Everything I have been talking about RE: economy / middle class

I think America will never have to fear any uprising from the masses. Because there's a buffer between the rich and the poor called democracy.

The masses will never have a voice in the government because they can't get enough elected to office. And they can't possibly rise against those in office which they elected through mind-numbing propaganda. It is the perfect system to keep people in their places because there is no accountability unlike true dictatorships or oligarchies.

 

Read it. Don't really agree with the analysis or the recommendations. Am I enough, or do you need everyone right of you to comment before not posting about this stuff anymore.

 

Carl Marx was right all along.
He did give the solution though it was not pretty.

 

The thing is that all people are voluntarily governed, if it gets too oppressive, they will rise up and topple the ruling class.

Even in the USA, it can be economic, it can be human rights, it can be just about any major inequality.

The people that have the most are not safe unless the people that don't have as much have enough to be satisfied themselves.

DD

 

Nouriel Roubini needs to sit down with tea partyer to have some tea while discussing the solution to current economic crisis. Over-regulated or under-regulated, which one is it? :grin:

I am reading Road to Serfdom since the tea partyers have made it the gospel of their movement. Acutally, I am re-reading it, which I didn't take too seriously some 15 years ago in econ my history class.

Well, one doesn't need to look far. Was the post-war Britain run as a welfare state and failed miserably? Roubinis is quick to build on the current crisis with some big pretty big argument as credible as those of tea partyers IMHO and along with a a shot at Thatcher.

I think Keynes hit the nail on the head when he reviewed Friedrich Hayek's work - that is the hard part is line drawing, which we need to know desperately.

 

The radical right-wing Roberts Court decided that a corporation was a person, so now they can make pretty much unlimited donations to their favorite charity, the Republican Party, a political party that spent the entire two terms of Bush larding it up for their corporate benefactors. In fact, my guess is that the largess exceeded their wildest dreams of avarice. The Roberts Court is like the cherry on top of their sundae, a bonus they dreamed of, but probably doubted they would ever receive. So what does that have to do with this? I can see how at some point in the future the general public comes to see the country as being ruled by the big corporations, that their votes have no real meaning, that the deck is so stacked against them that they feel as if they have no real voice.

Should that day arrive, and some think it is here already, yeah, people could become seriously pissed off, to the point of violence. We aren't there now, but unless the current direction of the country, politically, is changed, and changed to a significant degree, I could see it happening, and it scares the hell out of me. I have two kids, one a young adult, the other three years from starting college, and their future is indeed frightening. We should be worried and not take our generally peaceful country for granted. Certain people in Washington certainly do take it for granted, thinking they can get away with anything, and the country will just keep keepin' on. Well, suck on it, fellas.

 

Well, that has been said for 200 or so years, but capitalism is still well and alive. The problem is the alternatives are much worse. I believe in rule of law.

That said, I share your concerns. That's why I am pissed at tea partyers and republican politicians complaining about over-regulations. If you listen carefully, all these GOP hopefuls at some time in their speech must quack about cutting corporate taxes, deregulate wall street, etc as if they are the cures rather than the source of current crisis. This is beyond self-serving promoting, as all politicians do, but rather some dubious moral ethics. Didn't we get into this freaking mess because the greed of wall street and corporate American ran wild?

On the other hand, the problem with the welfare state argument is that it can be dangerous. As Roubini put it himself "
Those flaws [of Europen's social welfare model] were reflected in yawning fiscal deficits, regulatory overkill, and a lack of economic dynamism that led to sclerotic growth then and the eurozone’s sovereign-debt crisis now." In another word, do we want to go down the road to become Ireland, Greece? Certainly not. The question is still balance, which is obvious, but nobody knows how to draw the line.

 

As an example, where they determined that free markets do not result in enough aggregate demand. I disagree with the conclusion as well as the fact that they have so ill articulated the argument that it is meaningless. What is "enough" aggregate demand? When they say "free markets" are they talking about totally free markets, which have not recently been seen in the US and thus no conclusions could be drawn about them as relates to current events; are they talking about the conditions that exist currently as "free markets"? Overall it seemed more like a BBS post than a published article. I also take issue with the author's statement of a conclusion (that inequality is the source of the cited unrest) without any attempt to provide evidence in support. Instead we get a statement that there is unrest, an unbacked assertion that the cause of this unrest is income/wealth inequality, a list of alleged causes (also with no supporting evidence), and then another assertion that the government must be more redistributive.

Put more succinctly, my biggest problem with the analysis was its absence.

You didn't answer my question, BTW.

 

The article is not so bad, but New Yorker's thread title is idiotic. He is desperately trying to pat himself on the back, undeservedly.

 

Yes, it seemed more like a blog post to me. Slate is sometimes good at providing numbers. I enjoy reading Mother Jones for social commentary and analysis. Great reporting.

I also don't agree with emulating Europe's social entitlement model. They've reached a point where riots are possible in order to cow politicians from reducing spending yet are as apathetic as we are regarding other policies.

i think we had a great model 60 years ago and the flaws we're facing now have been structural due to our inability to adapt to current realities and because that 1950's model was so great in sustaining our dominance that it was hard to reform, change course, and take risks politically.

it seems like we're living in a fairy land where despite the fact that we're living with social changes unseen before in stable times we're still pinning our nostalgia for the good old days on politicians who can sell the best snake oil. The best trick has been to make curves and trickle downs into simplistic jingles that people can dance to.

That was bit of an off topic rant. If we're going to the ****ter financially, we should double down on our infrastructure so we can drive our way to the poor house rather than shoot and bomb our way through

 

hasn't the argument against the right to bear arms
is that the government has better weapons.

I think Most americans are keenly aware of the threat

Rocket River

 

It doesn't sound like he's calling for temporary stimulus. He wants to restructure our current entitlement system without giving any details. I think anyone can agree things need fixing, but entitlement costs already look daunting with more and more boomers retiring.

 

Damn! Was I supposed to read it? I was responding to the title! ;-)-

 

These are obvious problems with current economy and nobody will deny them. The flaw with Roubini's article is that he has an ambitious title, points out the obvious, which even the tea partyers will agree, and then falls very short of supporting his conclusion. It's kinda weird if you read carefully that he anticipates criticism and concludes by telling us there needs to be balance. Duh, we all know that, but how? Very unsatisfactory.