Scientism

[pbrower2a]

(07-09-2019, 08:28 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(07-09-2019, 02:01 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(07-08-2019, 10:10 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: So what accounts for you having been brainwashed into trickle-down, free-market economics?

I wasn't.  In fact, I used to think that stuff was voodoo economics and I voted for Anderson and against Reagan in 1980.  I even wrote Reagan a letter saying "raise my taxes" in 200 point type.

Then the 1980s proved that supply side economics worked.  And Bush then proved that his nonvoodoo economics didn't work.

With the evidence hitting me in the face, I accepted the truth that supply side free market economics was the best way to go.

Of course, to get free market economics, you have to do something about excessive concentration of wealth to the point of oligopoly.  That's why I'm glad to see the Justice Department starting to probe today's tech oligopolists.

In other words, you don't know who brainwashed you into accepting this free market, supply side, Reaganomics trickle-down bullpucky and phony evidence, but you seem to know exactly who "brainwashed" those who can see beyond the propaganda and know for themselves how wrong it is.

It did put an end to stagflation, if only by lowering expectations of lots of young workers. It kept wages down and ensured that rigid low glass ceilings would be the norm in Big Business which would get to further dominate the economy. On3e gives credit for ending stagflation, but the long-term consequences are more intense economic inequality with the proles having to assume the entrepreneurial risk while entrenched elites got the entrepreneurial reward. If that isn't ass-backwards capitalism, then what is? Workers got to commit themselves to huge private debt just to have a chance to get anything other than minimum-wage work.

For people not in the economic elite, economic results are far worse than those of the 1950s. Sure, we have some nive technological gadgets and some slick entertainment to numb us.  I would suggest that most Americans would be happier if they were transported back to the 1950s (except for the removal of the Red Scare, residual Jim Crow practice, homophobia, and sexism -- none of which had any connection to the rise of Reaganomics).

Quote:The fact is that free market economics is always oligopoly. Oligarchy and wealth concentration is not only the inevitable result of free market economics, establishing that oligarchy is its purpose. That's indeed why the Justice Department is needed to act as a countervailing influence on the free market. You have lurched uncontrollably into a little bit of truth, despite yourself. There really is no free market without some government regulation in the mix.

Reagan's tax policies promoted further concentration of wealth and greater inequality of income. It promoted vertical integration because it established a near flat tax on business income. A mom-and-pop restaurant might end up paying the same rate of corporate income taxes as Exxon-Mobil. Bureaucratic elites got paid very well for treating people badly, which is perverse economics. This 4T wilol force change upon this society. Either the inequality intensifies and morphs into such a monstrosity as debt bondage in a system that treats most people as serfs in peace and cannon fodder in wars for profit -- or we get institutional change that mitigates the inequality if we do not get a violent revolution. We may be close to the resolution of the 3T mess that we have (and so far as I can tell, most 4Ts solve the mess that a depraved 3T allowed to fester.

Like most liberals I see Donald Trump as an unmitigated disaster. But he presides, in a way, over a hoard of the oily rags that people have let grow for no obvious reason. Oily rags can combust spontaneously.