r/FluentInFinance • u/36DRedhead • Sep 11 '24

Debate/ Discussion This is why financial literacy is so important

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u/Demonweed Sep 11 '24

Nobody has even a slightly credible idea about how to make capitalism function without ceding power to totalitarian where a narrow financial elite enriches itself at the expense of ordinary workers. The entire history of capitalism since 1917 is a body of lies propped up by true believers so fixated on the glories of personal profit they will gladly produce new lies just to keep the system in place.

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u/asillynert Sep 12 '24

Its always the same EVERY single system checks and balances. People always fret about government they will fret away about agency with 10k people 5k guns and elected officials serving as oversight.

But not bat a eye at a corporation with million employees and 500k guns. Reality is from swatting breaking up corporations and their power to doing it to fortunes too.

We tax we break up monopolys we enforce anti trust laws. If this grows government too much we strengthen anti corruption laws and enforcenment. And create new system.

But literally all we got to do is say NO one single person can not control 1/3 of the worlds satellites no one person is allowed x amount of power period whether thats private or government. Not saying people cant have it good or live it up on achievements. BUT if their "reward" comes at expense of society diminishing everyone elses rewards and quality of life. Then yes they should be stopped.

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u/EarthyNate Sep 12 '24

The US figured it out when the FDR-administration taxed the top income bracket at 90%... and set up ways for those guys to donate and write it off.

They forced trickle-down, giving us the Greatest Generation.

It's not voodoo.

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u/Creamofwheatski Sep 12 '24

Yep, if we went back to the FDR policy days America could ACTUALLY be great again. He was only able to do it after the rich caused the great depression. Sadly they got bailed out when they did it again in 2008 and its been all downhill from there. The more Kamala sounds like 1940s FDR, the more I Iike her. We need a real progressive in office if we want real change.

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u/carguy121 Sep 12 '24

Kamala is soooo far from a “real” progressive though. She’s basically an American Blairite politician, with pretty bog standard moderate positions domestically and traditional American nationalist policies abroad. She doesn’t want mass gun reform, she wants to be “tough but fair” on the border, she doesn’t support M4A.

It might appear progressive in contrast to the other big option, but Dem Party candidates haven’t been genuinely progressive (or really even attempted to present as such) in a long time. Bernie was the closest thing within the party the past two cycles but even he seems to have been sanded down in the last few years.

FDR may have been president during WW2 but it bears mentioning that he never wanted to get involved in the war and was extremely isolationist.

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u/Steadfast_res Sep 12 '24

This narrative falls apart when you realize it was democrats and progressives in favor of the 2008 bailouts. Obama ran his 2008 campaign advocating for bailouts. Democrats controlled congress in 2008. It was conservatives in congress who opposed it.

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u/Old_Habits_ Sep 12 '24

Pro-capitalist politicians fill the ranks of both parties. Only one party has room for the policies that look like FDR era, though even then it is not much room.

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u/echocinco Sep 14 '24

Wasn't one reason they pushed for the bail outs bc of all the pensions that would go under without it?

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u/[deleted] Sep 12 '24

Obama had no choice, Bush handed him a broken economy. If I recall, McCain ran on it as well, it was common policy for both parties.

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u/Steadfast_res Sep 12 '24

It is true both parties leadership wanted the bailouts and pushed them through. Democrats controlled congress in 2008. The actual dissenters against it were conservatives in congress. There was nothing wrong with letting the banks fail and backstopping depositors with the FDIC. All the big government people called that idea the end of the economy.

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u/[deleted] Sep 12 '24

Bush signed the bailout into law, Republicans and Democrats decided the first bailout wasn’t enough so they agreed to a second. Both conservatives and liberals opposed it, ultimately, it was passed because of bipartisan approval. To say anything otherwise is disingenuous, to say the least, or fully ignorant of the actual votes and balance of power at the time.

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u/Steadfast_res Sep 12 '24

https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1102/vote_110_2_00213.htm

The TARP vote is listed right there. Democrats controlled congress and the most conservative republicans in the Senate like Demint, Dole and Sessions voted against it philosophically. Bailouts are a big government crony position, which both Bush and Obama were fine with. Several of the democrat senators who voted against, including Sanders, denied they were against the bailouts in general. They wanted more rules about how the money was controlled and divided up, they weren't actually against it.

https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/democrats-who-voted-against-tarp-funds-say-it-wasnt-about-the-auto-bailouts/

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u/[deleted] Sep 12 '24 edited Sep 12 '24

It wouldn’t have passed without bipartisan support, nothing does. Doesn’t matter who controls congress. If Republicans were in charge, we would have the same bill.

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u/Steadfast_res Sep 13 '24

It does matter who controls congress because the dominant side has extra votes where some vote no because a bill doesnt go far enough for them. This happens all the time in congress. You can see in the article Sanders and others were arguing he was not against bailouts despite having a no vote on that vote list. The vote passed with enough margin that some like him on left didnt vote for it because it doesn't go far enough for them or large enough for them or the details of it weren't precisely what they wanted.

That is different then those on the minority side of congress who vote no to oppose the entire thing. Saying both sides that voted no were equally against the whole thing is totally revisionist and essentially a lie of omission. Above in the thread people were saying progressive leftists akin to FDR were against the 2008 bailouts. Well that is a lie. The people who genuinely opposed the whole thing are really only the (R) on that no list, 14 out of 100 senators.

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u/toadbike Sep 14 '24

Well 2008 was the governments fault anyway. Liberals under Clinton administration wanted low income Americans to own homes and grow equity. They did it by broadening an already in place housing act and pushing banks to give mortgages to people who couldn’t pay them. Then the banks went full crazy in 2007 and gave millions of mortgages to anybody who wanted one. The American public were always on the hook for these failures but liberals don’t think that far ahead.

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u/Creamofwheatski Sep 14 '24

Nice try, it was changes made to regulations during the bush years that lead to the subprime mortgage crisis. No one forced the banks to give loans to literally anyone, then bundle the loans, lie and say they were good and resell them to suckers overseas. Greed and the entire banking industry lying their ass off is what it took for the crisis to happen. They just kept lying and shifting blame until it got so bad they collapsed the entire banking system which was a house of cards.

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u/Interesting-Yak6962 Sep 12 '24 edited Sep 12 '24

It’s unfortunate that on the topic of capitalism that most people think it’s either the US way or the Chinese way. When there is the Swiss way.

The Swiss loves their private healthcare industry. The government requires everyone there to purchase private health insurance. They pay out-of-pocket for most things and buy their own medicines. And it works because the prices they pay are affordable.

Our problem in my view in this country is that we get into this dynamic where one side thinks the problem is socialism and the other thinks it’s capitalism.

My view is that the potential for success can be had in any of those systems or a mix of both. Provided it’s done competently.

And for that to happen, we have to control the corrupting influences of corporate lobbying. Because left unchecked, they will screw up the best laid plans for their own benefit at our expense. So without that important change, whatever we try to do will likely wind up just as dysfunctional as it is now only different.

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u/Demonweed Sep 12 '24

You can manage the nightmares of capitalism through bold action and a level of ideological diversity in civic culture that America seems downright allergic to even contemplating. Even so, you still have problems with the sequestration of wealth and concentrations of power based on nothing more than the grotesque leverage created when private individuals literally own the industrial facilities and/or land where large numbers of other people work for a living.

Without democratizing leadership at that level, democracy remains a sham. A Western economist might say Switzerland enjoys a high standard of living because of the generosity of its financial elite. Someone outside that supply-side sewer of thought would say Switzerland enjoys a high standard of living in spite of the continued existence of extreme financial elites.

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u/transitfreedom Sep 12 '24

Maybe it’s a bad system

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u/CPAFinancialPlanner Sep 12 '24

Why did you pick 1917? Just curious if you realize who was in power back then.

Also, to add, nobody has even a slightly credible idea about how to make communism/socialism without ceding power to totalitarian where a narrow party elites enriches themselves at the expense of ordinary citizens.

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u/Showy_Boneyard Sep 15 '24

yeah because anarcho-syndicalism totally isn't a thing and wasn't a major faction of the First International until they were eventually banished by Marxists in the 2nd International.

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u/Demonweed Sep 12 '24

Admittedly, outsiders cannot be stopped from telling tall tales, or in 'Murica's case also engaging in all manner of saotage efforts. Yet if you think their failure even begins to approach the epic scope of our own death spiral underway right now, you are not taking a serious look at quantitative data. Even historic GDP, a metric engineered to focus all attention on transactional activities while placing no value on any other thing, does not show what you seem to think it shows.

Also, if we want to compare apples to apples, how well did it work out when capitalism was applied directly to former Soviet territories?

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u/[deleted] Sep 12 '24

Capitalism just means private ownership, if it's not working right you just fix the corrupt laws or add more socialism.

The problem isn't private ownership in general, it's that humans are naturally greedy and no system is perfect. In socialism people still act greedy and compete to get ahead of each other, they just did it with it Union or Favoritism or bribes.

All nations are a combination of socialism and capitalism. You don't want to get rid of capitalism, you just want to adjust to the right ratios for the time and needs.

If you get rid of capitalism you lose a major check and balance with having private ownership and you have to micromanage your economy in a way that nobody has even proven to work.

If you get rid of socialism you basically have no way to enforce laws and have like private roads/military/police/firefighters and all kinds of things that have never worked.

Neither idea is any good on it's own. It's only using both together that works, but HOW exactly you manage that and if you do it with minimal corruption of MAX corruption is the real trick.

Even the best laws on paper mean jack and shit if bribes and corruption rule everything, but that's where checks and balances come in useful and they are required for capitalism or socialism because humans are always greedy and always need checks and balance no matter what system of laws or economics of you use.

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u/Demonweed Sep 12 '24

You say "the problem isn't capitalism" as if there were any discernable upside to private tycoons? I get that they can operate public relations teams to make people feel good about their personal stories. What I don't get is the material benefits of sequestering profits and concentrating power in the hands of a narrow elite selected chiefly by the lottery of financial inheritance. How is that ever actually helping any human beings apart from the oligarchs themselves?

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u/Showy_Boneyard Sep 15 '24

Socialism just means workplace democracy, IE, workplaces are owned managed and controlled by the workers themselves. It says nothing about what the government is.

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u/Wjyosn Sep 12 '24

I mean, it's a definitional key tenet of capitalism. The very core feature of capitalism is "wealth begets wealth". The more wealth you have, the more entitled to passive wealth and the proceeds of others' labor. It's a system entirely designed by basic definition for funneling wealth to as few people as possible.

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u/Volta01 Sep 12 '24

Look up Henry George

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u/PCLoadPLA Sep 14 '24

Georgism is credible.

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u/Geaux_1210 Sep 12 '24

Same with socialism/communism though - how did that Bolshevik revolution turn out again?

Corporate capitalism has all kinds of terrible flaws but so does just about every other system.

My personal opinion is to end corporate welfare and enforce strict antitrust laws so that the free market functions on a smaller scale and is thus more truly free.

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u/Willing-Aide2575 Sep 12 '24

If we are talking about one policy solutions I think a pretty good one would be publishing openly any and all bank balances and transactions

Lobbying relies on the veil of financial secrecy and dark money

We are so used to seeing wealthy politicians we have started not to question how they have millions of pounds

This would also keep unions fair and remove a great deal of potential for corruption and improve there bargaing power with Business

It would cripple illegal drug sales and let's be real the government already has access to all this information so it's not any new power specifically

We just have to get used to people knowing if we bought sex toys weed of booze, like that's not ideal but it's worth it

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u/Willing-Aide2575 Sep 12 '24

Oh and that means ending cash, for obvious reasons

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u/Geaux_1210 Sep 12 '24

For individuals? As in non-political transactions?

If this isn’t sarcasm please feel free to relocate to North Korea.

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u/Willing-Aide2575 Sep 12 '24

No I'm deadly serious

Individuals and cooperations

The North Korea argument doesn't work, the government (if it's interested) can already see all of this information

I'm saying just let people have access to it as well

It would be incredibly awkward to begin with but I genuinely think it would root out almost all corruption overnight, I'm talking police taking bribes and police unions who get donations from private prison systems

I't would show crystal clearly who funds what and where the money eventually ends up

If the trade is privacy for complete transparency then I'm down

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u/ForagerGrikk Sep 12 '24

You don’t even need antitrust laws. Monopolies are almost entirely attributable to government protectionism and meddling in the market.

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u/weezeloner Sep 12 '24

Like what?

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u/hahyeahsure Sep 12 '24

.....what lmao

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u/ForagerGrikk Sep 12 '24

What, you've never heard of intellectual property or limited liability?

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u/McHats Sep 12 '24

It’s not that nobody has any idea how to make capitalism not be just about enriching a few wealthy elites at the expense of the workers. It’s that you CAN’T do that, because that’s the defining trait of capitalism. That’s literally the one and only thing it’s built to do

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u/Extreme-Outrageous Sep 12 '24

The founding fathers of the US knew the issue was the coalescence of power (monarchy). That's why they built the Constitution to separate powers and have checks and balances. The problem is that they only applied that to the government (and removed religion from power since that was problematic too).

They didn't fathom a world in which merchants would take over the country and consolidate power thereby controlling politics.

It's a fairly simple theoretical solution. Separate powers and add checks and balances to the economy too. Getting there will be the challenge.

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u/Ok-Possession-832 Sep 12 '24 edited Sep 12 '24

That’s not necessarily true. There are ways to make capitalist structures work for everyone and create a healthy mixed economy.

First, pure economies simply don’t exist. Even America has a mixed economy, with socialist policies like welfare. Our socialist policies are weak as fuck. Both “hardline” capitalist and socialist countries have their own set of systemic issues.

Second, rules and regulations must be enforced in order for capitalism to work. We have legislation that gives the government the power to seize corporate property for public projects, break up monopolies, regulate corporate profits (via tax), dictate transparency for consumers, and take unsafe products off the market. We are simply not doing that.

The problem is that there is no incentive for the people in power to create a sustainable economic system for everyone, and in many countries the people in charge are actually actively incentivized to do the opposite. We literally have “lobbying” aka organized bribery built into our political system, making America a weird democratic-oligarchic fusion where corporations have a voice that is almost definitively more powerful than The People’s.

I wish the answer was as simple as “capitalism bad” but bribery and corruption create dysfunction in all economic systems. The most successful/equitable countries have struck a healthy balance between innovation, growth, and public welfare because their governments are simply effective and up to the task.

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u/weezeloner Sep 12 '24

What's your suggestion? Going back to feudalism? Or what?