bailout dead

OCCOM BILL wrote:

The simple truth is; most people's motivation to work is to better their own lot in life.

Right. And Cyclo's pretty obvious point is that "bettering your lot in life" means something else for all of us. For some it means being able to work fewer hours. For others it means being able to afford that extra holiday. For others it means getting a job that doesnt bore your eyes out of your sockets, or that has you working with cool colleagues. For others it means being promoted to a position with more prestige. To reduce everyone's motivations of bettering one's lot in life to getting the max $$ possible is silly.

Moreover, to the real enough extent that financial betterment does drive people's ambitions, how in hell's name would capping the max possible financial reward at the stratospheric end -- say, $9,000,000 a year, or $14,000,000 a year, or whatever such top-of-the-top of excess payments you think of when conceptualising caps -- suddenly stifle people's incentive to move up? If 10 mil a year is the top you can get in society, there will be people working their ass off and putting everything on the line to get there. It would be no different from what society looked like pretty recently, when people weren't devoid of incentive to better themselves, work hard and innovate either, even though there wasn't the kind of escalated top corporate CEO pay we have today.

This notion that if top pay wouldnt escalate from 10 mil last year to 20 mil today to 30 mil in ten years, people would lose the willpower to work, achieve and improve is just silly on its face to me. It's like ideological dogma that's sung loose from what real people act on.

I'm learning from this thread (thanks, dys, and thanks to all participants) and am not so much at this point on one side or the other. It's a natural inclination for me to agree with nimh, yes, and I see Robert's points. Wretchedly, I see something so far in virtually all of your expressed points.

I'll pipe in to say that my motivation for work in my long life has been to have money to eat and have shelter - but most of my employment or self employment choices have had to do with personal satisfaction re doing what interests me. I missed the wanting to be a millionaire gene. I once was asked to be lab manager in an early version of what became an international med lab - well, it was already international but only in the beginning few stages of its eventual growth to the major facility it became. I didn't take the job because I didn't like the way the owner treated some employees. The owner, basically a knowledgeable and good man, was generous and thoughtful to employees re compensation and profit participation, just a rager on some one to one bases. I sometimes sided with the fired people, as did others who quit along with the fired, but mostly I didn't like the chaos.

I ended up choosing to quit, go to school for years for a less well earning profession (generalizing) because it fascinated me and I got to design all the time - a whole new realm of fun and fascination that I continue to appreciate. I have designed a bunch for free: it's just plain old interesting.

Some limiting choices I've made have been related to a certain disability I deal with, but they were primarily re places I could work re travel time/hours to drive in dim light for part of the year. However - I could keep on being creative for decades after that, though never bringing in much dollar bacon, whatever the so-called hourly fees. I don't regret my choice, I have just loved designing.

So, that's an anecdote, but I think many have similar complexity to their work choices. Carpenters can crave working with wood, or at least projects that involve real craft. Mechanics can live and breathe cars while swearing a blue streak at one or another. Some people just love sales. Lots are fascinated by technology. Point, job satisfaction is very important, if not the main decider when you have a mortgage and a family.

Many women craved to move from the role of mother-housekeeper-nurse-teacher in my early lifetime to something that would interest them otherwise.
As we all know, that role still has value, perhaps even more regard than it did back then, but women also got to play in the fields of law and medicine and much else after the civil rights act.... because they were interested in law and medicine, movie production, whatever. Uh, also for the money, but not only.

Occom Bill does not seem to understand that there are countries which are more civilized than we. The French,for example, have a thirty five hour week and six weeks of vacation. We continue to work incredibly longhours. Juliet Schor, Professor of Economics at Harvard, in her book-""The Overworked American" has written that Americans enjoy less leisure today than at any time since the end of World War II.

Before responding to anything else: Robert you deserve a standing O for your patient explanations, and thinking of the questions that can't be answered by flawed logic. Bravo!

Cycloptichorn wrote:

First, it would save a considerable amount of money for our corporations....

Ours? I guess nimh might want to rewrite his part about this not being nationalization.

Quote:

Before responding to anything else: Robert you deserve a standing O for your patient explanations, and thinking of the questions that can't be answered by flawed logic. Bravo!

(Sorry, O'Bill, I just can't help myself here .):

No apology necessary. I think lots of people openly advocate class warfare. Some even think Nationalizing businesses is a good idea.

But I’m not yet convinced that either Nimh or Cyclo fit in either of those categories.

Quote:

No apology necessary. I think lots of people openly advocate class warfare. Some even think Nationalizing businesses is a good idea.

But I’m not yet convinced that either Nimh or Cyclo fit in either of those categories.

Class warfare?

It's not about class warfare at all. It's about treating all people within the broad community with decency & fairness & respect. Even those at the at the "bottom" of the rung. It's about living in a community, not just "the economy"!

That's just not true. I want their rights as well, I just don't see blindly attacking one class as the way to solve the problems for the other.

But you are probably right that discussing this won't help, you are determined to believe that your viewpoint is about the rights for ordinary workers and mine isn't, and this very notion that you have to be against one class to help the other is what I consider classism. I find it ugly regardless of what class the prejudice is pointed at.

I think, Robert, our definitions of workers "rights" might vary quite a bit. Me, (as well as the level workers' wages) I'd include the right to decent, affordable healthcare, which many (in the US especially, as I understand) are denied because they simply can't afford it. And equal opportunities in education .. and .....

I sincerely don't accept that it's "class prejudice" to question the distribution of the earnings - from the top to the bottom of any business organization.

But perhaps I should just shut up now. I've diverted the thread from the bailout. Any minute now dys could tell me he's put me on "ignore".

Questioning is one thing, wanting to impose caps on them all is a wholly different thing. By all means we should question disparity in earnings, societies with less disparate distribution tend to be better for all. But just trying to blindly attack the rich does nothing at all to help the poor.

Quote:
But perhaps I should just shut up now. I've diverted the thread from the bailout. Any minute now dys could tell me he's put me on "ignore".


If you pay attention to why he did so you'll note it's probably because that member is a conservative who's trying to mock liberals by pretending to be one and acting like an idiot. He's a troll and ignoring trolls is a good idea.

I'm not an American citizen, but I'd be arguing for a more equitable distribution of the profits/wealth created by the whole working community, o'bill. There does appear to be a hugely disproportionate share of the profits going into the pockets of CEOs & managements (compared to the ordinary workers) , as I understand the situation. And these are the very people who have created the current mess, which ordinary taxpayers will now have to bail them out of!

It's not about class warfare at all. It's about treating all people within the broad community with decency & fairness & respect. Even those at the at the "bottom" of the rung. It's about living in a community, not just "the economy"!

In a bold bid to revive President Bush's multibillion-dollar financial rescue plan, Senate leaders scheduled a vote for Wednesday night on a version of the bill that adds substantial tax cuts meant to appeal to Republicans when it reaches the House.

The goal is to net at least 12 more House votes than the rescue proposal received Monday, when lawmakers rocked the political and financial worlds by rejecting it.

The gambit is certain to anger some conservative House Democrats, who object to tax cuts that are not offset with spending cuts. But Senate strategists assume it will gain more House votes than it will lose.

If so, Congress would be poised to pass landmark legislation giving the government billions of dollars to buy deeply discounted mortgage-backed securities that are choking off credit and roiling the markets.

The strategy is risky because some House members might see it as a high-handed move by senators. Senate passage of a bailout measure has seemed assured all along. The showdown is in the House, but now the Senate is trying to force the House's hand.

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., called it "a brilliant move" that will "help pick up votes on both sides of the aisle."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's reaction was much cooler. "The Senate has made a decision about how to proceed and what can pass that body," the California Democrat said. "The Senate will vote tomorrow night, and the Congress will work its will."

The new approach, announced Tuesday night by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., would tack large and contentious tax measures to the bailout bill. Senate leaders figure the House will have to approve it because the tax cuts are too appealing to Republicans and the financial rescue plan will still seem essential to most Democrats.

The Senate approach uses big, game-changing amendments. House leaders earlier were considering the smallest possible tweaks to the bill in hopes of picking up 12 more votes.

The Senate bill would raise federal deposit insurance limits to $250,000 from $100,000, as called for presidential nominees Barack Obama and John McCain only hours earlier.

House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, praised the move, but many Democrats had signaled approval as well.

McCain, Obama and Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, signaled plans to return to Washington for the Wednesday night vote. If Obama and Biden vote for the measure, it would make it more difficult for Pelosi and other Democrats to reject or change the Senate measure.

The Senate measure will graft the bailout language to a tax bill it approved last week, on a 93-2 vote. It includes: a provision to prevent more than 20 million middle-class taxpayers from feeling the bite of the alternative minimum tax, $8 billion in tax relief for those hit by natural disasters in the Midwest, Texas and Louisiana and some $78 billion in renewable energy incentives and extensions of expiring tax breaks.

In a compromise worked out with Republicans, the bill does not pay for the AMT and disaster provisions but does have revenue offsets for part of the energy and extension measures.

That wasn't enough earlier this year for the House, which insisted that there be complete offsets for the energy and extension part of the package.

The Senate version also may include a measure to require health plans for 51 or more employees to give equal treatment to mental health or addiction if they cover such illnesses. The House and Senate have passed similar mental health parity measures, but none has gone to Bush for his signature.

The surprise move capped a day in which supporters of the imperiled economic rescue fought to bring it back to life, courting reluctant lawmakers with a variety of other sweeteners including the plan to reassure Americans their bank deposits are safe.

Wall Street, at least, regained hope. The Dow Jones industrials rose 485 points, one day after a record 778-point plunge following the House vote.

Amid Tuesday's negotiations, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. chairman Sheila Bair asked Congress for temporary authority to raise the limit on deposits by an unspecified amount. That could help ease a crisis of confidence in the banking system, Bair said.

She said the overwhelming majority of banks remain sound but an increase in the cap would help ease a crisis of confidence in the banking system as well as encourage banks to begin more lending.

Monday's House vote was a stinging setback to leaders of both parties and to Bush. The administration's proposal, still the heart of the legislation under consideration, would allow the government to buy bad mortgages and other deficient assets held by troubled financial institutions. If successful, advocates of the plan believe, that would help lift a major weight off the already sputtering national economy.

Bush renewed his efforts to save the bailout plan Tuesday, speaking with McCain and Obama and making another statement from the White House. "Congress must act," he declared.

Though stock prices rose, more attention was on credit markets. A key rate that banks charge each other shot higher, further evidence of a tightening of credit availability.

The rescue package was Topic A on the presidential campaign trail.

"The first thing I would do is say, 'Let's not call it a bailout. Let's call it a rescue,'" McCain told CNN. He said, "Americans are frightened right now" and political leaders must give them an immediate solution and a longer-term approach to the problem.

Obama issued a statement saying that significantly increasing federal deposit insurance would help small businesses and make the U.S. banking system more secure as well as restore public confidence.