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| quote: | Originally posted by DOOMBOT
Getting upset with Wall Street is really missing the big picture. You need to realize that banks wouldn't have been able to help with the rapid increase of home prices the last decade without government support. |
I also think getting upset with Wall Street is also a very small picture aspect of it. I see it as the right place to hold a demonstration of this kind and that's it. The media's there, the corporations trade there, and it's as simple as that. Anyone who makes it out to be something more I think is wrong. Short of going to Washington D.C. to voice grievances, you can't really demonstrate in Times Square and demonstrating outside of City Hall doesn't really make sense either. It's an okay platform for people to voice their discontent, it's not the end-all and be-all.
| quote: | Originally posted by DOOMBOT
You need to realize that banks wouldn't have been able to help with the rapid increase of home prices the last decade without government support. Same goes for the massive increase in college tuition or even the medical industry. |
See, this is where I think we have a complete difference in opinion. The housing prices boomed because of the extreme ease at which one could get a loan from a bank to pay the demanded price. College prices could go up because of how easy it was for the bank to hand the kid a check for $30,000 each year. The banks lent money out with complete disregard and without ever thinking about the consequences that would ensue if just 10% of those loans could not be paid back. They went haywire, and it was all their fault.
| quote: | Originally posted by DOOMBOT
You recognized that the US boomed in the 1800s but then seemed to blame that same private economy for the issues we faced in the 1900s, without ever taking into consideration that the government stepped in and began regulating the hell out of many industries, creating many problems. |
I'm not sure that makes any sense. Most of the problems I listed are due to complete unregulation. I think college tuitions need to be regulated. They're not now, and it's almost a joke how high they are and how much they increase per year. College prices and real estate values are two things that have almost completely no regulation on the part of the government.
| quote: | Originally posted by DOOMBOT
I just read your opinion piece and it seems to me like you are a little confused about the importance of profit. Actually, its pretty obvious that you are confused about how an economy grows and prospers in general. Profit is a very important part of a growing economy and the businesses within it. It is what allows the company to continue doing business, pay its workers, pay its employees, invest, and so on. Without profit, you and I and everyone else would not be able to enjoy almost all of the every day things that we do and take for granted, like the computer that you are using, for example. |
No I absolutely understand the concepts of profit and basic economics principles. I'm saying that the quest for unprecedented profit margins has become more than just something a business structures itself around, and has made its footprint over so many aspects of our society and even identity as Americans. Things have reached a tipping point where I think it's gone too far. By simply justifying things in an economic sense, our society has quickly been going in a downward spiral; I made short anecdotal examples of how the ripples of our now overly-capitalistic model of society are affecting so many aspects of our lives. If everyone worked a max. of 8 hours a day and salaries were increasing with parity to increases in costs of basic things like food and transportation, I think many of our country's problems would go away.
Many authors and smarter people than myself have discussed for decades what the balance of an economically prosperous nation needs to be relative to the happiness of its citizens. I think we've far surpassed the tipping point in that respect. This will have its own consequences in 5 years or 10 years or 20 years that we can't fully comprehend now. No economics or sociology textbook can fully explain the repercussions of what's going on in our country right now but it's not good. Our population's the most obese, least healthy, and least educated of our counterparts. We're losing math-based jobs to the Asian countrise, and we are not really specialized in anything anymore. We can't make the best cars, we don't train the best engineers, we don't have anything to our name anymore but Wall Street. This will ultimately hurt Wall Street. And I think it was largely dictated by the choices our government made, and the directions taken by the companies that trade on Wall Street. That's why I think this is all relevant. And yes, our government is totally to blame, if not for 75% of it, at least 50%, but for reasons I totally disagree with you on.
Simply stating that profitable corporations will keep this country alive is an outdated argument for the capitalist system.
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Last edited by DJ Eco on Oct-03-2011 at 03:43
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