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Originally Posted by ckblv
 Ah yes, because we all know how hard most people will work when it makes, absolutely, no difference what the end outcome will be.
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Originally Posted by Skippymjp
Actually, eyerolling aside, you got that quite right...when the parables "end outcome" IS the parable writer's paranoid fantasy.
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Originally Posted by ckblv
You MUST be right since redistributing the wealth and taking away incentive has been such a stunning success the world over.
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Originally Posted by Skippymjp
So, to sum up the OP in a nutshell. How many former well-to-do citizens are now destitute due entirely to the current administration's actions? Where are all the examples of this "end outcome".
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Originally Posted by Skippymjp
So, to sum up the OP in a nutshell. How many former well-to-do citizens are now destitute due entirely to the current administration's actions? Where are all the examples of this "end outcome".
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Originally Posted by 2dogmom
I had a conversation with my 96 year old father the other day.
He retired many years ago to a condo on the beach in Florida. This is a building where very wealthy people live and have lived - including former CEOs anda few high mucky mucks of Fortune 500 companies. He said something that shocked me, namely that he thinks the current economic conditions are worse than the Great Depression and since he was there at the time I believe him. He said that 1/3 of the residents in this building are currently in arrears with their condo fees. No doubt a lot of them got taken by the likes of Bernie Madoff types. This is not the doing of the current administration, this came about BEFORE Obama took office and BEFORE he got elected. So I do not understand why anyone is trying to blame economic problems on Obama. This mess has been developing for a long time and to me it's like sliding down a hill. The free fall down is easy. Crawling back up is hard work. We are all going to have to take some bitter medicine for this country to get back on track, get people back to work and get our economy moving again. I'm not seeing any viable suggestions from the crowd that is complaining either. All I see are fairy tales. |
| Alarmed by Roosevelt's plan to redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor, a group of millionaire businessmen, led by the Du Pont and J.P. Morgan empires, plans to overthrow Roosevelt with a military coup and install a fascist government modelled after Mussolini's regime in Italy. The businessmen try to recruit General Smedley Butler, promising him an army of 500,000, unlimited financial backing and generous media spin control. The plot is foiled when Butler reports it to Congress. |
| What the businessmen proposed was dramatic: they wanted General Butler to deliver an ultimatum to Roosevelt. Roosevelt would pretend to become sick and incapacitated from his polio, and allow a newly created cabinet officer, a "Secretary of General Affairs," to run things in his stead. The secretary, of course, would be carrying out the orders of Wall Street. If Roosevelt refused, then General Butler would force him out with an army of 500,000 war veterans from the American Legion. But MacGuire assured Butler the cover story would work: "You know the American people will swallow that. We have got the newspapers. We will start a campaign that the President's health is failing. Everyone can tell that by looking at him, and the dumb American people will fall for it in a second…" The businessmen also promised that money was no object: Clark told Butler that he would spend half his $60 million fortune to save the other half. And what type of government would replace Roosevelt's New Deal? MacGuire was perfectly candid to Paul French, a reporter friend of General Butler's: "We need a fascist government in this country… to save the nation from the communists who want to tear it down and wreck all that we have built in America. The only men who have the patriotism to do it are the soldiers, and Smedley Butler is the ideal leader. He could organize a million men overnight." |
| BTW he's my father, not my grandfather. |
The only way you can have those conditions in the US is to hire illegals.
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Originally Posted by Momofmany
Funny you should ask. I'm certainly not rich but neither am I poor. I lost 50% of my retirement savings due to the practices of the prior administration. I've reclaimed about half of that back during the current administration. Have you noticed the Dow Jones recently? Oh, and my taxes were reduced at the federal level and raised by the republicans at the local level (Kansas is run by republicans). Hmmmm......
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Originally Posted by 2dogmom
I had a conversation with my 96 year old father the other day.
He retired many years ago to a condo on the beach in Florida. This is a building where very wealthy people live and have lived - including former CEOs anda few high mucky mucks of Fortune 500 companies. He said something that shocked me, namely that he thinks the current economic conditions are worse than the Great Depression and since he was there at the time I believe him. He said that 1/3 of the residents in this building are currently in arrears with their condo fees. No doubt a lot of them got taken by the likes of Bernie Madoff types. This is not the doing of the current administration, this came about BEFORE Obama took office and BEFORE he got elected. You have no way of knowing that, you are just assuming that. And even if it were true which you have no idea if it is, is Bush responsible for every criminal that committed a crimie while he was in office? What about Bush wanting Congress to impose some regulations on Freddi and Fanny but the Democrats in Congress threw a hissy fit and said Freddi and Fanny were just FINE. Republican's in Congress tried and tried to get some oversight on F & F and the Dem's stonewalled them every time. Don't act like this is all Bush's fault because that is BULL, there is plenty of blame to go around. So I do not understand why anyone is trying to blame economic problems on Obama. This mess has been developing for a long time and to me it's like sliding down a hill. The free fall down is easy. Crawling back up is hard work. We are all going to have to take some bitter medicine for this country to get back on track, get people back to work and get our economy moving again. I'm not seeing any viable suggestions from the crowd that is complaining either. All I see are fairy tales. |
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Originally Posted by sharky
the end has yet to come...
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Which makes the parable only speculative, and a "best guess at the worst case" projection.
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Originally Posted by Cinder
That was interesting about Dupont and Morgan. I wonder if today they'd just pack it up and move their operations to a developing nation, where the potential for growth now lies. |
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Originally Posted by 2dogmom
NP he was 43 when I was born.
I think duPont and Morgan have moved their operations to a developing nation. The US doesnt allow to have pittance wages, unsafe working conditions, zero benefits and child labor in the US thanks to unions, OSHA and departments of labor, so why not set up factories in countries that are happy to get the work? Remember? China ate my dinner roll? The only way you can have those conditions in the US is to hire illegals. |
| While historians have questioned whether or not a coup was actually close to execution, most agree that some sort of "wild scheme" was contemplated and discussed. Contemporaneous media initially dismissed the plot, with a New York Times editorial characterizing it as a "gigantic hoax". When the committee's final report was released, the Times said the committee "purported to report that a two-month investigation had convinced it that General Butler's story of a Fascist march on Washington was alarmingly true" and "It also alleged that definite proof had been found that the much publicized Fascist march on Washington, which was to have been led by Major. Gen. Smedley D. Butler, retired, according to testimony at a hearing, was actually contemplated". ... The Congressional committee final report said: In the last few weeks of the committee's official life it received evidence showing that certain persons had made an attempt to establish a fascist organization in this country. No evidence was presented and this committee had none to show a connection between this effort and any fascist activity of any European country. There is no question that these attempts were discussed, were planned, and might have been placed in execution when and if the financial backers deemed it expedient. This committee received evidence from Maj. Gen Smedley D. Butler (retired), twice decorated by the Congress of the United States. He testified before the committee as to conversations with one Gerald C. MacGuire in which the latter is alleged to have suggested the formation of a fascist army under the leadership of General Butler. MacGuire denied these allegations under oath, but your committee was able to verify all the pertinent statements made by General Butler, with the exception of the direct statement suggesting the creation of the organization. This, however, was corroborated in the correspondence of MacGuire with his principal, Robert Sterling Clark, of New York City, while MacGuire was abroad studying the various forms of veterans organizations of Fascist character. |
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Originally Posted by 2dogmom
wikipedia should always be taken with a grain of salt. Anyone with an internet connection can modify the contents and I can tell you that in my field or expertise there are always amateurs mucking around with the content. A million monkeys sitting at a million typewriters you know.
Even so, I am wondering if you read the wiki link that you posted that says there was "not a shred of proof." |
| It may be interesting but there is not a shred of proof that it is true that Dupont and J.P. Morgan were in on any plot to overthrow the goverment. |
), I decided to post the Wiki link also.
| The main function of these hate groups was to enforce the will of right-wing corporate America, seeking to regain the political power it lost in the 1932 election. On the grassroots level, this intention translated into supporting the efforts of management to stop workers from unionizing. The most glaring example of this was the struggle at the General Motors plants. (General Motors was owned by the DuPonts). The Du Ponts employed the Black Legion, a sort of Northern Klux Klux Klan, which would terrorize workers, bomb union halls, and torture and murder organizers. ... These groups also acted as intelligence networks. They infiltrated unions, leftwing groups, and universities, and sold their information to industry. One example of such an intelligence agency was the American Vigilant Intelligence Federation, headquartered in Chicago and operated by Harry Jung. Jung later relocated to New Orleans where he was an associate of Guy Banister, who also hailed from Chicago. Banister's Detective Agency was spying for right-wing businesses as well. ... In the Thirties, corporate America's fear of government regulation threatened by Roosevelt's New Deal, ("Socialism" in their minds), gave them a reason to embrace Fascism. It justified their financing of paramilitary hate groups to carry out violent, anti-government and anti-union campaigns exploiting the vehicles of racism, anti-Semitism and anti-Communism. By the Sixties these groups had become entrenched in the grassroots landscape. ... Although the coup never materialized, the unrelenting propaganda attack against Roosevelt and the New Deal reforms continued, spearheaded by the American Liberty League. The League listed as its main contributors the Du Pont family, representatives of the Morgan interests, Robert Sterling Clark, the Pew Family (Sun Oil) and Rockefeller Associates. Its treasurer was Grayson M.-P. Murphy, MacGuire's immediate boss. The League itself was ostensibly dedicated to the virtues of the Constitution, individual freedom and free market capitalism. But it claimed all New Deal reforms were inspired by Communists within the Roosevelt administration. |
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Originally Posted by 2dogmom
This seems too bizarre to make up. |
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Originally Posted by ckblv
Yeah the Dow was great for one day, whoopeee. I hope it continues. But until manufacturing picks up and banks start lending money and People GO BACK TO WORK, this economy is not better IMO.
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Originally Posted by ckblv
What exactly has Barack done to improve the economy? His eye has been on the health care bill that is going to make middle income people's health care insurance premiums skyrocket more than they are now.
He has pushed for the phony cap and trade to make us taxpayers pay billions to third world countries to help them with their supposed energy needs. He hasn't helped create any jobs, maybe some govt jobs, how is that going to get us back on track? Maybe no president can help stimulate the economy, maybe he should have left well enough alone and not gave hundreds of billions of dollars of our money in bail outs to banks and Wall Street so they could give their CEO's huge bonus' |
| But health-care costs are far more than just a health issue; they're also an economic problem. The skyrocketing bill for health care, including both public and private expenses, is reducing America's competitiveness as a global producer of goods and services. Want proof? Take General Motors. Health-care costs added between $1,500 and $2,000 to the sticker price of every GM automobile, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), noted in a recent report called "Healthcare Costs and U.S. Competitiveness." Even back in 2005, a GM vehicle's price tag included more health care than steel. See full article from DailyFinance: http://srph.it/9OogtV |
| The study — one of the first to estimate the economic benefits of lowering sodium consumption among the U.S. public — estimates that meeting national sodium guidelines could eliminate 11 million cases of high blood pressure nationally (see the table). Moreover, meeting sodium consumption guidelines would save, in just one calendar year, 312,000 quality-adjusted life years — a research measurement that adjusts increased longevity for the relative healthiness experienced during those additional years of life. The monetary value of the improved quality of life would be an estimated $32 billion annually. |
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Originally Posted by 2dogmom
I see the health care reform as the first step in making the US competitive again and getting our economy back on track.
But hey there's a cheaper way to cut health care costs, cut back on the salt. http://www.rand.org/publications/ran...2009/news.html If we stop spending so much on health care as a nation we can spend it on other things. |
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Originally Posted by ckblv
If the Obama administration wants to put it out there that employment has been steadily climbing since he took office, so be it. All I know is the unemployment rate has held steady at 9.7% for months. I do remember Barack saying it would not go higher than 8%. But those things are hard to judge, I admit, so will give him some leeway on that. But if people think the recession is all Bush's fault that is incredibly naive IMO. Especially when the Pub's and Bush said repeatedly that Freddi and Fanny needed oversight but the Democrat's just wouldn't have it. But feel free to blame Bush, most Democrats will be blaming him for everything for the next 50 years I'm sure. What exactly has Barack done to improve the economy? His eye has been on the health care bill that is going to make middle income people's health care insurance premiums skyrocket more than they are now. He has pushed for the phony cap and trade to make us taxpayers pay billions to third world countries to help them with their supposed energy needs. He hasn't helped create any jobs, maybe some govt jobs, how is that going to get us back on track? Maybe no president can help stimulate the economy, maybe he should have left well enough alone and not gave hundreds of billions of dollars of our money in bail outs to banks and Wall Street so they could give their CEO's huge bonus' |
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Originally Posted by 2dogmom
He said something that shocked me, namely that he thinks the current economic conditions are worse than the Great Depression and since he was there at the time I believe him. He said that 1/3 of the residents in this building are currently in arrears with their condo fees. No doubt a lot of them got taken by the likes of Bernie Madoff types.
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Originally Posted by Momofmany
The Obama administration isn't putting it out there that employment has been climbing. The article that I posted was from the Department of Labor.
Unemployment peaked at 10% and is down to 9.7% right now. The point of the chart that I posted is that, had he not created the conditions for employment, the unemployment rate would have continued to rise at the rate when he took office. He's slowed down the bleeding. Certainly not where unemployed people would like to be, but it could have been a whole lot worse. Just the fact that the Dow is up so much is a sign of economic recovery. Are we fully restored? Nope not yet. It was a very deep trench he inherited. We've debated how we got to where we were many times in this forum. I don't blame Bush for causing it. I do blame Bush for not taking the necessary actions to prevent a meltdown during his watch. And let me remind you that the Wall Street bail out happened in 2008. I find it interesting that people blame Obama for that one. It's also interesting that you say the democrats were against oversite to financial firms, since that's what many repubs blame the democrats for doing (big government wants to keep an eye on everything!). Have you heard the Frank Luntz story? He's a GOP strategist that handed the GOP talking points about how to derail financial reform. He wrote it in January. McConnell has been caught at least 5 times reading from that script and using points that are simply false. Here's a video of him using the false talking points followed by a response from Dodd. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USoL-IHnKEs Here's the actual memo written in January. Please note that the bill hadn't even been written yet and he's telling the GOP how to kill it. http://www.docstoc.com/docs/document...oc_id=23808095 |
| I appeared on CNBC on 1/12/09 - the day President Bush and President-elect Barack Obama asked Congress to release the second half of the $700 billion Wall Street bailout. Should Congress obey their wishes or not? I don't think so. |
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Originally Posted by mrblanche
OK, time for a reality check.
Late on their condo fees? Poor babies. During the depression, they would have been lucky to be able to stay in a house. 25% unemployment. Wages of a dollar a week. A dollar a day was good. |
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Originally Posted by ckblv
The Stock Market crash in October, 1929 and the resulting Great Depression lasted until the start of WWII didn't it? Wasn't WWII really how this country dug its' way out of The Great Depression?
People love to give all the credit to FDR and the New Deal but it was WWII more than anything. And I agree, this is nothing compared to that. Good grief, people were jumping out of window's. There were freaking SOUP LINES. |
| War ended the Depression simply because of increased government spending, an intensified version of what Roosevelt was already doing with the WPA and similar programs.. Responding to the external threats posed by the Axis Powers (Germany, Japan and Italy) Roosevelt and the Congress threw fiscal caution to the wind and spent what was necessary to win the war. In so doing, they also achieved pre-Depression levels of employment and prosperity. What then is the legacy of the New Deal as a whole? Would it have ended the Depression? The best answer to that is that it went a long way toward alleviating the worst suffering of the Depression while still being captive to the conventional thinking (political, fiscal, racial) of the day. We cannot answer that question of whether it could have ended the Depression based on historical facts. World War II interrupted the process. |
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Originally Posted by mrblanche
OK, time for a reality check.
Late on their condo fees? Poor babies. During the depression, they would have been lucky to be able to stay in a house. 25% unemployment. Wages of a dollar a week. A dollar a day was good. By any and all statistics, this recession isn't even the worst recession in our lifetime. The recession of 1980-83 was much worse. Unemployment as high as 16%. Mortgage interest rates up to 23%. And prices rising as you watched them in the stores. A can of beans might have 5 different prices on it, changed since it was put on the shelf. No, this is a bad recession in some respects, but not apocalyptic. Not even disastrous. Just a little worse than than the average cyclic recession. |
Those "babies" as you put it are probably older than both our ages combined, and most of them were around the first time. These are people who did not grow up with a credit card mentality and who paid cash for everything in their lives except their homes. Many have gone from being multimillionaires to being unable to scrape together the several hundred dollars needed to do defered maintenence on their building. I guess if you've never been a millionaire, having a can of beans on the table is enough for you. Maybe statistically this recession is really just a "little worse" than the average recession but I think the difference is that we are not going to recover the way we did from the Great Depression. Whole communities have been wiped out and a lot of jobs have moved permanently out of the country. I don't know about anyone else, but about a year ago for the first time in my life I was really scared of what might happen with our economy. It doesn't matter if you did the right thing by spending within your limits and working hard all your life, the mess on Wall St and mismanagement of large corporations can ruin whole segments of the economy in a short time and the people responsible walk away from their messes with huge bonuses. Add to that the instant gratification mentality that has permeated the country and too many people (liberals AND conservatives alike) feel like somebody somewhere owes them something so they are going to take what they can.
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Originally Posted by mrblanche
As to the Madoff "victims," I'm having a hard time being very sympathetic. Most got in by learning the metaphoric "secret handshake," told they could only come in on the recommendation of the previous members. Most actually were withdrawing their large "dividends" all along, paying for those condos, cars, etc.
Yes, my mother lived through the Depression. I learned a lot from her. Not necessarily about handling money (she never had enough to make that a useful lesson), but about general living habits. "Use it up, wear it out, make it do." And yes, our IRA's took a beating last year, too. I bought all the way down, and, thanks to that, we're now ahead of where we were when it all started. Rich? Far from it. But those condo owners didn't learn one important lesson, in my opinion. That is, with a condo, you don't own anything but air space. I once considered a condo. Did all the research I could, and instead went and bought a little house for a lot less money. |
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Originally Posted by mrblanche
But those condo owners didn't learn one important lesson, in my opinion. That is, with a condo, you don't own anything but air space. I once considered a condo. Did all the research I could, and instead went and bought a little house for a lot less money.
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