Don't Spread Wealth. Create Wealth

Interesting Observations

The Republicans and "Free Market" Capitalist love to talk about the free market and how it creates wealth. The problem with the author's examples is that we now know how the past three decades of economic growth was achieved.

1) The economy is now globalized. This means that everyone has to compete against people from other countries who has the same skill set, yet has a lower cost of living. This translates into lower labor costs for companies and layoff for people who live in the most developed country (USA).

2) As jobs were shipped overseas, the US consumer decided that cheap goods were great, but didn't realize that meant money created in the US was leaving the US as cheap goods are now made in other countries.

3) The decades of economic growth was fueled in large part by ever growing US Consumer spending fueled in turn to expanding use of managed debt. i.e. Easy Credit via credit cards and home equity loans.

4) Now that we (US Consumers) have debts beyond our means to payoff, the US Consumer must spend less. This means less shopping and spending to pay off those credit cards. This means the economy will be contracting until some or most of the debt is paid-off. This in turn means the US is heading into a long recession.

Good luck America, we did this to ourselves by electing people who only cared about their campaign donors (Large Multinational Corporations).

Jae of MD @ Nov 02, 2008 13:48:43 PM

Not true

It's sad to people saying Obama is a socialist. bush and the wall street boys are the ones who profited during the last 5 years and then used ours and future generations of taxpayer dollars to fix this mess that will ruin the U.S. Shame on you for trying to shift bush's problems to Obama.

mike of IA @ Nov 02, 2008 08:35:51 AM

Patrick,

Obama will distribute your wealth to the global economy as he said in his speech in Germany. It will feed the poor that is probably as important as peace in the middle east, but you wour world will become the third world when he is done distributing the wealth. Of course the truly wealthy and the big coroporations do not need america. They will be long gone to countries who cater to them.

I'm with the top poster, the more I make the more they take... already giving about 50%

cindi of CA @ Oct 28, 2008 16:50:14 PM

Greenspan Admitted Lassiez Faire Capitalism Does Not Work

The famous free market capitalist, Alan Greenspan, gave up the ghost last week that the lassiez faire brand of capitalism he's been preaching is a failure, based on the assumption that businesses/institutions will operate in their own self interests. Greenspan seems to be sayin that the greed of corporations has gotten to the point where they will commit suicide to get that buck, companies will throw away the whole enterprise to achieve a profitable quarter (and an king's ransom in executive bonuses). The model is broken, the theory is squashed, and hanging on to the threads of reactionary knucklehead economics isn't going to help anyone going forward.

The illusion of creating wealth while amassing a almost insurmountable public debt is a joke. Nobody is laughing.

So now a generation has run the country into debt to line their own pockets - the republican mantra has been borrow and spend, spend and spend, and at the first word that someone would ask that they pay as they go, it is the squirrelly conservatives who would cut and run.

Americans have had to bail themselves out republican Depressions before, and it high time to get started by kicking out these flim-flam con men like Bush and McCain.

Pablo of WA @ Oct 26, 2008 12:08:36 PM

NJ

You must be kidding. All you can do is talk about fashion and Cindy? Wake up! Stop drinking the kool-aide. Everyone works hard for their money. Barack will definetly spend your money, don't worry. I'm with "jane" the plumber. I already plan to cut my days of work. I refuse to let someone tax me and "spread" it around. I'm not he only one thinking this. Everyone will get a lassiez faire attitude. No one will be proud of their achievements. It will cut our sense of entreprenurial guts to take a chance. Why? Why bother.

MP of FL @ Oct 25, 2008 16:08:18 PM

It is a question of direction

Over the years, each political party has tried to redistribute the wealth of this nation. The Republicans want to distribute it upward - the Democrats downward. The former leads to an excess accumulation of capital and the creation of evermore incomprehensible and idiotic financial vehicles for investment. This is not capitalism in the classic sense because the money doesn't do anything real - it doesn't pay for the expansion of manufacturing capacity and it doesn't create new jobs. If the wealth is redistributed downward, there is an expanded demand for goods that should lead to a legitimate focus for capital investment. Since the captial accumulation has been inhibited by the taxation that allows for the downward redistribution, such expansion doesn't take place and we have Stagflation. There has to be some well thought out point of balance that creates a functioning economy and society. In this type of society, nobody wins big -but everybody wins

Eugene Ostreicher of @ Oct 24, 2008 23:05:02 PM

Republicans - Destroyers of Wealth - Must Go

Cut the garbage. Your spin is hogwash.

Just like Greenspan, you basically don't have a clue what's going on in the economy.

Its obvious anymore that America has been devastated by 8 years of this Republican President and the 12 years of the Republican Congress - these guys have destroyed any wealth average Americans have.

Expect the pendulum to swing back the other way from the excesses of these Republican goons. Basically Republican Socialism sucks, redistributing the wealth to the top 5% by a rigged bogus capitalism that is privatizing the profits and socializing the losses. The American people have been screwed by Bush/McCain, and we ain't going to take it lightly. We are witnessing the demise of a corrupt criminal regime unprecedented in Modern US History, and the American people need to see someone's held accountable.

McCain/Bush have been a disaster, and we don't need some conservative megaphone to give us some economic fairy tales of how great the economy is thanks to knucklehead Republican economics.

Pablo of WA @ Oct 24, 2008 02:38:00 AM

Spreading the wealth?

I don't consider myself a very well educated person as I only with difficulty obtained my BA in Communications. My husband left me with seven little children but I worked hard to raise my children, with my mother and sister's help. I did not receive any aid, food stamps or anything else--I worked to raise my kids. I worked my way through night school, and succeeded in buying my own home. Obama's belief in "spreading the wealth" is a belief even Ronald Reagan had, unfortunately, McCain has selective memory. Adam Smith wrote in his, "The Wealth of Nations," "The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the suppport of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state." For those who have difficulty understanding what that means, it means that as McCain himself said, the Bush tax code as written was "skewed" to benefit the rich. McCain has ranted many times on the campaign trail about the enormous fortunes raked in by the oil industry, defense contractors, bond holders and the whole host of modern capitalists under the protection of the current administration. The dishonesty of McCain's rants about what Obama proposes, to restore tax rates on the wealthy to the same level during the Clinton administration, so families making less than $250,000 do NOT taxes is not a radical idea. When McCain goes on about Obama's "redistribution of wealth" and equates an income tax rebate for working people with "welfare" it is such a ridiculous statement that you have to be a real dummy not to see through these baseless statements. Let's leave aside the racial subtext of those stupid remarks, it's hard to say whether they display ignorance, dishonesty or both. The American tax system, like all other taxation in modern nations, ha always redistributed wealth. whether it's upward to the rich or at very few times downward to assist the poor. During the current Bush administration the "distribution of wealth" went upward to the rich and to the pockets of corporate executives. To cast socialist aspersions on a tax refund to working families whose incomes are too low to pay income taxes points a finger at McCain's supposed idol--Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagon praised the "earned income tax credit" as the best "anti-poverty" and pro-family legislation ever. It must be troubling for Republicans to learn that according to McCain, Reagan was a socialist, too.

Ann M. of IA @ Oct 23, 2008 21:48:04 PM