Re: Lucas: Shame on the redistributionists

From: The Trucker (mikcob_at_verizon.net)
Date: 06/13/04 

Date: Sat, 12 Jun 2004 17:03:19 -0700

Les Cargill wrote:

> The Trucker wrote:
>
>> Les Cargill wrote:
>>
> <snip>
>>>I don't *care* about the top %0.01 ; they
>>>are not as significant as the other %99.9 . And the
>>>information on mobility is out there.
>>
>>
>> Statistics on wealth not spun by Republicans indicate a much
>> taller and thiner top to
>> the pyramid and a much broader base. And the truly rich stay that
>> way for the most part. Every now and then you see a Gates come
>> along but it is extremely rare. The middle class of the USA was
>> once quite prosperous and now is not. They have "mobilitied"
>> downward.
>>
>>
>
> Yet there is no, none, nada, zip empirical evidence to
> support that hypothesis.

http://Greatervoice.org/econ/glossary/economic_decline.php

> All I see is an overheating
> real estate market, a sure sign of increased purchasing
> power.

What you see is increased debt. The people that the Pugs want to
refer to as "home owners" are actually just renters because they
refinance the house once a year to pay off the credit cards. They
will never own the house. The rentier has simply found a way
to get the renters to pay maintenance and insurance and taxes
more directly. And as Mr. Green Jeans now raises the interst
rates, the rentier Pugs will be taking possession at greatly
reduced prices.

> We see emplopyment finally jumping up, in the fastest
> recovery since 1980 ( and even it felt slow ).

We see bull*** data from the Bush bought and paid for
Bureau of Lying Sadistics (BLS). This data tells absolutely
nothing about real unemployment and nothing about the millions
of people that now have jobs paying considerable less than the
jobs they were forced out of by H1B visas and the like.

> The booms of recent were financial crack pipe dreams, and
> I was saying that in 1997. Getting washed out
> on Enron is not the same thing as downward mobility.

When the Gingrich Republican congress overrides a presidential veto
of the legislation that allowed Aurthur Anderson to be both consultant
and auditor of Enron you get exactly what you see. And Enron was
just the one that got caught for going too far. The overstated
earnings CAUSED a bubble and greenspan then engineered a crash to
coincide with the election. It was a Carter Volcker Reagan replay.
We see GreenJeans talking about hiking rates now, knowing that the
effect will be delayed. But he started ACTUALLY jacking the rates
a full 12 - 18 months prior to the previous presidential election
while Bush and Cheney sold the "false economy" scenario on the
campaign trial.

> *Right now*, you can get VC in a half a hearbeat - so long
> as you have your ducks in a row.

Is that anything like VD?

> You just have to spend
> considerable time in waterfowl alignment, and you won't keep as
> much of it as ten years ago. WHat you'll have to do
> will be technically shallower, but that's one of those
> things.
>
> <snip>
>>>Yet examples of readily available "self cleaning toilets" abound.
>>
>>
>> But the super rich don't want them. They want to have a servant
>> do the job. Wealth is the power to forego or to command labor.
>> Power is a form of wealth that IS zero sum. It is the enforced
>> subservience of others that makes the Republican feel good, feel
>> safe, feel powerful.
>>
>
> People say this, and I see no evidence of it. Nobody ( and I
> do know a few relatively well-off people ) has servants.
>
> Again, some people might hire a cleaning service periodically
> to help if both parents have kids and work, but that is *not*
> the same thing. Contracting with even a franchise cleaning
> service is not domestic servant labor.
>
>>
>>>If the breakdown is that its cheaper to hire people to clean them,
>>>then the self cleaning toilet makes no sense. I do not buy that
>>>there are people actively desiring to have "slaves" out there. It's
>>>too far from existing cultural norms. But there are a
>>>lot of people who desire to create employment.
>>
>>
>> You are simply WRONG. Today's Republicanism is a search for pure power.
>
> Nonsense. It's populism. You think a rent-seeking class could swing
> popular votes and would use footage of the president clearing
> brush on his land?

The "rent seeking class" will do whatever they believe necessary to
suck more rent out of the economy and subjugate the renters. If that
was to include airing pictures Howdy Doody having sex with a bullfrog
then that is what we would get on Faux news and in other campaign ads.

>> It is the search for an economy in which the leaders tell us all exactly
>> what our morals should be, who we are to have sex with and how, what
>> god(s) to worship and how, and to do this it is necessary to create
>> a ruling class economically.
>>
>
> Oh good grief. Wipe the dang foam off your mouth and
> *think* for a minute. Where is the evidence of an
> emerging Mandarin class?

George Bush wants a constitutional amendment to prevent gay marriage,
wants to give money to the religious orders, wants to detain people
without council, is accountable for torture of prisoners, and on, and
on and on. Its the friggin crusades. But it puts the rich, a la
Cheney and Co. above the law. It puts the Bush people above the
law, and it will, before all is said and done, put Ken Lay above
the law. Those that have power now operate with impunity as they hide
behind whatever MORAL issues they can drum up. Of course the favorite
is FEAR of those Moslems.

> If there is a corporation which represents things now, it
> is WalMart. They are extraordinarily good at what they
> do. They are also very fiscally conservative.
>
> AND THEY DO WHAT THE CUSTOMERS WANT THEM TO DO!
>
>> http://GreaterVoice.org/econ/glossary/aristocracy.php
>>
>
>
> --
> Les Cargill 

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