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Capitalism Has Gone Off the Rails

spiegel.de

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Re: Capitalism Has Gone Off the Rails

#61

Post by spikels »

I thought this article was a waste of time. It is a grab bag of obvious truths, buzzwords, opinions and contradictions. The author seems to be confused and his prescriptions for more regulation, higher interest rates and more incoherent political revolt are unlikely to improve things and will probably make things worse.

Clearly there are many problems in the financial sector and even more in our governments (there many good things too). Unfortunately nobody can - in my opinion - convincingly articulate how to fix them or even exactly what they are and what causes them. And this author is worse than most!

Re: Capitalism Has Gone Off the Rails

#62

Post by scottlocklin »

adsenseclient wrote: post #54
scottlocklin wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting that the left has pretty much given up on ideas of economic equality and inclusiveness in favor of pointing and sputtering when people say things which are not politically correct. If I were a suspicious type, I'd wonder if political correctness had corporate sponsorship; it certainly seems to have paid off for the oligarchy... To his first point, it's not really true. Many of the largest and scaries…

You must be joking. Any publically traded co these days is hardly family owned: the family members, in those rare example cases are by far the minority shareholders. Compare that with 100 years ago.

You evidently didn't read my comment. None of the companies I listed above are publicly traded: they are all family owned, and the families which own them have almost unfathomable power. Of course, many of the families which sold shares in their businesses also have considerable power.

I originally learned about these people by studying the grain and commodity markets.

Re: Capitalism Has Gone Off the Rails

#63

Post by vixen99 »

Animats wrote: post #17

This is an important article, but I doubt there will be a useful discussion of it here. The developed world has incredible productive capacity. With 1% of the workforce in agriculture and 8% in manufacturing, the US produces as much stuff as China. There are no significant shortages of any manufactured good anywhere in the developed world. Quality is pretty good across the board, too. This is unique in history. That'…

"But I doubt there will be a useful discussion of it here.". I suggest your uncalled-for sneer implies you won't be reading what you want to read.

Re: Capitalism Has Gone Off the Rails

#64

Post by adsenseclient »

scottlocklin wrote: post #62
adsenseclient wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must be joking. Any publically traded co these days is hardly family owned: the family members, in those rare example cases are by far the minority shareholders. Compare that with 100 years ago.

You evidently didn't read my comment. None of the companies I listed above are publicly traded: they are all family owned, and the families which own them have almost unfathomable power. Of course, many of the families which sold shares in their businesses also have considerable power. I originally learned about these people by studying the grain and commodity markets.

I am curious to know the proportion of GDP generated by publically vs privately owned companies in the US and how it has changed in the last 150 years

Re: Capitalism Has Gone Off the Rails

#65

Post by jacquesm »

vixen99 wrote: post #63
Animats wrote: post #17

This is an important article, but I doubt there will be a useful discussion of it here. The developed world has incredible productive capacity. With 1% of the workforce in agriculture and 8% in manufacturing, the US produces as much stuff as China. There are no significant shortages of any manufactured good anywhere in the developed world. Quality is pretty good across the board, too. This is unique in history. That'…

"But I doubt there will be a useful discussion of it here.". I suggest your uncalled-for sneer implies you won't be reading what you want to read.

You're proving his point for him.

Re: Capitalism Has Gone Off the Rails

#66

Post by atmosx »

mattmcknight wrote: post #27
Animats wrote: post #17

This is an important article, but I doubt there will be a useful discussion of it here. The developed world has incredible productive capacity. With 1% of the workforce in agriculture and 8% in manufacturing, the US produces as much stuff as China. There are no significant shortages of any manufactured good anywhere in the developed world. Quality is pretty good across the board, too. This is unique in history. That'…

This is not an important article, it is a rant against people with "tacky mansions", a turn of phrase that is more indicative of the author's point of view than the other conventional points about not understanding creative destruction. I think it is this overly nationalist view of economics that needs to die, not "capitalism". There is not less productive work to go around, it's just not being done in the US. We are…

[...] the number of rich people in the world is growing.

Thats because many more people become poor. I'm not saying they are directly exploited but indirectly they are, because it is a zero-sum game.

Re: Capitalism Has Gone Off the Rails

#67

Post by jacquesm »

hindsightbias wrote: post #14
RangerScience wrote: post #3

Well, yes. As more of the money is used to make more money, instead of things, experiences, or people... It losses it's correlation with the things that we actually want out of an economy. Plus, those in power (rightfully) use the power to get more power of the sort they already have. According the history books I read as a kid, this is what caused capitalism in the first place (english barons with more money than po…

> Iceland Not clear to me the executivies were charged for anything applicable to the overall collapse http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21577064... 3 from Iceland, 2 for stock manipulation and 1 for fraud. Not viable institutions - that would be retirement and mutual funds with hundreds of billions invested in real estate tranches? > older organism to gift Not sure where all those energetic milleni…

They couldn't lose their home to their HELOC (Home Equity Line Of Credit) because they could simply continue to pay the interest and do payments on the principal. They probably shouldn't have taken that loan to begin with but now that they have it they should simply be paying off on it.

The fact that bad debt was issued required two parties to be willing partners, one to issue the debt and another to take it on and that's something that didn't have to happen. Taking on debt without having the means to pay it back is supremely stupid.

As for the 401k, don't you get a say which funds that money gets invested in? Don't you get a say on whether or not you contribute to them anyway?

As far as I get it it is mostly a tax deferment scheme, pay out later (after (hopefully) compounding for a number of years) for when you're earning less than you do today.

A flat taxation regime would take care of that in a heartbeat (then deferment has no advantages).

Personally I wouldn't trust any institution with my pension, but that's me being paranoid. If you do choose to put your money in the hands of others for increased long term return you have to keep in mind that any kind of returns indicate an increase in risk and if you're unaware of where those risks stem from then you are probably assuming a good part of that risk yourself.

Re: Capitalism Has Gone Off the Rails

#68

Post by jacquesm »

jvm wrote: post #21

There's a lot of conflation in this article between distribution and economic growth, which I think arises from the Spiegel's European perspective. Going back to the start of the DAX tracking (mid-2011), we see okay performance in German DAX index, stagnation for the French CAC and British FTSE, and strong performance in the US S&P 500 and Japanese Nikkei. [1] Eurozone unemployment has soared into double digits of la…

> The economic situation in Europe is truly awful, in contrast to the US and Japan where growth has been respectable.

That depends very much on where you're looking. Spain or Germany are worlds apart in this respect.

Re: Capitalism Has Gone Off the Rails

#69

Post by scarygliders »

RangerScience wrote: post #8
dnautics wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that what Iceland did and the idea of clearing out bad capital and malinvestment are actually capitalist ideas, versus, say bailouts and central bank manipulation, which are not.

Yeah. I'm, to a decent degree, a fan of calling what we have today "corporatism" rather than "capitalism".

Well, I'm glad that /someone/ has recognised and stated the correct word for what we have today.

Until I encountered your post, I was reading the comments here with dismay - "capitalism" this and "capitalism" that...

Folks, please, recognise what the system we have today is; It's Corporatism. I have yet to see in my 45 years on this planet anything resembling laissez faire capitalism.

The creature and symtpoms as described by that article, and what you're all discussing, is Corporatism and its inevitable outcomes. As a variation you could probably call it Crony Capitalism. Go look both terms up and see which seems the most fitting for what we have today, for it is most definitely /not/ laissez faire capitalism in any way.

Re: Capitalism Has Gone Off the Rails

#70

Post by eropple »

tn13 wrote: post #53

Capitalism has not gone off the rail. It is just the concept that has worked better than almost every other thing known to humanity. This inequality business is a new modern day scam just like communism of last century. Some anointed people want power for themselves and want to still money from people like us who are working hard in the name of poor people nothing else. When government creates incentives where it ste…

The need to see an untermenschen to rail against always puzzles me; these tirades about "stealing from us" are just a good way to give one's eye-rolling some exercise. It's like you think, with your labor, you're not poor, too--while some folks (hi) recognize that a couple years of illness are enough to destroy a laborer's career. Even a tech worker.

If you don't own capital to sustain your lifestyle, you're almost certainly part of the poor you want to spit on. Nobody has serious designs on your slightly bigger slice of the scraps that the middle and lower classes have, and I have this sneaking feeling that you know that. But Steinbeck predicted you most of a hundred years ago.

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