People Power

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Originally Posted by Malbec

Go on then, explain why the recovery would have happened quickly? Remember that the governments involved in the bailout have yet to pass the cost of that onto us, the taxpayers although depending on the country you live in they are just about to. Our economies have so far only received the benefits of the bailouts, yet our economies are still not recovering.

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Because assets would have been sold, new ways of doing business would have been tried, etc.

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Originally Posted by BDunnell

Nor does it give the free-marketeers any justifiable right to accuse those who don't agree with them of getting a kick out of taking away their money.

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Then please explain to me how you achieve your goals of fairness and equality if it isn't through redistribution of wealth.

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Originally Posted by chuck34

Because assets would have been sold, new ways of doing business would have been tried, etc.

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Would you have been amongst those brave free-marketeers setting up new financial institutions and car manufacturers to replace those that had gone down the toilet?

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Originally Posted by chuck34

Because assets would have been sold, new ways of doing business would have been tried, etc.

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What assets? The rapidly devaluing ones that caused the problem in the first place? You know, the ones where repossessed houses either couldn't be sold or couldn't fetch a price high enough to cover the home loan that needed to be repaid?

Who would have bought the assets? You realise the problem was that once financial institutions lost faith in each others liquidity and credit worthiness companies couldn't raise money to cover basic running costs let alone expand by buying up assets?

You sound rather vague about an issue which underpins the principles you speak in defence of and which would have had a devastating global impact.

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Originally Posted by chuck34

Then please explain to me how you achieve your goals of fairness and equality if it isn't through redistribution of wealth.

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Of course I am in favour of a fair, and thus probably to some extent redistributive, taxation system, but I hold that view not out of any sense of glee at the rich having to pay a bit more.

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Originally Posted by race aficionado

This is again where the term "sharing" is misunderstood or misused.
Sharing does not mean giving away part of your bank account or emptying half of your refrigerator.

It means allowing others the opportunity to also have money in their bank and food in their fridge. - and of course add to that proper health care and a fair and responsible deal when it comes to credit opportunities.

It doesn't mean paranoia.

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Money obatained from where, whom, how?

Your rhetoric seems to say all persons out there are trying their hardest to become U.S. citizens striving for the common good as a united United States, whilst ignoring there is a goodly portion who are adamant to remain in a separate culture which is owed to by the white rich boys.
You need to consider more of the real world verses political dogma based on a fantasy.

In the conservative system near all who try to succeed have the opportunity to do so; in the liberal welfare state a portion are treated as a subserviant class who need not try to succeed or believe in a united United States because the government/s, federal and state, will address their wants and suport their chosen life-style.

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Originally Posted by BDunnell

Would you have been amongst those brave free-marketeers setting up new financial institutions and car manufacturers to replace those that had gone down the toilet?

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It was union pensions that bank-rupted General Motors, that would have ceased to exist and anything that rose from the ashes would have been constructed on the business of building cars, not paying outlandish pensions.

It is these type of pensions that are bank-rupting States, whilst self-centered recipients of said same are fighting to keep, regardless of what it does to the populace that pays them.

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Originally Posted by Bob Riebe

It was union pensions that bank-rupted General Motors, that would have ceased to exist and anything that rose from the ashes would have been constructed on the business of building cars, not paying outlandish pensions.
It is these type of pensions that are bank-rupting States, whilst self-centered recipients of said same are fighting to keep, regardless of what it does to the populace that pays them.

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I assume Mr Riebe that when you reach your golden years that you expect not to collect any retirement benefits? No?

It wasn't specifically union pensions that bankrupted General Motors or the United States, but a failure to set aside money or plan for the day when those entitlements fell due.
General Motors and indeed the United States, expected future receipts through sales and taxation respectively to cover payments for pensions.

The CEOs and Governments of the 1960s and 1970s were negligent, but most of those officers are now dead and completely oblivious of the mess they've left behind.

I assume from his posturing on these forums that Mr Riebe is already well in his golden years and
a) doesn't need to collect any retirement benefits - "he's all right, Jack" (sod the rest).
or
b) he is jealous ( ;) ) of those evil union folk who collect more retirement benefits than he does, so sod them all and the rest of them as well. :p

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Originally Posted by chuck34

Then please explain to me how you achieve your goals of fairness and equality if it isn't through redistribution of wealth.

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Wealth is already being redistributed through the process of wealth condensation.

I agree though fairness and equality aren't worthwhile goals. History has more or less shown that in the long run it's pretty well much impossible to achieve, so why bother.