5 ms·

A large number (majority?) of people who are proponents for american-style capitalism, advocating for less government intervention, are from big universities ar

A large number (majority?) of people who are proponents for american-style capitalism, advocating for less government intervention, are from big universities around the U.S, and will often earn a relatively high wage. Although it's very hard to quantify, I feel as though these people are very disassociated from the everyday life the claim to be studying. If you live near Harvard earning ~300k a year, how easy is it to imagine (pretend?) that everything is fine and that the skewed income distribution is actually a positive thing. Boiled down - can people who are part of such a skewed system really produce unbiased studies and theories about the system? They back up their claims with various arguments as to the nature of the average consumer and echoes and remnants of trickle-down economics theories. Why don't people instead look at the actual world for more accurate evidence? The U.S. is a pioneer of creating highly divided cultures, with the top 1% earning ridiculous amounts of money and living in relative luxury, while having a very large population of people struggling to make ends meet, or even get healthcare due to the associated costs. At the same time, countries exercising a highly socialistic economic policy (welfare countries), such as the Nordics and Germany to some extent have a far higher "average" quality of life, as well as (arguably) a happier population. Being a taxi driver in Norway or Denmark doesn't mean you live in near-poverty and have to work 80 hours a week to make ends meet. While I'll try to not get into details of economic theory, and so forth, one question that has always irked me is the following: Does the evidence not speak for itself? In what country has pure capitalism (or at least as close as we can get), actually worked to produce a happy and harmonious society?

msandford 11y ago
Personally I think that the growth of the banking sector is the problem, as it tends to capture more and more of the profits and allocate them to the pay of the bankers. It's also a brain-drain on other industries. Finally, the banks do occasionally lose everything and then we have to bail them out. Remove the "bail them out" part of the process and you'd likely see a fair amount of income equality restored. Banking has a concentrating effect on the economy, and the bigger the bank the more concentrating it is. If we had banks small enough to fail, they'd still concentrate but to a much smaller degree. That'd be good for income equality and good for putting smart people to work in favor of small businesses instead of against them, and good for reducing the tax burden on the non-rich who ultimately fund the bailouts.
- walterbell 11y ago
  We know when the firewall was turned off: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass–Steagall_Legislation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass–Steagall_Legislation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm–Leach–Bliley_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm–Leach–Bliley_Act
  - msandford 11y ago
    I'm not sure that repealing Glass-Steagall was the problem. We did have the savings & loan crisis and that was prior to the repeal. Personally I think it has more to do with the banks going public and then being on the treadmill of ever increasing profits. The NYT has a piece on the issue from 1999. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C03E7DF1639F931A1575BC0A96E9C8B63 http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C03E7DF1639F... Slate also documents the banks going public, again prior to repealing Glass-Steagall. http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2010/01/the_gang_of_five_and_how_they_nearly_ruined_us.html http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2010/01/the_...
    - tunap 11y ago
      Consolidation of oligops, helped too, corporate welfare has always been the norm & the revolving door b/t industry & regulators is a new-ish trick they seem to have mastered to a T. The Commodities Modernization Act of 1999+Financial Services Commodities Act of 1999 were not the bills that killed Glass-Steagall, but they were the final stake in the heart of the GD I protections that have been eroded over the last 30 years, or so. Frontline had a great doc'y on it years ago documenting the billions of lobbyist dollars that went into the piecemeal dismantling the G-S Act, but I cannot locate it currently(my n900 is almost just a phone these days...which is nice). Now that we are entrenched in the GD II, aka the 'Great Recovery', we can use some of our idle time to look back at commodities and securities price graphs over the last 20-30 years. It may be a coincidence that prices tripled, quadrupled & quintupled since 2000, but I doubt it. It took them 7 years to ruin the world economy and it would have come quicker if 9/11 hadn't made them pause to shed some crocodile tears. PS: hey Walter, to answer your questions from last month I can no longer post to: Yes & Mostly abstinence. More I rely on an org, the more I am beholden to them. Stick mostly to bare essentials.
kabouseng 11y ago
Wow lots of strawmen here. "A large number (majority?) of people who are proponents for american-style capitalism, advocating for less government intervention, are from big universities around the U.S" Source? So what? "Boiled down - can people who are part of such a skewed system really produce unbiased studies and theories about the system?" Can people who are part of the lower earning rung of society give a unbiased opinion of the system? "Does the evidence not speak for itself? In what country has pure capitalism (or at least as close as we can get), actually worked to produce a happy and harmonious society?" Yes the evidence does speak for itself. Capitalism worked out pretty great for much of Western Civilization. Everywhere where more socialist approaches were tried it failed. Just ask all soviet countries', Japan, East Germany, China etc. citizens if they are happy. America is not for nothing the land of opportunity, and it is not for nothing that emigrants are flocking to the USA, Europe and Australia. Unfortunately the soviets discovered you cannot have a classless society. It is that drive to elevate yourself to a higher class that makes us want to achieve more than the absolute minimum required effort.
- johanneskanybal 11y ago
  Creative quoting on your part but let's not pretend he was talking about communism. It stated pretty clearly [countries with] "highly socialistic economic policy (welfare countries)". All the mentioned countries are successfull capitalistic countries with better safeguards and policies.
  - kaybe 11y ago
    Well, in Germany we call the system we're using 'social market economy' and it does not aspire to be pure capitalism.
- tveita 11y ago
  > America is not for nothing the land of opportunity The U.S. has low social mobility compared to other developed countries. What claim does it currently have on being the land of opportunity?
- paulsecwhatt 11y ago
fixxer 11y ago
"Boiled down - can people who are part of such a skewed system really produce unbiased studies and theories about the system?" Those who are part of the 99% exhibit a bias as well. This is the nature of political economy arguments.

msandford 11y ago

Personally I think that the growth of the banking sector is the problem, as it tends to capture more and more of the profits and allocate them to the pay of the bankers. It's also a brain-drain on other industries. Finally, the banks do occasionally lose everything and then we have to bail them out. Remove the "bail them out" part of the process and you'd likely see a fair amount of income equality restored. Banking has a concentrating effect on the economy, and the bigger the bank the more concentrating it is. If we had banks small enough to fail, they'd still concentrate but to a much smaller degree. That'd be good for income equality and good for putting smart people to work in favor of small businesses instead of against them, and good for reducing the tax burden on the non-rich who ultimately fund the bailouts.

walterbell 11y ago
We know when the firewall was turned off: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass–Steagall_Legislation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass–Steagall_Legislation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm–Leach–Bliley_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm–Leach–Bliley_Act
- msandford 11y ago
  I'm not sure that repealing Glass-Steagall was the problem. We did have the savings & loan crisis and that was prior to the repeal. Personally I think it has more to do with the banks going public and then being on the treadmill of ever increasing profits. The NYT has a piece on the issue from 1999. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C03E7DF1639F931A1575BC0A96E9C8B63 http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C03E7DF1639F... Slate also documents the banks going public, again prior to repealing Glass-Steagall. http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2010/01/the_gang_of_five_and_how_they_nearly_ruined_us.html http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2010/01/the_...
  - tunap 11y ago
    Consolidation of oligops, helped too, corporate welfare has always been the norm & the revolving door b/t industry & regulators is a new-ish trick they seem to have mastered to a T. The Commodities Modernization Act of 1999+Financial Services Commodities Act of 1999 were not the bills that killed Glass-Steagall, but they were the final stake in the heart of the GD I protections that have been eroded over the last 30 years, or so. Frontline had a great doc'y on it years ago documenting the billions of lobbyist dollars that went into the piecemeal dismantling the G-S Act, but I cannot locate it currently(my n900 is almost just a phone these days...which is nice). Now that we are entrenched in the GD II, aka the 'Great Recovery', we can use some of our idle time to look back at commodities and securities price graphs over the last 20-30 years. It may be a coincidence that prices tripled, quadrupled & quintupled since 2000, but I doubt it. It took them 7 years to ruin the world economy and it would have come quicker if 9/11 hadn't made them pause to shed some crocodile tears. PS: hey Walter, to answer your questions from last month I can no longer post to: Yes & Mostly abstinence. More I rely on an org, the more I am beholden to them. Stick mostly to bare essentials.

kabouseng 11y ago

Wow lots of strawmen here. "A large number (majority?) of people who are proponents for american-style capitalism, advocating for less government intervention, are from big universities around the U.S" Source? So what? "Boiled down - can people who are part of such a skewed system really produce unbiased studies and theories about the system?" Can people who are part of the lower earning rung of society give a unbiased opinion of the system? "Does the evidence not speak for itself? In what country has pure capitalism (or at least as close as we can get), actually worked to produce a happy and harmonious society?" Yes the evidence does speak for itself. Capitalism worked out pretty great for much of Western Civilization. Everywhere where more socialist approaches were tried it failed. Just ask all soviet countries', Japan, East Germany, China etc. citizens if they are happy. America is not for nothing the land of opportunity, and it is not for nothing that emigrants are flocking to the USA, Europe and Australia. Unfortunately the soviets discovered you cannot have a classless society. It is that drive to elevate yourself to a higher class that makes us want to achieve more than the absolute minimum required effort.

johanneskanybal 11y ago
Creative quoting on your part but let's not pretend he was talking about communism. It stated pretty clearly [countries with] "highly socialistic economic policy (welfare countries)". All the mentioned countries are successfull capitalistic countries with better safeguards and policies.
- kaybe 11y ago
  Well, in Germany we call the system we're using 'social market economy' and it does not aspire to be pure capitalism.
tveita 11y ago
> America is not for nothing the land of opportunity The U.S. has low social mobility compared to other developed countries. What claim does it currently have on being the land of opportunity?
paulsecwhatt 11y ago

fixxer 11y ago

"Boiled down - can people who are part of such a skewed system really produce unbiased studies and theories about the system?" Those who are part of the 99% exhibit a bias as well. This is the nature of political economy arguments.