Long post, skip if don't like long.
jurry said:
Empty character assassination statements like "eckhart tolle is a charlatan" are not worth my time to respond to.
Ironic in that it wasn't me, but -you- who posted the following, "look at dasein's typical libertarian 'I don't give a f-ck about anyone else attitude' that has crippled and corrupted our economy over the last 30+ years, for example," with no accompanying reasoning whatsoever. So chatter on about "empty" character assassinations, hypocrite. I didn't attack any poster here directly, -you- did. I don't know you from Adam nor vice versa, but that's the exact kind of double standard entitled attitude NPDs I've come across in life have displayed over and over.
I don't go far off topic here all that much, and promise I'll relate the following to the topic eventually.
1. I don't need to be cited to some "Predator State" book written by a leftist hack son of a socialist hack father to understand the truth, that free capitalist markets have brought prosperity to all of us, not just the rich, but all, in the 20th and post 20th centuries. I'll let the cheap computer and forum I'm typing on and posting to demonstrate that QED, together with 100 other life enhancing devices and services that capitalism has provided I could look around and name in my house right now. Maybe China, Russia or some other planned, hyperbureaucratic state would have created the consumer computer, telecomm and net revolutions... maybe a monkey just flew out of my ass.
Capitalism did that, not government, not bureaucrats, not hard science or any other academics, certainly not any shill named Galbraith, capitalism and capitalists got all those innovations into common people's hands via funding, development and marketing, and did so through voluntary transactions. Finance and voluntary transactions, strong property rights favoring innovation did that. Neither you nor Galbraith, nor any of the whiny resentful left can get around that clear historical fact.
2. The only thing that has "corrupted our economy" over the last 30 years (70+ years actually) is big "progressive" government, the illicit growth of the Executive Branch to date:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_federal_agencies
to the point where by my estimate, 1:4 of the adult workforce, excluding SS, medicare and welfare, are directly dependent on government via overpaid govt jobs, academic grants, govt contracts and dependent industries. THAT'S a real problem, because a fiat economy crumbles every time. How many recent historic examples would you like?
Moreover, fiat economies, not voluntary ones, breed corruption, due to less competition. Or I suppose it was just an accident that China, despite having an immense head start in culture, innovation, standard of living, near instantly faded way behind the West over the last several hundred years because it remained imperial and hyperbureaucratic. Score... Enlightenment pragmatics, strong Lockean property rights, constitutional govt, capital markets 1, planned, hyperbureaucratic central economies 0.
3. The 2008 mortgage meltdown was caused by many factors, government meddling in mortgage markets towards illicit, expedient stimulus for 70 years chief among them (Oh, you believed all that flag waving "owning a home is the American Dream" crap? Sorry bout that). That part was not partisan, but all on biggov as a whole. Govt has no business whatsoever in mortgage markets, either as an originator, insurer, consolidator, NONE. No one dared take the crack pipe out of cracky's mouth once he was hooked, though, so we built to a multi decade, good old fashioned blowoff top that was going to happen eventually.
Some factors were partisan, Reagan and mostly Clinton relaxed the antitrust laws to the point to where banks were using their inflated stock prices to consolidate the entire consumer banking industry. Those of us in the industry at the time were like, "nah, that will never survive FTC scrutiny" but guess what? they did! The laws were there, no antitrust regulations were repealed (GLB/repeal of Glass Steagall are leftist hokum to deflect from their god big gov's role and make it look all partisan, had very little effect on the overall blowoff). So why have costly regulations when the state doesn't enforce them? The govenment -is- predatory in one way, it sells graft to the highest bidder, but that doesn't come anywhere close to indicting markets, but large, central government. Low central power, less graft to sell. Kill the brain, kill the ghoul.
Then there was CRA, "hey let's tell all these freshly minted 25 year old MBA megabankers that replaced the gray hairs out in the field that unless they start meeting arbitrary CRA quotas, we will sic the EEOC on them. If they complain, just tell them 'don't worry it's all insured by us, you go ahead and loan to that meth dealer in the slum, biggov will be there to pick up the pieces.'" Nah, that didn't have -any- impact at all on the overall degradation of credit and lending standards in these gigantic megabanks making credit decisions via committee 500 miles from the site of the actual loan. Perish the thought.
All the "it was derivatives, it was securitization, it was greedy Wall Street?" all BS to divert attention from the real culprit, government meddling in markets where central govt does not belong, illicit govt graft of relaxing preexisting antitrust law, govt forcing subprime lending down the banks throats. See a common denominator there? It begins with a "g."
4. Turning to "wealth/income disparity" and why it's a very good thing. How much do you think Jesus could have sold the secret to feeding 5000 with a basket of food for? How much could he have sold "water into wine?" Would you buy it? I sure as f would. Why? BECAUSE THOSE THINGS ARE MIRACLES THAT MAKE MY LIFE BETTER. OTOH, let's say someone tries to sell you a used condom for $500? You'll keep your money in all likelihood. And with that we explain income/wealth disparity right away. In times of MIRACLE LEVEL INNOVATION, people are willing to trade their existing property, including their work and $$ for the miracle du jour. Once they have the miracles in hand, wealth/income dist regresses to mean.
So we see two great "wealth disparity" periods in the 20-21st centuries. First was in the early 20th century... when everyone wanted things like refrigerators, movies, electricity, cheap cars, MIRACLES they never had before, and miracle makers got stinking robber baron wealthy. Perhaps you'd prefer a more equitable wealth distribution then and no cars, electricity, refrigerators, movies, etc.? Perhaps you'd prefer giving up all those things in exchange for not having a Depression? Fine. NOT ME! I'll keep my car, phone, electric light, yaddayadda. As those technologies matured and had fully proliferated TO THE COMMON MAN, and as all those mean ole robber barons were stepping all over themselves to GIVE MONEY AWAY, doing things like building libraries in thousands of towns across the country, wealth disparity trended back down.
Fast forward to the computer/telecomm/net boom. Once again, we have cheap miracles proliferating rapidly due to capitalist venture finance and marketing, once again we have wealth disparity due to voluntary market transactions making innovators and miracle creators stinking, filthy rich. GOOD! Let them keep innovating, let them keep using their money to create more miracles. What does government do with our money? Solyndra and farces like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxU6n4pAnrU
I don't care if the guy who made my cellphone go from 3 pounds and $500 a month in the 80s to 3 ounces and $50 a month today builds a pyramid of gold encrusted toilet seats, don't care if he buys a mountain of crack with it, don't care if his dogs eat better than I do... just keep making my cellphone better and keep his wealth from getting pissed down those government ratholes.
Just like the wealth disparity accompanying the tech boom of the early 20th century normalized over time, so shall the computer/telecomm disparity. I'm not telling anyone anything they don't already know though. Only a retarded leftist low info voter with 0 private sector experience would believe otherwise. "Damn that nefarious Bill Gates has 60 billion! WEALTH DISPARITY! WEALTH DISPARITY!" as the dude is giving it away literally as fast as he can. It comes down to whether you want a man like Gates deciding what charity to give to, or schmoes like IRS agents making Star Trek vids? No reasonable adult believes Gates is burying the stuff in his backyard. Only Occupy WSer types and other ignorant ****s believe such.
5. Now, around back to the thread topic. We all know the above pretty instinctively. For any American or other industrialized Westerner to sit and claim that there are some truly deprived poor here is asinine. The facts of "income disparity" are clear in obvious historical context. To argue against the above longwinded screed of mine reflects either 1. callous, intentional political propagandizing, 2. stupidity and utter disregard for facts clear to even schoolchildren, 3. an NPD "gimmegimme Imaspecialsnowflake" frame of mind.
So, jurry, in your case, which is it?
