Income Inequality is Good for the Economy

He's right, but not in the way he means.

When more and more people become disenfranchised with a system they perceive that keeps them down and rewards a very small few, it "incentivizes" them to social unrest, in extreme cases, revolution, but more likely, to make a political change that puts the screws to the gilded ones.

It's happened several times in history and it will happen again.

 

Heads on pikes.

It's the only way.

 

If Obama paid actors to go out in public and spew this stuff, people would scream it was a ridiculous failed attempt at satire.



What next, the righties start arguing for the repeal of women's suffrage and the reinstitution of slavery? "I remember a simpler America...."

 

1913 . . . Scrotum's dream . . .

And the commencement of Wilson's two terms. Never had much use for the guy, historically . . . a fatally-flawed personality, and unable to stand up to the stress . . . though "Disaster Just Ahead . . .
LOOK OUT!" Beck's off-the-wall read of the guy suggests WW wasn't wrong about EVERYTHING.

 

Conard concedes that the banks made some mistakes, but the important thing now, he says, is to provide them even stronger government support. He advocates creating a new government program that guarantees to bail out the banks if they ever face another run. As for exotic derivatives, Conard doesn’t see a problem. He argues that collateralized-debt obligations, credit-default swaps, mortgage-backed securities and other (now deemed toxic) financial products were fundamentally sound. They were new tools that served a market need for the world’s most sophisticated investors, who bought them in droves. And they didn’t cause the panic anyway, he says; the withdrawals did.

I thought cocaine, not peyote, was the drug of choice on Wall Street.

 

An astonishing toolbox.

Regulation may not be ideal, but NO regulation is 1000X times worse.

Foxes, henhouses, etc.

It's in the genes.

 

Do you really disagree with this? Most rich folks don't have their money stuffed in a mattress. It's invested. If you remember It's a Wonderful Life, that means their money is helping other people build businesses.

Terrible example. Look into what happened when a luxury tax was applied to "yachts", and tell me who got hurt by it. I'll give you a hint, it wasn't the rich guys.

People always mention Gates & Jobs as examples of guys who "earned" their money, and thus no one resents their wealth. It doesn't matter that Gates was a monopolist, who got higher prices for his products as a result, and put other entrepreneurs out of business.

It doesn't matter that Jobs "exploits" workers in China, and avoids taxes.

They're mentioned because they produced products we all use, and we think made our lives "better".

But, if you're a store manager at a Staples, or a Home Depot, or you sell a product through one of those stores, or are a developer who builds these stores, then you might think a guy named Mitt Romney, who helped get these companies started is a pretty good guy.

 

Yes I disagree with that. You'll keep harping on the "trickle down" effect and I'll keep citing the tremendous tax breaks made in the 1986 Tax Code Revisions and we'll evaluate the effects on society and distribution of wealth/income in the US.

Invested money? Yes its all being used to the benefit of the lower 99%.

Your descriptions work in the mid term exams but not in the real world. See who espouse the benefits of the superrich happily cite the theoretical models but disparage the economic studies that show otherwise.

 

The most surprising thing about this article was that it was published in the NYTimes. It's barely high school quality and reads like a press release for the guy's book

All the sophistication of It's a Wonderful Life with a side order of Randian nonsense.

 

"If being economically raped is inevitable, you should just lay back and enjoy it."

 

As I've said before, I eagerly look forward to the invention of time travel, for no other reason than somebody can hop in the DeLorean and go pump a few bullets in Ayn Rand's head when she's about 22.

 

People get enough vanilla lattes in them and radical change is inevitable.