[Sixstrings]

It’s a perfect storm. And I’m not talking about the impending dangers facing Democrats. I’m talking about the dangers facing our democracy.

First, income in America is now more concentrated in fewer hands than it’s been in 80 years. Almost a quarter of total income generated in the United States is going to the top 1 percent of Americans.

The top one-tenth of one percent of Americans now earn as much as the bottom 120 million of us.

Who are these people? With the exception of a few entrepreneurs like Bill Gates, they’re top executives of big corporations and Wall Street, hedge-fund managers, and private equity managers. They include the Koch brothers, whose wealth increased by billions last year, and who are now funding tea party candidates across the nation.

(snip)

We’re back to the late 19th century when the lackeys of robber barons literally deposited sacks of cash on the desks of friendly legislators. The public never knew who was bribing whom.

(snip)

Here’s the third part of the perfect storm. Most Americans are in trouble. Their jobs, incomes, savings, and even homes are on the line. They need a government that’s working for them, not for the privileged and the powerful.

Yet their state and local taxes are rising. And their services are being cut. Teachers and firefighters are being laid off. The roads and bridges they count on are crumbling, pipelines are leaking, schools are dilapidated, and public libraries are being shut.

There’s no jobs bill to speak of. No WPA to hire those who can’t find jobs in the private sector. Unemployment insurance doesn’t reach half of the unemployed.

Washington says nothing can be done. There’s no money left.

No money? The marginal income tax rate on the very rich is the lowest it’s been in more than 80 years. Under President Dwight Eisenhower (who no one would have accused of being a radical) it was 91 percent. Now it’s 36 percent. Congress is even fighting over whether to end the temporary Bush tax cut for the rich and return them to the Clinton top tax of 39 percent.

(snip)

The perfect storm: An unprecedented concentration of income and wealth at the top; a record amount of secret money flooding our democracy; and a public becoming increasingly angry and cynical about a government that’s raising its taxes, reducing its services, and unable to get it back to work.

We’re losing our democracy to a different system. It’s called plutocracy.
http://www.alternet.org/news/148558/the_perfect_storm_that_threatens_american_democracy/?page=2

So does anyone think taxes on the rich will ever be raised? Republicans want more tax cuts for the rich, the Democrats are split over extending the Bush cuts, and meanwhile the only growing source of government revenue is Ben's printing press.

Shouldn't austerity apply to the rich and not just the middle class? Is even a 6% rise in the top bracket just too much austerity for them to bare?

EDIT: corrected thread title, had too many zeroes.. it's .001 which is 0.1% (one tenth of one percent).. I think

[SteinarN]

I think the problem in USA is that most of the poor or low wage earner persons don't see them selve as poor but instead as POTENTIALLY rich. Therefore they don't want high taxes on the rich because them selv may become rich some day. And the already rich people does definitely not want to pay more in taxes.

[Newfie]

I think the problem in USA is that most of the poor or low wage earner persons don't see them selve as poor but instead as POTENTIALLY rich. Therefore they don't want high taxes on the rich because them selv may become rich some day. And the already rich people does definitely not want to pay more in taxes.

I have thought the same myself. I could win $50 million in the lotto, then what?

[gollum]

I can't even begin to understand why, under these conditions republicans are winning. I just don't get the American people.

[Sixstrings]

I have thought the same myself. I could win $50 million in the lotto, then what?

Ok, so rather than even return to the horrible draconian Clinton level of 39% (top bracket is 33% now), you'd rather the rich keep their low tax rate just in case you make it into that one tenth of one percent bracket, or win the lottery where the odds are something like .000000001.

All the while, the printing presses are smoking from churning out fiat money to pay the government's bills...

EDIT: and by the way, if you (a) don't live in Manhattan and (b) aren't running a hedge fund then your odds of making it into the super rich are even lower

[Timo]

Our collective silly notion that "capitalism" is THE ultimate modern gift from GOD, and that we are the best country in the world because of it, has destroyed our simoultaneous experiment with democracy. We now live in a plutocracy. All bow down before the Koch Brothers. They alone know what's best for America. Humanity be damned!

[Ludi]

Our collective silly notion that "capitalism" is THE ultimate modern gift from GOD, and that we are the best country in the world because of it, has destroyed our simultaneous experiment with democracy. We now live in a plutocracy. All bow down before the Koch Brothers. They alone know what's best for America. Humanity be damned!

"Capitalism demands the best of every man – his rationality – and rewards him accordingly. It leaves every man free to choose the work he likes, to specialize in it, to trade his product for the products of others, and to go as far on the road of achievement as his ability and ambition will carry him." - Ayn Rand

"Money is the barometer of a society's virtue." - Ayn Rand

[Oakley]

Our collective silly notion that "capitalism" is THE ultimate modern gift from GOD, and that we are the best country in the world because of it, has destroyed our simoultaneous experiment with democracy. We now live in a plutocracy. All bow down before the Koch Brothers. They alone know what's best for America. Humanity be damned!

There is no doubt that special interests (large corporations) and government have colluded to bring us an economy rigged in favor of the few at the expense of the many. Each law has an economic effect, mostly intentionally, but sometimes inadvertently, and our laws have destroyed free market capitalism. What we have is fascism, an amalgamation of the interest of government and corporations.

Essentially we have a slave system, which is why the distribution of wealth in the US is more and more resembling a pre Civil War southern plantation with the few owners possessing most of the wealth and the majority, the slaves, possessing nothing to speak of. If is quacks like a duck, etc., etc.

You are grossly in error to blame capitalism because it is not capitalism that has brought us to this point in history. It is the government that so many of you worship and demand even more of, that has done this to us. The federal government was established as a republic, not a democracy, but the limitations on government in the Constitution have increasingly been ignored. So it operates as a democracy, and democracies throughout history have failed when people learned that they could vote themselves a living, so the gullible public demands favors and get a pittance, while those who can bribe politicians and bureaucrats get the lions share of the favors and a lions share of the economic pie.

It is a common delusion to think we are free because we can vote. It is equally a delusion to think that if we just change the people who occupy the seats of power that freedom will be restored. It is equally a delusion to think that all we need is a few more laws to right the wrongs.

What we need is to eliminate 90% of the federal government and at least 70% of state governments, and I think nature will take us down that path as the end of the industrial age brings us massive economic contraction.

[Lore]

Capitalism as a system of personal prosperity is inherently flawed and therefore cannot exist or work in the long term. Just as Communism is for the same reason that human self interests are the antithesis of both. They are failed experiments. One relies on a ponzi scheme of infinite natural and human resources while the other on the collective human spirit of cooperation towards a goal for the greater good.

[Ludi]

The system of mutual support, which some people call "tribal society" or "band society" is the one humans are best adapted to. In this system, human nature is not suppressed (no dependence on striving for "the greater good"). Humans can act like humans, knowing that in order to get support, they must give support. Selfish or cheating behavior never gets rewarded like it does in capitalism. This tends to work only in small groups at or below the Dunbar number. In larger societies it can probably work to a limited degree with group/societal "ownership" of services and means of production, such as roads, energy production and distribution, some common land, water and air resources, etc. These sorts of cooperatives have worked well here and there. This is the non-state form of socialism, in which services are owned and administered by the people who use them, not by "the government." (examples: Telephone and power cooperatives in Texas; the Mondragon Cooperatives of Spain)

[Oakley]

Capitalism as a system of personal prosperity is inherently flawed and therefore cannot exist or work in the long term. Just as Communism is for the same reason that human self interests are the antithesis of both. They are failed experiments. One relies on a ponzi scheme of infinite natural and human resources while the other on the collective human spirit of cooperation towards a goal for the greater good.

Bull.

Any species exploits what resources are available to it. Cavemen exploited resources and so do elephants, both doing damage to their environments in the process. If a species finds new resources they will exploit them until the resources are depleted which can give rise to at first a population expansion and later a population contraction.

Capitalism was a system of people being free to exploit resources in a competitive fashion. There is nothing inherently unworkable in freedom. There is plenty that is unworkable in slavery, at least for the slaves; communism and fascism are slave systems because they both rely on government to force people to accept what those in power are willing to give them. Free market capitalism involves no force except to punish those who commit economic crimes like fraud and theft.

Rose Wilder Lane of "Little House on the Prairie" fame chronicled world history in terms of freedom in her book, "The Discovery of Freedom" and concluded that periods of freedom produced human advance, reduced human suffering and resulted in a more wide spread ownership of wealth, while periods of slavery produced economic stagnation, concentration of wealth, and significant human suffering.

I think the error in your thinking is that you choose to attribute to Free Market Capitalism what should be attributed to Fascism. Today we have Fascism, not Free Market Capitalism, and it is Fascism that is bringing us human suffering. Fascism is enforced by the power of government. Furthermore, you confuse the exploitation of limited resources with the system that rations these resources among the population. The exploitation of limited resources always follows a pattern as illuminated by people like Marion King Hubbert. There is no ponzi scheme, or fraud, involved in the free market exploitation of resources; they eventually just run out.

The fraud is the creation of corporations by government and the granting of these corporations economic advantage. This is not free market capitalism.

[Lore]

Bull.

Any species exploits what resources are available to it. Cavemen exploited resources and so do elephants, both doing damage to their environments in the process. If a species finds new resources they will exploit them until the resources are depleted which can give rise to at first a population expansion and later a population contraction.

Capitalism was a system of people being free to exploit resources in a competitive fashion. There is nothing inherently unworkable in freedom. There is plenty that is unworkable in slavery, at least for the slaves; communism and fascism are slave systems because they both rely on government to force people to accept what those in power are willing to give them. Free market capitalism involves no force except to punish those who commit economic crimes like fraud and theft.

Rose Wilder Lane of "Little House on the Prairie" fame chronicled world history in terms of freedom in her book, "The Discovery of Freedom" and concluded that periods of freedom produced human advance, reduced human suffering and resulted in a more wide spread ownership of wealth, while periods of slavery produced economic stagnation, concentration of wealth, and significant human suffering.

I think the error in your thinking is that you choose to attribute to Free Market Capitalism what should be attributed to Fascism. Today we have Fascism, not Free Market Capitalism, and it is Fascism that is bringing us human suffering. Fascism is enforced by the power of government. Furthermore, you confuse the exploitation of limited resources with the system that rations these resources among the population. The exploitation of limited resources always follows a pattern as illuminated by people like Marion King Hubbert. There is no ponzi scheme, or fraud, involved in the free market exploitation of resources; they eventually just run out.

The fraud is the creation of corporations by government and the granting of these corporations economic advantage. This is not free market capitalism.

Toxic thinking. Modern Capitalism is a rather recent invention, it has little to do with social freedoms. See China, case in point. It relies on the personal accumulation of profit in a system that encourages economic growth. However, uncontrolled growth in a finite world is by definition unsustainable. The minute you can prove to me that you can pull more resources out of your nether regions, which currently don’t exist, then I will believe that Capitalism is not a ponzi scheme. It is a mechanism for the absorption of limited resources in the production of an exponential amount of nonessential items.

Free Market Capitalism is just another form in which we have the ability to practice even greater levels of collusion. Ultimately, only caring for the corporate welfare, since no central planning is taken into consideration regarding the condition of the general public. Which makes the interference of government not only necessary, but required. Governments need to rule from a 30,000 ft level, while corporations are only worried about the next quarter for their share holders.

Fascism is an overplayed right wing talking point that bares little resemblance to our system of rule.

By the way Freedom isn’t a discovery, it either exists in one’s spirit or not. Many of the so called free today feel personally enslaved.

[Timo]

Capitalism only works when there are resources to exploit, and we have exploited the crap out of this planet. We've gotten waaay to big. Too big to fail? HA! Hardly. The very size of our global economy is the very reason it will fail. We've run out of our essential minerals, and there is nothing left to exploit, except for each other. Our current political direction is no accident. This plutocracy of ours was consciously devised. Vote Republican, and finish the job.

[Oakley]

Capitalism only works when there are resources to exploit, and we have exploited the crap out of this planet. We've gotten waaay to big. Too big to fail? HA! Hardly. The very size of our global economy is the very reason it will fail. We've run out of our essential minerals, and there is nothing left to exploit, except for each other. Our current political direction is no accident. This plutocracy of ours was consciously devised. Vote Republican, and finish the job.

Resource depletion only happens if there are resources being exploited.

A more formal definition of capitalism is:

Capitalism is an economic system in which the means of production are privately owned and operated for a private profit; decisions regarding supply, demand, price, distribution, and investments are made by private actors in the market rather than by central planning by the government; profit is distributed to owners who invest in businesses, and wages are paid to workers employed by businesses and companies.

Free market capitalism simply means that people are free to own and use property privately without the interference of government to control that use or to rig the market in favor of one competitor or the other. It is just one system of exploiting resources. Communism, socialism and fascism are other systems of exploiting resources that involve differing ownership and control arrangements.

If you are angry at capitalism for exploiting resources you should be equally angry at any of the other economic systems.

If you are angry at the distribution of the wealth because you don't think you are getting a reasonable share, that is not the fault of capitalism. It is the fault of collusion between some people and government to destroy free market capitalism and replace it with privilege for some at the expense of the majority. The problem is government creation of laws like the Federal Reserve Act, the Pure Food and Drug Acts, the creation of the Agricultural Department, the Commerce Department, the Education Department, the SEC, etc., etc. and at the State level the licensing of professions, businesses, government charity, the failure to obey the Constitutional requirement that they make only gold and silver coins legal tender, etc. etc.

Free markets very rarely produce monopolies and cartels; these require government to create. Government interference in the markets creates such economic disparities.

If you are angry at resource depletion, you are angry at mother nature for making people need resources to survive or having a drive to consume. If you are angry at maldistribution of wealth, then blame government granting of advantage to some at the expense of others. If people had not exploited energy resources the human population would still be back in balance with nature, perhaps under 3/4 of a billion people and your own life likely would never have been.

I think it is absolutely absurd to think that Republicans and Democrats are really any different. They all believe that government should control the economy and they believe so because they want to control the economy to favor themselves and their supporters. Look at what they do, not what they say to get your vote. You would need to be a very imperceptive fool to not recognize that Democrats and Republicans are in the pockets of special interests, and that the US Republic has failed. Obama is no different than Bush or any of the countless heads of state going back for decades. They have only gotten away with creating slavery because the resource base was so great that in spite of their interference to direct the lion's share to themselves and their friends, the average man receiving his small share of the economic pie still experienced an improvement in standard of living. But now the worm has turned and it is no longer acceptable to continue with the current system of plunder and control; the pie is contracting and will do so for decades. Anger is growing, but people are still too indoctrinated to see that it is government, not freedom that is their enemy.

If you buy into the Republican vs Democrat dichotomy, then you will never do anything but switch masters with each election cycle and continue to see a poorer quality of life. And as the die off develops, this system will make it more difficult for the majority to survive as they carry upon their backs the burden of government and special privilege.

Plenty of people will die, not to satisfy the desire of Ludites for less consumption, but because there will not be enough of even the basics to go around, and you Ludites will be squealing like babies as you find you likely will not survive. If you continue to support the government and their friends, unless you are one of them, your chances of being a survivor will be reduced since you will be burdened with supplying not only your own needs, but theirs as well.

[Quinny]

but...

Capitalism requires growth.

[Denny]

If we think back to the 50's, the "Leave it to Beaver" days, that so many seem to fondly remember, especially the right wing tea party crowd, the income gap was much less pronounced than today.

Corporate CEO's made about 50X the rate of pay as the line worker, versus about 175X today. The top end tax rates were severe, in the 70%+ range, and even reached into the 90% range just prior to that during the war years. But companies had no problem filling the executive ranks.

Most U.S. states and Canadian provinces had no sales taxes.

States were not into the lottery numbers racket that prey on the low end people who see their only crack at la dolce vita being through luck. In fact, they had laws against lotteries.

Most dads were able to raise their families just on their income, and as the work week had been reduced to five days and 40 hours, those same dads were able to be hockey coaches and boy scout leaders, not spend their evenings on Excel and Powerpoint, at the office and at home. The 40 hour week came about by the force of unions which extended to about 30% of the workforce, compared to 9% today. We may wish to think it was the generosity of employers that brought this about, but that would not be true. Non-union firms matched the work weeks in part to keep their own staff from unionizing. Likewise with health benefits and pensions.

State colleges were much more affordable, so for the first time, a substantial share of students attending came from low income families, where just a generation before, higher education was only attainable to upper middle income families and above.

What I am trying to say, is that the same era that most conservatives look on wistfully as a model society was in many ways much more of a socialist, or at least egalitarian, society than what we see today.

[americandream]

but...

Capitalism requires growth.

A more useful analogy would be by way of a bucket. Capitalism's use of resources, being premised on continuous and obsolescence configured consumerism in the pursuit of endless surplus accumulation, is more properly characterised as a bottomless bucket.

In contrast, a modernity such as communism, based as it is on the application of technology for uses other than the generation of surplus by way of obsolescence, is more suitably characterised as a leaking bucket. Depending on the degree of its steady state, that bucket of course is capable of being incrementally sealed. In contrast, it's bottomlessness is a function of capitalism's logic.

[PrestonSturges]

Free market capitalism simply means that people are free to own and use property privately without the interference of government to control that use or to rig the market in favor of one competitor or the other. It is just one system of exploiting resources. Communism, socialism and fascism are other systems of exploiting resources that involve differing ownership and control arrangements.

........Plenty of people will die, not to satisfy the desire of Ludites for less consumption, but because there will not be enough of even the basics to go around, and you Ludites will be squealing like babies as you find you likely will not survive. If you continue to support the government and their friends, unless you are one of them, your chances of being a survivor will be reduced since you will be burdened with supplying not only your own needs, but theirs as well.

Your idea of Utopia seems to be framed as the time where people were free to take someone else's private property without the interference of government. And your idea about being a survivor living from his well stocked wine cellar and frozen boxcar of Omaha steaks is likely to be compromised by someone a lot more hungry and motivated who will adapt to the lack of rules that you are pining for.