Weekend Economists ask the Question of the Year (so far) July 11-12 2015

[Ghost Dog]

28. Supper at Jesse's Café:

... Greece is playing a rough hand, and more than anything else, playing for time. What else does one think they would have gotten out of the Berlin blockheads, a fair deal, a workable solution? Hah!

Why should that happen now, when the crony capitalists have been pushing so hard for deprivation first, and then privatization and a general looting of productive assets next? This is a well-established pattern.

I think this was laid out in a pretty straightforward manner a couple of weeks ago. But the sturm und drang is certainly diverting, especially the German hubris and the Greek negotiation tactics. You cannot adequately follow the game unless you understand the objectives...

... The real solutions are fairly simple, but will not happen because there are such powerful interests allied against them. And they have managed to delude a vocal portion of the populace by feeding them a steady diet of slogans, sociological phantoms for children, and economic hoo-haw.

Financial reform and wage growth, with more certainty in the big variables of healthcare costs and retirement plans is key to a sustainable and organic recovery.

The way things are arranged now, hiring even a single person is a 'step function' because you are not only signing them up for a wage, but for benefits that can vary all over the place and represent a burden for a new or small business.

Gee, I wonder what a developed country would do. Oh yes, the US started on the path for a sane solution in this matter in the 1930s and the New Deal, but alas, were hijacked along the way.

Single payer healthcare and a robust social security system, taking the matter out of the hands of individual businesses who look for ways to cheat and cut corners would be more cost effective and much more workable.

And much easier then to get business to pay a living wage to a national workforce in which essential items like healthcare were not wild cards and the feeding grounds of healthcare and insurance monopolies that add roughly 50 percent overhead to the costs.

And finally there is the matter of tax loopholes and multinational tax cheating to consider.

And for the love of God: break up the Banks.

But the sine qua non is campaign finance reform. The current system of soft bribery for the political class makes a progressive democracy ineffective in the face of big money and crony capitalism.

Oh well, interesting times. It is a good phrase for the day.

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