GirlChat #517736

Start A New Topic!  Date Index  Thread Index

Re: A few points for Lat...

Posted by Lateralus on 2010-December-18 20:04:04 EST, Saturday
In reply to Re: A few points for Lat... posted by Baldur on 2010-December-18 18:30:17 EST, Saturday
  Views: 0    Likes: 0     
In this article the author mentions a discussion he had with an economist about corruption and the scope of power:

"Some years ago, at a conference on international development, I suggested to the great economist Peter Bauer that pervasive corruption was one of the chief reasons that so many developing countries remained mired in poverty. Bauer sighed and leaned on the lectern and said something like: "No, that's not quite right. The United States and Britain when they were developing economically were as corrupt as many developing countries are today. The difference is that when the U.S. and Britain were developing, the size of their governments was small. The governments controlled a very small percentage of their GDPs. Today, the governments in most developing countries are very big relative to the size of their economies, often controlling more than half of their GDPs. Corruption is a problem, but the main problem is the size of their governments."

And yet, before the last 20 years taxes on the wealthiest Americans were much, much higher than they are now. The problem with modern conservatives is that they want to eat their cake and have it too. They want to run amok with regard to being unregulated, and yet they also want to not pay their fair share of taxes. Fuck 'em.

This post is archived, preventing any new replies.

Responses