96-99%'rs ... YOU ARE the 99%

[dre]

Me thinks the economic boom in that era had a heck of a lot more to do that just low gov regulation. A little thing called the 2nd Industrial Revolution. If you want to go as laissez-faire as it was back then and you're expecting some massive boom because of it you'll be disappointed. We'll need something as revolutionary to production in a short period of time like combustion engines, cheap steel, electricity, and the telephone.

This era was economically prosperous, but that doesn't equal everything to do with society prosperity. No gov regulation, then major retraction in things like minimum wage, workers comp, safety standards, environmental standards, labour rights, EI etc. How were those things in the 1870's?

I'm not a communist. I'm saying there's been income growth in the past 30 years and virtually all of it has gone to the 1%. Who has been benefiting from the deregulation that began with Reagan/Thatcher? "Trickle-down economics" sold to us in this era has statistically turned out to be a pile of rubbish.

Growth levels during the guilded age happened simply because the economy was so small with so much room to grow. For example... the ammount of coal being mined went up %10000 percent during a couple of decades. Incredible growth. But its a lot easier to achieve that level of growth when you are starting with nothing, than it is in a country where the coal industry is already mature and theres already a shitload of production.

Edited November 10, 2011 by dre

[Michael Hardner]

But its a lot easier to achieve that level of growth when you are starting with nothing, than it is in a country where the coal industry is already mature and theres already a shitload of production.

Just an aside on this assumption: For certain kinds of growth yes it's easier to grow when you start with nothing, but we can't predict where future growth will come from. Advanced robotics could come down in price and make labour supremely cheap. Low cost nuclear energy could be invented tomorrow.

[dre]

Just an aside on this assumption: For certain kinds of growth yes it's easier to grow when you start with nothing, but we can't predict where future growth will come from. Advanced robotics could come down in price and make labour supremely cheap. Low cost nuclear energy could be invented tomorrow.

We may see some bursts of high growth like we did in the 90's during a period of rapid technological progress but for the most part its pretty predictable. And I dont think well be seeing the kind of growth we saw in the gilded age ever again.

Picture youre having a party at your house. It starts out with just you. In the first hour 20 more people show up. You have a growth rate of 2000% per hour. Next hour 40 more people show up. Youre growth rate was only 300%. As some point youre going to start hitting structural boundaries that make those kind of growth rates impossible. The size of your house... the ammount of people that want to come... etc etc.

[cybercoma]

What, you would rather have a society full of tenant farmers? The numbers don't lie, society vastly improved with the gilded age and became richer.

Better for a select few, while others lived in misery and worked in brutal conditions. When they demanded safer working conditions and better wages, the government sent the military in to bust up their parties. Anyway, the point is that gilded means a superficial covering of gold and that's exactly what the growth in wealth was at that time, superficial.

[blueblood]

Better for a select few, while others lived in misery and worked in brutal conditions. When they demanded safer working conditions and better wages, the government sent the military in to bust up their parties. Anyway, the point is that gilded means a superficial covering of gold and that's exactly what the growth in wealth was at that time, superficial.

So those people didn't benefit from electricity, plumbing, jobs, automobiles, advances in science, the telephone, the telegraph, trains, advances in farm machinery, etc. Did they benefit from that. Yes or no will do.

[cybercoma]

So those people didn't benefit from electricity, plumbing, jobs, automobiles, advances in science, the telephone, the telegraph, trains, advances in farm machinery, etc. Did they benefit from that. Yes or no will do.

Every one of those things were to the benefit of the monopolies and the elite. They weren't built for "the people". The profits of their labour went to a select few and the advances in efficiency that came with Taylorism eliminated jobs while making working conditions gruelling and unsafe. The people suffered from these advancements far more than they benfitted.

[cybercoma]

deleted.

Edited November 11, 2011 by cybercoma

[cybercoma]

Don't bother reading this article. It talks about the suffering that you want to ignore which accompanied all the excesses of the Gilded Age.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/06/the-dark-side-of-the-gilded-age/6012/

Beatty leaves it to others to describe the glamour of the Gilded Age. Instead he makes viscerally clear the grinding poverty, the bloody racial hatred, the violent labor strikes, and the corrupt politics that also characterize that era.

There's a reason the wealthiest of the time were called Robber Barons.

[dre]

Every one of those things were to the benefit of the monopolies and the elite. They weren't built for "the people". The profits of their labour went to a select few and the advances in efficiency that came with Taylorism eliminated jobs while making working conditions gruelling and unsafe. The people suffered from these advancements far more than they benfitted.

I think its true that there was unfair allocation of wealth, and its also true that working conditions were very bad.

But the gilded age was just part of the industrial revolution, and IMO human kind most definate did benefit from it.

In the year 1800 not one country in the world had a life expectancy above 50 and most were between 30-40. Life was brutal, dangerous and short. The industrial revolution radically changed human existance for the better in terms of both health and wealth... and not just for Americans or for the British but for the entire world.

Heres a short and really good illustration by Hans Rosling, human statistics guru.

Its really well worth the watch.

[blueblood]

Every one of those things were to the benefit of the monopolies and the elite. They weren't built for "the people". The profits of their labour went to a select few and the advances in efficiency that came with Taylorism eliminated jobs while making working conditions gruelling and unsafe. The people suffered from these advancements far more than they benfitted.

So they would have been better off rotting out in the fields or in the bush wallowing in their own filth. Outstanding. The "robber barons" got rich and everybody else got to enjoy the benefits of their activities. If you don't think a society benefits from electricity your hopeless.

[cybercoma]

I didn't say that they didn't benefit. I said you're completely ignoring well-documented suffering from the age.

[cybercoma]

What you're saying is akin to arguing that slaves benefitted from having food, clothing and shelter given to them by their masters.

[dre]

So they would have been better off rotting out in the fields or in the bush wallowing in their own filth. Outstanding. The "robber barons" got rich and everybody else got to enjoy the benefits of their activities. If you don't think a society benefits from electricity your hopeless.

Peoples lives improved during the earlier part of the industrial revolution as well though under British Kings, the aristocracy, and the hereditary house of lords as well. That doesnt mean it wasnt a good idea to break up these concentrations of wealth.

We have to do this every once in a while. Reboot the system and put all the wealth back in the pool for people to compete for. The monarchy, the aristocracy, the robber barons, and later on the railroad tycoons. The bankers wil be next.

If you didnt do this from time to time youll end up with autocratic rule. Representive government cant work if a tiny group of people have all the money and power. It makes it too easy for them to tweak the rules to make it even easier for them to get more money and power, and they will keep doing it until they have it ALL if you let them.

Well break up this aristocracy just like we broke up the last one, and like we will eventually break up any others that emerge in the future. Its really just part of the natural human cycle.

Edited November 11, 2011 by dre

[blueblood]

Peoples lives improved during the earlier part of the industrial revolution as well though under British Kings, the aristocracy, and the hereditary house of lords as well. That doesnt mean it wasnt a good idea to break up these concentrations of wealth.

We have to do this every once in a while. Reboot the system and put all the wealth back in the pool for people to compete for. The monarchy, the aristocracy, the robber barons, and later on the railroad tycoons. The bankers wil be next.

If you didnt do this from time to time youll end up with autocratic rule. Representive government cant work if a tiny group of people have all the money and power. It makes it too easy for them to tweak the rules to make it even easier for them to get more money and power, and they will keep doing it until they have it ALL if you let them.

Well break up this aristocracy just like we broke up the last one, and like we will eventually break up any others that emerge in the future. Its really just part of the natural human cycle.

Under the free market, the foolish bankers would have went belly up. What's worse, the bankers trying to influence gov't, or the gov't having that much influence for sale? We had in our society the chance to keep the influence of gov't down. However, politicians sold the kool-aid that the gov't can and should do all sorts of things and the voters ate it up.

The free market allows the system to reboot.

[dre]

Under the free market, the foolish bankers would have went belly up. What's worse, the bankers trying to influence gov't, or the gov't having that much influence for sale? We had in our society the chance to keep the influence of gov't down. However, politicians sold the kool-aid that the gov't can and should do all sorts of things and the voters ate it up.

The free market allows the system to reboot.

While free market economics is an important part of human economics for you its really a religious belief. If the government doesnt control the rules of the game then the person/group able to marshal the most wealth/power/force/strength WILL. And every time in history people have found themselves in that position they have hated it and struggled to free themselves from it.

Thats why periods of no regulation are traditionally very short. The gilded age is a perfect example. People didnt like it, so they had their government change the rules.

This is just human nature. The idea you have in your head of what a "free market" would look like is an entirely utopian construct that would fall apart pretty quickly. And thats why it never has existed before in any form that people found acceptable, and never ever will. When humans interact in nature they create authority structures (ancient tribal council, to modern government and everything between), in order to establish rules and order.

Like I said... that doesnt mean that free market economic theory doesnt have value. It just means that like any other theory or ideology, when taken to its extreme it produces nothing but absurdity.

I dont buy your statement about the "free market" rebooting itself either. If the barons and railroad tycoons had been left to accumulate land and wealth at the rate they were, we would all be renting from their grand children today. And in fact, up until the era of modern government thats exactly what happened in a lot of places. A tiny group of lords/nobles/barons would end up owning almost all of the land in the country, and everyone else lived and worked on their vast estates and paid them rent and homage, and were subject to their rule.

Edited November 11, 2011 by dre

[Moonlight Graham]

While free market economics is an important part of human economics for you its really a religious belief. If the government doesnt control the rules of the game then the person/group able to marshal the most wealth/power/force/strength WILL. And every time in history people have found themselves in that position they have hated it and struggled to free themselves from it.

Thats why periods of no regulation are traditionally very short. The gilded age is a perfect example. People didnt like it, so they had their government change the rules.

This is just human nature. The idea you have in your head of what a "free market" would look like is an entirely utopian construct that would fall apart pretty quickly. And thats why it never has existed before in any form that people found acceptable, and never ever will. When humans interact in nature they create authority structures (ancient tribal council, to modern government and everything between), in order to establish rules and order.

Like I said... that doesnt mean that free market economic theory doesnt have value. It just means that like any other theory or ideology, when taken to its extreme it produces nothing but absurdity.

I completely agree, well said.

An example of what you were saying about changing the rules would the 30's Depression. Regulations & fail safes didn't exist to prevent it, and worker conditions were poor long before 1929 and obviously the masses were deeper in the crapper after the crash. Americans became fed up, booted out Hoover in a landslide and voted in FDR, who brought in the New Deal.

Now thankfully we have gov regulations to prevent some of the things that caused the depression, like gov insurance of bank accounts (at least in Canada) in case of a bank collapse to help prevent a run on the banks as happened in 1929.

In anything politics, strict idealism is dangerous. Political ideologies are theories, and there are holes in all of them. Being open-minded to adapt your thinking to realities "on the ground" is logical, blind adherence to an ideal despite evidence against it is not.

Edited November 11, 2011 by Moonlight Graham

[blueblood]

While free market economics is an important part of human economics for you its really a religious belief. If the government doesnt control the rules of the game then the person/group able to marshal the most wealth/power/force/strength WILL. And every time in history people have found themselves in that position they have hated it and struggled to free themselves from it.

Thats why periods of no regulation are traditionally very short. The gilded age is a perfect example. People didnt like it, so they had their government change the rules.

This is just human nature. The idea you have in your head of what a "free market" would look like is an entirely utopian construct that would fall apart pretty quickly. And thats why it never has existed before in any form that people found acceptable, and never ever will. When humans interact in nature they create authority structures (ancient tribal council, to modern government and everything between), in order to establish rules and order.

Like I said... that doesnt mean that free market economic theory doesnt have value. It just means that like any other theory or ideology, when taken to its extreme it produces nothing but absurdity.

I dont buy your statement about the "free market" rebooting itself either. If the barons and railroad tycoons had been left to accumulate land and wealth at the rate they were, we would all be renting from their grand children today. And in fact, up until the era of modern government thats exactly what happened in a lot of places. A tiny group of lords/nobles/barons would end up owning almost all of the land in the country, and everyone else lived and worked on their vast estates and paid them rent and homage, and were subject to their rule.

And that's all because the gov't had all of this power to hand out in the first place. Why does it need it? Those extremely large entities got to that size because the gov't picked winners and losers. All in the name of "helping" the little guy. The free market is tied into how nature works, that's why it's the best system we have because it utilizes human nature efficiently. Govts only responsibility should be to ensure that the market has an environment to function in. What that environment is has been subject to debate and elections are won and lost on what people think that environment should be.

One thing about the free market is that it is cruel and is unbiasingly fair. Many companies have come and one, some of them large, some not. The ones that innovate with the times and pay attention to their environment which is society as a whole in the long run, do better. Look at tech. Apple pioneered personal computers, almost went broke, then rose again. Toyota doesn't have u ions, yet compensates their workers well and is the worlds number 1 auto maker. You have to look at the market as a large entity. For example the aristocrats in France didn't make the lives better for ordinary people. They didn't like it and the market corrected itself by removing the aristocracy. This is why so many companies have evolved into paying attention to what ordinary people want, that's why there is the trade that ensures that in exchange for products that improve lives for money to go to users. One must realize that people are different, some have more talents than others and that has to be respected.

What those 99% ers don't realize is that they need the 1% as much as they trumpet that the 1% needs the 99%.

[blueblood]

I completely agree, well said.

An example of what you were saying about changing the rules would the 30's Depression. Regulations & fail safes didn't exist to prevent it, and worker conditions were poor long before 1929 and obviously the masses were deeper in the crapper after the crash. Americans became fed up, booted out Hoover in a landslide and voted in FDR, who brought in the New Deal.

Now thankfully we have gov regulations to prevent some of the things that caused the depression, like gov insurance of bank accounts (at least in Canada) in case of a bank collapse to help prevent a run on the banks as happened in 1929.

In anything politics, strict idealism is dangerous. Political ideologies are theories, and there are holes in all of them. Being open-minded to adapt your thinking to realities "on the ground" is logical, blind adherence to an ideal despite evidence against it is not.

Umm regulations caused it. It was cheap money policies that gov't thought would keep the economy roaring in perpetuity. However, that's not possible and there needs to be corrections. As a result of inflating a bubble, we got the depression, which gov't made worse by trying to distort the natural market by implementing the new deal to try and keep prices high. What people don't realize is that if prices fall, things become more affordable which increases demand and the economy gets corrected.

Those regulations created after ww2, set the stage for stagflation in the 70's, the dot com bubble, and the current financial crisis.

What you fail to realize is that the free market is a two way street. Those insurance of bank accounts creates the moral hazard for banks to start lending irresponsibly because the gov't will bail out the bad decision. In the free market, depositors would be very wary of how banks lent out there money and would exercise their power to pull money out of said bank and cmease loans from that bank, causing it to fail.

I think the biggest problem is the financial illiteracy of so many people today that can cause people to make bad decisions regarding the economy, such as bailing out those banks instead of letting them fail.

Edited November 11, 2011 by blueblood

[bush_cheney2004]

An example of what you were saying about changing the rules would the 30's Depression. Regulations & fail safes didn't exist to prevent it, and worker conditions were poor long before 1929 and obviously the masses were deeper in the crapper after the crash. Americans became fed up, booted out Hoover in a landslide and voted in FDR, who brought in the New Deal.

Go back and find out what Canada's Bennett government did instead.

[August1991]

Deregulation gave he USA economy the best economic growth possible

Gilded age late 1800s

Society prospered then, why couldn't it now?

No, it was gov't intervention that caused problems. Since gov't decided to intervene more and more, there have been more and more problems.

The Soviet Union and Mao Tse Tung are probably better evidence of your basic point. However, some government regulation is a benefit.

Some people gamble (like Goldman Sachs, or your Grandma at bingo). Some people simply inherit wealth. Some people earn it. Some people steal it. Some people just find it lying around.

Your Grandma chooses random numbers. Goldman Sachs actively seeks profit opportunities.

There's a big difference, dre.

[dre]

And that's all because the gov't had all of this power to hand out in the first place. Why does it need it? Those extremely large entities got to that size because the gov't picked winners and losers. All in the name of "helping" the little guy. The free market is tied into how nature works, that's why it's the best system we have because it utilizes human nature efficiently. Govts only responsibility should be to ensure that the market has an environment to function in. What that environment is has been subject to debate and elections are won and lost on what people think that environment should be.

One thing about the free market is that it is cruel and is unbiasingly fair. Many companies have come and one, some of them large, some not. The ones that innovate with the times and pay attention to their environment which is society as a whole in the long run, do better. Look at tech. Apple pioneered personal computers, almost went broke, then rose again. Toyota doesn't have u ions, yet compensates their workers well and is the worlds number 1 auto maker. You have to look at the market as a large entity. For example the aristocrats in France didn't make the lives better for ordinary people. They didn't like it and the market corrected itself by removing the aristocracy. This is why so many companies have evolved into paying attention to what ordinary people want, that's why there is the trade that ensures that in exchange for products that improve lives for money to go to users. One must realize that people are different, some have more talents than others and that has to be respected.

What those 99% ers don't realize is that they need the 1% as much as they trumpet that the 1% needs the 99%.

The free market is tied into how nature works, that's why it's the best system we have because it utilizes human nature efficiently.

What free market? You keep acting like it exists when it doesnt.

The ones that innovate with the times and pay attention to their environment which is society as a whole in the long run, do better. Look at tech. Apple pioneered personal computers, almost went broke, then rose again.

Apple didnt evolve in a free market. It build its business on a publically funded invention (the computer) in a tech industry literally saturated with public r&d.

Govts only responsibility should be to ensure that the market has an environment to function in.

Like I said. This is just a utopian dream on your part, because thats counter to human nature. The first time someone in the "free market" poisoned a few thousand people to death, the people would demand that the government ban the practice, and the government would. Thats why we have regulation.

THere IS no free market anywhere but in your head. If it existed on earth today the very first thing the people living there would do is start demanding that authorities regulate it.

Edited November 11, 2011 by dre

[blueblood]

What free market? You keep acting like it exists when it doesnt.

Apple didnt evolve in a free market. It build its business on a publically funded invention (the computer) in a tech industry literally saturated with public r&d.

Like I said. This is just a utopian dream on your part, because thats counter to human nature. The first time someone in the "free market" poisoned a few thousand people to death, the people would demand that the government ban the practice, and the government would. Thats why we have regulation.

THere IS no free market anywhere but in your head. If it existed on earth today the very first thing the people living there would do is start demanding that authorities regulate it.

Except it does exist, gov't is unique in that it can manipulate the market because of it's monopoly on the use of force.

Yes it did evolve on the market, it listened to consumers and provided them services and it prospered.

Your poisoning example is the market at work. If someone screws up, the market will correct it. Instead of people not doing business, they demand regulations. Unfortunately these regulations have the unintended effect of making it more difficult for honest firms to do business. If a firm poisoned people, the free market would have punished them anyway by people not doing business with the firm, thus killing the firm. What I'm saying is that balance will come gov't or not, the thing is if the gov't comes in the pendulum does more swings to find balance using up time and resources.

No, everybody lives in the market. Thinking that anyone can overcome nature is a fantasy because it will always bring itself into balance. The soviets found that out the hard way.

[bush_cheney2004]

...Apple didnt evolve in a free market. It build its business on a publically funded invention (the computer) in a tech industry literally saturated with public r&d.

This is false....the concepts for modern computing machines were developed by private individuals who were not publicly funded (e.g abacus, Charles Babbage, mechanical calculators, etc.) . The technology supporting Apple computers is also traceable to private sector research and development for discrete devices and large scale integrated circuits. At best it can be said that publicly funded R&D accelerated development of computing devices.

[jacee]

So those people didn't benefit from electricity, plumbing, jobs, automobiles, advances in science, the telephone, the telegraph, trains, advances in farm machinery, etc. Did they benefit from that. Yes or no will do.

We're not going back there bb.

...

Beatty leaves it to others to describe the glamour of the Gilded Age. Instead he makes viscerally clear the grinding poverty, the bloody racial hatred, the violent labor strikes, and the corrupt politics that also characterize that era. And he makes clear, too, the parallels with our own time, where once again a yawning gap has opened between

ich and poor, and political influence is available for the taking by anyone willing and able to pay.

Government for the people, a despairing Rutherford B. Hayes noted in his diary, was supplanted in the Gilded Age by "government of the corporation, by the corporation, and for the corporation." It was an era when government held the keys to corporate and private fortunes—land and subsidies for railroads, tariff protection for manufacturers, mountains for mining companies, timber lands for lumber kings, court orders to prevent strikes, and state militia and federal lawmen and U.S. Army regulars to break strikes and shoot strikers. "Government by campaign contributions," in Henry Demarest Lloyd’s words, gave America the most violent strikes in the industrializing world.

http://m.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2007/06/the-dark-side-of-the-gilded-age/6012/

Historian Page Smith examines the industrial revolution in Volume 6 of his People's History of the United States and Volume 6 of his calls the events of that era “The War between Capital and Labor.” It is an apt title: the two sides were indeed at war, Labor.” It is an apt title: the two sides were indeed at war, with armies of armed men fighting on both sides. The level of human violence and destruction of property did in fact often create warlike conditions, a situation exacerbated by the fact that many workers were Civil War veterans. They declared themselves just as prepared to shoot a corporate hireling as they had been ready to kill a Yankee or a rebel.

America’s captains of industry, who themselves often rose from very modest circumstances, saw workers as commodities to be dealt with like any raw material. Cold, ruthless, calculating and impervious to the negative effects of what they were doing, they hired their own armies to deal with recalcitrant laborers.

http://www.academicamerican.com/recongildedage/topics/gildedage2.html

Edited November 11, 2011 by jacee

[bush_cheney2004]

....America’s captains of industry, who themselves often rose from very modest circumstances, saw workers as commodities to be dealt with like any raw material. Cold, ruthless, calculating and impervious to the negative effects of what they were doing, they hired their own armies to deal with recalcitrant laborers.

And that's why we're the biggest and meanest sombitches in the world today. Hard to argue with success!