Are Democrats Anti Capitalist?

[thoughtone]

Cities Run By Democrats Have The Most Millionaires




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[actinanass]

I have two takes on this.

1. Most of the millionaires in L.A., and New York are from the entertainment industry. Most of the other cities are what you called "liberal strongholds". Most conservatives millionaires tend to live outside the big city. For example, I guarantee you that there's more millionaires in Texas ALL of the cities *except for NEW YORK...for obvious reasons* put together. Florida, Texas, and probably Georgia more than likely have MORE millionaires living their than any other part of the country.

2. Democrats are anti-capitalist when it effects their bottom line. We all know this.

 

[Upgrade Dave]

Democrats are no more anti-capitalist than Republicans are pro- small businesses.

 

[thoughtone]

I have two takes on this.

1. Most of the millionaires in L.A., and New York are from the entertainment industry. Most of the other cities are what you called "liberal strongholds". Most conservatives millionaires tend to live outside the big city. For example, I guarantee you that there's more millionaires in Texas ALL of the cities *except for NEW YORK...for obvious reasons* put together. Florida, Texas, and probably Georgia more than likely have MORE millionaires living their than any other part of the country.

2. Democrats are anti-capitalist when it effects their bottom line. We all know this.

Most of the millionaires in L.A., and New York are from the entertainment industry.

At least do SOME research before you open up your mouth.

Wall Street, Finance, Pharmaceutical, Chemical, Scientific, Consumer Products...

BTW, the entertainment industry is about the only industry making money these days besides oil.

Most conservatives millionaires tend to live outside the big city. For example, I guarantee you that there's more millionaires in Texas ALL of the cities *except for NEW YORK...

I was born an partially raised in Fairfield, County, Connecticut. The north eastern NYC metro and I guarantee that there are more millionaires in the NYC metro than in all of Texas, by far. The NYC suburbs are nowhere near as conservative as any of the city suburbs in Texas or Georgia.

Florida, Texas, and probably Georgia more than likely have MORE millionaires living their than any other part of the country.

I live in the ATL and there is absolutely no comparison to the wealth of Georgia and Chicago, NYC, San Francisco, LA, Boston and Philly. Aside from racist ass Forsyth County, Georgia and Northern Fulton, Georgia and North East DeKalb, County, Georgia, ATL cannot compare.

People in cities could give two fucks about who you fuck or what you call yourself. They are about living the American dream.

 

[Dannyblueyes]

GW Bush was the president that bought out all of the banks when the economy collapsed so no, the democrats are no more anti-capitalist than republicans

 

[Retired Mizer]

What doesn "pro capitalist mean to you then? And then ask yourself why do they deserve such preferential treatment over everybody else???

The's the shell game the real capitalist,right wingers,and blue dogs Democrats try to pull on you to obvious success!. Corporations get tax breaks and other concessions out the wazoo, and they give nothing back. Is America well-being based soley on how well business are allowed to fleece you? I ask because that is what you endorse when you question the rights of outrage against inamate objects acting and being granted rights and priveledges like they are a flesh and blood human being.

This corrupts the true meaning of human personhood and how it relates to governing and providing for the public's best interest.

To answer your question, most Democrat AND Republican are bought by Corporations and other interest groups. Period.

 

[BrainChild09]

It seems from most of the responses to the question so far, that people take being capitalist or "anti-capitalist" to mean whether one political party helps and/or wants people to make lots of money or whether they do not. But that's not what being a capitalist actually means, capitalism isn't about people becoming mega-rich. It obviously happens and that's great but that's not the actual purpose of capitalism. I think the confusion so many people, particularly liberals and progressives, have about this is why we have so many of the problems we do.

That said, yes I think several Democrats are anti-capitalist, particularly many of the Democratic Party's politicians. They prove this with their words and their policies.

Well, I guess it's time for some of ya'll to call me "negro Republican", "coon", or whatever else name you throw at any black person whose political philosophy differs from yours. Or, like many progessives, you'll dismiss me as someone who is either un-informed, dumb, or cold and uncaring.

 

[Lamarr]

Are Democrats Anti Capitalist?

My short answer is YES, I'd like to see an example, in recent history, of the Dems allowing the free market to work.

I'd put the Repubs up there but atleast they allowed Enron & Tyco to fail. And magically, the world didn't come to an end!

Cities Run By Democrats Have The Most Millionaires

Could this be a result of cronyism? Seriously, are the looking out for their constituents or is this just coincidence?

 

[dzlkdd]

It seems from most of the responses to the question so far, that people take being capitalist or "anti-capitalist" to mean whether one political party helps and/or wants people to make lots of money or whether they do not. But that's not what being a capitalist actually means, capitalism isn't about people becoming mega-rich. It obviously happens and that's great but that's not the actual purpose of capitalism. I think the confusion so many people, particularly liberals and progressives, have about this is why we have so many of the problems we do.

That said, yes I think several Democrats are anti-capitalist, particularly many of the Democratic Party's politicians. They prove this with their words and their policies.

Well, I guess it's time for some of ya'll to call me "negro Republican", "coon", or whatever else name you throw at any black person whose political philosophy differs from yours. Or, like many progessives, you'll dismiss me as someone who is either un-informed, dumb, or cold and uncaring.

You'll have to better define the purpose of capitalism.

As I understand it, capitalism's purpose is to allow free men to achieve under their own power.

Two schools of thought on that: One is anarchy, let the chips fall where they may. One is to govern capitalism so that it continues to benefit the country as a whole.

I believe the latter is better, for two primary reasons: One is corruption, we have to limit its effect. Two is legacy, meaning since money is passed down, the gap becomes too overwhelming, and success becomes functionally impossible for the vast majority of people. Which puts us basically in the same realm as socialism and communism for lack of motivation. The endgame of wealth consolidation means the end of our free country, and I'm not sure it hasn't happened already.

 

[thoughtone]

My short answer is YES, I'd like to see an example, in recent history, of the Dems allowing the free market to work.

I'd put the Repubs up there but atleast they allowed Enron & Tyco to fail. And magically, the world didn't come to an end!



Could this be a result of cronyism? Seriously, are the looking out for their constituents or is this just coincidence?

I'd put the Repubs up there but atleast they allowed Enron & Tyco to fail. And magically, the world didn't come to an end!

You need to study history better. Enron was one of the first shots fired in this economic disaster and the major cause of California's present economic state.

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Could this be a result of cronyism? Seriously, are the looking out for their constituents

Ah, isn't that what politicians do?

Unlike this REPUBLICAN looking out for his constituents!

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...and didn't you imply that he was right?

 

[BrainChild09]

You'll have to better define the purpose of capitalism.

As I understand it, capitalism's purpose is to allow free men to achieve under their own power.

Two schools of thought on that: One is anarchy, let the chips fall where they may. One is to govern capitalism so that it continues to benefit the country as a whole.

I believe the latter is better, for two primary reasons: One is corruption, we have to limit its effect. Two is legacy, meaning since money is passed down, the gap becomes too overwhelming, and success becomes functionally impossible for the vast majority of people. Which puts us basically in the same realm as socialism and communism for lack of motivation. The endgame of wealth consolidation means the end of our free country, and I'm not sure it hasn't happened already.

Liberty's purpose is to allow free men to achieve under their own power. Capitalism or the free market allows for resources to be utilized and prices made based on supply and demand without their being someone deliberately coordinating all these things. Progressive/liberal/socialist suppporters' policies go against this and it is true that we don't have a pure capitalist system in the U.S. But most of the true capitalist features in American society are extremely valuable and are one of the primary, if not the primary, reason why America has been so prosperous.

In response to your suggestions, who can govern capitalism? No one. A system where someone is trying to control the economy and how it affects certain people is not capitalism at all, that is socialism and will quickly lead to totalitarianism. I agree that there should be general laws, and only general laws, that it is the government's job to enforce these laws without bias of any nature. One of the main laws that is the government's job to enforce is that voluntary contracts between consenting individuals are honored. One of the main issues is that the government does not enforce the basic laws that are key to having a prosperous nation and the ones that it does enforce are done with increasing bias. We don't need more laws, we need the most basic laws actually enforced, and enforced without bias to any group.

One man passing his wealth down to his children isn't making anyone any poorer. The amount of money available in this world is not fixed. One man winning the lottery doesn't make another man lose his job or a child in Haiti starve. So-called "wealth consolidation" isn't inevitable and may not even be possible (depending on whatever wealth consolidation actually is) under capitalism because in a truly free market not manipulated by the state, people are free to produce and charge prices as they see fit. That's not to say that the past hasn't influenced people's circumstances and what conditions that work under, but that affects all people. It's life but doesn't mean most people are destined to destitution, especially in America. But under socialism, yes, there can and will be wealth consolidation. Because under socialism, the state will control the resources, the prices, the means under which you can accomplish something, what ends you may pursue, and so on. A central body controls the wealth. That destroys individual drive, creativity, and more. Not everyone does well under capitalism, but many do, and many more have the opportunity or the opportunities will be created for another generation. Who does well under socialism other than the highest members of the state?

 

[muckraker10021]

Politicians Lie, Numbers Don't
And the numbers show that Democrats are
better for the economy than Republicans.

Sept. 16, 2008

by Michael Kinsley

If you're wondering why a formerly honorable man like John McCain would build his presidential campaign around issues that are simultaneously beside-the-point, trivial, and dishonest (sex education for kindergartners, lipstick on pigs), the numbers presented here may help to solve that mystery. Since the conventions ended, McCain has mired the presidential race in dishonest trivia because he doesn't want it to focus on what voters say is the most important issue this year: the economy.

There is no secret about any of this. The figures below are all from the annual Economic Report of the President, and the analysis is primitive. Nevertheless, what these numbers show almost beyond doubt is that Democrats are better at virtually every economic task that is important to Republicans.

In other words, there are no figures here about income inequality, or percentage of the population with health insurance, or anything like that. This exercise implicitly assumes that lower taxes are always good and higher government spending is always bad. There is nothing here about how clean the air is or how many children are growing up in poverty. The only point is that if you find the Republican mantra of lower taxes and smaller government appealing, and if you care only about how fast the economy is growing, not how that growth is shared, you should vote Democratic. Of course, if you do care about things like economic inequality and children's health, you should vote Democratic as well.

Tab 1 reports the performance of the U.S. economy in seven categories from the years 1959 to 2007. (Where the President's Economic Report doesn't include figures for 1959 or 2007, those years are left out.) The most important measure of a nation's economic strength is gross domestic product. But comparing GDPs among various presidents would be unfair. Since the economy does tend to grow over time (or always has), more recent presidents would enjoy an unfair advantage. And every president inherits a situation; the question is what he does with it.

So the measure I use is "Change in Real GDP Per Capita," which corrects for inflation and also for population growth. It asks: If the output of the economy were divided equally among the population, how would each share have changed during these years?

Of the other measures, inflation is self-explanatory. So is unemployment. Federal taxes, spending, and the deficit are recorded as percentages of GDP: What part of the nation's economic output is commandeered by the government each year? How much of that does the government actually pay for, and how much does it finance by borrowing? And since defense spending is the one exception to the general dislike for government, figures are included for federal spending minus defense. At the bottom of Chart 1 is the average per year for every year of roughly the past half-century. I haven't cheated: These are the years the President's Economic Report reports.

The results are surprising, I think. Tab 2 and Tab 3 figure separately the averages for years with Republican presidents and years with Democratic ones. Then Tab 4 compares those averages. On average, in years when the president is a Democrat, the economy grows faster; inflation is lower; fewer people can't find a job; the federal government spends a smaller share of GDP, whether or not you include defense spending; and the deficit is lower (or—sweet Clinton-years memory—the surplus is higher). The one category that Republicans win is, unsurprisingly, federal taxes as a share of GDP. But it is no trick to lower taxes if you don't lower spending.

Among many objections that could be made to this calculation, some of them legitimate, one is that a president's economic policy doesn't work overnight. To account for that, Tab 5 goes back and recalculates everything with a one-year lag. That is, if George W. Bush's father was president in the years 1989 through 1992, inclusive (was he? Hard to believe …), his years of economic impact are assumed to be 1990 through 1993. This changes the result remarkably little. Republicans win in two of the seven categories, with a tiny .01 percent lead in lower inflation.

Some people believe that the president has little or no effect on the economy. If so, that would be a serious flaw in this exercise. But it would also be a serious flaw in the exercise called democracy, since people tell pollsters that the economy is the most important issue for them in deciding whom to vote for. No doubt any particular bad year in any of these statistics can be explained by some extrinsic special event—a war, for example. But surely patterns that emerge over half a century account for these. At some point, if Republicans or Democrats tend to start more wars, and wars cost money, that can be a legitimate part of the calculation.

Finally, as economist Greg Mankiw points out in his blog, reacting to a similar calculation by Alan Blinder (both of them former chairs of the president's Council of Economic Advisers), correlation is not causation. Maybe economic statistics are better when the president is a Democrat for reasons having nothing to do with the president's skill in handling the economy. My own feeling about that is that as long as the pattern continues, who cares why? Correlation will do just fine.

http://www.slate.com/id/2199810

 

[Lamarr]

You need to study history better. Enron was one of the first shots fired in this economic disaster and the major cause of California's present economic state.

I need to study history? ha! OK, I hate going back in time but you are failing to recognize how the govt crafted the Commidity Futures Modernization Act which allowed Enron to conduct their reckless business practices. The exchanges were / are unregulated because Congress, in 2000, agreed with Enron energy traders that electronic trading required no government oversight. The resulting “Enron Loophole” has allowed futures traders to evade reporting their activity, even as the market grew exponentially and was flooded with exotic hedge fund trading instruments.

So Who signed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act? Bill Clinton

Once again Thought, if you read my posts, Both sides are anti-capitalists. I really don't understand this left vs right argument when both are owned by the banks. All I said was atleast W let Enron fail

Ah, isn't that what politicians do?

Thats what they do, but, Is that the 'true' role of govt?

They are elected to serve the people, however, regardless of party, they serve the special interests! If you agree with this statement, you must conclude Democrats are Anti-Capitalist, reason being, they craft legislation that is friendly to the special interest and NOT the people.

In a free market, the greed for profit is always counter-balanced by the risk of loss. But what the govt does is try to diminish the risk of loss by crafting legislation.

 

[BrainChild09]

In a free market, the greed for profit is always counter-balanced by the risk of loss. But what the govt does is try to diminish the risk of loss by crafting legislation.

Well said. This shouldn't be so hard for people to understand and see why that's not a good thing.

 

[thoughtone]

I need to study history? ha! OK, I hate going back in time but you are failing to recognize how the govt crafted the Commidity Futures Modernization Act which allowed Enron to conduct their reckless business practices. The exchanges were / are unregulated because Congress, in 2000, agreed with Enron energy traders that electronic trading required no government oversight. The resulting “Enron Loophole” has allowed futures traders to evade reporting their activity, even as the market grew exponentially and was flooded with exotic hedge fund trading instruments.

So Who signed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act? Bill Clinton

Once again Thought, if you read my posts, Both sides are anti-capitalists. I really don't understand this left vs right argument when both are owned by the banks. All I said was atleast W let Enron fail



Thats what they do, but, Is that the 'true' role of govt?

They are elected to serve the people, however, regardless of party, they serve the special interests! If you agree with this statement, you must conclude Democrats are Anti-Capitalist, reason being, they craft legislation that is friendly to the special interest and NOT the people.

In a free market, the greed for profit is always counter-balanced by the risk of loss. But what the govt does is try to diminish the risk of loss by crafting legislation.

In the free market, the golden rule applies. He who has the gold, rules.

Search my posts, Clinton was more republican than democrat as far has his economic policies.

One person's special interest is another persons constituent concern.

The bottom line is if you want the politicians to represent people and not businesses, then fight for 100% public campaign funding. That way they would no be beholden to the interests that give them money to run for office.

 

[nittie]

washingtonpost.com
By Jia Lynn Yang
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 15, 2010

Corporate America is hoarding a massive pile of cash. It just doesn't want to spend it hiring anyone.
This Story

*
Companies have the cash, but not the will to hire

Nonfinancial companies are sitting on $1.8 trillion in cash, roughly one-quarter more than at the beginning of the recession. And as several major firms report impressive earnings this week, the money continues to flow into firms' coffers.

Yet all the good news from big business hasn't translated into much promise for jobless Americans, leading many to wonder: If corporations are sitting on so much money, why aren't they hiring more workers?

The answer to that question has become a political flash point between the White House and big business groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which held a jobs summit Wednesday and accused the Obama administration of dumping onerous regulations on businesses. That has created an environment of "uncertainty," which is causing firms to hold back on hiring as the unemployment rate has hovered near 10 percent, the Chamber said.

The White House countered that companies are wary of hiring not because of new regulations but because they're still waiting for consumer demand to return. The administration also claimed credit for 3.5 million jobs created by the stimulus bill from last year.

The acrimony over jobs comes at a particularly tense moment in the relationship between business groups and the White House. With the midterm elections looming and polls showing Americans expressing a lack of confidence in President Obama's handling of the economy, White House officials are eager to demonstrate that their policies are helping, not hurting, the prospects for job growth and are making an extra effort to reach out to industry leaders.

There is no recession, no market or economy. Dems and Reps are servants. Big Business is to powerful for govt to contain or regulate. They have the money and power to do what they want to do they are too big to fail, they are gods.

 

[muckraker10021]

Go to the bottom of this post and play the video of now US senator Bernie Sanders confronting former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan’s bold face lies as Greenspan was testifying in front of a congressional committee.

Keep in mind this exchange occurred several years ago before the economy cratered & imploded in 2008. Everything senator Bernie Sanders said was 100% on point. Listen carefully to Greenspan’s cynical response to the litany of facts senator Sanders hits him with. Greenspan cannot counter what senator Sanders says.
Greenspan says:<blockquote>
“Major focus of monetary policy is to create an environment in this country which enables capital investment and innovation to advance, we are at the cutting edge of technologies in the world, we are doing an extraordinary job over the years and people flock to the United States, our immigration rates are very high and why, because they think this is a wonderful country to come to.”</blockquote>
Let me interpret Greenspan’s bull speak. What he essentially has said is that the US economy is being run for the benefit of big corporations not working class US citizens.

He said <i>”major focus of monetary policy is to create an environment in this country which enables capital investment and innovation to advance </i> That means outsourcing of jobs to China, India, Indonesia, Singapore etc. That means increased productivity.

When you hear the business report on the news talk about increased productivity and celebrate any increase, what does that really mean? It means that corporations are making more money by squeezing more work out of their remaining workers - (more hours worked, less vacation time, decrease in employee benefits etc.) - as they shed thousands of workers.

His comment about flocking immigrants is even more insulting to American workers. Flocking immigrants depress wages for US workers many who have spent $100,000 or more getting the college education they were told would solidify their path to the middle class & higher.

As it is said , a picture is worth a thousand words; The graph below throws into stark relief what the Greenspan policies have meant for working class US citizens.

<SPAN style="background-color:yellow">
There has been ZERO net job creation in the USA since December 1999. </span>
Who controlled the macro economic policy at the Federal Reserve during the last decade?? Alan Greenspan
READ:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/01/AR2010010101196.html


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Slow To Spend
The "Anti-Business" President’s Pro-Business Recovery.

by Ezra Klein

August 08, 2010

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/06/AR2010080606238.html

This White House has “vilified industries,” complains the Chamber of Commerce. America is burdened with “an anti-business president,” moans The Weekly Standard.
<b><SPAN STYLE="background-color:YELLOW">
Would that all presidents were this anti-business: according to the St. Louis Federal Reserve, corporate profits hit $1.37 trillion in the first quarter—an all-time high. Businesses are sitting on about $2 trillion in cash reserves. Business spending jumped 20 percent last quarter, and is up by 13 percent against 2009. The Obama administration has dropped taxes for small businesses and big ones alike. </b>,Maybe the president could be anti-me for a while. I could use the money.
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<b><SPAN STYLE="background-color:YELLOW">
The reality is that America’s supposedly anti-business president has led an extremely pro-business recovery. The corporate community has recovered first, and best.</span></b> The populist tone that conservative magazines and business groups decry is partly in reaction to this: as corporate America’s position is getting better and better, the recovery is looking shakier and shakier. Unemployment is high. Housing looks perilously close to a double dip. Job growth is weak. And corporate America, for all its profits, isn’t hiring. The 71,000 jobs the private sector added in July aren’t sufficient to keep up with population growth, much less cut into the ranks of the unemployed.</span>

Pundits have expended a lot of energy on this puzzle, but there’s actually no puzzle at all. A look at the history of financial crises shows that our slow, halting recovery is right on schedule, and the business community’s caution is predictable.

In their book, This Time Is Different, Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff look at every financial crisis over the last 800 years. It’s an exhaustive study, and its conclusions are depressing for a country that believes itself exceptional even in its suffering: we’re not special.

If you look at unemployment, housing prices, government debt, and the stock market, Rogoff says, “the U.S. is just driving down the tracks of a typical post–WWII deep financial crisis.” In some areas, we’re even a bit ahead of the game: economic output usually drops by 9 percent. We held the drop to 4 percent.

Even the unevenness of our recovery is predictable. “Housing and employment come back much slower than equity and [gross domestic product],” Reinhart says. GDP usually falls for two years and then recovers. Equity can move even faster, which helps explain corporate America’s rapid recovery. But employment tends to fall for five years, and sometimes it never quite recovers. And housing? That’s usually a six-year slide.

So business may be back, but its customers aren’t. That’s the Catch-22 of our recovery. Businesses will start hiring when the economy recovers. And the economy will start to recover when businesses start hiring. But that shouldn’t obscure what is, in fact, sort of good news (the frustrating stuff recoveries are made of): businesses can expand, they’re just waiting around to do so. “If you’re running a business, you can’t start hiring on speculation [that the economy is getting better],” says Joseph Kasputys, chairman of IHS Global Insight. “You have to wait until you see market signals that things are getting better. The smart businesses are looking for the early signs so they get the first advantage. They’re ready to move.” That’s a lot better than a world in which they don’t have the ability to move.

So what can we do to speed things along? More government stimulus—either through direct spending or further tax cuts—could offer some quick help, but Senate Republicans won’t allow anything large enough to make much of an impact. The Federal Reserve could step into the breach, but so far it’s been reluctant to do so. The Republicans want to see the Bush tax cuts extended and Obama’s health-care and financial-regulation bills repealed, but none of that will make a big short-term difference.

Instead, we’re left with that frustrating old standby: time. A financial crisis, Reinhart says, “is not something that policymakers can undo quickly. If you look at the big, historic panorama, deleveraging takes time. That’s not the answer people want to hear, but these [recoveries] are lengthy.”

So businesses are watching consumers, consumers are watching businesses, and everyone is pointing at Washington. But given the history of financial crises—and in the absence of further government intervention—there’s not much left to watch but the clock.


[FLASH]http://www.youtube.com/v/rPh-qGcYruw&amp;hl=en_GB&amp;fs=1[/FLASH]

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