US Chamber Pot & Capitalsim Propaganda
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is launching a $100 million campaign it describes as standing up for capitalism — an effort that could pit the group against the Obama administration and liberal activists on issues such as health care reform, energy, regulation of businesses and executive pay.
The chamber’s Campaign for Free Enterprise is a national and local effort opposing tax increases and government intrusion into the competitive marketplace.
MoveOn.org says the campaign will spearhead business opposition to the Obama administration’s health care reform and energy policies. The administration has sought business advice on the recession, credit crunch and housing crash, but has moved against some private sector wishes on issues such as credit card protections, health care reform, and CEO pay and bonuses.
6 comments:
Sunny,
Perhaps you can identify a non-capitalist country/econmomy that has produced a higher standard of living than the typical capitalist country/economy.
Perhaps also, you can explain how government meddling in the ecomomy, such as with the passage of the Community Reinvestment Act, dis-incentivized (or in fact criminalized) normal business practices, promoted lending to unqualified borrowers, and became a prime contributor to the sub-prime loan crisis.
Perhaps we should wonder how our standard of living got so high? Obviously, the height is being reduced and has been for a number of years. Is this the fault of any so-called move toward socialism or Marxism or whateverism? I think not.
I think it's what happens when the pedal gets put to the free market metal and no one cares about the innocent bystanders to slow to get out of the middle of the road. But then again, if they had better bootstraps they could put their way out of the path of athe free market freight train.
Let's quit pretending there has ever been a "free market" it this country. Business doesn't want competition and never has. For more than 150 years tariffs streghtened business by shutting out competition. The bigger the business the better to beat down the smaller businesses throught bribbing the political system.
Until we start letting the corpses of the starving pile up on Main Street, we will need to gravitate towards more inclusive health care options and such. Until we quit exporting our jobs in order to enrich the stockholders of companies, we will have to provide an ever expanding social safety net. We can't go back to the farm and live off the land like our grandparents did in the Great Depression. We've become addicted to conveniences and those conveniences have whip the frenzy of commercialism that has ultimately employed the Communist peasants of rural China.
Maybe it's time the Chambe of Commerce stop being the voice of business and start being the conscience of the people. Oh yea, that would be like the teachers' unions starting to care about the results of the education of our children.
No, I didn’t think you would be able to name one. But it was a trick question, of course: there is no non-capitalist country that has produced as high a standard of living as we enjoy. None - and not by a long shot.
Your ideas of capitalism are nothing but old-left caricatures of free markets, and I’m amazed that an educated person like yourself can still believe in such discredited bunk. Haven’t you been keeping up on current events for the past 50 years or so? Collectivism has failed miserably everywhere it has been attempted – and at exorbitant human cost. It’s even failing in Western Europe today, where the economies of the EU have been stagnant and crippled with high unemployment for over 20 years. Overwhelming evidence to the contrary, you seem to think that capitalism is the problem, and more collectivism is the answer. I just can’t understand how or why you continue to believe such nonsense, unless you are some kind of dreary anarchist or anti-progressive luddite.
Do me a favor. Read “The Road to Surfdom” by F.A. Hayek. Even if you do not buy all of the arguements presented, it will enable you to better understand just how devastating the intellectual critique of collectivism really is, and how lame and dated your old-left platitudes sound in comparison.
How are you defining "standard of living?"
Doing a random look at various rankings, I see the US ranks 78th as the country with the lowest murders. Myanmar ranks #1.
US is #1 is prison population; Russia is #2.
For freedom of the press, US is #9; Finland is #1.
For greenest country, US ranks #24; Finland is #1. Heathiest life expectancy has US at #24; Japan is #1.
Largest total health expenditure per capita has the US at #2; Marshall Island #1.
Gun ownship has US #1; Norway #2.
I guess you need to define what you mean by "standard of living." The US, like Finland or Norway -- but to a lesser degree -- is a country with a mixed economy.
Define what you mean by "capitalism." Are you talking about "free market?" How do you define that? Maybe all your questions are "tricks" where only your answers are correct.
I tend to be bais aobut the US and think it is the best country in the world...then again, it's the only country I've ever lived in. Maybe you have lived in a number of countries and have a broader range of experience to judge what country has the best standard of living.
I don't trust the idea of a totally free market. I don't think an economy totally controlled by government works either. If the free market is on the left and government control is on the right, I would place myself substantially to the free market side of the center. Democracy doesn't imply a free market or unrestrained capitalism. Democracy implies that the citizens primarily determine the degree of free-ness that will prevail.
Obviously, the pedulum swings both ways and now it looks like it will be swinging towards more regulation.
Can that "collectivism" baloney you keep throwing out. It's a swing to the left that will swing back in 2012 or 2016 or 2020 or some point in between. You strick me as being above the Chicken Little gang that sees the economic end times looming on the horizon.
Mr/Ms. Sunny B., I must let you know that you need a civics lesson. This is, in fact, not a democracy. It is a republic. We do not control those who make the laws, rather, we control their future in our government.
I do agree with you in that we need neither a completely free market, nor a run-away capitalist state. The balance of power was the best thing we ever inherited from our forefathers.
Though, I must say, I do believe collectivism to be something that simply will endure. People are simply fed up, both on the right and the left, of a single (or almost) entity controlling the nutrition of the masses.
I say it is high time we take responsibility for what goes into our bodies.
Also, I do enjoy reading your blog. It is very interesting.
Aslag:
The people exercised either directly or through elected representatives, generally define “Democracy”."
A republic in its basic sense is constitutional government. The word is derived from the Latin res publica, or "public things". It is an ordering of society under a written set of laws and a society that has the concept of the rule of law.
We have a democratically elected government that works under a constitution operating on the rule of law out lined in the definition of "republic."
We can split hairs over democracy v. republic, but whatever the case, we got a little of both and more in the governmental experiment called the "United States."
History has shown that the pendulum swings back and forth like an ideological tug-o-war. We swung towards more government intervention and regulation with Hoover and FDR up until the time when Carter and Reagan started down the deregulation path. Now we seem to be swing towards more regulation.
Some will say that regulation is bad. I say some regulation is bad and some is good. Clean water and air, safe food, sensible driving laws, etc. could be considered big government nanny statism. Then again, there was the Good Witch and the Wicked Witch in the Land of Oz. The Wicked witch seemed to be a pretty good motivator and had the troops goose-stepping behind her. The Good Witch seemed to be a loner who was admired by the Munchkins.
Not sure how all that Oz stuff ties into the definition of democracy and republic, but it helps shed some like on my thoughts on regulation.
I tend to hang left of center and generally distrust big money's influence in government. It thinks big business has the influence buying power to stifle small business and entreupreurtship. I also think small business wants to become big business and dreams in the shadow of the money tree. I think the big payoffs are rare and failures quite common.
Thanks for stopping by to chat.
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