GOP often like to state our high GNP per capita as a a reason why we are doing well. I always argue that that statistic only shows how well the 1% are doing and that is is not a good indicator of our whole society.

This is when they like to say our poor are not "poor" which is true but that doesn't tell the whole story.

http://blog.ted.com/2011/10/24/how-economic-inequality-harms-societies-richard-wilkinson-on-ted-com/

There is now a collection of factual data that overwhelmingly proves income inequality damages society. It also shows that income equality can be produced organicly through level incomes to begin with or through socialist redistribution systems and they both still bring about a good result.

It also provides proof that even the rich are better off being in a society where income inequality has been reduced.

11/6/2011 3:27:40 PM

the more poor people there are, the harder people try to impress their friends through display of consumption.

An egalitarian society becomes a bunch of hipsters. toasters are soo last century

11/6/2011 4:08:29 PM

Oh look, more correlations.

Let me know when causation is found and I'll be motivated to care.

11/6/2011 4:26:08 PM

11/6/2011 5:30:56 PM

I'd bet that wellbeing is also negatively correlated with rates of immigration.

People moving from poor countries to rich countries tend to bring their poor health with them.

11/6/2011 5:31:38 PM

Like all those fat unhealthy immigrants in the midwest?

11/6/2011 7:44:42 PM

You're right. Let's increase taxes on everyone earning more than they should earn and then let the government decide who gets paid and how much. No issues there, no chance of corruption, no chance of destroying the economy.

11/6/2011 8:24:56 PM

Yes. It works well in other countries. I don't really care about "destroying the economy" because economic growth has no benefit if income inequality is growing with it.

11/6/2011 10:39:50 PM

God I hope fools like you someday learn that big government is not your friend.

11/6/2011 10:53:06 PM

God I hope fools like you someday learn that government size does not determine friendliness.

11/6/2011 10:56:50 PM

God I hope fools like you someday learn that big government can refer to more than size

11/6/2011 11:05:38 PM

Which definition of big would you like to use?

Quote :

"1. large, as in size, height, width, or amount: a big house; a big quantity. 2. of major concern, importance, gravity, or the like: a big problem. 3. outstanding for a specified quality: a big liar; a big success. 4. important, as in influence, standing, or wealth: a big man in his field. 5. grown-up; mature: big enough to know better."

11/6/2011 11:16:45 PM

'big government'

try again.

11/6/2011 11:17:50 PM

Well, I found this definition:

Quote :

"a form of government characterized by high taxation and public spending and centralization of political power"

Then I looked through this thread and found this, from you:

Quote :

"You're right. Let's increase taxes on everyone earning more than they should earn and then let the government decide who gets paid and how much. No issues there, no chance of corruption, no chance of destroying the economy."

Do you like strawmen, or do you just like sucking your own dick while pretending you're richer and more powerful than you really are?

11/6/2011 11:27:37 PM

Quote :

"4. important, as in influence, standing, or wealth: a big man in his field."

Telling people what they can do with their own bodies is BIG.

11/6/2011 11:27:46 PM

Using that definition (importance and influence), I'm pretty sure any and all governments are big.

11/6/2011 11:30:45 PM

that's completely hollow. Saying that government are big in an absolute sense has nothing to do with the conversation.

Governments can significantly reduce or increase their size by the way of laws that restrict individual liberty. In common science fiction books and movies about out-of-control governments, the fact is that government was big in people's lives. If government mandates that you take pills to control (or suppress) your emotions, that forms an example of big government - very big relative to current governments. That government may still only spend 5% of GDP. So small by your definition?

11/7/2011 12:02:18 AM

I'd feel a lot better about our country's situation if I just had some Soma pills to take everyday.

11/7/2011 12:07:13 AM

From my understanding of how the American system operates, a bigger government would just increase income inequality. After-all, the metro area with the greatest income inequality is Washington DC, the seat of government.

You need to recognize that the government doesn't tax in order to give the money to the poor. Transfer payments to the poor as a percentage of spending have tended downwards for decades now. The government taxes the poor and the rich in order to give the money to the rich they favor, be they weapons manufacturers or the owners of Argonaut which have made $Texas off the Solynandra mess.

If you want to increase transfer payments to the poor, I suspect most on this board would support raising the Earned Income Tax Credit. Especially if it was done in conjunction with drastic reductions in transfer payments to the rich (means testing Medicare, SS, ending farm subsidies, ending green energy subsidies, etc).

[Edited on November 7, 2011 at 1:02 AM. Reason : .,.]

11/7/2011 12:48:35 AM

The "transfer" payments are confusing. If you look at farm subsidies, very few of the people who directly receive the payments are rich themselves. But if you consider the market dynamics, they may be subsidized based on production, which favors the techniques of the ag giants like Monsanto, as well as the economies of scale that only such large firms can take advantage of.

Plus, most of the public is still allergic to any kind of transfer payment. They've painted a narrative about the role of a government that redistributes wealth that has persisted since the 80s.

11/7/2011 9:16:15 AM

We've experimented with giving the poor money they didn't earn for 50+ years. Hasn't worked. Won't work.

11/7/2011 9:49:09 AM

Are you trolling? Were you trying to sarcastically give an example of the exact attitude I mentioned?

The entire point is that we have subvert transfers of wealth from the general population to the rich. So yeah, let's end this welfare state.

Quote :

"We've experimented with giving the poor rich money they didn't earn for 50+ years. Hasn't worked. Won't work."

11/7/2011 12:34:26 PM

Let me correct you there. Giving money to the rich has indeed succeeded at its intended goal, which was winning elections. It is debatable whether anyone ever got elected giving money to poor people.

11/7/2011 1:41:58 PM

Quote :

"It found that in 1979, households in the bottom quintile received more than 50 percent of all transfer payments. In 2007, similar households received about 35 percent of transfers."

11/9/2011 2:30:24 PM

Quote :

"We've experimented with giving the poor money they didn't earn for 50+ years. Hasn't worked. Won't work."

We've experimented with giving the richer lower tax rates and looser regulations for 30 years. Look where we it got us.

11/9/2011 2:59:21 PM

Well, the lower tax rates have gotten the rich to pay a far higher percentage of federal taxes. As for the other assertion, the federal register is several times thicker today, so how the hell do you call that looser regulation?

11/9/2011 5:45:33 PM

Quote :

"Well, the lower tax rates have gotten the rich to pay a far higher percentage of federal taxes. "

Lmao, yes, by removing some of the brakes on their wealth accumulation. Those poor fucking rich people paying a higher percentage of total taxes because they now have a higher percentage of total income. Boooooo hooooooooo

Quote :

"As for the other assertion, the federal register is several times thicker today, so how the hell do you call that looser regulation?"

Lmao where do you right wingers get this shit? Like seriously, what's the secret website where you pass around these little tidbits like "The Federal Register is large therefor the registrations contained therein must be more strict" that I see everywhere.

"Quantity of regulations" does not equal "Tightness of regulations" anymore than the quantity of rope wrapped around your neck affects whether or not you're being choked by it.

You want an example of looser regulation? From 1932 all the way until the 90's commercial and investment banking were strictly separated. After that ended, we end up suffering the largest financial crisis since the Great Depression within one President. Hmm. Oh but on the same day the DMV added two laws about seatbelts and rear view mirrors, therefor REGULATIONS ARE TIGHTER THAN EVER!!!

[Edited on November 10, 2011 at 10:18 AM. Reason : .]

11/10/2011 10:17:57 AM

Sarbanes Oxley
Basel II
Safe Drinking Water Act
Food Quality Protection Act
CRA itself
Patients Rights Rules
Airline Traveler Rules
Used Car Sales Rules
Libel Laws
Arbitration Laws

And so on.

But lets not forget, any time we are describing the macro its way easier to just stick to our cognitive bias and assume what we already believe is correct...no real data/model needed.

11/10/2011 9:54:32 PM

Lmao you're seriously citing "used car sales rules" in the same conversation as Glass-Steagall,

11/11/2011 9:56:27 AM

I mean yeah sure the most wealth-laden sector of the economy (finance) was cut pretty much cut loose entirely, since we cast off those regulations that were put in place 80 years ago to prevent a repeat of the Great Depression. But since then they also passed the Food Quality Protection Act I think we can safely say overall regulation on the economy is so much tighter than it was.

Also the CRA, fucking lol http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/regv23n3/gunther.pdf

Here's a Mises article from 1999 wherein they argue the CRA should be eliminated...not because it forces banks to loan to low-income households...but because it's redundant and in its absence banks could make even more such loans to even worse-qualified people.

11/11/2011 10:04:07 AM

Str8Correlations!

11/11/2011 10:06:10 AM

The regulations which were repealed, no one in Washington is suggesting we bring back, because there is no theory for how their repeal contributed to the crisis. All the data we have suggests Glass Steagal would have made the crisis worse. Most of the failures which occurred were companies that had not utilized the repeal, as all the major collapses were either stand alone investment banks (Lehman Brothers) or standalone Consumer Banks. Also, many of the forced mergers the Government imposed during the crisis violated glass Steagal.

So, no, repealing one law which seems to have nothing to do with the crisis does not wash away the thousands of regulatory impositions that clearly contributed to the crisis by socializing losses and eroding lending standards.

11/11/2011 10:19:46 AM

Lmao Jesus Christ Loneshark at least google the things you're talking about before you make stuff up

Gingrich - http://www.minyanville.com/dailyfeed/2011/11/09/newt-gingrich-regrets-glass-steagall/

Huntsman - http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/jon-huntsman-too-big-to-fail-6512242

McCain - http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2009/12/14/an-odd-post-crash-couple.html

Clinton - http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2011/11/08/clinton_and_gingrich_agree_we_miss_glass_steagall.html

Volcker - http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/21/business/21volcker.html?scp=2&sq=volcker&st=cse

Mervyn King - http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/speeches/2009/speech406.pdf

Plus just about every single Democrat in both houses of congress and a decent number of Republican ones who aren't completely off their rockers.

Also, guess who the biggest opponent is to re-instating it? http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703580904574638414165296326.html (In case you don't subscribe, Bank of Fucking America)

[Edited on November 11, 2011 at 10:35 AM. Reason : .]

11/11/2011 10:23:15 AM

Quote :

"The regulations which were repealed, no one in Washington is suggesting we bring back, because there is no theory for how their repeal contributed to the crisis. "

So you have no frame of reference here, Loneshark. You're like a child who wanders into the middle of a movie and wants to know...

Quote :

"The repeal enabled commercial lenders such as Citigroup, which was in 1999 the largest U.S. bank by assets, to underwrite and trade instruments such as mortgage-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations and establish so-called structured investment vehicles, or SIVs, that bought those securities."

Hmm, mortgage backed securities, those sound familiar.

Also, I wonder when and how the banks we had to bail out got too big to fail...



Woah, CitiGroup, Chase, JP Morgan, and Bank of America sure gobbled up everything

Where have I seen those names before?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubled_Asset_Relief_Program#Participants

[Edited on November 11, 2011 at 10:37 AM. Reason : .]

11/11/2011 10:25:31 AM

Right. Citigroup. To quoth Shrike, the bailout of Citigroup was profitable for the government. Meanwhile, the bailouts (and collapse) of the various non-unified banks (standalone consumer or standalone investment) lost the government and investors vast sums.

Quote :

"sure gobbled up everything"

Of course. Because gobbling up everything was the only way to get access to the federal treasury, as promised by 50 years of ever tightening regulatory capture of federal regulators.

[Edited on November 11, 2011 at 10:41 AM. Reason : .,.]

11/11/2011 10:38:40 AM

The regulations which were repealed, no one in Washington is suggesting we bring back, because there is no theory for how their repeal contributed to the crisis.

11/11/2011 10:39:51 AM

Quote :

"there is no theory for how their repeal contributed to the crisis."

Not entirely true...the left thinks their repeal caused the crisis because their ideology demands that big government works. The right thinks they couldn't have because their ideology demands that big government doesn't work. Both sides will cite "experts" on their side that started at the conclusion and worked backwards on a study based on a heavily manipulated (toward their side) model that confirms their belief and neither side will admit that we simply aren't God enough to understand how any single or multiple levers sums to an economy with hundreds of millions of actors making trillions of micro transactions spread across 31,536,000 seconds a year.

11/11/2011 10:47:59 AM

God shut the fuck up Chance you really contribute absolutely nothing by going to every thread that mentions the economy and giving your "GUH GUH BUT ECONOMY IS RLY RLY COMPLEX THEREFOR COMPLETELY IMPOSSIBLE TO UNDERSTAND" line. You think you're above the fray but it's pretty obvious you're just compensating for your ignorance of economics by trying to discredit economics altogether.

11/11/2011 10:51:12 AM

Quote :

"Plus just about every single Democrat in both houses of congress and a decent number of Republican ones"

My bad, so you're saying Glass Steagal was reinstated by the Dodd-Frank? Wait, it wasn't? How can that be if what you say is true that all democrats and many republicans are calling for reinstatement? Didn't the democrats control both houses and the Presidency for awhile? How is that cognitive dissonance coming along?

Pay attention to me, you kinda need to know this: What people say is meaningless compared to what they do.

But fine, clearly I overstated by position, I'm sure someone is "calling" to bring it back in the form of speeches. But I have seen very little legislation over the past four years. However, I have seen lots of legislation designed to make banks larger. Go figure.

But, I stand by the assertion that there is no theory for how the repeal alone contributed to the crisis. Foreign countries have no such regulation, many of whose banking systems completely escaped this crisis. The only theory you seem to offer is that it might have blocked 10% of mergers as the vast majority of mergers on your graph were consumer banks merging with consumer banks and investment banks merging with investment banks. How can this theory stand up against the obvious fact that many of the banks that failed were non-unified?

11/11/2011 10:55:50 AM

I'm not alone in thinking that we've come far enough with our knowledge of the macro to command an economy which is exactly what guys like you propose we can do.

Quote :

"Foreign countries have no such regulation, many of whose banking systems completely escaped this crisis."

Which ones?

[Edited on November 11, 2011 at 11:02 AM. Reason : .]

11/11/2011 11:00:15 AM

Actually Chance what you've been saying is that you don't believe we know enough about macro to try and link a decision which enabled the largest banks to binge on mortgage banked securities to a crisis that later occurred in which mortgage backed securities played the key role and the largest banks nearly failed.

[Edited on November 11, 2011 at 11:02 AM. Reason : .]

11/11/2011 11:01:42 AM

Well, yeah. I've been pretty clear with that statement.

Your side says we do. The other side says we don't. Why is your side right other than because it is?

11/11/2011 11:03:53 AM

Quote :

"Which ones?"

The biggest example given is usually Canada. There were usually various European governments listed, but I hesitate to mention them, given those same country's banking systems invested heavily in government bonds and are about to collapse...making them bad examples of "stable banking systems that bolster my position"

11/11/2011 11:28:00 AM

Quote :

"My bad, so you're saying Glass Steagal was reinstated by the Dodd-Frank?"

Lol what is this, opening with a strawman

Quote :

"Wait, it wasn't? How can that be if what you say is true that all democrats and many republicans are calling for reinstatement ?"

Lmao note I didn't say "all" Democrats, I said "just about every" and a handful of Republicans.

Quote :

"Didn't the democrats control both houses and the Presidency for awhile? How is that cognitive dissonance coming along?"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filibuster + http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Dog_Coalition + http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kennedy#Death = Right wing myth of Democrats ramming things down America's throat in unison is a total disingenuous lie

Quote :

"But fine, clearly I overstated by position, I'm sure someone is "calling" to bring it back in the form of speeches. But I have seen very little legislation over the past four years. However, I have seen lots of legislation designed to make banks larger. Go figure. "

That's because, as usual, you're pitifully uninformed or misinformed and make no effort to get informed and can't even be bothered to google the shit you talk about.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass%E2%80%93Steagall_Act#Proposed_re-enactment

Most recent attempt: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h112-2451

Quote :

"But, I stand by the assertion that there is no theory for how the repeal alone contributed to the crisis."

This is interesting wording. "The repeal alone contributed". If I point out that I didn't claim it was the only factor, you'll say "Yes but I asked you to show how it contributed.". If I show how it contributed you'll say "But how was it ALONE in that contribution?"

And to be fair, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm%E2%80%93Leach%E2%80%93Bliley_Act was the capstone on allowing mergers of investment and commercial banks.

Quote :

" Foreign countries have no such regulation,"

Britain has until very recently. Japan did until the early 90's when they relaxed these regulations. Also China has even stricter separations, and they've weathered the crisis relatively splendidly. You should really, really avoid making categorical statements like this.

Quote :

" many of whose banking systems completely escaped this crisis. "

You mean like China, who has an even stricter separation between investment and commercial banking than the US did under Glass-Steagall? China, the largest economy on Earth that also happened to weather the crisis relatively well?

Or maybe you mean France or Germany, who are both considering such separations in future EU law?

Please, point out which countries "completely escaped the crisis" saw your post above

Quote :

"The only theory you seem to offer is that it might have blocked 10% of mergers as the vast majority of mergers on your graph were consumer banks merging with consumer banks and investment banks merging with investment banks. "

Are you high? Take a look at the list of TARP participants I linked earlier. Just because "10% of the mergers" were blocked doesn't mean those mergers only accounted for 10% of the market, or 10% of the crisis for that matter

Quote :

"How can this theory stand up against the obvious fact that many of the banks that failed were non-unified?"

Quote :

"While the majority of problems that occurred centered mostly on the pure-play investment banks like Lehman Brothers, the huge banks born out of the revocation of Glass-Steagall, especially Citigroup, and the insurance companies that were allowed to deal in securities, like the American International Group, would not have run into trouble had the law still been in place. “Commercial banks played a crucial role as buyers and sellers of mortgage-backed securities, credit-default swaps and other explosive financial derivatives,” Demos, a nonpartisan public policy and research organization, wrote in a report discussing the problems it said were caused by the repeal of Glass-Steagall. “Without the watering down and ultimate repeal of Glass-Steagall, the banks would have been barred from most of these activities,” Demos said. “The market and appetite for derivatives would then have been far smaller, and Washington might not have felt a need to rescue the institutional victims.”"

[Edited on November 11, 2011 at 11:42 AM. Reason : .]

11/11/2011 11:39:35 AM

Quote :

" Your side says we do. The other side says we don't. Why is your side right other than because it is?"

Lol you seem to think that just because you are yourself ignorant of arguments being made that the people making them are also ignorant.

HO HO EVERYBODY HAS AN OPINION HOW CAN WE POSSIBLY SAY ONE IS MORE VALID THAN THE OTHER???

11/11/2011 11:40:50 AM

Quote :

"HO HO EVERYBODY HAS AN OPINION HOW CAN WE POSSIBLY SAY ONE IS MORE VALID THAN THE OTHER???"

You're so stupid that you can't actually see this is exactly what I'm asking you? What you're posting is so banal it could be construed as trolling.

Me: Who is to decide which side is the 'correct' opinion.

You: Herple Derple, how can we know which side is more valid?


It's like I'm arguing with a fucking third grader here.

Is it really this hard when someone questions not your conclusions but the fundamental basis you're using to arrive at those conclusions as flawed that you just foam at the mouth and make no sense whatsoever?

11/11/2011 12:01:06 PM

I've made multiple posts in this very thread on the topic. Do you want me to just copy-paste them but address the posts to you this time?



Glass-Steagal allowed giant mergers like AIG and Citigroup, which later on ended up needing bailouts the hardest

It also inflated vastly the mortgage backed security market, which is pretty much the center of the crisis

The right wing lines about the CRA and F&F are based on almost entirely mythological 'evidence'. The actual role played by the two in the crisis were minimal.

There's citations scattered around my posts in this topic and this one: http://brentroad.com/message_topic.aspx?topic=619020&page=2

I'm not going to repost it all just for you.

11/11/2011 12:09:51 PM

Like Shrike says, Citigroup turned a profit for the government. And AIG is an insurance company, utterly immune from Glass-Steagal as I understand it. Can you explain otherwise?

11/11/2011 12:12:56 PM

Quote :

"Glass-Steagal allowed giant mergers like AIG and Citigroup, which later on ended up needing bailouts the hardest"

For fucks sake dude... YOU CAN'T SHOW TO WHAT EXTENT THIS LEGISLATION CAUSED THIS. YOU

JUST

FUCKING

CAN'T

Take another god damn second and read that again. All you are doing is pointing out A happened then Z happened with no fucking clue what affect B-Y had on Z. Do you understand this one fucking bit? Do you not comprehend a god damn thing I am posting? We get it. You're a big government and labor dong gobbler. If government made a regulation and then removed it and 8 years later things blew up then clearly because one followed the other it must be because of the government regulation which was good and all knowing thing.

Wait, no, I know your next argument. We made the regulation (A) and 70 years later (Z) nothing "bad" had happened (we'll ignore all the recessions and banking related problems during that period because..well, because god damnit it undermines our argument causing us to question our entire ideology and we just can't have that) we'll just assume again that B-Y had nothing to do with that.

Quote :

"The right wing lines about the CRA and F&F are based on almost entirely mythological 'evidence'. The actual role played by the two in the crisis were minimal."

This should rightly blow your mind...but I actually agree with you that the CRA and F&F were at most enablers.

[Edited on November 11, 2011 at 12:16 PM. Reason : .]

11/11/2011 12:15:25 PM

Quote :

"Like Shrike says, Citigroup turned a profit for the government. And AIG is an insurance company, utterly immune from Glass-Steagal as I understand it. Can you explain otherwise? "

Their main markets were mortgage backed securities and credit default swaps (a.k.a. loan insurance). AIG grew more than 10x follow G-S and G-L-B, as banks merged and CDS's made it possible for banks to make horrible loans with little to no incentive to actually expect repayment. Further, those mortgage backed securities grew from 5 to 30% of the loan market after banks like Citigroup were suddenly allowed to underwrite them. G-S did not directly affect AIG, but it drastically altered the markets they interacted with. There is no such thing as "immunity" in the extensively interconnected web called "finance".

11/11/2011 12:33:59 PM