Damn it, I don't know how to break up the quote so nicely, so I'll just have to answer in order and hope you can follow. Apologies.
Agreed, I was wrong when I said per capita, that can be misleading in both directions, debt/GDP is a much better measure. I don't understand your math however, our debt is well over $14 TRILLION, and our GDP is less than that today (I think by far, but I can't find current projections, it was $14 trillion in 09). That makes our ratio 1/1 at best, or 100%, not 60%. That only takes the 'on the book' debt into account.
Thanks for the EU lesson, I really didn't know. It sounds like ditching your own currency is a bad move, huh?
OK, raising interest rates is LIKE re-valuing the currency, but not the opposite of how they often devalue it, by simply printing more. That's why the gold standard was good, it made it illegal to just print more without the gold to back it, making hyper inflation less likely.
Yes, hyper inflation is the fear. If, because we have obvious insurmountable debt, we become more of a credit risk and no one will lend us money (like happened to Greece), that's the only option left, isn't it? We don't have union partners tied to us with a currency chain, and we are too big for any 'partner' to bail out anyway. We're left with paying debts by printing money, which leads to hyper inflation. That's what could happen if they don't get hold of the debt, by spending cuts AND tax increase.
And that leads to the next point, I have repeatedly said it is BOTH under taxing AND overspending. You seem to not read the part where I say it's also under taxing, repeatedly. It's imperative we get BOTH under control and in balance, in my view.
It's true, you can balance the budget at 100% of GDP if you live in a socialist society, that's a way to go. In a capitalist society, you need to leave enough for commerce to continue in order to generate MORE revenue for next year. I don't think 50% quite cuts it in most cases. 75% probably would, and would give the feds a huge fund (3.5 trillion per year) to both pay our debts and pay for services, if those services are curtailed to a reasonable level (and that's the rub, what's reasonable to one is not to the other). It's absolutely true that maternity leave by itself poses no problem whatsoever, it's the hundred thousand other iterations of similar programs combined that make it impossible to do anything properly. I absolutely agree that we should generate revenue (taxes) at least at the same level as our spending. I don't think that's quite possible at the level of spending we have now, just as it's not possible to continue under funding the budget that exists and floating larger debt (creating more spending with no service because of larger interest payments, another reason large debt is BAD). We need to thoughtfully prioritize our spending AND raise revenue in my eyes. Keeping priorities straight is not a strength held by most Americans, and certainly not our government, so I have little hope this will happen.

>> ^newtboy:

I think debt is a bigger problem in Europe because they have much larger debts (per capita).

I'd say per capita isn't as important as debt/GDP ratios. By that measure, Greece is in terrible shape (148% of GDP), while places like Sweeden and Denmark and Finland are all in the 30-40% range. The US is at about 60%, which isn't great, but it's not terrible, and definitely nothing like Greece.

>> ^newtboy:
They do all have soverign currency still, don't they? I thought they all just added the euro, not replaced their currency. If you're right, YIKES!

It's true. Not every EU nation has given up their own currency, but all of the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain) have.

>> ^newtboy:
I disagree that we have control of our currency since we left the gold standard, but that's a different discussion althogether. We certainly do have the control to devalue it, just maybe not re-value it.

Well, Fed policies can reduce the money supply too. Any time the Fed raises interest rates, that's what it's doing.

>> ^newtboy:
You say 'at worst, inflation' as if that's just fine, but remember Germany after WW1, they 'just' had inflation to pay their crushing debt, it started with them needing a wheelbarrow full of deutchmarks to buy a loaf of bread, and ended with the creation of the Nazi's and WW2.

That's hyperinflation, i.e. a process where inflation doesn't just rise, but starts exponentially increasing. That's why central banks in modern times have explicit, stable inflation targets that they communicate publicly.

Adopting a higher inflation target definitely helps a government's long term fiscal position, at the cost of weakening its exchange rate, without risking any sort of runaway inflation.

Sometimes that's a worthwhile trade to make, especially if the alternative (default) is worse.

>> ^newtboy:
There's no need to focus solely on taxes either, it's a ballance thing.
...
Our 'friends across the pond' will shortly not be supplying these programs to their citizens either, they bankrupted themselves with these kinds of programs and lack of revenue, and now their bankrupting their partners in the EU. That's why it doesn't make sense to compare our social programs to theirs and say 'they can, why can't we?'...theirs bankrupted them.

That's the thing, you say it's the programs that "bankrupted them", I'm saying "no it didn't, they went bankrupt because they didn't ask people to pay the taxes to pay for the safety net they had".

You can balance the government budget at 18% of GDP or 50% of GDP. Having paid maternity leave doesn't bankrupt you. It's having paid maternity leave, and then cutting the taxes that pay for it that bankrupts you.

>> ^newtboy:
If we had the money, I would be all for it, and 3 months paid vacation, guaranteed retirement benifits, low or no taxes, etc.,

Well, having the money is a choice we make as a society. Our GDP, even in this crisis, is $14 trillion a year. I suspect maternity leave wouldn't even cost a thousandth of one percent of that.

Again, the size of government has nothing to do with your fiscal discipline. Fiscal discipline is saying that you want to be taxed at a rate that will pay for the government as it exists. Demanding other people sacrifice so that you don't have to pay higher taxes is the height of fiscal irresponsibility.

come on winston!
anecdotal evidence does not an argument make and you should know better and whats with the name calling?
this is not a political ideology problem but a greed and corruption problem which is more a personal flavor than a political one.
leftie,rightie,neolib,spendocrat,rethuglican...
who cares? they are all paid whores for their corporate and wall street masters and by the looks of your previous comments you have bought their line of tripe hook,line and sinker.

the fact of the matter is that after WWII america became a manufacturing juggernaut (mainly due to other manufacturing countries being leveled from bombings).our government dealt with the public in a pretty straight forward manner (relatively speaking of course).the unionized american work force set the standard and helped usher in the middle class,a hard fought standard i might add.this was the first appearance of the "middle class" and it was not just handed over but fought for tooth and nail by our grandparents and their parents.

the 60's were a time of great changes,not only politically but socially and marked a definitive change how our government dealt with the people and thus began the slow march we find ourselves in today.
consider this:
1.in 1972 the dollar was worth .78 cents on the dollar (22 cents interest per dollar)
in 2011 the dollar is worth .03 cents on the dollar.that loaf of bread didnt increase in price but rather the purchasing power of your dollar decreased.
2.in 1968 the phrase "for the public good" was removed from the corporate charter.hows that been working out for us?
3.in the 60's the middle class was roughly 48% of the american population and controlled 72% of americas total wealth.this was unheard of on a global scale,this sharing of wealth and was one of the main reasons why so many wished to come to america and take a swing at opportunity.fast forward to the present the "middle class" is roughly 11% of population and controls less than 10%.
4.while america still outproduces the rest of the world,has the largest and richest economy (yes,we still are the biggest).now lets consider the fact that the american worker produces more,works longer hours (on avg),yet receives less benefits in the forms of health care and retirement and the wages have stagnated since the 80's and when you factor in inflation,american workers are actually making LESS than their counterparts from 40 years ago.

let us all be clear on one thing.
capitalism,socialism or communism are NOT political ideologies but rather ECONOMIC systems and right now the system is rigged.
lowest tax rates in 40 years right along with interest rates.
this is NOT a coincidence.
you are being robbed.
at least the blacks KNEW they were slaves.
you on the other hand...remain clueless.
the fox is in the henhouse and people waste their time waxing poetic about political perfunctory.

@marbles
right on man.

I have the 'benefit' of actually - you know - having LIVED in the 60s. Back then the average interest rate on a home loan was along the lines of 16% to 18%. Needless to say this video glosses over a lot of the challenges the great middle class had in making ends meet.

The dini index is a rather foolish barometer - which is why neolibs like it so much. It allows a neolib to take perfectly happy, content, functional societies and act like everyone there should be miserable because they don't hit the right note on an artificial standard. Look instead at the relative standard of living enjoyed by a country. By any standard, the US has it pretty dang sweet. Just saw a report yesterday where those in the supposed "poverty" level have (A) homes they own (B) 2+ Big Screen TVs (C) 2+ cars (D) video game systems, DVD players, computers, and smartphones (E) and eat 'out' as often as twice a week. "Wah wah wah - the US isn't as good on the dini index as a bunch of pinheads think it should be!" Neolibs can whine all they want about wealth concentration. The fact that the bottom 5% is buying luxuries that many other nation's RICH can't afford (while paying ZERO income taxes) proves that the bellyaching is meaningless drivel.

Besides, leftists really don't care jack-crap whether or not the bottom 5% actually ever moves out of the poverty level. The crocodile tears about the 'poor' is a bunch of propoganda they use to advance higher tax rates - which help the poor only in the barest, most marginal, subsistence-only way. Neolibs use the poor as a manure shovel to trowel money into bloated, criminally negligent government troughs. Obama's entire regime is demonstrable proof that huge government spending accomplishes nothing for the poor or middle class. In fact, higher taxation & spending accomplish the exact opposite of 'helping' the middle class. Leftist governments do not help with wealth distribution. If anything, wealth disparity is frequently much worse under leftist systems. "Rich" person money does more good funding private-citizen billionaire prostitute crack snorting addictions than it does in government.

So I reject the neolib premise that money "must" be shunted from the rich to government, or society is somehow less fair. Frankly, it is none of your cotton-pickin' business or mine what rich folks so with their cash. Neither poor people, nor the middle class have any right to anyone else's money just because they're jealous that someone else has more of it. If a guy is rich, it is their decision what to do with their money. Donate to charities, invest it in businesses, or use it to murder puppies - whatever - it's THEIR cash - not yours. Same goes for companies and corporations too. Just because a company is earning truckloads of cash doesn't mean you have any right to one jack-sprat cent of it.

Student Loans, lessee-The government will give you $$ to pay for tuition in order for someone who has believed the lie that having a degree will enable you to get a more formidable piece of the American Daydream. They provide a reasonable amount of time for you to pay the loan back, a reasonable interest rate for the same, and reasonable penalties should one's untimely or inadequate payments not match the agreed upon methods. Bullshit.

The university system in the US is a pathetic husk of what it was prior to the 20th century. Compared to those graduating in say 1903 from ANY college or university, today's college graduates are systematically and willfully retarded by these hollow institutions. The student loan system IS fraud, IS a SCAM, run by gangsters and thieves and re-educators.

Listen to this woman run it down for all you recent, developmentally-disabled grads-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSH7T3YljFM&feature=channel_video_title

Blankfist has the right idea-Fascism is alive and thriving in the United State's broken and dying governmental experiment which, in reality is by design, nothing but a flashy new version of the same old empire. People need to organize some creative Civil or less than Civil, economic protest to show the assholes who think they still own slaves just who works to pay for them to fuck the world...and then kill these motherfuckers.

@blankfist, the correct Krugman answers are:

Commodity prices are going up for supply & demand reasons, core inflation and wages are still flat (as are bond interest rates). A weak dollar is how you solve the unemployment problems, just ask Milton Friedman. The problem is that it's going to be hard to get a weak dollar.

Oh, and on the "dollar closed weak", you should go here and hit the 3Y timeframe. That's the dollar index from about when the recession started to now. Would an honest person describe that as a consistent downward trend?

As for recessions and their official end, I haven't seen any economist declare that the official end of the recession meant the economy was A-OK now. Mostly they interpret "end of the recession" as "beginning of recovery", which jives with the metrics the NBER uses to decide those things.

Oh, and this month commodity, oil, and gold prices are down, and the dollar is up: http://money.cnn.com/2011/05/17/markets/oil_gold_selloff/index.htm

And here's Krugman on that topic three days ago, pointing out once again that fluctuations in commodity prices != inflation.

@blankfist, no, I have it right.

Schiff: If the Stimulus passes, hyperinflation will destroy the country by 2010 at the latest.

Krugman: The economy will be stuck at high unemployment with low inflation for years, despite a 0% interest rate at the Fed.

I apparently just hit my NYT paywall limit for the month, so I don't have a link for Krugman but that's Krugman in a nutshell from the late 2008 through early 2009 period on what we'd see.

I dunno about you, but I don't remember having to take wheelbarrows of cash to buy a loaf of bread last year.

>> ^blankfist:

It would be very hard for businesses to get as large as corporations do today without the unfair support of government. This means more competition, and logically as a result more small businesses would sprout up, and therefore more jobs could be created.

I think taking away the liability limits ultimately raises the barrier for creating a new business, since it increases the potential downside risk of any new investment, and worse, makes predicting the worst case scenario nigh impossible.

The knock on effects of that would be that investors would be more reluctant to invest, meaning that interest rates would go up, and the tolerance for risk would go down.

In some sense I think we'd see companies that are larger, but also "flatter" in a sense. I'm thinking more McDonalds, Best Buy, and Amazon, and a lot less heavy industry with big, expensive, dangerous, illiquid capital investment.

I sorta say "so what, it's more fair, and restrains corporations' flagrant disregard for safety and the environment".

However, for people who want to see a bazillion small businesses, I think you want the limited liabilities there to help people simplify their risk assessments.
>> ^blankfist:

I don't see why we'd need regulatory requirements or unionization. Most of the responsibility would be held at the top levels, such as CEOs or COOs or supervisors or whomever. And this can all be decided by some form of conflict resolution whether that be the courts or arbitration.

Well, courts are guided by law in those sorts of determinations, arbitration is more guided by the relative strength of the bargaining positions of the participants (i.e. little people get reliably crushed).

Which is to say, we'd need to set some sort of standard on how accountability works, or it'll only be the guy following orders who gets the short end of the stick.

>> ^blankfist:
But my point was that people couldn't escape liability just because they're employed. If your boss told you to murder someone, for instance, you know that to be wrong and would hopefully not follow through. But if you did murder someone, obviously you'd be held accountable, right? kind of the same idea. Maybe not exactly, but it's close enough.

For something as serious and obvious as murder, sure.

But say my boss tells me not to order the scheduled maintenance for critical safety equipment because "it's not in the budget"? If things go wrong later, am I to be held responsible because my idiot boss didn't budget for proper maintenance? Do I really need to constantly present my boss with waivers from legal liability for every decision I think has a potential risk? Can he fire me for demanding them too often?

>> ^blankfist:
If a business spilled oil like BP did, then all the parties involved would be liable within reason. If you were hired to clean the toilets on the rig, then you're probably not going to be responsible in any direct or indirect way. But if you are hired as a professional to do a specific job like supervising the boom or drilling or whatever, and that contributed somehow to the spill, then you're probably going to inherit some substantial responsibility. And I think that's more than fair.


I agree with that, but in my experience as a technical professional, I have to say that unsafe shit is almost exclusively something that happens when management refuses to pony up the cash to do things the right way.

But let's look at the other side of the coin. For the sake of argument, let's pretend management didn't do anything obviously wrong on Deepwater Horizon, and it was just some guy out on the rig who just made a stupid mistake and caused the whole thing to happen.

Should that guy bear all of the financial liability alone, while the CEO's, shareholders, and the company itself are held blameless?

I say even in that case, the blame needs to go upward -- management hired the guy, and someone higher up approved the process that was susceptible to massive damage coming from one guy's human error. They're the ones who put the oil rig in his hands, they're the ones responsible for the damage he did with it.

>> ^flavioribeiro:

Once you compensate for deficit spending, nominal GDP declined approximately 10% per year over the last 3 years, and oscillated around 0% for the 7 years before that. This has been masked by borrowing trillions of USD, which is the only way the government can stimulate anything. I believe the US does not have the production capacity you expect it to have, which would be required to produce a true economic recovery and not have GDP merely return to pre-2000 levels.

There's no such thing as "once you compensate for deficit spending" when it comes to GDP. If you do that, it's something other than GDP. You may make an argument for why you think some other number aside from GDP is a better metric of the status of the economy, but growth in GDP is growth in GDP.

As for the productive capacity, if we'd had a massive earthquake and tsunami, yeah, I'd expect our productive capacity to diminish. We didn't lose anything in the way of supply infrastructure though. We just saw demand for goods and services drop across the board.

In any case, my main point is that fixing the slump is the only way to ever fix the debt issue. I also think any attempt to fix the debt now is going to be self-defeating, since both raising taxes and cutting spending will make the slump worse, which will in turn only make the debt worse.

>> ^flavioribeiro:
I completely agree, and so does Karl in his latest video. The recovery process is going to be very painful, because Congress will most likely not enact a decent healthcare solution or a widespread reform to the tax code, and will defend special interests and military spending at all costs.

Again, you're blurring two unrelated issues together. Debt doesn't cause recessions, recessions cause debt. Debt might lead to inflation which can hamper overall growth, but right now we're seeing abnormally low inflation, even with short term interest rates at zero.

>> ^flavioribeiro:

>> ^bmacs27:
Also, if our balance sheet is so bad, why aren't the bond markets punishing us?

Because quantitative easing pushes down the yield on short-term bonds. On the other hand, it increases the yield on long-term bonds (since QE is essentially printing money, it raises the expectation of inflation in the long term).


That's what bmacs is talking about, and we're not seeing signs of increased expectations of inflation at all. 10-year bond rates are expected to settle at the expected 10-year inflation rate + some return, and looking out there today, I see it's around 3.6%, which is lower than it's been for most of the time they've been tracking it. See that spike in the middle? That was the last time inflation caused problems for the real economy in the US.

>> ^flavioribeiro:

As for the top priority of the US Congress, I believe it should be balancing the budget. The national debt is the most pressing issue because especially over the last 4 years, US GDP growth has been fueled with borrowed money.

I say getting a solid economic recovery is job #1. A huge portion of the deficit right now is due to the recession itself -- it lowers our GDP (and therefore the tax revenues), and it means a lot more people going on government assistance because they're unemployed and can't find a job.

>> ^flavioribeiro:
Rolling over this debt will already cause a significant drop in the American standard of living, especially as inflation and interest rates start to rise.

"Rolling over" this debt? Why will it result in any drop in the standard in living? It seems to me that leaving the unemployment picture untouched is going to have a massively larger impact on our long-term prosperity than having a higher short- and medium-term national debt.

>> ^flavioribeiro:
To make things short, I refer you to Karl Denninger's blog (who I agree with). He posted short video about this today. To answer your question more precisely, the US Congress must 1) revise the tax code and 2) enact significant cuts to government programs. (1) is nearly impossible to pass because it effectively taxes everyone the same. We will at best see a weak version of (2), which will be insufficient and more painful in the long run.


I'll have to watch the video later, but the blog post probably gives me a clear enough picture. You know this guy is a founder of one of our dreaded Tea Party groups here, right?

In any case, I'll just respond to what I think he's got a valid point about.

First, he's right that medical care costs are essentially the entire problem with the long range debt picture. We've got to find a way to get health care cost inflation under control here. Other countries have done so with lots of government interventionism. We're still refusing to do that sort of thing, and the longer we put it off, the worse our deficits will get.

Second, while I think the "Fair" tax is a giant scam, I'm not opposed to the basic idea of replacing income taxes with consumption taxes.

Third, I like the idea of cutting back on the number of incentives baked into the tax code. But I don't oppose the very idea of them on principle, I just think we have a bunch that aren't doing any good for anyone, and a bunch that are actively doing harm (like oil & gas subsidies).

However, the vast majority of it is just lies and dogmatic ideology being presented as some sort of solution to a mundane budget issue. It's exactly what I was referring to when I said this:>> ^NetRunner:

The issue here [is] the millions of people who think the biggest problems in our country are that taxes are too high on businesses, government aid to the poor is too generous, and worker safety regulation is a tyrannical imposition on liberty.


It's also just one step shy from suggesting that we euthanize our elderly, process them into soylent green, and sell it to pay down our debt.

Out of sheer curiosity, what country are you from?

>> ^NetRunner:

If you mean it in a broader sense, and mean more people need to be aware of FPTP problems and the issues with supermajority rules, then yeah I'm in complete agreement. I mostly get push back about those from right-wing people though, who either say "the Founding Fathers made it that way for a reason, and we shouldn't mess with their perfection" or just generally cheer the idea that those things make it hard for the government to do anything at all, even though it really just makes it nearly impossible for people to have a voice in what it does. A desire to make the system work right, rather than a desire to sabotage it would be nice.

(...)

Okay, so let's unpack this. What do you think should be the top priority of the US Congress over the next year? If it's the national debt, why is that the most pressing issue right now? Why do you reference spending specifically? Aren't revenues at a 60-year low? What factors make our spending "unsustainable"? Does the fact that we're still mired in a recession affect the answer to any of these questions?

Yes, I mean it in the broader sense. FPTP degenerates too often into regimes where there is very little opposition, even if there are (formally) more than two parties.

As for the top priority of the US Congress, I believe it should be balancing the budget. The national debt is the most pressing issue because especially over the last 4 years, US GDP growth has been fueled with borrowed money. Rolling over this debt will already cause a significant drop in the American standard of living, especially as inflation and interest rates start to rise.

To make things short, I refer you to Karl Denninger's blog (who I agree with). He posted short video about this today. To answer your question more precisely, the US Congress must 1) revise the tax code and 2) enact significant cuts to government programs. (1) is nearly impossible to pass because it effectively taxes everyone the same. We will at best see a weak version of (2), which will be insufficient and more painful in the long run.

>> ^blankfist:

@NetRunner, what's stimulus money got to do with money supply? Are you serious? You must be trolling. For the benefit of others, I'll answer that question:
The Treasury Department borrows the money from the Federal Reserve. This money is printed new and is NOT already in circulation. So, once those trillions get circulated into the economy, what happens? It inflates the money supply. Presto!

Are you serious? You must be trolling. For the benefit of others, I'll correct you.

The Treasury Department borrows the money by selling Treasury bonds on the open market. Domestic investors and banks buy most of it, a big chunk of it is bought by other governments. Some might be purchased by the Fed using freshly printed money, but that's entirely based on what the Fed wants to do with the money supply, and has nothing to do with whether we did stimulus or not.

Not to mention, even if the Fed prints money and buys a treasury, there's no guarantee the buyer won't just hold the dollars as a reserve of some sort, and keep it out of circulation.

>> ^blankfist:
And you asked what happens to wages during inflation? Well, I don't know

An honest answer. Too bad you kept writing...

>> ^blankfist:
[L]et's look at history, shall we? There are plenty of examples in history (Rome, Germany, Yugoslavia), but let's look at Zimbabwe in the 2000s because it's really easy to google. According to wikipedia, Zimbabwe's "annual inflation was estimated at 6.5 quindecillion novemdecillion percent (6.5 x 10108%, the equivalent of 6 quinquatrigintillion 500 quattuortrigintillion percent, or 65 followed by 107 zeros – 650 million googol percent)."

Yes, inflation can happen. But looking at nominal price levels alone doesn't answer why inflation is bad.

>> ^blankfist:
But that's fine, right? Because they just increased the wages and everyone went back to happy Krugman land and ate marshmallows and played with bunnies. Oh no, that didn't happen at all, did it? No. In the end the Zimbabwean Dollar was destroyed, and the people were forced to adopt foreign currencies.

Well here's the thing, have you actually looked at what's happened to the wage level in Zimbabwe? Is the problem that wages never increased at all, and that inflation meant no one had any purchasing power at all?

Or was it something a little more esoteric like a collapse of market confidence that really buggered them?

>> ^blankfist:
It's not as easy to fix as "putting upward pressure on wages". In fact, the people who are first impacted are the people on the bottom, because ALL (and I mean absolutely ALL) inflation enriches the government first, the big businesses with government contracts second, the rich third, and ultimately it's the poor and retired who suffer through the adjustment phase.

Again, you're hamstrung by not actually understanding the underlying economic principles. If the main issue with inflation was really this confiscatory debasement you're talking about, then that would in large part be fixed by greater wage flexibility.

>> ^blankfist:
And what of the people with savings? Are you so willing to write them off with a big dildo shoved up their asses, because they're not currently "earning" a wage? What of those people who saved and saved because that's what society told them was prudent for their retirement? What does your precious Krugman messiah say of the grandmothers and grandfathers who see their savings diminish while their social security payments play catch up with the current cost of living changes?

The answer there is that inflation screws people with large amounts of liquid money (the rich), and helps people with debt (the not-so-rich), while making holding assets look more promising than holding cash in any form. People who saved for retirement by stuffing $100 bills into their mattress get screwed. People who put their money in a savings account may get screwed if the bank doesn't offer them competitive interest rates. People who invested in a mix of stocks and bonds will see those stocks go up in nominal value, while the bonds will likely become worthless (depends on the exact terms though).

People who rely on Social Security will be fine, so long as a) wages as a whole go up with inflation, and b) conservative morons don't come in and cut the COLA below inflation for no reason. It's part of why anyone who wants to privatize Social Security is pretty much a fuckwad.

In the end, the negative effects of stable but high (~10% or so) inflation wouldn't be so bad. There's basically no downside to inflation around 2-4%. And by the way, we're sitting somewhere around 1% right now, with not even the remotest hint of hyperinflation.

The only way for us to really trigger hyperinflation right now is if conservatives follow through on threats to make the US go into default on its debt. But that won't be hyperinflation because of the Fed printing money, it'll be because conservatives will have trashed our nation's credit rating because they're stupid.

I haven't read anything on individualism being a root cause of poverty. I did a quick google search and found a couple things. One is the idea of "survival of the fittest", that those in poverty do it to themselves, and it's the individualist ideology that tells everyone "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" and as a result those who cannot receive no help. Is that the complaint against individualism?

If so, I completely understand that a self-centric position on society would most likely create an environment where poverty could easily manifest and consume the less-to-do of society. I do think some will allow it to happen to them, while others will resist but their current station in life (specifically class) won't allow them to escape poverty. A couple bad financial decisions and the banks won't make it easier on you. The poor are usually in the financial position where they receive higher interest rates they cannot afford, while the well off with good credit receive lower intrest rates. It seems unfair.

I do believe charitable actions would be higher in an individualist society. We already live in a nanny state which is counter to the individualist society. Sure, the majority of spending tends to go to defense spending, but that doesn't mean we don't currently have excessive social programs already in place to catch the fringe of society. And still we have poverty. Lots of it.

What happened? The government has its hands deeply embedded in the private economy, and restrictions and regulations are steep for startup entrepreneurs, while the larger corporations enjoy crony-capitalism. Translation: regulations and restrictions create a tilted playing field where larger corporations can easily succeed with less competition, thus less jobs are created by budding entrepreneurs. So the number of workers goes up while the number of job creators goes down. Eventually we could all be working for the big corporations, and with less competition they could lessen benefits such as health or vacation pay, they could easily lower wages, and they could then extend the expected work week from 40 hours to something like 100 hours. If that sounds farfetched, I can tell you from first hand experience I've seen this exact thing happen to an industry I know very well. And when I say big corporations, I mean major parent companies that buy large businesses. For instance, let's take the advertising industry. One parent company could own almost all of the major companies in that industry, so if you complain about the 100 hour work week and loss of vacation benefits, your chances of receiving another job in that industry are cut to almost zero. I've seen it. And they do illegal shit like tell women not to get pregnant.

This kind of corporatist entitlement is bad. And we got here through regulations, through a regimented government nanny system that is counterintuitive to free markets. And this makes it very hard on people to "pull themselves up by their bootstraps", which is what all individualists claim to want of people around them. How can you pull yourself up when you're essentially a slave to corporations? I don't know. But it's not getting better. The nanny system, in my opinion, is making it worse. The more we ask for, the less we get. And I say this because I see a very real connection between system created to help us (welfare) and regulations that help big business. I see it as being connected. Poverty perpetuated by big business and bankers.

If we could peel back the regulations and restrictions on industry, we would see a growth of jobs. We'd see a decline in corporate dominance. Most restrictions or regulations are created to stifle competition, not help the consumer, mind you. From there, I'd like to think people would generally do better, have better lives, and contribute charitably to others. Poverty will never be stricken from the planet, but we certainly could do more to help those in our community. That's where it starts. And when people feel they pay into a nanny system, they feel less generous to help those in front of them. I know, I see it every damn day in LA.

Greenspan claims to be a laissez-faire free marketeer, but propping up industries, inflationary policies, manipulating interest rates and what's been termed the Greenspan Put isn't the "let it be" free market practices.