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    Orlandu7Hamilton Nolan
    8/25/15 12:39pm

    Wow, I didn’t know Obama and his Treasury Secretary were the ones handing out TARP money to bankers in September 2008. Good job on the timeline, there, Joe. And nice job completely ignoring any of Obama’s actual policy accomplishments, such as the ACA being the single biggest attack on inequality in fifty years, in lieu of viewing the guy’s entire record in terms of the imaginary things you thought he did before he was president.

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      iGatsbyOrlandu7
      8/25/15 12:56pm

      Obamacare fucking blows. It basically taxes the young and the healthy to subsidize the old. It did very little to fight against equality.

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      jamisparkerOrlandu7
      8/25/15 1:02pm

      I’m pretty sure that he was trying to point out that the electorate needs to push further left, not just settle for the current Democratic status quo.

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    ThomasMooreHamilton Nolan
    8/25/15 12:41pm

    I used to drink the libertarian cooled about the mighty market. I too laughed at Stiglitz and Krugeman. And then a funny thing happened!

    Over thirty years I made the mistake of paying attention.

    And over that thirty years BOTH Stiglitz and Krugeman were a hell of a lot more RIGHT than they were wrong.

    And all those other mighty market pundits? Sure some got rich. But they got rich by being fucking wrong, by sucking the cock of monsters, or by being fucking immoral monsters themselves. And by lying. Jesus. Wake up. The unfettered mighty market is for liars and monsters.

    You can only ignore reality for so long. Well. If you have a speck of intellectual honesty and curiosity, that is.

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      tzimtzum does not existThomasMoore
      8/25/15 1:00pm

      I feel as though the majority of Libertarians are just people who tire of the bureaucracy and often hypocrisy across party lines, ever-changing policy and legislation they have to keep on top of to understand an increasingly changing world around them, both civilly and culturally, because let’s face it, most Libertarians are straight, white males. They throw their hands up and say “fuck it! I’m done with this! Do away with the entire system and put your faith in the Free Market!” - because like all politics, there is an element of belief - of faith - in either people, the system, historical record, etc.

      It’s wrong, of course. It’s often willful ignorance. But I find it difficult to not at least empathize with the stance that humongous government can have failings that very directly affect some people, and that when the common citizen cannot even understand the ever-swelling complexities of their own country’s legal and economic situation, you are just breeding disenfranchisement. But the answer is mindful redistribution, not turning our country into some corporate-sanctioned Thunderdome.

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      burnahhh1111ThomasMoore
      8/25/15 1:05pm

      I wouldnt lump Stiglitz with krugman, as Stigilitz argues inequality is holding back economy and Krugman disagrees with him.

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    123456789124356789Hamilton Nolan
    8/25/15 12:38pm

    While most of my leanings are to the left, I have no problem with income inequality. Why do we need to fight it? Who decided that everyone is entitled to the same economically? What harm is it actually doing? I don’t buy the idea that it’s stunting our growth.

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      ARP2123456789124356789
      8/25/15 12:49pm

      Some inequality is fine (actually good). However, the inequality levels we’re at means that most people don’t have enough money to buy consumer goods (the thing that drives our economy). So, we’re stunting our growth. It’s like a sports team that has 1 or 2 really good players and the [rest] are horrible. They’ll do OK, but they don’t win championships. It’s better to have a lot of average players and a few above average players.

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      CMYKilla123456789124356789
      8/25/15 12:57pm

      Reading. It’s a useful tool, you tool.

      Stiglitz: We’re always gonna have some inequality. There is a small enough level of inequality that, while you might worry about it, it doesn’t have a corrosive effect. We’ve reached a level of inequality where it’s unambiguously clear to me and to most observers that it’s interfering with our economic performance. It’s having a corrosive effect on the way our democracy works. It’s having a corrosive effect on the way our society functions. So we’re in the bad regime. We’re facing very large costs.

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    RooseveltsRevengeHamilton Nolan
    8/25/15 12:37pm

    Awesome interview, HamNo!

    Stiglitz is awesome and has some great content on YouTube, lectures and documentaries and such. Chomsky is constantly referencing him, and he explains things in such a way that even neo-cons can't really squirm their way out of it...

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      Governor McCheeseRooseveltsRevenge
      8/25/15 12:50pm

      This is such an undergrad humanities major thing to say. Next, are you going to tell us about how Led Zepplin is underrated?

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      RooseveltsRevengeGovernor McCheese
      8/25/15 1:48pm

      Haha.

      Seriously though.

      Led Zeppelin is seriously underrated.

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    frecklesthetalkingboyHamilton Nolan
    8/25/15 12:36pm

    PLEASE KEEP TALKING ABOUT THIS!!!

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      PeteRRHamilton Nolan
      8/25/15 12:30pm

      Stiglitz: There are two ways of trying to explain it. The simplest way is that if we spend that money well, the return is so much greater than the cost of capital that we become wealthier. So it’s not a threat. The other way to think about it is, our grandkids will be on the hook for it, so YOLO!

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        LangostaPeteRR
        8/25/15 12:36pm

        Borrowing money cheaply, getting a nice return, and then paying down the principal would be a great plan. We never seem to get around to the principal reduction part.

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        PeteRRLangosta
        8/25/15 12:39pm

        The bigger problem is the spending is wrapped up in politics and will inevitably not be spent well.

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      PeteRRHamilton Nolan
      8/25/15 12:47pm

      The best studies of what the comprehensive rate, which would be all three of them, would be that we could clearly manage—in the sense of benefits to our equality—at least 70% or 80%, as an integrated rate. Remember during the Eisenhower years we had a 91% federal rate at the top.

      Which almost nobody paid because you could expense and deduct everything.

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        EvanrudeJohnsonPeteRR
        8/25/15 12:54pm

        Also Kennedy campaigned on cutting the 91% rate because it was so high and LBJ finally did so after JFK was killed.

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        IAmBrettPeteRR
        8/25/15 1:41pm

        It had some effect - the effective top tax rate was on average around 40-45% back then after all deductions/tax cheating/etc, versus about 20-ish% now for rich folks. And while the big burst of income and wealth inequality happened after the major tax reductions in the 1980s, there was a spurt of inequality growth after the Kennedy and Johnson era reductions in income tax.

        But you’re right that it wasn’t nearly a constraint on inequality as people think. Independent business owners exploited deductions and expenses (or just outright neglected to pay full taxes), and already rich families could easily hide their income in tax-exempt municipal bonds and real estate trusts. The people who paid full heft tended to be celebrities and pro sports players who got high incomes with little way to hide, hence songs like this.

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      EatTheCheeseNicholsonHamilton Nolan
      8/25/15 12:33pm

      Stiglitz cut me in line for coffee at a conference once. And the bastard has the nerve to come in here and talk about inequality...

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        JohninLAEatTheCheeseNicholson
        8/25/15 12:41pm

        He referenced that.

        Secondly, it’s really hard to say this, but: [poor people need to] educate themselves a little bit better not to be taken advantage of.

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      Medieval KnievelHamilton Nolan
      8/25/15 12:38pm

      It’s always good to get a diversity of bearded liberal ivy league economic opinion.

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        ARP2Medieval Knievel
        8/25/15 12:43pm

        We’ve tried the trickle down approach of “give us more money and we’ll eventually give you some” for the past 35 years and it really hasn’t worked out for us.

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        large_eddyMedieval Knievel
        8/25/15 1:27pm

        Ivy league? Fuck that. I want to listen to the opinions of economists who studied at Devry or Pheonix.

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      ShaunyPHamilton Nolan
      8/25/15 1:18pm

      Kudos on calling Obama out on the people he listened too. Tim Geithner is the worst type of policymaker and the biggest mistake of the Obama Administration.

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