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EconPete says

If the U.S. ever wants to restore its economy, they need to immediately stop private finance to public campaigning. If politicians put the majority’s views in front of the special interest’s demands, maybe then people wouldn’t need 30 years to pay for a house, 7 years to pay for a car, or 15% of their salary for healthcare they don’t even use!

I agree!

The solution is public campaign finance so that common people can run for congress instead of just the friends of the ultra-rich.

How does public campaign finance work if there are 100s or 1000s or unlimited number of candidates that want to apply for funding?

It seems to me that this question is never addressed.

If candidates somehow have to pre-qualify in order to be eligible for public campaign financing, then the influence of corporate money will simply move from the election stage to the qualification stage, and we are even worse off than before, plus we would be PAYING for the already-paid-for candidates to run.

Those are but an aspect of what drives inflation (or negative inflation --i.e., deflation). And, rather microeconomically oriented. The macro variables driving the inflation equation are much less deterministic, much noisier, and much less readily computed.

And for the record, I believe campaign finance has effectively zero to do with the situation. But we've had that debate numerous times already.

Econpete,

No one is gonna implement your solutions. However, similar solutions can come as unintended consequences of existing and/or new policies.

Let me give you a hypothetical example. For instance, all but those linked to public unions want to dismantle public pensions. Lets assume that it happens. There are $17 Trillion in the coffers of Calpers like agencies. If you take this money away from capital markets, APPL, GOOG, AMZN won't be trading at what they are trading now. Of course, it would be a stock market deflation. Do Republicans, who want to dismantle pension funds, want a deflated stock market? What's gonna happen to their wealthy friends, who own public companies? Their assets deflate as well. It is in the interests of wealthy to keep these pension funds, so that they can keep their inflated assets!!

Those are the things that we should wait for. Slogans like 'dismantle Fed', 'dismantle fraction reserve banking' don't help, since it is highly improbable that policies like you advise are implemented.

EconPete says

If the U.S. ever wants to restore its economy,

And that was the end of your piece.. the rest has no meat and hold no solution to our current economic problems.

Too much to comment on other than the primary contradiciton in the piece: You are absolutely correct in your fundamental analysis of market distortions in the sectors delineated and then lapse into confusion on the points by recommending direct government distortions of the electioneering process. As with tangible products and services the market will determine value or the lack thereof. As with free markets caveat emptor applies to the voters. Customers aka voters must follow, "the first rule in communications is to HEAR what is being said." The applicable portion of the governmental invasiveness argument is the affects of trickle down dependency preempting yet another of our most important individual responsibilities which is to be an informed voter. The orginial checks and balances were and remain accurate, applicable and effective. The weak link falls on the lever in the voting booth. So, quit complaining by trying to identify false claims by promises from those who think there's greener grass "beyond capitalism" and the original constructs of the greatestt civilization in human history, ours! Leadership is all about taking risks not designing systems to all thats technically possible to avoid it. Let us Free Ourselves!

Indeed nothing prevents the current system from working. For all the electioneering money poured into the system, the outcomes fail to prove a single defendable correlation between money and winning elections beyond the smallest of local level where it's a simple function of name-recognition (because nobody knows who they hell all those judges or city supervisors are anyway).

If you want to go hunting for blame in the failure of our current democratic system then focus on the voters and potential-voters. It is their collective laziness and unwillingness to even read the bold print, big font front page of their voter guides -- that if they even bother to vote at all.

As for wrapping capitalism into this, I find it disgustingly ironic that the entire "Corporate Social Responsibility" movement which ostensibly was created as a way to try to balance corporate behavior against the public good is in reality one of the larger accelerators of the decline of US democratic function.

It's this simple: among the roles of a functioning government is to counterbalance corporate interests. If we don't like the way the banks or the factories or the big box retailers are behaving, then we have a democracy at our disposal to remedy that. But no. We instead fabricate some ill begotten CSR fiction that is supposed to inject a "soul" of some sort into for profit companies.

I don't want to rely upon the soul of a company to do what's right for society. What's right for society is for companies to be as profitable as possible, period. What's right for the voting public is to set our systems laws such that those companies pursue their profits in a manner consistent with our value systems.

This is not a difficult equation. Them old buggers who set this system up were smarter than we think. No, they weren't perfect, but they did apply a very minimalistic approach to forming our government which has held up longer than any other continuous democracy on earth to this point. Let's make sure that streak isn't broken during our time at the wheel.

I don't argue the rationality of non-voting. I think non-voting is the ultimate form of non-violent protest, in fact. But, like acts of civil disobedience, the protester has to accept the consequences of their act. For the non-voter, they are accepting that their non-vote is essentially a vote in favor of a failed system. The non-voter is an anarchist who is agitating for a failed government and eventual revolution, just on a longer-term time scale.

But that is an entirely rational choice, I agree.

It's also rational for true leaders to rise to the call and endeavor to utilize the existing system for change. Sadly, those leaders are few and far between today. They are out there, to be sure, but they mostly choose to avoid civil service.

Again, entirely rational. They are voting by withholding their leadership skills from the service of society in favor of expediting a failed state.