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There was a recovery?

Who knew?

What has been going on is an artificial “pumping up” of numbers, both by injections of cash into big investors that support stock prices on the major exchanges, in the face of anemic price-to-earnings ratios, and also artificially depressed interest rates, because of very low loan activity, the real injection of the lifeblood of expansion. Other numbers that are “cooked” include the actual employment rate in this country, and the benefits actually extended to individuals through various government-supported or government-mandated programs.

Through a combination of taxation and some extremely restrictive regulation, those who have cash are sitting on it, rather than getting it out there to circulate. Most of the value of money in a capitalist economy lies in its velocity, the speed at which it is passed from consumer to producer, and reinvested by the producer to further expand the pie. Thus the familiar refrain, “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer”.

It doesn’t have to be that way. What has been happening is that some entity or oligarchy of consultants has come to the conclusion that there has to be “equality” in compensation, and their first instinct is to pull down those at the very top.

This is inherently destructive and totally counterproductive. This tactic cannot succeed, because those who have cash, or other valuables that are quickly converted to some liquid form, will take it beyond the reach of those who would expropriate it (”steal from the rich”, for those of you in Rio Linda, as Rush would say). No kinds of blandishments, threats or even direct physical confrontation will succeed in jarring loose any more than crumbs, and even those few crumbs are soon exhausted. Meanwhile, the sparrows grow hungrier and hungrier, as the horses disappear from the stable, or break out of the corrals for greener pastures elsewhere.

The complaints that capital and its concomitant employment are fleeing to other countries is easily enough countered - just make things more attractive in this country for them to return. Drop the overregulation, most of which is totally pointless and does not even address the problems it claims to, and make the process of taxation sufficiently transparent so people realize that a goodly portion of the price of a product, any product, is a hidden tax on consumption, Manufacturers and processors do not pay these taxes, the consumer does. The manufacturer or processor that is NOT making a profit is soon out of business, employing nobody and producing nothing.

But since the Current Regime, unlike the placeholders during the Bush Interregnum, have absolutely no flexibility in regards to either reducing the tax load or rationalizing the schemes of regulation, we are stuck with dealing with the badly broken and rubble-strewn landscape that passes for a playing field, at least for the moment.