Reply #14: The Stock Market is a very democratic institution [View All]

[Citizen Number 9]

It makes the ability to invest in companies available to everybody, not just those with wealth or privilege. The privileges of investing are open to everyone with even a few dollars. In the past, these kinds of opportunities were withheld from common folk and we didn't like that, now we don't like that they are available?

We have no money because we didn't save any. Plain and simple. People wanted to spend everything they had....and everything they hadn't yet earned. That is no one's fault but our own and nearly everybody participated in it. A number of rational voices spent the last 10 or 15 years warning that we couldn't keep spending the way that we were. They warned that it just wasn't sustainable. You could see it in the prices people were paying for homes....much of it with "cheap" credit. That was wrong-headed and now, the only way is to work ourselves out of it. If we had the money, we could just write a check and chalk it up to a good lesson, but we don't have the money. We will actually have to do the hard labor that many people spent the last 10 years avoiding. Of course, people will have to accept less, materially, as well.

Please support your contention that we have no industry. Facts, please. Last time I checked, about 20-25% of the GDP was from industry. Back at the Depression, it was only like 40%. That's not as big a difference as you have been led to believe. You might also spend some time explaining why industry is so preferable to other income sources. Our country is rich in assets, not the least of which are it's people, infrastructure and institutions.

There are already substantial government backed assurances in place for the poor and the unemployed; have been for a long time, so I don't know what you are talking about there.