Stiglitz: the 1% own the government and use it to their advantage:

[Free Thinker]

Yet the U.S. government, far from reducing inequality, has spent 30 years doing the opposite, he argues: warping the market to shift money from the bottom and middle of society to the top. Government, in this view, is the billionaire’s secret weapon.

Economic Stimulation
Since the days of John Maynard Keynes, governments have sought to counter shortfalls in demand with increases in either public or private spending. With the 1 percent bent on restraining government expenditure, the burden for stimulating the economy fell on tax cuts and low Federal Reserve interest rates, Stiglitz says.

The devastating result was the housing bubble, which Alan Greenspan couldn’t (or wouldn’t) see because he believed markets were fully efficient. Half a decade after the bubble burst, the slump grinds on.
Inequality Level
Among advanced industrial nations, the U.S. now has the highest level of inequality, he says, and the immiseration didn’t happen by chance. Though market forces played a role, government policies shaped those forces. This should be obvious to anyone who reflects on why Wall Street banks were allowed to gamble with federally insured deposits -- and got bailouts when their wagers blew up.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-...lionaires-secret-weapon-government-books.html

 

[AAAintheBeltway]

Democrats were the biggest supporters of the bailouts.

Guys like Stiglitz and Krugman act like we are not pursuing Keynesian stimulus now, but we are running an enormous deficit.

As for income inequality, etc, we have pissed away trillions on the War on Poverty and other liberal attempts to address poverty. We have little to show for it except for a vast underclass of dysfunctional people who view welfare as an entitlement and way of life. In the process we destroyed the black family, wrecked our educational system and crashed the housing market.

 

[Ricter]

Quote from AAAintheBeltway:

Democrats were the biggest supporters of the bailouts.

Guys like Stiglitz and Krugman act like we are not pursuing Keynesian stimulus now, but we are running an enormous deficit.

As for income inequality, etc, we have pissed away trillions on the War on Poverty and other liberal attempts to address poverty. We have little to show for it except for a vast underclass of dysfunctional people who view welfare as an entitlement and way of life. In the process we destroyed the black family, wrecked our educational system and crashed the housing market.

I won't argue that the democrats are not infested with One Percenters, they are. But if they can manage to get themselves called "socialists", unlike the reps, they must be doing something different. Either that or the rep claim is BS.

As for the war on poverty, what are we doing wrong, and what are other nations with lower gini scores (to use just one measure) than ours (including us! 30 years ago) doing right?

 

[jem]

its so fricken obvious.
as the 1% got more control of the govt what happened.
govt got bigger. Govt policy and a screwed up tax policy is what causes the have and have nots to become fixed groups.

we always had fluid classes in the U.S.

but bigger govt and bigger govt give ways... have caused a more cemented underclass...

and the upper class like Buffett and wall street guys are doing their best to pull up the ladder. Democrats are happy to oblige.
More socialism, more taxes, more regulations (drafted by the 1%)to keep competition down. Bailouts are contrary to capitalism, they keep the losers in place.

You want equality... you want small govt and much lower taxes.
people can then deploy their assets to chew away and the bigger companies.

 

[Free Thinker]

Quote from jem:

its so fricken obvious.
as the 1% got more control of the govt what happened.
govt got bigger. Govt policy and a screwed up tax policy is what causes the have and have nots to become fixed groups.

we always had fluid classes in the U.S.

but bigger govt and bigger govt give ways... have caused a more cemented underclass...

and the upper class like Buffett and wall street guys are doing their best to pull up the ladder. Democrats are happy to oblige.
More socialism, more taxes, more regulations (drafted by the 1%)to keep competition down. Bailouts are contrary to capitalism, they keep the losers in place.

You want equality... you want small govt and much lower taxes.
people can then deploy their assets to chew away and the bigger companies.

so now the democrates are protecting the 1%? you really do live in an alternate reality.
why is it then that anytime sombody wants to do something that goes against the 1% interests it is blocked by republicans?

 

[jem]

the dems and repubs work for the 1 percent--
how could you be so dumb as to not figure that out.
Wall Street owns the Neo Cons and the democrats.

Haven't you figured out why obama sold your leftist asses out on health care.

on war spending
on tax policy
on infrastructure
on just about anything useful

The left and the right have some good ideas and some potentially very good polices. None of them get implemented properly. Have you ever bothered to figure out why?

No, flat tax, no vat instead of income tax. No single payer health care.
No spending reductions. No proper wall street reform. No elimination of too big to fail... nothing nada zip except the seals forced Obama to get bin laden.

nothing nada zip for the left from Obama.
nothing nada zip for the right from Bush.


If health care removed the burden of health care premiums from business, most rational people would say wow interesting maybe we can get this to work. If you are going to save me 800 dollar a month and eliminate deductibles... I might be willing to pay higher taxes... especially if you still let me choose supplemental coverage.

Why the hell did the left not even bring that up.
Because Obama and the dems in congress sold your foolish leftist ass out?

Wall street owns insurance and insurance owns Congress and Obama.

 

[Mercor]

The Government is the 1%.

Lifetime Government employees retire with multimillion dollar pension guarantees.

Public Government employees qualify for the top 5% in income when you consider their lifetime income.

 

[jem]

Quote from Mercor:

The Government is the 1%.

Lifetime Government employees retire with multimillion dollar pension guarantees.

Public Government employees qualify for the top 5% in income when you consider their lifetime income.

good point.

 

[AAAintheBeltway]

Quote from Ricter:

I won't argue that the democrats are not infested with One Percenters, they are. But if they can manage to get themselves called "socialists", unlike the reps, they must be doing something different. Either that or the rep claim is BS.

As for the war on poverty, what are we doing wrong, and what are other nations with lower gini scores (to use just one measure) than ours (including us! 30 years ago) doing right?

I don't have data to support these arguments, but they seem reasonable to me. Others may disagree.

In comparison to other countries with less of an income skew, we are handicapped by the vast underclass, much but not all of it composed of minorities and unskilled immigrants. The fact that our urban underclass has no interest in education, no culture of academic achievement and poor family structures suggests that this problem will not go away and in fact will become vastly more difficult as they increase in numbers relative to the people who support them.


Income inequality is also exacerbated by the historically high compensation for top execs. I have said before I view this as a failure of corporate governance, but at some point principles have to give way to reality. The reality is that the system is not policing compensation properly and something needs to be down. Perhaps it could be done as part of a deal restricting government employee pensions. Fair is fair.

It is not only corporate execs who are enjoying record levels of ocmpensation. The salaries and benefit packages handed out by universities are staggering. Surely the ever-escalating cost of tuition--financed by govenrment loans and grants-- is related to the vast proliferation of administrators and their enviable salaries.

Another factor has been the decline of manufacturing, previously a steady source of middle income salaries for blue and white collar workers. Free trade has many winners and losers, but few could argue that being able to buy junk at Walmart is an adequate tradeoff for losing a high-paying factory job to someone in china.

As with fighting wars, we have become too squeemish to be effective. We have myraid regulations to protect the air, water, land, civil rights and every conceivable bug. The BRICs? Not so much. We can't even bring ourselves to burn coal, so we ship it to China to power the factories that take our jobs. A pipeline to bring in crude oil from canada is bitterly opposed. Oil and gas exploration and production is hamstrung at every turn, costing tens of thousands of jobs.

Simplistic solutions like taxing the "rich" will not even dent the problem and will probably make it worse.

 

[JWS11]

Occupy Wall Street
By Dr. Thomas Sowell

The current Occupy Wall Street movement is the best
illustration to date of what President Barack Obama's America looks
like. It is an America where the lawless, unaccomplished, ignorant and
incompetent rule. It is an America where those who have sacrificed
nothing pillage and destroy the lives of those who have sacrificed
greatly.
It is an America where history is rewritten to honor dictators,
murderers and thieves. It is an America where violence, racism,
hatred, class warfare and of murder are all promoted as acceptable
means of overturning the American civil society.
It is an America where humans have been degraded to the level
of animals: of defecating in public, having sex in public, devoid of
basic hygiene. It is an America where the basic tenets of a civil
society, including faith, family, a free press and individual rights,
have been always rejected. It is an America where our founding
documents have been now shredded and, with them, every person's
guaranteed liberties.
It is an America where, ultimately, great suffering will come
to the American people, but the rulers like Obama, Michelle Obama,
Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Joe Biden, Jesse
Jackson, Louis Farrakhan, liberal college professors, union bosses and
all other loyal liberal Communist Party members will live in opulent
splendor.
It is the America that Obama and the Democrat Party have now
created with all the willing assistance of the American media,
Hollywood, unions, universities, the Communist Party of America, the
Black Panthers and numerous anti-American foreign entities.
Barack Obama has brought more destruction upon this country in
3 years than any other event in the history of our nation, but it is
just the beginning of what he and his comrades are capable of.
The Occupy Wall Street movement is just another step & a
forewarning of their plan for the annihilation of America as we have
known it. "Socialism, in general, has a record of failure that's so
blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it."