Why thank you!........I may just do it...purely for the fun of it.  Do you like to have fun?

Are these the criteria that should apply to minimum wage?  (You said in another thread that you consider $15 an hour an acceptable pay rate.)  If not, could you provide an example of a job for which this would be the proper compensation?

I'm simply considering that a company will have to adjust the price it charges for its products/services in order to make payroll and remain solvent.  Rising prices will affect consumer spending, which will in turn affect companies' profits, and in turn their ability to create or keep jobs.

In regard to executive pay, the Ben & Jerry's saga is worth considering:  The company originally operated with the policy that its highest paid employee could not make more than 7 times its lowest paid.  (This of course did not take into account the profits the owners earned as shareholders.)  When the CEO stepped down, the company lifted the policy in their search for his replacement.  It would appear the company was not confident they could find a suitable candidate who would accept a $150,000 salary.

I've never experienced hatred. Sorry to disappoint. Not everyone can hate like you.

Since projection, illogic, stupidity, and reading comprehension failure are the staples of your existence, I'll take that as a compliment from a hateful little girl. Take care.

nothing.

The trick is to jump minimum wage significantly, and enforce a price freeze for a year. After that year, with wages tied to inflation, any price increases will be met by wage increases. Today a company can say they deserve more for a service than previously without increasing wages correspondingly. I'd make that illegal.

Obviously though, the benefits take time to realise. Probably more than a year for some, less for others. More than enough time for almost every entrepeneur to go out of business. So they can't be expected to shoulder the burden throughout the process. The only real alternate is the government suppliments wages for businesses in the interim.

Decades of stagnation and unmoving wages have brought things to an extreme, and only extreme solutions can fix the problems.

After the transition, companies won't be able to afford 7 figure salaries, and noone will get them. Noone deserves them anyway. So 150k will sound nice enough to someone who wants to be a ceo.

^ Trollin'.. Trollin'.. Trollin' down the river...

More child smack talking I see.....

I can tell when I hit a nerve...you keep yelling "PROJECTION"..."PROJECTION".....must be a bitch to be you...you don't have balls, but a 'mangina'....

You must be angry....you hate everyone...especially if they make a dollar more than you. 

It's really not that simple.  There are professions where the risk / reward ratio is horrible without high salaries.

About 20 years ago, I was in a relationship and there was this new GUI interface that was all the rage -- it was call "Motif" and it was going to replace X/Windows and we were never going to write command line tools ever again.  Or at least that was the theory.

So I rang up Dell Computers and ordered something with a 486 and a ton of memory -- probably all of 64MB -- and lots of disk space, and I installed Motif.  I think I paid about $2,500 for that computer back in 1992.  My partner =freaked= that I'd spent that much money.  Was perfectly happy with my salary, but didn't like me spending money on tools.

A few years later, when the Interwebs were all the rage, I built a bigger server, installed a very complex LAN, and probably spent $5,000 or so on that particular effort.  All so I could stay ahead of the curve and keep making money.

Today, I've risked every single dime I have, and then some, to start the company I own.  I work 70 to 90 hours a week, trying to bring products to market, make the products, and sell the products.

I want you to tell me, with a straight face, that I don't deserve to be well-compensated for the risks I've taken, the time I've invested, and the sacrifices I've made.  Ignoring college tuition, since I started working, I've spent somewhere between $300K and $400K on "business expenses".  How in G-d's name (or Flying Spaghetti Monster's name, take your pick) would it make sense for me to spend that kind of money if my salary is limited to whatever it is you think is appropriate?

Let me tell you about a vendor of mine.  He used to work for the company he now owns.  He was a very hard worker and when his boss decided to call it quits, his boss sold him the company for something like $4M.  How is he supposed to recoup $4M on some kind of low salary?  I have a parts supplier who is getting ready to retire, so I asked him about his company -- what's the value of it.  He tells me it's worth around $2.5M.  How is whoever buys that business supposed to pay for that, in a reasonable number of years, on a 5 figure salary?

These are =small= businesses.

The odds of a new company lasting 5 years is 1 in 5 -- 4 out of 5 new companies go broke before 5 years are up.  I've poured my life savings into a project with a 20 percent chance of success.  And if I managed to get one of the guys around here with money to invest, you can rest assured they understand that there is still a pretty good chance the money will all go down the drain.  How are they supposed to be compensated for that risk?  I convince B.S. to invest $100K -- you think he only wants $100K in return when the risk that he's going to lose his entire investment is as high as it is?

There you go again.....hating on people....so knee jerk. 

B.S.,

The problem I see is one of the "Tragedy Of The Commons".  So long as what these companies are doing isn't harmful to The Commons (the American Economy) and is sustainable (won't harm the American Economy down the road), I don't have a problem with who pays whom how much.

But when CEOs are rewarded for producing short-term stock price increases, and =many= stock awards are tied to stock prices and not future dates, and their manipulation of their stock price causes economic harm, then I object.

Unless a company took a bailout, it is NONE OF OUR BUSINESS HOW MUCH A CEO IS PAID.  That is up to the stockholders and board of directors.  They are a private business and the government has NO business in any part that does not affect anyone in any material way who is not apart of that organization, whether they be employees, stockholders or management.  PERIOD!

Not taking the blame for this multi post. Site is not working well.

Not taking the blame for this multi post. Site is not working well.

Do you have any evidence of a large number of companies being ran into the ground by CEO's looking for short term gain? Can you name even one current example?

There are the big examples of Enron and Worldcom- in both cases the people responsible went to jail because they broke existing laws- for 25 years not a slap on the wrist sentence. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act was passed increasing the potential jail terms of people who do similar things in the future and increasing SEC oversight which theoretically makes it harder to get away with. Of course, that relies on the SEC being effective and I can understand if you don't trust the government to do anything well. 

I think it is important to note that both of these examples are not examples of successful companies ran into the ground to make the executives more money, they were failing companies that were fraudulently made to look successful in order to make the executives more money. Regardless, such actions are and should be illegal and are enforced. So what is the problem?

And when things like this happen, who is the victim? Who are the ones with standing to file civil lawsuits? Investors. If you don't buy stock in a company, you are not directly affected by their shenanigans. In fact, if you own stock in a competing company, you are actually helped by the collapse.

Whenever you make an employees pay based on performance and that employee has some potential to fudge the performance numbers there is the potential for fraud. I've seen it at the smaller level of commission sales people where someone can fake it for a few months and rip the company out of money. Generally on the small scale it isn't worth prosecuting since the lawyers easily become more expensive than the money that was defrauded. Companies that pay commission often just fire the employee and write it off as a loss because the majority of employees don't commit fraud. On the larger level it is actually easier to punish the guilty and seek restitution.

Like everything else in business it requires a risk/benefit analysis. Paying high for short term gains increases the risk of fraud, but also encourages short term performance. As an investor, you have to decide how much risk you are willing to accept understanding that if you become a victim of fraud you might not get your money back. If you think a board of directors is putting too much trust in the executives and taking too many risks, invest elsewhere. It is impossible for government to stop all crime, the best it can do is punish people after it happens to discourage other people from trying the same thing. It is up to you to take precautions to minimize your risks.  

It is wise to build in some type of long term incentive to discourage short term fraud and encourage long term results- most boards do. As an investor, it is wise to know exactly how the executives pay is determined, it is all public knowledge filed with the SEC and readily available. If an executive is being paid purely on short term results, you might want to reconsider your investment or petition the board to change the pay. If the company is experiencing growth that is higher than average with no obvious explanation and never seems to suffer setbacks, be extra suspicious. If a companies performance is too good to be true, it probably isn't true.

Ultimately, as an investor you have to take steps to protect yourself. The SEC is capable of punishing people after fraud is committed but there is little that can be don't to prevent or detect it before damage is done. Be an informed and alert investor, when something doesn't smell right take action, maybe even alert the SEC if you think something potentially illegal is happening. Take steps to minimize your risks and take solace in the fact that the vast majority of people are not criminals. Most people don't commit fraud, or steal, or murder. Most executives are doing their personal best to make their companies profitable and most are decent people doing their jobs.

Right now the SEC is trying to do the same thing the TSA does, treat everyone like they are criminals in the hopes that it will be better able to catch the one real criminal before damage is done. It doesn't work for the TSA and I don't think it works for the SEC either, it simply puts extra burdens and costs on those who are honest while those who are willing to be dishonest, are still dishonest. The funny thing about criminals is that they don't follow new laws any more than they followed the old ones.

So the investors in these companies are idiots or they sell their shares to idiots who only look at short term gains. So we have to protect the idiots on Wall Street from themselves? What about compaines like GM that had overpaid unions and bloated unfunded pensions?

Precisely which company is harming you and how? You say they are looting, what are they looting and who are they taking it from?

Jobs move from one location to another for a variety of reasons. So what? If I employ someone for a day do I suddenly have some kind of obligation to employ some person every day in perpetuity regardless of whether or not I need them? When someone chooses not to renew a contract with me can I bitch about the economic harm they are causing me?

Yes I understand the Tragedy of the Commons but you have yet to explain what commons are being damaged. Tragedy of the Commons implies that there is public property that is being harmed. What public property (tangible or intangible) is harmed when Tim Cook gets several hundred million dollars?

Rereading your old post it looks like you are trying to conflate the economy at large with "The Commons". Which is absurd. The whole point of the tragedy of commons is that resources are finite and static, it is based on the assumption that when overused the resource will disappear forever. The economy is infinite and dynamic as long as there are humans the economy will exist and it will change. Often times when a company fails, it is a loss for them and anyone involved with them and a boon to anyone competing with them. 

In the commons people over consuming a resource harms everyone because it deprives that resource permanently. If a company over consumes in the form of over paying executives, what resource are you deprived of? Money? Well that gets spent, it doesn't disappear. The executives take that money and put it somewhere, purchase something, pay for services etc. Worrying about that would be like me worrying that you are going to breathe up all my air. The Tragedy of Commons is only relevant when discussing finite resources or resources that are slow to renew.

What resource is being overused? Which brings me back to the original question, what are they looting? And who are they looting from?

Edit:

And another question I asked that was ignored.

Do you have any evidence of a large number of companies being ran into the ground by CEO's looking for short term gain? Can you name even one current example?

Which is to say that even if I accept your bullshit premise that the economy is common, do you have any evidence that people actually are overgrazing?  

The entire economy is the Commons -- I've tried to be as clear as can be.  Tragedy of the Commons DOES NOT mean the resource disappears forever -- in the most common example, grass =will= grow back.

Nor is there any requirement that =any= business fail because executives are being overpaid.  Hell, I've said that as long as employees are being paid an economically sustainable wage, I really could care less what executives are being paid.  What is not sustainable, and what is destroying the economy is sending work to places where the employees cannot afford the goods and services they provide, and when businesses or individuals hoard wealth and thereby create drag on the economy.

The best example, since it was posted here, is Apple sending manufacturing jobs to China where slave labor has to be used in order to maintain wages at $0.31 per hour.  That Apple has more cash on hand (on the order of $80B) than many small European countries is proof that they are also hoarding wealth.

When you didn't take Economics did they also not teach about the Velocity of Money?  Did you not learn about the various measures of money and Economic Activity?  Do you understand that "Wages Paid" are part of Economic Activity?  Did you learn from a source of information other than Rush Limbaugh?!?

That's why I included "slow to renew". The point of the tragedy of the commons is the overexploitation of a limited and shared resource. What resource is being overexploited?

So living in China sucks, got it. So does living in a good portion of the world. What we have there is a moral question, if you think it is somehow our responsibility to improve things for workers overseas the logical solution is high tariffs until labor conditions improve. That is a moral decision, not an economic one. As long as our government refuses to start a trade war why get upset with companies doing what they do? The bottom line is that we benefit a lot from trade with China, which is why we don't start a trade war with them.

In the short term, we would all be poorer if we tried, the long term consequences are up for debate. Personally, I have advocated a trade war with China for some time now, I think we should be economically brutal with any country that does not allow reasonably free trade and protect the basic liberties of its citizens. Trying to use regulation to control US companies is pointless and at best is treating the symptoms, at worst it provides Chinese companies a competitive advantage and hampers our own innovation. The other downside of a trade war is that China would probably allow many people to starve to death before giving in. But if that's what you want to propose as a solution I am willing to join in. If your solution is to attempt to create wage caps or other form of price controls or use government to force/nudge companies to spend their money where you think it should go, I vociferously disagree.

Actually I was too busy working to bother attending class much. I have never hid the fact that I was a poor and lazy student mostly I only showed up on test days with the exception of classes I was interested in. So why don't you use your wonderful wisdom to educate me rather than throw out random and shallow references from Macro 101 that have at best a tenuous relationship to the subject at hand? 

Exactly what does velocity have to do with your initial claim that the economy as a whole is comparable to the commons? I think there is more than enough evidence to vindicate the Austrian's conclusion that changes in velocity are a result from the changes in relative value of money vs. goods, not an independent cause. So unless you want to posit that the slow down in velocity is the cause of our current financial difficulties rather than a consequence I don't see a point in pursuing that discussion. Nothing you have said thus far has given me reason to think you believe that. 

A large flaw in modern Keynesian thought (which I argue is not necessarily consistent with Keynes himself) is the idea that somehow circulating money is the most important variable in an economy regardless of whether that money is actually being spent on something useful. In the short term, it can work, but ultimately it collapses. The needs and desires of the marketplace change.

When people make the decision not to buy something, they are sending a signal to the sellers that the product they are selling is not needed in the current amount. Suppose you manufacture widgets and they sell big at $5 a piece for a bit but then people stop buying them. Maybe some company has invented a better widget. Your business is now experiencing a recession. And that is a good thing, because now you are forced to create a widget that competes, sell your widgets cheaper to increase demand or get out of the widget business entirely and make something different that the consumers might want.  

Now suppose some asshole in the government decided that the velocity of circulation needs to increase because his Macro 101 professor said so. He passes a law where everyone who buys a widget gets a $10 tax credit. Suddenly you have a huge increase in people coming to buy widgets so being a greedy capitalist you either raise prices, or make more widgets- maybe hire someone to help you make them. The problem is that what you see as an increase in demand, isn't. The people are buying widgets and throwing them in the garbage because they just wanted the tax credit. Is the economy at large better off or worse off? Velocity of circulation is increased.

I would say it is clearly worse off. The rise in production of widgets is not improving anybodies standard of living because no one wants them. In the short term you are personally experiencing gains, as well as anyone you purchase from but long term the government has to get the $10 from somewhere and sooner or later will shut the program down leading to an even larger widget recession and a larger negative impact on the people who you spend your money with. It is the short term illusion of prosperity that can't last forever. The idea that simply circulating money magically creates prosperity is absurd on its face. Prosperity is created when one person produces a good or offers a service that is actually wanted/needed by the eventual consumer. Price is a less than perfect, but one of the best indicators we have of the relative value of a good or service an individual or company produces.

Recessions are inevitable and provide an important guide to the economy. A recession indicates which areas of the economy are producing more than demand and which areas need to produce more. Trying to ignore the signals of a recession by propping up demand and keep money circulating for the sake of velocity can only lead to a larger recession and a pile of products that no one needs or wants. Keynesians want to pretend that recessions are complete evil and can be avoided by propping up demand, history has shown that does not correlate with reality. Recessions are cured by producers changing their production from areas without demand to areas with demand. Since the best way to make a profit is to fulfill another persons demand that evil capitalist greed will eventually drive investors and workers to produce in areas with high demand and avoid areas with low demand. The sooner and faster that trend takes place the less impact it has on the economy at large. 

In theory, the only way to prevent recessions is to perfectly calculate demand ahead of time and produce exactly what is needed and distribute it to whoever needs it, always producing enough but never producing too much. The RBE crowd seems to think this is possible. I don't, at least not with current technology or while allowing the population any kind of liberty. I have stated before, my main priority in evaluating economic policies is not a maximization of national wealth. My main priority is the maximization of personal liberty. If that leads to being the wealthiest country great, if it leads to China becoming richer than us oh well. I would rather be relatively poor with liberty than wealthy but forced by the government to produce the maximum. Even if you had some computer that could predict demand with perfect accuracy, you would then have to control the producers and force them to produce the correct amount. I'll take the recession thanks. 

Yes wages paid is part of economic activity, so are imports- the economy is global not a closed circuit no matter what law you pass or how much you pray to your imaginary friend otherwise. I take a cash holdings approach. The decision not to buy something in a marketplace is as important as the decision to buy something. When Apple decides to have $80 billion cash on hand, they are making the decision that having that cash available is more valuable than anything they could purchase at the moment. So what? How does Apple's decision to not purchase a good or hire someone for a service harm the commons? Or you? If you want Apple's money, convince them you have a service worth paying for. It is no different from your personal decision to buy or not to buy an I-pad except in scale. 

And to state that the money is doing nothing is absurd. Lets look at where Apple has its money.

http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/AAPL/1645632560x0x512287/5a5d7b14-9542-4640-841d-e047ec28bb96/AAPL_10K_FY11_10.26.11.pdf

(page 55 if you're actually interested)

$2.9 billion is actually cash which seems quite reasonable to me. They did $100 billion in revenue last year and need cash on hand to pay employees, overhead and the various expenses associated with the cash flow of a large corporation.

$3.1 billion is in money markets and mutual funds. Reasonable enough, this is money that isn't immediately available, but could be accessed quickly in an emergency like a natural disaster.

The rest, $75 billion, is kept in securities and certificates. Including $10.7 billion in US Treasury securities, $13.5 billion in US Agency securities, $3.4 billion in municipal securities (local governments) and $35.2 billion in corporate securities. All of that money is doing something perceived as useful by the entities selling the securities. Now I would agree that the money raised by the government is obviously being wasted, but considering that our entire currency would collapse if people stop buying treasuries it would probably be devastating if Apple and every other corporation that purchases treasuries stopped. 

The point is that the money isn't sitting as cash in some room for Tim Cook and the board members to swim through or use benjamins to light cigars. So I will repeat my main question again, exactly who is being harmed by Apple deciding to divide its money the way it does? What amount do you think would be appropriate for them to have on hand? Where should they put the rest? Why should I be willing to potentially give up my future freedom to determine what I or a company I run spends or doesn't spend my money on in order to control Apple's money now?

Also in the 10-k you might be interested to find that sales of Apple products in China are pretty good. At $12.4 billion, sales in China are second only to the US ($41.8 billion), up substantially from only $2.7 billion in 2010. Indeed, with $53 billion in sales belonging to other foreign countries the US accounts for well under half of Apple's revenue. (p. 74) Obviously someone in China can afford an I-pad and if Apple was given a choice between doing business solely in the US or doing it everywhere except the US, everywhere else would be the more profitable choice.

For example? I don't think businesses can be run as social clubs. The bottom line is you the consumer buy the best value. So they can only focus on value. If people like you were willing to pay more for the product if the company treated employees differently. I know Starbucks is only buying coffee from 'fair trade' places because consumers prefer this. Perhaps you could lead a boycott of companies that don't treat employees they way you wish.

But the bottom line is you don't buy inferior value products. So it is actually you, the consumer, that is creating this situation with your behavior. Instead of buying based on cost, buy based on how employees are treated.

BINGO, this is what the mindset of people like Beyond don't want to see or willfully ignore. ANY honest job is an honest job and human beings are not tools. But we are in a climate of consumption that degrades humans to mere tools. There is not one single job however, that doesn't require skill. The people who claim that are idiots and have not done those jobs for any significant period of time because they are too jaded and self absorbed to understand that.

And the Mitt Romney types who claim the poor are envious are idiots as well. It has nothing to do with envy or hating wealth. No one begrudges someone for having more. What we do hate is the attitude that the pay gap and cost of living can keep exploding. Ignoring that explosion in cost is killing our workforce and eventually even those at the top will be affected because no one will have any money to buy a damned thing.

I hate the word "menial" as well. This is a snob's view. No one is more important than anyone else. People simply have more or less than another person. EVERYONE is needed in a three class system, but those who own businesses should not think that they are more important than the people who work for them.

I am really fucking sick of that attitude. But the way things are going, if they continue, we will end up looking like India and China's sweat shops.That is not nor ever will be my idea of global competition.

B.S.,

Please try NOT to write a Master's Thesis, though Doctoral Thesis might be closer to what you wrote.

You're looking at the economy from one side, and one side only.  We know, for an absolute fact, that real wages for the vast majority of Americans are flat to down over the past decade or more.  Real wages are heading in that direction because American corporations have been booking rising profits while sending jobs overseas.  My former employer has sent about 100,000 jobs out of the country in the past 10 to 15 years and since giving me the boot 3 years ago, their stock price is up 100%.  It's up about 50%, even with paying a nice dividend, since the high prior to the present mess.  Apple is up about 100% from its pre-crash price and is up 400% from bottom to present, all the while employing large numbers of Chinese for all of $0.31 per hour.  So, these companies aren't struggling to make ends meet, and Apple has cash enough on hand that they could quit selling =anything= and keep paying salaries for =years=.

In regards to what Apple is selling in China, according to the CIA, China has a population of 1,336 million people, to our 310 million or so.  So, $12.4B compared to $41B isn't "good".  Per capita, it's about $9.30, compared to $130 for the US.  And you were saying?  China has the second largest economy in the world (after the United States), and the second largest population (after India).  However, it ranks far lower on per-capita economic measures, which makes sense when one considers that about 1/5th of the world lives in China.  Not only does China export over-priced slave-labor produced electronic goods, China also exports poverty by refusing to allow wages to rise internally, as well as artificially maintaining an undervalued currency.

Your mistake is that you seem to approach things from only one half of the economy.  Without wages paid, there can be no demand, no matter how wonderful a widget happens to be.  If you price them at $5 and have good sales, but don't keep wages on pace with inflation, sooner or later demand tanks -- demand cannot be sustained with declining real wages, which is what the present situation is.  As this chart shows, real income growth does not track the population --

THIS is the cause of present economic struggle -- the absolute refusal of businesses to keep wages on pace with inflation and the concentration of wealth into the hands of an ever shrinking number of people.  What that chart doesn't show is the per capita change in income growth.  That 34.6% of income growth doesn't look as bad when compared to 15.9% of income growth, but when compared on a per-capita basis, it becomes 34,600% compared to 17.7%, or roughly 2,000 times more income growth per capita.  Oh, those poor rich people.  To complete the comparison, here are all the numbers --

It looks just a little bit different now, doesn't it?  I mean, OH THOSE POOR, OPPRESSED RICH PEOPLE.  Income growth disparity looks a little different now, doesn't it?

Now, back to Apple and their $80B in cash "and cash equivalents" (apparently you skipped the class which covered "cash doesn't mean you stick it under your mattress&quot.  Loaning money does not create the same economic activity as purchasing goods and services.  If I purchase $10 of something from you, and you purchase $10 of something from me, that's a different amount of activity than if I loan you $10, you purchase $10 in goods and services, and then you've got to give me my $10 back.  This is why government entities often talk about how the government can spend $10 and it creates $20 (or whatever) in economic activity, or why so new project will create more jobs than just the jobs directly created by the new project.

It's been a while since I tallied up all the excess wealth that was being hoarded, but from fuzzy memory it amounted to a drag of something on the order of $5,000 to $10,000 per capita.  That is, if you added up the wealth of the top 10 or 20 business, in terms of cash-on-hand (money they hoarded instead of paying out in wages or the purpose of goods and services), and you added up the the wealth of the top 100 or 200 Americans, and divided it by the number of people in the country, that's what you've got -- something between $5,000 and $10,000 for every American man, woman and child.  No one is saying, certainly not me, that Steve Jobs didn't deserve to make a lot of money, or that Apple Computers doesn't deserve to be profitable.  But that hoarded wealth isn't doing WORK in the economy.  Remember the difference between me buying $10 worth of goods and services from you, compared to me loaning you $10?  That $5K to $10K per capita isn't being used to purchase goods and services, which then flow back to businesses, which they pay it back out as wages, which are then used to purchase goods and services.  It is out of the economy, in the sense of causes economic activity.  In short, it is a drag on demand -- there is that much less ability to have demand.

It's apparent you hate Keynes (I'm not fan myself, though he got a few things right) and you seem to favor the Austrian school, which is widely rejected as "Wrong" by serious economists, though many use more polite terms like "Incorrect".  Is that what you believe?  Austrian School economics?

Recessions happen because either supply exceeds real demand, and the supply side gets corrected -- companies lay-off workers to reduce excess supply -- or they can happen on the demand side because there is insufficient income to support real demand -- workers don't have real wages sufficient to purchase products they really do need, demand collapses, and companies must lay-off workers to reduce supply.  That's what recessions are about, right?

Guess which one we have?  Yeah, that was easy -- the demand side is broken.  If you kill the middle and working classes -- and hopefully you can see that having the top 0.1% seeing real income growth 2,000 times higher than the middle and working classes -- sooner or later the vast majority of the population is no longer able to keep the economy going, despite continuing to have real needs.  In other words, the DEMAND is there, but the WAGES needed to maintain that DEMAND aren't being paid.  It isn't the case that Americans have gone on a collective diet and Archer Daniels Midland is suddenly awash with food people aren't eating, it's the case that the vast majority of Americans just plain aren't being PAID enough to purchase whatever it is that they NEED.

There is a solution -- make the money go around in a circle again.  Stop increasing hours worked per week for salaried employees by refusing to hire.  Stop driving wages down and down and down by pitting illegal aliens and Chinese slave labor against American workers.  Stop propping up profits by out-sourcing to third world countries and NOT reducing prices.

Recessions are often more psychology than reality.  They typically end when people are finally =forced= to start spending.  When the car they've been limping along on =finally= has to be replaced.  When workers are finally so over-worked that businesses are =forced= to hire.  Nothing was different the day before, except the psychology of the various levels of consumers.  Because there is pent-up demand which cannot happen because of the real income growth chart I posted above, the only people who can end the recession are, yeah, it's those rich people with trillions of dollars in hoarded wealth.  It isn't 270 million people with $1,000 stuffed under the mattress -- it's a few thousand people with $100M stuffed under the mattress, and in the cookie jar, and in a shoe box, all adding up to trillions of dollars that CANNOT be used to get demand going again.

Both sides can crash an economy -- if 90% of the population decides not to spend $100 next week, "just because" they feel nervous, that's a lot of money.  If that 0.1% of the population decides not to spend 900 times that amount, "just because" they are a bunch of greedy fucks, the effect is the same.  You can see that?  Not rocket science?  You can tell which side has broken the economy by which side got a seat when the music stopped.  Right now, the people you think are the poor, oppressed rich people are the ones with all the seats.

You have to understand the role both sides play in the economy.  Reagan's tax cuts worked because the SUPPLY side of the economy needed a kick in the pants, not because "tax cuts" are magical.  Keynesian stimulus programs work, if and only if, the DEMAND side needs a kick.  Easy to see that one as well?

If =real= demand (three squares, clothes, cot and a car) can be satisfied with wages, the government doesn't need to get involved and government spending to prop up excess supply creates debt that does no good.  Basic Keynesian behavior, right?  But if =real= demand cannot be satisfied with wages, the only solution is for the only entity large enough to "fund" that =real= demand to get involved.  Once demand picks back up, business has the money needed to pay wages and keep things going.

What has happened this go round is that when the government did step in and start handing out money, people who already have plenty of money decided to hoard =that= money as well.  They didn't hire, they didn't increase wages paid, they took the money out of circulation, and they stuffed it into their already fully pockets.  And I don't care if a law has to be passed, or an armed revolution has to happen, but that money =will= be pried from their greedy fat fingers.  My fingers can just as easily push a button in the voting booth as they can pull a trigger.  It would be a lot better for the 0.1% if they just decided to stop being a bunch of greedy bastards, but I'm more than willing to help them become former greedy bastards one way or another.  Ballot box or ammunition box, makes little difference to me.  They are a clear and present danger to this Nation, and homie don't play that way.

You are both welcome to stop by my blogs