Let's just stop pretending and put the rich white men in charge - Page 2

So you're suggesting that the US cannot provide for its citizens given the vast amount of wealth in this country? If revenues were properly managed?

Provide what? Retirement at 62 with a government sponsored pension + free education + year long maternity leave + etc etc per many EU counties?

If that's what you mean then no. Not even close.

Side note, the Bowles-Simpson plan should be enacted, like, yesterday.

With the extreme personal disappointment in the Obama admin so far (between GM and health care), I really hope he takes a lot of the aforementioned plan's ideas and incorporates them into the next budget.

Probably not a free education, but education could certainly be cheaper. And we have a public pension system that works fine.

Which is, coincidentally, one of my main problems with Simpson-Bowles is their treatment of social security. Raising the retirement age shouldn't be on the table, particularly when SS is fully funded for the next 40 years or so.

I agree with that...I think they should simply withhold payments for the $1 million and above earners.

I think I read a study somewhere that something like that should even things out.

Yeah, that's one way of handling it, but I'm leery with means testing because there's a chance of unintended consequences; people that really need it might not get it.

However, extending the FICA tax beyond the current cap of 106k would be very helpful.

We're derailing this thread. Sorry gang.

You liberals and your apologies.

That's why we continue to win!

We coddle millionaires and monopoly corporations in this country and people have been misled that that's somehow right and true. That Exxon Mobil should NOT pay their fair share of taxes because in some magical bubble of logic, that will "hurt jobs." Hedge fund managers only pay 15% for crissakes.

We could TOTALLY afford to reform the tax code to make life livable for the working and middle classes here, with free education, free healthcare (for those that want it), and a living wage. But the entrenched financial interests are too powerful to allow any thinking that doesn't conform to their "coddle the rich, screw everyone else" mandate.

And The Closer, you can't blame pension funds for the problems they're having -- you can blame the @$$%@&^% on Wall St. from helping themselves to half their value, leaving the pension funds scrambling to make ends meet.

In terms of the retirement age, lowering it would increase employment because it would open millions of jobs to younger workers. Raising it only makes life more miserable for the elderly (especially hard laborers) and doesn't fix the overall problem.

I'm not blaming pension funds...in the EU I'm blaming their generous government pension along with all the other entitlements I listed.

But again I think you're underestimating the impact of the incredible losses they all sustained as a direct result of Goldman Sachs et al. I mean, if the great Wall St. debacle hadn't happened, would EU countries be facing these shortfalls?

The EU's problems are caused by budgetary and confidence issues. Greece didnt need a bailout because of the financial collapse...they needed a bailout because of decades of irresponsible spending (via quick growth of the public sector combined with entitlements) and cheap lending. Did the financial crisis speed things up a bit and add to that lack of confidence? Sure, but their public debt was already at 113% of GDP at the end of 2008, and people have been concerned about Greece since the turn of the century. Keep in mind that when Japan's economy collapsed their public debt was only at 100% of GDP. Back in 2003 (I think) was when Greece owned up to the fact that due to it's history of deficits, it should have never been allowed to join the EU in the first place. Right then there were many economists who predicted something like this would happen within 5-10 years.

The problem with the EU right now is that once people began taking a closer look at Greece, they saw the similarities between them, Portugal, Spain, and Italy (all of which will need to be rescued over the next 12-18 months). This mirrors what happened on Wall St (the two hedge funds liquidating on 7/07, which lead to closer looks at Bear, which lead to closer looks at Lehman, etc) and just like what happened on Wall St, these are problems that are a culmination of more than ten years of bad decisions.

So yes, even if the financial crisis hadnt happened, the EU would still be having these problems. The only difference is that they may have been delayed a year or two.

Explain Germany then. The EU includes countries with strong socialist economies that more than make up for their quality of life programs with sane taxation, banking regulations, a trade policy that protects their manufacturing sector, etc.

Germany is in decent shape, but would be a lot better if it werent for two things - one minor and one significant:

1) They keep having to pay for other countries bailouts. Thats pretty minor.

2) Germany, among other things, has extremely generous welfare (with an 8% unemployment rate currently) and retirement programs. Combine that with the large % of folks who are due to retire and it spells trouble. Adjusting for demographics, Germany is one of the most indebted nations in the entire world.

A big part of the current EU bailouts are primarily to protect the economy of Germany, which is the only passable economy in the EU currently. Greece is going to eventually default...probably within a year or so. Spain is too big to be bailed out. Problems will eventually spread to Italy. Germany, meanwhile, holds $43 billion worth of Greek debt, and an additional $250 billion of Portuguese and Spanish debt. With countries having to reduce payments on that debt, combined with imminent defaults from countries like Greece, Germany is in a shitload of trouble looking down the road.

A good comparison would be suggesting that AIG is a hybrid of Portugal, Spain, and Greece, while Germany is Goldman Sachs. You're bailing out the three that made mistakes to protect the really big fish.

I'm tired and jetlagged right now but I dispute this, The Closer. There are no homeless people (or vastly fewer) in Germany, for one thing. The German people seem to reject the "every man for himself" nihilism of the US. considering that FDR progressives helped craft their Constitution I think that it bears examination in terms of what could be in the US and isn't.

I also don't understand what you mean by protect Germany. Their participation in the bailouts are essential but they're going to protect themselves in this regard. Germany is home to a lot of Fortune 500 companies and a lot of millionaires but not at the expense of their society. They're doing something right, and if that something is ensuring people have money in their pockets to keep the economy moving or a free education to encourage innovation or a solar roof program to make less expensive energy, then maybe they'd bear studying rather than painting them with the same brush as Greece, which was taken in by Goldman Sachs in a big way.

Germany is doing a lot of things right. So are a lot of EU countries on a social level.

My point is that most of them can't afford some of the things they're doing.

Of course citizens in France are probably going to be happier than here in the US. They get free health care that is consistently rated as the best in the world, a year of maternity leave, excellent job security, and a great government pension when they retire at 62. But again, that doesn't mean that what they're doing is in any way fiscally responsible.

Germany, to your point above, is really the one EU country who's concerning situation is primarily a product of the current climate as opposed to what it's doing wrong. But the same can't be said for the other nations I mentioned.

You do know that Germany is heavily unionized, right? As in almost completely. The German unions can make or break a government.

What this whole thing has shown me, as a layman, is that there really isn't a way to cover yourself when the shit hits the fan, other than actually having enough production and consumption internally to keep your market running for a while once foreign funds dry up. Or be able to print new money at will.

You can be a deregulated Chicago school banking paradise like Iceland.
You can be an incompetently run stagnant economy dependent on borrowed money like Greece.
You can be a low corporate tax, high quality workforce, high tech investment driven economy like Ireland.
You're still fucking going down.

Indeed.
Cant really argue too much with that.

When you're dealing with people's lives it seems bizarre and unpleasant to me to claim that it's wrong for countries to go into debt over things like healthcare and maternity leave. Fiscal responsibility be damned - international economics is a trap we've created for ourselves, and I'd rather live in a country with large debt that looks after its citizens than one which counts every penny and only has time for the rich.

Which is understandable, but it's just not feasible.

I would rather live under that type of social structure as well, but realistically it's not in the cards - and that's really what matters.

How is it not feasible? Have any of these countries ceased to exist? Does fiscal irresponsibility result in total annihilation? It's not feasible if you buy into the notion of the world economy being anything other than a noose we created for our own necks.

Holy fuck you people know how to derail a thread.

Im not sure on what type of system youre advocating. Politics and economics go hand in hand as politics is essentialy the control of an economy, and the concept of a global economy is linked to economics as a whole.

What Im getting at is that there would have to be a major shift in the basic way the world works and how countries interact with each other for the concept of the global economy to cease to exist.

And Tzu, you should be thanking me...Im diverting the conversation away from the subject of fasco-racist baby eaters like us.

Hell, I included some those tangents in my meaning.

Wait, you guys aren't actually thinking that when people speak against the ruling classes they refer to people like you? Unless you're hiding stuff from us (and I don't mean it as a slight against you) you're about two social classes away from being considered worthy of inclusion to those wielding actual power.

No, not at all. Just the standard right-winger humor between Tzu and I.

If MoonBase was here Id be sure to include him too.

Yeah, stel, just some white privilege being bandied about over here. Don't mind us.

60% of the United States teaching population belongs to either one of two unions, yt.

For the rest of you if you attended Catholic school what would you expect to be taught? That Catholicism has the answers you need. A yeshiva? That Judaism can cure your ills. A madrasah? Islam is the one true way.

What then in a government education center? Are the young minds going to be molded into trusting their government or fearing it? Will they be taught to distrust and question it or be undereducated just to the point that they are easily led? Government education centers are not set up to turn out individual thinkers.

I think it's nice that Tzu at least manages to be consistently ignorant of what he is talking about in all the threads he posts in. Whether it's TV shows, games, politics, sex or movies, you can count on this guy to know absolutely dick-all about what he's talking about. But he sure is liberal about sharing his right-wing nut job opinions.

And it's so nice to know that certain factions of the leftist guard around here can do dick all in the face of facts.

I'm confused (but that's probably due to my Government funded education in public schools here in NJ) - I'm trying to remember at which parts during my public school years I was being indoctrinated that Government is God. It must have been Photo Tech, or no, no! It was definitely home economics. Possibly Physics.

Alright Tzu, please, in your vast Right-Wing nutso logic, explain to me this....

So, let's say, as you propose, that the "government", that nebulous evil organization run by Stalinist zombie-robots, is running an indoctrination program. That program is the public school system in the United States of America. That program is also the focal point, the very crux of the "government"'s plan to brainwash and control us all. Why then, please tell, is that program ALWAYS the first to have it's already pitiful budget cut?*

You would think that a plan so devious and far reaching would at least be properly funded.

*All of this is based on assuming Tzu's opinions. Said opinions being very confused and inaccurate based understandings of the roles of Federal and Local governments in the funding of public schools.

Do you know any teachers? Do you have any kids in public schools?

Wait . . . GM? Really? As in the car company? The administration has fucked up a lot of things thus far, but I don't see how the GM deal can be included in that list.

The bailout of GM = the most blatant purchasing of votes in recent history. Not to mention the fact that administration's treatment of the secured creditors of GM was highly unethical and the impact that the admin's dealings with GM had on the contracts between GM and it's creditors was borderline illegal.

It kills me that people will go on and on about Paulson and co bailing out his friends at Goldman Sachs, yet nobody seems the least bit upset about stuff like this.

Married into a family full of them and one is attending at present the other will fall prey in a few years. If I recover from my divorce in time I'll put them both in private school.

But I trust you know better than to bring this down to an individual level. Individuals can care. The bureaucracy doesn't. And the machine at the top has an agenda that doesn't care about the student. They care about keeping their members employed at all cost. Even if those members have no business being in a classroom.

So yes I have seen first hand the insidious policies that exist to erode the concept of the individual from captive minds.

I think you're looking for demons where there are none. In my experience, the biggest problem with public education is in the administrative offices. Every public school teacher I've ever encountered has had his/her heart in the right place but is hamstrung by administrators and mandates like NCLB. There is no scary all-powerful teachers union agenda, except perhaps a living wage and decent on-the-job rights. Trying to make teachers into this bizarre Glenn Beck-like villain is, I think, pretty contemptuous.

I'm a bit baffled by arguing for the alternatives though. The company had to be saved from imploding, or it would take the entire U.S. auto industry with it, along with millions of jobs. I understand the frustration, that this argument is frightfully similar to the one used to bail out the banks, but the key difference here is that GM (and Chrysler and Ford) are making cars. The banks aren't doing a goddamned thing other than raking in profits, sitting on capital and letting small-scale private enterprise wither away through a lack of credit.

Should the autoworkers have been held to a tougher standard? Maybe. But the concessions they made in the bankruptcy process were wide-spread and significant. I'm not going to shed too many tears for the investors because that's what happens when a company goes bankrupt. The stock was trading at $.75 a share when the company went down. The idea that you should be able to invest without assuming any of the corollary risk is insane to me. And I think there is an important difference when considering bad investments vs. people's livelihoods. The autoworkers don't deserve their deals? Fine. Neither do bankers. Crying foul isn't getting anyone anywhere, because both sides are fucking crooked as hell. But if you're gonna get down to it, then yeah, I'm gonna stand with the (few) people who still make things in this country, instead of goddamn parasites shuffling money around and making a killing at it.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Tzu went to school in a Pink Floyd concept album!

I do know a lot of teachers, and while I don't think like Tzu they're out to brainwash my kids, there are a lot of unqualified people teaching in the US system. So outside of administrative issues, there's just a good chunk of teachers and counselors that are not that bright, which is a symptom of low wages. If we paid better, the profession would likely attract a much better set of candidates.

I agree on the individual level, I said that already. And as you get out of the individual schools and into the district offices on up it becomes less and less about the kids and more and more about the politics of maintaining a juggernaut lobbying effort. If I implicated "teachers" I apologize. I don't think I did. I said unions and that includes bureaucracy in the form of the Dept. of Education as well.

Policies are in place that on the surface are couched in terms of budget problems being transferred to parents that are subtle indoctrination into Marxist thought processes.

Captive minds aren't just in danger at church.

*EDIT*

Cap, not getting argumentative but I am not singling out teachers. But oftentimes those teachers are hamstrung by policies that even if they agree with me are wrong they have to implement. I get that and don't lay flack down on them. But a government isn't going to educate its populace to be freethinkers and to question its motives. They are going to create a system that is bogged down in red tape and creates a class of people that cannot parse doublespeak.

And mind you to everyone involved in this discussion, I am not laying this down at the feet of leftists. NCLB is not on my list of good things that have been done in service of the children.

Actually one thing in particular that sticks out in my mind is vastly different from the days when I was in school. And it just so happens to be one of those polices I implicate above.

This is really, really, really stupid. I agree with you that the Unions are a problem and are doing much to harm the massive job of educating the country's youth, but when you start couching it in terms of Marxism and 'free-thinkers' you sound like a tool while missing the point.

There are lots of problems with institutionalized education, but collectivist indoctrination isn't one of them. If anything, standardized learning structures put far too much emphasis on individual accomplishment to the detriment of cooperative learning.

Does anyone have any idea which boogeyman policies TzuDohNihm's calling out here?

In 11th grade in Georgia my U.S. Government class was told by our teacher that our constitutional rights ended once we walked through the front door of the building. Not in a menacing way but just in a matter of fact "this is why you as students aren't allowed to do this or do that." Fundamental rights are abridged yearly in government schools.

Now for the past four years I have watched every year as my son is taught on the first day of school that private property rights do not exist in the government school world. When I was in school my school supplies were mine. Kept in my pencil box and in my desk and in my bookbag. Today all supplies purchased from the list of things my son needs for his school year are communal. They are brought in and placed all together and then handed out as each student needs them. Some students can't afford supplies or buy Roseart crayons instead of Crayola. This way everyone is brought down to one level.

I'm not going to even waste my time illustrating instances that occur every year where individual distinctions are eliminated and when educational standards are lowered so that failing students have a better chance instead of keeping things stringent and teaching students how to achieve.

Karl Marx espoused this quite clearly one time.

You tell me how to couch it.

Oh boy ...

Who the fuck cares?

Thats not even remotely true. I really hate to sound like a broken record, and I dont mean to come off as an ass, but anyone who says that really has no understanding of how bankruptcy works on even the most basic level.

GM filed for bankruptcy. It was always going to. The reason for the initial loan/bailout was so that the administration could buy themselves more time to attempt to convince the creditors of GM to accept concessions that would benefit the UAW. The creditors said no, so Obama goes on TV and calls them speculators and a danger to the economy. Which is bullshit, and he knew it. When the creditors exercised their rights granted to them by law via the contract they signed with GM the day they became creditors, Obama and the Treasury stepped in and made sure the UAW got everything and the bondholders got nothing.

So it boils down to GM filing for bankruptcy, some people lose their jobs, and the company rebuilds itself.

Or

GM files for bankruptcy, some people lose their jobs, the company rebuilds itself, and the UAW is happy because the US Treasury finances them and prevents the need for any significant concessions on the UAW "legacy costs."

Obama chose the latter.

Aside from the massive blow job given to the UAW, there is really no difference between the two outcomes.

See above. They would have continued to make cars anyway.

This isnt really a conversation about whether or not GM was worth saving, as bankruptcy for GM is VASTLY different than bankruptcy for a financial firm. If a bank files for bankruptcy, it gets liquidated immediately. Non-financial firms don't work that way. Its like suggesting that if you filed for bankruptcy you would automatically die of ebola.

For an example of how a non-financial firm bankruptcy works and the end result, one only needs to look at United Airlines or Delta.

I agree 100%. The GM stockholders should have gotten nothing. Stockholders go into the market knowing that they are taking on that kind of risk.

But were talking about the bondholders. Bondholders accept much lower returns (2-4% on average) because when they purchase a bond of a company they enter into a legal contract with said company that says in the event of a bankruptcy, the bondholders are to be repaid first. Why? Because the bondholders are who provided the company with money to function in the first place.

A number of my clients had Lehman Brothers bonds when Lehman was liquidated. You know how much they got? $.70 on the dollar. Almost 3/4 of their money from a company that is no longer even in existence. GM just had the biggest IPO in history, and you know how much the bondholders got? Zilch.

I bet you think the puppets on Sesame Street teaching kids to share are a bunch of fucking commies, don't you?

Tzu, I can tell you first hand that when my mother came home from a twelve hour day, eyes full of tears from the bullshit she had to put up with from parents, students and the administration ,knowing she had to put dinner on the table and then get back to work grading a stack of homework assignments, that she took great relief in knowing that at least her socialist/communist agenda of crayon sharing was being fulfilled. You fucking lunatic.

By the way, I'm almost afraid to ask, but what are your thoughts on No Child Left Behind?

Your 11th grade U.S. Government teacher was a nut.

ETA: and an idiot.

ETA 2: also, if you think banks do "nothing" for the economy, you're an idiot, too.

I love how he was informed of this "not in a menacing way." It's like he's taking roll and it kind of slips out.

"Agnoni?"

"Here."

"Bueller?"

"Here."

"Cabana?"

"Here."

"By the way, students, you should probably be aware of something; you have absolutely no constitutional rights once you step into this building. None. Those rights you cling to so dearly that we're in the process of teaching you? Yeah. They don't exist. Not here. DeSilva?"

"Here."

To be honest, a lot of things about Tzu are really starting to add up based on his bizarre and frightening education.

Was there not a Dennis Miller quote that more accurately illustrates this unbelievably retarded point?

Fine, but unions? Why with the right does it always come back to unions? I think it comes back to institutional corruption, which has zero to do with unions. And ps. charter schools -- having wasted two years with one -- are a total Trojan Horse. And if you've got the money to send your kids to private school, go with God. Having an educated generation benefits your country. Public schools -- not charter schools but regular public schools -- are a system we are lucky to have and they should be nurtured and repaired rather than destroyed. School quality didn't start cratering until the Me Generation decided it would rather have material riches than pay taxes for critical services.

I think ElCap hit the nail on the head -- it's money. Every teacher I've known has had to pay for their own school supplies and field trips, have had to sneak in valuable arts or science education, usually with the help of a good PTA. NCLB was a disaster for schools. I grew up in public schools and got a great education. My daughter is high-achieving enough to get into magnet schools and--shock of shocks--they get more money and can therefore deliver a better learning environment. It's all about the money. So, the boogeyman isn't actually unions, it's institutional corruption and the short-sighted self-interest of the tax-phobic Me Generation.