Pyong Bricole

Thin Line between Fairness and Socialism

Socialism (noun) any of various political philosophies that support social and economic equality, collective decision-making, and public control of productive capital and natural resources. A belief that industries and infrastructure within a society should be owned and controlled by the society as a whole (the state) and that such common ownership produces greater general benefit than private ownership for private profit.

Fainess (noun) the property of being fair

Above are the definition of socialism and fairness that I found from Wiktionary. I tried to look at other dictionaries (Oxford and Larousse), they gave me more or less the same definition. I guess people who wrote on Wiktionary also checked on those dictionaries.

When we tried to bridge the gap between those haves and those don't haves, you might will ended up with label as a 'SOCIALIST' - just as what happened to Barack Obama, as he tried to bring the fairness for American middle class, he got the SOCIALIST label from the GOP members and supporters.

In contrast, I pay lots of respect to those people who dare to take that chance to fight for those who needs than those big business man.

I pay close attention to both candidates taxes and health care policies. Be honest, I don't see any single of McCain's that leaning towards 'ORDINARY PEOPLE', it's more that - the prorperity of those haves will tickle down to you, so let those haves make more profit and they will pass some of it to you, later, BETCHA!!!.

I agree that health care is a RIGHT for every citizen, and I also agree that family that working so hard is eligble for a special 'TAXES RATES' which will give them the chance to enjoy the income they made on maximum, not only let big companies making the most of tax saving and then bring those money to expand their business else where with one argument - the cost in USA is way too expensive.

Giving chance for people to have an affordable health care is just the way government taking, care of its citizen.

I understand that giving discount on taxes is a great way of attracking investor to invest in the country. But, on the other hand, offering no discount taxes for people who don't make enough money while giving discount taxes for people who making too much money is just 'ethical not correct'. While paying taxes is every citizen's responsibility, government sometimes have to understand, for those who don't haves, every single dollar is count. A small discount for their taxes rates will means a lot for them. But for those who already haves, they will not appreciate the tax discount (tax break) they receive, and even though the really have to pay those taxes, it won't make them poor anyway.

It's very easy to mess up between the fairness for everyone and socialism. But one thing we have to keep it in mind, what has been purposes by Barack Obama is only a bit relief for those who don't haves and it has nothing to do with socialism, cause he didn't even mention a small bit of sharing your wealth with others.

It's not only human who immigrates to USA from South East Asia

 The financial crisis in America recently is , for me, a mirror for what had happened across South East Asia back in 1997. Before my eyes, I saw one by one those giant banks with decades of good reputations collapsed in a matter of days. Banks struggling to keep a good level of liquidation on their balance sheets, assure clients that they are fundemantally strong, and kind of refused to give any credits during that period.

A small drop of bad gossip around the city can cause a rush to branches of the bank and it enough to make them collapse in just the matter of hours to days.

I remember, Indonesia Central Bank tried to interfere the market - injected the money to money market and helped bank who struggled with their liquidation. But after couple of weeks, it caused our inflation soaring to...somewhere around 20 persen or more. It's just CHAOS! Everything all of sudden become very expensive, people had no enough food to eat. It's disaster!

Then came IMF as the good guy, or should I say the Savoir of Indonesia's economy. They decided to increase the CAR level of banks across the country to Basel Accords II level, those banks were so behind that most of them by that time still using the Basel Accords I as their CAR level benchmark. Not everybody was happy with this changes, but on the other hand government has no choice but to safe the illed economy, so then the big banking SAGA in Indonesia started. Most of small banks couldn't comply with this CAR level and they ended up declared themselves bankrupt or otherway is to liquidize themselves to the bigger buyer. In 3 years time, most of small banks got wiped out from the Indonesia banking map. There are only couple BIG players left, but they are healthier than before and more competitive too.

From the story above, I could say, what happens in USA right now (economically) just about the same with what had happened in Indonesia a decade ago.

The ill-economy situation is just like a cancer. You can't cure patients with cancer, you can only pro-long their lifes by giving different kinds of medicines, in this case the bailout aids or whatever they will call it. That $700 billions dollars won't safe America economy from disaster, it just keeps it from arriving a bit later. As long as banks don't stop to give credits to either unqualified individual or company, this problem will never be solved.

If today Bernanke asked me what US government should do to end this crisis...my answer will be, let the ill-company get into their own trouble, they should learn to take responsibility for whatever action they decided to take before. I know, it sounds cruel, but if you help one entity, then you shouldn't refuse to help the other one, just like how FED decided to help AIG but abandon Lehman Brother, it's just not fair. You may argue it has a wide spread effect of the economy, bla...bla...bla...but the point is...not fair is not fair, government should not refused Lehman Brother on day 1 and accept AIG on day 2. He should either help or reject both, besides both of them are world-size company, so I think we are really doing a lemon to lemon comparasion

Life in the economy is just like our cylce of life, one dies other comes out. One business bankrupt a new one will replace it.

Let economy goes along with the nature selection, Wall Street will ended up with healthier companies. Helping those ill-companies will not only drag down Wall Street to the deeper part of the black-hole, it will take along the Main Street and Penn Ave. together into bankrupty. When Penn Ave. files for chapter 11, who's going to bail them out????