[WaydayNef]

Yes kids, one day you too can be part of the middle class. Don't over shoot and make more than $63k a year, don't want you to be too successful. Just go for mediocrity.

YAY Obama and the lefts low expectations for us. Nah, he isn't a socialist, just having everyone at the same level is as American as you can get right?

Do you tell your kid to aspire to make C's?Wonder if Obama tells Sasha and Melia to strive for middle class?

[KahiroSamo]

Cut through all the whining right wing gibberish, and we get the actual quote that "set him off".

Now, just as there was in Teddy Roosevelt’s time, there is a certain crowd in Washington who, for the last few decades, have said, let’s respond to this economic challenge with the same old tune. “The market will take care of everything,” they tell us. If we just cut more regulations and cut more taxes – especially for the wealthy – our economy will grow stronger. Sure, they say, there will be winners and losers. But if the winners do really well, then jobs and prosperity will eventually trickle down to everybody else. And, they argue, even if prosperity doesn’t trickle down, well, that’s the price of liberty.
Now, it’s a simple theory. And we have to admit, it’s one that speaks to our rugged individualism and our healthy skepticism of too much government. That’s in America’s DNA. And that theory fits well on a bumper sticker. But here’s the problem: It doesn’t work. It has never worked. It didn’t work when it was tried in the decade before the Great Depression. It’s not what led to the incredible postwar booms of the 50s and 60s. And it didn’t work when we tried it during the last decade. I mean, understand, it’s not as if we haven’t tried this theory.

Remember in those years, in 2001 and 2003, Congress passed two of the most expensive tax cuts for the wealthy in history. And what did it get us? The slowest job growth in half a century. Massive deficits that have made it much harder to pay for the investments that built this country and provided the basic security that helped millions of Americans reach and stay in the middle class – things like education and infrastructure, science and technology, Medicare and social security

Absolutely correct on all counts. Slow job growth. Now massive unemployment. Yet the rich are getting richer, and corporate profits are at record highs. "Let the market fix everything" doesn't work. It has never worked.

[Wrasialat]

Absolutely correct on all counts. Slow job growth. Now massive unemployment. Yet the rich are getting richer, and corporate profits are at record highs. "Let the market fix everything" doesn't work. It has never worked.

Let the government fix everything doesn't work, and has never worked, yet the mentality has existed since the nation has been founded, so the free markets have not been allowed to. If we're shown a true free market that hasn't worked on its own merits, it's one factor, if we can cite examples where it hasn't worked because government chose to intervene in the simple Supply and Demand balance, then its another, show me an example where we've experienced free market theory in action and we'd be better set to discuss the issue. Madison, the ultimate compromiser politician in our history, has seen to it since the nation's inception. The government by nature creates a monopoly in the industry it legislates interventionism towards. No reason to assume its foreign impacts are any less significant than the domestic. I find it curious you find our foreign interventionism incomprehensible, yet have no concerns towards our domestic interventionism. If we really wish to see progress, we should choose to break this symbiotic government-corporate partnership by constraining our own government once more, if the government is unable to pass legislation to improve the wealth of individual companies, then lobbyists become irrelevant.

[Dreaming]

Whatever Joe, Obama still said you should be telling your kids to strive for middle class. Wohooo.

[GoveMoony]

Let the government fix everything doesn't work, and has never worked, yet the mentality has existed since the nation has been founded, so the free markets have not been allowed to. If we're shown a true free market that hasn't worked on its own merits, it's one factor, if we can cite examples where it hasn't worked because government chose to intervene in the simple Supply and Demand balance, then its another, show me an example where we've experienced free market theory in action and we'd be better set to discuss the issue. Madison, the ultimate compromiser politician in our history, has seen to it since the nation's inception. The government by nature creates a monopoly in the industry it legislates interventionism towards. No reason to assume its foreign impacts are any less significant than the domestic. I find it curious you find our foreign interventionism incomprehensible, yet have no concerns towards our domestic interventionism. If we really wish to see progress, we should choose to break this symbiotic government-corporate partnership by constraining our own government once more, if the government is unable to pass legislation to improve the wealth of individual companies, then lobbyists become irrelevant.

You're right, that the market will eventually "fix itself", in the same sense mother nature will "fix itself" by culling a population of deer that grew too large.

However, if we actually want to solve unemployment, that requires intervention. Hence my previous point - corporations not only have no problem with high unemployment - they actually WANT high unemployment. If the number of workers outnumber the jobs, that means you can work your employees harder, pay them less, and cut their benefits, because they have no choice but to accept your terms. And if an employee gets fed up and quits, no problem, there's ten unemployed people waiting to take his place.

WJ insists that there is an unlimited number of jobs at McDonalds and Walmart. Wrong. They always get way more applicants than they need, and Walmart is is in the process of slashing employee benefits, because they know they have more than enough people desperate for jobs.

That was the essence of the new deal - put people to work building economic infrastructure. Short term that reduces unemployment. Long term, it stimulates the economy with large scale projects that will increase our economic output. Obama's solution was to give away money to the banks. That sort of works short term because it keeps banks from going under, resulting in mass layoffs. Long term, the stimulus accomplished absolutely nothing, because the banks, even the ones that were bailed out, are laying off people ANYWAYS, and we have nothing to show for all that money we spent.

[TyncTyncSah]

You're right, that the market will eventually "fix itself", in the same sense mother nature will "fix itself" by culling a population of deer that grew too large.

You'll never solve unemployment, to insist otherwise is pure fantasy, what's really a question is whether the interventions make the problem better or worse. I lean towards the latter myself. Corporations and the government are the biggest conspiracy in our time, we have one side that hates one, one side that hates the other. The truth of the matter is, both sides are correct because the two entities have become so deeply conjoined that it's become almost impossible to determine where one begins and the other ends. The funny thing people seemingly ignore is that corporations love big government and thrive on regulation. Lobbyists get their pocketed senator or congressman to pass legislation all the time with the sheer designs to blockade the introduction of competition in their industry niche. The real source of employment comes from the private sector, we all are aware of this, but it also comes largely from the small business community, which I'm sure we're all also aware. What we may not be aware of is how difficult it has become to be in small business in this era. Government intervention is a gigantic source of these problems, and big corporations in that industry don't help the process either.

You are dead correct about the stimulus. Stimulus of any variety, new deal or otherwise, is a system designed to prime the pump. In this instance it's something more akin to CPR on the terminal patient. The banks had very lousy practices which got them into trouble in the first place, and attempting to re-inflate the bubble just prolongs that. Unfortunately the best solution is to actually let the banks go bankrupt. Will this result in layoffs? Yes, will the recovery be quick? No, but recovery from a cancer is never pretty to look at.

Recovery will come, but I cannot foresee a permanent solution where this cronyism is allowed to flourish. If we reduced the role of government in commerce to the point where it wouldn't be beneficial for lobbyists we may have a chance at overcoming these obstacles eventually. I liken our current system of government to a bulkhead of one of our DDG's. (I understand this isn't easy to relate to for most so I'll illustrate as best I can). On many of our DDG's we find that our corrosion runs rampant, especially following longer deployments. A common tendency of our sailors is to try to mask the corrosion with layers of paint. Of course over time the paint chips, flakes, and falls off rather quickly, and we often find the situation worse off than it began. We find the best solution to be stripping the paint away to bare metal, eliminating the source of the corrosion, and reapplying the paint after we've eliminated all the rust. Then at least the paint we apply tends to last for longer periods of time.

Of course in the metaphor the government intervention is the paint being applied, and the rust is all of the cronyism and the corruption that is almost impossible to find because the government even made transparent would be too complex for even the most scrutinizing observer to weed out all of the bad parts. I see an opportunity to strip this government to bare metal, then reapply regulation only to the extent needed to prevent large business entities from directly infringing on the basic rights of individuals, and by basic I mean their right to life, liberty and pursuits of happiness.

The New Deal was the beginning of the New Failure in our social policies. It's when the government really decided for itself that its role should be far greater in determining how individuals live their lives than even the individuals themselves. This took our government far beyond even the illusions held by even by Madison with the best laid intentions this system always winds up in the same place, as a government entity of a few individuals are always going to be insufficient to the task of managing the many outside it. That's where the belief stems from that the best government is that which governs least. If we put to vote the dinner options to two wolves and a rabbit, the rabbit always loses. It's extremely important that the government we have in place is entirely the consent of the governed.

[whatisthebluepill]

All i can say.. is i love ya for smashing the trophy glen!

[sandracuk]

WJ insists that there is an unlimited number of jobs at McDonalds and Walmart. Wrong. They always get way more applicants than they need, and Walmart is is in the process of slashing employee benefits, because they know they have more than enough people desperate for jobs.

One million job listings on Monster dot com. Too bad the majority of them require something more than a liberal is willing to study in college. You know, things that actually require you to get your hands dirty. It is all about the choices you make early on in life, to be a criminal or obey the law. Pay attention in school, or drop out cause you got your girl friend pregnant. Don't worry, Obama gotz yo bak, you can get to middle class. That has always been the American dream right?

[xochex]

You'll never solve unemployment, to insist otherwise is pure fantasy, what's really a question is whether the interventions make the problem better or worse...

Its pure folly to ignore it. There are 3 possible responses to skyrocketing unemployment - 1) Ignore it, and use the military to suppress the ensuing riots (as we did in the 19th and early 20th centuries), 2) Put them on an economic feeding tube indefinitely... or 3) Create jobs programs.

There is a very simple reason we haven't created jobs programs - because the wealthy elite of America are against it. High unemployment increases corporate profits, and further concentrates wealth into the top 1%.

As for your point on corruption and the blurring lines between government and corporate entities - that's true. But to suggest that a company wants higher regulation to hurt the competition is just as silly as saying Warren Buffet wants higher taxes to prevent other people from getting rich.

The current cries for Austerity ignores economic history. Since WWII business and banks have been increasingly deregulated, and taxes have continued to be slashed. Not only has this not spurred economic growth like Conservatives claim, our GDP growth has actually DECLINED dramatically, and wage growth has stagnated for 30 years.

As for the cries for privatization, this again ignores history. We forget WHY these functions were put under government control in the first place. Early "subscription" fire departments degenerated into protection rackets (Pay the fee for the fire brigade... or you might have an "accidental" fire at your house). We left the gold standard only after a hundred years of recession after recession, finally culminating in the Great Depression, where even the assets of the rich weren't safe... not to mention the risk of getting lynched by an angry crowd of starving blue collar folks. Social programs for the poor and unemployed were established after private charity failed miserably to support them.

Furthermore on social programs, again, history has shown it doesn't work. De-regulation and massive tax cuts by Bush and Obama... according to Conservative logic, private donations should be going through the roof, right? Wrong. Many shelters and soup kitchens have been forced to either start charging fees, or shut down altogether, from lack of funds.

One million job listings on Monster dot com. Too bad the majority of them require something more than a liberal is willing to study in college. You know, things that actually require you to get your hands dirty. It is all about the choices you make early on in life, to be a criminal or obey the law. Pay attention in school, or drop out cause you got your girl friend pregnant. Don't worry, Obama gotz yo bak, you can get to middle class. That has always been the American dream right?

So many fallacies... I'm not even sure where to start. There are more job applicants than there are jobs. That is proven fact. Major corporations are laying off workers to concentrate their manpower, and slashing employee benefits. Also proven fact. Unemployment persists, but corporate profits remain at record highs. Also PROVEN FACT. Its nice you found a website with a lot of job offers on it. That's real cute. But last time I checked there was a lot more than a million unemployed people.

[Maryjasmine]

So many fallacies... I'm not even sure where to start. There are more job applicants than there are jobs. That is proven fact. Major corporations are laying off workers to concentrate their manpower, and slashing employee benefits. Also proven fact. Unemployment persists, but corporate profits remain at record highs. Also PROVEN FACT. Its nice you found a website with a lot of job offers on it. That's real cute. But last time I checked there was a lot more than a million unemployed people.

Make excuses all you want, the jobs are our there, the problem is the skill isn't. All those conservatives with real degrees have a job or qualify for jobs that are listed. Those studying womens history and poetry are still looking and will turn down the dishwasher position cause it requires them to do physical labor. Guess maybe those jobs would be filled if only the poor had access to the interwebs.

[space-on-s]

Its pure folly to ignore it. There are 3 possible responses to skyrocketing unemployment - 1) Ignore it, and use the military to suppress the ensuing riots (as we did in the 19th and early 20th centuries), 2) Put them on an economic feeding tube indefinitely... or 3) Create jobs programs.

There is a very simple reason we haven't created jobs programs - because the wealthy elite of America are against it. High unemployment increases corporate profits, and further concentrates wealth into the top 1%.

As for your point on corruption and the blurring lines between government and corporate entities - that's true. But to suggest that a company wants higher regulation to hurt the competition is just as silly as saying Warren Buffet wants higher taxes to prevent other people from getting rich.

The current cries for Austerity ignores economic history. Since WWII business and banks have been increasingly deregulated, and taxes have continued to be slashed. Not only has this not spurred economic growth like Conservatives claim, our GDP growth has actually DECLINED dramatically, and wage growth has stagnated for 30 years.

As for the cries for privatization, this again ignores history. We forget WHY these functions were put under government control in the first place. Early "subscription" fire departments degenerated into protection rackets (Pay the fee for the fire brigade... or you might have an "accidental" fire at your house). We left the gold standard only after a hundred years of recession after recession, finally culminating in the Great Depression, where even the assets of the rich weren't safe... not to mention the risk of getting lynched by an angry crowd of starving blue collar folks. Social programs for the poor and unemployed were established after private charity failed miserably to support them.

Furthermore on social programs, again, history has shown it doesn't work. De-regulation and massive tax cuts by Bush and Obama... according to Conservative logic, private donations should be going through the roof, right? Wrong. Many shelters and soup kitchens have been forced to either start charging fees, or shut down altogether, from lack of funds.




So many fallacies... I'm not even sure where to start. There are more job applicants than there are jobs. That is proven fact. Major corporations are laying off workers to concentrate their manpower, and slashing employee benefits. Also proven fact. Unemployment persists, but corporate profits remain at record highs. Also PROVEN FACT. Its nice you found a website with a lot of job offers on it. That's real cute. But last time I checked there was a lot more than a million unemployed people.

Make no mistake about it, some regulations out there are a corporation's friend, why else would there be such a thing as "lobbyists"? You think all these big corporations are contributing vast sums of money to politician's campaigns because they're feeling especially charitable? Now who's being silly?

My point is there are so many regulations out there today it's absolutely impossible to tell which ones have a tangible benefit and which are redundant, interventionist, and oppressive. Deregulate in one area and ten more take its place in others, which is why individual regulations are so ineffective. No one can realistically enforce them all, so nobody honestly tries too hard. I think you've been misled to believe (and I may be partially at fault for this) that it is the goal to strip away everything government and replace it with a sucking void. It's not entirely accurate. Yes I believe we need to hit the big reset button, but then to replace it with limited, effective, enforcible regulation, which is out to protect the individual rights and liberties of free enterprise through Constitutional authority and to let simple supply and demand function as it ought. Simply put, I never see any measure the government taking towards enforcing ethical commerce ever becoming more effective than the simple prospect of eventual Chapter 7/11 when corruption and malfeasance is discovered. It's time we started allowing it to happen, really, we've never experienced it in full force our lifetimes and part of it is simply due to the fact that we've consistently transitioned away from it from the moment of the idealogy's conception. Our market is free enough that we can see working examples of supply and demand functioning correctly, and in those markets specifically we experience the best prices for valuable, efficient services and products provided for trade. Since government cannot keep up with information technologies at the least we experience many principles of the free market from that specific field, and thus, considering the complexity and intricacy of many technological innovations, we get excellent prices and services for this hugely trending industry simply because it is a requirement for companies to stay on the leading edge to do so. The more government inserts itself the more the equilibrium becomes unbalanced, and the result is a trend away from best price. Even people with a freshman-level understanding of economics understand that principle, and I suspect your comprehension of the subject is much higher than that.

Government intervention in the form of stimulus for the purpose of creating jobs is turning out to be swinging a bat blindfolded in a dark cave, it rarely ever connects and accomplishes little more than a brief upset in the balance of the system and actively enables the failed practices of failing businesses, many of whom happen to be political cronies of the people earmarking the fund, and the saving of any employment whatsoever is temporary at the long-term detriment of the company itself and it costs the government, and thus the American taxpayer, significantly. The reason the poor and the middle class feel so disparate from the very rich has a lot to do with the dillution of our own currency. Collectively we have all (and even a bit more) of the money that we had years previous, yet the incremental rise in costs throughout the years, practically outside of our direct notice contributes to the fact that we're beginning to feel what we do have is never enough, and sometimes that is accurate, especially coupled with extensive uses of credit to make purchases beyond our liquid capabilities, which is another subtle means to deprive ourselves of our wealth. Of course the money supply has grown so much larger, the wealth must have gone somewhere, for the rate of increase overall far exceeds our own cost of living increases provided by our own employers, which leaves realistically the very rich, due to the trickle down nature of inflation.

For any business to be successful, and add value for shareholders, it will be their eventual goals leading towards expansion, and thus job creation. The more government upsets the fluid nature of commerce the more it hampers their ability to do that. As the intervention forces those being intervened upon to move into self-assessment and survival mode which actively deters that very thing, much like a rise of a new competitor in their market. When the competitors rise, at least they create jobs, and the business being competed with is forced to innovate or give up market share. When government intervenes, neither of which occurs.

Responsible financial practices, both at a personal and business perspective, are never things a government can realistically enforce, even under the most strict communist practices. I see spending and borrowing as an addiction at a level or worse than anything chemical, and individuals and businesses need to learn to develop pragmatic practices where they more effectively control their assets. Once they do so they have the opportunity to save their earnings, and in the cases of businesses apply them towards expansion of their enterprises (which doesn't happen to work without creating a job for somebody, although it may be a position that has a market value lower than our own minimum wage or a union's concept of "fair wage". )

[karaburatoreror]

Sorry for the delay, I just noticed your response:

Make no mistake about it, some regulations out there are a corporation's friend, why else would there be such a thing as "lobbyists"? You think all these big corporations are contributing vast sums of money to politician's campaigns because they're feeling especially charitable? Now who's being silly?

Generally they lobby AGAINST such legislation. Against more environmental protections and standards. Against more safety oversights, etc.

But I will concede there are certain pieces of legislation that Corporations support - specifically - ones that RELAX controls on them. The "Right to Work" laws in the South are every CEO's wet dream. The way to undo over a hundred years of workers' rights in a single day.

My point is there are so many regulations out there today it's absolutely impossible to tell which ones have a tangible benefit and which are redundant, interventionist, and oppressive. Deregulate in one area and ten more take its place in others, which is why individual regulations are so ineffective. No one can realistically enforce them all, so nobody honestly tries too hard. I think you've been misled to believe (and I may be partially at fault for this) that it is the goal to strip away everything government and replace it with a sucking void. It's not entirely accurate. Yes I believe we need to hit the big reset button, but then to replace it with limited, effective, enforcible regulation, which is out to protect the individual rights and liberties of free enterprise through Constitutional authority and to let simple supply and demand function as it ought. Simply put, I never see any measure the government taking towards enforcing ethical commerce ever becoming more effective than the simple prospect of eventual Chapter 7/11 when corruption and malfeasance is discovered. It's time we started allowing it to happen, really, we've never experienced it in full force our lifetimes and part of it is simply due to the fact that we've consistently transitioned away from it from the moment of the idealogy's conception. Our market is free enough that we can see working examples of supply and demand functioning correctly, and in those markets specifically we experience the best prices for valuable, efficient services and products provided for trade. Since government cannot keep up with information technologies at the least we experience many principles of the free market from that specific field, and thus, considering the complexity and intricacy of many technological innovations, we get excellent prices and services for this hugely trending industry simply because it is a requirement for companies to stay on the leading edge to do so. The more government inserts itself the more the equilibrium becomes unbalanced, and the result is a trend away from best price. Even people with a freshman-level understanding of economics understand that principle, and I suspect your comprehension of the subject is much higher than that. And that's where we're going to have to disagree. Simply producing the "best price" is not the end-all most important thing in the universe. Manufacturing pencils might be cheaper if corporations used child labor, but that doesn't mean we should let them. True, these regulations make the cost of business more expensive, but if we actually cracked down on outsourcing, that wouldn't be so much of a problem.

Secondly, the major libertarian argument against regulation that I've heard - "common sense" - is just plain wrong. So according to this theory, if a corporation used unsafe practices, produced unsafe products, or unsafe work conditions, the "invisible hand" would come in and put them out of business. Doesn't work. The world's just too complex. What's in those pills you take at lunch every day? What went into that cheeseburger? Is that minivan safe? What minerals are in your tapwater?

We cry about the government and regulation - but we forget why all that was established in the first place. Wildjoker told me - completely serious - that he would like to live in the 19th century. He has been taught that everything was "better" before the evil progressives came along and established evil big government.

I know you're smarter than that - and you're right - there is a lot of redundant and excessive legislation - but that's not the root of our financial problems. We could quite literally fire every non-DOD government employee, and the budget still wouldn't be balanced. Our major problems are the broken medical system, foreign wars, and social security. The foreign wars will end when we eventually figure out they don't work. Social Security will fix itself as we pass on over the baby boomers. The major remaining problem is the broken medical system, which makes both government programs (medicare/aid/Tricare) more expensive than necessary, causes more bankruptcies, and makes people spend more than they need for basic coverage. This SHOULD be easily fixed, every other industrial power has a working system - our main problem is ideology. We're so scared of "death panels", "communism", etc etc - we refuse to recognize the systems that work better than ours.

Government intervention in the form of stimulus for the purpose of creating jobs is turning out to be swinging a bat blindfolded in a dark cave, it rarely ever connects and accomplishes little more than a brief upset in the balance of the system and actively enables the failed practices of failing businesses, many of whom happen to be political cronies of the people earmarking the fund, and the saving of any employment whatsoever is temporary at the long-term detriment of the company itself and it costs the government, and thus the American taxpayer, significantly. The reason the poor and the middle class feel so disparate from the very rich has a lot to do with the dillution of our own currency. Collectively we have all (and even a bit more) of the money that we had years previous, yet the incremental rise in costs throughout the years, practically outside of our direct notice contributes to the fact that we're beginning to feel what we do have is never enough, and sometimes that is accurate, especially coupled with extensive uses of credit to make purchases beyond our liquid capabilities, which is another subtle means to deprive ourselves of our wealth. Of course the money supply has grown so much larger, the wealth must have gone somewhere, for the rate of increase overall far exceeds our own cost of living increases provided by our own employers, which leaves realistically the very rich, due to the trickle down nature of inflation. The stimulus got the job done- inflating the economy - the problem is it went straight into the pockets of the banks and corporations - the people who caused the problem in the first place.

For any business to be successful, and add value for shareholders, it will be their eventual goals leading towards expansion, and thus job creation. The more government upsets the fluid nature of commerce the more it hampers their ability to do that. As the intervention forces those being intervened upon to move into self-assessment and survival mode which actively deters that very thing, much like a rise of a new competitor in their market. When the competitors rise, at least they create jobs, and the business being competed with is forced to innovate or give up market share. When government intervenes, neither of which occurs. None of this requires responsible long term strategy. Why would a CEO care if the company blows up in 10 years, after he's retired? Why would he care if it blows up in 1 year? If they fire him he'll get his golden parachute and get a new job somewhere else.

Responsible financial practices, both at a personal and business perspective, are never things a government can realistically enforce, even under the most strict communist practices. I see spending and borrowing as an addiction at a level or worse than anything chemical, and individuals and businesses need to learn to develop pragmatic practices where they more effectively control their assets. Once they do so they have the opportunity to save their earnings, and in the cases of businesses apply them towards expansion of their enterprises (which doesn't happen to work without creating a job for somebody, although it may be a position that has a market value lower than our own minimum wage or a union's concept of "fair wage". ) Okay - this one puzzles me. So our national wealth continues to be concentrated to the top 1%, yet you say our minimum wage is too high?

[IrrettelatWet]

Okay - this one puzzles me. So our national wealth continues to be concentrated to the top 1%, yet you say our minimum wage is too high?

You do understand that the more the government gives to the poor in the way of handouts or minimum wage hikes, the more the rich get richer right? The rich are very well adapt to saving money and making the best out of a situation that is supposed to detriment them. The poor on the other hand see new FREE money and 9 out of 10 times spend it. It has happened with that tax cuts from Bush that allowed the poor to spend more, and now that they are accustomed to that much money in their paychecks, they can't have their taxes go up without "hurting" them. This all leads to the rich getting richer cause the poor spends everything they get, the more they get, the richer the rich become. So really blame no one but the government that thinks they must socially engieneer the people.

[hwood]

Sorry for the delay, I just noticed your response:

Generally they lobby AGAINST such legislation. Against more environmental protections and standards. Against more safety oversights, etc.

But I will concede there are certain pieces of legislation that Corporations support - specifically - ones that RELAX controls on them. The "Right to Work" laws in the South are every CEO's wet dream. The way to undo over a hundred years of workers' rights in a single day.

And that's where we're going to have to disagree. Simply producing the "best price" is not the end-all most important thing in the universe. Manufacturing pencils might be cheaper if corporations used child labor, but that doesn't mean we should let them. True, these regulations make the cost of business more expensive, but if we actually cracked down on outsourcing, that wouldn't be so much of a problem.

Secondly, the major libertarian argument against regulation that I've heard - "common sense" - is just plain wrong. So according to this theory, if a corporation used unsafe practices, produced unsafe products, or unsafe work conditions, the "invisible hand" would come in and put them out of business. Doesn't work. The world's just too complex. What's in those pills you take at lunch every day? What went into that cheeseburger? Is that minivan safe? What minerals are in your tapwater?

We cry about the government and regulation - but we forget why all that was established in the first place. Wildjoker told me - completely serious - that he would like to live in the 19th century. He has been taught that everything was "better" before the evil progressives came along and established evil big government.

I know you're smarter than that - and you're right - there is a lot of redundant and excessive legislation - but that's not the root of our financial problems. We could quite literally fire every non-DOD government employee, and the budget still wouldn't be balanced. Our major problems are the broken medical system, foreign wars, and social security. The foreign wars will end when we eventually figure out they don't work. Social Security will fix itself as we pass on over the baby boomers. The major remaining problem is the broken medical system, which makes both government programs (medicare/aid/Tricare) more expensive than necessary, causes more bankruptcies, and makes people spend more than they need for basic coverage. This SHOULD be easily fixed, every other industrial power has a working system - our main problem is ideology. We're so scared of "death panels", "communism", etc etc - we refuse to recognize the systems that work better than ours.



The stimulus got the job done- inflating the economy - the problem is it went straight into the pockets of the banks and corporations - the people who caused the problem in the first place.

None of this requires responsible long term strategy. Why would a CEO care if the company blows up in 10 years, after he's retired? Why would he care if it blows up in 1 year? If they fire him he'll get his golden parachute and get a new job somewhere else.

Okay - this one puzzles me. So our national wealth continues to be concentrated to the top 1%, yet you say our minimum wage is too high?

You missed the point entirely, there's so much regulation that any single piece is virtually unenforceable in a standardized fashion. A good business, by anyone's standards today would be somewhere in the vicinity of 80% compliant with only the areas assessed by an overseer on a periodic "snapshot in time" basis. No assessor can even begin to evaluate what a company's corporate culture is like based on what they have to work with. Every time they swing by they're paraded around with a beautiful "dog and pony" show and treated to coffee and donuts. We've saturated the system so much that no one can even begin to regulate effectively. Strip it down, apply the right regulations, enforcible ones that are necessary to handle most of the stuff you tend to worry about so much, but nothing that is entirely redundant to that which a little bit of social consiousness towards the consumer wouldn't handle on its own accord. CEO's, believe it or not, are held accountable, to their Board of Directors and to shareholders. They don't get golden parachutes by allowing companies to fail, and no new organization will hire one that does. They might get second chances, dependant upon the circumstances of their individual situations, but those that will be a liability to the success of the organization will be on a blacklist they may be unable to recover from.

As far as lobbyist go, they go both ways, now it may be in their interest to stop legislation, especially when it infringes on their rights of free commerce in a manner that is inconsistent with the Constitution, much as you say. Likewise, can you honestly think a Corporation wouldn't insert a piece here or there that is effectively meaningless in the overall "protection of consumers", but can be a bag of doodoo wrapped in a pretty package strictly with the intent to limit the number of new entrants into their market niche? You're a lot nicer to business corporations than I ever could be if you think that tactic is somehow off limits.

The overzealous legislation is a problem with our freedoms, and our commerce. It eliminates choices we have as a consumer and restricts the operational capabilities of the proprietor. This paves the way for the strength to fall into the organizations with the greatest amount of capital resources available to become "compliant" and weeds out everything else. What entities can you think of who would have the most capital resources available to appear "compliant" (or at least put up the thickest system of smoke and mirrors)? If there wasn't a cost involved, 9 times out of 10, it wouldn't need to be regulated because people would just do it or be busted for not doing it and incur business costs in the form of loss of patronage. Focusing on foreign wars and military spending is only a focus on part of the economic problem, there are contributions from every facet of how we apply our resources and intervene in a manner inconsistent with our Constitutional role of government and abridge the freedoms of citizens trying to earn an honest living who are forced to wade through all the crap the government throws at them in the interests of becoming "entrepreneurs". If we want to solve this problem, honest entrepreneurs are exactly one of the things we need, and maybe the best thing. A little humble pie in our foreign policy wouldn't hurt either.

The "invisible hand" and "best price" are concepts I think you might not fully understand. "Best price" is not equivalent to "lowest cost" first of all. "Best price" is the product of competitive cost and SUPERIOR QUALITY to any of its competitors in the market. In the age of Jane's List, social awareness has a significant impact towards exactly what "quality" means. This is where the invisible hand gets its power, and its power is stripped away when all of the TARP funds get applied towards businesses, because no longer are those businesses forced to act fiscally responsibly as a means of self-preservation, and like you complained about, they can line their pockets with all of those taxpayer dollars and are in no way compelled to "share" it with their employees. If the only effective results of these funds are richer rich people and a diluted currency, making the rest of our money worth a bit less, it doesn't seem like a very good system.

The minimum wage I mentioned earlier affects unemployment, simple as that. It artificially sets the cost of a position in the United States higher than the fair market value of that position. Thus the sensible alternative for a business is to outsource the position to a nation a lot closer to the market value. While it probably would be a struggle to make a decent living at less than the current minimum wage, it does give "underqualified" individuals an opportunity to enhance their individual skill sets and improve their resumes, which enhances their individual marketabilty, allowing them to seek better employment contracts in the future. Market value of a position is important. I imagine you might think something along the lines of "well then a business could just set all wages at a penny a year". Fortunately this mentality ignores the principle that employment is strictly at will, for both sides. A person gets hired to the amount both they and the employer agree to. If the wage rate is set too low, nobody takes the position, businesses lose that productive capacity, and the value to shareholders (think profit) is also taken away.

That's the problem, the whole system itself has become so corrupted and the only way we can think to fix it is to add more "controls", naive to the fact that every new control we implement will be a placebo and that only the law-abiding strongly adhere to the law. Your going in assumption tends to be that every single person, no matter whom, is untrustworthy and unethical and cannot be trusted to run their own business in a manner that does anything but exploit their consumers. I go in with a different assumption, I look around at all of the people I know and associate with, and although not altogether perfect as individuals, very few actually are so spiteful and hateful to the extent they would exploit every opportunity with zero regard to the detriment of those they provide a service to. Why such corruption exists is a good question, I think I do understand it a little bit, as everything is incremental in a sense that a person begins to "cut corners" and continues down a path unless corrected by external forces. Your assumption seems to be only the government is good and just enough to be effective to play in that role. My assertion is not only is that untrue but it is the least effective but most constraining towards the ones who do play by the rules. To me every legislator in any facet of our government has the responsibility and the duty to ask themselves every time they introduce a single sentence in legislation, and that is to ask themselves, "who is this legislation really affecting" (the lawful or lawless) and which extent is more and by how much. If the answer is the former much more than the latter, check it by the Constitutional measuring stick, I bet it's outside of the boundaries stated there, and then forget they ever thought of it, even if it came from the absolute best of personal intentions.

[FjFHQLJQ]

You do understand that the more the government gives to the poor in the way of handouts or minimum wage hikes, the more the rich get richer right? The rich are very well adapt to saving money and making the best out of a situation that is supposed to detriment them. The poor on the other hand see new FREE money and 9 out of 10 times spend it. It has happened with that tax cuts from Bush that allowed the poor to spend more, and now that they are accustomed to that much money in their paychecks, they can't have their taxes go up without "hurting" them. This all leads to the rich getting richer cause the poor spends everything they get, the more they get, the richer the rich become. So really blame no one but the government that thinks they must socially engieneer the people.

Oh my god jesus you're killing me.

Okay I GET IT. Jesus hates the poor. Everyone who makes less than 50k is going to hell. I GET IT. How does your rant have ANYTHING to do with what I said about minimum wage?

[drugstore]

You do understand that the more the government gives to the poor in the way of handouts or minimum wage hikes, the more the rich get richer right? The rich are very well adapt to saving money and making the best out of a situation that is supposed to detriment them. The poor on the other hand see new FREE money and 9 out of 10 times spend it. It has happened with that tax cuts from Bush that allowed the poor to spend more, and now that they are accustomed to that much money in their paychecks, they can't have their taxes go up without "hurting" them. This all leads to the rich getting richer cause the poor spends everything they get, the more they get, the richer the rich become. So really blame no one but the government that thinks they must socially engieneer the people.

Sooo...to stop the rich from getting richer, we merely need to take all the money away from poor people. Brilliant!

[BILBONDER]

You missed the point entirely, there's so much regulation that any single piece is virtually unenforceable in a standardized fashion. A good business, by anyone's standards today would be somewhere in the vicinity of 80% compliant with only the areas assessed by an overseer on a periodic "snapshot in time" basis. No assessor can even begin to evaluate what a company's corporate culture is like based on what they have to work with. Every time they swing by they're paraded around with a beautiful "dog and pony" show and treated to coffee and donuts. We've saturated the system so much that no one can even begin to regulate effectively. Strip it down, apply the right regulations, enforcible ones that are necessary to handle most of the stuff you tend to worry about so much, but nothing that is entirely redundant to that which a little bit of social consiousness towards the consumer wouldn't handle on its own accord.

And as I said earlier, there is a reason corporations are regulated. This took a hundred years. They hired mercenaries. They burned protestor camps. They deliberately murdered women and children - all to protect their financial interests. I don't feel like having to fight that battle all over again. And frankly, I think most people who advocate de-regulation don't realize how much blood was spilled to get that regulation installed in the first place.

CEO's, believe it or not, are held accountable, to their Board of Directors and to shareholders. They don't get golden parachutes by allowing companies to fail, and no new organization will hire one that does. They might get second chances, dependant upon the circumstances of their individual situations, but those that will be a liability to the success of the organization will be on a blacklist they may be unable to recover from. For someone who says our system is inefficient, you see no inefficiency in this? One man deserves a paycheck and separation package larger than that of tens of thousands of "little people" combined - or that he takes in a hundred million while at the same time his company is laying off thousands of employees?

The Finance business is burning. Banks are laying off people every year, and its only going to continue. Yet the CEOs of these operations continue to be rewarded with obscene amounts of money, whether or not their leadership was even effective?

As far as lobbyist go, they go both ways, now it may be in their interest to stop legislation, especially when it infringes on their rights of free commerce in a manner that is inconsistent with the Constitution, much as you say. Likewise, can you honestly think a Corporation wouldn't insert a piece here or there that is effectively meaningless in the overall "protection of consumers", but can be a bag of doodoo wrapped in a pretty package strictly with the intent to limit the number of new entrants into their market niche? You're a lot nicer to business corporations than I ever could be if you think that tactic is somehow off limits. As I said earlier, there are certainly pieces of legislation that corporations like (like "right to work" laws, the Republican Party's wet dream) - but as a general principle, less accountability is preferable to more accountability.

The overzealous legislation is a problem with our freedoms, and our commerce. It eliminates choices we have as a consumer and restricts the operational capabilities of the proprietor. This paves the way for the strength to fall into the organizations with the greatest amount of capital resources available to become "compliant" and weeds out everything else. What entities can you think of who would have the most capital resources available to appear "compliant" (or at least put up the thickest system of smoke and mirrors)? If there wasn't a cost involved, 9 times out of 10, it wouldn't need to be regulated because people would just do it or be busted for not doing it and incur business costs in the form of loss of patronage. Focusing on foreign wars and military spending is only a focus on part of the economic problem, there are contributions from every facet of how we apply our resources and intervene in a manner inconsistent with our Constitutional role of government and abridge the freedoms of citizens trying to earn an honest living who are forced to wade through all the crap the government throws at them in the interests of becoming "entrepreneurs". If we want to solve this problem, honest entrepreneurs are exactly one of the things we need, and maybe the best thing. A little humble pie in our foreign policy wouldn't hurt either. That's emotionally appealing, but not practical. As I said earlier, if a new drug, car, children's toy, power tool, sunscreen, or appliance is unsafe - are you going to know? You and I cannot be experts in every field, which is why someone who IS an expert (like the FDA for example) needs to exist to hold that relevant industry accountable.

The "invisible hand" and "best price" are concepts I think you might not fully understand. "Best price" is not equivalent to "lowest cost" first of all. "Best price" is the product of competitive cost and SUPERIOR QUALITY to any of its competitors in the market. In the age of Jane's List, social awareness has a significant impact towards exactly what "quality" means. This is where the invisible hand gets its power, and its power is stripped away when all of the TARP funds get applied towards businesses, because no longer are those businesses forced to act fiscally responsibly as a means of self-preservation, and like you complained about, they can line their pockets with all of those taxpayer dollars and are in no way compelled to "share" it with their employees. If the only effective results of these funds are richer rich people and a diluted currency, making the rest of our money worth a bit less, it doesn't seem like a very good system. I don't think TARP and Stimulus were applied in the most moral and efficient way possible - but surely you agree that they needed to happen?

The minimum wage I mentioned earlier affects unemployment, simple as that. It artificially sets the cost of a position in the United States higher than the fair market value of that position. Thus the sensible alternative for a business is to outsource the position to a nation a lot closer to the market value. While it probably would be a struggle to make a decent living at less than the current minimum wage, it does give "underqualified" individuals an opportunity to enhance their individual skill sets and improve their resumes, which enhances their individual marketabilty, allowing them to seek better employment contracts in the future. Market value of a position is important. I imagine you might think something along the lines of "well then a business could just set all wages at a penny a year". Fortunately this mentality ignores the principle that employment is strictly at will, for both sides. A person gets hired to the amount both they and the employer agree to. If the wage rate is set too low, nobody takes the position, businesses lose that productive capacity, and the value to shareholders (think profit) is also taken away. Which is why our "minimum wage" laws don't just affect the wage. They also dictate what hours employees can work, breaks... time management in general. While a corporation would love to assign the work of 10 men to just 5 to save money, our laws are SUPPOSED to prevent that from happening. Again, as I said earlier, corporations WANT unemployment. Unemployment drives wages down, and keeps the workers in fear of losing their jobs. Unfortunately, in a capitalist system, there is no easy solution to that. However, using stimulus money to build a jobs program would mitigate a lot of negative effects from unemployment, and in the long run be positive for the economy.

That's the problem, the whole system itself has become so corrupted and the only way we can think to fix it is to add more "controls", naive to the fact that every new control we implement will be a placebo and that only the law-abiding strongly adhere to the law. Your going in assumption tends to be that every single person, no matter whom, is untrustworthy and unethical and cannot be trusted to run their own business in a manner that does anything but exploit their consumers. I go in with a different assumption, I look around at all of the people I know and associate with, and although not altogether perfect as individuals, very few actually are so spiteful and hateful to the extent they would exploit every opportunity with zero regard to the detriment of those they provide a service to. Why such corruption exists is a good question, I think I do understand it a little bit, as everything is incremental in a sense that a person begins to "cut corners" and continues down a path unless corrected by external forces. Your assumption seems to be only the government is good and just enough to be effective to play in that role. My assertion is not only is that untrue but it is the least effective but most constraining towards the ones who do play by the rules. To me every legislator in any facet of our government has the responsibility and the duty to ask themselves every time they introduce a single sentence in legislation, and that is to ask themselves, "who is this legislation really affecting" (the lawful or lawless) and which extent is more and by how much. If the answer is the former much more than the latter, check it by the Constitutional measuring stick, I bet it's outside of the boundaries stated there, and then forget they ever thought of it, even if it came from the absolute best of personal intentions. Well then, that's where we're going to have to disagree. People are selfish short sighted little monsters. Its biology. It was all fine and dandy when we were primitive hunter-gatherers or small agricultural communities. The Left has a fetish for the "noble savage" and the Right has a fetish for Ann Raynd's "superhuman individuals". Both are wrong.

As small populations of villages or tribes, man had very little control over his environment, food supply, or neighbors. Now in the post-industrial world, that's all changed. We have no equilibrium, because we have the power to irrepairably damage both the environment and ourselves. Without controls, people would scoop up every last fish in the sea, burn holes in the ozone layer, exhaust every inch of usable farmland, and oppress every other person weaker than them. We used to believe the "free market" was omnipent. That idea was finally disproven the hard way with the Great Depression. We tried to fix the Great Depression with Austerity programs under Hoover. We failed miserably. We only left the great depression under FDR and the New Deal.

[Sheelldaw]

Sooo...to stop the rich from getting richer, we merely need to take all the money away from poor people. Brilliant!

Poor people don't need money! They have all kinds of luxury items! Refigerators, television sets, cell phones... we're spoiling them!

[obegeLype]

Sooo...to stop the rich from getting richer, we merely need to take all the money away from poor people. Brilliant!

Well, it is either stop complaining about the rich getting richer, or stop handing out money to the poor for doing nothing to slow the rich getting richer. Without confiscation of every piece of asset the rich owns, you will never stop them from getting richer.

[MeeveStesia]

Oh my god jesus you're killing me.

Okay I GET IT. Jesus hates the poor. Everyone who makes less than 50k is going to hell. I GET IT. How does your rant have ANYTHING to do with what I said about minimum wage?

Troll urges just bubbling out and over the crack in your head again. No where in there did I say anything about Jesus.