Originally Posted by spence
I think you're making it complex and confusing,
You did that with your contradictions. And the Progressives do it by ramming their square peg spending into their tax funded revenue hole. They never shave the edges of their spending, they just artificially widen the revenue hole. So they have to keep trying to raise taxes on corporations and the rich to get revenue while making it appear that they are sparing or "helping" the so-called "middle class." But there isn't enough money in the pockets of business or rich folks to fund all their government expanding programs so they have to, quietly, "borrow" enough so they can at bare minimum, in order to hide the wealth they steal from us, to pay the monthly interest on the debt. But, like the spending addict or illegal gambling junky, never any payment on the debt capital.
So the debt keeps getting larger and keeps becoming a bigger drag on economic growth by pouring the nation's capital into the widening sewer hole of debt to the federal reserve or to China or to other foreign nations and to individual suckers who want to invest into the illusory "full faith and credit" of the U.S. government--all of whose collected interest payments from the government have lost value to government monetized inflation.
So, in reality, the middle class is "helped" to shrink or lose upward mobility, and the lower class is "helped" to expand and stay in place.
The process is obfuscatory, not transparent. It is obviously a slight of hand economic piece of magic meant to confuse us into believing that our life is made better. And it makes it more difficult, and progressively more impossible, for the private sector to bring back the middle class, and restore individual economic mobility as it is meant to do, and is capable, if let free, of doing.
just like this new GOP tax plan. Now you can set up 529s for the unborn? This is the simplification that was touted?
The original simplicity is being destroyed, as I pointed out before, by the cascade of cowardly concessions to political pressure.
A lot of private sector growth the past century has been led by government funding. That doesn't mean it all is, certainly business funds their own innovation programs to some degree.
That "lot of" is too vague to give us a clear picture (that unclear, confusing, obfuscatory lingo stuff). Is there also a lot of failure in the private sector led by government funding? Is the government preferable to private banks as a funder? Is it better to risk our tax dollars than those of the banks? Does the government take more risks than banks do? Is it economically and politically wise for the US government to be a bank, or to replace private banks? Does it distort, or erode, the relation of citizen to government in our constitutional system? Does it give the government more power to create winners and losers? Is it one of those ways of expanding the government's regulatory power over the marketplace? And a lot more relevant questions.
From what I've seen though the real growth is most likely to occur when risks are taken that lead to really new ideas. These often aren't see as the most profitable or if really disruptive totally absurd. It's hard to automate something you've never done before so there's a surge of energy required to bring it to life. That creates growth.
That requires more freedom and less taxes and regulations.
A lot of business today is totally stale though, they look to be more efficient and minimize risks until the point at which they are obsolete. They don't do this what for a lack of capital -- many are still very profitable -- they do it as a matter of culture and a really big problem their religious adherence to the virtue of shareholder value.
Sounds like the familiar, rather natural, pattern of birth, to maturity, to senescence, to death. Hard to shrug off. Very rare for any life form to escape. Probably good that it is so. Leaves space for the next generation, the truly new, the competitive battle, the free market.
But, this still remains the bulk of the corporate sector. If you want to spur growth just routing cash disproportionately to non-managerial shareholders doesn't seem like an effective place to put it. To do so at the expense of additional debt and inflation is even further counter productive.
Is there a lesson for government there about additional debt and inflation?
This is a money grab plain and simple.
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