Originally posted by: jjzelinski
Originally posted by: Dissipate
Originally posted by: jjzelinski
Originally posted by: Riprorin
Originally posted by: WinstonSmith
Originally posted by: Dissipate
Originally posted by: WinstonSmith
It's good news for billionares. It doesnt help anyone else, but it's great for them.
Poppycock. Under your theory, if there we no concentrations of wealth, everything would be fine and dandy. Tell me then, who would ever have enough capital to start a business?
Concentrations of wealth? Of course there are. So before billionares, who started businesses?
Lets give one man all the money there is. Then we would have new businesses everywhere, under your theory that is.
BTW, let that man be me. You? Go fish.
Who's going to decide how much money is too much?
And after you eliminate all the billionares, who are you going to go after next, the millionares?
I guess you libs won't stop until everyone's poor.
You've got your ideologies a little mixed up, the point is to reduce poverty; not induce it. Call me crazy but I see it as a flaw in capitalism when the wealthiest people in America become even wealthier while millions of our countrymen
hope to be able to at least live paycheck to paycheck.
You aren't crazy, but you are misguided in your belief that one man's success means another man's impoverishment. As I said before, the reason why a lot of people are having a hard time making ends meet is because their money is literally being stolen from them everday by the Federal Reserve and the banks. People think to themselves, "Free checking, this is great!" when in fact, their "free" checking account is a vehicle of theft, from themselves and their fellow Americans.
The hyperinflation of the '70s was caused by the Federal Reserve, which was literally printing money to fund the government's enormous welfare state. The government today has merely taken the printing down a notch, but the effects of this printing are still devestating on the less fortunate.
I don't think I'm grasping how your conclusions preclude my own. I'm not insinuating we should resort to egalitarianism, I'm simply suggesting that our naturally imbalanced economic policies have become drastically more imbalanced recently and that our society and government are failing to regulate a system that is intrinsically numb to the interest our nations people and their quality of life. From what I gather of your post, this notion doesn't seem contradictory to your own.
Our imbalanced economic policies are the result of conservative socialism, which can only be carried out by the government itself (see below).
anywho
You're suggesting that the way the fed can create and destroy money to influence the market (open sales and purchases for example) leads to inflation, and this is true but the effect isn't immediate.
You are right. The effects of the money that the Fed prints today on the economy do not come to full fruition until months later, but this has no bearing on the fact that the Fed is inflating the money supply everyday, and that this has significant and damaging effects on the economy.
In fact take a look at CPI figures since the economy has started its rebound, inflation is not yet an imminent concern.
Inflation is always an imminent concern, it severely diminishes gains in productivity by not allowing productivity gains to be manifested in lower prices. For instance, with a relatively fixed money supply in an economy that is growing (like ours) prices would fall. Everyone, including the poorest of the poor would be able to buy more with less. Inflation directly counteracts this positive, naturally ocurring effect.
Inflation
will bite us in the butt eventually but not in time to reflect negatively on this administrations fiscal policies while they remain in office (wherebeit 6 more weeks or 4 more years.) So not only is the effect of inflation difficult for the common Joe to notice or understand, it becomes even more difficult to ascertain the element of immediacy is removed by the attenuating effect of the Fed.
I agree, the fiscal policies of the Bush administration are terrible, but so have been the fiscal policies virtually every modern president before Bush.
Now that is not to vilify the Fed, I actually recognize it as an important regulatory tool for our economy and one that is not necessarily in the pocket "Texas money."
As I said before, this is false. The Federal Reserve was not created to bring financial "stability" to the country, it was created in order to perpetuate a legendary scam that was being carried out by the nation's wealthiest elites. Fractional reserve banking, like virtually all other scams in history cannot hold up on its own in the free market. But unlike a lot of other scams, those practicing fractional reserve banking, instead of going to prison, they were granted a government enforced cartel.
I think it is doing everything it can to counter the horrendous fiscal policies of Bush Inc., simply because the Fed is more bureaucratic than political. Therefore it is more insulated from the frenetic pace and nearsighted nature of politics.
The "insulation" of the Fed is a complete myth, lie and illusion. The Fed is not insulated by political influence in the least. If it was insulated, the Fed would not have put the nation through an era of hyperinflation in order to fund an expanding welfare state.
So I don't see the fed or the worth of our currency as a dominant source of increasing difficulty lower income Americans are facing. Instead I would point to an unfavorable job market, an ever worsening health care system, and a vast reduction of the influence of labor; each of which I would directly attribute towards the policies that have been enacted (or exacerbated) over the last four years. I'm prepared to defend each of these three sources should you be interested in hearing it.
I'm prepared to defend my position that poverty is caused by government regulation & taxation (of any kind), in addition to the reason I stated above, which is continuing inflation caused by the banks and the Federal Reserve's consistent increase of the money supply.
Lastly, perhaps I'm interpreting your comment too narrowly by limiting its scope to Bush Inc., but I'm pathologically predisposed towards associating all things bad with the policies of the executive branch and it's tightly leashed congress. So in summary, capitalism*fed/=bad, fiscal policy of Bush Inc.=bad.
I agree about Bush. I think he is a corporate statist, a classic example of a conservative socialist. Conservative socialists believe that the nation's wealth should be re-distributed to corporations and entities whom they believe have "merit" or a "good track record" (airlines & defense contractors just to name a couple).The problem is that this type of socialism is not as known amongst conservatives themselves. They believe that the only kind of socialism that exists is welfare handouts.
However, this is not a problem with capitalism, it is a problem of government. As long as the government exists, people from all walks of life will attempt to channel it's coercive powers for their own personal gain. Trying to change the face of government, i.e. by changing the faces of the plutocrats in office will not change the nature of government or it's scope. Government creates enormous opportunity for exploitation, and therefore, for the exploitation to end, the government must end. It is that simple.
