dagblog - Comments for "Romneyville and Financial Capitalism. "

On Romney's 15% tax, I noted

NCD — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 18:03:57 +0000

On Romney's 15% tax, I noted some comments at various sites said, well, 'Kerry was rich too". Others pointed out though, 'OK, Kerry is rich, but unlike Romney, he doesn't want to end Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid'. Hopefully people will figure that part out.

You all are making me

Oxy Mora — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 03:02:50 +0000

In reply to That's the transcendentalist

You all are making me homesick for Vermont.

I grew up in the Midwest in a town in which neighbors typically worked in local factories and made enough money on one salary to support a family and have time left over to participate in community activities. I'm not sure we will ever see that kind of life ever again and that does make me sad at times.

Thanks, erica. I also liked

Oxy Mora — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 02:58:36 +0000

In reply to Oxy, I think this is all

Thanks, erica. I also liked Peter's comments on the subject.

As an actual business owner and having spent a while in other companies, managers overall do appreciate employees. There's just no question however that over the last several decades, because of profit hungry investors, employees were thrown on the chopping block in a startling way.

In my small business I want my employees to stay because they are well trained and have a good work ethic. Frankly, that makes things a lot easier on me.

NCD, I meant to respond

Oxy Mora — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 02:48:51 +0000

In reply to Story on financial

NCD, I meant to respond earlier. Thanks very much for your comments.

I just hope the Obama Administration does figure out how to tie this up in a bundle for the average working guy, but like you I'm not holding my breath. What a choice for blue collar workers---Obama vs. Romney.

That's the transcendentalist

Dan Kervick — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 02:41:37 +0000

In reply to But maybe that's some kind of

That's the transcendentalist tradition, AA. To me New England is a place of town meetings and civic organizations, with extremely strong community spirit and a genius for democratic self-government, where people worked together to build a common life. It's churches and "meeting houses" and publicly constructed and operated schoolhouses. It's the Shakers. It's contradances. It's the town commons. It's the New Hampshire state legislature which is - so we understand - the third largest democratic legislature in the world, after the US Congress and the Indian Parliament.

It's in the Calvinist Jonathan Edwards, who wrote that the duty of Christian charity:

is most reasonable, considering the general state and nature of mankind. This is such as renders it most reasonable that we should love our neighbor as ourselves; for men are made in the image of our God, and on this account are worthy of our love. Besides, we are all nearly allied one to another by nature. We have all the same nature, like faculties, like dispositions, like desires of good, like needs, like aversion to misery, and are made of one blood. And we are made to subsist by society and union one with another. Mankind in this respect are as the members of the natural body, one cannot subsist alone, without an union with and the help of the rest.

Sometimes the communal and organizational tradition of New England has been expressed through formal government; sometimes through religious organizations; sometimes through organizational "voluntarism" which is particularly strong in New Hampshire. Walk around the New England landscape and everywhere you see the memorials and legacies of the things people did together, not a lot of idolatrous monuments to the pride of individual magnates and titans.

The tea partiers and free-staters who have been attracted to New Hampshire by the Live Free or Die motto really don't know what kind of "freedom" New Hampshire has traditionally practiced.

Thanks, Erica. I think what

Oxy Mora — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 02:34:34 +0000

In reply to One other thing--we could

Thanks, Erica. I think what Romney's financial backers want is a complete reversal of any semblance of financial regulation which might have been introduced by Obama---as starters.

Thanks, Destor. I saw that

Oxy Mora — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 02:32:04 +0000

In reply to I have mixed feelings about

Thanks, Destor. I saw that other post and putting the two stories of Elevation Partners together made an impact.

About the General, I'm wondering if Romney can really back away from the "job creator a la Bain" posit of his overall campaign. It seems that the Governorship of Mass by itself isn't much of a story.

I'm just steeling myself not to take my eye off the ball with respect to the potential devastation a Romney Administration could cause.

But maybe that's some kind of

artappraiser — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 01:15:35 +0000

In reply to Oxy, I think our minds are

But maybe that's some kind of weird New England bias I have.

I can't imagine what New England might have to do with that, but then this essay is stereotypical New England to me.

Oxy, I think our minds are

Dan Kervick — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 00:34:40 +0000

In reply to Dan, you made a comment

Oxy, I think our minds are all polluted by a brutal, radically individualistic and monstrously aggressive contemporary mass culture that promotes individual victory, exhibitionism and domination as the chief American values, and has written the very powerful democratic and egalitarian strains of American history out of the official narrative. It's fantastically repulsive. It is hard even to take a breath in contemporary America without feeling the need to throw up.

Even Obama's recent big speech, which was a definite improvement, seems to accommodate itself to the crass tradition of domination. There is still the notion in it that life is a kind of contest in which some are victorious and some lose, and that the more "democratic" version of this conception is that all we can ask of this American cage match is that we each get a "fair shot" at victory.

I refuse to believe that there aren't still a very sizeable number of Americans who completely repudiate this repulsive reality show version of America as some kind of manic chariot race, where our chiefest prayer is that with God's grace we can successfully humiliate our opponents and leave them in the dust.

The contemporary revisionist view is that America has never been about democracy, community and equality, but always the expression of a Nietzchean will to dominate the world and liberate oneself as an individual. This just seems completely false to what I understand about American history, and the way most Americans have traditionally lived their lives. But maybe that's some kind of weird New England bias I have.

Mass culture is just a product manufactured by the plutocratic rulers of America to perpetuate the outlook that best preserves their own positions. So one thing we should do is turn off as much of it as we can. It's really poisonous - and even ironic distancing can't shield one from its toxins.

I understand this or at least

Richard Day — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 23:32:13 +0000

In reply to Oxy, I think this is all

I understand this or at least partially.

But a business cannot function without relationships with government.

Licenses must be sought; property taxes paid; tarriffs paid; tax deductions be allowed...

Businesses are given 'bys' by the governments.

They are given some slack on property taxes and income taxes and all sorts of costs by the governments.

When a manufacturing plant is put in place assurances must be given in exchange for the right to do business that the drinking water of the locality is not poisoned, that workers are not poisoned or abused; that waste and garbage are properly accounted for...

And if deductions are taken with regard to employee's pensions then there must be certifications made by the governments granting those tax credits and deductions that the monies in those pensions are properly secured.

Books discussing these issues can easily run a thousand pages.

There are always contracts between corporations and governments and when those contractual provisions are broken some one must take the blame.

Governments should not let management 'walk away' from failed businesses leaving the locality with unemployed workers, destroyed pensions, poisoned water and empty rotting buildings.

Oh well...