[quote=davelj]… it’s pretty clear to me (at least) that our system is rigged to perpetuate the ultra-wealthy and, as we saw during the financial crisis, to “protect” these folks from the actual downside risks associated with the risky assets from which much of this group’s wealth is derived (think of much of Big Finance).
If these folks are going to have a permanent put related to their wealth – as it appears they do – I think they should pay for it in the form of redistribution that reduces the level of inequality that we see today.
I’m not saying this is a perfect model (far from it, in fact) – to be clear – I’m just saying the model we have now is completely screwed where the middle class is concerned vis-a-vis the 1%.[/quote]
Well said. You have my attention here. Not sure how that fits in with all the talk about “luck”. Did the powers that be luck into the rigged system or did they make it that way? I’d say they made it that way.
To me, when the system is such that it is “rigged to perpetuate the ultra-wealthy” you can do two things.
You can 1) undo the rigging or 2) you can try to live with the current rigging and add bunch of other rigging to make the current rigging have less effect.
Either way, you are fighting the powers that be to implement the change that is needed.
The way I see it is this – a whole lot of money gets funneled through the government and through that government system, it is guided by very few hands. Those hands are the rigged system.
Let 350 million people each guide a small amount of the money and it will get distributed more evenly.
I think Ron Paul is represents path #1 – undo the rigging. I, personally, like that approach. Low likelihood of success but if it happens, then the rigged system falls apart and few decision-makers are replaced by many. The Revolutionary War also exemplifies path 1.
Path 2 is “politics as usual” that leads to regulations and redistribution schemes piled on top of regulations to undo regulations that were once put into place to deal with one problem but created another. Take a simple home loan, for example. It should be pretty simple. One dude loans another dude some money. If the second dude doesn’t pay him back, the first dude gets the house.
Well. Something went wrong and the small number of decision-makers decided that the taxpayers would bailing out the first dude. So, to protect the taxpayers there comes an army of acronymns to make this simple loan process a complete mess. Isn’t it better to just not bail out the first dude in the first place. Or, to at least avoid doing it again in the future ?
So, why don’t we just go back to the simple situation where one dude loans the other dude money and the taxpayers have nothing to do with it ?
Because we choose path 2, which puts puts band-aids and non-voluntary redistribution schemes into place to try and make up for the prior horrible decision, which tricks the public into thinking some progress has been made, when in-fact, the whole system that bails out the 1% is still there and, as you say, creates the wrong incentive.
Reducing the flow of money through the small number of government hands would be better than continuing to run that money through their hands and trying to control their hands.
