[GundamFan0083]

Originally Posted by DonQuigleone

Hope you look forward to every American export being tariffed out of existence.

Ah, got to love those sweet sweet trade wars.

Not going to happen.

Originally Posted by Xellos-_^

we anti-trust and anti-monopoly laws, the problem getting people to carry them out without interference form congress.

how much more are you willing to pay for everyday stuff?

We agree on that the current congress will not get the job done.
What people need to do is educate themselves so we can get a congress that will get the job done.

As for Tariffs.
I suggest reading this piece by Craig Harrington on the subject.
Why the U.S. Must reinstate Tariffs
http://economyincrisis.org/content/w...nstate-tariffs

Originally Posted by Sugetsu

Listen, I know that ANY politician no matter what he promises or what is in his heart can't do much in the current state of affairs. For one, it is all about connections, money and influence. Right now corporations are the rulers of this country and they hold all the good cards. The media, plays a pivotal role in this game of power and control. Obama has excellent ideals but he lacks the stubbornness and influence in the power circles to make any significant change. At least not in the current geopolitical climate, which is supported by the following pillars:

- Citizens united.
- Rupert Murdoch.
- 8 Years of deregulation.
- Corporations are considered people.
- Privatized media.
- The military complex and its contractors.

I agree Sugetsu but Obama's problem is that he's been lying to us.
I've no doubt he wants to do much of what he's promised, but he lacks the resolve to do it.
Even when he had a filerbuster-proof Democratic controlled congress.
If he can't do it with that, then he can't do it at all.

Any and all the politicians elected to office from here on MUST abide by those pillars in one way or another, if he or she do not comply with they can't be a part of the American political system and this is the harsh reality. This means that all politicians will always be the same and he can only take his agenda so far, because the system will keep him in check. You have President Reagan, who was just a puppet like any other, to thank for the current state of affairs.

Actually I'd say it goes way...way farther back then that.
More like Woodrow Wilson.
It was during the 1910s that Rockerfeller Senior and J.P. Morgan poured so much money into the Republican and Democratic parties that they essentially bought them.

The idea of universal health care for all has never been an unpopular idea, but it was terribly deformed by big farma and insurers, which of course have to power and influence to keep or kick out politicians.

We agree here completely.
What we needed was a tax-funded health care program for the poor and we got the national equivalent to mandatory auto-insurance, only unlike owning a car, it's not optional to be a citizen.

The extension of the Bush tax cuts was done when GOP threaten to not extent unemployment benefits to million of Americans knowing full well that this would only hurt the Obama administration no matter the outcome. That was just the beginning, of course, there is much political hostage taking in the forecast.

I don't buy into that talking point.
He had a Democrat controlled congress that had nothing to loose (they had already lost the election of 2010).
They could have easily ended the extension of the Bush Tax cuts and Obama wouldn't be in any worse shape than he's in now.

There is no monetary system in this planet that is pure; all systems have a mix of capitalism and socialism. Neither socialism nor capitalism are worse than the other. They are both very important for the monetary system as a whole. The problem is big business have much to gain from strong capitalist policies and much to lose from socialist ones. This is why the media has been disciplined in its smear campaign against socialism, even though it is ignorant of them to think that the US would survive without it.

The reason there is a mix is that pre-Marxian socialism actually embraced non-corporate capitalism (according to H.G. Wells book The New World Order, Chapter 4).
I guess I need to start writing Marxism when I say Socialism because that's what I'm usually talking about.
Lenin (to his credit) proved that Marxism doesn't work, which is why he had to implement the NEP after 7,000,000 people starved to death in Russia under "War Communism."
Stalin then did away with Marxism completely and implemented what Khruschev called "State-Capitalism" in his "Secret Speech" of 1956.
I forget that there are numerous other forms of both socialism and capitalism that have been proposed since the 1700s.
From Owenism and Fabianism, to Austrian Economics and Masonomics.
The form of socialism that has failed is Marxism/Scientific-Socialism and the form of capitalism that has failed is Monopolisitic-Capitalism/Kenesyian (you might find that article interesting Sugetsu).

As it stands right now, the REAL rulers of the country want one thing and one thing only: the complete privatization of the United States of America. Would this be a good or a bad thing? People like Edward Bernays thought that such a system would usher a new golden age, I on the other hand, think it would accelerate the destruction of our planetary resources leading to mankind's extinction, but I digress.

I agree with you, and I'll add that it will not usher in a new golden age but rather a new Dark Age which will return us to the manorial system and of course Feudalism.

The modern Tea party of 2009 is nothing but the product corporations, specifically Newscorp, created specifically to smear, demagogue, misinform, and marginalize the Obama administration, nothing more, nothing less. I am sorry to be so crude about it but this is just a fact,. It has little to no resemblance to the original tea party.

Again we agree about the Tea Party, and unfortunately there are signs that the Occupy Wall Street movement is already getting taken over.
It's very agrivating to see what start out as grassroots movements turn into agitators and provocateurs to further the agenda of the ruling elite.

Originally Posted by Kamui4356

Yes, and? If he hadn't the economy would be completely fucked right now as opposed to somewhat fucked. I don't think critics of the bailout and stimulus really appreciate how bad things were. We were on the brink of a collapse worse than the great depression. We are not beyond that risk yet either. Also devaluating the dollar is not necessarily a bad thing. It makes US exports more attractive internationally, allows US products to be more competitive with imports domestically, and makes the debt easier to repay. Runaway inflation is bad and can lead to hyperinflation, but the levels of inflation we've seen are nowhere near either. While I agree there should have been more control over who got the money and how it was spent, it was necessary.

I disagree Kamui.
Had Obama paid off the morgages of every outstanding low income homeowner (the bulk of the credit crunch was in so called "Ninja loans") then I would agree with you because it would have helped US taxpayers.
Giving money back to the Taxpayers in an actual redistribution of wealth would have been far better than redistributing it to the bankers.
A large chunk of the stimulus money went to overseas banks.
I realize the talking points are that it "had to be done or else doomsday was upon us," but the truth is much different.
What both Bush and Obama did was bailout the banking institutions and wall street and left the Taxpayer with the bill.
BOTH the Republicans and Democrats are at fault over this.

Originally Posted by Solace

But we're not going socialist. We're going plutocracy. The government provides a social safety net for the worst off of us, and this has only been in existence for roughly 75-80 years. This has been attacked constantly ever since by private interests who see government intruding on something they could profit...or should I say exploit.

We've moved on from the socialist phase after Nixon.
We've retained the portions that are required for corporatism, but have dropped nearly all the old restrictions on finance and banking (like Glass-Steagall).
He started the "War on Drugs" which allowed for the militarization of police, gun control laws, SWAT teams, RICO laws, and all manner of moves that have undermined the Bill of Rights since the Neo-Cons started it back in 1969.

If Benito Mussolini is correct (and I think he is), we're moving into the Fascist phase of the "capitalism-socialism-corporatism-fascism-feudalism" sequence that he envisioned in his Doctrine.

People have this strange idea that corporatism and plutocracy are newer threats to the country. Hardly. The elite of this country have always done whatever they could to exploit those less fortunate than them. They had slaves. They hired immigrants, often illegal. They exploited children. They paid off politicians. They created legislation and made those politicians pass it. They engineered crises to profit from. They did whatever they could to control markets, including collaborating with other companies to control prices, goods, and services until they had the opportunity to stab their partners in the back.

Yep, I agree.
It was Alexander Hamilton that first proposed "Public-Private" partnerships with businesses and the US government.
He even created the 1st Bank of the US (which Jefferson abolished).
So you are correct Solace.
This take-over has been going on in the US since the begining.

It was workers organizing that gave the nation labor laws, standard work hours, benefits, and safer work conditions. It was citizens organizing that gave us the civil rights movement, the women's rights movement, and the LGBT movement, as examples. It was citizens that fought for better environmental protections, better food and drug standards, and better living conditions. Through government this was possible, not companies. It was brutal, violent, and full of tragedy, but that's the history of progress in this country.

Again I agree that it is always the citizenry that makes progress in the United States.
We'd all be on plantations right now if it were left up to the elitists in this country.

Today companies seek to control and regulate everything you do, everything you own, and even your very life. They, like citizens, use government as their tool when they cannot simply circumvent the law entirely without major repercussions. It works out well for them, because they're much more organized and funded than your average citizens protest movement. Businesses don't hate government....just when it works against their profit margins.

Of course they do.
It was Niccolo Machiavelli who once said "The rich seek to enslave the poor, and the poor seek not to be enslaved."
Marx said the same thing and he was right.
The problem for Marx is his solution has proven to be worse than the problem (in all fairness to Karl he had no idea that would happen).

Pretending that a "free market, absent of government" will somehow be better is delusion. Use your head for a moment....Capitalism is self interest. Cooperation is only tolerated for as long as someone has what you need, and then they no longer matter. Free Enterprise is based on the notion of supply and demand, but supply and demand in an era of abundance makes little sense. What drives up the price of energy? Not how much of it exists, because we're only limited by what we choose to use. What drives up the price of food? Not how much of it exists, because we make enough to feed the world as much as it could ever desire. What drives up property? Not a lack of housing, or land, as we have the ability to house everyone with room to spare. What about medicine? Surely the lack of doctors means less people getting help, so prices should go up? Technology can pick up the slack here, and in many ways already does.

As H.G. Wells pointed out in Chapter 4 of The New World Order "There never has been anything on earth that could be properly called a Capitalist System."
What you have described is more akin to Objectivism which is just as bad as Marxism, Fascism, or Corporatism since it's obvious that a "Cult of Personality" like Stalin, Hitler, or Mao will rise to the top of such a society and become a dictator.

When you consider that the entire system of Capitalism relies on money, and consumers having jobs making money so they can spend it, you can easily see where this system has an end point, regardless of things like fiat, the Fed, and other financial devices. That end point is that if you have too many people who do not have a job, the system cannot sustain the constant demand for growth required to keep it going. The "worker" is a paid slave, because you are required to have a job just to live, and your opportunity for getting to a point where you can live without a job is slim at best. Your freedom is automatically stifled by being forced to spend a large amount of your life in service of someone else, often doing something you aren't really interested in doing and most likely hate.

Solace, under actual capitalism there are NO corporations and thus businesses are born, live, and allowed to die.
Yes, it makes for a more dynamic economic system, and there will still be those that lose in such a system, but it's no different in any -ism.
Under Socialism you have more and more people living off of the state dole, with fewer and fewer people making enough money to support the revenue required for the entitlements.
Thus taxes become oppressive and the whole society collapses or is forced to change to something else, like the USSR did or China is doing now.
Therefore, what's the difference between being a slave to the state under socialism or a slave to a corporation?

Real capitalism, especially Laissez-Faire (which has NEVER been implemented anywhere on Earth), is more akin to Owenism than what we live under now.
Such a system is a good basis to start a new -ism from, but no longer a viable system to implement due to the current state of affairs.

Simply put, much of the old "isms" and ways of thinking that got us to where we are now are outdated and no longer work. It's not just a matter of "if we do this, this, and this, everything will work again". It never really worked, unless you were fortunate. It needs to go.

Agreed.
We're still living under systems that were based on philosophies of the 17th, 18th, and 19th Centuries (for the most part).
We need a 21st Century system that will take the best of socialist theory and the best of actual capitalist theory and combine them into something new.