Capitalism Guarantees Rising Inequality

[Quadravius]

How many millions of his own people did stalin kill???? Far more than hitler!!! Think!

All I know is if hitler won he would have conquered the world and stuff all colored people in gas chambers. The only thing to think about is my black ass would be dead if the nazis won.

 

[GISMYS]

The Germans deliberately killed about 11 million noncombatants, a figure that rises to more than 12 million if foreseeable deaths from deportation, hunger, and sentences in concentration camps are included. For the Soviets during the Stalin period, the analogous figures are approximately six million and nine million.

 

[Quadravius]

The Germans deliberately killed about 11 million noncombatants, a figure that rises to more than 12 million if foreseeable deaths from deportation, hunger, and sentences in concentration camps are included. For the Soviets during the Stalin period, the analogous figures are approximately six million and nine million.

Yeah but it sorta sounded like you were defending hitler though. How many more people would hitler have killed if stalin didnt put a boot up his ass? Pretty sure there were a few hundred million people in africa that wouldnt be there now if hitler won. So you can add that to the casualty list.

Most of you are are hating on communism without really experiencing it. Youve been fed capitalist propaganda for decades. Only thing communism is gonna be is sorta like now in the USA just better, because more wealth will be spread around to more people. Cant have people making 20 million a year while others who work make 20,000 a year. Those people making 20 million are gonna have to give up most of it. If you dont like it? Canada is north of the border. Nobody is stopping you from leaving.

Im glad to see the democratic party is starting to take income inequality seriously.

 

[GISMYS]

RUSSIA,CUBA,CHINA FAILING BIG TIME !!! TODAY'S NEWS = CHINA ON THE EDGE==The People’s Bank of China , the central bank, has just ordered commercial banks to halt cash transfers.
In short, there will be a three-day suspension of domestic renminbi transfers. There will also be a suspension, spanning nine calendar days, of conversions of renminbi to foreign currency.

 

[gipper]

The Germans deliberately killed about 11 million noncombatants, a figure that rises to more than 12 million if foreseeable deaths from deportation, hunger, and sentences in concentration camps are included. For the Soviets during the Stalin period, the analogous figures are approximately six million and nine million.

Yeah but it sorta sounded like you were defending hitler though. How many more people would hitler have killed if stalin didnt put a boot up his ass? Pretty sure there were a few hundred million people in africa that wouldnt be there now if hitler won. So you can add that to the casualty list.

Most of you are are hating on communism without really experiencing it. Youve been fed capitalist propaganda for decades. Only thing communism is gonna be is sorta like now in the USA just better, because more wealth will be spread around to more people. Cant have people making 20 million a year while others who work make 20,000 a year. Those people making 20 million are gonna have to give up most of it. If you dont like it? Canada is north of the border. Nobody is stopping you from leaving.

Im glad to see the democratic party is starting to take income inequality seriously.

It is hard to agree with most of that.

First, Hitler and Stalin were blood brothers. By any objective analysis, Stalin was worse than Hitler and had been murdering and enslaving his own people long before Hitler came to power. Yet, we helped Stalin destroy Germany only to enslave half of Europe to an evil dictator and ideology for 50 years. Terrible...very terrible.

Second, you will never eliminate income inequality. Humans are all different. Some do great things and should be compensated for it, or they will NOT do great things that all humanity can benefit from.

And we have a progressive tax system that requires the wealthy to pay much more. How much more should they pay, to make you happy? And beside, all these trillions transferred over the past few decades has done nothing to reduce or eliminate income inequality....but it sure has enriched the power elite and dramatically increased the power of the state...so lets keep doing the same thing expecting a different result...

 

[Iceweasel]

Castro was a hero who liberated cuba. Stalin sided with the allies to crush the white supremacist nazis. And mao made china what it is today. Most of your products are made in china because of mao.

Either this is a hoax or it comes from the most brainwashed person I have ever seen.

 

[dblack]

George, simple question: do you think people should be free to spend their money as they wish? To give it to whomever they want, for whatever reason, as long as they aren't soliciting otherwise criminal activity (eg hiring a hit man etc...)?

I sense a trick question, dblack, but I'll stick my neck in the noose and answer by saying "yes".

It's not a trick, but yes, it's more subtle than it appears.

Wealth is economic power. It's control over labor and resources. In a free market, we give this control to people who use it in ways we value. We withhold it from those who squander it. We do this via voluntary economic decisions, and to the extent that those decisions are free and unfettered, the result is an accurate representation of our values as a society. If the aggregate result of those decisions results in a small minority controlling most of the wealth in the world, I don't see why that's a problem, and I'm wondering if you do.

I'm hoping that's not the view your promoting here and, instead, you're drawing attention to the fact that our economic decisions are often not free and unfettered, that via deception and coercion, unscrupulous people acquire economic power that we don't, in fact, want them to have. If that's the case, I'm right there with you. We should figure out exactly what they're up to and deal with it.

 

[Dragonlady]

Having all of the wealth in the hands of the few is the very definition of a Third World country.

What made the US economy the largest and strongest in the world was the buying power of a strong and vibrant middle and working class.

Now that the working class has been reduced to poverty and the middle class is struggling, the US economy is falling behind.

As long as people continue to allow the top corporations and individuals to syphon all of the wealth of country, that decline will continue.

There is a lot of pent up demand amongst the working class, but with income declining and savings gone, there is no way for that demand to be filled.

Conservatives seem to think this a good thing.

 

[Iceweasel]

Having all of the wealth in the hands of the few is the very definition of a Third World country.

You desperately need a road trip. Get out more and look around. Most Americans are living pretty good, nice cars, homes, appliances, electronic doodads, eat in restaurants on a regular basis. Go to movies, buy them and have good TV satellite or cable packages. Just because multi-national corporate heads make zillions don't make you poorer even though the discrephency is larger.

What made the US economy the largest and strongest in the world was the buying power of a strong and vibrant middle and working class.

Now that the working class has been reduced to poverty and the middle class is struggling, the US economy is falling behind.

Define 'poverty'. The ONLY thing that will increase the middle class is a better economy. And we are not on track, it's limping along at best. Like I said before, take all the rich folks assets and it won't run the government halfway across a dime.

As long as people continue to allow the top corporations and individuals to syphon all of the wealth of country, that decline will continue.

There is a lot of pent up demand amongst the working class, but with income declining and savings gone, there is no way for that demand to be filled.

Conservatives seem to think this a good thing.

yawn.

 

[RKMBrown]

Where is Democracy to be found in a world where the three richest individuals have assets that exceed the combined GDP of 47 countries?

A world where the richest 2% of global citizens "own" more than 51% of global assets?

Ready for the best part?

Capitalism ensures an already bad problem will only get worse.

"The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) states that income inequality 'first started to rise in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s in America and Britain (and also in Israel)'.

"The ratio between the average incomes of the top 5 per cent to the bottom 5 per cent in the world increased from 78:1 in 1988, to 114:1 in 1993..."

"Stiglitz relays that from 1988 to 2008 people in the world’s top 1 per cent saw their incomes increase by 60 per cent, while those in the bottom 5 per cent had no change in their income.

"In America, home to the 2008 recession, from 2009 to 2012, incomes of the top 1 per cent in America, many of which no doubt had a greedy hand in the causes of the meltdown, increased more than 31 per cent, while the incomes of the 99 per cent grew 0.4 per cent less than half a percentage point."

Spotlight on Worldwide Inequality

There are alternatives that don't require infinite "growth."

So let's see...

You are saying that if the bottom 5% do practically nothing and earn practically nothing they are somehow hurt when the top 5% double their income if doing nothing does not double in pay. ROFL What an idiot.

 

[georgephillip]

George, simple question: do you think people should be free to spend their money as they wish? To give it to whomever they want, for whatever reason, as long as they aren't soliciting otherwise criminal activity (eg hiring a hit man etc...)?

I sense a trick question, dblack, but I'll stick my neck in the noose and answer by saying "yes".

It's not a trick, but yes, it's more subtle than it appears.

Wealth is economic power. It's control over labor and resources. In a free market, we give this control to people who use it in ways we value. We withhold it from those who squander it. We do this via voluntary economic decisions, and to the extent that those decisions are free and unfettered, the result is an accurate representation of our values as a society. If the aggregate result of those decisions results in a small minority controlling most of the wealth in the world, I don't see why that's a problem, and I'm wondering if you do.

I'm hoping that's not the view your promoting here and, instead, you're drawing attention to the fact that our economic decisions are often not free and unfettered, that via deception and coercion, unscrupulous people acquire economic power that we don't, in fact, want them to have. If that's the case, I'm right there with you. We should figure out exactly what they're up to and deal with it.

What I'm trying to promote is not only are the economic decisions we make not free and unfettered, but they are downright illusory.

Chris Hedges uses Moby Dick to effectively convey what I believe we are confronting today:[/B]

"The most prescient portrait of the American character and our ultimate fate as a species is found in Herman Melville’s 'Moby Dick.'

"Melville makes our murderous obsessions, our hubris, violent impulses, moral weakness and inevitable self-destruction visible in his chronicle of a whaling voyage.

"He is our foremost oracle.

"He is to us what William Shakespeare was to Elizabethan England or Fyodor Dostoyevsky to czarist Russia.

"Our country is given shape in the form of the ship, the Pequod, named after the Indian tribe exterminated in 1638 by the Puritans and their Native American allies.

"The ship’s 30-man crew—there were 30 states in the Union when Melville wrote the novel—is a mixture of races and creeds..."

A couple of paragraphs later Chris nails our current economic illusion, IMHO

"Our financial system—like our participatory democracy—is a mirage.

"The Federal Reserve purchases $85 billion in U.S. Treasury bonds—much of it worthless subprime mortgages—each month.

"It has been artificially propping up the government and Wall Street like this for five years.

"It has loaned trillions of dollars at virtually no interest to banks and firms that make money—because wages are kept low—by lending it to us at staggering interest rates that can climb to as high as 30 percent. ...

"Or our corporate oligarchs hoard the money or gamble with it in an overinflated stock market.

"Estimates put the looting by banks and investment firms of the U.S. Treasury at between $15 trillion and $20 trillion.

"But none of us know.

"The figures are not public.

"And the reason this systematic looting will continue until collapse is that our economy [would] go into a tailspin without this giddy infusion of free cash."

And when that collapse comes, most of us will blame a different set of victims.

I'm really not sure in a market free of rentier (FIRE sector) influences large private fortunes would ever come into existence. I suppose it's possible those who compete on a completely level playing field and still manage to earn million$ every year would be entitled to their gains, but I don't see anything like that today; do you?

Chris Hedges: The Myth of Human Progress and the Collapse of Complex Societies - Chris Hedges - Truthdig

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

Having all of the wealth in the hands of the few is the very definition of a Third World country.

What made the US economy the largest and strongest in the world was the buying power of a strong and vibrant middle and working class.

Now that the working class has been reduced to poverty and the middle class is struggling, the US economy is falling behind.

As long as people continue to allow the top corporations and individuals to syphon all of the wealth of country, that decline will continue.

There is a lot of pent up demand amongst the working class, but with income declining and savings gone, there is no way for that demand to be filled.

Conservatives seem to think this a good thing.

Now that the working class has been reduced to poverty and the middle class is struggling, the US economy is falling behind.

Despite your confusion, we're still twice the size of China's economy.
Probably more, I don't trust their government's numbers one bit.

 

[francoHFW]

OP- SAVAGE capitalism, ie Reaganism/Thatcherism/Gilded AGE/1920's GOP causes inequality...Socialism is not communism, brainwashed hater dupes/cold war dinosaurs lol...

''We're all socialists now''- Finland PM when O-Care passed...

Socialism is well regulated capitalism with a good safety net and ALWAYS democratic, except In Pub WORLD...

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

I sense a trick question, dblack, but I'll stick my neck in the noose and answer by saying "yes".

It's not a trick, but yes, it's more subtle than it appears.

Wealth is economic power. It's control over labor and resources. In a free market, we give this control to people who use it in ways we value. We withhold it from those who squander it. We do this via voluntary economic decisions, and to the extent that those decisions are free and unfettered, the result is an accurate representation of our values as a society. If the aggregate result of those decisions results in a small minority controlling most of the wealth in the world, I don't see why that's a problem, and I'm wondering if you do.

I'm hoping that's not the view your promoting here and, instead, you're drawing attention to the fact that our economic decisions are often not free and unfettered, that via deception and coercion, unscrupulous people acquire economic power that we don't, in fact, want them to have. If that's the case, I'm right there with you. We should figure out exactly what they're up to and deal with it.

What I'm trying to promote is not only are the economic decisions we make not free and unfettered, but they are downright illusory.

Chris Hedges uses Moby Dick to effectively convey what I believe we are confronting today:[/B]

"The most prescient portrait of the American character and our ultimate fate as a species is found in Herman Melville’s 'Moby Dick.'

"Melville makes our murderous obsessions, our hubris, violent impulses, moral weakness and inevitable self-destruction visible in his chronicle of a whaling voyage.

"He is our foremost oracle.

"He is to us what William Shakespeare was to Elizabethan England or Fyodor Dostoyevsky to czarist Russia.

"Our country is given shape in the form of the ship, the Pequod, named after the Indian tribe exterminated in 1638 by the Puritans and their Native American allies.

"The ship’s 30-man crew—there were 30 states in the Union when Melville wrote the novel—is a mixture of races and creeds..."

A couple of paragraphs later Chris nails our current economic illusion, IMHO

"Our financial system—like our participatory democracy—is a mirage.

"The Federal Reserve purchases $85 billion in U.S. Treasury bonds—much of it worthless subprime mortgages—each month.

"It has been artificially propping up the government and Wall Street like this for five years.

"It has loaned trillions of dollars at virtually no interest to banks and firms that make money—because wages are kept low—by lending it to us at staggering interest rates that can climb to as high as 30 percent. ...

"Or our corporate oligarchs hoard the money or gamble with it in an overinflated stock market.

"Estimates put the looting by banks and investment firms of the U.S. Treasury at between $15 trillion and $20 trillion.

"But none of us know.

"The figures are not public.

"And the reason this systematic looting will continue until collapse is that our economy [would] go into a tailspin without this giddy infusion of free cash."

And when that collapse comes, most of us will blame a different set of victims.

I'm really not sure in a market free of rentier (FIRE sector) influences large private fortunes would ever come into existence. I suppose it's possible those who compete on a completely level playing field and still manage to earn million$ every year would be entitled to their gains, but I don't see anything like that today; do you?

Chris Hedges: The Myth of Human Progress and the Collapse of Complex Societies - Chris Hedges - Truthdig

"The Federal Reserve purchases $85 billion in U.S. Treasury bonds—much of it worthless subprime mortgages—each month.

Chris is an idiot. The Fed buys US Treasury bonds and guaranteed MBS.
Neither one of which can be considered subprime.
Although, after 3 more years of Obama, that may not be the case.

"It has loaned trillions of dollars at virtually no interest to banks and firms that make money

Banks are currently borrowing from the Fed Discount Window........$6 million.
They are currently lending to the Fed, at 0.25%, about $2.4 trillion.

"Estimates put the looting by banks and investment firms of the U.S. Treasury at between $15 trillion and $20 trillion.

Chris pulled that estimate out of his ass.

"But none of us know.

LOL!

I see why you like this guy, he's even dumber than you.

 

[francoHFW]

SEE sig para 1 for how we're doing against the other socialist modern countries- Original EU, Canada, Japan, Oz, NZ...

Yup, we're socialist, BARELY, BUT SLANTED TOWARD THE GREEDY IDIOT RICH UNDER REAGANIST policies...now starting to turn around thank god...

 

[dblack]

I sense a trick question, dblack, but I'll stick my neck in the noose and answer by saying "yes".

It's not a trick, but yes, it's more subtle than it appears.

Wealth is economic power. It's control over labor and resources. In a free market, we give this control to people who use it in ways we value. We withhold it from those who squander it. We do this via voluntary economic decisions, and to the extent that those decisions are free and unfettered, the result is an accurate representation of our values as a society. If the aggregate result of those decisions results in a small minority controlling most of the wealth in the world, I don't see why that's a problem, and I'm wondering if you do.

I'm hoping that's not the view your promoting here and, instead, you're drawing attention to the fact that our economic decisions are often not free and unfettered, that via deception and coercion, unscrupulous people acquire economic power that we don't, in fact, want them to have. If that's the case, I'm right there with you. We should figure out exactly what they're up to and deal with it.

What I'm trying to promote is not only are the economic decisions we make not free and unfettered, but they are downright illusory.

Chris Hedges uses Moby Dick to effectively convey what I believe we are confronting today:[/B]

"The most prescient portrait of the American character and our ultimate fate as a species is found in Herman Melville’s 'Moby Dick.'

"Melville makes our murderous obsessions, our hubris, violent impulses, moral weakness and inevitable self-destruction visible in his chronicle of a whaling voyage.

"He is our foremost oracle.

"He is to us what William Shakespeare was to Elizabethan England or Fyodor Dostoyevsky to czarist Russia.

"Our country is given shape in the form of the ship, the Pequod, named after the Indian tribe exterminated in 1638 by the Puritans and their Native American allies.

"The ship’s 30-man crew—there were 30 states in the Union when Melville wrote the novel—is a mixture of races and creeds..."

A couple of paragraphs later Chris nails our current economic illusion, IMHO

"Our financial system—like our participatory democracy—is a mirage.

"The Federal Reserve purchases $85 billion in U.S. Treasury bonds—much of it worthless subprime mortgages—each month.

"It has been artificially propping up the government and Wall Street like this for five years.

"It has loaned trillions of dollars at virtually no interest to banks and firms that make money—because wages are kept low—by lending it to us at staggering interest rates that can climb to as high as 30 percent. ...

"Or our corporate oligarchs hoard the money or gamble with it in an overinflated stock market.

"Estimates put the looting by banks and investment firms of the U.S. Treasury at between $15 trillion and $20 trillion.

"But none of us know.

"The figures are not public.

"And the reason this systematic looting will continue until collapse is that our economy [would] go into a tailspin without this giddy infusion of free cash."

And when that collapse comes, most of us will blame a different set of victims.

I'm really not sure in a market free of rentier (FIRE sector) influences large private fortunes would ever come into existence. I suppose it's possible those who compete on a completely level playing field and still manage to earn million$ every year would be entitled to their gains, but I don't see anything like that today; do you?

Chris Hedges: The Myth of Human Progress and the Collapse of Complex Societies - Chris Hedges - Truthdig

Yep, that's pretty much what I see as well. Though it's sounds like the problem isn't free market capitalism, but our attempts to control the economy via the state (the Fed, etc), which always feeds the agenda of those in power. And that makes it doubly frustrating to see most critics simply proposing more of the same.

 

[francoHFW]

GOP policies favor the greedy rich, Dems', not so much, dupes.

 

[georgephillip]

Having all of the wealth in the hands of the few is the very definition of a Third World country.

What made the US economy the largest and strongest in the world was the buying power of a strong and vibrant middle and working class.

Now that the working class has been reduced to poverty and the middle class is struggling, the US economy is falling behind.

As long as people continue to allow the top corporations and individuals to syphon all of the wealth of country, that decline will continue.

There is a lot of pent up demand amongst the working class, but with income declining and savings gone, there is no way for that demand to be filled.

Conservatives seem to think this a good thing.

Conservatives used to think Kings were a good thing.
Democracy scared them, and, apparently, it still does.
Just as the well-mannered serf centuries ago toiled an equal number of days for his "lord" as for himself, today's right-wing slaves slobber over a "free market" that has now bestowed the same wealth upon the richest 85 lords and ladies as it has upon the poorest one-half of this world's serfs.
The new world order that began in the aftermath of the '73 economic crisis is different from its predecessors in that finance capitalism now has a stanglehold on the US economy, and anyone who points that out is "envious" of the wealth Wall Street hoards.
Only conservatives are that suicidal.

The Political Economy Of Predatory Capitalism | PopularResistance.Org

 

[dblack]

Having all of the wealth in the hands of the few is the very definition of a Third World country.

What made the US economy the largest and strongest in the world was the buying power of a strong and vibrant middle and working class.

Now that the working class has been reduced to poverty and the middle class is struggling, the US economy is falling behind.

As long as people continue to allow the top corporations and individuals to syphon all of the wealth of country, that decline will continue.

There is a lot of pent up demand amongst the working class, but with income declining and savings gone, there is no way for that demand to be filled.

Conservatives seem to think this a good thing.

Conservatives used to think Kings were a good thing.
Democracy scared them, and, apparently, it still does.

Democracy doesn't scare me. But unlimited government does, regardless of who is calling the shots.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Having all of the wealth in the hands of the few is the very definition of a Third World country.

What made the US economy the largest and strongest in the world was the buying power of a strong and vibrant middle and working class.

Now that the working class has been reduced to poverty and the middle class is struggling, the US economy is falling behind.

As long as people continue to allow the top corporations and individuals to syphon all of the wealth of country, that decline will continue.

There is a lot of pent up demand amongst the working class, but with income declining and savings gone, there is no way for that demand to be filled.

Conservatives seem to think this a good thing.

It is so sad that Maya Penn was born into a third world country. Just think of what would have happened if she had been born into the world you think actually exists.

This teen entrepreneur is out to change the world: Q&A with Maya Penn | TED Blog