Democrat front-runner Elizabeth Elizabeth wants to Remake Capitalism From the Ground Up. It would help if she had a clue what capitalism is all about.
A President Warren would seek to regulate big tech companies as utilities, break up big banks and split them from securities dealers, ban fracking of oil and gas, phase out carbon emission from buildings, cars and power plants in eight to 15 years, require big companies to appoint worker representatives to at least 40% of board seats, ban private health insurance and, effectively, for-profit college, and negotiate down drug prices.
Her policies would directly affect companies with sales of nearly $5 trillion and stock-market value of more than $8 trillion, a third of the S&P 500 stock index. Taxes on the wealthy and corporations would rise sharply.
“She could create an environment where it is next to impossible to function” for health insurers, said Vicky Gregg, a former chief executive of BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee and now partner in a private-equity firm. “There’s no question that keeps you up at night if you’re a health-plan executive.”
Ms. Warren, in laying out her case, has said she is “a capitalist to my bones,” whereas fellow candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders calls himself a “democratic socialist.”
“I love what markets can do, I love what functioning economies can do. They are what make us rich, they are what create opportunity,” Ms. Warren said on CNBC last year. “But only fair markets, markets with rules. Markets without rules is about the rich take it all, it’s about the powerful get all of it. And that’s what’s gone wrong in America.”
Healthcare is a Right?!
Capitalist to the Bones, My Ass
When you start preaching “free” education, “Medicare for all” , ban private insurance, and demand businesses put workers on boards, you are preaching anything but capitalism.
Yet, Warren claims to be “capitalist to my bones.” In what alternate universe?
This is seriously scary stuff.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
Warren wants to break up the big oligopolies and monopolies but no mention of that by Mish. If industries like insurance, banking, tech and even retail were played on a level playing field we would get more productivity growth and better products. What we have today isnt working for sure. No one else has even mentioned the issues Warren has repeatedly stated.
“Capitalist to the bone” my ass. Just another in Dizzy Lizzie’s long list of lies. She probably does not know she is lying because she does not know what she is talking about.
But if the current incarnation of capitalism was as wonderful as all you smug acolytes proclaim, the likes of Warren would never spring up and would certainly not be a threat. So why are you all worried about her?
Scary indeed. Let’s continue to bash Trump and ensure Warren wins the presidency in 2020.
Is business to blame? I think we are splitting hairs going down that path, but, wealth inequality is going to have to be addressed and there is an easy way to do it, and a hard way to do it, but make no mistake it is going to be done, because the hardest way of all is simply kill all the rich and that is coming if BUSINESS does not start rewarding labor appropriately.
Ah, and for those that claim/lie that the wealthiest pay more than the poor here is a new update for you proving you are either ignorant of the facts or just lying; “In 2018, for the first time in history, America’s richest paid a lower effective tax rate than the working class.”
Saez and Zucman analyzed Americans’ effective tax rates since the 1960s. They decided to examine the top 400 families because they have more money than the bottom 60 percent of households combined. They also own 3.5 percent of the country’s assets.
Read that? It was relatively easy to study this now that only 400 families are richer than the lower 60% of us. And the rate at which the gap in increasing is increasing. The wealth gap is going parabolic and as you all know when any chart goes parabolic it is all over. That is why banksters and the 1% want a new cashless society with ANYTHING other than dollars as legal tender. They want anything to stand in the $’s place so when it is introduced you will get that new money to reflect your financial position, that would lock in their wealth while locking out the rest of us. Because a dollar can (and will be) destroyed.
Warren is just a symptom the same as Trump is, the problem is Nazism on the right and socialism on the left, I was against the socialism side till I realized I will be homeless in 2020 unless matters change dramatically before spring. Now, I guess I have no choice but to vote for the left. Maybe I will throw a Great Gatsby themed party on my credit card then flee to Argentina before this shithole goes up in flames.
The details are different, but yes we are entering another very messy episode in world history of: the have-nots rebelling against the unjustly-rich. Unfortunately, as is usual, all is confusion.
Out of all places, don’t pick Argentina….
Peron was the guy who got the whole “Dear Powerful Leader burning seedcorn” worship going in earnest in the Americas. That’s who everyone from Obama to Orange to whomever comes after them is doing their best to emulate.
And Argentina is still arguably leading that particular race to the bottom. We may all be ruled by what is effectively and in practice Peronista Juntas by now; but that’s hardly a reason to specifically seek out the country where that particular cancer has had time to to grow and develop the longest.
Capitalism lets shitty businesses die.
Bailing out banks to the tune of trillions because they so severely f.cked up their core business of assessing and pricing risk appropriately is as far away from capitalism as it is possible to be.
The US conservative antipathy towards “socialism” conveniently ignores the fact that hundreds and hundreds of billions worth of jobs are government creations funded by borrowing money the governemnt doeasn’t have. Vast military industrial complex. hundreds of billions spent on the ridiculous “war against drugs,” hundreds of billions more invested in locking away the biggest proportion of your citizens of any country on earth.
The US simply does by one remove what “socialist” countries do explicitly.
Don’t get me wrong, I love capitalism – it works – but you have to let the market do what an unencumbered market does. Failure is an esntial part of that.
And don’t even get me started on the unelected, thoroughly unaccountable Central Banks around the world distorting the market unimaginably on an insane, failed theory……
Well put.
How many would agree with her if she said central bankers are to blame for everything?
Close enough, if the central banksters were gone at least we would then have a chance, as it is we are actually doomed to ever deepening slavery.
We are looking at a 2nd civil war if this bitch become POTUS!!!!!
We can always hope…..
Why?
These warnings and threats have been coming up forever. Nothing ever happens.
Mishtalk is more than 50% of the traffic on moneymaven.io
Too much of mishtalk’s traffic is coming from never-do-wells who don’t even live in the USA. Another large contingent are Canadian ex-pats living in the 3rd world sh!t hole known as San Fransisco.
None of these people have skin in the game. None of these people can fix there own sh!t holes — the Canadians in SF are there because they can’t get jobs back in Canada.
I love reading your posts.
Toward Fair and Sustainable Capitalism: A Comprehensive Proposal to Help American Workers, Restore Fair Gainsharing Between Employees and Shareholders, and Increase American Competitiveness by Reorienting Our Corporate Governance System Toward Sustainable Long-Term Growth and Encouraging Investments in America’s Future link to papers.ssrn.com
“Capital is not a thing, but a social relation enforced by the law and the state. With the right legal coding, any object, claim, or idea can be turned into a wealth- or capital-generating asset. In her new book, Katharina Pistor analyzes the evolution of capital over the past 400 years.”
We survived Obama. We’ll survive Pokie as well, if it comes to that.
And black dudes survived slavery. North Koreans are still alive… So yeah, it probably does take more than abject economic illiteracy to fully exterminate the entirety of the US population.
“But only fair markets, markets with rules. Markets without rules is about the rich take it all, it’s about the powerful get all of it. And that’s what’s gone wrong in America.”
thimk, below, said Warren is worth some $15 million dollars. Never heard that before. If that is true, Warren is one of those rich people that take it all. Hillary said she wasn’t that rich despite being worth over $100 million dollars. Now we are hearing about the Bidens allegedly enriching themselves from their government connections.
College has become outrageously expensive since the government meddled in it with student loan guarantees. Warren herself allegedly made some $400,000 on the backs of college students.
The healthcare-education complex (HEC) is now twice as big as the military industrial complex Eisenhower warned about, and the HEC causes a lot more suffering too.
Lets add up the cost of all the miseducated people who can’t (are unable to) hold a job, and see how that compares to a “cheap war” overseas.
Not advocating stupid wars. Just saying all the people who are understandably against dumb wars should look at the bigger problem.
Government run health care and government run education, on top of Government Motors and Government JPM/GS/Fed
This isn’t capitalism. This is pure corruption and the -ssholes in Washington (Warren is a career politician who caused the problems in the first place).
The democrat party has become nothing but a crime syndicate (and the repubs aren’t much better)
God get me some smelling salts, CB and I agree on something, if anything I am the more hawkish on this subject. There are so many things we can do to make care affordable and higher quality for all. To start with END private insurance, it adds about 33% to costs without adding anything at all to care outcomes. Then end the AMA stranglehold on medical school admissions, keeping doctors in shortage is their goal and they are good at it. Then attack redundancy in facilities in towns and cities across the country, this relatively small city has two of the most gorgeous bone palaces you ever saw, and have taken over whole neighborhoods for their “campuses.” The government should set maximum prices for care/procedures/drugs/treatments/diagnostics that are REASONABLE. Then fine the snot out of anyone charging more.
Routine low danger care items should be handled by lower level practitioners, giving birth for example, there are millions of births each year and zero reason why 98.99% are done in hospitals and involve doctors. Every pregnant woman should get an exam by a doctor who will clear her for midwifery at a birth center, unless there is a legitimate reason why she needs to be attended by a physician.
And, drugs? Gilead priced its first new hepatitis C drug, sofosbuvir, at $1,000 per pill, or $84,000 for a three-month course of treatment. ” The cost to treat the entire population of 3.7 million chronically infected Hepatitis C patients in the United States with Sovaldi, at the estimated rate of $84,000 per patient, would be $310 billion. For comparison, the total spending in the United States on all drugs for 2014 was $360.7 billion.”
That is just gross and no matter what you say there is NOTHING that can justify this level of profiteering.
2019 will see drug expenses climb to $440 billion and no end in sight for this wipeout of our finances.
But, my care is through the VA, odd thing about the VA, it gives great care to veterans for less than half the cost per other Americans outside that system. Please do not come at me with the two or three isolated instances where greed and criminal negligence combined to get a few vets killed when they were terminated from waiting lists. Those actions were both predictable and avoidable and only happened because congress authorized 6 figure bonuses to administrators who managed to whittle down wait lists, give me a hundred thou and I will get rid of that list for you, right into the shredder, and that is exactly what happened in that VA care scandal. It was not even because of actual problems at the VA. It was the boneheads in congress seeking quick easy solutions. Trying to trim budgets because they don’t actually like veterans.
$15 million isn’t filthy rich. It’s not bad, but not what it used to be. She may have even earned some of that money honestly. From the book sales etc.
The Biden’s, on the other hand…
Hard to believe the choices presented are the best we have. Oh but then again, Hillary is back on the book tour and getting some attention…
The pundits and legacy media outlets (can’t really call CNN/Fox News/Big 4 networks “mainstream” when no one under 60 is watching) are keeping the s*** show that is the Democratic Party nomination process alive because they think it is good for ratings, or maybe because they know that Trump is still packing in 50K+ at rallies and want to make sure everyone uses their war chests on TV ads instead of the $100,000 Russian social media spend that somehow got Trump elected.
Meanwhile, in an 11th hour announcement, Clinton will swoop in to “save the party” from itself. Hollywood couldn’t write a better third act.
I don’t see why it is so hard to “see” the best choice. One that supports business, lower taxes, removal of damaging regulations and anti-socialist. Easy choice.
Which Democrat meets that criteria? Trump is the presumed candidate for the Republicans, unless he is tossed out by the Senate. So there’s not much point in going through the process for the republicans.
If the Dems would figure out that Gabbard is probably the best mainstream choice they might have a chance. But media coverage is no different than tabloid journalism anymore so the biggest freak gets the attention.
One of the reasons economic two year olds like Warren gets any traction, is because the economic three year olds on the nominal “other” side, have so completely missed the boat wrt what “supporting business” means.
The absolute last thing you want to do; with, maybe, the possible exception of dropping the entire US nuclear stockpile on the US itself just for fun, is listen to existing business owners and leaders. Do that for even a month or two, and all you end up with, is a crony corporatocracy; hellbent on making it harder for competitors to set up shop and make capitalism work the only way it can work.
Instead, what “supporting business” needs to mean, is “support business which have not yet been started.” IOW, make it as easy as in any way possible, to set up shop doing anything. Anywhere. With no means for anyone to restrict you. In any way. Whatsoever.
You want every Google today, to be bankrupted by a startup tomorrow. A startup consisting solely of ex Googlers thinking they can do things a tiny bit better and more efficiently themselves, and in the process tear the ex employer anew one. Specifically by taking things they learned at their erstwhile employer, and making just a tiny change for the better….
Ditto anything else. You want Chinese, Argentinian and Filipino doctors and nurses setting up shop in a van parked right in front of Mayo, offering their services for a buck less. While selling drugs sourced somewhere in India, if that is where they can them cheapest. While offering their services on an entirely caveat emptor basis, if that is what they feel like. Again, no restrictions. At all.
And you want all of those guys to do so, without having to spend ONE PENNY, nor one minute, on mindless process like business registrations, tax collection, reporting blah., blah. People should simply do exactly what they have at competitive advantage doing, and absolutely nothing else.
Today, what we instead have, are self described “business friendly” politicians and parties, primarily concerned with protecting the profits of wealthy incumbents, by protecting them from exactly the relentless creative destruction which is what capitalism is all about. So the naive sees that, and figure, “well heck, anything’s gotta be better than this capitalism thingy, since that’s obviously nothing more than a cover for letting the rich rob everyone else…” And that’s how you end you end up with tweeting tarrifistas, and illiterate Pocahontas wannabes, alike.
The russians were spending $1.25 million per MONTH at the troll factory in St. Petersburg alone. If you are going to post “facts” at least try to document them. link to businessinsider.com
Bourgeois culture, any culture, can only stand if it is rewarded. In prior times bourgeois culture was fundamentally supported by the upper classes, who invested in America, creating vast wealth. They modeled sobriety, hard-work, risk and reward. The working classes modeled the behavior through church and labor unions, standing together for each other and nation.
The wealthy have abandoned America, and the working classes have abandoned religion, unions, and each other. Into that void steps cultural anarchy.
Bourgeois culture requires hard-work, and discipline. It requires accountability, primarily of the wealthy. I tire of articles that lament the loss of culture without holding those accountable who have abandoned their responsibilities.
Not going to agree 100% with this, the wealthy have not abandoned America, and all through the Gilded Age they flaunted wealth while at the same time hiding as much as they could, that was made a way of life by the introduction of the income tax. Even in the Gatsby era wealth inequality was no secret, the poor just took a defensive attitude that A) wealth is not the most important thing in life, and B) what can you do about it anyway.
But, the lower classes still have their religions, the right wing religious have turned money and hating other poor people into a religion that wears the mask of Xtianity. And the left poor have a new religion of Man Made Global Warming and socialist solutions to existential white guilt. Sobriety was replaced with pot, and even though they claim to be socialist they are as materialistic as any generation before them, ask them how much their tattoo’s cost (more than half have spent over $1,000 on tats and many have spent over $10k) or their new phone.
Cultural anarchy, that is a good phrase for it, but I think it is more serious than that, if you hang out at reddit and read what younger people are saying, it is suicidal. And many are as homicidal as suicidal. They blame the baby boomers for absolutely everything that is wrong with the world. I will say this, I knew a gay activist way back in the late seventies early eighties that predicted marriage equality in his lifetime and he was a very anarchistic person. He actually believed that anarchy would make life better.
I wonder though if he is still around and still believes that, because anarchy would kill half the people on the planet within a matter of months. Without capitalist markets of scale many parts of the world would starve before this year is over if trade ended today. Maybe part of his anarchy was the desire to drop the population back below a billion? I don’t know. I do know that at any given time the world runs with a revolving 60 or so days worth of food. Any disruption to that supply would be catastrophic for a lot of people.
“Anarchists did not try to carry out genocide against the Armenians in Turkey; they did not deliberately starve millions of Ukrainians; they did not create a system of death camps to kill Jews, gypsies, and Slavs in Europe; they did not fire-bomb scores of large German and Japanese cities and drop nuclear bombs on two of them; they did not carry out a Great Leap Forward that killed scores of millions of Chinese; they did not attempt to kill everybody with any appreciable education in Cambodia; they did not launch one aggressive war after another; they did not implement trade sanctions that killed perhaps 500,000 Iraqi children. In debates between anarchists and statists, the burden of proof clearly should rest on those who place their trust in the state. Anarchy’s mayhem is wholly conjectural; the state’s mayhem is undeniably, factually horrendous.” ~Robert Higgs
Anarchy also means not being able to plan and invest, not just for corporations but for people. Humans evolved to be part of a cooperative community, anarchy is the opposite of that.
Who needs culture when you have welfare?
Even after she was caught lying about her native american nonsense, she continued to lie about being “fired” for being pregnant. Even left leaning publications have called her out on another total lie. The cabal of corrupt billionaires backing her makes 3rd world dictators cringe.
Warren has never held a private sector job in her life, and has no idea what capitalism is. Her health scam is even more ridiculous than Bernie’s medicare for all — and Bernie admitted his plan isn’t financially viable.
Warren is going to get Trump re-elected in the best case, and she will trigger a civil war in the worst case. George Soros is probably pushing for civil war, which is the reason he backs Warren. Time to put Soros in prison where he should have spent the last few decades
“Warren has never held a private sector job in her life, and has no idea what capitalism is.”
Coming from someone that works for Федеральная служба безопасности Российской Федерации I find that comment amusing.
Harvard is a private sector university where Warren was employed for most of her career. The truth does exist.
She’s going to be the nominee. It’s what the DNC has wanted all along. Her or Harris. No way they would allow an old white guy. Biden is out and Sanders too.
The election is likely to come down to Trump vs Not-Trump. So it won’t matter what platform she runs on.
Once Texas turns blue, we’ll be a one party country and the dems will do whatever they want. The only question is will it happen in 2020 or 2024.
Warren is a threat to most democrat billionaires (except George Soros, who wants a civil war and doesn’t care how many Americans die in the process)
In a country which
“….regulate big tech companies as utilities, break up big banks and split them from securities dealers, ban fracking of oil and gas, phase out carbon emission from buildings, cars and power plants in eight to 15 years, require big companies to appoint worker representatives to at least 40% of board seats, ban private health insurance and, effectively, for-profit college, and negotiate down drug prices….”
, civil wars are a wonderful thing and a massive step forward. No matter how many die in the process.
As Zapata recognized, it really is better to die on ones feet, than live on ones knees, after all.
The only upside to the likes of halfwits like Warren, is that they make the day the jihadis come “rescue” “us,” a day to look forward to, rather than fear.
Mexico is a sh!t hole, and southern Mexico (where Zapata launched his failed movement) is even worse.
….as is the US…. To the point where exactly which side of the border is better or worse, is by now akin to little more than swimming around in a sewer, attempting to pick favorites among ones fellow turds.
Funny, or perhaps sad, thing is: Mexico is a shithole for the same reason the US is: A population naive, gullible, economically illiterate, and plain old stupid enough, to vote their way to being subjugated by an overgrown, totalitarian government. Instead of being loosely regulated and coordinated by the kind of tiny, highly restricted, largely impotent government both the US founders and Zapata recognized were the key to a country avoiding turning into a shithole.
When all your country’s major corporations sell out their workers, and move all manufacturing to China for profit over patriotism, big business may just be getting the “blowback” they deserve. What goes around comes around, right Mish?
Sounds like she wants to turn our America into some socialist hell-hole like Germany. Does she expect us to actually make stuff? I say hell no!
Does she really think that having been boned by capitalists when she was young means that she is “capitalist to my bones”?? That conclusion is the only thing supported by any facts.
I think that most Northern European countries show that better healthcare at lower costs is possible in a centralized approach. I think making employers responsible for health care is strange; that’s not what they’re for. If you want to support people in having good coverage, I think it should be from the government and not from third parties. Mind you, that’s an if. (and yes, I personally think government should provide a basic healthcare for all. I see plenty of examples where that is done succesfully. But I am aware that this is a choice, not a given).
This is the biggest problem with the retarded dem party. If they just focused on fixing healthcare only instead of disarming people from their weapons and confiscating wealth they could actually win. The republicans failed miserably in their promise to “fix” Obamacare and if the dems focused on this alone they could have a chance. The rest of their crazy platform alienates most people who can see through their demagoguery.
But the Democrats already fixed healthcare with ObamaCare. The had the Presidency and complete control of Congress.
I don’t understand how the people that screw things up should somehow be the same people assigned to fix them?
This isn’t just dems but government. Government screws up healthcare and then is the same geniuses are supposed to fix it? Education is the same.
The Democrats ‘Fixed’ healthcare with Obamacare.
Seriously??
Nothing has been fixed
Obamacare fubb’d the healthcare system for people and employers who pay for private insurance. Medicare is the most cost effective healthcare program thus far.
Sorry but the Northern European countries have about 10% the population of the US, and are pretty homogenous in their demographics….though that is changing with the refugee influx. You can already see that this influx is starting to have a drag on their social programs. Wait 5 years and I think you are going to see some major changes…
The population of the EU is 550million. All have a version of medicare for all.
If you want to know what socialized medicine is all about, learn about the VA. It’s a shame what we do to our veterans.
“better healthcare at lower costs is possible in a centralized approach”
The usual collectivist analysis.
If your standard is the entire anthill of humans, and not the liberty and property rights of every particular individual, then redistributing wealth appears to be a positive. I know, concepts like “individual
rights” and “private property” seem archaic, even silly, to all the varieties of zombies under the big-gov tent.
“Government” points guns at people. No thanks.
Senator Warren does not have the backing of Wall Street.
Wall street is terrified of Warren even becoming the nominee, much less getting elected.
And a lot of the California socialists are worried about the impact her candidacy would have on the IPO market that makes California’s lifestyle possible.
Biden will be lucky to avoid prison, and Bernie’s heart attack has him out of the running. Warren would cause a civil war if she got elected. George Soros is the only person who would benefit from Warren. Most of the democrat’s billionaire base would lose big time and they know it.
Warren is about as much of a socialist as you are, Mish. And, she gots more contributions from billionaires than Biden. That should tell you something. It’s a distinctive mark of the political ignorance in the US, is the reactionary labeling of figures like Warren (or Obama) as socialist.
She’s a Fascist. That’s socialism in cahouts with the bankers and big corporations. Remember the German and Italian Fascists of the 1930’s and 40’s??
Thus, the big corporate donations
She’s bad enough it will almost be enjoyable watching her lose to the demagogue. But not really.
Warren is already tied with creepy uncle Joe; even ahead in some polls. One more fake whistleblower with TDS and Biden is done.
“Everyone has a right to health care” is one of those liberal truisms that sounds noble and good but which is actually utterly ridiculous. Health care is a service provided by people who provide that service to make their living. What gives anyone a right to the fruits of someone else’s labor?
If a doctor decides to quit being a doctor, can he be can he be imprisoned under civil liberty statutes for denying people their rights to health care? These people are nuts.
“What gives anyone a right to the fruits of someone else’s labor?”
You know, I’m going to ask the owner of the company I work for that very question today!
You agreed to do that when you worked for him. He’s providing an opportunity for you.
You could start that business but you didn’t. He’s being rewarded by your labor and you are being rewarded by his pay.
That’s how capitalism works.
Individual freedom is about the individual. If you choose to give up your labor for pay, then we live in a free country. When you do not choose to do so, then we are no longer free.
Yup. In a nutshell ….
Yup
The only fly in the ointment, is that there are an increasing number of restrictions preventing John from setting up shop next door. As well as preventing anyone else from doing so, and poaching John away at a higher salary.
You have zoning/land use laws, bans on running a business out of a van parked wherever, arbitrary “IP” laws written by patent trolls, franchise laws, permits required to conduct business/practice darned near anything, expensive-to-comply-with taxation, regulation, bans on building etc. All set up for the sole purpose of protecting well connected incumbents from the kind of cutthroat competition that is required for both consumers getting a good deal, and for employees getting one. By making sure an ever greater share of the economy, effectively get redistributed to idle rent seekers instead.
People are so wound up, jokes don’t work here.
While I’m not a fan of Warren, the health care system in the USA is broken. Why does an appendectomy cost 100 times more in the USA than what mine cost in South Korea? My income taxes are lower and the hospital waiting times drastically shorter in South Korea. In Korea, you can go to any hospital and there’s no deductible. Many Americans get angry when I say this and say I’m a traitor to the USA, but there’s nothing patriotic about being an apologist for a system that is so financially brutal to so many Americans just to make a few people fantastically rich. Even an ambulance ride in the USA can cost thousands of dollars and one aspirin in an American hospital can cost $25. It’s a corrupt system, while Superpatriots point to a $25 aspirin and shout “USA!!! USA!!! USA!!!”
I can tell you exactly why it costs more in the USA…..government interference.
I am a cash customer. My insurance co-op will reimburse me for all medical expenses. Because I present myself as a cash customer, I get 80-90% off.
For example, I’m a marathon runner. I ran a race (won my age group! hurray!) and overexerted myself to beat the 20 somethings. I ended up with a collapsed lung, which can be serious.
Lung xray for an insured person? 1200. For me as a cash customer? 150 bucks. It was reimbursed by my co-op, to which I contribute 450 a month.
The insurance industry is the problem. Anytime a doctor can charge whatever he wants to the insurance company, with little competition, we shouldn’t be surprised to see huge price inflation.
so “ridiculous” and “nuts” that every other rich country in the world provides it at half the cost and with better outcomes.
Capitalism has winners and losers, that is a fact of life, it is still the best economic system that man has or can devise to keep 7.8 billion people alive, there is no doubt of this fact, some win, some lose. But, even at the birth of capitalism ~1400ish, NOBODY was allowed to die from simple bad luck or poverty. Not unless the black plague was devastating everywhere all at once. Even then some work was found for the able bodied and they were fed, housed, it might have been bread in a stable but nobody starved in Medieval Europe.
What is reality now is that the economy of the planet has been financialized and dollarized. You pay or you die. That is slavery. Arbeit Macht Frei, at the same time the rich donor class has insisted that they not be taxed in any real way and that further financialization take the place of taxes on them. That requires lies about real inflation of course. Because just printing money and giving it to the rich is grossly inflationary.
Remember that “inflation is too many dollars chasing too few goods.” We can update that to say too few services as well. People have needs, housing and food and transport and such. Population grows at a very predictable rate, and what all those new people need and want also grows at the a very predictable rate. It is now pretty low. Some nations like Italy are actually in negative growth for population, Japan too. Most of the developed world is at 1% or less, only immigration has kept the US growth rate higher.
But, corporate growth rates (profits) have to be higher than the “organic” growth rates of the nation in general or their shares go in the toilet, they get parted out. This is something that the left and right both get wrong. Though the left has it partly right, in slow growth low profit eras like we have been in for decades now, more of that profit has to go to the people, because that is what sustains the entire economy. Businesses cannot survive without customers, and they have no customers when wages pay for less than the basic necessities. No excuses, people, average, median people like me have to have some spending green in their fingers or the economy dies on the spot when profit margins are as slim as they are. The ONLY thing keeping us from falling into a headline depressions now is the ongoing bailouts of banks and the dwindling reserve currency status of the dollar. And we have no leadership at all. Tweets just don’t count.
Back to original thought, capitalism has losers, maybe those losers are not as smart as you are, maybe it was bad timing, maybe they blew up their lives over emotional outbursts like when you found out your fiance was cheating on you the day before you were to marry her, and then you married the bitch anyway because it was too late to cancel, maybe expensive divorce, maybe like me the house burned down and the person you loved and lived with died in the fire! Here is a fact for you, NOBODY save one man helped me after that fire. He was an exec with L’Oreal, he sent me $1,500 from Paris a couple days after the fire. The insurance company paid out $5 million to the estate of Erik, but would not even take a claim from me for my losses. The adjuster said you should have had renter’s insurance (or been legally married since those are the only people in New York then that could file such claims). Even though I was family, paid no rent, and lost everything I owned in a house I lived in that was VERY well insured. They had a technicality (gay man) that said they did not even have to take a claim. No matter that the man paying the premiums was also a gay man and that marriage was not even legal yet. They had an answer for that as well, he could have adopted me.
When I think about how sneaky and dishonest people become around money and wealth I would have no problem at all just pushing that big red button that uncreates humanity. Most of you are trying. Almost all of you have some good in you. Some of you are stars, great people. But, the vast majority are just pigs.
Narrow minded greedy pigs. And it is shocking how many admit it. Every person that supports Trump is a greedy narrow minded Nazi pig. If you were a republican and a decent human being you would support another republican and advocate getting the garbage out of your party, but you can’t because you are already in a minority and could not win without cheating. That is why you will have to pay socially and morally when you lose because you cannot cheat enough anymore.
Decent people don’t support politicians or political parties.
You can’t eradicate cannibalism by eating the cannibals; there is no better analog for what voting is.
The voting booth should reconfigure the ballot lever to a dildo and require the Helots to use their mouths to make the selection of their next master, it also provides a keen preview of things to come for the voter.
“A ballot is just a substitute for a bullet. If your vote isn’t backed by a bullet, it is meaningless. Without the bullet, people could ignore the election outcome. Voting would be pointless. Democracy has violence at its very core!” ~Muir Matteson, “The Nonviolent Zone”
“An election is a moral horror, as bad as a battle except for blood; a mud bath for every soul concerned in it.” ~ George Bernard Shaw
“Free election of masters does not abolish the masters or the slaves.” Herbert Marcuse
“Working within the system means to become a part of the system. When you go into the voting booth, the only meaningful significance that your action will have is to show that one more person supports the state”. ~Mark Davis
“Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich, by promising to protect each from the other.” ~ Oscar Ameringer
“If the right to vote were expanded to seven year olds … its policies would most definitely reflect the ‘legitimate concerns’ of children to have ‘adequate’ and ‘equal’ access to ‘free’ french fries, lemonade and videos.” ~ Hans-Hermann Hoppe
We’ve become so accustomed to dictatorial presidencies that we’ve forgotten Congress is a brake on extremism.
Warren is unelectable, there’s nothing to worry about from her.
Was Trump electable?
And other than Twitter and tarrifs he doesn’t do much.
It is true what they say about the Dutch.
Apples and oranges, the USA had never encountered extreme measures from foreign interference in our elections aided and abetted by the minority party before. It goes without saying the fact that it did happen has hardened the extremism on both side and further polarized politics in America just when you think it could not get more polarized. In 2016 we got taken for a ride and Trump (to his and Putin’s surprise) won on the very slimmest electoral college wins, there are facts that republicans are very uncomfortable with, like the winner take all electoral votes in states that Trump won by less than 1% or even less than 1/10 of a percent.
I say, that hardening is because fool me once shame on YOU, fool me twice shame on me. People know that 2020 is going to be FAR worse than 2016 for foreign influence and it is already underway. So they are ignoring social media inputs and just made their minds up already. I know I can’t vote democrat at this point because I hate socialism probably even more than Country Bob does and that is saying something (considering I suspect he is a captain in the FSB) but I see the corruption on the right as the death of this country and everything it stands for. If you people can’t take out your own garbage and replace it with real citizens that have reasonable voices then you do not deserve to win. If your way of doing things, of governing, is so great why are you the minority party that can’t win without cheating?
“At the end of a century that has seen the evils of communism, Nazism and other modern tyrannies, the impulse to centralize power remains amazingly persistent.” ~ Joseph Sobran
“This is seriously scary stuff.”
Yes it is. But this is exactly what happens when the existing capitalism is about “Privatize profits and Social losses”. So if anyone needs to be blamed for the Warrens and AOCs of the world it is the cabal (politicians, central bankers, media, corporate) who have given capitalism a bad name. The present “ism” that we have is definitely not capitalism.
well said
Agree, we don’t have free market capitalism anymore, it is corrupt crony capitalism. Adding fire to this fuel is the suppression of free market interest rates by ignorant wizards in the monetary politburo. Hence the biggest disparity in wealth driving this undercurrent of communism.
You really have to go back the the roots of capitalism, I mean really we do have to because what we have now is NOT even remotely like what the Northern Italians and Venetians and the Templar’s before them invented. The Templar’s invented banking/credit with letters of credit all the way from the English Channel to Jerusalem. People (royal crusaders) could not carry all the money they needed for their crusades for among many reasons there wasn’t exactly a highly liquid ForEx market in 1,000 A.D. and the robbery rate was prohibitive. So, the Templar order stationed military units all along the route of the crusaders and guaranteed safe passage (for a fee of course) and the use of Templar funds also on the whole route. You deposited your funds with them at the starting point and all along the way money you spent was deducted from a running total. It was like the MasterCard of medieval wars.
The Venetians took it a step further with their naval power that was a merchant marine. They invented shares as a form of risk/return insurance. If a good sized set of ships (say a merchant sent 6 big boats) went to the East Indies or China, it could bring back a HUGE fortune in silks, spices, porcelain (which the Europeans had not figured out how to reproduce yet, “The earliest European porcelains were produced at the Meissen factory in the early 18th century.”
But half the ships sent out might sink, maybe only one got back, that could be ruinous to a family who owned them. It should be noted that if even one returned it most of the time paid to replace all losses. That is how much profit there was in the trade, and that explains a lot about why we had so many wars regarding trade in the Far East.
So, the owners came up with the idea that they would sell “shares,” a portion of the profits in their cargoes to lessen their own risk while still keeping the ownership and majority of the profits. But, if they lost their ships the shares would pay for the losses. The first evidence of Venetian trade in porcelains goes back to 780 A.D. (I know, I was surprised as well). But, it was later that selling shares was mainstream, about 1,100. And it was not till the invention of the astrolabe and accurate timekeeping/maps that they went in large numbers. See? Technological advance made profit easier/larger, but, as always there is downsides.
All this was a fine start to capitalism, except that money was an issue, every duke and prince and kingdom had their own monetary system that was not very convertible or liquid. Money only really served as money (Gresham’s Law remember) when it met the three criteria of what money is, even though Gresham was still distant future to them, it was always a fact of life. One of the major missing things about money was that all these coins and notes and letters of credit had no common unit of account, and that is why we will see the dollar remain as reserve currency far longer than most people think it will. It is the modern common unit of account. Everything, including the currency of other nations is priced in dollars. That is not going to change till a better system happens.
This lack of any realistic accountancy lead to a Franciscan friar, Luca Pacioli (he gets the credit for it anyway) inventing double entry bookkeeping. It was at that point that real Capitalism was born and took off, it assembled all the parts that had been forming for centuries and it made modern concepts like banking and stock markets and populist ownership possible where before it had not been. It was also the slow doom of aristocracy and the rise of the bourgeoisie. He also invented balance sheets/income statements. That was late 1400’s, about the time Columbus was looking for a sponsor.
So, in REAL capitalism we see that markets are more or less perfect and very responsive to the needs and wants of people. Unfortunately it’s weak spot is when the wants of the very wealthy override and take priority over the NEEDS of the many. That has ALWAYS been a problem and I expect it always will be.
Where we are now is that every part of our government (I include corporate influences here because government and business are now inseparable) are controlled by the very wealthy and will only allow that share of GDP to be paid out in wages (called rents in economics) or social benefits, retirements, welfare, subsistence aid, etc. to the lower 80% that is just enough to keep the poor from rioting, hunting down the rich, and doing to them what the French did to the aristocracy in the revolution there. And even then there are people here at Mish Talk that think that is way too generous. That the rich should put the uppity “people” back on the plantation and teach them a harsh lesson in who exactly always has been and always will be the boss. This was one of the reasons I loved reading “The Hunger Games,” it was a very entertaining read even if the movies were somewhat low budget. Anyone with a background in economics and finance would recognize many modern themes in the story that are real today. Some exaggeration yes, but otherwise it would have to have been 20,000 pages long.
So, I will wrap it up and join you tomorrow, but, for those that have not read The Hunger Games, and are not pinched off old dried out turds, I do recommend it, the story is filled with economics, and has more about competition than you can read in 20 encyclopedias. I think it is brilliant because it goes so much further than that nut case Anus Randus. Yet does it in three easy to read books. And, it tells a morality tale as well, along with predicting our future. I think I will read it again myself.
The “seriously scary stuff” remains in the White House…
with the deaf, dumb & blind support of his party.
I agree with Warren…
QE4ever is a non-functioning market without rules; certainly not pure capitalism.
Private Health Care was a joke from the start:
“… the less care they give…the more money they make.”—Ehrlichman to Nixon.
Health Care should be socialized.
She won’t get everything she wants: a democracy requires compromise.
But a little more de-corporatization…
& a little less de-humanization…
sounds like a nice policy change in direction.
How about a little more choice? A little less centralization? A few more alternatives to the Walmarts and UPMCs of the nation? Sure, not arresting farmers for selling raw milk would be fantastic, but I’ll be happy if some new small businesses that aren’t exactly the same as every other highly regulated company could get a toehold in the marketplace.
free health care at the point of service would create a lot more choice for workers. Imagine how much easier it will be to start a new business, switch jobs or hire more people, if health care cost was not a consideration. The system right now only provides “choice” for the investor class.
Elizabeth Warren, queen of the water cooler and break room gangs. Yes, the type you couldn’t trust with the third shift floor sweepers for six months, unless you were prepared for first shift endlessly bitching at you about dirty floors. Yes, that Elizabeth Warren is sallying forth lambasting your sorry ass for not spending even more of your precious years strapped to a god damn plane going somewhere to pick up the pieces, make apologies, refere cat fights and generally wage war for capitalism in order that airhead demagogues everywhere can run for president on a platform of how shitty and unfair capitalism has been to them. What a country.
She’s got a thing for Marines,that MSG detachment better be on patrol for that cougar,she’s a freak!
”
Yet, Warren claims to be “capitalist to my bones.”
“
Again, it’s just progressivism as usual. Newspeak and nothing but. Just say some words which makes uncritical dunces feel good, and that mythical guy named “We”, the one with the equally mythical last name “The People,” will cheer for Dear Leader, and Make Hope and Change Great Again.
Of course, her being being flat out illiterate; I suppose it would be too much to expect her to ever ponder, when that similarly mythical bad guy, the one named “The Rich” will control everything else absent her “rules”, why won he end up controlling the rules as well?
That’s the real world. Rules, and political power and influence is, again like all else, just another perfectly standard economic good. No different from lemonade, housing and gunpowder: All sold to the highest bidder.
I have no doubt such “mindblowing” display of economic literacy, and common sense, is way beyond the comprehension of anyone dumb enough to give this dimbulbita even the time of day, but that is the real world. Compare the number of rules, as well as the resources devoted to fighting over, interpreting and enforcing them, with back when that pesky “The Rich” guy didn’t own every breathable air molecule outright as a result of Fed redistribution and, tah-dah, rules! preventing people from simply routing around him. Then tell me how “more rules” are somehow preventing “The Rich” from enslaving the rest again. Even empirically..
She will never get any of this through Congress, unless the House and Senate are both Democrat. Even then I doubt enough legislators would vote for these ideas.
The whole Congress will have to turn a lot more Socialist.
I was thinking the same thing.
I don’t know about that anymore. Republicans act more like opportunists than Republicans. Scary times.
Plus, most of it appears / sounds Unconstitutional to me on multiple grounds. SCOTUS is a backstop for a while now.