Reply #72: What I find so disturbing is the intellectual dishonesty around here. [View All]

[CaptJasHook]

All these DU voices crying for health care reform, education reform, equality and justice... pretending that those things are free.... pretending that a country of 300,000,000 people can somehow achieve prosperity without the theft we call Wall Street.

Wall Street will be reformed, for now. A generation from now (when all of this becomes badly written, seldom taught, boring history lessons passed over in High School) the wolves will be back. in the meantime, I will support this president's attempts to implement systems of reform that will not easily be changed (ie. health care, education and green energy). These reforms are possible because of money that Wall Street has generated/stolen, to pretend otherwise is silly. How do you think Europe was able to implement socialism? They have been sitting on a shitload of wealth gained/stolen during a couple of centuries of colonialism.

Krugman is cherry-picking his facts about the 50s and 60s as well. He forgets to mention that most of the world was recovering from a couple of world wars, fought on their own soil. Their industry centers were bombed to hell, ours were intact. Banking as part of GDP was so low because everything else was so high. As other countries rebuilt their industries, competition became fiercer for market share. Americas predominance in the world began to shrink (ie. the late 70s), Wall Street began to panic, looking for ways to make money legally or illegally. Thus, they elected morally bankrupt Reagan/Bush and goons to deregulate (ie. break the laws, both morale and codified). And here we are.

Commerce for profit is graft. But the reality is that is why we have the privilege of entering into discussions about health care reform. Try having that level of conversation in Nigeria, Brazil or even China.