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This is the part the corporate directors are missing. Henry Ford said it first: if you want to sell product, you have to pay your workers a decent enough wage that they can afford to buy what you're selling. If the middle class erodes, who will buy the products the corporations are cranking out? I guess more and more outlets are going to look like Wal-Mart and the big box stores: huge barn-like structures with interiors that look like warehouses, with virtually no customer service selling cheap cr@p made in China.
In time, the shopping options in the US will look like Russia: people selling shoddy Chinese goods at public markets with a few "department" stores (a variation on the public market, not a true department store) selling products made in Bulgaria (a step up from China), and a short street of Western designer outlets in the big cities, like Escada, Elegance, Louis Vuitton, and the like, for the wives of oligarchs. Those who can't afford Designer Row (like Hollywood's Rodeo Drive) will shop at the public markets, flea markets, Wal-Mart or the warehouse stores.
Here is where I think that the multinational corporations are in agreement. Contain costs in America and develop markets in the former third world. What this does is set us on a path toward economic equilibrium with the former third world.
I agree with pretty much everything else you've said in this thread so far but I have to take issue with these -
Most of what you're saying here already happens in the US and has been happening since well before 2008. In 15 years in Philly I watched 4 hospitals close and those were just the ones near me. It took my dad 6 weeks to get his knee looked at. It was a one month wait for a check-up when my wife was pregnant. Understaffed hospitals are a chronic problem and we already have the problem of large private hospital/university hospital systems taking over other hospitals, closing them down, closing emergency rooms, consolidating other departments, etc. After 2 years in Australia (single-payer system) I can tell you that whenever I call to make an appointment, regardless of what for, it's almost always same day or next day visit.
OK, thanks. I'd forgotten about the new trend for hospitals to gobble up private practices, that is definitely alarming. I haven't seen it anywhere I've lived on the West Coast (the hospital closures, that is. I don't know about the rest of it). And in small cities where there's only 1 hospital, I would think it might be illegal, as it could monopolize health care delivery in that town. Are anti-trust laws still in force in the US?
To look at this issue a little more closely; why are hospitals becoming understaffed? Management of my local hospital (the only show in town) was taken over by the parent company. Immediately, skilled nurses were replaced with nurses with a lower qualification. Then they began to cut back in the nursing staff. Why was this done, if the hospital was doing ok before the takeover? What's going on? Is it about increasing profits for the corporation, or for stockholders? Do you have a clue? It's not working. Doctors are complaining there's not enough staff to give the patients the prescribed attention, and staff have gone on strike, saying mgmt has created an environment that's unsafe for patients.
But again, as I was saying before, if it would be possible to go back to the days that clinics and hospitals were run on a non-profit basis, and health insurance companies could become non-profit, too, I think that would work out better.
Last edited by Ruth4Truth; 09-25-2014 at 05:59 PM..
We spend over 700 billion a year on defense. Their economies will not collapse because they don't have lopsided defense spending. Here is what Europe spends:
I gave you a bump up in reputation because you kept the debate civil.
hm... Who does Norway have to defend itself from? Russia? Is it a NATO requirement?
Swedish arms sales represent 0.2% of Swedish GDP. It's a lot of money but it's not even close to propping up their system. It's like saying the US economy would collapse if we lost the popcorn industry.
Really? That little? What's the point, then? At least the US isn't vending popcorn while claiming internationally to be a non-popcorn-popping nation.
edit: I checked on that stat, and the figure I found was that arms exports are 1% of Sweden's GDP. Still not enough to say it "props up" the economy, though. But more significant than 0.2%.
Last edited by Ruth4Truth; 09-25-2014 at 06:03 PM..
I'm using the term capitalism as a synonym for free market. The free market is defined as the voluntary exchange of goods or services between two people, wherein both people benefit. I.E., if you have a hat, and I have $10, and we exchange my money for your hat, I obviously valued that hat more than my money, and you valued my money more than that hat.
So, how exactly was the free market responsible for the housing collapse? Alan Greenspan, more correctly, could have more than a few fingers pointed at him. And the Fed is about as non-free-market as any entity on planet earth. So... please... elaborate. How did the free market cause the housing collapse?
And I would suggest that if you're going to make a case, you should be well-armed with the facts. This is an area of expertise in my field of study.
I don't claim to be highly knowledgeable in economics. It would be very foolish of me to do so on a public forum where there are people who are clearly more literate on the subject than I. So there's really no need for you to prove your expertise to me.
However, I’ll try to concisely answer your question to the best of my ability. How did the free market cause the housing collapse? Well, Harvard-educated economists cannot fully explain how it happened, and I don’t pretend to understand the intricate workings of macroeconomics, especially on an international level.
But I’d say that unregulated or minimally regulated markets, along with years of steady economic growth and low interest rates worldwide etc, created a perfect storm that led to the housing crisis that began to appear as early as 2006 nationally. Unregulated capitalism also almost brought down the world’s financial system.
* financiers, or mortgage lenders, disregarded risk by doling out loans to borrowers with poor credit histories who’d never be able to repay them but who could take advantage of low interest rates. Some economists say those low interest rates were the result of central banker’s mistakes; others say that larger shifts in the world economy created them.
* mortgage lenders then engaged in further reckless behavior by pooling those already risky mortgages and then investing them in even riskier international assets that gave them higher returns in a low interest world. In other words, banks and other mortgage lenders wanted to be able to make fast money and big money, no matter how recklessly.
But you’re correct when you say that Greenspan is at least partly to blame. Some say he kept interest rates too low, which continued to encourage those longer-term, risky mortgages. But it wasn’t just US banks that got into the greedfest. European banks did, too; hence the reason that Europe has suffered a housing crisis, as well.
In a nutshell, then, the free market contributed to the housing crisis precisely because it was so free. It wasn’t regulated. Central bankers and other regulators didn’t do their jobs (for whatever reason) in overseeing financial institutions and their business.
Last edited by newdixiegirl; 09-25-2014 at 06:16 PM..
In a nutshell, then, the free market contributed to housing crisis precisely because it was so free. It wasn’t regulated. Central bankers and other regulators didn’t do their jobs (for whatever reason) in overseeing financial institutions and their business.
Yup. Those regulations that got rolled back were there for good reason. The lesson was learned in the aftermath of the Depression. So the conditions now exist to cause another Depression.
hm... Who does Norway have to defend itself from? Russia? Is it a NATO requirement?
Norway is in Nato. The common enemy was Russia. It is the percentage of GDP that is the issue here. My original point was that Europe can afford luxuries like socialized medicine because it spends much less on defense as a percentage of GDP.
I'm a libertarian that has come to realize that the 'capitalists' that comprise the 1%, are advocates of socialism (bank bailouts, corporate welfare, etc) as long as it benefits them while they talk about how they are against socialism.
Norway is in Nato. The common enemy was Russia. It is the percentage of GDP that is the issue here. My original point was that Europe can afford luxuries like socialized medicine because it spends much less on defense as a percentage of GDP.
Yes, thank you, I have fabulous reading comprehension, I got your point from the start. It just seemed odd that Norway would still feel the need to defend itself from Russia. But it's probably required to maintain a certain defense strength as a NATO member.
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