What Was Lost When Political Economy Became Economics?

[Lukey]

"Goldman and JPMorgan have complained about many aspects of Dodd-Frank and worked to weaken many provisions. But they realize that the policies that cramp their profits also kill their competitors. That's a win-lose for the big guys. It's a lose-lose for the economy."
There's no doubt that government has many laws already on the books it could employ against white collar crime if it wasn't owned by Wall Street.

In general regulation supports the oligarchs when its written by their lobbyists and enforced by their lackeys. It seems to always come back to getting private money out of public election campaigns.

"Dodd-Frank is indeed killing community banks, a recent study from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government suggests. Marshall Lux of the Kennedy School found that just before and during the financial crisis, these small banks lost market share — about 6 percent total from mid-2006 through mid-2010.

"Then, it seems, the real threat to community banks’ emerged: Dodd-Frank. Since mid-2010, community banks have lost 12 percent of market share."

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/goldman-and-jpmorgan-sit-safely-behind-the-walls-of-dodd-frank/article/2560179

Again, I agree with what you have posted here, but I don't see it as an argument for a) bigger government, b) campaign finance reform that doesn't address the influence of unions and left leaning media or c) an anti-capitalist economic agenda.

 

[Woolleybugger]

The difference between unions and corporate interests is that unions represent labor meaning lots and lots of normal folks. Corporate interests only represent capital. The right has done a great job of demonizing unions but in reality, unions have always been the most powerful force combating entrenched power by elites and through their surrogates, government. I want more unions, more power for them, more participation for them, more representation for them and more accountability for their actions. Just because some unions go over board does not mean that you abandon the concept, just fix it.

 

[Lukey]

The difference between unions and corporate interests is that unions represent labor meaning lots and lots of normal folks. Corporate interests only represent capital. The right has done a great job of demonizing unions but in reality, unions have always been the most powerful force combating entrenched power by elites and through their surrogates, government. I want more unions, more power for them, more participation for them, more representation for them and more accountability for their actions. Just because some unions go over board does not mean that you abandon the concept, just fix it.

Bullshit! Corporations represent shareholders, employees and customers - a much broader interest than just "labor." It's bullshit arguments like that that make me think there's something seriously wrong with you people...

 

[Queen Titania]

When the Unions are powerful they become their own worst enemy --- Corporate is now like a runaway train --- both become too big for their boots.

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

The

Chris Hedges has a special perspective on hereditary wealth due to his time as a scholarship student at an elite New England prep school, his studies Harvard Divinity, and his quarter-century career as a war correspondent covering conflicts from Central America to Palestine. The word "pathology" often finds it way into Chris's writings on the subject:
"The pathology of the rich white family is the most dangerous pathology in America. The rich white family is cursed with too much money and privilege. It is devoid of empathy, the result of lifetimes of entitlement.

"It has little sense of loyalty and lacks the capacity for self-sacrifice.

"Its definition of friendship is reduced to 'What can you do for me?'

"It is possessed by an insatiable lust to increase its fortunes and power. It believes that wealth and privilege confer to it a superior intelligence and virtue. It is infused with an unchecked hedonism and narcissism.

"And because of all this, it interprets reality through a lens of self-adulation and greed that renders it delusional.

"The rich white family is a menace.

"The pathologies of the poor, when set against the pathologies of rich white people, are like a candle set beside the sun."

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_pathology_of_the_rich_white_family_20150517

Stockholm Syndrome

The poor are not the opposite of the rich, so the two malignant groups shouldn't be used in any contrast. I can't trust anybody to get it right who has submitted to the obsolete aristocratic institution of the university. Making this misleading contrast is typical of the defective thinking caused by ever being able to stomach being near the Heirheads.

Prep School means prepare for college. So that anti-democratic institution must be replaced by highly paid professional training or it will poison the thinking of every student.

He also doesn't bring out the contradiction in the guillotine-fodder's thinking. If rich children are automatically born with superior talent, they won't need any of Daddy's money to get ahead and should be cut off from it at age 18. If we have to do it on our own, so must they. Or we must make sure that those who are born rich wish they had never been born.

 

[georgephillip]

It has been an odd journey to this pass but I shan't begin on that particular rant, the brainwashing of the World and the Freudians and two European Wars, an insidious occupying force call the EU and of course in my case Thatcher -spit spit. New bloody Labour and the rest of the gang.
The web is a very tangled one, it is complex, instead of properly using our thinkers it is all too easy to simply blame the Rich Bitches at the top and be done with it, a thing I am not averse to doing myself in weaker moments -we all do it but it is irresponsible in a way because we are all in this together and we allowed it to be as it is, we all saw in the 80s how careless we all are, and now that the Party is over what are you proposing? Do we really want a French or Russian type coup/revolution where even worse bastards take the rudder?

I strongly suspect another violent revolution in the US would not turn out well for lefties like myself, and I remember many of the events you mention or at least their star-spangled counterparts (Reagan--puke, puke,puke). I believe the last hundred years of history in both our countries has largely been determined by unelected private central banks who owners control which candidates you and I are allowed to choose between in the voting booths. Clearly, we don't need a Lenin or a Stalin or a Hitler to take the reins today, but I don't think we can indulge the status quo much longer either. When you get this all figured out...please post here first.

 

[Queen Titania]

The

Stockholm Syndrome

The poor are not the opposite of the rich, so the two malignant groups shouldn't be used in any contrast. I can't trust anybody to get it right who has submitted to the obsolete aristocratic institution of the university. Making this misleading contrast is typical of the defective thinking caused by ever being able to stomach being near the Heirheads.

Prep School means prepare for college. So that anti-democratic institution must be replaced by highly paid professional training or it will poison the thinking of every student.

He also doesn't bring out the contradiction in the guillotine-fodder's thinking. If rich children are automatically born with superior talent, they won't need any of Daddy's money to get ahead and should be cut off from it at age 18. If we have to do it on our own, so must they. Or we must make sure that those who are born rich wish they had never been born.

Here we go again --- knock down those at the top, look at what has happened every single time man has done such a foolish thing --- learn from our History, it would work no better this time as it ever has before unless or rather until we are a more enlightened peoples --- at the moment we are going in the wrong direction. Both my grandfathers left school at 14 with a far better basic solid education under their hats than most of the kids coming out of the Micky Mouse Unis of now and more importantly they always had a lust for new knowledge.

I keep getting a silly picture of --- a little child falling over and the PC reaction being to find the tallest person one can and clobber them about the head.

We are out of balance for sure - my main sorrow is for the 'Wars' but if we are keeping ,in this discussion, to our Western societies only - I wish all schools were as progressive and good as Eton, I do not wish Eton was like the State Senior School up the road where all the children are taught by and on a computer only ---

 

[Queen Titania]

I strongly suspect another violent revolution in the US would not turn out well for lefties like myself, and I remember many of the events you mention or at least their star-spangled counterparts (Reagan--puke, puke,puke). I believe the last hundred years of history in both our countries has largely been determined by unelected private central banks who owners control which candidates you and I are allowed to choose between in the voting booths. Clearly, we don't need a Lenin or a Stalin or a Hitler to take the reins today, but I don't think we can indulge the status quo much longer either. When you get this all figured out...please post here first.

I disagree about Hitler but am tired of arguing it so ain't gonna.

 

[georgephillip]

Again, I agree with what you have posted here, but I don't see it as an argument for a) bigger government, b) campaign finance reform that doesn't address the influence of unions and left leaning media or c) an anti-capitalist economic agenda.

Can you tell me of an historical epoch when you believe capitalism, as you believe it should exist' actually existed? Maybe we should also define our terms like "bigger government" since government does already possess regulations it could use to prosecute corporate crimes. Finally, I don't think you can compare the economic influence on government today of labor unions and the Koch brothers or Sheldon Adelson, and, if capitalism can no longer compete in the market place of ideas, it's time to consider WSDE.

 

[The Sage of Main Street]

When the Unions are powerful they become their own worst enemy --- Corporate is now like a runaway train --- both become too big for their boots.

You're Saying That Sheep Are Just As Predatory As Wolves Are

Unions should be made mandatory. They pressure management into replacing lazy or bullying parasites at the top. Otherwise, the Big Shots don't earn money; they merely sit back and collect it from the workers who produce all of it. This both demoralizes the working force, reducing productivity, and allows management to take it easy and put up with its own no-talent yes-men and brownnoses.

Increased revenue is all that happened when American sports became unionized. As it was in the beginning with the lazy hereditary ownership, there was no way the clubs could avoid being bankrupted by the unions. That is static thinking, but management was forced to become dynamic. They charged much more for tickets and didn't lose any customers from that, proving that they had never known before unionization activated them what value the public gave to watching the games. They demanded larger TV contracts and got them, whereas before the soft spoiled owner and his flunkies were so ignorant that they thought of the sports channels as advertising the games and didn't demand the money they could have gotten. So much for the meeting of minds nonsense between buyer and seller in the well-financed fantasy that there is such a thing as a free market.

Of course, bootlicking liars are always provided the escape hatch that analogies can't be used if they expose the lunacy of the present corporate arrangement. Everything that offends them is automatically called "apples and oranges." But sports also can be used to explode myths in education and civil rights. The controlling lie is that what is good enough for us is not good enough for athletes.

When the Unions are powerful they become their own worst enemy --- Corporate is now like a runaway train --- both become too big for their boots.

Unions put pressure on management to replace its own dead weight. Your key error is believing that those in high-salaried positions deserve to be where they are. As under Capitalism's twin, Communism, the leaders are ignorant and indifferent no-talent brownnoses.

 

[Lukey]

Can you tell me of an historical epoch when you believe capitalism, as you believe it should exist' actually existed? Maybe we should also define our terms like "bigger government" since government does already possess regulations it could use to prosecute corporate crimes. Finally, I don't think you can compare the economic influence on government today of labor unions and the Koch brothers or Sheldon Adelson, and, if capitalism can no longer compete in the market place of ideas, it's time to consider WSDE.

What? The unions elected Barack Obama...twice! And you want to say they can't compare in economic influence on government as a couple of individual billionaires? Please!

--Public-sector workers had a union membership rate (35.7 percent), more
than five times higher than that of private-sector workers (6.6 percent).
(See table 3.)

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm

Looks to me like they have a stranglehold on government, truth be told. And capitalism can most certainly "compete in the market place for ideas"

A recent Reason-Rupe poll asked Americans to rate their favorability towards capitalism, socialism, a free market economy, and a government managed economy. Americans have the most favorable reaction to free markets (69%), followed by capitalism (55%), socialism (36%), and coming in last was a government managed economy (30%).

http://reason.com/blog/2015/02/12/poll-americans-like-free-markets-more-t2

You seem to only believe what you read in progressive propaganda outlets and only respect the opinions of (anti-capitalist) progressives. But those are not the facts surrounding this discussion - it is a leftist narrative.

 

[Queen Titania]

You're Saying That Sheep Are Just As Predatory As Wolves Are

Unions should be made mandatory. They pressure management into replacing lazy or bullying parasites at the top. Otherwise, the Big Shots don't earn money; they merely sit back and collect it from the workers who produce all of it. This both demoralizes the working force, reducing productivity, and allows management to take it easy and put up with its own no-talent yes-men and brownnoses.

Increased revenue is all that happened when American sports became unionized. As it was in the beginning with the lazy hereditary ownership, there was no way the clubs could avoid being bankrupted by the unions. That is static thinking, but management was forced to become dynamic. They charged much more for tickets and didn't lose any customers from that, proving that they had never known before unionization activated them what value the public gave to watching the games. They demanded larger TV contracts and got them, whereas before the soft spoiled owner and his flunkies were so ignorant that they thought of the sports channels as advertising the games and didn't demand the money they could have gotten. So much for the meeting of minds nonsense between buyer and seller in the well-financed fantasy that there is such a thing as a free market.

Of course, bootlicking liars are always provided the escape hatch that analogies can't be used if they expose the lunacy of the present corporate arrangement. Everything that offends them is automatically called "apples and oranges." But sports also can be used to explode myths in education and civil rights. The controlling lie is that what is good enough for us is not good enough for athletes.
Unions put pressure on management to replace its own dead weight. Your key error is believing that those in high-salaried positions deserve to be where they are. As under Capitalism's twin, Communism, the leaders are ignorant and indifferent no-talent brownnoses.

Lol - Anyone who believes that Unions should be mandatory should be forced into a time machine and to come and live in England through the '70s when it more or less was! loooooooooooooooool

I loved the '70s and found the whole thing hilarious but it wasn't really funny, they nearly bought us to our knees and what is most unforgivable is that they, more than anyone are to blame for Thatcher being foisted upon us.

 

[georgephillip]

Prep School means prepare for college. So that anti-democratic institution must be replaced by highly paid professional training or it will poison the thinking of every student.

What sort of curriculum would be provided? Would the public or private sector provide the funding and administration, and how would such an institution make education more democratic?

 

[georgephillip]

What? The unions elected Barack Obama...twice! And you want to say they can't compare in economic influence on government as a couple of individual billionaires? Please!

--Public-sector workers had a union membership rate (35.7 percent), more
than five times higher than that of private-sector workers (6.6 percent).
(See table 3.)

Union voters help elect Obama twice, but the money comes from business by a 15:1 margin:
"The broadest classification of political donors separates them into business, labor, or ideological interests. Whatever slice you look at, business interests dominate, with an overall advantage over organized labor of about 15-to-1.

"Even among PACs - the favored means of delivering funds by labor unions - business has a more than 3-to-1 fundraising advantage. In soft money, the ratio is nearly 17-to-1.

"An important caveat must be added to these figures: "business" contributions from individuals are based on the donor's occupation/employer. Since nearly everyone works for someone, and since union affiliation is not listed on FEC reports, totals for business are somewhat overstated, while labor is understated. Still, the base of large individual donors is predominantly made up of business executives and professionals. Contributions under $200 are not included in these numbers, as they are not itemized."
https://www.opensecrets.org/overview/blio.php

 

[georgephillip]

A recent Reason-Rupe poll asked Americans to rate their favorability towards capitalism, socialism, a free market economy, and a government managed economy. Americans have the most favorable reaction to free markets (69%), followed by capitalism (55%), socialism (36%), and coming in last was a government managed economy (30%).

I'm tempted to say most Americans don't know what "free market" means.
"Recent polls have suggested that millennials are far more positive to socialism than older cohorts. For instance, the Pew Research Center found that 43 percent of 18-29 year olds had a positive reaction to the word socialism, compared to 33 percent of 30-49 year olds, 23 percent of 50-64 year olds, and 14% of 65+. The older you get the more you hate socialism."
It's also reasonable to point out most young people have seen a different edition of capitalism than their parents and grandparents saw. Once upon a time capitalism provided each generation with an opportunity to improve upon their parents socioeconomic position, but that's no longer the case, and it isn't likely to improve by voting Republican OR Democrat.
http://reason.com/poll/2014/07/16/millennials-dont-know-what-socialism-mea

 

[Woolleybugger]

Bullshit! Corporations represent shareholders, employees and customers - a much broader interest than just "labor." It's bullshit arguments like that that make me think there's something seriously wrong with you people...

You my friend are a born sucker. You keep getting fleeced and want more it seems. What is it about supporting the working man and woman that drives you nuts?

 

[Lukey]

You my friend are a born sucker. You keep getting fleeced and want more it seems. What is it about supporting the working man and woman that drives you nuts?

The political corruption, kakistocracy and economic stagnation in which it results!

 

[Lukey]

I'm tempted to say most Americans don't know what "free market" means.
"Recent polls have suggested that millennials are far more positive to socialism than older cohorts. For instance, the Pew Research Center found that 43 percent of 18-29 year olds had a positive reaction to the word socialism, compared to 33 percent of 30-49 year olds, 23 percent of 50-64 year olds, and 14% of 65+. The older you get the more you hate socialism."
It's also reasonable to point out most young people have seen a different edition of capitalism than their parents and grandparents saw. Once upon a time capitalism provided each generation with an opportunity to improve upon their parents socioeconomic position, but that's no longer the case, and it isn't likely to improve by voting Republican OR Democrat.
http://reason.com/poll/2014/07/16/millennials-dont-know-what-socialism-mea

They like the "sharing" aspect and have a favorable inclination to socialism because of how economics is taught in school (by progressives who favor socialism). They aren't taught what real free markets are and instead are told that our current crony capitalist system is the result of "free markets" when, in fact, it is the result of the very progressivism the professors preach.

Once they get into the real world and start making money and see the government take it to pay benefits to people who have never worked for a living, the right minded folks come around to the fact that socialism represents failure, and at that point, only the losers continue to favor a socialist system over the meritocracy inherent in a market based economy.

 

[Lukey]

Union voters help elect Obama twice, but the money comes from business by a 15:1 margin:
"The broadest classification of political donors separates them into business, labor, or ideological interests. Whatever slice you look at, business interests dominate, with an overall advantage over organized labor of about 15-to-1.

"Even among PACs - the favored means of delivering funds by labor unions - business has a more than 3-to-1 fundraising advantage. In soft money, the ratio is nearly 17-to-1.

"An important caveat must be added to these figures: "business" contributions from individuals are based on the donor's occupation/employer. Since nearly everyone works for someone, and since union affiliation is not listed on FEC reports, totals for business are somewhat overstated, while labor is understated. Still, the base of large individual donors is predominantly made up of business executives and professionals. Contributions under $200 are not included in these numbers, as they are not itemized."
https://www.opensecrets.org/overview/blio.php

And the "business" donations are split between democrats and republicans while the union money goes almost solely to democrats. So your suggestion here that business spending dominates the union spending is misleading.

 

[Craig]

And the "business" donations are split between democrats and republicans while the union money goes almost solely to democrats. So your suggestion here that business spending dominates the union spending is misleading.

Hardly misleading.

Business money dwarfs union money. The only conclusion one can come to looking at the numbers on that page is the Republicans hate the working man.