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Originally Posted by renton
I'm not learned enough to have a strong position opposite this, but I really disagree. Maybe not so much greed and stupidity, but definitely fiscal ignorance has to play a big factor in the problems we have. The fiscal problems in this country are strongly pushed for by the top 1% and the government that serves primarily them; the treasury department primarily consisting of goldman-sachs people, the huge subsidies on homeowner credit, the advertising campaigns pushing for homeownership and refinancing. But people choose to fall for this stuff don't they?
Originally Posted by Ash256
I agree with Renton though, that one attribute of a sizeable chunk of the working poor is awful money management.
Putting the emphasis for systemic economic failures on the working class is like putting the emphasis for a lost war on the soldiers (instead of the administrators, generals, and those who ran/operated the war). Under some hypotheticals, it works, but under reality, it's impractical and misses the truth entirely. It's important to make the micro and macroeconomic distinctions
While the populace is naturally fiscally irresponsible, the numbers and facts show us that this microeconomic irresponsibility doesn't really affect macroeconomics. In fact, median purchasing power has been plummeting over the last few decades, which puts the blame on the shoulders of the working class even less.
Consumers' microeconomic decisions have zero to do with macroeconomic policy. Our monetary policy, banking policy, corporate policy, etc have nothing to do with what consumers decide to do. It's ALL on the shoulders of those in charge who game the system because they want two dozen yachts instead of just four. The ONLY role that commoners play here is in voting for liars and whores who stab us in the back. That's a really big deal and I think it puts a ton of weight on retard voters' shoulders, but that shouldn't be conflated with economics.
I don't think I'm explaining this well. It's a very elaborate issue with inroads and outroads everwhere. For example: If we were to blame our economic woes on three factors, they would all be macroeconomic and enormous issues that have been working for a long time
1. Crony banking. Basically, commercial and investment banks merged and pushed for huge vacancies in regulations which produces nothing other than reverse-Robin Hood. Over just a few decades, Wall Street has stolen countless trillions from the economy, and they create exactly nothing for it. We haven't seen even remotely close to the worst of it. The prediction is along the lines of derivatives hold a 600 trillion $ market over the next couple decades, and absolutely nothing is being done to stop them. This market, however, has zero benefit to the economy, and whatever wealth gains are made out of it is purely a reverse-Robin Hood
2. Imbalances in global monetary and regulatory policy. Lax corporate regulations by the US and artificial depression of purchasing power by China has pretty much forced the US median class to abandon manufacturing and savings for services and debt. We're not in debt because we're greedy, we're in debt because of decades of our purchasing power being sapped up by the top echelon. In fact, we spend substantially less on consumer product than we did decades ago, yet vastly more on necessities. We now have an enormous trade deficit and joblessness without the ability to deflate our way out of it like normal
3. Energy issues. If you wanna create an instant recession, bump oil prices up to 100$ for about a week. US economy is designed on cheap and stable energy costs, yet it's no longer cheap, and stability is a pipedream due to the relatively new issues of massive industrialization of poor nations (mainly just China) and financial speculation. This problem is so fundamental it's difficult to explain. The point is that we're basically screwed by design of how we consume energy. Things like a 40 minute one-way commute on gasoline is just unsustainable, and it's catching up to us
I pointed those out because they have nothing to do with fiscal irresponsibility of the masses. It's like giving a man 20$ to eat for a week then find out he's out of money by day four then blaming him for being irresponsible because there was some way he could have made that 20$ last for seven days. No. The real irresponsibility comes from the greed of the royal class who give no thought to raping and pillaging the masses
On the individual level, fiscal responsibility is important, but it has absolutely nothing to do with macroeconomics, which is what we're talking about
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