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The United States is Broke

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Cenedril_Gildinaur
Post subject: Re: The United States is Broke
Posted: Wed 02 Dec , 2009 5:07 am
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TheEllipticalDisillusion wrote:
How about good ol' pulling yourself up by your bootstraps? That works for everyone, right? Wasn't everyone a tycoon during the days of laissez faire?
That's a very magnificent straw man, TED.

Just because I believe people are supposed to live within their means, unlike the boomers before me, doesn't mean that I believe everyone was a tycoon.

You don't even need to be a tycoon to live within your means.

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Ara-anna
Post subject: Re: The United States is Broke
Posted: Wed 02 Dec , 2009 6:07 am
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I was talking to a co-worker today about retirement funds that had been lost in the stock market crash. She was going on and on about how the government, specifically Obama had made it impossible for people to retire becase the market crashed. I looked at her and said the market crashed under Bush. And then I said no-one held a gun to anyones head and made them invest in the stock market. Anyone who is 50 or older should not be putting retirement funds in any risky investment, no matter how shiny the brass ring looks or how much money they could make. And if they do, they they sure as hell better not cry over how they lost money because Wall Street was unethical and greedy.

There's an old saying...Don't put all your eggs in one basket, because you might drop that basket.

We put all our eggs in the Wall Street basket, took off all the banking regulations (thanks Ronnie) and let the bull loose in the china shop. And then we are shocked that we are broke.

A lot of the greed and materialism that is plaguing our nation comes from the warped sense of entitlement that starts with the spoiling of the Boomers down to my kids age people. It's almost apparent in the generations that each generation has gotten worse. My mothers generation believed a 2500 square foot house was big, my generation thinks 3000 square foot house is average and my kids...well lets just say they think mom and dad need to buy a bigger house for them.

IMHO this nation is full of spoiled, selfish, greedy people who think that God Bless America is an entitlement and they deserve every drop of oil, the biggest TV, the easiest retirement possible, and that they can put it all on plastic and pay for it later. Well later has come, the bill is due. That and God maybe just a bit pissed off at the US's pride and gultony and is handing us a big dose of humility.

So yes people need to learn to live within or beneath their means, to keep the old car, or walk. To not think they need the newest biggest best of everything all the time. Will people do this....no they will blame the Government and Obama, because self resposiblity and self reliance is just unheard of in this day and age.

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TheEllipticalDisillusion
Post subject: Re: The United States is Broke
Posted: Wed 02 Dec , 2009 8:20 am
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Cenedril_Gildinaur wrote:
TheEllipticalDisillusion wrote:
How about good ol' pulling yourself up by your bootstraps? That works for everyone, right? Wasn't everyone a tycoon during the days of laissez faire?
That's a very magnificent straw man, TED.

Just because I believe people are supposed to live within their means, unlike the boomers before me, doesn't mean that I believe everyone was a tycoon.

You don't even need to be a tycoon to live within your means.
I'm glad you liked him. He keeps the owls away and the owls keep the clowns away...

There is a level of unrealistic idealism in some of your usual opinions of how to fix this economy, so whether you thought everyone was a tycoon or not, doesn't negate that there is a reality to our way of life today and latching onto an ideal will not work for 300 million people. Everyone can't be rich. I happen to like the idea of pragmatic solutions--whatever they may be.

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yovargas
Post subject: Re: The United States is Broke
Posted: Wed 02 Dec , 2009 12:12 pm
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Quote:
Everyone can't be rich.
Who in the world said they could be?? :scratch: :scratch: :scratch: :scratch:


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sauronsfinger
Post subject: Re: The United States is Broke
Posted: Wed 02 Dec , 2009 1:13 pm
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I must live in a far different America that some others do. I live in a nation of over 300 million people who cannot be stereotyped or characterized so that a narrow label fits them all. I live in a nation made up of many diverse people of all ages, races, ethnicities, occupations and levels of ability and skill.

I learned long ago that to attempt to characterize groups of people by making statements like 'Hispanics want to do this', or "Gen X'ers are this way', or 'New Englanders act like a bunch of..." is simply foolish. People are people and it is simply ridiculous to apply silly stereotypes to them.

In the America that I live in, I do not see the pursuit of wealth by everyone as any sort of real problem. I do not know anyone who has a DVD collection of "Life Styles of the Rich and Famous" on their faux pressed plywood mantle over a portable fireplace in their mobile home. The people I live among are basically honest, decent and hard working people who look around and see their way of life in danger. And their way of life is not living in a 5,000 square foot McMansion with four fancy new vehicles in the heated attached garage, each on a trickle charger so the battery does not run down when they spend five months in their smaller 4,000 foot ocean home in the Florida Keys.

In the America I live in, people know that many of the middle class advances that they have come to enjoy were hard fought for and hard earned over the last century. They know that nobody gave the middle class anything - everything they have had to be fought for and worked for and paid for with blood, sweat and tears. And they see that threatened as some want to roll the clock back a full century to the good old days of the Gilded Age. If you think I am lying just read the speech Glen Beck made about his efforts to return America back to the days before the evil Progressive Movement and Teddy Roosevelt got hold of this country. The plan is right there for all to see.

In the America I live in, average folks see their life getting worse while a small group of people seem to reap most the benefits. They don't mind others getting ahead if it is through hard work and intelligence but they do object to people changing the system to deliberately benefit their schemes and tactics while screwing most everyone else.

Offering people platitudes at a time when unemployment rates are over 10% is not offering any real solution. Offering people ideology at a time when they local strip mall is over half empty is not offering any real solution. Offering people hollow cliches at a time when people are losing their homes to foreclosures and many mortages are worth more than the house they cover is not offering any real solution. Offering people pie-in-the-sky philosophy at a time when good jobs with decent wages and benefits are under attack is not offering any real solutions.

In fact, not only are those empty bromides not real solutions, they are insulting and part of the very problem we all face.

Last edited by sauronsfinger on Wed 02 Dec , 2009 3:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Dave_LF
Post subject: Re: The United States is Broke
Posted: Wed 02 Dec , 2009 1:56 pm
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I actually see it both ways. There are a lot of soft, entitled people out there. There are also a lot of people who are enduring real hardship, and a lot of formerly-entitled people who received a rude awaking over the last year. It sounds a bit schizophrenic, but we're a schizophrenic country.

And there's no doubt that wealth polarization is taking place. The gap between the superrich and everyone else has been growing steadily for some time; especially over the last decade. Now the gap between the employed and unemployed is becoming more pronounced as more and more of the former group move to the latter.

There are really 2 fronts to attack on: how can we make sure there is enough wealth for everyone who's willing to work for it, and how do we ensure the wealth is distributed fairly once we have it? Labor unions and regulations are part of the answer to the second question, but they won't get you very far if you're in trouble with the first. So the key question, IMO, is: is the financial crisis a "fake" crisis--i.e. just a problem of numbers on paper--or are we actually in a situation where there's less wealth available per capita than there was once?


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Ara-anna
Post subject: Re: The United States is Broke
Posted: Wed 02 Dec , 2009 2:22 pm
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Dang I had a long post and the computer ate it.

Dave,

I agree totally.

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sauronsfinger
Post subject: Re: The United States is Broke
Posted: Wed 02 Dec , 2009 3:58 pm
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from Dave LF
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There are really 2 fronts to attack on: how can we make sure there is enough wealth for everyone who's willing to work for it, and how do we ensure the wealth is distributed fairly once we have it?
The progressive income tax was one means of advancing those goals. The idea being that the more you make, the bigger percentage you can afford to pay since less of your income goes to basics like food and shelter. How many steaks does one person need to eat at dinner? But with the arrival of Reagan in Washington, we went on a thirty year binge to lower the progressive income tax.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax ... es.5B20.5D

The top tax bracket today is 35%. When Reagan took office is was twice that at 70%.

One of the results of this has been a greater disparity of income between the haves and the have-a-lot less and the have nots. The other result is that government has less money to use for the common good and the people who need the most help.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_o ... ted_States
Quote:
The [recent] onrush of technology largely explains the gradual development of a "two-tier labor market"... Since 1975, practically all the gains in household income have gone to the top 20% of households... The rise in GDP in 2004 and 2005 was undergirded by substantial gains in labor productivity... Long-term problems include inadequate investment in economic infrastructure, rapidly rising medical and pension costs of an aging population, sizable trade and budget deficits, and stagnation of family income in the lower economic groups. -CIA factbook on the US economy, 2005.[13]
The United States has one of the widest rich-poor gaps of any high-income nation today, and that gap continues to grow.[16] In recent times, some prominent economists including Alan Greenspan have warned that the widening rich-poor gap in the U.S. population is a problem that could undermine and destabilize the country's economy and standard of living stating that "The income gap between the rich and the rest of the US population has become so wide, and is growing so fast, that it might eventually threaten the stability of democratic capitalism itself".[17]
All of this was advanced by the worshippers at the phony altar of free markets, rugged individualism and just plain selfishness. They wrapped their greed in a gilded patina of ideology and ersatz political philosophy and corporations were more than willing to fund right wing think tanks and writers to justify greed and selfishness. The result was a decrease in government regulations and Wall Street and the financial sector going wild with little practical restraint. We end up with massive institutions that are now too big to fail and something like the derivatives market which threatens to destroy the whole ball of wax.

The answers are return to a higher level of income tax on the wealthy and go back to strong government regulation of the markets.

Quote:
Labor unions and regulations are part of the answer to the second question, but they won't get you very far if you're in trouble with the first. So the key question, IMO, is: is the financial crisis a "fake" crisis--i.e. just a problem of numbers on paper--or are we actually in a situation where there's less wealth available per capita than there was once?
If you figure in the so called value of things like derivatives and other financial instruments which have been popularized over the last few decades, their is more wealth on paper than at any time in our history. There is more wealth available per capita now than previously. The problem is that with the right wing war on the middle class, that wealth is ever increasingly in the hands of the few while the many see their financial health in grave danger.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_market

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sauronsfinger
Post subject: Re: The United States is Broke
Posted: Sun 06 Dec , 2009 12:51 pm
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This article comes complete with charts and graphs to illustrate the redistribution of wealth towards the rich that has occurred because of right wing tax cuts.

http://www.antemedius.com/content/wealt ... y-have-won
Quote:
In America, personal wealth will be redistributed one of two ways: taxation and accountability to the tax payers, or the lack thereof. Will redistribution recreate a wealthy aristocracy this nation rebelled against long ago, or will it provide for the common good and give all citizens an equal chance at creating their own wealth?

America's wealth redistribution will either benefit all of us or a select few at the expense of all of us. America's wealth redistribution will either raise all boats or only those that can be well maintained. America's wealth redistribution will either enrich the common good or engorge the well off. America's wealth redistribution will either create and maintain a foundation for our democracy and our infrastructure, or let both crumble for the sake of self-interest. America's wealth redistribution will either protect citizens and their shared resources from abuse or empower the abusers as they ravage the shared resources and protect their 'individual' gains. America's wealth redistribution will either empower all citizens to become wealthy or empower a few to control most of the nation's wealth. America's wealth redistribution will either provide for a broad based common wealth, which gives all citizens a equal chance for success and building personal wealth, or will concentrate wealth and power in a very wealthy aristocracy.

For the last 60 years, our tax laws have favored the very wealthy at the expense of other Americans not like them. The tax cuts for the wealthy are highlighted by the chart below which shows the drop in the highest tax rate between 1945 and 2008.



60 Years of Tax Cuts for the Rich



As detailed in another posting, the impact of the above tax cuts has given 16 percent of American families, those who make over $105,000, a 361 percent greater tax cut than the other 84 percent of American families. America's growing, but young, aristocracy is becoming wealthier and more powerful.

To these tax cuts, add the surreptitious use of privateering. Privateering takes a portion of the remaining tax revenues and diverts it to companies like Blackwater and other sole-source defense contractors, or to 'too-big-to-fail' banks. And so the wealthy CEOs get richer still and more powerful.

This redistribution of the nation's wealth to the wealthy is also shown by the chart below. It shows how family income distribution has changed from 1945 (blue) to 1970 (green) to 2008 (yellow). (All incomes were adjusted to 2008 dollars.)
http://the-wawg-blog.org/wp-content/upl ... chart2.gif

Through Tax Reduction The Nation's Wealth Goes to the Rich

(Data for this chart were obtained from the Census Bureau: 1945, 1970 to 2008.)


In 1945, while all citizens were helping to fund their share of the common wealth, only 6.6 percent of the nation's income wealth was distributed to those making more than $75,000. (In 1945, taxation was based on funding the common wealth to protect and empower all citizens. This progressive taxation also took into account the effects of systemic causation. This progressive taxation was exemplified by the tax rates during WWII, which included up to 32 brackets and rates that ranged from 10 percent to 94 percent.)

By 1970, after the highest tax rate was dropped by more than 30 percent, that same group tripled their share of the nation's income to 18.3 percent. By 2008, even more favorable tax cuts allowed the wealthy to keep even more of their income. Now they capture 32.4 percent of the nation's income wealth - about a five fold increase from 1945.

Of course, while this transfer of wealth to the rich was happening, the funding of our common wealth was reduced just as dramatically. Now a college education is becoming affordable for only the very rich and grades K-12 are underfunded and failing in more and more public school districts as tax cuts rule. Now citizens die from food poisoning and inadequately tested drugs due to lack of independent inspectors which are paid with falling tax revenues. Now our nation and state infrastructures are literally falling down or being overwhelmed by nature and citizens die as a direct result of tax cuts. Now we have to borrow from other nations to pay our war bills and bank CEO's bonuses. Now we have corporations that build facilities that electrocute our troops so they can maximize their profit. Now we have a health insurance system that lets Americans die to maximize CEO bonuses.

As the wealthy have become disproportionately wealthier and more powerful, what has happened to accountability for the nation's wealth between 1945 and 2008? In 1945, with highest tax rates at 94 percent, all families were proportionately funding our common wealth - our elected officials were accountable to the voters for our common wealth and used it to protect and empower all citizens. In 2008, with the highest tax rate at 39 percent, mega rich individuals, who have gained the most from the nation's common wealth, became accountable - to themselves and to shareholders.

This difference in the distribution of wealth and whose accountability for the redistribution is explained by the strict father family model of conservatives without conscience (CWC) and the nurturant family model of progressives. As stated by George Lakoff in Making Accountability Accountable " To progressives, it [accountability] means social as well as personal responsibility -- responsibility for both oneself and everyone else who could be harmed by one's failure. To conservatives, it means individual responsibility only."

In other words, for CWCs, the individual is solely accountable for their wealth and they have no responsibility for other Americans not like them. Nor do they believe that other factors have an impact on their wealth. They believe they are in control. For progressives, the individual and various systemic factors like the family you were born into and the availability of a good education, contribute to an individuals wealth. Progressives also believe we are all accountable for our effects on others. They that hold our elected officials are accountable for America's common wealth and will not support those officials that show favoritism with our common wealth.

As accountability shifted from elected officials to CWCs, funding for the common wealth was reduced significantly by substantial tax cuts for the mega rich. The result is a slow drift toward a new corporate aristocracy where most citizens will suffer more abuse and find it more and more difficult to get ahead. Increasing taxes on the rich is the only way to defund the rise of this aristocracy and re-fund the common wealth This in turn will provide for the protection and empowerment of all citizens to create their own wealth based on their abilities, better K-12 basic education, equal access to higher education, protecting our common resources like land, air and water, and an infrastructure that enables equal and safe access to the nations common wealth.

In summary, America's common wealth is being depleted, the government is less able to protect and empower its citizens, and accountability for the nations common wealth has been stripped from our elected representatives and handed over to corporate CEOs who are only accountable to shareholders.

It's time we all realize that tax cuts favoring the very wealthy are not what America needs. Just look at where they have gotten us - The Great Recession, consumer debt at 100 percent of GDP, and banks too big to fail.

Originally posted at The WAWG Blog

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yovargas
Post subject: Re: The United States is Broke
Posted: Sun 06 Dec , 2009 10:20 pm
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Dave_LF wrote:
...and how do we ensure the wealth is distributed fairly once we have it?
It is impossible for everyone to agree on what would be "fair" and few people think it's unfair for themselves to get a bigger share, whether very poor or very rich. Which is part of why some of us are opposed to "distributing" it at all.


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vison
Post subject: Re: The United States is Broke
Posted: Sun 06 Dec , 2009 10:27 pm
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No one needs to "redistribute" wealth. But there ought to be a concerted and sincere effort to ensure that everyone gets a fair shake, and that taxation doesn't fall more heavily on low-income people than on high-income people. Everyone ought to pay taxes. I favour the flat tax, myself.

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TheEllipticalDisillusion
Post subject: Re: The United States is Broke
Posted: Sun 06 Dec , 2009 11:14 pm
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yovargas wrote:
Dave_LF wrote:
...and how do we ensure the wealth is distributed fairly once we have it?
It is impossible for everyone to agree on what would be "fair" and few people think it's unfair for themselves to get a bigger share, whether very poor or very rich. Which is part of why some of us are opposed to "distributing" it at all.
It has already been redistributed: from the workers to the decision makers. We live in a society where the greater value is in deciding what product to create, but not in the people who produce it. How can one oppose what already happened?

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Cenedril_Gildinaur
Post subject: Re: The United States is Broke
Posted: Mon 07 Dec , 2009 12:41 am
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yovargas wrote:
Dave_LF wrote:
...and how do we ensure the wealth is distributed fairly once we have it?
It is impossible for everyone to agree on what would be "fair" and few people think it's unfair for themselves to get a bigger share, whether very poor or very rich. Which is part of why some of us are opposed to "distributing" it at all.
Bravo.

Meanwhile, the recent events in Dubai are worth looking at. While Dubai isn't a huge event monetarily, it's gigantic symbolically - it shows that even today governments can and will default, even though that doesn't happen and nobody has ever lost money on a United States Government Bond. It can happen, even today. Those who correctly predicted the recession say Dubai is the first of a trend. Those that didn't are too startled to even say it won't happen again.

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It is a myth that coercion is necessary in order to force people to get along together, but it is a persistent myth because it feeds a desire many people have. That desire is to be able to justify hurting people who have done nothing other than offend them in some way.

Last edited by Cenedril_Gildinaur on Tue Feb 30, 2026 13:61 am; edited 426 times in total


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vison
Post subject: Re: The United States is Broke
Posted: Mon 07 Dec , 2009 12:47 am
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Cenedril_Gildinaur wrote:
yovargas wrote:
Dave_LF wrote:
...and how do we ensure the wealth is distributed fairly once we have it?
It is impossible for everyone to agree on what would be "fair" and few people think it's unfair for themselves to get a bigger share, whether very poor or very rich. Which is part of why some of us are opposed to "distributing" it at all.
Bravo.

Meanwhile, the recent events in Dubai are worth looking at. While Dubai isn't a huge event monetarily, it's gigantic symbolically - it shows that even today governments can and will default, even though that doesn't happen and nobody has ever lost money on a United States Government Bond. It can happen, even today. Those who correctly predicted the recession say Dubai is the first of a trend. Those that didn't are too startled to even say it won't happen again.
Dubai is not much like the US, though. I'd hardly call it a "nation". It is a rich man's hobby, and not much else.

Still, it is worrying. :(

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Dave_LF
Post subject: Re: The United States is Broke
Posted: Mon 07 Dec , 2009 1:50 pm
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Wealth shouldn't be distributed? Don't be ridiculous; it has to be, unless you believe the only things people should own are the ones they make with their own two hands. Almost everything that is produced in the modern world is the result of hundreds or thousands of people working together. And some decision has to be made somewhere about how the resulting wealth will be distributed among all those individuals.

As for Dubai; good riddance. It's development was symbolic, and so is its fall.


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sauronsfinger
Post subject: Re: The United States is Broke
Posted: Mon 07 Dec , 2009 3:25 pm
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The idea that wealth is not something to be redistributed fits right in with the current holiday season. People.... at least the little ones ... believe in Santa and his magical elves and the reindeer who can fly through the sky and deliver all the presents in one short night. Sure sounds neat to me. But its a childish belief that we all grow out of.

Wealth has been redistributed for as long as wealth has existed. Wealth is constantly being redistributed through a variety of means and measures and will continue to do so for as long as wealth exists.

The progressive income tax is a redistribution of wealth.
Public services that come from tax dollars are a redistribution of wealth.
Welfare programs for the disabled, poor and less fortunate are a redistribution of wealth.
Our culture and society depends on a redistribution of wealth.

What is the alternative? A financial survival of only the fittest where a small number of the very rich use their wealth and the power it can buy to become even more rich while the rest of us languish in squalor, poverty and powerlessness? No thank you. We went through that period of history and its not something we should return to.

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TheEllipticalDisillusion
Post subject: Re: The United States is Broke
Posted: Mon 07 Dec , 2009 3:54 pm
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If wealth shouldn't be redistributed, who owns wealth? Is it the businessman who owns the shoe company or the workers who make the shoes? Well, the workers wouldn't be making shoes without the businessman's shoe factory, but the shoe factory would remain empty if not for the workers. Our line of ownership has always been blurry, but the rich tell us that there is some reason why they should continue to command ownership.

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Cenedril_Gildinaur
Post subject: Re: The United States is Broke
Posted: Mon 07 Dec , 2009 6:18 pm
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That analysis, TED, relies on the Labor Theory of Value. It's long ago discredited. The Subjective Theory of Value does work much better.

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TheEllipticalDisillusion
Post subject: Re: The United States is Broke
Posted: Mon 07 Dec , 2009 6:34 pm
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Been discredited by whom? What's the Subjective Theory of Value say then? Why is it better? What are the benefits of it?

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sauronsfinger
Post subject: Re: The United States is Broke
Posted: Mon 07 Dec , 2009 7:32 pm
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TED
here is a link which will explain what you asked about.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjective_theory_of_value

In addition, make sure you read the last part of it.
Quote:
Political implications

If it is true that the economic value of things cannot be ascertained without subjecting a particular good to individual value judgements in a market, then governments may have difficulty justifying, to economists, setting the prices of goods and services for society. This is also a technical problem for governments wishing to implement a planned economy. Those who espouse the subjective theory of value tend to advocate that individuals should be allowed to choose for themselves what price they are willing to pay for, or part with, any given good or service. They tend to maintain that forcible interference by the state in the process of individuals arriving at a mutual value judgement when making a trade is irrational, unworkable, and/or immoral

It explains why persons who believe in certain 'unusual' value systems embrace this 'theory'. In the end, its still just a theory... for whatever that is worth. in my opinion, not much. Manure for your garden has a better utilitarian usage.

This link will give you information about the other thing you asked about

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticisms ... y_of_value

The Labor theory of value and who is critical of it. TED - you can have three guesses as to what political/economic group in America really does not like it and the first two don't count.
Quote:
The Austrian school, led by Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, argues against the whole tradition of the LTV

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There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs. - John Rogers


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