Answer To Economic Frets Is: More Government?

[dairygirl4u2c]

i know the bailed out bear sterns, bank or whatever too.

i'm generally opposed to bail outs.

but, if it's a company that's central to the economy.... like if microsoft somehow went down bc lawsuit or soemthing... and our infrastructure was dependant on it.... we might make an exception to my general rule.

i don't know the details of the airlines or berr sterns.

[kenrockthefirst]

[quote name='dust (the ultra-handsome' post='1492545' date='Apr 4 2008, 01:29 PM']If the government wouldn't have bailed out the airline industry after Sept 11th, the entire industry would be a whole lot better off today. Why can't the government simply let businesses fail? Now, the airline industry is in a horrible state--one that it might not be in if a few airlines folded a few years ago, leaving the well run, healthy airlines to pick up the slack and a better share of the market.[/quote]
I'm not arguing for or against bailouts. All I'm saying is: be consistent. If you want "the market" to take care of everything such that if one loses one's home because the mortgage rate re-adjusted, then let "the market" deal with the fat cat bankers, too. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

[Aloysius]

bailouts in the wake of national disasters are a much different story than bailouts in the wake of bad business practices. when a company does bad business, it needs to reap the consequences of that bad business.

regulation and policing are indeed different. with regulation, you have to go through a beaurocracy in order to propose your product, and the centralized power decides what products can and cannot be sold and what claims can and cannot be made about said products. policing ensures that if a company makes bad claims, it will be punished, but it doesn't give anyone the corrupting power to enforce their own opinions about things before the information is even offered to the public.

for instance in the case of alternative medicines.

[son_of_angels]

First of all, I think we need some parameters for discussing exactly WHY drugs are cheap from Canada. They are cheap in Canada because they have an efficient, publicly funded, drug program which results in greater production. They have about the same safety standards as the U.S. China, on the other hand, similarly has a publicly funded drug industry with few standards. So, how can we compare the two? One is governed by a body which is actually concerned about the people, while the other is governed by a body which is more concerned about prices for that year.

The problem with the U.S. economic situation, in my opinion, is that it operates quite similar to the Chinese, but, with the aid of quite a few political left-wingers, adds in copious amounts of "Social Democracy," comparable to the movement which dominates Europe, managing to maintain high standards. This is, of course, a completely unsustainable economy and budgetary system, considered in light of our current addiction to defecit spending. And, it also seems unjust...Why should a company have to care about public standards if the public isn't contributing to the cost of it's production? Hence the left liberal idea: share the burden of personal and corporate wealth between the government (public) and the individual. On the other hand the right liberal (libertarian) wants to put the burden of personal welfare entirely on the person. Both of these, of course, will always fight the question of sustainability.

On the other hand, the Communists fight their general inability to expand economically by creating cheap, almost payless, jobs which can out-produce western counterparts in manufacturing. This means that, while a priori one would expect a communist system, where personal wealth is entirely dependent on the 'public good,' to eventually reach equilibrium and cease expansion, the demands of remaining competitive as a nationality force them into an even less sustainable economy, lacking the means to instil any trend in quality control.

The only solution I see at present, considering the demand for "democratic" government (which will continue to exist, as long as the President is elected via this 'rock-star' celebrity system conceived by the American liberals of the 1700's), and considering the fact that our dollar, and our perceived quality, is being significantly challenged by the liberal democracies of Europe and even parts of Asia, is to move to a slightly more left approach to both government and social policies, or else to start a process of economic controls which are controlled by the insightful idealogues of our time.

[Aloysius]

just to be fair, the founding fathers founded more of a practical oligarchy than a democracy; it evolved into the rock-star celebrity system much later on (I blame whoever gave women the vote... lol jk, there's lots of reasons)

spot on otherwise about how our economy has evolved into a form of elitist communism though.

[Deb]

Our times are just another repeat of the 80's. The Reagan years, the "Me" decade, the savings and loan bailouts (Bush brother gets rich, clients eat dirt) cover ups and a recession. Ah yes, I remember it well and have watched it unfold yet again.
Money is the God for a few and they get to strangle the rest of it for it. Gotta love unchecked capitalism.
My thought, get any money you do have in off shore accounts like the rich do. I hear you don't have to pay taxes on it. I can't do it, I have no money.

[Aloysius]

the problem of unchecked capitalism is not solved by centralizing power to regulate capitalism, but by policing capitalism against immoral financial practices; making usury (as defined by Aquinas and the scholastics who understood the nature of money) illegal, for one example, and having big businesses that make such bad financial decisions as the recent ones be held accountable.

the concept that Reagan and Bush at least paid lip service to, ie decreasing the size of the federal government, is not a bad concept at all and would indeed be good for the economy were it actually done. anyway, the part of the current recession that can be blamed on Bush is that he cut taxes while not cutting spending, not that he "left capitalism unchecked"... that's just a theoretical buzz-word that doesn't really apply to anything Bush has actually done... the Dot Com bust came during the Clinton Years, recall. it's the Fed and its regulation of the currency which is mostly to blame for these bubbles and bursts.

but that see-saw game continues and the direction it seems to lead us into is an acceptance of further centralization of power over the economy to an elitist few all in the name of protecting people from economic crises like these.