In theory, likely.
In real life, unlikely.
In theory, likely.
In real life, unlikely.
Agreed. One world government, even in currency, isn't an option right now. People wouldn't buy it.
... One world government, even in currency, isn't an option right now. People wouldn't buy it.
Haha, you're either shillin' or slippin' CDB! Would you have guessed a black pres just a few years ago? Just like you think people wouldn't buy the Amero, you're behind the curve brother.
No, but I would have guessed a Democrat one, that just turned out to be Hillary or BHO, and no one wanted a first mullet so they signed him up. As for the Amero, people might buy it in concept, but not what is necessary to make it happen in reality. That's the problem.
If the Amero was a gold or silver backed currency I'd be all over it. We all know that won't happen though.
What people want in order for such a thing to happen is a crisis. When there is a crisis people tend to accept anything. Look at all the civil liberties lost because of 9/11.
Many can say that a North American Union, World government, or Amero is nothing but conspiracy talk. Yet when you have people like the Rockefeller's who own many of the oil companies, are founding members of the Federal Reserve. Own Bank of America and have started the Council of Foreign relations, Tri-lateral commission and the Bilderberg Group. All with stated goals of a world government controlled by central bankers. When every member of the cabinet of the president for decades has been a member of the CFR. It is hard to not listen to what they say there goals are. When you understand there influence in the U.S and world and then read what they have said... Research kissinger and the CFR.. Research Rockefeller and the CSR..
You will be very surprised. lol There are recordings of Rockefeller thanking the New York Times and other media outlets for keeping the CFR's goals secret from the public with the intent of world government..
Now you can call me crazy.. But i am just repeating what they.. our leaders are saying..
Actually i care more about the government being able to call any american a terrorist and then being able to torture them and put them in jail without cause. I am worried about the government spying on our phone calls and our internet use.
I am also believe that we live in what can be called corporatism. The corporations control this country not the people. I believe that all these bail outs will go to the big businesses and little to the people. We have already over paid 78 billion dollars over the stock price to bail out the banks. Many have used that money to buy up other banks but not help people.
On this bail out issue, look at it like this. They had two choices. One to help the banks like they are now. Or they could have let the home prices fall and let people refinance. One really helps the banks and just barely helps the people. My way would have helped the people to a much greater extent. The government is spending billions to artifically prop up home prices. Who does it help?
We have massive debt and we keep spending. Long or short term that has to devalue the dollar and add massive inflation. Before all the spending it was estimated at 10%. The hidden tax. Food prices anyone? Anyone ever think to ask why they are so high? Why a coke use to cost 25 cents when i was a kid and now it is a dollar.
And no one is doing a damn thing about it... except Ron Paul.. i will give him credit..
Don't flatter yourself that the government really cares what you are doing with yourself. If your name is not Ali Al Abaristan, I don't think you have too much to worried about.
I really don't believe that corporatism line. If corporations were really running the show, would we have a minimum wage, environmental regulations, coercive unions, social security, welfare, anti-trust legislation, the second highest corporate tax rate in the world, medicare, medicaid, child labor laws, CEO salary limits, discrimination laws, and "cap and trade" taxes?
We are in the situation we are in due to incompetent, well intentioned politicians, who feel an obligation to "help" every American through another American's taxes.
I like Ron Paul too. He's the man.
I really don't believe that corporatism line. If corporations were really running the show, would we have a minimum wage, environmental regulations, coercive unions, social security, welfare, anti-trust legislation, the second highest corporate tax rate in the world, medicare, medicaid, child labor laws, CEO salary limits, discrimination laws, and "cap and trade" taxes?
We are in the situation we are in due to incompetent, well intentioned politicians, who feel an obligation to "help" every American through another American's taxes.
I like Ron Paul too. He's the man.
To me all his campaign proved was that it's way past the time for working within the system and getting much closer to the time that shooting the pricks will be the only viable option.
lol you have to give a little to take a lot. Much of that list is taking money from the people and redistributing it to other people. What is it? The top 10% own 80% of the wealth. I can guarantee you that the other 90% are paying more than the top 10% into all of those social programs. Don't forget that many, many companies lobby for many regulations and laws. Wonder why? It makes it harder for new companies to get into the business due to the costs.
Example, Hotels lobbied to make all hotels regardless of size to have fire suppression systems, fire exits the whole nine yards. Large corporations can afford to do this. Smaller companies have a much harder time and many had to go out of business because of the costs...
Well no form of government is ever truly a pure form. We've never had a purely socialist government even counting the USSR, and we've certainly never had a purely capitalist government, or lack thereof to be more precise. I think it is fair to say that corporations hold a major controlling interest in the US government, especially banks. Why do you think they are getting a trillion of our dollars? It rarely goes the other way and in such high numbers, and that's the direct give aways today which doesn't count what they've managed to steal through the back door of inflation.
Tell me who's really taking advantage of the situation. The top 10% who pay more taxes at a much higher percentage than the bottom 50% of the population or the bottom 20% of the population who receives 80% of the money they make through government entitlements.
The rich provide jobs, GDP growth, and large amounts of taxes to the United States. The poor take free money and a large percentage provide NOTHING in return to country whether through work or through any other form of public service. You can say the government is a tool for the rich, but if that's the case the rich must LOVE giving their money to the poor.
as a percentage of income they give much less. As an example Warren Buffet admitted that as a percentage he paid much less in taxes than his secretary does.
You are correct about the politicians. It is the governments jobs to curb the excesses of the corporations. Unfortunately it is broke and not working that way. Look at Freddy Mae. It is very known that many Democrats after they leave office go to work for them and make millions. Which is one of the many reasons this Private Company recieved a bailout.
Well then i hope you will agree that government sponsored private corporations are horrible and just bleed people. I think that is what the democrats are trying to do with the insurance companies and the national health care. Guaranteed income with government backing and if you miss up you get bailed out. What a gig.
Tell me who's really taking advantage of the situation. The top 10% who pay more taxes at a much higher percentage than the bottom 50% of the population or the bottom 20% of the population who receives 80% of the money they make through government entitlements.
The rich provide jobs, GDP growth, and large amounts of taxes to the United States.
The poor take free money and a large percentage provide NOTHING in return to country whether through work or through any other form of public service. You can say the government is a tool for the rich, but if that's the case the rich must LOVE giving their money to the poor.
I think the problem is not the corporations, but the politicians. If politicians were not whores looking to sell influence and legislation to the highest bidder, corporations would have no incentive to go to the politicians.
Corporations are not wolves in sheeps clothing.....they were created as a means to grow and increase capital.....they will do so with or without government's help. To blame the organization whose sole purpose is to make money, for trying to wake more money is wrong.
Blame the actual wolves in sheep's clothing.....politicians supposed role purpose is overseers and legislatures of the "public good", who are busy taking and even demanding bribes....aka campaign financing.
As for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are Government Sponsored Entities (GSEs) similar to the Postal Service or FDIC. Their reckless leveraging of home loans is one of the reasons for the real estate boom in the late 90s and the subsequent mortgage meltdown of the last couple of years. Politicians like to blame the banks, but their government programs were just as culpable if not more.
I agree, GSEs are horrible. They're trying to make banks into GSEs with the bailout. Force them to take bailouts then tell them how to run their operations because they took bailouts. Is that capitalism?
Don't forget the bottom 95%, who have their wages and savings in a state of terminal devaluation, who can't write off their property as a capital expense and whom the government charges rent on that same property for a near worthless education, which then forces said bottom 95% to gamble with their retirement via investments to hopefully outrun inflation so they'll still be able to pay all their taxes to the government and not starve to death.
The rich do not necessarily provide jobs. The rich who invest well and use their resources productively do.
The rich are just as capable of using their money to buy special favors from the government.
GDP growth is largely irrelevant, it's a statistical artifact and mostly a measure of consumer and government spending which really says **** about the economy in the end.
Large amounts of taxes to the US government isn't a good thing, that money would be better off in the private sector where it would be used more productively. Funding the government that accounts for 40% of all spending in the economy, not counting off budget spending, and has the highest per capita imprisonment rate in the world, a federal code that grows and spreads like some super fungus to stifle economic activity everywhere, a perpetual war department, and an acronym soup of agencies that regulates damn near every aspect of our public and private lives, isn't a good thing in my book.
I'd be happier if the rich revolted and told the government to go **** itself.
Some do, but why indeed are they unemployed and parasitic? Have all human wants been satisfied, has the well of general '**** to do' run dry? Or have they been forced below the line of the productively employable by a shitload of government regulations that have essentially made them dependents on other people? Some I don't doubt are parasitic in nature, a lot have just been screwed by a system which is geared to provide easy money and credit to the higher ups. Some people think this will benefit the poor, they are mistaken. Some understand it's a hand out system, and just don't care. Still some others don't know what the hell is going on.
The rich take more than their share of welfare from the government. Look at TARP and the current bail out. The only reason these are 'necessary' is because it's become increasingly difficult to accomplish such wealth transfers on the sly through inflation, so direct transfers are now necessary.
More. Greed exists in all sectors to the point of unethical behavior. It is the government policies though that enable such people and fool others into behaving in ways that lead to mass error and clusters of bad investments like we deal with in the boom bust cycle. The key point is the clustering. It takes no economics to explain why businesses fail and money is lost. People are people, sometimes they're wrong. What needs explaining is why all of a sudden do so many people, with whatever motivations good or ill, make the same bad move and end up screwing the pooch all at once. The answer is institutional bias/incentive to do so, and only the government can provide that.
Reread your history, banks have never been anything but GSEs in disguise and have been getting bailed out by the US government since its inception. the whole point of the Fed and FDIC was to ensure a safety net for banks. This is nothing new what we're going through right now.
How many non-rich people provide jobs.
I'm not saying all rich people provide jobs, I'm saying that jobs are provided by rich people.
Only if the government asks for and/or receives their bribes.
Agreed. My point was that rich people drive the economy, not wage earners.
Sounds like the plot of an Ayn Rand book. Rock on!
As I said above, the bottom 20% of the population get 80% of their money through entitlement programs. There is not "working poor" in the United States. Yes, this is the "great society". No sinking or swimming, just floating and drifting aimlessly.
Good point. I guess it would be more accurate to say that banks are no longer GSEs in disguise, there now just GSEs.
Providing a job isn't the only way to contribute to the economy. Being productive in a job is another way one can add to total social utility. And most people who do that are non-rich. The rich entrepreneur is useless without labor to work for him.
Rich people also have the lobbying power to provide us with restrictive regulations and wealth transfers to them, either directly or in the form of inflation. Rich or poor is not a useful characteristic for distinguishing who is a net tax payer (productive citizen) vs a net tax consumer (parasitic citizen). You'll find payers and consumers in both camps, and a rich tax consumer is a lot worse than a poor tax consumer. All the poor tax consumer wants generally is a home of sorts, some deep fried oreos, cable TV, and an occasional doctor's visit. The rich tax consumer wants war reconstruction contracts, infra structure contracts, investment guarantees disguised as foreign aid, federal subsidies and bail outs, etc.
True, but who is leading in a dance doesn't subtract from the fact that it does take two to tango.
And you'd be wrong. Wage earners are the ones who actually produce stuff.
Nor is it only necessarily the rich who enable them via capital accumulation, it's the total pool of available loanable funds coming from everyone who demonstrates thrift to some degree or another. Any one person who defers consuming now in favor of savings is adding to the pool of available funds for investment. This is true of the rich as much as it is true of the McDonald's employee with a savings account.
I left out the kinky sex. Any way, I think she was a bad writer overall.
There's plenty of working poor here, they come across the border. But that's another issue.
What I think you're missing though is what choice do those bottom 20% have? Should they live in the street and starve on principle? They can't work for a job that pays less than the minimum wage, jobs that pay more are politicially limited, and thanks to inflation enabled by rich bankers who want even more money than they already have, even if they score one of the limited minimum wages jobs available it's not enough or barely enough to live on. So what should they do? Were I in their position I'd take every advantage I could get, government provided or otherwise. Those are the ****ers who would be responsible for starving me, if they offer a reach around of any kind, I'm taking it.
... All children and adults will be forced to be retrained in order to qualify for work certificates--home, Christian, privately-schooled children included ...
To me part of the problem is that everything is geared towards keeping the flow of money going to the top 10%.
Our entire economic systems is not based on saving, it is based on spending. The government gives a stimulus check and says don't pay off bills or put it into savings, spend it.
Remember before the Fed was created there was no Federal Income Tax. If you didn't know the fed was created at jekyll island. A secret meeting between the seven riches men in the world. It is estimated those 7 men owned over 45% of the worlds wealth. Not all of them were American, nor are all of the owners of the member banks at this time American. Besides giving these men control of our nations money, it also made sure that New York would always be the power center of America. The Fed was sold to the people with the believe that it would bring market stability. I think we can all say it has failed in that regard.
Remember it is the is wealthy, the very wealthy who provide the books our children use in schools. Who decide what we learn. Either it be from T.V, newspapers or even in the major universities. There is a very big movement both in the U.S and in the U.N to create a Global Workforce Training.
If that were true, don't you think they'd be teaching an American history that was not anti-business/pro big government. The rich get no benefit from a welfare state in which there vilified. They stand to gain the most in a free market system that lacks government regulation. Kids are taught in school that this system is evil and to blame for all society's ills.
Remember you have to give a little to take a lot. Yes they talk about the Rockefellers and the JP Morgans monopolies. But then they stop.
They don't talk about the Rockefeller foundation that has 5% of stock in each of the companies before the break up. That he still maintained major interest in all the companies. And that he still owned out right many of them. lol then shall we move on to the banks and the FED. Bank of America is the bank of the Rockefellers and one of the founding member banks of the FED. The current names of standard oil companies. Exxon, Chevron, Mobil and Amocco.
But i digress, what many history books are not teaching anymore is the rights of the workers. When they do, it is ancient history, like we have moved so far from that. Unions are looked at as an evil entity.
What is being taught is socialism. If you are the people who control the money do you really care what the people with no power, no money or influence say? It really doesn't matter who is in power in the government because you control the money.
I know you always talk about the poor or the bottom 20%. The government and the elite want poor people. They need people to do the jobs that no one else will do.
While production is important, it is the man who creates the opportunity to work that drives capitalism, not the man who fills the role the producer created.
As I said before. I cannot fault a businessman for exhausting every legal pathway to make money and create advantages over their competitors. I can fault the politician who abuses his position as a public servant to take "donations" from lobbyists.
Wage earners do not create stuff, wage earners use existing processes to manufacture stuff. The production is built on the brains of the creators. Could you really give credit to an assembly line worker for producing an automobile and not Henry Ford?
The beauty of the process that Ford created is that basically anyone can step in and learn their piece of the pie in a relatively short amount of time. The wage earners are not driving the train they're passengers.
Well said, everything you said about savings is entirely true. However, at this point in America, most Americans who are not rich and even some that are are extremely leveraged and have an abysmal rate of savings. The average savings rate is -2% in this country. Credit card debt is the norm in this country. The Fed's easy money has made saving an anachronism in this country.
I think she has solid plots, but her book's dialogues often read like sandpaper.
If that were true, don't you think they'd be teaching an American history that was not anti-business/pro big government. The rich get no benefit from a welfare state in which there vilified. They stand to gain the most in a free market system that lacks government regulation. Kids are taught in school that this system is evil and to blame for all society's ills.
What good is the one without the other? And the man who creates the opportunity is not always the same man who saved and made the funds available to pursue the opportunity. So the situation is very complex and in reality no one person or class is responsible for the economy.
Those lobbyists are hired by businessmen to change the law in their favor, often to everyone else's detriment.
Yes, because automobiles were produced before Ford and the assembly line, and despite Ford's genius without the workers the plant would have run a lot slower.
Actually as the division of labor become more complex and specialization proceeds apace the 'wage earner' as you call him becomes more indispensable to the economy.
True, but like you say that's an after effect of the Fed's policy. Why save what's being devalued?
Quite the contrary. It is the union of throne and altar that businessmen want. Remember The Fed was pushed through to supposedly 'restrain' greedy bankers and their desire to inflate the currency. The real purpose was to create coherent inflation so no one bank brought another down and, after FDIC was put in, to get a true lender of last resort in place. Those bankers who supported the legislation were called 'enlightened'. According to the press at the time, they saw past their own greed for profits and put the greater good of the nation before their own. And they got exactly what they wanted. The same went for the Sherman Anti Trust Act. It was never designed to do anything but give failing businesses a legal lever to put political pressure on succeeding firms. But that's not how it was sold to the public. Even though the 'trusts' had lowered prices and increased production faster than any other businesses they were villified and the businesses who supported the legislation were once more called 'enlightened'.
In other words the history of much legislation and almost all so called progressive legislation is anti business / class warfare propoganda cloaking legislation designed to enable businesses, to manage the market, to grant monopoly, etc. That's what I think you are missing; businesses don't want to compete on an open market. They lobby nonstop for market management and legislation that favors them above all their competitors, that keeps out new market entrants, etc., and they always do this under the guise of legislation that is supposedly for 'the public good'. The ICC is another great example, supposedly pushed through to stop railroads from setting high rates, and when it was installed the first thing they did was outlaw secret price cutting. This did the public no good, but it sure as hell made it harder for maverick firms to bust cartel agreements. The railroads are also the primary player in another so called public good legislative coup, preservation. It was the railroads that funded much of, and probably still do fund, the conservation movement west of the mississippi. Why? Well when you own land out there and you get the government to outlaw building on what's left, you can charge through the ass for development of the land you have, usually received as a government grant too. Again, rhetoric about preserving America's treasured landscape cloaks legislation that was really just aimed at driving up land prices for those who already had holdings in the west.
Most businessmen are anti business. They want government market management. In their favor of course.
We are batteries powering greed.
Lobbyist are useless without politicians to change the laws. Lobbyists are the byproduct of the problem, which is crooked politicians.
Ford's genius enabled the 'common man' to be able to afford the automobile, which enabled him to hire many more employees. Ford paid better than competing unionized companies in order to retain his best people and reward excellence. I agree the employees are important, but the employees aren't even employees without Ford, so I value Ford more than his workers.
I guess.
I've read it like 4 times. Ayn Rand lucky that she identifies capitalism? Have you read any other books by her. She wouldn't have anything else but capitalism.
I agree with much of what you say here, however I think you logic is faulty due to the fact that you generalize businessmen.
Maybe things have changed and Political Entrepreneurs run the show now, but its not fair to forget the Market Entrepreneurs who ushered America into greatness did so despite, not because of the government.
Here is where I think you make a slight mistake. Politicians are, in the end, the holders of the blame. But in my view that's because they're the ones with the guns who can give a final yes or no. However their crookedness is often just the result of the environment they are in and the perverse incentives they deal with. They are surrounded by the most peculiar poeople in the world, namely bureaucrats with life time appointments, other politicians at all levels, some of them powermad, others just as confused, and lobbyists. Plus they are cut off from normal informational channels you and I take for granted. Take any human being and put him in that mix and chances are they'd start behaving oddly. A Ron Paul, that is someone who sticks to principle, is a rarity.
Here is where I think you make another small mistake. So long as human beings want for anything the opportunities for employment of resources, including labor, are endless. In other words Ford himself isn't as important as the capitalist/entrepreneurial function he happened to fulfill, and without the workers that function is useless.
Try making your own shoes, then tell me how much the cobbler is really worth. Same goes for undercoaters, spot welders, the guy who wires up motorcycles, etc. As the division of labor proceeds we all essentially become specialists capable of producing a lot more in our specialization than if we had to devote our time elsewhere. Hence the increasing demanda for labor in an unhampered economy.
As she saw it. In the Fountainhead What's-His-Name refuses to alter his design approach for the market, correct? Capitalism/entrepreneurialism is to serve the demand in the market and to anticipate it, not double guess it. Rand's characters to me at least always seem to have this pretense of knowledge the rest of the world doesn't have. She also seems to me at least to not get some aspects of capitalism. As a system it's most profound and significant feature is the price system which is a genuinely social phenomena. It relies on input from all individual market participants but it's content always transends that of any particular individual's contribution. That's one of the reasons a pure socialist state is impossible, not just inefficient: no one mind or even group of minds can access, handle, or even conceive of the information necessary to make economizing activity possible for a modern society. Rand to me seems to shun the social aspect of the system in favor of individualism. In other words, referencing Atlas Shrugged, to her it's not the function John Galt serves that is valuable, it's Galt himself. She misses the cooperative aspect of the market or down plays it at least in favor of some mythic group of super individuals who hold the whole world up with their creativity.
Nor is it fair to forget that usually people aren't one or the other. Rockefeller wasn't above taking government grants, J.P. Morgan pushed through the Fed with Rockefeller in order to essentially steal money they couldn't get via honest loans. Both were instrumental in getting the ICC in as well if I recall correctly, which allowed rate setting on the rails. Folsom's book is a good read and it's a valid distinction, but the topic is more complex. I think even James Hill of the Great Northern Railroad had some government 'help' that he took, even though he bragged about getting little to none. As above with Rand, each of these individuals is a mixed bag, the method and function of their actions is what counts.