Strikes over austerity measures paralyze Greek capital

Source: Deutsche Welle

Clashes broke out in the Greek capital, Athens, on Wednesday as police fired tear gas at stone-throwing youths and demonstrators marched against the government's strict austerity measures.

At least 10 people were reported injured and a further five detained as some 20,000 took to the streets to voice their disapproval of public and private spending cuts to be voted on later this month worth an estimated 23 billion euros ($32 billion).

The 24-hour nationwide strike has closed schools and brought public transit to a halt around the country, particularly affecting train and ferry services.

Air traffic controllers have also staged a walkout, grounding flights for four hours. The two main Greek operators, Olympic and Aegean, were forced to cancel or delay nearly 50 flights at the start of the busy tourist season.



Read more: http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,15066914,00.html

The working class shouldn't have to pay for capitalist fuckups. SHUT IT DOWN!

I just hope we do the same here when we're in the crosshairs. It's time for the people to BREAK WITH THE BOURGEOISIE!

they want to join it.

The American Dream was never 'from each according to his ability, to each according to his need'.
The American Dream was about the right to own property (and that includes capital) and thereby pursue one's happiness.

Over 40% of American households (I'm rounding down to avoid arguing decimal points) across all age demographics own stocks or bonds.

It's more pronounced in the younger generations. People like me, born in 1975 or after, realize we're facing a negative net return on SSI (never mind factoring in inflation, dollar for dollar I'll get less because we have so many riders/pullers in the SSI wagon), and so aren't placing our trust in government welfare programs to provide a decent retirement living.

My grandfather's father disappeared when he was in the equivalent of the 8th grade, leaving him to start working and taking care of his mother and sisters in the midst of the Great Depression. He worked as many as three jobs at a time in his life, but never lost sight of the importance of always devoting part of that income to savings, no matter how tight it made things at home.

America turned from a society saving a good portion of its income to one spending beyond its income. That couldn't last forever, and as in Greece, the reckoning will come.

Americans are among the highest earners in the world, but too few of them are savings a portion of their earnings to increase the pool of real capital. Instead we borrow from other nations to fund our consumerist binge, and then want to act indignant when they say enough is enough?

I've visited 'dictatorships of the proletariat', and they don't hold a candle to capitalism in meeting the needs and wants of mankind.

Living off the labor of others sure beats doing the hard work yourself.

But that road's been closed for a while, in the U.S. and elsewhere.

Does owning a few shares here and there really entitle one to make decisions on behalf of the company? I don't see many boardrooms filled by workers' representatives. Most of the shares owned by the American proletariat are tied up in 401(k) accounts (a scam if there ever was one) or mutual funds. That's hardly owning the means of production and being part of the bourgeoisie.

As for Social Security (I'm assuming that's what you mean by SSI, not the Supplemental Security Income), we've had this debate many times. Remove the $106k ceiling on SS taxable earnings and we could all enjoy a dignified retirement at age 65 or even earlier. As you, I don't place my trust in government welfare. However, this is not the fault of some abstract idea of inevitable government failure, but rather the result of a concerted effort on the part of the bourgeoisie to deprive the working class of the dignity and welfare it has struggled to acquire in the past 150 years.

Living off the labor of others sure beats doing the hard work yourself.

I think saving is hard work, and like exercise too few people do it as much as they should. They know they should, but they think they'll start that next week, or next month, or maybe on the 5th of Never.

If I save and invest my money in the equipment necessary to manufacture insulated glass windows, now my brother can build custom insulated glass windows much more effectively than he could 'by hand'.

So now he can make 20 units a day instead of 5. The more windows he can make, the cheaper he can sell them, thus his buddy can convince more customers to replace their windows. Customers get better insulation, saving on their heating and cooling bills, his buddy gets more business, he gets more work, and all made possible by me forgoing extra personal consumption from my own earnings. If I'm to forgo the night out with my wife, or gift for my nephew, why should I not earn some of the return generated by the new equipment my investment made possible? My brother would be working a lot hard for a lot less without that investment. Will people make sufficient investments without reward, or does the reward earned by capital serve to increase the allocation of earnings toward investment?

You see it as 'living off the labor of others', but that only applies to people living on handouts expropriated or gifted by those who are producing and earning in the first place.


But that road's been closed for a while, in the U.S. and elsewhere.

No, it's just that some people don't go down it because 'hey, 46" LCD TVs are only $519 today at Walmart', and so they don't save as they should, and when they hit a rough spot they realize $516 dollars committed to earning a return is more valuable than a 46" TV...


Does owning a few shares here and there really entitle one to make decisions on behalf of the company? I don't see many boardrooms filled by workers' representatives. Most of the shares owned by the American proletariat are tied up in 401(k) accounts (a scam if there ever was one) or mutual funds. That's hardly owning the means of production and being part of the bourgeoisie.

Maybe you're just bad at math, but investing in return generating assets (companies that make things people want, like gasoline) allows one's savings to earn until, by mid-life if the person has been determined enough to save, the savings are generating a higher income than 'working'. It's not a matter of sitting on Exxon's board, it's a matter of earning a share of Exxon's profits.

Unfortunately most Americans earnings are siphoned off into a wealth transfer scheme that promises them they'll get their turn in the cart one day, meanwhile over 14% of what they earn is taken and given to the most powerful (and wealthiest) voting bloc. Put into a dividend paying mutual fund over the course of their life they'd be earning WAY more than Social Security has ever promised to pay out. Seriously, run the math. Furthermore, instead of being a rob Peter to pay Paul system it would invest in increasing productivity, and make possible greater standards of living in the future.


Remove the $106k ceiling on SS taxable earnings and we could all enjoy a dignified retirement at age 65 or even earlier.

Why did the law originally call for a ceiling of 3% (6% in total) on the Social Security tax (it's now over 14% total)? Were the actuaries who concocted this wealth transfer as 'insurance' scheme as bad at math as you? The government has always reserved the right to do what it wants with the money. You have no property right to Social Security. And you don't recognize it as a scam? They try to frighten you with prospect of being poor when you're old while doing their best to ensure it! They have created a massive system of dependency, are you blind to that?! You believe, against all history and evidence, that if we just keep raising the taxes they won't spend all that and more. Ask yourself, where did the 'Trust Fund' of Social Security taxes go when they last raised the rates in the early 80's. If you answered, Congress spent it and then some, give yourself a gold star...

You, on the other hand, might want to consider the reality of saving money on an average income, especially if you have other mouths but your own to feed. Do you really believe that most working class people are going to buy a big screen TV when they need this money to fix a ten-year old POS car that gets them to work, to buy clothes for their kids, or to pay the rent?

And even if a proletarian did, God forbid, make the decision to brighten an otherwise shitty life with a trip to visit relatives or a TV or whatever other fucking distraction one can get from the misery of modern servitude, are you going to fucking pillory him or her for that? Sometimes, just sometimes, working 60+ hours a week makes one want to go out and treat oneself to some of the frivolities capitalism is supposed to bring into our lives. Sorry about that. Sorry for wanting to treat my loved one to a dinner on our anniversary, sorry for wanting to buy a book that's not available in the library, sorry for wanting to watch a movie that's never going to be shown on TV, sorry for owning a fucking computer and paying for a DSL connection so I can inform myself and keep in touch with family and friends. Sorry your capitalist system has not yet reduced me and countless others to work-eat-sleep-shit automatons.

Finally, you might also want to consider the waste of privately managed mutual funds and other investment schemes. That waste is sometimes referred to as profits, which, and this might come as a surprise to you, are routinely squandered on speculative market plays or shenanigans such as executive compensation. I'll take a legally guaranteed, predictable retirement over a "market-driven" scheme any day. At least we can--it's a stretch, I know--have a say in how public rather than corporate laws are made.

And, yeah, I'm on the record for raising taxes on the top 10%. No apologies there.

I have less than no desire to post on a Republican board or a Libertarian board. Wonder what they get out of posting here?

:shrug:

I don't mind the former at all, but feeble copy/paste attempts to challenge points that have been covered and sourced with great diligence by progressive posters here point toward the latter. How can anyone who lives in any kind of reality defend the current system, I don't know.

Hey, on the bright side, this kind of stuff only serves to strengthen my convictions. :)

because I realize there are fellow travelers, interested in the advance of human rights.

I see them rage at injustices, but failing to see the source of those injustices they seek to strike at the wrong targets.

If just a few more people consider arguments they might not have seen or considered, minds may change.

I post on several forums, across the spectrum, but always from the perspective of enlarging individual liberty. This, in my view, is the path of human progress.

What I couldn't fathom is who, in seeking a message board, would want only an echo chamber of thoughts they already held. Humanity has never known such uniformity of thought and opinion. If that's all DU is supposed to be, then I would truly be in the wrong place.

I see lots of opinions here, many I agree with, many I don't. I certainly don't mind seeing them.

"Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it." - Thomas Jefferson

An 'average household income' is over $50,000 in this country. But even that isn't very representative, because people actually start at the bottom and move through income quintiles through their life as they advance their careers and gain experience.
I've never earned more than that and I still save money every month. If it meant having a roommate, I had a roommate. If it meant driving a shittier car than I wanted, that's what I did, so that I'd never have to say 'sorry' to myself when I was 65 years old and wanting to retire.


whatever other fucking distraction one can get from the misery of modern servitude

I look at what people have had to do over their lives through the ages and around the world and realize if you think what passes for work for most Americans is 'misery' and 'servitude' you need to broaden your horizons.


Sorry your capitalist system has not yet reduced me and countless others to work-eat-sleep-shit automatons.

The capitalist system made it possible for you and everyone you know to readily afford the miracle that is a modern computer. Are you oblivious to this? It's the capitalist system that made all the 'distractions' you apparently crave over saving for your own future.


Finally, you might also want to consider the waste of privately managed mutual funds and other investment schemes. That waste is sometimes referred to as profits

I enjoy the profits my savings earn. It allows them to snowball.
Use your computer, your DSL connection, and your math skills to take advantage of Google Docs to create yourself a spreadsheet like follows:

Income Savings rate Saved Amount Earnings on Savings Accumulated Savings
14% 8% $-
$20,000.00 14% $2,840.00 $- $2,840.00
$20,000.00 14% $2,840.00 $227.20 $5,907.20
$20,000.00 14% $2,840.00 $472.58 $9,219.78
$20,000.00 14% $2,840.00 $737.58 $12,797.36
$20,000.00 14% $2,840.00 $1,023.79 $16,661.15
$20,000.00 14% $2,840.00 $1,332.89 $20,834.04
$20,000.00 14% $2,840.00 $1,666.72 $25,340.76
$20,000.00 14% $2,840.00 $2,027.26 $30,208.02
$20,000.00 14% $2,840.00 $2,416.64 $35,464.66
$20,000.00 14% $2,840.00 $2,837.17 $41,141.84
$30,000.00 14% $4,260.00 $3,291.35 $48,693.18
$30,000.00 14% $4,260.00 $3,895.45 $56,848.64
$30,000.00 14% $4,260.00 $4,547.89 $65,656.53
$30,000.00 14% $4,260.00 $5,252.52 $75,169.05
$30,000.00 14% $4,260.00 $6,013.52 $85,442.58
$30,000.00 14% $4,260.00 $6,835.41 $96,537.98
$30,000.00 14% $4,260.00 $7,723.04 $108,521.02
$30,000.00 14% $4,260.00 $8,681.68 $121,462.70
$30,000.00 14% $4,260.00 $9,717.02 $135,439.72
$30,000.00 14% $4,260.00 $10,835.18 $150,534.90
$40,000.00 14% $5,680.00 $12,042.79 $168,257.69
$40,000.00 14% $5,680.00 $13,460.62 $187,398.30
$40,000.00 14% $5,680.00 $14,991.86 $208,070.17
$40,000.00 14% $5,680.00 $16,645.61 $230,395.78
$40,000.00 14% $5,680.00 $18,431.66 $254,507.44
$40,000.00 14% $5,680.00 $20,360.60 $280,548.04
$40,000.00 14% $5,680.00 $22,443.84 $308,671.88
$40,000.00 14% $5,680.00 $24,693.75 $339,045.63
$40,000.00 14% $5,680.00 $27,123.65 $371,849.28
$40,000.00 14% $5,680.00 $29,747.94 $407,277.23
$50,000.00 14% $7,100.00 $32,582.18 $446,959.41
$50,000.00 14% $7,100.00 $35,756.75 $489,816.16
$50,000.00 14% $7,100.00 $39,185.29 $536,101.45
$50,000.00 14% $7,100.00 $42,888.12 $586,089.57
$50,000.00 14% $7,100.00 $46,887.17 $640,076.73
$50,000.00 14% $7,100.00 $51,206.14 $698,382.87
$50,000.00 14% $7,100.00 $55,870.63 $761,353.50
$50,000.00 14% $7,100.00 $60,908.28 $829,361.78
$50,000.00 14% $7,100.00 $66,348.94 $902,810.72
$50,000.00 14% $7,100.00 $72,224.86 $982,135.58
$50,000.00 14% $7,100.00 $78,570.85 $1,067,806.43
$50,000.00 14% $7,100.00 $85,424.51 $1,160,330.94
$50,000.00 14% $7,100.00 $92,826.48 $1,260,257.42
$50,000.00 14% $7,100.00 $100,820.59 $1,368,178.01
$50,000.00 14% $7,100.00 $109,454.24 $1,484,732.25


I used 14% because FICA takes more than that out of your earnings. I picked 8% for the earnings rate because that's well below the average rate of return over time to be found in index funds of the S&P500. You could crank that down to 5% and still end up with a retirement income that was 2/3rds of your last working income. For fun you can add a column for 'dividend taxes' and see how taxes on savings melt the snowball and foster dependency on welfare systems instead of savings to fund retirement.
Presuming you pay off your house instead of constantly using it as an ATM you'll have an income stream that doesn't even require you to touch your capital by retirement.
The biggest problem this country faces is that too many people spend their youth as the grasshopper, and try to catch up to the ant when the math is no longer going to be on their side.

I'll take a legally guaranteed

Pardon the all caps, BUT THERE IS NO GUARANTEE!
Supreme Court already decided Congress can change the game whenever they want, and they have, many times.
I take that back, there's one guarantee, offered by no less than Alan Greenspan in Congressional testimony:
"We can guarantee cash payments from here on out, what we cannot guarantee is the purchasing power of that cash." -Alan Greenspan during remarks on Social Security, Feb 16, 2005
You have to realize the real enemy is a system that allows the Federal Reserve to print 'money' at will. If counterfeiting was actually wealth building and not robbery, wouldn't the economy benefit from each of us having such a printing press in our homes?
Politicians have foisted upon the nation a rob Peter to pay Paul retirement system that simply services consumption, instead of fostering one that rewards savings, which has the advantage of building up the capital base that allows for the productivity enhancements the result in computers and big screen TVs available at a fraction of the cost of only a decade ago.

The sad things is when you point out the flaws of the current system you're denigrated as uncaring, as though promoting a system with better outcomes represents caring less!
Stick with politicians as benefactors and you'll end up with a miserable retirement compared to the ones who didn't (and then you'll probably clamor to seize more of their savings to improve your lot, all the while calling them 'selfish')

biggest financial problems also has one of the highest net household savings rates. The rate in Ireland in 2009 was a whopping 11.4%. Contrast that was a savings rate of 1.2% in the USA. Yet Ireland's economy has gone to hell in a hand basket. The truth is that we cannot save ourselves out of this mess. The only viable solution is for the people to take their country back.

http://econ365.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/gross-savings-rate.pdf

Maybe. But you have a HUMAN right to it.

'They have created a massive system of dependency, are you blind to that?!'

No, they haven't. They have just RESPONDED (in most cases, insufficiently) to existing 'dependency'. What are poor, sick, disabled or elderly people to do to survive? Starve and die? Join criminal gangs as their only source of protection? Read some 19th century history, or some of Dickens' books, or talk to someone who lives or lived in a country with little or no state provision for the needy.

'You believe, against all history and evidence, that if we just keep raising the taxes they won't spend all that and more.'

And if they spend it on the right things - i.e. relieving and preventing poverty and funding well-run public services, rather than for instance endless wars - then why should they not?

But I'm not going to argue any fine points of Marxist theory here.

What I WILL say is that capitalism has shown it's true nature since the fall of the USSR and it ain't pretty. More and more Americans are seeing the bankruptcy of the SYSTEM as they see their own personal bankruptcy happening BECAUSE of the rampant boom and bust speculation of the capitalist class. And guess what? THEY DON'T WANT TO PAY FOR THE SPECULATORS FUCK UPS! Not in Greece and not here, either.

Are they ready to "Break With The Bourgeoisie"...yet? Probably not, but the longer this shit goes on, the more ready they'll be. And they're DEFINITELY not willing to PAY because the speculators guessed wrong.

The BEST recruiter for Marxism is capitalism in it's present form.

"More and more Americans are seeing the bankruptcy of the SYSTEM as they see their own personal bankruptcy happening BECAUSE of the rampant boom and bust speculation of the capitalist class."

Actual capitalists (those who save and invest those savings in ownership of companies that create the wealth in the world) are being robbed whenever Bernanke can crank up his printing press and keep his loser buddies 'in the game'.

"The BEST recruiter for Marxism is capitalism in it's present form.

It's 'present form' is a perversion that let's the banking class summon purchasing power from thin air and spend it before the effects of their inflation are felt by the population at large.

"Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the capitalist system was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security but at confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth.
Those to whom the system brings windfalls, beyond their deserts and even beyond their expectations or desires, become "profiteers," who are the object of the hatred of the bourgeoisie, whom the inflationism has impoverished, not less than of the proletariat. As the inflation proceeds and the real value of the currency fluctuates wildly from month to month, all permanent relations between debtors and creditors, which form the ultimate foundation of capitalism, become so utterly disordered as to be almost meaningless; and the process of wealth-getting degenerates into a gamble and a lottery.
Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.
In the latter stages of the war all the belligerent governments practiced, from necessity or incompetence, what a Bolshevist might have done from design. Even now, when the war is over, most of them continue out of weakness the same malpractices. But further, the governments of Europe, being many of them at this moment reckless in their methods as well as weak, seek to direct on to a class known as "profiteers" the popular indignation against the more obvious consequences of their vicious methods.
These "profiteers" are, broadly speaking, the entrepreneur class of capitalists, that is to say, the active and constructive element in the whole capitalist society, who in a period of rapidly rising prices cannot but get rich quick whether they wish it or desire it or not. If prices are continually rising, every trader who has purchased for stock or owns property and plant inevitably makes profits. By directing hatred against this class, therefore, the European governments are carrying a step further the fatal process which the subtle mind of Lenin had consciously conceived. The profiteers are a consequence and not a cause of rising prices. By combining a popular hatred of the class of entrepreneurs with the blow already given to social security by the violent and arbitrary disturbance of contract and of the established equilibrium of wealth which is the inevitable result of inflation, these governments are fast rendering impossible a continuance of the social and economic order of the 19th century."
-The Economic Consequences of the Peace, by John Maynard Keynes, 1919

Ask yourself what Bernanke's policies actually mean. And remind yourself who appointed him, and who re-appointed him.
Here's Bernanke's playbook, note he made these statements in 2002:

"Today an ounce of gold sells for $300, more or less. Now suppose that a modern alchemist solves his subject's oldest problem by finding a way to produce unlimited amounts of new gold at essentially no cost. Moreover, his invention is widely publicized and scientifically verified, and he announces his intention to begin massive production of gold within days. What would happen to the price of gold? Presumably, the potentially unlimited supply of cheap gold would cause the market price of gold to plummet. Indeed, if the market for gold is to any degree efficient, the price of gold would collapse immediately after the announcement of the invention, before the alchemist had produced and marketed a single ounce of yellow metal.
What has this got to do with monetary policy? Like gold, U.S. dollars have value only to the extent that they are strictly limited in supply. But the U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press (or, today, its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost. By increasing the number of U.S. dollars in circulation, or even by credibly threatening to do so, the U.S. government can also reduce the value of a dollar in terms of goods and services, which is equivalent to raising the prices in dollars of those goods and services." - Benjamin Bernanke.

He's made no secret of the fact he's willing to 'run the printing presses', and it has been revealed he has 'printed' trillions and funneled them to banks that the free market and capitalism declared harmful, losers, and was trying to eradicate. It takes legal tender laws and a federal charter to manage a rip-off of this scale.
If you misdiagnose the problem, you'll never be able to work toward a cure.

I understand that Somolia is a libertarian PARADISE! Why don't you guys head there? I prefer socialism, myself.

did you come up with it on your own?

Tell me, do they universally respect the rights of individuals in Somalia? My understanding is that it's run by various warlords and gangs who pillage and murder. If you think such a place is a 'libertarian PARADISE' you actually have no concept of what moral code libertarians prefer.


But two can play the game, do you prefer your socialism nationalist, or soviet? ;)

Read some Trotsky.

Then you libertarians could create your very on gang and take over in Somolia. You wouldn't have to worry about any government saying no to anything you want to implement. Just don't try it here.

"I'll take socialism" comment.

Then you libertarians could create your very on gang and take over in Somolia

Creating a gang to invade and conquer another nation isn't in the least bit libertarian. How many ways can you illustrate you don't know what you're talking about with respect to libertarian ideology?

Support the weakening of our constitution, support sending what used to be well-paying American jobs overseas, support visas for overseas workers who will take US jobs for 1/2-3/4 of salary etc. etc ...

and then had their savings wiped out by the stock crashes or the real estate crashes... placing it all on people spending on frivolous crap is a bit unfair on the millions of people who were told to invest their savings and then had the rug pulled out from under them.

And if your income is 0, how are you supposed to save? I'd be thrilled to have three jobs. Since 2008, I've put in more than 700 applications and I've barely gotten an interview. In 2009, I couldn't get an interview at f'in McDonalds.

The reckoning will come. I agree with you there. It will come when people nearing retirement get sick of the football being constantly pulled away at the last second and it will come when enough bright kids graduate college (as they were told to do) with mountains of debt and find there are no jobs that will ever let them repay it.

The problem isn't ordinary Americans spending too much (which at least helps to create demand and jobs). It's a system that brutally sucks wealth and opportunity away from the most vulnerable members of society and heaps it on people who don't need it all the while telling people "don't spend so much", "save and invest", "pull yourself up by your bootstraps", "you just need to think positively", "anyone can start their own business and succeed".

n/t

but anyone who "had their savings wiped out by the stock crashes or the real estate crashes" wasn't saving, they were speculating.
Taking out a mortgage isn't saving. A house with a mortgage is a liability, not an asset.
Putting your nest egg in the company stock isn't saving. You would think after things like Enron, the tech boom and bust, etc. that most folks would get that. There is strength in diversity, the key is putting you capital to work in companies that pay a dividend. That's how you join the bourgeoisie.
People that sold at the bottom in fear created a loss for themselves, but after the fear passed the prices rebounded. I'm still dollar for dollar ahead in my 457b, and that's not even counting the tax advantage I realize by utilizing it.


The problem isn't ordinary Americans spending too much (which at least helps to create demand and jobs).

If you're spending more than you earn, you're spending too much, and most Americans were doing this (the net savings rate actually went negative before the crash). Chinese, who earn WAY less than Americans, save an enormous percentage of their income. They don't rush out and buy shit they don't need the way Americans feel they should (or deserve)
When the society spends more than it produces you're not 'creating demand' or 'jobs', you're fostering an unsustainable structure of production that must inevitably crash when the pool of real savings is drained and your unsupportable level of consumption can no longer be supported by others.
The consequence of that is collapsing valuations and rising unemployment while people in unsustainable lines of production are fired (because the consumers of their products and services are tapped out) and have to find new employment, and people begin to save again to rebuild the capital base that will actually permit real investment and increases in productivity.

It's a system that brutally sucks wealth and opportunity away from the most vulnerable members of society and heaps it on people who don't need it all the while telling people "don't spend so much", "save and invest", "pull yourself up by your bootstraps", "you just need to think positively", "anyone can start their own business and succeed".

Anyone trying to succeed in starting their own business has a real appreciation for just how hard it is to provide something people want. No one understands better than a business owner that the real power is in the hands of the consumer.
Not 'anyone' can start their business and succeed. Very few, very exceptional, people can start and run a business. Most people are teachable, trainable, and can work for someone else, but most people also lack the initiative, intellect, foresight and work ethic to make much of a business on their own. Humanity is not a stretch of paper dolls, equal in ability or interest.
The system of capitalism quickly identifies those good at serving human wants, and those that are bad, and the ones who are bad find that people are no longer bringing them their resources to exchange. The market (people freely choosing whether to trade their own production for someone else's) would relegate these poor performers back to a more suitable role, whereas a Federal Reserve Chairman with a printing press can keep diverting resources to them, at the ultimate expense (and detriment) of everyone else.

particularly in a recession when all of those business owning "winners" are either filing for bankruptcy, refusing to hire, or using it as an excuse to "downsize" workforces and wages?

of a central planning mindset.

No one person can judge what jobs are in demand, and thereby begin assigning them to society at large. The only course is to watch the interaction of supply and demand. Where supply and demand move prices beyond costs there will be profits, which spur competition for those profits (hiring more people into that particular field, and investing in productivity in that field), which raises supply, which ultimately lowers prices until profits are no better than can be found in other industries. The role of profits is to spur investment (capital and labor) where it is most desired, and to balance among all the wants and needs of the society.
Profits are a signal, and yet some people mistakenly view them as a 'waste'. Unaware that by trying to curtail profits via means other than raising supply they are really only thwarting society's goals at large.

We can't divine today all the needs or wants of tomorrow. What instead we must do establish and leave in place a system that responds to those needs and wants.

We cannot forever paper over a shriveling of the capital stock. Such efforts only prolong the malinvestment and delay reforms in the structure of production that will best meet our needs and wants. We need to end the bailouts, remove the taxpayer funded backstops for failure, and let society put our economy back together again.

PS... we've been doing it your way for thirty years. That's why we're in the mess we're in.

Unregulated capital has already driven the American economy off a cliff. Hitting the accelerator isn't going to stop us from falling.

Because I don't presume to know personally what jobs others are most suited (or more importantly desired) for, others must necessarily starve?

This is silly.

Unregulated capital has already driven the American economy off a cliff.

America hasn't had 'unregulated capital' for nearly a century. The efforts of the Federal Reserve to regulate capital (attempting to dictate interest rates, and thereby distorting patterns of consumption, savings and investment) have pushed us off the cliff.

I propose not to 'hit the accelerator', but to take the steering wheel out of the hands of people like Ben Bernanke who sees counterfeiting value and transferring it to the banking elites as simply good policy.

It doesn't create enough jobs for schizophrenics or epileptics, for single mothers, for people with 60 IQs, for 75 year olds who are scammed out of their savings, for drug addicts, for convicted criminals who don't have high school diplomas, for veterans with multiple amputations.

These "poor performers" as you so charmingly put it, who are not ideally suited to "serving human wants" (because clearly that's the only function a person can perform), *will* starve on the streets without social programs to support them. At least be honest about that.

When I wrote of 'poor performers' I'm speaking specifically of firms that are running a loss. Firms that, according to free society, are making undesirable use of resources. When the central bank, or government, directs that resources be allocated to these firms (think AIG and other bailout queens like GM, etc.) they are attempting to overturn the decision of the market (which is really just people willingly bringing their own resources to trade for others).

Governments are not acting on for 'schizophrenics or epileptics, for single mothers, for people with 60 IQs' when they divert wealth to politically connected enterprises. We're talking about apples and oranges here.


These "poor performers" as you so charmingly put it, who are not ideally suited to "serving human wants" (because clearly that's the only function a person can perform), *will* starve on the streets without social programs to support them. At least be honest about that.

Is your view of humanity (your own included) so dim that it takes threats at gunpoint to aid the disabled in society?

The more wealthy a society becomes the more it is able to care and provide opportunity for the least able among it.

I presume you and I differ on the need and advantage, as well as morality, of conflating charity, compassion, and compulsion. To that end I seek an alteration in the headlong rush to consolidate all power and decision making to Washington, D.C. I want the state governments free to expand and address their charters to the mores of their constituency, and allow the people freedom to travel and live among the choices that would arise therein.

What libertarian rubbish.

Well-said, wickerwoman!

PB

In fact, you haven't visited any dictatorships of the proletariat. China, USSR etc. were/are socialist in name only, as the party simply replaced the old greedy elites. It has become clear that real socialism requires democracy, which those poor countries have always lacked. How can poor people be in control if they don't really get to elect their leaders?

Wealthy countries, including the USA, run systems which lie somewhere in between socialism and true capitalism. Obviously, Canada, Europe, Korea, Japan etc. are closer to socialism than us. In general, the more control super wealthy people have over the gigantic purses of these governments, the worse off average and poor people are. That is why worker solidarity, ie unions and leftists parties, is indeed needed.

bureaucratically DEFORMED worker states. And the democractic part of democratic centralism was what he spent the latter part of his life fighting FOR.

And your last paragraph is what are called the dictatorships of the bourgeoisie. And to fight this worldwide, currently unchecked dictatorship we need an INTERNATIONAL solidarity of the working class. If it's based in nationalism, it won't work long term.

Whether you're talking labor or money, this country bloats on trickle down, tsunami up.

Originally, the American Dream was not as you describe. It was about anyone in this country being able to get ahead by working hard, perhaps getting an education and then working hard. Being able to make something of yourself via your own efforts, regardless of whether Mummy and Daddy were rich or poor.

That was the American Dream and America's promise. That's what bought immigrants here, literally by the boatload.

as it is in Greece. Yet.

Keep shoving your reforms down our throats, bastards.

http://www.marxists.org/subject/mayday/articles/tracht.html

n/t

Wonder how much more intense their protests would get if their governments wanted to slash social spending in order to extend and increase tax cuts for multimillionaires and subsidies for the most profitable companies in the history of the world.

Their government loses $30 billion a year to tax evasion.

Source from May 2010: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/02/world/europe/02evasion.html

and here they are protesting $32 billion in cuts. Hmmm...