Hayek, Friedman and The Chicago School. All I can say is 'in a perfect world we might be able to reach utopia'. And of course this world isn't perfect nor will it ever be so. But 'conventional economic wisdom' is that if the economy is left to its own devices that it will run more effectively and we will all benefit. More and more in the last 30 years that 'wisdom' has been applied to the economy. So I ask have we all benefitted? Of course not because, like I said earlier, the world isn't perfect.

In any society if all the laws were repealed and the people were allowed to police themselves would there be less crime and that society would run more efficiently? Not a chance. That society would break down and chaos would ensure. So we are asked to believe that people who run economies are different in their nature then people in the larger society as a whole? They are the same. And if you remove all the laws and regulations chaos will occur. All we had to do was remove some of the regulations to find out that 'truth'.

And this economic school of thought devalues and debases anything that is good in humanity. We are told that our level of freedom is based on what we have. The more stuff you can buy the freer, and by extension the happier, you are. It reduces human worth to just another item on the spreadsheet used to calculate the corporate bottom line. But over the years we have heard about "trickle down economics", "the ownership society", been preached to about "the virtues of free market capitalism" and how we should worship at it because it will solve all of a societies ills. In the year 2007 more income was redistributed upwards compared to any of the last 100 year except 1928. And we all recalled what happened in 1929. Or have we forgot already?

So now I am hoping to hear the weeping and gnashing of teeth of from the Chicago School, the political conservatives and their plutocratic friends when regulations are firmly put back in place now that we have been shown AGAIN that Laissez Faire economics doesn't work. The invisible hand is a myth just like pots of gold being at the end of rainbows...

Posted at October 8, 2008 2:25 PM in response to Is it Markets, or is it Class?

And you made a very good point Ellen. Sometimes I am a little leary of getting into detailed discussions about economics with you. It isn't that I don't like to hear your POV it is because your knowledge far supasses mine. But I always enjoy reading your posts even when the detailed discourse is way over my head.

People who take positions based strictly on an ideology tend to be too inflexible to solve problems. In any society if all the laws were removed and the people were allowed to 'police' themselves that society would eventually breakdown and chaos would ensue. And in an economic system the same thing happens when all the rules are removed. But most R's and many D's seem to believe the opposite will happen and the less rules there are for the economy the more efficiently it will run. It can no better police itself than citizens of a society can police themselves. Sometimes the situation will dictate that less regulation/control is called for to make the economy run more efficiently and sometimes more regulation/control is needed. Bottom line though is there needs to be rules and regulations for the financial markets of they will eventually breakdown into chaos. And when problems do arise flexibility and pragamitism are the best way to solve them. And when it comes to the many issues, not just the economy, conservatives tend to be too inflexible to deal with problems.

Posted at October 7, 2008 7:19 PM in response to We Need to Drive a Stake into the Heart of Conservatism

In a sense I am more upset with the D's then I am with the R's. I know what the R's stand for and expect them to govern the way they do. The D's on the other hand abandoned many of the core principles to have their turn at the money trough. I agree with Destor's first comment (and Dave Bowman's very good comments also) on this thread...I hold and will continue to hold D's to just as high a standard if not higher than the R's. They should 'know better'. There is nothing wrong with a large government if in measuring its size we are talking about its effectiveness and not its sheer mass. We need an effective FEMA, we need the D's to stand up to invasive large government programs like FISA, we need a government which puts the common good ahead of the corporate bottom line.

Posted at October 7, 2008 1:46 PM in response to Corrupt on Both Sides

First off Ellen, not being familiar with the intimate details, I would want to know the reasons that the S&L's were losing money in the first place before I could make a recommendation about what should have been done initimate details. I do like the idea of allowing the raising interest rates on savings. To me, that is a win-win, it benefits the banks and the consumers. I think increasing the consumer protection of savings is a good solid liberal position to take.

I would have probably been opposed to the subsequent deregulation which occurred in 1982. Again I admit I am not familiar with the details of the examples you cite but if it was New Deal regulations put in place after the '29 crash to ensure there would be no repeat of the crash I would have been opposed to removing them.

Posted at October 7, 2008 1:10 PM in response to We Need to Drive a Stake into the Heart of Conservatism

The D's had 3 candidates 1980, 1984 and 1988 that were either severely wounded politically or just truly horrible candidates and embraced the pro-corporate ideology of the Conservative movement.

One final thing. I wrote this very sloppily...the point I was clumsily trying to make was that those 3 bad candidates caused the D's to abandon Liberalism and I wasn't saying in 1980, 1984 and 1988 the candidates did that themselves.

Posted at October 7, 2008 1:54 AM in response to We Need to Drive a Stake into the Heart of Conservatism

And I wanted to add...

Even if the ideological vampire is successfully impaled on the stake what is gonna replace it? A Centrist ideology? An ideology which enabled the conservative goals of NAFTA/free trade as we know it and were fully supportive repealing acts like Glass-Steagall. I think it is high time true Liberalism was given another look...

Posted at October 7, 2008 1:48 AM in response to We Need to Drive a Stake into the Heart of Conservatism

Unfortunately, I'm afraid that he doesn't quite put the stake through the heart, which is really what we have to do with this monster.

And who is gonna do the driving? Centrist Democrats? I doubt it...Centrist Democrats have partially embraced Conservatism. The D's had 3 candidates 1980, 1984 and 1988 that were either severely wounded politically or just truly horrible candidates and embraced the pro-corporate ideology of the Conservative movement. Liberalism only failed in the sense that it was abandoned for a fistful of dollars...which the Democrats will be reaping for the next four years if they sweep into power in the Legislative and Executive branches. Again I ask...who is doing the driving of said stake?

Posted at October 7, 2008 1:41 AM in response to We Need to Drive a Stake into the Heart of Conservatism

The McCain/Palin ticket has hit an all time political low. I have seen a lot now I have seen it all. They are intentionally creating a hatred within the ranks of some of their supporters towards Barack Obama that someone actually shouted 'kill him'.

WTF is happening to our country? This f@!ked up. A line has been crossed by the republicans that in a decent society never should. I pray someone in the MSM calls for a serious 'reality check' right about now...

Posted at October 7, 2008 1:05 AM in response to Incitement: McCain Fostering Climate of Violence

Well lets see Tena...

Out of the last 28 years the R's have held the Executive Branch for 20 of those years. And held the Congress for the 12 years were the yeoman's share of the heavy lifting was done to fulfill their promise to render the government ineffective and sell what they could off to the highest corporate bidder. Sure they have had some complicit democrats who had sold out and helped them but where we are st now is the maturation on the neoconservative movement which was begun being put in place during the Reagan administration. And the democrats sold out thinking the liberal movement was dead and the American people had rejected it because of the republican's electoral successes in the 80's and early 90's. The republicans had those electoral successes not because the public embraced their governing ideology. They responded favorably to the republicans because the republicans played to the most powerful of human emotions of fear and hatred. So the democrats from 1980 - present have been nothing more than enablers for the conservative agenda under the guise of being 'centrists'. Bottom line though whether the democrats enabled or not it is still the conservative agenda...an agenda that has produced nothing of worth to anybody except those in the top 5%.

Posted at October 7, 2008 12:25 AM in response to Five Aspects of the Conservative State

I have long been bemused (or actually more like dismayed) that the republicans have stayed in power for as long as they have when their "ideology" about the role of government diverges 180 degrees from how they govern. Part of the reason is they are so good at 'dividing and conquering'. They can convince lower and middle class white voters that, even though there is no proof of it, that they will be better off under GOP rule by playing to that section of the electorate's racial fears and hatreds.

But now that all the republicans have to show for the time in power is corruption, their love of big government (creating the behemoth DHS), their fiscal irresponsibility (record national debt and allowing corporations to run amok and severely damage our economy) and general incompetence in governing the 'movement' is coming undone. And just like Wall Street can't be trusted to do the 'right' thing if left alone the republican's core philosophy of allowing the rich to profit obscenely because the 'invisible hand of capitalism' if left to its own devices will take care of all our societal problems can be relegated to the garbage bin of history right next to the Marx theories of government. It is just a shame that so many people have to be economically ruined to 'prove' the greedy and corrupt treachery inherent in the conservative ideology.

Posted at October 6, 2008 8:06 PM in response to Five Aspects of the Conservative State