Two Americas: Finance or Foodstamps

[kaz]

Government sets your rates and removes your competition. You see that as minor regulation? Seriously?

The government sets the rates based on the information that we provide them. Now what they do with that info varies from state to state. Some are little more than rubber stamps. Others (like most in the Northeast) can be very tedious to deal with.

As for removing our competition; that's not necessarily true. Each city and town does have the legal ability to run their own utilities individually or in groups (and more than a few do). Individual customers now have the ability to choose where they want their power to come from to a lesser degree. There are also a lot more options these days for people to go "off the grid" with different forms of private generation systems.

No matter who you have for a company, the only significant differences are in the customer service and the maintenance of the physical facilities; neither of which are things that the states regulate. They can fine us for poor customer service and for interuptions, but there is very little they can do to make us change anything.

As for the red, you just fundamentally don't understand free markets. Free markets is CONSUMER choice. Businesses competing to make deals with government to shut down their competition just isn't free market in any way, shape or form. Still in your example of not caring about the customers, you are showing why we need free markets, not why we don't.

As for the blue those are true and may matter in the future, but just so you know my background includes stints at GE Power and GE Nuclear and I know the industry pretty well and those are of very limited consequence at this point. I do know a guy who put geothermal heating in his house, but he obviously didn't do it to save money with total cost and other forms of independent energy aren't cost effective either.

 

[Anachronism]

How exactly do you intend to force businesses to remain in the United States?

Very simple..... I DON'T intend to force businesses to remain in the United States.

HOWEVER, I do believe that when given the option to remain here and potentially do business with some parts of the rest of the world (under government supervision) OR to leave the US and to lose any potential to do any business inside the United States, that many of them will chose to remain here.

 

[Avatar4321]

I will never understand this irrational hatred for corporations. It really makes absolutely no sense.

Because they don't have Americans best interest in mind. They are to NEVER be trusted.

Neither do you, nor the radicals who control the Democrat party, but you never complain about them.

 

[Anachronism]

As for the red, you just fundamentally don't understand free markets. Free markets is CONSUMER choice. Businesses competing to make deals with government to shut down their competition just isn't free market in any way, shape or form. Still in your example of not caring about the customers, you are showing why we need free markets, not why we don't.

Ok. Let's look at what it would take to actually provide consumer choice in the Electrical distribution market..... Every single asset that you see on the street would have to be doubled or tripled. For every section of wire running between two poles, there would have to be two or three more just like it. Every company would have to have its own substations, transformers, switches, etc... all running down the same pole lines or through the same underground conduit systems to provide the sort of choice that you're talking about. The utility industry is one place where consumer choice just cannot be maintained at the individual level with any form of sanity. With your background I think you already know that.

As for the blue those are true and may matter in the future, but just so you know my background includes stints at GE Power and GE Nuclear and I know the industry pretty well and those are of very limited consequence at this point. I do know a guy who put geothermal heating in his house, but he obviously didn't do it to save money with total cost and other forms of independent energy aren't cost effective either.

You're right that they ARE of limited consequence at this point, but they are increasing. When I started with this company a decade ago we had pretty much no "interconnections" policy, because we didn't need it. Now we have several engineers dedicated just to dealing with new interconnections attachments and the official policies related to those activities. Some of it is on the personal leve and some of it is more corporate (windmills, solar farms, etc...), but it is growing very rapidly.

 

[georgephillip]

Clearly, both the Republicans and the Democrats are engineering the destruction of the American middle class:

The Republicans continually champion the cause of the super wealthy, instituting trickle up economics, credit in lieu of pay increases, the end of all protectionist policies, the export of both manufacturing jobs and skilled professional jobs, and the destruction of education.

Meanwhile the Democrats, fail to promote protectionism, always lose on tax policy, do nothing to stop the flow of jobs out of the country, but continue to promote social welfare programs and at best McJobs. The Democrats are geat at championing the cause of the middle class - and always losing.

Then the two parties divide the middle class politically by divying up the hot button issues: abortion, gay rights, gun rights...all of which are inconsequential compared the to economic decline of the American middle class.

If the current trend continues, think of what America will be in 30 years:

A nation where everything is owned by 1% of the worlds population - and most of them not even Americans. For 99% of Americans, subsistence living on social welfare, working pitiful minimal wage jobs, or miltary service (followed by a lifetime of the former two).

America will become the exporter of military security and the importer of everything else.

Any economic system is an environment created by the dominate military paradigm - the U.S. government.

What is needed NOW is protectionist economic policies and an extremely increasingly progressive tax code. We desparately need to correct the balance of the wealth distribution.

All of this has been played out before - it's an almost exact duplicate of the economics that destroyed the Roman empire and drove western Europe into the dark ages:

An over extended military, a huge government deficit, all wealth concentrated into the hands of a very few, and huge welfare programs to placate the masses. Finally, a major military defeat destroying all government controls and subsequent anarchy (no, not free liberaterianism). 200 years of wars, famines and plagues followed by 500 years of absolute totalitarian rule by the most barbaric.

And after those 500 years of authoritarian barbarians came capitalism. The next three decades in America could manufacture as much misery as five centuries in Feudal Europe.

The corporation has been called the last remaining institution of 20th Century authoritarians. It certainly functions as a top down tyranny without concern for anything or anyone except its bottom line.

If public services like education and safety become corporate shells like Enron or Halliburton, it will be because Republicans AND Democrats AND Wall Street succeeded in dividing Americans on relatively trivial social issues.

Progressive taxation would certainly be the fastest way to cripple corporate power, but it's hard to see how that would happen while most US voters continue "choosing" between Republican OR Democrat at the polls.

One of the few mistakes I haven't made is bringing a child into this world.

Those who have should give serious thought to the world the global rich have in mind for the next generation.

Listen Jimmy Carter, you are not going to be able to do anything to effect industry with taxation that won't do more damage to the middle and lower classes. Industrial entities can simply pass higher taxes on to the consumers which is called inflation. Carter found this out when we hit double digit unemployement and double digit inflation.

Taxes would effect the bottom line, only it would be most individual bottom lines that would take the hit. Economics doesn't work the simplistic way you seem to think it does and history bears this out. It took Reagan to undo Carter, who would undo the current government without the manufacturing and savings based economy that facilitated recovery in the early '80s? Answer...no one could pull that off.

Corporate income taxes have declined as a share of GDP since the end of WWII. In the early 1950s they crested 6% of GDP, and by 2009 they were down to 1%.

Do corporations use our roads?
Do Wisconsin teachers school some of their workers?
Does the US Military guarantee their right to exploit other countries' consumers/workers/natural resources?

"US corporations, who are (according to to the Supreme Court) also citizens of this country, paid just $300Bn in taxes last year (2009) on $6 TRILLION in income (5%).

"That’s right, if US corporations simply paid the same amount of tax as Mr. Buffett (17.7%) – that would, by itself, be enough to wipe out our deficit. But, things have gone decidedly the other way in the past 30 years:..."

Phil's Stock World

If US corporations could pay taxes at a rate of 6% of GDP in the mid-'50s when productivity was far more evenly shared among all wage quintiles than it is today, why can't they pay the same rates today?

Because Republicans AND Democrats depend on the richest 1% of Americans to fund their campaigns.

btw, most Americans wee paying more in taxes when Reagan left office than when he arrived. The "Reagan Recovery" only looked good because of the "Reagan Recession" that immediately preceded it.

It's also hard to see how Reagan adding $1.4 trillion in deficits over eight years helped anyone but creditors. Of course, some Americans grow filthy rich on the debts of others.

 

[georgephillip]

And after those 500 years of authoritarian barbarians came capitalism. The next three decades in America could manufacture as much misery as five centuries in Feudal Europe.

The corporation has been called the last remaining institution of 20th Century authoritarians. It certainly functions as a top down tyranny without concern for anything or anyone except its bottom line.

If public services like education and safety become corporate shells like Enron or Halliburton, it will be because Republicans AND Democrats AND Wall Street succeeded in dividing Americans on relatively trivial social issues.

Progressive taxation would certainly be the fastest way to cripple corporate power, but it's hard to see how that would happen while most US voters continue "choosing" between Republican OR Democrat at the polls.

One of the few mistakes I haven't made is bringing a child into this world.

Those who have should give serious thought to the world the global rich have in mind for the next generation.

Listen Jimmy Carter, you are not going to be able to do anything to effect industry with taxation that won't do more damage to the middle and lower classes. Industrial entities can simply pass higher taxes on to the consumers which is called inflation. Carter found this out when we hit double digit unemployement and double digit inflation.

Taxes would effect the bottom line, only it would be most individual bottom lines that would take the hit. Economics doesn't work the simplistic way you seem to think it does and history bears this out. It took Reagan to undo Carter, who would undo the current government without the manufacturing and savings based economy that facilitated recovery in the early '80s? Answer...no one could pull that off.

What is needed is rectify this mess is an epiphany of the middle class. There is no one single magic bullet. Protectionism and an increase in taxation on the wealthy would be a good start, but not enough:

The employees of the America would have to start demanding that wages be based on their productive value, not on the least that it would take to replace them (i.e their 'market value').

Additionally, boycotts of good that are overpriced - a rebellion against inflation.

There is no doubt that the wealthy will respond in any way possible to protect and increase their take of the world's wealth against any changes in government policy, the employees if the world would have to stand united and act in unison to counteract these.

Ultimately, it is the employees of the world that hold, by far, the balance of the real economic power in the world - it's only a matter of them acting in unison that is the question.

BTW, Reagan's economis policies lead to the worst recession since the great depression in the early 1980s. There was no recovery in the early 1980s. Later on, by ballooning the deficit and investing in the military industrial complex, Reagan succeeded in causing somewhat of an economic boom, but that was nothing in comparison to the economic boom of that was caused by the increased taxation of the early 1990s.

A US Labor/Renters Rights Party?

If it's accurate to say that 30% of actual US voters have brains that don't bend left and the brains of another 30% don't bend right, wouldn't you have to find a way to awaken the 30% - 40% of eligible voters who don't usually see any reason to vote?

Finding ways of inspiring workers to vote their economic interests would include using boycott and divestment strategies; however, could this happen in a country mesmerized by corporate celebrities and propagandists?

The Internet could fuel an awakening here like the one sweeping the Arab world. The beginning of your middle class epiphany could be on display right now in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Ohio.

Somehow it will have to find a way to globalize Democracy the same way the capitalists have globalized exploitation.