[BartSimpson]

andyt andyt:

The middle class has been under attack since Reagan.

That's quite the myth, brother. When Reagan took office mortgage interest rates had soared to 21%, unemployment was the highest since the depression, and middle class incomes were shrinking. When Reagan left office he left behind a surging economy, lower interest rates, low unemployment, and etc.

His VP, who coined the term 'voodoo economics' eventually conceded that Reagan was right because no matter how much you wanted the man to be wrong, at the end of the day his policies delivered on what the man promised.

andyt andyt:

This isn't just some phenomenon of the latest financial scam. And I don't see the omens you do that will see the middle class recover? Based on what?

Based on the fact that the economy is still trudging along. People are buying cars again, they're building homes again, and the mall parking lots are full again.

At the same time, all of that can be readily negated by Washington so we'll see what happens with the Federal budget. If the debt exceeds 100% of GDP then inflation will start up and cause wage erosion and Obama will be a one-term President. And this is the year we'll hit 100% of GDP so it's not like it can't happen.

[Prof_Chomsky]

I know this could spark a massive flame-fest, but it really shouldn’t.

The simple fact here is we are capitalists. For better or worse that is the economic route we took. It’s also well known that an unfortunate side effect of capitalism is it favours the rich in every possible way. This not only makes their lives and their children’s lives infinitely more likely to attain fortune than any one else (I’ll leave out the political control money gives you over laws and policies too…), but it also allows them to perfect “usury” into a fine art and create HUGE fortunes by doing literally nothing more than making money with money… a concept which by the way until this century was condemned by all facets of society from the church to the elite.

Anyway, to my point. Capitalism seems to work so until we find a better alternative we stick with it. But we also know capitalism unintentionally favours the rich elite and we don’t like that as a society, and it benefits no one (not even the rich elite in the end). So they NEED to change our tax policies to reflect this favoritism. The rich are rich because they were born into it, or they profited off of the country’s educated working masses, infrastructure and other social policies. So it’s time to give back the way they always did prior to the 1980’s. Sorry, you already have a rigged system since you have money, so we’re going to rig the tax system to help smooth out those rough edges.

Remember when we could afford to build new hospitals, roads and schools and didn’t have loads of debt?
Remember when we could support a family of 4, own a house, a car and pay for university on a single modest income without going into crushing debt?
Remember when health care didn’t have a 3-9 month waiting period for non-essential services?

The only thing that changed is our tax policies and that led to the working class being taxed to death while the rich got richer. Start taxing the wealthy for all the success our countries social programs GAVE them by allowing them use of publically paid for infrastructure, educated people and the like, and everyone will benefit. Sorry, but no one needs 50 billion when 5 billion will suffice.


… and while we’re on the topic. Change our trade policies. We do NOT have to compete against 3rd world nations who’s work forces are willing to do anything a company asks because they are currently living in slums, 9 people to a room, and barely surviving. Sorry, that’s why we have borders. Until the world becomes borderless and everyone is equal my children shouldn’t have to compete for jobs and match wages with desperate poverty stricken people half way around the globe.


P.S. Anyone who says Reagan helped the economy clearly needs remedial math class.

[andyt]

Right Arm.

There isn't a country in the world that's pure capitalism. There isn't one that's 100% equal either. So the question is where we want to be between those two poles. From what I see, the Scandinavian countries have it figured about right. Much better social indicators than the US, beat us in some as well. Don't know if it's feasible to emulate them completely with the culture we have here, but we could give it a shot.

[Prof_Chomsky]

I agree with you entirely andyt. In fact we could emulate them without imposing the same tax rates on everyone they have to because our natural resources are so vast per capita.
It's criminal that they receive natural resource Royalty payments of 90-95% while we routinely get 5% until the company gets their capital investment back, and then a measily 10-15%.

[andyt]

Prof_Chomsky Prof_Chomsky:

It's criminal that they receive natural resource Royalty payments of 90-95% while we routinely get 5% until the company gets their capital investment back, and then a measily 10-15%.

Don't say that too loud. We don't want to piss off the people who give us our jobs. They would just pick up their investment and move somewhere else.

[BartSimpson]

Prof_Chomsky Prof_Chomsky:

P.S. Anyone who says Reagan helped the economy clearly needs remedial math class.

Anyone who says he didn't needs to take remedial history.

[Prof_Chomsky]

andyt andyt:

Prof_Chomsky Prof_Chomsky:

It's criminal that they receive natural resource Royalty payments of 90-95% while we routinely get 5% until the company gets their capital investment back, and then a measily 10-15%.

Don't say that too loud. We don't want to piss off the people who give us our jobs. They would just pick up their investment and move somewhere else.

That's such a myth though. If you check the financials of most of our natural resource investments our government and universities fund the lion's share and get peanuts in return. We gave away billions in crown owned land and corporations.
Companies like DeBeers came in and pseudo 'stole' the discovery of a geologist who spent his life and public money searching for Canadian diamonds...

We don't need private investor money to fund that sort of thing. Frankly they should be state owned the same way they are in Scandinavia. They are guaranteed investments, and we give them away like prizes to the wealthy.

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

Prof_Chomsky Prof_Chomsky:

P.S. Anyone who says Reagan helped the economy clearly needs remedial math class.

Anyone who says he didn't needs to take remedial history.

I won't even get into that. It's ridiculous. He tripled your debt. Destroyed the unions. Changed laws to allow deficit spending. Destroyed the middle class. Introduced MASSIVE trade deficits. His policies have lead to the ONLY time in history that wages have been stagnant EVER.

In short, Reagan will be single handedly responsible for sinking your country and selling it to the rich. Enjoy.

[BartSimpson]

Prof_Chomsky Prof_Chomsky:

(Reagan) tripled your debt. Destroyed the unions. Changed laws to allow deficit spending.

Not so familiar with our Constitution, are you? While he certainly did fire the air traffic controllers he had little to do with busting the non-government unions as they were doing a fine job of that all on their own.

To the topic of the debt and deficit spending the President has NO authority to cause the debt to increase or to 'change laws'. Both of those responsibilities reside with the Congress and spending bills all originate in the House - which was solidly Democrat and liberal all through Reagan's Presidency.

Prof_Chomsky Prof_Chomsky:

Destroyed the middle class. Introduced MASSIVE trade deficits. His policies have lead to the ONLY time in history that wages have been stagnant EVER.

You're a funny guy. Reagan destroyed the middle class? Hyperbole much lately?

And you're wrong again. Alan Greenspan's anti-inflationary policies led to the stabilization of wages due to the fact that the inflation of the 1970's had been brought under control. As to wages being stagnant - that happened under Roosevelt in the 1940's and again under Nixon in the 1970's when both Presidents ordered wage freezes.

Prof_Chomsky Prof_Chomsky:

In short, Reagan will be single handedly responsible for sinking your country and selling it to the rich. Enjoy.

I always love how leftists can't decide if Reagan was some sort of Evil Genius who managed to trump a Democrat-majority Congress into doing his bidding or if he was an incompetent befuddled by senility who also managed to trump an apparently gullible Democrat-majority Congress into doing his bidding. I wish you people would make up your minds and then stick with whatever story you all decide on. This crap of switch-hitting on Reagan's legacy as it suits you is become tiresome.

[Thanos]

Reagan's policies were the beginning of the decline of the American middle class. Even his former budget director David Stockman says so today. Reagan was the starting point to an overall economic phenomenon that culminated in the George W. Bush era, i.e. the final hollowing out of the middle-class job sector, the end of the American manufacturing sector, the acceleration of jobs leaving America to set up in slave-wage states overseas, the simultaneous stagnation (or even reduction) of middle-class wages occurring at the same time the wealth of the already-rich increased astronomically, etc..

I'd also like to point out that, for a republican anti-monarchy document, the US Constitution has been effectively helpless in halting the development of a system of unaccountable nobility fleecing the entire nation for it's own selfish benefit. That it can hide behind the corpse of the now moribund American Dream, and use the myth of 'anyone can become rich in America' along with 'anyone who criticizes the economic system is a communist', to endlessly fool the proles into going along with it on the magical one-in-a-trillion chance that they too will somehow become wealthy means that it very well could be a new nobility that will never be toppled. It some day could make the caste system of post-Diocletian Rome look like an era of wildly successful social mobility by comparison.

[Unsound]

hurley_108 hurley_108:

I have seen something else under the sun: The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all.
Ecclesiastes 9:11

I must've missed Bart's refudiation of this...