Interview - Dean Baker - The Conservative Nanny State

Interview with Dean Baker, economist and co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research and author of "The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer"

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• Economy
• Economics
• Policy
• Research
• Nanny
• State
• Wealthy
• Government
• Rich
• Poor
• Stock
• Market
• Bailout
• Paulsen
• Bernake

[Irtidad]

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

[Xenu]

Socialism means worker control of the means of production.

[hongyewu]

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

[jolsteiner]

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

[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.

[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.

[Entropy137]

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

[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"