So, any chance of getting those links?I don't suppose you can provide links to objective, credible evidence that "anti-American" sources are "behind ... funding" the OWS movement? In particular, I'm looking for evidence showing these "anti-American" sources are a substantial source of funding (since pretty much anyone can make incidental contributions that have no material impact on direction and goals).Behind most of the hapless lost souls showing up in the parks to freeze and accomplish next to nothing? No.
Behind those fools' continued funding? Yes, absolutely.
The only "fantasy" here is believing that such groups don't exist, and that they're not involved.
So, any chance of getting those links?
Are you going to keep trying to bleat on and on about links to OWS funding? Or are you going to realize that there are MANY factions that support and/or are part of it - some of which do in fact have an "anti-American sentiment"
http://www.workers.org/ duh.
Some of us were opposed to ALL of the bailouts from the very beginning and sincerely wish they would have let the failures happen naturally.
All we've done with the bailouts is delay the inevitable.
This mystical "total reset" that people are calling for now? We could have been halfway there already, or close to it. Would it be complete chaos? Absolutely. But, that's going to happen anyway -- as I said, it's inevitable.
I guess the only benefit of the delay may be that it has given the smartest amongst us time to prepare...
OR you could lose your job for not showing up to work and instead go bang some drums...
How is WW anti-American? Because they question our foreign policies that are imperialist?
Or is it that they dare to question crony capitalism?
Poor CaD, using a shred of critical thinking is Un-PC to him.
Grow up fanboi.
"Workers World fights for a socialist society -- where the wealth is socially owned and production is planned to satisfy human need. That's also what workers around the world, from Cuba to China, have been struggling for. The U.S. rulers have spent trillions of our tax dollars trying to stop them in a global class struggle. WWP promotes international working-class solidarity, the right of every nation to sovereignty and self-determination, and militant resistance at home to imperialist interventions and wars."Are you going to keep trying to bleat on and on about links to OWS funding? Or are you going to realize that there are MANY factions that support and/or are part of it - some of which do in fact have an "anti-American sentiment"
http://www.workers.org/ duh.
But yeah, I can see how leftists don't see hating democracy is a "anti-American sentiment"
Are you going to keep trying to bleat on and on about links to OWS funding? Or are you going to realize that there are MANY factions that support and/or are part of it - some of which do in fact have an "anti-American sentiment"
http://www.workers.org/ duh.
"Workers World fights for a socialist society?where the wealth is socially owned and production is planned to satisfy human need.
Sorry that facts offend you so, but he made a bold allegation and I'm asking him to support it. One reason OWS appears to have so much potential is that unlike the Tea Party, for example, it's agenda has not been driven by external deep pockets with ulterior motives (as far as we know). If his claim is accurate, it is significant and is certainly information I will consider. If he's merely flinging partisan innuendo, he should do the honorable thing and retract it.
Edit: re. your link, you really should have taken that Remedial Reading class I suggested so many years ago. It might have greatly reduced the time you've spent on P&N thrashing straw men and chasing red herrings. As I said before, "In particular, I'm looking for evidence showing these "anti-American" sources are a substantial source of funding (since pretty much anyone can make incidental contributions that have no material impact on direction and goals)." The idea that Workers World agrees with OWS, and may even have offered some support, falls far, far short of that.
You are the one trying to discredit people exercising there Democratic right to speak up against tyranny, the very same right our forefathers gave their lives for in the trenches and battlefields acros the world.
You sir and not making a good case for even having a clue what America or Democracy is. Feel free to come back from la-la land anytime CaD.
Hey...any chance of getting your link to the RNC-approved mis-definition for socialism?So, any chance of getting those links?
Civil discourse is a thing of the past. Critical thinking has been all but eviscerated. There is no point in trying to reason with uneducated fools. The stupidity in this country must be cleansed before it allows something truly disastrous to take place. It will be cleansed one way or another. The most civilized way would be simple poverty and starvation. It is logical to assume that a people so fat lazy and stupid will lose the ability to sustain themselves. However, high tech weaponry makes that outcome problematic. but it is still generally the most likely outcome.
Do you have a criticism of this? Or is it someone on TV/Radio said "BAD!"
I would love to hear your scathing criticism of a resource based mixed market economy of the future.
Please, share with us why we should continue down the road of the status quo of failed capitalism.
The USSR is gone, the cold war is long over, young people think you sound like MORONS,
-a bunch of irrelevant political soap opera haters from the distant past ranting/freaking out at clouds and ghosts of a past long gone with a giant stick up their ass
The modern conservative.
1: The divergence is created by the author estimating how incomes should have reacted. Without the formula used by the author, the chart has little probative value. Also, I fail to see how a service company or manufacturer becoming more productive necessarily funnels those benefits to financial institutions.
2: The increase in CEO pay has nothing to do with tax policy or deregulation as corporations have always been free to contract with individuals at whatever terms are agreeable to the two parties. All the chart does is demonstrate that CEO pay has increased; it fails utterly at demonstrating that such increases were the result of deregulation or changes in the tax code.
3: In the first instance, women entering the workplace was a double-edged swords in that it produced a much greater supply of potential workers; this increase in supply, without any immediate offsetting increase in demand, exerted a downward pressure of wages. Unlike the prior two charts, however, I do think there is something here. I would contend, however, that it is primarily the result of globalization, viz. the income beneficiaries of globalization tend to be the highly skilled (which, whether rightly or wrongly, are usually the wealthy). This is not to say that globalization has been a bad deal for the less well-off; specifically, the less well-off have benefited immensely from cheaper goods and services which are a direct result of the force of globalization.
4: This graph is rather meaningless without also referencing the average tax rates paid by all income brackets. Moreover, the CBO indicates that in 2007 -- the latest year for which figures were available -- the top 1% of earners paid 28% of all tax collected by the federal government (income, payroll and the like). Furthermore, the those making >1m pay taxes at a higher average rate for income tax purposes (23.3%) than those making less than 50k (7.2%) or those making 50-100k (8.9%). Finally, the 400 individuals paying an extremely low rate of tax probably do so because most of their wealth comes in the form of realized capital gains. Although it might be tempting to increase the cap gains tax rate, history would suggest this is not a prudent idea. Specifically, prior to 1979 -- the year in which the cap gains was reduced to its current level -- venture capital was seemingly moribund because the earnings derived from such activity were taxed so heavily. We, as a society, greatly benefit from VC -- think of how many biomed and tech companies rely on VC -- and I don't think it prudent to stifle the pace of innovation.
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With regard to the quip about 90% rate, allow me to c&p from elsewhere: I believe this is a common misconception that has been propagated, in part, through use of slightly misleading information. Specifically, it is true that under the Eisenhower administration the highest marginal tax bracket was 90%. This, however, deserves two qualifiers: 1) the income threshold for the highest bracket was any earnings in excess of 400k (the current IRC schedule uses 250k as the threshold); 2) If you adjust the 400k for inflation and the like, it is roughly 3.2-3.4m in 2011 dollars.
Obviously, there is a huge difference between having the highest marginal rate kick-in at 250k and at 3.4m. Moreover, it should be noted that tax receipts as a percentage of GDP were below the historical average of 18% from 1955-1960 (which constituted a majority of Eisenhower's 8 years)(http://www.heritage.org/budgetchartb...t-tax-receipts).
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5: To be clear: a housing bubble caused the crisis -- full stop. This 'number' has so many misstatements has they relate to monetary policy and the years leading up to F08, I almost shudder that the authors of the piece honestly believed the argument they advance here.
6: Banks need to get bailed out because a collapse of the financial sector would be infinitely worse than any hardship endured by 'Main Street'. This is not to say we shouldn't posit prudent reforms of the banking sector. The construction of this argument, however, sets out a false narrative that fails to take into account the disastrous consequences of not rescuing failing financial institutions (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_of_United_States)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_contagion).
7: Although I agree money in politics is a problem, I don't know how to solve the problem without creating some other problem or committing some other wrong.
8: Again, Wall Street didn't cause people to lose their jobs. The bursting of the housing bubble did. I recognize the attractiveness of assigning responsibility for the ills of society to one group or profession. The problem, however, is that such simple explanations are, more often than not, incorrect and fail to adequately explain or describe complex and inter-related situations such as the American economy.
9: Although this is an unfortunate situation, there is no evidence presented suggesting that this the fault of the major Wall Street banks. Moreover, certain measures that I would assume are endorsed by the OWS crowd -- such as an extension of unemployment benefits -- are contributing to the rise of 'long-term' unemployment as it provides an incentive for the unemployed not to seek or take certain jobs. Alan Krueger, Obama's newest chairman of Economic Advisers, wrote, "the estimates of the elasticities of lost work time that incorporate both the incidence and duration of claims are close to 1.0 for unemployment insurance." In effect, the extension of unemployment benefits encourages longer periods of joblessness.
10: Whether banks were concentrated or smaller institutions, the rationale for saving them would have been all the same (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_contagion).
Troll elsewhere. You're boring.Hey...any chance of getting your link to the RNC-approved mis-definition for socialism?
The housing bubble occurred because everybody in the chain, from mortgage companies up to and including Wall St, lowered standards and sold deceptive mortgage products to anybody with a pulse, creating false demand and high prices.
The other obvious necessity, changing the rules so that it won't happen again in that or some other asset class
Reading is fundamental, Chapter 1 - He responded to it by alleging that "anti-American" sources are "behind ... funding" the OWS movement. When asked to support that claim, and specifically when challenged to show "anti-American" sources are a substantial source of funding (since pretty much anyone can make incidental contributions that have no material impact on direction and goals)," he mysteriously lost his bravado and started avoiding the subject. Now I don't know how human behavior works in CADWorld, but here in the real world, that strongly suggests he was full of it and his claim was a baseless attack.Uh no. He responded to the statement of "anti-American sentiment". He is correct.
Duh! You think? Did you figure that out yourself, or did you wait for the RNC talking points? It's a massive movement that's open to anyone. Having a diverse mix of people is a given.The OWS "movement" is a collection of many different groups
Reading is fundamental, Chapter 2 - Who? Give us links. Show us who is denying that some people involved may have anti-American sentiments (for sufficiently wing-nut definitions of anti-American, of course).but to deny that some(if not many) involved don't hold an anti-american sentiment is just being naive.
Reading is fundamental, Chapter 3 - "You people?" Really? Proving you wrong is like shooting fish in a barrel. Here is one of my previous comments, for example:So while you people can continue to believe that the OWS movement actually has legs -
Reading is fundamental, Chapter 4 - It's been explained several times that this is a dumb criticism. They don't need a cohesive message or a solution. They simply need to raise awareness and create pressure on those who have the power to effect change.the rest of us will continue to see it for what it is - a rag tag bunch of groups with no cohesive message and no solutions.
Apologists? Apologists for what, exactly? Being an apologist implies that one is rationalizing someone else's wrong-doing. Other than the occasional scuffle with police, what, specifically, has OWS done that's wrong? Are you one of those hypocrites who only supports Americans' Constitutional rights when you agree with them politically?Everytime someone points something out with OWS, you apologists
Ah, so you're moving the goal posts, trying to duhvert the focus to side issues you can attack instead of the overall OWS movement. Lame.claim it isn't the movement's goal/statement/etc - well no shit it isn't ALL, but since there is no main message(other than class warfare hate the evil rich) you people will always have the plausible deniability card to play. So until there is a cohesive message - we'll pick off the supporting groups one by one and show them for who they are.
The bailouts of non-financial firms, like GM, might have been socialistic in nature but control or nationalization of a single firm is different from government control of entire industries. This isn't a question of opinion or degrees, merely fact.
As for the financial firms, the government temporarily intervened to resolve a liquidity crisis. Although I would argue that the government's first mistake was intervening to save Bear in the first place -- as it could have been properly wound-up -- it was proper for the central bank to serve as the lender of last resort after the fall of Lehman pushed the markets into a temporary period of irrationality. Serving as a lender of last resort is one of the principal functions of any central bank. This is the only way to control the contagion emanating from a failing bank or financial institution and ensure that a minor disruption does not produce a full bank-run on the entire banking sector.
Just to be clear, central banks, whether operating under a socialist or capitalist regime, ought to serve this function to ensure there are no shocks and runs on financial institutions.
And what did the New Deal produce for the average person? The measures that the Roosevelt administration adopted to stimulate demand -- including billions in government spending and wholesale government intervention in the economy through promulgation of new regulations -- were, by and large, inefficacious. Specifically, the American economy did not get back to 1929 levels during Roosevelt's first two terms (i.e., before American involvement in WWII). Specifically, the Dow Jones didn't return to its pre-crash levels, total hours worked by the American labor force was 20% lower in 1939 than in 1929 and unemployment rarely dipped into single-digits before the outbreak of WWII. Indeed, the average person was worse off vis-a-vis their 1929 standards of living when taking into account the inflation caused by increased spending.
And, for the sake of clarification, the Great Depression was not a result of the failure of capitalism. To be sure, the stock market failure of 1928 was caused by the bursting of a stock bubble (which, like the housing bubble of 2000-2008, was fueled by overly cheap credit). Rather the Depression proper was the result of the Fed adopting deflationary monetary policies and its unwillingness to step in and save Bank of United States in 1931 (relating back to my earlier point about the role of the central bank to be the lender of last resort). It was this failure of government -- not of capitalism -- that transformed a modest downturn into a full out depression. Moreover, the measures adopted by government did little to improve either the general economy or the lot of the ordinary person. It was only WWII, which was an external event, that re-invigorated the economy.
For my own elucidation, how much do you think the rich (say top 1%) pay, as a percentage, of the overall revenues collected by the government through imposition of an income tax? Furthermore, what do you think is the average tax rate they pay and what do you think is the average tax rate for individuals earning less?
I still don't understand the false demand part either but since you have avoided answering a few of previous posts, I doubt I'll get much clarification now.