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talkpoliticsWhat accounts for the spikes in these graphs? Conservative (free market) policy or corporatist (government intervention) policy?
Why'd average Wall St. bonus pay recently quadruple average annual salaries? Why'd the financial sector recently triple the nonfinancial sector? Why'd the highest incomes recently increase 36 times faster than median family income?
Provide concrete explanations as to how X (policy) caused Y (economic indicator). Point to specific legislation or executive orders.
The liberal position is predictable: The unprecedented extreme growth in the financial sector and increased inequality is bad. Free market policy (deregulation of banks --> derivatives market expansion --> collapse) is to blame.
I'm more interested in the conservative position: How do you explain the unprecedented growth in the financial sector and the increased income inequality? What're the causes? Is corporatism (government interventionism) responsible? If so, how? Do you draw a connection between the above figures and the financial collapse?
I honestly don't understand the conservative position.
Why'd average Wall St. bonus pay recently quadruple average annual salaries? Why'd the financial sector recently triple the nonfinancial sector? Why'd the highest incomes recently increase 36 times faster than median family income?
Provide concrete explanations as to how X (policy) caused Y (economic indicator). Point to specific legislation or executive orders.
The liberal position is predictable: The unprecedented extreme growth in the financial sector and increased inequality is bad. Free market policy (deregulation of banks --> derivatives market expansion --> collapse) is to blame.
I'm more interested in the conservative position: How do you explain the unprecedented growth in the financial sector and the increased income inequality? What're the causes? Is corporatism (government interventionism) responsible? If so, how? Do you draw a connection between the above figures and the financial collapse?
I honestly don't understand the conservative position.
(no subject)
Date: 20/4/10 23:59 (UTC)I think you need to check your adages
Date: 21/4/10 00:37 (UTC)Besides mentioning that power alone is sufficient to cause corruption, without needing to be absolute, I think both of us know very well that they were intimating that corruption increases as a function of power. The more power, the more corruption.
So again, do you actually think that so long as poor people have nice cars and food on the table, this ever-increasing corruption won't occur?
Re: I think you need to check your adages
Date: 21/4/10 00:41 (UTC)More that it won't have as much of an impact, or perhaps more that they'll retain the ability to fix the problem. It's not as if the poor are powerless in this case.
Re: I think you need to check your adages
Date: 21/4/10 01:05 (UTC)But wealth and the power it creates is relative.
If I have a million bucks in the bank and a nice car in the driveway, I still have nowhere near the individual power you do if you have a trillion dollars in the bank. The power ratio between us is still at least as great as if you only had a million dollar and I only had a $100.
Either way you can use that massive financial advantage to stack the decks against me, politically, legally, socially or in virtually any other respect.
Re: I think you need to check your adages
Date: 21/4/10 01:13 (UTC)Re: I think you need to check your adages
Date: 21/4/10 02:02 (UTC)Re: I think you need to check your adages
Date: 21/4/10 02:22 (UTC)Re: I think you need to check your adages
Date: 21/4/10 02:22 (UTC)Re: I think you need to check your adages
Date: 21/4/10 02:44 (UTC)a) High relative wealth = high relative socio-political power
b) Power corrupts
c) Or?
Re: I think you need to check your adages
Date: 21/4/10 18:01 (UTC)In many cases a poor person merely needs to be harmed and sue a rich person or company and they will be awarded a judgment even if the defendant is judged to not be at fault merely on the grounds that said defendant was involved and can afford to pay.
This is not universal but it certainly exists.
The same is true on the political front. Your trillion dollars in the bank could not have bought John McCain the presidency, but a relatively speaking poor man (net wealth of only a few million) was able to win it on the basis of his charisma, charm, and skill at running a campaign.
Yes, wealth gets you power in the US but it is nowhere near the direct correlation that it is in places like Cuba or Nigeria.
Re: I think you need to check your adages
Date: 21/4/10 03:07 (UTC)But even so it is an adage, not an absolute sent down from Olympus. Altho like most adages that last (I believe this was Lord Acton in the 1890s) tend to have more than a modicum of truth to them :D
Re: I think you need to check your adages
Date: 21/4/10 04:47 (UTC)"And remember, where you have a concentration of power in a few hands, all too frequently men with the mentality of gangsters get control. History has proven that. All power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
What I suppose we can fairly conclude from all this, is based on the same historical record that Lord Acton was mindful when he made these pronouncements, is that power certainly has a reliable tendency to create corruption, and that the level of this corruption correlates strongly with the level of power.
Re: I think you need to check your adages
Date: 21/4/10 18:04 (UTC)Also this more than anything is a reason to lessen government's ability to meddle in the economy (and yes, that includes it's power to regulate) because that power draws those who would abuse it until they inevitably control it and become like the "gangsters" Acton referred to.
Re: I think you need to check your adages
Date: 23/4/10 19:36 (UTC)