But as I keep saying, comparisons with the Soviet Union are ridiculous. The economies of most Western European countries are vastly more regulated than ours, yet they produce comparable GDP per capita to our economy. The choice is not between the Soviet Union and the US, it is between France and the US. The standard of living is perfectly fine in France, Sweden, etc. It’s not some sort of Stalinist hell hole.

Well, yes, but France doesn’t have to do the heavy lifting we do, with respect to military power. Someone has to keep sea lanes open for commerce, and for over 200 years that has been Anglo-Saxon navies. We simply can’t afford to be French. Everyone’s economy would suffer.

That said, the per capita GDP (PPP) for 2007 show the USA at $47k and France at $33.5k. That alone is a 29% drop . . .

And we have to keep in mind the failure France’s socialist system has had attempting to assimilate immigrants. We need a free market system where people are encouraged to assimilate, learn the language, work, etc., or things will decay fast; socialism will encourage immigration and discourage assimilation.

http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/FDR-s-Policies-Prolonged-Depression-5409.aspx?RelNum=5409

The regulations which ‘allowed’ this crap and the people who bought the loans share blame. I was approached about a teaser rate loan back in 1996. Do you think I took it Mitsu? NO

I am responsible. I have a 9 year old minivan. I have a modest house that I bought in 1997. I know people who got the $500,000+ houses and bought trucks and cars with equity and had subprime rates.

These things predated Bush and were not part of a ‘deregulation’ era but an era of government trying to cash in. Values increased giving governments more revenue.

We as people as Sarah said need to “never let this happen again”. This is our doing. You can’t blame a corporate big wig or a government politician alone.

All of us should learn the lessons of living a lifestyle where money doesn’t come easy. I should NOT have to pay for people making poor decisions over and over.

The safety net for the elderly and non-able bodied and our national security depend on us changing this nation so that we do not head towards depression…. A lot of people suffer in that situation.

Numbers of people
1) The top 10% of income earners grew from 12.8 to 13.5 million people between 2000 and 2006 – a 5.4% growth of number of people
2) The bottom 50% of income earners grew from 64.1 to 67.8 million people between the years of 2000 to 2006 – a 5.7% growth in the number of people

Income Earned
1) You were in the top 10% of income earners if you earned $92,100 in 2000 and $108,900 in 2006 – An 18% change
2) You were in the bottom 50% of income earners if you earned $27,000 in 2000 and $32,000 in 2006 – An 18% change

Share of Taxes Paid
1) The top 10% of income earners paid 67.3 % of the income taxes in 2000 and that grew to 70.8% of the income taxes in 2006 – A 5.2% increase in the share of income taxes
2) The bottom 50% of incme earners paid 3.9% of the income taxes in 2000 and that shrunk to 3% of the income taxes in 2006 – A 14% decrease in the share of taxes.
3) For reference the group between the bottom 50% and the top 10% paid 28.8% of the income taxes in 2000 and 26.3 % of the income taxes in 2006 – A 9% decrease in their share of taxes.

Our tax structure is extremely vulnerable to revenue losses for a few reasons:
1) States tax property with high values at higher rates
2) The federal government and state governments tax income earners at the top brackets at higher rates
3) When there is an economic downturn or values in homes plummet – revenue losses into the government plummets at steep levels.

We have people like Arnold in CA and Barnery Frank and Obama saying in order to close that gap leading into a recession that we need to increase tax rates on higher incomes —– that changes behavior Mitsu. It changes people to brace themselves, hold on, tighten their belts and people see what they need to do already for a recession and you will have them holding on to even more.

Simply put – what we need is to have Obama apologize, give a cold hard recognition of his lessons learned, let people know that he wants people to ‘invest’ not ‘divest’ from the market and propose lower capital gains tax rates, lower corporate tax rates, and drop the higher income tax rates.

If you have contrary data, feel free to post it. Simply asserting the CRA is the reason for the problem, despite the total lack of empirical evidence for this is not a rational argument.

As for “balance of powers” — one thing that constantly surprises me about you guys is that you seem to think everything has to be applied to one extreme or another. I’ve already pointed out that I am not against all deregulation instituted by Reagan and continued by Bush. I am NOT saying that the state is the solution to all problems, nor even that regulation would necessarily have prevented the housing bubble.

What I am saying, and I don’t know why this is so hard to understand, is that one needs to *calibrate a balance* between regulation and deregulation, one needs to regulate in an intelligent, targeted manner, and one should make these calibration based not on ideology but on empirical evidence. To my mind it is obvious that there’s such a thing as too much regulation, and such as thing as too little.

But as I keep saying, comparisons with the Soviet Union are ridiculous. The economies of most Western European countries are vastly more regulated than ours, yet they produce comparable GDP per capita to our economy. The choice is not between the Soviet Union and the US, it is between France and the US. The standard of living is perfectly fine in France, Sweden, etc. It’s not some sort of Stalinist hell hole.

As I’ve said many times, I am not in favor of placing the balance anywhere close to where they have it in European social democratic states. For me, it should stay on the relatively deregulated end of the spectrum. However, it is obvious that we’ve gone too far in that direction and it is time to ratchet it back a bit.

Link

It’s very clear that the Dems are involved in damage control, and they are counting on the ignorance of the public – a public already primed to despise George Bush and his party – to fob it off on to those who were not the cause of the problem. One of the ways they deflect blame is to blame, in vague terms, “deregulation” or “executive compensation” (how about Jaime Gorelick’s or Mr. Raines’ compensation?) or “securitization.”

The real cause may be the legal loopholes that the Act had which allowed President Clinton and Janet Reno to threaten the banks with prosecution if they didn’t start throwing the cash to the four winds.

I’m just f***ing sick of this whole degenerate way the Dems have kicked sand in people’s eyes, they keep the system intact, get it bailed out, and no hope that the system will be corrected so that this does not happen again. The underwriting standards are not reformed one iota.