Who should be Hillary's running mate?

I am not advocating "wealth wars", Baldimo.

I am advocating for a more equitable distribution of the wealth of our nation.

Success should not be punished...and doesn't have to be in order to have a more equitable distribution of the wealth of our nation.

The means of doing that are complicated...and probably will focus on how wealth is perpetuated.

It can be done...but it will take brighter minds than mine to do it.

They most assuredly are not. Getting to the moon was not a simple matter either. We did it.



I want to see people "work less." We have less need for human labor...we ALL should be working less. But mostly, I want inefficient people working less...so that our productivity will go up.



No reason for "more equitable distribution of wealth" to impact on that at all. You seem to think that there is a finite amount of wealth. There isn't. We can insure that every person has enough clothes, shelter, food, healthcare, education, shirts, televisions, transportation, communication, and the like...and there will still be plenty of yachts, palaces, gold toilet seats, tickets to the Super Bowl, and Rolls Royce Phantoms for the big people.



Yup...much more. Saying we can get people to the moon and return them safely to Earth is a good deal easier than actually doing it also.

We did it.




Nothing about it will be easy...or it already would have been done, George. Working out the dynamic and logistics is way above my pay grade. But then again, moving an aircraft carrier out to operate in the open sea is above my pay grade also...but there are people who can do it...right?

We gotta do it.



We all ought to keep that in mind. Revolutions have been motivated by such matters.

Seems to me I already mentioned that.

Related to the topic of wealth distribution I've recently read two interesting articles.

One Company’s New Minimum Wage: $70,000 a Year



This is a great idea and one I would love to see implemented by business leaders. Not the government.

The other was an article I can't find now discussing migration of people from high tax states to low tax states. People are indeed leaving states that wish to tax the wealthy and moving to states like Texas that do not "punish" citizens for being successful.

I just read a Dutch study (posted in another thread) that talked, in part, about the correlation of longer life expectancies with living in societies with less income spread. Maybe Mr. Price read the same study.

I think "equitable distribution" is an unfortunate term and not in its literal sense a good objective. It smacks of a tea-bagger style of thinking that has infected both the left and the right.
"Greater public good" is better. Frankly I think public goods have gone to hell and have been given the short shrift by both major parties. Hospitals and many colleges for instance used to be a community good, now they're viewed as profit centers that answer only to their shareholders. Roads and bridges are crumbling, and the entire US government's contributions to the arts are less than the city of Vienna. And public elementary education... don't get me started.
The problem with "equitable distribution" as a term is that it implies that John works, Bob doesn't, so let's have John give Bob 1/4 of his earnings, and that is "equitable." But both can be selfish SOB's and choose to spend the money they end up with selfishly. I'd prefer to see a strong nation, with tax revenues pumped into infrastructure, transportation, education, arts, crime prevention, and yes, a safety net.

Next post...use "more equitable income distribution"...and see if you can come up with something for that...rather than truncating it so that it looks as though something else was being said.

But he got elected twice.
What does that say about the dems that ran against him?

Al Gore and John Kerry???

Are you saying those two men are less intelligent than George W?

Gimme a break.

In an IQ test against either, a Vegas bookmaker would probably have to spot ya 20 points to get any action on him.

Maybe Clinton has decided to follow as much of Warren's ideas as she can.

Elizabeth Warren Democrats should cheer Hillary Clinton's latest big hire
.


On Thursday, Hillary Clinton wrote a love letter in Time magazine to Elizabeth Warren. But what she did next is even more important for the faction of the Democratic Party that's passionate about tightening the screws on Wall Street: she hired Gary Gensler as her campaign's chief financial officer.

Who is Gary Gensler?

Gensler is a former banker at Goldman Sachs who became an unlikely hero of the financial reform movement during his stint as chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Viewed biographically, Gensler is an example of the revolving door between business and government — he was a Goldman exec who was handed a huge job regulating his former colleagues. But he was much tougher on the financial industry than Obama administration officials like Tim Geithner and Larry Summers.
Gina Chon of the Financial Times led her article about Gensler stepping down with the observation that he is "regarded by some as one of the toughest regulatory cops policing Wall Street."
Tom Ashbrook of NPR called him "a hero to those who call for a crackdown on Wall Street."
Ben Protess of the New York Times wrote, "Even as Mr. Gensler’s aggressive streak thrust the once-backwater agency into the front lines of reform, it also maddened colleagues and complicated his legacy."

In the course of gaining this reputation for regulatory toughness, Gensler made a lot of enemies in the mainstream of the Obama economic team. Part of what reformers liked about him was that he was willing to fight with other stakeholders in the administration and wasn't afraid to dish about those fights to reform-minded journalists. To the White House and the Treasury Department, this was doubly infuriating. To Gensler's fans, the low esteem in which he was held by his colleagues made him that much more heroic.

Gensler's odd job on Hillary's campaign

The job of campaign chief financial officer has, of course, nothing to do with derivatives regulation, the Volcker Rule, or any of the other things Gensler clashed with people about.

But as a gesture, the indication that Gensler is in Clinton's good graces is a very loud and clear dog whistle to financial reformers and to journalists who cover these agencies. It also implies that after leaving the Obama administration with a slew of smoking bridges, Gensler might be in line for a top financial regulation job in a hypothetical Clinton administration.

This is, for Wall Street skeptics, a huge deal: Gensler is the kind of regulator a President Elizabeth Warren would be expected to pick, not a President Clinton. But if Clinton is going to pick the kinds of regulators Warren was going to pick, then the difference between them isn't as large as many thought.

Gensler opens doors to other hires

Associating with Gensler is clever in another way, as he is very much a poster boy for the proposition that the relationship between working on Wall Street and regulating Wall Street is more complicated than simplistic analysis would suggest. Compared with Geithner or Summers or Ben Bernanke, Gensler had much deeper personal and professional ties to the world of big-time banking — yet he was still much tougher.

Indeed, on the CFTC itself Gensler often found himself clashing with Mark Wetjen, a Democratic commissioner and former Harry Reid staffer who took a generally more moderate line than Gensler and who also lacked Gensler's Wall Street background.

All of which is to say that Gensler is a good guy to have around if you are planning to hire some more folks with Wall Street experience and want to defuse concern that this means you are bringing in a bunch of patsies for the banking industry. For example, when Obama tried to tap former Lazard investment banker Antonio Weiss for a top Treasury job, Gensler would have been a good person to point to as an example of how these relationships can work out fine.

Except the Obama-Gensler relationship was so bad, Obama can't point to Gensler as an example of anything. By rebuilding the relationship, Clinton now can. He's simultaneously outreach to Wall Street haters and cover to work with Wall Street veterans. It's a very shrewd move, and a reminder that whatever her limitations as a charismatic public figure, Clinton is a profoundly skilled practitioner of other aspects of the political game.

That is true, but being great at a game that the people have gotten sick of is not a good thing. If anything it causes me to be less likely to think that I want her in the POTUS chair

Any politician not skilled at all the seedier aspects of the “political game” is like an automobile mechanic who needs help opening the hood of a car and who does not know how to operate a pneumatic car lift. A politician does not get to make a political contribution to governance without first being elected.

Any citizen who considers such skills to be a negative probably is not wise enough to cast an intelligent vote.

You over the years have seemed to have no awareness that being seen to be part of the elite, as a skilled manipulator, can be a negative. The elite rule only with our consent, which can be withdrawn at any time. Scott Walker understands.

Your naivete' is touching, Hawk. I'd call it cute.

Nobody gets to where Scott Walker is without doing things you would condemn with gusto in Hillary Clinton...or anyone else you do not particularly like.

I suspect you know that.

It is not about me, it is about the declining reputation of the elite, it is about our decreasing willingness to do what those who claim to be our betters tell us to do, it is about being sick of being dishonestly manipulated by people who want something from us, it is about the search for something and someone who is real...who is not a handler molded product being sold.

Hillary Clinton is not going to get ahead by the media writing stories about her expertly pulling the leavers of power. We are not in the mood for the brand "Hillary, consummate Washington insider".

Nobody is leading me around...and I think that political maneuvering has been a part of life since the Republic began.

You may be allowing yourself to be lead by the sensational media to think that we live in the worst of all times. I don't feel that way.

The entire notion of "Washington insider" and all the crap that goes with it has a solid basis...but it always has been that the power structure has done the leading.

The true problem is that Ronald Reagan screwed the entire country up by institutionalizing the hatred and distrust of government to the point where we all are wringing our hands much too much.

And folk like you use the phenomena to rail against people you do not like...like Hillary in your case.

The difference in the political machinations between all the contestants right now...is minimal.

I choose Hillary primarily because I think the Republicans are more likely to install people devoted to furthering the notions of barons over peasants.

You seem to feel differently...and that is your right.

I'll certainly agree that human nature hasn't changed since the founding of this republic or even much earlier ones in cluding those of Rome and Athens. The historical record amply illustrates this truth. Cicero's orations against his political opponent Cataline don't look strange at all even today.

However, it is also true that individual organizations, political and otherwise all tend over time to become corrupted by the cumulative effect self serving actions of the main actors who populate them. External changes and technological chganges also play a part magnifying the effect and potential of various deceifful practices. External shocks and unusually effective leaders can change that and turn back the process of corruption for those orrganizations lucky enoughd to encounter them, but the underlying fact of nature that evertthing is slowly corrupted over time by the accumulation of disorder and entropy remains true.

Who do you think populate big corporations and CEO's and banks? Are you claiming the private sector does not have it fill of corrupt people as well who are not after the almighty dollar while the people who help them get those dollars work for them for little benefit?

Agreed, George. Truly I do.

The problem I see, however, is:

Should you only vote for people you consider incorruptible...or should you vote?

We see people from both sides of the political aisle here talking about candidates from "the other side"...who lie, cheat, accept contributions they probably shouldn't, make political decisions that benefit people who contribute to their campaign...and who wear clothes when giving speeches and who eat almost every day.

Influx of G.O.P. Hopefuls in New Hampshire Creates Humanitarian Crisis

Thanks for your gratuitous and irrelevant comment.

I made no claim that corporations are exempt from a process which I explicitly said applies to all human organizations. Perhaps you have trouble reading as well as thinking.

Indeed, because non performing business organizations are quickly driven by their many competitors to financial failure and annihilation, they are far less subject to such continued decay and decline than governmernt ones. Moreover, the "almighty dollar" that businesses chase is the same one that motivates their employees. Climb down from your petard and do your preaching elsewhere.