Are you talking "white", or "black" slavery here? Somehow, I get the feeling that economics should take a backseat to morality.
War, fossil fuel subsidies, and other earmarks
Some in Congress would call that new taxes, and you'd be stopped in your tracks.
Investors can invest, or not invest. Those are the only real options that they have.
If you've noticed the Stock Market recently, you'll see that the large firms are doing quite well. The only businesses that need investing are the small businesses which have very little effect on the economy except in aggregate.
AYN RAND: I am opposed to all forms of control. I am for an absolute laissez-faire, free, unregulated economy. Let me put it briefly. I am for the separation of state and economics. Greenspan is Rand's acolyte, who prevented the derivatives market from being regulated (transparency), and led the way to it's crash.
(See Frontline's: The Warning (About Brooksley Born)
As it turns out, the problem is the lack of transparency, without the sucker getting an even break. Then when it blows up, and the perpetrators lose money, the suckers make good the money that the perpetrators lost, so that they can be victimized all over again.
Additionally, this concept of the self-regulating "Free Market" is for the simple minded. We had a "Free Market", and J.D. Rockefeller made it his own. An economy with out regulators is like a football game without referees. I would think everyone would understand that since 2008.
(rolling of eyes)
We all paid for it with our taxes.
The problem is that our overlords don't seem to recognize the real, physical world. They only understand their virtual, economic world.
You mean that there is nothing we can do about being sheared like sheep.
It does reflect the true cost. They get the profits, and we get the costs.
The DOD has made plans for "Climate Change. Why wouldn't corporations already have plans to make profits from this next disaster? The only ones who don't have a plan, are those who rely on politicians to protect them.
By a 54 to 40 percent margin, all respondents say the U.S. is at the ³start of a longer term decline, where the U.S. is no longer the leading country in the world,² rather than ³going through the kind of tough time the country faces from time to time².
Poll: Congress Has 14 Percent Approval Rating More Americans continue to disapprove than approve of sequestration, now by 56-35 percent
More Americans continue to disapprove than approve of sequestration, now by 56-35 percent
Let's face it, we've lost control of our government.
Public campaign financing would be so much simpler, since we are talking "Pie in the Sky".
Every once in a while, however, politicians do something so wrong, substantively and morally, that cynicism just won¹t cut it; it¹s time to get really angry instead.
First, as millions of workers lost their jobs through no fault of their own, many families turned to food stamps to help them get by ? and while food aid is no substitute for a good job, it did significantly mitigate their misery. Food stamps were especially helpful to children who would otherwise be living in extreme poverty, defined as an income less than half the official poverty line.
Wait, we¹re not done yet. Food stamps greatly reduce food insecurity among low-income children, which, in turn, greatly enhances their chances of doing well in school and growing up to be successful, productive adults. So food stamps are in a very real sense an investment in the nation¹s future ? an investment that in the long run almost surely reduces the budget deficit, because tomorrow¹s adults will also be tomorrow¹s taxpayers.
So what do Republicans want to do with this paragon of programs? First, shrink it; then, effectively kill it.
And why must food stamps be cut? We can¹t afford it, say politicians like Representative Stephen Fincher, a Republican of Tennessee, who backed his position with biblical quotations ? and who also, it turns out, has personally received millions in farm subsidies over the years. Look, I understand the supposed rationale:
We¹re becoming a nation of takers, and doing stuff like feeding poor children and giving them adequate health care are just creating a culture of dependency ? and that culture of dependency, not runaway bankers, somehow caused our economic crisis.
But I wonder whether even Republicans really believe that story ? or at least are confident enough in their diagnosis to justify policies that more or less literally take food from the mouths of hungry children. The absurdity of the cuts angers the people they affect. The US can undoubtedly see how Southern Europe is driving itself into the ground with its belt-tightening measures and how unemployment there is skyrocketing. But, here, the country is pulling its own plug.
"Austerity, including sequestration, is the economic version of medieval leeching," wrote Jared Bernstein, former chief economic adviser to Vice President Joseph Biden, in the New York Times in early May. People in the Middle Ages believed a sick person needed to lose supposedly bad blood in order to regain health.
"If we were the pilots who fly members of Congress home, maybe we wouldn't have had our funding cut either," says Keys, the Head Start center director.
³Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth.²-Lucy Parsons
Even if they got it by gaming the system.
At one time we revolted against a King , and royalty. Only the names have been changed. Government, in the name of the ruling corporations, wants absolute control again.
We have a corporate controlled government, and a corporate controlled media. Sure we have limited free speech for the present, but the government with its mushroom clouds, and smoking guns spooks enough of the population to justify most any crazy notion. In any event it gives the un-beloved Congress the plausible excuse to do things that are against our own good, like the National Defense Authorization Act.
Yes the environment is overwhelmed, and as far as we are concerned with its ability to support human life, the nurturing environment is dying. Yet, here we all sit in the water, wondering how much warmer it will get.
At least until they see you as something that may go well with wild onions, and french fries.