Wil jij graag de verzorgingsstaat om zeep helpen?

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Op maandag 8 maart 2010 17:32 schreef EchtGaaf het volgende:
Stem dan vooral op de VVD. Maar ik niet zo.

Waarom zijn er mensen die deze vreselijk club nog willen steunen?

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Op maandag 8 maart 2010 17:32 schreef EchtGaaf het volgende:
Stem dan vooral op de VVD. Maar ik niet zo.

Waarom zijn er mensen die deze vreselijk club nog willen steunen?

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Op maandag 8 maart 2010 17:45 schreef Darkangle het volgende:

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Is dit nog een verzorgingsstaat dan?

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Op maandag 8 maart 2010 17:54 schreef EchtGaaf het volgende:

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Tja, het is te triest voor woorden.

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Op maandag 8 maart 2010 17:57 schreef EchtGaaf het volgende:

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Je bedoelt dat zwakken de sterken moeten steunen?

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Op maandag 8 maart 2010 17:33 schreef BasEnAad het volgende:
De VVD is om hele andere redenen een vreselijke club. Iets met Fred Teeven.

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Op maandag 8 maart 2010 18:01 schreef EchtGaaf het volgende:
De echte grote griezel is Mark Rutte, met die abjecte VVD. Daar moet de media eens een keer op richten.

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Op maandag 8 maart 2010 18:07 schreef remlof het volgende:

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Ik snap het niet, ik ken Mark Rutte uit de jaren '90 als een "linkse" VVD'er. De VVD lijkt het spoor een beetje bijster de laatste jaren en gaat zich na de debacles met Wilders en Verdonk steeds rechtser profileren. Geen wonder dat de partij die nog echt liberaal is (D66) zo groeit.

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Op maandag 8 maart 2010 18:03 schreef EchtGaaf het volgende:

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Dat veroordeel ik ook

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Op maandag 8 maart 2010 18:11 schreef EchtGaaf het volgende:

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Ik weet niet wat erger is. Als er iemand de boel goed voor de gek houdt, dan is Mark Rutte het wel.

Hij is de grootste demagoog die er rond loopt. Hij kwijlt als als hij in de Big Apple komt..... Als hij daar zwervers ziet liggen dan kijkt ie maar de andere kant op.

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Op maandag 8 maart 2010 18:13 schreef Pietverdriet het volgende:

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Ga door, ik had bijna D66 gestemd, maar je overtuigd me nog een keer VVD te gaan stemmen.

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Op maandag 8 maart 2010 18:01 schreef EchtGaaf het volgende:

Niet Geert wilders is de griezel, want hij wil de verzorgingsstaat ongemoeid laten. Zoals het ook hoort.

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Op maandag 8 maart 2010 18:19 schreef EchtGaaf het volgende:

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Geert Wilders is daar absoluut helder in. Of je het ermee eens bent of niet.

Hetzelfde geldt voor de SP.

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Op maandag 8 maart 2010 18:16 schreef EchtGaaf het volgende:

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Er is wel erg weinig voor nodig.

Het zijn labiele geesten die op zo'n volstrekt achterlijk partij stemmen.

Het zijn echt zielige geesten die op de VVD stemmen.

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Op maandag 8 maart 2010 18:14 schreef EchtGaaf het volgende:

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Ach maak mij verder niet uit hoor. D66 is zo ongeveer net zo erg.

Het liberalisme is sowieso een abject gedachtegoed. Zo niet ziekelijk.

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Op maandag 8 maart 2010 17:58 schreef Pietverdriet het volgende:

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Wat ik bedoel is dat mensen liever in de bijstand zitten dan voor hetzelfde geld 20, 30 uur in de week te gaan werken.

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Op maandag 8 maart 2010 18:24 schreef axis303 het volgende:
“One of the consequences of such notions as "entitlements" is that people who have contributed nothing to society feel that society owes them something, apparently just for being nice enough to grace us with their presence. It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication and a government bureaucracy to administer it.”

Thomas Sowell

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nother fundamental issue that the current discussion has overlooked almost entirely is the distinction between the losses to banks and other lenders that reflect genuine losses of wealth to the economy, and other losses that don't. When the value of your house falls, that's a loss of wealth to the economy as a whole. If you keep paying your mortgage, you bear the loss yourself: your net worth is diminished by the amount of the decline in the home's price. If you default on your loan, then someone else—maybe the bank that lent you the money, maybe some investor to whom the bank sold the loan—also bears part of the loss. If the government steps in and reimburses the bank, or the investor, the taxpayers will bear part of the loss as well. But however this loss is divided, what is inescapable is that someone, somewhere, will bear it. What much of today's debate is about is how these losses should be divided among homeowners, banks, loan-purchasing investors, and the taxpayers. But the loss must be borne by someone, and America's economy is poorer because it has occurred.

By contrast, suppose you and your neighbor have bet on whether today's peak temperature would exceed fifty degrees. One of you was right, the other wrong. One of you won, the other lost, and the amount the winner won is identical to what the loser lost. There is no loss of wealth to the economy, merely a transfer of wealth from the loser to the winner. Many of the huge losses that American financial institutions have sustained in the current crisis are of this second kind. None of them was betting on the weather, but they were taking positions that amounted to placing bets on outcomes that represented no change in wealth to the economy as a whole. And with regard to these positions, for every loser featured in the latest newspaper story about banks posting losses and turning to the government for bailouts there is also, somewhere, a winner.

The most telling example, and the most important in accounting for today's financial crisis, is the market for credit default swaps. A CDS is, in effect, a bet on whether a specific company will default on its debt. This may sound like a form of insurance that also helps spread actual losses of wealth. If a business goes bankrupt, the loss of what used to be its value as a going concern is borne not just by its stockholders but by its creditors too. If some of those creditors have bought a CDS to protect themselves, the covered portion of their loss is borne by whoever issued the swap.

But what makes credit default swaps like betting on the temperature is that, in the case of many if not most of these contracts, the volume of swaps outstanding far exceeds the amount of debt the specified company owes. Most of these swaps therefore have nothing to do with allocating genuine losses of wealth. Instead, they are creating additional losses for whoever bet incorrectly, exactly matched by gains for the corresponding winners. And, ironically, if those firms that bet incorrectly fail to pay what they owe—as would have happened if the government had not bailed out the insurance company AIG—the consequences might impose billions of dollars' worth of economic costs that would not have occurred otherwise.

This fundamental distinction, between sharing in losses to the economy and simply being on the losing side of a bet, should surely matter for today's immediate question of which insolvent institutions to rescue and which to let fail. The same distinction also has implications for how to reform the regulation of our financial markets once the current crisis is past. For example, there is a clear case for barring institutions that might be eligible for government bailouts—including not just banks but insurance companies like AIG—from making such bets in the future. It is hard to see why they should be able to count on taxpayers' money if they have bet the wrong way. But here as well, no one seems to be paying attention.

Why has there been so little discussion of fundamental issues like this distinction among losses? Why is so little said about the trade-off between the goal of allocating the economy's capital efficiently and the need to shrink the enormous costs of the financial industry in doing so? One obvious reason is political. There is a long arc from Roosevelt's acceptance of a useful role for government institutions and government regulation to the conviction of Reagan and Thatcher that the government is never the solution but actually the problem. A second, closely related reason is ideological: the faith, personified by Alan Greenspan with his early dedication to the writings of Ayn Rand and his staunch opposition to regulations while chairman of the Federal Reserve, that private, profit-driven economic activity is self-regulating and, when necessary, self-correcting.