We've tried giving all the tax breaks to the rich thinking things would "trickle down" and they didn't. The rich got richer, the middle class is damn near extinct and the lower class makes up most of the population of America.
We've already proven that a "free market" society just leaves the doors open for embezzlement and outright theft. Now they've got our hard earned money in their hands and they're still crying while cutting bonus checks.
The stimulas should have went to the lower class then the upper class could compete for us to spend it on their products.
We're robbing Peter to pay Paul, when Bernie Madoff did that, he got sort of arrested and almost in trouble, yet the government does the same thing?
It's a wonder none of them learn.....
Free Market Capitalism?
You call it free market capitalism when due to the government regulations the financial sector is given a virtual monopoly on IPOs (Initial Public Offerings)?
If we lived in a truly free-market capitalist society it wouldn't be necessary for me to go through a firm like Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers or whoever else, in order to be able to do an IPO. I wouldn't have to report to the SEC, just to the shareholders who'd probably demand to know what the hell I am doing with the money they invested in the company, and thus increasing the value of their shares.
We don't have a free market capitalist society. If we did, then their would have been no talk of bail outs. The companies would have been allowed to fail.
As a direct result of that, there'd also be no talk of their bonuses (they'd be unemployed.)
What we have is a statist/interventionist government that does not understand that if they would get their fat asses out of the way the market would correct problems like the obvious idiocy of the financial sector.
It would correct it by causing the firms that were mismanaged to go bankrupt.
There would also be a considerably lesser need for those companies to be continuously seeking greater and greater returns, because there would be a stable commodity backed monetary unit that was not subject to inflation, and thus would retain its value.
People would be more willing to take the sure bet with a guaranteed pay off instead of the high risk bets with potentially great losses. Why?
Because, in a society such as ours where the dollar you have in your wallet is not going to be worth as much tomorrow, people have to generate sufficient returns to cover that inflation. That adds 3 - 5% on the turns that you need just to retain purchasing power.
Add onto the 50 - 60% that you'll pay in taxes and you're facing the need to earn 23 - 25% just to make it worth the effort of investing that money instead of sitting on it.
This is not a failure of the free market. In a free market stability would be assured because the government would not be stealing so much from everyone.
This is a failure of a socialist/statist interventionist market system.