Another Good One from Robert Reich

[KeithE]

[Mrs Haruo]

Right on, Right on.

[Dave Roberts]

The more I read from Reich, the more I respect his understanding of economics.

[ET]

[KeithE]

[Dave Roberts]

[Mrs Haruo]

I for one feel very fortunate that my father gave me such a good example of financial planning by how he always stopped by the bank first on payday and putting something aside for emergencies and the future ("Pay yourself first" he called it) and adjusting our family's lifestyle to fit what was left. Seems like so many others hit the bars or the shopping malls first, and then have to be supported in their old age by their children when their children have children of their own that could use a boost up the ladder. A bit of wisdom he read many years ago he has told my son many times. "The wise man plans for future generations. The stupid man plans for Saturday night". Dad was still planting trees after he turned 90 that he doesn't expect to live to enjoy the fruit of, but he knows his grandchildren will. That's love.

[ET]

Well, Keith, if he is preaching to someone like me, I shall require something with more intellectual substance to it than political rhetoric. You, Dave and Reisch make claims, but offer nothing resembling a useful answer to the questions I ask.

No argument was offered for how an increase in wealth of any rich person limits the potential of another. If Bill Gates or Steve Jobs or some other CEO gets rich, how does that place limits on the rest of us? How does their success make success harder for me, you or anybody else? How does their success make "equal opportunity a pipe dream" for you, me or anybody else? Are we limited in life by the success of other people? Your argument seems to contend that one person's gain is another's loss and vice versa. The way to succeed in America is to make someone higher up do with less so that you can have more.

And secondly, if there are some limits imposed on us, then I ask the same questions I asked before: why should we presume that those limits exist due to not enough government instead of too much government? How do we know that it is not government regulations and laws that are the primary roadblocks that keep people from climbing the economic ladder?

For example,? Why should it require some government-approved "medallion" to show that one has a safe vehicle to haul people around for a fare? Why should the ? Ahh, yes, "regulations" are claimed to be needed to "protect" the public.

In my view government often prevents - most likely in collusion with some "rich" folks who want to be insulated from competition - people from starting taxi companies in NYC (and elsewhere) and in this case in Louisianan with burdensome regulations. Of course, in both situations I'm sure we had some folks telling us in their most tender and compassionate-sounding voices just how much they were trying to look out for the public by making sure no "unlicensed" providers of services would be out there taking advantage of the public...and then probably announcing a price increase the next day. Here's one entitled . Or maybe a (as opposed to "interior decorator"). Or those .

In each case above someone enriches themselves by using regulations to prevent competition, yet you argue that more regulation is the way to broaden opportunity. All you or Reich need to do is to explain to me how more regulations lead to more opportunity for the rest of us.

As for Keith's distaste for deregulation, my hometown would be much less well-off if the airlines hadn't been "deregulated" in the 1970s. Federal Express would not exist, which employs a huge number of people in Memphis and the surrounding area. It has provided thousands of college kids with jobs and college tuition over the years and gave some of the less well-off a way to get both an education and/or a job in a good company that, for many of them, led to a career..... buuuuuttt it made Fred Smith "filthy rich", as they say. OH! THE HORROR!!! Forty or fifty thousand people in the Memphis alone are are employed as a result of "deregulation" and the increased freedom to operate a business that came with it. There's a whole lotta people in my hometown that climbed the economic later BECAUSE Fred Smith got rich. Explain to me how his wealth kept others FROM getting rich. Or email Robert Reich and ask him to drop by and explain it.

While I'm thinking of FedEx, Southwest airlines and other low-cost carriers exist because of deregulation, although I'm not sure just how far one can claim the air industry to be deregulated with its thousands upon thousands of pages of regulatory material.

Dave, a belated Merry Christmas to you and Happy New Year. Greetings aside, whatever the economic situation is around your area doesn't provide us with anything useful in determining why the situation is what it is, nor does it provide any evidence that because someone, somewhere made a lot of money that the folks in the towns around you somehow have less opportunity as a result of someone making a big pile of money. The disappearance of jobs in one geographical region is nothing new to human history. What is left for Reich (or you or Keith) to prove (or at least make a rationale argument) is his implied claim that because someone in NYC or Redmond or Memphis or Peoria made a bunch of money that the person in your neck of the woods somehow has diminished opportunities as a result of that "rich" person's success.

[Dave Roberts]

[KeithE]

[William Thornton]

[KeithE]

[William Thornton]

Moving the goal posts, are you? You need to crunch more numbers on CEO pay. The McD CEO giving his total compensation to employees would amount to less than a penny an hour, but the idea you have tilts more toward punishing higher paid folks than helping lower, else you would recognize your usual screed as having little to do with higher wages. In the industries with a lot of low skill employees there isn't enough money in CEO or executive level pay to move the needle which makes one think that this is more about soaking a few highly paid execs than about the hamburger flippers.

Uh, I notice that you ignore the athlete pay business in your response. Smart move. You flung yourself off El Capitan by raising that. There's a problem with one private citizen making an agreement to pay another private citizen a sum to perform a service? Why should my plumber not have his exorbitant charges tamped down by gummit?

If a fast food enterprise that exhibits and practices the fairness that you approve, pays executives the lower pay that meets your approval, and has such great morale, why don't you start one? Risk your capital and those of the ethically-conscious investors who share your views and see how it works? You make it sound so simple.

Oh, you'd rather use the power of gummit to force this on others so that you bear no risk? I completely understand.

[Sandy]

So, William, when it comes to private business, then any morals, ethics, or other human considerations need not be considered. Profit and money is the bottom line, and it doesn't matter who gets fleeced, stepped on, or screwed to keep the money stream flowing? Those who work in the franchises and make the sales and products happen are just worthless and dispensable and their lives don't matter?

Investments notwithstanding, none of those corporate execs would have been able to build what they did without the help of the thousands of employees who produce their product or provide their service, nor without all of the tax abatements, infrastructure support and other benefits provided by government.

[William Thornton]

[KeithE]

[William Thornton]

So, Babe Ruth et al will just have to deal with the fact that they are the worlds best but cannot reap the rewards of skill because it violates some handwringer's sense of fairness?

Geniuses, stellar athletes, and high achievers of every age brought low by the bleeding hearts. Deal with it. We can all be mediocre and poorer...but we will feel better.

[Dave Roberts]

[KeithE]

[William Thornton]

[KeithE]

[William Thornton]

I favor freedom and self/market correction. You technocrats think all Gummit needs is smart guys with calculators and we will all be rich. It is still unproven that artificially reducing higher pay increases lower paid individuals. We are seeing how Gummit handles a major sector of the economy at the present.

[Sandy]

[William Thornton]

[ET]