Income Disparity a Failed Government Policy

Want to know why the income disparity has continued to grow, leading to much frustration?

As with most economic problems today you can tie the disparity directly to the policies of the government.

Our system had a built in solution to excesses of capitalism, including excessive CEO wages.  It was known as a recession and it regularly forced everyone from the single mother to the largest corporate board to reevaluate their priorities.  Companies fired underperformers!  Unfortunately the government's desire to lessen the effects of a recession and protect the too big to fail companies has not only extended the pain we all feel but has nearly eliminated the very important effects of that self correcting, excess eliminating mechanism.

Update with some thoughts brought to you by a leftie site via Ace

You've people got it backwards. Capitalism calls for insolvent banks to fail. Socialism calls for them to be bailed out. submitted 11 hours ago by r3compile
Edit: Some more complete thoughts:
The free market gets rid of risky, unstable businesses. Capitalism means if you don't have a viable product, you go away. People vote with their own money.
In Socialism, you vote with other people's money. You keep throwing good money after bad because you like the idea of a stable bank and you don't want to admit that it needs to go bankrupt.
All a businessman can do is try to sell you something that you think is worth the money.
But a government can take your wealth by force, and allocate it to an area that has no viable market, purely for the benefit of catering to voters and trying to get re-elected.
As long as we have a big government trying to run every aspect of the economy, it will be taken advantage of by some minority to the detriment of the majority.
I sympathize with the message of OWS thanks banks get special favors from government. But the answer isn't to give more special favors to labor unions and employees. The answer is to get the government out of the way and let the market flush out all these bad banks so a viable economy can rise.

Boom or Bomb -- Policies Matter

You can drop as many bombs and guided missiles on terrorists as you can afford, BUT, as long as the administrations policies and rhetoric capitulate to the goals of the terrorists you will never solve the terrorist problem.

That is the problem with the current administration.  That was the goal of the left from the beginning.  Don't bother changing the behavior and attitudes of the terrorists and their sponsoring governments, it is far easier for us to just learn to live with terrorism like Europe................hey I remember someone saying that right after 9/11.

So, on to the ill advised draw down in Iraq.

Comparison of Jobs Record

 

Via HotAir

Need a Reagan, Not a Nixon.

Okay, so why am I afraid that we will elect a Nixon when what we need is another Reagan?

Nixon believed in federal government solutions, hence his signing of the EPA and OSHA regulations to name a couple.

Unfortunately we need someone who believes government is the problem not the solution and I fear there isn't anyone running who really believes that today.   Do you?
DKK

Obama's Role Model -- Diplomacy That Nearly Destroyed The World: Prediction Realized

Update May 16, 2011 and reposted to front page:  German Paper: Iran is Building Rocket Launch Bases in Venezuela.  As I said at the bottom of this post, "If this is what Obama has in mind, getting the hell beat out of him by Kim and Mahmoud I don't want anything to do with it! I should just start digging the shelter now!"

I really believe it is as if Obama believes the past 2000 years were an anomaly rather then the human condition.


Original post dated May 8, 2008 follows:...............................................

I trust the American people to understand that it is not weakness, but wisdom to talk not just to our friends, but to our enemies, like Roosevelt did, and Kennedy did, and Truman did.

Obama's supporters are too young to know any of this, but Roosevelt led the United States in the war against Hitler; the Allied policy was unconditional surrender, so there was very little for Roosevelt and Hitler to discuss, and in fact, the two did not meet at all (but they did exchange correspondence before the war).
So my guess is that Obama is thinking of the Yalta Conference with Churchill and Stalin as talking to "our enemies", although of course we were still allied with the Soviet Union against Germany and Japan at that point. Beyond that, is the Yalta Conference something Obama and his advisers view as a success worthy of emulation?
(Just One Minute -- Don't Know Much About History...)

Yalta was considered a diplomatic disaster that enslaved millions in Eastern Europe. Roosevelt, who called Stalin, "Uncle Joe," failed to recognize the evil that would lead to the deaths of 15 to 20 million Soviet citizens -- Time Magazine (13 April 1998) (Some estimates as large as 52 million with 30 million being the median estimate).

I can't recall when Truman talked to our enemies, other then perhaps their surrender after he dropped the atomic bomb . Truman lead the UN into Korea and did so without talking to our enemies -- they were boycotting the UN -- rather then talk he gave ultimatums and took action to remove our enemies from South Korea.

As a matter of fact Truman has his own Doctrine (The Truman Doctrine) that supported our allies financially and militarily against Soviet (our enemies) influence. This lead to what was known as the Domino Theory and formed much of the Cold War doctrine that lasted for decades (a variation of which Bush uses to push democracy).

Along with The Marshall Plan The Truman Doctrine helped feed the Soviet reaction that led to the Berlin Blockade. It was only the show of determination and strength -- redeployment of B-29's to England, the same bombers that dropped atomic weapons on Japan -- that prevented escalation of the conflict during the 11 months of the airlift.

Kennedy escalated Vietnam as a part of Truman's doctrine and while he did speak to Kruschev during the Vienna Summit it was considered a failure that caused the players (Kennedy and Kruschev) to push the world toward the most dangerous nuclear stand off in history -- The Cuban missile Crisis.

(About Vienna, Kennedy later claimed of Khrushchev, "He beat the hell out of me.")

If this is what Obama has in mind, getting the hell beat out of him by Kim and Mahmoud I don't want anything to do with it! I should just start digging the shelter now!
DKK

Update: Great minds think alike - points made by Jack Kelly here at Real Clear Politics.

Kings of Non Sequiturs

Why doesn't any journalist ever call the Democrats and environmentalists on the non sequitur they continue to use by comparing total oil reserves to total usage?

"We can't drill our way out of this, we only have 2% of the known reserves yet we use 25% or the worlds oil!"

Ah, yes. Forget for a minute that you can't increase your known (proven) reserves without exploring for more oil (see Brazil 1995 vs Brazil 2011), the comparison is completely apples to oranges.

Untapped oil under ground /= (is not equal to) oil in the pipeline!

It is like saying that it won't do any good for the electric company to produce any more electricity because the factory down the road, where everyone in the town works (see how I did that), uses 25% of the electric company's power, despite the fact that the company has unused generating capacity equal to 2% of the world's generators AND they can always find more if the market were to call for it.

Patriots or Patriots

There is a group of millionaires who call themselves, "Patriotic Millionaires for Fiscal Strength" who are advocating raising taxes on the wealthy. They argue that they should be taxed for the good of society as a whole -- increase their taxes so we can reduce debt without impacting social spending.

Well, aside from the fact that no one is stopping them from making a donation to the government that can be applied directly to the debt (pay.gov), true patriots are those millionaires who are providing jobs and fuel for the nation's economic engine not sending money to the black whole of Washington.

Here is an idea, how about each one of these millionaires decide how much extra money they believe they should pay and then hire people to do whatever service they believe is worthy. For example if they want to support senior meal programs then they could take $200,000 in extra taxes and hire 8 people at $40,000 each and deploy them in the city they believe needs the assistance. They would not only be providing the seniors aid they would be creating jobs multiplied in the economy AND they would be providing additional tax revenue to all stages of government.

Killing two birds with one $200,000 stones. Each of those jobs helps to support another worker in the economy and according to Obama's stimulus they would create or save another job!

So, why are they so selfish and unpatriotic?

Bad day, btw, I'll come back and clean this up in a few days.

Dumb War Hypocrite........

May 28, 2008 I analyzed Barack Obama's Dumb War speech and concluded it did not make the grade of real world experience.

Well, here is an upgraded version with just a few changes:

That’s what I’m opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics.

Now let me be clear. I suffer no illusions about Muammar Quaddafi . He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power. He has repeatedly defied UN resolutions, sponsored terrorists , developed chemical and biological weapons, and enriched himself at the expense of his country.

He’s a bad guy. The world, and the Libyan people, would be better off without him.

But I also know that Quaddafi poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors, that the Libyan economy is in shambles, that the Libyan military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history.

I know that even a successful war against Libya will require a US occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Libya without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaeda.

I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars.

Oh how things have Obama has changed

The Worst of Both Worlds -- Failure to Lead

President Obama's dithering and failure to lead on the Libya situation has lead to a no win situation for the US.

We won't receive any of the meager credit we could might have gotten if the rebellion succeeds and we will receive all of the blame if it fails.

Yes, this always happens anyway, but at least we had the opportunity to shape things somewhat and we would have gotten some credit from those objective few.

Root Cause.........

How Much Does The Government Know About You?

Atty. general: Ill. should release FOID card list

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. —
The Illinois attorney general says state police must release the name of everyone in the state who is authorized to own a gun.

Illinois state police determine who gets a Firearm Owners Identification card, which allows people to own guns. The police have always kept the list private.

But Attorney General Lisa Madigan's public access counselor released a letter Monday night saying the information should be public.

The Associated Press had requested the list of FOID cardholders but state police said that would violate the privacy of gun owners. The attorney general's office ruled that argument invalid.

State police officials have not said whether they will comply with the ruling.

There are Republican-sponsored bills in the Illinois House and Senate that would prohibit disclosure of the information.

Milton Friedman on Progressive Taxes

A further factor that has reduced the impact of the graduated tax structure on inequality of income and wealth is that these taxes are much less taxes on being wealthy than on becoming wealthy. While they limit the use of the income from existing wealth, they impede even more strikingly -- so far as they are effective -- the accumulation of wealth. The taxation of the income from the wealth does nothing to reduce the wealth itself, it simply reduces the level of consumption and additions to wealth that the owners can support. The tax measures give an incentive to avoid risk and to embody existing wealth in relatively stable forms, which reduces the likelihood that existing accumulations of wealth will be dissipated. On the other side, the major route to new accumulations is through large current incomes of which a large fraction is saved and invested in risky activities, some of which will yield high returns. If die income tax were effective, it would close this route. In consequence, its effect would be to protect existing holders of wealth from the competition of newcomers. In practice, this effect is largely dissipated by the avoidance devices already referred to.

Capitalism and Freedom

Economic Freedom Is Tied To Political Freedom

"The question becomes, are you going to have everyone play by the same rules, or are you going to try to rectify the shortcomings, errors and failures of the entire cosmos? Because those things are wholly incompatible. If you're going to have people play by the same rules, that can be enforced with a minimum amount of interference with people's freedom. But if you're going to try to make the entire cosmos right and just, somebody has got to have an awful lot of power to impose what they think is right on an awful lot of other people. What we've seen, particularly in the 20th century, is that putting that much power in anyone's hands is enormously dangerous."

Thomas Sowell via Glenn Beck; Broke

Ah The Unions!

In 1943, a New York Supreme Court judge held:

To tolerate or recognize any combination of civil service employees of the government as a labor organization or union is not only incompatible with the spirit of democracy, but inconsistent with every principle upon which our government is founded. Nothing is more dangerous to public welfare than to admit that hired servants of the State can dictate to the government the hours, the wages and conditions under which they will carry on essential services vital to the welfare, safety, and security of the citizen. To admit as true that government employees have power to halt or check the functions of government unless their demands are satisfied, is to transfer to them all legislative, executive and judicial power. Nothing would be more ridiculous.

National Affairs: The Trouble With Public Sector Unions

Rockford's Sock Monkey Makes Time's Top 100 Toys!

The Nelson Knitting Co. of Rockford, Ill., may not have invented the sock monkey, but it standardized its manufacturing process somewhat. In 1932, the company added a line of socks whose red heels assured their customers that they were indeed purchasing original "Rockfords." When worn out, the socks were then deployed as playthings by American mothers who made stuffed monkeys out of them, using the red heel as a mouth. Hearing about these enterprising homemakers and seeing great promotional opportunity, the Nelson Knitting Co. began including a sock-monkey pattern with every pair of socks.

Time Magazine All Time 100 Top Toys

The International Human Right -- Firearms!

A recent article in the Washington University Law Quarterly argues that the most important thing we can do to prevent genocide is to ensure that civilian populations are armed:

The question of genocide is one of manifest importance in the closing years of a century that has been extraordinary for the quality and quantity of its bloodshed. As Elie Wiesel has rightly pointed out, "This century is the most violent in recorded history. Never have so many people participated in the killing of so many people."

Recent events in the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and many other parts of the world make it clear that the book has not yet been closed on the evil of official mass murder. Contemporary scholars have little explored the preconditions of genocide. Still less have they asked whether a society's weapons policy might be one of the institutional arrangements that contributes to the probability of its government engaging in some of the more extreme varieties of outrage.

Though it is a long step between being disarmed and being murdered--one does not usually lead to the other--but it is nevertheless an arresting reality that not one of the principal genocides of the twentieth century, and there have been dozens, has been inflicted on a population that was armed.

Fox News - Opinion -- The International Right

Why Small Government? Bureaucracies fail and damage many when they do!

Alexander Natta, former General Secretary of the Italian Communist party:

At the same time we, the communists, having either overestimated or underestimated the functions of the “welfare state,” kept defending situations which, as it became clear only now, we should not have defended. As a result, a bureaucratic apparatus, which serves itself, has swelled.
...
Any bureaucratization encourages the apparatus to protect its own interests and to forget about the citizens’

That is the the best explanation of government and from an unlikely source.

Source: Margaret Thatcher: a legacy of freedom via Glen Beck Broke

On the concept of A Living Constitution

“a formula for an end run around popular government” and is “genuinely corrosive
of the fundamental values of our democratic society”.
William H Rehnquist

Jefferson on Redistribution of Wealth

To take from one because it is thought that his own industry and that of his father’s has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association—the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.

Thomas Jefferson, letter to Joseph Milligan, April 6, 1816

America's weakness affects its friends, but aren't we all getting along now? Nay, not so much.

Jimmy Carter will go down in American history as "the president who lost Iran," which during his term went from being a major strategic ally of the United States to being the revolutionary Islamic Republic. Barack Obama will be remembered as the president who "lost" Turkey, Lebanon and Egypt, and during whose tenure America's alliances in the Middle East crumbled.

The superficial circumstances are similar. In both cases, a United States in financial crisis and after failed wars loses global influence under a leftist president whose good intentions are interpreted abroad as expressions of weakness. The results are reflected in the fall of regimes that were dependent on their relationship with Washington for survival, or in a change in their orientation, as with Ankara.

America's general weakness clearly affects its friends.

Haaretz

Obama will go down in history as the president who lost Egypt