Road to recovery? (capitalism, small business, free market, credit)

[jimhcom]

Actions always speak louder than words, and if you really want to know if we are on the road to recovery you need to examine the actions of the government and decide whether or not those actions are consistent with building a prosperous future. Are we investing in our countries infrastructure? Are we improving education? Are we structuring our trade policies to protect American workers and American companies? Are we running our government finances with fiscal responsibility? The answer to all these questions are no.
What is being done to the American people is akin to a leveraged buy out of a corporation. When a company is bought with the intention of breaking it up and selling it off, there is no point in future planning. There is no point in maintaining the facilities, or enacting long term business plans. There is no point in striving to improve or even maintain employee relations. The goal is to simply make as much money for the people at the top as is possible, and to sacrifice the wellbeing of all the employees in the process.
That is the same type of game plan we see being repeated over and over in America today. America’s largest corporations are now multinational and have no loyalty to the country of their origin. Worldwide profits dwarf what they are able to make domestically. There is no plan on the table to facilitate America’s recovery. There are only world banking interests, multinational corporations, and criminal politicians, taking the American people for a very unpleasant ride.

[Sky1]

If we could only package greed, corruption and bigotry and sell it overseas our deficit would be over.

[texdav]

We are on a logn road to recovery but it will not be eqaul on where people land just by the position they were in when it started. Soem likei the 70's recession never really recover tot here pre-70's economic position. But those were already slowly going downward before the recession. It may take deacdes for tehm to adapt to chnages coming and their massive debt will mean mnay changes.Its reallt no different for individuals really.

[jertheber]

Seeing as how there is no equal to this present economic situation I find it comical that the average Joe continues to refer to it as a"recession," the collapse of a sixty year credit binge isn't likely to turn around any time soon. In past US economic reversals there was a fair amount of hope held by the masses. The relatively small GDP of those days suggests the widespread credit binge wasn't anywhere near our present day levels, when an individual crashes from his spending excesses it's the sheer amount of debt he's liable for that determines his pain level and chances for a speedy recovery. I'm pretty sure it's the same for governmental and corporate debt, our collective pain is just now beginning to look like it will be more than a temporary thing, future generations will certainly be impacted by this collapse of the biggest credit market ever.

I personally didn't have much faith in the economic system for the simple fact that it was continuing to expose it's weakest side throughout the last fifty years, capitalism was a great thing on paper but the practical application of it's principles have long been shored up by the very same government it vilifies in it's glorious free market theory. The truth of things has been there all along, it was just easy to look the other way when the failures of our system were being mitigated by large amounts of government aid to the capital class. Even in colonial times the construct of government protection for mercantilism was the goal of our earliest US laws, the upper class knew the way it worked in England and the only change they wanted was to supplant themselves in the role of government.

The degree of economic inclusion for the lower classes was the key to making this new government seem to be one of egalitarian interests, but when the largest chunks of wealth migrated to the top very few were fooled by the talk of freedom and equality. Credit was/is the one thing that gave the majority of American's the feeling of economic inclusion, without it the masses could see the glaring and growing chasm between those with money and those without. It was touted in public schools that a Russian had to work much longer to attain the same wealth as an American, of course the rise of available credit to US workers made them feel vastly superior to other workers in foreign nations, having credit was the same as getting a huge raise in wages, leveraging todays pay against the future paycheck became the drug that drove US consumerism. Now that easy credit is gone, we'll just have to wait for the eventual reality of that to sink in.

[texdav]

Bascailly capitalism has been the thing that centraized system have turned to when thier systems failed. Lookig at euroipe even itas milder socialized system has just floundered and cuts to it are being made. The UK experienced just this uder Thtcher and now are having to go further. The problem in our country is that people did not follow the risk verus reward in lokig ahead. Its wne tfrom wall street to main street on takig on too much risk. The resulkts was to be expected. Same as over leveraging government spending . that after the governam,nt spent deacdes of incentives to provide easy credit that involved too much risk.Now they are having to put even more restrctions on risk limiting credit to the restricting point.lopokig at the savings rate and the amount of personal leveraging shows what government was really encouraging. That isn;'t capiatlism that is centralized control buy policy to spread the wealth and encousrge people to take too much risk personally.The mess with Fannioe and freddie is a perfect example of governamnt settig upo a governamnt /privte businhess that still no one knows now to resolve.

[jertheber]

There is a huge difference between Capitalism and free enterprise, that said, it appears that the best economic systems have been those that provide the most inclusion. Capitalism simply put is only a theory, how a nation really functions relative to their stated economic system gives us a better idea of the practical translation of their respective economic theory. Ours in the US is supposed to be a capitalistic type, that's to say that private ownership would trump any and all attempts by government to provide goods or services. Of course we all know the reality isn't quite that simple, right from the start America has had a hybrid form of socialism, and a quite different twist on things socialistic to boot. In our form of socialism it's the few that benefit from the work of the collective many, this style of socialism has encouraged the growth of monopoly capitalism as most older American's have seen through the last fifty years.

Free enterprise has been the real American dream, but the big box, big corpa style of economics has rendered a hefty blow to the small business enterprise. It isn't that capitalism was imported around the world, it's been the notion of small, community based, family oriented, business' that has caught on in the state socialist economies of China, Russia, and some south American nations. The American economy being that it is this hybrid type has probably run it's course, the many are now feeling the pain brought to their door by the few, even the best of the upper classes cheerleaders have admitted to the fact that shifting the risk that is inherit in capitalistic ventures to the taxpayers backs has been a poorly thought out plan. We are now faced with the same decision that the Europeans faced after world war two, what kind of economic system do we want?

When you ask the average American this question you'll get the blank stare of someone caught off guard, most assume this present system isn't totally broke, "it just needs some tweaking or better regulations" but the truth is, it is broke, it isn't able to repair itself and we sure aren't privy to the knowledge that would make us the repairmen. We as the nation's people are supposed to be able to create any kind of government or economy we want, so the question begs, why are we not voicing our opposition to this present system that has fought the advances of workers, moved factories around the globe, monetized the rise of fascist governments, and then screwed us by creating a cabal of financial terrorists operating on our soil. Do we really need an "ism" in our dream of a better economic system? We have some of the best minds ever right now in our midst, it's time to re-do the American dream, we can see the mistakes we made in the past, we don't have any excuse not to demand of our government those changes that would separate it from the cozy affair they have fostered with their masters on Wall Street. It's our government, not the upper classes.