Your friendly neighbors up north disagree. The last 7 have been a fair bit worse then the 30 or so before.
US policy hasn't changed for the past 30 years, the only difference is that Iraq is higher profile than Panama, Granada, and Somalia. The neighbors up north should take a look at their involvement in Haiti before saying anything about the US in Iraq.
When will people stop thinking "oh, if we just shut down all the 'dangerous' activities, we'll all be safe from terrorists"? It was communists, now it's terrorists - there's always a boogeyman.
I totally agree. Sorry, my point was to refute the racism in the post that I replied to. In fact the people who go to the camp would have a greater appreciation of the dangers of explosives and be safer than those idiots on YouTube with the anarchists cookbook.
The general public does normally prefer low price and is willing to mindlessly destroy their own livelyhood in its pursuit.
They prefer lower price unless there is a compelling reason to pay more. Cooking your own food is even cheaper than going to fast food, but people choose to pay more for prepared food because of a compelling reason (time). People pay more for good food or atmosphere at a mom & pop shop.
But where low price alone is insufficient, it is scientifically proven that the public is also subject to mass scale media-based brainwashing, which in marketing circles goes by the name of "branding". That is why people will buy McCrap burger, even though a Mom & Pop store is offering much better cousine next door. They are simply inundated with incessant multi-billion psychological manipulation, from very young age onwards, for which very purpose the so called "mass media" exists.
Yes, nobody can resist the sheer compelling power of mass media, all Dubya needs to do is start an advertising campaign and all his problems will be forgotten. I tend to give people more credit, mass media may have some limited impact, but it is far from being so compelling it controls people.
That is why the advent of "franchise" stores is so popular, as they do provide the mass-media centered mass-mind-warping mechanisms, which individual stores cannot even dream of.
Franchises work because people are risk averse. I walk into Starbucks, McDonalds, Apple Store, I know what to expect whether I'm in Louisville or Tokyo. There are better coffee shops than Starbucks, but most people don't want to go around experimenting. I go to a mom & pop coffee shop in town, because they offer better coffee and better pastries. But when I go to other countries, unless a place is recommended I will stick with the safety of a franchise... I don't have the time or patience to look for something better when I'm travelling.
You forgot about the barriers to entry. If the barrier to entry (most of the time artifically created by the participants of the cartels) is so high that only a mega-bazillionaire multi-mega-national can enter, the mom & pop crowd is at a distinct disadvantage
Yes they are at a disadvantage, but it doesn't mean impossible. There are new small businesses started every day, just because the obvious path is dominated by giants doesn't mean that nobody can compete; that's why hundreds of small business start up every year.
So I guess it is all right to be owned by our feudal betters, as long as the TV keeps playing and the bread is available, right?
Only if the alternative is starvation and economic collapse. I still don't see how we are being controlled by feudal betters; because we freely choose to buy things from big multi-national corporations? The US economy would be unsustainable without globalization and economies of scale, we'd be worse off, not better
The foreigners (particularly oriental where all the manufacturing and thus wealth is heading) have far more purchasing power then the locals, and the locals have been repeatedly burned by investing in useless education, only to become underpaid corporate drones, and so their lesson learned was that the education is yet another empty slogan in a long parade of many.
Have you ever travelled to China or Asia? They do not have nearly the same purchasing power as people in the US. The asian sweatshops are filled with people making Nikes for the "poor" inner-city kids in the US. When 15% of students drop out of highschool, the problem isn't about being "burned" by pursuing higher education.
Since at this point pretty much all is being outsourced, which is only logical after the core of the economy, the manufacturing is already somewhere else, I am not sure what you are trying to recommend for all
if you ask me, those R&D folks should be canned for making so many obvious mistakes and omissions on the released product, but thats just my opinion
I would put this squarely on the marketing dept. It was obvious when Apple pulled Leopard resources to work on the iPhone. Reminds me of the launch of Star Wars Galaxies, where basically meeting a launch date (also right before the end of June to meet Q2 deadline) was more important than having everything ready. The same excuse was probably used, the system is "comparable to other products on the market in terms of feature readiness"
I definately can see the massive potential of the iPhone, the platform is ready, the specific apps are not. It just needs a few months of tweaking to go from good to great.
You've apparently not been paying attention to the news for the last 7 years. Let me introduce you to 21st century American Politics- when the question isn't "is this politician corrupt?" but rather "who has purchased this politician?", because the assumption is EVERY politician is corrupt
Let me introduce you to all of history, power and corruption go hand-in-hand. The last 7 years have been the same as the last 7000
Uh, no. In fact, most cartoon shows are created nowadays solely for the subsequent merchandising possibilities.
Nowadays? Over 20 years ago we had the famed 30min toy commercial. All that's changed is the shows have gone from plastic action figures to collectable card games. I can't believe I just said "over 20 years ago"... sigh, I'm old, next thing you know they'll start recreating more "grown up" versions of my childhood cartoons to capitalize on the nostalgia.
MacDonalds has decided to rebrand themselves to the more authentic "Krusty Burger" corporate image.
Lou: I went to the McDonalds over in Shelbyville the other day.
Chief Wiggum: The Mc-what?
Lou: Yeah, I never heard of it either but they say they have over 2000 locations in this state alone.
Eddie: Hmm...Must've sprung up over night.
Lou: But you know, its the little differences.
Chief Wiggum: Example?
Lou: Well at a McDonalds you can get a Krusty Burger with cheese. But they don't call it a Krusty Burger with cheese.
Chief Wiggum: Get out! What do they call it?
Lou: A quarter pounder with cheese.
Chief Wiggum: Quarter pounder with cheese...well I can see the cheese but? Hey, do they have Krusty's Partially Gelatinated Gum-Based beverages?
Lou: Yeah, they call them 'shakes.'
Eddie: *Pfft* 'Shakes.' You don't know what you're gettin'.
A small grocery store is dead next to a WalMart. A mom-and-pop burger place has no chance on the same corner as McDonalds. A small-time family car repair shop is nearly always devastated by a national chain. Etc and so on.
Perhaps we should just go back to the good old days of individual craftsman, instead of mass production, then everybody will be the owner of their own company; that would definately improve everybody's quality of life. The solution to the economy is not to make everything more expensive. Mom & pop shops can and do compete, just not directly with price. People will pay a little more for a burger that doesn't taste like cardboard, for goods that aren't mass market cheap plastic, and for good customer service at the repair shop.
No one decides per-se. Taxation brackets would be adjusted based on median income of the nation, and thus floating automatically with the increase/decrease of the wealth of the whole populace.
You still have to decide the scale. Is 95% bracket at 10 million dollars? What happens to companies like airlines, the cost becomes completely prohibitive because you can't form an airline on a few thousand dollars. You actually eliminate competition by pricing people out. The approach is backwards in that it promotes cheap & less risky investment, rather than expensive & revolutionary development.
This of course is one of those big lies of the "free" market, today. Many things, which are supposedly available because of "economy" of scale are simply rip-offs. Microsoft products (up to 10000% margins) or FLASH memory chips (400-800% margins) alike and are simply a result of activities of various cartels.
You contradict yourself. If there are these huge margins across the board, then mom & pop shops would be able to compete. For the most part economy of scales have brought us much cheaper goods, a-la Walmart. Yes there are specific cases where the system breaks down, I never claimed that the free market is perfect. There should be a strong FTC & DOJ to prevent such problem (Memory maker collusion, MS monopoly, etc); and it should be something the citizens demand, of course half the people can't be bothered to vote let alone educate themselves.
Perheaps it is so, but you cannot put a blame for the result of the decades of corporate propaganda squarely on the shoulders of its victims.
If commercials make people buy, then I guess video games make people murder.
And now you are blaming the hapless goofuses, who unlike you and me, had no privilege of other points of view, which in my case is of foreign origin.
Which is why I feel so strongly about education. Exposing people to new points of view is the only way to change the culture. Massive taxation won't fix things, it will just concentrate wealth in the hands of the government, another elitest group. The solution is to fix the culture.
make a long story short, none of these technologies are practical in the slightest, and all ultimately depend on the good graces of the very people you are trying to cirvumvent
Those were just brainstorming examples. The solution most likely is not obvious, but there is a solution - that's how companies are started.
But the whole insideous nature of such "soft" slavery is that, as Goethe once said: "None are more enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free". And I think this statement applies quite nicely to most of the populations of the Western countries. The fact that people in some other places have it worse, does not excuse what is going on here. It is a logical fallacy to try to excuse removal of someone's freedom by pointing out that someone else is going hungry.
On the flip side, telling a man he is free does not end his hunger. To
My answer is an abolishment of corporate charter (and thus return to personal responsibility of business owners for the actions of their companies - a key element which you forgot to mention being circumvented by the corporate charter
So your answer to fixing the class imbalance is to remove any chance of ownership from the lower and middle classes? Yes you will have more "responsibility" but the risk will then further concentrate power in the hands of the few who can afford to take risk. You can point all you want to "evil" corporations, but privately held business throughout history aren't any better. I do agree that some measure of corporate accountability is necessary, but it should be focused on the executive level, those in control. Exposing shareholders would just change how capital is raised from shared ownership to debt.
We do not need large businesses and super-wealthy super-businessmen in any area. We need a lot of smaller businesses competing for everything
First from a practical level, who decides the minimum number of companies, or what size company is too large? A grocery store has different capital investment requirements from a wafer fab. Second from an economic point of view, we would be eroding economies of scale causing things to be more expensive. Do we really need more bankrupt airlines?
along with near 90% inheretance taxation in higher brackets
I do agree with this, there are too many loopholes that allow multi-generational legacies to be established. The children of the rich have enough benefits that they should be able to become self-sufficient and not need inheretance
Maybe because of the fact that most of the population in the US (and increasingly most of the West) has a negative savings rate?
Most by individual choice. Just look at this weekend, thousands of people waited hours, even days, in line so they could spend $2000+ dollars for a gadget (including the 2year contract). Some of them probably could afford it, but many probably couldn't and just stuck it on their charge card. People overpurchased on homes, bought gas guzzling SUVs, playing the credit game of financing longer, so they could afford the payments because of all the other debt they have. People choose to live on the edge, then cry helplessness when the world doesn't go according to plan.
Because we increasingly are owned. As an example, in an area we nerds find dear to us: where I live, all cell-phone service providers have merged into two cartels, who now charge identical rates of ~0.5$ per kilobyte for internet access on your phone, or roughly $21,000 for 4Gb. Your "consumer choice" is that of a Dick A up your ass, or Dick B up your ass. Same applies to land-based ISPs whose best uplink rate (in a densly populated city centre) is 384kbit/s for a mere $95 a month.
You forgot choice C which is don't give into consumerism and just use your phone for phone calls.
The problem is not that they are making money. It is the way in which they are making money. What I am pointing out is the total breakage of the basic, fundamental rules of the whole "capitalist" society!
How specifically are they making money that breaks capitalist society? Other than inheritance, most of the wealth is generated through risk taking and entreprenuership.
Oh yea! That will cure the problem! I will just hop on to my bank, get a loan for, say, $5 billion, get the government to sell me some radio spectrum presently used by someone else (I will have to buy a few politicians to do that, bribing them more then the other guy) and then I will start my own cell-phone company and I will never have to pay 50 cents a kilobyte again! That's the truly practical plan for all citizens in my area, surely.... not!
No it is not. If the CEO compensation and the compensation of employees diverge by a factor of 500, even if profits of some shareholders are proportional
If you look at the CEO compensation vs S&P 500 chart you will see they are proportional. Yes there are high profile circumstances where CEO pay at a particular company is totally out of sync with performance, but as a whole CEO compensation is fine. The problem is that company growth due to employee productivity increases do not result in increase of employee compensation. It's the employee wages being held down that's the problem, not the CEO pay being out of control.
The purpose of allowing the corporations to come to being is to benefit the society as a whole not a few feudal lords, otherwise known as billionaire stockholders, and their semi-loyal vassals, the CEOs, at the expense of everyone else.
The history of corporations has always been to help mercantilists to make more money by reducing risk (and in theory helping society as a whole). Benefits to society have only been a side-effect of corporate greed. I do agree that society does have the right to revoke corporate charters, I don't necessarily think that will really accomplish what you want. All that would do is push everything back to privately owned companies with much less transparency and responsibility, and reduce the middle class of ownership. Rather than the rich owning most everything, they would in fact own everything.
It is truly mind boggling how many excuses people like you come up with in order to justify the galloping return to feudalism-in-all-but-name, which is so advanced already in the USA. Not only that, many of you are apparently not satisifed about how fast can you become wholly owned and operated by your "betters". "Give me liberty or give me death" my ass.
It is truly mind boggling why people carry this sense of helplessness. Why do you feel you are owned? Because somebody else is making more money than you is jealousy not patriotism. If you feel owned start your own company, one that reflects your own ideals. Yes there are problems in the US, just like there is everywhere else in the world. Most of the problems are caused by the choices of individuals, the structural problem such as medical coverage and access to higher education should be the focus. Not that CEOs make more money, and people are deciding to go into more debt.
And before you start going off about how average Joe American is a stockholder too, be sure to realize that 90% of all stocks in the USA are owned by less then 20% of the population, with over 30% of all companies owned by just the top 1%
The problem is Joe American isn't a stockholder, the biggest mistake most middle class people make is to put consumerism over real ownership. Instead of investing they buy goods that overtime will be worth less, with credit that makes them cost more. How many of those shares are owned by the corporate founders? Also, your numbers are skewed since institutional investing has taken the place of individual investment. I may not own a share of stock, but I'm invested in a mutal fund that holds stock; I'm an owner by proxy, with less risk exposure.
CEO compensation for the most part tracks the S&P 500. They make more money in proportion to the money the stockholders make, which I would say is appropriate compensation.
"Piracy is ethically no different than finding a few nice items on the street that you weren't planning to buy for yourself, making an exact replica of those items, and taking the replicas with you, leaving the original items unharmed." That is a more accurate analogy, but quite a bit less clear-cut from an ethical point of view.
Piracy is like printing your own money and depositing it in the bank. It doesn't really hurt anybody if you do it, but if everybody does it then money becomes worthless.
The This ruling undermines capitalism. It suggests there exists a case where it is more favorable for the buyer to be strictly denied the most favorable terms - the exact case the Sherman act was trying to prevent and the reason we have laws against monopolies.
Dumping for example is favorable short-term, with long-term negative impact on competition. Loss leaders are another example where a larger retailer can price out specialty shops, resulting in less competition.
So will hyperinflation caused by currency de-valuation, due to oversupply and no demand, which is a scenario we're facing now.
Where is this hyperinflation? There is a danger of triggering stagflation with oil prices causing a domino effect across the economy, but this is not related to current monetary policy.
Its equivalent to paying your Mastercard with your Visa.
No it's like using your visa to buy a computer so you can start a business to earn money, so you can pay off your Mastercard. The money doesn't go straight from debt to pay debt, it goes to investing and funding economic growth
Intuitively eventually this catches up to you, and it looks like this is finally starting to happen. They thought as long as the population grows, and technology advanced, that the total productivity of the nation would keep up with the currency debt spiral, and the 'balance' could be held indefinately.
The real GDP is positive, so the balance is being held.
So lets see... inflation is supposed to be a broad measure that tells us essentially how much more money we need this year over last year in order to maintain the same standard of living? Yet it excludes the cost of fuel and energy.
There are a number of measures of inflation. Inflation needs to be looked at over the long term, food and energy can be deceptive because of their volitility. That doesn't mean they need to be ignored, but they do need to be put in perspective.
Bottom line, the government has lost control of inflation, and is lying about it. The cracks are starting to show.
This sounds like the same rhetoric as the early 90's. Massive US cold war debt, the economy is failing, the Japanese will own us one day. What cracks? How does the government lie about it, perhaps they could pull it off on Joe Sixpack, but there are too many people (and more importantly too much money) involved in the financial sector for the government to fool them all.
The first point is that the government and central bankers create money from nothing and create a national IOU to balance it.
Where do you propose money be created from, it has to come from somewhere. The system in place is there to prevent the federal government from just printing money with no recourse. Also, most of the government debt created by the "borrowing" of money from the federal reserve is erased through rebates each year. If you look at the national debt most of it is owed to the government itself, kinda like calling yourself in debt because you used the money you allocated for your vaction to pay your mortgage.
The second stage of this is the fractional reserve banking system. This is perhaps the biggest scam ever created. The fractional reserve banking system allows commercial banks to loan out to people more money than they have in reserve
This helps investment, otherwise the cost of borrowing would be much higher. It's better for an economy to keep money moving to facilitate exchange of goods and services. Fractional banking works because the growth of the economy outpaces inflation.
The debt can never actually be paid. There isn't enough money in existence to pay of the debt, ever. Because of the interest on the initial creation of the money. You borrow $100 into existence but owe $105 at the end of the year, the extra $5 doesn't actually exist, it was never created, so you borrow some more.
Unless you found a way to invest and earn more money.
It can actually be narrowed down to specific dates. For the US it was August 15th 1971. Everyone else has since followed.
Actually the debt based economy was from 1913 with the establishment of the federal reserve. Removing the dollar convertability in 1971 was done to prevent economic crisis as the US was becoming bankrupt (gold reserve drop from 21ktons to 8.5ktons)
I think indentured servitude is an apt description of our current monetary system.
The current system allows fiscally responsible people to work hard now, invest the value of that work, and enjoy the fruits of their labor later. The problem is most people aren't responsible.
Gold has intrinsic value. Paper does not. Hence, paper money is a form of tax
Gold has no intrinsic value beyond it's usefulness in industry. A starving man in the desert would accept bread and water before accepting gold. Gold is useful as a currency because it is widely accepted around the world, not because of any intrinsic value.
Good thing nobody pirates video games or those guys would be going out of business too!
Fewer people pirate video games than music since most of the revenue is in the console & portable space where it is relatively difficult to pirate. PC games accounted for only $1B vs. $6.5B for console games.
America standas for looking like you are rich, sanity stands for being debt free and not being incredibly retarted spending money on things like diamonds for your wife, giant new home, imported luxury cars, new boats, etc...
The guy in the cardboard box on the street corner lives a debt-free life. Enjoying life is not about spending everything you have, nor is it saving every penny until you're 60. It's about finding balance between enjoying now and securing your future.
Depends on where you live, and what lifestyle you choose. Should I not be rewarded for working harder or investing intelligently, beyond some arbitrary limit?
but it would keep you from taking home $200m retirement packages; packages that don't reflect your use to society.
Who defines a person's use to society? Capitalism doesn't judge a person in terms of society which is something very difficult to define, it only addresses relative value - between the service and the purchaser.
In these cases the ballot is put into the 'Spoiled' pile.
Seriously, what is the problem with you Americans, I've seen my 3 year old neighbour doing Paint-by-numbers and get it in the assigned spaces, how hard is it to follow the simple instruction "Mark the box next to the person you want to vote for with an X and no where else"?
Which is what typically is done, unless you have a case where the is a close election then the "spoiled" votes become contentious. It's not like spoiled ballots or disputed election results are an exclusively American, look at the Italian election in 2006. At least the US doesn't have riots following elections like France, then again the French will riot about pretty much anything.
You won't have hanging chads if you have this two-inch-square box on a piece of paper that you mark with an x or fill in.
So what does it mean if there is a "/"? What if there is a scribble mark in one box and an "X" on the other? What if there is just a dot (as if the pen was placed in the center of the box)?
Slashdot Mirror
In fact the people who go to the camp would have a greater appreciation of the dangers of explosives and be safer than those idiots on YouTube with the anarchists cookbook.
Suppose somebody named McVeigh, or Cho attends.
Anybody could be a terrorist.
They prefer lower price unless there is a compelling reason to pay more. Cooking your own food is even cheaper than going to fast food, but people choose to pay more for prepared food because of a compelling reason (time). People pay more for good food or atmosphere at a mom & pop shop.
Yes, nobody can resist the sheer compelling power of mass media, all Dubya needs to do is start an advertising campaign and all his problems will be forgotten. I tend to give people more credit, mass media may have some limited impact, but it is far from being so compelling it controls people.
Franchises work because people are risk averse. I walk into Starbucks, McDonalds, Apple Store, I know what to expect whether I'm in Louisville or Tokyo. There are better coffee shops than Starbucks, but most people don't want to go around experimenting. I go to a mom & pop coffee shop in town, because they offer better coffee and better pastries. But when I go to other countries, unless a place is recommended I will stick with the safety of a franchise... I don't have the time or patience to look for something better when I'm travelling.
Yes they are at a disadvantage, but it doesn't mean impossible. There are new small businesses started every day, just because the obvious path is dominated by giants doesn't mean that nobody can compete; that's why hundreds of small business start up every year.
Only if the alternative is starvation and economic collapse. I still don't see how we are being controlled by feudal betters; because we freely choose to buy things from big multi-national corporations? The US economy would be unsustainable without globalization and economies of scale, we'd be worse off, not better
Have you ever travelled to China or Asia? They do not have nearly the same purchasing power as people in the US. The asian sweatshops are filled with people making Nikes for the "poor" inner-city kids in the US.
When 15% of students drop out of highschool, the problem isn't about being "burned" by pursuing higher education.
I definately can see the massive potential of the iPhone, the platform is ready, the specific apps are not. It just needs a few months of tweaking to go from good to great.
I can't believe I just said "over 20 years ago"... sigh, I'm old, next thing you know they'll start recreating more "grown up" versions of my childhood cartoons to capitalize on the nostalgia.
Chief Wiggum: The Mc-what?
Lou: Yeah, I never heard of it either but they say they have over 2000 locations in this state alone.
Eddie: Hmm...Must've sprung up over night.
Lou: But you know, its the little differences.
Chief Wiggum: Example?
Lou: Well at a McDonalds you can get a Krusty Burger with cheese. But they don't call it a Krusty Burger with cheese.
Chief Wiggum: Get out! What do they call it?
Lou: A quarter pounder with cheese.
Chief Wiggum: Quarter pounder with cheese...well I can see the cheese but? Hey, do they have Krusty's Partially Gelatinated Gum-Based beverages?
Lou: Yeah, they call them 'shakes.'
Eddie: *Pfft* 'Shakes.' You don't know what you're gettin'.
Perhaps we should just go back to the good old days of individual craftsman, instead of mass production, then everybody will be the owner of their own company; that would definately improve everybody's quality of life.
The solution to the economy is not to make everything more expensive. Mom & pop shops can and do compete, just not directly with price. People will pay a little more for a burger that doesn't taste like cardboard, for goods that aren't mass market cheap plastic, and for good customer service at the repair shop.
You still have to decide the scale. Is 95% bracket at 10 million dollars? What happens to companies like airlines, the cost becomes completely prohibitive because you can't form an airline on a few thousand dollars. You actually eliminate competition by pricing people out.
The approach is backwards in that it promotes cheap & less risky investment, rather than expensive & revolutionary development.
You contradict yourself. If there are these huge margins across the board, then mom & pop shops would be able to compete. For the most part economy of scales have brought us much cheaper goods, a-la Walmart. Yes there are specific cases where the system breaks down, I never claimed that the free market is perfect. There should be a strong FTC & DOJ to prevent such problem (Memory maker collusion, MS monopoly, etc); and it should be something the citizens demand, of course half the people can't be bothered to vote let alone educate themselves.
If commercials make people buy, then I guess video games make people murder.
Which is why I feel so strongly about education. Exposing people to new points of view is the only way to change the culture. Massive taxation won't fix things, it will just concentrate wealth in the hands of the government, another elitest group. The solution is to fix the culture.
Those were just brainstorming examples. The solution most likely is not obvious, but there is a solution - that's how companies are started.
On the flip side, telling a man he is free does not end his hunger. To
So your answer to fixing the class imbalance is to remove any chance of ownership from the lower and middle classes? Yes you will have more "responsibility" but the risk will then further concentrate power in the hands of the few who can afford to take risk. You can point all you want to "evil" corporations, but privately held business throughout history aren't any better.
I do agree that some measure of corporate accountability is necessary, but it should be focused on the executive level, those in control. Exposing shareholders would just change how capital is raised from shared ownership to debt.
First from a practical level, who decides the minimum number of companies, or what size company is too large? A grocery store has different capital investment requirements from a wafer fab.
Second from an economic point of view, we would be eroding economies of scale causing things to be more expensive. Do we really need more bankrupt airlines?
I do agree with this, there are too many loopholes that allow multi-generational legacies to be established. The children of the rich have enough benefits that they should be able to become self-sufficient and not need inheretance
Most by individual choice. Just look at this weekend, thousands of people waited hours, even days, in line so they could spend $2000+ dollars for a gadget (including the 2year contract). Some of them probably could afford it, but many probably couldn't and just stuck it on their charge card. People overpurchased on homes, bought gas guzzling SUVs, playing the credit game of financing longer, so they could afford the payments because of all the other debt they have. People choose to live on the edge, then cry helplessness when the world doesn't go according to plan.
You forgot choice C which is don't give into consumerism and just use your phone for phone calls.
How specifically are they making money that breaks capitalist society? Other than inheritance, most of the wealth is generated through risk taking and entreprenuership.
There are unlicensed parts of the rad
The problem is that company growth due to employee productivity increases do not result in increase of employee compensation. It's the employee wages being held down that's the problem, not the CEO pay being out of control.
The history of corporations has always been to help mercantilists to make more money by reducing risk (and in theory helping society as a whole). Benefits to society have only been a side-effect of corporate greed. I do agree that society does have the right to revoke corporate charters, I don't necessarily think that will really accomplish what you want. All that would do is push everything back to privately owned companies with much less transparency and responsibility, and reduce the middle class of ownership. Rather than the rich owning most everything, they would in fact own everything.
It is truly mind boggling why people carry this sense of helplessness. Why do you feel you are owned? Because somebody else is making more money than you is jealousy not patriotism. If you feel owned start your own company, one that reflects your own ideals.
Yes there are problems in the US, just like there is everywhere else in the world. Most of the problems are caused by the choices of individuals, the structural problem such as medical coverage and access to higher education should be the focus. Not that CEOs make more money, and people are deciding to go into more debt.
The problem is Joe American isn't a stockholder, the biggest mistake most middle class people make is to put consumerism over real ownership. Instead of investing they buy goods that overtime will be worth less, with credit that makes them cost more.
How many of those shares are owned by the corporate founders? Also, your numbers are skewed since institutional investing has taken the place of individual investment. I may not own a share of stock, but I'm invested in a mutal fund that holds stock; I'm an owner by proxy, with less risk exposure.
CEO compensation for the most part tracks the S&P 500. They make more money in proportion to the money the stockholders make, which I would say is appropriate compensation.
No it's like using your visa to buy a computer so you can start a business to earn money, so you can pay off your Mastercard. The money doesn't go straight from debt to pay debt, it goes to investing and funding economic growth
The real GDP is positive, so the balance is being held.
There are a number of measures of inflation. Inflation needs to be looked at over the long term, food and energy can be deceptive because of their volitility. That doesn't mean they need to be ignored, but they do need to be put in perspective.
This sounds like the same rhetoric as the early 90's. Massive US cold war debt, the economy is failing, the Japanese will own us one day. What cracks? How does the government lie about it, perhaps they could pull it off on Joe Sixpack, but there are too many people (and more importantly too much money) involved in the financial sector for the government to fool them all.
This helps investment, otherwise the cost of borrowing would be much higher. It's better for an economy to keep money moving to facilitate exchange of goods and services. Fractional banking works because the growth of the economy outpaces inflation.
Unless you found a way to invest and earn more money.
Actually the debt based economy was from 1913 with the establishment of the federal reserve. Removing the dollar convertability in 1971 was done to prevent economic crisis as the US was becoming bankrupt (gold reserve drop from 21ktons to 8.5ktons)
The current system allows fiscally responsible people to work hard now, invest the value of that work, and enjoy the fruits of their labor later. The problem is most people aren't responsible.
Enjoying life is not about spending everything you have, nor is it saving every penny until you're 60. It's about finding balance between enjoying now and securing your future.
At least the US doesn't have riots following elections like France, then again the French will riot about pretty much anything.