Here’s what I don’t get–These individuals, trained as journalists, are supposed to be inherently skeptical of those in power. However, Obama declares that he’s being more transparent and honest, and these people just accept it at face value. To be fair to Mr. Ashbrook, he pushed Ms. Halloran on whether the Obama budget is really honest, but she ignored the question, and he dropped it. Mr. Crook raised the point that perhaps the Obama budget really isn’t all that honest.

So my question is–Isn’t it WORSE to trumpet how open and honest you’re being, and then wind up not really being all that open and honest?!!

As for Mr. Beatty’s gushing over unions–He and anyone else is free to an opinion on unions and whether they’re good for workers and the US in general. However, I’m deeply disturbed by the fact that the union boosters are willing to overlook how the new law that Obama is sure to put in place will give union organizers the right to intimidate workers into signing cards. If I suggested that we conducted our presidential elections that way, Mr. Beatty would surely scoff. So why is it okay for unions to operate in that way? Why not just make the process so that the integrity of union elections is guaranteed and protected? (My hunch is that the unions and their supporters know that more shops will be unionized with the card fiasco, because of the pressure aspect. This really saddens me.)

Capitalism for westerners has been very good all things considered since its birth five centuries ago!

But have you considered the negative impact on the rest of the world? From slavery to colonialism and today’s Globalization on the back of the “Third world”! This crisis is poetic justice for them.

I believe that the world is at a crossing road toward a global new system.Completely new paradigmes will emerge.Unrestrained materialism will decrease a great deal.The world is more and more a small village and Obama is viewed by a lot of people like the first leader of the entire world.The question is, is he ready to assume that role for a more sustainable system?
10% of world population can not control and consume 90% of the world ressources forever.

Those considerations can not be ignored as we are trying to conceive a better way forward.

Not a bad time and place to live… I’ve partied my ass off, I’ve traveled, and I burned green like there was no tomorrow. If Capitalism had to exist, I’m certainly glad I got to be in the right place at the peak.

First I need to rephrase my next to last sentence above, as it was ill considered.

Where I stated:
“Unless man’s intention is that there be no regard for the future of humanity and much of creation, then Capitalism, regulated or not, is the worst of all societal systems,”

I should have said:
“Unless man’s intention is that there be no regard for the future of humanity and much of creation, then Capitalism, regulated or not, is a system unsuited to the goal of maintaining quality of life for present and future generations.”

Obviously, it’s not “the worst of all societal systems,” and I should have proofread myself.

As to your query of “What then?”

I’ve never offered an alternative for Capitalism; I’ve only ever stated my case as to the failings of the system.

I can only offer the obvious: the alternative system would somehow have to manage resource use for sustainability of both the resource and the environment… short of that we lose an ultimate goal.

I hate to say it and I don’t condone it, but a workable system would likely have to be somewhat totalitarian. Resources would have to be rationed, population controlled, population centers carefully managed to optimize density and efficiency, land use allocated by plan, etc.

China has some answers as to how some of this might work, and so far as my knowledge goes, it’s not that pretty.

A system with such restrictions would make it tough for even limited Capitalism to work to much effect… the best one could hope might be to have some degree of guaranteed egalitarianism.

I’m definitely not Marxist, but Marxism sounds like it comes closest to something that might succeed at the goals of sustainability… a depressing thought, as I can’t see how humanity can evade such a system in the long run.

Insightful JP, you make it seem like you are among the first to recognize that capitalism has its flaws. Clearly the system is imperfect and as the recent financial crisis shows intelligent regulation is necessary to prevent the severe shocks that can occur in a more laissez-faire system. However, despite your critical view on the economic system I would challenge you to present a more effective one? The capitalist system can certainly stand to be improved, but its ability to stimulate innovation coupeled with the freedom it affords people to control their own lives makes it far superior to any sort of state planned system in my opinion.

FDR’s programs worked, they might not have worked as well as people wanted, and if your a stanch small government conservative I’m sure that even the kind of toilet paper FDR used would come under scrutiny.

What I mean by regulation is that I think the banks, such as Bank of America and Morgan Stanley should not be allowed to to what ever the hell they want to.

I also think it’s absurd that the companies(Standard and Poor’s is one example) that rate things such as securities should not be paid by the very companies that are trying to get the ratings. Conflict of interest.

As far as Reagen is concerned it way to simple to say that by him cutting taxes worked, while it did let more people keep money, the deficit soared. Property taxes went up and state and city taxes as well.

For some reason we seem to think in this country that we should get something for nothing. How do you people who do not want to pay taxes think we are to pay for trash collection, fire departments, police, street cleaning, road repair, snow removal, schools. If we keep lowering the taxes then what?

My problem with Bush is he went to war without doing what a country should do, raise revenue to do so.
Instead his government borrowed all of it. This was bad public policy, period.

As far as the current crisis, I like all of the people posting here do not have any idea what is going to happen. We are in uncharted waters.

I’ve been saying this for years:
Capitalism is already a proven failure!

In a model where resources are unlimited, regulated capitalism works nicely and may even be the most desireable system.

The problem is that resources ARE limited while there is a desire to maintain quality of life for present and future generations.

The nature of capitalism is that it requires crisis in order to function properly.

For instance, people want a resource, oil:
Supply and demand dictate that supply will ramp up to meet demand, eventually exceeding it; then oversupply reduces price, and people can even better afford oil; Supply ramps up further to meet the increased demand; the cycle repeats.
This system ensures that the resource, oil, will be used up as quickly as possible, and the cycle is not curbed until supply can no longer meet demand due to forced scarcity.

This model is the same for all resources, including: wood, water, extracted resources, food, etc…

CAPITALISM ENSURES A RACE TO SCARCITY FOR EVERYTHING!

Despite millennia of human history, only a few recent generations of man has managed to consume as much as 70% of the worlds easily recoverable resources, resources being defined as all that which is recovered for use by man.

CAPITALISM ENSURES A RACE TO CRISIS BEFORE PROBLEMS CAN BE SOLVED!

Too much pollution? Eventually Capitalism will ensure that excessive pollution is addressed… but not until it is fully acknowledged as already a severe problem.
Global climate change? Sure, Capitalism force a change to better behavior, but not until the problem reaches crisis level.
Enron? Bad toys from China? Bad pet food? Mortgage-backed securities? Tech bubbles? Capitalism has self-regulating mechanisms which will see to it that all of these problems are addressed… but not until each demonstrates that it has reached a crisis level.

This incredibly selfish wastfulness by a few generations of humanity is the direct result of the success of capitalist economies.
Success, yes… but only a few generations reap the rewards of success at the expense of all future generations.

Capitalism has many virtues, not the least of which is a drive towards progress and innovation, but the instinct for preservation of the species will soon have to be weighed against certain types of human “progress.”

Unless man’s intention is that there be no regard for the future of humanity and much of creation, then Capitalism, regulated or not, is the worst of all societal systems.
It is a race towards (and thus always ensures) scarcity and crisis.

You’re out of luck on this one.Where do you think my pseudo “wavre” comes from?It’s city in belgium(Brabant)where i spent years.I’ve lived in Europe Half of my life!From my first grade in elementary school up to my last year in high-school. I will not bore you with my life story”mais je connais l’Europpe comme le fond de ma poche”and i wonder what Europe your family members have been living in.I’m not denying the imperfections and inequalities that exist, but in comparaison one have to admit that the European social safety nest is stronger and more egalitarian.The documentary “Sicko” is very acurate on this particular topic.

The strenght of the unions in Europe has help to keep the politicians from too much eroding people’s basic rights(health,food,work and shelter).The main problem in our governments is that the people who makes decisions are rarely those who are impacted by those decisions.They want to restrict social security benefits,calling those programs”entitlements”. Although we pay into them, they make them sound like handouts!(unfunded mandates??)
They have money, they don’t care, they will never need that safety nest.They have “manufactured” a concensus in the media saying that those programs are the main cause of our future financial demise.But when it comes to the financial system, where they have invested interests, a bailout with no accountability is the only solution!
David i know you have enjoyed your first class cabin, but it’s time to get out and swim, the Titanic of unregulated capitalism is sinking!!

You are correct, I was incorrect, unemployment in 1940 was around 14%. However, in 1938 it was still at 19 percent, after 6 years of intense government intervention in the free market system. The fact is that FDRs own treasury secretary was very dismayed at the results of years of spending and regulating.

Your comment about low taxation and low regulation is not applicable. We did not have low taxation and low regulation during the Bush administration. The banks were regulated by policies started by the Clinton administration, and continued by Bush, Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, and company, which forced them to make loans to people that had no business receiving them. Every place the government has attempted to regulate a better solution for our country has been a failure.

Over the history of this country, no matter what tax rate was imposed on which income level citizen, the maximum amount of revenue collected has averaged around 18 percent of GDP. If you increase the tax on the wealthy, they will simply find tax shelters to hide their earnings, or they will stop making investments in this country to earn more. Jimmy Carter increased taxes on the wealthy and tax revenues declined. Reagan decreased taxes on the wealthy and tax revenues increased. Reagan’s biggest failure was that although he dramatically slowed the growth of government, he was unable to reduce it in size. When Bush reduced taxes on the wealthy, tax revenues increased as well. The only problem was the Bush was not fiscally conservative by any definition.
The problem with our current tax system is that whenever anybody, Democrat or Republican, says that they are going to tax the rich, my taxes go up. Most of the time because congress closes all kinds of deductions for middle class taxpayers, but you never hear about that part of the process. All of the politicians and their lobyist friends have millions of ways to shelter and hide their income. Meanwhile the poor don’t pay taxes anyway, so at the end of the day middle class working Americans are stuck with the bill.

If you think that more regulation will get us out of this, I ask you to explain how it is that Chris Dodd, who was supposed to be in charge of the Banking Committee, and overseeing the likes of Fanny May, Countrywide and Freddie Mac, received the most campaign contributions from those institutions, received favorable loans from Countrywide, and in 2007 said that all of them were in great shape. The Banking committee had oversight over all of these institutions, and when some people challenged that there were serious problems with the system in 2007, they were beaten down by the likes of Maxine Waters, Chris Dodd, and others who said that everything was just fine. Regulation got us into this situation, it will not get us out.

Government was the last resort in the great depression. The reason is grew was because they were the only ones hiring. You spin these stats any way to make it seem that the conservative view point is right and the left is wrong. However look at what we have now, we had about 30 years of Reaganomics, which seems to have failed. The last 8 years the republicans were in charge and they spent like kids in a candy store. Bush took us from being in the black to huge deficits. He started two wars without asking for sacrifice, which in times of war means raising taxes or selling bonds or both.

I have said this before, there are plenty of democrat’s who are to blame for this mess as well, namley the wall street crowd.

The party is over, low taxation and no regulation has failed. Have not noticed that? Are you paying attention?

Hover did nothing and the unemployment level when he left office in 1933 24.9 and the level of under employment was close to 25%. By 1937 unemployment dropped to about 14.3%. Clearly something was working here, you have to be in complete denial not to see this. Was it perfect, no, nothing in life and politics is.

As far as unions are concerned, like everything else some are good and some are awful. The bottom line for me is that workes should have the right to orginize, period.

We have tried supply side for over 25 years and it seems to have failed. So has IRA’a, which originally were designed to help with a pension and social security for retirement, not to be the main source of income.

Clearly something has gone wrong, very wrong and just standing around and point fingers and blaming FDR wont work.

1. Increasing taxes on the wealthy, and on coporations was tried in 1932 by FDR.

2. Creating government agencies (NRA, WPA, etcetera) and doubling the size of the federal government in order to put Americans back to work was tried in 1932 by FDR.

3. Increasing the power of the unions, while vilifying the corporations that were employing the workers was tried in 1932 by FDR.

FDRs own Secretary of Treasury, Henry Morgenthau III commented that after doubling the size of the government, and taking over significant portions of the commerce of the United States, unemployment in 1940 remained near 20% and the DOW was still trading in the same range it was at in 1930.

The comment made by Jack Beatty about the union worker being more “productive” is nothing but tripe. I would love to see where he got his statistics from. I have worked in union environments most of my life, both in the union, and in management. The unions I have worked for and with had absolutely no interest in increasing productivity. His comment about the profitablility of unionized companies loses all validity if you simply look at Detroit. Take a look at the states that have been hit the hardest in this crisis, Michigan and California — strong union states. Take a look at the states that have fared the best The Carolinas, Georgia, Tennessy, right to work states. The state of Connecticut where I live and work, has lost hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs as factory after factory closed down and left to avoid the workplace obstructions put in place by the union. It is not even about wages, it is about “work rules” that handcuff the business and prevent them from being able to have the flexibility required to meet customer demands. When I was a union employee, my “fellow workers” came to me and told me to “slow down” because I was making the rest of the crew look bad. I can tell you that it was not a friendly conversation, not to mention that there was a strong connection of the union to the Gambino crime organization.

I listen to these radio shows and find myself screeming at the radio saying, how can people be so ingorant of history and common sense.

Jack Beaty is right. If Chinese Governement gives one speech, questioning our ability to pay; … guess what?
You will lose sleep that night.

Wavre – yes, I have lived extensively in Europe – most of my family lives in France & England. You obviously have no idea what you’re talking about. France is not more “egalitarian” – it is FAR less so; the people are not “happier” in any way that you conceive of that term; my sister-in-law is a consultant to help workplaces improve because they are often horribly inefficient and authoritarian; the hospitals are atrocious; and yes, politicians everywhere are “owned,” as you say – do you think this changes when a country becomes more socialist? No, it gets worse; and very much to the detriment of the country. Start thinking Wavre – and stop wallowing in wishful thinking about what Europe is really like.