Christopher Chantrill:
The results are in. Baby-boomer geezers like me are cleaning up with the Fed’s asset bubble economy, while the working middle class is getting screwed, via regulation, student debt, and the welfare state’s subsidization of idleness.
But at least the oceans are receding and the hills are alive with the sound of music — from wind-turbines.
So let’s screw the banks and the insurance companies and buy local!
Last weekend the Wall Street Journal thoughtfully reviewed its 125 years of free-market advocacy: OK, the editors admit, the Journal got Herbert Hoover wrong. But on the whole they’ve backed freedom all along and equality when it’s about things like “breaking the government-enforced tyranny of Jim Crow.” The problem right now is that
President Obama and Nancy Pelosi turned to the old nostrums that government spending can conjure growth, that regulation can productively steer investment, and equality should be the main goal of economic policy.
Over at Forbes Joel Kotkin is asking “What if they gave a recovery, and the middle class were never invited?” Says he:
We’ve run an experiment under Bernanke, Bush and Obama to pump up the economy from above, and what we’ve done is squash the aspirations of those middle orders, particularly small business and the self-employed.
He is asking for good ideas from left and right on how to get the economy moving for the middle class.
Reason had the bright idea recently to run a poll to see what the millennials think of it all. The charitable thing to say is that they are confused. Millennials are in favor of Social Security privatization, cutting spending and taxes, and wealth distribution based on achievement. But they are also in favor of raising the minimum wage, guaranteeding access to health care, and increasing taxes on the rich.
Here’s a contradiction. I’ve heard from two acquaintances at Microsoft that they are anxious to patronize small local merchants instead of the big box stores. Maybe the next step for them is to quit Microsoft and start working for a nice little software startup for a lot less money where they can maximize human contact with their coworkers and their clients.
Then there are all the liberals like Alan Colmes confused about the idea of a Republican candidate for Congress suggesting the government has a monopoly on violence. Actually, I prefer the more direct “government is force.”
It’s natural for a governing class to have forgotten how they came to seize power. Liberals love to blame white males for western colonialism in Africa and the conquest of the Americas. But they don’t seem to get that their Outrage Industrial Complex practices domination and colonization on ordinary Americans every day of the year. And under Obama it’s got worse.
He is asking for good ideas from left and right on how to get the economy moving for the middle class?
Why?
He never listens!
The velocity of money needs to speed up.
To do that…..
Red tape to start businesses needs to be shredded to 1/10th its present amount.
Red tape to do business needs cutting, too.
Lower the tax RATES so people can save for their own aims, not be forced to pay for things they don’t want while not being able to save for their futures.
Dump the government workers unions….all of them.
Be able to fire incompetents in government at every level.
It can’t be underestimated how much this alone would save Americans.
Republicans have lost millennials largely because of the positions the party has taken on social issues. If they were more tolerant regarding social issues, I think they’d find millennials far more receptive to common sense arguments on other topics. The party could make a choice.
Anna Marie Cox spells out the problem in no uncertain terms: The GOP self-destruction is complete: millennials officially hate conservatives. The article is hyperbolic, but a fairly accurate assessment of the GOP’s millennial problem.
Strange that the liberals with lots of money have not voluntarily given it to the poorer, non-working libs so they will all be equal. Isn’t it?
@Greg: NYTimes says this:
Therefore the young of this nation can learn that communism/socialism is a crock at their age.
They may be secularists, but they are fiscally more conservative than Reagan’s voters were.
And who will be adding their votes to these young people’s?
Obama is importing hundreds of thousands, and eventually tens of millions, of Christians from Central and South America!
Very.
Like Cher.
Instead of helping, Cher has sent her condolences to the city of Detroit.
Via Twitter!
How long have the majority in Detroit been Dems? (Answer, since 1962.)
How long had the city been run by Dems? (Answer, since 1962.)
@Nanny G:
How long has the city had money problems? (Answer, since 1962.)
How long has the city been a disaster? (Answer, since 1962.)
He (Forbes Joel Kotkin) is asking for good ideas from left and right on how to get the economy moving for the middle class.
It can’t happen until after the November elections. Wait until December when Republicans win back the Senate and begin House impeachment investigation proceedings on Obama and Holder.
The post-recession Obama economy has performed barely better than the economy did during the first 16-19 quarters after the Great Depression ended. It is painfully obvious that in comparison to the other post-downturn economies seen after World War II, the Depression and Obama-era economies are in a horrible class by themselves.
http://bizzyblog.com/wp-images/ObamaFDRandOthEconsVsPeaks062514.png
One argument Obama and his administration’s defenders constantly make is that the hole dug in 2008-2009 was extraordinarily deep by all but Depression-era standards. As seen below, that argument doesn’t help their cause; it hurts it.
The post-Depression bounceback was as large as it was because the economy previously contracted by a huge 29 percent. Where’s anything resembling an analogous bounceback after 2008-2009, the worst contraction since the Depression? Answer: AWOL:
http://bizzyblog.com/wp-images/ObamaFDRandOthPostDownturnGrowth062514.png
http://www.bizzyblog.com/2014/07/16/fever-swamp-left-celebrating-how-steve-liesman-supposedly-embarrassed-rick-santelli-no-he-didnt/
As I’ve noted before the biggest action in the stock market right now (and lately) has been businesses buying back their own stocks from private stockholders.
Then, when they own more of those stocks they start paying out huge dividends!
All I can say is, if you are a pensioner or retired person….don’t sell!
If you are buying stocks on a regular basis ….keep doing so.
If you don’t own any stock but would like to be more secure when you’re older…..buy stocks.
There is no money in keeping your cash in the bank.
You are falling behind with cash saved in a bank.