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Absolutely. What does signing a record deal with Columbia at age 20, and being on that label for the bulk of his career, mean to you? He didn't record stuff on Columbia for charity and world peace. He did it for money. 100 million sold copies later, he ended up making both himself and Columbia records a ton of money. Voluntary association, free market, supply/demand, etc. Everything you love and hate and hate about capitalism is included in Dylan's music career.
Only difference between a guy like Dylan and Gene Simmons is intellectual honesty with themselves. Both are pure, 100% capitalists, and only one has the honesty and guts to say it loud and proud. hen again, Dylan being more shy about his capitalist bona fides is itself capitalist thinking, if only because he understands his target market and how they perceive his brand.
Here's the one basic economic fact that everyone should hardwire into their brains. Economics is governed by the sine wave. It goes up, and goes down, and it goes up, and it goes down. And it will be that same sine wave, with a dampening here and an attenuation there, until the end of time.
Presidents have almost nothing to do with it outside driving minor daily, maybe weekly moves in the stock market that the natural cycle always corrects right after the President shuts up for more than an hour or so. Same thing for all "force applied to natural occurrences" issues. While the force is being applied, it may seem like some guiding hand is driving, but take away the force, and nature excels at resetting and getting right back to sine waves, entropy, quantum mechanics and uncertainty, etc.
And almost all of the points listed in LearnMe's Big List of Subjective Stuff is actual government meddling or a direct result of government meddling, and can most times only be measured via political relativities.
It's political games being played so we ca all discuss how to play political games.
While I tend to agree with much about your opinion, I also tend to believe that politics plays a larger role than you recognize, both in the short term and certainly over the long term. Some like to compare our government to a large ship not easily turned on a dime. Very true, and also true like all ships, it rises and falls according to what seas are being navigated, but the direction of the ship makes a difference either way. A big difference...
The economy of the United States works for everyone, considering our poor people enjoy a standard of living that escapes roughly 85% of the global population. RELATIVE to our own wealthy people, there may indeed seem to be a glaring disparity, but our rising tide has indeed lifted all boats, and outside of the mentally ill/drug addicts who are homeless, the average poor person in America is kicking the ass of almost anyone else on Earth economically.
That's an economy that works for everyone. The stock market that has all those hedge fund gazillionaires as evil villains...yeah, that's America's retirement fund, or at least the only one that is actually funded. When that market works for that diabolical hedge fund tycoon, it is also working for Mom and Pop America who have their 401k's in Evil Tycoon's fund.
What that point fails on logically is that because our economy can work so well for some is assumed t mean it does not work at all for others. That's an invalid conclusion along the lines of: IF A = A, then A is INVALID.
Our economy works for the vast majority of the country, and for those it doesn't seem to be working for, review their average number of hours worked per week, averaged over a 5, 10 and 20 year timespan, and in most cases, you'll find that isn't the economy not working for them, but them not working within the economy.
With you in particular, I suspect we would need to get more technical, more clear at least about what these words actually mean...
For example, how the economy "works" for everyone. What does that mean? Everyone is a part of our economy one way or another, taking more or less advantage of the opportunities afforded by our economy, benefitting more or less, but what is the question really? I mean when it comes to how our economy "works" for some people and not so much for others.
So far, being an American has worked plenty well enough for me personally, simply put, but I can easily see how being an American hasn't worked at all well for many millions of Americans too. Only a fool would claim that's simply because some people like me studied and worked hard while others didn't. Please...
I wish I could stay and play economist a little longer today, but I've got to sign off now. Perhaps I can better explain another time when I have more time to waste...
Absolutely. What does signing a record deal with Columbia at age 20, and being on that label for the bulk of his career, mean to you? He didn't record stuff on Columbia for charity and world peace. He did it for money. 100 million sold copies later, he ended up making both himself and Columbia records a ton of money. Voluntary association, free market, supply/demand, etc. Everything you love and hate and hate about capitalism is included in Dylan's music career.
Only difference between a guy like Dylan and Gene Simmons is intellectual honesty with themselves. Both are pure, 100% capitalists, and only one has the honesty and guts to say it loud and proud. hen again, Dylan being more shy about his capitalist bona fides is itself capitalist thinking, if only because he understands his target market and how they perceive his brand.
Real quick, before I go (because I can't leave this one hanging)...
Here too, perhaps we have a different understanding about what it is to be a capitalist. Review the definition, and I think it is fair to say the definition of a capitalist is not anyone who makes money. Tons of it no matter!
Most true musicians make music because they are musicians, not capitalists, whether they make money or not, and if they don't make money being musicians, they are forced to do something else. Others continue to be musicians whether they make money or not. Dylan happens to be a successful musician, but that does not mean Dylan is therefore a capitalist.
In fact, many successful musicians write music that is entirely anti-capitalist. According to you, despite their beliefs, because they make money they are capitalists regardless? What of someone who writes a book about the evils of capitalism and makes "a ton of money" for herself and the publisher? She too is a capitalist according to you?
Do think again...
"The year was 1967 and the 26 year old musical phenom, who was not yet an icon but well on his way, sat down for a press conference at KQED Public Television in San Francisco. Fielding questions from reporters, photographers, teenage fan club members and assorted hangers-on, including Beat poet Alan Ginsburg, Dylan, who was promoting “Highway 61 Revisited” (which was then and remains today the most consistently anti-capitalist album in his very anti-capitalist canon) was asked, “If you were to sell out to a commercial interest, which one would you choose?”
Real quick, before I go (because I can't leave this one hanging)...
Here too, perhaps we have a different understanding about what it is to be a capitalist. Review the definition, and I think it is fair to say the definition of a capitalist is not anyone who makes money. Tons of it no matter!
Most true musicians make music because they are musicians, not capitalists, whether they make money or not, and if they don't make money being musicians, they are forced to do something else. Others continue to be musicians whether they make money or not. Dylan happens to be a successful musician, but that does not mean Dylan is therefore a capitalist.
In fact, many successful musicians write music that is entirely anti-capitalist. According to you, despite their beliefs, because they make money they are capitalists regardless? What of someone who writes a book about the evils of capitalism and makes "a ton of money" for herself and the publisher? She too is a capitalist according to you?
Do think again...
"The year was 1967 and the 26 year old musical phenom, who was not yet an icon but well on his way, sat down for a press conference at KQED Public Television in San Francisco. Fielding questions from reporters, photographers, teenage fan club members and assorted hangers-on, including Beat poet Alan Ginsburg, Dylan, who was promoting “Highway 61 Revisited†(which was then and remains today the most consistently anti-capitalist album in his very anti-capitalist canon) was asked, “If you were to sell out to a commercial interest, which one would you choose?â€
He signed a contract with Columbia to record his music with them. Sorry bro, but that is pure capitalism at its finest. He had supply, they had demand, 100% voluntary association, profit motive, the whole nine.
I again use Gene Simmons and I'll add Lars Ulrich to those musicians who are honest about it, but if they have recording deals and are asking you to pay for the privilege of hearing that song, then they are all the way, neck deep in capitalism. No getting around it.
And the lyrics don't matter. He could have recorded "Die Capitalism, Die!" repeated a million times, and if he recorded it at Columbia, and Columbia then asked you to pay for it, and after you did so they covered their costs and then split the profits with Mr Dylan, well then his lyrics would be laughably ironic, given the 100% capitalist nature of the process by which you got to hear that song.
It's like Bono. He plays at this Nobel peace prize, pure love, man of the masses...and his band dd all sorts of cool incorporation machinations to drastically lower their tax burden...to what....oh yeah...MAXIMIZE PROFIT FROM EARNED REVENUE. Blah blah save Africa, blah blah, fair society...when the rubber meets the road, he pays a team of experts to make sure he and his bandmates kick ass at capitalism, which he defends as "smart business." Dylan and every other one of your PUBLISHED music heroes is the exact same way. They are selling you stories, and the sale makes them capitalists, regardless of what the story is telling you.
The economic system in this country mainly works to benefit those in power.
The problem with this statement is that nobody really knows who "those in power" exactly refers to. Is it the Kennedys or the Clintons or the Bushes or the Koch brothers or the Trumps or Bill Gates or Oprah ...?
It is an amorphous concept that is always a moving target.
I'm not gonna do a poll on it, but I have to wonder - for educated readers one - exactly how many months with the Stock Market going NOWHERE.....or going up at levels 1/2 or 1/4 of normal - would it take for them to realize that the "economy" is not so good?
I'd love to be wrong...I'm the person who saved for 40+ years of work and now live largely off market returns. So far I have a year and a 1/2 (an actually majority of Trump time in office...and the time since he signed "tax reform") with almost no return.
First trading day in 2018 (after new tax bill in force)
25.3K Dow
Today - 17 months later
25.7K DOW
less than 1.5% increase....
That's well less than inflation and about 1/10th (10%) of normal market returns over that time period!
Why?
It's fantastic for people to discuss fact vs. opinion when perhaps the largest FACT of all, in economic terms, stares them in the face.
I gather that overall, people in general are not doing well in this economy. There are new jobs, but not good jobs. And the money is all flowing upward to the top 1%.
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