It is kind of pointless to argue about the value of spending in Iraq since that is money already spent. Biden just said he would not rule out a preemptive strike against Iran at some meeting in Germany, while Iran is still trying to say that the holocaust didn't happen (apparently just saying that is a crime in Germany). Now that could get expensive, not to mention surge in Afghanistan.
This is not about city vs, rural but a philosophical difference about the purpose and responsibility of government. I don't think it is the job of government to bail out weak businesses (automakers), provide nationalized healthcare, tell executives how much they can earn, Corporate jets they can buy, or take wealth from those who earned it to redistribute to those who don't.
Newt Gingrich said it well with "private companies can't have capitalism on the way up, and socialism on the way down" They need to prosper and fail by the same rules. This is a variant on the more conspiratorial sounding "privatize profit and publicize loss". We needed to intervene in the banking system since failure there would cause a world wide depression. How we "save" the banking system is conflicted with the need to not cause too much collateral damage.
I have friends personally suffering in the demise of old detroit, but the solution is not support for stronger unions and status quo bailouts. there is a reason GM is profitable in other nations and not here. Don't ignore the obvious.
Nationalized healthcare.. Oh boy, lets turn health care over to a post office mentality. Way to make a flawed system worse. If anything government needs to dismantle the dysfunctional medical insurance cartel, that negotiates off sheet price discounts for medical services forcing individuals to pay several times more for identical services if not playing by their game rules. All the while these medical insurance firms isolate the medical consumer from their actual treatment cost/benefit decisions so free market forces have no sway on behavior. This will just get worse, under government supervision. Price controls on drugs will all but stop research into new drugs. I suspect this slowing has already begun due to long lead time for new drug discovery and the writing on the wall for future changes.
Micromanaging business by government is another recipe for failure. Does any small business owner reading this, want the government to second guess their decisions? I didn't think so.. Congress whines about some business retreat, as they have their own at taxpayers expense. The epitome of hypocrisy. When Obama sells air force one, I'll accept his criticism of corporate use of private aircraft to maximize work output from top management.
Regarding capitalism vs. socialism, I don't interpret the last election as some national sentiment shift toward socialism. I read it as an emotional rejection of the last administration so strong that the election campaign was positioned against the man not even running. I figure the american people will wake up soon enough from this fantasy being sold them that government is somehow the answer, but there can be a great deal of damage done between now and the mid term elections.
I agree that we need appropriate regulation, personal, and corporate responsibility. I don't feel the financial crisis was a failure of regulation as much as the unintended consequence of government meddling into free markets, and a lot of bad judgement, personal and corporate. As I've theorized before, the housing bubble was started by easy money generated by the government trying to soften the pain from the dot com collapse. Government compounded this using F & F and heavy handed oversight to push lending to people who couldn't afford to borrow, and the final factor that pushed this over the cliff, was everybody willing to look the other way as this derivative fueled game of musical chairs appeared to make everybody wealthy... everybody up and down the food chain, until that music stopped.
As the investigation into the failures of the SEC to catch even $50B ponzi schemes (after they were warned multiple times), I am not optimistic that government regulators will save any day. It seems fraud and illegal behavior increases during economic expansions, and gets revealed by the low water of economic contractions. If the government were able to prevent business cycles they would also prevent this cleansing process. I favor tolerating sharp but short economic contractions, over all this intervention, that if anything will buy cover for any frauds not yet discovered and support unproductive dead wood.
For any who think I sound like an anarchist, or abortion clinic bomber, back at you... I am resigned that this bill will pass in some fashion so that damage is done... I just don't think 2010 can come soon enough. This is worse than I thought it would be. And I'm generally optimistic.
JR
This is not about city vs, rural but a philosophical difference about the purpose and responsibility of government. I don't think it is the job of government to bail out weak businesses (automakers), provide nationalized healthcare, tell executives how much they can earn, Corporate jets they can buy, or take wealth from those who earned it to redistribute to those who don't.
Newt Gingrich said it well with "private companies can't have capitalism on the way up, and socialism on the way down" They need to prosper and fail by the same rules. This is a variant on the more conspiratorial sounding "privatize profit and publicize loss". We needed to intervene in the banking system since failure there would cause a world wide depression. How we "save" the banking system is conflicted with the need to not cause too much collateral damage.
I have friends personally suffering in the demise of old detroit, but the solution is not support for stronger unions and status quo bailouts. there is a reason GM is profitable in other nations and not here. Don't ignore the obvious.
Nationalized healthcare.. Oh boy, lets turn health care over to a post office mentality. Way to make a flawed system worse. If anything government needs to dismantle the dysfunctional medical insurance cartel, that negotiates off sheet price discounts for medical services forcing individuals to pay several times more for identical services if not playing by their game rules. All the while these medical insurance firms isolate the medical consumer from their actual treatment cost/benefit decisions so free market forces have no sway on behavior. This will just get worse, under government supervision. Price controls on drugs will all but stop research into new drugs. I suspect this slowing has already begun due to long lead time for new drug discovery and the writing on the wall for future changes.
Micromanaging business by government is another recipe for failure. Does any small business owner reading this, want the government to second guess their decisions? I didn't think so.. Congress whines about some business retreat, as they have their own at taxpayers expense. The epitome of hypocrisy. When Obama sells air force one, I'll accept his criticism of corporate use of private aircraft to maximize work output from top management.
Regarding capitalism vs. socialism, I don't interpret the last election as some national sentiment shift toward socialism. I read it as an emotional rejection of the last administration so strong that the election campaign was positioned against the man not even running. I figure the american people will wake up soon enough from this fantasy being sold them that government is somehow the answer, but there can be a great deal of damage done between now and the mid term elections.
I agree that we need appropriate regulation, personal, and corporate responsibility. I don't feel the financial crisis was a failure of regulation as much as the unintended consequence of government meddling into free markets, and a lot of bad judgement, personal and corporate. As I've theorized before, the housing bubble was started by easy money generated by the government trying to soften the pain from the dot com collapse. Government compounded this using F & F and heavy handed oversight to push lending to people who couldn't afford to borrow, and the final factor that pushed this over the cliff, was everybody willing to look the other way as this derivative fueled game of musical chairs appeared to make everybody wealthy... everybody up and down the food chain, until that music stopped.
As the investigation into the failures of the SEC to catch even $50B ponzi schemes (after they were warned multiple times), I am not optimistic that government regulators will save any day. It seems fraud and illegal behavior increases during economic expansions, and gets revealed by the low water of economic contractions. If the government were able to prevent business cycles they would also prevent this cleansing process. I favor tolerating sharp but short economic contractions, over all this intervention, that if anything will buy cover for any frauds not yet discovered and support unproductive dead wood.
For any who think I sound like an anarchist, or abortion clinic bomber, back at you... I am resigned that this bill will pass in some fashion so that damage is done... I just don't think 2010 can come soon enough. This is worse than I thought it would be. And I'm generally optimistic.
JR