I have ever read. Well, I don't read Newsweek very often, but this was a great editorial. One of the central points--that capitalism works, that it wasn't the failure of captialism, but the failure of finance and even democracy that lead to where we are now.
Capitalsit Manifesto
Full Version: Anyone ever read this in Newsweek?
Pretty good, balanced article. My favorite paragraph was this one:
"There's a need for greater self-regulation not simply on Wall Street but also on Pennsylvania Avenue. We get exercised about the immorality of politicians when they're caught in sex scandals. Meanwhile they triple the national debt, enrich their lobbyist friends and write tax loopholes for specific corporations—all perfectly legal—and we regard this as normal. The revolving door between Washington government offices and lobbying firms is so lucrative and so established that anyone pointing out that it is—at base—institutionalized corruption is seen as baying at the moon. Not everything is written down, and not everything that is legally permissible is ethical. Who was the last ex-president to refuse to take a vast donation for his library from a foreign government that he had helped when in office?"
"There's a need for greater self-regulation not simply on Wall Street but also on Pennsylvania Avenue. We get exercised about the immorality of politicians when they're caught in sex scandals. Meanwhile they triple the national debt, enrich their lobbyist friends and write tax loopholes for specific corporations—all perfectly legal—and we regard this as normal. The revolving door between Washington government offices and lobbying firms is so lucrative and so established that anyone pointing out that it is—at base—institutionalized corruption is seen as baying at the moon. Not everything is written down, and not everything that is legally permissible is ethical. Who was the last ex-president to refuse to take a vast donation for his library from a foreign government that he had helped when in office?"
QUOTE (RamblinRose2 @ Oct 31 2009, 03:03 PM) 
Pretty good, balanced article. My favorite paragraph was this one:
"There's a need for greater self-regulation not simply on Wall Street but also on Pennsylvania Avenue. We get exercised about the immorality of politicians when they're caught in sex scandals. Meanwhile they triple the national debt, enrich their lobbyist friends and write tax loopholes for specific corporations—all perfectly legal—and we regard this as normal. The revolving door between Washington government offices and lobbying firms is so lucrative and so established that anyone pointing out that it is—at base—institutionalized corruption is seen as baying at the moon. Not everything is written down, and not everything that is legally permissible is ethical. Who was the last ex-president to refuse to take a vast donation for his library from a foreign government that he had helped when in office?"
"There's a need for greater self-regulation not simply on Wall Street but also on Pennsylvania Avenue. We get exercised about the immorality of politicians when they're caught in sex scandals. Meanwhile they triple the national debt, enrich their lobbyist friends and write tax loopholes for specific corporations—all perfectly legal—and we regard this as normal. The revolving door between Washington government offices and lobbying firms is so lucrative and so established that anyone pointing out that it is—at base—institutionalized corruption is seen as baying at the moon. Not everything is written down, and not everything that is legally permissible is ethical. Who was the last ex-president to refuse to take a vast donation for his library from a foreign government that he had helped when in office?"
I generally think Zakaria is kind of an arrogant d-bag, but he really nails this article. Especially this: "This is the disease of modern democracy: the system cannot impose any short-term pain for long-term gain." People want the government to give them more stuff and take less tax money from them at the same time. Any politician who votes to raise taxes or to cut spending risks losing the next election to a challenger who attacks on that basis (<cue ominous TV commercial voice> "Bob Smith voted to raise your taxes" or "Bob Smith voted to cut funds to XXXX"). But we have gotten to the point where we need to do both in order to allow our government to begin paying off its debts. And we absolutely should NOT be creating any new entitlement programs, because history has shown that they are nearly impossible to take away once they are created, even when they turn out to be clearly ineffective or even counter-productive. At least tax cuts can be easily taken away when the economy picks up.
This is a "lo-fi" version of our main content. To view the full version with more information, formatting and images, please click here.