Straw man alwert. There is none.
first, what I 'want them to do with it' has nothing to do with much of anything. What they are going to tent to do with it is to put it where it makes them more.
Second, my issue isn't as much what they do with it, as the goal of our society having a general propserity, and that needs a moderate concentration of wealth, not high or low.
That's a misleadingly simplistic statement. I find it useful to think of a small town in the old west. In one scenario, imaging one guy who owns everything - the store, the hotel, the mine, the ranch, and everyone works for him. They make enough to eat, but they don't own much of anything, while their profits go into his pocket, and his bank account swell.
In the second scenario, take him out of the picture, and you have many citizens each owning part of the town, each increasing in prosperity - and the town more productive.
It's good to be the guy who owns the town - but not good for the town.
Having the trillions of increased dollars that have gone to the most wealthy instead go to a lot more people who start and work at businesses has more benefit IMO.
There's a basic ignorance in our socity about the harmful effects of the excessive concentration of wealth, the stagnation and suffering it brings.
Not to mention the corruption of the politics as the 800 pound gorilla of the few extremely wealthy use the wealth to set up the system to serve them.
No, it's not a zero sum game, but excessive contentration of wealth reduces the growth of the pie.
Actually, you would quite possibly create a massive surge in people buying computers and Microsoft products, and they'd thrive.
I hate to burst your bubble, but a guy making $1 billion a year doesn't work twice as hard to make $2 billion, he's not twice as productive if he does. It tends to be about manipulting the system to simply take more pie without adding the same amount to the pie - and their motives aren't just money. That's an ideology, a blind theory not much based in fact, to try to make it simple that somehow there's no problem from increased concentration of wealth.
I'm not suggesting we make the poor CEO's. I am suggesting that I want to see more prosperity for everyone - and that includes increasing productivity, which spreading the wealth around does better than concentrating it. These are lessons a century old and more, largely, but not well understood by many.
Look what more money for the rich has done - it has simply let them gain more political power, change the economic situation so that our non-productive finance sectory has skyrocketed in its share of the economy, where it moves money around over and over not creating value but skimming some off each time for the rich, while the real productive entities in our economy are starved and shrunk - and you get masses poorer and poorer (or at least not getting a fair share of the gains) while the rich just own a larger share.
I wish I could help you get out of the wrong ideology, but it's not easy.
Edit:
You are blinded, it seems, by the visible rich who build big companies - but unaware that spreading the money a bit more would let more and more people build companies, too.
There's a reason why the FDR policies that TOOK AWAY from the rich led to the explosion of the middle class's wealth and growth in the economy, while the right-wing policies of the 20's created tycoons with far more than they could spend, led to the Great depression, and did not create much real wealth for most.
Hmm, here's some things the rich do with their money:
1. Buy expensive mansions, cars, yachts, islands, etc....
2. Make "political donations" to congressmen in exchange for favorable policy decisions
3. Establish partnerships, foundations and organizations with the goal of using the money to make even more money.
4. Buy out or merge companies - that usually involves job losses, not gains.
So far, I see nothing in there which directly serves to benefit the middle class average joe, nevermind benefiting the lower class poor, or those who have lost their jobs and homes. So when I see claims that bailing out the speculators on Wall St will somehow boost the economy, it doesn't seem too convincing that it will help the interests of American citizens as a whole, as opposed to just lining the pockets of the rich.
Fern
Elite Member
- Sep 30, 2003
- 26,907
- 174
- 106
Fixed.
About 500K job losses each week?
Record foreclosures as of the last quarter reported?
Yeah, it's kick'in man! [/sarcasm]
We're still looking at about 750 Billion in ARMs coming up for reset and no more money for bailouts should they hit/go into default (they are all bundled into MBS's and CDS's). Equally as ominous is the continuing rise in defaults on standard home mortgages due to unemployment.
I'm glad the MSM is no longer bashing the economy, thus making it worse - but I still believe it's too soon to celebrate. Just getting a little bit LESS worse ain't all that hot. That's about as comforting as jumping out of an airplane without a parachute and getting all happy that your rate of fall isn't accelerating as much as it was.
Fern
bamacre
Lifer
- Jul 1, 2004
- 21,029
- 2
- 81
No, there's merit to their complaints in many cases. We like to think sometimes that it's the poor that suck on the government's tit, but often wealthy are doing the same. For Christ's sake, our whole government has become nothing less than a timeshare owned by a handful of industries.
Where I disagree with them is how we got there, and where to go next.
StageLeft
No Lifer
- Sep 29, 2000
- 70,150
- 5
- 0
Not always. Simple case in point what if you were born in Somalia? I bet you'd be poor as fvck and so would I. And since the US is not a perfect nation/economy in which your dreams can all be realized with just a little elbow grease, it's somewhere in between that ideal and Somalia, the end result being that luck/birthdright still plays a huge role in how you end up.
Foolish to me is that graph the Obama administration put out before the stimulus and promptly creamed in the rear without lube. The truth is nobody has a clue how positive or negative the stimulus has been. However, we can say, if we're being honest, that the economy is certainly much worse than the Obama administration said it would be. And that's going on their numbers, not mine.
Anyway, Craig is right the rich and poor divide continues to get huge and the middle and lower classes in the US are about flat while the increasing size of the US pie trends very heavily toward those at the top.
Originally posted by: bamacre
Don't fret.
I'm sure the Rep's and Dem's will fuck up the economy so much that eventually China will be outsourcing jobs here for the sake of profits.
lol It's already happening because the dollar is so weak now.
First
Lifer
- Jun 3, 2002
- 10,518
- 271
- 136
When the hell was 500K job losses per week happening? Maybe you meant per month (which, btw, occurred months ago)? In any case, "if the current ARM mortgages default" is a meaningless statement; they always default, the question is what % do. There's no indication they'll be any worse than historical norms and, certainly, the bailouts and stimulus made things far better than they would have been had mortgage relief for underwater owners not been enacted; and even though just 6% new contracts have been accepted by banks like BOA, it's still far better than the alternative proposition from the opposition, which was that 0% of mortgages be renegotiated. Again, that was all part of the stimulus.
And again, all impossible without bailing out these (admittedly horribly irresponsible) financial institutions that put 60% of $10T financial industry at risk of default. It's why a majority of economists agree the stimulus clearly had a major impact on new mortgages, home buying, and job creation. And it's why those same economists all say we're out/heading out of the recession, with positive GDP growth already here and (hopefully) job creation to begin sometime next year (jobs almost universally lag GDP growth, btw, so that's not an excuse). And besides, let's not pretend that Obama had anything to do with job losses in, say, January or February or even March. Bush era policies (with some terrible holdover Clinton decisions) created a good deal of this boondoggle over the last year. Though, despite Bush's ineptitude and utter failings to create sustainable job growth, he did at least adhere to the bailouts, something history will look well upon him for.
And Fern, you used to be a good poster but you have gone entirely off the deep end since Obama was elected, whether it's the birther nonsense or your baseless notion that the economy hasn't clearly recovered.
First
Lifer
- Jun 3, 2002
- 10,518
- 271
- 136
Originally posted by: Ausm
Originally posted by: bamacre
Don't fret.
I'm sure the Rep's and Dem's will fuck up the economy so much that eventually China will be outsourcing jobs here for the sake of profits.
lol It's already happening because the dollar is so weak now.
The Chinese yuan is semi-pegged to the dollar and they have absolutely zero interest in seeing the dollar plummet given their $1T+ dollar reserves, so while you said this in jest, it's actually not really accurate.
Ozoned
Diamond Member
- Mar 22, 2004
- 5,578
- 0
- 0
As of Sept.01, 2009 Only approx 14.5% of the stimulus money had been spent. A little research and you can see that the economy is pretty much on its own. The real stimulus spending hasn't started, and is yet to come. You WILL see a huge up-tick in the economy 3 to 5 months prior to the 2010 elections.
Here is a link to the leading economic indicator of our real economy. It sucks.
Here is a link to the leading economic indicator of our real economy. It sucks.
Creating "jobs" is easy. They don't mean much if they aren't creating value though. Government-subsidized jobs don't often create value.
TastesLikeChicken
Lifer
- Sep 12, 2004
- 16,852
- 59
- 86
rudder
Lifer
- Nov 9, 2000
- 19,441
- 86
- 91
The Government can print more Money.
I doubt we can get more loans.. in 2009 it will cost the U.S. Government $383 billion in interest payments on our national debt.
Sure the stimulus saved those jobs. But what does the OP think is gong to happen in the long run? With the CBO projected trillion dollar deficits over the next decade... what do you think debt payments will be on that?
The problem is this is all based on artificial and temporary demand. Government expenditure can certainly create jobs in the short run, but it does nothing to fix the structural problems of the economy. As a general rule: Government spending = thousands of visible beneficiaries but MILLIONS of invisible victims
You never see the people who don't start a business due to excessive red tape or high taxation.. You never hear about the people who don't get loans due to the "crowding out" effect of the government siphoning trillions away from the debt market..But you do see people painting walls and do other money-losing projects funded by government spending. They are ALWAYS visible and can be pointed to as signs of "success", but nothing that hide the fact that they are engaged in something that not based on market demand. There is no hiding that all forms of fiscal "stimulus' are draining and diverting resources from the real economy and creating many invisible victims in the process.
You never see the people who don't start a business due to excessive red tape or high taxation.. You never hear about the people who don't get loans due to the "crowding out" effect of the government siphoning trillions away from the debt market..But you do see people painting walls and do other money-losing projects funded by government spending. They are ALWAYS visible and can be pointed to as signs of "success", but nothing that hide the fact that they are engaged in something that not based on market demand. There is no hiding that all forms of fiscal "stimulus' are draining and diverting resources from the real economy and creating many invisible victims in the process.
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