Conservative rant...your opinions?

I agree completely...almost. This part: "We've seen housing prices and the cost of a college education rise because of Federal government intervention with their 'free money'". Anyone who knows that we are in a corporatist system also knows that the Fedeal Reserve System is only "the Government" in that our elected officials can decline to appoint fed governors or chairmen after they have screwed up--though in practice, they don't actually do this, they instead let them keep their jobs as Fed Chairman or promote them to the post of Treasury Secretary.

The government ceded this power in 1913. What we are seeing is not government intervention with the private-sector. It is private sector (the banking cartel that we call the Federal Reserve) intervention with the private-sector (the broader economy that is everybody else).

Things aren't always what they seem. The effects of monetary policy were not as well understood back then. The Fed didn't tinker with interest rates on a regular basis the way they have done since the creation of the (quarterly, at a minimum) FOMC meeting requirement but there were other factors at work. Most notably the combination of a still lagging European productive capacity (because of WWI) and persistent, large capital inflows to the US in the form of war reparations from Germany and debt repayment from the allies. Plus, as you mentioned, marginal tax rates were gutted. They were cut accross the board, yes...but whereas the marginal rates on the first $11k earned saw changes from 4% down to 1.5% and 11% down to 5%, the new marginal rates on the $100thousandth to the $2millionth earned dropped far more:



From 73% down to 23% for everything over $2mil. That's a pretty big tax-cut.

Anyway, I wouldn't have brought any of it up except that what happened next so clearly illustrates one of the problems inherent in corporatism--a system that was very much with us back then though many of us are reluctant to admit it: When you have a fast growing money-supply (as happened in the late-teens, early 1920s as well as this past decade) that is controlled by private interests (the Banks) who do not have enough meaningful restrictions on how they can invest your money (and they didn't then, don't now, almost certainly won't in a few weeks after they pass the finance "reform" bill) then a good portion of this loose money is naturally going to find it's way into speculative outlets; this could really include home loans when you come down to it because home loans are not productive--. If you then couple this institutional frenzy with radical reductions of the top marginal tax rates, you ensure disaster. The rich--who would most likely have invested in the first place (rather than consume) with these last dollars they didn't have to pay in taxes push the bubble higher. The middle class, not wanting to miss the party altogether, finally gets in--right before the bubble bursts--and at the first sign of trouble, smart investors get out, having realized for some time that the prices are not backed up by the fundamentals or the historical trends. Prices slide, everybody panics, the whole charade comes tumbling down and it drags the real production economy with it.

In the 1920s the banks played fast and loose in the stock market because fiscal and tax policy made it attractive, plus there was no rule which prohibited it. The general public joined the party, it all blew up and we got the 1929 crash and Great Depression. Then they wrote rules to prohibit this kind of chicanery...which were repealed in 1999 by Clinton and a Republican Congress (woo-hoo! yay bi-partisanship!...conniving motherfuckers). These deregulations were accompanied by loose monetary policy and followed soon by the Bush tax-cuts, which...

Wanna buy a house? CDO anybody?

History may not repeat itself but it sure as fuck seems to rhyme.

Since we're on the subject of Corporatism...

Here's comic-book artist Chris Ware's take on things. It's Fortune's May 2010 issue, which contains the annual 500 list. They commisioned this cover...then rejected it.

Here it is:



Gee, wonder why they would reject that?

Here it is in high-res.

Oh, I see. They rejected it because it's fucking awesome!

beep yeah!

it really needs to be viewed in the high res version, but its awesome.

they would have gone with that cover, on gunpoint, sure.

Rant thread indeed.

I'm not sure if I wasted the last 90 minutes getting caught up in this thread or feel slightly more enlightened as a result. On the whole, I think it was time well spent so thank you fellow members for your contributions to my well of knowledge.

Someone has a saying in their sig line: "The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance, it's the illusion of knowledge. Translation: You aren't as smart as you think you are. I think some folks need to keep this in their mind, often.

It's just a reflection of normal society where the vast majority of people fancy themselves quite a lot. I wish I could find the link, but a study was conducted and the vast majority of people think they are of above average intelligence, are good drivers, and good lovers. We all know that the first two are mathematical impossibilities on their face. The third probably is too.

With all due respect to a few of the posters in this particular thread, considering it's nature, your intellectual arguments would sound far more convincing IMO if you ran your posts through grammar and spell checking software first, like MS Word.

Seriously. It would help and only take an extra minute or two. You might even learn something in the process about syntax, subject-verb agreement, homonyms, etc.


I will say one thing I have come to feel quite strongly about in recent years: I do not want to pay one penny more in taxes of any kind! I consider any money the government collects to be a tax and they get way too much already. Enough is enough!

But I am in the middle class. Is it wrong for me to think the richest should be paying a higher percentage of income tax? And is a net worth tax a bad thing? Some countries have a net worth tax as a way of closing the gap between the richest and poorest while presumably helping to ensure that wealth isn't quite as concentrated in the hands of as few.

Just a note: I grew up around farmers in rural Ohio. Some of those men couldn't spell worth a shit, but smarter men would be hard to find. They were pilots(still are even at 84 yrs old) knew computer programming(from the late 80's to current), nutrients, game, had mechanical affinity for machines worth more than most peoples houses, not to mention incidentals like taxation and business management. Just because someone lacks grammar and spelling, don't mistake them for stupid. They very well may be smarter than you and I combined.

Thanks Bonesnoff,
What you say is true and a very good point and something that I believe personally. It's just that in an online community like this, all I have are the words people use. I can't see them, hear how they speak, see how they dress, how they carry themselves, how they treat small animals, etc. so my only basis for drawing an opinion specifically in a thread like this is how they write. And since this thread has evolved into a kind of intellectual discussion, I think one's points would carry more weight if one didn't sound like a 6th grader when making them.

Any thread like this is going to bring some kooks out espousing their bizarre and moronic views. It will also bring out those who fancy themselves and like to see their pseudo-intellectual rants in writing. It's just the nature of the beast. Most stupid people don't know they're stupid and like I said, the illusion of knowledge is worse than ignorance.

I have mostly graduated from getting mad at stupid people. I have also mostly graduated from ridiculing them overtly. Now I mostly try to have pity or compassion and sometimes even seek to try to understand them. Mostly. But sometimes....

I have learned a lot from this thread though. Thanks again nice people for facilitating discussion on important issues.

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