Political Discussions
Is someone to blame for the current state of the economy?
Posted by AlexGreat • 12/21/08 • Subscribe to this Discussion [RSS] • Report This Topic
Topics: blame, business, Economy, future, Government, policy, Regulation
Greedy businessmen? Wrong policies? Not enough Government regulation? Or should we just bury the hatchet and look forward towards a better, brighter future?
User Comments
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“We can put light where there’s darkness, and hope where there’s despondency in this country. And part of it is working together as a nation to encourage folks to own their own home.” — President Bush, Oct. 15, 2002
www.nytimes.com/2008/12/21/business/21admin.html?_r=1&hp
Couple that with the deregulation of the late 90s and voila! Economic meltdown!
If we don't learn the cause of the current economic disaster, we're destined to repeat the same mistakes.-
Didn't the drive towards deregulation start with Reagan?
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Didn't the drive towards deregulation start with Reagan?
Reaganite libertarian/conservative BS is the entirety of the crisis. Once the idea of "self-regulating markets" got out there, the collapse became inevitable.
It was a whole new development in the science of stupid -
Show me on the doll where the Invisible Hand of the Market touched you. -
Good article, but wrong quote from Bush. I like the 'How did we get here?' . That's typical. Imagine your bus or taxi driver asking you that. Get a map! Ask for directions! How did we get here? You were in charge, remember!
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Didn't the drive towards deregulation start with Reagan?
It did. Reagan once said, "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'"
Republicans believe the government isn't capable of doing any good. When they're elected to office, they screw everything up and appoint incompetent people who in turn give them proof that the government isn't capable of doing any good and that everything should be privatized.
Regan would have been as bad as Bush had he had a Republican congress. -
"Didn't the drive towards deregulation start with Reagan?"
Yes, but that's not where this crisis started. This crisis started with the dumbing down of loan requirements by government entities from Reagan's predecessor, Jimmy Carter, in the name of helping the poor. As for "libertarian BS," may I just remind you that 1) liberals like Barney Frank were among the most enthusiastic supporters of this and 2) the over-emphasis on the real estate industry largely comes from productive sectors like petrochemicals, nuclear energy, railroads, and others being utterly stagnated by land use regulation. When 95% of our developed land can only be used for housing and retail, OF COURSE your going to have too much investment. This also affects the political marketplace to by changing the balance of power, hence how liberals fed in to this just as readilly as conservatives, and in fact the only group of legislators who tried to stop this nonsense were a group of moderate ocnservatives led by John McCain back in 2003.
I remember when I was taking a train from Atlanta to Seattle, it took us several hours to get in to and out of Chicago because we had to stop for so many different trains and there wer so few tracks. They tried to expand the grid a while back but a whole bunch of suburban home owners stopped em. I know that in Seattle the railroad line from the eastside is being forced out of commission to be replaced by a bike trail because no one wants to hear trains anymore. Pull that kind of BS and strange things happen. That's the real problem, spoiled Americans don't want to see factories in their backyard.
And no, outsourcing is not killing American industry, Americans are killing American industry by refusing to live next to it. There are plenty of advantages, like strong jurisprudene to protect large transactions (especially important for the aerospace industry, where what you are selling often costs hundreds of mil), cheap electric power, low taxes, a strong navy and millitary stabillity, and pre-established suppliers, services and infrastructure give especially medium-size and specialty manufacturers a tremendous edge. Sort of like a downtown vs. a shopping mall. Shopping malls (our third-world friends) always attract the big names, the JCPenny's and the Applebees, while the smaller stores & restaurants almost always head to the downtown (us), where a large pedestrian population guarantees that they will not need a big name.
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I blame Michael J. Fox.
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It must have been a Canadian
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I love him and we are all his fans.
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Damned Canadians and their frickin' cold fronts. Keep the damn cold fronts up there! We don't need them here in Colorado!
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Great question, i think it is just a thing that we have no control over, sort of like the weather, hard to predict. -
Greedy corporations want us all to be cheap expendable non-union labor! Working long hours for low pay and no benefits.
That is the future economy for you. -
Corporations will always be like that. One solution could be to require the outsourcing companies to provide proof that the countries they are dealing with have appropriate and enforced labor legislation. It's the same as the companies are required now to adhere to certain accounting, food and product safety.
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A lot comapnies in other countries just shut down, change their name in order to avoid accountablity. Corporations just want cheap labor pools. It has always been that way.
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I mean American companies. Those who outsource, those who import. Keep them accountable. It's not that hard. You have safety controls for food and medicine. How hard would it be to introduce controls for proper labor laws in countries of origin for sneakers, jeans and PCs.
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It is not enough to just bury the hatchet. There was wrongdoing on a few ends and those who committed this wrong need to pay the price. This includes Americans business, government officials and the American people as a whole for living beyond our means. We cannot prosecute the entire country, but we can deal with the very few who had the power to effect change. -
A lot of the problems started in the Reagan administration with the big tax cuts for top income earners and the increases in the national debt. The repeal of the Glass-Stegall Act (1933) in 1999 broke down barriers between commercial and investment banks. Senator Byron Dorgan predicted this would produce a financial meltdown in about 10 years. The SEC also changed the reserve rules for banks in 2004
The Securities and Exchange Commission also caused the current crisis. A former SEC official, Lee Pickard, who says a rule change in 2004 led to the failure of Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, and Merrill Lynch.
The SEC allowed five firms — the three that have collapsed plus Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley-- to more than double the leverage they were allowed to keep on their balance sheets. The companies were also allowed to remove discounts that had been applied to the assets they had been required to keep to protect them from defaults.
I wrote an article today on class warfare on my blog that discusses this question in the rubric of class warfare.
if you want a simpler answer try this: "The Bush Ownership Society,"
rightardia.blogspot.com/2009/06/american-class-warfare-originated-on.html-
Overall a nice blog there... but regarding the Republican Party, was Lincoln full of poop when he said:
"Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration." (Annual Message to Congress, 1861) -
@Agit8r - lol on the use of the word "poop."
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The economy started seriously tanking once the Democratic congress gained control. Just saying.-
The US economy was in a recession one year before Obama was elected. The financial meltdown and subsequent bailout started during the Bush Administration. Obama has been prez for five months. As the Zen master said, "We'll see." The jury is out on Obama. But I'm an optimist.
BTW I like the Agit8r quote on Lincoln.
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At this point it looks like we are in the stage where historians will say that Obama was "experimenting" with the economy
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Then we are the guinea pigs? Ewww.
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get back on your hamster wheel... production is slacking
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Would we really be better off if 'Gramps" McCain had been elected? Does anybody really beleive that?
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We would be better off if McCain had won and I will tell you why. Because he is not a far left ideologue. He isn't a far right ideologue for that matter, either. He was not my first choice, but given the alternatives of Obama and Hillary - I voted for him. In fact, I think we would have been better off if Hillary had been elected, or McCain, or even Joe the Plumber. Well, maybe not Joe - but then again, he wouldn't have gone on a multi-trillion dollar spending spree.
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It's not comparing apples to oranges. I'ts comparing Rome Apples to Yellow Delicious (that didn't come off sounding racist did it... oh well, my bad). The two were more alike than different. Both were for Bailouts
Both were Gun-grabbers Both were PATRIOT Actors Both were for Cap and Trade Both were for War Both were for Work Camp -
Well, if elected President I will end the deficit by taxing all foreigners living abroad.
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Gramps voted 80-90 per cent with W. Ninety per cent of presidential historians describe the Bush presidency as a failure. Gramps has a lifetime American Conservative Union rating of 80 per cent which is not centrist.
Hillary lost because she assumed she would win. She never apologized for her Iraq War vote which alienated many Democrats. She didn't take the Democratic caucuses seriously and she got ambushed by MoveOn.org. Obama ran a brilliant primary and general election campaign. Gramps never really had much of a chance.
The Democrat victories cleared out the right wing ideologues with their Trojan horse supply side economics. America can no afford to starts wars of choice like we did in Iraq that has cost the taxpayer more than $800 billion.-
While I will agree that the wars fragged our economy (if that's what you're saying--given the thread topic) but why haven't they been ended?
The simple answer is that returning soldiers would increase the unemployment numbers... wouldn't want that -
Well, ALL of congress votes with the President 90% of the time. Because most of the votes are procedural. The spin that the Democrats put on that little factoid was that McCain was lock-step with Bush. Don't fall for propaganda, especially during a campaign.
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Obama has a timetable for Iraq. We should be out in another year or two. The Russians appear to be helping us in Afghanistan. One of their giant An-124 Condors was forced to land in Mumbai and it was carrying arms and equipment for US forces in Afghanistan.
We will have to work with the Taliban and start community affairs in Afghanistan to win the war there. Prior to the al Qaeda attack, we were paying the Taliban $50 million a year to keep the opium production under control. The folks Bush put back in power, 'the so-called Northern Alliance' were the people who grew the opium poppies.
I also like Anticsrocks idea of taxing Americans who live abroad.-
Well, I would tax foreigners living abroad...not Americans.
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How would you tax foreigners living abroad?
BTW McCain voted with Bush 90 per cent of time in 2007-2008. No one bought the maverick stuff except Republicans who were so far right they though McCain was a moderate. -
that statistic is deceiving. It is like saying "Obama is the most liberal voting Senator." It is a tactic aimed at alienating the center. In reality both are centrists who differ on a few points. Consider the some of key points in Obama's agenda--Cap and Trade, Expanding Americorps, Immigration Reform--and compare them to legislation that McCain sponsored (Lieberman-McCain, Bayh-McCain, and Kennedy-McCain, respectively) o_0
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"How would you tax foreigners living abroad?"
Watch old reruns of Monty Python, eelder1. It was a joke. You know humor. *sigh* Never mind.
@Agit8r, about Obama's far left voting record, I believe he is considered that for his stance on certain issues like abortion, especially late term abortions.
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I haven't watched Monty Python for years. It is still funny.
McCain represented the failed policies of Bush and he supported the Bush tax cuts and the Iraq War which created a monster deficit. He also wanted to keep the war going in the Middle East which was failing and unjustified.
McCain finished in the bottom 1 per cent of his Annapolis class and was involved in four of five aircraft mishaps. His father was 4 star who commanded the Pacific Forces. He was another favored son like Bush. I don't think he had the gray matter or youth to be a president.
One moderate is Arlen Spector. Both his ACU and ADA ratings are about 50 per cent. Obama has a liberal voting record. His ADA rating is 90 per cent. Lieberman also has a very high ADA rating.
Votes in the House are procedural, but not in the Senate. McCain is a senator, not a congressman.-
McCain was a victim of far left propaganda. Was he the right candidate at the right time? No. No more so than Kerry was when he ran and lost. But that is the way of politics in this country.
BTW, the Senate also has procedural votes -
"This legislation has been around for a long time," Reid said by way of explaining his push to have a vote on the bill this evening after the procedural vote passes this morning."
dcist.com/2009/02/live_blogging_the_senate_procedural.php
www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/feb/09/obama-administration-barackobama
www.forbes.com/feeds/afx/2008/02/06/afx4624609.html -
Nicely done. -
*bows*
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Aticrocks: BS. Obama had three times the soldiers on the street that McCain had. I know because I was one of them. Obama had learned a lot in his 'community organizing' days. The campaign offices were equipped with cell phones and laptops. We had a manpower and technical advantage. We won by 8 million votes and a 2:1 electoral advantage. The GOP was outclassed.
Stop thinking every time you lose it was because of the mainstream media or a conspiracy. Thee are more Democrats than Republicans. That's a fact, Jack! Many democrats looked at McCain as a sacrificial lamb. Palin drove the final coffin nail into the campaign.-
Palin was purely a gimmick to garner votes.
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Hold on there cowboy. I never said anything about HOW McCain ran his campaign. I said he was a victim of the far left propaganda machine. Specifically when stating that he was just going to be "Bush's third term."
I never said the reason he lost was because of the media. It was his fault. Had he run his campaign like he did the last three weeks heading up to the election, I think he very well could have won.
You said he was an extension of Bush. I was refuting that claim by saying that the mainstream media picked that little nugget up from Obama's campaign and ran with it.
Regardless of what you think about Palin, she added a lot to McCain's campaign. I think he should have called her up much earlier, she had to basically hit the ground running because McCain waited too late to bring her on.
But go ahead and bask in your four years of Obama, because with the choices he is making, I think that he'll be a one-termer; and thank God for that. Raising taxes on every American with his Tax and Kill Bill will be the final nail in his coffin, if it passes Senate that is. Probably will, but just saying.
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The GOP hoped to grab some of the Hillary voters with Sarah Palin. She wasn't ready for prime time. Some of the folks on MSNBC described the pick of Palin as a 'hail Mary' play.
McCain knew he had to do something dramatic to pull out a victory. Unfortunately McCain's 60 yard desperation pass went wildly out of bounds. Many Democrats looked at Sarah Palin as Bush is a skirt. The nation could not afford to elect another lightweight. -
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Check out the Vanity Fair article on Palin: rightardia.blogspot.com/2009/06/does-sarah-palin-have-personality.html
A lot of people told Vanity Fair that Palin has a personality disorder. The Mccain campaign folks had few kind words for her.
McCain was a victim of far left propaganda? prove that statement.
But go ahead and bask in your four years of Obama, because with the choices he is making, I think that he'll be a one-termer; and thank God for that.
Don't count on it.
Raising taxes on every American with his Tax and Kill Bill will be the final nail in his coffin.
The tax issue has been addressed. Taxes have been cut for the Middle Class. The top two tax brackets will have to have their taxes raised to begin to balance the budget.
Hey, we won! We don't plan to coddle the affluent like the Republicans do. When you have a distribution of income in the US that heavily favors the rich, progressive tax tables are essential.-
A lot of people told Vanity Fair that Palin has a personality disorder.
I don't know about that, but the people who voted for the McCain/Palin ticket definitely have a few screws loose. -
"McCain was a victim of far left propaganda? prove that statement."
You've got to be kidding me. Only someone with their head buried in the sand would think that she got a fair shake by the media, either that or.... *points up*.
The GOP buys her nice clothes for the campaign and the media tears her up. Michelle Obama wears a pair of $540.00 sneakers to volunteer in a soup kitchen....not a peep by the mainstream media. -
I don't know about that, but the people who voted for the McCain/Palin ticket definitely have a few screws loose. ..... *points up*
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Wow, you're discussions really going nowhere. Palin? You leftists have so little good to say for yourselves that all you can talk about is red meat in a skirt?
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sati!!!! You did it! You mastered not only the copy and paste command, but the art of mimicry!!
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Calm down, antics. It was a joke.
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Oh, I guess I am not used to you trying to be funny...on purpose that is.
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Obama said it took him four months to be vetted for a presidential run. When he heard that Palin was picked as VP,he said she will not have enough time to prepare. Antics you have offered no evidence that Palin was a victim of left wing media or propaganda. CBS,ABC and CNN are mainstream media not left wing.
The Katie Couric interview gave Palin softball questions. Palin was unable to ID newspapers or magazines that she read. the term "Wasilla Hillbillies' came from the McCain campaign staff, not the Democrats.
McCain and Palin were measured, weighed and found wanting by the public. In what universe could the likes of those two have defeated Obama and Biden. The Democratic candidates also swept all of the debates.
Read meat can be tasty! Yum.-
also a major Bush voting block--working and lower middle-class elder Boomers--had become more politically complacent with regard to defiance of the State as they began collecting Socialist Security checks for the remainder of their years. *shrugs*
If the Rep. Party wants to be relevant, they need to start appealing to the self sufficient Gen X. and more defiant Gen Y., who are not nearly as socially conservative. They need a candidate more like MT Gov. Brian Schwietzer. IMHO.
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Most working people in the world have tax numbers, US citizens have socialist security numbers Marx was right capitalism is doomed socialism is in vogue Viva la Revolucion -) (infortunately I don't see any lines of would be immigrants in front of the Cuban and North Korean embassies )
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you missed my point. There are many genX and genY voters who would vote for personal resposibility if it didn't come with big-brotherish consequenses (like the PATRIOT Act, repressive social doctrine, nationalization of airport security...)
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The only Demographic McCain won was the 60+ crowd. The younger folks went with Obama. A lot of the Obama campaign workers were in their 20s.
Call it socialism, peopleism or the welfare state. What is the GOP alternative; get you home foreclosed, lose your job, and lose your health insurance?
Social Security is more generous in Canada than in the US. In the UK, public health care costs $600 per year and the UK is rated 18th in the world and the US is rated 37th. US health care costs twice as much as the other industrial nations of the world.
Capitalism work great, doesn't it? The Wall Street financiers destroyed 40 per cent of the world's wealth according the the economists who met in Davos, Switzerland. See my blog at rightardia.blogspot.com for more information on how the GOP has been wrecking America.-
Dunno about the GOP alternative, but the conservative alternative is personal responsibility.
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Dunno about the GOP alternative, but the conservative alternative is personal responsibility.
That's the conservative ideology, which is devoid from reality. -
"That's the conservative ideology, which is devoid from reality."
Please explain further. -
Personal responsibility sounds good, but it doesn't work as a policy.
Take the housing bubble and bust. Say you're responsible and buy a house that you can afford and you make your payments on time every month, but because of deregulation, a lot of other people in your neighborhood buy houses they can't afford. Their houses are foreclosed on so they trash them and they're left vacant. The crime rate goes up in your neighborhood and property values go down.
So here you are with your house that you keep up nicely and make all the payments on time, but now it's worth less than what you owe. You're screwed because other people aren't responsible. Regulation is needed to force people to be responsible. -
In what form do you think the regulation should take, and how invasive do you think it should be? If enacted, how long before you will see improvement within the housing sector?
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For one thing, they need to restore the Glass-Steagall Act, which was repealed as part of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Services Modernization Act in 1999. Repealing the Glass-Steagall Act was largely responsible for the housing bubble and ultimately, its collapse, which destroyed our economy.
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To take your example, sati. If everyone in that neighborhood practiced personal responsibility, then the houses would not become vacant. That is why it is a philosophy that works. The government is not the answer. It cannot swoop in and fix every problem that comes along. At some point, you have stand up and say that you are in control of your own destiny. If you screw up, get knocked down, then you get back up and try again, hopefully a bit wiser.
Why do you always want the government to make things right? Why do you turn to the government, rather than yourself? -
If everyone in that neighborhood practiced personal responsibility, then the houses would not become vacant.
Yes, but they don't and they are. -
Once again sati, you didn't answer my question.
Why do you always want the government to make things right? Why do you turn to the government, rather than yourself? -
You asked a hypothetical question. If the world was perfect, sure, we wouldn't need the government to regulate, but people are often driven by greed -- thus the need for regulation. People who are responsible need the government to protect them from people who aren't.
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"If men were angels, no government would be necessary"
James Madison, The Federalist #51 -
No, actually I was asking YOU why YOU always cry for the government to come save you. I would rather fall on my own than be held up by the government.
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Antics: The conservative alternative is a platitude? I am not surprised. Most of the GOP agenda has been symbolic and social: anti-flag burning, anti-abortion, anti-gay, pro-gun, pro-religion and so forth. For years the GOP got away with this while running on their one trick pony: low taxes.
Obama took the tax issue away by promising middle class tax cuts. The Washington Post published a comparison of the Obama and McCain tax proposals:www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/06/09/ST2008060900950.html
It was clear the McCain tax plan favored top income earners and did little for the middle class.
You really need to have wake-up about the GOP. It is an elite made up of white businessmen who want to maintain the status quo. The GOP is primarily oriented to keeping taxes low for corporations and the affluent, even if means creating a huge national debt. George W. Bush was the only US president who started a war and also cut taxes.-
Hence the reason I didn't answer for the GOP.
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Yes, the someone who created our welfare state.-
That's a rather ambiguous term. Perhaps you could explain how you define "Welfare State"
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That's just a talking point which is not based on reality.
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And that is another divisive comment sati. When you say things like that, it stifles honest debate.
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There is really no long term 'welfare state' in the US anymore. I have been paying into Medicare and Social Security all of my life and I look at as a 'for pay' benefit. Unemployment is an insurance program, not welfare.
The Aid to dependent children Program was replaced by Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF)in 1996. Lifetime benefits are 5 years. The only program that provides long term welfare benefits are food stamps and if you make much more than $600 per month, you may not be eligible for them. A part time job can disqualify you for food stamps.
The 'so-called' welfare state is part of a GOP disinformation program to create animosity between the middle class and the poor. The GOP would prefer for the middle class to pay attention the welfare cheats rather than the affluent and corporations who loot America when the Republicans are in power.
More read meat anyone?-
virtually all welfare is dispensed at the state level (by the individual states in the Union as opposed to the State per se) many of those are not even federal mandated programs, but rather programs of the individual state governments.
The term "welfare state" is another matter. I tend to prescribe to F. A. Hayek's definition--that of bestowing a privelege beyond the basic necessities of subsistence and preparation for the work force and civic life--which does not substantively exist here on a national level. -
"read" meat? I read my newspaper, but I don't read meat. lol
WIC programs are welfare. They offer coupons for low income families to purchase milk, eggs, bread, fresh fruit, cheese and breakfast cereals. They stop when the child is either 3 or 5, I am not sure. I know that is a big gap, but I just can't remember the guidelines. I took a Disability Awareness program as one of my electives while pursuing my Psychology degree and we covered programs like WIC, TANF, etc...
As far as being a tool or weapon wielded by the GOP...I think they have other bigger issues on their plate than using some low income programs to wag the dog. That statement smacks of bitterness.
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Agit8r: I agree with you. There is no welfare state in the US. Many of the state programs are borderline.
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State programs should be defined "by the states respectively"
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Agit8r: Yes, but most state programs receive federal dollars that they adminster.
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The founding fathers designed the USA government to protect and defend the nation both internally and externally and do only the things the citizens couldn’t do for themselves. It is impossible for our government to remain a sugar daddy provider and survive.
We now have a situation where fewer and fewer people are taking care more and more people, which make it impossible to avoid a total economic collapse.-
I have news for you. We're in an economic collapse. Whether or not it's total remains to be seen, but the government is the only entity big enough that can stop the free-fall.
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Prove that statement. We have a distribution of income and wealth problem in the US. Our Gini index is above .4 which puts us in the danger zone. We have more people below the poverty line. This started when Reagan was president because his tax plan fractured the middle class. Taxes are a function of income, it isn't the other way around.
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You could be right; depending on bigger and bigger government is the way our learned economist seems to be taking us. However, I totally disagree; I think the only way to go and save our freedom at the same time is to take all burdens off the federal government by privatizing damn near everything.
That would at least save the central government even if everything else was going to hell in a hand basket.
History has proven that a true free market place always work. With the government out of the way entrepreneurs will save this economy.-
I agree with you Fred. Free enterprise is the engine that drives our economy and Obama is not letting it run to its full potential.
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Deregulation is what caused the collapse of our economy. History has proven that a true free market always results in disaster: i.e. The Great Depression, the S & L crisis of the 80s, the financial sector meltdown of last year. You're just repeating right wing ideological talking points that have no grounding in reality.
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So the Smoot-Hawley Tariff played no part in the Great Depression? That is prepostorous, sati. Deregulation had nothing to do with it.
"Monetarists, including Milton Friedman and current Federal Reserve System chairman Ben Bernanke, argue that the Great Depression was caused by monetary contraction, the consequence of poor policymaking by the American Federal Reserve System and continuous crisis in the banking system. In this view, the Federal Reserve, by not acting, allowed the money supply as measured by the M2 to shrink by one-third from 1929 to 1933. Friedman argued that the downward turn in the economy, starting with the stock market crash, would have been just another recession. The problem was that some large, public bank failures, particularly that of the New York Bank of the United States, produced panic and widespread runs on local banks, and that the Federal Reserve sat idly by while banks fell. He claimed that, if the Fed had provided emergency lending to these key banks, or simply bought government bonds on the open market to provide liquidity and increase the quantity of money after the key banks fell, all the rest of the banks would not have fallen after the large ones did, and the money supply would not have fallen as far and as fast as it did."
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression
americanhistory.about.com/od/greatdepression/tp/greatdepression.htm
It is absurd to continually maintain that the free market is not what drives this country. If government market controls are superb, why then did Communist Russia not thrive? They never allowed free markets, so they should have been fine according to your line of thinking, sati. -
So the Smoot-Hawley Tariff played no part in the Great Depression? That is prepostorous, sati. Deregulation had nothing to do with it.
What was the impetus for the Smoot-Hawley Tariff? Answer that question and you'll answer your own question. And the idea of a tariff wasn't necessarily a bad thing. It was the implementation that made a bad situation worse.
It is absurd to continually maintain that the free market is not what drives this country. If government market controls are superb, why then did Communist Russia not thrive? They never allowed free markets, so they should have been fine according to your line of thinking, sati.
No, you're just setting up a straw man. It's not an all or nothing proposition. A well regulated economy promotes capitalism while a free market results in monopolies and radical economic sways. -
When you say free market you are referring to a free enterprise system with no regulation at all. I am not. That is not practical by any means. YOU are the one that makes it an all or nothing proposal.
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The Republicans have just about privatized everything including health care. At one time garbage collection, electrical power and water was public. We had one quasi-government company called AT&T that provided phone service all over the US.
We now have banks and insurance companies that are monopolies like AIG that are 'too big to fail." We are the only industrial nation besides South Africa that doesn't have public health care and our system costs twice as much as the folks in Europe. In the UK, it cost $600 per year for health insurance. The UK is rated 18th in the world by the WHO and Canada is 3Oth. We are 37th. Some of the health insurance companies make a 30 per cent profit by denying medical care.
BTW the free market brought us the Great Depression and the Great Recession that started during the last year of the Bush administration.
All countries have a mix of public and private. The invisible hand of free enterprise had to be rapped on it knuckles after the financail meltdown.
Deregulation just doesn't work because private enterprise is often fueled by greed. -
Deregulation just doesn't work because private enterprise is often fueled by greed.
That's exactly right. Even Alan Greenspan admitted he was wrong about his understanding of human nature. Greed is the reason regulation is necessary. -
Don't get me started on the World Health Organization. The sure fire way to make it high on their list of "Best Health Care," is to have socialized medicine. That is one of their criteria. What a crock.
Tell me this, if the UK has such a GREAT health care system, then why:
* Breast cancer mortality is 88 percent higher in the United Kingdom.
* Prostate cancer mortality is 604 percent higher in the U.K.
* The mortality rate for colorectal cancer among British men and women is about 40 percent higher.
*Canadian and British patients wait about twice as long - sometimes more than a year - to see a specialist, to have elective surgery like hip replacements or to get radiation treatment for cancer.
* All told, 827,429 people are waiting for some type of procedure in Canada.In England, nearly 1.8 million people are waiting for a hospital admission or outpatient treatment.
As for how the WHO ranks countries on their health care services, well just read this.
"The WHO rankings are based on a constructed index of five factors. One factor is "health level," defined as a country's disability-adjusted life expectancy. Another is "health responsiveness," which includes desirable characteristics of healthcare like speed of service, protection of privacy, and quality of amenities.
Both of these are sensible indicators of health quality, but they constitute only 37.5 percent of each country's score. The other 62.5 percent encompasses factors only tenuously connected to the quality of care -- and that can actually punish a country's ranking for superior performance.
Take "Financial Fairness" (FF), worth 25 percent of the total. This factor measures inequality in how much households spend on healthcare as a percentage of their income. The greater the inequality, the worse the country's performance.
Notice that FF necessarily improves when the government shoulders more of the health spending burden, rather than relying on the private sector. To use the existing WHO rankings to justify more government involvement in healthcare is therefore to engage in circular reasoning, because the rankings are designed to favor greater government involvement. (Clinton's plan would attempt to improve the American FF score by capping insurance premiums.)"
www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9259
You get what you pay for, our system may have its flaws, and it does; but would you want to go to Malta, or Singapore, or Iceland to have that surgery you might need? I sure as hell wouldn't and those countries all made it higher on the list. -
Come on, AR. You can't use a study from the Cato Institute for facts. They're funded big business including Philip Morris and American Petroleum Institute and are far from being an unbiased source.
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So that means that when they state the WHO's own criteria for ranking health care, they are wrong? It isn't a study, its an article explaining the way the WHO ranks the countries in it's report of health systems by country.
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satijournal: There are at least six schools of thought on the Great Depression. As I recall the Austrian school predicted it. Buying stocks on the margin was a big factor and Hoover didn't spend enough federal money to get the economy restarted. The GOP took the blame for the Great Depression because they had been holding the presidency for at least 10 years between Hoover and Coolidge before it started.
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also, hoover and coolidge were crony capitalists. Mere coincidence that the same situation repeatedly has occured from the panic of 1837 'til now? I think not
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