let me guess even though the democrats in sacramento have bankrupted the 7th largest economy in the world and democrats have hollowed out the core of just about every major city on the east coast with welfare programs and give aways and oppressive taxes, you are going to say clinton balanced the budget (with sketchy accounting) and not give any credit to the gingrich and the contract with america. You will then take the anomaly of this one odd democrat and therefore pretend that democrats have not destroyed city and states by turning them into welfare states just so they could get more democratic voters. Therefore well I say spend like hell you will be able to pretend I was not specific enough. By the way the socialists who became neo cons and republicans participated in the bankrupting america. Both parties are traitors.
I re read my sentence and it does appear as if I said taxes rates went up in the 70s. I did not mean to say the tax rates got high for the first time in the 70s.. I just remember them being high int he 70s and having stagflation. Oil prices killing us and business grinding to halt because of taxes and other issues. Your link was a good one.. thank you.
Jem, you seem to becoming more measured and rational in your posts, compared with your posts some time ago. I appreciate that. Things are seldom as simple as we might suppose.
Not surprising since Nobel never intended a prize for economics - the banks funded it at a later date and glommed onto the "Nobel Prize" title.
Indeed. It's not a real Nobel Prize. It's a prize given in memory of Alfred Nobel. But they did get the academy to go along, thus giving it an aura of legitimacy. The odd thing to me is the prize in economics is given in "economic sciences"; yet economists can't agree whether economics is a science. Many think it does not meet the requirements of a "science", and that it is no more a science than mathematics, which of course is not a science at all, but an invention. Economists are apparently rather good at blowing their own horn.
Or, on the other hand, you may be wrong. Capitalism in the most basic sense means that captital and the means of production is largely in private hands. So while consumerism and capitalism may be found together, because, after all, capitalists are strong promoters of consumption, and capitalism may not thrive in an economy with low consumption, I nevertheless don't see these two things, i.e., consumerism and capitalism, as being at all equivalent. Here's why. These are the features that characterize capitalists. Capitalists like low labor costs and dislike full employment. (In fact America, the undisputed champion of capitalism, was built on cheap labor.) Capitalists like monopolies and cartels. They loathe free competition. None of these characteristics of capitalists are beneficial to consumers and hence to "consumerism." Consumers benefit most by the existence of competition, something capitalists hate. And there is a trade off with labor costs, because although cheap labor may (in the presence of free competition) result in lower prices for the consumer, it does not necessarily do this in a capitalist economy where the goal is to eliminate competition, mainly by regulating it out of existence, raising the market entry threshold via regulation, or buying up competitors. And, on the other hand, cheap domestic labor costs mean that consumers will have less to spend in the domestic market. Let us remember that to capitalists the meaning of free enterprise is that they are free to do as they like, unfettered by competition or the government. Whereas to the consumer, the term free enterprise means that all are welcome to enter the market and compete on equal terms. These are astoundingly different meanings for the same terminology!