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

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.