Republicans are Bad at Capitalism!!!

I recently came across this tweet that strikes at the heart of what should be the debate:

Building on that list:

Bad at Capitalism #1-This is one reoccurring jaw dropper that is now normalized: Republican free market capitalism uses the government, the same government they hate want to get out of the way of business, to give out taxpayer funded state revenues to private businesses?

Bad at Capitalism #2-Republicans passed liability laws protecting business from capitalism's greed, corruption, bad products, and consumer lawsuits! They limited private sector attorney's fees too. Deregulation is really just new regulation against consumer interests and protections.

Bad at Capitalism #3-Wisconsin Republicans gave so much taxpayer money to Foxconn, they didn't have enough for Kimberly Clark's demand for cash.

Bad at Capitalism #4-Republicans against government interference actually praise and idolize "Art of the Deal" god Trump, even as he distorts markets by threatening private automakers, Harley Davidson, banned foreign tech companies, raised consumer taxes in the form of tariffs, gave us the biggest trade deficit in history, and gave business a huge tax cut forcing U.S. taxpayers to pay its bills by borrowing.

Bad at Capitalism #5-This is the BIG one!!! Republicans promoted a capitalism friendly deregulated Wall Street that crashed the global economy, the Great Recession, and wiped out hundreds of major retailers that employed tens of thousands of jobs.

Bad at Capitalism #6-The old switcheroo: Republicans realizing how bad at capitalism was to business without "socialist" protections, they turned capitalism's brutality loose onto the public...

Noam Chomsky: After the greed, recklessness, and illegal behavior of Wall Street led to their collapse, it is a system which provided trillions in government aid to bail them out.” In other words, we now have socialism for the rich and free market capitalism for everyone else. This is a perverse inversion of the historical norm.

Bad at Capitalism #7-Republicans are now ignoring free market energy companies moving to clean energy:

Driven by investor pressure, growing public concern and mounting scientific urgency ... the fervor around the Green New Deal is accelerating this shift and accentuating Republicans’ isolation and their internal divisions ... Virtually all executives acknowledged climate change as a pressing issue and a few, including CEOs of major oil companies like BP and Equinor, implored the industry to do more and embrace big policy changes. (Some Republicans) likening the Green New Deal to genocide and responding to a question about climate change by explaining photosynthesis.

Bad at Capitalism #8-Republicans think their tax cuts will result in roaring free market business profits that will pay for lost government revenue and produce good paying jobs...

USA Today: The bottom line 2018 deficit number is significant because it occurred during good economic times, when the federal deficit typically falls rather than spikes. According to the Monthly Treasury Statement for fiscal 2018, the year that just ended Sept. 30, the deficit was $779 billion — a $113 billion, 17 percent increase over the$666 billion deficit recorded last year.

This was the biggest one-year increase in the deficit since 2009, when the Great Recession wreaked havoc on federal finances. 

A simple analysis of what Treasury reported shows that virtually the entire deficit increase was because the tax cut enacted in December reduced revenues substantially.

And while Republicans push supposed capitalism and bash "socialist" areas of the state like Dane County and Madison, they should be thanking them for making the jobs numbers look really good;

The truth is Scott Walker did nothing but took credit for a recovering economy. And after looking at his mind numbing tweets, we can breath a little easier.

Capitalism and Millennials: "Malcolm Harris, an editor at the online magazine the New Inquiry, begins his book Kids These Days: Human Capital and the Making of Millennials," had this message:

What made millennials so burned out? Why are they having fewer kids? Why are they getting married later? Why are they obsessed with efficiency and technology?

And Harris' answer, in so many words, is the economy. Millennials, he argues, are bearing the brunt of the economic damage wrought by late-20th-century capitalism. All these insecurities — and the material conditions that produced them — have thrown millennials into a state of perpetual panic. If “generations are characterized by crises,” as Harris argues, then ours is the crisis of extreme capitalism.

I spoke to Harris about the case he lays out in the book, and why he thinks millennials will have to overthrow the system and rewrite the social contract if they want to meaningfully improves their lives — and the lives of future generations.