socialism indicted

[Ntetos]

Why should we give money to the banks? When they were earning billions and billions did they shared a single dollar with us? No. And now that they are bankrupt they ask us to help them and give them our money.

[heavycola]

Hey right wing assholes, look around you and try and keep pretending that small government works. This is all your fault. The 'market' is a human invention, like nuclear bombs. I realise that's a poor analogy for the more 2nd amendment-happy crowd, so i'll try another analogy... it's a function of human behaviour, like incest or line dancing. This time please leave government, regulation and in fact everything else to the people with a clue. k tks.

Que? Lets get something straight. Small government more than works. The bailout is a product of big government. (I hope it continues to not get passed) The reason they are even talking about a bailout is not the fault of "small government" but GREED.

Greed that was allowed to flourish because of a LACK OF REGULATION, WHICH IS WHAT SMALL GOVERNMENT IS ALL ABOUT.
The bailout is a horrible, but necessary, fact. If it doesn't get passed, it is going to be ordinary people who will suffer, not just the suits on Wall St. Why would you welcome that?

[jay_a2j]

The bailout is a horrible, but necessary, fact. If it doesn't get passed, it is going to be ordinary people who will suffer, not just the suits on Wall St. Why would you welcome that?

Ordinary people will suffer and a bailout will delay the suffering and make the suffering worse in the long run. If they need 700 Billion, they can take it from the CEO's who caused this mess. They don't pay, throw them in jail. It's called putting the responsibility where it belongs and we the people are not responsible for this mess.

NO BAILOUT!!!!

[Dancing Mustard]

The bailout is a horrible, but necessary, fact. If it doesn't get passed, it is going to be ordinary people who will suffer, not just the suits on Wall St. Why would you welcome that?

Because people who don't know much about how financial markets work, are really jealous of how much people who do earn.


Basically their line is "I'm jealous you have earned a lot more than me, so I am willing to shoot the national economy (and my own financial wellbeing) in the face, just to spite you and to make sure you don't recover from your errors".

Without a bailout the US economy is fucked, and its business assets will be bought up by the Chinese (etc) within the year... because that's how the free market works.
With a bailout it'll be able to return to strength and will continue to be (largely) owned by Americans.

The problem here is angry Americans who don't understand how finance works or what bankers do, but begrudge them their stellar earnings. Add to that a national psyche which seems irrationally terrified of the thought of its Government doing anything (i.e. providing ongoing regulation to prevent short-sighted trading by banks)... and you have a recipe for poorly informed (and oh so ironically) short-sighted attidues like the one Jay (and co) are currently sporting.



In short: Man up and back the bailout. Yes you're going to lose some taxpayers money (even though vast amounts of that money will have been paid by the bankers whose wealth you so begrudge). What you need is to get over your fear of government regulations and income taxation... because they're the two things which (1) prevent this kind of bollocks happening in the future, and (2) take money from the rich, so that they can pay for cleaning up this kind of mess.

[Dancing Mustard]

If they need 700 Billion, they can take it from the CEO's who caused this mess. They don't pay, throw them in jail.

Oh purrrrrrrrrrrrlease. Could you even get more hypocritical if you tried?

Just imagine the field day your 'troofer' websites would have if the government did something like this:
"Facist overlords jail innocent man for not paying tax!!!1"
"Evil money-grabbers in DC levy lightning taxes on hardworking Americans!!!1"
"DC gouges private citzens to pay for its own sins!!!1"
"Ron Paul would never have taxed anybody!!!1"

From a man who has spent his time here banging on about liberty, who hates any form of state intervention, and who thinks that tax is the 8th deadly sin; to suddenly change his tune to "Charge arbitrarily huge tax at the drop of a hat. Lock up people who do not pay" is laughable at best.

[mpjh]

It is not a question of jealousy. It is a question of justice. The people on Wall Street not only make a lot of money, they made the decisions that are now taking the banks down. It is not just that those people should get a bail out, while the rest of us suffer. And we cannot forget that we are suffering regardless the bail out. We a losing jobs, experiencing unbearable health costs, and experiencing a failing education system.

People opposing the bail out want some justice.

[joecoolfrog]

The bailout is a horrible, but necessary, fact. If it doesn't get passed, it is going to be ordinary people who will suffer, not just the suits on Wall St. Why would you welcome that?

Ordinary people will suffer and a bailout will delay the suffering and make the suffering worse in the long run. If they need 700 Billion, they can take it from the CEO's who caused this mess. They don't pay, throw them in jail. It's called putting the responsibility where it belongs and we the people are not responsible for this mess.

NO BAILOUT!!!!

Yeh its ok for you to give your money to the local church for the pastor to blow on rent boys but you resent the government using your money to stop a financial disaster, 3 cheers for common sense

[Dancing Mustard]

It is not a question of jealousy. It is a question of justice. The people on Wall Street not only make a lot of money, they made the decisions that are now taking the banks down.

Directly yes, they made the transactions. But here's a clue, if you worked in a bank so would you.

The thing which people like yourself are refusing to acknowledge here is that America also bears responsibility for this problem as a whole because of its long history of rejecting the notion of state-control, rejecting the idea of anything more than minimal levels of personal taxation, and trusting everything to the freest of free markets... and look at what your eternal faith in the mystical properties of a never-failing, unchecked, and seldom taxed free market has led you to.

But no, let's not try to figure out the best solution for the future. Let's ignore the failings of the system you've created, and let's turn away from the difficult problems of ensuring your long-term economic health. Let's go find ourselves a cheap scapegoat, and lynch those mysterious bankers. Those bankers whose only sin was doing what every American is told to do from the moment they are born: Go make as much money as you can before you die, that's what is important because it's the American way.

It is not just that those people should get a bail out, while the rest of us suffer.

You do understand that they aren't going to give this money to the bankers as spending money, and that they will suffer more unemployment and wage-slashing than you ever will... right? The money is going straight into companies to buy-out bad debts and valueless stocks, so that institutions of immense value to the US economy don't die overnight... it's not some kind of windfall bonus that bankers can use to buy fancy houses and cars with.

Seriously, for all your "The people are dying m'lord" lines: you are going to suffer a fuck-tonne more if you don't make a bail-out.

What's worse? Losing a chunk of tax-money to ensure long-term survival of your economy's financial cornerstone. Or having that money become utterly worthless when your economy crashes and burns, causing massive unemployment, drastically lowering your purchasing power, and leaving your domestic industry open to foreign buy-outs?

No! To hell with these difficult questions you cry! Let's cut our noses off to spite our faces and revel in some short-sighted fucking-over of the newly demonised Wall Street bankers. Sure it'll bugger us in the long and short terms... but the sound of doing it makes us feel good.

Yeah... Nice one. That's the kind of outlook which is bound to let your nation succeed.

[heavycola]

No! To hell with these difficult questions you cry! Let's cut our noses off to spite our faces and revel in some short-sighted fucking-over of the newly demonised Wall Street bankers. Sure it'll bugger us in the long and short terms... but the sound of doing it makes us feel good.

[b.k. barunt]

Well slap my ass and call me Long Duc Dong, but i say let the Chinese buy us out. Our present leaders have pretty much finished off our Constitution and are rapidly pushing us toward a dictatorship, and if i have to choose between a little weaselfaced, phonyTexasaccent cheesewanker, and a socialistic slanty eyed newboss, i think i'll take my chances. Hell, they've already got the Bay Area where i was raised - the high school i was kicked out of is now 80% oriental and the #2 high school in Amerika.

I for one have had enough of this bullshit. NO BAILOUT! They'll just ask for another one later on down the line. Enough of the anemic slow death here - i myself would prefer a little chaos in the streets - besides, i like Chinese food.


Honibaz

[Ditocoaf]

"Let people do whatever the hell they want, call it 'free market,' and hope for the best" seems to have failed. Jay actually seems pissed at our country's financial bigwigs. Does this mean government checks and controls on business are okay now?

Because the "free market" doesn't gravitate towards what's best for the consumer. The "free market" gravitates towards what's best for the business, and often that's also what's better for the consumer. If Jim and Dave both sell apples, and are left unchecked, they'll probably lower prices and try to grow better apples, to compete with eachother. But if Dave discovers that it's really really cheap to grow apples that happen to make men who eat them sterile... the free market will dictate that he should, because its best for the business. His morals might provide some check to that... but corporately-owned business legally don't have a conscience -- the company is required to do whatever earns the most money, for the stockholders. Which is pretty fucked up.

Let me repeat this again, because I believe this is one of the most fucked-up things in our country today. Corporations are owned by the stockholders, but the stockholders don't make most decisions... so those who do, are required to do what's "best" for the stockholders, assuming all they care about is money. A lack of moral reasoning is written into the structure of corporations, with money being the sole motivator. If a corporation goes "green," it's only because someone made a good case that "going green" would be good for business, and therefore increase profits. How -- seriously -- fucked -- up -- is -- that?

[AlgyTaylor]

Well slap my ass and call me Long Duc Dong, but i say let the Chinese buy us out. Our present leaders have pretty much finished off our Constitution and are rapidly pushing us toward a dictatorship, and if i have to choose between a little weaselfaced, phonyTexasaccent cheesewanker, and a socialistic slanty eyed newboss, i think i'll take my chances. Hell, they've already got the Bay Area where i was raised - the high school i was kicked out of is now 80% oriental and the #2 high school in Amerika.

I for one have had enough of this bullshit. NO BAILOUT! They'll just ask for another one later on down the line. Enough of the anemic slow death here - i myself would prefer a little chaos in the streets - besides, i like Chinese food.


Honibaz

Now now ... I'm as anti-American as the next European, but for fucks sake ... this is China we're talking about. Say what you like about a Republican US - they're nowhere near as bad a global superpower as China would be if they had the opportunity.

The enemy of my enemy is only occasionally my friend ...

[Ntetos]

The free market works!!!
No government regulation!!!
Mark my words. Ten years from now the american government will again try to convince us that this bullshit is correct. But then the banks won't need financial help. And they will continue to act unregulated until they collapse again and once more ask for a bailout.

[bedub1]

Anybody that thinks we can SPEND our way out of this problem is a fucking idiot that doesn't understand 1st grade math.

[Neoteny]

My assertions are right, and I don't need a reason why!

[Snorri1234]

Anybody that thinks we can SPEND our way out of this problem is a fucking idiot that doesn't understand 1st grade math.

The problems with that is that economics isn't simple. Maths isn't important as things don't have to be logical to work.

[Frigidus]

My assertions are right, and I don't need a reason why!

QFT. On a side note, I don't get what the big deal is about partial birth abortions. I mean, it's some...thing that just spent the last 9 months living in a vagina. It's like a parasite.

[Jenos Ridan]

Well slap my ass and call me Long Duc Dong, but i say let the Chinese buy us out. Our present leaders have pretty much finished off our Constitution and are rapidly pushing us toward a dictatorship, and if i have to choose between a little weaselfaced, phonyTexasaccent cheesewanker, and a socialistic slanty eyed newboss, i think i'll take my chances. Hell, they've already got the Bay Area where i was raised - the high school i was kicked out of is now 80% oriental and the #2 high school in Amerika.

I for one have had enough of this bullshit. NO BAILOUT! They'll just ask for another one later on down the line. Enough of the anemic slow death here - i myself would prefer a little chaos in the streets - besides, i like Chinese food.


Honibaz

I just hope, for your sake, you don't get targeted by some band of toothless hicks as a collaborator or sympathizer. Last I checked, lead in large amounts (especially forcibly inserted) is bad for your health.

Otherwise, I agree wholeheartedly; fine and jail those wallstreet scum.

[hecter]

Anybody that thinks we can SPEND our way out of this problem is a fucking idiot that doesn't understand 1st grade math.

And anybody who doesn't understand what the bailout is actually doing is a fucking idiot who doesn't understand the way the economy works.

[Jenos Ridan]

Reagonomics is Voodoo economics. Wealth does not trickle down - in fact, the circulation of money, goods, and services, is tipped in favor of the rich. The gap between the rich and the poor only grows wider with time. Without a lot of redistribution of that wealth, the middle class disappears, and the poor eventually become slaves to the rich.

Then explain the rise of the middle class in the late 19th century on the the mid 20th.

Please, stop paraphrasing Marx people. The man had no idea what he was talking about; he thought the revolution would happen in industrial nations, but it happened in places like Tsarist Russia, China and so forth.

The middle class rose on the backs of slaves and then on the exploitation of the land and resources of the indigenous. In the Unites States, there was an extra boost in the md 20th century in the form of subsidies to highways, gas, electric, and communications infrastructure drawn from fees to the urban poor.

Marx never said that.

Late 19th century: after 1865, there were no more slaves in the US. In Europe, slavery was outlawed decades earlier (which is interesting, since they also started reducing their use of plastic bags sometime in the mid-80's, perhaps it is true and that they are, on average, smarter. Now, to find out why......). If you want to talk about share cropping, they still were not slaves. Slaves are property, share croppers are paid laborers and have legal rights as citizens. I will make no excuses, what happened to the Indians was horrible. Not as bad as the Holocaust, but terrible none the less.

Last I checked, government funds are drawn from people's incomes based on the amount of money they make, meaning the rich get taxes more than the poor (by percent of income, some one like Bill Gates will get taxed something like 95%, wereas I will only have to pay about 33% or less). It has been that way since Ted Roosevelt was president.

I read Marx to have said that. He also said that a violent revolution was not only neccessary, but inevitable, did he not?

[Dancing Mustard]

Anybody that thinks we can SPEND our way out of this problem is a fucking idiot that doesn't understand 1st grade math.

And anybody who doesn't understand what the bailout is actually doing is a fucking idiot who doesn't understand the way the economy works.

Basically, you could have stopped writing just before you typed the second 'who'.

[Jenos Ridan]

QFT. On a side note, I don't get what the big deal is about partial birth abortions. I mean, it's some...thing that just spent the last 9 months living in a vagina. It's like a parasite.

You sir are a monster.

[mpjh]

Reagonomics is Voodoo economics. Wealth does not trickle down - in fact, the circulation of money, goods, and services, is tipped in favor of the rich. The gap between the rich and the poor only grows wider with time. Without a lot of redistribution of that wealth, the middle class disappears, and the poor eventually become slaves to the rich.

Then explain the rise of the middle class in the late 19th century on the the mid 20th.

Please, stop paraphrasing Marx people. The man had no idea what he was talking about; he thought the revolution would happen in industrial nations, but it happened in places like Tsarist Russia, China and so forth.

The middle class rose on the backs of slaves and then on the exploitation of the land and resources of the indigenous. In the Unites States, there was an extra boost in the md 20th century in the form of subsidies to highways, gas, electric, and communications infrastructure drawn from fees to the urban poor.

Marx never said that.

Late 19th century: after 1865, there were no more slaves in the US. In Europe, slavery was outlawed decades earlier (which is interesting, since they also started reducing their use of plastic bags sometime in the mid-80's, perhaps it is true and that they are, on average, smarter. Now, to find out why......). If you want to talk about share cropping, they still were not slaves. Slaves are property, share croppers are paid laborers and have legal rights as citizens. I will make no excuses, what happened to the Indians was horrible. Not as bad as the Holocaust, but terrible none the less.

Last I checked, government funds are drawn from people's incomes based on the amount of money they make, meaning the rich get taxes more than the poor (by percent of income, some one like Bill Gates will get taxed something like 95%, wereas I will only have to pay about 33% or less). It has been that way since Ted Roosevelt was president.

I read Marx to have said that. He also said that a violent revolution was not only neccessary, but inevitable, did he not?

The advantages to white people - who made up the vast majority of the so-called middle class - did not end with the legal end of slavery or the imprisonment of native Americans in reservations. History has a way of continuing from past to present, and the wealth accumulated and the resources appropriated continued to work to the advantage of white folks.

I was not speaking of taxes when I talked about the subsidy of the infrastructure that advantaged white people, but the prices paid. If you had lived here during the mid twentieth century, as I did, you would know that the prices for highways, public transportation, electricity, gas, and communications overcharged the urban poor and undercharged, significantly, the suburban middle class. Unlike Europe, our middle class is largely a suburban phenomenon. I actually testified as an expert witness in many of the cases that attempted, with some small success, to remove these subsidies.

Never read Marx. Have read Amil Cabrar, Franz Fannon, Mao, Martin Luther King, Stigletz, Lenin, Gandhi, Friedman, Newton, etc. etc.
All of whom speak eloquently of this phenomenon, both on a national and international level.

[Snorri1234]

Anybody that thinks we can SPEND our way out of this problem is a fucking idiot that doesn't understand 1st grade math.

And anybody who doesn't understand what the bailout is actually doing is a fucking idiot who doesn't understand the way the economy works.

Indeed.

Though I must say how the supporters of the bailout handled the thing was stupid. They should have told the people what it actually meant and did. Now we got pages and pages of people on this forum saying they don't want to bail out the dicks who were responsible for this who don't even know the actual impact that not doing anything would have.

[Frigidus]

QFT. On a side note, I don't get what the big deal is about partial birth abortions. I mean, it's some...thing that just spent the last 9 months living in a vagina. It's like a parasite.

You sir are a monster.

I wish to clarify your statement by asserting that I hate children. They should all be shot, and abortion is leading the way. Oh, and a little off topic but I can't stand the war in Iraq. It has been a senseless loss of life on both sides of the equation.