Hi, I think it's perhaps my fault, but you are missing the most important thing in my post: that labor's share of GDP is the lowest it's been in modern times. This share was highest in the middle of the 1970s with that time's shortage of labor, and was probably too high and there was an investment strike.
Policy changed and the globalism stuff happened and huge amounts of employment were shipped out of the country and replaced with cheap imported goods. This has been aggravated by relatively uncontrolled immigration. This policy driven phenomenon obtains throughout the Western world.
So working class, (in NA we say middle class), real incomes have fallen but standard of living not quite so obviously as the income gap was taken up by loose credit, which has led to enormous individual debt. Now folk are working off debt and business is the shits. And, given demographics, horrible immigration policy, and the if the globalizing type policy continues, business will stay the shits.
I don't know where you live but if you drive through the the traditional industrial parts of the country, (any Western country), they look like they've been through a war. A war they lost! We are in what amounts to a post war economic emergency.
So...
It was called TARP.
The gov't baked a TRILLION dollars into the budget it never was removed.
The politicians are passing it out.
We've had almost a decade of this to what effect...
Not much effect. That's what. It wasn't isn't aimed at the right place. Bailing out banks and other financial institutions is necessary but not sufficient action, because they are not the economic driver: business activity is and businesses require prosperous citizens who feel prosperous. If folk aren't properous and feel like it they don't behave entrepreneurially.
The only reason there has been any post '08 recovery at all is that the US, UK, Northern EU countries, China and India didn't do much austerity and kept their government deficits running.
The way out of this quagmire is get The Boot off our throats.
You had better identify the correct boot. Which is private, not government, debt. And the globalizing policy, which gave East Asians and Indians a leg up but it's now time for them, particularly Chinese, to concentrate on making their economies less export dependent which they can do,since they now have sizeable middle class.
Health Care must change...the current version is a disaster.
The increased premium costs are strangling the middle class.
Tax Rates need to be cut.
The offshore trillions need to come back home.
The Vatican has a wall.
Israel has a wall.
The 1% have walls.
America needs a wall.
This means SFA unless private debt is killed off, or at least reduced to a manageable level. We can do it slow, which means not all, given demographics. Think about it: I'm the first of the baby boomers and I'm 72 and the last of them are well into their 50s. So we better do it fast!
This is normative and not economic argument and therefore fails:
I do not think a Debt Jubilee is the answer.
Failure must be allowed.
It is how most successful people I know learned how to get wealthy!
However even as normative argument it's not sound.
There has already been failure due to moral hazard, [2008 remember?] and it was the failure of the 1%ers and MOTU, (otherwise known as bankers). They got a pass. The ones that deserved it didn't even go to jail.
So where's the equity in your normative argument? What about everyone else who has been royally screwed and actually has to pay for the willful blindness of the 1%ers, (who have done very well out of the crash), and the hubris of MOTU?
It's time to be practical. Reset the private debt which will jump start the economy, repatriate real industry, reform the uncontrolled immigration policies and get really serious about the Islamists who are, if not an existential threat, are a de-civilizing force everywhere.
Yeah, I researched Trump. As Dubya would say, he's greatly over underestimated by most of his opposition as are his supporters. Hillary and the Republican/Democratic establishments, which are undistinguishable, think because they're doing okay, everything is okay, and they know what's best. The only other people who think that are the EU executive, Angela Merkel, most of the 1%, and Isis. So fuck 'em. |
