“If we’re fighting to reform the tax code and increase exports, the benefits cannot just translate into greater profits and bonuses for those at the top. They have to be shared by American workers, who need to know that opening markets will lift their standard of living as well as your bottom line,” President Obama told the Chamber of Commerce on Monday morning.
Reaction from Jim “Gateway” Hoft — “His answer to everything… Socialism.” Apparently anything that doesn’t support plutocracy is socialism. Hoft’s “insight” was accompanied by that obnoxious “Obama as the Joker” image. I hadn’t realized the Joker was a socialist.
Update: Here’s another one, from Weasel Zippers —
Marxist-in-Chief: Corporate Profits “Have To Be Shared By American Workersâ€â€¦ What’s he really saying: I intend to force evil capitalists to redistribute their income in the name of class warfare.
Sometimes they’re too predictable. On the other hand, Little Lulu’s post about the speech is an incoherent rant about how the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is in cahoots with Big Labor to promote amnesty for illegal immigrants. She also accuses the Chamber of “playing footsie” with the ALF-CIO to support increased government infrastructure spending.
Oooo, evil government infrastructure spending! And yes, the Chamber and the AFL-CIO are in favor of it, because government infrastructure spending is good for business and labor. How dare they actually advocate in favor of whatever is good for their members!
Another Update: Some guy asks, “How is this not socialism?”
So·cial·ism
1 : any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods
2a : a system of society or group living in which there is no private property b : a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state
3: a stage of society in Marxist theory transitional between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done
On the other hand, the President’s speech was solidly pro-capitalist:
America’s success didn’t happen overnight, and it didn’t happen by accident. It happened because [of] the freedom that has allowed good ideas to flourish, that has allowed capitalism to thrive; it happened because of the conviction that in this country hard work should be rewarded and that opportunity should be there for anybody who’s willing to reach for it. …
… We have to renew people’s faith in the promise of this country –- that this is a place where you can make it if you try. And we have to do this together: business and government; workers and CEOs; Democrats and Republicans.
We know what it will take for America to win the future. We need to out-innovate, we need to out-educate, we need to out-build our competitors. We need an economy that’s based not on what we consume and borrow from other nations, but what we make and what we sell around the world. We need to make America the best place on Earth to do business.
It was a capitalism pep talk, in other words. Then he talked about the stuff government does for business, such as maintain infrastructures (is infrastructure socialism?):
As a government, we will help lay the foundation for you to grow and innovate and succeed. We will upgrade our transportation and communication networks so you can move goods and information more quickly and more cheaply. We’ll invest in education so that you can hire the most skilled, talented workers in the world. And we’ll work to knock down barriers that make it harder for you to compete, from the tax code to the regulatory system.
Then he tells businesses —
But as we work with you to make America a better place to do business, I’m hoping that all of you are thinking what you can do for America. Ask yourselves what you can do to hire more American workers, what you can do to support the American economy and invest in this nation. That’s what I want to talk about today –- the responsibilities we all have — the mutual responsibilities we have — to secure the future that we all share.
As Steve M. points out, Obama is “asking for the economy to work the way right-wingers say it should.”
Right-wingers say that showering wealth on the rich in the form of tax cuts inevitably helps the rest of us. They say they want the rest of us to be helped, which is why they want the tax rates of the wealthy to be reduced. So, see, right-wingers want corporate profits to be “shared” by American workers. Right-wingers want to “spread the wealth around.”
Or, as a former Republican president once said, “We ought to make the pie higher.”
It is beyond reason why anyone would object to what the President said, but that’s wingnuts for you.
Mr. Hoft,
Throughout history, even slave owners knew that they had to feed, shelter and clothe their slaves so that they could get the work out of them that they needed. That wasn’t ‘socialism,’ that was the cost of doing business. It’s the same here.
And Corporations,
In America, we’ve long been slaves to corporate masters, like in history before, serfs depended on their Lords. So the question isn’t whether you own the table – we know you do. It’s the quantity and quality of the crumbs that trickle down to us. And may I respectfully suggest increasing some of those? Those tables may prove to be flammable. And some of us wouldn’t mind being the first to light the match, I mean, seeing as we have the time.
Sorry, goatherd…
What Gulag said.
Seemed to me all President Obama was saying is, people with no money to buy things don’t buy things, which includes your products. But when I read the comments over at Hoft’s cave, I could see how this was a dastardly attempt by Obama to steal from the rich and . . . and . . . Socialism! . . . stockholders and CEOs deserved all the profits . . . and just another example Obama’s evil skulduggery.
Damn, now I am soooo confused.
Reaction from Jim “Gateway†Hoft — “His answer to everything… Socialism.â€
Jim “Gateway” Hoft’s answer to everything: Feudalism.
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I watched the president’s speech today, I thought it was quite reasonable and if anything he seemed to be bending over backwards to the corporate snobs. But thats the right wing media for you, anything short of the upper crust bathing in champagne while the rest of us beg for crumbs is socialism. I did not click on the gateway link, what’s the point?
BTW my laptop gat a nasty little virus from a right wing website that was linked to from here on or around the day of the Gifford’s shooting (I had to replace my hard drive it got down into the operating system and could not be cleaned). My IT guy told me that some sites setup up a malware attack depending on who linked one to it? Word to the wise.
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I believe you mentioned that at the time. I’d take the link out if I knew which one it was, but I didn’t get any “bugs.”
Yeah, in all the Reagan hagiography no one bothered to remember that the whole point of shooting firehoses of cash into rich people’s pockets was TO MAKE THINGS BETTER FOR THE REST OF US. It was a stupid idea that any non-moron could see wasn’t going to work, but at least the INTENTION was to make things better for everyone.
They don’t even pretend to that anymore.
On a related note, Pfizer shut another R&D site. And announced a stock buyback! Free ponies for all executives and shareholders. Oh– by the way– don’t get cancer. There won’t be any new wonder drugs.
Uncledad wrote:
BTW my laptop gat a nasty little virus from a right wing website that was linked to from here on or around the day of the Gifford’s shooting (I had to replace my hard drive it got down into the operating system and could not be cleaned). My IT guy told me that some sites setup up a malware attack depending on who linked one to it? Word to the wise
I don’t want to derail this thread off-topic, but Uncledad, you didn’t need to buy a new hard drive. You can wipe a hard drive clean (and yes, that means wiping all your software including the OS) with Darik’s Boot & Nuke (DBAN):
http://www.dban.org/about
Download it from here:
http://www.dban.org/download
But the image to a CD. Then boot with the CD and following the instructions to wipe a hard disk. It’s easy. But then you’ll have to reinstall the operating system. If it’s Windows and you don’t have a backup CD, you’ll have to buy it (goodbye US$200). Or install Linux for free (my preferred option). If you want more info about that, email me at chiu_miaoling followed by a @yahoo.com.
Now back to topic: righties will gladly vote themselves into poverty. While they’re sitting around the campfire beneath the freeway overpass where they now live, a mercenary (working for Blackwater) approaches them to say they will have to start paying rent or move because President Palin just sold the Interstate Highway System to Halliburton (which is now owned by the Chinese). The righties will cheer even though they’re being evicted because, by God, privatization is so much better than Obama’s socialism.
… the whole point of shooting firehoses of cash into rich people’s pockets was TO MAKE THINGS BETTER FOR THE REST OF US. It was a stupid idea that any non-moron could see wasn’t going to work, but at least the INTENTION was to make things better for everyone.
I don’t believe that. It was just window-dressing for the gullible masses, softened up by the same peoples’ demonization of liberalism. These people are so used to manipulating others through their words and stagecraft – this was just one more trick to mollify any opposition to their own agenda, which has nothing to do with benefiting anybody but themselves.
True, but those same gullible masses fervently believed this to be true, and they are now the same gullible masses who are screaming SOCIALISM because the President suggested the economy should make things better for everyone. It’s like super-double-plus gullibility turned back on itself.
Consider the simple principle behind HCR-
You will obtain health insurance or pay a tax.
Apply this to the economy and business –
You will hire American or pay a tax.
The implementation would not be simple – neither was HCR. But basic idea is that if you want to sell in the biggest market there is – which the USA is – and if you want to be listed on Wall Street and enjoy the protection of that marketplace, the hiring practices have to follow your bottom line. As you make more money, you have to hire more US workers – or pay a stiff tax.
Hoft is confused about various forms of socioeconomic systems. It’s not the transition from capitalism toward socialism that has him upset, it’s the suggestion that modern industrial capitalism shouldn’t devolve into feudalism that bugs him.
He seems to think that, if you have been clever and lucky enough to manipulate the system so that all the financial benefits of governmental action and all the financial benefits of other people’s hard work, both physical and intellectual, come directly to you, then you deserve it, and all that money is rightfully yours.
In the Middle Ages, there was a class who gamed the system by claiming divine right of birth, and now apparently Hoft believes in a divine right of corporate executive privilege, and they are owed all the wealth produced by the nation.
I’m sorry, but the suggestion that a President, particularly one with a chief-of-staff from GE and a Treasury Secretary from Goldman Sachs, going hat-in-hand to make nice to the Chamber of Commerce is Meven remotely connected to socialism is, well, just absolutely frickin’ nuts.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sg1A0GdIIxw
I’ve been doing a little reading about Frederich Von Hayek who is better known by his streamlined handle, Frederick Hayek and Ludwig Von Mises. Both seem to have believed not only that Socialism would fail due to the inability to manage the economy as well as the all-knowing, unerring, unfailing, “free market” but that democracy also gummed up to works. Society was best run, by the elite a.k.a. the rich, who had proved their worth competing in the world of commerce.
This sheds new light on the Republican/Tea Bagger obstructionism. Their goal is to make the democratic elements of the American political system so dysfunctional that some Hayekian/Randian alternative will seem attractive and/or necessary. It seems to me, it will be a modernized feudalism (manoralism). Socialism was a “road to serfdom” according to Hayek. It’s better to take Hayek’s advice and take the other side of the “fork in the road”, which leads to, Ummm SERFDOM.
But, Hayek actually favored some sort of social safety net, (according to an interview, later in his life) though minimal and he didn’t describe himself as a conservative. He once said, “The value of conservatism, depends on what it is that you’re trying to conserve.” I have often wanted to ask conservatives just what it is that they are trying to conserve, in specific terms.
I suppose once that pesky democracy is relegated to its proper place and the world is run by corporations like Enron, Goldman Sachs, Xe and Halliburton, everything will be just peachy.
No hard feelings Cundgulag, the best man won. (Sounds kind of like Herbert Spencer after writing this comment)
I took a look at the links; why is it I never learn not to read the comments?
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I hear that Hosni Mubaraek has thrown his hat into the ring for the 2012 GOP nomination. The “birthers” understand that he’s Muslim and wasn’t born in the US, bu they like his style.