Hey, it aint me saying that, it’s mainstream Wall Street columnist Paul B. Farrell of MarketWatch (published by Dow Jones & Co).
You sure wouldn’t know it from the attacks that politicians are making on social spending and longstanding restraints on corporate predation, but maybe a few insiders are finally waking up to reality. If the super-rich (and the rest of us) are lucky, there will be enough of a political upsurge to change the rules of the game before all hell breaks loose.
The New Deal policies of FDR and the depression-era Democrats saved capitalism from extinction back in the 1930’s by establishing rules to constrain the damage done by the greed of insiders and power seeking demagogues, and by creating social programs to protect the weak and disadvantaged and to share the wealth. Without that, there would probably have been a violent revolution in America.
Taxation by itself will not be enough to create a compassionate and harmonious society, but retrieving the loot that has been stolen from the American people over the past couple decades would be a good start.
Here are a few tidbits from Farrell’s article:
Remember, 93% of what you hear about markets, finance and the economy are guesses, wishful thinking and lies intended to manipulate you into making decisions that suck money from your pockets into Wall Street.
…on an inflation-adjusted basis, Wall Street lost 20% of your retirement money in the decade from 2000 to 2010, over $10 trillion.
Wake up folks. The Super-Rich Delusion is destroying the American Dream for the rest of us. The Super Rich don’t care about you. They’re already stockpiling for the economic time bomb dead ahead. Don’t say you weren’t warned. Time for you to plan ahead for the coming revolution, for another depression.
Read the rest of it here:
Beyond Money 
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It seems to me that both the linked article and Tom’s commentary succinctly illustrate the serious problem that all reformers have in properly defining the root problem of our current woes.
On the face of it, – “The top 1% live privileged lives, aren’t worried about much.” is spot on true. Who indeed, could possibly argue?
But.. “Our top 1% honestly believe they’re immune, protected from the unintended consequences of beating down average Americans for three decades with the free-market, trickle-down Reaganomics doctrines that made them Super Rich.
and
“The New Deal policies of FDR and the depression-era Democrats saved capitalism”
is simply nonsense on a spectacular scale.
‘Free market capitalism’ is to blame for everything, absolutely everything – give the State more power and everything will be alright. It’s a view so tired, so old and so obviously and manifestly wrong that I am simply astonished the argument still holds so much water. It’s particularly upsetting seeing such views expressed on a website such as this, that claims to be fighting for, effectively a voluntary, ‘free market’, via the ‘liberation of money and exchange’ – the exact opposite indeed of the State power Farrell so clearly desires.
For gods sake, the economic reality of today has more in common with the societies of the thankfully defunct USSR and the old eastern europe than it does with anything that could be remotely described as ‘free market’ or ‘capitalist’. There exist thousands upon thousands upon thousands of rules and regulations. Infact just about EVERYTHING in modern life is regulated and monitiored to the umpteenth degree.
Money, the crucial facilitator of exchange is the mother of all monopolies, market entry onerous and extraordinarily difficult almost to the point of making it impossible. On top of this the ruling class continue to pour torrents of additional and burdensome regulation to obstruct voluntary and free exchange and yets muppets like Farrell continue to get away with blaming ‘free markets’ and ‘capitalism’.
What we have folks is State socialism writ large, us the drones working, effectively for a privileged elite. It may not be what the ideology of socialsim intended (or so its adherents will claim,) but it’s always and everywhere the inevitable outcome of centralised control.
The solution? I can’t say that I know. My gut feeling is that societal collapse is probably only way out, as the current set up appear beyond meaningful reform. Certainly, if Farrell views are predominant, and they certainly seem to be, there is no chance whatever of peaceful reform -only more of exactly the same. FDR wasn’t the saviour of capitalism at all, he was the father of the entirely corrupt, State socialist / corporate leviathan we see today.
As within the old USSR, the perpetrators of the economic outrage are the very folk in charge. To suggest they tax themselves is as ludicrous as it is futile.
AD
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