Romney’s World

[TomServo92]

Great, now that we've finally gotten that out the way, what's the next semantical issue we can beat to death?

 

I hope it isn't Chick-Fil-A! I'm sick to death of hearing about that.

[FordBuyer]

They have never used like the Republicans are using it now. I believe they have filibustered 16 job bills so far. This is what Bitch McConnell meant when he said his top priority was to make President Obama a 1 term president. The Republicans want to make sure that the economy stays in the shitter so they can regain power, pretty pathetic.

 

That's the big issue now..PARTISANSHIP at the expense of really improving economy. If Romney should win which would be huge upset IMO as he would have to carry most of the swing states, then the Demos will block every initiative put forth by Romney to make him look bad also. The negative beat then continues. No way is Romney's coat tails long enough to carry majority in Senate too. So Demo Senate will block every Repub bill that Romney wants as revenge for four years of attacking Obama in every front. Pay back is a bitch. So result is bigger deficit, continued high unemployment, and probably another Romney war somewhere. I notice Romney has detailed plan to improve economy, but no specifics about improving housing industry. Without that, there will no improvement in economy as auto industry has already come back along with durable industry in general. So housing is missing in action and biggest piece of puzzle that Romney ignores in his plan.

[FordBuyer]

I hope it isn't Chick-Fil-A! I'm sick to death of hearing about that.

 

God, it's annoying how the media fixates on meaningless issues compared to big picture. That story isn't worth 5th page in D Section.

[grbeck]

Americans have ruined their own domestic economy by shopping at WalMart too.

 

So, paying more for a smaller car will make us richer? I don't think so. It will make a few UAW workers richer, but that's about it. Then compare their number to the 14 million or so Americans who will pay higher prices for ALL new cars.

 

And do I have to repeat the figures from my earlier post regarding what people were paying for cars and food in 1960 and today? We've ruined our economy by paying less for superior products and more variety? I doubt that most people share that view.

 

Oh but there is a 2012 Crosley - only now it's called "Cruze" (they just switched a few letters).

 

The 2012 Cruze is not the equivalent of the old Crosley. It is the equivalent of the Corvair/Chevy II/Falcon/Valiant.

 

The 2012 equivalent of the Crosley is the Sonic/Fiesta/Fit/Yaris.

 

Today's models line up like this against the domestic offerings of the 1950s and 1960s:

 

Sonic/Fiesta/Fit/Yaris: There was no domestic equivalent after Crosley died in 1952.

 

Cruze/Focus/Civic/Corolla/Dart: Corvair/Chevy II/Falcon/Valiant/Lancer/post-1962 Dart/American.

 

Malibu/Fusion/Accord/Camry: Malibu/Fairlane/Satellite/Coronet/Classic/Rebel.

 

Impala (2014)/Taurus/Avalon: Impala/Galaxie/Fury/Polara/Ambassador.

 

No car the size and price of the Sonic had been produced in this country since production of the Crosely ended in 1952. The Cruze is most certainly not the equivalent of the old Crosley.

 

If we're all about the open spaces, then why are small cars grabbing a record share of what remains of the market all of a sudden?

 

Because gas prices hit an inflation-adjusted peak a few years ago, and are still high in historical terms (I seem to recall that several environmentalists and our president thought that we weren't paying enough for gas anyway). Also note that GM and Ford, thanks to productivity improvements and work-rule changes in the UAW contract, have been able to pack more features, performance and equipment in the Cruze and Focus.

 

Perhaps you haven't driven either one. I have driven both the new Cruze and Focus. They aren't penalty-box strippers. The Cruze and Focus are quieter, smoother and more comfortable than the old Panther-platform cars or even an early 2000s Taurus, Impala or Accord. If you really believe that they are a step-down from what the average American has been driving, your opinion is outdated, at best. The days of penalty-box compacts are long gone...

 

We've "downsized" our car-buying habits before. Compacts, ponycars and intermediates gained a foothold in the 1960s, when the economy boomed. Full-size car sales began sliding after 1965, even as the total market grew. The simple fact is that more people today are buying vehicles that really fit their needs. Most people don't need two pick-ups or two SUVs. We certainly don't. If the economic crisis forces people to take stock of what they can afford, and buy a Cruze instead of a Tahoe...good. I'm not seeing how this is bad. If nothing else, we won't have to listen to people wail about higher gas prices while commuting solo in a Tahoe or Expedition.

 

Incidentally, a fair amount of our trade deficit consists of imported oil...if more people drive Cruzes instead of Tahoes, it seems to me that we will ultimately be importing less of it. Which should reduce the trade deficit. So this should make you happy.

 

(I'll answer: because we're on a small car budget now. We're no longer prosperous. 30 years of making nothing but speculative bubbles, of continually running a trade deficit, and of forcing our workforce to compete with slave-wages in third world countries, and with mechanized substitutes here at home, have collapsed the American consumer base down to a dark, miserable little black hole that has sucked the entire global economy in with it.)

 

Again, as I've shown before, the percentage of our gross domestic product that is claimed by manufacturing has remained unchanged for decades. The article in The Atlantic I posted earlier this year in another thread showed that our manufacturing output has INCREASED by 30 percent since 2000 (manufacturing employment has declined by the same amount, thanks to productivity improvements, not outsourcing). Your contention that we no longer make anything is incorrect. Repeating it on various threads will not make it true.

 

And we ran a trade surplus during the 1930s. I doubt that most people recall those days as "good times" from an economic standpoint. My father, who actually lived through them, does not.

Edited August 5, 2012 by grbeck

[Langston Hughes]

I hope it isn't Chick-Fil-A! I'm sick to death of hearing about that.

 

Amen! What started out funny with a few pokes at the president of the company turned into a massive protest vs. counter protest that is just so draining to even think about.

[Edstock]

Mitt's European Tour:

 

[Versa-Tech]

 

 

They did not have the same money. Romney lobbied Congress for the cash after he was appointed to head the Olympics.

Assuming this is true, good point... BUT...

 

Why didn't the original organizers lobby for the same money, if the lack of such funds were the only impedence? Could it be that congress would not have approved such funds to people who had not proven their competence?

[Versa-Tech]

Error...

Edited August 4, 2012 by Versa-Tech

[fmccap]

[retro-man]

Again, as I've shown before, the percentage of our gross domestic product that is claimed by manufacturing has remained unchanged for decades. The article in The Atlantic I posted earlier this year in another thread showed that our manufacturing output has INCREASED by 30 percent since 2000 (manufacturing employment has declined by the same amount, thanks to productivity improvements, not outsourcing). Your contention that we no longer make anything is incorrect. Repeating it on various threads will not make it true.

May or may not be true - but with 12,800,000 people out of work (LINK) and wealth continuing to flow to the top it hardly matters. Jobs are what matter - listen to Romney - not the volume or value of manufacturing. Unless and until there is some way to properly distribute the gains from that value. Suggesting the 55 year old laid off punch press operator get off his ass and become a video game designer (or a greeter at WalMart) is not the answer. Our economic system (and by extension our government) have failed huge numbers of the people it exists for - and all the airbags and mp3 jacks in the world aren't going to change that. A sane and just economic policy might.

[Langston Hughes]

 

Awesome...it goes along with this one...which although fake is funny, because hse is supporting him.

[TomServo92]

Awesome...it goes along with this one...which although fake is funny, because hse is supporting him.

 

My "lower brain" (if you know what I mean) is yelling "Romney! Romney! Romney!". :D

[Edstock]

Our economic system (and by extension our government) have failed huge numbers of the people it exists for - and all the airbags and mp3 jacks in the world aren't going to change that. A sane and just economic policy might.

 

You delusional commie!

[rn4]

 

Again, as I've shown before, the percentage of our gross domestic product that is claimed by manufacturing has remained unchanged for decades. The article in The Atlantic I posted earlier this year in another thread showed that our manufacturing output has INCREASED by 30 percent since 2000 (manufacturing employment has declined by the same amount, thanks to productivity improvements, not outsourcing). Your contention that we no longer make anything is incorrect. Repeating it on various threads will not make it true.

 

And we ran a trade surplus during the 1930s. I doubt that most people recall those days as "good times" from an economic standpoint. My father, who actually lived through them, does not.

 

Here is an article saying that you are wrong.

http://breakthroughjournal.org/content/authors/vaclav-smil/the-manufacturing-of-decline.shtml

 

America's manufacturing sector has retreated faster and further in relative terms than that of any other large, affluent nation. US manufacturing as a percentage of GDP declined from 27 percent in 1950 to 23 percent in 1970 to 14 percent in 2000 to 11 percent in 2009.

[Langston Hughes]

My "lower brain" (if you know what I mean) is yelling "Romney! Romney! Romney!". :D

 

I know what you mean!!!

[retro-man]

Great article rn4. It points out what anybody on the ground can clearly see. The prescription it sets out for recovery doesn't necessarily agree with what I have often been a proponent of (a regime tending towards more national and local self-reliance - which I think is better socially and ecologically, though not necessarily in the net economically), but it is realistic about the effects of dropping manufacturing employment, and right on when it points out that the belief that the service sector can somehow make up the difference is delusional. It also makes - yet again - the well-founded point about how our lack of a health care system is a serious impediment to American competitiveness. The contrast between the education systems in the US and Germany was interesting too. Even though I was the first generation in my family to finish college, the thought never entered my mind that either of my sons wouldn't finish with a 4 year degree at least (and they both have by now). It may be time to rethink that. The problem with any policy and any kind of planning is the degree to which competitiveness depends on agility. If the dialogue now is that we need more trade schools, you can be sure that those skill sets will be rendered obsolete mid-career for many of those who attain them - as soon as someone figures out how to tilt the table the other direction. Change and progress are not the same thing. We seem to have much of the former, and less than zero of the latter.

Edited August 6, 2012 by retro-man

[grbeck]

May or may not be true - but with 12,800,000 people out of work (LINK) and wealth continuing to flow to the top it hardly matters.

 

If you have different figures than the ones quoted in The Atlantic, then don't waste time posting here, tell the editors so that the magazine can issue a correction. Last time I checked, The Atlantic is hardly a right-wing rag. Until I see information that proves otherwise, the article and its central thesis stand as fact.

 

People are out of work because we are in the middle of a serious recession. So your link is hardly going to stop the trend toward automation and improved production processes.

 

Sorry, but making things the way we did in 1955 isn't going to ultimately solve that problem.

 

Jobs are what matter - listen to Romney - not the volume or value of manufacturing.

 

Of course Romney will say that...he wants to win.

 

If "jobs" are what matters, not the volume or value of goods produced by the sector, then the agricultural sector must really be sick, and the country therefore in a permanent depression. Agriculture was once the country's largest sector. It employed over half of all American workers in the early 20th century. Now it's down to less than 3 percent.

 

So not only must the agricultural sector be sick, but the country must have been a depression since at least the 1910s.

 

Yet, no one is starving in this country, and the standard of living for everyone is higher in 2012 than it was in 1912. I doubt that any reputable economist will say that we are poorer today because fewer people are needed to raise even more food (with higher quality and lower cost).

 

So that contention is ultimately wrong.

 

I hate to break it to you, but neither Romney nor Obama, once in office, will tell, say, the Ford Motor Company, to remove its robots, or abandon procedures adopted from the Toyota Lean Production System, and hire more lineworkers. This will not happen.

 

Here is what one source, Bruce Bartlett (and I believe that you've quoted him a few times in prior threads), had to say about the state of the manufacturing sector:

 

Everybody seems to be worried about manufacturing these days. For years, manufacturers have been outsourcing operations to foreign countries to lower labor costs and escape high taxes, government regulations and union demands. Falling manufacturing employment in the United States has led to a widespread impression that the industrial sector of our economy is declining. Critics of free trade on both the left and right are proposing more trade protection to keep out foreign goods - or at least to save American jobs.

 

The truth is that U.S. manufacturing is doing quite well in every way except in the number of people it employs. Furthermore, few economists would judge the health or sickness of any industry based solely on employment. By that standard, agriculture has been the sickest industry of all for decades because employment has declined - although farm productivity rose dramatically in the past century. Industrial health is better measured by output, productivity, profitability and wages.

 

Read more here: http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba456/

 

Suggesting the 55 year old laid off punch press operator get off his ass and become a video game designer (or a greeter at WalMart) is not the answer.

 

Neither is making things the way we did in 1955, so that no one ever loses a job, or denying customers the opportunity to buy superior goods at lower prices. Which, like it or not, are the two "solutions" that you will ultimately have to offer.

 

You can throw an online temper tantrum, accuse me of "not caring," or insinuate that I'm too dumb to know what's good for me, but I'm not going to buy junk to keep someone from losing his or her job, and neither is anyone else.

 

Nor will any of those actions "prove" that we no longer make anything in this country, that the manufacturing sector has collapsed, that rich people paid more taxes in the 1950s than they do today, that free trade has made us poorer, or that people are worse off today than they were in 1960.

 

All of those contentions have been effectively proven incorrect.

 

Our economic system (and by extension our government) have failed huge numbers of the people it exists for - and all the airbags and mp3 jacks in the world aren't going to change that. A sane and just economic policy might.

 

Really? Considering that the death rate per 100 million miles travelled is at 1/5 the level of the good old days (the 1960s), I think that a few people saved from death or serious head injury by those airbags, not to mention stiffer structures and better designed vehicles, would beg to differ. And that isn't even considering that cars are longer lasting, more reliable, more comfortable and far less polluting than their 1960 counterparts. All the while being cheaper in inflation-adjusted dollars, too.

 

Again, how, exactly, have the customers not benefitted from free trade and the inevitable competition it fosters? Unless you are going to cast your side with the special interests (the UAW) and corporations that benefit from closed markets. (Although I thought you stood on the side of the people and not corporations, but I guess not. And, to support your argument, you will ultimately have to argue that a 1960 Ford Galaxie is a better car than a 2012 Fusion or even a Focus. As I've said, that should be entertaining to read, to say the least.)

Edited August 6, 2012 by grbeck

[grbeck]

Here is an article saying that you are wrong.

http://breakthroughj...f-decline.shtml

 

America's manufacturing sector has retreated faster and further in relative terms than that of any other large, affluent nation. US manufacturing as a percentage of GDP declined from 27 percent in 1950 to 23 percent in 1970 to 14 percent in 2000 to 11 percent in 2009.

 

Your source is not using inflation-adjusted figures, so his argument is ultimately incorrect.

 

If the figures are adjusted for inflation, then manufacturing's share of the nation's gross domestic product has remained relatively stable (around 16-17 percent since at least 1977).

 

If you don't adjust for inflation (as the author of the article failed to do), then manufacturing share's of the gross domestic product will show a steep drop. Why? Because the manufacturing sector has experienced greater productivity improvements than other sectors. This, in turn, has resulted in lower cost increases for manufactured goods (one reason Ford can sell a 2012 Fusion for half of the inflation-adjusted price of a 1960 Cadillac Fleetwood Sixty Special, while offering better build quality, performance, reliability, economy, safety, comfort and cleanliness).

 

The author also conveniently ignores some key facts. For example, he says this:

 

In 1950, American companies made about 95 percent of cars sold in the United States; 60 years later, the country that invented mass automobile production bought most of its light vehicles from foreigners. The crossover occurred in the summer of 2007 when the Detroit Three began to sell less than half of all passenger cars and light trucks bought in the United States. Three years later, the Detroit share had declined further. In 2010, roughly 45 percent of all light vehicles sold were from American makers while 55 percent came from foreign makers (with Japanese companies accounting for nearly 85 percent of the latter share). (emphasis added)

 

There is one, big problem with this point. Many of those vehicles bought from "foreigners" are actually built here. If he is trying to use this as an example of the decline of American manufacturing, it ultimately proves him wrong when ALL of the facts are show.

 

Now, I realize that this gives the "buy American" diehards and UAW supporters apoplectic fits, but most people today realize that Honda building Accords in Ohio, and Toyota building Camrys in Kentucky, and VW building Passats in Tennessee all contribute to AMERICAN manufacturing. This is a good thing.

 

The domestic auto industry no longer consists solely of the "Detroit Three" - GM, Ford and Chrysler. It also includes Toyota, Honda, Nissan and Hyundai, at a minimum (just as the German auto industry includes both Opel and Ford of Europe). Everyone needs to check their calendars - it's not 1965 anymore.

 

As for the argument in support of national health care - he, again, conveniently ignores that Honda, Nissan, Toyota, VW, Mercedes and BMW are all based in countries with a singler-payer system. Yet they have all built plants here in the United States, and are able to offer their workers health coverage and still make money. The North American market is now more important to Honda, for example, than its home market. So that argument ultimately fails.

 

One hopes that the author, in the future, learns to adjust his figures for inflation (he must have skipped Econ 101, so maybe we need to enroll him in the nearest course immediately, or at least before he writes anything else), and realizes that a vehicle doesn't have to be made by GM, Ford or Chrysler to be "made in the USA."

Edited August 6, 2012 by grbeck

[grbeck]

Great article rn4. It points out what anybody on the ground can clearly see.

 

If those people don't understand that the figures quoted in the article must be adjusted for inflation to be accurate. When those figures are, the article's main thesis turns out be incorrect. It's not a good idea to quote articles written by authors who either failed Econ 101, or skipped it entirely.

 

The prescription it sets out for recovery doesn't necessarily agree with what I have often been a proponent of (a regime tending towards more national and local self-reliance - which I think is better socially and ecologically, though not necessarily in the net economically)...

 

So, applying this logic to the real world, people looking for a small car in the 1970s would have been better off with a Chevrolet Vega or AMC Gremlin, as compared to a Honda Civic or Toyota Corolla, because the first two were made here, and the latter two weren't?

 

If you are wondering why you can't get too many people in the real world to agree with your views regarding free trade and economics, ponder that scenario...

Edited August 6, 2012 by grbeck

[rn4]

If those people don't understand that the figures quoted in the article must be adjusted for inflation to be accurate. When those figures are, the article's main thesis turns out be incorrect. It's not a good idea to quote articles written by authors who either failed Econ 101, or skipped it entirely.

 

 

 

So, applying this logic to the real world, people looking for a small car in the 1970s would have been better off with a Chevrolet Vega or AMC Gremlin, as compared to a Honda Civic or Toyota Corolla, because the first two were made here, and the latter two weren't?

 

If you are wondering why you can't get too many people in the real world to agree with your views regarding free trade and economics, ponder that scenario...

 

There are plenty more that agree with what the author is saying in his article. So I still say you are wrong. Go use google and get back to us.

[xr7g428]

RN4 read your own article. It doesn't agree with your hypothesis.

 

September 2, 1945, the day that Japan's Foreign Minister Shigemitsu Mamoru signed his country's surrender on board the USS Missouri, was the apex of American military and economic power. There was nowhere for America to go but down. And, relative to the rest of the world, down America went. When compared in constant monies, US GDP was nearly 6.5 times higher in 2010 than in 1945, but as a portion of the world economic product, it declined from 35 to about 23 percent (in nominal terms).[/url]² This decline was inevitable once the war-destroyed economies of Europe and Japan began to regain strength and even more so once they began to concentrate their innovation and export efforts in some key modern manufacturing sectors: cars and machinery in Germany and cars, electronics, and robotics in Japan.

As befits a large, modern country, America's manufacturing sector remains very large and has been growing in absolute terms. In 2009, US manufacturing accounted for more than 18 percent of global manufacturing³ and its value was higher (when compared in nominal, exchange-rated terms) than the total GDP of all but seven of the world's economies (behind Brazil at $2 trillion and ahead of Canada at $1.6 trillion). The per capita value of manufacturing in 2009 was higher in the United States ($5,800) than in France ($3,900), Canada ($4,200), Italy ($5,100), and China ($1,500). When measured in constant monies, US manufacturing expanded by about 60 percent between 1990 and 2009, nearly matching the growth of overall GDP; it grew by 10 percent between 2000 and 2009, compared to a 15 percent increase in GDP.⁴

 

Here are a few facts for you to consider:

 

http://www.nam.org/Statistics-And-Data/Facts-About-Manufacturing/~/media/0F91A0FBEA1847D087E719EAAB4D4AD8.ashx

 

The quantity of manufactured goods produced in the United States has kept pace with overall economic growth since 1947, as both GDP and manufacturing have grown by about seven times (Figure 2). The United States still has the largest manufacturing sector in the world, and its market share (around 20 percent) has held steady for 30 years (Figure 13). One in six private sector jobs is still in or directly tied to manufacturing (Figure 8). Moreover, productivity growth is higher in manufacturing than in other sectors of the economy (Figure 25). Due largely to outstanding productivity growth, the prices of manufactured goods have declined since 1995 in contrast to inflation in most other sectors, with the result that manufacturers are contributing to a higher standard of living for U.S. consumers (Figure 12).

 

[retro-man]

People are out of work because we are in the middle of a serious recession.

You seem to lack an appreciation of what we have been through over the last 4 years, and are continuing to go through - perhaps because you have been relatively insulated from it, or perhaps because you are too young to remember other "serious recessions". I have been through recessions before. This is not a recession in the sense that word has been understood anytime in the last 3 generations. This is a watershed, transformational economic "event" - and we will not emerge the same on the other side. Such events do not happen as part of the normal business cycle: they happen as the cumulative result of decades of bad policy - policy that fails to recognize changing conditions and effectively adjust for them. The severity of this recession is sufficient proof of the wrong-headedness of our economic policy over the past 30 years, and the utter failure of our regulatory safeguards. To shrug it off as a "serious recession" as if it is part of the normal business cycle strains credulity.

Edited August 7, 2012 by retro-man

[grbeck]

There are plenty more that agree with what the author is saying in his article. So I still say you are wrong. Go use google and get back to us.

 

He failed to adjust his figures for inflation. His contention that the manufacturing sector accounts for a drastically smaller percentage of the nation's gross domestic product is therefore incorrect.

 

Here is what Bruce Bartlett had to say about this:

 

Looking at manufacturing alone, over the long term one finds it has also grown. In 2001, in inflation-adjusted terms it was 16.2 percent of GDP, which is higher than it was during the recession of 1991 (16 percent).

 

It is critical to adjust the figures for inflation in order to make a valid comparison. The price of many goods such as computers has fallen sharply. Since GDP data are calculated in money rather than volume terms, failure to account for price changes gives a distorted picture. For example, suppose the output of a product rose by 10 percent in terms of units while falling 10 percent in price due to higher productivity. Using nominal dollar figures makes it appear there was no increase in output. Using real data captures the increase. (emphasis added)

 

There is no dispute about this. The inflation-adjusted figures are out there, and they prove him wrong. (Incidentally, I used Google to prove him incorrect, so I'm quite familiar with it.)

 

Whether lots of people "agree with" the author is irrelevant. They apparently skipped Econ 101, too. You never conduct this type of comparison - one that spans decades - without adjusting for inflation.

 

Lots of people initially agreed that Prohibition and the 55 mph speed limit were good ideas, too. Guess what - they weren't, even though lots of people initially thought that they were. Lots of people can all be wrong at the same time.

Edited August 7, 2012 by grbeck

[grbeck]

You seem to lack an appreciation of what we have been through over the last 4 years, and are continuing to go through - perhaps because you have been relatively insulated from it, or perhaps because you are too young to remember other "serious recessions".

 

I am fully aware of how serious this recession is, as several of my friends have lost jobs, or had their pay cut to reflect reductions in business. I have also seen the effect that it has had on Pennsylvania's tax revenues (they are down drastically from 2007). Pennsylvania has not been hit as hard as California, for example, but that is because our state, along with its municipalities, did not adopt many of the policies regarding housing and land use that California and its municipalities did. Nor did Pennsylvania spend money as recklessly as California did.

 

The problem is that the solutions that you have put forth on this thread and others - higher taxes on rich people, tariffs, discouraging companies from installing new procedures or machines, slapping more regulations on companies - will not ultimately help them.

 

I'm more interesting in HELPING them than punishing someone else, especially if that "someone else" really had nothing to do with the present crisis, or just happens to fall into a certain income category.

 

This is not a recession in the sense that word has been understood anytime in the last 3 generations. This is a watershed, transformational economic "event" - and we will not emerge the same on the other side.

 

Yet, ultimately, your solutions seem to revolve around the idea that we can somehow recreate 1955. (Which makes your complaints that Tea Party members are the ones who want to drag the country backwards more than a little amusing.) That is not how one addresses "transformational" events.

 

The severity of this recession is sufficient proof of the wrong-headedness of our economic policy over the past 30 years, and the utter failure of our regulatory safeguards. To shrug it off as a "serious recession" as if it is part of the normal business cycle strains credulity.

 

As I've shown above, the idea that we've been on some sort of deregulatory binge since 1980 is a myth. Federal spending on regulations has increased above the rate of inflation over the past 30 years, and virtually every piece of legislation passed since the mid-1980s has TIGHTENED regulations over the financial sector. The one "deregulatory" piece of legislation affecting the financial sector - the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 - had nothing to do with the present crisis.

 

The "regulatory safeguards" failed because certain people wanted to ignore them, and they weren't all conservative Republicans. In fact, lots of them were liberal Democrats who wanted to use government to "help" people in various ways (making it so easy to buy a house that virtually anyone could do it, which fueled the real estate bubble that was at the center of the crisis). You might find it more productive to direct your ire at those who want government to "help" everyone. While you're at it, aim some of your ire at governments at the local and state level that enact building restrictions that drive up the cost of housing and put it out of the reach of middle-class and lower-middle-class buyers. They must then resort to exotic mortgages to afford even a townhouse.

 

If you are talking about going back to the days when lending standards were tighter, and people had to have "skin in the game" when they bought a house, I have no problem with that. If you want to reverse the change in the federal tax code that eliminated the capital gains assessment on the sale of real estate pushed through by Congressional Republicans and signed by President Clinton in the late 1990s, I'm there with you, too.

 

If you want to shrink the military presence of the United States in places like Europe, or only send troops overseas when we are directly attacked (as we were on 9/11), I have no problem with that, either. Of course, you'll have to accept that an activist foreign policy did not start with George W. Bush. (It was liberals such as Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt who advocated an aggressive American foreign policy in the early 20th century. Meanwhile, it was conservative Republicans who fought to keep us out of World War II until the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, while Franklin Roosevelt was working to get us INTO the conflict. For that matter, John F. Kennedy, Sr., and Lyndon Johnson were both ardent Cold War warriors.) You also need to wake up to how the current president has largely either continued the policies of his predecessor, or doubled down on them.

 

What I'm not going to do is attack the phantom of "deregulation." We have only deregulated three industries since the mid-1970s - trucking, telecommunications and airlines. Not one of them had a role in the current crisis. We have not been on a deregulatory binge since 1980.

 

I'm not going to support higher taxes on anyone, as we all pay enough already, and rich people now pay a higher percentage of federal income taxes collected today than they did when the top rates were much higher in the 1950s and 1960s. We already heavily tax rich people. Our problems stem from too much spending, not too little revenue.

 

If you want to make us all buy Malibus instead of Accords - sorry, no dice.

 

Companies (and their workers) exist serve the customer, not the other way around. (Repeat that 10 times before reading farther.) This, by the way, is the TRUE anti-corporate stance.

 

I'm not buying junk to make sure that no one ever loses a job. Companies and workers need to get off their duffs and compete. For big ticket items in particular, people will pay MORE for higher quality goods. You could generally buy a Malibu for LESS than the cost of a Camry or an Accord. Yet more retail customers wanted the latter two instead of the former.

 

That horse is out of the barn - you need to accept it and move on.

Edited August 7, 2012 by grbeck

[grbeck]

Actually, I should modify my "no tax increase" stance.

 

There are SOME tax increases that I could find palatable:

 

http://washingtonexaminer.com/sunday-reflection-repeal-the-hollywood-tax-cuts/article/2503964

 

And here are more suggestions from a reader:

 

1. Eliminating the charitable deduction for all estates exceeding $500 million in gross value (Buffett, Gates).

 

2. Since salaries in excess of $1 million to executives are not deductible, extend this same provision to businesses paying such sums for television and motion picture acting, directing, and production. Extend the same provision to the music industry royalties, etc. (Geffen, Redstone, Spielberg, and a host of other left-coast lefties).

 

3. Keep the pre-Bush cut tax rates (possibly even raise them) on executives who led firms that either took TARP money in excess of $75 million or invested significant sums of money in special debt instruments or shares of firms that took TARP money, or who were paid significant bonus moneys from TARP firms during the periods immediately before they took funds from the U.S. (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, GM, Citibank, JP Morgan, etc.) Make these provisions also applicable to capital gains.

 

4. Excise tax on all premium television transmissions in excess of 2nd tier cable or satellite packages (HBO, Showtime, etc.) Make the tax non-deductible for income taxes.

 

5. Extending the corporate accumulated earnings tax to all non-profits having cash, investments, and securities in excess of $500 million (Ford foundation, Pew Foundation, Harvard, Yale, etc).

 

Of course, all of these increases in both articles would hit core constituencies of the Democrats. Listening to these good liberals wail about the negative effects of these potential increases would provide more entertainment and unintentional hilarity than an entire season of The Bachelor.

 

Bring it on!