dohboi wrote:"I fully agree the market is rigged, and who is it that does the rigging? It is the collusion of government and corporations"
Easy solution--outlaw corporations.
Governments are voted in. Corporations are not. And many are essentially immune from customer boycott (just try to boycott Koch Refineries, for instance).
The screed about 1000 to one gov projects being boondoggles is pure right wing bs propaganda, of course. Even most of your current crop of rabid right wing pres candidates don't want to scrap social security, a program that has eased the lives of hundreds of millions of elderly Americans.
And guess what--it is essentially socialism. And it is wildly popular with nearly all Americans.
And Cog, man, if you are trying to paint Pops as some kind of narrow minded partisan, you are really barking up the wrong tree, buddy, from what I have seen of his posts, at least.
Really, there is no one so thin skinned as a died in the wool repug. Any suggestion that there may be a different position or that their side did something bad, and they immediately jump to accusing YOU of being one sided.
I really think that political discussions have gotten essentially toxic in this country, mostly because of rightwing extremist (almost the only sort that gets any air time) rhetoric.
It all seems very Weimar to me.
Corporations are created by governments. The original corporations were vehicles for granting monopoly, and the American Revolution was in part a rebellion against the British East India Company's monopoly on trade with the Colonies. The British East India Company was resented by the Colonist, and the Boston Tea Party was a reaction to a tax that was imposed for the benefit of that company.
Corporations have been the vehicle for concentrations of wealth, and it is no wonder they now dominate economies around the world. I fully agree with you that all corporate charters should be revoked, with a reasonable phase out period in which for them to dispose of their assets and go through liquidation. This would leave general partnerships and sole proprietorships as the remaining forms of business, and there is a natural limit on the size of a business that can be operated in these forms.
As far as your worship of government, I think that is dangerous. Government is force. Most of that force is not used to promote freedom, but to destroy it.
Social Security is a retirement plan, one forced on us by government instead of the ones that we privately acquire either through our employers or by simply investing our own in one we choose. And characteristic of government, they have made a mess in their management of it. They took the money they force collected from workers, and instead of setting it aside for future payments to retirees, they spent it on other things like wars. If a private insurance company had done this, their management people would now be in jail. They keep changing the rules with things like changes in the retirement age, or changes in the tax rate for collections from workers. Social Security has indeed become a Ponzi scheme because in order to pay those now receiving checks, it must take money from young people in order to make the payments.
If people now receiving checks like Social Security it is because they are getting someone elses money. I am a good example. I am 67 and began receiving my checks at age 62. I made most of my tax payments when the rates were lower, and after I had the necessary 40 quarters of tax payments to qualify, I quit working and lived from income sources not subject to social security taxes. I really have not worked for the majority of my life. If I calculate what I paid in plus what my employers paid in for me, and factor in theoretical interest earnings on those amounts, I have already gotten back more than all that, and I could easily live another 20 years, being supported by young people who are complete strangers to me. And to boot, I have significant other income, probably more than most of the young strangers who are funding what the government sends me as Social Security. It is a deplorable system because it takes what one person works to earn and gives to to someone else. Unlike the people who are collecting today, when people just entering the work force now finally retire they will get much less back than what they paid in, if anything at all. This is simply a system of theft, not an insurance program.
And the sad fact is that the federal government will default on it anyway. They are slowly doing so now by not adjusting the payments to reflect the increasing costs of living. People truly dependent on those checks might receive them until they die, but each year they will buy less and less. So not only it the government stealing money from one man to give to another, they are now in the process of giving less and less each year to the person receiving the checks while pretending to honor the obligation they have under the program. And it is likely that when the federal government finally fails, which it will, just like the USSR did, there will not even be the illusion that they are paying what they promised, and countless people will be left holding the bag, many of them dieing as a result.
You have been and are being scammed and don't even realize it. And this is just one of the several scam fleecing you. The monetary system where the federal government granted to banks the right to create money out of thin air and loan it to you at interest is another major one. There is a huge transfer of wealth from the public to the banks as a result and it seems that this is such a good scam that it can be carried on out of the light of day with few understanding what is being done to them.
I suppose the old saying that, "A fool and his money are soon parted", is an appropriate description when it comes to citizens and government.
It does stink though. Turns out Nancy Pelosi's brother in law got even more money than Solyndra:
