I’m just sayin’ – the right wing has twisted economics into a Randian pretzel. They don’t know jack about people. There is a small percentage that is driven by financial return, nothing more. They are always with us, called by various names, including “Wall Street” and “the financial sector.” They are our facilitators, but not our innovators. They need to be put in a cage, handed green eye shades, but never let out into real sunlight. When they become our masters, when their needs become our driving force, we have … what we have – boom and bust, bubble and pop, and grand inequality of wealth.
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Oh-oh: I realized while on the treadmill that this post is classic confirmation bias. Perhaps the Catholic Church can use my services in finding that elusive second miracle for JPII. How easily I fall into it.
My bias is this: That right-wing economics takes that behavior of a small minority of us, sociopaths, and presumes that we all not only should, but want to behave that way. It then seeks to look to government as stifling our natural impulses to behave as they think we should. I am always in search of evidence.
Piece of Mindful 
I was wondering if those Haitians who perished in last years earthquake would have wanted a less corrupt govt. along with a heavy dose of wealth.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110112132415.htm
From your buddies in Boulder.
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His best work happened during the 1950′s, when the top tax rate was 91%.
What was the actual rate, after the various deductions?
I see what you are saying, in that John Paulson making multi billion dollars in one year on Wall Street is beyond the Pale. But handing our money in excess of subsistence over to the Government doesn’t work too well either.
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You are correct, sir. The purpose of the 91% bracket was to incentivize investment activity. Oddly, it is high taxes, and not low taxes, that spurs investment.
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Missed the first part – as I understand it, the top rate kicked in at today’s equivalent of three million.
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Mark,
You continue to be confused between the differences of:
*Economics
*Investment
*Entrepreneurship
..and muddle their aspects into such a mess that you confuse it all into your “Randian” anti-theory.
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Please, you three, read my post script. I erred badly on this post.
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There are true economists out there who study the behavior of people. They are interesting in the extreme. Everyone should be an investor to some degree, be it home ownership or Social Security or personal retirement. Entrepreneurs are supposedly risk takers, but are actually risk-averse, in that they are always on the lookout for rewards for minimum risk.
Be that as it may, Randians and libertarians step into the picture and say that we should all be risk-takers, completely misunderstanding the nature of entrepreneurs and most people in general, who are quite willing to trade wealth for security. R&L’s say that government removes risk and therefore most of us to some degree are feeding off risk takers. From that they take our economy and make it into the monopoly board, winner take all, and huge inequality follows. Not only do they have it backwards, but the results are disastrous, as they are not cautious about introducing massive change into our economic model. They are dangerous.
Remove R&L’s, and we still have the three activities you describe. Introduce high taxation with opt-out clauses, and we adjust well, and have more investment for greater good (which Rand denied even existed, conveniently). Call it socialism, it creates greater equality, better public services, and as any happiness index will tell you, a wholesome existence.
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Disregarding all the meaningless terms you used, such as “income inequality,” “wholesome existence,” etc., I understand your position to be as follows: The government can make better investments with my money than I can.
Ah, go on, Trotsky. Be serious.
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Generally true – government can buy wholesale, and provide health care at half of what your private sectors costs, just for example. I don’t want them making my cars and jockey shorts, but with mass commodities like utilities and infrastructure, government is a better investor.
Income inequality can be objectively defined. A “wholesome” life is one in which people get up each day and go about their life’s business not worried that an illness will bankrupt them or that they haven’t set aside enough for college. They start out on a more equal platform, and are free to pursue those things that please them the most. This might have a lot to do with the fact that even though Canadians have as many guns per capita as we do, they don’t go around shooting each other as we do. Their lives are more settled.
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$100 toilet seats.
Money saving Death Panels.
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The government can make better investments with my money than I can. And you think that is true? Then why is the government mired in debt and nearly broke, while I am debt free and rich?
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I am dying to hear your objective definition for “income inequality.” I could be suffering from it, depending on where I look, but I am not sure. Please enlighten me.
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So, a “wholesome life” is being able to pay medical and college bills. Really? It is all about cash flow and assets? But what if I have no medical or college bills? Would being able to pay for an around-the-world cruise with five-star dining qualify as a “wholesome life”?
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Come on, Trotsky, be serious with us.
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The government is mired in debt due to tax cuts and military spending. It’s a deliberate squeeze to justify elimination of social programs, aka “The Two Santa Claus Theory.” Those who promote it say that they don’t believe in big government, but the truth is that they want big government so long as it benefits them.
Don’t give a rat’s ass about your cruise, but those who wake up in Canada and Denmark wake up each day with a leg up on us – they can go about their lives’ business not having to worry about medical bankruptcy or education costs at any level. They have higher quality than us, and it shows in surveys – they are happier.
Your racial comments are repugnant – both of you.
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The truth is always repugnant to the immature mind; whereas, the adult mind accepts it and deals with it.
If you are going to toss out liberal generalities and leftist bumper sticker slogans, you must stand ready to defend them. Every attempt to evade a substantive reply lowers your credibility a notch, until you are finally consigned to the bottom of the fuzzy-brain barrel.
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1. If the US Government can invest money better than an individual can, why are the US Government’s finances a disaster? If “tax cuts and military spending” are to blame, how do you explain for the bankruptcies of Iceland, Greece, Ireland, Portugal, and soon Spain, all of whom are socialist countries with some of the highest taxes in the world and little or no military establishments? Or for that matter, how do you explain for the insolvencies of California, Illinois, and New Jersey?
2. Define “wholesome life,” and explain how government-subsidized medical insurance coverage or government-subsidized college costs create a “wholesome life”?
3. Define “income inequality,” and explain how it works and why it is good or bad.
4. What role does race play in a nation’s public safety, social cohesion, and general prosperity?
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Putting baby in a corner, are we? You don’t put baby in a corner, Got that? That’s Kailey’s shtick.
I will answer your questions – if you don’t know the insecurity that people feel not being able to afford health care or to send their kinds to college, then you are out of touch. Merely waking up each monring knowing that this part of our lives is covered adds security and makes people happier.
Income inequality merely means existence of a middle class. Without progressive taxes on income and estates, wealth naturally concentrates in the upper quintile, upper 1%, actually. I find the bottom part of this graph most interesting – the presumption is that wealth follows talent. I doubt it.
Race – that’s your bugaboo.
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Baby Trotsky:
I see now. Everything in your worldview is emotional. It is all about how people “feel.”
The 25-year old guy who has no job and no money and no assets, is in good health, and has no interest in attending college “feels” great. I mean, “secure.” He is enjoying a “wholesome life,” according to you.
Meanwhile, the 25-year old with a job and money and a house and two cars “feels” awful. I mean, “insecure,” because he has no government-subsidized health insurance and no government-subsidized college costs. He is living an “unwholesome life,” according to you.
Be serious. Have you thought at all about what you are saying?
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“[W]ealth naturally concentrates in the upper quintile….”
OK. What is your problem with naturally occurring phenomena?
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Have you thought about this at all? You’re doing exactly what I said that those who profess right wing economics do – projecting your lack of empathy on the population as a whole. It’s not about feelings, but rather about “normal.” 96% of us are normal in our empathy and willingness to join in with each other in facing mutual problems. You’re an outlier.
I don’t care that phenomena is naturally occurring – that’s hardly the point. The point is that we can remedy negative natural phenomena. After all, viruses and bacteria are natural phenomena too – do we sit and watch people die for that reason?
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There you go again, Trotsky, retreating into fuzzy psychologizing instead of answering the questions. Now you are expatiating on “empathy.” Spare us the gas, please.
I understand there is no substance, or even logic, to what you are espousing. My purpose is to make you understand that. By demanding that you define the slogans and clichés you use, I am torturing you for a reason: I would like to redirect your mental energies into rational, productive thinking.
You completely fall apart when questioned about your theories of economic, political, and social organization. You cannot even explain the terms that you habitually and glibly use, much less explain why they are important. Ultimately, you fall back on faith, your belief system.
You easily gloss over the essential premises that underpin your belief system. Like any good preacher, you naturally assume everyone in your congregation believes in God, or, in this case, everyone believes in a “wholesome life” or “income inequality” or whatever.
Premise: “Having free or subsidized health insurance creates a wholesome life!”
Premise: “Income inequality is a negative natural phenomenon!”
Then you proceed to describe various ways in which solutions might be found. But wait a second. What is a “wholesome life”? What is “income inequality”? How do these things work? Why are they good or bad? Do they even exist?
Never mind, right? We need to get busy working on the solutions!
That is crazy, dude.
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Acquaintances who’ve lived in Europe tell me things aren’t so hot, that the statistics are somewhat cooked.
The US wage picture changes when you take out the suppressive effect of illegal immigration.
We’ve seen recent riots in France and Greece. Is this part of the happiness you are telling us about?
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The Happiness Index differs throughout socialist Europe.
In France, for example, the Index is based on a moving average of the number of cars torched each night in the banlieues. Any number below 200 cars is considered universal happiness.
In Greece, they count the number of broken shop windows in Athens multiplied by the number of homemade bombs that actually detonate.
The British use a rather complex formula to calculate their Happiness Index. It is a composite index that uses the number of flights cancelled at Heathrow Airport because of strikes, how many months it takes to get hip replacement surgery, and the number of days since the last government scandal.
Ireland just does a simple count of the gallons of whiskey consumed (more = happier).
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Thanks for sharing your anecdotes.
What you call “riots” are actually a phenomenon that you don’t recognize – popular power. We don’t have that over here in the states – we’ve been conditioned to think that joining arms with our fellows is a sign of weakness.
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I thought “popular power” was the stuff that runs the lights in my house.
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Your racial comments are repugnant – both of you.
Repugnant but true. What I find repugnant is the typical liberal who has spent their life in a monochromatic community, yet embraces policies that will make such more difficult for those who come after.
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I grew up on the south side of Billings, largely Hispanic, surely poor. I see the differences in people and prejudge them based on those differences. The only thing that makes me what you disdainfully call a “liberal” is the realization that I am one of them, but fortunate to be a white male in a society dominated by white males. I am hardly a victim of anything.
And you are no victim either. If you can’t make it as a white male in this societal, you’ve got problems.
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but fortunate to be a white male in a society dominated by white males.
A bit more than fortune is involved, in that your ancestors cultivated societies and abilities that resonate today.
I don’t think one should apologize for wanting to perpetuate “a society dominated by white [small w, eh?] males.” It seems to be the place to where everyone wants to move. As you state in your ‘about’ section, in an evidently unguarded moment, “I’m good at what I do.”
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This might have a lot to do with the fact that even though Canadians have as many guns per capita as we do, they don’t go around shooting each other as we do.
This might have more to do with the ethnic groups that make up each country and their corresponding contribution to the shooting.
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Go ahead, Fred, call a spade a spade.
What you have said about homicide is also true about criminality in general, healthcare costs, public school problems, drug addiction, unwed mothers, and a host of other social ills.
Promoters of Canadian and Northern European socialist systems conveniently overlook the fact that those nations do not have to cope with 40 million Africans and 38 million Hispanics. It is easy to have a tidy, safe, and efficiently run society when everyone is the same.
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Last I checked, 16% of the Canadian population was “visible” minority.
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Nice try, Trotsky, switching from Africans and Hispanics to all minorities in Canada. But you are not playing with your idiot liberal friends now.
African Canadians = 2.5%
Hispanic Canadians = 0.97%
[Source: Statistics Canada]
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Want to do Sweden next?
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Last I checked, 16% of the Canadian population was “visible” minority. Confirm your bias elsewhere. You picked two of many.
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Thanks for noticing. Maybe now you can begin to take some of this into account when designing public policy: the immigrant Han Chinese in Canada have certain characteristics that set them apart from other groups, such as a low incidence of gun violence, and high achievement in school. Inquiring minds want to know.
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Also this:
Race – that’s your bugaboo.
This from a guy who probably gets a warm glow when he sees a person of color in a movie who is an architect, scientist, doctor, super hero, IT expert, who informs me that our Mestizo, Cholo, and Zambo immigrants are going to carry on physics research and the space program.
We’ve got a bunch of social programs based on the Left’s racial fetish, programs that are beyond criticism (hello James Watson). Anyone saying otherwise is a new age Galileo.
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You don’t know what you are talking about. You’re drifting on fumes.
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Unfortunately, Fred is right, and you are immersed in Fantasy America.
Now that is unbelievably ironic when you think about it. You have set yourself up as the Grand Theoretician of Propaganda and Media Brain Douching, yet you have utterly succumbed to every diversity and equality myth manufactured by the liberal fantasy mill.
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By the way, I suspect that if you check, IBM will have outsourced much of its research.
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Notice that it has not been outsourced to Mexico.
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Paulson’s unethical shorts were created by Paulson with help from bankers trying to dump huge sub-prime-originated paper from their tanking balance sheets. Long after banks knew the pain that would decend upon the homeowners and the “street,” it continued to issue sub-prime securities because they couldn’t lose. If ARM mortgages got paid, they profited, if they defaulted, an even bigger windfall from the hedge bet against homeowners. There was no reason to stop, and no risk in that deal, which netted hundreds of billions with no benefit to anyone except players at the table. At the very least, at 91%, Paulson could at the end say there was some public benefit to all his (and the banks’) fraudulent behavior.
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Good luck, Mark. With Max and Right Fred, it is always only a matter of time before their pores start oozing racism. I especially like how Max normally declares European socialist countries basket cases, until race comes up. Then he talks about how these places are “tidy, safe, and efficiently run.”
Max and Right Fred don’t really want to talk, you know. They want:
a) To drive you crazy, and they are clearly making progress.
b) To make your once-interesting site into a cesspool of nasty, pre-World War II nativism, until your regulars are driven away.
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Good point, especially concerning Max’s contradictory view of European countries.
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It is very hard for people like “Visitor” to confront reality. This is why they have created Fantasy America for themselves, a place where they can pretend and pretend and pretend. And this is why you are now being threatened with having your blog shunned. They abhor reality, and you are a purveyor of it when you allow anyone to speak their mind.
What the hell, right? You have already pissed off most of them, and the rest are terrified by you. And you also know that they are lying when they pout and stamp their little feet and swear they will never read your blog again.
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Northern European socialist states are tidy, safe, and efficiently run compared to America. Keyword: Compared. And the obvious reason for that (Oooh, scary idea now!) is that they are for the most part racially homogeneous. They have not squandered billions trying to raise up and manage the savage people among them, and therefore they can direct public money into more productive enterprizes.*
Switzerland is the best example of a tidy, safe, and efficiently run Western nation, not to mention a prosperous nation. Try to immigrate to Switzerland if you are not white. Impossible. The Swiss will not even give you a temporary work visa.
Austria is another good example of a tidy, safe, and efficiently run Western nation. But they have some minor problems. So, if you are a Gypsy, Austria will pay you the equivalent of $30,000 to go back to Romania.
France will buy any Muslim a plane ticket back to Algeria or Morocco—or probably anywhere outside Europe.
Grow up and live with it, Visitor. Get yourself unstuck from your liberal fantasies.
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* They have also not spent billions on their own self-defense, a burden that has fallen on the USA. This has allowed them to play at socialist utopia for many years. But that game is fast coming to an end.
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Thanks, Max. I was going to write a parody, but how I could top your own words?
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You are welcome. I am always happy to help a confused and bewildered liberal struggling to ascertain what is real.
No one can top my words, so there is no need to feel inadequate.
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Here’s the deal, Max. Even if you were right about the importance of race, which you are not, you completely ignore the differences in gun ownership here and abroad, levels of violence among all races in America, the difference between long-settled countries and a society that was recently on the frontier, the societal costs of forced segregation, differences in educational attainment (between the U.S. and Western Europe), etc. You seize on one difference and make it bear the whole burden of your crackpot theory. Bad sociologly, bad logic, bad boy.
Even more important, you act as if the “savage” Africans came here of their own free will. In colonial times, someone with your outlook would have been a stalwart backer of slavery and Mark T. would have been opposed to the institution. That’s where the “progressive” label comes from: some people look to the long-term good. Others can’t see beyond their own interests and their poisonous prejudices.
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You just cannot help yourself, can you “Visitor”?
A simple statement of fact sends you into a paroxysm of denial and an incoherent recitation of socio-psychological theories, not to mention upside down history, all of which I find fairly funny.
But I especially enjoyed the part about America being “recently” a frontier society.
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History plays out slowly, possibly not slowly enough for you to understand, but still….
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BA History, Summa Cum Laude (4.0 GPA), MSU, 1993.
MA History, Summa Cum Laude (4.0 GPA), MSU, 1995.
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Maxi Pad, you are just a figment of the Internet’s imagination, so what is the point of claiming credentials? Though I did win the Nobel Prize for economics and have a doctorate in history from Yale.
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You win the prize, all right, for gender-biased baby talk. Get back in your crib.
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What, Max is a feminist now? Wimp.
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