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The Real Unemployment Scandal?
Discussing the latest US jobs report, Greg Ip of The Economist comments on jobless agonistes:
Hopes
had risen in the past week that America’s economic soft patch was
ending. They have just been doused with a bucket of cold water. The job
market showed further deterioration
in June from May, the government reported today. The number of
non-farm jobs rose a meager 18,000, lower even than May’s 25,000 number
(itself revised down from the original estimate). The two months
together mark a dramatic deceleration from the previous three when
payroll growth averaged 215,000 per month.
The unemployment rate,
meanwhile, rose for the fourth consecutive month to 9.2%, from 9.1% in
May. It was 8.8% in March. The economic recovery celebrated (if you
could call it that) its second anniversary on July 1st, and in that
time the unemployment rate has moved a lot while ending up almost
exactly where it began. America has made almost no progress closing the
output gap opened up by the recession. The
U-6 unemployment rate, which includes people who have given up looking
for jobs and part timers who want full time work, shot up to 16.2%
from 15.8% and the average duration of unemployment hit a new high of
39.9 weeks. More women than men lost jobs. Indeed, since the recovery began, women have fared worse than men, a reversal of the pattern during the recession, as a new Pew study documents. Still, the male unemployment rate rose more last month than the female rate.
Digging
deeper, the details grow worse. Hourly wages failed to rise and the
average work week shrank slightly—bad news for income and thus
purchasing power. The survey of households, from which the unemployment
rate is drawn, shows a much bigger plunge in employment, at 445,000,
than the payroll survey. The household survey is less reliable but is
still a useful check. It tells us the payroll report is not understating
the strength of the job market.
There is no good news in this
report; in the category of "could have been worse," private sector job
growth was better than the overall total, at 57,000 last month. Public
employment fell, for the eighth consecutive month, led by more layoffs
by state and local governments.
The best explanation for the sharp
slowdown in the jobs market is the confluence of bad luck that hit the
economy this spring: a sharp increase in petrol prices, a series of
natural disasters, and the Japanese tsunami and earthquake that
interrupted supply chains in electronics, automobiles and other
industries. Most of these temporary restraints have begun to lift. The
weather is back to normal, petrol prices are down 10% (nearly 40 cents
per gallon) from their peak, and Japan’s disruptions are ending.
Automobile production schedules are ramping up and the Institute of
Supply Management found that factory activity improved from May to June.
Manufacturing employment rose last month, albeit by only 6,000. Even
Greece seems, yet again, to have muddled through its latest confidence
crisis (but keep your eyes on much bigger Italy).
In all
likelihood, the employment data will improve in coming months as
consumer purchasing power and business spirits recover from the fuel
price surge. Yet as we argue in an article
in this week’s issue of The Economist, there is more to the
disappointing trajectory of the recovery than these temporary
restraints. America has only just begun
to deleverage and a McKinsey study has found that comparable episodes
in history have been accompanied by anemic growth and often a return to
recession. While America probably won’t fall back into
recession absent some new shock, its workers should get used to
stop-start growth punctuated with disappointments and soft patches.
Americans are not alone in this; Britain has experienced similar
disappointments and Spain’s outlook is even more anemic. Both share
America’s pre-existing condition of vastly overstretched household
balance sheets and the opportunistic infection of exploding government
debt.
While most of Europe is ahead of America in implementing
plans to arrest the rise in government debt as a share of GDP, America
is just beginning. In Washington, the mood surrounding negotiations
over an increase in the statutory debt limit took a turn for the better
this week as Republicans signaled flexibility on taxes and the
Democrats did likewise on entitlements. This may be good news
politically but it is ambiguous, and possibly bad, economically, if the
final deal front-loads, rather than back-loads, the pain. The steady
bleed of public sector jobs shows state and local government austerity
is already weighing heavily. Federal fiscal policy is scheduled to
tighten in January when a temporary investment tax credit and payroll
tax cut expire. Layering on more austerity would pummel an economy
still struggling to achieve a virtuous circle of jobs, income and
spending. Mr Obama is reportedly pushing to extend the payroll tax cut
for another year. That would be good, but that would not represent new
stimulus, merely a softening of the fiscal restraint already in train.
And
what about the Federal Reserve? Its second round of quantitative
easing (QE) was completed at the end of June. The consensus is that it
would have to see deflation looming to implement more. I think the bar
is lower than that. Ben Bernanke, the
Fed chairman, has always worried that rising unemployment could spark a
pernicious cycle of declining confidence and spending. If its recent
rise continues into the third quarter, expect to see Wall Street raise
the odds on QE3. It’s too soon to write the recovery off, but not too soon for contingency planning.
I'd
say the odds of another QE3 were slim prior to the latest jobs report
and they now stand at 50-50. If employment growth doesn't pick up
significantly over the next few months, QE3 is a done deal, and Wall
Street will celebrate by bidding up risk assets.
The real
structural problem in the US labor market is that there are really two
economies since the early 80s: the financial economy made up of bankers,
traders and money managers on Wall Street and the real economy made of
manufacturers but mostly of small businesses. The latter are struggling
while the former keep enjoying record bonuses. Nothing is trickling
down, and even if it is, it's so minute that it doesn't make a
difference. Even cash rich corporations are in no hurry to hire because
they're producing more with less and they've got no confidence that this
is a sustainable recovery.
And as TomDispatch associate editor Andy Kroll
points out, for all the verbiage about jobs that will be coming your
way, there’s one part of the American jobs crisis deserving screaming
headlines that the politicians won’t be talking about, the 60-year unemployment scandal:
Live in Washington long enough and you'll hear someone mention "east of the river." That's
D.C.'s version of "the other side of the tracks," the place friends
warn against visiting late at night or on your own. It's home to
District Wards 7 and 8, neighborhoods with a long, rich history. Once
known as Uniontown, Anacostia was one of the District's first suburbs;
Frederick Douglass, nicknamed the "Sage of Anacostia," once lived there, as did the poet Ezra Pound and singer Marvin Gaye. Today the area's unemployment rate is officially nearly 20%. District-wide, it’s 9.8%, a figure that drops as low as 3.6% in the whiter, more affluent northwestern suburbs.
D.C.'s divide is America's writ large. Nationwide, the unemployment rate for black workers at 16.2% is almost double the 9.1% rate for the rest of the population. And it's twice the 8% white jobless rate.
The
size of those numbers can, in part, be chalked up to the current jobs
crisis in which black workers are being decimated. According to Duke
University public policy expert William Darity, that means blacks are
"the last to be hired in a good economy, and when there's a downturn,
they're the first to be released."
That may account for the
soaring numbers of unemployed African Americans, but not the yawning
chasm between the black and white employment rates, which is no
artifact of the present moment. It's a problem that spans generations,
goes remarkably unnoticed, and condemns millions of black Americans to a
life of scraping by. That unerring, unchanging gap between white and
black employment figures goes back at least 60 years. It should be a
scandal, but whether on Capitol Hill or in the media it gets remarkably
little attention. Ever.
Indeed, nobody wants
to talk about the shockingly high unemployment rate among black
Americans because they've been largely written off. I'll tell you about
another scandal that nobody talks about, the unemployment rate of
disabled persons which is closer to 85%, and that's being generous.
I
take the rights of disabled people very seriously partly because I have
MS and it makes me extremely angry at how prejudiced employers are
towards disabled persons. One trader recently sent me an email telling
me the following:
no
offense, but that MS will likely be the preventing factor to your
being hired (large orgs fear large disability expense, small orgs can
ill afford any absence) - I know two guys with health issues (a guy who
is a cancer survivor with diabetes, another had a liver transplant)
and group benefits/life-insurance are a factor in them staying in
sub-optimal jobs....plus they save/invest like fiends since they are
parents with abbreviated life/mortality expectations
I wasn't offended at all and told him he's right, most organizations --
private corporations, federally chartered banks and even government Crown
corporations and government departments -- will treat people with a
serious preexisting condition as a liability (one day, I will expose
these organizations and their discriminatory practices). This is why I
decided to teach myself to be completely self-sufficient, focusing on
trading stocks, consulting and business ventures where I control my own destiny. No more sucking up to
anyone for a job! If you don't want to hire me because I have MS, that's your problem and I don't want to work for you!
Importantly,
my MS doesn't control me; I am feeling better than ever and will beat
this bloody disease because I'm the toughest SOB you'll ever meet. MS or no MS, I'll take on the world!
But that's not the case for many who are much worse off than I am and
can't fend for themselves. Many disabled are stuck collecting disability
insurance, living in poverty, all because they are ostracized
from a shallow society who only sees them as a liability. That's the
real unemployment scandal and anyone who thinks otherwise is an utter
fool who's never walked in their shoes and felt the stinging pain of
blatant discrimination.
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Lets suppose you are correct and free markets would simply cut out the middle man. At least we would save a shit ton of money by not funding the corrupt middle man.
Employees wouldnt put up with this shit. Here is a good example. Even when the government, in all of its might, makes certain goods illegal to posses, alternative markets are created and goods are traded. If the government cannot even prohibit alternative markets from arising, how could a bank or company (without assistance from government of violence) inhibit alternative market. The world is full of examples of free people creating alternative models of trade to get around entities who try to create monopolies.
So what happens 3 years into your fantasy when there's no government regulation, and there are now only 3 banks left, all operated by people that golf at the same country club (that doesn't allow you as a member)?
This would not occur and is simply fear mongering. You don't understand. Banks would not have power over consumers without the central bank and its printing presses. What we have done is deregulate the banks at the same time leave their sugar daddy intact(federal reserve) and bail them out at every corner. Who bailed them out? Central Political Power (politicians). Your theories are by defintion (INSANITY). You want to try the same thing over again expecting a different result. The ideas that genuine free markets have not been proven to fail miserably is an argument that you cannot make about government regulation and central banks.
I'm fear mongering? Only a true believer would say that the same corrupt robber barons who bribe our government officials (who are elected by the same consumers who you think are smart enough to prevent the fuckery that I describe) would not bribe, control or simply eliminate the private regulators that you envision.
Because that is the only place they can gain an unfair advantage. That's why! If the bankers could manipulate the free market so well, why did they buy of the government to create the federal reserve? They must manipulate the markets through using the government precisely because they cannot manipulate the market otherwise. Why would they go through all that trouble and fork out all of those dollars if they could simply do it on their own?
If they could manipulate the free market so well, why do they go to the government for favors and special treatment?
That's like asking why a gangster goes to the cops and bribes some of them. I would think that most people would intuitively understand that the gangster would exist and thrive without the cops. But let me just tell you -- the gangster would exist and thrive without the cops. He would love for there to be no cops. He would probably write books about how life would be better with no cops. With the cops, he needs to find corrupt ones and bribe them.
Your argument hinges upon the definition of gangster. Perhaps "gangster" would not have the resources to buy off officials if their trade were not illegal. Prohibition always drives up the costs of goods that have been prohibited because of risk premium. Thereby enriching the less than legitimate persuaision of individuals who step in to operate in said markets. Trade partners dealing with goods in the black market cannot settle their business disputes in a civil court of law for fear of prosecution. That leads them little recourse besides violence and the threat of violence to deal with any disagreements. Government prohibition creates violence and enriches those who excell at illegitimate trade. This was a bit of side note but I thought it fit into the whole"governments are destructive" narrative that I have been running with.
So if it were perfectly legal to bribe and/or murder the privately funded and uncorruptable overseers of your Unicorn fantasy economy, the power elite would stop trying to gain unfair advantage?
Thats just it. We would be the overseer's. There would be no power elite orchestrating and manipulating us or the economy.
You clearly understand the corruptability of all central power. What would be your remedy for our current situaton? What role should government play in our lives?
Duplicate Post.
Duplicate Post
Very nicely said W T. Thank you.
To an objective realist, the right to pursue your own happiness also means respecting another right to do the same. When people in business interfere with the integrity of moral truth among their fellows then you have Enron, World Comm, etc...
Rand isn't responsible for both the mismanagement of Greenspan together with the demoralization of business entities that made irresponsible decisions. She aspired to an ideal set in moral reasonableness and practicality.
Blame belongs to those who stray from basic principles and values. There are liars cheats and thieves in every society and most of those have compromised for whatever reason core-moral principles and values.
Show me one captain of industry unencumbered by rules or regulations who nonetheless behaves in a fashion that is not selfish and destructive, and I will show you one hundred who will feast on the flesh of their shareholders until they have consumed everything and everyone in their sight. Rand had her day and she was wrong. We have proof in the form of a worldwide banking/economic crises where the potential losses could be measured in the quadrillions of dollars. Rand's philosophy is simplistic and requires unrealistic human behavior to succeed. It's like saying, "we don't need police so long as everyone just agrees not to do anything to harm anyone else's person or property." When I show you example after example of people who steal and kill when they know they will face no consequences, do you respond "well, it's not my fault that those people didn't follow my philosophy correctly. We shouldn't need police." For these reasons and so many more, Rand's philosophy is demonstrably and fatally flawed. In my view, the only reason anyone with an IQ over 60 follows Rand is because she provides an almost religious justification for self-absorbtion and greed.
Fool what happened in the banking industry was the DIRECT result of government intervention. The bankers KNEW they would be bailed out because they bankrolled the Politicians. That is what is meant by folks saying that this sort of bailout is a moral hazard. Now bankers will ALWAYS think they can make stupid ass bets with money I have entrusted to them.
There hasn't been a free market in the US for quite some time. The 2008 crash was a direct indictment of the sort of government intervention into the economy that Rand argued against. Matter of fact if you actually knew something about Rand and had read her books you would be startled by the parallels.
Fool what happened in the banking industry was the DIRECT result of government intervention.
What happened was due to LACK of government action, action that it had the legal right to take and the moral responsibility to take, but under fascist right wing leadership did not take. Rand was a cunt who could not write a cookbook.
I love it when idiots pull their hoods down and yell "Fascist Right Wing" when Fascism was as left-wing as the night is dark. Benito was a card carrying commie who just took it a different direction. Giving the sheep a little more room to roam while still maintaining control via state controlled economic dictation.
More to the point at hand: What happened was that the governemnt acted in their own interests under this plutocracy. When the GLB bill was passed effectively castrating Glass-Steagal.. well.. do I need to say any more?
Why is it so hard for people to see the separation of the "US" vs "THEM" scenario. It's really simple. There is "US", the typical "bust our ass American" and them "The power hungry, who are most often also very wealthy and who also have vested interests in making sure the cards are played in their favor". That's not to say that ALL wealthy are necessarily power hungry.
It's so much nicer watching the ants than actually being one. There's less "traffic" in that scenario.
Everything that's been done do us has been done on purpose with some added bonus, unexpected, side-effects. The success in shrinking the family sizes. The success in making it extremely difficult to manage a simple life. The destruction of the family unit. The end result was this creation of a society that has become so busy in life by necessity that they can't see what's going on around them. There just isn't enough time in the day to operate and "live". You have to choose one or the other. Be a cog in the machine or they make "living" practically impossible.
Economics is really easy: I want, you have.. I pay, you give. The only reason that a state controlled money exists is so they can take your wealth from you little by little; all the while giving you the impression that you had any to begin with so they can further extort "work" from you.
All this chat has made me hungry...
Government action created the bubble. Enabled the fraud. Guaranteed the moral hazard. I wouldn't wait for the government to start acting with integrity.Bureaucrats have no incentives to work in your interest or mine. Regardless of who's in office. Right wing fascist were the cause? How is that left wing Obama working out. He is really coming down hard on the corporations isn't he? They are all cut from the same cloth.
Well said.
You are indeed a parrot. Congratulations.
I couldn't agree more with half of your point (the banks knew they could socialize the risk and privatize the profit half). The second half (that eliminating government regulation would solve the problem) ignores the basic laws of human nature. What exactly do you think the same bankers who "bankrolled"(bribed) the politicians would do if they had no rules governing their behavior? Why are only elected politicians capable in your view of garnering centralized power? And why would we want unelected bankers running the world in place of elected (albeit mostly corrupt) politicians? The problem with Rand is that she addresses only one half of the problem and ignores the other. Rand saw her father's phramacy business taken over by communists, e.g, government. Her daddy was her hero, and it was very said when the evil government took over his thriving business. So her answer to all of the world's problems? Eliminate government and let the nice folks like her daddy do their thing in peace and everyone will be happy. To a child who sees in pure black and white, this worldview of "good free market capitalists versus evil government takers" makes perfect sense. To a thinking adult capable of seeing the more complex shades of gray, it is horribly naive and simplistic.
The book in question was first published in 1957, and you're still talking about it. 64 years later, it reads like a description of our current situation.
I really don't care about how you feel that your shades-o'-gray world is somehow more sophisticated and enlightened than those heathens who are willing to dissect the world to find the truth. Rand was a philosopher, not a fiction writer- and needs to be judged as such.
Reading Atlas Shrugged or The Fountainhead does not give you the complete picture of what she was trying to communicate. Most of her books were meticulously crafted syllogisms, and marketed and sold as philosophical non-fiction. If you read them, she explains clearly and deliberately what she was trying to achieve, and the method she used to develop her writing style.
She did not want complex characters- each character was specifically designed to represent an archetype, and the storylines were crafted to show the interplay between those archetypes in a fictional setting. They are not entertainment, they are a set of mathematical proofs crafted to oppose the works of Kant and Heigel. She explains this at length in an essay criticing Sinclair Lewis' "Arrowsmith." She was a fan of the worldview, but felt that the addition of irrelevent scenes such as the one where Dr. Arrowsmith would shock his friends as a child by striking a match in a dark room on the jawbone of a medical skeleton. While this lends "humanity" to the character, it dillutes the purity of the syllogism.
Rand has a pedigree in Natural Law, and her works are a continuation of the men who created and defined western society. She is of the school that begins with Aristotle, and continues through St. Thomas Aquinus, John Locke and the Founding Fathers.
Look at the world where this ancient philosophy did not define society, and you will see where we are headed if you ignore her work. Because you "feel" something does not make it true- you have smeared the integrity of a person who penned thousands and thousands of pages of flawless logical argument with a couple of paragraphs that claim that she had daddy issues. To me, that is a failure on an epic scale.
Read the public-consuption Atlas Shrugged again, and open your brain when you do it. You will see, easily enough, that the titans of industry she admired represent only a few individuals, while many, many more are of the species that are destroying us today. Her claim was that a Henry Rearden is a rare person- but there are thousands of Jim Taggarts and Weasley Mouches for every one of them. They liked to talk about fuzzy shades of gray, too.
On second thought, never mind. I can see the cherry-picking already.
"She explains this at length in an essay criticing Sinclair Lewis' "Arrowsmith." She was a fan of the worldview, but felt that the addition of irrelevent scenes such as the one where Dr. Arrowsmith would shock his friends as a child by striking a match in a dark room on the jawbone of a medical skeleton. While this lends "humanity" to the character, it dillutes the purity of the syllogism."
Thanks P418 for a more detailed examination. Appreciate your information and it sounds like fascinating reading. Thank you again.
The second half (that eliminating government regulation would solve the problem) ignores the basic laws of human nature.
Their would be regulation without the government. The FDIC would be replaced by private insurance groups that would insure our deposits. They would rate banks trustworthiness based upon the risks they took with your deposits. It would be in their interest to behave ethically and honestly because they would be on the hook for losses. Banks that take risks that depositors were not willing to bare would simply go out of business because no one would bank with them. The FDIC has no such incentive.
And why would we want unelected bankers running the world in place of elected (albeit mostly corrupt) politicians?
Bankers run the world because they control the issuance of money. We are required by law to use the money they counterfeit (through fractional reserve banking). In a free market we would choose what money was, and with whom we would deposit it. We would decide how to store our productivity. Currently, we are required to store our productivity in a currency which is manipulated, whereby our wealth is extracted. Again, the laws of government created this environment. Free markets did not.
Oh look, there's a unicorn AND a rainbow! Of course, there would be no corruption between the banks and the private insurance groups, and none of the predator banks would destroy their smaller competitors with unfair trade practices even though there would be no laws or rules preventing such practices.
If the insurance groups lied about banks risk two things would happen. The bank would go out of business when their investments went south.(No central bank or politicians to bail them out) and the insurance company would go out of business. Both would be sued for fraud. Which would be a breach of contract (the contract you would sign with the insurance group if you had any intelligence. The suits goal would be to make you whole financially because a theft had occurred, through lying. I find faith in government regulators and politicians more akin to believing in unicorns. I personally believe in rainbows. I am sorry you live in a part of the world where apparently they are fiction and cannot be observed.
Your argument simply ignores the fact that the power that captains of industry have that enables them to feast on the flesh of shareholders and others is given to them by the government. Through laws and regulations. This is predictable seeing as central power is always corrupted by those who can pay for influence. Therefore, central power is the tool/weapon that is used to commit these acts of economic violence. Consumers/customers are the only effective way to counter act businesses greed. Regulators have no incentives to do so. They will not lose there livlihood if they fail continually becasue their income is gaurenteed by government theft. They are not required to prove that they are productive. Free market producers must deliver value to their customers otherwise they will cease to exist. That is a distinction you fail to make.
A more simplistic view of the world is difficult to imagine. Central power always arises in human interactions. In the early 1900's, robber baron's like Rockefeller used his enormous corporately derived wealth and power to crush competition and verticially intergrate entire industries, putting most competitors out of business. The free market has never existed and it never will exist, because corrupt men will always rise to power and ensure that they have unfair advantage. Rand simply ignores this basic truism which has held for our entire human history.
Monopolies come from two places. Either consumers create monopolies through freely choosing only one producers good over any others or the monopoly is created by governement regulation. A perfectly free market may not have ever existed, but simply becasue a goal has never and may never be achieved perfectly does not excuse any responsibilty of individuals to choose to pursue that goal as a just end if it is indeed categorized as just. You infer that a simple world view is somehow inferior. I argue that men with complex views on the world are likely to claim you cannot understand their truisms on how the world really operates and therefore you must relinquish liberty to them in order for your well being to be protected. You get neither liberty nor safety when this occurs. People simply don't trust freedom even after all of the other options have been proven tyranical and destructive to wealth.
Monopolies also come from uneven power and wealth abused by barons of free enterprise. Rockefeller used paid thugs to intimidate small businesses. He also crushed competitors by setting up shop next door and selling gasoline for below cost. Consumers after he was done eliminating competition could either buy gas at Rockefeller's inflated rates, or get stuffed. But I don't need to explain any of this to you, because you have openly embraced narrow minded simplicity as a religion, by your own admission. Please don't preach to me about freedom when your idea of good society is letting the Rockefellers run the show without even a hint of countermeasure to stop them, and rejecting complex solutions because they are too hard.
I guess Walmart won't be having those "rollback" sales as frequently.
Monopolies also come from uneven power and wealth abused by barons of free enterprise. Rockefeller used paid thugs to intimidate small businesses. He also crushed competitors by setting up shop next door and selling gasoline for below cost. Consumers after he was done eliminating competition could either buy gas at Rockefeller's inflated rates, or get stuffed. But I don't need to explain any of this to you, because you have openly embraced narrow minded simplicity as a religion, by your own admission. Please don't preach to me about freedom when your idea of good society is letting the Rockefellers run the show without even a hint of countermeasure to stop them, and rejecting complex solutions because they are too hard.
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Robber Baron's that were created by free markets are a myth. How about you educate yourself and not believe everything the government schools tell you. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ce8_5GcoUi8 .
One of the least intellectual videos I have seen. I love 1/2 of Ron Paul and frankly would vote for him because I'm fed up with the Fed and the corrupt two party system. But I utterly disagree with his and your idea that turning over the keys to the corporations is the answer. He's just dead wrong on monopolies. Private robber baron types WILL create monopolies through fear and force if the government isn't there to (try to) stop them, and they will do so for reasons other than providing the best service to consumers. The idea that hapless "consumers in a free market system" will prevent this corruption by selecting competitors is beyond naive.
They will have no power except the very power we as consumers give them. They may be able to manipulate a market for a short period of time. But the means they use to manipulate the market , if continued, will always bankrupt them. Some one new will always come along and provide competition. If a business screwed its customers it would go out of business. Businesses cannot corner markets without government help. Abuses of consumers would not be tolerated in a free market. Government acts like it rides to the rescue when it claims it is regulating the very monopoly it created! Unbelievable.
Wo..Wo...Need to pull up the reins a bit. I can see you have wounds, however I do value your impressions even if they come from a place of emotional hysteria.
"To live, man must hold three things as the supreme and ruling values of his life: Reason—Purpose—Self-esteem. Reason, as his only tool of knowledge—Purpose, as his choice of the happiness which that tool must proceed to achieve—Self-esteem, as his inviolate certainty that his mind is competent to think and his person is worthy of happiness, which means: is worthy of living."
-Ayn Rand
Maturity is when reason is in control of emotion and Rand isn't responsible for the implementation of foolish policy or their misrepresentation of whatever they think her beliefs were.
I sense you may be a bit bitter because you know she is right on, having a good read on human nature and the horrors of emotionalism which is what much of liberal policy making is based on.
So basically you are saying that Rand was right so long as we completely ignore the fact that her ideas are guaranteed to fail in practice. Now I get it.
Of course Rand is right. Atlas Shrugged is a perfect example of what is occurring in the leech infested mismanagement of government today. If one has read it one would see the obvious.
If you have it in your library I suggest you blow the dust of it and read it you will then know exactly what I am talking about.
Rand was a frigid sexless bitch that ho'ed her literary self out to anyone that would pay her, her dialogue sucked, her books were three times as long as they needed to be to make a point, and her characters were as wooden as Pinocchio. The only leeches in this nation are the upper 10% that have stolen the labor and time of the bottom 90% and I hope like hell they get what they deserve.
End welfare for the rich, boil them instead. I understand all that fat would end our energy problems and still leave us with some fine soap.
I read it many years ago and I started (but could not finish) Fountainhead. I have the capacity to see through simplistic and unrealistic philosophy and scientology-like cultism.
You mean that you have the attention span of a fruitfly and couldn't finish it
I stop reading when I'm choking on my own vomit.
So many fascists, so little time! You of the reichwing have simply got to understand that there is a social contract and it will be enforced when your greed tips the masses into murderous hate in return for your inhumanity and greed. It has happened over and over and will keep happening as long as decent people working are treated like whiny dirt under your greedy boots. You say we are the non productive whiners, yet since 1960 all the crying and bitching and moaning I have heard has been from shit for brains rich people who don't want to pay a fair share and I have had enough, pitchforks are too good for you lot.
I despise the failed presidency of BO but just to piss you off I am going to go register to vote Monday and I will send his campaign money in the hopes your heads will explode and save us the trouble of having to load you into boxcars and send you away.
"but just to piss you off I am going to go register to vote Monday and I will send his campaign money in the hopes your heads will explode and save us the trouble of having to load you into boxcars and send you away."
Fine art.
...and fuck was she long-winded.
+1
This whole corrupt cesspool began long before Rand and her silly "greed is good" preachings.