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Strategies & Market Trends : Booms, Busts, and Recoveries

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To: RealMuLan who wrote (36763)	7/31/2003 5:03:59 AM
From: Seeker of Truth	Read Replies (2) of 74559

"Western democracy has a lot of problems." I think we should define "Western democracy" with more detail. As we all know, in the US money talks. Ordinary people more or less have civil rights, they will probably not be sentenced to jail for something they never did. Basically they can say what they want, etc. What they totally lack is any influence over government policy. All of this is in the interests of the super-rich. The latter want to be protected against criminal acts of one of their members, and against unjust arrest. They also don't want poor people to have any influence on the government. Since modern life is complicated and the issues are hard to understand, the $ controlled media are used to obfuscate the issues. $ also make the required noise at elections. In some European countries the taxes are sufficiently high and progressive that there are not so many rich people. Some examples are Scandinavia and the Netherlands. In such countries there are not only civil rights the people also eagerly vote and discuss national issues. Key issues are taxation and proportional representation. Without these, a complete democracy cannot be established. I had the good fortune to spend some time in Sweden and the Netherlands. It opened my eyes. Capitalism and democracy are a good fit, provided that we limit extreme wealth. Business people should be allowed to make good profits but not so much that they develop a billionaire class, in control of everything. Not only Eisenhower, but even people as early as Lincoln warned against such a development. In the above sense I really hope that Chinese people will some day enjoy "Western" democracy. But it won't be in the life time of any of us. We have to invest in China knowing that the investment is subject to political whims. And adjust the acceptable P/E, dividend yield etc. accordingly.

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