legislation. If you think that petrochemicals, genetically modified crops, pharmaceuticals, growth hormones, soft drinks, and fast food franchises are any different than cigarettes, I think you're completely naive.
Just like a democracy functions only with a check against corruption with a strong and critical news media, markets only function with a strong and legitimate regulatory body that checks against greed and exploitation of irreplaceable resources.
Corporatism and unregulated markets are tyrannical. The people with the most money control society with near impunity, a fact they forget to mention in Econ 101 when they talk about voting with your dollars.
Here.
So, we need to come up with some changes to the system in order to keep it solvent in 40 years. This is not an emergency. Recent market events have once again illustrated what a terrible idea it is to tie retirement to something as volatile as the stock market.
And, like all of the fiscal nightmare scenarios cooked up lately, it's easily fixed by reducing our military spending. Here are the contracts we awarded just yesterday, which totals $1,250,643,816.00. And that only reports contracts worth less than 5 million dollars.
Ask her to say something nice about you.
It will probably be some silicon like material that will shrink or expand with more or less current. Either that or a layer of air/water between two surfaces, where the bottom surface can attract or repel the top one. Both would be preferable, so you could have check boxes or something like that dip and navigation buttons stick out.
The trick will be making it taut enough to feel right, or just training people not to mash down on the buttons like monkeys.
Leadership by example and leadership by force are two different ideas. Telling someone that they will give up their resources or die, and telling them that they are welcome to buy technology from you probably would elicit different responses.
I know this doesn't jive with your jingoistic bias. But, that's reality for you.
So allow me to turn the question around on you:
Why are you not complaining now that the current administration is putting us further and faster in debt than the last administration?
Because they are investing in education and infrastructure - things that can make a society more productive and efficient - rather than overspending on weapons and colonialism, which can weaken them. And in the case of Iraq, the trillions being spent were exacerbating the problem instead of mitigating it. It didn't help that for the first time in our history, we went to war and cut taxes at the same time. That's not only colossally stupid, it's also immoral.
Anyway, if you invest money instead of throwing it in a fire, it can make sense to go deeper in debt in the short term for greater long term benefits.
Or to put it another way:
Which tea party were you at?
All of my favorite political demonstrations are sponsored by the good and decent Americans at News Corporation. It's the only way you can be sure that it's "grass roots" and patriotic, unlike those other people who are committing treason by providing aid and comfort to our enemies when they are protesting.
I know. That's why the "free" is in quotes. Whenever you hear someone talk about how the market should be free, they usually mean, free to allow powerful interests engage in anti-competitive practices. That's how taxpayers end up subsidizing private providers of Medicare, because they can't compete with government provided services of comparable quality. It isn't "fair" that they aren't allowed to make money, so we should keep the market "free."
Interestingly, it looks like India's health care system, a mix of private and public initiatives, is doing very poorly compared to the universal system in Singapore. India's healthcare system is not providing good service for their population, so I don't know why you consider it evidence of the "free" market working it's magic. According to Wikipedia, "Most public health facilities lack efficiency, are understaffed and have poorly maintained or outdated medical equipment." It's no secret that rich people can get good health care, it's just that most western people are very rich when they're shopping in India.
A friend of mine was a rep for a larger company. She was an ex college cheerleader and they picked her up straight out of college, and with bonuses, she was making close to 80k in her second year. This didn't include all the expenses her company paid for - car, housing, gas, expense accounts for taking clients to dinner. And according to her, she was not unique in her history as a cheerleader, or her pay grade.
I saw the analytical software she had to gauge her performance against others in her region. It was mind-boggling how much data she had, how many prescriptions had been written by which doctor, doctors who hadn't purchased her brands yet, growth rates... and that seemed to be just the tip of the iceberg. But nowhere, nowhere did it tell her if patients had recovered or not, or if any of them had passed away. If they were dead, it was just the loss of one prescription.
She always talked about competing for growth rates, and the bonuses that it included. Basically, doctors who sold a lot of drugs were invited to gatherings in the Caribbean, expenses paid of course, where all of the top sales reps would also be enjoying the conference as well.
The whole thing was really sickening. I talked to one doctor that said he felt pressured to prescribe pills, not necessarily by the drug companies, but by his patients. They come in, malnourished, overweight, smoking, and not getting any exercise, and ask for help with their cholesterol. What he should tell them is that they need to stop smoking, prescribe an hour of exercise a day, and a new diet. Instead, he writes them a script, is one step closer to getting a free vacation, and his patients get to continue abusing themselves guilt free.
This is one of the many reasons we need to move to a system where the incentive is to keep people healthy instead of keeping them sick. As the baby boomers continue to age, this dogmatic adherence to the "free market" could quite possibly bankrupt us.
I thought the reason it was so bad is because many of the dead are young adults. That's one of the milestones of a really dangerous pandemic, right?
More revenues for society to not mean the society is healthy, especially if wealth is being concentrated among fewer people. Plus, saying that revenues went up since we started cutting taxes in the 1980s is meaningless. If revenues didn't go up, you wouldn't be beating inflation.
Obviously, there is some point at which raising tax rates becomes damaging to an economy. Our rates seem to be just fine - we just need a simpler tax code that closes loopholes for corporations, since they pay some of the lowest effective tax rates in the industrialized world.
Elements of the Laffer Curve theory would explain why American businesses are doing so well, and middle class American citizens are not.
From what I understand, a collapse of the dollar would immediately lead to the pricing of oil in Euros instead of dollars. Both Iraq and Iran and Venezuela have threatened to sell oil in Euros instead of dollars, but if I remember correctly, it is still OPEC policy to only sell oil in dollars. I've read that a war against the Euro is one of the reasons we were drawn so easily into Iraq, but I digress.
Once oil is sold in Euros, lets say 100 Euros per barrel, and the dollar craters in value, it would cost possibly thousands of dollars to bring a barrel of oil into the United States. So even if oil triples due to lack of supply after that collapse (and inevitable war in the Gulf region), Europe is paying 300 instead of 100, but America is paying $9,000 instead of $3,000. At that price, gasoline would be $215 a gallon. (I know these figures are totally made up - I have not read any "predictions" that say they would be this high.) I doubt the Pentagon would allow anyone to touch the oil reserves - you'd see a shitload of bikes on the road, with a few ambulances and humvees.
China doesn't have the military capability to step in behind America. They spend 200 billion a year on their military, which has a larger number of troops with less than stellar equipment. Their economy would also partially collapse, as the demand for their products from the US disappear and Europe and the rest of the world would greatly reduce their imports as well.
Russia may have enough leftover equipment and proximity to take over Iraq and Afghanistan, but who knows where China would land in that scenario. Plus, China couldn't dump their US holdings slow enough to retain their full value, as any move in that direction would cause everyone else to sell theirs.
This is my totally uneducated opinion, but I'd be very interested to see what contingency plans our government has cooked up for this type of scenario. Maybe it was already put into play in 2001.
I meant to expand on this, but China doesn't actually have all of our money, just the most out of any foreign country, along with Japan. I still think they hold enough to do some damage, though, if they switch entirely to Euros or something else.
Trust me. The dollar will not fail.
If China allowed the dollar to tank, the American economy would make the current crisis look like paradise. Oil would be unaffordable. Our reserves would be locked up for military use. The power vacuum left by a rapidly destabilized American military would fuck shit up. You'd probably have dozens of wars spring up, especially in the middle east, as Europe and Asia battle over the energy reserves currently under our control. Israel would probably end up dropping a pre-emptive nuke to make everyone think twice about moving in their direction. Who knows which way Russia would swing.
So, the world isn't going to let America fail at the moment, since no one knows how better or worse off they'd be. That's why the dollar is up since the crisis. China may have all of our money, but we still have more military power than the rest of the world combined.
And gold? Gold isn't going to get you to the border, or to any place of safety. You should buy a dirtbike and a shitload of ammunition if you think the dollar is going to fail. Gold won't buy much more than cash if everyone is starving.
Plus, your fears about spending are basically groundless. During WWII we drove up our deficit to unbelievable highs - wars are expensive, that's why taxes should go up when a country goes to war. McCain said in 2003: "The tax cut is not appropriate until we find out the cost of the war and the cost of reconstruction." That was, of course, before he starting toeing the line for the real political power in the GOP.
We can afford national healthcare, stimulus packages, more education, and ponies if we reduce military spending, which is currently at a trillion dollars a year. Empire is what is bankrupting the country, not social spending.
Fuck yeah!
Money is for war and not education!
(awesome guitar outro)