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I know so many people here are from all over the world. I also know that America is in the spot light as far as the ceiling and budget are concerned.
I was told by a friend of mine who majors in economy that the world is looking to the USA to help pull the world issues up and out of the massive freefall we are in.
At the same time, America is at the point of a crisis with either side not able to come to an agreement.
My question is this...
Those of us in the USA are watching this very closely. Many things count on our leaders being able to pass a house resolution for goverment to continue, but what effect do you think might happen to those who live abroad if our economy collapses?
I know this isn't script talk but it is important to America and the world.
So even though we might not be loved, are other countries looking to us right now to turn this tide?
I think YES!
Do you like a bookie?
Do you like a loan shark?
How many people really like the police?
Were asked to be the brokers of the world, the police of the world and yet, are despised.
Is our economy tied to the worlds? If not, then why the attempt to garner favor? Why not withdraw and save our own then live to fight others wars another day?
Here's some really basic, simple economics: Just like with an individual's credit rating, the more debt you aquire the lower your credit score goes. Likewise, the more debt the US stacks on the lower our credit rating goes - and the lower the value the USDollar (USD) is in relationship to other global currencies. USD value decreases = the relative value of the Euro increases.
Great. So what.
When rest of world (ROW) currencies increase in relative value their businesses can now purchase materials of production, commodities (crude oil, met coal, iron ore), at a lower price. It's the same as increasing their credit limit. Now ROW can spend less to buy materials, manufacture, transport and retail finished goods.
The US stock market is commodities based. When ROW starts buying up commodities they become increasingly scarce and their value increases making the stock market increase.
SIMULTANEOUSLY with the USD decreasing in value and ROW currencies increasing in value, now US exports are relatively inexpensive (this is good for US manufacturing and jobs!) and ROW imports are also more expensive (also good for US jobs). But don't get too d@mn giddy. I don't think the US has ever NOT had a trade deficit, which means Americans have ALWAYS bought more ROW cr@p than ROW ever bought from us.
Americans are energy and materials consuming pigs, vermin, a GD pestilence upon the planet.
So here's the deal, some of you may be familar with the acronym BRIC: Brazil, Russia, India and China. Four EMERGING MARKETS, meaning they currently have relative cr@p but are rapidly running up or are attempting to run up to the current US/UK/JPY/AUS standard of gluttonous consumption of energy and materials resources, joining the rest of the industrialized nations are going to put a preposterous strain on global energy and materials resources.
So, tell me this: do you wanna live like kings for a day or like paupers for a year?
Yes/No: is there a benefit to absolutely destroying the global economy?
Mmmm.... Yes.
If the US ccredit rating is downgraded from AAA to Aaa the US stock market will crash not because of willy-nilly lack of faith. Um, no. That's how kindergardeners think.
The stock market will nose-dive because the relative value of the USD will NOT be adversely impacted due to higher debt = ROW currencies drop in value = they can't buy commodities AS CHEAPLY = their costs of production increase = commodities inventories have decreased pressure = the commodities based US stock market drops.
Now, not only have a monster amount of paper profits have been lost, there's going to be a mad scramble to liquidate stocks FIRST before everyone stupid enough to buy what's being made available for fire-sale runs out of cash.
Anyone leveraged out the wazoo is going to lose big.
Frankly, I was born to be a hunter gatherer. I can live without airconditioning just fine. Clean water and immunizations I'll miss. When the world goes to h3ll in a hand basket - stock up on anti-diarrhea medicine!
FWIW, bullets will be a more practical currency than gold coins, which only stupid people will be trying to peddle about. Silver coins in small denominations will be much more practical.
All I know is that when the economy took a shit, I bought a house with a mortgage at 5.5%. A year later, when it took an even bigger shit, I refinanced at 4%, the lowest rates since the Eisenhower administration.
I still have a job (two, actually) and there isn't any talk of layoffs at either place.
If the stock market crashes, my 401k may get screwed up, but it's not a ton of money. Social Security may die, but I don't really count on that being around at my retirement age anyway.
This impending doom scenario spooks me about as much as Y2K, which is to say I don't have a preponderance of duct tape in my house.
I am, but my my two smallest children are not old enough to have completed their full regimen.
And I'm talking for real post-apocalyptic no modern conveniences hunter gathering.
As in your grand children and great grand children may die of dysentary, necessitating the need for large families because of the sky high infant mortality rate.
Of course this is painting the worse possible outcome that likely isn't going to happen, I'm just saying there's a clear advantage to destroying the global economy that I don't think the average "sane" person considers on a daily basis. We tend to just humpty-dump along, tra-la-la-la-la.
300M Americans sucking up every bit of oil and eating all the red meat we can. + 500M EU consumers + 100M Japanese consumers + 22M Australian consumers
to be joined by... 1,300M Chineese consumers + 1,200M Indian consumers + 190M Brazilian consumers + 140M Russina consumers
All at the same/similar consumption rate of energy and materials.
Birth rates slow to the point where populations cannot be replaced wherever there is prosperity. Without immigration in Europe and America, and the high birth rates of immigrants, these populations would be declining. Japan is an island of old people, with extremely low birth rate. There's no reason to panic. There's plenty of room on the planet, and plenty of resources...even with existing technology. And technology will offer new solutions.
Whole towns and areas of the US are depopulated. Detroit is down a million from a generation ago. If we don't let the socialists destroy prosperity, everything will be fine. And we've been through it before. Anyone remember the 70s? Reagan gave us a generation of prosperity(including the Clinton years). If we can control the ballooning government, everything will be well, as it always has. Businesses and people will adapt, invent, prosper. Trust in freedom and human ingenuity. Everything will turn out fine.
Birth rates slow to the point where populations cannot be replaced wherever there is prosperity. Without immigration in Europe and America, and the high birth rates of immigrants, these populations would be declining. Japan is an island of old people, with extremely low birth rate. There's no reason to panic. There's plenty of room on the planet, and plenty of resources...even with existing technology. And technology will offer new solutions.
Whole towns and areas of the US are depopulated. Detroit is down a million from a generation ago. If we don't let the socialists destroy prosperity, everything will be fine. And we've been through it before. Anyone remember the 70s? Reagan gave us a generation of prosperity(including the Clinton years). If we can control the ballooning government, everything will be well, as it always has. Businesses and people will adapt, invent, prosper. Trust in freedom and human ingenuity. Everything will turn out fine.
As someone who lives in the UK, the US is seen as a critical ally both economically and defensively.
In the global market, all countrries to some extent rely on others econmically. I haven't got any figures to hand, but I know that there will be a large number of UK companies that rely on US investment or sales.
One of our politicians, Vince Cable, recently caused a bit of friction with the US by saying that the Republicans who are opposing tax rises are "Right Wing nutters" who are threatening the world's recovery and leading us into a new financial crisis.
Whether it's true or not, it shows that the state of the US economy is a major concern for the rest of the world.
Just to offer another UK voice, I think a prevailing view is this: are your politicians really willing to plunge the world into another round of economic turmoil simply because they can't swallow their partisan pride and come to some sort of agreement? As Obama said, this one IS avoidable. All this brinksmanship is crazy.
Markets are global for sure. When the US government became involved in the housing market in the interest of helping people, it ultimately interfered with housing's market based values. The entities created to perform these functions(the FANNIES) inevitably became corrupt organisms with a life of their own. The resulting bubble collapsed the economy, and has huge ripple effects world wide. Countries like Ireland and Greece depended on tax revenue from people heavily invested in these markets, and they require huge revenue flows to support their own bloated government dependents.
The bottom line is that government efforts to help people ended up hurting vastly many more people than they helped. By brother struggles to pay a mortgage on a house that he was forced to overpay for because of this bubble. It's important to separate intent from results, and people have a hard time doing that.
The founders of the US understood that when the majority of citizens look for the government to provide for them, to give them things, the system is in big trouble. It's easy to vote for your neighbor to give you stuff, but eventually no one has much incentive to make anything, and your neighbor doesn't have much to give any more.
Politicians in the US make careers on taking stuff from other people to give to those that will vote for them. That includes borrowing from future generations. One of the main American parties is built entirely around that concept. It is beyond hope. The other party is built around a different concept, but often can't resist doing the same thing, giving stuff to people to win their votes.
A small portion of people realizes that this is unsustainable much longer. They are trying to force change. It's a very difficult thing to wake up most people who haven't a clue. They think all we gotta do is tax some rich guy and the gravy train will keep rolling.
When people take the online test to see where they stand politically, most people end up Libertarian. Interesting thing is that the Tea party really is based on Libertarian values, but for some reason it has become thought of as as an extreme rightwing party...
I wish religeon was not part of politics at all. Turns some people off.
...me? I can't vote here because I'm not a US citizen. I don't vote in Sweden either because I don't live there and don't plan to so I figure I shouldn't be part of deciding what happens there.
Hopefully you can get citizenship. Immigration keeps this country going. It loses its essential ability to revitalize without it.
I think the Tea Party is more Libertarian than religious, but I've never been to a rally, so I really don't know. There will be a religious element there, as there will be all kinds of people who want to be heard. My sense is that it's mostly regular people who think the government is destroying this country.
The idea of moderating the size of government is now presented as extreme. I'm certain many people here think I am extreme right wing, even though I'm pro-choice, believe that there should be a safety net like social security, and think that society should be built around a strong protection of individual rights. I just happen to think it's dangerous when we want the government to tell people what to eat, how to raise their kids, what to drive, what to think. I also think government meddling with free markets results, eventually, in widespread human suffering. Cuba, the Soviet Union, and the current fiscal mess are evidence of that.
Keep the government out of our bedrooms and out of our pockets! How's that for Libertarian?
Second spreadsheet section down Amount: billions of dollars Total Note that steady improvement of bank fiat funny money credit lending from 2010 third quarter of $2,394.9B.
The more that increases the less need there is for the US government to act as public bank by creating its own fiat funny money in the form of debt.
US banks have been making more and more loans. It's almost a year's time for the US government to discontinue piling on the debt and to begin paring it back.
This is the time for the people who voted for the politicians to pay attention and contact their elected representatives to let this be the last debt increase.
Additional government spending is no longer needed. If you want the global economy to recover US debt needs to be maintained at or near current levels as banks spur economic growth. The US government has pumped enough cash (in the form of debt) into the US economy and US consumers have exported that cash/debt quite sufficiently in the form of the trade deficit - largely for mobility fuel, AKA crude oil.
Please, by all means, let's keep exporting US taxpayer debt/cash to ROW in the form of our trade deficit. http://www.census.gov/indicator/www/ustrade.html Drive around a lot, buy more cr@p, and eat more cr@p! (There are three things you can spend your money on: Consumables - Zero value after usage, like food, utilities, services. Depreciating assets - lose value the older they get, like cars, furniture, clothes, electronics. Apreciating assets - things that HISTORICALLY increase in value over time, not too many of those these days, but it used to be real estate, securities and investment grade commodities.) Buy more consumables and depreciating assets! Surely there's another pair of shoes you can BOGO 50% off!
If you want to destroy the global economy so that WWIII doesn't begin over BRIC buying all of the mobility fuel, iron ore and met coal we want twenty+ years down the road then tell your congressmen to keep loading up on debt, cut tax loopholes so that the government can simultaneously increase its revenues for expansion of federal government services - AND - disincentivize investment in US business.
Defaulting for a few days or weeks won't do sh!t, long-term. It'll just be a lot of paper losses and quite a few more global jobs lost for a decade, maybe.
Pick a future: Happy now > Miserable later > Devastated two or three generations from now (100 years ain't nothing, BTW)
or
Not so happy now > Not so happy later > Not so happy two or three generations from now.
In the late 70s, there was widespread pessimism about similar things. Unemployment, inflation, and interest rates were all double digit. Most of the influential books that came out about the population explosion and scarcity of resources came out in the 70s. Our water ways were foul, streets cluttered with litter.
I remember Dick Gephart in the early 80s going around preaching that the government needed to step in to take over the micro chip field, which was being taken over by Japan.
Then a funny thing happened. Reagan took the correct steps needed to unleash American businesses and entrepreneurs. Regulations were reduced, government unions were stood up to, taxes were lowered. The economy took off.
The environment is light years better than it was. Rivers are cleaner, as is the air. More to be done, but it's much better.
The chips Gephart wanted to save? Good thing we didn't follow his plan, or we wouldn't have Intel, and we wouldn't have all the little gadgets with advanced chips that we use, such as cell phones, IPads, laptops.
Population? The problem is not going to be too much population, but too little. The modern welfare state is set up so that the young pay for the retirement of the old. We have people living longer, and lower birth rates, so we'll have a smaller young population paying for an expanded older population. Gonna need more people for it to work.
But there is plenty of reason for hope. The US has faced predicaments like this ever since it was founded. Look through 19th century history. One crisis after another. Banking scandals, market manipulations, the adjustment from an economy based on canal transportation to rail transportation, eventually to road transportation.
Political crisis is not new either. No way!
And yet this country always comes through stronger in the end. As long as the country remains built on the principle of individual liberty, it will always adapt and come through. As long as people are free to pursue their own dreams.
The system is making it tougher to do that, though. You have an idea and want to start your own business? Well, now you have to deal with infinite layers of government regulation. You have to have a full time accountant, an attorney that deals just with government law. And to compete with your competition, you probably have to be paying off a local politician, so you can get the same waivers he gets.
But the Tea Party shows how resilient this country is, and how strong our instincts are to resist government oppression. There's no hope for one of our parties, but there is still hope in the other one. History is on this country's side.
And just as a strong US economy was an engine for the world economy, and will be again, the same will happen in places like India, and perhaps Brazil. These countries are bursting with energy and are about to explode in productivity. They will use up more resources, which will be a challenge, but their populations will actually decline. As they become prosperous, their birth rates will decline.
Things could end up badly, but they could just as easily end up good. It keeps the gods entertained!
An optomistic pessimist! Things definitely WILL go wrong!
Honestly, it all depends upon what one considers wrong.
I tend to think in geological time frames where tens of millions of years are just moments compared to cosmological time frames involving measurement in billions.
Across human history empires only last a century or two. America's empire has only been since WWII, in a nation with roots barely three centuries old when we began routing out the former hunter gathers.
No wonder millennia old nations look at us with such (justifiable) derision.
Is it wrong to push energy and materials consumption well beyond sustainability? Does that mean we won't do it? Surely someone somewhere will do something about fixing that, right? Modern humans would never fish the last fish out of the ocean and then ask "Now what do we eat"? and would never cut the last tree down from the forest as ask "Now what do we build and burn"? Never. Not in the next thousand years, right? Ten thousand years? One hundred thousand years? Remember: one million years isn't sh!t, geologically. Ten million years? A hundred million years?
"Is it wrong to push energy and materials consumption well beyond sustainability?"
The people who are saying we're running out of stuff are literally the same people who were saying it in the 70s. Back then, they said we'd be all out of key materials by the late 90s. All of there predictions proved wrong. All of them. Not sure why I would listen to people with that kind of track record.
This is a big planet, with a lot of resources, and we only scratch the surface like ants. Human ingenuity and adaptability are difficult to stop.
As for the geological point, I don't know what anyone can say to that. Ultimately the expanding universe will die out, the sun will run out of fuel, supernovas will explode and wipe out most of life on Earth, extinction events will occur as they always have...and so on. Do you want to live your life with such stuff in mind? Do you want society to be built around such notions?
But if you want to think in geological terms, the only hope for the planet, then, is that human knowledge advances to the point where we can save it from the next extinction.
The Roman Empire lasted a thousand years, but you could argue it lasted much longer. Byzantium, which inherited Rome, lasted another thousand years after the sacking of Rome. Plus, Rome lives on today in our civilization.
As someone who loves history, I can say that in ways I look with envy at the older civilizations or nations, just because I love history. But I can tell you that, though they don't often admit it, over the last century these countries have often looked with envy at the US, not because of our power or resources, but simply because of our lack of paralysis. Rather than sit around in coffee houses decadently describing the world, American were out there building one.
Maybe next up will be the Chinese, or the Indians, building while others snicker and watch and say witty things from their cafe's in the remnants of their once proud civilizations. Or maybe it will be...Americans once again, infused with the energy of its new immigrants, inspired by the chance for a better life. History does not always repeat itself, but there are patterns, and as any gambler knows, it's wise to bet the trend.
A thought occurs to me: one thing I have always lamented about Americans is their lack of knowledge about history. But maybe I have it wrong. Maybe that lack of knowledge is the source of their strength. Others let their knowledge of history paralyze them. Oh, why build a house, it's only gonna come crashing down some day? Why build a civilization, all civilizations fall at some point? Why fix the planet, the universe will end some day? Too much knowledge and reflection can lead to cynicism, skepticism, paralysis.
It might even kind of be like what we do here here at SS with film. We deconstruct, analyze, break down, describe. Meanwhile, others are out there writing scripts, filming, creating.
The universe could end tomorrow. But I gotta hunch it won't. Human progress might stop with this generation. But I'm not betting on it. The age of Western Civ and America might be over. But I doubt it. The founding father in the US were terrified of the mob. The system they designed reflects that. The theory of limited government is built on that. If we respect those principles, we will continue to thrive.
Human ingenuity and adaptability are difficult to stop.
Human greed blows that away anyday. Sure, all the time, we see people creating some sort of way to power our vehicles and the like. However, only once they develop a way to be mass produced, are they bought out and the technology buried.
Fundamentally, people are suckers for the truth (3 bonus points if you know that quote without cheating). But, people are also not the brighest, especially when they're people, as opposed to persons.
As was being said earlier, if the economy (only using the U.S. as an example, because it's all I know) collapses and I mean, really collapses, we'll revert back to the savages we are, right underneath the surface. George Carlin once said that it wouldn't take much to push us back into barbaric times. "It would probably happen in less than two years. All you'd have to do is eliminate electricity and I mean, completely."
You do that and money won't mean a Goddamn thing anymore. We'll still be greedy, but for truly important things. Food, clean water, supplies of any discernable value, etc.
Only then, after all the people who are willing to murder each other in this country do so, will we finally get back to how things used to be. There will be a sense of community, the survivors will have long-since adapted to being a hunter-gatherer and be living off the land and we'll be satisfied with "good enough" which is something most of us seem to have lost long ago. This is, of course, wishful thinking, but it's certainly possible. We'll see, though, won't we?
An interesting revisionist analysis of the Reagan years. Our equivalent - and equally destructive bedfellow - is thankfully not afforded such generosity.
The Asian markets (on the current trajectory) diminish this dick waving about the American economy. I know a guy who trades bonds in SF who's actively licking his lips at this current situation. The problem (or solution) does not lie with one group or country - it lies with tackling greed.
The ideas you portray here are not new. They go at least back to the time of Voltaire, when intellectuals fantasized about mankind in a primitive, pure, natural state. And you seem to have latched on to some version of the popular Leftist idea of greed. If only we could get rid of the corrupting influences of money and business, we'd be so much happier, and live in a pure state of community. Those ideas were common enough even in the 19 century, with the first communes.
Funny thing about greed. Do you personally know anyone that greedy, that they happily destroy others, or the environment, just so they can have more of something? I mean do you really know people like that? A lot of them?
Or are those greedy people that are out there wreaking havoc just people you kind of know about? People behind the scenes, corporate biggies and the like.
It kind of makes a difference. What you have to ask yourself is this: this greed that you think is responsible for the great evils of the world, is this something you believe because you have witnessed it? Or is it just a way of explaining the world for you? We all want to understand the world and how it works. For a couple thousand years, in our society, we explained bad things that happened by saying the devil was behind it. We don't believe that now, but we still want to think some force is behind it. We like that. It's comforting to think things happen for a reason. So we blame things like greed, and oppression, and money.
Do you really think we'd be better off without civilization?
You talk about burying technologies. In the early decades of the 19th century, to create commerce, the nation built huge systems of canals all along the northeast. Those that controlled the canals made fortunes. Then the rail roads came along. Shouldn't the canal owners have suppressed that development? They didn't, and the rail roads became the new industrial lords...until the automobile came along, and forever destroyed the power of the railroads. Shouldn't the great railroad barons have destroyed the auto industry? Television destroyed radio and film; cassettes destroyed records; mp3s destroyed cds; and so on. You can't hold back technology. Don't believe the little conspiracy websites.
What you might call greed, the desire to pursue one's own fortune, is what drove all these great inventions. The washer and drier, invented by "greedy" inventors, freed women from a life of tedious drudgery.
Hunter gatherers destroyed the natural forest lands on the west coast, and the red wood forests were one of the results.
Do you really prefer we become hunter gatherers again? You really think greed would not exist in those societies? Man, greed is not our biggest threat. It's cloudy thinking.
Hey you Whitehouse, Ha ha charade you are You house proud town mouse, Ha ha charade you are You're trying to keep our feelings off the street You're nearly a real treat, All tight lips and cold feet, And do you feel abused? .....! ......! ......! ......! You gotta stem the evil tide, And keep it all on the inside. Mary you're nearly a treat, Mary you're nearly a treat But you're really a cry
Americans are not dumb!
Far from it. You cant put a name on the movement that is America now. Don't call it anything. Dont call it Tea Party...
Dont call it politics. America is at a stand or bust moment in history. Not because of a ceiling or a budget but because of the realization that we have been lied to over and over again and this president slipped and told us so.
Our account is empty!!!!!
Our social security is empty!!!!
WE ARE BROKE!!!!
And we are borowing 40 cents on every dollar.
The movement in America is deeper than a ground swell. I for one am involved in seeing our country restored, not compromised with just another delay.
Furthermore, I'm a WIMP = Weakly Interacting Massive Particle.
If I put 10% down on a home and borrow 90% from my own statistically probably future income + interest I am not "broke". I am utilizing my resources. I am leveraging. This is sound business commonly throughout the world for millennia.
Amen Nester. Very difficult for the truth to get out, with all of the networks and 2 of the news channels refusing to report the whole story, but it gets out. Nice to see.
I really don't like constructing arguments with links, but the one above is an article by Thomas Sowell, one of the most powerful thinkers of our time. If by "tackling greed" the idea is simply to encourage people, through persuasion, to act in a more generous manner, then I am all for it. But I rather doubt that's what you mean.
Those that wish to "tackle greed" are really saying they think that humans and human institutions should step in to tackle this greed. They think that economic activity should be guided if not controlled by wiser and more ethical people(usually themselves) in order to protect those victims of greed. If this government class of elites happens to benefit from this service to the rest of us, well, that's only fair isn't it, since we are so dependent on them?
But the real problem, as Thomas Sowell effectively argues, is that those that are being "protected" in the end are actually harmed. It is folly and arrogance to think we are smart enough to "regulate" and "redistribute" and that people will benefit. For example, the US passed a huge new body of financial regulations in order to govern the markets, and "tackle greed". Leaving aside the absurdity that this legislation was put together by the same people that created the conditions that led to the collapse, and ignoring the fact that the "regulators" are well connected to the market people, and therefore vulnerable to corruption, the main thing to consider is this: if the result of all this regulation is a curtailment of economic activity, whoi benefits and who suffers?
Thomas Edison was a greedy guy. His invention process was heavily capitalized and involved a lot of people. He was no humanitarian slaving away just to benefit the world. And he did more to change and benefit the world than any do gooder ever dreamed of. The matter is one of results. If he had had to deal with people tackling his greed, he might never have invented anything. Or certainly he would have stopped early in his career.
Reagan famously said government is not the answer, it's the problem. I lived through those times, and watched the energy that was unleashed by his philosophy lift the country, and through the global economy, the world. The Left can rewrite history all they want, and in the end, that's really all they're good at anyway...rewriting history, altering truth to make the world seem like it fits their models. Models which conveniently glorify the role of the "greed" tacklers. I remember what it was like to look for jobs before Reagan's revolution, and what it was like after.
There is one thing that the history of the 20th century should have made clear, a lesson taught over and over: the regulators and redistributors, those that think men should plan and control human activity, the greed tacklers, have consistently created only one thing-- widespread suffering.
Sorry Kev, you lost me at Thomas Sowell. His ramblings often meet my eyes on RCP.
Your comments on policy prescriptions evidently don't come from a 'policy wonk'. No offence.
Regards the Reagan quote and usage to denigrate the 'Left' - I assume that FDR made very little history in your country and worldwide. Hell, Winston Churchill would have scorned you for such a revisionist appraisal of FDR's achievements. This distrust of the 'Left' is bordering on the maniacal, Kev. Quite frankly, it's embarrassing.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Tony Blair is correct when he argues of the impotence with static definitions of the 'Left' and the 'Right' - oddly enough, our views are not mummified. Fluidity and history take a huge dump on your rigid understanding of the political spectrum. For me, it's simply a case of priorities. To want to put the poorest and most vulnerable at the forefront of economic policy is not anti-growth/anti-capitalist/anti-rich/anti-'Right'. As a much more intelligent man than Thomas Sowell told me: "What's the point of a surplus?".
Once all the rhetoric and bullshit has been said, it's unfair to place the burden of deficit reduction at the feet of those who didn't even have the pleasure of enjoying the racking up of the 'nation's credit card'. If you can explain to me why they should, then man, I'll hate those Leftie b*stards as well. The practical implications of your shiny new bill is such: cutting spending (the chosen means of cutting the deficit) affects the poor disproportionately. I have absolutely no shame in wanting to raise the level of the poor. It doesn't make me a great man in my head, it simply justifies the time spent by my family in investing the idea that you should aim to help those with the least. I don't hate the rich, I don't want the rich to suffer - f*ck, I want to be rich. This crazy argument that thinking this way equates as such is beyond disingenuous.
Confession time. This:
"There is one thing that the history of the 20th century should have made clear, a lesson taught over and over: the regulators and redistributors, those that think men should plan and control human activity, the greed tacklers, have consistently created only one thing-- widespread suffering."
English seems to be the common language that separates, Andrew. Or perhaps just clear thinking. I'll try to help you through it.
The issue of cutting spending is precisely that this expansive government you are enamored with is exactly what hurts the poor. How? It drastically reduces economic opportunity.
If you were to find yourself born into a less privileged situation(and I was), what do you think will give you greater opportunity to improve your lot: A) government programs, or B) a rising economic tide?
Once you realize the answer is B then we can move on to the next question. I hope that you understand the answer is B, but perhaps I should not assume. Maybe I'll have to come back to it later.
So the question is what will create the rising tide? Or perhaps more accurately, what will allow this tide to form? Or another way, what kinds things will prevent this tide from forming, and therefore should be avoided?
It's basic economic stuff, Chuff. When you take money out of the hands of people that are producing, investing, and spending and put it in the hands of people that are just spending, you are reducing economic activity and growth. The more you tax, the more of a drag you put on the economy. People with money spend more time trying to hide it. It's simply a fact proven over and over again, and even Obama is aware of it. He knows full that to raise taxes will slow growth.
Let's look at "stimulus" plans. The Bush idea of stimulus is almost the same as Obama : borrow money from the future(deficit) in order to stimulate growth in the present. Use the growth to pay back the money borrowed. But there's a difference. The Bush notion is to use this borrowed money to give across the board tax cuts. What happens is people use this money to spend and to invest, all of which stimulates the economy. The Obama(progressive/Kerynsian) idea is to spend the money through government programs. The problem is that this money does not end up being distributed based on market efficiency. It gets doled out based on political connections. It privides some stimulus, but it does not encourage the kind of econoimic activity that leads to growth.
The article from Sowell that you refused to read(I know, facts are threatening), does a great job illustrating the suffering created by government intervention in the economy. A lot of this started right here in my state, Massachusetts. In the early 90s, there were studies(put out by liberal advocacy groups) that showed that banks were granting mortgages to blacks at a lower rate than whites. These studies did not look at 2 things: the relative credit of the groups compared, or their assets. They just looked at income. So for example a white person and a black person both make 50k per year, but one gets a mortgage, and another does not. The reason could be that one has assets. Or that one has lower credit. But the study did not look at that, and still concluded that the discrepancy was automatically racist. Government do gooders to the rescue!
So the governments forced banks to lend to minorities. Over time, this idea built up political momentum. Quasi givernment institutions FANNY MAE and MAC bought up most of the mortgages in the country. They encouraged, in some cases insisted, that banks lend to everyone. No credit, no assets, no problem. This created artifical demand on homes, which created a bubble, prices going up and up. Financial instituions learned how to bundle these together and make huge money of them. Was there risk? What happened if the bubble burst? Would the banks be stuck with all that bad paper? They knew the government was tied up with it all, and would not let the system fail.
As Sowell points out, based on the numbers, the result has been disastrous for blacks. After the bubble burst, in 2009 the net worth of blacks was less than half what it was in 2005. As with many things, intervention by government hurt those it was supposed to help. And it unhinged the world economy.
FDR: unemployment was 25% in 1932. If memory serves me correct, it was the same in 1937. As things heated up with Hitler, and war materials were needed, the country started to come out of it, and finally unemployment fell to normal after Peral Harbor. So massive government intervention in the economy does not have a good record at all.
static definitions of Left and Right: of course it varies. You go far enough Left, and they don't believe inm private property, or even democracy. When we use generalizations, it is because it is useful to make a point. Nobody fits neatly into one belief system. As a general rule, the Left insists on government intervention in the economy, and often in other social aspects of human behavior. As a general rule, the Left believes humans are smart enough to plan and manage human activity. As a general rule, the Right, at least the American Right, believes interference with economic activity is harmful, and that imposing social change is often unwise.
widespread suffering caused by government intervention, planning, regulating: have you ever heard of the Soviet Union? Cuba? Communist China? Adolf Hitler? Do you see any difference between North Korea and South? Did the massive government intervention in the economy in the 1930s by FDR succeed? If you think so, google unemployment numbers. How about post WWII Europe; have not the semi socialist policies in many countries resulted in a complete lack of economic opportunity? What's the youth unemployment rate in France? In Spain? And finally, look at the current world financial mess, created by well intended government intervention in the economic system(and there really is no doubt on that). All of this suffering, the result of the foolish hubris of planners and managers, regulators and greed tacklers.
If you want to help the poor, get the government out of the way. Christ, if I want to start a small business, do you have any idea the red tape I'd now have to go through? All put in place by your planners and do gooders. And by the way, also backed by Big Business. And that's the dirty secret. Big Business now backs the Left. Look it up. Wall Street gave to Obama 2 to 1. GE is making huge money through Obamanomics. Big Business has learned it can use the Left to destroy small business, it's competition.
Freedom is the answer, Andrew. Not building a bigger government. Economic growth will save the poor. Not government programs. The only thing government programs help, in the long run, is the government class. We left Europe to escape feudalism. Liberals are trying to bring it back.
What happens when government sponsored think tanks conclude there will be nil effective economic activity in the next decade as there are no provocative technological developments on the near-horizon with the scope to haul the planet out of the economic doldrums?
Would it not be prudent then to bias spending policy towards "paying people to do nothing" and away from "giving them the tools to help themselves"?
Much economic activity is based on want. Who wants what more? What will people provide to get what they want? What happens when people are largely satisfied with what they have and don't really want much of anything new or better? Situational satisfaction or contentment may have actually been achieved.
Sure, little inconsequential things are still desired, but the big ugly desire for products the foundations of global industry can gear up for are... no shows.
The economic party can't burn forever. I think we're in a Sunday morning hangover from the party that begun on Thursday night.
And then there's the whole trade deficit/expatriation of American labor thing.
How the domestic money is shuffled around is largely irrelevant. Tax increases and decreases always remain self serving. Increase taxes and economic activity declines = equilibrium. Decrease taxes and economic activity increases = equilibrium. Fed taxes go up, state taxes go down = equilibrium. Fed taxes go down, state taxes go up = equilibrium.
Take money from the rich and give it to the poor who will spend it all on consumables and depreciating assets and amazingly the revenues of the business owners (the rich) increase!
Allow the rich to keep their money, they may chose to either horde it (endemic) or invest it (Ha! Brave fools!). Either way, the poor still are out of either loop.
I think increase taxes are now punishments of the rich for hording their cash. If they aren't going to spend it then FINE! The government will. The banks need to get squeezed, too. This raking in cash for doing nothing banking policy is equal BS to handing disincentivizing/handicapping money to the poor. Raise the Federal Funds Rate. http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/FEDFUNDS Make the banks get off their a$$ets.
You make a very interesting point about phases of economic development and the fact that growth is always required. Many historical phases have been fueled by a technological development, such as high tech in the early 90s. I'm not an economist, just a guy who makes noise in a script forum, so I don't know what those studies suggest. I would say that these technology boosts can spark growth, but that growth has happened in other periods, such as the 80s.
What happens to capitalism without growth? Economists have talked about that for a century. Marxists made it a big part of their theory, suggesting this aspect of capitalism is what fueled colonialism. Certainly the modern welfare state with its entitlements requires growth to sustain itself.
I don't see any reason why the economy party can't burn forever. There is no shortage of people hungry for success, to make their fortune, to establish a better life for themselves. There are plenty of young Bill Gates out there. What we need is to make sure these future "rich" people have incentive to build, to invent. They can't have mounds of regulations in front of them, whose stated purpose is to do good things, but whose purpose is to protect established businesses looking to stifle their competition. We can;t tax them to a point that they won't take the risks needed to launch their businesses.
The poor are not out of the loop when the rich spend money, whatever they do with it. You mentioned spending it. Also, if they just put it in the bank, it will be used to finance businesses and home mortgages.
Using taxes to "punish" people is real dangerous, Ray. Real dangerous. It's the basis for economic disaster. I hope you give that one some thought. Likewise, squeezing banks to make them lend money. Christ, that's what started this economic mess to begin with! Jeez, isn't that pretty clear?
Banks have not been lending because of greed or selfishness. They are practicing sound economic policy. It's all related to the massive collapse of real estate values and economic uncertainty. But in the end, it's greed and selfishness that WILL save the day. When things rebound, banks, competing with each other, will need to make their money work, need to make it make money.
Government spending contributes to this economic uncertainty. It's not market based, but political based.
Government meddling created this mess. And many millions have suffered because of it. Let's not fix the situation with more government meddling. Somebody please save the world from the meddlers!
Oh, I know (in crude principle) darn good and well the dangers of "punishing" people for political agendas, but that's the thing: The purpose of a government is to govern. Furthermore, in our fortunate case it's to govern according to the wishes of the public that votes them into that position of responsibility.
If the people are individually smart but stupid as a mob then we will all suffer their freedom of decision making.
There is an economic quasi-triangle. Consumers & Business kinda make a zero-sum, twisted pair corner. Economic growth only comes from fiat money, without which there remains a zero-sum economy, host to it's own set of issues. Banks provide cash now in lieu of payment with interest later = fiat/funny money, without which there is no economic growth.
Banks are in control. They determine if the future is bright enough to warrant extension of credit, thus economic growth.
No faith = no growth = madness.
Government acts as the ice breaker. Government is the third corner, and the flexible one at that. Not only does it control banking policy via the FFR and other regulatory tools, it also pumps fiat/funny money into the economy via taxes (redistribution of wealth) and debt (same as consumer credit or mortgage).
These are powers the government has. Without which our economy stagnates and fails to maintain competitive advantage with other nations (BRIC especially, but all emerging nations, really) - exactly like any other business - who are dying to consume all the energy and materials we've grown long accustomed to.
Should we the people ask our government to permit our economy to stagnate? Should we promote global economic recovery? Should we promote economic Armageddon?
We are the government. We are the meddlers. Or at least the vocal/paying minority are.
The powers the government has, such as monetary policy through the fed, or even the income tax, or regulatory tools...were not things it always had. And there was no shortage of growth and development before that, such as the 19th century. The problem was the boom and bust cycle was much wilder, and the effects on people were severe. We've established government controls to minimize those effects. And to a point, that is good. But it should not be thought that growth and economic activity were dependent on government levers. Not at all.
You have other interesting points I have to look into later when I have more time. Have a beer on me!
I'll be as clear and concise as I can, Kevin: what on earth are you talking about? Seriously. That one question encapsulates the bewilderment I felt when reading your chunk of text.
Here are a few nuggets that stand out:
Quoted from Kev
widespread suffering caused by government intervention, planning, regulating: have you ever heard of the Soviet Union? Cuba? Communist China? Adolf Hitler? Do you see any difference between North Korea and South? Did the massive government intervention in the economy in the 1930s by FDR succeed?
Say what? Widespread suffering caused by Hitler's "government intervention, planning, regulating"? What are you talking about?
Quoted from Kev
Or perhaps just clear thinking.
Hehe.
Quoted from Kev
The article from Sowell that you refused to read
I read it.
Quoted from Kev
Let's look at "stimulus" plans. The Bush idea of stimulus is almost the same as Obama : borrow money from the future(deficit) in order to stimulate growth in the present. Use the growth to pay back the money borrowed. But there's a difference. The Bush notion is to use this borrowed money to give across the board tax cuts. What happens is people use this money to spend and to invest, all of which stimulates the economy. The Obama(progressive/Kerynsian) idea is to spend the money through government programs. The problem is that this money does not end up being distributed based on market efficiency. It gets doled out based on political connections. It privides some stimulus, but it does not encourage the kind of econoimic activity that leads to growth.
A stunning analysis. You need to look at the context and not simply fall back into comfortable ideological shoes. Context.
Quoted from Kev
Government spending contributes to this economic uncertainty. It's not market based, but political based.
Which government spending? What was your alternative to the stimulus? Or do you simply think the funds were misapplied? Where would you have invested them?
Quoted from Kev
Government meddling created this mess.
Deserves to be there all by itself. Truly in a league of its own when it comes to terrible analysis. Sorry to be so rude, but I cannot read this rubbish (delivered with an ineloquent arrogance) and stand idly by. Usually I will take a conciliatory tone but not here. I like you as a guy, you're a nice bloke, but your views are plain wacky, IMO. It seems the same irrationality that governs your views on Islam leans heavily on your economic views.
Quoted from Kev
And many millions have suffered because of it. Let's not fix the situation with more government meddling. Somebody please save the world from the meddlers!
Oh dear.
Quoted from Kev
Likewise, squeezing banks to make them lend money. Christ, that's what started this economic mess to begin with! Jeez, isn't that pretty clear?
Right. This altruistic lending is what caused a meltdown. If I shake my head any more, it'll fall off.
Unfortunately, for these presumably preconceived conclusions, you've extrapolated nothing of real worth from what's going on. You just ranted. I honestly have no idea what you are trying to say most of the time. It's patently obvious when you're lecturing above, you're actually just paraphrasing history books from a cursory glance and regurgitating flawed writers like Sowell. It's as plain as the nose on your face that it's what you're doing. Alas, I do not need a rudimentary 101 in politics, history or economics from you.
Andrew, I can tell you, and you can accept my honesty on it or not, but I am not paraphrasing anyone's work. I posted the link on Sowell because I thought it was an interesting article that summed some of this up pretty well. Can you find writers that say similar things that I am? Of course! Because this stuff is pretty common knowledge to those not wearing ideological blinders. There's a fairly new book out by a NY Times columnist about the cause of the economic crisis. You can google it.
I hesitated including Hitler in that passage as it might muddy things. The better examples are the Communist ones, which you conveniently skip over. But the Nazis did engage in their own brand of control and planning. Millions of Soviet peasants starved under government planning. Modern North Koreans are starving. Man, what I shame I have to waste words on this. History is worth studying.
There is simply no serious question that government meddling in housing created this mess. No question. And it involved squeezing banks to lend to people that were not qualified.
In all seriousness, compare your arguments to mine, and tell me who's ranting. You talk about wagging dicks and tackling greed. One is juvenile nonsense, the other is some kind of meaningless slogan. Nothing you say approaches an argument, a theory, even a coherent thought. Cite one example of a coherent thought in your posts above?
Your positions are about feeling. Emotional reactions to things I say that you don't agree with, but can't refute. You offer no alternative ideas. You snicker and spit out half a$$ Left wing bumper slogans about greed. What else you got? Make love not war? Bush lied people died? Seriously, snickering does not constitute an argument, or even a thought. Stick to your bumper stickers.
You're right, I am being lightweight on detail. Deliberately. Why? Kev, to debate with you would be to halfway legitimise your ludicrous views put forth. I'll get 'coherent'. I'll reiterate the questions you missed:
Which government spending? What was your alternative to the stimulus? Or do you simply think the funds were misapplied? Where would you have invested them?
You wanted me to reply to the mention of Communism? What's the correlation with the Obama government? I skipped it because it's a silly, silly comparison. Like I said, I have no idea what you are talking about with most of this tripe.
In terms of policy prescriptions, I'll happily lay out and substantiate if I think the audience is willing to engage, and/or broaden my own understanding. I truly believe it's a waste of my time in trying to do so with you. You simply churn out arbitrary terms like "government programs" which have been lifted directly from the likes of Sarah Palin and Blll O'Reilly.
But, you want to get serious, then answer the following, please:
- What programs do you talk of? - Why is Obama's government so big? - What % of the deficit is owing to these programs? - What % is owing to tax breaks for the top 1%, war and the financial meltdown? - How do low taxation rates for the top 1% trickle down to the rest of us? - If the tax breaks stimulate the economy, how do they? - Who are the real drivers of the economy? The consumer or the innovator? - How do Bill Gates and Warren Buffet justify their views? - Why do these innovators believe tax breaks are not just irresponsible, but economically imprudent? - How have these government programs exacerbated the deficit? - If we're to take your word for it and government programs are indeed so rife and dangerous, what do you propose doing? - How do we cut the increasing gap between those at the top and those at the bottom? - How do your prescriptions simultaneously 'grow the economy' whilst addressing the income gap? - What's more important? - What do we do to ensure growth is not misappropriated and shared equally? - Do you concede that sticking to the current trajectory will leave the rich richer and the poor poorer? - If not, why not? History shows the opposite. Explain why history and trends are wrong. - If the economy does grow, how do we avoid 'excessive regulation' messing it all up again, even though inconveniently it was lax regulation? - Explain to me why stimulating the economy your way improves schooling when you're advocating mass spending cuts that directly impact on education whilst protecting the defence budget? - Do you concede that your hawkish views on Islam beget this desire to protect defence spending at all costs, even if it directly impinges on the schooling of the many, many poor children in your country (and mine)? - How many of the richest in the USA (individuals, not organisations) lost their homes, their incomes and their financial futures as a consequence of the true cause of the crash in 2008? - Why are banks posting record profits? - Define greed; and please define what you've extrapolated my definition to be?
For a thousand years in Europe lending money for interest or fees was considered a sin, and in most times and in most countries in Europe was considered illegal. A thousand years.
Of course, many kings and councils knew this was folly. That was why Jews became money lenders. Rulers knew their kingdoms needed money lending, so they found a way around the ban by allowing non Christians to perform the job. But this was never a very effective solution, especially as sooner or later kings tended to pillage the Jews and take all their money.
But the relevant point is this: wise people knew that money lending was needed. Not just to lend to the crown, but for the essential economic activity of the kingdom, on which the strength of the crown was built. If someone wanted to start a business as a baker, a miller, a sign maker, where would they get the money? So all this activity was suppressed for centuries.
Why could the rulers not allow what they knew was so needed? Because the prevailing meme said that this activity was sinful. It was greedy to profit from your neighbors need. If your neighbor needs money to start a business, lend it to him at no profit to yourself. It's the Christian thing to do.
In England, finally under Henry the VIII, near the end of the sixteenth century, lending with interest was made legal. Of course, it took the breaking with Rome for this to happen. In the following decades businesses flourished, including those involving the settlement of America...not by exploiters, like the Spanish, but by individuals and small groups looking to build lives.
This example from history illustrates the problem of ideas and memes that sound right to our ear but might not be. The idea that usury was a sin was meant to protect people from exploitation. It had the exact opposite effect, and resulted in a situation where for centuries it was all but impossible to climb from the bondage and desperation in which most people lived.
When I was in high school, I took AP History with a professor who was a great teacher at that level in that he encouraged thinking about history in terms beyond dates and figures. But I reflected later in life on some of his teaching, and it is illustrative. At the beginning of the semester, we were given a book by the historian Richard Hoftstader, who did most of his work in the 1930s. We were told, literally, that this book should be treated as the bible for his class. I now know that that statement alone indicates a problem.
The history we were taught, the Hoftstader history, told us that historical events and trends could only be understood in economic terms. Our first topic was the colonization of North America. Most kids had been taught that liberty and religious freedom were big factors in the settling of this world. Not so, said Hoftstader. The driving force was, and always is, economic considerations. People came for money, or at least to make a living.
I didn't know at the time, none of us did, that this was Marxist history. In fact, when I was older I researched Hoftstader. Brilliant writer, maybe the best historical writing I've ever read, from the pure writing perspective. But his theories, like many of his era, were heavily Marxist. It was the big intellectual trend in that day, and especially where he was, NYU I think(yes, even bigger than now). Later in life, Hoftstader took a slight turn to the right, and recanted some of his earlier thinking, but it was that earlier thinking that we were taught. Under this MArxist/materialist view, everything that happens does so because of money.
This kind of thinking has currents that penetrate deep within our subconscious today. Think about these expressions: "It's all about the money", "or "follow the money". But it's important to know that we didn't always think this way. This is what a meme is, and memes have deep roots in our minds, and we take them for granted. That is not to say that money is not important. What I'm saying is that this notion that everything that happens is attributed to money is part of our modern thinking, but it was not always part of our conventional thought.
So when someone says it's all about greed, most people just go "Amen, brother, I hear ya". That's the meme at work. Everyone thinks they understand, and no one really questions or looks closely. But we don't even really know that is even meant. Are we talking about the greed of rich people? Of unions? Of pensioners? Of lenders...sinful lenders?
What many call greed, economists call incentive. Incentive is what drives economic behavior. When someone says they want to "tackle greed", to most of our ears, influenced by the prevailing meme which says money is the root of all problems, it sounds right. Just like it sounded right to the medieval ear that lending at interest was a sin, and sin was the root of all evil in their world. It took them a thousand years to overcome their prevailing meme. Hopefully we will not suffer the same fate.
EDIT: Another thing to think about is Potemkin villages. Google if you can't recall what they are.
In the 1930s, the intellectual community in the US was still in love with the Soviet Union. Many of these progressive people filled the FDR administration, including the socialist VP Wallace(I forget his first name, maybe Henry). The Soviet experiment had been ongoing for about 2 decades, and even though information was tightly controlled within the Soviet Union, it could not be completely contained, and the tragic disaster unfolding there was becoming somewhat clear. Central planning resulted in the starvation of millions, not to mention all the other horrible crimes committed under the notion that a powerful central government can make society a better place.
But this was not what the intellectuals in the West wanted to hear. So they simply closed their eyes and went "na na na na, I can't hear you." And the human disaster continued, uncommented on by the West. In fact, the US government remained literally filled spies who were generally intellectuals on Left who sympathized with the Soviets. Look it up. We now know this(see Venona Cables).
I think it was 1938, and Wallace visited the Soviet Union(I could have year wrong). Before his visit, the Soviets created fake villages for him to visit, to show him how great things were in Soviet society. It's extraordinary how intelligent, educated people fell for that, but they bought it hook, line and sinker. Why? Because it fit perfectly into the image they had in their heads what a planned society would look like.
That would NEVER happen today, right? Well, look at how progressives loves Hugo Chavez. They adore him. Sean Penn hangs out all the time. And yet, despite having the world's largest oil reserves, Venezuelans have trouble keeping the electricity on. Silencing opposition is the only thing they are efficient at. Central planning.
What does this have to do with 'greed tackling'? Income redistribution is the key tenet and promise of central planning. Soon to come to a theater near you, perhaps.
Memes are powerful, and sometimes dangerous things. And there's no shortage of people willing to take advantage of their power. Two words: hope and change.
Kev, in your head that response may have sounded scholarly; to me it was pidgin, home taught history never investigated or debated beyond the confines of your computer. This aimless summary of history bore no relation to the direct questions I asked you. Why did you not answer the questions? You stated that the deficit is the consequence of inept governance (I've softened your actual quote to create a resemblance of reality); that the Left have never made history; that Reagan was the doyen of American recovery from selfish little Carter, etc, etc.
I simply asked you to qualify various statements of yours with facts or reasoned thinking. You relinquished any self-held superiority with this curious response. If I'm a fully-paid up member of the Left who doesn't tread on serious, fact-based ground, then I don't understand why you cannot pummel me into the ground when I tread the substantive ground of the Right. The point and lesson here is that you need to move beyond the Right and the Left. It's hampering your thinking and clouding you to the realities of the world today. Historical context is crucial in understanding what's been and gone as well as assessing the precedents we deal with today, but you must learn the lessons of it - not simply apply it to a preconceived framework of thinking based on mistrust. I don't mind evasive, intelligent responses to questions that are designed to ultimately challenge the recipient. Your response doesn't fall into that bracket - not even close. You simply put together a lot of nonsense to avoid answering questions that you do not know the answers to.
You accused me of being whimsical, so I asked you questions to challenge your political leaning and to quantify some of the ludicrous accusations towards a government you dislike simply for its political stripes. I'm not trying to catch you out with stats you don't (or could not) know.
I'm supposedly emotive, and yet you cannot answer simple questions that should be easily answerable. In lieu of any solid evidence of conceptual thinking in your politics, it's clear it is you that is politically emotive. The one question that I keep asking myself is: What government programs, Kev? If you could even answer the simplest question, I'd be impressed, but you haven't had the memo yet via the television mouthpieces who provide the words for you to parrot.
To be honest, I lost a huge deal of respect for you when you blindly and ignorantly stated that Islam was an evil faith. But this continued diatribe against a 'Left' - which is simply a construct of ill-educated bigots (just like the equivalents who attack the 'Right') - demonstrates you do not have a possession of facts/reasoned thinking; instead, you have a disturbing dislike for a non-entity: the 'Left'.
A fundamental tenet of my political thinking is: how do we bring ourselves closer together? How do we reconcile our differences? How do create equality? How do we make a world that we want to pass onto the next generation? How do we look at children cut adrift from the harbour of opportunity and continue to close our eyes to this greatest of crimes? How do we create a true meritocracy? These are core elements of my philosophy that I convey emotively because I am passionate about them. This doesn't mean I am unable to deal with 'practicalities' or 'fact' or whatever term you want to use. It simply means I have conviction, belief. But when you're discussing important issues with someone refusing to open their mind, you're simply wasting your time.
Honestly Andrew, take this how you will, but I really did not read your last post. I guess I will waste a little time and do so now. You haven't up to this point offered anything interesting. You re-quote parts of my posts and then snicker. You make no counter points. It reminds me of college, when Lefties used to make hissing noises when someone said something in class they don't like.
One thing you are managing to annoy me with is assumptions about the source of any of my knowledge. I have a degree in history and have been interested in history a long time. Long before the internet.
Everything I have said is basic history, and easy enough for you to research. I'm not doing your homework for you.
Let me go back and see if there's any question you really need answered. Back in a moment.
As an appendage (if you will), I would like to touch on pragmatism. This is the one skill we all (irrespective of our level of idealism) should look to extend in our 'reality vocabulary'. There are compromises that must be made, and we must accept that this plays a pivotal role in the world of politics. It's important to consider your principles in a cost-based analysis when dealing in political currency. The Liberal Democrats in England failed to do so in the recent debate regards tuition fees for university education. Whilst we must ensure that the universities of England remain competitive, cutting edge and financially sure-footed, we must not do this at the expense of a generation of poor children already fighting against the cycle of perpetuity that was the legacy of Margaret Thatcher and her reckless, incomprehensibly unfair government in the 1980s.
Reconciling the chasms inherent in politically tribal persons (on 'both sides' of the debate) depends on compromise and common sense but must be grounded in a humanistic desire to bring us all on a fair footing; and that's where greed comes into play. It's that decision (consciously or not) to put one's own goals, dreams and comfort ahead of those with the least. It's that decision to retain taxation levels that create more wealth for the richest, whilst suffocating those with the least with gargantuan spending cuts that worsen existing inefficient public services. This is simultaneously a double blow when you deprive these people of opportunity in the wider economy. How are these tax cuts driving more money in a consumerist economy? The irony is that it is those who lecture on responsibility the most or constantly shrink from it themselves. And therein lies the crux of this current economic debate.
One last point. Innovation is crucial. It's the grease which has allowed our wheels to turn throughout history. Red tape and blocks to small business should be dealt with, I agree. To contextualise that problem within an argument of government intervention and excessive regulation is flawed thinking. There's simply no substance to it. It's this odd thinking that allows workers' rights to be sliced to shreds. To think that corporations should be governed (internally) by a code of conduct that puts its worker, its products and its innovations at the forefront of its strategy is not anti-capitalist. It's humanist. Profits are important. Of course they are. However, we need an international debate on what's more important: record profits and inefficiency savings or the welfare of those who produce the bounty? If we cut a swathe through the cosmetic differences that most of us share in politics, we'll share a centre ground that can be the cornerstone of a fairer society. And that's what I want. When it comes down to it, we're all one big family sharing this earth, so let's compromise and do what we can to make life so much easier for everyone. Let's not demonise people. Let's not obfuscate one another.
Everything I have said is basic history, and easy enough for you to research. I'm not doing your homework for you.
You keep saying this. I don't need a lesson in history. I read it constantly. Perhaps with this knowledge you won't feel the need to impart your own inaccurate history to develop ill-judged polemics.
Stimulus: this one is easy. Lower basic tax rates. It has always worked. Look it up.
Why is the Obama government big: the government has been expanding for decades, under all Presidents. He has expanded it. There are different ways to measure size of government. We can talk about number of employees. We can talk about as percentage of GDP, which is tricky. And we should separate discretionary spending from entitlements. Entitlements are the big problem, and they have nothing to do with Obama. However, though addressing entitlements will be extremely hard with either party, there is no chance with the Democrats. They don't really see entitlements as a problem, or they think we simply addressing them by taxing those in higher income brackets. They don't understand the effect this has on the economy. And it serves their purpose: bigger government adds to their power, through unions, and through voters who are looking to the government for "stuff".
the financial meltdown is the biggest problem with the deficit. And growth is the best way out of it. The only way, actually. That was how Clinton achieved a surplus, something he did not anticipate.
War is a separate economic argument. They are national security issues. I did not support the war in Iraq, I thought the idea behind it, that we could make a stable democracy there, was wrongheaded. You know that.
Taxes: I have addressed this above, will touch briefly. What do people do with that money? What will happen to if if the government takes it? If they keep the money: they invest it, they spend it, they put in the bank. All of which stimulates growth. If the government takes it and spends it, this also stimulates growth. But the growth it stimulates is weak, and does not justify borrowing from the future(deficits) to do. It does not encourage wise investing, like the market does. It is politically determined. Often, it encourages behavior that is corrupt, and inefficient. But most important, and completely proven(you look it up) is that it changes incentives for what the rich do with their money. They start moving it around. So you raise the rate, you don't collect what you thought you would, and you are encouraging inefficient economic activity.
And you know who knows this? Now anyway. Barack Obama. I doubt he knew when he ran for office. But his economists have told him. That's why HE argued to extend the Bush tax cuts. Look it up.
consumer vs innovator: it's a false argument. But you wouldn't want an economy without innovators.
Bill Gates, Warren Buffet: they are liberals. What can I say? Bill Gates is a computer geek, most of them are liberal. Doesn't mean he knows anything about the economy. Buffet is a good man. But he's from the Depression era, and was raised under certain liberal assumptions that he's never shed. God bless him. He is worth listening to, a bright guy. doesn't make him right. They are exceptions in that they don't get it. You can throw Soros in there too, though not sure he's a good guy.
Ok, you have a ton of questions, not really fair in that you don't answer any. Let me take a quick sweep through the rest:
Gap between the rich and the poor: revealing question that you ask it. Lefties always bring it up. And it's silly. How do you measure it? Let's say we raise the income of everyone on our block 10%. That's a good thing right? Well the guy who makes 100k a year is going to have his income go up more than the guy who makes 50k. So very bad. We've just increased the gap between the rich and the poor. This is just a little example, but this gap is a strange thing. Are people poor because of their behavior? Or because of luck? Or oppression? Why is it someone's right or responsibility to address this "problem"? But the worse thing is, when people take it on themselves to address it, they only succeed in making everyone poor. Soviet Union, Cuba, North Korea...and Western Europe. Look at youth unemployment in Spain, or France. What a travesty socialism has created.
Do you have any conceivable idea what we spend on education in this country? In my state we spend 11 k per pupil! Think about that. Do the math. And oh, BTW, that does not count the cost of the buildings, facilities. That's just the education budget. Unfreaking believable!
And there isn't enough money for books!
Think about a small school, 4 classes of 25 kids each. so 100 kids, times 11k...per year! Where does the money go? Democrats, socialists, Leftists don't like those questions.
Next generation: You will be passing on a terrible world, where youth have no opportunity...like Europe. It will evolve into a feudal world, already has. You want to open a small business? Good luck! You will have to navigate a small maze of regulations and licenses put up by big government types. Trust me, I dealt with them all the time in my business. And who is behind these regulatory barriers, besides bureaucrats and other government types? Well, who benefits? Big Business, and unions. Big business, unions and big government. That's what progressivism quickly evolves into. It's not a world of liberty, and it's not a world with opportunity for the poor.
You casually pass off the tax rates question as though you're communicating fact. You're not. The onus is on you to provide evidence to support your argument. If such a quote was such a clear fact, we wouldn't be discussing it. You're not educating me by supporting your argument.
11k per head spend? Where is this money going? A topline figure doesn't disqualify concerns about educational spend. I'd like to see the source, please. What do you propose is the problem if not monetary? Could it be a social/cultural thing? Please enlighten me.
What do you spend per head on defence? And to simply brush over that is to miss the point. It's a case of real threat versus perceived threat. You believe that Islam is an evil religion. This view of yours hasn't changed, has it? Carrying this fundamental (and incorrect belief) ratchets up the need for defence spending. It's a shame that questioning the profits of what Eisenhower correctly prophesied as the MIC has become the base of irrational conspiracy theorists and thus delegitimised very legitimate questions. To be called a conspiracy theorist is to become an intellectual pariah in the mainstream. The point being that to raise the level of fear/ignorance creates a demand (need) to spend on defence against this 'enemy'. It's a crude insinuation but something to think of. You really need to reassess your thoughts on Islam.
You're not asking questions, which is why I'm not answering them.
More than a tad condescending towards Buffet. You believe you're right - doesn't make it so.
Quoted from Kev
Next generation: You will be passing on a terrible world, where youth have no opportunity...like Europe.
Not quite sure what you mean with that, but thought it was perplexing and quote-worthy.
But it's a good point to stop for now. I'll be back Sunday.
Look at youth unemployment rates in Spain, or France. Horrible. Lost generations. And I don't think it includes full time students, and many just stay in school indefinitely. I don't have time to research it.
Massachusetts spends zero on defense. Unless perhaps National Guard. Not sure if that comes out of federal budget. I think it does.
We need taxes. We need a defense, a legal system, meat inspectors. I support a safety net, such as types of welfare, and social security. But we need to be careful when mixing democracy with the idea that government can be used to take things from others to give to yourself. It's pretty easy for everyone on the block to vote that the guy with more stuff gives you stuff.
Buffet's one guy.
Ok: my one question for you. How do you wish to 'tackle' greed? And since you were the one who used the word greed, how do you define it? To me, it's irrelevant, as I made clear in all my posts. If your greed helps me, I'm ok with it. If you're greed makes you invent the light bulb, it helps everyone. This was a big part of the point I made in discussing usury, though once again, you brush off without argument or counter point. The idea that lending for interest is a sin held sway for a thousand years. And it wreaked incalculable harm on society. Focusing on greed as a sin is the same as focusing on usury. To the medieval ear, it made sense to see usury as a sin and "bad". To the modern progressive ear it makes sense to see greed in the same way. What harm shall we allow them to do? Will it last a thousand years too.
EDIT: You do know that 20% of a million dollar a year income is quite a bit more than 20% of 50k a year? Just making sure, not trying to be provoking. A lot of liberals insist the rich pay higher rates because "it's fair that the rich pay more". They often don't get that the same rate is still more.
If you are going to be born poor in a part of the world, what you want there is an economy that provides you opportunity to advance your standing. It's economic opportunity that matters, not some gap between the rich and poor. That's what you want to create and measure: opportunity.
If higher tax rates don't damage economic opportunity, then that's one thing. But there is a point when they do damage it, and at that point they harm the poor.
Reagan lowered the rates across the board, and reduced regulations. The economy expanded for two decades as a result. I started high school in 1980, when he took office. Believe me, I've witnessed the difference in opportunity.
Liberals will tell you until they're blue in the face that Reagan hurt the poor. They have absolutely no clue. They point to evidence of the gap between the rich and the poor. But that is foolish and impossible to measure. And the measurements are not meaningful. For one thing, most of those below the poverty line were the result of exploding birth rates among certain communities. That was not caused by Reagan. The fact is that minorities moved in the middle class at record numbers. Look it up. If birth rates had remained unchanged, the poverty numbers would look very different.
Also keep in mind those collecting the numbers are those with an agenda. An agenda you would recognize.
I suspect things in Britain were similar under Thatcher. My understanding is Thatcher turned a declining, moribund economy around. Liberals will never accept that, just like they're fooled by Potemkin villages. They believe what they want to believe.
I'm sincerely sorry for your situation, Nester. I lost my business as well, and the building, and my home. I know what you're going through.
Don't know what to say beyond that, except when you lose your business, you suddenly have time for things like talking on the internet.
I can't speculate what happened in your community or with you personally. I do know what caused the housing collapse, which caused the financial collapse. And it's not my theory, but something very well established with several good books. The link below is an article about one.
If you read the article, you'll see the Democratic political operative made CEO of FANNY MAE made 100 million dollars in compensation from that quasi government agency, and he manipulated the hell out of the market. As I've said, government intervention created this mess. It's very well established.
I'm sorry for yours as well leitskev. And Dreamscale, I am sorry that you lost so much.
This is where we are in history.
I see the word TRILLION over and over again as though it were change from a twenty.
I see the flipid mannor in which those we charge to see over us abuse our rights and get rich.
But I also see a resolve deep in the hearts of those still alive who have been through much worse (great depression/WW2) and I see hope.
I'm imspired!
What scares me, is I dont see any of these traits in the youth of today. I see a goverment who knows just what to say and the young simply acceept it with no questions.
One thing I can at least say has been historically true in the US. It is extremely resilient. It has faced times like these before. The 70s were pretty bad, maybe in some ways worse. No one believed this country would ever be strong again. High inflation, high unemployment, gas lines, a defeated military. And things turned around and stayed basically good, with some bumps, for more than 25 years.
I wouldn't give up on the young, either. They know we're borrowing on their dime to run these deficits, and they're waking up.
With the internet, and other media sources, it's not so easy to keep the truth down either. Not all youth get their ideas from MTV. As long as individuals remain free in this country to pursue their dreams without interference, it will bounce back. Count on it. Don't ever bet against the United States in the long run!
Leftie Michael Moore wants S & P executives arrested for the downgrade of US credit rating. No one who follows politics closely should be surprised by this. A few days ago John Kerry suggested the news channels stop covering the Tea Party point of view. Look how college campuses react when speakers that are even remotely conservative appear there.
Some more stuff for you Andrew, before I turn in for the night.
"...decision to retain taxation levels that create more wealth for the richest..."
Only a progressive thinks taxation "creates" wealth for the richest. It's their money we are talking about, it it not? We're talking about how much of their money you are willing to let them keep.
"The irony is that it is those who lecture on responsibility the most or constantly shrink from it themselves. And therein lies the crux of this current economic debate."
Is that yet another attempt at a personal shot, Andrew? I actually just don't know what you mean by this. Vague at best.
What caused the financial crisis, Andrew?
Corporations are posting record profits. They are not posting record business levels. They've become lean and mean, and they're not doing what they would normally being doing at this point after a recession, which is investing in new equipment, hiring new people, and expanding. Why Andrew? Uncertainty.
And what will happen if we do what you recommend, which is tax that money and use it as the government sees fit? what will those businesses do with the money?
Look, I don't have time to research it and get links, but you raise corporate rates, and corporations move. Businesses are leaving California in droves. It's just simply a bad idea that has devastating consequences both long and short term.
Read the George Will link above. Government caused these problems. There will be suffering no matter what now. We can't undo what was done. But we can learn from it.
Here's the thing on compromise: there's a fire. And instead of putting water on it, we're pouring gasoline. The Left(Progressives, Democrats, Labor...you pick the word) wants us to pour a whole lotta gasoline on it. Compromise means pouring less gasoline. We need to stop pouring gasoline before it's too late. We've been compromising on this for decades.
Kevin, I've been too busy to login, hence the delay in even reading your questions. I'll respond when I get the chance. Since I was last here an awful lot has happened: We've had the English rioting in the streets giving rise to waves of moral indignation largely devoid of context; and I see your Left continues its Obama apostasy, whilst your Right continue flirtations with completely unelectable candidates like Perry. A crazy world.
I do not care much for the political threads -- and probably will not be posting again on this one -- but I do have to watch them (lest they turn ugly), and did want to toss something out there for ya'll to gnosh on.
Recent op-ed in the NY Times by Warren Buffett, asking, in essence, "WTH? Why aren't you taxing me more?"
Quoted from Mr. Buffett
I have worked with investors for 60 years and I have yet to see anyone...shy away from a sensible investment because of the tax rate on the potential gain.
People invest to make money, and potential taxes have never scared them off.
There is the tax rate for those income brackets; and then there are loopholes, little things that are generally written into the code in order to encourage certain types of activity. Sometimes these loopholes are well intended: trying to encourage charity, or environmentally conscious behavior, or investments in government bonds. Sometimes these loopholes have been created through a corrupt process, where government is influenced by wealthy special interests. Look as GE, which profited billions last year and paid no taxes.
What people like the Tea Party and many Republicans want is to get rid of the loopholes but lower the rates. This can be done so that the net effect on tax revenue is neutral. And it creates a much cleaner government. There would be far fewer lobbyists in town. This is what reducing government is all about.
Buffet manages to somehow avoid talking about that. When he talks about rates he pays, he is not talking about the tax rate for people in his income bracket. He is talking about the rate he actually pays after the loopholes. It sounds like his loopholes are mostly related to capital gains taxes, which have often been lowered to encourage economic activity.
But taking away these loopholes takes away a powerful tool of the government. Therefore, it reduces the power and influence of government. For those that like big government, that's a bad thing. For those that thrive in trading government favors for influence, it's a bad thing. The party that does not want to give these things up is the same party that loves government regulations, another tool that increases government power, and their influence.
Also keep in mind that you can dramatically increase the rates the rich pay, and it won't even come close to solving the problem, which is out of control spending and entitlements. Hey, I'm not rich, and if soaking the rich guy will solve our problems, go for it. But it won't. It just makes people that aren't rich feel good.
Warren Buffet is a good man, and his thoughts should always be taken seriously. But he's kind of on an island out there. It's tough to find other people in his field that agree with him.
I had read that article before, but thanks for posting, it is a good one.
I really don't have the time for this, but to refute the odd accusation put forth, I'll answer the 'questions', even though you never scratched the surface with mine. To be honest, I've just had a hearty belly laugh that a failure to reply is indicative of 'fear' and 'lurking' as opposed to simply living my life.
Tax creates wealth: I'm not sure what you're saying with this. The levels of tax paid should be fair. The existing structure is not fair. You've had how many years of 'tax breaks'? How has that worked out. The idea that lower taxes stimulates growth/investment simply doesn't stand up to scrutiny. Nobody is saying tax should become 'so fair' it effectively quashes entrepreneurial spirit; the problem is who is escaping paying their share? It's not the middle class, is it. Far too many are not even paying their dues (let alone a fair rate). Smoothing out your complex system is a positive step forward but it must be done in conjunction with a moral assessment of fairness. Nobody wants to punish successful people; I simply stand for creating a level playing field for competition.
What caused the crisis: A multitude of factors. One thing that didn't was the Obama administration, as you put forth. Excessive spending in Iraq/Afghanistan and regulatory failure in allowing an inflated housing market to become a cash cow and simultaneously a dangerous game of musical chairs are two reasons. Do you disagree?
Personal shot: No. Read it again.
Taxing business; reinvestment: My view is pretty simple: we must tread the fine line between keeping businesses competitive whilst providing opportunity and security for the people who grease the wheels of growth. I think you reached a conclusion of tax burdens in line with your false preconceptions on my political views.
Gasoline: You're ironically providing an antithesis of compromise with your analogy.
You really must drop this silly line of thought which suggests I'm afraid of debating you. The reality is I think your views are ill-informed, bigoted and besmirching the name of your great country.
I'm not for taxing the rich more per say. I want to be one of them someday. The American dream. I heard on Rush Limbaugh's show many years ago that if every American paid 17% flat tax to the federal. No exemptions. No write offs. The country would be richer. In essence that is taxing the rich more because they know how to hide their money. Make it dissappear from IRS eyes.
As a middle class citizen I'm paying somewhere in the vicinity of 28%, I think. It's because of tax breaks for businesses and over seas manufacturing that we're fucked. I would love to see a flat tax rate across the board. Alot of accountants would be looking for work.
"lower taxes stimulates growth/investment simply doesn't stand up to scrutiny."
It certainly does, and even Obama admits it. You're putting more money into the economy. Obama would prefer to put this money into the economy by government spending, but in both methods, you're putting money in, which stimulates economic activity. Just like the fed attempts when it lowers rates; it puts more money in. There's different ways to do it. The problem with the spending way is that it is inefficient and worse. The market rewards better ideas, or those that work harder. That improves the economy long term. Government spending rewards those with political connections. Which often means it actually penalizes those that have a better idea, work harder. Plus, it contributes to a corrupt political culture. Why do you think there are so many more lobbyists in Washington then a few years ago? There's a lot more at stake now. There's a lot of money in play. That means a lot of access is being "bought".
How are you creating a level playing field with your big government? Don't you understand that Big Business is in bed with Big Government? Look at GE. Andrew, Big Business has discovered it can use big government to destroy its competition, namely, the little guys. How? Excessive regulations, a complex tax code, Obamacare. These are things a big business can deal with a lot more efficiently than a small one. Let's say you run a small drug store with a dozen employees. Can you afford to hire a full time accountant and a full time lawyer to deal with this stuff? Of course not. And don't you think the big drugstore chains know that? So who supports these massive regulations, the little guys or the big guys? And which party is the party of regulations?
What is a fair rate? What are the dues? If Warren Buffet paid 6 million in taxes last year, did he not pay his dues?
I did not say Obama caused the crisis. It began before he was in office. I would say he represents the philosophical approach that created the crisis. Government meddling on a large scale in the economy. And that's very, very well established. It was government meddling in the housing market. And plenty of Republicans were part of it. They thought that helping the poor own their homes might contribute to more responsible behavior on their part. The so called "ownership society".
Not one person of serious opinion things wars caused the crisis. I'm not talking about the deficit. I'm talking about the crisis.
Did they contribute to the deficit? Yeah. And I was against the Iraq war. Afghanistan was an unfortunate necessity. We were attacked.
Honestly, Andrew, I only said that about your running from the debate because you put a large number of questions and then griped when I didn't take time from my day to answer them all. Truth is, I hand't seen them, but it's presumptuous to load questions up like that anyway. I make my points, and you could agree with them or not, but I don't fire questions your way.
You manner of argument has not shed a positive light on you. You take the time to quote my remarks in your post, but then just leave some kind of snicker underneath it rather than refute or add anything substantive to it. That's weak. Weak.
Then you make presumptions about where I get my ideas or information, a habit that is typical of your ilk. I must be parroting some Fox News celebrity or something. I have been arguing these things for over 20 years. I dealt with people like you all through college. You think better of yourself because you've chosen some political outlook that supposedly looks out for the poor. But you make no effort to review whether any of these things actually help the poor. Because this isn't really about the poor for you, though you think it is.
I'll tell you a little secret. I have a lot of black friends, and about half of them vote Democrat. But you want to know something funny? They would sooner hang out with a red neck than a white liberal. I first started noticing that in college, and it surprised me. But you know why they don't like white liberals? They don't trust them. Because they know that they're all about. You see, deep down, it's all about themselves with liberals. They use black people, by taking up positions that show they "care" about minorities. But this doesn't fool black people for one damn second. They understand the liberal is just using black people to feed their own sense of superiority. Black people do not trust white liberals. Trust me.
I'm sorry I have been unable to help you in your intellectual struggles. But I really did not expect I would succeed. The problem is not intelligence on your end. The problem is that you have so much psychological capital invested in your political philosophy that any information that challenges that philosophy becomes a serious threat to your conception of self.
Hogwash of the highest calibre re: my supposed conception of self. If you don't want me to 'snicker', don't post such nonsense.
Who was talking about colour?
Funnily enough, I'm not as arrogant to effectively say: 'black people like my type more than yours'. A staggering statement, it really is. Stereotyping is dangerous, but attempting to homogenise 'black people' actually makes me feel uncomfortable. There is no such homogenous group, irrespective of colour.
Look. Your views are your own and that's fair enough. I disagree with them but acknowledge some of the merits i.e. closing tax loopholes. We disagree on the subsequent prescription from such actions i.e. a flat tax rate but that's where compromise and pragmatism (which I mentioned previously) enters. A flat rate is not fair. It's perplexing that hard work is seen by you as the preserve of the 'super rich'. How incredibly self-serving of me to want to reinvest in our poor at the expense of tax cash. You suggest that raw figures paid justify lower taxes for the rich. Why? If I pay 20% of 20,000 and you pay 20% of 52,000,000, who's worse off? Who works harder? Whose children have the better opportunities? An under investment in the poor freezes social structure and perpetuates unfairness. How incredibly self-serving of me to want to close the gap. All figures confirm an increasing gap and your much vaunted lower tax rates have coincided with an exacerbation of relative poverty.
I posed you questions as you'd said I was pissing about, so I got serious and asked you questions that challenged what you'd laid out. The answers were not satisfactory and that was that. It appears to have been simmering for you since.
Big Government i.e. the Left is fully to blame (aside from a cursory mention of Republicans) in your eyes. And yet you have the sheer gall to suggest an inflexibility on my part. A huge logic gap exists in that argument which you appear incapable of acknowledging. You should also reevaluate your view of my as an American liberal. I'm a British Labour supporter. A different animal. Read about the Labour Party and then read about who I consider a great leader: Clement Attlee.
You parrot Fox News and Tea Party talking points exactly (big government, entitlement programs, liberal/leftie bashing, socialism, etc etc) so the natural conclusion is that you've simply watched too much of that debased nonsense. There are two glaring problems with your supposed historical knowledge:
1) You PM'd me and raked on about the problems in Northern Ireland as if you knew the history. You didn't and I called you on it. Inconveniently for you, I'm well versed on the situation being half Irish.
2) Your absurd views on Islam. The very mention of this earlier prompted protestations of childish namecalling. You have continued to ignore my mention as you know it's a view to be mocked by the masses. Why won't you stand up and acknowledge publicly that you think Islam is evil? That is weak, friend.
You say you agree with James and yet that directly contradicts much of your previous musings.
You say you agree with James and yet that directly contradicts much of your previous musings.
Jesus fucking christ. This thread blows from front to back. It shouldn't even be on these boards. Andrew, you're a pompous ass who would rather discuss politics then write a script worthy of the paper I spin off my toilet paper roll. I tried to read EMD, it was front loaded with politics I didn't know or cared about.
You can tell the assholes on the board when they use their own face as an avatar. Stop combing your hair with an egg beater.
Yeah, I'm a drunk. But, that's all you or anyone else on these boards has against me.
Andrew, I suggest we end the conversation because you're playing out of bounds and spewing inaccuracies. Let's say for argument's sake we had a PM conversation that went even remotely like you suggest, which it did not. Don't you understand the concept of private message? What part about private is confusing to you?
There would be no way for me to defend against things you claim I said in private messages. You could make up whatever you want. And I don't doubt you will.
This thread is not about Islam. You wish to keep dragging it in because your arguments related to the thread topic were nonsensical. You were defeated on the merits, so you had to reach around for whatever personal attack you could come up with. Very childish. You must be a little disappointed in yourself.
Are things Ok with you? Are you going through a personal crisis of some sort? There has to be some explanation for this behavior. I don't want to make light of it. I hope things get better. I'll give you the last word so we can end this. Hopefully you can avoid the temptation to fiction.
There's a reason why religion and politics are usually avoided around here. Sure there's the chat board where you can talk about whatever you want, but...those two subjects never seem to improve anything as far as SS forums go. I've been here for years, sad I know, and I've seen too many people leave or get banned due to either of these subjects. Religieon and politics tend to get people very emotional. It also tends to divide people. Agree with this side or that one.
This place is for screenwriters. Why even have discussions like that? Lets work together and try to help each other write better and improve our scripts. Why try to divide us? There are plenty of forums out there if you want to discuss politics or religion. Just my $.02.
James, I usually refrain from personal insults of this ilk, but wow, you're an asshole. First class. Oh, and I recall you posting an avatar of yourself - perhaps it's best you took it down and kept it down. You know what I mean. I've taken a load of insults the last couple of days and haven't got sensitive, so let's hope you can do that as well. Why would I care what someone like you thinks of me.
Kevin, if you want to lie and attempt to gain the high ground, then so be it. But we both know you're lying. It's come to you trying to suggest I have problems. Another belly laugh. I'm just disappointed you're incapable of a decent discussion. Any sensible person reading the whole exchange will know who's lost the plot. This erroneous suggestion that I don't read scripts is belied by much evidence to the contrary.
Trying to give you the last word, but hard to leave it when you call me a liar. You live in a world of your own making, Andrew, hopefully that helps you in the profession of screen writing.
Incapable of decent discussion? Look at the history of your posts, outside of the political arguments.
1) you copy my quotes into your posts, then snicker instead of making any kind of a point. Does that seem mature? Does it seem like someone winning the argument? 2) yesterday, in another thread, because I merely made the point that Jeff gives a very thorough read, you suggested that my post be deleted! Look it up. Yes, you really did that. That's why I worry about you. 3) yesterday you allude to some conversation we had in private a long time ago, which I barely remember. Who posts things from private conversations in a public forum? Regardless of whether you think you scored some point in that discussion, that you would make a private discussion public is a warning to anyone out there about speaking to you in private. 4) why you would you want to keep shrilly screaming things about my thoughts on Islam in this thread? It's never been remotely part of the discussion. We're talking about economic issues. If you're winning the argument, why would you need to do that?
But I fully agree with Pia. Let's go back to scripts. Send me one you're working on, if you want, you know I'll give it an honest opinion and try to be constructive. I wish you well, your pilot script has potential, I'd be happy to look at the latest version.
Perhaps the reason a fledging friendship has descended into a bitch fight is that there's a transatlantic interpretation problem. I never suggested your post should be deleted - I said the underlying point was bollocks i.e. Jeff is some kind of script doyen. He's not a bad guy but is simply incapable of being challenged or played rough with, which is ironic when you consider his posting history. But as I said to him, as soon as I hit logout, Jeff doesn't appear in my head again until I hit login. Why would he!
I'm not a sensitive person. Perhaps I should factor in you guys are seemingly sensitive. There's just a bit of a double standard whereby it's ok to hit me hard with the words but if I play equally hard I'm upsetting people or embarrassing myself, or worse, I'm having an implied breakdown. There's a huge gap between that perception and who I am. Find me on any of the big social networks and that fallacy can be put to bed.
Like I said, I'm not trying to win an argument - never have been. Have you seen me throw my toys out of the pram? No, I've taken a lot of sh*t and just accepted it - again, it's just odd that when I reciprocate, it's all my fault. Apparently I'm: an asshole who's a shit writer with crap hair; a rat; care for the poor to make myself feel better - and that's just off the top of my head! Call me the names by all means but don't be surprised to see me fight my corner. Point is that nobody is innocent here.
The views on Islam are important because they tie in with a general outlook on the world that's held by your Tea Party. Whilst I'm happy to accept views on their own merits, it's necessary to delve deeper and not just appraise on the surface alone. As you know yourself, a university education encourages to scratch deeper - this isnt petty points scoring on a conpletely irrelevant thread that means nothing. The view you hold on economics is generally held in conjunction with the views you stated on Islam. It's plausible to argue that's stereotyping, but you tick both boxes and that was the point. It's not a case of trying to embarrass you; you want to disentangle the views but they're inextricably linked.
Yourself, Jeff and James have all had reads from me in the past. Jeff accused me of reviewing out of spite, which was disappointing as I call it as I see it, so I won't bother wasting my time again. But I'm happy to read your work and appreciate the offer. No new draft yet as I'm very busy with other stuff, but please feel free to send over stuff.
And there you have it. Last word offered by Kev, and accepted by Andrew -- with only a modicum of intervening commentary.
I know both of you to be reasonable, intelligent sorts; both well capable of moving on from this point.
Under different circumstances you two would probably get on quite well.
I think all would agree that this thread has certainly run its course -- and is yet another example of why I like to stick to screenwriting on these forums.
The old cliche about politics and religion did not invent itself...
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