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(The basic problem is that you are trying to ignore supply and demand.) The market is very resilient against anything but very heavy-handed intervention in this regard--
I am not ignoring supply and demand. I just said that the interaction of the two doesn't set the price. And that demand is not infinite, that in order to have economic demand it is not sufficient for there to be a supply and the desire to own a product or to consume a service, there has to be money to realize the desire. And that the economy is demand lead and that it is no longer constrained by the supply.
I don't believe that the economy is "very resilient against anything but very heavy-handed intervention" in any regard. If this was true, the government interventions would have a minimal effect on the economy. But we know that this is not true and the vast majority of your fellow free market enthusiasts would agree.
It is worth noting at this point again that the government defines the roles and the structure of the players in the economy such as corporations and the professionals that are allowed to do critical jobs. That, as in the broader society, in the market it is the government that defines and enforces what behavior is acceptable. That it is the government that defines and enforces property rights. And important for our discussion it is the government that determines the income distribution to the participants.
In 1980 supply side economists were certain that the market was not resistant to government intervention and that it was government intervention that had pushed up wages and suppressed profits. They were correct.
And what they proposed to do was that the government should intervene to reverse this and to suppress wages and increase profits to increase the the incomes of the already wealthy. And the government did do this. They passed tax cuts, they stopped raising the minimum wage, they stopped supporting the unions, started increasing the government's support of the corporations, started allowing the concentration more corporate control over the economy by larger and fewer corporations, started rolling back the burdening of exchanges with externalities such as having to clean up their own pollution or the burden of having to sell only safe products manufactured in safe factories paying decent wages.
... and I don't want to give the government the sort of control on our economy that would be necessary to force what you want.
What makes you so fearful of the government? I would think that you would be happy with the government that we have now. It is solidly in the control of the party of neoliberalism and anything the wealthy and the corporations want, they get. Exactly the principles that you support, here in this blog.
They have promised to do the things that you want to do, relieve the free market of government oversight, especially the financial sector, banks, because they have learned to regulate themselves and to play nice, not like they did before 2008. To reduce taxation on the rich and to shift it to the non-rich, because the wealthy don't need the government, why should they pay for it? To re-establish the joys working for a living rather than living off of government largess, people like me, disabled and all of those children who chose the wrong parents. To turn government services into private, for profit corporations like was done in Russia. You want the US to be like Russia don't you?
Loren Pechtel said:
You, Reagan, and Milton Friedman are making the same mistake that Marx made. You are proposing an economic system based on conjecture, on an unproven fantasy that is unsupported by history or even theory. Like Marx you are proposing to replace a large part of the regulation of society that government currently does with the regulation by the economic system, to subject large segments of society to the questionable "discipline" of competitive markets, including education, the national defense, health care and jurisprudence.
Whereas you are proposing a system that has been shown not to work.
See, this where your memorized, randomly placed talking points fail you, not to mention your failure to read and/or to understand my posts.
I am proposing to keep the economy that we have right now, the mixed market, government and private enterprise working together, capitalistic economy that you see working quite well everyday. The economy that has provided for you and yours everyday that you and yours are here. The most successful economy that the world has ever seen. The economy that defeated both fascism and communism within fifty years.
Why do you think that it is a failed system?
Your fantasy is that the adaptations that capitalism made were a mistake and that the 99% can be changed to accept your vision of an optimized capitalism. That markets can self-regulate and control much of what government does now. That rather than we using capitalism to improve our lives it would be better to let capitalism change us to improve capitalism. And like Marx, you are wrong.
I realize the markets aren't good at self-regulating.
Jeez, Loren, I wish that you had told me that about 3,000 of my words ago, and long before I made a complete fool of myself.
Oh, well, it isn't the first time and I expect it won't be the last. I have to stop assuming that I can keep it straight who has said what here. I apologize.
Ignore about 40% of what I wrote. The regulation parts. What I wrote is true, I just shouldn't have directed it to you.
But you are wrong about there being no need to raise wages, the income inequality that we are seeing now will just continue to grow and it will continue to anger the workers even though they don't know what the problem is. And I find your desire to not offend the capitalist system unconvincing. It is what happened in 1980, and then the neoliberals weren't concerned with offending the system when they bent it to increase profits.
Besides, it is this redirection of money from wages to profits that explains the Great Moderation and the low growth in the economy because the rich save their money, which takes it out of the economy and the non-rich spend their money which boosts the economy. I know that you believe that savings somehow find their way back into the economy, but it isn't true and I can tell you why in a later post. For now, just think about why hasn't anyone worried about too much savings causing inflation?
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