Comments on: Greed Wins Again

By: RickC

RickC — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 22:15:09 +0000

Dark
I like many of your points. In fact, I have been a firm believer in both a maximum and minimum income for years. The one thing I take issue with is what I often hear alot: that socialists expect a perfect system. That is silly. I for one don’t expect a perfect world just a better System and judging by job creation in the US since 2000, the giant increase in poverty, and the fact that we essentially let people die in this country for want of health care suggests that there are serious problems in America.. What you said about Socialism becoming corrupt is true. The same sort of corruption happens in Capitalist societies. The truth, as I see it, is that balances must be struck. A society where big business and capitalism becomes too strong leads to fascism and nazism. If you doubt that assertion do some study of the economic structure of nazi Germany and fascist Italy during the 1930. You will find societies driven by greed and the free market.(6 million jews, after all, made for good cheap slave labor for awhile). A society where the profit motive is eradicated can lead to Communism. And one only need look at North Korea and the former Soviet Union to see the danger in that. My assertion and I suspect the assertion of others who read this blog is that the pendulum has swung way too far in favor of big business. As a consequence you get gated communities where 400 billionaires are separated by 35 million Americans living on less than 10,000 per year. Should a society be defined as succesful when for every person it works for a million others fail? Seems to me to be the antithesis of success.
Conservatives often wax euphoric of the good old days of morals and values while ignoring that in those good old days the discrepancies between rich and poor was not as dramatic. In 1980, for example, the average CEO pay was 40x times that of a worker. it is now 400X. When a small segment of society gets a bigger slice of the pie it means that larger segments of society are left with less and less. What is wrong with thinking gosh maybe that is a wrong thing? what would be so awful in reestablishing a system when CEO pay was only 40 or 30x or gasp a mere 20x times that of the average worker. Why is it acceptable when there is a redistribution of wealth from the poor and middle class up to the upper class but not the other way around?
In short, I argue that big business and the wealthy class has way too much power and that power is to the detriment of everyone else. A balance needs to be reestablished where yes you have an upper class, middle class and lower class. But there is nothing healthy when that lower class grows exponentially in numbers and shrinks in wealth while the upper class grows exponentially in wealth and shrinks in numbers. America prides itself on “in liberty and justice for all”. If justice is symbolized as balance(Ie the lady holding the scales of justice) then the US is, right now, drifting further and further away from justice.
I’d like to see the system correct itself but it may take a revolution. If so then I hope the revolution is peaceful. But as JFK stated:
“They who make peaceful Revolution impossible make violent Revolution inevitable”
Incidentally i’d be happy to send you links to illustrate the massive growth in the concentration of wealth that has occured in recent years, the massive rise in poverty, the huge discrepancies in population growth and job creation since 2000 and other stats to illustrate that this system as it stands now is no longer just, no longer democratic and no longer sustainable.

By: DarkBolt

DarkBolt — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 13:52:15 +0000

Interesting thoughts to be sure. But what gets me every time is when I hear or read about someone claiming (as if irrefutable fact) that “people who watch fox news” or “Republicans” or “conservatives” are basically idiots, they are uneducated in politics and do not know why they are voting for someone, or they do not have a true understanding of the issues and speak gibberish when they talk about their views. Then those same people cry foul because the rich are oppressing the poor. NOW- THAT SAID, a point needs to be made. The rich ARE oppressing the poor in many ways, the rich DO have a system in place to protect their wealth and generate them more wealth, the rich HAVE over time secured their interests through laws, and lobbyists in government and so-on.
However, your column seems to say to me, that the “old” America, the “American Dream” is gone. You speak of personal financial struggle, as if there is no hope. The truth is that there IS a way out of your financial rut, and mine as well. I am not willing to go to college so I am stuck in this rut unless I discover a different route to generate wealth. What I hate hearing, is the connotation that the current way things are needs to be done away with and we need to “share the wealth”. That will NEVER HAPPEN, at least not the way you are wishing it would happen. The reason, is that EVEN the people who would agree with you will become corrupt later or give into threats, or what have you, and corrupt THAT system. THIS system is corrupt already, BUT- every YEAR there are thousands more millionaires created in America, so corrupt as we may be, the system can still work for you, IF you are ambitious enough to do what you need to in order to succeed. That SOCIALIST system you all seem to WANT, well, here is what it should be: Everybody gets AFFORDABLE insurance run by that socialist government- but THE GOVERNMENT is NOT allowed to benefit from the proceeds of each insurance type. Health insurance would be pooled and there would of course be certain “accounts” set aside for hospital buildings, electrical expenses each month, Doctor’s salaries etc., research into disease and cure, and so on. Auto insurance would not be a huge competition of private companies but just one, the government. Same thing, several accounts would be set up for basic expenses, and based of a couple years of trial and error, the elected overseer would (with the help of staff of course) determine how much money would actually be spent on actual accidents and injuries due to those accidents, and therefore they would determine how much money they would need in a special account to cover each month’s estimated accidents, and to be safe that number could even be doubled in case there were more accidents than usual in a given month. But think for a moment, if every American has this auto insurance let’s say, and it is $60 a month for full coverage, and there are 200 million American adults with insurance, that is One Billion, Two hundred Million dollars each month going into the pool. Lets say there are 10,000 accidents, with an average expense of about $5000. That is Fifty Million dollars each month. For the sake of argument we’ll even say that One hundred million are needed a month for total nation wide expenses of every kind. Probably not nearly that number, but basically that means that there is STILL a huge surplus each month of One Billion, Fifty Million dollars. That goes where? It SHOULD get re-distributed annually back to the people in your perfect little world, not to mention every other area of insurance, but there simply is not a country or government in the world that works like that. If that much money would be left over then we would probably pay $5/ month apiece. Also, everyone would be allotted a residence if they did not have the means to own their own, that would be only fair, and everyone would be given work BY that government as to eliminate the unemployment rate. It would only be a very short matter of time before that system became corrupted totally and then everyone would be locked into their current status, the government would begin making all their decisions and making all the rules and laws and if you rebel, you get arrested for treason. (That is called communism.) Government should be small, and only handle matters of national security, nothing else. EVERY other aspect to a society should be handled by the private sector. Without exception, and even in our twisted, corrupted system in America, as powerful as the rich are today, they are not all bad just because they are rich, there are tens of thousands of rich people in America who are normal, average joes, they were just ambitious and fortunate enough to make it to where they are today. They have every right to have the money they enjoy. And there is no way in hell they should be taxed more or treated any different than the rest of us.
Now, final point. What we SHOULD figure out how to do, to make things FAIR for all of us, and make our economy thrive again, is figure out how to RE-WRITE the laws for commercial business in America. They would have to have some strict regulations, mandated by the Federal Government, with massive fines and penalties if broken. For example, CEO’s and boards of directors should have a maximum salary, that can never be surpassed, and a LIMIT put on bonuses for ALL management. The CEO and management will STILL make a fantastic salary, let’s say CEO’s can make ONE million each year, boards of directors 700,000- etc. This way they still get to be rich just not nearly as FILTHY RIDICULOUS rich as they are today because of SHEER GREED AND CORRUPTION. What would be done with the ENORMOUS surplus, is that from the ground up, the base workers and so on would share the difference in their salaries. My $11.25/hr would then be changed to about $30. Would that give us an incentive to work harder? Would that enable me to buy more? Would that stimulate the economy more? That is the real answer. Changing our system to that socialist model, will not work unless you bring in all the greedy politicians, government organizations, and rich private organizations to be recruited in the ground level of the new system. And by then your new socialist model is pretty much screwed from conception.

By: lesterfiggler

lesterfiggler — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 16:01:28 +0000

I agree with Rick on htis one. Look at history, for example the French Revolution. And Marx constantly stressed the middle class unrest in his Dialectic. America will probably never experience a “political revolution”. The poor are too busy watching “Dancing with the Stars” and cashing food stamps. “Da Grubsamunts” knows only too well to confine (To ghettos and holding tanks like Detroilet) the poor while destroying what is left of the middle class. The destruction has been going on now for nearly 30 years. Nixon started the destruction but Reagan turned it from virtue to science. I question whether enough remains of the middle class to even foment revolution. America is third or fourth world, gated, protected communities to keep the elite safe from the unwashed masses. America is Brazil, i.e. lots of filthy rich elite but far more poverty stricken and marginal dwellers. Ever wonder why we have automatic locks on the expensive cars that lock all 4 doors at once? Its not “for the children”. It’s for the security or the occupants. Leave the safety of the house, quickly to the car, and one button will return you to security heaven. I have to manually lock my corolla doors, not that I do, though. We will see social upheaval and riots, but not revolution. More like food riots and minor acts of terrorism/vandalism. More like Rodney King and Devil’s Night in Detroilet. And then there are the people like me who live in the woods. We won’t we revolt, We already have. Self sufficiency is the ultimate form of revolt because they have no control over me. I simply tell them to fuck off and refuse to participate in their bullshit. If they make things too difficult, I’ll move to Panama or the Dominican Republic. Good Snorkling, Hot Weather, Hot women, Fewer Assholes.

By: RickC

RickC — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 19:16:30 +0000

as much as I agree with most of what you say, I have to disagree with you slightly on this post. Orwell stated that of the 3 classes it is the middle class that starts Revolutions. The rich obviously don’t want change and the poor are too busy focusing on survival. It is only when the Middle class unite with the poor that revolutions occur. Ever notice how the Rich pit the middle class against the poor? using the poor as scapegoats for the problems the middle class faces. I still know personally many middle class people who believe the poor are draining the economy by going on Welfare(completely ignorant of the time limits imposed by Welfare reform and that, even at its height in the 80′s Defense spending alone was 50 times that of Welfare). Oh and the blaming of immigrants for stealing American jobs when its the wealthy who do the hiring. When the middle class sees that they are never going to get rich but only poorer and the bond forms between the middle class and poor it becomes an existential threat to the uber wealthy corporate elite. I suspect that the greedy corporations are in a race. Drive the middle class into poverty and a life focused solely on survival before the middle class wises up to what happens