Wealth concentration means we have Central Planning -

[hedgehog]

I hope someone can come up with a snappier slogan, but I think it's a good meme to push. Here's one small example :

Every fair sized city used to have one or more independent department stores. Every season, buyers from those stores would bring in clothes selected for the people of that city. Now, most cities have only the large department store chains with buyers in a central location selecting goods for everyone across the country. I can remember talking to the store clerk in Buffalo frustrated because the buyer in NYC couldn't understand that women in Buffalo were looking for much heavier winter coats than women in NYC.

On a larger level, every mall in America has the same stores selling the same goods.

Think about it - if Walmart turns it down, the odds are you can't buy it anywhere. How many companies has Walmart forced out of business?

On the personal level, people like the Koch brothers have distorted our politics. On a corporate level, Exxon-Mobil spends millions to convince people that global climate change is a myth. It only took a few giant banks to drive the real estate speculation that has devastated our economy.

When we have a relatively few people controlling the personal wealth, and relatively few large corporations controlling investment and production, the result is central planning. Central planning didn't work for the Communists, and it doesn't work in a Capitalist system, either.

[xchrom]

1. recommend

[rurallib]

2. been saying something similar for quite a while

pretty much every consumer product category has but two possibly three competitors which can easily lead to collusion.
eg - ClearChannel owns radio along with Cumulus, P&G owns laundry & shampoo and so on.

what little competition exists will be merging soon enough.

[WingDinger]

3. Trickle down is a ponzi scheme

[Tennessee Gal]

4. Ahhhh, don't you get it?

This is the goal of Republicans. They love government when it works to their advantage, when policies result in the success of large corporations and the wealthy. Those policies result in government expenditures that leave little in the government coffers to advance policies that benefit the vast majority of Americans.

They have been planning this for at least 40 years by spending millions, if not billions, to buy up media control and establish right wing think tanks. They are organized, focused, and determined. They hire consultants to teach them to "frame" issues in such a way that fools voters. Take tax cuts as an example. They started calling it "tax relief" years ago. Who wouldn't want tax relief? The average American thinks it applies to them and they don't comprehend that it doesn't as administered by the Republicans. That is why so many Americans vote against their own financial interests.

The problem is that we on the left are not organized in the same fashion. We have no single minded goals and investments in organizations that would promote our causes.

[The2ndWheel]

5. What's the motto we all know and love?

E pluribus unum.

Our entire civilization is geared toward bringing more people into a single way of doing things.

[rrneck]

6. Call it what it is: Fascism. mt

[hedgehog]

7. Another example of central planning run amok:

(CBS/AP)Cargill executives are talking turkey after the meat producer recalled 36 million pounds of ground turkey over a salmonella outbreak that sickened 76 people, killing one.

"It is regrettable that people may have become ill from eating one of our ground turkey products," Steve Willardsen, president of Cargill's turkey processing business said in a statement. "And for anyone who did, we are truly sorry."

The USDA and the Minnesota-based meat giant announced Wednesday evening that the recall would include fresh and frozen ground turkey products produced at the company's Springdale, Ark., plant from Feb. 20 through Aug. 2.



http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504763_162-20088031-10391704.html