Class warfare

The term "class warfare" is generally, in my experienced, used by the haves whenever anyone wants to do something that will result in the haves having less, whether that's the main or intended result or not. But it's real, and all of the salvos thus far have been fired downrange, economically speaking.

Where's Sarge? I'd like to ask him why that 1% shouldn't give up a fair portion of their potential earnings in order to reduce unemployment.

With the example of Greece all over the news, it's not surprising that the haves are a little concerned about violent reprisals.

Which is... possible. Maybe. It won't ever affect rich people, though. The richer someone is, generally, the further they live from the range of a good riot. And that's all the violence the have nots can really muster against the haves in the US. Anything else is going to be 'friendly fire'--poor white trash taking aim at poor brown people, mostly.

The lesson I've always taken away from this talk is this: I need to get rich! No one will ever fuck with their money. Money talks and they hold it all.

The way the rich(and politicians) have the system rigged, I honestly don't think that's possible.

It's possible. I'm not sure it's possible to do at this point without getting ugly, but it's possible.

I'm always suspicious when a bunch of rich guys tell me it is in my best interest for them to make more money.

Thats why I think its inevitable that humanity will outgrow Capitalism just like it outgrew slavery. It just isnt a fair system. Its built on greed for one thing, but thats not sustainable because by rewarding greed you have a built in incentive to shit on the poor, and thats exactly what is happening.

There will eventually be an alternative economic model.

Perhaps it already exists, but its never been implemented yet.

http://www.prout.org/

I think that is what certain billionaires want to return to.

they didnt have the interwebs back then, so it took longer to make stuff happen.

*shrugs*

Eh. I think capitalism is fine, it just has to be carefully controlled. Greed is a very good engine for human motivation. You just can't let greed be the controller of the economy. You don't steer a car with the gas pedal.

What we have is no longer really capitalism; rather, we have the end product of unrestricted capitalism.

Hopefully somebody else will post while I'm composing this so I don't double post.

One really weird thing about all this is the Tea Party. You wouldn't know it from any of the things they make noise about, but to an extent they actually hate big business in their narrow, misguided way. They are, of course, against anything that might actually free up some of the wealth that big business hoovers out of the economy. But the capacity exists for a populist movement that really does cross party lines.

I don't know if you'd consider it greed or not, but corporations are sitting on 2 trillion dollars on top of that they are making capital improvements over hiring more workers. Capital improvements/investments and cash are relatively safe from a sudden drop in the economy, but part of the reason the economy isn't recovering is because corporations are making capital investments and sitting on their cash. I am not sure if that is considered greed or not, or if they're just making safe investments.

I am far from an economics major, but i am pretty sure that one of the ways to improve the economy is to spend money, in order to spend money, the middle class has to be working in order to make money in order to spend money.

Another problem with Capitalism, is the boom and bust cycle, which in turn seems to always concentrate more wealth into the hands of the already wealthy. We are seeing that now.

PROUT (which stands for Progressive Utilization Theory)seeks to address that.

Page

Mother Jones magazine had a pretty good article about this and the decline of unions (LINK).

But I think 99% of Americans aren't going to read stuff like this. People hate reading stuff that doesn't reinforce their belief system (like that America is a model all countries should follow).

I laugh when people call economics a science - I think it is a belief system like religion.

Brilliant. Well put.

The narrative has largely been defined by the upper class, the poor are woefully underrepresented as it is, but when I think of class warfare, I think about the erosion of the middle class. People have a lot to be fearful of as they find their lives quickly becoming less comfortable amid the economic downturn, many are angry and are looking for anyone to blame. Some choose the government, others the wealthy, and some have chosen to focus on the most blameless, immigrants and the poor, but many fail to blame themselves. It's not so much that they are directly responsible for causing the situation they find themselves in, it's that they allowed it happen.

Over the years they've allowed the balance of power in Congress to skew towards a small but very wealthy minority and way from their interest. The right has done a good job of allowing people to believe that they are among "the American people" that are that suffer because of government spending and to some extent, this is true. However, the reason why they are suffering is because they've been saddled with an increased burden while the wealthy upper class continue to enjoy a holiday in this regard. Additionally, the cuts proposed by Republicans are in areas that would hurt those who are the most vulnerable, including the middle class.

While those who find the relative comfort of their higher salaries and wages slipping away, the wealthy so-called "job makers" have refused to inject needed capital into the economy by hiring new employees or increasing wages alongside rising productivity rates. People are having to work harder while their wages stagnate and inflation pecks away at their savings, but the wealthy just get wealthier. Understandably, a majority of Americans have directed their frustration at both the government and the financial institutions that helped get us into this mess, despite popular opinion to shift some of the burden back where it belongs onto the tightfisted wealthy, Republican law makers have chosen to play the "class warfare" card in defense of million and billionaires.

The latest Republican tactic of tying the increasing the debt limit to reducing the deficit in one piece of legislation threatens to plunge not only the US, but the rest of the world economy into a depression, particularly at a time when so many economies are already fragile. Even flirting with default has potential repercussions, and some are even looking at ways of capitalizing on such a default. Such a dramatic and wry move goes way beyond mere class warfare, it's just pure evil.

Ok...it's in your best interest to make more money for ME

A documentary about the Central Banks mentioned that some people believe that the cycles are intentional for that reason.

I think that is too simplistic, but if you read any basic article about investing the strategy of buy low sell, sell high is mentioned and boom and bust cycles make that churning of money possible.

I think I've seen that doc on youtube. The Money Masters?

It was a while ago when I saw it, but I think that is the one.

"The Spirit Level" by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett is a very interesting book about the relationship between income inequality within a society and the performance of that society on a variety of issues such as life expectancy, crime, education, mental illness etc. This book seems very relevant to the thread topic. Hence, I thought I'd recommend this book to anyone in this thread who is interested.

I thought this "Money as Debt" video was an intersting and easy to understand video on the history of banks, paper money, and debt. I kind of knew that the amount of money in the world didn't bear any relation to the amount of paper money/reserves but the video made it pretty easy to understand how that came to be.

I tried watching this, but it was SO American centric that it made me stop it after 5 minutes. It sounded like a lot of American conspiracy talk that really turns me off.

Argh... the e-book is going for $12 in Canada, around $8 (equiv) in the UK, and $3.75 in the US. I have GOT to figure out a way to buy e-books from the US...