The_vagabond7 said:
Oh yeah, I totally agree that the government we have now is essentially just a tool for corporations, which I find upsetting. Without a government willing to stand up to corporate america there are no checks or balances on corporate power, no means to prevent them from being blatantly corrupt, and harmful to everything but their own bottom line. Which is a puzzle I haven't hashed out yet. Even if we could regulate them, globalizations renders that ineffective anyway. Location on the planet is largely just a matter of convenience, and if it ceases to be lucrative to do business in America they can easily pick up and move to india, china or where ever they can buy a more favorable legal environment to operate. We don't produce anything near what we used to because it's cheaper and easier to put production facilities in other countries.
The idealistic version of free market is that we will vote with our dollars and that is the check and balance on corporate power, but who are we kidding? That's not going to work. We're too apathetic, and uneducated on how these corporations work and they are too large and complex. BP doesn't give a rats ass if I get gas from their gas station or a different one. So I don't really know what the solution is to prevent the planet from being bought by corporate overlords, it kind of seems inevitable.
I agree that we do need to keep medical research going, and profit is a powerful incentive for doing that, but I fear for our healthcare system as a whole. It really just seems to be a quagmire of interests and bad ideas, and I really hope people more educated than myself on the topic are trying really damn hard to find a viable solution. Maybe yours would work, I dunno. I claim ignorance on the finer points of the topic.
Your point on welfare seems like such a common sense one, I don't know why we aren't employing it. We need all sorts of work done on our infrastructure, and have all sorts of community programs in each city and state, they want to collect checks from the government. Why not trade? Not a full time position obviously, because then you're just getting cheap government labor, but like you said, some number of hours of a kind of service should be required. I don't know how many jackasses I've known that were gaming the system to get money because so little is required to get a check.
Also, what's up Kasz! Missed you man, I've been gone for a while. I always enjoy reading and participating in discussions with you, I always find out something interesting. Are you in some way involved in economics, or is it just a hobby learning about it? You seem to participate in economic discussions more than others. Just curious. |
Well if it wasn't for the government BP would be out of buisnesses. Due to liability caps they didn't have to go bankrupt with all the cost to fix that oil spill. Why there are liability caps I dunno. I don't have a liability cap if i break something that prevents me from going bankrupt.
One interesting thing I've seen is a suggestion to change the way we tax companies. Instead of taxing companies for being here... you tax companies for selling here... and if anything give a tax bonus FOR staying here. Instead of a 10% fee on sold items, if they are mostly produced here, it's 5%.
It's just a hobby for me. Had the choice between Psychology and Economics. Made the wrong choice. Turns out that Psychology is a lot more shallow then you'd think. For example all the main disciplines of psychological therapy are equal effective.
In reality while pscyhologists are extremely useful, and it does require training... the actual fields of psychology scientifically are just... all nothing. Psychology is more philosphy then science.
A lot of this can be said for Economics too but... at least with economics there is real life data. People like Paul Krugman can talk a good game, but there is data out their contradicting them... which is really the case for all science.
