We don't talk enough about concentration of wealth.

[Cary]

The top 1% have 40% of the wealth. I could cite all kinds of other numbers to demonstrate the incredible and shameful state of affairs in terms of concentration of wealth. The middle class is being systematically destroyed by the top 1% for no real reason.

This is the source of all of our economic problems. If people don't have money to spend, they don't spend it and we don't have demand. If we don't have a strong demand companies don't hire.

I almost destroyed my TV last night when I surfed past CNBC and caught Larry Kudlow, an amazingly stupid person, claiming that debt is the problem and that the current state of affairs is proof that debt is the problem and Keynes sucks and you can't "throw money" and blah blah. This man is an idiot and he found some sycophant to agree with him.

The real interest rate is below zero, you dumb POS Kudlow. WE SHOULD BE BORROWING MORE MONEY AND YOU WOULD KNOW THAT IF ONLY YOU HADN'T BEEN DROPPED ON YOUR HEAD.

Sorry. Rank stupidity like Larry Kudlow pisses me off. Anyway this isn't brain surgery. You fix these problems by imposing progressive taxation and investing in things like education and infrastructure, and you have more regulation not less. I could present a lot of math to prove this. All of the empirical evidence demonstrates the truth.

"Conservative" disinformation got us into this problem and it sure as isn't going to get us out of it. Larry Kudlow and his ilk would only make this worse.

[dkf]

1. Why is Europe in such a sad state then?

Are their taxes not progressive enough?

[Cary]

2. Your first post at DU, dkf?

You're not hiding your agenda very well.

Which country or countries in Europe are you referring to? Specify the exact nature of what you call their "sad state." Then tell me how progressive their tax is or isn't.

Then tell me what the hell this has to do with concentration of wealth.

Or maybe you can just link to the talking point your trying to barf back here?

[LiberalLoner]

4. This poster (dkf) is a right-winger who is allowed to stay here because of politeness of

posts. But the views are all very much right-wing. (Just to save you aggravation. The ignore feature is sometimes good in cases like these...)

[Cary]

6. I picked dkf out right away.

Thanks for the advice but no need for me to ignore. I have seen these tactics many times. You might notice what I tried to do. Instead of falling into the trap of trying to answer a hot general mess I redirected this person with several questions designed to drill down to the real issues that he or she glosses over, and then correctly identified the attempt to hijack the real issue.

I'm not surprised that I have no response and I don't expect one.

How do you think that worked out?

[Cary]

7. Oh, and now I see it isn't dkf's first post.

For some reason when I asked the first question I couldn't see the post count. I just figured he or she was new.

I don't mind this person at all. If polite, that's great. Now if only he or she can ditch the talking point thing....

[dtom67]

20. Caveat Orator....

Careful! I just got dinged a few hours ago for just for suggesting that a post berating liberals may have written by a right wing shill.

[dfgrbac]

3. It's not progressive taxes stopping their economies.

It is the lack of progressive spending, in other words austerity.

Our capitalist multinational corporations have pretty much taken control of world economics, or at least they think they have. Through the IMF, WTO, etc., they are trying to force countries to do their bidding. If the people wake up enough, this will stop. It seems the citizens of France have figured this out. Hopefully, more will do so soon.

[Cary]

8. Yes, but it's the concentration of wealth that leads to the need for progressive spending

I'm not sure what the numbers are in Europe but here in the U.S. I've seen figures that show that if we had the same distribution of earnings that we had before Reagan (whom I blame for most of this) then the average earning would be about $30,000 more a year. If the average person were earning $30,000 a year we would not be experiencing our housing crisis and I'm not sure how much that would add to GDP. And people would be consuming.

The response I've gotten to that elsewhere is that it would cause inflation. Well, probably but so what? We can produce a lot more than we produce right now and the only reason we're not producing it is because we're in the worst of all worlds, which is deflation. And when you're in this, the worst of all worlds, it is the government that has to step in to bridge the gap until the business cycle kicks into a sustainable recovery.

This is economics 101 and I'm just appalled at the general level of economic literacy, or lack thereof, amongst "conservatives".

[dionysus]

5. don't you have a corporation or bank you should be off somewhere defending? oh wait...

you do that here...

[Egalitarian Thug]

9. Agreed, but they are downsizing the middle class for several reasons.

The goal has always been to replace the American market, where they have been beaten back multiple times previously, with more cooperative markets. America itself is, or was, a threat to their dominance. Imposing their feudal scheme works much better in cultures with subservience and tolerance for military tyranny already built in. India and China meet their criteria perfectly.

[Cary]

10. I don't know.

I mean I understand where you're coming from but it strikes me as a bit of a conspiracy theory. I'm thinking it's being done more out of greed and this pernicious Ayn Rand thought virus that seems to displace any semblance of real reason that may otherwise exist in "conservatives".

[Egalitarian Thug]

16. Two things; it is not theory, members of this class have stated this for decades. They attempted a

military coup, How much more blatant could they be?

It's not a conspiracy as much as the confluence of goals among competitors.

When you look at this from a sufficiently long historical perspective, there is no mystery or question. This is nothing new, it's the same war we've fought since the 16th century.

[Cary]

17. Didn't we have this discussion before?

I remember discussing something similar when I first returned.

You're right I think, but it is new because the times are very different. The world is smaller, from our technological perspective. We have advanced a long way and are advancing at an ever faster rate. We don't have a great plague at the moment. We also have a modern economy which really isn't going to support a feudal system because serfs don't consume.

The people who are really and truly in trouble are the unskilled.

We are under great pressure because of globalization and we are in the midst of a major transition that we won't fully understand for quite some time.

So I really don't know ET but I do thank you for your thoughts.

[Egalitarian Thug]

22. You're certainly welcome, and I thank you for the conversation and your thoughts as well.

[Cary]

11. At the end of the day they really ought to be in favor of flatter income distribution.

Who would gain more than they would gain from a strong, healthy American consumer?

[Egalitarian Thug]

12. Money is not the point. All of them have more than they will ever need, this is about power and the

greatest threat to that power is The United States.

It's not our nation's relative wealth, it's the principles this national was founded on. It is the idea, and remember that we were the very first instance of a subservient colony successfully breaking away from its Sovereign in the history of the world, that power flows from the bottom up. That the government's right to govern comes, not from God or might of arms, but from the consent of the governed, a consent that by its very nature can be withdrawn.

This is what and why they fight.

[Cary]

14. Yes I definitely see a lot of that.

I do believe they are fascists and fascism at the end of the day is a pure power grab. There's no doubt in my mind about that. But in terms of many of these fascists it is an oddly American form of fascism that interjects a truly fucked up idea of "liberty".

What bothers me about your diagnosis is that it's too rational and too functional. I don't think "conservatives" are as cognizant as that. They are beyond the looking glass and in order to really get into their heads you have to venture there yourself. They actually think they speak for the Founding Fathers, for example. They are true believers. They also make the egregious error of conflating lassaize faire capitalism with freedom.

But mostly if you really boil them down to their essence I think what you're left with is this amorphous hatred of something they refer to as "Liberal". The definition of "Liberal" varies but they know it when they see it. If you were able to remove that underlying seething you would unravel all of their commonality.

And why do they fight? They fight because they're fascists.

[Egalitarian Thug]

21. Absolutely agreed. I think we're talking about two different groups. The 'conservatives' you speak

of are the useful idiots. The angry and stupid simply looking for someone/thing to blame for things that have happened or been done to them by someone/thing they can't identify, don't understand, or can't fight against, so they follow generic authority. The authority of a church, a political party, a charismatic conman, a celebrity, whoever presents themselves as a leader in a way that fits their world view.

The others that I'm talking about are the architects. Those born into and educated to be the ruling class. This is how it has been and how it remains.

[leftstreet]

13. Why do they need 'American' consumers?

Population of the US = 350+ million
The rest of the world = 6+ billion

[Cary]

15. True and they may be looking at those potential markets.

But will the Chinese and the Indians consume?

[leftstreet]

18. Will they consume? Ask McDonalds. Or Burger King. Taco Bell.

They're all in the BRIC countries and expanding like crazy

[Cary]

19. I would need more data.

I wouldn't put your theory past them though.