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The Cure To Our Economic Problems / The Best Equity is Sweat Equity

12 points by astrec 18y ago

alexandros 18y ago
I understand all the admiration of the US enterpreneurial spirit, and I agree that all the measures offered are conscious populism by the candidates. It is remarkable however, how little he offers in the way of actual measures a potential president could take. 'encourage enterpreneurs'? Those same enterpreneurs that don't care about tax rates and recessions are going to care about 'encouragement'? Would he fund someone who says 'after our new president's encouragement, I decided to start a business'? As it stands, I get very little other than populistic statement of the obvious by this blog post.
- jfornear 18y ago
  I thought the same thing. Cuban's outlook on America seems a little too focused on money imo. I think there are more things to consider than merely your pocketbook. Granted, he is worth 5 billion times more than I am, and the financial crisis is a hot topic right now.
jacobolus 18y ago
I stopped reading after the first few paragraphs. The author displays a stunning lack of economic sophistication, boiling down current economic problems to the U.S. budget deficit. Currently the chief economic problem facing the US is that American consumer spending (and significantly, growing consumer spending) has been fueling the economy for decades, while working class and middle class wages have been stagnant. The resulting massive consumer debt was masked somewhat, or at least prevented from exploding into crisis, by policies which inflated house values and encouraged homeowners to borrow massively against home equity. Decreasing government spending or raising taxes in order to rein in the deficit is, indeed, precisely the wrong thing to do in the budding recession. “Entrepreneurial spirit” alone isn’t going to do shit. Needed are massive Keynesian government expenditures on infrastructure, boosting wages and employment, and keeping the economy going during a recession. Even deficit hawks are admitting this these days. (Clearly there are several other problems: the budget deficits, current account deficits, and trade deficits which the U.S. is running are all obscenely high. The U.S. “defense” budget is a giant sinkhole which causes massive harm worldwide for arguably very little benefit, except to a shrinking number of specific very large corporations and (above all) their executives. U.S. dependency on oil imports is extremely costly and ultimately unsustainable, and the American government would do well to massively invest in alternative energy research. Etc.)

12 points by astrec 18y ago

I understand all the admiration of the US enterpreneurial spirit, and I agree that all the measures offered are conscious populism by the candidates. It is remarkable however, how little he offers in the way of actual measures a potential president could take. 'encourage enterpreneurs'? Those same enterpreneurs that don't care about tax rates and recessions are going to care about 'encouragement'? Would he fund someone who says 'after our new president's encouragement, I decided to start a business'? As it stands, I get very little other than populistic statement of the obvious by this blog post.

jfornear 18y ago
I thought the same thing. Cuban's outlook on America seems a little too focused on money imo. I think there are more things to consider than merely your pocketbook. Granted, he is worth 5 billion times more than I am, and the financial crisis is a hot topic right now.

jacobolus 18y ago

I stopped reading after the first few paragraphs. The author displays a stunning lack of economic sophistication, boiling down current economic problems to the U.S. budget deficit. Currently the chief economic problem facing the US is that American consumer spending (and significantly, growing consumer spending) has been fueling the economy for decades, while working class and middle class wages have been stagnant. The resulting massive consumer debt was masked somewhat, or at least prevented from exploding into crisis, by policies which inflated house values and encouraged homeowners to borrow massively against home equity. Decreasing government spending or raising taxes in order to rein in the deficit is, indeed, precisely the wrong thing to do in the budding recession. “Entrepreneurial spirit” alone isn’t going to do shit. Needed are massive Keynesian government expenditures on infrastructure, boosting wages and employment, and keeping the economy going during a recession. Even deficit hawks are admitting this these days. (Clearly there are several other problems: the budget deficits, current account deficits, and trade deficits which the U.S. is running are all obscenely high. The U.S. “defense” budget is a giant sinkhole which causes massive harm worldwide for arguably very little benefit, except to a shrinking number of specific very large corporations and (above all) their executives. U.S. dependency on oil imports is extremely costly and ultimately unsustainable, and the American government would do well to massively invest in alternative energy research. Etc.)