Reply #10: F@*K Greenspan! [View All]

[teryang]

On addressing the issue of outsourcing jobs and the declining income of the "lower 80 percent" (Sen. Corzine) and the failure to address a new paradigm in international trade theory (Sen. Shumer), Greenspan (who appears to be getting largely out of date), brings up Adam Smith and individual achievement in the classroom.

If there are 5 million qualified software engineers in Asia willing to work for 20K a year, no amount of education is going to save American jobs in this area. When you open the domestic labor marketplace to unprotected competition from abroad, where the populations of highly literate and trained personnel are enormous, wages and labor markets are going to collapse domestically.

The state has to play a role in protecting its standard of living at home. Blind adherence to ideological notions of free trade and self correcting markets will be diastrous. The middle class of India, which is highly literate, is larger than the entire population of the US. Fortunately, the language barrier in China is still too great; when they master the english language, a world wide depression in labor will occur and American skilled jobs in some sectors will be completely wiped out.

Also Greenspan goes on about the benefits of education and individual achievement while ignoring the issues of supply and demand.

Corzine brings up the issue of US debt being held disproportionately in offshore Caribbean banks and Greenspan is dumbstruck. This has to do with US multinationals moving their profits offshore in sham transactions in order to avoid US taxation. These corporations are using American markets and infrastructure but not paying taxes.

Yet, Greenspan goes on at length about the benefits of law in encouraging commerce and economic growth when what we have is a manipulative, corrupt marketplace lacking entirely in integrity.

The diversion of SS funds to military uses, the intent to divert SS revenues to the stock market, the payment of SS benefits to the super rich, the regressive nature of the tax, and the intent to delay payments to eligible beneficiaries, all make me sick.