Unfortunately, there has been an unprecedented change in the economy, but not one that is helpful. The change is that the national debt has increased exponentially, such that soon we will have to tax everyone 100% of income just to pay the interest on the debt. If interest rates rise, and they will, that day will arrive even sooner.
Social programs set up from bygone eras using models that presuppose that technology and the economic growth will continue at the same pace, therefore need that growth.
Real estate was set up on those kind of models of fast growth. When a borrower receives money for a house that he cannot afford, as long as the property value keeps rising, it does not matter, for when he must sell, he will not lose as the profit will cover the borrowing costs plus the living costs that accrued before he had to sell. Government legislation did nothing but encourage this kind of practice, as often as not in the name of social justice.
But i was a false economy that assumes progress, when in fact the real economy remains stagnant with high energy prices and very little true progress in technology to justify the assumed growth.
Taxes of course cannot be a solution, because without growth, taxes are eating away the muscle and not the fat. That is essentially what the protesters are insisting upon—that the muscle of Wall Street be consumed so that the rich will be brought down to size. Eating away at any hope of investment capital of course will do nothing to provide the protesters with jobs to justify the dollars spent on the higher education.
Social benefits of the bygone era are unsustainable, but instead or recognizing the need for cutbacks of some kind to benefits that exceed a countries ability to pay for them, the protesters are insisting on more and more, more free education, more programs for the gals and the minorities, more, more, more.
All the while they protest the Wall Street greed, as if Wall Street is of a fundamentally different culture than the materialistic one that the protesters all inhabit too.
We are saved only by the fact that the dollar is the reserve currency of the world. But when the rest of the world loses confidence in the dollar, that could change. If dollars are no longer accepted, we will become like Greece, forced to implement austerity measures rather than borrow. Indeed, austerity measures are necessary in any case, just to deal with the unsustainable debt. All the protests in the world won’t help that.
Yes, exactly. Instead of learning from the example of Greece and Europe, the protesters are insisting on that as being the example to follow.
Investment firms and banking of course must be regulated. American governments have really dropped the ball on that in comparison to Canada, for example.Much of this unprecedented nose dive is a made in America failure.
But the protesters are not protesting the lack of regulation. They are protesting Wall Street itself, the very existence of billionaires and the very existence of the inequality.
In the end I suppose Americans have to choose. If it is the existence of inequality that is objectionable, then the revolution being called for and yearned for by protesters here is essentially a socialist or communist one, for that is what the aim of these system is—a classless society, where all are equal.
But if what is wanted by the protesters is a fairer playing field only, where people can get ahead, sometimes even to extraordinary levels, but within the rules, then that is not a revolution that is wanted. It is an affirmation of the American ideal itself, and it is what the tea party movement has been calling for all along.
But this takes hard work, and intelligent policy, and a recognition that big government and big business are in a symbiotic relationship with each other against the interests of the middle class.
Is Wall Street greedy? Sure it is, and so are the students asking for everyone else to foot their education bill. The question is then not whether Wall Street is too greedy, but whether the current administration has done anything at all in order to ensure a level playing field. That is what Obama was elected to do after all, to change the way that business was done in Washington with all the influence paddlers and all.
And if the answer to that is an emphatic NO!
So to the extent that that Obama’s irresponsibility is not the focus, it is indeed all smoke and mirrors and the protesters are all chumps.
