"If CEO pay is out of control, what should be done?” is the question of the day.
The villain is not Trump, Musk or the Republican party. It is the antiquated capitalistic system that rewards greed and treachery and now pulls the levers of power including Trump and the Republicans by immoral utilization of wealth and power. Rampant out of …
"If CEO pay is out of control, what should be done?” is the question of the day.
The villain is not Trump, Musk or the Republican party. It is the antiquated capitalistic system that rewards greed and treachery and now pulls the levers of power including Trump and the Republicans by immoral utilization of wealth and power. Rampant out of control capitalism is the demon behind the curtain that is disempowering and now even disemboweling what once was our beloved democracy. Sooner of later we must formulate and activate an economic system not built on the premise that “Greed is good.”
A wealth tax is like the preverbal finger in the dike. That we even need dikes to stay above the water is the root problem. There is no “fixing the capitalistic system.” It is a self-defeating system because it is impoverishing the consumers on which it depends. We do not fix it with a wealth tax, we look to replace it with a system that looks after the welfare of all. Most of us have children and grandchildren; we owe it to them to lay the groundwork for a system that will give them some hope for the future even if we do not live long enough to enjoy the benefits of our far-sighted plans and progress.
As bad as capitalism is, history shows that communism is much worse, because it easily allows autocrats to assume control, and socialism works only if paired with capitalism, the way it's done in the Scandinavian countries. They are not socialistic countries.
After the U.S.S.R. failed, demonstrators there showed carried signs that read, "Workers of the World, We Apologize," playing off Marx's famous last line in "Capital." As well they should!
After getting nowhere with socialism, China opened the capitalistic flood gates "with Chinese characteristics," which, as far as I can tell, includes a police state. However, capitalism is given credit for raising more people out of poverty in China more quickly than any other regime in history. That fact must be acknowledged, not sloughed off.
It seems to me that the problem, no matter the system, is human greed and selfishness, plus we humans are happy to use violence to get what we want. In short, we have met the enemy, and he is us. Even all the utopias failed. Plato admitted in his great and lengthy epic, "The Republic," that we just can't bring heaven down to Earth. Can we make small to moderate improvements? Yes, FDR, my hero, did some good things for the people, but what really got the U.S. out of our Great Depression was World War II, which, if you will, was in large part a government employment program -- everyone had a job. MMT wants to institute a federally supported jobs program. (More on that in a minute)
I also question whether modeling our economy on Scandinavian countries is wise. They are tiny homogeneous countries with highly educated populations satisfied with reasonable incomes, not needing to become multimillionaires, unlike too many Americans.
You promote SPROUT, a new idea to me. New ideas are usually worth considering, because maybe one or two of them will help, and if so, great.
My new push is for Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), which provides a more accurate description of how our federal government budget works. We had it all wrong. They aren't like a household's, a city's, a county's, or a state's, nor like a corporation's. Those entities must either balance their budgets, by law, or make a profit if they want to remain afloat. The federal government is under none of those constraints. The federal government can print money, raise taxes, and set interest rates; it is the only one that can do all that, which makes all the difference. We can spend money on any viable project; funding is never a problem, because we print our own fiat currency. For instance, our space program created many new discoveries, good-paying jobs, and, in short, paid for itself. The government's red ink just shows its amount of investment in us, the people. Without government investment, our GDP would be about a third of what it is now.
MMT is a win-win. For more on that, I recommend "The Deficit Myth" by Stephanie Kelton. It's a game-changer. Plus, in that book, she refers you to other macroeconomists who support MMT. (Bernie Sanders and AOC support MMT; unfortunately, they don't have the courage to tell America that we can fund any worthwhile project, because Americans believe that the federal budget is just like their household's, i.e., you can't spend money you don't have, and you must pay it back relatively quickly or pay exorbitant interest, and that the national debt is not worrisome until it gets much, much larger.)
"If CEO pay is out of control, what should be done?” is the question of the day.
The villain is not Trump, Musk or the Republican party. It is the antiquated capitalistic system that rewards greed and treachery and now pulls the levers of power including Trump and the Republicans by immoral utilization of wealth and power. Rampant out of control capitalism is the demon behind the curtain that is disempowering and now even disemboweling what once was our beloved democracy. Sooner of later we must formulate and activate an economic system not built on the premise that “Greed is good.”
A wealth tax is like the preverbal finger in the dike. That we even need dikes to stay above the water is the root problem. There is no “fixing the capitalistic system.” It is a self-defeating system because it is impoverishing the consumers on which it depends. We do not fix it with a wealth tax, we look to replace it with a system that looks after the welfare of all. Most of us have children and grandchildren; we owe it to them to lay the groundwork for a system that will give them some hope for the future even if we do not live long enough to enjoy the benefits of our far-sighted plans and progress.
As bad as capitalism is, history shows that communism is much worse, because it easily allows autocrats to assume control, and socialism works only if paired with capitalism, the way it's done in the Scandinavian countries. They are not socialistic countries.
After the U.S.S.R. failed, demonstrators there showed carried signs that read, "Workers of the World, We Apologize," playing off Marx's famous last line in "Capital." As well they should!
After getting nowhere with socialism, China opened the capitalistic flood gates "with Chinese characteristics," which, as far as I can tell, includes a police state. However, capitalism is given credit for raising more people out of poverty in China more quickly than any other regime in history. That fact must be acknowledged, not sloughed off.
It seems to me that the problem, no matter the system, is human greed and selfishness, plus we humans are happy to use violence to get what we want. In short, we have met the enemy, and he is us. Even all the utopias failed. Plato admitted in his great and lengthy epic, "The Republic," that we just can't bring heaven down to Earth. Can we make small to moderate improvements? Yes, FDR, my hero, did some good things for the people, but what really got the U.S. out of our Great Depression was World War II, which, if you will, was in large part a government employment program -- everyone had a job. MMT wants to institute a federally supported jobs program. (More on that in a minute)
I also question whether modeling our economy on Scandinavian countries is wise. They are tiny homogeneous countries with highly educated populations satisfied with reasonable incomes, not needing to become multimillionaires, unlike too many Americans.
You promote SPROUT, a new idea to me. New ideas are usually worth considering, because maybe one or two of them will help, and if so, great.
My new push is for Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), which provides a more accurate description of how our federal government budget works. We had it all wrong. They aren't like a household's, a city's, a county's, or a state's, nor like a corporation's. Those entities must either balance their budgets, by law, or make a profit if they want to remain afloat. The federal government is under none of those constraints. The federal government can print money, raise taxes, and set interest rates; it is the only one that can do all that, which makes all the difference. We can spend money on any viable project; funding is never a problem, because we print our own fiat currency. For instance, our space program created many new discoveries, good-paying jobs, and, in short, paid for itself. The government's red ink just shows its amount of investment in us, the people. Without government investment, our GDP would be about a third of what it is now.
MMT is a win-win. For more on that, I recommend "The Deficit Myth" by Stephanie Kelton. It's a game-changer. Plus, in that book, she refers you to other macroeconomists who support MMT. (Bernie Sanders and AOC support MMT; unfortunately, they don't have the courage to tell America that we can fund any worthwhile project, because Americans believe that the federal budget is just like their household's, i.e., you can't spend money you don't have, and you must pay it back relatively quickly or pay exorbitant interest, and that the national debt is not worrisome until it gets much, much larger.)