Obama's Economic Hope Teeters at the Edge of a Chasm of Public Fear
Reader Comments
Rich
The analysis of how we got here is mostly correct but the read of public sentiment is wrong--the very high approval numbers that Obama continues to get despite public furors such as the stimulus bill and the "teaparties" shows that the public is not drowning in pessimism; they believe Obama and his administration are handling it and that their lives will start to improve by the end of this year. Zuckerman's heroic picture of the banks and capitalism may be mostly wrong--the big cash movements created by their machinations produced a bubble which, when it burst, stripped all the beneficiaries--from upper-middle class salarymen to overextended homeowners with a credit card--of their artificial gains. What is left is the "real" economy, the businesses and occasional factories and local banks, doing what they've always done. America desperately needs to become a steady-state economy along the lines of the European social democracies, where public and private need have a reliable balance, so that we can stop obsessing and arguing about the phony economic thought behind cowboy capitalism and instead be able to focus on life's important matters, like going to mars or creating intelligent machines or curing disease...
Josh of NY
Josh of NY: "An average taxpyaer making $50,000 pays only 3% in federal taxes.. We are not being bailed out by an average taxpayer but by the same "rich" that this administration so fervently denigrates"
Who's your accountant? I get soaked to the tune of about 30% every year, just in income taxes. We won't even go into fees, sales taxes and all manner of hidden taxes, which would take it northward to about 50% or so. And that was true when I only made $12,000/year, too!
A Spiritual solution to the economic problem?
Could the answer to the economic problem be beyond equations, and formulas and calculated probabilities?
Perhaps we need to grow up, and apply spiritual attributes to our strategies, like economic democracy and social justice.
Perhaps the "invisible hand" helps those who help others.
One strategy that meets the spiritual test is enhanced profitsharing. www.profitsharinguprising.com
Allow businesses a tax credit for returning 20% of net profits back to employees.
This is the next great advancemnt for humankind.
All are invited to join the profitsharing uprising.
This will increase household income quickly and dramatically.
It will refine capitalism to the model that was envisioned by our forefathers.
Sounds logical, but...
Logical discourse on the necessity of a banking system that rationally allocates capital. The problem is that our current (big) banks have shown that they are completely incapable of rationally allocating capital. Hence, why prop up these failed institutions; create new ones with the "rational allocation of capital" mission and flush Citi and the other mutated failures down the drain.
I couldn't help thinking while reading the article that Mort was suckered by Madoff big time. Takes away from his credibility in my view.
An average taxpayer is not getting the bill..
"Who can blame the average American taxpayer (who earns under $50,000 a year), who has to cope with broken hopes and diminished aspirations, not to speak of shattered expectations of a secure retirement, for becoming angry when he is asked to rescue institutions responsible for the chaos? "
An average taxpyaer making $50,000 pays only 3% in federal taxes.. We are not being bailed out by an average taxpayer but by the same "rich" that this administration so fervently denigrates
Its not a wonderful vision...
Its a delusion! I was under the impression Mr. Obama was an educated man. It is and has become vividly apparent he was schooled in the same liberal panacea that permeates our system, and is headed for disaster.
Israel taking out Iran is going to give this guy and his liberal friends an education in reality that will send Ms. Pelosi and company back a hundred years.
He can take that green reality and beg the strong for mercy...
What fear?
Market was down only 289.00 points today. Retirement funds off 40 - 50%, home value down 34%, uneployment rising.
Then you see the President telling to world how bad we have been and we are going to change an dhe is sorry for what we have done. Then shaking hands with some of the worse leaders in the world. Then his DHS folks are willing to call Americans "Terrorist" but would dare called the REAL terrorist -Terrorist.
Why worry?
