Does Barack Obama understand capitalism? This is a legitimate question that Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post would like answered, given that Obama is a Socialist bully who uses intemperate language and who is NEVER EVER THERE for America’s bff Israel
"Structural unemployment" isn't code for "you poors are lazy", it's code for "we're not gonna do shit to fix this mess, so suck it up losers"
Were they not right-wingers, they would be unable to simultaneously believe that unemployment is all Obama&#039;s fault <em>and</em> an inherent feature of the system. But they&#039;re right-wingers, so they&#039;re entirely oblivious to the mutual exclusivity of those two concepts, both of which are in fact false.
Krugman&#039;s written several columns over the last four years trying to prevent a belief in &quot;structural&quot; unemployment because of the long-term damage (a &quot;lost decade&quot; or several) likely to be caused by policies formed by believers in such a myth.
&quot;Our economic opportunities are limited only by the impediments that government (taxes, stifling regulation, etc.) and individuals (lack of skills and work ethic) impose.&quot;
Okay, for taxes, how about this: Reduce the maximum income tax rate to, say, 20%. In exchange, increase the inheritance tax rate to 100%.
Because, according to Jennifer Rubin, our &quot;economic opportunities&quot; are apparently not influenced by our ancestors&#039; economic success, at all.
I recently learned there are &quot;ultra-Orthodox&quot; people living in Israel who don&#039;t have to serve in the army. Apparently they don&#039;t even work - they have unemployment insurance benefits for life.
Meanwhile, I certainly believe in the Right of Return. That&#039;s one reason I like Nordstrom - they&#039;ll take anything back.
Republicans are largely incapable of distinguishing between wealth <em>creation</em> and wealth <em>capture</em>.
Finance sector executives are <strong>universally</strong> incapable of making that distinction.
Also, this is bullshit:
<blockquote>If Bain or the 1 percent are getting rich, as Obama would have us believe, then others are getting poorer or are being defrauded. So, naturally, government must step in to rearrange the slices of the pie. But we know that is not the case.</blockquote>
Actually, in the case of Bain, if Bain is getting rich, then <strong>absolutely</strong>, 100% unequivocally, the rest of us are getting poorer. Wealth capture, as practiced by private equity firms, is a zero-sum game, everything they extract, the rest of us lose.
It&#039;s true that if one person benefits from the fruit of their own productivity, no-one else is poorer as a result. But to believe that a CEO produces <em>anything</em> of economic value, you have to have a complete lack of understanding of what capital actually is. CEO wages make the rest of us poorer. Even if you believe that the money isn&#039;t being taken away from anyone else (and in more healthy economies, including most of American history, much of what goes towards CEO pay in modern America would be spent instead on employee compensation), that it is essentially being plucked from a money tree, it still makes the rest of us poorer through inflation. The meaning of owning fiat currency is that it represents a claim on a proportion of the future productivity of the issuing nation; the size of that pie isn&#039;t fixed because productivity is variable, but it is nothing like as elastic as Rubin would have her readers believe; anyone who takes a bigger slice without commensurately growing the pie, basically everyone in the finance and shadow finance sectors - yes, including Bain - plus almost all of the executive class, is leaving less for the rest of us.
After Germany, the strongest economies in Europe appear to be Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland.
Finland has one of the best health care systems - not sick care, as we sorta have here in the US of A, but genuine health care - in the world. The right wing nutz rant about Britian because they can aggregate horror stories from the English press. They never mention Finland&#039;s roaring success.
&quot;Structural unemployment&quot; isn&#039;t code for &quot;you poors are lazy&quot;, it&#039;s code for &quot;we&#039;re not gonna do shit to fix this mess, so suck it up losers&quot;
Were they not right-wingers, they would be unable to simultaneously believe that unemployment is all Obama&#039;s fault <em>and</em> an inherent feature of the system. But they&#039;re right-wingers, so they&#039;re entirely oblivious to the mutual exclusivity of those two concepts, both of which are in fact false.
Krugman&#039;s written several columns over the last four years trying to prevent a belief in &quot;structural&quot; unemployment because of the long-term damage (a &quot;lost decade&quot; or several) likely to be caused by policies formed by believers in such a myth.
&quot;Our economic opportunities are limited only by the impediments that government (taxes, stifling regulation, etc.) and individuals (lack of skills and work ethic) impose.&quot;
Okay, for taxes, how about this: Reduce the maximum income tax rate to, say, 20%. In exchange, increase the inheritance tax rate to 100%.
Because, according to Jennifer Rubin, our &quot;economic opportunities&quot; are apparently not influenced by our ancestors&#039; economic success, at all.
I recently learned there are &quot;ultra-Orthodox&quot; people living in Israel who don&#039;t have to serve in the army. Apparently they don&#039;t even work - they have unemployment insurance benefits for life.
Meanwhile, I certainly believe in the Right of Return. That&#039;s one reason I like Nordstrom - they&#039;ll take anything back.
Funny how that works, isn&#039;t it? Ya do the right thing and it just pays off for ya.
Republicans are largely incapable of distinguishing between wealth <em>creation</em> and wealth <em>capture</em>.
Finance sector executives are <strong>universally</strong> incapable of making that distinction.
Also, this is bullshit:
<blockquote>If Bain or the 1 percent are getting rich, as Obama would have us believe, then others are getting poorer or are being defrauded. So, naturally, government must step in to rearrange the slices of the pie. But we know that is not the case.</blockquote>
Actually, in the case of Bain, if Bain is getting rich, then <strong>absolutely</strong>, 100% unequivocally, the rest of us are getting poorer. Wealth capture, as practiced by private equity firms, is a zero-sum game, everything they extract, the rest of us lose.
It&#039;s true that if one person benefits from the fruit of their own productivity, no-one else is poorer as a result. But to believe that a CEO produces <em>anything</em> of economic value, you have to have a complete lack of understanding of what capital actually is. CEO wages make the rest of us poorer. Even if you believe that the money isn&#039;t being taken away from anyone else (and in more healthy economies, including most of American history, much of what goes towards CEO pay in modern America would be spent instead on employee compensation), that it is essentially being plucked from a money tree, it still makes the rest of us poorer through inflation. The meaning of owning fiat currency is that it represents a claim on a proportion of the future productivity of the issuing nation; the size of that pie isn&#039;t fixed because productivity is variable, but it is nothing like as elastic as Rubin would have her readers believe; anyone who takes a bigger slice without commensurately growing the pie, basically everyone in the finance and shadow finance sectors - yes, including Bain - plus almost all of the executive class, is leaving less for the rest of us.
Nah.
Right sandwich.
Wrong sauce. Call the witch doctor!
Which doctor?
No - the Witch Doctor!
After Germany, the strongest economies in Europe appear to be Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland.
Finland has one of the best health care systems - not sick care, as we sorta have here in the US of A, but genuine health care - in the world. The right wing nutz rant about Britian because they can aggregate horror stories from the English press. They never mention Finland&#039;s roaring success.
All these nations are at least quasi-socialist.
Just how can this be?
That sounds like communism, consider Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot.
from the crap my mom spots, wsj editorials (at least) are very very close to limbaugh land.
It&#039;s not because you were on the Heaviside?
Welcome to the new feudalism.
To be fair, it&#039;s hard to see society&#039;s ills when your view is blocked by the enormous Koch cock filling your mouth.
&quot;How much is enough?&quot;
All of it, Katie.
Ugh...imagine her and Ann Coulter knockin&#039; boots together.
What the hell does the sauerkraut represent?