Old_Liberal
Member
What mess?
This is exactly what the free marketeer, low tax, low regulations environment types wanted to happen.
-A Labor glut domestically, due to cheap overseas hires and tax incentives to hire overseas.
-Private profit, public risk.
-No cap on wealth extraction.
-Weak labor unions.
-Friendly and paid for politicians.
-Multi-tiered/Multi-national conglomorates (de-facto monopolies)
-Low regulatory environment with underfunded regulatory agencies.
-Corporations considered people and money is considered speech.
There have been record profits made over the last 20 or so years. And massive government deficits.
This is working as conservatives want it to work. The only thing left is the smash to social safety net to allow old people to die at a proper age. Like they did before the New Deal.
Welcome to the conservative economic model! When the social safety nets are gutted, and all of the unemployment runs out, and average folks join in with the OWS crowd, the Great Depression unrest is gonna look like child's play.
We cannot recover from this recession, because of the bleeding of jobs, with nothing here that can replace those jobs. These people, millions of them, will literally have to die out for this problem to go away. And those people are from whence the future great social unrest will come from. It is inevitable.
This conservative economic model is insanity. It cannot be substained, because it has a deep inherit flaw. WE ARE A CONSUMPTION BASED ECONOMY. YET WE NO LONGER MAKE WHAT WE CONSUME. And this fact is why this economic model we have now cannot be substained, and a middle class to exist. We did much better when americans made most of what america consumed. That was a winning model, and had much to do with our middle expanding.
Consumption drives our economy. In order for average americans to benefit from this economy they have to make what is consumed. If they do not, millions will end up in poverty and we move closer to what history has loved, two class societies.
Capitalism can create a large middle class, by fettering it, regulating it. Capitalism will not create large middle classes left to its own devices. Capitalism can send most of the wealth to the top, and human nature being what it is, this is predictable. But you cannot create large middle classes and max out owner profits simultaneously. It is one, or the other.
The labor costs it takes to build a middle class negates the owner maxing out profits. To escape building a middle class and therefore maxing out profits requires the owner to move production to places like communist china.
This is the big picture of what capitalism can do. And has done.
Yup. Not sure of your definitions or economics. Round and round Is a great Bob Weir tune.
Just an observation without being burdened by propaganda to interpret it for me. Hell, I just look and see what has gone on, and draw conclusions. And I have observed the scene since the early 1950's, so my window is medium sized. And I tend to look at the big picture.
I have never heard any economist discuss the down side of a consumption based economy not making what it consumes. A very basic component in an economy that has great importance. Yet all you hear are crickets. In its place some guy trying to dot his i's and cross his t's on a defintion of capitalism. A defintion that is purely a concept, an ideal, but impossible to pull off. It exists only as a mental creation, and in its place we have what the real world gives, as capitalism. And this capitalism can create middle classes or max out owner profits. This should be the most important thing about this thing called capitalism. And we need to choose as a people, which way we want to go.