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Re: WE are in fact...
Welcome, The Beat, cynicism and all! Let me work on one sentence in your comment:
"To make the owners of these companies richer and the employment problem bigger. All the while people get poorer and are unable to put money back into the economy."
Several thoughts come to mind immediately:
- Corporations are owned by shareholders, including millions of ordinary people.
- The whole idea of being in business is to increase wealth. If you can only hold your own at best or lose money, you won't stay in business long.
- Increased wealth of owners is not automatically a cause of job loss. Disaster notwithstanding, job loss usually occurs due to the business losing money and/or competitiveness, and/or trades and/or workplaces being rendered obsolete by technological progress. How many assembly line jobs have been lost to automation?
- Business that turn a profit put that money back into economy, one way or another. They invest the profits in expansion, they increase dividends to the shareholders, they increase wages and/or benefits. (The last, by the way, quite often - or at least should - depend on initiative of the worker to earn it.)
- All of us, except the utterly destitute, are very defintelty putting m oney back into the economy from our end as well.
- People who get poorer usually suffer one or more of the following: Increase on living expenses; no increase, or a decrease, in earnings; bad luck, such as crime, fire or sickness (the disaster factor again); or poor decisions and/or planning. On the whole, not much of that can be blamed on corporate profits.
posted by
WriterofLight
on August 24, 2008 at 5:31 PM
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Re: Rules and Regulations
You're missing two parts of the problem. One is that Congress went a long ways out of its way to open the door for questionable loans. The other is the circumstances of the borrower. Some had turns of bad luck - sickness, accident or some other unavoidable calamity. Others were simply irresponsible. The attempt by the Democrats to pin the blamde solely on lenders is typically incomplete and ineffective, and typical of their class warfare mentality.
By the way - "regulation of commerce" is indeed in the Constitution, but it is a duty of Congress, not the President (Article I, Section VIII).
posted by
WriterofLight
on August 24, 2008 at 5:19 PM
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Rules and Regulations
According to the Fed (hardly a bastion of socialist ideology or liberalism), deregulation of the financial industry under the Reagan administration caused the mortgage crisis. It allowed many companies to expand into new areas of business without the same oversight that earlier, more segmented financial institutions were subject too, and many of them took bad risks, often on the belief that with a major failure, the government could always bail them out. It is the Wall Street investors that are now demanding more oversight, because they don't want to lose money on their investments, not just liberals. And these powers are included in the Constitution, under regulation of trade. Limits to those powers are subject to interpretation, but the principle is sound.
posted by
mousehop
on August 23, 2008 at 10:17 AM
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I'm better off . . .
but that's thanks to hard work, advanced education, more hard work and being thrifty.
Nobama essentially wishes to socialize this country and redistribute the wealth even to those who don't work. Yeah, that makes a whole lot of sense. Fact is, you tax the crap out of the wealthy, they're going to lose incentive to work, or they'll just move their companies off shore. . . and then you've just lost more job potential. That trickle down theory is really very true. Low taxes to the wealthy create more jobs, more profits and more taxable income.
And by the way. I believe it's fair to say that it's thanks to Clinton admin policies that lead to the bubbles which lead to the subprime debacle we're in today.
But I know I'm preaching to the choir . . . .
posted by
JanesOpinion
on August 22, 2008 at 6:47 PM
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WE are in fact...
Yes I can say that I am in fact better off today then I was five years ago. The beauty of America is while you and I hold our nice fluffy teddy bears at night and can depend on getting paid by weekly. There are many out there loosing their jobs. Loosing their jobs in part by what and how you and I spend our checks. America is great because with my comfy bed and a full belly it is easy to not be aware of how much trouble this country is actually in. Bliss is grand id'n it.
Fortunately, for Mr. Borak Osama bin Laden Hussein Obama (do you like my all inclusive reference to tyranny! I DO!) marketing departments do a very VERY good job of getting you and I to buy things we do not need. To put this country into a bigger whole. To make the owners of these companies richer and the employment problem bigger. All the while people get poorer and are unable to put money back into the economy. As for flying depend on those services only being used by the rich company owners putting us into a pickle. Because one day...your and my salary put together will not get us anything. Which in turn will cripple those billionaire company owners but that is neither her nor there.
As you can see we have a problem. I think it is the job of the next president to get these companies and make them more mindful of the wonderful marketing tools they use against us. Maybe you should be writing about how possibly it should be against the constitution to manipulate people.
posted by
the_beat
on August 21, 2008 at 9:31 PM
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