Bashing Bain
Deval Patrick has entered the Democratic race, and John Hinderaker writes:
…[I]t is worth noting that Patrick resigned from Bain Capital the day before he announced.
Of course, there is nothing wrong with working for Bain; it is a perfectly good company. But remember the abuse that the Democrats heaped on Mitt Romney for running Bain Capital? He was a “vulture capitalist.” He caused one woman to die of cancer. He fired many more from their jobs. (Never mind the jobs Bain both created and preserved.) We see revealed here the utter cynicism of the Democratic Party. The leaders of that party don’t mean the things they say. They knew their attacks on Bain Capital were stupid, they just didn’t care. Just as they do not, more generally, believe their own demagoguery of Wall Street, when in fact, Wall Street has been among their biggest financial supporters.
True.
As far as it goes, that is – but it doesn’t go quite far enough. I remember the Democratic attacks on Romney regarding Bain, and I also remember that similar attacks originally came from Romney’s Republican rivals for the nomination, in particular Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry as well as some of their supporters and defenders.
I remember it because it was a battle fought on this blog, as well. There are many things to criticize about Romney, both then and especially now, but his work at Bain isn’t one of them, IMHO. If you want to see what I’m talking about, go here and read both the post and the comments. Here’s an excerpt from the post:
…[T]he Gingrich/Perry v Romney/Bain business has fascinated me far more than I expected it would, and much more than the usual campaign imbroglio. I think the reason is that it conjures up a host of deeper issues to ponder—about capitalism and free enterprise in general, and about the business of finance and how that fits into the mix.
So I may come out with quite a few posts related to this before it’s done. Not that I expect it to be done all that soon. And even if the Republicans start leaving the topic alone (which I doubt), the Democrats will be sure to pick it up if Romney is nominated. Of that you can be certain, if you can be certain of anything at all in this election.
And that turned out to be quite correct, as you can see from this. As I wrote in that post:
Politics can be (and often is) a vicious slugfest full of distortions and even outright lies about the opponent…These lies and distortions are the problem, not the subject matter itself (be it Wright or Bain), and it’s the function of the press to set us straight with the truth, although much of the MSM abdicated that effort long ago and joined in the mendacious festivities.
That was written in 2012, and it’s only gotten worse since then.
[NOTE: Let me add that I would amend this by saying that one of the functions of the press is to present the truth as best and as objectively as it can be determined. And if they’re not going to be objective, at least be truthful about their biases and own up to them openly.]
Patrick has a JD from Harvard but he failed the California Bar exam twice.
How does that happen? I thought the Harvards had the best and the brightest.
“one of the functions of the press is to present the truth as best and as objectively as it can be determined. And if they’re not going to be objective, at least be truthful about their biases and own up to them openly.]” neo
As we all know, the press abandoned objective journalistic standards long ago and, in doing so became propagandists. And, propagandists are not in the least interested in objective truth but only in the advancement of their ideological agenda until complete dominance and power are achieved. Given that mind set, there is no possibility of their being truthful about their biases nor of owning up to them openly.
I wonder what Deval actually did at Bain. Did he actually work productively? Or was he just a token black and handily an ex-governor of MA? MA is not exactly a state where politics is sin-free, so maybe he greased some skids and so earned his keep.
It seems Deval is deemed more-in-the-middle than the rabid Dem socialist candidates.
But I think he is simply an Obama/Holder clone, a chameleon, who said, after all, “the problem is not wealth; the problem is greed”. So if in power he will excuse himself and his wealthy buddies because, after all, they are not greedy. Strikes me as excellent Clintonian wordsmithing.
But then I’m a Deplorable white male so I must be guilty of something. Not wanting to surrender whatever wealth I might have defines me as greedy; right, Deval?
Interesting about his CA bar exam failures.
In 2012, I was very busy working for a living, so commented much less often. Also don’t like to comment without reading the comments (sometimes just skim some of … the longer ones).
What is Capitalism: market capitalism – crony capitalism.
Lots of old commies, & supporters of commies, don’t like a lot of capitalism / developers rule / widespread corruption, now so common in Slovakia and central Europe (ex-commie).
Haven’t seen much of commenter foxmarks (hope he’s OK), but among the good things he said on that old thread:
But since they control the flow of money, the finance guys have captured most of the economic growth over the past few decades and have supplanted “real” production, becoming the center of the economy. I’m not persuaded that finance guys deeply understand how business works, they just know how business is financed.
He also talks about THE problem of too much debt.
The Federal Reserve has many graphs, including some showing how the profits going to finance, finance guys, and financial firms has been increasing faster than the economy, so over the last 5 decades or so it’s gone from 2% of GDP up to 4% GDP (from memory).
I claim that a big part of this is the tax-advantaged treatment of debt, with interest payments being tax deductible. So that financing businesses by more debt is tax advantaged over financing firms with more equity – there continue to be econ debates about this.
Finance and money creation, especially now with (out of thin air) fiat money, are heavily regulated by financial laws — made by folks who suffer what is called “regulatory capture”. The regulators are more in favor of helping the financiers than the companies needing finance.
In the overall critique of capitalism, consider the median wage income (about $63k/yr), and the income at the top 10% level or top 1% level. ($118k, $719k)
https://www.investopedia.com/personal-finance/how-much-income-puts-you-top-1-5-10/
Wages grew 3.7% for the top 1%, but only 1% for the bottom 90% of the population.
I like the rich getting richer, and the poor worker getting richer, and the middle getting richer. But the after tax system should be resulting in the median wage earner getting richer faster than the wage growth of the top 1% or top 10%.
Not just Bain, but all finance companies and capitalism are subject to questions like Neo asked: Should they make no profit at all? How much would be too much? And who gets to decide where to draw the line?
The top 1% after-gov’t income should NOT rise faster than the median income.
Uh, Mr. Grey, the year is 2019. 2012 was some time ago.
Your comment was overlong, so I took your action to heart…just skimmed it.
Your bottom line is however troubling: “Not just Bain, but all finance companies and capitalism are subject to questions like Neo asked: Should they make no profit at all? How much would be too much? And who gets to decide where to draw the line?”
You’re missing the forest for the trees (of finance). You should be concerned about the Big Tech forces which are negatively reshaping American society.
Cicero: this kind of Big Tech shaping?
https://hotair.com/archives/ed-morrissey/2019/11/15/wsj-google-actively-blacklists-interferes-control-search-outcomes/
I’m certainly concerned about Big Tech.
Facebook should be nationalized, with most acquisitions spun off back into competing platforms, but with a standard interface API (applications program interface) to work with FB. The “community standard” for censorship should be all legal free speech is acceptable, those who want further censorship on their own feeds should have a way of not seeing it.
Google should be broken up into different services.
Advertising expenses using “monopolists” should only be post-tax expenses, not tax deductible. Monopolists are those entities with 50+% share of advertising revenue in their market. Search, email, social media, video provision. Possibly others.
These proposals are unlikely, but might lead to a Digital Utility Commission, to regulate the provision of digital / internet services. The Google abuses AesopFan notes from hotair / WSJ will be leading more Reps towards this, and the socialist Dems always favor more gov’t control. Not always wrongly, when the Big Business acts in a dishonest way. Free marketeers (like I try to be), are being naïve enablers of dishonest business to oppose all regulation, always — tho all such gov’t actions are indeed subject to long term regulatory capture.
Bain, the subject of this post, is not such a digital utility or Big Tech threat. Yet issues of working capitalism remain, and Neo’s questions about how much profit, and who draws what lines, remains with no consensus answer – elections are the closest we have.
The after tax wages of the top 1% should be growing less fast than the after tax wages of the median (50%) worker. That’s my line, which I think can become a plausible political line – the median worker getting richer faster than the rich are getting richer.
That also goes for countries, in theory, with the caveat of “under the same economic laws”. Which caveat means it mostly applies only to the different EU countries.