Charlie Rose

JohnGelles  10/31/2010 10:32 PM Report

mabraham -- whom I shall address as M. ~

You make these points:

1. Government can't create jobs overnight

2. Government can't invest if it give immense revenues (needed for investment) back to its richest taxpayers

3. America's economy did work when taxes on the richest taxpayers were higher than today -- at about the levels to which Obama would like them to return.

I say these points are the same as conventional deficit- hawks make. They assume fiat money (greenbacks) cannot be used in place of tax revenues.

You are among the majority when you hold your views.

If you are wrong -- which my side holds -- you are the problem. If you are right, I would be the problem if I prevailed.

I believe we will have a chance to get the answer. We will have to find jobs overnight (as we did in 1942--immediately after Pearly Harbor). To fail would be to cede to China something China cannot even handle-- leadership of the civilized world.

From 1942 until the end of the war (1945) we lived in a command economy. Today they call China an authoritarian capitalist economy with an immature form of democratic principles. We do not want what they have. We want what we had under President Roosevelt at war with destroyers of civilization itself.

Failure to guarantee full employment at the high wage standard our technology invites is also a destroyer of civilization itself. Automated production will allow the rich to get richer and enjoy the highest degree of civilization ever imagined.

This will not hurt the rest of the population -- who will live in great comfort at peace -- and aspire to be even better than the richest:

..... ..... because they will gave the economic security and possibility of becoming important artists, scholars and role models -- whose interest in personal wealth as such, is totally absent.

REMant  10/25/2010 03:57 PM Report

I didn't quite get the discussion of the president's take on Wall St. Is it like Rattner's own? Is it like Summmers'? Is he really just pandering, but doesn't believe the public knows what they're about? Is a welfare capitalist like Clinton? When he says "Change" does he merely mean a change of nameplates?

mabraham  10/24/2010 05:20 AM Report

@John Gelles

You don't make any sense, and it is not just typos.

The government can't create jobs overnight out of the blue. And it certainly can't invest while giving tax breaks at the same time.

Letting the tax cuts for the wealthiest, a policy than has shown it doesn't work, in place makes no sense. Leaving them expire would bring back the tax levels of the 90's. A time where the economy did work.

JohnGelles  10/23/2010 04:51 PM Report

Please correct the few typos above as you read.

JohnGelles  10/23/2010 04:43 PM Report

On the 22 Oct 2010 conversation between Charlie Rose and --

"Steven Rattner author of 'Overhaul: An Insider’s Account of the Obama Administration’s Emergency Rescue of the Auto Industry'"

Rose asked about the Bush Tax Cut for the very richest of current taxpayers. Should it expire or be extended?

Rattner wanted it to expire. He thought the revenues to be collected by Uncle Sam after expiration would show lenders and investors the world over that democracy was prepared to reduce national budget deficits some day -- lending credence to the idea that the best physical standards of living were more likely to be produced and consumed if markets not parliaments were allowed to solve the problems ahead.

Opposite this idea are those of authoritarian capitalism as practiced today in China. The ruling communist party prefers to keep the free market in a birdcage. It will have air to breathe -- but not the power to escape and buy the party and return China to rule by those ideas defeated by Mao and his reds in 1949.

Who is right? Rattner or ME. I say leave the tax cuts in place. The money saved by the richest is needed for investment. If not invested let it be saved but not be allowed to buy Congress even more than the richest already have.

The real issue is growth of green output to raise our minimum wage and standards of living. This growth needs government seed investment everywhere. Like the seed that rescued GM and built our technology R&D infrastructure on the back of WW II and the sold war that followed.

We can do that without war, if we do it to advance world peace.

Rattner and Obama have failed to support the middle class with enough government investing, lending and spending to reach full employment overnight. For this failure they deserve the boot.

They should have offered the richest among us full tax relief in return for such middle class economic security. Who care how much they have, if ordinary people have a lot and get fair pay for their work and guaranteed prosperity all the days of their life. The rich want security and get a lot of it. But the Democrats do not have the common sense to offer them to it in return for common sense systems that are immune immune from inadequate demand.

Nano-tech and bio-tech revolutions want to end scarcity NOW. Conservatives and liberals are both in the way.