[PluggyRug]

That's one of the aspirations clogging the pipe.

[BartSimpson]

andyt andyt:

Stiglitz's agenda.

His agenda is pretty clear: He wants to limit incomes and compensation to reduce 'inequality'.

I abhor his ideas in this regard.

I agree with reducing the complexities of the legal system that favor the wealthy, but I also think we need to reduce the ability of everyone to litigate. To many trivial things are litigated these days and the result of this has been a complex and expensive legal system.

The author also comes close but misses the point about the interaction of the high price of education and debt. The financialization of the marketplace has made the banking industry the most important industry in Western civilization. This has come at the expense of other industries and we'e also seeing the indulgent influence of the bankers as education costs have been disproportionately inflated, a happenstance that reaps billions in non-profit profits for the educators but that also reaps heinous amounts of profit for the bankers who finance student loans.

The more an education costs the better the profits for the bankers.

Ending the power of the banks by nationalizing them (at least for a time), requiring their deposits to cover their loans, and forbidding the government from requiring banks to issue loans to people who do not qualify for them would all be good steps to restoring our industrial economy.

[peck420]

You could take every penny from every banker, today...and you will need to do another redistribution in 15 years.

[BartSimpson]

andyt andyt:

You can't have equality of opportunity without redistribution of wealth.

Andy, if it were up to you then every hockey team would win the Stanley Cup.

Every year.

[BartSimpson]

peck420 peck420:

You could take every penny from every banker, today...and you will need to do another redistribution in 15 years.

Then you see why I want to nationalize the banks to reduce their power.

Notice that I am not including credit unions or other financial cooperatives that are owned by depositors. Just the banks that have financed themselves into unaccountability.

[ShepherdsDog]

He wants your chicken in his pot.

[andyt]

How can you have equality of opportunity without equality of education? Takes tax money to do that. And so on down the line. Start everybody off equal, the winners will take a larger slice of the pie. Fair enough (unless they game the system to keep themselves winners, as y'all do in the US), but their kids certainly won't start off equal, and not just with inherited wealth. Equality of opportunity is a myth. But what can be realized is lessening the gap - and he gives examples of where that's done successfully.

I don't hear him saying there should be a cap on earnings - but regulations that prevent making profits at the expense of society, and wealth redistribution, (taxes) to make things less unequal, not totally equal.

[Thanos]

peck420 peck420:

You could take every penny from every banker, today...and you will need to do another redistribution in 15 years.

I'd let the bankers and brokers keep all the profits they want. In exchange any public bailouts for when their crooked schemes blow up on them come to an absolute and permanent halt. Privatize profits all they want but the socializing of any loss never happens ever again, no matter how many banks go under. In the short term it might hurt but as the banksters realize that any losses will be fully paid for by themselves the likelihood of them engaging in these frauds that have global consequences will greatly and rapidly diminish.

Just a theory though. They own too many politicians everywhere now for any genuine systemic changes to ever happen.

[peck420]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

peck420 peck420:

You could take every penny from every banker, today...and you will need to do another redistribution in 15 years.

Then you see why I want to nationalize the banks to reduce their power.

Notice that I am not including credit unions or other financial cooperatives that are owned by depositors. Just the banks that have financed themselves into unaccountability.

Lol, I understand your point, but that was not my point.

I will rephrase for clarity:

You could take every penny from every person on the planet, redistribute it perfectly equally, and you will be doing the same, again, in 15 years.

The point is that many are far to willing to give away their wealth for cheap and immediate material satisfaction, while others are not.

For all of this talk about ending fiscal inequality, it is very rare to see the single largest culprit to the problem called out...the consumer.

Capitalism is not production driven, it is not even capital driven...it is CONSUMER driven.

Equalize all you want, if you don't fix consumers, you just repeat and repeat.

[BartSimpson]

andyt andyt:

Equality of opportunity is a myth.

No, it isn't.

I'm a better shot than almost everyone I know. But when I was 15 I couldn't hit a wall with a baseball. Lots of practice and hundreds of thousands of rounds later I can easily plug a nickel at 100 meters. And then put twenty more rounds through the same hole.

That's a result of perfecting my craft and going to the range even at times in my life when I was disabled from surgeries and maybe never needing to shoot again. Yet I did it anyway.

I went back to college in 2000 and got a degree in Network Technologies and paid for the whole thing myself because the college money I'd earned in the service was not available because although they'd disabled me for my pay they refused to disable me for my benefits. Did I cry about it and stop living? No, I doubled down and did what I wanted to despite the roadblocks.

Is my outcome the same as some loser who doesn't have a physical disability but spends his whole day crying about inequalities? Of course not!

The opportunities were there for me, the same as they are for anyone else, and I made the best of them. There was no one to blame but me if I didn't try.

And that's the common thread I always see with leftists like yourself: Yes, you acknowledge the injustice in the world but then you let it stop you from pursuing success. Your life is full of excuses and you blame your failures in life on some vague bogeymen. Meanwhile other people face the same challenges and worse and they not only persevere, they prosper.

And you hate it because their success underlines your failure and you hate them for it.

You make your failure worse by wanting to destroy the fruits of the success of others.

Were you a failed artist then instead of doubling down on your efforts you'd want to burn the Louvre.

[Thanos]

Tell the consumer, in this case the investors who buy bank stocks, that public bailouts will no longer happen. If an investment scheme implodes then the only ones on the hook for it will be the bankers that thought it up and the investors that sat back and allowed it to proceed. This alone should force the investors and other stockholders to insist that the banks no longer engage in risky investments and crooked practices. If the reality of their own personal impoverishment when inevitable disaster at the hands of some shysters finally strikes isn't enough to change the consumer attitude then nothing will.

[peck420]

Thanos Thanos:

I'd let the bankers and brokers keep all the profits they want. In exchange any public bailouts for when their crooked schemes blow up on them come to an absolute and permanent halt. Privatize profits all they want but the socializing of any loss never happens ever again, no matter how many banks go under. In the short term it might hurt but as the banksters realize that any losses will be fully paid for by themselves the likelihood of them engaging in these frauds that have global consequences will greatly and rapidly diminish.

Just a theory though. They own too many politicians everywhere now for any genuine systemic changes to ever happen.

I don't think it would have made much of a difference, too be honest.

It's not like the banks would have covered their losses out of their pockets, they would have covered their losses out of their clients pockets...so, really...at least with 'socialized' coverage, the nation gets to try to maintain an illusion of confidence.

Either way, it ends up fugly.

[peck420]

Thanos Thanos:

Tell the consumer, in this case the investors who buy bank stocks, that public bailouts will no longer happen. If an investment scheme implodes then the only ones on the hook for it will be the bankers that thought it up and the investors that sat back and allowed it to proceed. This alone should force the investors and other stockholders to insist that the banks no longer engage in risky investments and crooked practices. If the reality of their own personal impoverishment when inevitable disaster at the hands of some shysters finally strikes isn't enough to change the consumer attitude then nothing will.

So...do exactly what the US government already did? The covered the losses of a terrible investment idea that, not only did they come up with, they sat back and watched as everybody else told them it was not going to pan.

A huge component (the primary component, in my opinion)of the housing bubble, that started the ball rolling, was legislation designed to make it easier for low income families to buy homes...ironic isn't it.

[Thanos]

peck420 peck420:

Thanos Thanos:

I'd let the bankers and brokers keep all the profits they want. In exchange any public bailouts for when their crooked schemes blow up on them come to an absolute and permanent halt. Privatize profits all they want but the socializing of any loss never happens ever again, no matter how many banks go under. In the short term it might hurt but as the banksters realize that any losses will be fully paid for by themselves the likelihood of them engaging in these frauds that have global consequences will greatly and rapidly diminish.

Just a theory though. They own too many politicians everywhere now for any genuine systemic changes to ever happen.

I don't think it would have made much of a difference, too be honest.

It's not like the banks would have covered their losses out of their pockets, they would have covered their losses out of their clients pockets...so, really...at least with 'socialized' coverage, the nation gets to try to maintain an illusion of confidence.

Either way, it ends up fugly.

True enough, and believe me, I'm not clamouring for some mom & pop investors to get destroyed in all of this. Tax dollars being used to save bankers from their own evil behaviour has to stop though. If the investors get hit but the taxpayers that aren't even invested in these funds and whatnot aren't, then so be it. It's far more fair than saying everyone, even those who aren't even the slightest bit involved, has to pay for the chichanery of a paltry few. I hate to think about how many American homeowners got foreclosed on when their tax dollars ended up going to save the banks that came out and evicted them from their own homes. Those are the people I feel sorry for, not some retiree in Florida collecting a couple of grand a month in investment dividends from the Wall Street criminals at the same time they're collecting Social Security from the federal government.

The elderly dad of a former friend here in Alberta lost his shirt to the tune of about a hundred grand in the Principal Group collapse back in the 1980's. They don't talk to me anymore, and haven't for years, when I told them that there was no fucking way that my taxes should have gone up just to pay for his bailout from the Alberta government. I saw no profit or benefit from the Principal Group when they were riding high on the hog so why should I be obligated to suffer a loss (in the form of my taxes paying out private investors) just to save someone else who trusted their banker too much? The ones who are all hooray-for-the-free-market when they're making money, but then rapidly turn into terrified quivering socialists crying for the government to save them when things turn sour, really piss me off.

[Thanos]

peck420 peck420:

Thanos Thanos:

Tell the consumer, in this case the investors who buy bank stocks, that public bailouts will no longer happen. If an investment scheme implodes then the only ones on the hook for it will be the bankers that thought it up and the investors that sat back and allowed it to proceed. This alone should force the investors and other stockholders to insist that the banks no longer engage in risky investments and crooked practices. If the reality of their own personal impoverishment when inevitable disaster at the hands of some shysters finally strikes isn't enough to change the consumer attitude then nothing will.

So...do exactly what the US government already did? The covered the losses of a terrible investment idea that, not only did they come up with, they sat back and watched as everybody else told them it was not going to pan.

A huge component (the primary component, in my opinion)of the housing bubble, that started the ball rolling, was legislation designed to make it easier for low income families to buy homes...ironic isn't it.

It was probably less the theory of low-income home ownership at fault than it was the practice of allowing the ones (i.e. the Wall Streeters) most likely to turn it into a criminal enterprise to be the ones to manage it. Classic letting the vampire provide security for the blood bank scenario, so to speak.