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The New Financial Class War?
Earlier
this week, I read an interesting comment by Damien Hoffman, Are
Private and Public Employees Headed for War?:
American Enterprise
Institute President Arthur C. Brooks might be an emerging leader of
the intellectual side of the Tea Party movement (Cf. the emotional
side). He raises an interesting point I have been hearing a
lot lately by people in states with massive public pension
liabilities: “The disparity [between public and private sector
benefits] is so large and so unfair, a day of reckoning is coming.”
When
I was recently visiting family in New Jersey, all they could discuss
was their animosity toward police officers retiring in their 40′s with full
pensions, teachers receiving 4% a year raises despite the economic
recession, and politicians who keep signing contracts for more
unsustainable and unfundable public sector compensation programs. Given
the anger coupled with their very reasonable insights, I could easily
see how this issue will reach an ugly head.
However, one thing
Brooks and many private sector employees fail to also consider are the ~10 million private pensioned people lobbying hard
for a government bailout. And I don’t think anyone has yet
forgotten the Trillions in liabilities we are all sharing for the private
finance sector bailout in 2008 and 2009.
Thus, I don’t think
this is a public versus private sector issue as much as an issue of
people incorrectly believing that 1) there are guarantees in
capitalism, and 2) taxpayers can sustain irrational retirement benefits
for public sector retirees.There are NO
Guarantees in CapitalismI repeat: there are no
guarantees in capitalism. If the US is to recreate one of the greatest
economies in the world, we must end the practice of aiding businesses
and programs which would otherwise go bankrupt without government
subsidy. Once guarantees are offered to a privileged group of people, a
society ends up in the current tit-for-tat gameplay currently reaching
elevated heights in the US.
Of course, there must be exceptions
for certain programs which provide legitimate social value for the
statistically small percentage of people who genuinely need it. But
insofar as guaranteeing survival in the private marketplace or
irrational retirement benefits in the public sector, the government
must end these practices now before we follow the same path as ancient
Rome.
The death spiral is as such:
First, public sector
employees see private sector companies receiving generous taxpayer aid
for all types of unfair reasons. Then, the private sector sees public
workers retiring after 15-20 years with full pensions at insane rates
based on trickery (e.g., padded time sheets with unnecessary overtime),
paid-up medical with zero to infinitesimal worker contributions, and
other outrageous benefits which seem like they were added to the public
budgets during a real life trip through Tim Burton’s Alice in
Wonderland.
After that, the private sector lashes back
because there’s no justice in using tax dollars to provide one set of
workers with a better standard of living than another set of equally
deserving workers. This game goes back and forth until the parents step
in and quash the childish nonsense.Taxpayers
Cannot Sustain Irrational Public Sector BenefitsIn
addition to getting back to Adam Smith’s authentic version of
capitalism — not crony capitalism or corporate socialism — the public
sector must recognize that 1 + 1 = 2. Therefore, public budgets must be
based on realistic tax burdens. No one I know debates whether we need
teachers or police officers. However, they do question whether a 40-year
old police officer really needs so much tax payer support as to have a
Hummer, live in the wealthiest neighborhood in town, etc.
Moreover,
there is a major problem with military officers marrying friends
simply so the tax payer will send benefits to the new “spouses”. Anyone
who has spent any time around the military knows there is a huge
cancer of scams such as this being perpetrated against the taxpayers.
Rather than nickel and dime our nation’s protectors, let’s take care of
the honest ones more generously while rooting out those who are
stealing from the system.Those Are Fighting
WordsArthur C. Brooks’ new book The
Battle: How the Fight between Free Enterprise and Big Government Will
Shape America’s Futureis gaining a head of steam.
If the anger continues to spread on both sides, I would agree that our
nation’s workers are on a path to war.
While I
share many concerns raised in this article, let me also present the
flip side of this capitalistic view of retirement benefits that you will
never see in mainstream media.
Guns & Butter had another
outstanding interview with Michael Hudson on Europe's
Financial Class War Against Labor, Industry and Government:
"Europe's
Financial Class War Against Labor, Industry and Government" with Dr.
Michael Hudson. Economic crisis in Europe created by predatory
lending; European Central Bank stranglehold on the Eurozone; the Euro;
foreign banks decimate Greece's social structure; Marx's industrial
capital versus fictitious capital; Latvia as a model for the rest of
Europe; Hudson's financial and fiscal plan for Latvia; the Cold War and
its ruinous effect on progressive economic thought.
Take
the time to listen to Michael Hudson below. There are few people in
this world who understand the new financial class war more than him. I
don't agree with everything he says, but his analysis is devastatingly
brilliant. An absolute must listen interview.
»
- advertisements -
I will: police officers don't deserve the retirement they get after 20 years.
Now what?
I will too. Firemen get 3% a year toward retirement, so that the net impact is that a fireman will get 90% of his salary after 30 years. If he retires at 55 based upon a $150,000 salary and lives to be 85, the cost of his 10-day a month work scheudle is effectively 190% of his salary or over $300,000 annually with benefits. 10 days a month = 120 days a year = $2,500 a day ($300,000/120). Why are munis broke?
I know there is at least one asshat gonna respond - don;t call them then when your house catches fire! I'm not saying they shuddn't be compensated, I'm saying they are over-compensated.
They can never be overcompensated...because they are part of the Holy Trinity and its handmaiden, the almighty MILITARY that is out there risking their lives to defend us all every day.
Yes, defending us from the mighty Iraqi and Serbian threats that were massing 9000 miles away. To invade us sometime in the year 3000. Or something.
Both are right.
public spending is not sustainable. there is currently a class war going on against the working class.
We're trapped in a system based on a 2-year election cycle - the largest group of "count on" voters are union members and seniors. Since the first rule of government is get re-elected (it's actually the only rule) no action will be taken that may endanger the votes from these groups besides, the elected official has an even better pension deal than the public sector employee. The continual attempted solution will be increased taxes (mostly hidden as fees) until most money in the private sector is fully directed to the upper class of the population (the public sector).
It is a worldwide problem - in Ontario, on July 1st the price of gasoline, electricity, natural gas, Internet access, home service calls for anything, hotel rooms, campsites, air travel, magazine's, home renos, car re-sales, new homes, realty commissions, vitamins, green fees. health club memberships, live theater, sports for the kids, barber, lawyer fees and more all get taxed an additional 8%. NOW - since this is an increase in a government tax, it will not be included in the CPI - so that 8% will not be considered inflationary.
Another non sense article. People only retain Smith's invisible Hand.
Smith advocated colonization. The current situation is a following of his points.
This author of the article cannot cope with the past. He has to deny lets say something like the biggest land transfer in humanity's history.
People looked for handouts since the beginning of the US. The Indian lands were seized by the US government to be distributed to the US citizens.
There is no war on labour.
Labour is a drain on resources. Take a technological level. The more resources are available, the more labour is available.
When a society is capturing a lot of resources, it is good propaganda to hype up the importance of hard work as it will warrant people's participation to transform and use the newly captured resources.
An agrarian, mining society will get great benefits from seizing preserved land as it will allow more and more society members to work.
Of course, once the injection is over, labour is bound to appear more and more like the drain on resources it is.
Already what happened at the end of the 19th, when the Indian land transfer was achieved.
The US gave themselves room with expanding on the failed european colonial empires after WW2.
But the world is finite. And the space conquest, before being paraded as that communist/capitalist mock show, failed as its main purpose was to offer expansion in space.
You are so stupid it's a wonder you can think to breath.
If the acquisition of "Indian lands" made America wealthy, then why didn't it make Mexico wealthy? Or Brazil? Or Argentina? Or Honduras? Or Cuba? Or Peru? Or Columbia? Or Panama? Or Chile? Or Costa Rica? Or Canada? (Canada does alright for its small population, but it should have been a world power like the U.S.) Why didn't it make the Indians themselves wealthy and powerful?
The answer is that the land itself doesn't mean shit. Only two things matter: the people (genetically and culturally) and the social system under which they are organized. America used to have a superior germanic population and the optimal social system for rapid advancement (free market capitalism). Now the genetic population is getting replaced by inferior Mexicans and West Africans and free markets are being replaced by socialism.
It's a waste to reply to you as you must lead a pretty pathetic existance of self loathing and hatred.
But for the record, the reason the U.S. did very well is rather simple.
After WW2 the U.S. was the only economy left. Everyone else was in rubbles.
The U.S. did well by the two Oceans on either side in that fight because it was hopelessly inadequately prepared for war: torpedoes that failed to detonate, fighters that were inferior to the Japanese's zeros, tanks that were nicknamed after a good cigarette lighter (because they lit up after the first enemy shell hit them) etc. It did have Detroit and again those two Oceans.
As for indegenious populations and Industralization, a different take is Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (which while overly simplistic) is at least a better argument.
I have systematically refuted Diamond's basic thesis, which is post-hoc apologism.
The truth is that not all populations are endowed with similar attributes. Period.
Who made the fucking guns? The steel? Did this stuff make itself?
Once again, how does it connect to the my first comment?
"The truth is that not all populations are endowed with similar attributes."
Makes sense to me.
My response, in which I mentioned Jared (and said he oversimplified) was a little longer than just "Guns, germs..."
However, I would caution that you should qualify your satement somewhat because most populations have similar enough attributes: greed and stupidity is Universal.
Using logic, knowledge and intelligence, just what the hell is with you, Muir?
Seriously, though, thanks for espousing the obvious to clowns who evidently have never learned anything or actively used their analytical faculties.
Much prefer Joseph A. Tainter to anything Diamond ever wrote, and Diamond obviously borrowed some of Prof. Tainter's insights.
Yes, latch on to any thesis you like to hear merely because it was written in a book by an "authoritative" author.
Never mind that Diamond is a fool; his PBS series had him going on about how africans evolved the way they did, away from civilizations, as a selective adaptation to avoid malaria pandemics.
In other words, he himself was saying, despite apparently not realizing it, that the overarching pressure of malaria caused west africans to be uncivilized. In fact, west africans who were more aggressive and less civilized would be apt to have higher baseline survival rates than those who formed cities and were then wiped out by malaria.
You really need to think before you speak.
As long as you idiots fall prey to the faux egalitarianism out there, nobody will get anywhere. You are an easy mark for racial guiltmongers and apt to destroy yourself over fabricated sins of your fathers.
But what thesis?
Is this guy in his books has to demonstrate the most obvious fact like labour is a drain on resources, an agrarian/mining society benefits from an injection of land?
It is funny how ideologues love to side track a topic to avoid facing the facts related to it.
Keep to the facts. The US robbed land. It helped them. No matter how skilled they are, all robbers have to face the very fact that to rob, there must be something to rob.
My comment was filled with basic facts.
The poster diverted them by introducing a racist innuendo to issues that affect every society or even individual.
For example, if a farmer has a son and just enough land to work by himself, his son might not be able to work the land as his father already work the land.
Now if he adds land to his property, this will allow his son to work the extra land. Empirically known since agriculture is practised.
Labour is a drain on resources and when a society/individual adds to its resources pool additional resources to drain on, it increases its capacity to labour.
Germanic people, like other people, know this fact for sure.
First, people dont think to breath. Breathing is operated through the autonomic nervous system.
Second of all, the land does not matter. A breath taking statement not shared by many people in the past. How many bronze age warlords did not comprehend the importance of resources?
The current state of propaganda led by some has reached a point of self destruction. Coming to negate obvious facts for hundreds of generations.
Germanic superior population and organization? But the Germans comprehended the importance of expansion. How come that people for whom supposedly the land meant nothing spent so much effort to try to acquire more? If the land does not matter, keep none to you and thrive.
Free market capitalism is replaced with nothing. The world is simply finite and expansion is getting harder. For lack of space to expand into.
Running short of indian lands...
+100
"America used to have a superior germanic population..."
You're a hopelessly ignorant person with severe racial prejudices. The way you think is a throwback to the era of slavery and colonies. America used to be great because it was the land of opportunity, not opportunism, which it has degenerated into.
What he states is the truth - all are not created equal.
If you cannot see that, then you are a fool. Opportunity is WASTED on the slothful. This is how Rhodesia became Zimbabwe. Redistribution to different hands disproved immediately your inane and self-delusional premise of shared cognitive heritage.
America has been ghettofied, it's most powerful institutions, media and finance, have risen to the top, strangling everything else. Biracial babies are paraded as the pinnacle of achievement, even greater than the moon landing. We denigrate the achievements of men like Jefferson now because he owned slaves.
We have ourselves an internal war by non-westerners on western civilization, carried forth by organizations purporting to advance "colored" issues but who are run by different masters.
JFC, just look at the unholy alliance behind Gangster rap. The JDL and Eazy E.
Usury and aggression are our game now.
I dont see how this negates any point of my post or even connect to my post.
The only way it could connect to my post is by providing a counter-example to the general points made in them.
Without that, it is just racists seajacking a comment for any cause that is.
"America used to have a superior germanic population..."
Just because it's prejudiced doesn't mean that it's not true. I live in Belgium, which is divided between Germanic and Latin populations. Care to guess which one is innovative and rich and which one isn't? The split in Belgium is a microcosm of Europe.
Actually, in Belgium, the 'Germanic' populations advanced by taking from the 'Latin' populations through a policy of compromize.
But hey, some wants to be at the top and are ready to lie for that.
There are NO Guarantees in Capitalism
hence we do not have capitalism....
i'm all for burning a few teachers as a down payment on burning a bunch more politicians....
"If I were running Greece, I would have redenominated all debts in drachma instead of the euro, devalued by 99%, wiped out all the debts, and had a clean slate. And then I'd let the currency float under a new drachma."
Is that that a drachma that's worthless?
I call bullshit on Michael Hudson, he speaks in a similar vein to that moronic Ellen (governments must be allowed to create money themselves) Brown.
Leo K nails it again!
So, you're OK tho with the BANKS being allowed to create it so long as it has INTEREST attached to it? WTF
That's far WORSE. You people are calling for debt prisons for the Greeks simply because they're stupid. Rah rah banks, huh?
I got bad news for you, WE are "in debt" to the banks to the tune of the entire Z1 consumer credit figure, or $50+ trillion, buddy.
We allowed them to LEND us our money supply and charge us interest on it. Now, they expect REAL assets in exchange for what was FICTIONAL capital. Our money is a ponzi scheme confidence racket.
you said it. yes, and yes and this is
the only important point of discussion
until it is corrected/eliminated/fixed.
yes. yes. this is it. if we can't fix
this everything else will remain broken
forever. yes. thank you.
imo.
down with "federal reserve notes"
long live "UNITED STATES NOTES"
Michael Hudson conveniently ignores the fact that Europe as a whole is deeply in debt. He says that the ECB COULD just "finance this debt itself"...but instead that the banks are being paid back.
Well, Iceland is his ideal. Hudson advocates, in effect, Keynesian printing to support living standards rather than paying back debts. He hates Margaret Thatcher. He's a socialist, a money-printer.
If anyone actually believed this claptrap, then why not just raise and raise living standards even more? According to Hudson, we can pay for anything if we only use the central banks in the service "of the people".
Cuts have to be made to living standards so that they are sustainable by productivity. Want high living standards? Work harder, be more productive and stop borrowing, eleiminate deficits. Period.
What's Hudson saying new here, Leo? It's just more print, print, print...
As opposed to fucking WHAT, "repaying" the banks the capital they lent but never actually possessed in the first place?
Yeah, I get it...Greece, like every debt serf who fell prey to the usury clan leading up to yet another great purge, should repay in REAL assets in exchange for loans of money that was CREATED by the banks that lent it to them...PLUS interest.
This is PRECISELY the debt compounding, real for paper, deflation/default SCAM that has been played for centuries by the banking tribe. It ALWAYS ends up in mass misery, strife, conflict, and even genocide.
The only credit that should exist is that which is self-liquidating, iow, REAL bills.
"Want high living standards? Work harder, be more productive and stop borrowing, eleiminate deficits. Period."
Spoken like a true witless neocon with an obvious underlying agenda (super-rich, or works for them).
When the worker's innovations, intellectual property, created and developed technology, etc., has been offshored, along with all their jobs, your specious statement is rendered useless and nonsensical.
Those deficits, oh ignorant one, derive primarily from monetizing that private debt (hence all those debt-financed billionaires, and several trillionaires) on the backs of the public, and those endless wars, which are immediately placed on the supplemental budget, i.e., immediately go in the deficit-spending column.
Do you actually know anything at all? Do you have any education in anything?
Sure don't sound like it, dood....you don't even understand the fundamental supply and demand and what constitutes productivity, fooooool.
Two thumbs up Sgt. Doom.
And what country, pray tell, isn't in debt, lowbrow?
The USA? This country went bankrupt (technically speaking) back in 2004.
Youse needs to do some book learning, dood.... (Youse works for the Peterson Institute, don'ts youse?)
OMG, U must b rite cuz u spell things all funny-like!
Give it a fucking rest, dood.
Your stupid fucking spelling alone has made me 100% against whatever the fuck it is you're for.
Not really he is advocating debt relief more than anything. making banks take the losses, not bailing them out and nationalizing them, letting them fail, and starting up new ones.
You analysis is faulty. I am also sick of the term socialist somehow being bad. it has been demonized by the very people who would loose the most.
There was a great article in the ft last week about volkswagon. pay people good wages, the company makes profits, but it isnt about stealing from the workers. yes it is less profitable than other car makers, but they have a more sustainable business model in my view.
Yes the public sector can't continue to spend as much. but much of this could be reduced by military spending, ending corporate subsidies, etc. The very idea that people should get paid a living wage, have some kind of access to healtcare, not be stuck in debt usary is reasonable to me.
People who are stuck in their ideology make me puke. We don't have capitialism in this country. What we have is corporate socialism. Even a capitialist like Ron Paul says we have corporate socialism. The guy is correct that they have a real class war going on.
I wish there was a time marker on the hudson file. but no question there is financial warfare going on. it is war against the middle class to benefit the bankers.
He's advocating the destruction of all wealth in cash. Keep in mind that it may destroy foreign banks, but for domestic banks their liabilities would get monetized, too. It's people who have savings accounts who would be wiped out. It's massively redistributive, and if coupled by confiscation of non-financial assets it's a truly terrifying thing to think about.
Gotta admit, though, Stalin, Pol Pot, Hitler, Mao, Kim Jong Il et al. really did a number on it. My apologies for the Godwin, but the distrust of socialism is informed by the real catastrophes produced by autarkic socialist systems and the overwhelming success of market-based systems. Indeed, the success is such that what we call "socialist" these days in Europe usually refers to a large welfare state, not government ownership of the means of production.
Really? Its workers in developing countries often make just enough to live above their official poverty lines, and its 10 plants in China are part of its CEO's Napoleonic vision of surpassing Toyota in market share. VW has deals with its unions to supplement the existing workforce with temp workers at much lower wages. And then you have to look at suppliers. For example, here in Japan, Toyota and Honda pay fairly good wages for manufacturers, but when you at its subcontractors and temporary employees, their pay is substantially lower and they're the source of a lot of cost-cutting. It's somewhat unfair to applaud a company's high pay if it hides wage deflation elsewhere.
He's only advocating ONE thing: more money-printing. He's not against borrowing. He's not against printing money to raise or support ridiculous living standards. He seems to have a vindictive hatred of the banks, when the fault lies with the populations and governments of those indebted countries.
He wants to stiff the creditors. Just another redistributionist Keynesian socialist. And I WILL look at this ideologically: why save deadbeat borrowers at all?
__
Oh, one last thing...
"Cuts have to be made to living standards so that they are sustainable by productivity. Want high living standards? Work harder, be more productive and stop borrowing, eleiminate[sic] deficits. Period."
__
Ehh...hmmmm.... how can I put this politely?
You are full of shit.
__
What productivity when the jobs were taken to Mexico and China?
How about stupid wars that were a "slam dunk?" Might this be a "misallocation of resources?"
How about doing just about everything possible to be dependant on oil from the Middle-East?
You've got to be an investment banker, only someone like that could say something so stupid.
And your proposed solution is?
"He seems to have a vindictive hatred of the banks...."
Don't you?
"....when the fault lies with the populations and governments of those indebted countries."
wrong
The problem lies with ignorant populations, servile governments and unaccountable banks.
__
Leo presented this as a dichotomy, binary problem.
That is why there will not be a correct solution.
"Want high living standards? Work harder, be more productive and stop borrowing, eleiminate deficits."
Just as true as you can't reduce entropy (disorder) in a system without doing work using which consumes energy. (The no free lunch law of thermodynamics)
Yes, so simple, so true, yet so hard for statists to understand. Everything else in economics is a distraction. Debt=serfdom. Q.E.D.
Great read Leo. Thank you.
Thanks Leo. Too many people looking for a handout. Where is the pride of individualism? The problems we are facing are not new historically. The people will never wake up just as the leaders will never wake up. Things would go better if they did but they will continue on the same course until it crumbles under their feet. Then they'll fight over the crumbs. If more people were financially independent they could learn to be self sufficient. We most definitely could do without teachers and police. An average student could learn the 12 year curriculum in 8 years at home on a computer studying 2 hours a day. The police department could be run by community volunteers. We have been brainwashed in to thinking kids should be herded from one room to the next in groups of 35. It is not necessary. But as stated above, people that actually consider themselves mature adults will be fighting ferociously for jobs that are not needed and retirements that others must pay for.
" Too many people looking for a handout."
Pooh-Bah, dood, you are soooo right. I mean, only all those debt-financed billionaires deserve handouts, and corporate welfare, and not having to pay any taxes (ExxonMobil, GE, Blackstone Group, etc., ad infinitum, along with over 70% of US-based corporations).
Yup, and everyone else should volunteerily work for them there communities and corps.
Yeah....it's all about that there individualism, righto lemming feller!
Yup, Poo-Bah, I'll be I can easily pick you out in a crowd, you're the clown who appears so short because you're bent over with your head as far up your butt as it will go.
On the Michael Hudson bit:
I wouldn't call monetizing the deficit "nothing."
A Godwinning Keynesian advocating a bailout of cotton and ink producers. Color me shocked.
I'm sorry, but while it's true that a government could nationalize everything and produce at cost in the very short-term, is he arguing that cell phones, data plans and all the enormous breakthroughs in communication technology would exist under Uncle Sam's wing? Shit, back in Cali we paid our police officers over $150,000 per year and still had terrible crime. Waiting in the DMV, post office and so on took three hours. I've had to wait in the post office for two hours to pick up a package. If the government has any solutions, they have a hell of a way of showing it.
No, dammit, no. First off, Japan and Russia are basket cases. The misallocation of capital in both countries is immense. Japan Post itself is, to be polite, a fucking terrible waste. It was a backdoor method of taxation that funded public works pork barrel projects and enabled Japan to suppress its cost of funds enough to run up 200% debt/GDP with shit to show for it. The major Japanese banks are not much better, in their own beneficiaries of government bailouts and implicit support.
His solution just seems to be to socialize everything in line with Marxism (no, that's not ad hominem; he advocates it). I'll buy that there are immense problems with our system, but I'm not switching to Trotskyism.
Re the Greek gold stolen by Nazi's bit:
It was Mussolini and the ad on ZH may have it right:
Buy gold at $387.
Not too many people appreciate $5T of gold cannot offset $777T of deflating GDPs, unfunded agency mandates and financial derivatives forever.
From someone who bought silver at a buck and gold at $35...
His first quote is why lending at interest was BANNED in the western world for centuries and why Usury Clan members have been run out of every country they've ever inhabited.
The banks lent Greece money they NEVER HAD. The capital DIDN'T EXIST, ok? It only exists as a confidence racket, the true ESSENCE of a ponzi is what ALL debtmoney is.
Look at the Z1...ALL of those dollars are FRNs from either the Fed or member banks! Do you honestly think that banks had $55T in capital to lend at the start of the Fed system!?!? If not, then where the HELL did all that credit come from? They expect INTEREST on "capital" they pulled out of their ASSES.
The proof that banks create debt/money by lending capital they do not possess is INARGUABLE. The ubiquity of this practice among "bankers" and Usury Clan members is why this sort of thing was singularly REVILED throughout history.
Real Bills is what financed world trade through the Renaissance and beyond. This system we have NOW is an abomination.
EVERYone should repudiate! The bank gave you NOTHING real and NOTHING it actually OWNED when it lent you money.
"First off, Japan and Russia are basket cases."
Duuuh...and Japan's hit came from the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) specific capital-on-hand changes directed at them, while Russia suffered from those U. of Chicago's "shock and awe" aimed at turning them into simply the next resources source for the US and the Western countries. (Remember a dood named Jeffrey Sachs? Remember a dood named Larry Summers? Perhaps you might also remember, if youse has any book learning, their involvement with that?)
China is a Totalitarian Capitalist State, America is a Corporate Fascist State, not a whole lot of difference, but what Engles and Marx were origininally advocating (for those who've never read Das Kapital - all editions) was economic democracy, not the corporate nor state monopolizing land, capital and knowledge.
Buck up and learn, dood!
Yes, I listened to the tape too.
But you were sort of picky about what you put up.
How about when he criticizes Obama for appointing bank lobbyists for his cabinet and the bailout of the banks?
I mean, surely you are not suggesting that corporations should be in charge, are you?
I can agree that the pension plans are insane and still find a lot of what Michael Hudson said to be true.
This is not as LEO seems to imply a binary problem.
If you compare public employee unions and politicians to the Chinese Communists in China, the only difference is that the Chinese Communists usually go out of their way to help the private sector.
Furthermore, in America, the stupidity of local government knows no bounds. In a budget meeting, one elected official argued that the workforce of the town government couldn't be cut because the town was the largest employer and the town workers pay taxes.
Hey Ragnar,
Listen buddy, your objectivist lurrrning has failed you. Completely. If you think the difference between Chinese and US Government is that China goes out of its way to help the private sector and the US does not (TARP, AIG, FinReg's toothlessness), you really have not been paying attention. At all.
In fact, objectively (heh) speaking, the is statement is so wrong it is almost willfully obtuse.
It seems you were day dreaming when reading one of Rand's 77 page monologues in that horrribly written book.