Yeah, I'm familiar with Stiglitz. World Bank 'think-tank' biggie and Clinton-era Democrat liberal. Perhaps not the strongest proponent for 'free-market' capitalism, I'm sure you'd agree...? Nothing you said denies the FACT that in 'free-market' capitalism, you earn what you are WORTH in the (guess what) 'free-market' of human skills and abilities! A brain surgeon might make a zillion bucks a year... a ditch digger might make 'minimum wage'. It all (ALL) depends on what you can DO better, and, what you can do BETTER than others who also do what you do. Can you at least 'grasp' that much...? Is COMPETITION a concept you really are so unfamiliar with...? As far as 'rational' people in our society are concerned, you'd better HOPE that we've got enough rational people left to vote for what's in the best interests of the United States, or we'll just continue our slow downward spiral into wretched government dependency, Socialism, and failure.... . "Why bother to work when the government will give me what I want...?!"
His work at the World Bank changed him. He opposes a lot of what they do now. He also opposes the regressive policies that characterises the Clinton era. So, aside from you being wrong, yes. When you say free markets, which fantasy are you talking about? They fall into 3 camps, for the most part. There are the mercantilists (they want hard money, a lot of them quietly want to roll the clock back to before the Civil War). Then there are what I call the primitives, who think you can have a modern economy without government intervention. Then there are the newer fantasies, like the Vienna School. The Vienna School is fake poli sci pretending to be about economics. It's Red Scare panic (they haven't figured out the Soviet Union is gone). So what flavor of goofy are you? While this can get complicated, the basics are easy. The government has to build the roads and schools we need to have both a good life and a good economy. The government has had to invest in the economy since just after the Civil War when they provided investment money for the McCormick Reaper, started the Aggie Colleges, and agriculture outreach programs and transportation (like the Continental Railroad). Every capitalist economy has had to do things like that, starting with the first fully capitalist economy, which was England in the 1800s. The decline you refer to is the same decline every empire faces before it's collapse.
I've decided to give my vote to candidates that I truly believe in only. I'm not voting for a shitbag any longer. I was on the other side of this argument at one point in my life, telling folks they were wasting their votes and using the lesser-of-two-evils method. But then I realized that the lesser of two evils is still evil and I'm not voting for evil any more. That's not to say that those who criticize that as throwing away a vote don't have something of a legitimate point, but I no longer care. My vote will go to a candidate that earns it. Currently neither major candidate has. We need more choices to vote for in this country and that won't happen if nobody votes outside of Democrats or Republicans. I do see where you're coming from, it's just not for me.
I respect your viewpoint on this, and I resonate with your frustration more than you know. But, again, I 'thought-outside-the-box' twice with Ross Perot, as I mentioned. It amounted to pissing in the wind... and it was a HEADWIND at that, coming right back at me. What fun. I'm an old guy, and my political experience has been long and, with one exception, pretty damned BAD overall.... The one exception was when Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980, setting off the best two presidential terms I have ever seen. The country went from being weak, humiliated, demoralized, economically ravaged by "Stagflation", and totally confused, to once again becoming the undisputed, most powerful and prosperous nation on Earth! We had money! We had careers! We achieved dominance over the Soviet Union! We were actually HAPPY for the first time since liberal Democrat Lyndon Johnson sent 50,000 Marines to Da Nang, South Vietnam, ramping up the worst military disaster this country has ever sustained, and which lasted ten long, weary, miserable years.... We haven't seen anything like the Reagan years since , and I fear the United States will have no possibility of seeing anything so wonderful again in the next thirty years at least, no matter who is elected this November.... Just the 'lesser of two evils'....
And overwhelmingly, people are choosing Biden as the lesser of two evils in 2020. That's a flipflop from 2016, when those who disliked both candidates broke for Trump. That's one big reason why Biden is whupping Trump so badly now. The other reason Biden is doing so well is that he's boring and nice, which is how to win the squishy middle. The nation misses boring and nice. People want the current sh itshow to end, and instead of ending it, Trump is escalating it.
There is a significant amount of accuracy in what you said there, Mamooth. People liked Eisenhower, but loathed Johnson. People loathed Nixon, but got along fairly well with Ford and Carter. Perhaps the exception was Reagan, who wasn't boring and sedate, but didn't make a blathering ass out of himself, either. "Daddy" Bush was fairly boring, and once Bill Clinton cast off his own 'socialism-lite' aura, he was fairly boring, too, in a good way -- and an effective compromiser after he got his ass handed to him in the 1994 elections. I despised both "W" Bush and Obama, who did a lot to harm this country -- BADLY -- during the 16 years of their idiotic regimes, and now, we have Trump.... I keep saying, "Donald, KEEP YOUR FUGGING MOUTH SHUT, WILL YA?!" But then I look at Biden again, and listen to what comes out of his mouth, and his mind, and I know that I'll have to hold my nose and vote for Trump this year, too. No, I'm NOT happy... and neither are a lot of other right-wing Conservatives who don't happen to be stock market gamblers, when you get right down to it.
