Sparky speaks
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Posts posted by Sparky speaks
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You mean this health care plan???
"Obamacare Summed Up in One Sentence"
From a video posted on YouTube that shows Dr. Barbara Bellar speaking at a Women for Romney/Ryan rally last month:
"So let me get this straight. This is a long sentence.
We are going to be gifted with a healthcare plan that we are forced to purchase, and fined if we don't, which reportedly covers ten million more people without adding a single new doctor, but provides for sixteen thousand new IRS agents,written by a committee whose chairman doesn't understand it, passed by congress, that didn't read it, but exempted themselves from it, and signed by a president who smokes, with funding administered by a treasury chief,who didn't pay his taxes, for which we will be taxed for four years before any benifits take effect, by a government which has bankrupted Social Security and Medicare, all to be overseen by a surgeon general who is obese and financed by a country that is broke.
So what the blank could possibly go wrong?"
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Sparky you can look on the ground and tell theres not gonna be another housing crisis. its already played out
Maybe you should read this and open your eyes to reality...
The Fed Plays All Its Cards
http://lewrockwell.c.../schiff181.html
Here's an interesting bit of info from a website most of you here will respect...
ACLU Report: Obama administration expands domestic spying
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The third song "What a Fool" has the bass player Toby Leaman doing vocals. I've been fortunate to see them live three times this year and they are pretty damn good. They are growing on me more each day. Two of the songs here 3. What A Fool and 4. Exit For Sale are already available on iTunes.
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Lou, you'll be back. I've said the same thing many times but you guys keep pulling me back in. This is currently the most read thread on this forum. You've got to give the people what they want. Most are not posting but I don't know why. I'm not the one going to call them crazy heartless hippie bastards. The more participation the merrier.
I don't understand why you guys don't find this obvious or reasonable. It makes perfect sense to me...
This is going to happen to the Keynesians as surely as it happened to the Marxists. (not wanting to admit they were Keynesians after the collapase) The Keynesians basically got a free ride, and have for over 60 years. Their system is illogical. It is incoherent. Students taking undergraduate courses in economics never really remember the categories. That is because they are illogical categories. They all rest on the idea that government spending can goose the economy, but they cannot explain how it is that the government gets its hands on the money to do the stimulative spending without at the same time reducing spending in the private sector. The government has to steal money to boost the economy, but this means that the money that is stolen from the private sector is removed as a source of economic growth.
The Keynesian economic system makes no sense. But, decade after decade, the Keynesians get away with utter nonsense. None of their peers will ever call them to account. They go merrily down the mixed-economy road, as if that road were not leading to a day of economic destruction. They are just like Marxist economists and academics in 1960, 1970, and 1980. They are oblivious to the fact that they are going over the cliff with the debt-ridden, over-leveraged Western economy, because they are committed in the name of Keynesian theory to the fractional-reserve-banking system, which cannot be sustained either theoretically or practically.
The problem we are going to face at some point as a nation and in fact as a civilization is this: there is no well-developed economic theory inside the corridors of power that will explain to the administrators of a failed system what they should do after the system collapses. This was true in the Eastern bloc in 1991. There was no plan of action, no program of institutional reform. This is true in banking. This is true in politics. This is true in every aspect of the welfare-warfare state. The people at the top are going to be presiding over a complete disaster, and they will not be able to admit to themselves or anybody else that their system is what produced the disaster. So, they will not make fundamental changes. They will not restructure the system, by decentralizing power, and by drastically reducing government spending. They will be forced to decentralize by the collapsed capital markets.
http://mises.org/dai...of-Keynesianism
Don't let facts get in the way of a faulty policy...
The Last Housing Crash Is Not Even Over But Bernanke Is Already Setting The Stage For The Next One
By the way, I've posted info about Romney's family Mexican connection, the corporate controlled media, Obama's dealings with countries who use children soldiers, Israel's crazy leader and answered all of Lost Highways questions in the past 24 hours or so. Christ, I even spelled out my political philosophy to you. You all complain about my Fed posts but where are your thoughts on those issues? Those can't be boring topics to you as well? Are we supposed to talk only about the superficial aspects of the election like the debates, or who paid what in taxes or who's wife is better looking? That, to me is boring.
We can all differ without accusing the other person of being some nut job because they don't have the same beliefs as you.I don't think I have resorted to name calling or personal attacks here. If I have, I'm sure you'll let me know. I might challenge someone's beliefs but that is far from attacking them personally or suggesting that someone go f**k themselves as was done over the Obama phone issue. The good thing is, time will tell who is correct on the economic issues. The road being used to kick that proverbial economic can down is fast coming to an end. Save your ire and loathing for those responsible for that rather than a person who is only trying to get you to realize it is happening. Some here defend these politicians as if they hold some special knowledge about how they should run our lives. They are beholden to special interests and don't give one shit about you and I. Voting for either of them IMO just gives this corrupt system legitimacy.
Did I suck you back in Lou? I could keep going but you've heard it all already and I know it is getting late.
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Again, the ad hominem attacks continue. (An attempt to negate the truth of a claim by pointing out a negative characteristic or unrelated belief of the person supporting it.)
Why do you folks believe these lying bastards? Are they relatives of yours? They are concerned with the welfare of the banks and the banks alone. It is a private banking cartel which has been allowed to savage our economy for decades without nary a wimper from our elected representatives who benefit from their policies of printing endless streams of money to fund their pet projects, wars, bailouts, etc. They have done nothing but fund asset bubbles which explode in our faces and create the boom and bust cylce we have been victims of since the Great Depression. If you want to argue it was created to prevent this cycle you have years of economic bubbles brought on by Fed policy that have exploded in our faces to explain away. Yet, you are all willing to see this continue? Are you expecting a different result? If you do, you are crazier than I am and according to some of you that is pretty crazy. We have had nothing but government regulation and interference in the market for nearly a century . That is what has brought us to this stage in history. You are so used to the government coming up with programs and policies to improve things that you actually think they are working. I guess that's why we need more of them. It's like hitting your kids. If hitting your kids works why do you still have to hit them? Keynesian economics is destroying this country right before your eyes and you can't see the forest but for the trees.
Now back to your regularly scheduled ad hominem attacks.
Change of pace...
Meet Mitt Romney's Mexican Mormon Family
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Worth noting that the United States has not tested since 1992.
Revival of Nuclear Arms Race: US Conducts New Underground Nuclear Tests
http://www.globalresearch.ca/revival-of-nuclear-arms-race-us-conduct-new-underground-nuclear-tests/
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For the one or two of you who care...
Fed Chairman Admits His Economic Model Is Japanese Economic Stagnation
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said in an October 1 speech that his U.S. central bank would copy Japanese economic policy to get the U.S. economy moving, despite the fact that the Japanese economy hasn't seen significant economic growth since the 1980s
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I never watch CBS,NBC, etc. Their version of the news is controlled, filtered and biased to support the corporate interests that own them. Manufactured dissent. I get my news from various alternative news sites on the internet. Used to watch Freedom Watch with Judge Napolitano on Fox Business news until they took him off the air back in the Sping for being too anti-establishment. Haven't watch TV news since. No worse for it.
Who Owns The Media? The 6 Monolithic Corporations That Control Almost Everything We Watch, Hear And Read
http://theeconomicco...h-hear-and-read
3 Time Emmy Award Winning CNN Journalist: Mainstream Media Takes Money from FOREIGN Dictators to Run Flattering Propaganda
http://www.washingto...propaganda.html
Remember all that Kony 2012 bullshit earlier this year?
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How should our nation's leaders avoid us pitching in our hat next to Israel for a war with Iran?
That's been addressed a few times. They won't avoid it. Israel has both of them by the balls. The fun starts after the election.
How about, how does a candidate that has bashed 47% of the country get elected?
He has an interest in the company that supplies the voting machines in 6 states including Ohio and Texas.
What do you expect to see in the debates?
Two talking heads basically supporting the same policies. You mean you are going to watch them?
Does Romney still have pull with the Tea party?
The Tea Party is kaput. Been hijacked by the neocons and marginalized a while back.
What should the Republican party, really be about in the 21st century?
Statism just like the Democratic party. Why change?
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Analysis of Bernanke's speech...
http://www.tfmetalsr...taking-audacity
Call me crazy, heartless or a hippie I don't rightly care, Lou. I have looked through the laundry list of libertarian beliefs and philosophies and put together a list of those I can say I believe in just for you so you can stop painting me with such a broad brush. I'm not perfect and I am changing my views on issues everyday as I learn more about them. I don't know why so many are afraid of liberty? I'm sure some of you here will agree with many of these ideas. Is there something wrong with wanting a society that reflects these tenants? That's what the Constitution was all about. A document that placed limits on government power. A document that proposed a government whose most important function was to protect our rights and liberties not grant them or take them away. A rule of law not of people. Where's Jimmy Stewart when you need him? There are some aspects of the philosophy I differ with or can't quite get my head around but here goes...
To quote the New World Encyclopedia...
Most libertarians do believe in and accept some minimal government and governmental power—a view sometimes called the "night-watchman theory of the state."
Minarchist libertarians—who could also be called night-watchman theory libertarians—consider government necessary for the sole purpose of protecting the rights of the people. This includes protecting people and their property from the criminal acts of others, as well as providing for national defense.
The central tenet of libertarianism is the principle of self-ownership. To libertarians, an individual human being is sovereign over his or her own body, extending to life, liberty, and property. As such, libertarians define liberty as being completely free in action, while not initiating force or fraud against the life, liberty, or property of another human being. This is otherwise known as the non-aggression principle.
Libertarians believe that personal responsibility, private charity, and the voluntary exchange of goods and ideas are all consistent manifestations of an individualistic approach to liberty, and provide both a more effective and more ethical way to prosperity and peaceful coexistence. They often argue that in a truly capitalistic society, even the poorest would end up better off as a result of faster overall economic growth—which they believe likely to occur with lower taxes and less regulation.
Some who self-identify as libertarians are minarchists, i.e., supportive of minimal taxation as a "necessary evil" for the limited purpose of funding public institutions that would protect civil liberties and property rights, including police, volunteer armed forces without conscription, and judicial courts.
Libertarians strongly oppose infringement of civil liberties such as restrictions on free expression (e.g., speech, press, or religious practice), prohibitions on voluntary association, or encroachments on persons or property.
Libertarians generally defend the ideal of freedom from the perspective of how little one is constrained by authority, that is, how much one is "allowed" to do, which is referred to as negative liberty.
Libertarians also oppose any laws restricting personal or consensual behavior, as well as laws on victimless crimes. As such, they believe that individual choices for products or services should not be limited by government licensing requirements or state-granted monopolies.
Rights theorists hold that it is morally imperative that all human interaction, including government interaction with private individuals, should be voluntary and consensual. They maintain that the initiation of force by any person or government, against another person or their property—with "force" meaning the use of physical force, the threat of it, or the commission of fraud against someone—who has not initiated physical force, threat, or fraud, is a violation of that principle.
Similarly, many believe that the United States Food and Drug Administration (and other similar bodies in other countries like Health Canada in Canada) should not ban unproven medical treatments, that any decisions on treatment should be left between patient and doctor, and that the government should, at most, be limited to passing non-binding judgments about efficacy or safety.
Many libertarians view life, liberty, and property as the ultimate rights possessed by individuals, and that compromising one necessarily endangers the rest. In democracies, they consider compromise of these individual rights by political action to be "tyranny by the majority," a term first coined by Alexis de Tocqueville
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And if you believe any of what Bernanke says heaven help us. Have you ever seen Ron Paul question him at banking hearings. He destroys him.
Lou, Nixon proves that there is no differnece between the Republicans and the Democrats. They both support the statist way of solving problems and dealing with issues. They both believe government has all the answers and we should trust their hands on the wheel. Is say governemnt is what is screwing things up and that it needs to pull back gradually and let the free market help decide prices, interest rates, etc., etc. What the government is doing is not working and yet all they want to do is more of the same.
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A thought from Alexis de Tocqueville:
“The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.”
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.”
Lou, this might help with your question about who would regulate money...
http://www.nolanchart.com/article7009-the-purpose-of-money-and-the-dangers-of-fiat-currency.html
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One socialist to another...
Chavez to Obama: I'd vote for you, and you for me
http://www.reuters.c...E8KU37A20120930
Dollar Falls Most Since 2011 as Central Banks Bump Up Stimulus
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That's fair. I'm no moderator, it was a suggestion. Maybe not the best one. I guess I'm out of Fed debate in the context of the Presidential Election, but people can discuss what they will- thread relevant or no.
That's no conspiracy talk, it's just showing a war hungry jingoist for what he is. That guy's trigger finger is itchy.
Well, he does conspire with the neocons here in the US.
Good article here on the situation...
Netanyahu believes his maximum leverage over Obama, the president of the “world’s only superpower,” is just prior to the election. Israel cannot attack Iran on its own without the risk of Israel’s destruction. But Netanyahu reasons that if he attacks Iran the week before the US election, Obama will have to join in or lose the Jewish vote for not supporting Israel in states such as Florida, which has a large Jewish population and many electoral votes. If the election is close, Netanyahu, a person consumed by arrogance and hubris, might exercise his threat and attack Iran, despite the opposition of former chiefs of Israeli intelligence and military, the opposition party, and a majority of the Israeli people.
In other words, the outcome of the “superpower’s” presidential election might depend upon whether the sitting president of the “superpower” is sufficiently obedient to the crazed Israeli prime minister.
That the outcome of the US presidential election could depend upon the agenda of the prime minister of a tiny country that exists only because of US financial, military, and diplomatic support, especially the UN veto, should disturb those Americans who think that they are the “indispensable people.” How indispensable are you when you have to do what the Israeli prime minister wants?
The US media makes certain that this question never enters american minds. Americans have been told that if Iran doesn’t have nukes, it has a nuke weapons program. This is what the politicians of both parties, the media, and the Israel Lobby tell them. Americans are told this despite the facts that the CIA and the National Intelligence Estimate stick to the conclusion that Iran abandoned its flirtation with a nuclear weapon in 2003 and the International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors on the ground in Iran report no evidence of a nuclear weapons program and no evidence of any diversion of enriched uranium to a weapons program.
Moreover, what could Iran do with a nuclear weapon, other than use it against an aggressor? Any offensive use would result in Iran’s destruction.
Why do Americans believe Iran has nukes or is making nukes when the CIA says they are not? The answer is that Netanyahu says so, and the elected members of the US government in the House, Senate, and White House are afraid to contradict the Israeli prime minister, as are the American print and TV media. Some “superpower” we are! The “indispensable people” have to grovel in the dirt before Netanyahu. Americans are not even aware of their shame.
Iran, unlike Israel, signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. Signatories to the treaty have the right to nuclear energy. Nuclear energy requires a low level of enrichment, 5% or less. The minute Iran announced a nuclear energy program, the Israeli government and its prostitutes in Washington lied that Iran was building a bomb. For exercising its legal rights under the treaty, Iran has been painted as a rouge criminal state and demonized.
A nuclear weapon requires 95% enrichment. To get to 5% from scratch and then to 95% is a long drawn out process. I think I first started hearing Israeli government claims of an Iranian nuke back in he 1990s of last century.
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/
WARNING!!! Pleasure scroll past this if you wish to remain clueless about the power that is destroying our economy and how our leaders do nothing about it. But be warned, the word Federal Reserve appears several times. This could be very damaging to some. So please, proceed with caution...
For all you Federal Reserve fans out there...
Sadly, most Americans don't even realize that the Federal Reserve has more control over our economy than anyone else does. Most Americans that are actually concerned about politics are busy arguing over whether Obama or Romney will be better for the economy when it is actually the Fed that controls the levers of economic power...
The Federal Reserve played a major role in creating the housing bubble which severely damaged our financial system a few years ago.
....after 9/11 the Federal Reserve dropped interest rates to historically low levels. This allowed potential home buyers to get into much larger mortgages, and the big banks (which the Fed supposedly "regulates") started making home loans to almost anyone with a pulse.
When interest rates started to go back up to normal levels in 2005, many home owners discovered that their adjustable rate mortgages started to become much more painful. By 2007, we started to see a massive wave of mortgage defaults. In 2008, the financial system crashed.
In response to the financial crisis of 2008, the Federal Reserve dropped interest rates to record low levels. The effective federal funds rate is essentially at zero at this point, and the Fed has promised to keep interest rates at ultra-low levels all of the way into 2015.
But didn't artificially low interest rates cause many of our problems in the first place? The central planners over at the Fed are convinced that this is the right course for our economy, but can we really live in a zero interest rate bubble indefinitely? Won't this eventually cause even greater problems?....
The Fed is also destroying our economy by recklessly printing money.
Once upon a time, the U.S. monetary base rose at a very steady pace. But since the financial crisis of 2008, Ben Bernanke has been flooding the financial system with money and this has caused an unprecedented explosion in our money supply...
Fortunately a lot of the money from previous rounds of quantitative easing is being stashed by the big banks as "excess reserves" with the Federal Reserve, but when that money starts flowing into the "real economy" (and it will at some point), we are going to have a major problem on our hands.
But more than tripling our monetary base was not enough for Bernanke. He recently announced yet another round of quantitative easing which he says will last indefinitely.
Basically, Bernanke is taking a sledgehammer to the U.S. dollar. Our currency is being systematically destroyed, and the U.S. Congress is standing by and doing nothing...
The Federal Reserve seems to think that printing more money is always the solution to whatever economic problems we are having.
But of course the Fed has been debasing our currency from the very beginning. The entire Federal Reserve system is designed to create inflation.
From the time that the Federal Reserve was created back in 1913, the purchasing power of a U.S. dollar has declined from $1.00 to only about 4 pennies today.
And now Bernanke seems bound and determined to wipe out those last 4 pennies.
The Federal Reserve system was also designed to create a never ending spiral of government debt.
Sadly, most Americans simply have no idea where money comes from. Most Americans have no idea that money that the Federal Reserve zaps into existence out of thin air is loaned to the U.S. government at interest. Most Americans have no idea that the primary reason why we are 16 trillion dollars in debt is because this is what the system was designed to do to us.
Today, the U.S. national debt is more than 5000 times larger than it was when the Federal Reserve was originally created in 1913. This did not happen by accident....
Not that our politicians should be off the hook for this. They have been spending money as if there is no tomorrow. Most of them have shown no concern at all about the legacy of debt that they are passing on to future generations of Americans.
If our politicians had been more responsible, the national debt would still be there, but it would be at a much more manageable level.
If we ever want to totally get rid of our national debt, the Federal Reserve must be abolished.
There is no other way.
At this point our entire financial system is based on debt, and if the debt bubble does not continue to expand the entire thing will collapse.
But no financial bubble grows forever. History has proven that to us over and over.
At some point this bubble is going to burst.
When it does, we will either experience a deflationary collapse or a hyperinflationary collapse depending on how "the powers that be" respond to what is happening.
History has shown us that financial collapse is often accompanied by social upheaval. Many times it even leads to war.
http://theeconomicco...onomy-in-secret
Well, you made it. It is safe to view the next post in this thread. Please exercise caution in the next few days for you never know when that heartless bastard Sparky might slip another Federal Reserve post in. If your fingers didn't cramp up scrolling past this article consider yourself fortunate. I apologize for wasting a 1/2 second of your life. This concludes the first test of the Federal Reserve warning system.
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Good morning Lou...
New Yorker editor now a crazy conspiracist?
New Yorker magazine editor says Netanyahu is 'arrogant and dangerous'
David Remnick accuses the Prime Minister of endangering Israel and making himself a factor in the U.S. elections.
By Haaretz
New Yorker magazine editor and Pulitzer-Prize winning author David Remnick accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday of endangering Israel, interfering in U.S. elections and aligning with Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney in a "neocon strategy" against U.S. President Obama.
In a biting blog post in the magazine on Wednesday, Remnick accused Netanyahu of doing more “than any other political figure to embolden and elevate the reactionary forces in Israel, to eliminate the dwindling possibility of a just settlement with the Palestinians, and to isolate his country on the world diplomatic stage.”
I couldn't resist. This guy is good. He explains things in a way that most who are economic neophytes can understand...
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Not much to read here...
Just think how many cell phones this could buy...
U.S. Move to Give Egypt $450 Million in Aid Meets Resistance
The Obama administration notified Congress on Friday that it would provide Egypt’s new government an emergency cash infusion of $450 million, but the aid immediately encountered resistance from a prominent lawmaker wary of foreign aid and Egypt’s new course under the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood.
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So the very thing that will most affect the policies of whoever wins the White House is not relevant to the election discussion? Will either candidate be able to live up to their promises to create jobs and lower taxes if Fed policy prohibits them from doing it? Don't you want to know why they really will never be able to live up to those promises instead of accusing one candidate or the other of being a liar or an incompetent or a panderer? Look, if that is the sentiment of the majority of posters here in this thread I will acquiesce. I'll let the market of ideas dictate.
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On a totally other tangent I propose a cease on Federal Reserve discussions in this thread. It is a worthy, and fascinating conversation. I think it could go much further, but it also has nothing to do with the Presidential Election. We have all recognized that neither candidate has made any statement to lead us to believe they have any unusual, or specific plans for changing it. Give it another thread.
You are missing the point about its' inclusion. All that you wish your chosen candidate to accomplish if he wins the election and all the debates here about welfare, social security, taxes, bailouts, job creation, etc. are mute if that issue is not addressed because Fed policy will determine if there will be money to pay for those things or not. Those issues are affected and controlled by Fed policies of money inflation, interest rates, borrowing and spending. What the Federal Reserve does or doesn't do determines the fate of those issues dear to all of us. It is the elephant in the room no one wants to discuss or try to understand. Just because neither candidate wants to address the cold realities with the American people is not a reason to ignore it here. You can still talk about Michele Obama's food pyramid and Paul Ryan's abs with a few Fed posts thrown in can't you?
I won't comment on those posts and you don't have to comment on the Federal Reserve ones. -
Look, Heartbreak, there should be a safety net for those folks as desperate as your brother. I was not trying to be a heartless bastard as you and others implied. But, I believe the government should not be subsidizing close to 100,000,000 people as it does now. I'm sure you agree we can't afford that. If this continues, there will be no money available to provide your brother and others like him with the services they desperately need and deserve. What will he do then? I doubt the majority of those receiving these benefits are as bad off as you describe your brother to be. No offense intended. Sorry you interpreted what I was saying the way you did. I understand how sensitive you are about your brother but those very same programs that are helping your brother are being threatened by Fed manipulation of the money supply and interest rates and the continued borrowing and spending beyond our means on the part of the government.
Bleedorange, I couldn't agree with you more as to where this falls on the priority list of government subsidized programs that need to be re-evaluated and restructured. I was only using the the phone issue as an example to relate it to the Fed discussion and to try to illustrate the point that when government subsidizes something the price goes up because there is no concern on the providers part to reduce prices because the government is going to foot the bill no matter what the cost. That then creates greater demand for the service because those receiving the benefit are more willing to use it because they are not paying the bill and not concerned with the cost. Hence the prices go up.The same holds true for college loans and medical costs or any other government subsidized program. Market forces are not allowed to operate when the government (through newly created borrowed money and taxes)pays the bulk of the costs making it easier for folks to obtain the services.
Plastic surgery and Lasik surgery for examle are not covered by most health plans. Believe it or not, the costs of those procedures is going down while all other medical costs covered by health plans such as Medicaid and Medicare are skyrocketing. Why, because the free market is working there. There are no government subsidies being used to pay for those services. The consumer is paying out of his or her own pocket. Those who provide the services know this and must be competitive price-wise in order to secure clients. It is basic economics. This is one of the major reasons health care prices have been rising and will continue to rise. The government has stymied competition in the health field. When you factor in the aging baby-boomer generation requiring more medical care this creates an even greater demand for services which is unsustainable. It is a vicious cycle that we will never get out of unless there is a drastic restructuring of our economic system and our entitlement programs. That won't happen until we go over that fiscal cliff which is just up ahead. Then we're all going to need a government subsidized cell phone.
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This (expansion of the money supply) has never been done on the scale it is being done currently. To keep doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is insanity....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptMrAgWqRfg
This is a very good article if you have the time. Why do folks have such a hard time with common sense?
Statism Is Finished
by Jacob G. Hornberger
You see, for both liberals and conservatives, the welfare state is a given. As far as they’re concerned, the welfare state has now become a permanent part of American life. According to them, we should just accept that and then try to come up with ways to make the welfare state work, as Krugman devotes his life to doing.
Consider the basic problem. The government promises to provide a welfare dole to its citizens. For simplicity, let’s assume that the total amount of the promised dole is $1,000.00. Let’s says that the government collects the total sum of $250 in taxes.
Do you see the problem? The government doesn’t have the money to pay off the dole it has promised. It’s $750 short. But when it tries to explain that to people, they get upset and demand that the government honor its promise.
The government could go out and raise taxes on the people who have income and wealth in order to have the money to pay the entire promised dole. But the problem is that you can’t squeeze blood out of a turnip. After decades of confiscatory taxes on the Spanish people, the parasite has just about killed the private sector, which pays the taxes. If the government confiscates more wealth from the private sector, it just drives more businesses into bankruptcy and sends more people into unemployment, who then demand their share of the dole. And then what happens the following year, where people are, once again, demanding their full dole?
Interestingly enough, it seems that Krugman understands that problem because he doesn’t call for higher taxes in his article, as most liberals do. Instead, he turns to the European Central Bank to solve the problem. How? Through inflation — the printing of the money to “stimulate the economy” — or “priming the pump,” as interventionists used to call it.
But how in the world does that solve the problem? If printing money produced real, solid, long-term prosperity, Zimbabwe would have been the wealthiest nation in the world when it was inflating its currency several years ago. It wasn’t. It was possibly the poorest country in the world, in part because the government was looting and plundering the citizenry with inflationary increases in the money supply.
When the central bank inflates the money supply, it sends false signals to businessmen, banks, and investors — signals that indicate that there is increased wealth in society that can justify expanding business operations. Responding to those deceptive signals, the businessmen expand operations, the banks lend money for them, and investors put their money into the ventures.
But the problem is that increases in paper money aren’t real wealth—they’re not real capital. They are nothing but false signals and ways to plunder and loot people without raising taxes.
Ultimately, what happens? Reality sets in at some point. People figure out that there really wasn’t any increase in real wealth to justify the expansion of operations. That’s when the bubble bursts and the new round of crises occur.
That’s the welfare state and managed economy in action. Why can’t liberals and conservatives just face the fact that their beloved statist paradigm has failed and that it is incapable of being made to work?
Link:
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Will your vote really count in November? Like Stalin said, It is not important who votes, it's who counts the votes that matters...
Vote counting company tied to Romney
http://www.opednews....-120927-75.html
For those who are taking some interest in the Fed issue...
13 States Now Considering Gold and Silver as Money
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Ok, Kevin, I'll bite. I don't care who came up with this idea or when they did. This is a typical example of a government required mandate that is paid for by the consumer, as the article states, when the phone companies tack the cost of these "free" phones on to our phone bills to pay for it. Thus the government has raised the price of phone service by interfering in the market place. So this does relate to the economic discussion in a round about way. From the libertarian viewpoint the government has no business providing free (subsidized) phone service to anyone rich or poor. Nothing is free in reality. We all pay the price from cell phones to free lunch. When does it stop? When do we run out of money to pay for these things? Unfortunately, very soon. The video is pretty funny though...
Pearl Harbor and others you can came up with are included in the etc., etc.
Presidential Race (Respector Edition)
in Tongue-Tied Lightning
Posted
What's not true and unrelated to health care?
I found my candidate...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXux37wzQeQ