Capitalism Guarantees Rising Inequality

[georgephillip]

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.

I'm not sure the Fed serves the state as much as it serves private wealth

 

[Quantum Windbag]

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

Herman Melville was a hack writer who never used one word when he could use 100. Comparing him to Shakespeare is like comparing an artist who throws paint at a wall to Picasso.

 

[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.

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

You call me a conservative, yet support the very economic policies you claim to despise because I, allegedly, believe in them.

What does that say about you?

 

[georgephillip]

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.

Who said the bottom 5% do practically nothing?
The ratio in average income between the top 5 percent and bottom 5 percent increased from 78:1 in 1988 to 114:1 in 1993.
Between 1988 and 2008 (remember what happened then?) the top 1% increased their incomes by 60% while the bottom 5% had no change; possibly because the rich crashed the global economy and destroyed millions of (5%) jobs.

Spotlight on Worldwide Inequality

 

[georgephillip]

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.

Who "guarantees" the MBS the Fed is buying, Hank Paulson or Dubya?

 

[Bombur]

The Fed will make money on the MBS. A lot of the problems that happened had to do with large changes in value which would require private institutions to liquidate fast which is obviously problematic when everyone is trying to do the same thing.

MBS were rated incorrectly. Investors were running to the markets with bad information and based on multiple levels of market manipulation. A lot of blame to go around.

 

[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.

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

The NSA is one of the best recent examples proving how dangerous unlimited government can be, and our intelligence agencies seem to serve corporate (1%) masters.

 

[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

You call me a conservative, yet support the very economic policies you claim to despise because I, allegedly, believe in them.

What does that say about you?

That I'm confused.
Can you give me a specific example of an economic policy you're referring to?

 

[georgephillip]

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

Herman Melville was a hack writer who never used one word when he could use 100. Comparing him to Shakespeare is like comparing an artist who throws paint at a wall to Picasso.

Are you a literary critic of any standing?

"Moby-Dick; or, The Whale (1851) is the sixth book by American writer Herman Melville. The work is an epic sea-story of Captain Ahab's voyage in pursuit of Moby Dick, a great white whale. It initially received mixed reviews and at Melville's death in 1891 was remembered, if at all, as a children's sea adventure, but now is considered one of the Great American Novels and a leading work of American Romanticism."

Moby-Dick - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You can't really condemn a writer who published over 150 years ago on the grounds you proposed.

Another good question would be how many times have you read Moby Dick?

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

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.

Who "guarantees" the MBS the Fed is buying, Hank Paulson or Dubya?

Obama.

 

[Mac1958]

Socialism is well regulated capitalism with a good safety net and ALWAYS democratic...

Gotta say, I've been seeing more and more on the Left coming out about this over the last few years, and it's refreshing to see the honesty.

Sure, they're bending over backwards trying to paint the best possible face on it -- that has to take some serious effort and spin -- but at least a few of them are willing to admit what they want.

Of course, the rest are still trying to deny it -- habit, I guess -- but maybe they'll become a little more brave at some point. "Follow the leader" 'n stuff.

.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

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

You call me a conservative, yet support the very economic policies you claim to despise because I, allegedly, believe in them.

What does that say about you?

That I'm confused.
Can you give me a specific example of an economic policy you're referring to?

That depends, do you still think capitalism is the worst thing ever? Just asking, because capitalism is the most effective way to prevent concentration of wealth. On the other hand, it you still support government regulation and a governemnt that actively intervenes in the economy, you actually support the very things you claim to despise.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

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

Herman Melville was a hack writer who never used one word when he could use 100. Comparing him to Shakespeare is like comparing an artist who throws paint at a wall to Picasso.

Are you a literary critic of any standing?

"Moby-Dick; or, The Whale (1851) is the sixth book by American writer Herman Melville. The work is an epic sea-story of Captain Ahab's voyage in pursuit of Moby Dick, a great white whale. It initially received mixed reviews and at Melville's death in 1891 was remembered, if at all, as a children's sea adventure, but now is considered one of the Great American Novels and a leading work of American Romanticism."

Moby-Dick - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You can't really condemn a writer who published over 150 years ago on the grounds you proposed.

Another good question would be how many times have you read Moby Dick?

Why the fuck not? Mark Twain was a contemporary of the drooling idiot and I never once found myself thinking that he is anything like him.

 

[Antares]

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...

Every time you type you look more stupid.

 

[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.

Who said the bottom 5% do practically nothing?
The ratio in average income between the top 5 percent and bottom 5 percent increased from 78:1 in 1988 to 114:1 in 1993.
Between 1988 and 2008 (remember what happened then?) the top 1% increased their incomes by 60% while the bottom 5% had no change; possibly because the rich crashed the global economy and destroyed millions of (5%) jobs.

Spotlight on Worldwide Inequality

What do you think it takes to be in the bottom 5%? What part time minimum wage job does one have to have to be in the bottom 5%? Let's pick on my first part time job that put me (as a fifteen year old kid) into the bottom 5%. Bagging groceries. Course I only bagged groceries for a few months before I was promoted to a bottom 10% job. But let's stick to the people who start out bagging groceries and never get a promotion from there for their entire lives.

Now, please explain to me why we should give a massive raise to someone who is bagging groceries part time?

 

[Dragonlady]

The problem is that in today's job market, the job you were promoted to no longer exists, or if it does exist, it still pays minimum wage. And minimum wages haven't gone up in years, because all of the people who used to work in manufacturing, are now competing for minimum wage jobs.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

The problem is that in today's job market, the job you were promoted to no longer exists, or if it does exist, it still pays minimum wage. And minimum wages haven't gone up in years, because all of the people who used to work in manufacturing, are now competing for minimum wage jobs.

The problem is we have 20 million illegals competing for low skill jobs.
Makes it hard for low skilled Americans.
Want to raise their wages, deport their competition.

 

[Antares]

The problem is that in today's job market, the job you were promoted to no longer exists, or if it does exist, it still pays minimum wage. And minimum wages haven't gone up in years, because all of the people who used to work in manufacturing, are now competing for minimum wage jobs.

The problem is we have 20 million illegals competing for low skill jobs.
Makes it hard for low skilled Americans.
Want to raise their wages, deport their competition.

......and Bammy wants to provide blanket immunity so that MORE competition for those jobs.

 

[1776]

Liberals need to explain how letting 11M-15M illegals become so-called Americans with access to jobs and welfare will somehow help poor AMERICANS.

If you are on a deserted island with limited food, you don't improve your situation by adding more people to eat your food.....dumbfucks.

 

[Where_r_my_Keys]

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...

Yeah.

And Gonorrhea isn't the clap and Syphilis isn't the drip.

Agree, disagree... Doesn't matter. Reasonable, objective people want no part of either one of 'em and to avoid 'em, they don't screw around with SOCIALISTS!