Originally Posted by Weave

.

You made wild conspiracy claims of a massive plot among the rich to "destroy the middle class" with out an ounce of proof. (seems pretty tin foil to me) When you asked me to back up my claims on Fast and Furious I did. I never mentioned religion or the bible and am In fact hardly religious at all. As I suggested earlier, up your meds, they arent working.



The ignore feature is the last refuge of a lost argument.....

No, "Take your meds!" and its variants has become an even-later refuge of a scoundrel on Internet chat lines. You are a scoundrel, Weave. Sarcasm is not a valid substitute for a reasoned argument.

There need be no conspiracy. If I were to tell you that owner-operators of small businesses were the backbone of the middle class and are now disappearing because the tax code now favors vertically-integrated entities and bureaucratic elites within that can exploit economies of scale and reap almost all of the advantage of them while squeezing out smaller-scale competitors, would you see a problem? The prime example is Wal*Mart, which has the ability to squeeze suppliers as smaller retailers can't, can buy politicians and lobbyists as smaller retailers can't, can use information technology unavailable to competitors, can get its advertising done cheaply, can pick and choose where it locates its stores, can face an IRS audit with lesser disruption than can a mom-and-pop retailer, can co-ordinate effective anti-union drives (it is probably good for survival to have a bumper sticker that supports a reactionary politician if you want to work there... and Wal*Mart stores are the last places at which I ever see Bush-Cheney bumper stickers) and pays the same percentage of taxes as a small-scale retailer?

Some of that is simple progress... but as I see, small-scale retailers (and even outlets of giant retailers like JC Penney) die in small towns and suburbia unless they deal in merchandise that Wal*Mart doesn't touch -- used merchandise, merchandise that Wal*Mart has chosen to foist onto someone else, low-end schlock for really low-end customers that Wal*Mart doesn't want (the "shoplifter" profile and customers of rent-to-own emporia whose checks bounce)... high-brow merchandise (Wal*Mart typically has a dreadful selection of books), antiques, or other high-end merchandise (like furniture) -- or specialized equipment that still needs some explaining (that is old-fashioned salesmanship, something that the Wal*Mart model of business distrusts).

I could also discuss gigantic banks and chain restaurants, but that would take time. But all in all the middle class is shrinking even as more people aspire to be in it... because the tax policies and political system in America favor cartels and trusts over small business. Monopolies, cartels, and trusts give short-term benefits to customers and often a short-lived boom in such activities as construction -- and then economic busts.

Small business created America's economic greatness -- and monopolistic entities capable of exploiting market power take the fruit of that greatness while ruining America.

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

The capacity of rightwingnuts to waste the time of intelligent people continues. . .

Romney now leads polling in SC. Looks like the Republican fight has been a tale told by half a dozen idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing, and within a few weeks the result will be clear. So having beaten a President's wife and an Admiral's son to succeed a President's son, who originally beat a Senator's son, Obama now faces a Governor and auto company President's son! Isn't America wonderful? Any man can become President, if he had the right dad. . . .

If Romney becomes President I expect a lot of Christian Conservatives and especially Tea Party folks be very disappointed when he is governing little differently than Barack Obama has.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

No, "Take your meds!" and its variants has become an even-later refuge of a scoundrel on Internet chat lines. You are a scoundrel, Weave.

Small business created America's economic greatness -- and monopolistic entities capable of exploiting market power take the fruit of that greatness while ruining America.

And you sir, are a poltroon of the highest order....

Originally Posted by Tristan

If Romney becomes President I expect a lot of Christian Conservatives and especially Tea Party folks be very disappointed when he is governing little differently than Barack Obama has.

It may be impossible to govern as a Tea Party right-winger even if the opportunity presents itself for someone of such a persuasion to become President.

The Hard Right relies upon 'dying' demographics. The Religious Right is aging, and it isn't keeping its kids in the fold or winning converts fast enough to offset the harvest of the Grim Reaper. The fastest-growing part of the electorate (aside from the Millennial Generation too rational to fall for that stuff) is the Hispanic vote, and it has no use for the anti-intellectualism (which reaches to the public-school teacher) and the anti-government obsession (Hispanics are an urban population and rely heavily upon public infrastructure) of the Hard Right. Deflationary economics that the Hard Right proposes of course hits debtors -- like young adults with large student loans that they can't discharge.

I doubt that the Hard Right is so hostile to politicians based on religion. The Iowa caucuses demonstrated that Christian Protestant fundamentalists can vote for a right-wing Catholic, especially with President Obama in the league of Hitler, Stalin, Castro, and Saddam (snicker, snicker!).

It may be that a 4T forces statist solutions to the economic and international distress that occurs in a 4T. 3T 'solutions' fail catastrophically in a 4T in the sense that Bermuda shorts that one might get away with on occasion in early October fail in a Minnesota winter. People must create institutions suitable for the time and abandon those that prove irrelevant. We obviously can't rely entirely upon money-grubbers out only for themselves in a 4T.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

People must create institutions suitable for the time and abandon those that prove irrelevant.

On that sentence, we agree.

James50

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

It may be that a 4T forces statist solutions to the economic and international distress that occurs in a 4T. 3T 'solutions' fail catastrophically in a 4T in the sense that Bermuda shorts that one might get away with on occasion in early October fail in a Minnesota winter. People must create institutions suitable for the time and abandon those that prove irrelevant. We obviously can't rely entirely upon money-grubbers out only for themselves in a 4T.

Originally Posted by James50

On that sentence, we agree.

James50

I think James was being ironic, because I think your view of what institutions remain relevant is completely different. In any case, I disagree with you both.

PBrower here represents the very common tendency in this forum, mostly among the left, to assume that the theory of turnings more or less guarantees rational solutions in a 4T. I'm not sure that that's what Strauss and Howe were saying although the books can certainly be read that way. But the key point is--it's not true. Men and women create the solutions they want to create, based on their political power, in the 4T. Some are good and some are terrible. We have already seen this in the US in the civil war crisis and we are seeing it right now.

James has made clear that he thinks New Deal institutions are now irrelevant. I disagree profoundly in one sense: we need them more than ever. But he's right in another sense: powerful people have rejected them and there isn't enough constituency for them any more.

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

James has made clear that he thinks New Deal institutions are now irrelevant.

Irrelevant is probably not the right word - more like over-extended. Or designed to do one thing but stretched to a breaking point by new conditions.

Social Security - needed and relevant, but becomes more difficult to fund as time goes by
Medicare (not really New Deal, but cut from the same cloth) - needed and relevant but absolute fiscal disaster. It will collapse if we cannot cut overall medical expenses.
Wagner Act - needed and relevant, but so far judging by union levels in the private workforce, incapable of adjusting to the demands of globalization
Fannie, Freddie, FHA - relevant but expanded far beyond the original intent. Need to be vastly scaled back or replace with something better for our collapsed housing market.
Glass-Steagall - terribly needed but repealed by the Clinton administration in payoff to its Wall Street overseers. Let's bring this one back!
Large military - maybe not fair to call this part of New Deal, but was made huge at the same time and has maintained an overly burdensome size ever since. Let's cut it back.
Fair Labor Standards Act - this one is relevant and needed, but minimum wage laws can have the effect of suppressing employment of new job seekers. We should be careful.
FDIC - relevant and needed. Has saved the economy from bank runs many times.
SEC - relevant and needed, but is a good example of regulatory capture. How in the world did they miss Madoff? Now we have Dodd-Frank. We will see how that works.

What have I left out?

James50

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

I think James was being ironic, because I think your view of what institutions remain relevant is completely different. In any case, I disagree with you both.

PBrower here represents the very common tendency in this forum, mostly among the left, to assume that the theory of turnings more or less guarantees rational solutions in a 4T. I'm not sure that that's what Strauss and Howe were saying although the books can certainly be read that way. But the key point is--it's not true. Men and women create the solutions they want to create, based on their political power, in the 4T. Some are good and some are terrible. We have already seen this in the US in the civil war crisis and we are seeing it right now.

Of course, intrusive government can be a right-wing phenomenon. Consider Apartheid in South Africa. Big government 'owned' by cartels, trusts, and warmonger interests is unlikely to be left-leaning. Dubya was no less a big-government supporter than any previous President even if he was no friend of Big Labor, the poor, or the environment.

Irrational solutions, the extreme example being the fascist ideologies of the last 4T, prove catastrophic non-solutions. Maybe they unify most of public life and establish a well-defined culture; maybe they make people proud due to pageantry that distracts people from hardships that irrational solutions never solve. Those seem to be most attractive early in a Crisis Era; if the irrational solutions are not entrenched as public policy early they become increasingly unattractive -- even abominable. KKK activity dwindled to near-nothingness during the 1930s in America; the BUF had all but vanished by September 1, 1939. He whom we dare not mention had only a limited window of opportunity in Germany... but exploited it to the fullest.

The Tea Party and the Religious Right are clearly on the decline. They have little obvious appeal to a Civic Generation. Homosexual rights get increasing acceptance even while the general culture becomes much less tolerant of destructive deviancy.

James has made clear that he thinks New Deal institutions are now irrelevant. I disagree profoundly in one sense: we need them more than ever. But he's right in another sense: powerful people have rejected them and there isn't enough constituency for them any more.

Those institutions will have to be re-fashioned; their natural constituencies will need to form anew, this time with Millennial adults instead of GIs pushing them.

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

James has made clear that he thinks New Deal institutions are now irrelevant. I disagree profoundly in one sense: we need them more than ever. But he's right in another sense: powerful people have rejected them and there isn't enough constituency for them any more.

I give James credit for taking a revisionist look at what New Deal programs are still relevant, and I mostly agree.

David Kaiser has put himself in a bit of a corner, however. Not that he isn't entitled to be there, but I myself prefer to embrace a view of reality that doesn't say that the New Deal is what we need, but is not possible.

I agree it may not be possible to go back. But then the alternative is this: to go forward, by moving toward an ideal and program that might be more relevant today, by answering the needs that are unknowingly expressed by the New Deal's opponents. In other words, instead of moving backwards to before the New Deal, or to the New Deal itself, to embrace a higher synthesis. The main thing that needs to be added to the New Deal, that has developed among younger generations since the GIs, is self-empowerment. I think a rationalist, scientist view of reality may be what holds some New Dealers and collectivists (or those who advocate citizenship in common, etc.) back from moving forward to this higher synthesis.

What has become available, in what has been dubbed the "new age," is a path to enlightenment. Now that this is available, why wouldn't anyone want to take this path? How can it be dismissed, when it is such a venerable and constructive part of our culture? It is available now because it has been adapted to modern life. You don't have to shave your head and join a Buddhist monastery for decades at a time (though you still can), or become a Catholic or Orthodox Christian monk and recite the Jesus prayer all day (though you still can). Enlightenment now means simply a more accurate view of the reality of your life. It is not that complicated or esoteric. It is pursued through meditation and other practices. What you realize is that your own being, your own consciousness, is more than the current conditions and affairs that preoccupy us, and more than a view of yourself as a separate thing. You are, here and now, the eternal being that has always existed and will always exist. Our teacher Jesus said it best: "before Abraham was, I AM." In enlightenment, we see that Jesus was not referring to himself as the one and only god, as Christian fundamentalists think, but to the reality of his being-- and ours.

To pursue this path today, and other paths to greater self-confidence and inner peace, is not to give up the rational, or go back to the pre-rational or "magical thinking," but forward to what is beyond the capacity of intellectual thinking alone to grasp by itself, to the trans-rational, which (in Ken Wilber's phrase) transcends but includes the rational. It also enables us to go beyond the dis-empowering, reductionist view of ourselves as mere "material" objects. In some degree or other, the influence of the new age, and in general the revival of religion and spirituality since the New Deal, means that a totally secular, rationalist and collectivist program does not satisfy most people today. We need to take the best of the New Deal and combine it with programs that empower people.

The GIs like Reagan who created and promoted the Republican trickle-down, anti-New Deal philosophy of today, confused many Boomers and others who want self-empowerment, into rejecting the New Deal in favor of "individualism" and "self-reliance" and other shibboleths of the right-wing that already existed. Many also embraced fundamentalism, because they came from a more conservative culture that could not pursue new age paths. But to transform ourselves into more-enlightened souls does not imply a society of separate individuals, but quite the opposite: a society of connected and conscious people. Still, it may lead us beyond some prevalent views in the New Deal and populist era, that we have to depend largely on society and government programs for our needs, because we as individuals are nothing but dependent organisms who have no power within them. And so, revisionist liberal policies such as those that Clinton tried (but failed) to institute, such as his reform of welfare into welfare-to-work, are compatible with a view of society as interdependent individuals that need community. Clinton's popularity resulted from the perception that he represented this "third way" forward, though it turned out that he gave too much latitude to deregulation and other compromises with the right-wing.

Jeremy Rifkin, who is promoting his new book The Third Industrial Revolution, has been for some time one of the best advocates of this "third way." More later.

Originally Posted by James50

Irrelevant is probably not the right word - more like over-extended. Or designed to do one thing but stretched to a breaking point by new conditions.

Social Security - needed and relevant, but becomes more difficult to fund as time goes by
Medicare (not really New Deal, but cut from the same cloth) - needed and relevant but absolute fiscal disaster. It will collapse if we cannot cut overall medical expenses.
Wagner Act - needed and relevant, but so far judging by union levels in the private workforce, incapable of adjusting to the demands of globalization
Fannie, Freddie, FHA - relevant but expanded far beyond the original intent. Need to be vastly scaled back or replace with something better for our collapsed housing market.
Glass-Steagall - terribly needed but repealed by the Clinton administration in payoff to its Wall Street overseers. Let's bring this one back!
Large military - maybe not fair to call this part of New Deal, but was made huge at the same time and has maintained an overly burdensome size ever since. Let's cut it back.
Fair Labor Standards Act - this one is relevant and needed, but minimum wage laws can have the effect of suppressing employment of new job seekers. We should be careful.
FDIC - relevant and needed. Has saved the economy from bank runs many times.
SEC - relevant and needed, but is a good example of regulatory capture. How in the world did they miss Madoff? Now we have Dodd-Frank. We will see how that works.

What have I left out?

James50

Some time ago, James, you declared that the New Deal was dead and asked, what will replace it? I'm glad you see more value in some of it now. However, I'm pessimistic that we can go as far as you want to go. The chance to bring back Glass-Steagall was missed when Obama picked Summers and Geithner to head his economic team. (Volcker would have done it. I'm reading about this now--you'll be hearing about it.) The SEC, as you mention, has become a joke; I don't know if it can make a comeback. The Republicans are trying to make it impossible for Dodd Frank to go into effect and it's full of loopholes so the jury is out. My understanding about Fannie and Freddie, by the way, is that they guaranteed mortgages, and they got trapped into guaranteeing a lot of mortgages that should never have been given out. But I'm not certain on that point. I do think we need strong minimum wage laws which we need to enforce. We have long been in agreement on health care. James, you and I wouldn't have any trouble fixing these problems but even you are probably to the left of a mainstream Democrat on some of these issues, and as for the Republicans, forget it. (I just watched ten minutes of debate. They can't stop talking about gay marriage--which of course is already legal in New Hampshire.)

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

(I just watched ten minutes of debate. They can't stop talking about gay marriage--which of course is already legal in New Hampshire.)

That is not a fair characterization of what happened. For the first time, I actually watched some of the debate.(It was halftime of the Detroit/New Orleans game ). It was George Stephanopolous that had the audience groaning in frustration as he kept badgering Romney about contraceptives. Romney kept saying we should have contraceptives and that it was a silly question. After that, Diane Sawyer had to bring up gay marriage and assault all the candidates about the subject - a issue on which as near as I can tell there is no daylight between most of the Republicans and Obama. I doubt any of the candidates would have picked either topic as important to our current circumstance. This constant attempt to trap the Republicans in a subject they don't want to talk about is standard MSM fare and one of the reasons I don't watch these things. I am surprised you give it any importance compared to all the other issues out there.

James50

Originally Posted by James50

That is not a fair characterization of what happened. For the first time, I actually watched some of the debate.(It was halftime of the Detroit/New Orleans game ). It was George Stephanopolous that had the audience groaning in frustration as he kept badgering Romney about contraceptives. Romney kept saying we should have contraceptives and that it was a silly question. After that, Diane Sawyer had to bring up gay marriage and assault all the candidates about the subject - a issue on which as near as I can tell there is no daylight between most of the Republicans and Obama. I doubt any of the candidates would have picked either topic as important to our current circumstance. This constant attempt to trap the Republicans in a subject they don't want to talk about is standard MSM fare and one of the reasons I don't watch these things. I am surprised you give it any importance compared to all the other issues out there.

James50

Actually, I turned it on after that, and it kept coming back. Rick Perry brought it up in response to a question that was supposed to be about foreign policy.

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

I'm glad you see more value in some of it now.

Well, lest harmony begin to break out, its not the specifics but the general that will bring it down. George Will captures it well today:

Liberals have a rendezvous with regret. Their largest achievement is today’s redistributionist government. But such government is inherently regressive: It tends to distribute power and money to the strong, including itself.

Government becomes big by having big ambitions for supplanting markets as society’s primary allocator of wealth and opportunity. Therefore it becomes a magnet for factions muscular enough, in money or numbers or both, to bend government to their advantage.

The left’s centuries-old mission is to increase social harmony by decreasing antagonisms arising from disparities of wealth — to decrease inequality by increasing government’s redistributive activities. Such government constantly expands under the unending, indeed intensifying, pressures to correct what it disapproves of — the distribution of wealth produced by consensual market activities. But as government presumes to dictate the correct distribution of social rewards, the maelstrom of contemporary politics demonstrates that social strife, not solidarity, is generated by government transfer payments to preferred groups.

here.

James50

Originally Posted by The Rani

I just found my candidate:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4d_FvgQ1csE

What sold you? His promise of good dental hygiene for everybody or the wellie on his head?

~Chas'88

Originally Posted by James50

Well, lest harmony begin to break out, its not the specifics but the general that will bring it down. George Will captures it well today:

Liberals have a rendezvous with regret. Their largest achievement is today’s redistributionist government. But such government is inherently regressive: It tends to distribute power and money to the strong, including itself.

Government becomes big by having big ambitions for supplanting markets as society’s primary allocator of wealth and opportunity. Therefore it becomes a magnet for factions muscular enough, in money or numbers or both, to bend government to their advantage.

The left’s centuries-old mission is to increase social harmony by decreasing antagonisms arising from disparities of wealth — to decrease inequality by increasing government’s redistributive activities. Such government constantly expands under the unending, indeed intensifying, pressures to correct what it disapproves of — the distribution of wealth produced by consensual market activities. But as government presumes to dictate the correct distribution of social rewards, the maelstrom of contemporary politics demonstrates that social strife, not solidarity, is generated by government transfer payments to preferred groups.
James50

This is a politicized fantasy. We had the most equal, least regressive income distribution when we had the highest progressive taxation (about 1930-65 and for just a few years thereafter.) The government has never, never tried to replace the market as the primary allocator of rewards--that's just red meat for resentful white folks. The government has to perform a number of important functions, including national defense, roads and bridges, etc., etc. We have also discovered the hard way that the economy (not necessarily the workplace, James) needs regulation. And we have made a decision as a society that wage earners will pay into Social Security and retirees will be able partly to live on it. We also have a health care problem--because we have the only for-profit health care system in the world.

Will is peddling an updated, polite version of the welfare queen fantasy. If he thinks we should let older Americans of every race, creed and color starve and do with much less medical care, he should say so. If he doesn't he should think about how to pay for it, which means, surprise surprise, higher taxes on everyone with a reasonable income, especially the very rich.

Originally Posted by James50

Well, lest harmony begin to break out, its not the specifics but the general that will bring it down. George Will captures it well today:

Originally Posted by George Will

Liberals have a rendezvous with regret. Their largest achievement is today’s redistributionist government. But such government is inherently regressive: It tends to distribute power and money to the strong, including itself.

Government becomes big by having big ambitions for supplanting markets as society’s primary allocator of wealth and opportunity. Therefore it becomes a magnet for factions muscular enough, in money or numbers or both, to bend government to their advantage.

The left’s centuries-old mission is to increase social harmony by decreasing antagonisms arising from disparities of wealth — to decrease inequality by increasing government’s redistributive activities. Such government constantly expands under the unending, indeed intensifying, pressures to correct what it disapproves of — the distribution of wealth produced by consensual market activities. But as government presumes to dictate the correct distribution of social rewards, the maelstrom of contemporary politics demonstrates that social strife, not solidarity, is generated by government transfer payments to preferred groups.

here.

James50

Are people happier in an aristocratic or plutocratic economic system than in a community that puts human need and personal growth against class privilege and bureaucratic power? If such were so, then Imperial Russia would still be the wave of the future.

The United States now has the most severe economic inequality among the long-industrialized countries. In that we have gone from fairly normal by standards of the rest of the industrialized world to very poor. Our system well rewards the acquisition of market control, organizational power, and huckstering on behalf of the already-rich. We have a political power close to achieving complete power (if the 2010 election is any evidence) whose economic objective is to dismantle what remains of the welfare system and to further concentrate wealth and earning power among fewer people. We are approaching the point in which the poor of America risk obscene poverty.

I suppose that a serf on a great estate could be happy through ignorance of the rest of the world -- much as most North Koreans are surely happy that they don't have the misfortune of living in what they understand is the Hell-hole of economic inequality, whoring on behalf of the American colonial overlords, and starvation that North Korean propaganda says is South Korea. (Ignorance is not bliss, by the way; it takes the South Korean authorities about 48 hours to flip an infiltrator from the North, about an hour of the time spent in a South Korean supermarket, and that is far more effective than any other part of the effort).

The most effective redistributive effort in America has been done by the Right -- to turn what used to be public investment into personal debt, to sell off the public sector, to do sweetheart deals with well-connected interests, to cut taxes for the super-rich, and to have policies that effectively favor giant enterprises over mom-and-pop operations. Something is wrong when the tax rate on a family business that turns $100K a year is the same as it is on a monolith that churns out $100 billion a year.

I love this exchange. I am bestowing honorary Xer status on Jon Huntsman.

Originally Posted by Meet the Press GOP Debate

JON HUNTSMAN: Let me say-- let me say, first of all, with respect to Governor Romney, you know, there are a lot of people who are tuning in this morning. And I'm sure they're terribly confused after watching all of this political spin up here. I was criticized last night by Governor Romney for putting my country first.

And I just wanna remind the people here in New Hampshire and throughout the United States that I think-- he criticized me while he was out raising money for serving my country in China. Yes, under a Democrat. Like my two sons are doing in the United States Navy. They're not asking who-- what political affiliation the president is. I wanna be very clear with the people here in New Hampshire and this country. I will always put my country first. And I think that's important to them.

DAVID GREGORY: All right. Well, why don't you get a response, Governor Romney, and I'll come back to you on the austerity question.

MITT ROMNEY: I-- I think we serve our country first by standing for people who believe in conservative principles and doing everything in our power to promote an agenda that does not include President Obama's agenda. I think the decision to go and work for President Obama is one which you took. I don't-- don't disrespect your decision to do that. I just think it's-- most likely that the person who should represent our party running against President Obama is not someone who called him a remarkable leader and went to be his ambassador in China.

JON HUNTSMAN: This nation is divided, David, because of attitudes like that. The American people are tired of the partisan division. They have had enough. There is no trust left among the American people in the institutions of power and among the American people and our elected officials.

JON HUNTSMAN: And I say we've had enough and we have to change our direction in terms of coming together as Americans first and foremost

George Will:

Liberals have a rendezvous with regret. Their largest achievement is today’s redistributionist government. But such government is inherently regressive: It tends to distribute power and money to the strong, including itself.

Government becomes big by having big ambitions for supplanting markets as society’s primary allocator of wealth and opportunity. Therefore it becomes a magnet for factions muscular enough, in money or numbers or both, to bend government to their advantage.

The left’s centuries-old mission is to increase social harmony by decreasing antagonisms arising from disparities of wealth — to decrease inequality by increasing government’s redistributive activities. Such government constantly expands under the unending, indeed intensifying, pressures to correct what it disapproves of — the distribution of wealth produced by consensual market activities. But as government presumes to dictate the correct distribution of social rewards, the maelstrom of contemporary politics demonstrates that social strife, not solidarity, is generated by government transfer payments to preferred groups.

A good illustration about how to bend reality to your "will" by using emotionally-entrapping words. The conservative ideology is built on those words.

Liberal government does not redistribute power and money to the strong. Conservative government is what does that. That is abundantly clear from the stats about what happened under conservative government these last 30 years. It is also clear that Will is (like most conservatives today) simply ignoring the facts and substituting his own rhetoric.

The factions that are most successfully bending government to their advantage, are the rich who have the most lobbyists.

Government does not distribute money to "preferred groups," but to the people who need the help, or who benefit society through building the infrastructure that we need.

The market is not consensual. Powerful rich people dominate it. It supplies needs, but in accordance with what costs the least and produces the most return to these people. These results are often not in accord with the needs of most people and society.

Democratic government is an instrument for correcting abuses by the market and other groups and lawbreakers. It does not replace the market. This government and taxes can be used by groups of people within society to get some benefits for itself. It is up to the people to choose a government that represents the best interests of society. If they don't, then we deserve what we get. The people in government are chosen by us and represent us; it is not a separate group with big ambitions for itself. There are always disagreements among groups in society, which the ballot box can settle. However, some clever people can use emotionally-laden words to trap people into voting against their own interests and society's, and instead to vote for the interests of a small group of rich and powerful people. That is what folks like George Will do.

If people want (or think we have) to move beyond a society supposedly too-dependent on government social programs and regulations ("big liberal government"), then we will need to look elsewhere besides leaving everything to the market. We will need to look to personal empowerment that builds community. We will need to build a more conscious and creative society upon a foundation of the society that worked economically (circa 1940-1980), rather than going back to the economy that didn't work except for a few (the times before that).

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

George Will:

Liberals have a rendezvous with regret. Their largest achievement is today’s redistributionist government. But such government is inherently regressive: It tends to distribute power and money to the strong, including itself.

Government becomes big by having big ambitions for supplanting markets as society’s primary allocator of wealth and opportunity. Therefore it becomes a magnet for factions muscular enough, in money or numbers or both, to bend government to their advantage.

The left’s centuries-old mission is to increase social harmony by decreasing antagonisms arising from disparities of wealth — to decrease inequality by increasing government’s redistributive activities. Such government constantly expands under the unending, indeed intensifying, pressures to correct what it disapproves of — the distribution of wealth produced by consensual market activities. But as government presumes to dictate the correct distribution of social rewards, the maelstrom of contemporary politics demonstrates that social strife, not solidarity, is generated by government transfer payments to preferred groups.

A good illustration about how to bend reality to your "will" by using emotionally-entrapping words. The conservative ideology is built on those words.

Liberal government does not redistribute power and money to the strong. Conservative government is what does that. That is abundantly clear from the stats about what happened under conservative government these last 30 years. It is also clear that Will is (like most conservatives today) simply ignoring the facts and substituting his own rhetoric.

More precisely, reactionary government becomes an enforcer for economic elites. A more genuine conservative might recognize that the common man needs a stake in the system; the reactionary believes that the common man is either rendered incompetent or impotent to challenge the power of economic elites, whether by fooling them or terrorizing them into submission. Reactionary government does what it can to take away alternatives -- including competition with the elites, let alone rebelling against them.

The factions that are most successfully bending government to their advantage, are the rich who have the most lobbyists.

Never have lobbyists -- unelected and thus not responsible to voters, unappointed by elected officials and thus not responsible to people who can lose office if their appointments become travesties, and not employed by the government and thus subject to firing for misconduct. Lobbyists are ultimately responsible to the interests who hire them.

Government by lobbyist is a novel form of tyranny. Representatives responsible to lobbyists can represent interests other than those of their nominal constituents and make a travesty of districts based upon geographic divisions. Congratulations are in order to those who found how to short-circuit our constitutional government -- that is, if you like phenomena similar to the 1948 coup in Czechoslovakia.

Government does not distribute money to "preferred groups," but to the people who need the help, or who benefit society through building the infrastructure that we need.

The market is not consensual. Powerful rich people dominate it. It supplies needs, but in accordance with what costs the least and produces the most return to these people. These results are often not in accord with the needs of most people and society.

Again, such is consistent with tax codes that favor Big Business at the expense of small-scale entrepreneurs. Lobbying becomes a positive feedback for the concentration of economic power and economic inequality.

Democratic government is an instrument for correcting abuses by the market and other groups and lawbreakers. It does not replace the market. This government and taxes can be used by groups of people within society to get some benefits for itself. It is up to the people to choose a government that represents the best interests of society. If they don't, then we deserve what we get. The people in government are chosen by us and represent us; it is not a separate group with big ambitions for itself. There are always disagreements among groups in society, which the ballot box can settle. However, some clever people can use emotionally-laden words to trap people into voting against their own interests and society's, and instead to vote for the interests of a small group of rich and powerful people. That is what folks like George Will do.

If people want (or think we have) to move beyond a society supposedly too-dependent on government social programs and regulations ("big liberal government"), then we will need to look elsewhere besides leaving everything to the market. We will need to look to personal empowerment that builds community. We will need to build a more conscious and creative society upon a foundation of the society that worked economically (circa 1940-1980), rather than going back to the economy that didn't work except for a few (the times before that).

Government incapable of judging what is right and wrong, just and unjust, honorable and dishonorable, sustainable and unsustainable, or workable and unworkable, is either powerless or sold out. The Hard Right wants government as its enforcer even across the borders. A Great Power with no democracy and a heritage of militarism and expansionism is much more dangerous to world peace than is a Great Power that has democracy.

This is an interesting perspective, and it gets to the heart of (imho) the political disagreements here.

I think the difference between myself and the dems on the board (guessing) is that while I agree that we have a country massively tilted toward the wealthy, where being born poor is in some ways a caste prescription, I don't blame the pubs, and I don't necessarily see the dems as the party for the poor.

They're both the party of the elite. Period. And everytime we set up something that resembles a "safety net" here in the US, it eventually turns into a safety net for that same elite.

consumer protection turns into big ag. "common defense" becomes the biggest effin welfare program we have, the war on drugs becomes something like the second. modern keynesianists become billionaire handouts to the people who caused this problem. sending working class kids to school turns into the non-bankruptable chains of debt serfdom in the next bubble.

I simply don't see how folks (some of whom I respect) can have faith in either of these parties.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

Are people happier in an aristocratic or plutocratic economic system than in a community that puts human need and personal growth against class privilege and bureaucratic power? If such were so, then Imperial Russia would still be the wave of the future.

The United States now has the most severe economic inequality among the long-industrialized countries. In that we have gone from fairly normal by standards of the rest of the industrialized world to very poor. Our system well rewards the acquisition of market control, organizational power, and huckstering on behalf of the already-rich. We have a political power close to achieving complete power (if the 2010 election is any evidence) whose economic objective is to dismantle what remains of the welfare system and to further concentrate wealth and earning power among fewer people. We are approaching the point in which the poor of America risk obscene poverty.

I suppose that a serf on a great estate could be happy through ignorance of the rest of the world -- much as most North Koreans are surely happy that they don't have the misfortune of living in what they understand is the Hell-hole of economic inequality, whoring on behalf of the American colonial overlords, and starvation that North Korean propaganda says is South Korea. (Ignorance is not bliss, by the way; it takes the South Korean authorities about 48 hours to flip an infiltrator from the North, about an hour of the time spent in a South Korean supermarket, and that is far more effective than any other part of the effort).

The most effective redistributive effort in America has been done by the Right -- to turn what used to be public investment into personal debt, to sell off the public sector, to do sweetheart deals with well-connected interests, to cut taxes for the super-rich, and to have policies that effectively favor giant enterprises over mom-and-pop operations. Something is wrong when the tax rate on a family business that turns $100K a year is the same as it is on a monolith that churns out $100 billion a year.

http://moslereconomics.com/2012/01/0...nd-the-dollar/

the Fed and the dollar

Posted by WARREN MOSLER on January 9th, 2012

Imagine being on the FOMC and in the mainstream paradigm

In 2008 you moved quickly to make sure the US would not become the next Japan

You cut rates to 0, even faster than Japan did.

You provided unlimited liquidity to the dollar money markets,
both home and abroad.

You did trillions of QE, sooner than Japan did.

You announced you expected rates to stay down for two years.

etc. etc. etc.

And what do you have to show for it, 3 years later?

GDP marginally positive, much like Japan
Inflation working its way lower to Japan-like levels, especially housing and wages.
Employment stagnant a la Japan.

And now, after 3 years of 0 rates, and trillions of QE, the dollar is going up, much like the yen did.
After the Fed has done all it could think of to reinflate, and then some.

And all just like MMT suspected.
And for what should be obvious reasons.

Oh, and the Austrians are still wondering about dazed and confused looking for that corner where hyper-inflation lurks.

So how many lost decades has japan had?

Originally Posted by antichrist

This is an interesting perspective, and it gets to the heart of (imho) the political disagreements here.

I think the difference between myself and the dems on the board (guessing) is that while I agree that we have a country massively tilted toward the wealthy, where being born poor is in some ways a caste prescription, I don't blame the pubs, and I don't necessarily see the dems as the party for the poor.

They're both the party of the elite. Period. And everytime we set up something that resembles a "safety net" here in the US, it eventually turns into a safety net for that same elite.

consumer protection turns into big ag. "common defense" becomes the biggest effin welfare program we have, the war on drugs becomes something like the second. modern keynesianists become billionaire handouts to the people who caused this problem. sending working class kids to school turns into the non-bankruptable chains of debt serfdom in the next bubble.

I simply don't see how folks (some of whom I respect) can have faith in either of these parties.

I have a book recommendation that might help: Moral Politics by George Lakoff.

While the differences between the organized political parties may have blurred, there are real distinctions between liberals and conservatives. I'd encourage you to look at it this way, rather than the "Pubs" and the "Dems."

AFAIC, there is still enough liberalism in the Democratic Party as a whole, in contrast with the Republicans, to justify a preference for them over the alternative. If Tammy Baldwin becomes the Democratic nominee in the Wisconsin Senate race, and if Tommy Thompson gets the GOP nod, there will definitely be a real choice for the voters.

Originally Posted by antichrist

This is an interesting perspective, and it gets to the heart of (imho) the political disagreements here.

I think the difference between myself and the dems on the board (guessing) is that while I agree that we have a country massively tilted toward the wealthy, where being born poor is in some ways a caste prescription, I don't blame the pubs, and I don't necessarily see the dems as the party for the poor.

They're both the party of the elite. Period. And everytime we set up something that resembles a "safety net" here in the US, it eventually turns into a safety net for that same elite.

consumer protection turns into big ag. "common defense" becomes the biggest effin welfare program we have, the war on drugs becomes something like the second. modern keynesianists become billionaire handouts to the people who caused this problem. sending working class kids to school turns into the non-bankruptable chains of debt serfdom in the next bubble.

I simply don't see how folks (some of whom I respect) can have faith in either of these parties.

Sadly, I can't disagee wth any of this. We have reduced politics to a contentious social axis and an uncontested economic one. The wealthy couldn't care less whether Adam marries Steve. It has no impact on them. On the other hand, they resist to the death any changes that move wealth, or even the potential for access to it, away from those who have it now. In the long run, it's an unsustainable model. That doesn't mean we're near a tipping point, though. This can go on for decades.

Originally Posted by antichrist

So how many lost decades has japan had?

Officially, two. There is an argument as to how serious they have been (not so bad - not so good), but in grand style, we are aiming to exceed their perfomance.

To their credit, the Japanese have avoided the ideologically driven foolishness.