If I had a nickel for every analysis of our present economic situation that doesn’t include a prescription for fixing things and, even more importantly, a viable path for accomplishing that, I’d be a wealthy man. The latest of the genre is Joel Kotkin’s piece at Forbes. In it he correctly, in my view, characterizes our present economy as a “plutonomy” and, again correctly, notes that there will be no return to robust growth until more people participate in the recovery. He concludes:
How to drive growth to these and other productive sectors may require not only changes in government policy but also reacquainting the investor class with the virtues of long-term growth, productivity and the revival of the mass economy. Perhaps once they do investors might earn something other than intense dislike from the rest of the population.
We have now returned to the “zero-sum game” problem I mentioned in my previous post this morning. The beneficiaries of the present economy apparently want others to lose even more than they want to win. Or they believe that when others lose they in fact win. You can’t run a republic that way.
I would add that it has gotten very tiresome reading some blowhard from Publication X fail to understand or differentiate between an investor and a speculator.
The former are a net benefit to our society, the latter not so much. We’ve chosen policies which drive the investor into speculation just to stay even and are now drowning in the consequences.
The beneficiaries of the present economy apparently want others to lose even more than they want to win.
It’s all about establishing and freezing in time a new ruling class. And the sooner they can crush the middle class, the better. Thus the border policy of the current son of a bitch in the White House, and the sons and daughters of bitches in Congress who almost to a person agree with what he’s doing to desolve the border. It’s all about destroying the middle class, and look at how the rich people like Reynolds and steve and Drew cheer them on.
I must have missed the part where I was cheering on what’s going on at the border, ice. I think it’s a travesty.
I think that’s overwrought Ben. Many iInvestors are climbing up the risk curve in yield chase, but they haven’t become rank speculators.
The closest thing may be those investors in wildly over valued mo-mo type public equities.
Drew, you’re going to run right out this fall and vote for open borders candidates, and claim they’re the best thing for the country.
And you’ve apparently forgotten your posts complaining that Americans won’t work for Third World wage scales.
@Ben Wolf
… fail to understand or differentiate an investor and a speculator.
What and why one purchases something is there business. The difference is between simple asset inflation and a bubble. A bubble relies upon credit that is being leveraged off of the assets that are being inflated. Either scenario is subject to speculation, but the bubble is the problem not speculation.
Creating money is not quite as free as you may think. The devil will be paid. Welcome to the payment plan – six years and counting.
@Guarneru,
Well, I may have overstated things a bit, but I do think that the overall risk-structure is significantly worse than a few years ago because a lot of capital has nowhere else to go.