IGX

johno wrote: Instead, worry about the Too Big to Fail institutions that our Gov't has grown.

which would those be?

how did the government grow them?

did their growth come at someone's expense?

dead man walking wrote:

johno wrote: Instead, worry about the Too Big to Fail institutions that our Gov't has grown.

which would those be?

how did the government grow them?

did their growth come at someone's expense?

http://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/ ... olidation/

that's one example.

thank you for making my point.

So what's your review of the book that started this thread dmw?

my review? hah. i'm no one to review a major work of economics.

i've long observed that there is no such thing as a free market. there are markets. they operate according to rules that we make, same as baseball or war, for that matter. the rules go a long way to determining who wins and who loses. with the documented decline in the middle class and the document increase in income inequality, it's worth asking whether the markets are serving our broad national interests. if thye're not serving our interests, we should change the rules. if banking consolidation is a problem, a problem that has resulted from a change in the rules, change the rules again.

i'm not a student of free trade. remember when ross perot told us free trade with mexico would lead to be big sucking sound as jobs went south? has free trade worked for us? if i'm not mistaken, free trade means we trade our jobs for cheap goods. is that a good trade?

i don't know anyone--right or left--who believes a concentration of power in fewer people is a good thing. the question of whether a fabulously wealthy zuckerberg reduces my opportunities isn't the right question. the question is do we want a small collection of zuckerberg-like barons in control?

i enjoyed the old pbs series upstairs/downstairs. i don't want that historical narrative to be a vision of the future.

double post

dead man walking wrote:my review? hah. i'm no one to review a major work of economics.

i've long observed that there is no such thing as a free market. there are markets. they operate according to rules that we make, same as baseball or war, for that matter. the rules go a long way to determining who wins and who loses. with the documented decline in the middle class and the document increase in income inequality, it's worth asking whether the markets are serving our broad national interests. if thye're not serving our interests, we should change the rules. if banking consolidation is a problem, a problem that has resulted from a change in the rules, change the rules again.

i'm not a student of free trade. remember when ross perot told us free trade with mexico would lead to be big sucking sound as jobs went south? has free trade worked for us? if i'm not mistaken, free trade means we trade our jobs for cheap goods. is that a good trade?

i don't know anyone--right or left--who believes a concentration of power in fewer people is a good thing. the question of whether a fabulously wealthy zuckerberg reduces my opportunities isn't the right question. the question is do we want a small collection of zuckerberg-like barons in control?

i enjoyed the old pbs series upstairs/downstairs. i don't want that historical narrative to be a vision of the future.

I enjoyed 1984 and Animal Farm and don't want that narrative to be a vision of the future.

Here are some photos of people we never think about with a HUGE ability to fuck up people's lives. BTW the guy in the background of the top photo loves nature and the little guy so much that he takes unfathomable amounts of money from our tech and finance oligarchs.

Turdacious wrote:If we were serious about reducing inequality we would start by:
1. Reducing medical bankruptcy (no evidence that Obamacare is doing this yet)
2. Reduce the cost of health care (both to individuals and especially to businesses)
3. Return to teaching vo-ced in college and high school
4. Reduce the cost of college
5. Prioritize students over teachers unions
6. Reduce the cost of regulatory compliance (in terms of time and money)

My list would include:
1 - Education vouchers so impoverished kids could escape the hellholes that are Public Education.
2 - Restigmatize unwed parenthood. And destigmatize work…any form of honest work.
3 - Devise a test analogous the the GED for a 4 year degree, one that could be studied for online.

My propositions would help people advance to the middle & middle-upper class, not bring down the 1%.

johno wrote:

DrDonkeyLove wrote: How are Mark Zuckerberg one Sergey Brinn fucking anybody?

^This.

If certain people grow the economic pie and get insanely wealthy as a result, how does that impoverish me?

Instead, worry about the Too Big to Fail institutions that our Gov't has grown.

Answer the Question, Mr. 99%.

donkey,

the tech guys are making zillions because they came up with new ideas, sometimes useful ones. good for them.

the finance guys are market manipulators. they add limited value, and their paths have been cleared by rule changes--repeal of glass steagall, for ex--that benefit them foremost.

you think lisa jackson is a problem. list jackson? seriously. lisa jackson did jack shit at epa. if she had actually done something to address climate change, i'd understand why you would stick pins in a voodoo doll of her. but she did nada.

i believe the obama hate deflects people from more worrisome trends. apparently your view differs.

your pictorial response gets high marks.

It's hard to answer a strawman (hint: who mentioned Sergei or Zuck).

Silicon Valley as a whole has a fine chance to fuck us all when the current bubble pops - hopefully it will be contained among those willing to gamble on Snapchat and Twitter, this time, but that's still a lot of paper money that will disappear.

On a micro level, I'm amused when earnest people tell kids to study engineering or something IT related - those are going to be the easiest jobs to ship to India. Or they can just import immigrants to work cheap and not cause problems (don't want to lose that company-sponsored visa).

dead man walking wrote:donkey,

the tech guys are making zillions because they came up with new ideas, sometimes useful ones. good for them.

the finance guys are market manipulators. they add limited value, and their paths have been cleared by rule changes--repeal of glass steagall, for ex--that benefit them foremost.

you think lisa jackson is a problem. list jackson? seriously. lisa jackson did jack shit at epa. if she had actually done something to address climate change, i'd understand why you would stick pins in a voodoo doll of her. but she did nada.

i believe the obama hate deflects people from more worrisome trends. apparently your view differs.

your pictorial response gets high marks.

1) Agree completely about the Newt/Clinton repeal of Glass Steagall yet there is nary of mention of this in the news.
2) I listed Jackson as someone who could fuck up your life. Same w/the pic of the ATF guy. I don't if he's guilty of anything but I know his predecessors are. The EPA came to mind because of what they're doing to some guy in WY who made a pond following all state regs and is being hounded by the EPA. Same w/the BLM.

I know climate change is a much bigger deal to you than to me. My burning heat is for jackbooted thugs and their kleptocrat cronies - hence my fondness for OWS and TEA Party types.

milosz wrote:It's hard to answer a strawman (hint: who mentioned Sergei or Zuck).

Silicon Valley as a whole has a fine chance to fuck us all when the current bubble pops - hopefully it will be contained among those willing to gamble on Snapchat and Twitter, this time, but that's still a lot of paper money that will disappear.

On a micro level, I'm amused when earnest people tell kids to study engineering or something IT related - those are going to be the easiest jobs to ship to India. Or they can just import immigrants to work cheap and not cause problems (don't want to lose that company-sponsored visa).

You brought up oligarchs so I gave you a couple of Amerikkka's top oligarchs. Would they have been straw men if I used the Koch bros.?

i don't know about the epa issue you mention. i get that the govt. can be infuriating. my current pet peeve is gas cans. you can't get one with a simple screw on cap. they all have these fucking safety caps that are cumbersome at best. no doubt there is a study that shows these new gas cans save lives of people too stupid to transport gas safely.

i've got a diesel can, a chainsaw gas can, a plain ordinary gas can, and one by one the spouts have cracked,. and i can't get a simple new spout. no, i've got to go buy a whole fucking new can with a fucking useless safety spout that spills gas or diesel or whatever.

so yes, spare me the unnecessary parental oversight.

but don't forget the guys in the private sector are huge fucking pirates, often operating with the blessing of laws their elected puppets passed. that's my bitch.

i'll grant you a licenses to torch government assholes if you grant me a license to torch hedge fund predators and their near kin

ps--did you see the irs recently gave bonuses to employees with disciplinary actions against them? fucking crazy world

DrDonkeyLove wrote:

milosz wrote:It's hard to answer a strawman (hint: who mentioned Sergei or Zuck).

Silicon Valley as a whole has a fine chance to fuck us all when the current bubble pops - hopefully it will be contained among those willing to gamble on Snapchat and Twitter, this time, but that's still a lot of paper money that will disappear.

On a micro level, I'm amused when earnest people tell kids to study engineering or something IT related - those are going to be the easiest jobs to ship to India. Or they can just import immigrants to work cheap and not cause problems (don't want to lose that company-sponsored visa).

You brought up oligarchs so I gave you a couple of Amerikkka's top oligarchs. Would they have been straw men if I used the Koch bros.?

walton fucking family. last i looked, four were in the top 10 richest.

walmart--selling cheap shit made overseas, hollowing out american stores and jobs

You brought up oligarchs so I gave you a couple of Amerikkka's top oligarchs. Would they have been straw men if I used the Koch bros.?

Less of a strawman, but I don't believe that I singled out any particular oligarch?

Would have been odd, of course, since I didn't use the word oligarch at all...

My list would include:
1 - Education vouchers so impoverished kids could escape the hellholes that are Public Education.
2 - Restigmatize unwed parenthood. And destigmatize work…any form of honest work.
3 - Devise a test analogous the the GED for a 4 year degree, one that could be studied for online.

1. Vouchers wouldn't allow kids to get the fuck out of shit school unless they pay for transportation as well. Vouchers only impact that ONE thing. Kids need to get to school. Kids need to be supported by family to succeed in school.
2. All you're going to do here is drive up divorce rates and expose kids to even more scumbags than they will already meet. What you really need to do is destigmatize abortion and cheap, easy, anonymous use of the morning after pill and other birth control methods. Abortion as birth control. Yeah. I'm on board with that.
3. You can test out of damn near any college course, there is a fee, but it's significantly cheaper than tuition. You'd have to dig up the info on this, I just read it in passing about how some enterprising older students were getting new degrees in a fraction of the time and cost. However, legit, cheap online higher education would be awesome, but it'll only be useful for a small percentage of folks with drive.

dead man walking wrote:my review? hah. i'm no one to review a major work of economics.

i've long observed that there is no such thing as a free market. there are markets. they operate according to rules that we make, same as baseball or war, for that matter. the rules go a long way to determining who wins and who loses. with the documented decline in the middle class and the document increase in income inequality, it's worth asking whether the markets are serving our broad national interests. if thye're not serving our interests, we should change the rules. if banking consolidation is a problem, a problem that has resulted from a change in the rules, change the rules again.

Fair enough.

dead man walking wrote:i'm not a student of free trade. remember when ross perot told us free trade with mexico would lead to be big sucking sound as jobs went south? has free trade worked for us? if i'm not mistaken, free trade means we trade our jobs for cheap goods. is that a good trade?

That is one thing that free trade can mean, and often does. However, we are shooting ourselves in the foot in other ways. Our inefficient, slow, and poorly thought out regulatory environment; the highest per capita cost of health care in the world (which is heavily paid by businesses); and a lack of focus on useful skills in our educational system all hurt. The plus side of cheap goods is that it lowers the cost of living.

no quarrel with you on free trade. in the past. i have been largely persuaded by the arguments you list. recently, i have begun to question the deal. a small town guy, i increasingly am troubled by the dis-integration of society that has resulted from free trade, walmarts, and such. the social cost of economic efficiency can be high.

milosz wrote:

You brought up oligarchs so I gave you a couple of Amerikkka's top oligarchs. Would they have been straw men if I used the Koch bros.?

Less of a strawman, but I don't believe that I singled out any particular oligarch?

Would have been odd, of course, since I didn't use the word oligarch at all...

I stand corrected but the individuals I named certainly fit the description you made. Let's just agree that I knew what you meant even though you didn't say it (kind of a Chris Matthews thing).

milosz wrote:Given the options of ceding money and power to a (theoretically) representative body vs. a small group of billionaires and multinationals that owe no allegiance to any nation-state...

dead man walking wrote:i don't know about the epa issue you mention. i get that the govt. can be infuriating. my current pet peeve is gas cans. you can't get one with a simple screw on cap. they all have these fucking safety caps that are cumbersome at best. no doubt there is a study that shows these new gas cans save lives of people too stupid to transport gas safely.

i've got a diesel can, a chainsaw gas can, a plain ordinary gas can, and one by one the spouts have cracked,. and i can't get a simple new spout. no, i've got to go buy a whole fucking new can with a fucking useless safety spout that spills gas or diesel or whatever.

so yes, spare me the unnecessary parental oversight.

but don't forget the guys in the private sector are huge fucking pirates, often operating with the blessing of laws their elected puppets passed. that's my bitch.

i'll grant you a licenses to torch government assholes if you grant me a license to torch hedge fund predators and their near kin

ps--did you see the irs recently gave bonuses to employees with disciplinary actions against them? fucking crazy world

I know a good source for PROPAINE!

a smarter man than i (david brooks) discusses the pickety book

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/25/opini ... 03353&_r=0

and krugman weighs in (i know many of you don't trust him but he offers some useful context)

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/25/opini ... d=30103353

johno wrote:

Turdacious wrote:If we were serious about reducing inequality we would start by:
1. Reducing medical bankruptcy (no evidence that Obamacare is doing this yet)
2. Reduce the cost of health care (both to individuals and especially to businesses)
3. Return to teaching vo-ced in college and high school
4. Reduce the cost of college
5. Prioritize students over teachers unions
6. Reduce the cost of regulatory compliance (in terms of time and money)

My list would include:
1 - Education vouchers so impoverished kids could escape the hellholes that are Public Education.
2 - Restigmatize unwed parenthood. And destigmatize work…any form of honest work.
3 - Devise a test analogous the the GED for a 4 year degree, one that could be studied for online.

My propositions would help people advance to the middle & middle-upper class, not bring down the 1%.

Investing in the education of poor kids is my favorite answer to inequality problems, but not because it will actually lower inequality now. The hope is that it would alleviate the rather large disadvantage that a lot of poor kids face. Unfortunately, it would require interventions at younger ages that are more targeted than most popular proposals. Vouchers won't fix the well-documented disparity that arises before the kids reach school age. Universal preschool is also neither targeted appropriately nor intensive enough. (It's a give away to the middle class, as are college tuition subsidies.)

At higher levels of education, vouchers and charters schools show some promise, but they probably also need to be targeted better. I think Turd is right about breaking the stranglehold of the teachers' unions because they will not allow meaningful reform. Ever. If you ever start to think that someone from a teachers' unions does care about education, ask them what they think about firing under-performing teachers. If they aren't willing to talk about a plan in which bad teachers could feasibly be fired, they don't care about education.

As for Piketty's book, there's a lot of good discussion out there from all sides. I haven't read it (and probably won't), but Piketty is a serious guy who has certainly put a lot of thought into the book. That said, any projections about what might happen over the next century should be viewed as highly speculative at best.

dead man walking wrote:

johno wrote: Instead, worry about the Too Big to Fail institutions that our Gov't has grown.

which would those be?

how did the government grow them?

did their growth come at someone's expense?

- The FDA (aka big pharma/agra/chema)?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPt3IQfIXgo

- Corruption

- You and your children?

Interesting that some blame regulatory capture on the FDA/EPA/etc. itself, rather than the (subsidized) industries that sought capture in the first place.