The Elites Vs. The Rest of Us

An unraveling of civilization?

Hardly the Best and Brightest by Victor Davis Hanson on National Review Online

Hardly the Best and Brightest
The institutions run by our elites aren’t trustworthy, so why should we put any faith in them?

By Victor Davis Hanson

Most historians agree that earthquakes, droughts, or barbarians did not unravel classical Athens or imperial Rome.

More likely the social contract between the elite and the more ordinary citizens finally began breaking apart—and with it the trust necessary for a society’s collective investment and the payment of taxes. Then civilization itself begins to unwind.

Something like that has been occurring lately because of the actions on Wall Street and in Washington, D.C. The former “masters of the universe” who ran Wall Street took enormous risks to get multimillion-dollar bonuses, even as they piled up billions in debt for their soon-to-be-bankrupt companies....

...Take your pick—on the one side, we have free-market capitalists who took huge amounts of money as their companies eroded the savings of tens of millions; on the other, we have supposedly egalitarian liberals who skipped paying taxes.

The result is the same. Our best educated, wealthiest, and most-connected in matters of finance proved our dumbest—and our political leaders were less than ethical in meeting their moral responsibilities as citizens.

If ordinary Americans were to follow the examples of Wall Street and Washington elites, the nation would neither collect needed revenue nor invest its capital. All that is a recipe for national decline and fall.

This is not even close to what happened. The political leaders in both parties urged Wall Street to use creative financing to provide abundant cheap credit, at first to restructure our stagnant economy in the 1980's and then to try to skip over economic slowdowns during the 1990's and 2000's. When Greenspan, whose policies fathered two enormous bubbles, the tech bubble that wiped out a whole generation's retirement savings, and the real estate bubble, retired, he and his policies were praised and given awards by governments and central banks all over the world and now those in government are saying Wall Street did it?

It was politicians from both parties who didn't want to have to run for reelection during an economic slowdown that began on their watch who continued to foster and protect easy credit policies, despite numerous warnings of impending disaster, that led to the financial crisis and the recession, and these are the same politicians who are now saying, Wall Street did it. Wall Street did exactly what the politicians now pointing fingers wanted it to do.

Wall Street execs were awarded gargantuan paychecks and regarded by many as the best and the brightest and as "Masters of the Universe" for the exact same policies that gave us the prosperity of the 1990's and then the tech bubble and that prevented a recession in the early 2000's and then gave us our present problems. Bush said Wall Street got drunk and now we all have hangovers, but the truth is Wall Street got drunk at a party they were invited to by the drunks who run Washington and now the rest of us are picking up the tab for the party that went on for twenty five years.
 
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Good thumbnail sketch of the mistakes we've made 2Much.

The banks and the government, working in collusion, screwed the pooch.

Those same people are in the process of trying to keep this doggie from going to doggie heaven right now, and frankly, I don't think they know what they're doing.
 
That was one of Victor's more lame efforts.

But that's to be expected. His partisanship has been evident for many years. Now he doesn't even try to conceal it.

The elites are from both (referencing the bipolar nature of US politics) parties.

Victor, who is a member of the elite on the right is having a go at the elite on what passes for the left (the Democratic Party is a right wing party in my view).

Victor has outed himself as a partisan hypocrite. Stick to historical analyses of wars Victor, you just shot your bolt on this one.

The National Review is a conservative magazine, so I would assume that he was writing from that perspective. However, I don't really see how the article was partisan. He blamed those on Wall Street as well as those who didn't pay their taxes. Wall Street included many Republicans. Actually, I'd say this article was very non-partisan.
 
That was one of Victor's more lame efforts.

But that's to be expected. His partisanship has been evident for many years. Now he doesn't even try to conceal it.

The elites are from both (referencing the bipolar nature of US politics) parties.

Victor, who is a member of the elite on the right is having a go at the elite on what passes for the left (the Democratic Party is a right wing party in my view).

Victor has outed himself as a partisan hypocrite. Stick to historical analyses of wars Victor, you just shot your bolt on this one.
I agree that he's an 'elite', however his criticism was not aimed at the 'left', no matter how you'd like to spin it.

I'd say, this is one of your own more lame attempts at your newfound partisanship.

Bada Bing, Bada Boom
 
An unraveling of civilization?

Hardly the Best and Brightest by Victor Davis Hanson on National Review Online

Hardly the Best and Brightest
The institutions run by our elites aren’t trustworthy, so why should we put any faith in them?

By Victor Davis Hanson

Most historians agree that earthquakes, droughts, or barbarians did not unravel classical Athens or imperial Rome.

More likely the social contract between the elite and the more ordinary citizens finally began breaking apart—and with it the trust necessary for a society’s collective investment and the payment of taxes. Then civilization itself begins to unwind.

Something like that has been occurring lately because of the actions on Wall Street and in Washington, D.C. The former “masters of the universe” who ran Wall Street took enormous risks to get multimillion-dollar bonuses, even as they piled up billions in debt for their soon-to-be-bankrupt companies....

...Take your pick—on the one side, we have free-market capitalists who took huge amounts of money as their companies eroded the savings of tens of millions; on the other, we have supposedly egalitarian liberals who skipped paying taxes.

The result is the same. Our best educated, wealthiest, and most-connected in matters of finance proved our dumbest—and our political leaders were less than ethical in meeting their moral responsibilities as citizens.

If ordinary Americans were to follow the examples of Wall Street and Washington elites, the nation would neither collect needed revenue nor invest its capital. All that is a recipe for national decline and fall.

I worry about this. If working and middle class people feel screwed over by both parties, new parties eventually may emerge......
and they may not actually be moderate.....

Our system is not conducive to multiple parties. It's not like a parliamentary system where coalitions are put together to run the government. I think a bigger fear would be that those that are less moderate could end up taking over both existing parties.
 
Exactly the point. The grads of the Ivies seem to lack ethics, whether on Wall Street or The Mall.

Maybe it's more than the Ivy grads who lack ethics today. They just have the biggest impact when they screw up because they impact upon our entire economic system.

What percent of Ivy Grads totals are in the positions of power in AIG, Lehman, Goldman and Sacks?

The Neo Con movement under the tutelage of Straus, is exactly this. There are a small group of elites who believe they are the only ones who have the wisdumb to run the nation. Wolfy, Jeb, Feith, Cheney and the rest of this group proved once more in history that these people don't know their asses from a hole in the ground.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3l0ceOoxujk]YouTube - Leo Strauss - the Neo Con inspiration[/ame]
We are now a nation that is run and controlled by the rich and the Corporations. No, once again, I don't hate business, but I don't think corporation should be running our country, they aren't people no matter what anyone says.

Maybe we need a complete collapse of the current economy to throw these bastards out and start all over.

Only, problem is it will happen again.
 
An unraveling of civilization?

Hardly the Best and Brightest by Victor Davis Hanson on National Review Online

Hardly the Best and Brightest
The institutions run by our elites aren’t trustworthy, so why should we put any faith in them?

By Victor Davis Hanson

Most historians agree that earthquakes, droughts, or barbarians did not unravel classical Athens or imperial Rome.

More likely the social contract between the elite and the more ordinary citizens finally began breaking apart—and with it the trust necessary for a society’s collective investment and the payment of taxes. Then civilization itself begins to unwind.

Something like that has been occurring lately because of the actions on Wall Street and in Washington, D.C. The former “masters of the universe” who ran Wall Street took enormous risks to get multimillion-dollar bonuses, even as they piled up billions in debt for their soon-to-be-bankrupt companies....

...Take your pick—on the one side, we have free-market capitalists who took huge amounts of money as their companies eroded the savings of tens of millions; on the other, we have supposedly egalitarian liberals who skipped paying taxes.

The result is the same. Our best educated, wealthiest, and most-connected in matters of finance proved our dumbest—and our political leaders were less than ethical in meeting their moral responsibilities as citizens.

If ordinary Americans were to follow the examples of Wall Street and Washington elites, the nation would neither collect needed revenue nor invest its capital. All that is a recipe for national decline and fall.

This is not even close to what happened. The political leaders in both parties urged Wall Street to use creative financing to provide abundant cheap credit, at first to restructure our stagnant economy in the 1980's and then to try to skip over economic slowdowns during the 1990's and 2000's. When Greenspan, whose policies fathered two enormous bubbles, the tech bubble that wiped out a whole generation's retirement savings, and the real estate bubble, retired, he and his policies were praised and given awards by governments and central banks all over the world and now those in government are saying Wall Street did it?

It was politicians from both parties who didn't want to have to run for reelection during an economic slowdown that began on their watch who continued to foster and protect easy credit policies, despite numerous warnings of impending disaster, that led to the financial crisis and the recession, and these are the same politicians who are now saying, Wall Street did it. Wall Street did exactly what the politicians now pointing fingers wanted it to do.

Wall Street execs were awarded gargantuan paychecks and regarded by many as the best and the brightest and as "Masters of the Universe" for the exact same policies that gave us the prosperity of the 1990's and then the tech bubble and that prevented a recession in the early 2000's and then gave us our present problems. Bush said Wall Street got drunk and now we all have hangovers, but the truth is Wall Street got drunk at a party they were invited to by the drunks who run Washington and now the rest of us are picking up the tab for the party that went on for twenty five years.

That is actually a very good assessment. Politicians from both parties allowed this to happen over a very long period of time, all for their own political benefit. However, I can add that the populace who voted these people into office are just as accountable because no one is capable of thinking long term.

Everything is done for today. Just like the stimulus package. We have to have it, they tell us, or everything will collapse, yet there is no concern about the deficit that is being added to and the cost of it on the budget for years to come. If voters don't see an immediate impact, they vote the other way, so politicians give them what they want instead of what is needed.

Another example is Social Security and Medicare. Everyone with half a brain realizes that it is underfunded for the future, but just try suggesting that we raise the age from 65 to 70 or cutting benefits and the outcry can be heard on Mars.
 
An unraveling of civilization?
The institutions run by our elites aren’t trustworthy, so why should we put any faith in them?

I don't!

Journalist Nelson D. Schwartz wrote for the New York Times 14 February 2009:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rise in Jobless Poses Threat to Stability Worldwide — From lawyers in Paris to factory workers in China and bodyguards in Colombia, the ranks of the jobless are swelling rapidly across the globe. Worldwide job losses from the recession that started in the United States in December 2007 could hit a staggering 50 million by the end of 2009, according to the International Labor Organization, a United Nations agency. The slowdown has already claimed 3.6 million American jobs. ...Just last week, the new United States director of national intelligence, Dennis C. Blair, told Congress that instability caused by the global economic crisis had become the biggest security threat facing the United States, outpacing terrorism.

In emerging economies like those in Eastern Europe, there are fears that growing joblessness might encourage a move away from free-market, pro-Western policies, while in developed countries unemployment could bolster efforts to protect local industries at the expense of global trade. Indeed, some European stimulus packages, as well as one passed Friday in the United States, include protections for domestic companies, increasing the likelihood of protectionist trade battles.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Used to be, back in Ye Olden Times, if a man wanted more, he worked for it. He might have a day job that provided for him and his family. And if he wanted to have something more, he would work in the evening hours at it. It may have been something that somebody wanted him to make that he was handy at. He would make a contract — which would be a gentlemen's agreement — to make the item and the other party would pay him for it, or there may have been a barter agreement.

If the global society would have had a standard medium of exchange, these types of agreements could have existed worldwide without the types of incidents that presently occur. But national leaders, tinkering with national economic systems, devised monetary systems far removed from global standards. In America, the Tinkerers relegated our exchange system to a paper system, and then began the inflation that propelled our system far from those of lesser developed countries, such that the numbers that represented exchange a hundred years ago have increased 9700%. A Carpenter working in 1910 made around 45¢ per hour. A Carpenter working today makes around $44 per hour, which includes a retirement program, insurance, etc. This "tinkering" affects "tax brackets", wages, prices, and just about everything involved in our human endeavor.

Over the last couple of decades, the Tinkerers enacted trade agreements with developing countries that encouraged our manufacturers to move their operations out of this country, and ship their products back here at lower costs. A government agency even worked to encourage this, and business groups worked toward this end also. The American consumer purchased these goods to the point that, as operations in this country closed down, and more and more people became unemployed, they no longer were able to make the purchases to sustain this global trade system, and now it is collapsing, as our economic system regresses. The Tinkerers are now throwing our children's, and grand-children's, future at it, and telling us that this will "fix" it. It's hard to believe that we have so let ourselves to be led astray.
 
Exactly the point. The grads of the Ivies seem to lack ethics, whether on Wall Street or The Mall.

Maybe it's more than the Ivy grads who lack ethics today. They just have the biggest impact when they screw up because they impact upon our entire economic system.

What percent of Ivy Grads totals are in the positions of power in AIG, Lehman, Goldman and Sacks?

The Neo Con movement under the tutelage of Straus, is exactly this. There are a small group of elites who believe they are the only ones who have the wisdumb to run the nation. Wolfy, Jeb, Feith, Cheney and the rest of this group proved once more in history that these people don't know their asses from a hole in the ground.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3l0ceOoxujk"]YouTube - Leo Strauss - the Neo Con inspiration[/ame]
We are now a nation that is run and controlled by the rich and the Corporations. No, once again, I don't hate business, but I don't think corporation should be running our country, they aren't people no matter what anyone says.

Maybe we need a complete collapse of the current economy to throw these bastards out and start all over.

Only, problem is it will happen again.

Even if we have a complete collapse the SAME bastards will start out ON TOP.

Why?

Look at their asset base compared to the rest of us.

I posted those numbers here recently.

The lower 80% of America owns 15% of its wealth.

And damned little of that wealth is liquid.

Most of it is in the form of real estate, which you must have noticed is far from liquid right now.
 
That was one of Victor's more lame efforts.

But that's to be expected. His partisanship has been evident for many years. Now he doesn't even try to conceal it.

The elites are from both (referencing the bipolar nature of US politics) parties.

Victor, who is a member of the elite on the right is having a go at the elite on what passes for the left (the Democratic Party is a right wing party in my view).

Victor has outed himself as a partisan hypocrite. Stick to historical analyses of wars Victor, you just shot your bolt on this one.

Really? Did you miss the part where he "had a go" at the elites on BOTH sides?

Begging the question.

Try again.
 
That is actually a very good assessment. Politicians from both parties allowed this to happen over a very long period of time, all for their own political benefit. However, I can add that the populace who voted these people into office are just as accountable because no one is capable of thinking long term.
......

It's a very good assessment, it's the sort of assessment that Victor, were he not being partisan, would have written. I'm sure Victor is capable of it, the man isn't stupid, he's just blinkered and overly partisan.
 

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