Page 2 of 5

Re: Robert Reich: Why American Capitalism is So Rotten

Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2024 6:54 pm
by Res Ipsa
ajax18 wrote:
Tue Jan 16, 2024 6:05 pm
Res Ipsa wrote:
Tue Jan 16, 2024 5:47 pm
Maybe boil it down to a meme? I've always thought that guys like Limbaugh are performers that laugh at their audiences all the way to the bank. He and his copycats convinced half the country that they should fight with black and brown folks over a few crumbs instead of paying attention to the few who took the whole pie.
Robert Reich's people have gotten their way since 2020. This is the result of Bidenomics and Democrat foreign policy. The middle class is shrinking. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. That's the fruit of Democrat's in power, not Republicans.
The trends you are asserting began with Reaganomics in 1980 and accelerated with the series of tax cuts Republicans pushed thereafter. Republican union busting took away the power of workers to share in increasing GDP. If Reich were getting his way, taxes on the wealthy would have already been enacted. The Trump tax cuts were a massive transfer of income to the very rich. They have so much money they had to invent things to invest in like NFTs. Now they are gobbling up single family residences and driving the cost of housing through the roof. Soon the 1% will own the housing and the 99% will be renters.

Of all the people that post here, you could probably benefit the most by actually reading Reich's articles and watching his online class. Then you could at least discuss the economy coherently.

Re: Robert Reich: Why American Capitalism is So Rotten

Posted: Tue Jan 16, 2024 7:25 pm
by Doctor CamNC4Me
Ajax,

What part of Robert Reich's economic philosophy that:
  1. addresses the 73% of Boomers retirement savings of $100k or less so they’re not on the street
  2. ensures workers are guaranteed strong wages and retirement plans so they can own a home and make sure their families can get care without devastating debt, and
  3. making sure your kids have a safety net if they’re injured or unfairly fired
do you hate the most?

Strong middle-class.
Strong local economies.
Reduced recession cycles.

- Doc

Re: Robert Reich: Why American Capitalism is So Rotten

Posted: Wed Jan 17, 2024 1:47 pm
by Doctor CamNC4Me
I saw this:

https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/s/b7OJapwLQp

this morning. I thought it was topical, so yeah.

- Doc

Re: Robert Reich: Why American Capitalism is So Rotten

Posted: Wed Jan 17, 2024 5:59 pm
by ajax18
Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:
Tue Jan 16, 2024 7:25 pm
Ajax,

What part of Robert Reich's economic philosophy that:
  1. addresses the 73% of Boomers retirement savings of $100k or less so they’re not on the street
  2. ensures workers are guaranteed strong wages and retirement plans so they can own a home and make sure their families can get care without devastating debt, and
  3. making sure your kids have a safety net if they’re injured or unfairly fired
do you hate the most?

Strong middle-class.
Strong local economies.
Reduced recession cycles.

- Doc
I'd like to see most of the that. My question to you is why we don't see this on the left coast or inner cities where Democrats have been in power for so long?

Re: Robert Reich: Why American Capitalism is So Rotten

Posted: Wed Jan 17, 2024 6:13 pm
by Res Ipsa
ajax18 wrote:
Wed Jan 17, 2024 5:59 pm
Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:
Tue Jan 16, 2024 7:25 pm
Ajax,

What part of Robert Reich's economic philosophy that:
  1. addresses the 73% of Boomers retirement savings of $100k or less so they’re not on the street
  2. ensures workers are guaranteed strong wages and retirement plans so they can own a home and make sure their families can get care without devastating debt, and
  3. making sure your kids have a safety net if they’re injured or unfairly fired
do you hate the most?

Strong middle-class.
Strong local economies.
Reduced recession cycles.

- Doc
I'd like to see most of the that. My question to you is why we don't see this on the left coast or inner cities where Democrats have been in power for so long?
The answer is obvious. Neither Mayors nor Governors have control over federal tax policy. The income tax cuts since 1980 are the major cause of the redistribution of income from the middle class to the ultra rich.

Re: Robert Reich: Why American Capitalism is So Rotten

Posted: Wed Jan 17, 2024 6:55 pm
by ajax18
Res Ipsa wrote:
Wed Jan 17, 2024 6:13 pm
ajax18 wrote:
Wed Jan 17, 2024 5:59 pm


I'd like to see most of the that. My question to you is why we don't see this on the left coast or inner cities where Democrats have been in power for so long?
The answer is obvious. Neither Mayors nor Governors have control over federal tax policy. The income tax cuts since 1980 are the major cause of the redistribution of income from the middle class to the ultra rich.
Can't you just use state income taxes to implement your plans? Then when it works people would move in to become a part of the better standard of living.

Re: Robert Reich: Why American Capitalism is So Rotten

Posted: Wed Jan 17, 2024 7:05 pm
by Res Ipsa
Part 2: What Really Happened to the American Dream

https://robertreich.substack.com/p/what ... e-american

In this article, Reich lays out why the American Dream has become unattainable for so many Americans. By the American Dream, he means the notion that a worker can earn enough to buy a house and a car or two and raise a family. Here is what changed as seen from 40,000 feet:
FOR THREE DECADES after World War II, America created the largest middle class the world had ever seen. During those years, the earnings of the typical American worker doubled, just as the size of the American economy doubled.

Over the last 40 years, by contrast, the size of the economy has more than doubled again, but the earnings of the typical American have barely budged (adjusted for inflation).

Then, the CEOs of large corporations earned an average of about 20 times the pay of their typical worker. Now, they rake in over 300 times.

In the 1950s and 1960s, the richest 1 percent of Americans took home 9 to 10 percent of total income. Today they take home more than 40 percent.

Then, the economy generated hope. Hard work paid off. The living standards of most people improved through their working lives. Their children enjoyed better lives than they had. Most felt that the rules of the economic game were basically fair.

...

Today, confidence in the economic system has sharply declined. Its apparent arbitrariness and unfairness have undermined the public’s faith in it. Cynicism abounds. Equal opportunity is no longer high on the nation’s agenda.

To the contrary, our economic and political system now seems rigged.

That’s because it is.

THE THREAT TO CAPITALISM is no longer communism or fascism but a steady undermining of the trust modern societies must depend on.

When most people stop believing they and their children have a fair chance to make it, the tacit social contract begins to unravel. And a nation becomes susceptible to demagogues such as Donald Trump.
Reich describes the typical economic arguments between Rs and Ds over the last several decades: (1) free markets v. government regulation and (2) redistribution of income and wealth. But, according to Reich, these typical arguments function as a diversion that keeps people from understanding how the market itself has been altered in the U.S. over past decades. This leads to one of his key points: the rules that govern a free market do not spring from the forehead of Zeus or any other God. The free market depends on a set of rules that allow it to function, and there are many, many different rule sets that could be adopted to set up a free market. The rules we use are a choice -- and wealthy elite have fundamentally altered the rules in a way that effectively shut out the poor and middle class from the gains the economy made as a whole since around 1980.
MARKETS DEPEND for their very existence on rules governing property (what can be owned), monopoly (what degree of market power is permissible), contracts (what can be exchanged and under what terms), bankruptcy (what happens when purchasers can’t pay up), labor unions (how much power should workers have), and how all of this is enforced.

Such rules do not exist in nature. They must be decided upon, one way or another, by human beings.

These rules have been altered over the past four decades as large corporations, Wall Street, and wealthy individuals have gained increasing influence over the political institutions responsible for them.

Simultaneously, centers of countervailing power that between the 1930s and 1980s enabled America’s middle and lower-middle classes to exert their own influence — labor unions, small businesses, family farms, and political parties anchored at the local and state levels — have withered.

The consequence has been a market organized by those with great wealth for the purpose of further increasing their wealth.

This has resulted in ever-larger upward distributions inside the market, from the middle class and poor to a minority at the top. Because these distributions occur inside the market, they have largely escaped notice.
Not only is the market rigged, so is the government. The same wealthy folks that restructured the market to work for them also control the government. Thus, the debate between free market and government is futile because it doesn't address the roots of the problem.

Reich's proposed solution is the organization of a countervailing power composed of citizens that has the ability to restructure the market and take control of the government away from the wealthy that use is to rig the market in their favor.

Why doesn't that happen? Because the people that have an economic interest in coming together to make the necessary changes are set at each other's throats by political division. Ajax's non-stop attacks on everything Democratic benefits his real enemies -- the ones who have cheated him and his children out of their fair share of the wealth generated by the American economy. And it works the other way, too. The poor and working class are so set at each others' throats that the wealthy are able to continue siphoning the share of economic gains that otherwise would go to the poor and working class. Class warfare has been occurring over the last 40 years, but it's one way: warfare by a tiny minority against the vast majority of Americans.
The underlying issue is not the size of government. It’s whom the government is for.

The remedy is for the vast majority to regain influence over how the market is organized. This will require a new countervailing power — allying the economic interests of the majority who have not shared the economy’s gains.

The battle pitting the “free market” against government is needlessly and perversely preventing such an alliance from forming.

The biggest political divide in America in years to come will be between, on the one side, the complex of CEOs of large corporations, top executives and traders at Wall Street banks, private equity and hedge-fund managers, and other moneyed interests who have fixed the economic and political game to their liking. And on the other side, the vast majority who have been left behind.

Some of the people who have been left behind are susceptible to the lies and bigotry of neofascists like Trump.

But the answer is not to give up on democracy.

To the contrary, the only way to reverse course is for the vast majority who now lack influence over the rules of the game to become organized and unified, in order to reestablish the countervailing power that was the key to widespread prosperity five decades ago.
Reich lists examples from the past that illustrate what he is advocating:
In the 1830s, the Jacksonians targeted the special privileges of elites so the market system would better serve ordinary citizens.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, progressives enacted antitrust laws to break up the giant trusts, created independent commissions to regulate monopolies, and banned corporate political contributions.

In the 1930s, New Dealers limited the political power of large corporations and Wall Street while enlarging the countervailing power of labor unions, small businesses, and small investors.

The challenge is not just economic but political. Economics and politics cannot be separated.
And he gives this advice to the Democratic party:
It’s time for the Democratic Party and its leaders to give full-bodied voice to the forces — labor unions, small businesses, worker cooperatives, worker-owned businesses, family farmers, nonprofits, bottom-up politics, and all of us who are still committed to the common good — that together can countervail the overwhelming power of the big monied interests.
To be continued...

Re: Robert Reich: Why American Capitalism is So Rotten

Posted: Wed Jan 17, 2024 7:08 pm
by Res Ipsa
ajax18 wrote:
Wed Jan 17, 2024 6:55 pm
Res Ipsa wrote:
Wed Jan 17, 2024 6:13 pm


The answer is obvious. Neither Mayors nor Governors have control over federal tax policy. The income tax cuts since 1980 are the major cause of the redistribution of income from the middle class to the ultra rich.
Can't you just use state income taxes to implement your plans? Then when it works people would move in to become a part of the better standard of living.
No. Please read the articles.

Re: Robert Reich: Why American Capitalism is So Rotten

Posted: Wed Jan 17, 2024 7:35 pm
by ajax18
Res Ipsa wrote:
Wed Jan 17, 2024 7:08 pm
ajax18 wrote:
Wed Jan 17, 2024 6:55 pm


Can't you just use state income taxes to implement your plans? Then when it works people would move in to become a part of the better standard of living.
No. Please read the articles.
What would be different about what Reich is describing than what European socialist countries have done over the past 50 years? They still have the same high federal taxes that you want. Why not just move there?

Re: Robert Reich: Why American Capitalism is So Rotten

Posted: Wed Jan 17, 2024 7:45 pm
by Res Ipsa
ajax18 wrote:
Wed Jan 17, 2024 7:35 pm
Res Ipsa wrote:
Wed Jan 17, 2024 7:08 pm


No. Please read the articles.
What would be different about what Reich is describing than what European socialist countries have done over the past 50 years? They still have the same high federal taxes that you want. Why not just move there?
READ. THE. ARTICLES.