Americans oppose raising debt ceiling

So, a complete restructuring of how our economy fundamentally works will fix everything?

Might be the only thing.

Edit @Fighteer Yeah, it's a problem with distribution, not with lack of capital.

To tie the two things together...TARP sucked, right? So what you do, is you let the banks stand or fall as they may. And in their place, you open up a temporary public bank to replace/restore the lines of credit that are lost when the banks fall (this is a large part of the reason why they were propped up in the first place.) and provide other financial services.

But this was never really on the table because too many people would have a tantrum about creeping "socialism". But it's probably what was needed to happen.

Too much ideology, not enough thinking if you ask me.

edited 24th May '11 10:04:23 PM by Karmakin

Democracy is the process in which we determine the government that we deserve

The problem is people claiming thinking is ideology, and ideology is thinking.

Exactly, for the top 5, 1, & 0.1 percent respectively, yes.

Eric,

See? Evenly distributed :D

What happened to the 40% o-o?

The bottom 95% has it.

Or as some call them, the "peons"

Someone needs to make a nifty chart for this statistic. It wouldn't be hard!

The peons don't actually have that much. Within the bottom 95%, the bottom 50% have less than 3%.

Eric,

So basically, 45% of the net families of the country hold 37% of the wealth. The one statistic in all of this that ISN'T appalling.

Taxed income, not wealth, nor gross income (think of the difference between a paycheck, a bank balance, and a tax filing.) Speaking of charts, here's one that shows both income and taxation. Note that both this and the prior link we've been arguing over are both based entirely on IRS income declarations, and do not take into account non-federal taxes nor undeclared income.

Eric,

I must admit I am rather enjoying the fact that Tom actually doesn't respond to any of these (presumably valid) criticism and instead just tries to laugh it off.

> Someone needs to make a nifty chart for this statistic

http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-in-america-chart-graph

First Chart and Third Chart from the top, although using a bit different mathematic.

^^ How do you argue these things? I can pull up all the statistics in the universe supporting me and I'll still be dismissed outright.

My statistics and my argument are slightly different things. My statistics basically just indicate that “the wealthy pay all but a tiny fraction of income tax,” my argument, insofar as this particular exchange goes, boils down to “nobody other than the wealthy should pay income tax, since it harms them a great deal yet contributes little to federal revenue.”

Eric,

Thats because quite a lot of your stats seem to come from Apparently biased sources. Can you provide any concrete proof from either history or economic journals that can support the majority of your views?

The fact remains that a great deal of these sources may indeed be biased but a larger percentage of those that are not support their positions. Yours remain unsupported by people who don't have an active stake in them.

For example, Tom, can you cite any sources validating "trickle down theory" as anything other than a way of making rich people richer under the guise of it being good for the economy? Was the country in dire economic straits prior to Reagan cutting taxes on the rich?

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

8-11%+ inflation rates on top of 8%+ unemployment rates were a constant from 1977 until the recession of 1983 (which was expected, which is why it lasted so short). Stagflation, you should learn what it is. Stagflation in the 1970s was a direct result of overspending and adherence to Keynesian theory, sure the 1960s were awesome economically speaking, but in the 1970s the bill came due and the Keynesian model fell apart at the seams. Stagflation today is a very real danger, one that at the public perception level is already here.

I don't know why they like to defend the rich so much anyway. They can take care of themselves.

Major Tom: Last time I checked, the Keynesian model has never been used in USA.
You are looking for the Austrian school, or rather "throw enough cash at the marked until it works again".

A guy called dvorak is tired. Tired of humanity not wanting to change to improve itself. Quite the sad tale.

Way to go on revisionist history there, Tom. As if Keynesians had anything to do with the time period you're talking about.

You want a system falling apart, look at the notion of "Tax breaks for the richest Americans = Prosperity!"

USA isn't the only country in the world. Everyone was suffering the same conditions and everybody solved it doing something totally different from one another. Canada, for instance, took more Keynesian approach (and also a more socialist approach) than Reagan. The country weathered through just as well.

Japan is the only nation that really never recovered from the economic problems of the 80s as I recall. I do seem to recall they tried to do some very heavy control economy stuff subsidizing steel or something and it failed miserably, but I don't remember the details.

I thought their real problem was a refusal by the banking industry to admit that they are bust.

edited 25th May '11 12:46:08 PM by storyyeller

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