What do you get when you cross a nihilistic borderline "tail end of the boomers start of the Gen X ers" Marxist, and the presidency of the United States? It appears we are about to find out. Given that Marxists tend to believe that you have to dismantle the capitalist system before you can get the workers to unite around a socialist system, there may be a reason why the current $790 Billion “stimulus” bill appears to do more for socialism then it does for stimulating an economy.
Ladies and gentlemen, fasten your seat belts.
Does Obama WANT to fix the economy?
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The Grey Badger
- Posts: 176
- Joined: Sat Sep 20, 2008 11:50 pm
Re: Does Obama WANT to fix the economy?
I believe Obama really does want to fix the economy. I believe he is fumbling around for tools to do so and the stimulus is one all the history books have handed to him - "Remember the New Deal?"
I think he knows it's an iffy sort of a tool, but if you need a Phillips-head screwdriver and only have a nail file, you do your best with the nail file.
I don't believe he's a Marxist or a Socialist or any such thing. I believe his philosophical orientation is "Whatever works, and it it doesn't work, we'll experiment until we find something that does." I agree that to him this means Big Government, which to many is Socialism but to most is simply mainstream thinking. And I also note that in a world where there are multinational corporations bigger than the official governments of most countries (for a parallel, see Late Republican Rome's Pompey, Crassus, and post-Gaul, Julius Caesar) and said corporations have none of the checks on their doings that political constitutions give governments (in fact, they have a mandate to pursue profits at all cost, and even to pursue short-term profits at their own long-range expense. I know: I'm a stockholder in many of them and read their annual reports) -
then something has to offset that sort of unchecked power. I'm sorry. Corporatism is not libertarianism for the simple reason that corporations are not individuals. They are more like feudal lordships. (I have also worked for institutions much larger than I am. Corporate, government, or nonprofit, you are to them what a flea is to an elephant, offset only by their printed rulebook running to thousands of pages.) Which is why I'm also in favor of strong labor unions: the worker is NOT in much of a position to bargain with, say, ConocoPhillips over terms of employment. Except, of course, for "the brightest and best,who we'll lose to our competitors if we don't pay them millions of dollars and all sorts of perks!"
Big Government may not be the best model of economic regulation. Regulation may not be the best way to deal with the marketplace. (Though one of the legitimate functions of government is to prevent the use of force and fraud in the marketplace and elsewhere. They've done a very bad job of it recently, but that IS their job.) But to let the corporations operate unchecked and unbalanced is to basically, turn them into a government, and not a republican form of government either.
My opinion. Take it as you will.
I think he knows it's an iffy sort of a tool, but if you need a Phillips-head screwdriver and only have a nail file, you do your best with the nail file.
I don't believe he's a Marxist or a Socialist or any such thing. I believe his philosophical orientation is "Whatever works, and it it doesn't work, we'll experiment until we find something that does." I agree that to him this means Big Government, which to many is Socialism but to most is simply mainstream thinking. And I also note that in a world where there are multinational corporations bigger than the official governments of most countries (for a parallel, see Late Republican Rome's Pompey, Crassus, and post-Gaul, Julius Caesar) and said corporations have none of the checks on their doings that political constitutions give governments (in fact, they have a mandate to pursue profits at all cost, and even to pursue short-term profits at their own long-range expense. I know: I'm a stockholder in many of them and read their annual reports) -
then something has to offset that sort of unchecked power. I'm sorry. Corporatism is not libertarianism for the simple reason that corporations are not individuals. They are more like feudal lordships. (I have also worked for institutions much larger than I am. Corporate, government, or nonprofit, you are to them what a flea is to an elephant, offset only by their printed rulebook running to thousands of pages.) Which is why I'm also in favor of strong labor unions: the worker is NOT in much of a position to bargain with, say, ConocoPhillips over terms of employment. Except, of course, for "the brightest and best,who we'll lose to our competitors if we don't pay them millions of dollars and all sorts of perks!"
Big Government may not be the best model of economic regulation. Regulation may not be the best way to deal with the marketplace. (Though one of the legitimate functions of government is to prevent the use of force and fraud in the marketplace and elsewhere. They've done a very bad job of it recently, but that IS their job.) But to let the corporations operate unchecked and unbalanced is to basically, turn them into a government, and not a republican form of government either.
My opinion. Take it as you will.
Re: Does Obama WANT to fix the economy?
Right-wing alarmism? Really? Wok wok wok wok... pfft.JimZ wrote:What do you get when you cross a nihilistic borderline "tail end of the boomers start of the Gen X ers" Marxist, and the presidency of the United States? It appears we are about to find out. Given that Marxists tend to believe that you have to dismantle the capitalist system before you can get the workers to unite around a socialist system, there may be a reason why the current $790 Billion “stimulus” bill appears to do more for socialism then it does for stimulating an economy.
Ladies and gentlemen, fasten your seat belts.
There are hardly any state socialist countries left today. Europe (even Scandinavia) is broadly capitalist. It's a thing of the past. There are plenty of things to bash Obama for; start with something that's actually truthful.
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protagonist
- Posts: 36
- Joined: Fri Dec 19, 2008 3:59 pm
Re: Does Obama WANT to fix the economy?
It doesn't really matter, all that the administration wants is the public perception that they're trying to do something to help the economy, regardless of whether it actually helps the economy or not. This problem is caused by a collapse in the demand of credit, hence the drop in productivity coupled with deflation. The only way to solve this situation is to create an external credit demand that's big enough to stimulate the economy. How Obama would go about doing this is uncertain, but a good bet would be to kick off a conflict between 2 major powers, say China and Russia, in which both sides would heavily borrow from the U.S and hence give it the much-needed stimulus to boost the economy.
Internal "stimulus spending", i.e giving tax money back to the tax payer, does not work for very obvious reasons.
Internal "stimulus spending", i.e giving tax money back to the tax payer, does not work for very obvious reasons.
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