Tag Archives: Politics

Economics, Politics, Preparing for the worst

A Privatized Social Security

Recently, I have been seeing or hearing a few references about privatizing Social Security, and how it doesn’t seem to be an issue this election. I wonder why?

If people really wanted to go about privatizing Social Security, I would suggest that we build on the existing scheme. Leave the current SSA accounts in place and then allow the individual to set aside some completely voluntary amount into an account that they, personally, can manage. They can select the funds to be invested in, or the stocks or bonds to be purchased. I imagine a lot of brokerage firms like Fidelity and T Rowe Price and Merrill Lynch and Charles Schwabb and others will be glad to set up structured plans to aid the novice investor in directing the growth of these future retirement accounts (all in exchange for a very small percentage, annually, of the account’s net worth).

We can call them Individual Retirement Accounts, since they are for an individual to build up a retirement nest egg. And we can motivate the reluctant citizen to invest in their future with all sorts of tax reliefs and incentives. It’s hard to see any down-side to this plan. If everyone invested 10% of their income every year, in not too long a time everyone would be millionaires. Just think of it, a nation with 300-Million+ millionaires. And they would still be getting Social Security checks! This is such a no-brainer, I’m surprised no one has thought of it before.

Economics, Politics

WTF!

Banks to Continue Paying Dividends

Here we are, bailing out all these banks who are so badly in need of capital in order to operate and do their banking thing, and they want to pay out over half of the money we are rescuing them with to the investors who goaded them into their malfeasant ways in the first place.

And then there’s this:

Ed Yingling, chief executive of the American Bankers Association, said he was increasingly hearing from banking executives who feel they should not be forced to accept money with so many strings attached. He said these banks don’t need the money, but they are willing to use it to increase lending, so long as they are not punished for doing so.

Are we forcing banks to accept federal money?

The more I hear about this entire venture, the more it stinks. I think the best idea is to take the $700 Billion and create a separate banking system. Let the new banks put liquidity into the system and let the old banks die. (I heard this proposed earlier this month (Oct 10?) on CNN or MSNBC but my google-fu is not not working and I can’t find a link to it. It sounded like a very workable idea. There was even a way for the government to gracefully bow out of the banking business once the foundation was set.)

Politics

Only in America, land of opportunity

Yes- only in America do you have the opportunity to be branded a terrorist for committing acts of non-violence. And with that opportunity comes the lifetime of harassment and restrictions imposed by said label.  Oh well, at least they won’t disappear you the way they do in other countries, mostly.

Protesting nuns branded terrorists

http://www.denverpost.com/ci_10694060

This does open the an interesting option. Can we get the Wall Streeters and mortgage brokers labeled terrorists? No trial necessary and they are going to be hosed for the rest of their lives.

Economics, Liberating Thoughts, Politics, Preparing for the worst

Whose Economic Policies Work Best?!?

Personally, I consider the National Debt to be the greatest threat to the future well-being of the United States. Followed closely by deficit spending. Given the economic news of the past week, with the Federal Government doing its best to socialize losses, I expect the debt will continue to grow. (Did you know the National Debt is about to hit $10 Trillion? That’s Trillion, with a Tr.)

Avedon compiled a review of past administration economic results that Dwight Meredith studied “Just For the Record” – covering 1962-2001.

The link has some specific numbers and links to other interesting pages.

A bit of Summary:
Continue reading Whose Economic Policies Work Best?!? →

Liberating Thoughts, Politics

Reflections on the Fourth:

I have sort of half been paying attention to the buzz going around this year on the pending elections. The Nominees have been determined and now each side is looking for a VP that will make a difference.

I saw a reposting of a Washington Post piece on the allegiance of a patriot an American. It does well to capture what I think of as the base ideals of America, ideals that are run over roughshod in the current political climate.

I see that Clark made a statement that being a war hero, to have made a large personal sacrifice for your country, does not mean that you are qualified to be commander-in-chief. I also heard the follow-up – that reaching the strategic command level begins to reach the level of qualification Clark was referring to. Clark was lambasted for dissing McCain, which he wasn’t doing. And McCain’s people can’t say that just because McCain has made great personal sacrifices for his country that he is qualified to be President. Neither approach is correct; neither being a war hero nor being a strategic genius qualifies you to be the President – or Commander-in-Chief. And it is foolish to pretend it does. But, I suppose the pundits need to prattle on about something. The very thought of MacArthur as President sends shivers down my spine.

The President is a civilian authority. He, or she, has the resources of the Pentagon and the Joint Chiefs to call upon to review military options. That’s their job. I am afraid that too many in the current administration see the military as a foreign policy tool and since we paid so much for it, it seems kind of silly not to use it. So they invade sovereign nations that are not an eminent threat to the US or to its allies and squander billions of dollars of the US treasury and thousands of soldier’s lives. And Congress, our representatives, lets them get away with it. Why are WE letting THEM get away with it?

The President is not the King of the United States of America. Yet many seem to think of him as a king and to treat him as a king. His deciding decisions are the final authority on all matters great and small. If the President makes a decree that the pundits agree with, then it is treason to disagree with the President. (Of course, if the pundits disagree with him then he is a buffoon or a criminal.) Presidents shouldn’t make decrees; they should make suggestions, and maybe even suggest how a suggestion can be implemented, but they shouldn’t make decrees. Leave that for the idiots in Congress.

As we have observed this past Fourth, the United States of America was founded on the principle that we do not owe allegiance to one man, to one sovereign. The people are sovereign; the citizens are sovereign.

And there are natural rights that apply to all humans. These are inherent human rights that we hold to be self-evident. We started to define them in our Declaration of Independence and further refined them in our Constitution. These are natural human rights, unalienable; not just American rights. We just happened to be the first to codify these rights for all and our prosperity. It does well to ponder these rights on the Fourth, to remember where we came from and why, and to look upon our current path, and to see if we are still moving, progressing in the desired direction.

Liberating Thoughts, Politics

“The Four Freedoms”

The essential human freedoms don’t change over time, driven by partisan politics. They are a constant basic foundation of our social fabric.

Please don’t forget them.

American Rhetoric: Franklin D. Roosevelt — “The Four Freedoms”


In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.

The first is freedom of speech and expression — everywhere in the world.

The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way — everywhere in the world.

The third is freedom from want, which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants — everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear, which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor — anywhere in the world.

That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called “new order” of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.

To that new order we oppose the greater conception — the moral order. A good society is able to face schemes of world domination and foreign revolutions alike without fear.

Economics, Politics

Entering the economic quagmire…

I read an article over on Making Light and it got me to pondering.

What libertarians (and the softheaded quasi-libertarian burghers of science fiction fandom, most of whom think the Economist is a voice of reason) need to learn is that capitalism is never about free markets, or in fact “freedom” of any sort; it’s about using the power of the state in order to make it easy for large amounts of capital to get together and rearrange the rules for its own convenience. “Privatize the profits, socialize the losses” is the logical consequence of capitalism’s prime directive. What we wind up with is socialism for the powerful, and tough shit for everybody else.

“Privatize the profits, socialize losses” seems to be a very apt description of Wall Street Capitalism.  Every decade or two we seem to need to learn the lesson all over again. If rules and regulations get set up, the players learn to game the system while continually trying to undermine the regulators – Oh! they’re not needed anymore since we learned that lesson!

But I did start to ponder about the full matrix that the statement creates.

  1. Privatize profits ——socialize losses
  2. Socialize profits——socialize  losses
  3. Socialize profits——privatize losses
  4. Privatize profits——privatize losses
  1. is straight Wall Street Capitalism
  2. is probably straight Socialism
  3. is never going to happen, or is it philanthropy?
  4. is complete anarchy/ true capitalism

I must continue my pondering.

Economics, General, Politics

The New Colonialism

China | The new colonialists | Economist.com

Not all observers, however, think that China’s unstinting appetite for commodities is super. The most common complaint centres on foreign policy. In its drive to secure reliable supplies of raw materials, it is said, China is coddling dictators, despoiling poor countries and undermining Western efforts to spread democracy and prosperity. America and Europe, the shrillest voices say, are “losing” Africa and Latin America.

I read this paragraph and immediately thought “How is this different from what the US has been doing for the past 100+ years? ” I might include the Europeans as well, after they had to relinquish their empires – coddling dictators indeed, setting them up in the first place, that’s what they were doing.