Discussion on:

Interview: How corporate socialism is crippling U.S. prosperity

that's not what it means. Please stick to the accepted meaning of words otherwise none of us will have a clue what anyone else is talking about. This is not socialism, it's just business. Powerful interests always act to maximise their power and interests. Is that new? The important word here is 'corporation'.

They're Johnston's words, so don't shoot the messenger.

That said, the headline is much too long anyway, and this term certainly doesn't help that fact. I've edited it.

The term is Corporate Socialism, and the concept is that while the profits are indeed tagged for private retention, the FAILINGS of the system are indeed "socialized" -- that is WE CONSUMERS pay for the failures.

If you truly fail to understand this simple feature of today's Capitalism, I point you to the fact that the government recently bailed out the Banks -- rather than let them simply fail, as the "Free Market" myth says they ought to when they screw up.

It is not "just business" to cheat the game -- meaning cheating taxpayers and the public -- by lying and fixing the rules. That is a lame, lame, lame excuse that flawed individuals have been using for decades to cover their bad behavior. If you cannot be an honest business person, stay out of business. The reason the nation is in this sorry fix is because Wall Street people fixed the game on housing, then walked away with millions, each, in bonuses as a reward for tanking their corporations and the nation. There is nothing to be admired in such individuals. Obama's biggest malfunction has been his failure to prosecute people in the financial sector for bad behavior. You may have noticed that the American people are running on a shorter fuse. Stay tuned. There is comeuppance in the wings waiting to take the stage.

You said "We pay four times what the French do for a triple play package of cable, Internet and telephone and they get worldwide TV, not just domestic; their Internet is ten times faster and instead of two country calling, they get long-distance to 70 countries at no extra charge. All that for $38 compared to the U.S. average of $160 including taxes. "

This may be true, but the really awkward thing about it is that in France, the primary provider is France Telecom, which drives the prices and keeps them low, which is State-owned and is to all intents a monopoly. You prove, awkwardly, that the best way to run a national universal telecom system and provide low-cost universal service is to nationalize it!! Is that your intention?

whether intentional or not.

I don't do cable, satellite, etc. and the reason I decline the services, and especially "packages" is that I know the prices are a cheat, and secondly, 80% of the available material is garbage that no one with an intellect or education would watch.

...but theft as well.

EVERY "package" of cable channels the industry sells sends money to FAUX Noise as part of the "basic package."

This means that EVERY cable bill paid in America helps support the channel that every (THINKING) American knows is really a Propaganda Channel.

If we lived in Europe, we'd have a CHOICE to pay FAUX or not, based on Ala-Carte channel packages. Not in America, sorry.

Yet another way the Corporatists have us over a barrel.

I hate paying for MSNBC, CNBC,CSPAN, CNN, PBS, CURRENT TV, HEADLINE NEWS and all the other channels that are part of the propaganda arm of the liberal/socialist movement.

I would gladly cut off their funding with an al-a-carte buying plan. Judging by their poor ratings, most of those channels would fail if not kept alive by forced fees.

I would save a lot more money al-a-carte by dropping them than you would save dropping just FOX.

I'm a dual citizen of the US and Switzerland (born and raised in the US). In Switzerland we don't have greedy, corrupt, moronic Republicans messing everything up with stupidity. The US has the only people in the world stupid enough to believe in the failure known as trickle down economics. Reganomics was the worst idea in history and Regan was the third worst President the US has ever seen, (only preceded by the 2 Bushes). The US doesn't have to re-invent the wheel, there are plenty of countries that have surpassed the US and they make a great example of what to copy. (and here is a little clue, they all think the Republicants are worthless morons who only know how to run a country into the ground. I happen to agree with them)

...from a citizen of a country that gets to remain wealthy as a haven for those who hide their wealth from the Progressives he so admires.

Except for defense, ( no private contractors) , railways ( strictly state owned) , postal service (again state owned) all other services have state owned as well privately held service providers, banking, insurance, air and road transportation, health services, education, you name it. There is abundant competition in every field.

All services are firmly regulated and controlled by the state in the best interest of the people and national security. One has the choice to opt for any from a wide choice.

That is why there are NO burner phones available in India, No communication service is available without 100% verified identity of the individual availing that service. No way to hide caller ID. No way to disenfranchise absolutely any individual by any stupid ID laws. It happens to be a fundamental right as it should be in a true democracy. No filibustering either. BTW we do not have those moronic republicans, either.

You obviously don't understand free markets, the freedom and liberty they present to people of a nation. I wouldn't expect you to understand this being from India. A nation the U.S. has help lift itself form poverty.

Here in Australia there is reasonable carrier competition, and our internet &c is closer to France's than the USA's.
Also, the prices were a higher and the service poorer when we did have a monopoly (Telstra owned pretty well all of the infrastructure, and charged retail prices to other ISPs to start with).
I think his point stands.

Its the regulator, NOT France Telecom that dictates wholesale prices in France and herein lies the difference between France and the US (and other states that suffer from uncompetitive telcos); ineffective regulators, stymied by incompetence and corporate lobbyists acting against the consumer.

Well why not?! Cheap, universal services compared to increasingly expensive, dismal services?? It seems a no-brainer. But somehow this has become an acceptable standard for too many Americans.

Good point ATT is a subfunction of the NSA anyway!

...since at least in "socialism", the benefits or suffering are theoretically shared by most.

But fundamentally, I totally agree with him. Capitalism needs failure as much as it needs success. By not allowing the fundamentally broken banks to fail, we only encourage the bad actors responsible.

There was a brilliant advert in a magazine that exposes a lot of corruption like this in SA - called Nose Week. They had an advert for a motor manufacturer asking for bailout that went along these lines: "You did not buy our sh*tty cars, so now we will take your money anyway." It points out the absurdity of what happened with the bailout system. These same companies who took hard earned tax payer money - gave no mercy to suppliers who went under. They then retrenched large portions of their workforce. By allowing the abusers of capitalism not to fall - the Bush administration ended capitalism. Regardless of party politics - capitalism needs reform as does the political system.

"Capitalism" is only a state of reality. It exists under all political/economic regimes. The only difference between these regimes is the degree that the state attempts to manipulate it.

During the Cold War, I used to tell people that there was a far more pure form of capitalism in Russia than there was in the US. It was called the "black market".

exists any time the established political system implicitly requires it; the requirement will never be explicit. Whenever the established system tends to strongly favor one group, while denying its benefits to others or when a commodity (e.g. drugs & alcohol) is too strongly regulated or denied by by that system, this "pure" capitalism springs up to make available that which is denied. Thus, "pure" capitalism existed in the USSR under the Soviet regime. It existed under Prohibition. It exists now under drug prohibition.

The problem with "pure" capitalism is it tends toward monopoly, and the potential/current monopolist will do what is necessary to gain or keep the monopoly. As this type of capitalism operates outside the established society, what is necessary is not usually restrained by current social mores. Thus, the gang wars and violence of the 20s were a natural process under "pure" capitalism...and the gang wars and violence of the last three decades are also a natural process.

...since almost every monopoly I can think of is, in fact, established and maintained by government.

The banks also promised to do mortgage workouts if they were bailed out, but then accelerated repossessions. They promised to loan to small business, the real job engine, but instead went back to gambling in the Big Casino. But everyone just accepted the lie and now the DOJ has given Goldman-Sachs a get-out-of-jail-free card by publicly saying they will never prosecute G-S.

Socialism among the only ones who count the corporate citizens nonhuman immortal immoral psychopathic entities. Not little people. Like humans.

Also these immortal "persons' tend to have millions and billions to influence their interests too. Last time I checked I didn't have any "free" money to send to a politician let alone buy lunch.

Now we pay the price for the excesses of globalizing American companies. I worked for one of those utilities that expanded to Europe and nearly went broke because they tried to use their 1930's business plan too big. Workers in Texas were forced to cooperate with freezing wages while executives were rewarded millions and in one case a billion dollars to fail. They all left and our retirement plans recovered only to be sold to another company that raided the retirement plans. Good luck with maintaining good service and happy workers without letting the workers have some control.

Unionise!

I know someone who lost all their money to Enron but is Still a Republican and doesn't like that N**er President. Some people just know how to bend over and kick themselves in the ass.

"Wall Street and the Too Big To Fail Banks are, for now, by far the worst offenders. We put $14.7 trillion, the entire economic output of the nation in 2009, at risk under the George W. Bush administration bailout instead of letting these firms suffer the consequences of their own mismanagement."

Yep, that's half the story. And then Obama signed Dodd-Frank into law, which institutionalizes "Too Big To Fail." That's the rest of the story.

When it comes to corporatism, with politicians and corporations both bellying up to the public trough, there's plenty of blame to go around.

Here's a crazy idea: Perhaps the solution is less government, not more.

stop the class warfare!

any more than less government equals "free market".

In light of the fact that the average income of 95% of Americans has stagnated or decreased over the past 30 years (when adjusted for inflation) while the earnings of those at the top of the economic pyramid have soared (again, when adjusted for inflation), just who, exactly, do you think is making war on whom?

I am sure Ronny will save us right?

In India the government would have bought off all the failed mortgages for a dime on a dollar or simply allowed those companies to go bankrupt. Same with the banks and insurance companies. They would simply have been merged into state owned entities under similar conditions with the share holders hanging on to the worthless paper.

A similar approach with renegotiated mortgages, for example repayment plan sans interest, would have gone far in alleviating the miseries of the US population. The buyers would be held responsible but at an affordable rate. The government too would make money on their throwaway purchase price !

If the US government started arbitrarily seizing mortgages or forced them to be paid off at pennies to the dollar, no company would ever again make a mortgage loan in the US except at huge interest rates.

There was a lot of greed on every side during the real estate bubble. People signed on to mortgages their income could never support, in the vain hope that real estate would continue to increase at ridiculous rates. They were just as overcome by greed as the big Wall Street banks. Rather than enforcing existing regulations to stop the madness, government at all levels instead did everything it could to make these outlandish loans possible.

As for India, the central government struggles under massive debt as it subsidizes fuel and other commodities. It's a game that can't be won in the long run, and its people are barely improving their lot despite these massive subsidies.

I think 'greed' is the wrong word for people who were fooled into buying a house, taking on a mortgage they couldn't really afford (or understand), only to become 'upside-down' or foreclosed on a few years later. Greed is illustrated by the Big Banks, the mortgage lenders, allied politicians, etc.

Those are the folks who made out or remain making billions, while not being held accountable for almost tanking America's financial system. Somehow those consumers who you claim were being "greedy," who are now probably a relative-away from being completely homeless, as opposed to 'making out like bandits', doesn't qualify.

Foolish, naive, vulnerable, easily-manipulated, and yes, even a few stupid homebuyers, but 'greedy' isn't the correct word I'd use.

A lot of that "greed" is because housing inflated so much it cost a million to buy a bungalow. I recall seeing a lousy little yellow crackerboard house at the bottom of my hill, that would have sold for about twenty grand in the fifties inflate to nearly a half million. Ordinary working people had to take out ruinous loans to buy the same house they could have paid down on minimum wage in the fifties. "Make a fortune flipping houses" was the big scam hyped everywhere. Buy a house for almost nothing, flip it, then the next guy flips it, then the next guy flips it, all for a profit for the Same Friggin House. But at a certain point someone has to pay for all those ill gotten gains.

When did the US government tell the banks they were required to abandon safe lending practices? And if government did, in fact, do so, wouldn't the banks have been perfectly justified in telling the government where to go and how to get off when it got there? Do you think the banks wouldn't have done that if compliance meant a decrease in profits?

More information...
http://www.clevelandfed.org/research/commentary/2009/0509.cfm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subprime_mortgage_crisis

It's just a repug lie to divert our attention from the banksters so we can hate our own government - mostly fueled by Southerners who still want to win the civil war and bust the union.

Even if the govt relaxed lending requirments, they did Not dream up this idea of slicing and dicing mortgages into worthless instruments, then selling and reselling them all over the planet, inflating their value a thousand time - which is what caused the Real damage. The banks thought that up all on their own.

It all started under Carter. That led to law suits in the late 1980s, but to keep it simple. Here goes.

When the US Government, starting under Bush 41 and moving on through Clinton and Bush 43, relaxed the lending rules the banks started to run out of money to fund all of the mortgages they were making. You can thank the authors of the useless Dodd/Frank bill for being behind many of the questionable changes that followed.

Through Fannie and Freddie the US government started the practice of bundling mortgages so the government would buy them and the banks would then have the cash on hand needed to make more loans. That idea came out of freshman Congressman Marty Meehans office in conjuction with Congressman Barney Frank around about 1993/94.

It was an idea brought up by a Bank of America official at a meeting in Lawrence Mass as part of a pilot project providing mortgages to people whos credit had been trashed by unemployment in the 1991 recession. The origional concept was a noble and well thought out plan that went bad during implimentation.

After realizing that the scope of what they had gotten into was even more than the government could afford, the bureaucrats in Fannie and Freddie pushed Clinton for help. He worked with Congress to repeal Glass/Steagall in 1999 to allow investment banks to get into the game.

The rules were so fast and loose that all semblance of good banking went out the window. Many of the lending rules were managed by the individual federal reserve banks. Some like, the NY and LA fed, went nuts and set virtually no rules. Count welfare and unemplyment payments as income? Sure. No income, no problem.

The level of regional control is why New England saw some of the least impact of the sub-prime crisis. The head of the Boston fed had kept a lid on the crazy lending among New England based banks. It pissed them off at the time, but only 1 bank under his region has failed during this mess. The damage in New England was limited to those mortgages held by the big national banks. Local banks in New England are now thriving.

Nail on the head! I've never figured out why all of the Dodd/Frank stuff receives no mention in the media..even when it was fresh.

Another effect of the "Too Big To Fail" is that the smaller banks in the rest of the country outside of New England that didn't get involved with the scam, did honest business, etc.. are now taking it in the shorts for the TBTF's..

Yes but the taxpayers would have benefited Why do you think they want to raid Social Security and say bad thing about it? Well its full of money what a greedy grab.

of those scum trying to call Social Security an Entitlement, as if its some form of welfare. I worked real hours and had real money taken from my check for SS - it's an Investment. These Goebbels-like brainwashers on the right try to make it sound bad with their word games.

You are not the problem with SS as you paid in and thus rightfully expect to benefit. The problem is that the politicians have decided to use the "retirement" program like a welfare program. There are many getting SS benefits who never paid (or paid little). I frequently see billboards with lawyers advertising their services to help get SS disability. I know of healthy people in their 40s who get SS disability and will for the next 30 to 40 years until they die.

These are the reasons why SS is going broke. Like normal when there is a large amount of money involved, the politicians cannot keep their hands off and end up using the money to benefit themselves. In this case making it easier for those who should not get benefits to get them. They do this because those getting the benefits will turn around and vote for the politicians who allowed it. So in effect the politicians are giving away our money to those who don't deserve it so that they can buy their votes.

Wouldn't you have rather invested your "real money" on your own instead of being forced to "invest" in this government give away?

Too many people think SS is this big pile of money sitting there.

Congress and Presidents, from both parties, have been raiding it for decades.

It is full of IOUs that are coming due soon. At that point it will crush the federal budget.

What kind of "investment" is it that is forced by law, and has a guaranteed negative rate of return?

At least Madoff's victims had an opportunity to opt out.

Iceland repudiated their phony debt, jailed the rotten banksters, and is recovering. We are not. Funny how our press says Nothing about Iceland.

And Bjork is cool ;')

Because Congress and Presidents in a decades long Bipartisan effort made everything that was done to create the finacial mess LEGAL to do.

Many of them broke NO LAWS.

We should set a great example for the future. Jail all of the politicians involved.

Do note that the greatest financial and business growth was during a time of Strong regulation of finance and business, no matter the size of govt. Once the corporations got their hooks into govt to entrench themselves, the regulations were loosened--all this does is to advantage the larger companies already in a particular market, as it allows them to freeze or squeeze out the competition.

Also, govt should always hold onto infrastructure that is non-competitve--hospitals, public transport, a few other things. If they don't, all they do is get worse and cost more under private companies.

The trouble is that things like facts and financial history are unknown to the Faux and Limbaugh crowd. They are not only ignorant of facts - they can look right at them and deny them. It's really a form of insanity.

Why do we know that when it comes to individuals we can't take the cop off the corner, or we'd all be getting robbed and murdered, but the GOP claims we can do that for corporations. It's insane. There is exactly the percentage of sociopaths in corporations as in the general population - probably more since they are drawn to power. And just one can do a Lot more damage. Of course, most government regulators, like the FDA, are corrupt, and in bed like they are with Monsanto, due to bribes and revolving-door jobs. So I think I mean Honest regulation ;')

Someone has the guts to state that the Reagan experiment is the reason for our present mess!
"All of the shift I identify in THE FINE PRINT began in either the 1980s or later, meaning when we abandoned the New Deal for Reaganism, which both parties now embrace."

All trickle down has ever given us is more profit for the top. The myth is that if corporations make more profit they will then hire more people. Jobs are created from need and nothing more. Without a strong and growing middle class who will buy the goods we sell? Go to any third world nation and see what the lack of a strong middle class means for the economy.

Complete nonsense.

The "New Deal" was about getting a critical mass of the population attached to and totally dependant upon the state. The Reagan years were but a mere blip in that trend.

We're on our way to Greece.

We are on our way to becoming any one of the sub-Saharan economies looted by oligarchs and plutocrats.

There is no comparison to Greece; comparing the US to Greece displays an abysmal lack of understanding of the economies of both countries.

We are becoming Greece; a democracy where the majority of people are completely dependent upon the government for their income, and will always vote for more benefits and less taxes to pay for them.

yup, and people like Romney making his pile from creating jobs by exporting them to China.

Name three good things about Ronald Reagan:
He's Dead.
He's Dead.
He's Dead.

Sad to read such sick rubbish.

Visit www.democraticroad.com and pick up "True Freedom - The Road to the First Real Democracy" if you ever want to properly fix all of these problems.

"In essence, youre being ripped off, and those responsible are taking everyones money while assuming very little risk."

This has been going on for decades. There are so many manipulative and nasty little lies and tricks that they can't be counted. At the top of any given corporation, the individuals do as they please to line their own pockets with vast wealth and then bald-facedly lie about why the company isn't making money and why workers can't be given at minimum the expected cost-of-living raises or anything else for that matter. In fact, these big dogs will fly first class all over the world at $4K a pop, but they will not spend a pound to replace work-equiment, leaving it to managers to blame problems on employees. It's a rigged game ftom top to bottom. I have no objection to them making money. I object to the constant stream of lies and lack of ethics.

The cost of living scheme is one very obvious method by which human beings are slowly put through the grinder. Why should cost-of-living raises be demanded? because.. if you are hired for an arbitrary $50K a year, and after 10 years of 1% raises for all hardworking employees, it is $54,684. But the cost of living went up 4% each year, so the pay should properly be $74,102 (not including any raises for merit) See how the workers at all levels are actually given large gross pay cuts every year? The pay is not raised by 1% each year (as your manager says, apologizing that the company has no money) with those little raises, but it is effectively cut by 3% each year and no one talks about the fact that ther cost of labor isn't being paid as it should. Distractions from the important numbers. So, after the 10 years, the employee's real pay has been cut to 73.8% of the hire wage. Sure, this can be brought up to one's managers, etc, but they can't do anything about it.. They get the same.. Only the top boys make out, with big bonuses and non-publicized incentives most of the rest never find out about.

The only way to stay above the cost of living any more is to fire your employer, take your experience and knowledge, and move on up to that new hiring offer at a competitor, 10-20% more.

Employers have no idea how much intellectual property they throw out the window and into the waiting arms of competitors because of the top boys' personal greed and failure to properly compensate employees. penny wise and pound foolish. I have seen this many, many times.

Another example of this two-faced destructive behavior is the way subscriber agreements are wrtten. The provider is not responsible for anything and does not suffer if they fail to deliver, but woe to the guy who is a day late with a payment. It may be that some people actually prefer to have bad credit, because then there is nothing they can be threatened with when they default on payments or make bills late.

These are only a few reasons why many people do not "consume" any more, they do not buy things except what is absolutely necessary, will not assume debt, etc.. They are sick of it. Why give these servants of Mammon, the great satan, the abominal grinder of human beings, even more? Why be subject to insane customer agreements any more than absolutely necessary? No. Let them go to scratch.

When I was a computer programmer, the common way to get a raise was to go from company A to company B. Then company A would hire someone from company B, where you had just got a job and a raise, to replace you. The new hire would get a raise over your salary that was much more than you asked for to stay. It was all insane.

Then of course, each company had to waste time and money training you and getting you up to speed. I Never figured out why they acted so irrationally.

Unfortunately, even until now, after several centuries ... there is no known example of "free market" that has not finished the same way ... not be a free market cash ... without a strong regulatory role and effective by the State ... that is the reality ... and paradox, while ... maybe we forget the yin and yang ... everything necessary in perspective ...

That was the year Glass/Steagall was essentially repealed after decades of waivers and exceptions granted by Congress and the sitting Presidents made the law effectively useless anyway.

The repeal of Glass/ Steagall broke down the last remnants of the wall put up between routine banking banks and investment banks after the Great Depression to prevent another 1929 style economic collapse. As expected by a few naysayers in 1999, it did not take long for the banking system to exploit their new found freedoms and make a mess of things.

To make matters worse than 1929, the US government, through Fannie and Freddie, encouraged the bad behavior by buying up and insuring billions of dollars of questionable mortgages granted to people who would have never received a mortgage under the old school, sound banking rules.

Despite many calls to jail Wall Street bankers, I doubt many, if any, will be jailed because much of what they did was made legal by a bi-partisan effort in Washington DC spanning generations of politicians.

And all fluff measures like Dodd/Frank did not touch the root causes of the subprime mortgage crisis. Subprime mortgages targeted at people who cannot afford them are now limited by regulation alone.

All of the bad behaviors that caused the crash of 2007/2008 are still legal if regulators allow them to happen again.

Its not often I find myself agreeing with you. You made a concise point this time that I cannot find fault with.
I too have called for the return of Glass/Steagall.

Glass-Steagall is like good weather. Everyone wants it but nobody can do anything about it. And now with Citizens' United just forget having a democracy.

I'm loving the discussion here today folks.

I think there was a short window when the banks could have been held accountable but that opportunity was lost. Dodd/Frank is even fluffier after congress watered it down on the advice of lobbyists.

The current problem as I see it is that we are being asked by the fox to let it stand guard at the hen house; in spite of the feathers stuck in its teeth. The banks are not able to self regulate when the biggest can ignore risks and expect the tax payers to bail them out. The last bail out did not ask for accountability or even a plan to pay back, the tax payers deserve to demand accountability and more if we have to bail the banks out again.

Good business done well can prosper if the cheaters are caught and prosecuted.

"Good business done well can prosper if the cheaters are caught and prosecuted."

The problem is the government no longer regulates the financial markets for the betterment of the nation.

They have become part of the problem through market manipulation and laws that are designed to allow shadowy behavior and prevent regulators from enforcing sound banking rules.

There is little enforcement and even less prosecution because much of what used to be illegal is now normal business.

This applies to all commerce. A framework of regulation has to be in place to ensure that abuse cannot take place without consequence. Selfregulation is in fact no regulation

Between regulation and over regulation.

A great example comes out of one FAA policy rolled out under the Obama administration.

Old regulation: All carpet on planes must be fire resistant.

New regulation. All carpet on planes must be fire resistant and made of 100 natural fibers obtained from sustainable sources.

No such carpet existed. It had to be developed from scratch.

http://www.triplepundit.com/2012/10/boeing-american-airlines-faa-collaborate-environmentally-progressive-technologies/

I don't see your point at all. It's a test program, they're cooperating, and there is a list of technologies they are trying that they feel will be of benefit. It certainly doesn't look like strong-arm regulation unless it's Really over-interpreted.

They wrote the regulation then realized the tech did not exist. Morons.

So they had to pay for a test program to prove the tech.

Just another excuse to spend money.

It doesn't even mention the mandate.

But imagine how inexpensive that carpet could be if hemp was legal...

You make false claims about actions never taken by the FAA and the current administration and present a questionable statement as a fact. Did you interpret your own citation incorrectly on purpose, or are you merely misinformed?

The Europeans have even let banksters take over their economies. The fox not only guards the henhouse, he Owns the henhouse.

When the generation that experienced the great depression dies of the matter is no longer part of the social memory so Glass/Steagall is out the window and in comes the bad times. Inevitable historical force of greed at work.

But as I said, housing prices had inflated so much you had to get an unsupportable mortgage to buy a small house that a working man could easily have afforded decades before. Fanni and Freddie didn't inflate housing. It was all the enormous greed I saw advertised to "Make Big Money Flipping Houses" Every time there is a scheme to make a lot of money with only a little work, it ends badly.

David uses the term Socialism - and it is redistributive in nature, but isn't this closer to Fascism in that the gov't is collaborating with business to bring these rules about the two become inexorably linked with the government getting more and more control and shaping how the businesses behave vs. having the "free hand" of the market do so. Limiting competition vs. opening these markets. Unfortunately everything that David points out about the power structure of these duopolies or monopolies are true of our broken two party system in which now we have a duopoly of power that can be bought and favors sold.

...is the bookkeeping. Either way, it's the central authority telling someone what to do and how they can do it. And the only real beneficiaries are those at the top of the pyramid.

Fascism, Communism, and modern Fabian systems are all attempts to implement Socialism. Get over it all ready. And yes, all three have the common basis in that they all want to provide security. Security to people, that cannot be provided. Security to industrial production organizations. Communists by having the organization owned by the Government, and Fascist and Fabian systems by the government assuming the results of failure. All three systems also support monopoly, either directly or indirectly.

The observations in the Article are spot on. Yes, failure is a part of Capitalism. No organization is too big to fail, as the EU is discovering right now. Think Greece, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, and soon, France.

We are really not very far behind them.

Fascism isn't socialism, it's statism. There is a difference. They can, however, be applied together.

When GE bought out RCA (at that time a very successful company), I saw the handwriting on the wall and called it Corporate Feudalism. You may recall that with feudalism, the King was able to tax anybody into starvation, and if somehow someone escaped that fate, the lower level lords had absolute power over the serfs who had no real rights at all. We are very rapidly reaching that state here in the US.

Free market capitalism is a lie if you speak those words about America. This is the real deal.

The term "corporate socialism" may be appropriate here given the socializing of bad corporate policy through taxpayer bailouts engineered by government agencies strongly tied to Wall Street, phony "green companies" and so on. The unfortunate truth is that bailouts have become integral to the business model of the largest companies in the financial sector while government imposes high-risk activity, such as untenable mortgage loans and/or loan forgiveness in the interest of "social justice". Nothing is too big to fail; they fail anyway and the taxpayers pick up the tab as with General Motors and Chrysler while the government declares they were "saved" by brave public policy.

David Cay Johnston is absolutely correct about the abysmal state of our television and communication services. $63 a month for "high speed" (12 mbps) interrnet. $95 a month for a package of channels with reruns and infomercials much of the time. Service in and out.

Our political system is completely out of control. Citizens are receiving no protection from these incompetent robber barons. Democrats don't get it. Republicans don't get it.

But we the people are getting it. In an uncomfortable place.

In terms of conversion or purchasing power India has the lowest telephony service in the entire world. It costs me no more than US$ 4/= equivalent per year for unlimited incoming text or voice calls with $ 3.80 worth of outgoing voice calls. A txt message costs $0.01 and voice call $0.01 per minute ! All mobile phones sold are fully unlocked without requiring any kind of contract.

The author whines that residents in socialist countries pay less for internet, overlooking the massively higher tax burdens they must pay to enjoy the subsidy.

No thanks. I'd rather have the choice to pay "more" (is $20 more? That's what our monopoly provider charges), or choose to do without, than have the government tax me so everyone else can have subsidized service.

The reason monopoly / duopoly continues is because potential customers aren't willing to pay the cost of adding a third or fourth wired entity to the mix. Stringing cable / copper / coax / fiber to every house costs a bundle - $2K/house for high-density, more for rural settings. With LTE coming soon, new carriers are appropriately loathe to take the risk on such investments without contractual guarantees from consumers - which they won't give. Instead, a few loudmouth consumers want to have their cake (1 Gbit fiber) and force the rest of us to underwrite it.

You must be joking. What country are you talking about? Must be US where almost everything costs anywhere from 20 to 30 times the price in India. India was the pioneer of designing and deploying 256 line ( and higher) solar powered telephone exchanges linking remotest very small villages. We also have very high deployment of WLL telephony service which does not require any cabling whatsoever. Majority of TV subscribers are linked through satellites with more than 400 channels available for a meager US$ 10/= to 12/= per month ! All these from privately owned corporations WITHOUT any government subsidies and after paying huge amounts for licensing.

...making 5 cents/hour to do all of our dirty work for us. Oh, to be middle-class in a country with widespread abject poverty! But we can hope. If we keep going like we've gone the last four years, we'll be there soon.

and you may get your wish.

Contrary to what you say, India is socialist. How much of the economy is subsidized? What percentage work for the government or government industries?

In the US, we have rural electrification and telephone, subsidized by the big city populations. Your very small villages can't afford to pay for the initial installation or the ongoing maintenance. It's completely subsidized.

If India is so cheap to live in, why do so many of your people come here to work and live?

Really? Our carriers are not subsidised, we are not socialist.

You are wrong the access to the phone poles is a monopoly you have the phone co and the cable that's a non competing arrangment the FCC prevented wireless net by refusing the use of already purchased air because of whiners with billions. My cable company in one county takes in billions. ONE county.

Not only are journalists a dying breed, but the ones who remain aren't going to dig very deep. We live in an age of sensationalist, soundbite journalism. We will devote thousands of print pages, millions of megabytes, and hours of airtime on a reality show star's most recent scandal, but stories about legislation and budgets are "boring." They're not "sexy."

Some young reporters either don't know how to research a story or don't want to spend the time on it. Where massive layoffs have left every department short-staffed, they may not have time to spend on understanding an issue and crafting a good story about it; so we end up with stories told from press releases and wire copy, repeated over and over by thousands of newspapers, TV networks, websites, blogs, and occasionally, radio stations.

And let's face it, if given the option, 47% of the population would probably choose the reality show scandal over an in-depth study of the legislation that will affect their day-to-day lives, but I don't know if that's because they've been conditioned over the past 25 years to "care" about the gossip or because they just don't want to think about how corporations and the government are stripping the American people of not just their money and their rights, but their hopes and dreams as well.

While you are correct at one level - the competing interests of sensationalism; there is a more profound and sinister issue here. These corporations who have crossed the ethical lines (allowed by government policy) are also advertisers in many publications that would have reported on them. It would take a brave editor to allow a major customer to be exposed in the cut throat business of advertising. After all, is this not what media is about?

I suspect some of those who benefited from the corruption include one or two media families or their close friends. The next question is - how complacent have we become? Even though this information is out - do we care enough to take a stand. The abuse of the system is unfortunately a downward spiral in society standard of living - and on this I agree with the author.

Make that about 85% of the population. And most of the rest are in prison.

Sometimes I wish we had a "culture czar" with control over entertainment. It wouldn't work, but I can dream.

The media is not your friend.

It's also note worthy that the discussion isn't dominated by irate fake patriotism as would have in recent years. People of all political philosophies are finally seeing that the US has a dysfunctional political system (a fake democracy) that has destroyed our governments representational functionality and general leadership competence and as well destroyed our dysfunctional economy (fake capitalism) . Since it has become absolutely clear that we have zero democratic solutions to the above problems, it seems we have reached a point where we're going to see if this country's citizens have the courage to force the changes necessary - before the nation slips quietly into the trash bin of history - or worse we collapse into chaos.

The winners of Obamacare are 1) Big Pharma -- guaranteed gov't price, 2) Big Insurance - continued state monopolies, 3) Big Law - no tort reform, and 4) Big Hospital -- cost plus. The losers are 1) the doctors - wages & liabilities, 2) the taxpayers - continued 10-12% increases, especially the young & healthy, and 3) the labor unions, since all the administrative jobs will be unionized when it transitions to 'government affiliated'; unionization will add only about 10-12%, but will sure make a lot of union bosses happy. We have become so used to big deals between government and industry (Dodd Frank, repeal of Glass-Steagall) that we totally miss the significance of things like the real impacts of Obamacare.