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As it became clearer how, by being born into the upper class, I was given many unfair advantages in jump-starting a successful career, I became appalled at the accusation that many people aren't “successful” because they don’t “work hard enough.” While I and many others have more than we need, I am surrounded by friends who are struggling to make ends meet, get health care, and pay back massive student loans. While millions are struggling for survival, taxes for the wealthiest 1% have gone down! This is simply unacceptable. And the thing is—it is unacceptable to every other person of wealth that I know. That is why I—and many others in the 1%—are standing with the 99% in demanding a more just and equitable distribution of wealth. This will require effort from all sides—100%.
We Are the 1% ... And We Stand With the 99%
by Jesse Estrin
8 comments:
Why did the Europeans have a 3 year wait for this crisis when Lehman and Bears Stearns went down so fast in our crisis 3 years ago?
A lot of Euro banks went down the drain, mostly small ones in UK Ireland Iceland.
How did they put it off ?
Why did US not "put it off" too ?
Did the ECB immediate $600 billion EURO stimulus help? Remember how Mike Norman reported on how this was done without any litigation ( like it was done here ) and without any hesistation in EU ?
Did the secret US TARP money help them more than it did us ?
What do you say to all the Americans left in the snow while Bernanke saved Europe ?
What function do derivatives and credit commitments serve to the 99% ?
Does it really help the stock market which supposedly helps companies finance themselves ?
where is the connection to the people ?
or are they just skimming cuts off of other people's bread without no benefit to the 99 % ?
Could we see derivatives as a hidden tax which goes from the 99% directly to the 1% aristocracy ?
That is a reverse spin on taxation - a hidden private proprietary tax that steals from the 99% and gives to the 1% but all under the guise which hides the 1% aristocracy as the recipients.
We are being taxed by the government to pay for this mess supposedly, but we are primarily being taxed by the 1% regardless of which points we are in the economic cycle.
So we can take up a reverse "neoliberal" perspective to this easily - no new taxes, no old taxes, and NO HIDDEN TAXES that benefit the 1% only by way of derivatives, credit markets, and "printing for banks only"
don't tax me to save the 1%
This is from the NYTIMES :
“If stock prices start falling, consumers are likely to cut back on spending, which would be sufficient to grind the recovery to a halt,” said Ryan Sweet, a senior economist at Moody’s Analytics. “And business confidence is very fragile. Any weight on confidence could hurt hiring and lift the unemployment rate.”
So this shows how they artificially pump up the market to try to create spending while not allowing the deflation which really is out there.
THAT IS THE HYPERINFLATION - artificial support for something that does not exist.
People will start buying things if price fall where they need to be and they let the market be as it is "laissez faire" right ?
what about capitalism ?
Goog,
It looks like the US went first and the Fed did some things that Europe eventually had to do also, so Europe could sort of go to school on the US response. It requires an ever expanding CB balance sheet and the monetarists over there irrationally dont like that.
In Europe, even though there is a "crisis", it doesnt look like it's gotten REALLY bad over there. Mike has made the point that they maintain high unemployment over there as the normal way of doing things even before all of this.
Look, if you are in Europe, you get national healthcare, and high public pensions in retirement. Free School. And they dont spend as much on Defense/Military. Not as dependent on foreign sources of energy (public transportation). So there is a lot of the differences right there.
For instance if the US didnt have to spend so much on Defense, you could re-program those expenditures to healthcare, education, retirement. And then people wouldnt have to do the ERISA savings which kill AD, etc..
We could have an overall better quality of life in our society, while running the same deficit of 8.5% of GDP that we do now. Our deficit right now is big enough as just a plain number if we were a closed economy. But it is because of things related to the external sector such as petroleum, Defense, trade deficit, that is why even a pretty large fiscal deficit of 8.5% GDP is producing outcomes that are coming up short for many Americans.
We need to address these mainly external sector issues through FISCAL policy. F the banks and banking system, through them all in GITMO for all I care; but we will get nowhere until we address the external sector's offsetting effects on FISCAL POLICY.
Resp,
Why doesn't he make voluntary donations to the IRS or is he just posturing and showing off his 'generosity of spirit'?
goog, I agree that pumping of the stock market is being engineered by Wall St. and the FED. However, derivatives are not the problem (and they transfer risk, so they have a purpose if used correctly)...
The problem is, as always uber-leverage of the system and extreme debt, as long as fail risk management just for the sake of uber-bonus and financial rents. Is nonsensical to have a financial system leveraged 40x times their capital and to have a system which needs increasing leverage and debt and/or continued (nominal) growth to not collapse.
These are the real problems to fix, and throwing more 'good money' after 'bad credit and leverage' which will end in the hands of the 0.1% (not even 1%) is not a solution. MMT should help easing the process of changing the system by showing we do not lack money as it can be created at will, but it shouldn't support the continuation of a crocked and failed system like the one we have now supported by inflation and which sucks real capital (not financial assets) out of the real economy as it stands right now.
When one 'click here to see messages from the 1%':
http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/photo-essay-we-stand-with-the-ninety-nine
The 'enthusiastic responses of the 1%' appear to have been written in invisible ink!
@ wilwon32
The link is working for me.
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