I completely agree with you. The problem is humans though, not the idea. If we were all perfect people, that would work. However, there are people that steal, take, cheat, are selfish, that ruin that system. They ruin some of the things we have now, like welfare. People as a whole need to change for it to work, and unfortunately, I don't think that will ever happen.
Look at the way the job market is. Everyone wants to blame the president for not making jobs. How can one man create millions of jobs? There aren't many ways for him to do it, honestly. The corporations, businesses and whatever else need to stop being greedy, and sending their businesses elsewhere. We need factories here, we need to be building here, and making things here. It would create jobs. In my opinion the whole problem is with that. If we fixed that, everything would be getting better, but no, they still send their places to another country. So people can make things for 1 cent an hour. They have billions of dollars, but can't pay Americans to work there? Fuck that.
Quoting: Anonymous Coward 1415174 Right. I think there is enough money around (thanks to The Bernanke's alchemical manifestations) but it's just not moving fast enough. There is record corporate profits, but they're hoarding cash, not spending, not investing, not hiring, and spending is what fuels the economy. The shrinking middle class no longer has much discretionary income to spend, while wealth over the past 30 years has been REDISTRIBUTED UPWARD, from the bottom 99% to the top 1%. And that gulf is widening. And it's just greed, pure and simple.
I dunno. There is a self-balancing reckoning coming. The whole house of cards is so top-heavy that I just don't see it as staying up much longer, in spite of the frantic manipulations of those who hold those powers.
I've gotten a lot of bad karma for suggesting a redistribution of wealth, but if the poor and middle-class had money to spend, they would, and the economy would pull itself out of the muck. But those who "have" don't want to share with those who don't, consider it to be some sort of theft, have a belief that anyone who is poor or struggling is either stupid or lazy, and deserve to be poor, screw them, losers.
Ironic thing is that when the whole thing implodes from the greed-sucking wealth at the top, that everyone will be suddenly more equal, only instead of the poor becoming rich, the rich will become poor. too.
And it has a sort of inevitability to it, especially for anyone with paper wealth, so all you who are smug in their wealthy portfolios, might as well burn them to stay warm when TSHTF.
I've come to the conclusion that Buckminster Fuller had it right. Wealth is the number of days of forward survival, so anyone who has the means to do so would be well-advised to convert their paper assets into tangible assets that ensure their forward survival and self-sufficiency, because there aren't gonna be many big corporations to provide your water, energy and food. Shelter, self-generated energy, food production facilities, and a reliable water source, for starters.
The S is going to HTF at some point in the not-too-distant future, and we will be in for perhaps years of struggle as the Beast of an economy we have built over the past 150 years will dismantle and implode on itself, and those who have become dependent on corporations for their sustenance will probably not survive. I guess there is your economic darwinism.
And perhaps that is the answer to the whole question of economics in a limited-resource world. Individual self-sufficiency and efficiency on a mass scale. Throw out the unlimited-growth model, the mindless-consumption, planned obsolescence, throw-away culture, and just live a high-quality life based on something other than material "wealth," the pursuit of which is really a poverty of the soul.
