Well, actually, in a real democracy not bought out by those chaps, yeah, we would have a say, in terms of being able to choose to buy stuff from their competition, which hasn't happened since deregulation enabled them to form everything into a monopoly.
Why would we have a say in what private enterprise does in a real democracy? How would the people be able to vote on what GM does, or what Sparky's Residential Electric (employing 4 electricians) does?
There is plenty of competition and where are the monopolies?
You missed the point. Monopolies and Oligopolies used to be illegal. Now they are not so much anymore. And if you dig into the cross-linking lines of ownership, you'll find it's the same relatively small group owning everything, including firms that are supposed to be "competing".
The way it works is, you own controlling interest in two firms and set them against each other under an ordinance of "maximizing profit". Everyone gets stressed and works more for less pay while the owner of both gets profits one way or the other, regardless of who wins or looses. Then he uses those profits to buy up more in order to increase his monopoly. The result is a tyranny operating under the guise of "free market", and tyrannies are exactly what Americans had revolted against in the first place. They turned into fertile ground for exactly that which they split from England to get away from. So ironic.
Hmm... well, in the first place, I think a lot of those goons at the rally were plants, put their by Wall Street to make the protesters look bad.
Oh BS... you just dumbed yourself down on that one.
You think so, eh? You mean it would never occur to you to do that if you were one of the Wall Streeters? Crumb, it's one of the first things I would try to make protesters look bad. Just salt them with some goons.
In the second place, one day I was doing some arithmetic, and I noticed that if the government had spent the bailout money paying off everyone's mortgage instead of giving it to corrupt Wall Street entities in the hopes that Wall Street would not foreclose on all those variable-rate mortgages, that in fact it would have been cheaper, plus people would have still had a place to live.
Yup, although I do not believe you came up with that by yourself.
Actually, I did. It's not that complicated. Doesn't take anything more than elementary-grade arithmetic to figure out.
That was one of the MANY things that could have been done with the bail out money.
Ok... so pay off all the foreclosures. Free Houses for the ones that got themselves into debt! And what about the ones (like me) who acted responsibly and bought within their means and never missed a payment? Shouldn't we have our houses paid off? Why should those that didn't read the fine print or did not plan get freebies?
Said attitude being why it wasn't handled that way, so instead give the trillions to those who caused the debacle in the first place. Somehow that was deemed more acceptable. Go figure.
But, since you're in a mood/state-of-mind for personal accountability/responsibility etc., how about this:
What percentage of your taxes do you think goes to pay interest on government debt?
Now, what if you were able to pay off your share of the national debt, such that next year your taxes get reduced by the interest that is not accruing from your share of the debt?
Suppose 30% of government revenue goes to pay interest on the national debt. If you can pay off your share of it, then your taxes should go down by 30%, right?
Give people the option to over-pay their taxes, in order to reduce taxes in the future, by reducing their share of the principal upon which interest is accruing.
Now... who do you think would object to that idea?
The lenders perhaps? I bet they would rather see a national debt stay in place, so they can keep juicing taxpayers year after year.