What’s Wrong with the World

"The only question is, whose heads?"

Easy, too big to fail is too big to exist - make a few bankers cry. We also need a financial transaction tax. Seriously crimp the curious notion of corporate personhood - undo Citizens united and way more. End carried interest...for a start.

The rulers, in the Moldbuggian sense, (http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2011/01/your-goverment-in-pictures-1954.html), which here means the bureaucrats. Although a little McCarthyism might be enough. Bluntly: make unelected government employees responsible (for example to elected government employees). Right now, the elected ones spend a significant period of their time campaigning for re-election and profiting from their current election. Authority originally vested in Congress has been passed to the permanent civil service. Congress shows little sign of taking it back, and the service shows little sign of being responsible to anyone.

We could also call for the heads of Congress and hope that Congress manages to react well enough to demand its authority back from the bureaucrats so that it can *fix* things, but I fear that the result of such an indirect approach would simply be to make sacrificial lambs of Congress.

Having a relative in the banking industry, I'd say we all need to do more research before simply buying this thinking. Is there greed? Sure. But a good part of the blame goes back to the actions of our government. Don't see it? Do more research. Don't let this play into communistic thinking. It is a smoke screen, and could be a very effective one at that. Sorry I cannot give details here, but start by look to the real causes of the savings and loan problems in the '80s; the government's redefinition of what it required on the books purposefully placed them into insolvency. The government lied to them, and then stabbed them in the back. Ask those who lived this. Then work forward and take a good look at the role of the government; they repeated their underhanded actions, and later basically forced banks to make loans to those who were not creditworthy. They monkeyed with our financial system and ruined it.

Then there is the whole other issue of the corporate world taking jobs oversees. Don't get me started. If they didn't there would be no American companies left. Someone would take the business from them. Remember that the rest of the world is greedy too. Free trade agreements are destroying us. Our government again. You think the problem is greed? Greed for what? Money or raw power? Is the problem Capitalism or Big Progressive Government?

Reforming the civil service would actually require what Al describes because there is a symbiotic relationship between the civil service and big contracting companies. The revolving door between them is as mutually beneficial as the one between Wall St and Washington. They also benefit one another by creating a hospitable environment for one another. Agency X needs to hire Lockheed to do IT work. Lockheed has to charge $150-$200/hour to cover overhead costs, taxes, etc. where hiring a few 1099s to help Agency X would cost 50-60% that (since 1099s have virtually no overhead costs). So Agency X needs a larger budget. That then creates a bigger pool of money to eat up for the contractors. Then their employees can hop back and forth as desired provided they go through the right "conflict of interest" kabuki to not anger the dread Elder Gods of Bureaucratic Ethics.

We'd need a President with the will of Ivan the Terrible to put these people into their place on behalf of the general public.

David, I rather hope that your point is Steve's point, though he's not saying it outright. He is, after all, one of the only contributors to this blog (other than me) whom I've always understood to be unambiguously in favor of the free market.

Walter Williams, from The Examiner:

Do we want to repeat history [as in the Great Depression] by listening to those who created the calamity? That's like calling on an arsonist to help put out a fire.

Amen.

No one should be "occupying" anywhere, but speaking hyperbolically, if the question is one of wanting there to be more jobs, perhaps protestors should be "occupying" Pennsylvania Avenue. Certainly, the worst thing we can do for the recovery of the economy would be to listen to the loony left.

One more point, of course: To the extent that this is about college loans and lack of academic jobs, the academic market and the demand for college degrees has been grossly inflated by government money for many decades, encouraging the assumption that everyone should go to college. This has also inflated the academic job market. A crash was bound to come eventually. The entitlement mindset says that once there have been x number of jobs in "my" economic sector, there must always be, that you can never have too many x's, and that if government artificially inflates the x sector, this must be kept going at the level in secula seculorum. Welcome to reality, guys. You were lied to. How's that degree in Women's Studies workin' out for ya'? Too bad you took out a big loan to get it. Live and learn.

Do I feel sorry for the philosophers getting new PhD's and unable to find jobs? Yes, I do. Do I think they have a claim on the universe? No, I don't. That's why I warn people thinking of going to graduate school that they need another string to their bow. The party's ending.

I think Bush and Clinton's heads, at the very least.

I'm not sure why this inevitably ends up as an either-or between gov't or banksters. It seems to me more like a classic case of wealthy and powerful people colluding to make themselves more wealthy and powerful, and then when it went south to make sure they didn't suffer too much. Looks to me like it worked. I just can't get the meme of poor put-upon banks who were forced to make bad loans. They were clamoring to make these loans; they couldn't get enough of them. They were going to ride the wave of house prices all the way to the...well, the bank. If all the 'American Dream' stuff were concocted for the sole purpose of enriching the banks (and also the politicians who sell themselves to them) how would it have looked any different?

If the banksters wanted a free market they would probably advocate one. I figure they know well that a free market would be very bad for them.

A) "You think the problem is greed?"

Yes.

B) "Greed for what? Money or raw power?"

Yes.

C) "Is the problem Capitalism or Big Progressive Government?"

Yes.

"I'm not sure why this inevitably ends up as an either-or between gov't or banksters."

Because both sides work from the false binary produced by an ideological belief that their side is totally correct, and that any compromise results in a slippery slope, on the one side, a slide into state socialism, and one the other, a slide into Gilded Age-style plutocracy. That such a binary is bogus should have been apparent long ago, but people will cling to their ideologies.

I just can't get the meme of poor put-upon banks who were forced to make bad loans.

The right seems generally unwilling to face the fact that this was part of a revised agreement between the banks and federal government that greatly enriched the banking elites. It was the concession they had to make in order to see the end of Glass-Steagall.

The real fight isn't between the private and public sectors, it's between Washington and Wall Street on one side and the American people on the other.

I think Bush and Clinton's heads, at the very least.

ObaMessiah doesn't get a look-in? Because his policies are going to save the economy, perhaps?

The right seems generally unwilling to face the fact that this was part of a revised agreement between the banks and federal government that greatly enriched the banking elites. It was the concession they had to make in order to see the end of Glass-Steagall.

The real fight isn't between the private and public sectors, it's between Washington and Wall Street on one side and the American people on the other.

You can tell your a big Vox Day fan.

As far as collage degrees et al is is concerned let me speak my mind

a) I think that today many graduate degrees (especially in business related subjects) teach what in the past would have been covered in long apprenticeships e.g. in the BBC once upon a time you joined as the tea boy and worked your way from there. Now you can argue that this results in companies where no-one thinks outside the box but that is another discussion.

b) not everyone should go to collage, there are lots of professions which pay reasonably well whilst not requiring a degree, such as plumbing, administration, store managers etc.

c) Before we decide on who should pay for the cost of education we must think about the purpose of education. Is it to educate people to follow the latest fads in the marketplace and produce lots of shiny consumer goods, or is its purpose to educate people to know, love and to serve God and to be wise people/rulers. Now whilst the two are not mutually exclusive it is my contetion that ever since a market was introduced into higher education that the latter has been winning.

"Is the problem Capitalism or Big Progressive Government?"

The last time we had anything even resembling "Big Progressive Government" most of you all were infants or (more likely) not yet conceived. This may be of interest to those not hopelessly in the thrall of the magic of markets.

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/rodrik62/English

Those of you who have been deceived by the GSE line and are interested in understanding what actually happened should google "zombie lies" and explore.

One of the things I forgot to mention is the loss to the productive economy of luring folks with real smarts and PhDs in things like math, physics, and engineering into finance which is largely unproductive. Compensation over a reasonable amount which isn't 10 year restricted stock should be taxed at 90%. No one should be able to get wealthy marking to market.

Steve,

As a conservative, I get nervous whenever anyone starts talking about heads on pikes, metaphorically or not. I'm just not excited about revolutionary talk, period. Rod Dreher has started blogging again and posted a couple of sympathetic items about the Occupy movement. I posted a comment to the effect that I wasn't sympathetic at all and what we needed in Washington was less regulation and less spending. Rod thought I was crazy but here is the deal -- even after all the supposedly horrible "de-regulation" of the 90s and 00s, the government was knee-deep in the financial sector, especially the mortgage industry which eventually blew-up. And yes, Republicans and Democrats and equally to blame for the push to make sure every goofy unworthy minority out there could own their own home (or every Tom, Dick and Harry could refi and use their house as an ATM whether or not they could afford it). So there is plenty of blame to go around but don't claim that there was not government regulation or involvement with Wall Street -- there was plenty.

As for what should be done, I'm with the Tea Party, not the OWS movement. As I said above, less government, less regulation and let people stand on their own two feet. People can't find jobs because of Wall Street? I don't think so. How about because of Obamacare, high corporare taxes, EPA regulations, government debt as far as the eye can see, etc. etc. We need elected officials willing to tackle these problems and the economy will grow just fine. Mind you not every sector of the economy (as Lydia point out in her wise comment) and maybe not every geographic area of the country -- some of us will have to move to North Dakota or Texas for a good job or think about coal mining country (I just read an article about how the coal mining industry is desperate for workers and without a college education starting pay is $70K).

A neocon should never be trusted when it comes to deficit spending. Two wars paid entirely by credit card and a Medicare prescription plan as well, but government spending during the worst recession since WW2 - that's crazy talk.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/07/the-chart-that-should-accompany-all-discussions-of-the-debt-ceiling/242484/

Also, The Onion has a "revolutionary" solution to the debt crisis.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/aug/07/us-debt-fake-coup

"...make sure every goofy unworthy minority out there could own their own home..."

Again folks this is an indicator of someone who hasn't a clue about the present difficulties - google "zombie lies" for this one and others. The GSEs followed, they didn't lead and weren't responsible for the financial crisis.

"Rod thought I was crazy..."

Very discerning, I'll have to add RD to my bookmarks.

"...supposedly horrible "de-regulation" of the 90s and 00s,"

Again, deregulation started under Carter in the 1970s and has been driving things since then. I understand the desire to ignore the 1980s but we really can't. There was a definite failure to have regulation keep pace with things like shadow banking and derivatives (e.g. exchange listing derivatives).

"...Republicans and Democrats and equally to blame..."

No, engaging in wishy-washy equivocation in order to feel good isn't going to help here. One party (R) is a wholly owned subsidiary of our plutocrat class and needs to be replaced; the other (D) too often lacks courage, participates too much in the revolving door, and is cursed with too many conservatives but, given more pitchforks to spur them on, has the potential to actually act in the nation's interest.

"...think about coal mining country..."

Only a conservative could see coal mining as a solution to 16% unemployment. A handful of fit folks may be able to get good mining jobs but - wait - now I get it! Jeff is a genius. First we repeal all those pesky regulations including (I presume) mine safety regs. Greed and gravity will make sure that there will be plenty of ongoing vacancies. Increased pollution takes care of the rest. Take at look at parts of Eastern Europe to see the future Jeff's Galtian vision has in store for us.

The present crisis, here and in Europe, is wholly a conservative and libertarian policy failure. (I just saw that Paulsen apologized for his failure to understand his basic Keynes-Hicks and losing a bundle in the process.)

"One party...needs to be replaced; the other too often lacks courage, participates too much in the revolving door, and is cursed with too many [of the other guys] but, given more pitchforks to spur them on, has the potential to actually act in the nation's interest."

Could na hae said it better meself laddie.

The Elephant

"One party (R) is a wholly owned subsidiary of our plutocrat class and needs to be replaced; the other (D) too often lacks courage, participates too much in the revolving door, and is cursed with too many conservatives but, given more pitchforks to spur them on, has the potential to actually act in the nation's interest."

No, the fact is that neither party has the interest of the middle class in mind, except as voting-machine fodder. (R) is the party of business and has been since its inception. (D) has become the party of the underclass, by whose created dependency it remains in power. (D) is no less plutocratic and power-hungry than (R); it's just that the power-seeking manifests itself differently, as does the resultant created dependency.

M.E. is being mischievous and means to reverse Al's parties, methinks.

@al: "The last time we had anything even resembling 'Big Progressive Government' most of you all were infants or (more likely) not yet conceived."

Please, please, please, al - help me out, here: state a set of criteria for what, in your view, counts as "big progressive government."

As you go about this task, you will want to bear in mind that, to make your case, you will need to show that under, say, FDR, JFK & LBJ, our government was bigger and more progressive than it has been under the Bush's - to say nothing of Clinton & Obama.

I bet you can't do it.

I bet you daren't even try.

Quite right Lydia, the Elephant with the mask has my back!

Meanwhile, I thought this is an excellent primer on some of the ways in which the government, which was heavily involved in our economy in the 70s, 80s, 90s and 00s helped contribute to the mess we are in right now:

http://www.american.com/archive/2010/december/how-government-failure-caused-the-great-recession

Meanwhile, Step 2, this neocon thought Bush and the Republican controlled Congress spent too much money in the oughts and since I don't believe in unicorn/rainbow/Keynesian economics, of course I also don't support spending too much money in 2009-2010 under a Democratic President and Congress.

But for those who are keeping track, most of the big banks have paid back their TARP money!

Meanwhile, Step 2, this neocon thought Bush and the Republican controlled Congress spent too much money in the oughts...

Prove it. Link one or more comments you made back when the Republican were running things that supports the claim you would have paid for the wars with tax increases or with equivalent spending cuts. A generic "reduce spending" isn't good enough, you have to describe what you would cut and how that would be sufficient to counteract the cost of the wars.

Saw an OWS protest march when I was in Chicago last weekend. What impressed me (if that is the word) is just how angry they were. From this datum, I conclude this movement is not rational - it's passionate. Heads on pikes are not going to satisfy them. Entering the lists for or against Wall St. Will not impress them. The good news is this anger has not truly fixed itself on a target.

James Taranto, in his Best of the Web blog, went and talked to them and found something very different. Really and truly, I encourage you to go see for yourselves. From a safe distance.

Steve,

Assuming you're only speaking metaphorically with the 'heads on pikes' business, what does it matter? Ax a bankster, he ends up a Secretary, or Under-Secretary, or what-not; ax a Secretary, or Under-Secretary, or what-not, he ends up a bankster.

And round and round it goes.

If a staunch, knowledgeable libertarian like Alan Greenspan admits that deregulation of the financial industry played a key role in the subprime mortgage crisis, I'll sure believe him.

Regulation of the financial industry is not looney leftism; it's just common sense. If investors rely on credit rating agencies and those agencies say that mortgage-backed securities are investment grade, investors will buy them; if investors buy them, banks will continue to issue subprime mortgages because as soon as soon as they are securitized and sold off the banks do not bear the risk. It is now public knowledge that the rating agencies earned massive profits from rating MBS, pressuring them to rate them favorably - remember, ratings agencies are paid by the firms that organize and sell debt to investors. Fannie & Freddie getting tax incentives to buy MBS were icing, but not the cake.

So, I ask, is it really crazy to hope for a non-profit rating agency, or at least regulation of the rating industry, if not additional regulation of banks themselves? Is that really Godless liberal ideology?

Steve, re your earlier response to al, I should interject that things WERE pretty bad under FDR. In fact Obama has been drawing some comparisons to him of late.

LBJ was no Coolidge either...

But JFK, I will give him that he had a good economic head on his shoulders. It was about the only thing he was smart at.

The Elephant

John H.

Regarding rating agencies -- why should the government be in the business of regulating rating agencies (or establishing a monopoly for the big three)? Why not have a competetive market develop for rating bonds (like there is for equities)? Once again, you are putting the cart before the horse -- the government is already heavily involved in the rating agency game and when the rating agencies screw up you somehow claim deregulation is to blame? Rating agencies were regulated and the regulation failed. Some regulation is always going to be necessary to catch crooks and liars -- beyond that let companies competing with one another figure everything else out.

Regarding rating agencies -- why should the government be in the business of regulating rating agencies (or establishing a monopoly for the big three)?

Generally, libertarians are in favor of government regulations that fight fraud since most libertarians consider fraud and force to be two grounds by which the government can intervene. There's nothing wrong with the government requiring certain minimum disclosures and practices from businesses that exist for the sole purpose of giving information to buyers about the quality of a good, especially a good whose nature is often mercurial to the non-specialist buyer.

Deregulation is easily and rightly blamed in some areas of this crisis. Much of it would never have happened if Glass-Steagall were still in effect. Libertarians have the equivalent of liberals' problem with regulation: they don't know when there is too little regulation to prevent fraud and coercion.

Mike T.,

I think you don't understand the purpose of the rating agencies -- indeed it wouldn't surprise me if the SEC already had authority to police bond issues to make sure there is no fraud going on when a corporation puts them on the market. But the agencies are doing something different -- they are trying to make a determination that bond X or bond Y is a better investment. There are literally hundreds of folks doing that for a living when it comes to stocks and that industry is not tightly controlled by Washington -- why should Moody's, Fitch and Standard and Poor's be the only three guys who get to officially rate bonds? It doesn't make sense and leads to the problems we both want to avoid.

Meanwhile, in further news, life over the past 20-30 years hasn't been all that bad, despite what you'll hear from the OWS crowd:

http://blog.american.com/2011/10/5-reasons-why-income-inequality-is-a-myth-and-occupy-wall-street-is-wrong/

I have no great love for the OWS folks, but they are onto something. Income inequality is no myth when the CEO of the company I work for makes more in a day than I do in a year. And I am right in the median range of the company's income levels. No doubt such a scenario is multiplied numerous times over in American business.

Seriously, who needs $13M a year?

"Seriously, who needs $13M a year?"

How about whoever rightfully earns it? Seriously, where do we stop with this line of questioning? If I'm a crazed Marxist, I could easily ask, "who needs $250,000 a year when most Americans only around $50K?"

Umm ha, the false binary raises its ugly head! "Think some people make too much money? You must be a Marxist!"

Somehow, some way the Right has to come to terms with its baptism of greed, just as the Left has to come to terms with its baptism of lust. I for one am not hopeful about either.

How about whoever rightfully earns it? Seriously, where do we stop with this line of questioning? If I'm a crazed Marxist, I could easily ask, "who needs $250,000 a year when most Americans only around $50K?"

The workers are just applying the same logic to them that the executives use on them when outsourcing. If my salary is so outrageous that I am to be replaced by an Indian code monkey, you better believe I'm going to stand in judgment of my CEO's compensation and performance in a way that'd make an Old Testament prophet uneasy.

"The workers are just applying the same logic to them that the executives use on them when outsourcing."

Are the workers shareholders? Then who cares what logic they apply -- they have no right to stand in any judgment -- the CEO is judged by the market and his (or her) shareholders and board, as it should be. If the "workers" don't like their situation, quit their jobs and start their own company with their own capital and equity at risk.

Respectfully Nice, you zipped right past Jeff's perfectly legitimate question. That is, if someone justly earned a pile of money, why should it matter if he needs it? Baptism of greed? How about baptism of envy?

Are the workers shareholders? Then who cares what logic they apply -- they have no right to stand in any judgment -- the CEO is judged by the market and his (or her) shareholders and board, as it should be. If the "workers" don't like their situation, quit their jobs and start their own company with their own capital and equity at risk.

Human nature is what it is. It won't bend to your Capitalist model of the Rational Economic Actor anymore than it will to any of the various Socialist models of man. The workers will judge, they will eventually fight back and we'll all be the poorer for it. Complaining about envy while defending greed is just a form of social autism.

How about baptism of envy?

They're two sides of the same coin. Most people will never turn on a rich man who they feel does right by them. If the rich tended to have a sense of noblesse oblige, class warfare rhetoric would be a lot less popular.

And I'm not actually defending the idea that $13m/year is "too much." I'm attacking the idea that you can defend the decimation of workers' wages while paying the executives increasingly more money. Basic logic tells you that if a man who actually makes your product should get paid less, the people managing him should get paid less as well since their jobs provide no more value.

And that probably would be the case if most corporate boards really represented the common shareholder. As it is, they're mostly good old boy networks that are as incestuous as any feudal aristocracy.

Corporations exist in order to make profits; they are legal "persons" who exist for that purpose. Hence, they are by definition avaricious. By the magic of capitalism, a vice is turned into a virtue, and what would be intolerable and sinful in a real person is deemed praiseworthy in a legal fictive "person." This should raise in true conservatives some measure of disquiet.

"I bet you can't do it.

I bet you daren't even try."

Be patient and I'll try however I need to get a slab for a small barn poured (grade, excavate, tie steel) before the rainy season as the pasture becomes too muddy and I'm not inclined to pay a grand for a pump. Be a few days.

Are the workers shareholders? Then who cares what logic they apply -- they have no right to stand in any judgment...

If workers don't want to be exploited too bad for them, CEO's are demigods that wield a mighty and terrible power to transcend social judgements and only the magical Market should decide the rewards for impoverishing local communities and enriching foreign governments.

"How about baptism of envy?"

How is it envious to note the fact that there are people that have exponentially more than they need while others are suffering? I'm not saying that it's right to take it from them. I'm saying that it's wrong for them to want it in the first place.

One expects the unregenerate to be greedy. The Christian, however, shouldn't be running to their defense, let alone falling into the trap himself.

Thought question: Why is it that you seldom hear a sermon on James 5:1-6 in the American church? I've been a Christian for 35+ years, and have heard countless sermons, but never one on that passage.

Most people will never turn on a rich man who they feel does right by them. If the rich tended to have a sense of noblesse oblige, class warfare rhetoric would be a lot less popular.

Mike, seriously, what are you saying??? You can't really be this naive.

Point 1: If you stuff these kids' heads full of class envy from grade 0, they are automatically going to assume that a whole buncha rich guys whom they never met, who never did either "right" or "unright" "by them," who, in fact, have *no relation to them personally whatsoever*, are evil bankster capitalists who deserve the lamp-post.

Point 2: If they do make exceptions, what they'll probably do is make exceptions for people who are exceedingly rich but happen to espouse liberal politics or who jump on-board whatever the latest fad in leftist "ethical business" demands might be ("green jobs," or whatever), who will then get an unprincipled pass, even if they are engaging in graft and corruption and smooshing smaller businesses all over the place. This is the form that "feeling that this person did right by them" will take. You can keep it.

Point 3: If you get the sense of entitlement encouraged by all this balderdash about greed, blah, blah, going real good, the young people won't recognize actual noblesse oblige if it bites them in the posterior. They'll want to know what Miss Smithers, their lefty social studies teacher, would have said about this employer. If Miss Smithers would have thought him a greedy, racist, Tea Party, environment-destroying, homophobic, capitalist bigot, then that's what they'll think, too. Never mind how many jobs he actually provides to the community or his kindness, etc.

I honestly cannot believe you said that. Essentially, you're saying that toxic, blatantly communistic class envy must be a sign that the rich deserve it and aren't acting with noblesse oblige. That's nuts. I can think of a lot of things it's like, none of them good. ("Why do those darned Muslim terrorists hate us so much? We must be doing something really bad or they wouldn't want to fly planes into our buildings.")

Nice, you dodged again. If a person justly earns a pile of money, what does it matter if he needs it or wants it? Whether anyone can actually justly earn, say $13 mil is another question. One that requires something a little more thoughtful that "Greedy corporations! RAWR!"

Mike T.,

You are normally very sensible -- I think you need to be detoxed from reading too much Vox Day (and don't get me wrong, I like Vox but I think his economic thinking is fuzzy and clouded by his radical libertarianism). Anyway, Lydia said all I could say and she said it more elegantly. Like the Occupy crowd, too many generalities and vague declaration of nefarious motives are being imputed to various corporations and executives, when most are simply trying to do their best to provide the best goods and services at better prices than their competitors. And as the link I provided up above shows, most Americans have benefited thanks to this process, even with the occassional recession and now financial panic and extended recession.

Nice,

My favorite passage is the parable of the talents from Matthew 25:

"26 “His master replied, ‘You wicked, lazy servant! So you knew that I harvest where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed? 27 Well then, you should have put my money on deposit with the bankers, so that when I returned I would have received it back with interest.

28 “‘So take the bag of gold from him and give it to the one who has ten bags. 29 For whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. 30 And throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’

Seems like Jesus had a nuanced view of wealth...

Essentially, you're saying that toxic, blatantly communistic class envy must be a sign that the rich deserve it and aren't acting with noblesse oblige.

He wrote that class warfare rhetoric wouldn't be so popular if the rich were acting with noblesse oblige, which happens to be true. In the wake of the largest economic collapse in almost a century, how can any person who benefited hugely from the market bubble preceding the bust think the "real" problem is that workers are not making enough sacrifices, yet anyone who dares to mention shared sacrifices or talks about accountability for those most responsible for creating this financial disaster (including both Democrats and Republicans) is a dirty communist? It is unbelievable that we have a supposedly liberal media that refuses to call this class warfare, because it can't be honestly described any other way.

Step2, if you can't recognize the mindless and blatantly Marxist class envy of these infantile, anarchistic kookballs for what it is I cannot help you. As I understand Mike T, he's excusing it on the grounds that the rich haven't shown enough noblesse oblige. I'm simply astonished. And that this is supposed to be some form of libertarianism??? Say what??? Since when is the wacky, blatantly redistributionist, Big Government, entitlement-minded left libertarian? Since when do they even get _sympathy_ from libertarians? Maybe this is just another piece of the puzzle as to how R-- P--- gets such a...er...diverse group of supporters.

Mike T, I've got news for you: You're always talking about personal responsibility. I think you need to apply that here.

Lydia,

I never meant to imply that class warfare rhetoric would have no hold on anyone. There is a certain class of congenital moron for whom it would appeal in a society that genuinely practiced Christian social teachings from top to bottom. What I am saying is that it would a lot less popular because the rhetoric wouldn't match the reality. The margin of support would likely be critically narrowed such that it wouldn't easily win elections.

When a company dumps its American to hire Indian and Chinese for 1/3 the pay, while the CEO takes home 90x the average engineer's salary, most ordinary Americans instinctively don't want to hear arguments about how it was necessary to save the company money. Their first thought is "why is that !#@$head CEO still making $12m/year when John Q. American Worker got his job outsourced." That's human nature, plain and simple.

It also doesn't end there. It's my understanding that one of Rick Perry's biggest backers is a rich land developer who has gone out of his way to defeat proposals to bolster Texas's protection from illegal immigration. Why? Cheap labor. He'd rather pay some Mexican $10/hour to do a job that a blue collar American would get $25 for doing.

These things aren't lost on the average American. If the corporate elite in particular had done right by workers on basic issues like worker safety from the beginning, unions likely wouldn't even exist.

Jeff,

Like the Occupy crowd, too many generalities and vague declaration of nefarious motives are being imputed to various corporations and executives, when most are simply trying to do their best to provide the best goods and services at better prices than their competitors.

Very true. The OWS crowd cannot tell the difference between Wall Street and corporate America. The problems with corporate America could be redressed by reducing the corporate tax to a very low flat rate on revenues and a hefty tariff on "American goods" produced overseas for domestic consumption. I happen to like Cain's 999 plan, even though I have a lot of trouble with his affiliation with the Fed for that very reason.

Seems like Jesus had a nuanced view of wealth...

Indeed. The problem with the wealthy is the personality types that often acquire great wealth, not the wealth itself.

"My favorite passage is the parable of the talents from Matthew 25"

Which is great but beside the point. I've heard any number of sermons on that passage. None on James 5 though. Now why is that?

"If a person justly earns a pile of money, what does it matter if he needs it or wants it?"

Both the classical and historical Christian traditions state that the person should have no desire "to earn a pile of money" in the first place. Wanting more than you need, for prudence's sake excepted, is avarice. It was Enlightenment economics that turned greed into a virtue.

"Like the Occupy crowd, too many generalities and vague declaration of nefarious motives are being imputed to various corporations and executives, when most are simply trying to do their best to provide the best goods and services at better prices than their competitors."

Let's switch this around and see how it sounds: "Like the Tea Party crowd, too many generalities and vague declarations of nefarious motives are being imputed to various politicians and government agencies, when most are simply trying to do their best to provide the best responses and government services in better ways than their opponents."

Would you let a Lefty get away with balderdash like that?

As I understand Mike T, he's excusing it on the grounds that the rich haven't shown enough noblesse oblige. I'm simply astonished. And that this is supposed to be some form of libertarianism??? Say what??? Since when is the wacky, blatantly redistributionist, Big Government, entitlement-minded left libertarian? Since when do they even get _sympathy_ from libertarians? Maybe this is just another piece of the puzzle as to how R-- P--- gets such a...er...diverse group of supporters.

You understand me incorrectly. I am simply not sympathetic to either elites or these OWS crowd. I think they are made for each other. To me it's like Operation Barbarossa: can't both sides lose for the sake of the greater good?

Do recall that I am the person here who advocates policies like letting drug addicts die outside an emergency room that doesn't want to admit them and believes in simultaneously abolishing child support and welfare for unwed mothers.

Mike T, I've got news for you: You're always talking about personal responsibility. I think you need to apply that here.

And where have I actually agreed with OWS' demands? Where have I actually shown genuine sympathy toward most of the subgroups that make up most of OWS? To the contrary, I frequently viciously mock many of them for being so stupid that they not only paid $100k for a degree in some economically useless major, but can't even figure out why they deserve a good job less than a ditch digger.

Let me be perfectly clear. I think most of them are middle class brats who are just enraged that they have reaped the crop they sewed the moment they decided to drink, drug and screw their way through a major which imparts few, if any, job skills while collecting tens of thousands of dollars in debt. I think there is a delicious irony in these brats getting reduced to the same level of lifestyle as the "racist rednecks" they probably still mock.

However, as one who regularly visits wearethe99percent.tumblr.com to rubberneck, I've seen enough stories there to know that there is a large blue collar contingent who have been genuinely left behind and a number were destroyed because of medical reasons. They're no more monolithic than the Tea Party is.

"The problem with the wealthy is the personality types that often acquire great wealth, not the wealth itself."

Yet Jesus did say that it's hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom, which implies that wealth itself presents problems for piety.

"I've seen enough stories there to know that there is a large blue collar contingent who have been genuinely left behind"

What??? The rising tide doesn't raise all boats?? Trickle-down doesn't trickle down to everyone?

Heresy! Somebody quick -- call The Weekly Standard or the WSJ!!

From Patrick Deneen today at Front Porch Republic:

"The Tea Party and OWS are resurrecting some of the arguments of the Anti-federalists. But the Tea Party wants smaller government without sufficient attention to centralized economic power, and OWS wants a decrease in concentrated economic power without sufficient attention to the way in which that concentration has been enabled by government. Each is peddling a partial argument – and replicating the rutted arguments that have too long dominated American politics."

That's it in a nutshell, folks.

@al: "Be patient and I'll try however I need to get a slab for a small barn poured (grade, excavate, tie steel) before the rainy season as the pasture becomes too muddy and I'm not inclined to pay a grand for a pump. Be a few days..."

OK, I won't hold my breath.

Hobby-farming's a b*tch, ain't it?

Please try to make your real reply the next thing you post here, lest I suspect a sham.

;-)

I guess I don't really understand why all this class warfare stuff is even involved. Lloyd Blankfein et al should be in jail, or at the very least ruined and social pariahs. Thanks to the Supreme Court, we can't prosecute Bush and Clinton, but they ought to be prosecuted for allowing this. That's all though...no revolution, no institution of communism, no massive redistributive scheme slipped in under the radar...just punish those responsible. Why is it that even now, a good 70% of conservatives on the internet can't acknowledge that the banksters did indeed act recklessly and gambled the whole economy to get rich?

Jeff, there's nothing de jure, as far as I know, that prevents new firms from rating securities, but (a) I think it's unlikely that any start-up will take off soon, because there are huge barriers to entry; (b) even if start up firms took off, regulation is still a good idea, because if you don't regulate the industry, the same thing can happen again.

Are you against the Federal Reserve too? Perhaps you think we were better off a few centuries back when we had wildcat banking. Do you believe that the majority of economists are con artists?

Step2, if you can't recognize the mindless and blatantly Marxist class envy of these infantile, anarchistic kookballs for what it is I cannot help you.

If they were really anarchists, NYC would be in flames. I don't need your help to see what is going on, a few honest ones like Buffett openly admit that there has been class warfare and his side won. There is an inexplicable deference given to the wealthy from conservatives that I would like you to explain, if you can. I mean, I mock them constantly as being our corporate overlords, but many conservatives do treat them as overlords to whom everyone should eagerly submit and no blame or bad motives can ever be affixed to them - but when it comes to unions and other "parasites" those people are always blameworthy and filled with envy.

It also doesn't end there. It's my understanding that one of Rick Perry's biggest backers is a rich land developer who has gone out of his way to defeat proposals to bolster Texas's protection from illegal immigration. Why? Cheap labor. He'd rather pay some Mexican $10/hour to do a job that a blue collar American would get $25 for doing.

Mike, I'm quite happy to support fairly draconian measures to stop the employment of illegal immigrants. How many lefties are? It's the nasty right-wingers who support any sort of crack-down on even illegal immigration, not to mention limiting legal immigration.

Lydia,

Illegal immigration is a good example of the elite vs mainstream America. The numbers on being in favor of a comprehensive crackdown are well beyond just a right-wing issue. So much so that it has to encompass most moderates and liberals. About 70% of Americans are in favor of it. That leaves mainly the hardcore left and libertarians.

This is why I've long said that Ron Paul should run on a simplified version of his platform:

1. Massive crackdown on immigration.
2. End the wars.
3. End the Fed.
4. Fiscal accountability.
5. Civil rights.

Based on the polls on most of those issues, he'd be in line with about 70% of the American electorate.

In his book Real England Paul Kingsnorth writes:

"Giant multinational corporations dominate almost every area of national life, from finance to farming. They do so with the full and enthusiastic encouragement of the state, whichever political party happens to be managing it. Meanwhile, the same State busies itself enacting or enforcing laws...which crush the life out of the small, the independent and the local. Those on the right who blame an over-mighty State for our national woes and those on the left for whom the villain is the over-mighty corporation are both right and both wrong. These days...they are increasingly one and the same."

Anyone who can step back from his/her ideology for two seconds should be able to see something similar going on here in the States, although it's not advanced as far as it has in England. The modern Leviathan is not just the state (pace the Tea Party) or the corporations (pace the OWS) but a state-corporate hybrid. The anti-centralist Right and the anti-centralist Left are wasting time jousting with each other while the true enemy, the Beast, is busy devouring the countryside.

I wrote,

"@al: "The last time we had anything even resembling 'Big Progressive Government' most of you all were infants or (more likely) not yet conceived."

Steve replied,

"Please, please, please, al - help me out, here: state a set of criteria for what, in your view, counts as "big progressive government."

"As you go about this task, you will want to bear in mind that, to make your case, you will need to show that under, say, FDR, JFK & LBJ, our government was bigger and more progressive than it has been under the Bush's - to say nothing of Clinton & Obama."

"I bet you can't do it.
I bet you daren't even try."

Simple, hope you catch this. First of all numbers alone are meaningless so forget the Obama deficits. You are likely aware that we are in a serious financial situation. The unemployment rate is up, hence tax collections are down while demands for automatic stabilizers like unemployment insurance, food stamps, and medicaid are way up. That is the way things are supposed to work and would be the case regardless of who won in 2008.

Also we should keep in mind that we are a larger nation than we were in the past.

Perhaps we should look at government employment as a share of the population. We have a nice graph at,

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/21/notes-on-government-employment/

A comment on "bigness" may be appropriate: As with many things in life we have a certain asymmetry here. Conservatives and liberals view government differently; too many (most all?) conservatives assume that since they see reducing the size of government as a good in itself, liberals see expanding the size of government in a like manner. This, of course, is wrong (to be kind).

"So there you have it. The Bush-era brought you a regulatory state of militarized borders, drug wars, strategically weakened financial regulatory bodies for convenient regulatory shopping, and aggressive use of patents to shut down competition. This is not the regulatory state I fight for."

http://rortybomb.wordpress.com/2010/11/18/digging-into-the-changing-regulatory-state-of-the-past-10-years/

(A major pathology of contemporary liberalism is that too many on the left adopt brain-dead conservative memes, hence we are informed in SOTU addresses that "the era of big government is over" and that "as families must tighten their belts so must the federal government," but I digress.)

Another thought on bigness: Most government insurance programs are more effective, efficient, and cost effectiveness - Social Security, Medicare, and the VA. I would think that food stamps are more efficient and effective than tens of thousands of local food banks.

Anyway, the high point of progressiveness was 1965 - 66 before Johnson crashed and burned on Vietnam. Nothing on the scale of Medicare, medicaid, and civil rights has happened since. Nixon was a liberal by today's standards but then so was
Reagan.

Obama passed a major piece of social legislation but it was hardly progressive in any sense other than a conceptual crack in the door. Extending Medicare to all would have been progressive. Adding a public option would have been sort of progressive. The ACA was mostly a creature of conservative think tanks and recent Republican proposals.

I guess i should ask what you consider to be so big and progressive about the last forty or so years?

Oh, for eff's sake, Al - I waited FIVE WEEKS for THIS???

Wouldn't it have been easier just to have admitted in the first place that you have *no* serious, non-partisan conception of what counts as "Big Progressive Government?"

"...hope you catch this..."

Yeah, I bet.

"Wouldn't it have been easier just to have admitted in the first place that you have *no* serious, non-partisan conception of what counts as "Big Progressive Government?""

Steve, the term "Big Progressive Government" is itself ideological and partisan. You might start by recognizing that and devising a question that can be answered more to your liking. If you can't see the ideological, partisan nature of the question, I would be happy to help you out.

"Yeah, I bet."

Paging bitter, party of one.

Seriously Steve, the right has been ascendant in the West for over a generation. The world we currently confront is a conservative and neo-liberal creation. The problem is that you all keep moving the ball. Reagan would be too much a leftie for the current Republican base voter. Mandates, exchanges, cap and trade, etc. were all conservative ideas back when conservatives still had ideas.

Steve, this might help. Frum, Chait, and Sullivan have timely pieces:

http://nymag.com/news/politics/conservatives-david-frum-2011-11/

http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2011/11/why-obama-still-matters.html#more

"But the right is more unhinged and more dangerously full of denial. Since I was never structurally or financially or socially linked to the Washington right, I was immune to the withdrawal of jobs, money and access doled out to any dissenter in the Bush years. But every now and again, I get some kind of amazed look - "You're not going to back Obama again, are you?" - from someone in the conservative cocoon, and when I respond, "So far, you bet!", there is often a long pause and a genuine sadness on their faces. "What the hell happened to him?" you can hear them asking themselves.

Some of this is as head-scratching for me as it is for David:

Some of the smartest and most sophisticated people I know—canny investors, erudite authors—sincerely and passionately believe that President Barack Obama has gone far beyond conventional American liberalism and is willfully and relentlessly driving the United States down the road to socialism. No counterevidence will dissuade them from this belief: not record-high corporate profits, not almost 500,000 job losses in the public sector, not the lowest tax rates since the Truman administration. It is not easy to fit this belief alongside the equally strongly held belief that the president is a pitiful, bumbling amateur, dazed and overwhelmed by a job too big for him—and yet that is done too.

Did you get the impression from the GOP debates that Obama had lowered taxes? That he had not nationalized but saved the banks? That he had dispatched Osama and Qaddafi? That he had 60 percent support for a sane and succcessful foreign policy? That he was an exemplar of all those social values conservatives say they support: a model husband and father, a black man who has eschewed identity politics almost entirely, a president whose speeches are among the most intellectually Christian of any in modern times? This strange, bizarre hostility to him I put down to displaced anger at Bush, to cultural panic among the old, but also to a wider propaganda support system that is truly a sight to behold:"

"Seriously Steve, the right has been ascendant in the West for over a generation."

Seriously Al, I have no way of deciding whether you're lying through your teeth, or just deeply deluded, since you are evidently unwilling even to try to explain what you mean by the terms you use.

Hey Steve, check this out:

In the other tread, Al said, "The peak danger period re: the Soviet Union was in the mid-1960s."

In this thread, meanwhile, Al said, "the high point of progressiveness was 1965 - 66 before Johnson crashed and burned on Vietnam."

Hot damn! I bet he wishes he hadn't set these phrases down in digital space so close together.

An close identity between the "peak danger" from Communism and the "high point of progressiveness" is surely not the impression he wants to give.

Also, does our liberal friend suppose that our crashing and burning in Vietnam contributed to the decline of Soviet power, which, according to what he urged, commenced after the mid-1960s "peak danger"? Rare is the power that loses a bloody war, endures enormous riots on its streets and vast disorderly protests of its policies, while simultaneously gaining so dramatically against its foreign rival. What wonders progress works!