Interview - Dean Baker - The Conservative Nanny State

[hongyewu]

should have, would have, could have...... lol

[zurapDOR]

Write down at least 50 % of all morgages, blood-let the banks and gang-banksters and keep your homes. This is partly socialism, partly market-friendly, and resolves for 25 million house-owners, there after, spend OWN money by work or profit for home-owning. The rent on housing will plunge, win and win for both society and people. The Banksters will rightfully bleed.

[rockinewok]

It's amazing that this guy blames the collapse of the Michigan car industry on producing SUV's instead of fuel efficient cars. I would think that their costs of production due in large part to union salaries and pensions would do a huge amount of damage to their competitiveness. He talks about union workers "should" have those salaries and benefits. That's a normative statement. If you cannot compete with other car businesses due to your higher production costs, then you will fail.

[DeltaLimaNiner]

What would Dean Baker say about the national debt? At this point, I'm not sure we can pay back our foreign lenders, but then again, does it matter if we don't?

[rdozzi]

State Socialism is government control of the means of production. Libertarian Socialism (which is closely related to left anarchism) is worker control of the means of production. Note, the term "libertarian" originally meant anarchist/socialist not free-market capitalist.

[boing3887]

dean baker himself isn't really a socialist, more like a progressive keynesian (and remember, EVERYONE is a keynesian in the economist clique, its just that htey like to call themselves free marketers). but he also talks about how market policies can be beneficial in "conservative nanny state" and so forth. markets are like a hammer, you can use em to hammer nails or murder people. dean baker makes similar points in "conservative nanny state"

[wellingtonian]

you should try getting on at a DC warehouse

where you'd start off at 15 an hour.

[sealhunter5]

how does giving businesses free money help the people !

How does giving banks free money ? that loan money to the people at a profit help the people !

This is common sense !

give the company to the workers and see if they can make it profitable! if they fail, then they fail, this is the fair plan ,

why should a grocery cashier care if they fail or the school teacher in Idaho!

[redmattuk]

@sealhunter5

Grocery cashier gets fired when her boss goes bust because the bank cut his and his suppliers overdraft facility because they needed cash.

[CousinoMacul]

I'm a little skeptical as to how viable some of his solutions for copyright and patent are, but I definitely like them better than the current system.

[Irtidad]

It seems extremely obvious that free market fundamentalism is based on a double standard.

[xmattycorex]

the problem is we don't have a free market, we have socialism, we're just not honest about it. if we had a free market free trade economy the people would be in complete control of everything that goes on in the country, and the government stays out of the way entire, except keep it law like it says in the constitution that only gold and silver can be legal tender. but what do we have? a government that tells us what we can see, say, hear, what we can put in our bodies. that's socialism

[rivetgunner]

I thought the current crisis IS the failure of free market. Markets left to their own devices will eventually ruin the economy. Are you saying that we shouldn't have regulations at all?

[miklas1911]

Actually, what you have is not free market at all. You have socialism for the rich. B/c you have the entire shadow-banking systems that were really highly leveraged (30:1) and made really risky loans. But these institutions knew that the government would help them out if they went south b/c they are "too big to fail" and this is a big problem!! Why should the tax-payers help these CEOs out - they knew the risk! You should help out the institutions b/c it's necessary, and then cut the CEOs.

[Xenu]

Socialism means worker control of the means of production.

[Entropy137]

I thought it was gov. control of the means of production.

[jolsteiner]

@Irtidad Well, it has always been like that. You just happen to be learning about it now.