When I think of this tax bill, I remember the 600 b.c.e. fable of The Ant and the Grasshopper. It is one of Aesop's Fables and describes how a hungry grasshopper begs for food from an ant when winter comes and is refused. It is a moral lesson about the virtues of planning for the future. During the good times of the summer, the ants harvested and stored for the winter while the grasshopper splurged.

When the economy is booming, we have the opportunity to pay down the debt. Yet at this time, thanks to GOP “tax reform” we are adding a trillion dollars more to our debt.

The fed bailed out banks to stabilize the economy in 2008. We can argue over this but this won’t happen again. In the next crisis, the fed won’t have anymore arrows in its quiver due to the deficit. And winter will eventually show up. At that point, things will get really ugly really fast.

You are right and the GOP is now malicious as well as greedy. The GOP has planted this cancer in the system so that when it metastasized the body politic will be unable to defend itself. This is another reason why our Party must gain control of government before it is too late.

They profess their purity of spirit, and then -- like the Jim Bakkers of the world -- are found to be nothing but straw men. It seems today's Repubs are only interested in social conservatism, and yet they are still imbued (in the minds of the public) with the mantle of fiscal responsibility. It's all because of marketing, and if the Democrats don't get their act together and fight fire with fire, then the GOP will continue down the road to ruination. It's become the gilded age all over again.

Found this looking for KGOP:

https://www.democraticunderground.com/1017415151

Democrats and progressives congregate in the bigger cities and suburbs.

There were the Quakers who promoted abolition of the entire institution of slavery, and then there were societies that attempted to pass slavery laws or slave codes to make the slave's life easier. Codes such as restricting the total number of work hours for slaves and allowing Sunday worship. They promoted time off for slave women after birth, time off for slaves to plant gardens for food, some went so far as to decree that certain parts of a slaughtered animal had to go to the farm's slaves.

In the end, the entire institution of slavery had to be abolshed due to its continual horrors.

So there were 2 ways that people addressed the horrors of a slave economy. There are also 2 ways that people address the horrors of a capitalist economy.

There are those who want to pass codes and laws to keep capitalists in check, to prevent some of the worst horrors of capitalism. They pass minimum wage laws, work hour limits, rules for new parents and other laws and codes to prevent the slave, I mean the worker, from suffering too much.

Then there are the abolitionist, like me, who think the whole instutution of capitalism has to go. That like slavery, capitalism at its core is immoral, inhumane, excessively cruel and continually leads to ever harsher treatment of worker, or slaves by captalists or masters.

But so many for so long have been addicted to capitalism and can't stop themselves.

In the throes of feudalism? Did kings know that their power would in the future be simply based upon how much stolen wealth their fathers had accumulated?

Slavery in the US was combined with capitalism. In fact, it worked quite well with capitalism. So, after the civil war, there was an economic system already in place to takeover from slavery.

But feudal lords had no inkling that they could control huge swaths of people simply by having inherited capital. And get those people to pay for most of the infrastructure and other social costs while they luxuriated.

There are all sorts of ideas out their for a replacement: socialism, communism, marxism, economic democracy, slow money, participatory economics.

I'm open to good ideas. But capitalism is a failure and needs to be put into the dust heap of history.

Hyperbolic fulminations about capitalism without even attempting to conceive of a replacement are a very large failure.

Capitalism is compatible with socialism, economic democracy, and participatory economics. In fact, it is enhanced and strengthened by those. Thinking that those ideas are a "replacement" is not understanding them. They don't replace capitalism; they are part and parcel of workable capitalism.

Since you list communism and marxism, perhaps your goal is to replace capitalism with a dictatorship of the agrarian proletariat. That lead to famines in China in the 1950s.

That you can regulate and ameliorate a bad system and get a regulated or ameliorated Bad system, not a good system. You have to regulate capitalism BECAUSE it IS a Bad economic system. A good economic system should not have to be forced into fairness and equality by strict laws and regulations. It should be a fair system to begin with.

Why should taxes and laws have to bend and distort the very essence of capitalism to make it fair? Shouldn't a fair system naturally flow from a good economic system? I'm not saying you wont need laws and regulations to keep bad guys from misbehaving but the very essence of capitalism is that those born with capital get more capital and those born without capital get to be workers and prey. The bottom line is if a capitalist can pay you nothing, they get more capital or profit. Shouldn't the system of economy be fair and pay a person a fair wage for their work? What right does a rich capitalist have to pay you less than what you need to live? Why is it if you work hard and do a good job that you get none of the profit from the work you put in, unless you own your own business...but then you need capital for that and if you weren't born with it and around and around it goes.?

Slavery is also compatible with all those other systems you mentioned, as long as you leave the slaves outside the power structure. It doesn't make a good economic system just because it is compatible.

If I were a wizard I could tell you what will replace it, and it will be replaced because it has severe inherent flaws. So many people are right this moment imagining a better system that allows for the fair and equal distribution of wealth. I thought a form of decentralized socialism would probobly evolve out of the ashes of capitalism but now I've been reading about other ideas from some very interesting people that I've changed my mind. So no I can't tell you what economic system will evolve.

That argument fails as badly as your argument.

Look me up when you get over your love affair with capitalism.

P.S. I like your analysis on the tax cuts but your abrasive style kept me from commenting on it. Just something I think you should know.

Good luck there mate.

I'm sure I'll see you again.

Your tractor motor needs regulation or else it runs wild or stops.

Your hay's DNA needs regulation (by the cellular mechanisms) or else it just keeps on replicating and dividing and creating mutated failures.

So too does capitalism and socialism and all the isms you listed need regulation.

So when you start a post, as you did, arguing that capitalism is fatally flawed because it needs regulation and on that basis it should be discarded completely, well, that is where you go off the rails in a discussion.

Then when you are called out on that fallacy, you ignore it and attack the motives of the other person.

No.

Talking like a good Marxist. I'm all for socialism. I want healthcare, expanded Social Security, state subsidized education at all levels, beefed up subsidies for child care and early childhood education...etc. Absolutely.

But as the other two have replied, with what will you replace it? I have some ideas around forcing some positive changes in corporate charters to expand fiduciary responsibility, eliminate the accounting concept of 'externalities,' and so on, for sure.

To get rid of capitalism, though, we'd have to really grow up, and learn to see these billionaires that feverishly amass wealth and then try and tilt the field so they can amass more wealth as what they are...freaks. Or perhaps a mental/spiritual illness.

As Naomi Klein wrote in her 2014 book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate, we must begin organizing ourselves around human need, not human greed, and with a big part of that human need the continuity of our species through mitigating the ill effects of human-made climate change.

For the two who also replied to you, I will say that like Farmer Rick, I don't know what that will look like, but right now we are a loathsome species hurrying toward the cliff of extinction like a bunch of lemmings. And, hey, the earth will be fine if we fuck it up so bad it becomes a lifeless smoking cinder circling the sun. It's just that we won't be - we'll be extinct.

This Trump thing is the last gasp of the capitalists to keep control. It's a slow coup, where they are systematically and now openly raping the treasury to enrich themselves while at the same time the services we depend on from government are being cut, cut, cut. Why? So the billionaire freaks and big corporations like Monsanto and GE can further enrich shareholders.

Something's gotta give. Seems to me like a Bernie style Democratic Socialism is a good interim step - a step in the right direction. Though Rick IS right...capitalism profoundly sucks. It is by its very nature inimical to the many, who do in fact become (wage) slaves who then work to benefit the few. Adopt Bernie's platform, beef up regulations and start going the right direction is probably the best we'll be capable of at this level in our moral and spiritual development, but it will be a start.

I forgot how capitalism is such a dirty little pig in the trough. Making everyone's life miserable as it dumps it's feces and poisons out for everyone else to clean up, leaving behind a dirty stinking mess. It as if corporations and their owners are these big fat pigs that are running the farmer (us) ragged as he tries to clean up after them.

Really I had a pasture raised pig like that. She would root up all the pasture so that even the grass wouldn't grow. Then I learned to use her to clear my fields but that is another story.

the root cause of our polarization and government dysfunction is that everyone isn't operating from the same set of facts. We cannot forget that about 1/3 of the population gets its 'news' from corporate propaganda outlets like Fox.

One of the biggest problems facing us today. I'm pretty much a First Amendment absolutist, but we're now dealing with the proverbial 'Yelling FIRE in a crowded theater' with Fox "New" and the un-checked press. I don't know the solution other than to bring back the Fairness Doctrine. But I don't see that happening, because it totally favors the GOP and keeps them in power. If and when the Democrats take control again, I think one of the first things which should be addressed is a return of the Fairness Doctrine.

It would provide an automatic platform for global warming deniers, holocaust deniers, dominionists, racists, etc.

Any deviations from that would get into the hands of some Government appointed body, and you know what happens when Republicans, especially Trumpistas, appoint Government bodies.

Any news item Trump doesn't like would instantly gather demands to "present both sides" and they would have to be accommodated, because of a Supreme Court Ruling in 1969, 8-0.

No, the Fairness Doctrine is not solution. It would fail.

and you summed it up beautifully. This is pretty much what I expected of a Trump presidency and a republican congress. They are like small children, recklessly playing with economic gains that they didn't earn. After they trash the economy again, they'll find a way to blame Democrats.

The dollar is at a three-year low. I think foreign money is buying up US assets cheap and masking the weak job growth under Trump.

Job growth is the slowest in six years.

Stocks have all the news about corporate tax cuts baked in. Old adage: Buy on rumor, sell on news. Corp tax cuts are a done deal. So it must be the low dollar, which peaked a few months before tRump announced his campaign in 2015.

The decline of the US dollar has steepened since tRump took office.

will throw us into a recession and at the same time weaken the position of the US in the world economy.

The only people who will do well are the billionaire parasites. They are like remoras attached to a shark - doesn't matter if the shark is healthy or sick, the remoras still get their blood. And, no worries, if the current trends in wealth inequity continue, and the USA falls or becomes a bunch of un-united states, they will simply find new hosts.

Either way, we're fucked.

That's why we MUST flip both Houses of Congress this November. It will take decades to clean up after the morons.

Hope you don't mind if I use this. I'll be sure to credit the source.

act. Which Bill spoke publicly about repealing, and signed the GLB-Act into law, repealing it. (AKA the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999)

With that, Investment Banks and Commercial Banks could become the same thing.

Some of your timeline is inaccurate and the problem was at least partially bi-partisan.

Siskel and Ebert would agree, this one will bomb.

What happens when laws and regulations are not enforced?