The CWB Explained (Brilliantly)

[AdamSmith]

http://captaincapitalism.blogspot.com/2006/09/vast-prosperity-begat-mystery-repost.html

[wilagro]

Adam Smith: "However, capitalism is not infallible and has one great weakness;

It has a tendency to spoil its participants."

What a crock of doo doo...spoil indeed...tell that to the worker who works for 24 years and gets fired just before he is entitled to receive a full pension and benefits. Tell that to the thousands of loyal employees at Ford and General Motors laid off because their "masters" weren't smart enough to plan for fuel efficient vehicle production. Tell that to the hundreds of thousands of people in the USA who have lost money in investments involving housing and stock trading companies.

For mankind to advance, make progress and not regress, capitalism is a tool, a necessary evil...not a warm and fuzzy concept to be adored, admired and worshipped.

[AdamSmith]

here's some more good reading

http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell0900908.php3


"For mankind to advance, make progress and not regress, capitalism is a tool, a necessary evil...not a warm and fuzzy concept to be adored, admired and worshipped"

Willy this is the first thing you've said that makes me think you might just get it after all.

I will disagree with the idea of capitalism being a "tool".

Unless you consider a powerful engine to be a "tool" then yes I guess capitalism could be called a "tool"

As far as a warm fuzzy concept, well I don't know any free market capitalist who would use those words to describe it or would even see it in that light.

It's not a religion to any of us either.

Capitalism is what it is and that is the most successful economic system ever adopted by man.

It is successful because it ISN'T a warm fuzzy concept, because it ISN'T to be worshiped or even admired.

It's successful because all it's meant to do is allow people to freely pursue a better life on their own terms not somebody elses.

A true capitalist doesn't look elswhere for excuses for their own failures, they look within and from that they learn lessons and apply those lessons.

The political left always blames someone else or something else for their failures and because of that they will never learn from their failures. They just get more and more indignant.

[Fransisco]

Time to once again burst your anti-capitalist bubble wilagro. Here is something of relevance from the Wall Street Journal. It's socialism that the American Auto maker's and their workers can thank for their predicament.


"It must infuriate the auto makers how readily their critics attribute their problems to their own incompetence. Then how to explain that GM is thriving in Europe, selling small cars that get lots of miles per gallon? Buick is among the biggest selling brands in China. GM is running away with Latin America.

The Big Three's problem, to be blunt, is North America. They should have pulled out long ago.

Not only did history saddle them with a UAW labor monopoly that their foreign competitors have managed to avoid. Even that might not have been fatal had Congress not enacted its "corporate average fuel economy" rules in the 1970s.

Look at gallons consumed, miles driven, barrels imported or emissions emitted: CAFE has had no significant impact on energy consumption. Its sole practical effect has been to inflict on Detroit the need to produce, with high-cost U.S. labor, millions of small cars designed to lose money.

CAFE has to be the most perverse exercise in product regulation in industrial history. It confronted the Big Three with the choice only of whether to lose a lot of money, by matching Toyota and Honda on quality and features; or somewhat less money, by scrimping on quality and features and discounting, discounting, discounting. Rationally, they scrimped -- and still live under a reputational cloud in the eyes of sedan buyers. Yet notice that their profitable product lines, in which they invest to be truly competitive -- such as SUVs, pickups and minivans -- hold their own against the Japanese and command real loyalty among U.S. consumers.

Let us have a moment of nonflagellating realism. Toyota is as capable of poor market timing as GM or Ford -- witness its multibillion-dollar bet on the Tundra pickup. It flies in the face of human and business realities to imagine that, generation after generation, Detroit hired idiots while Toyota recruited geniuses -- though that's the usual explanation of Detroit's troubles.

Had CAFE not existed, there is no reason the Big Three today could not be competitive. As businesses do, they would have allocated capital to products capable of recovering their costs. Investments in fuel efficiency would still have taken place -- to the extent consumers valued those investments. That is, if they were profitable.

If Washington found this unsatisfactory, it could have done as the Europeans do and raised fuel taxes to coax the public to make different choices. Politically inexpedient? Well, yes, but that doesn't mean CAFE is an effective substitute. It isn't and never was.

"When exposed to the piercing light of economic analysis, the alleged benefits of more stringent CAFE standards burn away," Robert Crandall of the Brookings Institution wrote here last year. "Too bad these proposals will not be subjected to economic scrutiny before they become law."

Yup. We won't second-guess Detroit's political behavior during its 30-year fuel economy captivity, which consisted mostly of offering lip service to Congress's delusions. It might have done as Volvo, Mercedes, BMW and others did, and simply paid fines for failing to meet the targets. No doubt its friends in Congress advised that doing so would only make its political situation worse.

Having squandered the domestic auto industry's capital on millions and millions of cars that lost money, now Congress will squander the taxpayer's capital. It will lend the auto makers $50 billion to invest in fuel efficiency innovations that, by definition, won't command from car shoppers a price high enough to cover the cost of making them. Which makes it very unlikely we will get the $50 billion back.

Bottom line: Fifty billion won't turn CAFE into effective policy. It will do just fine, though, as an indicator of Washington's willingness to throw good money after bad rather than admit the folly of its own long-running handiwork."

[wilagro]

I would expect no less an article from the WALL STREET JOURNAL which I am sure is impartial and labour friendly NOT.

[Fransisco]

You keep jumping away from the facts wilagro and one day you're going to get hit by a bus.