

The Cure To Our Economic Problems / The Best Equity is Sweat Equity - astrec
http://blogmaverick.com/2008/10/23/the-cure-to-our-economic-problems/

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alexandros
I understand all the admiration of the US enterpreneurial spirit, and I agree
that all the measures offered are conscious populism by the candidates.

It is remarkable however, how little he offers in the way of actual measures a
potential president could take. 'encourage enterpreneurs'? Those same
enterpreneurs that don't care about tax rates and recessions are going to care
about 'encouragement'? Would he fund someone who says 'after our new
president's encouragement, I decided to start a business'?

As it stands, I get very little other than populistic statement of the obvious
by this blog post.

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jfornear
I thought the same thing. Cuban's outlook on America seems a little too
focused on money imo. I think there are more things to consider than merely
your pocketbook. Granted, he is worth 5 billion times more than I am, and the
financial crisis is a hot topic right now.

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jacobolus
I stopped reading after the first few paragraphs. The author displays a
stunning lack of economic sophistication, boiling down current economic
problems to the U.S. budget deficit. Currently the chief economic problem
facing the US is that American consumer spending (and significantly, growing
consumer spending) has been fueling the economy for decades, while working
class and middle class wages have been stagnant. The resulting massive
consumer debt was masked somewhat, or at least prevented from exploding into
crisis, by policies which inflated house values and encouraged homeowners to
borrow massively against home equity.

Decreasing government spending or raising taxes in order to rein in the
deficit is, indeed, precisely the wrong thing to do in the budding recession.
“Entrepreneurial spirit” alone isn’t going to do shit. Needed are massive
Keynesian government expenditures on infrastructure, boosting wages and
employment, and keeping the economy going during a recession. Even deficit
hawks are admitting this these days.

(Clearly there are several other problems: the budget deficits, current
account deficits, and trade deficits which the U.S. is running are all
obscenely high. The U.S. “defense” budget is a giant sinkhole which causes
massive harm worldwide for arguably very little benefit, except to a shrinking
number of specific very large corporations and (above all) their executives.
U.S. dependency on oil imports is extremely costly and ultimately
unsustainable, and the American government would do well to massively invest
in alternative energy research. Etc.)

