Droopy wrote:I am not a democrat, or a liberal. I am well educated. I am a student of history. I deeply respect the "importance of education and the seeking of knowledge."
Then makes statements that would lead one to believe that, without you having to expressly claim it for yourself.
Bush continued Reagan's policies?
Right, well, move along...
False. I did not support Al Sharpton in the Democratic primaries in 2004.Droopy wrote:Well, okay, whatever. If all it takes for Obama to be a cultural Marxist is the fuzziest of connections to Marxist thought, then I can say that Bush was a cultural Nazi with the greatest of ease. But that wouldn't be a serious critique of him.
Translation: "I'm utterly ignorant regarding much of this subject matter, but I like Obama because he's black, and it makes me feel morally superior and assuages my liberal guilt to like a black president
Um, no.and Obama wants to redistribute wealth, and it makes me feel morally superior and assuages my liberal guilt to support the redistribution of wealth, and Obama means change we can believe in, and what we need is change, because change means that we are changing, and..."
So Hank Paulson didn't actually do anything at Bush's behest. That was all an illusion 9 months or so ago.Droopy:
Bush supported a bailout, but the present form and extent (12 trillion dollars over the next decade) is the creature of Obama and the Democratic congress.LOL. Keep dancing, Droopy.
Bush, at best, is a marginal conservative, and governed at home as a Nixonian big government Republican interventionist, abet tempered by some serious tax cutting. Bush set the stage for the bailout, but the bailout itself, in extent and structure, is the baby and bathwater of the Democrats in congress and Obama.
Didn't do that.And yet again, another liberal apologist for gross government incompetence equates conservative with the Republican party, and crosses the center line into oncoming traffic.
Then why as Obama bent over backwards to avoid nationalizing the banks? Lord knows he had the political capital to do it if he really wanted to.Where do you get the idea that Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright are influencing economic policy? (Besides the acid trip, I mean.) Last time I checked, Obama's most influential economic advisers were economic centrists: Larry Summers, Tim Geithner, Austan Goolsbee, Valerie Jarrett, etc.
Where did I claim they were influencing policy in any direct way? Both Ayers and Wright have similar views on economics, however, and Wright, especially, according to Obama's own account, was an important and pivotal influence on him (a "mentor", and , after all, he attended his church for two decades).
Obama is of a very different political mentality than Jackson and Sharpton. If you knew anything about Obama, you'd know that. I hate to say it, but I really think you're lumping Obama in with Jackson and Sharpton because they're all the seed of Cain.All one needs to do, for heaven's sake, to see the influence here, is look at what Obama's been doing his entire life: "community organizing" (exactly what Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and other professional rabble rousers have been doing for decades: stirring up members of the welfare class to further government rent seeking) and politics, within which venue he has been among the most liberal members of the senate)
Omigod, he raised taxes for 2% of the population by 3%! Grab your pitchforks! Uncoil the noose!His policies thus far: expropriate entire industries, raise taxes, target the "rich" for especially severe taxation (making clear that government has some right to their fruits of their labor that they do not, as well as the recipients of the booty), seek the destruction of entire industries (coal in particular, his stated goal in one of his NPR inteviews), and involve the state in every aspect of our lives imaginable.
False. "Socialism" means that economic decisions are made by the state instead of by the workings of capital markets. Obama has very expressly disavowed this ideology in favor of a well-tempered capitalism. None of his policies outlaw capital markets, either de jure or de facto. Raising some people's taxes by a small amount is not tantamount to socialism, except to inbred intermountain hicks.Yes, Obama is a socialist, as anyone who understands what the full range and implications of that term mean.
I have a pretty good explanation for why the Obama administration didn't exert temporary control over Ford; do you?Where's the fascism, Droopy? There's an enormous difference between temporarily taking over companies and banks because the consequences of their failure are too big a risk to take, and nationalizing industries because that's how you think an economy should be structured.
I'm just about done with you, as your well past the stage of facile pop media ignorance and into the intelligence insulting area. I'm not sure how much of your own verbiage you really believe, but the present relationship with GM is, for all intents and purposes, syndicalist, with shareholders told to take whatever crumbs the state wishes to throw to them, while the bulk of the company is given to the union and the government, neither of which had any part in its creation or who know a thing about running such an enterprise, as their booty (and the union, by the way, is one of the primary causes for GMs failure, in cahoots with its management).
First sentence: mere rhetoric. Second sentence: mere rhetoric. Third sentence: mere rhetoric. Where's your actual point?Obama's a product of the University of Chicago; he understands the unattractiveness of government control in perpetuity. His actions in response to the economic crisis were intended to stem panic, and not to be so heavy-handed as to change in fundamental ways the nature of our free-market economy.
If you actually believe any of this child-like wish fantasy, you are a far sadder case than I suspected. You are, at heart, a serf, and you may have the kind of government you deserve. Unfortunately, I'm going to lose my liberty along with you.
Why do you assume that everyone that is opposed to the neocon agenda is liberal or whatever? Bush=Satan Obama=Satan
Droopy wrote:Why do you assume that everyone that is opposed to the neocon agenda is liberal or whatever? Bush=Satan Obama=Satan
Yeah, those darn Jews in the Bush administration.
Been brushing up on your Mearsheimer and Walt plumber?
Also, "utterly ignorant regarding much of this subject matter"? I studied political science and economics at one of the most prestigious universities in the country;
you get your political information from a drug-addled community college drop-out.
Then why as Obama bent over backwards to avoid nationalizing the banks? Lord knows he had the political capital to do it if he really wanted to.
Obama is of a very different political mentality than Jackson and Sharpton. If you knew anything about Obama, you'd know that. I hate to say it, but I really think you're lumping Obama in with Jackson and Sharpton because they're all the seed of Cain.
Omigod, he raised taxes for 2% of the population by 3%! Grab your pitchforks! Uncoil the noose!
Last week, President Barack Obama submitted his first budget to Capitol Hill, and it's a whammy: nearly $1 trillion in tax increases. Now that we've had some time to digest it, we've been able to break down how it raises taxes on the family energy bill, small businesses, family farms, your retirement nest egg, housing, charitable contributions, and nearly all large U.S. employers.
If you're getting the idea that this trillion dollar tax hike is on you, you'd be correct.
* Last week, President Obama sent a tax-increase budget to Capitol Hill. Even by his own (disputed) baseline, he’s raising net income taxes by about $1 trillion over the next decade
* Obama’s budget claims that it cuts taxes for families by $770 billion. Yet, the same document admits that fully $326 billion—nearly half—is in fact new spending, not tax cuts
The budget raises the top two income tax brackets from 33 percent and 35 percent to 36 percent and 39.6 percent, respectively. These are the tax rates in which $2 out of every $3 in small business profit is taxed. That includes 90 percent of the profits from partnerships and Subchapter S corporations, and 40 percent of the profits from sole proprietorships. This small business tax hike alone is $339 billion
The Obama budget imposes a “cap and trade” tax of $646 billion. Every American family will pay this tax in the form of higher gasoline, heating, and electric bills
That’s not the only way this budget raises taxes on energy-consuming American families. The deduction for U.S. energy manufacturers is repealed. “Superfund” (a slush fund tax for the EPA) makes a comeback. Energy companies will see an overnight tax hike on their inventories of oil and other fuels. Incredibly, there’s even an excise tax imposed on forty percent of the energy mined right here at home, in the Gulf of Mexico. These tax hikes add another $109 billion to American energy costs
Rather than dying a merciful death in 2010, as is scheduled under current law, the death tax continues indefinitely with a top rate of 45 percent and an exemption of $3.5 million ($7 million married couples). Small businesses and family farms will have to worry about seeing the undertaker and the IRS auditor on the same day
The Obama budget raises taxes on investors in several ways. The capital gains tax is hiked from 15 percent to 20 percent. The dividends tax is raised from 15 percent to 20 percent. Capital gains earned by investment partnership managers are taxed as high as 39.6 percent. At a time when the stock market wealth has nearly been cut in half, why is Obama proposing a $142 billion tax hike on the stock market?
U.S. companies will be forced to pay corporate taxes twice on international profits—once in the country they earn them in, and again here. This $210 billion tax hike will push jobs and capital out of our borders
By reinstating the “Pease” itemized deduction phase-out, and putting a 28 percent cap on the dollar value of itemized deductions, the Obama budget will hurt charitable contributions, raise the cost of housing, and make it even more expensive to live in high-tax states like New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Maryland, Illinois, and California. This tax hike is worth $318 billion.
* a tax on individuals failing to sign up for health care equal to the lesser of 2.5% of adjusted gross income (AGI) or the average individual premium amount. There is no income floor on this, so this would hit any uninsured American of any income
* a tax on employers for not providing a health care plan equal to 8% of payroll. This becomes 0, 4, or 6 percent of payroll as payday totals dip below $400,000 annually. This will even hit the smallest of small businesses, those making profits of less than $250,000
* codification of the "economic substance doctrine," whereby taxpayers would not be able to engage in legal tax avoidance techniques without demonstrating a bona fide business purpose. This would apply not only to large companies and wealthy individuals, but any taxpayer of any income who engages in a legal tax avoidance technique
False. "Socialism" means that economic decisions are made by the state instead of by the workings of capital markets. Obama has very expressly disavowed this ideology in favor of a well-tempered capitalism.
None of his policies outlaw capital markets, either de jure or de facto.
Raising some people's taxes by a small amount is not tantamount to socialism, except to inbred intermountain hicks.
I have a pretty good explanation for why the Obama administration didn't exert temporary control over Ford; do you?
No, you don't.
As have I.Droopy wrote:Also, "utterly ignorant regarding much of this subject matter"? I studied political science and economics at one of the most prestigious universities in the country;
Which is probably one of the best means I can think of, given the present state of higher education, and in particular, this department, of becoming far more ignorant of this subject matter than if one handn't gone to university at all and simply studied on his own.
I've done both.
What are your sources? Nothing sensible, no doubt. Have you ever even read primary sources for thinkers who aren't John Birchers?you get your political information from a drug-addled community college drop-out.
Twenty five years of reading, study, research, and several years of formal education, which, as money and time permits, is ongoing.
When did he do that without some extraordinary rationale?Then why as Obama bent over backwards to avoid nationalizing the banks? Lord knows he had the political capital to do it if he really wanted to.
The real question is why does he want to expropriate the means of production of 15% of the American economy?
What is it specifically about community organizing that necessarily makes it racial shakedownism?Obama is of a very different political mentality than Jackson and Sharpton. If you knew anything about Obama, you'd know that. I hate to say it, but I really think you're lumping Obama in with Jackson and Sharpton because they're all the seed of Cain.
Community organizing is racial shakedownism and political self aggrandizement of exactly the kind Jackson and Sharpton (among others) have been doing for decades.
Come on.
I had to read this far before I got to anything that even sort of resembles an across-the-board tax hike as promised in your introduction. And this is a pretty elastic definition of "tax", as the article's author seems to realize in his "pay this tax in the form of[...]" formulation. If you want to think of it as a tax, then it's very clearly a Pigouvian tax: i.e., a market-based approach to correct a market inefficiency. Obama has eschewed a top-down, command-and-control solution to anthropogenic climate change, and you're still finding fault with him. That's just unreasonable.Your going to have to educate yourself and do some homework if you want to discuss this with informed people JST. Everybody's taxes have already gone up.
Here's the reality from ATR:Last week, President Barack Obama submitted his first budget to Capitol Hill, and it's a whammy: nearly $1 trillion in tax increases. Now that we've had some time to digest it, we've been able to break down how it raises taxes on the family energy bill, small businesses, family farms, your retirement nest egg, housing, charitable contributions, and nearly all large U.S. employers.
If you're getting the idea that this trillion dollar tax hike is on you, you'd be correct.
* Last week, President Obama sent a tax-increase budget to Capitol Hill. Even by his own (disputed) baseline, he’s raising net income taxes by about $1 trillion over the next decade
* Obama’s budget claims that it cuts taxes for families by $770 billion. Yet, the same document admits that fully $326 billion—nearly half—is in fact new spending, not tax cuts
The budget raises the top two income tax brackets from 33 percent and 35 percent to 36 percent and 39.6 percent, respectively. These are the tax rates in which $2 out of every $3 in small business profit is taxed. That includes 90 percent of the profits from partnerships and Subchapter S corporations, and 40 percent of the profits from sole proprietorships. This small business tax hike alone is $339 billion
The Obama budget imposes a “cap and trade” tax of $646 billion. Every American family will pay this tax in the form of higher gasoline, heating, and electric bills
So now closing loopholes is the same thing as a "tax hike". Fantastic.That’s not the only way this budget raises taxes on energy-consuming American families. The deduction for U.S. energy manufacturers is repealed. “Superfund” (a slush fund tax for the EPA) makes a comeback. Energy companies will see an overnight tax hike on their inventories of oil and other fuels. Incredibly, there’s even an excise tax imposed on forty percent of the energy mined right here at home, in the Gulf of Mexico. These tax hikes add another $109 billion to American energy costs
Continued tax rates = tax hikes. Yet more brilliant logic from the illustrious Droopster.Rather than dying a merciful death in 2010, as is scheduled under current law, the death tax continues indefinitely with a top rate of 45 percent and an exemption of $3.5 million ($7 million married couples). Small businesses and family farms will have to worry about seeing the undertaker and the IRS auditor on the same day
If Obama is a "cultural Marxist" for not letting GM fail, then Bush is a "cultural Marxist" for not letting large banks fail. There's no getting around that.False. "Socialism" means that economic decisions are made by the state instead of by the workings of capital markets. Obama has very expressly disavowed this ideology in favor of a well-tempered capitalism.
Your sophistry is actually fairly well conceived and executed JSM. Nice try, but "socialism" is much more, or less, or some semblance of, what you have described, depending on the school of thought and political imperatives.
In point of fact, many economic decisions are already made by the state, and the distorting effects are manifold. The state is now making economic decisions for GM, if you have forgotten, the end of which will be the collapse of the company (what should have been allowed to happen in the first place).
Marx never used the words interchangeably. In Marxist thought, communism is supposed to be the end result of the feudalism -> capitalism -> socialism -> communism progression. Communism wasn't supposed to obtain until the "end of history" -- i.e., when mechanization had made economic scarcity a thing of the past. You're not even close to being correct here.It seems by "socialism" you may mean "communism". As both terms were traditionally used interchangably by communists (at least when not splitting doctrinal hairs), its difficult to tell.
Obama doesn't want to do this. Again: he has expressly ruled it out.Obama wants to move us toward a Fabian, or what on the Continent would be a democratic socialist form of government. This may or may not involve direct control of capital markets, but it does involve deep and pervasive regulation and manipulation of them, especially indirectly through monetary policy and taxation, as well as of the economy in general
Not really. It has more to do with the means and modes of production (i.e., capital markets vs. economy-wide government planning) than anything. Not even Marx believed in a close equality of outcome -- he even believed in personal property, except for capital.Although isolating one policy aspect of socialist thought would seem to support your argument, a deeper understanding of the concept spills your apple cart.
Socialism, at its core, is about:
1. Redistribution of wealth
See above. Also, Obama's not into equality of outcome (as was Marx, so maybe they're alike in a way that your tiny little brain hadn't thought).2. Material/economic egalitarianism, or approximating a state of equality of condition among the population.
Obama's regulatory schemes have tended towards the hands-off variety. Again, his economic policies bear the unmistakable imprint of Austan Goolsbee (Ph.D., economics, University of Chicago) and the like. Moreover, Obama has expressed no interest whatsoever in nationalizing any key sector of the economy. Even Obama's plan for the health care industry doesn't make this cut: Obama doesn't want state doctors, like those Khmer Rouge radicals in Great Britain; nor does he want to nationalize even the entire health care insurance industry, like those Stalinists in Canada.3. Deep state regulation of business and economic life, up to and including nationalization of key sectors of the economy.
Obama has never played this card. Ever. He's railed against individual rich people who have taken advantage of the middle class, sure, but he's never said anything against rich people merely for being rich. I defy you to find a quote showing otherwise.4. And always, a populist attack on wealth, achievement, and business as the enemies of "the common good" and as divisive social forces that create an "unfair" and "inequitable" society.
None of his policies outlaw capital markets, either de jure or de facto.
I never claimed he was a traditional communist.
I had to read this far before I got to anything that even sort of resembles an across-the-board tax hike as promised in your introduction. And this is a pretty elastic definition of "tax", as the article's author seems to realize in his "pay this tax in the form of[...]" formulation. If you want to think of it as a tax, then it's very clearly a Pigouvian tax: i.e., a market-based approach to correct a market inefficiency. Obama has eschewed a top-down, command-and-control solution to anthropogenic climate change, and you're still finding fault with him. That's just unreasonable.
So now closing loopholes is the same thing as a "tax hike". Fantastic.
Quote:
Rather than dying a merciful death in 2010, as is scheduled under current law, the death tax continues indefinitely with a top rate of 45 percent and an exemption of $3.5 million ($7 million married couples). Small businesses and family farms will have to worry about seeing the undertaker and the IRS auditor on the same day
Continued tax rates = tax hikes. Yet more brilliant logic from the illustrious Droopster.
If Obama is a "cultural Marxist" for not letting GM fail, then Bush is a "cultural Marxist" for not letting large banks fail. There's no getting around that.
Marx never used the words interchangeably.
In Marxist thought, communism is supposed to be the end result of the feudalism -> capitalism -> socialism -> communism progression. Communism wasn't supposed to obtain until the "end of history" -- i.e., when mechanization had made economic scarcity a thing of the past. You're not even close to being correct here.
Obama doesn't want to do this. Again: he has expressly ruled it out.
Not really. It has more to do with the means and modes of production (i.e., capital markets vs. economy-wide government planning) than anything. Not even Marx believed in a close equality of outcome -- he even believed in personal property, except for capital.
Obama's regulatory schemes have tended towards the hands-off variety. Again, his economic policies bear the unmistakable imprint of Austan Goolsbee (Ph.D., economics, University of Chicago) and the like.
Moreover, Obama has expressed no interest whatsoever in nationalizing any key sector of the economy. Even Obama's plan for the health care industry doesn't make this cut: Obama doesn't want state doctors, like those Khmer Rouge radicals in Great Britain; nor does he want to nationalize even the entire health care insurance industry, like those Stalinists in Canada.
Obama has never played this card. Ever. He's railed against individual rich people who have taken advantage of the middle class, sure, but he's never said anything against rich people merely for being rich. I defy you to find a quote showing otherwise.
"We have a [moral] deficit when CEOs are making more in ten minutes than some workers make in ten months."
"Some CEOs make more in 10 minutes than some American workers make in a year."
"Some CEOs make more in one day than their workers make in one year."
We want to take money and put it in the pockets of the middle class people…
"In an environment of scarcity, where the cost of living is rising, folks begin to get angry and bitter and look for scapegoats. Historically, instead of looking at the top 5% of this country that controls all the wealth, we turn towards each other, and the Republicans have added to the fire."
Hey Droopy, you're not a traditional Nazi.
*snap, snap* Hey, Droopy -- over here! We were talking about cap-and-trade, which can be thought of as a roundabout Pigouvian tax on carbon. Oh wait, you're against science, so you won't recognize this as worthwhile. Sorry about that.Droopy wrote:I had to read this far before I got to anything that even sort of resembles an across-the-board tax hike as promised in your introduction. And this is a pretty elastic definition of "tax", as the article's author seems to realize in his "pay this tax in the form of[...]" formulation. If you want to think of it as a tax, then it's very clearly a Pigouvian tax: i.e., a market-based approach to correct a market inefficiency. Obama has eschewed a top-down, command-and-control solution to anthropogenic climate change, and you're still finding fault with him. That's just unreasonable.
They are all taxes imposed on productive economic activity, savings, investment, and risk. All are taxes, and all will transfer productive resources away from the private sector and into the public sector. There was no market inefficiency involved in the present economic meltdown, precipitated by the housing bubble collapse, that was not a direct descendent of government intervention in those markets and corruption (utter, in the case of the CRA and the Fannie and Freddie system) of the incentives and dynamics of economic activity.
You're wrong. Not even a good Hayekian macroeconomist would say this. They'd note that late-1990s deregulation effectively and immediately increased the amount of funds available for home loans. That kind of thing inevitably leads to a market bubble, in their view. This doesn't mean that the entirety of the recession is due to the deregulation, but it does mean that deregulation is at least partly to blame.This entire recession is, to a nearly 100% degree, the construction of the Democratic party and the institutional Left within Washington. Any Republicans and private business interests involved are welcome into my bestiary, but the crux of the meltdown is serious distortion of markets and incentives by the incompetent, politically interested meddling of the state (Thomas E. Woods Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse is probably the best analysis of the present crises available at the moment)
By this logic, decreasing taxes when the economy occupies the right-hand side of the Laffer curve is a "tax hike," because it would increase tax revenues.So now closing loopholes is the same thing as a "tax hike". Fantastic.
Apparently you either do not understand the concept of "tax" and the manner in which "taxes" are raised (hidden, masked, and disguised), but your understanding of economics is as narrow and limited as your understanding of "socialism" Either that, or your just being disingenuous.
Either way, yes, quite obviously, closing loopholes, thereby exposing taxpayers to higher tax rates or liabilities, is the same thing, effectively, as raising their taxes. Inflation is a tax JSM.
Obama decreased taxes for the middle class on the whole, even if he raised some of their taxes. You seem to think that if I drop a nickel in your house when I'm robbing your safe of hundreds of dollars, that I'm giving you money, because hey, now you have a nickel!Obama's tax pledges were a body of outright lies. Tax rates and liabilities are going up across the board, from the middle class to the top few percent. Yes, they're diffused and masked through a plethora of various programs and law changes, but they are their just the same.
These are the tax rates that existed before the Bush administration -- nothing novel here. Also, only 1 out of every 300 estates would be affected by the proposal -- hardly the middle-class plunder you make it out to be.Continued tax rates = tax hikes. Yet more brilliant logic from the illustrious Droopster.
The death tax hits countless small business who file their income tax returns as individuals. As more people enter small business entrepreneurship, the tax will hit ever more individuals.
The problem with the death tax, and I don't think the author here said specifically that the rates were raised, is its fudnamental immorality and economic irrationality.
Regardless, what Obama is proposing is to "close loopholes" by altering the way in which assets are are valued. The exemption would fall to $1,000,000 and the top rate would rise to 55% from 45% . This is a massive tax rate hike as well as the exposure of many more Americans, mostly small businesspeople who do not make anything personally near the millions there estates (small business they attempt to pass on) may be worth, to the tax.
So you've forgotten all about how you used Obama's support for a bailout as evidence of his "cultural Marxism", even though you did that just a few posts up? Okay, um...If Obama is a "cultural Marxist" for not letting GM fail, then Bush is a "cultural Marxist" for not letting large banks fail. There's no getting around that.
Obama's "cultural Marxism" is evidenced in his entire ideological approach to a number of issues, economics only one of them. Cultural Marxism's salient feature, once one gets around its numerous doctrinal nuances, is the subversion of democratic capitalist society by colonizing the institutions of society and "boring from within" to destroy the status quo and reconstruct society along socialistic lines. Nowhere have I directly connected this broad ideological category with any specific policies except socialized medicine, cap and trade, and his colossal expansion of government invasiveness, control and coercion regarding economic and social life.
Both fascists and socialists like taking over industries, whether through nationalization, pervasive regulation, or effective domination through control of the boardroom. I don't think the differences are really all that salient for the Left, as the overarching principle is control and domination of economic life.
The GM bailout has much more to do with the fact that the UAW is a major Democratic sugar daddy, and this is, as with much of the bailout, simply political payback to ensconced political constituencies, but its also a naked power grab by the state into private economic matters.
Insofar as they did, they did so illegitimately. But my point still stands that you don't know what socialism actually is.Marx never used the words interchangeably.
All of his later disciples, theorists, and followers did, including the leaders and ideologues of all the major communist countries since the October revolution.
That doesn't make them the same, but whatever. This argument is pretty irrelevant to the debate at hand.In Marxist thought, communism is supposed to be the end result of the feudalism -> capitalism -> socialism -> communism progression. Communism wasn't supposed to obtain until the "end of history" -- i.e., when mechanization had made economic scarcity a thing of the past. You're not even close to being correct here.
Correct about what? What did I claim that you are criticizing? Throughout the 20th century, the term "communism" was used in tandem with terms such as "building socialism" or "socialism in one country" or "socialism with a human face", or "trasformative socialism" to mean a collectivist state governed on Marxian or Marxist/Leninist principles.
...? Looks like somebody needs to lay off the strong drinks.The reason, I think, is quite clear, and had nothing to do with the fine points of Marx's theory, but with socialism as actually practiced and what Marx's theory, when actually applied, was constrained by its own internal assumptions to produce
Obama had a perfect opportunity to nationalize banks. Why didn't he do it? My answer to this question is "Because Obama is not a socialist." What's yours?Obama doesn't want to do this. Again: he has expressly ruled it out.
Obama is a liar, and you, apparantly, are his willing sycophant. Everything he has ever said and done, thus far, indicates he wants to do precisely this. Indeed, he is in process of doing precisely this. If you do not see it, it is only because, like those three chimpanzees, you neither want to hear, see, or speak the truth. That, after all, would spoil your sense of pious liberal moral superiority and intellectual snob mongering.
No, Marx believed in the abolition of private capital. That's not the same as private property.Not really. It has more to do with the means and modes of production (i.e., capital markets vs. economy-wide government planning) than anything. Not even Marx believed in a close equality of outcome -- he even believed in personal property, except for capital.
Marx believed in the abolition of private property. His protestations that this did not mean the abolition of the private personal property of the artisan or craftsman is highly combustible sophistry, as a cursory reading of the Communist Manifesto will make clear. Marx is clear that this kind of property had already been abolished by the capitalist system (a clean pretext, or course, for the total state he envisioned, in which the labor of the proletariat belongs to the dictatorship of the proletariat - the state, the other definition of which is slavery).
Really.Marx didn't believe in equality of outcome? Really.
A classless society can still have inequality of outcome. You betray here your ignorance of Marx's conception of class, which is not as simple as income gradations.What would you call the classless society Marx envisioned.
Socialism.Even more so, what would you call the attempts to approach that ideal?
No. Unlike you, I know what I'm talking about when I speak.Obama's regulatory schemes have tended towards the hands-off variety. Again, his economic policies bear the unmistakable imprint of Austan Goolsbee (Ph.D., economics, University of Chicago) and the like.
Of course you here meant to say, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Benito Mussolini, or the socialist British Labor government of the sixties and seventies.
The GM takeover is not a regulatory scheme. I was referring to cap-and-trade and the like.Taking over ownership of an entire company, shoving its actual shareholders into a tiny corner, and giving the bulk of control of it to itself and a union is hands off?
No, Obama's plan is a meld of public and private options. Dennis Kucinich's plan is a single-payer plan.Moreover, Obama has expressed no interest whatsoever in nationalizing any key sector of the economy. Even Obama's plan for the health care industry doesn't make this cut: Obama doesn't want state doctors, like those Khmer Rouge radicals in Great Britain; nor does he want to nationalize even the entire health care insurance industry, like those Stalinists in Canada.
Uh.........Obama's plan is a single payer plan that destroys private insurance by degrees by forcing you into the government plan if you drop the private plan you have or change jobs.
False.Once you do that, you cannot enroll in a private plan again.
You're following George Will down [url=http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/06/george-f-will-admits-public-option-will.html]a dangerous road[/quote] -- you can't make this argument effectively without basically endorsing a public option.Further, the private insurance companies cannot possibly compete with a government monopoly that has unlimited funds and is not accountable to market disciplines.
Obama has never played this card. Ever. He's railed against individual rich people who have taken advantage of the middle class, sure, but he's never said anything against rich people merely for being rich. I defy you to find a quote showing otherwise.
Well, there is Obama's continual comparison of CEO pay and typical worker pay, a classic leftist class evny ploy."We have a [moral] deficit when CEOs are making more in ten minutes than some workers make in ten months.""Some CEOs make more in 10 minutes than some American workers make in a year.""Some CEOs make more in one day than their workers make in one year."
You might want to take a look at this naked populist appeal to class envy here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpmFd25t ... r_embedded
So I wasn't particularly surprised when I read the other day about a poll that shows folks are now more downbeat about their futures than they've been in nearly fifty years.
But we also know that's only half the story – because Wall Street executives have been doing just fine. Some CEOs make more in one day than their workers make in one year. There was a story about this in the paper the other day. They did a study and found that the top 50 CEOs made around $15.7 million last year – despite the fact that many of their companies have been falling behind.
This is a revealing quote from the Hyde Park Citizen of Dec. 28, 1995:Is there any context to this quote? Notice that it doesn't say that we should scapegoat the top 5% of the country."In an environment of scarcity, where the cost of living is rising, folks begin to get angry and bitter and look for scapegoats. Historically, instead of looking at the top 5% of this country that controls all the wealth, we turn towards each other, and the Republicans have added to the fire."Indeed, Obama's entire strategy toward the housing market collapse; blame "predatory lenders" (the very one's the Democrats had created through the CRA and through the Freddie and Fannie system, targeting poor and minority people who could not afford a house with sweetheart deals) and greedy rich bankers for exploiting the poor and working classes, and attacking "lobbyist driven politics", is a naked appeal, yet again, to class envy.