Ted Rall for December 27, 2013

Rall has never been tightly wrapped, but I think he’s now officially gone completely off the rails.

Capitalism is here to stay Ted; Get over it !

Yea, but don’t go to Mass if the Pope decrees the wine is to be replaced with Kool Aid!

Oh no. I’ve re-tweeted some of the things Pope Francis has said. Does this put me on a no-fly list?

You have the intellectual limits to only dip your toe in the water, yet you complain how deep the ocean.

Nope. You’re not getting any deeper than a toenail dipped in the water.

Smart enough to not debate someone who cannot articulate the viewpoint of the opposition.

Hey you’re the one who can’t seem to understand the strip. Good luck with everything.

As if he ever offered to debate?

No, his only offer was a set of lengthy defenses of capitalism that insisted on missing Rall’s point: capitalism is the state religion and heresy is dangerous.

And that regulation has created the super banks and super companies that get more profit through lobbying for yet more regulations to stop competition than actually making products and services people want.

It takes BIG government to actually make BIG business. Unless of course you subscribe to the theory that big business will soon have its own armies and some sort of drugs that force people to buy from them… (Which of course they don’t need now since they have the government for both)

Insanity is using the same methods to attempt to solve a problem and expecting different results.

_ Blame the rich, demonize the rich, we are going to just make the evil rich pay, you will never be rich so vote for me and I will give you free stuff from the rich._You made some good points following up on Ghostkeeper’s observation that Capitalism can be turned to ill use. The thing that many of us find refreshing about Francis’ remarks (which are hardly a condemnation of Capitalism), is that it highlights the fact that our society is giving a few people huge rewards, while others are losing ground. Wages have barely recovered from the recession & employment is still very low. Corporate profits are 60% higher than they were in 2007. This has compounded a trend that’s been going on since 1980. Pointing out those facts isn’t “demonizing the rich”.My feeling is that we need to strengthen the power of workers versus capital holders in order to bring up wages & employment. This will cut into profit margins, but increase demand, resulting in a bigger pie for all. Short of that, I can only call for a bigger, more generous social welfare system to avoid returning to Industrial Age misery for the masses.

Not a lie. Do your research before you make that accusation, or you wind up looking silly. After tax profits are up 60%. http://ycharts.com/indicators/corporate_profitsI am not saying you are wrong but you just can not throw out they bad they earn all this money and then not give some to employees.Of course I can! You can attempt to argue that having a small number of people taking all economic gains since 2007 isn’t a bad thing for America, but my facts stand. Any system should reward hard work & smart decisions, and not just on Wall Street & in the board rooms.

Useless tripe