Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
You're doing it again. Right guy, left wing guy, etc. Stop thinking like that. You have no idea what that guy believes. If some guy rants about obama care you automatically assume he is a right wing guy. As if that really defines him. People like Ron Paul are speaking about principles. Principles are important because they are the foundation of where we start. The baseline so to speak. From those principles we can be as pragmatic and effective as we want. Ron Paul has given thousands of speeches where he talks about this. The world is much more complicated then saying Hayek is wrong and Keynes is right. Neither one of them are wrong or right. The world does not work that way.
As a matter of principle as a person who actually makes his living actually applying my beliefs vs simply talking about them, I can tell you that you can't solve problems by throwing money at it. And you certainly have to adhere to the rule of insanity which is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Money and power corrupt. Adding more money and giving the government more power does not solve problems, it creates them. Now don't take the opposite point of view and then tell me I'm saying that no money and no government is the answer. I hate it when people do that. I'm simply speaking about the "direction" we need to move. We need to move towards "less" not more. Less does not mean none, it means less. We already have a huge government at the federal, state and local level. We have trillions of dollars. We throw money at every problem under the sun and yet they keep getting worse because we never try to understand them. Understanding them doesn't win people elections, but promising more money does. Like I said, I use to be your age and felt EXACTLY the way you do now. Once I got older and actually interacted withe the real world, I understood how it worked. I'm not trying to be condescending, but there are certain things in life that can only come from age and experience. You can't learn them in a book or a class. It reminds me of this speech that Robin William's character had with Matt Damon's character in "Goodwill Hunting" in which Matt Damon had all the book smarts and none of the real life experience.
You're doing it again. Right guy, left wing guy, etc. Stop thinking like that. You have no idea what that guy believes. If some guy rants about obama care you automatically assume he is a right wing guy. As if that really defines him. People like Ron Paul are speaking about principles. Principles are important because they are the foundation of where we start. The baseline so to speak. From those principles we can be as pragmatic and effective as we want. Ron Paul has given thousands of speeches where he talks about this. The world is much more complicated then saying Hayek is wrong and Keynes is right. Neither one of them are wrong or right. The world does not work that way.
As a matter of principle as a person who actually makes his living actually applying my beliefs vs simply talking about them, I can tell you that you can't solve problems by throwing money at it. And you certainly have to adhere to the rule of insanity which is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Money and power corrupt. Adding more money and giving the government more power does not solve problems, it creates them. Now don't take the opposite point of view and then tell me I'm saying that no money and no government is the answer. I hate it when people do that. I'm simply speaking about the "direction" we need to move. We need to move towards "less" not more. Less does not mean none, it means less. We already have a huge government at the federal, state and local level. We have trillions of dollars. We throw money at every problem under the sun and yet they keep getting worse because we never try to understand them. Understanding them doesn't win people elections, but promising more money does. Like I said, I use to be your age and felt EXACTLY the way you do now. Once I got older and actually interacted withe the real world, I understood how it worked. I'm not trying to be condescending, but there are certain things in life that can only come from age and experience. You can't learn them in a book or a class. It reminds me of this speech that Robin William's character had with Matt Damon's character in "Goodwill Hunting" in which Matt Damon had all the book smarts and none of the real life experience.
But that's exactly what I am talking about. You say Ron Paul starts at principles. But what principles? He and like a lot of other libertarian minded people start off with a set of presumptions about life, stuff they call principles or "common sense". They're amendable and pragmatic but there is a set of already assumed principles which they start off every debate or discussion concerning economics. They assume these laws that govern the world as "natural laws". The Austrian School is very big on this.
For instance, you ask anyone in here or in America if it came down to it, would you let a village starve or expropriate the only arable land which belongs to the private landowner two miles outside the county line? A lot of people would say that it would be wrong to take away a mans land, a land he worked hard for and his father and grandfather worked hard to build. Why give it to a bunch of thieving sloths that made bad use of their land?
The same dilemma happens all over the world. In Argentina, when the factory owners closed their doors and decimated whole towns during an economic depression, the people had two options; starve or take the factory away. They did the latter and re-opened it to greater profit. Only this time the profits don't go to a leech who "took a risk", but instead is re-distributed among the workers there. Most libertarians would say this is stealing! But that would only make sense in a world that adamantly protected stringent property rights over the needs of the masses. These rights, codified by law, are examples of those presumed principles, which ironically libertarians would be no where if there wasn't a strong state to enforce their precious property rights. Point is the basis of their beliefs in freedom and liberty are enshrined in these property rights. To take that away, even in the most dire situation as I described above would be anarchy, and to set a precedent like that is much worse than having a bunch of people starve.
Isn't that what you guys call "Being the leader of the Free World and defending freedom"?
My beliefs haven't change.... people got problems in their country... well, good luck, because we got problems, too. and we are broke
As a matter of principle as a person who actually makes his living actually applying my beliefs vs simply talking about them, I can tell you that you can't solve problems by throwing money at it.
You need to read about FDR's New Deal, it did a hell of a job fixing this country.
Have you ever heard of the "Rural electrification act" of 1936???
In the 1930s, electricity was widely available in cities but largely unavailable in farms, ranches, and other rural places. The impact of the Depression had revealed in stark terms the disparity in standards of living between city dwellers and rural residents. Congress responded to this problem, initially by providing funding for electrical service to rural areas and providing resources to make water available where droughts and water shortages had adversely effected rural residents. In the first attempt by the U.S. government to bring power to rural areas of the country, Congress passed the Rural Electrification Act in 1936. The law was proposed by Representative John E. Rankin and Senator George William Norris. The act signed into law by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
The Act established the Rural Electrification Administration (REA), with a provision of ten years. The REA was authorized to offer loans to companies willing to supply electricity to rural areas not already served by any other company. The U.S. government promised low-interest rates and tax credits to companies willing to construct and operate power generating plants and transmission lines to supply electricity to rural areas. Rural cooperatives emerged as the primary borrowers of REA funds, and by the end of 1936 approximately 100 companies in 26 states had received loans from the REA. A 1944 amendment to the Act increased loan terms from 25 to 35 years and made the REA a permanent public administration. In 1949, further amendments made rural telephone companies eligible to receive loans under the Act. In 1994, the Rural Electrification Administration was renamed the Rural Utilities Service (RUS), but the agency retained the same primary mission.
Of course the New Deal helped. When you publicly invest in not only infrastructure but the citizens, it produces a healthier populace and healthier economy.
The New Deal, helped but it did not get us out of the Depression. It wasn't until WWII that it really got us out. Conservatives will very strangely assert that it wasn't the New Deal but WWII that got us out, but why use that as an argument at all? What else but government spending did they think WWII was all about?
A massive campaign to literally build up an arms industry, price freezes, full employment, etc. It worked.
Why can't that same rationale be used for peacetime? A massive, utterly expansive campaign to literally rebuild this country? Nationalization of certain industries, instead of stupidly bailing them out or partially nationalizing them, giving them back to the owners and reaping no rewards! We partially nationalize the banks, buy up all their toxic assets, give them intrest free loans and give the banks back to them and watch them reap even bigger profits? That's insane.
The reason why the first stimulus didn't work was,(and Paul Krugman was right), ; was because it was piddly.
What's needed is a massive, expansive campaign the size of WWII and the New Deal combined to battle this chronic stagnation and low wage growth.
What's needed is a massive, expansive campaign the size of WWII and the New Deal combined to battle this chronic stagnation and low wage growth.
Financed by the Chinese? I'm all for massive infrastructure rebuilding, but we can't pay for a program like this without a massive tax increase or massive de-funding of the military, and both of those are politically impossible.
Financed by the Chinese? I'm all for massive infrastructure rebuilding, but we can't pay for a program like this without a massive tax increase or massive de-funding of the military, and both of those are politically impossible.
I always run into the same assumptions. There must be some framework to the politics that I must be so unaware of or not acknowledging. But I am trying to understand this in ways that doesn't sound general or vague. When you say it would be politically impossible, it makes me question the root of that assertion. You make it sound like it cannot realistically be done, even though it can, it just will not be popular among billionaires and the military elite. When it comes to the military industrial machine, it's both.
Of course this wouldn't be popular with them and would be a political powder keg for any President to dare attempt it but it would be the right thing to do. I wouldn’t even hesitate to think that there would be a coup plot in line because of such a policy. But it would be popular among the populace.
I would add a third thing to fund the program; nationalize one of the commanding heights of industry. We already provide copious amounts of corporate welfare in the form of tax breaks, subsidies, land grants, research and development grants, procurement funds. There is so much waste in the defense department alone shelling out millions and even billions of dollars to these defense firms which charge outrageous prices.
Have any of you ever read a GAO report before? It details the amount of waste the US Government spends on corporations year round, literally being a baseline for their growth. Why keep shelling out tax payer money to these companies that reap all the rewards, outsource, and get bailed out if they’re ever in trouble? Just nationalize some of them. No use in keeping up with this waste just to promote some inane doctrine of “free enterprise”, we all know it’s a monopoly. Most developed nations have some sort of nationalized industry that funds a lot of their social programs.
This thread is about politics and not really about Houston. Moving it to P&OC forum
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
