Friday, September 9, 2016

Democracy, the Economy and the Media

Forbes - Robert Shiller Unwittingly Helps Write The Obituary Of Economics As A Profession.  Forbes is a magazine that is read by people with money just like the Wall Street Journal or Bloomberg. Their focus tends to be on the stock market and their advertisers sell high end products like Rolex. The article claims that Economics is a dying profession because Mr. Shiller believes income inequality will become a greater problem down the road. The article claims that concern over income inequality is foolish and that people therefore don't need good jobs because if products are cheap enough your lifestyle improves. That did not happen during the industrial revolution. People who lived in poverty in the cities during the industrial revolution were worse off than they were when they had family farms. It was only after the monopolies were broken up and the progressive movement began restraining oligarchic businesses that the middle class really emerged. Things may have been cheaper during the depression; but, lives were not better. Still, let me poke you in the eye and tell you it doesn't hurt.

Yahoo - Reuters - Clinton slams Trump for commenting on Fed policies.  This is a quote from the article, "Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton criticized Republican rival Donald Trump on Tuesday for making comments about the Federal Reserve's monetary policies, which she said should be off-limits for U.S. presidents and presidential candidates." There you have it, she believes the President should not talk about monetary policy, maybe that's why she never does or maybe it is because of all the money she made from the banks to pay for this election. I wonder if the people who supported Sanders agree with her because he talked about it.

YouTube - [Full HD] Donald Trump Hillary Clinton Commander in Chief Forum 9/7/16 NBC September 7 2016.  In case you missed it, here is the complete Trump Clinton Forum. I watched the whole thing, the moderator was fine, Hillary did not do well and Trump did pretty good. It is only about an hour long so if you care about who is the next President you might want to watch it.

Vox - Stop asking what motivates Trumpism. Start asking what should be done about it.  The author seems to believe that Trump supporters are upset because blacks and women are doing better than in the past while white men are not. That is not the problem that they see, they see all the good jobs going overseas and this country being robbed by the wealthy who pay less taxes now than under Reagan.