Losing Our Way

[Torplexed]

Originally Posted by Vendor

Are you really sure that they are better in Sweden instead of U.S.? Personally, I think the opposite (sometimes), but it depends on the time and opportunity

Alas, a lot of us Americans grew up on the glorious myth of the Swedish Bikini Team.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_Bikini_Team

The Swedish Bikini Team was a group of American female models who appeared in an advertising campaign for Old Milwaukee beer. These commercials ran for several months in 1991 in the United States, playing with American stereotypes of Scandinavian women being blonde and having big breasts. The premise of the commercials was that a group of bored or thirsty men were "saved" by the Swedish Bikini Team. Other commercials would focus on a group of men male bonding on a hunting trip and saying "Guys, it does not get any better than this", to which a narrator would say the man was wrong and an Old Milwaukee truck would drive miles off road towards them claiming "it improved", "..and when the Swedish Bikini Team showed up, it got somewhat better."

[Gerald]

Originally Posted by Torplexed

Alas, a lot of us Americans grew up on the glorious myth of the Swedish Bikini Team.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_Bikini_Team

Not invite him to some temptation now

[UnderseaLcpl]

The current maldistribution of wealth is also scandalous. In 2009, the richest 5 percent claimed 63.5 percent of the nation’s wealth. The overwhelming majority, the bottom 80 percent, collectively held just 12.8 percent

I always hate hearing stuff like this. I hate it because that kind of inequality is indeed scandalous. I hate it because even with stats like that, the bottom 80% of the US is a damn sight better off than 90% of the world. But mostly, I hate it because it's almost always part of an argument that is indicative of a desire to force a redistribution of wealth, which in turn requires government intervention.

Contrary to popular belief, the US government doesn't actually redistribute wealth in the way people hope it will. What it does do is akin to distributing a pie somebody else made by eating a disproportionate share of the pie itself, passing what's left to the fatties most interested in eating the pie, and then redistributing the leftovers to those most in need as defined by who is the most popular. Unfortunately, it doesn't have enough pie for all of that so it borrows or steals pies from people who made them. But, there still isn't enough to go around so it starts gradually diluting the pie filling so that more pies can be made, though they won't be as good. While it does all this, it loudly proclaims to everyone in the room that it is doing good work and, in fact, made all these pies. Then it repeats the process, but faster the next time. Even when the pie-makers start leaving because they are tired of having their pies stolen and distributed thusly, the government just keeps doing it until there is no pie left.

Actually, that's not the best analogy. What government actually does is so unrelated to any other entity in existence that no real analogy can be made that I am aware of. The best I can do is just point out the results. That's what the author of the article is doing. And somehow, he thinks the same agency that either created these problems or allowed them to happen is going to fix them? New leadership? Really?

Government is not some genie that will magically fix things just because you ask it to. It's just a bunch of people. And no matter how smart or well-intentioned those people are, or how you go about finding smart, well-intentioned people in the first place they are not smarter than millions of people working for their own benefit. That holds true in the case of both wealth-creators and lobbyists. Business will always capture the regulators. The stricter the limitations on government, the longer it takes to happen, but it will always happen.

The author of the article apparently does not realize that. Presumably, he is in favor of more regulation. Many people are. They think that if the regulations were just a little more plentiful, or a little stricter, or a little more well-written, they'd close all these loopholes that the monied upper-class uses to cheat the little guy. I can understand that. Hell, I'll even cede the argument (in this thread only). Effective regulation is a good way to redistribute wealth, except it often ends up redistributing it right out of the country. I'm actually kind of happy about that bit. There are a lot of suffering people in this world who live terrible lives and could use the work. But no, all of the sudden that's a bad thing for people who want the wealth to be redistributed. As it turns out, what they really wanted was for wealth to be redistributed to them.

Now that we've established that, let's look at what they did when they realized that wealth distribution wasn't going the way they planned. Of course, they asked the government to help, and it tried. Protectionist trade law in the US (tariffs, quotas, etc) is so mind-bogglingy huge and complex that I can't even describe it without going beyond even my very lax standards for post length. Or the character limit. Or even human comprehension. There's not one person alive who understands all of it. In response, business did exactly what people do. Where it could adapt, it did, and where it couldn't it just left. You want to complain about outsourcing, go ahead and point that finger right at a mirror. All those pages of trade regs didn't preserve any jobs. The US export industry is all but dead in every case where the work could be done elsewhere. I could bitch further about how all that law is completely unfair to people who are a lot worse off than self-centered a-holes complaining about self-centered corporate a-holes, but I trust the point is made.

Fighting business is like trying to wrestle water. It's pointless, tiring, does nothing but shift water about, and no matter how you go about it you still end up wet. All in the name of fighting something that makes your life possible.

I can't really blame the author for his views. Nor can I blame the people who unwittingly demanded that government outsource their own jobs. They're just people being people. Unsuprisingly, that's what people do best, and most often. Unless they're zombies, of course. I will, however, blame the government, which, as I said, is just a bunch of people. When you give people power like that you're just asking for abuse. I don't blame the people themselves, even when they are career politicians. They're just doing what we gave them incentive to do. But it needs to stop.

Private industry, on the other hand, is also just people doing what we gave them incentive to do. It extracts things. It manufactures things. It serves you because you have somthing to offer in trade because you served other people. Everybody who can make pies is making pies! For everyone! Unless you can't afford them of course, in which case people made wealthy by pie-making will just give you pies for free! And that's actual free, not "free" stolen from someone else. Or maybe you don't like pie. Maybe you like cake. Maybe you like sausage. It doesn't matter. Private industry generates so much choice that we had to invent supermarkets just to keep up with all the demand. Thousands of channels on TV. Hundreds of millions of websites. Billions of books on every subject ever, and some subjects that aren't subjects at all. Simply by letting people be people without fiat power.

[Blood_splat]

[Gerald]

No Taxes....

Arthur Miller, echoing the poet Archibald MacLeish, liked to say that the essence of America was its promises. That was a long time ago. Limitless greed, unrestrained corporate power and a ferocious addiction to foreign oil have led us to an era of perpetual war and economic decline. Young people today are staring at a future in which they will be less well off than their elders, a reversal of fortune that should send a shudder through everyone

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organizes habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society: Edward Bernayes 1920s USA.

I hope the peoples of England wake up soon before this generation of middle class leaders (and liars) get us all into another world war, because the next one could be the last one. This oil lust will be the undoing of all that is good, if it's not to late already.

It is necessary to disagree with everyone who would control your spirit, therein is Freedom.

All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom; justice; honour, duty; mercy; hope. Winston Churchill.

[mookiemookie]

Originally Posted by UnderseaLcpl

But mostly, I hate it because it's almost always part of an argument that is indicative of a desire to force a redistribution of wealth, which in turn requires government intervention.

Why is it acceptable then to have that top 1% take unfair advantage of a rigged political system that allows the wealth to be redistributed upwards?

The solution isn't to say "ok we're taking X% of your wealth and giving it to the poor people." That's only treating the symptom. The cure is to treat the system that allows for such a concentration of wealth to occur.

You the consumer are paying $4 and $5 a gallon for gas. Meanwhile, oil speculators at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley drive the price per barrel up more and more. Traders at AIG make ridiculously stupid bets on the derivatives and credit default markets. When they blow up, who makes them whole? You the taxpayer. You pay for it with overcrowded schools because of slashed education budgets. You pay for it with 10% unemployment. You pay for it with reduced social services. All because the titans of capitalism are "too big to fail." Makes me sick.

[UnderseaLcpl]

Originally Posted by mookiemookie

Why is it acceptable then to have that top 1% take unfair advantage of a rigged political system that allows the wealth to be redistributed upwards?

It's not. That's why I'm always whining about dismantling the government as much as possible. If it had stricter limitaions on passing legislation, creating agencies, interpreting the constitution, and a well-written budget amendment that mandated profitability and restricted tax levels, there would be no political system to rig. Nobody is going to lobby an impotent government.

The solution isn't to say "ok we're taking X% of your wealth and giving it to the poor people." That's only treating the symptom. The cure is to treat the system that allows for such a concentration of wealth to occur.

We're agreed on the first point. Half-agreed at least on the second. Concentration of wealth is not necessarily a bad thing, as long as the system it operates in is alowed to continually generate more wealth. The distribution remains quite unequal (though I don't think the disparity would be as drastic as it is now), but the important thing is that everyone keeps moving up.

Perhaps more importantly, distribution of wealth seems to hover at around the top 10% having more than the bottom 90%, no matter what society you are in. In societies where that wealth is allowed to buy the inherently unethical mandate of force that only states have, that disparity gets even worse, and then it gets cemented in.

That's my view, anyway. If you have some other system I'm listening.

You the consumer are paying $4 and $5 a gallon for gas. Meanwhile, oil speculators at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley drive the price per barrel up more and more. Traders at AIG make ridiculously stupid bets on the derivatives and credit default markets. When they blow up, who makes them whole? You the taxpayer. You pay for it with overcrowded schools because of slashed education budgets. You pay for it with 10% unemployment. You pay for it with reduced social services. All because the titans of capitalism are "too big to fail." Makes me sick.

Is this all directed at me because I'm starting to wonder if you read the whole post, either. The reason I said the part in bold is because of just how harmful government intervention is. Goldman-Sachs and Morgan Stanley are only too big to fail because the government was captured by business, just as it always is in the end. The bailout money was stolen from the citizenry by the government. If the government wasn't in education in the first place there would be no more overcrowding of schools than there is overcrowding of supermarkets or gas stations. There would probably still be a high unemployment rate in the event of bank failures, but it takes state favoritism and iron grip to make it last more than a couple of years.

It makes me sick, too. Which is why I say we need to take that power away.

[mookiemookie]

Originally Posted by UnderseaLcpl

Is this all directed at me

Nope, just a rant using the collective "you"

[Gerald]

A very "neutral" statement I must say

[gimpy117]

Originally Posted by Vendor

Not invite him to some temptation now

saw this...couldn't help but think of this thread

[Gerald]

Originally Posted by gimpy117

saw this...couldn't help but think of this thread

Well,you are enough "old" to understand what was meant