America's Rigged Economy

do you think we are still able savage our nation, or has it been permanently bought and paid for by corporations and their lobbyists?

It's been bought and paid for. Only socialism's return, true socialism, not "moderate" democrat suggestions, can force the thieves at the top to return their ill-gotten gains.

Socialism is fine as long as it is voluntary and completely divorced from the state. The State has no advantage over any other institution in Society except that it can steal and murder with the authority of law. As far as the ill gotten gains of the elites go, they come mainly from the pipeline that they have drilled straight into the wallets and bank accounts of the masses, which is made possible by a coercive collectivism called the State.

You should also check out Part III of the Internet movie, Zeitgeist.

The Bush tax cuts in 2001, by 2006 had a direct revenue loss to the US treasury of 1.0 trillion dollars.

I think that most folks know this, and are acting accordingly in voting this year.

However, both Edwards and Huckabee are pandering to the people and will be seen as the panderers that they are.

I think that this election will wind up between Obama and Romney, however, we'll need to wait a bit to see.

We, the people are looking more for unity and non-partisanship in the next president. Not a panderer.

I say we should bring back tar and feathering.
To be truthful we can't win, this country is sunk and I for one am looking to move to Canada.

I'm afraid that the common response to this all too real problem is going to be to drag out from the ash heap of history intellectually threadbare ideas about how socialism can rescue us from the corporate (welfare) state. The troublesome nexus between the rapacious corporation and the individual is the State's ability to coerce (the individual to do the corporations bidding). When you are in the checkout line at Walmart it is the government that holds the gun to your head to make you pay the sales tax that Walmart keeps for itself. The socialists want to keep the gun to your head with the only change being that your wealth will now be transfered to a different cracked-pot collectivist scheme. The only solution is to remove the coercion from the equation. Until an individual is free to control the product of her efforts there can be no justice or peace in the world. In the American presidential race of 2008 the candidate Ron Paul most closely represents this ideal.

I'd hardly call declaring private property as the basis for keeping all the wealth that you aren't earning, but your workers are, and they get left in permanent poverty, as threadbare. To tell corporations that "If you want one penny of store profit, you get off your parasite butt and start working on that sales floor like everyone else" is justice, not wrong.

Yeah, yeah, All profits are theft. In the early 1900's the Progressives looked at De Tocqueville's America and were appalled at the number of people who had family businesses and small enterprises. In collaboration with leading industrialists they fought tooth and nail to get those people out of their independent way of life and into FACTORY JOBS. And then they proceeded to transform the whole American society into a vertically integrated structure based on the factory efficiency theories of Frederick Winslow Taylor. They replaced the libertarian democracy of independent action with central planned state socialism. Remember there's a pipeline right from the working man's wallet to the elite governing class and it passes right through Washington D C.

Profits aren't theft. Keeping them for yourself instead of turning them back to the people who are making them for you, however, is theft.

Isn't the entrepreneur, the person who organizes the business and puts capital up for risk, entitled to anything for his trouble?

Mr. Johnston has reassured me. From the moment that George Bush was elected, I have known that something was really rotten in Denmark. As a lifelong, educated and well read historian, I commend Mr. Johnston for his commitment to paying attention to detail, questioning authority and giving all US citizens the opportunity to Carpe Diem. Amen.

Give this nation the reason it needs to clean out the closets of Gotcha Capitalism - these two books are incredibly timely in their release. Clever dudes!! The doggone yahoo cowboy politics of Bush takes Reaganomics to the extreme - the trickle up theory!!

Reagan took us off the gold standard. He promoted deregulation and convinced people to endorse trickle down economics. (Why, it was scientifically possible and we did not question it because we all know that "pooh" flows down hill.)

Bilking the entire working population of the US for $1.00 a month would generate a great deal of money. Better yet, why not charge a "life" tax - $1.00 a month for every person residing in the US. That would make even more money - and we wouldn't have to pay taxes on it if we held a special referendum to speed vote on a bill that would give us the money tax free because we were smart enough to word it so generically that the entire content of the bill would appear so completely benign that the only people who would show up to vote all voted yes.

It is VERY possible that by considereing both books - Johnston's read first, followed by Gotcha Capitalism - all Americans can commit to change that will place the needs of the many over the needs of the few. We all want the same things - to raise our family in a safe place, to have enough to eat, to have a roof over our heads, to be loved. Change is possible - life is never, ever a static event. Change always happens. Therefore, to take care of the needs of the many, it is best to simplify - streamline laws, make 'em short and sweet. Same for taxation = cuz we need infrastructure that is safe (roads, utilities, etc). Ban all tax loopholes - period. For everyone, corporations to poverty level.

We are justifying the existence of lawyers; insurance companies; courts; government agencies out the wahzoo because we regard deceipt as a clever sin = white collar crime. Find a loophole, get rich exploiting it and ripping people off, and then escape accountability because the law changes based on what you did. You cannot be brought to trial after the law changes short of a miracle.

The structure of this forum is wretched. How can we carry on a conversation if we can't respond to each other with ease.

To Roz F.-- It was Franklin Roosevelt that took the American citizen off of the gold standard reserving gold only for international settlements (between nations). It was Richard Nixon who "closed the gold window" fifteen years before Reagan was elected.

Wake up people! The guest, and author of America's Rigged Economy, David Cay Johnston, makes clear that deregulation is not what is happening here. It's just a shuffling of the deck chairs on the Titanic. THERE IS NO DEREGULATION! it's just another version of "the old shell game"; it's a slight of hand that is designed to send the vast uneducated (publik skool) masses barking up the wrong tree and to cover up the crimes of the governing class.

kool aid flows downhill, too, apparently. Vote Edwards.

Thanks Matt. The twenty dollar gold piece that was struck in 1933 never made it to the street. And as many gold coins that the US Treasury could get their hands on were melted down, after then. Nixon also took the US off the silver reimbursement program. And that was the end of the US dollar being backed by anything other than the 'good will' value of the US dollar.

Can anyone one now remember that an ounce of Gold in the US used to be worth $18 bucks?

As the oil, real estate and gold values rise, so the US dollar valus sinks.

I remember when gold was $18 an ounce....still, I wonder what if anything we can actually do at this point. Something tells me we have gone too far to come back.

Well Susan, if one were to measure the cost of Gold to the cost of oil and also to the cost of real estate, one would see that these three over the years have actually remained stable and about the same cost compared to each other. The thing that has changed is the elastic value of the US Dollar, but then we call that inflation, while the real definition is that the value of the dollar has only gone down over the years.

Is that ok?

Is the question, and as each generation needs to make their own way in the world I think that is ok.

I forgot to add that as the value of the Dollar only goes down, it is not wise, in my opinion, to have a large savings account as those dollars will only lose value. Better would be to invest in things that will gain in value. Or at least to invest in Oil, Gold or Real Estate which will actually remain at the same or have a similar real value over the years.

If we continue to value oil over ecology there will be no worries.... because we won't exist as a species.

When I was a girl of 18 I got a job and a little apartment, I was given a modest car but I had to support it. Today my grand daughter has a job but can't come anywhere near paying for a little apartment, she has to room with 3 other girls to make it. And she has no car, the bus costs $5 per boarding (takes two to get to work, and almost 2 hours) She literally can't afford to live.

Things are not the same as they were, and I find that very sad. We've slipped down on the list of "developed nations." Most of it is because of the cost of health care and oil. Congresses and the administrations for the past 20 years have fiddled while all this happened.

I'm in favor of term limits for all, to "serve" for 8 years max. and no pensions. Taking part in government should not be a career, it was meant to be a public service.

What I think I see ... or at least feel like it is valid to bring up is that the marketing, propganda, brainwashing, whatever you want to call it of kids is so effective and refined that it takes a whole lifetime to see through it to how "rigged" the country is, and basically anti-social. By that time you try to talk about it, and it is sour grapes, unless you happen to be Warren Buffet who says the same thing, or eccentric, or mentally ill, or crazy ... whatever, because what is said along these lines is limited and derided in the media that young people find so interesting, because it is a seductivesimple, easy, and hypnotic way to find out about the world ... at least what the establishment wants to tell us.

I'm going to be the pessimist here.
I think we are becoming a third world country, or very much like Argentina or worse Russia.

Unless you're in the top 1 or 2% of wealth in this country you're cooked.

We do not have control over the system as it stands, Obama, Edwards, Clinton, whose husband by the way gave more tax cuts to the rich than Bush has.

Don't forget NAFTA, you know why there are million + Mexicans trying to get into our country? Because our corn industry put almost every Mexican corn farmer out of business after we dumped cheap corn on the Mexican market in the 90's. The trickle down effect there was all the other business and towns affected by this action. The trickle up effect was they came here looking for work. Thanks Bill Clinton.

A good place to start is to ban all lobbying, term limits is a good idea, as well as equal time for every candidate so they don't have to spend almost all there time raising money to run for office.

How about they have to pay for health care like everyone else.
Another good idea would be to rebuild our public school system so it works. How about paying teachers who qualify a good starting salary, say 75k a year or more.

A good national health care system would be nice. How about making it illegal for companies to hold us at ransom, you know like the pharmaceutical companies that say if we don't pay what they say they can't afford to research, BS. They spend most of that money those awful ads that are on TV all the time.

Regulate the credit industry, you know so they can stop acting like legalized loan sharks.
How do they justify charging people 15 to 30% or more in interest rates when the banks only give us 1 to 2% for saving accounts? We are being robbed.

Now on to the Oil industry that acts like they are suffering, every time you bring up the price of oil. Quite frankly if the profits are so high they should be bring the price of oil down for people who live in cold areas during the winter, that would be good, subsidize the little guy while his/her kids go off to fight in Iraq. Hey there is an idea regulate energy.

If the rich don't like being taxed at 33% they can move somewhere else, and that goes for any company that does not want to pay taxes here as well.

It's real simple if the system were done half right it would be a lot better.

On Point- there is a good deal of truth to the accusations brought by Edwards. But does that mean that we really want to hear the truth? Note that Edwards has yet to post a win, and Huckabee did not place in the top 2 in NH either.

So it may be true, but we still respond reflexively to that nonsensical crap about the USA being the City of the Hill and the Home of Limitless Opportunity. Well, not me personally, but most americans still jerk a knee when they hear it.

Jeff, show me where Clinton gave more tax cuts to the rich than Bush ... and then balanced the budget on top of it. Does that sound reasonable to you?

Chris ... I read these articles about politics and how you have to show optimism, and say these cornball lines like city on the hill, the last best hope for the world and appeal to people's sense of positivism ... or maybe just denial ... and it makes me puke.

We just got through 8 years of the worst administration this country has ever seen and we are going to make the same mistake again in this election, voting for someone who looks nice and whispers lies into our ears.

We have slid into 1984 to the point that we are brainwashed in out youth more than ever and by the time we realize it the brainwashing process has progressed to the point that more than ever we just react like whatever is most repeated by most of the people on TV, and we mistake that for real people, or that anything on TV is real.

I really enjoyed this!

That information was from the show; David Cay Johnston made the statement.
I am not an economist; I think Clinton was an ok president a very brilliant politician.
Having said that he is a centrist and his policies show that. He did try to tax the higher income bracket but the law had so many loopholes that people paid less. Go figure.
I might be wrong on that as I always thought and so did Paul Krugman that Bush has been giving the top 10 to 1% of this country the biggest tax breaks.

I do not like GW Bush, to me he is the worse president in the history of our country, there are others, Andrew Jackson comes to mind, Grant, Hoover, but Bush is the worst.


You know I would like to know what people think when they get pissed about paying taxes, we all do. If you look around after the Fed cuts taxes and the states and local governments raise them or drop services. That's trickle down for you.

One of my biggest beefs with the Clinton legacy on the domestic front is NAFTA, which was and is a disaster for all 3 countries, Canada, US, and Mexico.

No one talks about this when the talk about illegal immigration comes up.
Not one politician brings this up, the cause and effect. It's not the entire reason but it had a huge impact on the agriculture economy in Mexico.
As it does in Africa now, we are dumping corn on that country as well.
Beware the corn lobby they are turning us onto blimps and are now going to convince us that we need to use it for fuel. What they don't tell you is that it cost more in fossil fuel dollars to produce than it's worth. This is a very good example of how a huge industry, in this case agribusiness.

Jeff, I agree with some of what you say. There is one point that I recently changed my ming on due to the illumination of new facts and ideas.

I heard a talk by physcist Robert Zubrin who wrote a book called Energy Victory on CSPAN last week. His plan to get energy independence was basically to mandate that all cars sold in the US be flex-fueled vehicles ASAP.

The reason for this is that no matter what we do about oil, the saudis/opec controls the supply and hence the cost of the commodity - so we can get just as shafted if we spend lots of money to re-engineer the car - expensive, or switch to solar, wind, etc.

It costs $200 per vehicle to make a flex-fuel car out of a regular car, and it will open a whole new competing source of competition to oil, which is the only thing that will change the dynamics of this equation and thus the cost for us the consumers.

This is a short term thing, short term being the next 50 years. So I can support this idea even if it is not the ultimate and final answer because we cannot predict the final answer, and we cannot afford to experiment on a grand scale with our country.

My last article -over here- discusses this if you are interested.

The prototyle for the success of this is Brazil which is now a net exporter of energy due to their sugar cane production.

I voted for Bill Clinton for president twice - and he is the only pres I've ever voted for who has won... so far.

And I too was against NAFTA and CAFTA (the Central American trade agreement) becasue it was obvious it would only hurt our economy. But we all must remember that Clinton was hounded by the repubs before he even got into office; and hounded much worse after the election. How good a job could anyone have done in similiar circumstances?

Each time a repub is in office they run up our national debt giving tax gifts/rebates/off-shore accounts/tax credits to their friends and cronies. And then the repubs get their SIG/PAC $$ back in return by accepting money from them when running for office. The repubs whole thing about worshipping Reagan is such a fantastic lie. It was his voodoo economics that began to hurt our country bad and the depressing Bushco years have only worsened the problem.

What Matt above said really bares repeating, I couldn't say it better myself:

> "...deregulation is not what is happening here. It's just a shuffling of the deck chairs on the Titanic. THERE IS NO DEREGULATION! it's just another version of "the old shell game"; it's a slight of hand that is designed to send the vast uneducated (publik skool) masses barking up the wrong tree and to cover up the crimes of the governing class."

This is why, at least right now, John Edwards is my guy. I can't believe he did so badly in NH. He's the only candidate running who hasn't taken SIG/PAC money. Why doesn't that matter to more Americans I wonder?

Tell me folks, who in their right mind would continue to borrow money to pay the debt on their credit card bills all the while continuing to add to that debt? Only the repubs, that's who. Do you think they manage their own personal finances that way? Of course not! So why are we all allowing them to continue to run our country into the ground while they continue to borrow money to pay down debt (which, of course, they are not really doing, the debt just keeps on growing)?

(...and Bruce K - I'm going to go read your article right now...)

I think I am being misunderstood. I was pointing to NAFTA being a bad thing for Mexico.
Yes it was bad for us still is, so is CAFTA, politics is all about everyone making these deals that always screw the person on the street. We don't have a government like Germany, which has more protections of the individual, although it comes at a price.

Taxes are a fact of life, letting corporations get away with not paying there fair share is part of the issue.
As far the oil problem most of our oil comes from Canada but that does not seem to matter in the geopolitics of oil. I think one thing that could be done right away or at least in the next few years is to get cars to have higher MPG, say over 40 or better yet 50 to 60 MPG.
That would be a good idea. Ethanol is a good solution for the Midwest but the farther you get from the refineries of this product the more expensive it gets.

All of home and business in the Southwest and California should have solar panels on there roofs, think of the savings in energy consumption. Why this kind of development has not been done is beyond me.

I do agree it is a shell game, ban all lobbying, that's a good place to start.
What happened to this country is that to many people have bought into the myth.
The myth that this is the greatest country in the world, not true, it's a good country has given me a pretty good life so far, but compared to other western industrial countries we are lagging in the social structures such as health care, good housing, decent wages, and so on.

I am am not what you would consider middle class (although it would be nice to be). I think that the "little guy" needs to be more represented in the election than has happened so far.

soup kitchens after the next inauguration no matter WHO wins...

2008=Calvin Coolidge

In the past the jump from working class to middle class was fairly easy once you saved enough for a house. Those days are long gone and the middle class is being cored like an apple.

I agree with Matt that the misuse of government coercion is a pressing issue for ordinary people.

Having national leaders willing to shine light on particular issue areas would be a good thing. Such persons cannot be afraid of complexity and of being very detailed in a discussion of what is now wrong, why, and what direction we should move in to make repairs. These things can be discussed inclusively. Closing the doors on ordinary consumers is not acceptable.

We have a drug war that incarcerates some for using drugs and incarcerates others to force them to use pharmaceuticals. When the Soviet Union forcibly drugged people, many of us were horrified. It now happens here, and the people forcibly drugged may have a case against government when forced pharmaceuticals cause life-threatening side effects.

Wars of empire make the occupier the usual suspect for every bad behavior for all the sides. Ending wars of occupation should be of the highest priority for a president.

Immediate neighbors of unstable countries have the best incentive to end instability.

Removing military bases from nations capable of their own defense could also be a high priority.

NAFTA, CAFTA, EPA, FDA IRS rules, are not concise and clear enough to be enforced fairly. Alphabet soups of regulatory agencies do not protect ordinary citizens. They assign special privileges to corporations and wealthy individuals who can buy "scientists" and "politicians" alike.

Near the Potomac, a water grass is protected as helping to allow a return of species decimated by pollution.

On a sparsely populated peninsula with a substantial Native American presence on the West Coast, biocides are sprayed on water grass in a marine environment, at taxpayer expense. What happens when plaintiffs' lawyers discover the miscarriage rate on this peninsula? Will they ask the corporations whose products are sprayed there to pay?

EPA documents can be understood by scientists expert in the language used. For ordinary people, legalese minimizes the danger of biocides on the testimony of a researcher. His work is disputed by other scientists, but they were not invited to testify. These details could be brought to light by a president, for all the people to see.

Military subsidies of all kinds should be ended. We have armed both sides of world conflicts.

Many countries now have better quality-of-life statistics than we do. I am fine with trading advice and research with other nations, but we cannot force our advice on people. We have visitors from almost everywhere, and some of us like to travel, even to places of unrest. Voluntary exchange has a better chance of being honest than coerced exchange.

Ron Paul has a coherent platform: the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. He served in the military, and he has practiced medicine, and he has a long voting record in Congress that can be checked. I do not agree with him on everything, but I trust him to keep the most important issues in front of the people. By turning back part of the money he could get from serving in Congress, he has proved to me that he's not in Congress for the money and perks.