TO ANONYMOUS 11/5 3:50 p.m. who said: "But if society does not put limits on greed, the early winners will soon be able to corrupt any supposed democratic institutions..." The market itself puts limits on greed through failure. Play it out: excessive greed leads to excessive risk-taking, for excessive greed has little patience. Excessive risk-taking inevitably leads to huge losses and possibly failure, the self-correcting mechanism of the market. If a political system is corrupted, indeed corruptible, then that system is flawed, not the agents that seek to corrupt it. Mankind is flawed and will try any manner of dirty deeds for his aims. Take the Obamunist - hope and change, a new America, no red or blue states, only the United States, the most transparent admin in history...look at him now. Divisive, contemptuous, bitter, closed-minded. He is tearing us apart, pitting us against each other so he can win an election. Such a beast must be flushed out, i.e. not re-elected. In any case, assigning some arbitrary "limit" to what other people earn is simply wrong, if you understand this country's founding principles of personal, economic, and religious freedom. Having what someone ELSE decides is "too much" is NOT A CRIME.

@11/6 7:22 p.m. said "...when dealing with too big too fail corporations and banks, Adam Smith's metaphor breaks down. These behemoths win regardless of how badly they act as they have power to make $ regardless of how badly they act. Adam Smith's ideology of self-correcting markets is a myth." Incorrect, because "too big to fail" is not a construct of classical economics. It is an invention of the political system and represents a moral hazard: bail one out and the others become more reckless due to the expectation that they, too, will be rescued. Let one fail and the others will act more prudently. It is not this aspect of the economic system that is flawed but the actors who would regulate it. A recent example is the rescue of Bear Stearns. What kind of signal did that send? Then here comes Lehman, and oops! They let that one fail. Having government pick winners and losers is the cause of our current malaise; it was the cause of the depth and length of the Great Depression; and it will be the cause of more downturns in the future. The intention of the interveners, mostly liberals, is honorable: they don't want to see others in pain. Yet pain is the mother of lessons learned, and the well-intentioned tinkering always has unintended condequences. A great example is the impact that ethanol subsidies have had on the price of oil. The subsidies drove up the price of corn, which made it too expensive relative to other feed for livestock, at a time when developing economies were starting to eat more meat. So many ranchers increased their use of an alternative feed called beef tallow, driving up its price. Beef tallow is also used in ... soap making, so in some cases soap makers increased their use of certain petroleum products, driving up the price of ... you guessed it, oil. It continues to be my assertion that every lawmaker who has influence over economic policy first understand economics, either by holding a degree in it or by passing an exam that tests the necessary concepts, only one of which is supply and demand. As for the circular argument put forth by Anonymous 11/5 9:43 a.m.: "People can accuse all they want that `other people` don`t understand economics but it really is not about understanding economics because understanding economics is just understanding how to manipulate or work within this machine for profit," this is the same absurd reason these imps have used to walk out of an Econ 101 class. Remaining deliberately ignorant about a discipline does not garner anyone special rights to criticize that discipline. This is a central problem with the left: they cook up ideas they are so sure are right, without understanding some of the key bodies of knowledge that directly impact those ideas. Prime Example: wealth redistribution.

Anonymous on November 04 2011, @05:25 pm: "You sir need to read. Neoliberal economic theory has been empirically debunked. Read some nobel prize winning economists (Amartya Sen, Paul Krugman)..." This is hilarious. Krugman? He is nothing but a tool for the left. I love it when his fans refer to his "Nobel prize," implying that everything he says must be gospel. Sadly, poor Paul has a major axe to grind with conservatives, shown in his editorial rants that contain little economic reasoning and plenty of vitriol. Why not read Robert Barro? Oh sorry, he wouldn't agree with you. Maybe YOU should read something besides leftist propaganda.

‎"The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist." - John Maynard Keynes