Extra Federal Revenue From Tax Increases - Where Should it Go?

[adios]

Looks to me like most on this forum support having their Federal taxes raised. Kerry has stated that he's would like to increase the highest marginal tax bracket so perhaps my first statement is wrong. Kerry's proposal will conceivably add about $135 billion to current federal revenues if I remember the estimates correctly. The budget deficit will not be erased with an extra $135 billion. With that in mind which should have a higher priority, narrowing the budget deficit or adding social programs?

[CCass]

I voted to trim the deficit. Having said that, I am not in favor of raising federal income taxes on any of the brackets, highest or otherwise.

[Sloats]

I'm in favor of cutting taxes and having the federal goverment only concern themselves with transportation, military operations, public relations and boarders, and other national issues.

[Cptkernow]

Perhaps you should invent a time machine and go back to victorian England.

[adios]

...

[Sloats]

Maybe I should just accept that this country is becoming socialist and personal responsibility and planning means nothing.

[adios]

....

[Cptkernow]

To think America is socialist would put you somewhere right of Ghenhis Khan.

[MMMMMM]

It would be nice if the Left would just consider leaving everybody the hell alone.

[Sloats]

is

becoming

Now I know what Clinton's problem was.

[ThaSaltCracka]

[ QUOTE ]
It would be nice if the Left would just consider leaving everybody the hell alone.

[/ QUOTE ]
It would be nice if BUSH would consider leaving everyone the hell alone. I voted to trim the deficit.

[Kurn, son of Mogh]

Back to the taxpayers where it belongs.

[MMMMMM]

That applies to much of the Right, too, of course.

It is such a fundamentally flawed way of thinking to look to government to solve all social ills. All social ills will NEVER be solved, and the more you meddle, the more other problems will be created.

Moreover, the more security citizens ask government to provide, the more liberties are inevitably curtailed in the quest for cradle-to-grave security. Government does not give anything without taking away commensurately in other areas--actually, taking away more than commensurately, when you figure in the overhead and waste.

[ThaSaltCracka]

....

[Kurn, son of Mogh]

It never ceases to amaze me how all these big government types think it's OK for the government to use its power to "solve society's ills" as long as they agree with the definition of the problem and solution.

Isn't the Bush administration trying to forge a better society (at least from the perspective of their constituency)?

Once the electorate decides they want the government to proactively mold how we live, the theory of unintended consequences take over.

To all the liberals out there. Once you decide that it's the government's job to remake society you agree that the conservatives have the right to do it too?

OK, now reverse the words "liberals" and "conservatives" in the previous sentence and repeat.

[Sloats]

So in essence, what you are saying that there is no difference between the candidates for the Republicans and Democrats. That the only difference between Kerry and Bush that really matters is that Bush went to Yale.

[Cptkernow]

I dont think government should fix social ills.

I think it should act as a check and balance to other entities that have social and economic power without having the resposibilites or mandate that elected officials have.

ergo I want a powerfull body with the ability to protect citizens against more rapacious elements in our society.

P.s. For a very simple and accesible way of seeing what would become of the world if libertarians had there way see Robocop.

Omnicorp anyone.

[Cptkernow]

[ QUOTE ]
is

becoming

Now I know what Clinton's problem was.

[/ QUOTE ]

To think America is becoming socialist would put you somewhere right of Ghenhis Khan.

[andyfox]

OK. Let's start with the Iraqis.

[MMMMMM]

Saddam was aggressive towards us (attempted to assassinate GHB, constant antiaircraft fire at our planes), was supportive of our enemies, and presented an unacceptable potential future security risk.

We can leave Saddam and his cronies alone--permanently--after they are dead.

[adios]

It's not an either or choice, it's which should have the highest priority. I understand your sentiment about taxes and perhaps you believe that status quo is fine regarding the budget deficit and social spending.

[IrishHand]

I voted for decreasing the defecit. Seems to me that the first step is a balanced budget...then a surplus to pay off debt...then more/better social programs. Of course, all of that requires some combination of increased revenue and decreased spending. Increased taxes combined with better spending (getting rid of the massive waste and excesses which exist in so many gov't programs) would be a good start.

Which taxes? All of them - but with a special consideration for the higher wage earners. This whining about creating disincentives to make more money is senseless - if you net $500,000 of your first million in income, and then $250,000 for each additional million, you're still going to make as many millions as you can. Plus, you can sleep peacefully knowing you're contributing to the betterment of your country's citizens. /images/graemlins/smile.gif

In reference to some of the above comments: I laugh my butt off every time I hear people talk about how socialist this country is. Most democracies (pretty well every one in Europe, for example) are far, far more concerned with the plight of their citizens than the US. Indeed, the Democratic party is conservative by any reasonable world-wide standard. Health care, education, welfare...all grossly inadequate and inefficient for a nation of the US's wealth and power.

[HDPM]

Why? America has tons of ridiculous social programs and massive restrictions on business. We have Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, subsidized housing, and spend huge amounts of money on education at the federal level. There are unconscionable regulations on business. There are all kinds of governmental controls on everything. The United States certainly is not a capitalist country, although we have more vestiges of capitalism than other places and is why we are richer than many places. If we took the brakes off the economy and slashed taxes we really would do well. Alas, we steal almost half of people's working year to pay useless taxes and subsidize people in retirement. That's pretty much socialist in my book. Private parties still own the businesses, but the government hijacks the production. Not pure socialism, but we are getting there.


Guess I'm to the right of Ghengis Khan. However, I think of the government more like a pillager who uses force to steal from others. So I guess Ghengis Khan is closer to our governmental policy than I. Maybe you are right. /images/graemlins/smirk.gif

[IrishHand]

[ QUOTE ]
constant antiaircraft fire at our planes

[/ QUOTE ]
Keep in mind that he was shooting at planes that were violating his sovereign airspace, and were generally engaged in finding ground targets to attack.

Say Canada started flying military flights over Washington, Idaho, N. Dakota, etc. and periodically attacked US military bases. Then say that we fire our obsolete and inneffective AA guns at them in order to encourage them to desist in those activities. You think we're the aggressors?

[adios]

[ QUOTE ]
That the only difference between Kerry and Bush that really matters is that Bush went to Yale.

[/ QUOTE ]

So did Kerry, he was 2 years ahead of Bush. As an aside, I've been reading a Kerry biography. Neither one states that they remember meeting each other at Yale. From the biography a third party stated that they did meet and had a spirited discussion about the merits of force integration through school bussing.

[MMMMMM]

Didn't the U.S. have the right to enforce no-fly zones, in accordance with the terms of the cease-fire agreement?

[Kurn, son of Mogh]

No. I'm saying that neither one of them truly matches my opinions. The LP is much closer to my Pro-choice, pro-gun ownership, anti-tax, pro-freedom for gays, anti-welfare, anti-corporate subsidies, pro separation of church and state, anti public education, anti drug prohibition and anti gambling regulation beliefs.

[MMMMMM]

"Plus, you can sleep peacefully knowing you're contributing to the betterment of your country's citizens."

I'd sleep more peacefully knowing I'm not;-)

Not interested unless maybe it's someone I know personally, or maybe a homeless person I see on a street corner. I've certainly loaned or given money to individuals on occasion. How about YOU contribute to everyone else, if you want to so badly, OK? Don't try to force others too, though; that's both arrogant and immoral.

"Health care, education, welfare...all grossly inadequate and inefficient for a nation of the US's wealth and power."

Better to have to wait a couple years for basic elective surgery, then, as under socialized medicine in many Western countries?

Has public school education gotten better or worse since we started throwing federal monies at it?

"Most democracies (pretty well every one in Europe, for example) are far, far more concerned with the plight of their citizens than the US."

What plight? Are a bunch of people in Europe actually starving? Are a bunch of people in the USA actually starving? Most poor people probably have a car, 2 TV's, electricity, running water, money for food, beer, cigarettes and maybe drugs. Their PLIGHT??? That's what you call a PLIGHT???

The homeless: now they actually have a plight. Other than that, the merely lower income folks are actually fairly rich by historical standards.

It would be laughable if so many people didn't subscribe to this nonsense.

[Kurn, son of Mogh]

I dont think government should fix social ills.

Good. We agree.

[/b] I want a powerfull body with the ability to protect citizens against more rapacious elements in our society.

I agree. It's called the police and the justice system.

Omnicorp anyone.

That's more likely with government regulation than in a free market. Note the consolidation of the banking and communications industry over the last generation. Monopoly by definition needs a government mandate.

see Robocop

Or Demolition Man. "In the future, all restaurants are Taco Bell." /images/graemlins/grin.gif

[Kurn, son of Mogh]

Then pay down the debt.

[Sloats]

But shouldn't we be voting for a leader and not a empty suit who will follow a party platform?

(and yes, I know Kerry went to Yale.)


edit: replace you with we rinse, lather, and repeat....

[Sloats]

[ QUOTE ]
I dont think government should fix social ills.

I think it should act as a check and balance to other entities that have social and economic power without having the resposibilites or mandate that elected officials have.

ergo I want a powerfull body with the ability to protect citizens against more rapacious elements in our society.

P.s. For a very simple and accesible way of seeing what would become of the world if libertarians had there way see Robocop.

Omnicorp anyone.

[/ QUOTE ]

A couple more lawsuits against the police and that might just sound like a good idea. Do I really want to be paying with my taxes an economic judgement against a governmental institution? By privatizing the police, I can pay for more patrol and security and if they overstep their boundaries with an accused party who does not respect their authority in a situtation, than only that corporation's assets are at risk and not my future earnings.


(Yes, a strange deviation and slightly tongue in cheek.)

[Kurn, son of Mogh]

Most democracies (pretty well every one in Europe, for example) are far, far more concerned with the plight of their citizens than the US. Indeed, the Democratic party is conservative by any reasonable world-wide standard. Health care, education, welfare...all grossly inadequate and inefficient for a nation of the US's wealth and power.

This is such an irrationally short-sighted way to look at life it depresses me. I for one don't want to live in a world where the government "looks out" for me, and all the struggle and uncertainty is removed from life by the "benevolence" of the collective.

Everything you mentioned, health care, education, welfare, is an *individual* responsibility. Remove the onus of individual resonsibility accountability and failure, and you've ceded control of your life to the government. Pretty soon, they're telling what is and is not right to think. From the way you and most europeans talk, the brainwashing has already begun to take root.

Where's my "Don't Tread on Me" flag? /images/graemlins/cool.gif

[Cptkernow]

It all depends on what you see as the greater Evil.

Big business or Big government.

Whilst we do live in a time of big governemnet, it is possible to look at periods were government was tiny in comparison to how it is today.

That is why I made a comment early on in this thread about biulding a time machine and going back in time.

What you have to realize is that big governmnet is a result of big business, it has evolved out of conditions created by big business, would you have had the social programmes of FDR if unfettered capatalism hadnt created the crash of 29?

We have big government mostly due to agitation by the working classes earlier on in this century agianst horrendous working conditions and social inequality. States also realized that they had to maintain a healthy and educated social body if they were to compete in the modern geo-political arena. Concesesions had to be made out the working classes to gain there consent and obedience.

The reason why America is the least socialist of werstern democracies is because the American business hegemony has done a great job of idealogicaly mind raping the working classes of Yankland and basicaly stoped them forming collectively as succesfully as the working classes in Europe.

Basicaly, I am firm mixed economy guy. Looking back at the USSR you can see how big gov fucks up and looking back in time to the victorian period you can see how unfetered capatalism can [censored] up.

Whilst the Victorian age saw massive advances in all areas of human endevour it also saw massive inequalities (average life expentacy liverpool 1878=29) and those that had to bear the cost of this advancement started revolting all over the place and had to be paid off.

Aristotle said that "The virtue is a meen" meaning the middle path is best. Thats my take. For me the greatest achievment of Mankind, putting a man on the moon, was achieved by this middle path.

I think libertarian would ultimatley cause a breakdown in the social order.

How much personal responsibilty can you have if someone else controls all of your access to recources you need to live. Your only choice is to rebel against that fecker and put systems in place to ensure no fecker gets that amount of controll. Congrats you just created government.

However I do agree with you as regards goverment intrusion into choice. [censored] OFF AND LEAVE ME ALONE if I want to smoke weed/gamble etc etc.

Also as a final irony, I would like to point out that my income is entirely derived from online poker.

Here in the UK we dont pay tax on gambling winnings. RESULT /images/graemlins/laugh.gif

[IrishHand]

[ QUOTE ]
Everything you mentioned, health care, education, welfare, is an *individual* responsibility.

[/ QUOTE ]
How so?

Really though, it all comes down to a value judgment - do you think people are entitled to those things or not? If a nation decides that its citizens are entitled to education, then those people should (and do, in most other countries) fund schools and colleges so that any person who so desires can be educated to the level they desire. Similar rationale applies to health care, although welfare is a separate issue.

[ QUOTE ]
Where's my "Don't Tread on Me" flag?

[/ QUOTE ]
You can get one on eBay for under $10 including shipping - I'm still waiting on my Canadian and French flags. /images/graemlins/smile.gif

[Sloats]

You understand that America doesn't have 'classes'. I persons stature in society is somewhat determined by his wealth and he has the ability to change that and thus change his 'class'.

[IrishHand]

Re. the no-fly zones: that's a subject of contention. We apparently felt that those areas belonged to us. If we saw Iraqi radar or any other attractive military target in that area (on the ground, that is), it tended to get blown up. On their side, not only did they object to our right to overfly the majority of their country, but they certainly objected to our use of ordinance in that area.

[ QUOTE ]
I've certainly loaned or given money to individuals on occasion. How about YOU contribute to everyone else, if you want to so badly, OK? Don't try to force others too, though; that's both arrogant and immoral.


[/ QUOTE ]
OK - so you're an anarchist. That's fine. I appreciate different perspectives, although I certainly don't share those particular ones.

[ QUOTE ]
Better to have to wait a couple years for basic elective surgery, then, as under socialized medicine in many Western countries?

[/ QUOTE ]
Better for everyone to wait a couple of years than for some to get it right away and some to never get it. (And FYI - that argument is completely bogus for the US - the reason there are waits in other countries is because their health care programs are underfunded. You can't rationally argue that the wealthiest country in the world couldn't adequately fund their health care programs such that there would be sufficient equipment.)

[ QUOTE ]
Has public school education gotten better or worse since we started throwing federal monies at it?

[/ QUOTE ]
Your argument is what - that the quality of education decreases relative to the funding that education receives?

[ QUOTE ]
Are a bunch of people in Europe actually starving?

[/ QUOTE ]
Yes.

[ QUOTE ]
Are a bunch of people in the USA actually starving?

[/ QUOTE ]
Yes.

[ QUOTE ]
Most poor people probably have a car, 2 TV's, electricity, running water, money for food, beer, cigarettes and maybe drugs.

[/ QUOTE ]
Easily the most elitist and ignorant thing I've read today. Regardless, if that's your concern - redefine "poor" so that it meets whatever criteria you believe it should have - they still exist, as do their problems.

[ QUOTE ]
The homeless: now they actually have a plight.

[/ QUOTE ]
A rational person would have included them in the "poor" noted earlier.

Like I said above - it comes down to whether you think there's any sort of common responsibility to your fellow man. If it's all about the individual and his pursuit of wealth at the expense of all else, then go to it, my friend.

[MMMMMM]

America didn't need FDR's new deal. There was a similar crash and depression in the 1800's and we came out of it then too.

About the only think I agree with out of all of the reforms generated from the New Deal movement, etc. is maybe safety standards in the workplace.

[Kurn, son of Mogh]

I think libertarian would ultimatley cause a breakdown in the social order.

This presupposes that we're not capable of dealing with one another rationally without Big Brother lording over us.

it is possible to look at periods were government was tiny in comparison to how it is today.

But doesn't this assume we haven't grown as a species since 1878 Liverpool? I'm not saying we have, but isn't it possible we can have small government and not repeat the same problems.

And if we're not capable as humans of not being oppressive to one another without big government, how can government avoid committing similar wrongs since it's just made up of us fallible humans as couldn't take care of ourselves without it?

It may indeed be a Hobson's choice.


However I do agree with you as regards goverment intrusion into choice.

Fine, but I'd argue that how much of your hard-earned money you keep, and on what you spend it is just as valid a choice to be protected as with whom you sleep or whether or not to have an abortion.

[Cptkernow]

I understand that because of the aforementioned mind raping yanks think they dont have classes.

Class= opportunities/means to access wealth.

So therefore someone born in the projects would come from a different class to Paris Hilton.

Of course one can change class, its called social mobility.

[IrishHand]

[ QUOTE ]
I'd argue that how much of your hard-earned money you keep, and on what you spend it is just as valid a choice to be protected as with whom you sleep or whether or not to have an abortion.

[/ QUOTE ]

Define "hard-earned money."

[Cptkernow]

"And if we're not capable as humans of not being oppressive to one another without big government, how can government avoid committing similar wrongs since it's just made up of us fallible humans as couldn't take care of ourselves without it?"

There called Elections.. Democracy is of course a vital/essential part of the middle path.

[Kurn, son of Mogh]

Similar rationale applies to health care

Health care is not an entitlement. It is a service provided by the labor of others. Thus it is provided in a marketplace. The fact that I may need the services of a doctor does not mean that I have the right to force him to provide that service for less than market rates. Were I a doctor, I would be free to donate my services free of charge to those who might need them, but no power has the moral authority to force me to do that.

[Kurn, son of Mogh]

Define "hard-earned money."

Any money you earn without resorting to force or fraud.

[Cptkernow]

Kurn.

It boils down to this. I believe Government is the only thing protecting me from exploitation by some other fecker who beats me in the resulting land grab that would ensue the day the libertarian party gets elected.

in short No Government=

No Choice but working our asses off 24/7 for peanuts 99% of us.
Party time and loads of choice for 1%.

[adios]

[ QUOTE ]
What you have to realize is that big governmnet is a result of big business, it has evolved out of conditions created by big business, would you have had the social programmes of FDR if unfettered capatalism hadnt created the crash of 29?

[/ QUOTE ]

Basically the depression was brought on by mismanagement of the money supply. The stock market crash was a symptom not a cause. The Fed's main job today is to maintain price stability and they do that by effectively managing the money supply. Also during the years Roosevelt was president prior to WWII unemployment remained very, very high. Here's an article more or less debunking your claim:

Great Myths of the Great Depression (http://www.uaca.ac.cr/acta/1998nov/lreed.htm)

Great Myths of the Great Depression
Lawrence W. Reed

Many volumes have been written about the Great Depression and its impact on the lives of millions of Americans. Historians, economists, and politicians have all combed the wreckage searching for the "black box" that will reveal the cause of this legendary tragedy. Sadly, all too many of them decide to abandon their search, finding it easier perhaps to circulate a host of false and harmful conclusions about the events of seven decades ago.

How bad was the Great Depression? Over the four years from 1929 to 1933, production at the nation’s factories, mines, and utilities fell by more than half. People’s real disposable incomes dropped 28 percent. Stock prices collapsed to one-tenth of their precrash height. The number of unemployed Americans rose from 1.6 million in 1929 to 12.8 million in 1933. One of every four workers was out of a job at the Depression’s nadir, and ugly rumors of revolt simmered for the first time since the Civil War.

Old myths never die; they just keep showing up in college economics and political science textbooks. Students today are frequently taught that unfettered free enterprise collapsed of its own weight in 1929, paving the way for a decade-long economic depression full of hardship and misery. President Herbert Hoover is presented as an advocate of "hands-off", or laissez-faire, economic policy, while his successor, Franklin Roosevelt, is the economic savior whose policies brought us recovery. This popular account of the Depression belongs in a book of fairy tales and not in a serious discussion of economic history, as a review of the facts demonstrates.



The Great, Great, Great, Great Depression
To properly understand the events of the time, it is appropriate to view the Great Depression as not one, but four consecutive depressions rolled into one. Professor Hans Sennholz has labeled these four "phases" as follows: the business cycle; the disintegration of the world economy; the New Deal; and the Wagner Act.[1]

The first phase explains why the crash of 1929 happened in the first place; the other three show how government intervention kept the economy in a stupor for over a decade.



Phase I: The Business Cycle
The Great Depression was not the country's first depression, though it proved to be the longest. The common thread woven through the several earlier debacles was disastrous manipulation of the money supply by government. For various reasons, government policies were adopted that ballooned the quantity of money and credit A boom resulted, followed later by a painful day of reckoning. None of America’s depressions prior to 1929, however, lasted more than four years and most of them were over in two. The Great Depression lasted for a dozen years because the government compounded its monetary errors with a series of harmful interventions.

Most monetary economists, particularly those of the "Austrian school", have observed the close relationship between money supply and economic activity. When government inflates the money and credit supply, interest rates at first fall. Businesses invest this "easy money" in new production projects and a boom takes place in capital goods. As the boom matures, business costs rise, interest rates readjust upward, and profits are squeezed. The easy-money effects thus wear off and the monetary authorities, fearing price inflation, slow the growth of or even contract the money supply. In either case, the manipulation is enough to knock out the shaky supports from underneath the economic house of cards.

One of the most thorough and meticulously documented accounts of the Fed’s inflationary actions prior to 1929 is America’s Great Depression by the late Murray Rothbard. Using a broad measure that includes currency, demand and time deposits, and other ingredients, Rothbard estimated that the Federal Reserve expanded the money supply by more than 60 percent from mid-1921 to mid-1929.[2] The flood of easy money drove interest rates down, pushed the stock market to dizzy heights, and gave birth to the "Roaring Twenties".

By early 1929, the Federal Reserve was taking the punch away from the party. It choked off the money supply, raised interest rates, and for the next three years presided over a money supply that shrank by 30 percent. This deflation following the inflation wrenched the economy from tremendous boom to colossal bust.

The "smart" money –the Bernard Baruchs and the Joseph Kennedys who watched things like money supply– saw that the party was coming to an end before most other Americans did. Baruch actually began selling stocks and buying bonds and gold as early as 1928; Kennedy did likewise, commenting, "only a fool holds out for the top dollar".[3]

When the masses of investors eventually sensed the change in Fed policy, the stampede was underway. The stock market, after nearly two months
of moderate decline, plunged on "Black Thursday" –october 24, 1929– as the pessimistic view of large and knowledgeable investors spread.

The stock market crash was only a symptom –not the cause– of the Great Depression: the market rose and fell in near synchronization with what the Fed was doing.



Phase II: Disintegration of the World Economy
If this crash had been like previous ones, the subsequent hard times might have ended in a year or two. But unprecedented political bungling instead prolonged the misery for twelve long years.

Unemployment in 1930 averaged a mildly recessionary 8.9 percent, up from 3.2 percent in 1929. It shot up rapidly until peaking out at more than 25 percent in 1933. Until March 1933, these were the years of President Herbert Hoover-the man that anti-capitalists depict as a champion of noninterventionist, laissez-faire economics.

Did Hoover really subscribe to a "hands off the economy", free-market philosophy? His opponent in the 1932 elections, Franklin Roosevelt, didn’t think so. During the campaign, Roosevelt blasted Hoover for spending and taxing too much, boosting the national debt, choking off trade, and putting millions of people on the dole. He accused the president of "reckless and extravagant" spending, of thinking "that we ought to center control of everything in Washington as rapidly as possible", and of presiding over "the greatest spending administration in peacetime in all of history". Roosevelt’s running mate, John Nance Garner, charged that Hoover was "leading the country down the path of socialism".[4] Contrary to the modern myth about Hoover, Roosevelt and Garner were absolutely right.

The crowning folly of the Hoover administration was the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, passed in june 1930. It came on top of the Fordney-McCumber Tariff of 1922, which had already put American agriculture in a tailspin during the preceding decade. The most protectionist legislation in U.S. history, Smoot-Hawley virtually closed the borders to foreign goods and ignited a vicious international trade war. Professor Barry Poulson notes that not only were 887 tariffs sharply increased, but the act broadened the list of dutiable commodities to 3,218 items as well.[5]

Officials in the administration and in Congress believed that raising trade barriers would force Americans to buy more goods made at home, which would solve the nagging unemployment problem. They ignored an important principle of international commerce: trade is ultimately a two-way street; if foreigners cannot sell their goods here, then they cannot earn the dollars they need to buy here.

Foreign companies and their workers were flattened by Smoot-Hawley’s steep tariff rates, and foreign governments soon retaliated with trade barriers of their own. With their ability to sell in the American market severely hampered, they curtailed their purchases of American goods. American agriculture was particularly hard hit. With a stroke of the presidential pen, farmers in this country lost nearly a third of their markets. Farm prices plummeted and tens of thousands of farmers went bankrupt. With the collapse of agriculture, rural banks failed in record numbers, dragging down hundreds of thousands of their customers.

Hoover dramatically increased government spending for subsidy and relief schemes. In the space of one year alone, from 1930 to 1931, the federal government's share of GNP increased by about one-third.

Hoover's agricultural bureaucracy doled out hundreds of millions of dollars to wheat and cotton farmers even as the new tariffs wiped out their markets. His Reconstruction Finance Corporation ladled out billions more in business subsidies. Commenting decades later on Hoover's administration, Rexford Guy Tugwell, one of the architects of Franklin Roosevelt’s policies of the 1930s, explained, "We didn’t admit it at the time, but practically the whole New Deal was extrapolated from programs that Hoover started".[6]

To compound the folly of high tariffs and huge subsidies, Congress then passed and Hoover signed the Revenue Act of 1932. It doubled the income tax for most Americans; the top bracket more than doubled, going from 24 percent to 63 percent. Exemptions were lowered; the earned income credit was abolished; corporate and estate taxes were raised; new gift, gasoline, and auto taxes were imposed; and postal rates were sharply hiked.

Can any serious scholar observe the Hoover administration’s massive economic intervention and, with a straight face, pronounce the inevitably deleterious effects as the fault of free markets?



Phase III: The New Deal
Franklin Delano Roosevelt won the 1932 presidential election in a landslide, collecting 472 electoral votes to just 59 for the incumbent Herbert Hoover. The platform of the Democratic Party whose ticket Roosevelt headed declared, "We believe that a party platform is a covenant with the people to be faithfully kept by the party entrusted with power". It called for a 25 percent reduction in federal spending, a balanced federal budget, a sound gold currency "to be preserved at all hazards", the removal of government from areas that belonged more appropriately to private enterprise, and an end to the "extravagance" of Hoover’s farm programs. This is what candidate Roosevelt promised, but it bears no resemblance to what President Roosevelt actually delivered.

In the first year of the New Deal, Roosevelt proposed spending $10 billion while revenues were only $3 billion. Between 1933 and 1936, government expenditures rose by more than 83 percent. Federal debt skyrocketed by 73 percent.

Roosevelt secured passage of the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA), which levied a new tax on agricultural processors and used the revenue to supervise the wholesale destruction of valuable crops and cattle. Federal agents oversaw the ugly spectacle of perfectly good fields of cotton, wheat, and corn being plowed under. Healthy cattle, sheep, and pigs by the millions were slaughtered and buried in mass graves.

Even if the AAA had helped farmers by curtailing supplies and raising prices, it could have done so only by hurting millions of others who had to pay those prices or make do with less to eat.

Perhaps the most radical aspect of the New Deal was the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), passed in June 1933, which set up the National Recovery Administration (NRA). Under the NIRA, most manufacturing industries were suddenly forced into government-mandated cartels. Codes that regulated prices and terms of sale briefly transformed much of the American economy into a fascist-style arrangement, while the NRA was financed by new taxes on the very industries it controlled. Some economists have estimated that the NRA boosted the cost of doing business by an average of 40 percent–not something a depressed economy needed for recovery.

Like Hoover before him, Roosevelt signed into law steep income tax rate increases for the high brackets and introduced a 5 percent withholding tax on corporate dividends. In fact, tax hikes became a favorite policy of the president’s for the next ten years, culminating in a top income tax rate of 94 percent during the last year of World War II. His alphabet agency commissars spent the public's tax money like it was so much bilge.

For example, Roosevelt’s public relief programs hired actors to give free shows and librarians to catalogue archives. The New Deal even paid researchers to study the history of the safety pin, hired 100 Washington workers to patrol the streets with balloons to frighten starlings away from public buildings, and put men on the public payroll to chase tumbleweeds on windy days.

Roosevelt created the Civil Works Administration in November 1933 and ended it in March 1934, though the unfinished projects were transferred to the Federal Emergency Relief Administration. Roosevelt had assured Congress in his State of the Union message that any new such program would be abolished within a year. "The federal government", said the President, "must and shall quit this business of relief. I am not willing that the vitality of our people be further stopped by the giving of cash, of market baskets, of a few bits of weekly work cutting grass, raking leaves, or picking up papers in the public parks".

But in 1935 the Works Progress Administration came along. It is known today as the very government program that gave rise to the new term, "boondoggle" because it "produced" a lot more than the 77,000 bridges and 116,000 buildings to which its advocates loved to point as evidence of its efficacy.[7] The stupefying roster of wasteful spending generated by these jobs programs represented a diversion of valuable resources to politically motivated and economically counterproductive purposes

The American economy was soon relieved of the burden of some of the New Deal’s excesses when the Supreme Court outlawed the NRA in 1935 and the AAA in 1936, earning Roosevelt’s eternal wrath and derision. Recognizing much of what Roosevelt did as unconstitutional, the "nine old men" of the Court also threw out other, more minor acts and programs which hindered recovery.

Freed from the worst of the New Deal, the economy showed some signs of life. Unemployment dropped to 18 percent in 1935, 14 percent in 1936, and even lower in 1937. But by 1938, it was back up to 20 percent as the economy slumped again. The stock market crashed nearly 50 percent between August 1937 and March 1938. The "economic stimulus" of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal had achieved a real "first": a depression within a depression!



Phase IV: The Wagner Act
The stage was set for the 1937-38 collapse with the passage of the National Labor Relations Act in 1935–better known as the Wagner Act and
organized labor's "Magna Carta". To quote Hans Sennholz again:

This law revolutionized American labor relations. It took labor disputes out of the courts of law and brought them under a newly created Federal agency, the National Labor Relations Board, which became prosecutor, judge, and jury, all in one. Labor union sympathizers on the Board further perverted this law, which already afforded legal immunities and privileges to labor unions. The U.S. thereby abandoned a great achievement of Western civilization, equality under the law.[8]

Armed with these sweeping new powers, labor unions went on a militant organizing frenzy. Threats, boycotts, strikes, seizures of plants, and widespread violence pushed productivity down sharply and unemployment up dramatically. Membership in the nation's labor unions soared; by 1941 there were two and a half times as many Americans in unions as in 1935.

From the White House on the heels of the Wagner Act came a thunderous barrage of insults against business. Businessmen, Roosevelt fumed, were obstacles on the road to recovery. New strictures on the stock market were imposed. A tax on corporate retained earnings, called the "undistributed profits tax", was levied. "These soak-the-rich efforts", writes economist Robert Higgs, "left little doubt that the president and his administration intended to push through Congress everything they could to extract wealth from the high-income earners responsible for making the bulk of the nation’s decisions about private investment".[9]

Higgs draws a close connection between the level of private investment and the course of the American economy in the 1930s. The relentless assaults of the Roosevelt administration –in both word and deed– against business, property, and free enterprise guaranteed that the capital needed to jumpstart the economy was either taxed away or forced into hiding. When Roosevelt took America to war in 1941, he eased up on his antibusiness agenda, but a great deal of the nation's capital was diverted into the war effort instead of into plant expansion or consumer goods. Not until both Roosevelt and the war were gone did investors feel confident enough to "set in motion the postwar investment boom that powered the economy’s return to sustained prosperity".[10]



Whither Free Enterprise?
On the eve of America’s entry into World War II and twelve years after the stock market crash of Black Thursday, ten million Americans were jobless. Roosevelt had pledged in 1932 to end the crisis, but it persisted two presidential terms and countless interventions later.

Along with the horror of World War II came a revival of trade with American’s allies. The war’s destruction of people and resources did not help the U.S. economy, but this renewed trade did. More important, the Truman administration that followed Roosevelt was decidedly less eager to berate and bludgeon private investors, and as a result, those investors came back into the economy to fuel a powerful postwar boom.

The genesis of the Great Depression lay in the inflationary monetary policies of the U.S. government in the 1920s. It was prolonged and exacerbated by a litany of political missteps: trade-crushing tariffs, incentive –sapping taxes, mind– numbing controls on production and competition, senseless destruction of crops and cattle, and coercive labor laws, to recount just a few. It was not the free market that produced twelve years of agony; rather, it was political bungling on a scale as grand as there ever was.

Also as labor has become less influential and the US government has de-regulated many areas of business activity in the early 80's, GDP has soared in the U.S. Government has a role in the economy but that doesn't mean that there government can't be too intrusive.

[Kurn, son of Mogh]

There called Elections.. Democracy is of course a vital/essential part of the middle path.

That's not an answer. Who says the majority is always right? Do you want to put your right to play poker on the internet to a vote? Put gay marriage to a vote and it's history.

The democratic process, while important in a pluralistic society, is just as capable of oppression as any other without constraints on what is and is not subject to a vote.

[Kurn, son of Mogh]

in short No Government=


Please show me where I argued for no government?

[Sloats]

The children of Paris Hilton one day could sleep with the dogs. And if she does go bankrupt through a series of addictions, spending, and poor reproductive decisions, then her childrens economic position is due to the choices she and her ancestors made in the past. Her children would no longer be the 'royalty' of America.

And the impoverish single mother with a crack addiction who died with 4 children, one of which who decided to throw all of attention into his studies in hopes to take his mind off of all of the bad situations in his life, finds himself 30 years later a very wealthly and well respected member of his community, are his children, because of the 'class' that he was born into, deserving of the programs that assisted him into becoming the person that he is?

no. Because America does not have Classes. We do not have serfs, lords, princes,... Everyone is equal, but everyone's opportunities are based on the outcomes, risks, and decisions by those before them. Why should we reward people for bad careless decisions, like risking pregnancy in their early teens and almost certainly subjecting themselves and their children to a life of poverty and tax a couple who decide that it is smarter and safer to wait until they build up a economic security?

[MMMMMM]

"OK - so you're an anarchist. That's fine. I appreciate different perspectives, although I certainly don't share those particular ones."

No, I'm definitely not an anarchist. I just don't see the proper role of government as a nanny-state.

(re: long waits for basic elective surgery in many Western countries under socialized medicine): "Better for everyone to wait a couple of years than for some to get it right away and some to never get it."

I disagree. I don't think government should have the right to legislate such things or tell you what you can or cannot spend your money on.

"Your argument is what - that the quality of education decreases relative to the funding that education receives?"

That the huge monies thrown at it via federal programs haven't done much if any good overall.

(re: starving people) M: Just where are all the people in the USA you claim are actually starving? I don't believe there are many at all.

M: "Most poor people probably have a car, 2 TV's, electricity, running water, money for food, beer, cigarettes and maybe drugs."

Irishhand: "Easily the most elitist and ignorant thing I've read today. Regardless, if that's your concern - redefine "poor" so that it meets whatever criteria you believe it should have - they still exist, as do their problems."

M: "The homeless: now they actually have a plight."

Irishhand: "A rational person would have included them in the "poor" noted earlier."

This is hor$e$h!t. Have you ever been poor? Have you ever been homeless? Well I have been both and I can definitively state that being poor sucks but it isn't a plight. Being homeless is a plight.

It is your position that is elitist, not mine. And by the way I am doing just fine now, thank you very much. Also, I didn't get out of the trap by availing myself of government aid programs.

"Like I said above - it comes down to whether you think there's any sort of common responsibility to your fellow man. If it's all about the individual and his pursuit of wealth at the expense of all else, then go to it, my friend."

Any sense of responsibility you have may be personally administered by personally helping your fellow humans. If you're so concerned, why don't you go volunteer some time at the local homeless shelter or find some individuals to help out somehow.

Government trying to fill those needs generally just screws things up and manages to waste a lot of resources. It also takes away our liberties in the process of trying to be a nanny-for-all.

In the final analysis, everyone has got to learn to make it in this world. That's one of the reasons we are here in the first place. Asking government to lift this burden from people is asking for the impossible--and generally tends to lead in the direction of Utopian nightmares instead of Utopian dreams.

[MMMMMM]

^

[andyfox]

"the Truman administration that followed Roosevelt was decidedly less eager to berate and bludgeon private investors, and as a result, those investors came back into the economy to fuel a powerful postwar boom."

Wasn't the creation, and subsequent fantastic growth, of the military industrial complex the main reason for our postwar economic boom?

[Cptkernow]

Who is that guy.

What a woefully inadequate and incomplete analysis.

Intresting how he fails to mention at all the main reason most other commetators give for the crash. I mean he could of at least mentioned it to debunk it.

I can assume he didnt mention/outline the consensus view because he would have been unable to continue with his shamless peice of propaganda.

Basicaly towards the October of 29, the stock market (an unregulated market compared to the stock market of today) was rising at such a phenomenonal rate that business instead of investing in productivity saw it could make more money buy just plowing its money into the stock market. Such were the levels of irrational market exuberance that no one could see the obvious outcome of this behaviour namely stagnant growth.

When investors and business finaly saw the folly of there irrational exuberance geuss what it led to irrational market hysteria.

Buy Buy Buy turned to Sell Sell Sell.

The consequence of this was a fecked stock market in which the majority of businesses had investod and therefore lost there equity and could not invest in new production and therefore a long period of economic stagnation ensued.

That is the consesus shared by most Academics of note.

[Sloats]

[ QUOTE ]

That is the consesus shared by most Academics of note.

[/ QUOTE ]

Not to diminish what you said, but there is an attitude that the majority of the academics in the US are socialist by nature.

[adios]

[ QUOTE ]
That is the consesus shared by most Academics of note.

[/ QUOTE ]

Not Milton Friedman. In "Monetary History of the United States 1867-1960" by Milton Friedman and Anna J. Schwartz. (1963) the myth you cite was basically debunked. Friedman in his book Capitalism and Freedom gives a very good synopsys on what he found to be the causes of the Great Depression. I'm too lazy to type in the synopsys. As far as Friedman's credentials well I think it's fair to say that his ideas are very well respected and basically the world's central banks have incorporated Friedman's ideas in their monetary policy of today. If you think about it, mismanagement of the money supply makes perfect sense. The stuff you wrote about businesses is bull. Inventories were rising and consumption was falling. The Great Depression was characterized by deflation, decreasing demand for goods and services.

[adios]

Probably although there was a global expansion as well.

[Sloats]

[ QUOTE ]
Basicaly towards the October of 29, the stock market (an unregulated market compared to the stock market of today) was rising at such a phenomenonal rate that business instead of investing in productivity saw it could make more money buy just plowing its money into the stock market. Such were the levels of irrational market exuberance that no one could see the obvious outcome of this behaviour namely stagnant growth.

When investors and business finaly saw the folly of there irrational exuberance geuss what it led to irrational market hysteria.

Buy Buy Buy turned to Sell Sell Sell.


[/ QUOTE ]

NASDAQ?

[scalf]

/images/graemlins/cool.gif extra fed revenue should go to those making gr8ter than 200k/yr..

they do all the work

gl /images/graemlins/cool.gif /images/graemlins/diamond.gif

[Nemesis]

Going into the healthcare field... i think that socialized medicine and socialist ideas in general are the WORST thing that can possibly happen to america. If i'm rewarded for how hard i work with more money i'll work damn hard. If i get the same whether i fill 10 prescriptions or 100 i'll fill 10 and collect my paycheck. Social Security/Medicare are bullshit too... i'm 21 i doubt i'll ever see a dime, but i'll pay for oh so many people, with an average salary of 100k for me and 100k for my wife that puts me up in the top 1% i think? Anyway you know how bad the rake sucks... well this is a fuckin bad rake.

[Cptkernow]

Friedman is one academic who is particulary biased to one form of economic anaylsis.

Please tell me how much velocity of money you expect there to be after a crash of the magnitude of 29.

P.S. Velocity of money is an actual economic technical term related to moneterist theories. This weakness Friedman shows to this answer basicaly undermines his whole arguement.

As for the central banks yes they did turn to friedman for a
small period of time but only after the oil shocks of the 70s.

Ironicaly it was the pesky Arabs that put the end to demand side economics and the full empployment of the 50s 60s and early 70s.

The central banks rejected friedmans extremist moneterasim some time in the mid 80s.

[Cptkernow]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

That is the consesus shared by most Academics of note.

[/ QUOTE ]

Not to diminish what you said, but there is an attitude that the majority of the academics in the US are socialist by nature.

[/ QUOTE ]


Not by nature. If one spends an extended time specialising in objective and formal study using ones intellect the intellect comes to left leaning conclusions of its own violition.

As these conclusions are the only ones that the intellect can support.

[Nemesis]

Funny to me that the people making [censored] (acadamians or whatever) are very socialistic in their ideas, but the people who are paying for their foodstamps or whatever don't want anything to do with it. Seems stupid... "you" want somebody else to work for you so "you" can do whatever while everything is taken care of by big brother.

[Cptkernow]

Please define whatever.

You make 50k a year (pounds sterling) Hardly a world beater are you.

P.S. Those on "low" incomes pay a much larger proportion of there wages on tax than those on "high" wages.

[Nemesis]

I make 15k a year i'm a student, i don't claim that 100k a year is a TON, but it's in the top 5% for sure. I don't know how they do it in Britain, but in the US it's a scaled thing. You make x to y and you pay z% anything over y you pay z+10% and so on. The more you make the more you pay. Whatever ... i'll define it as a less than optimal use of your time. Whether that use be smoking crack, or debating why blue is a better color than red... it's not very productive.

[Cptkernow]

Hate having to repeat myself.

Those on "low" incomes pay a much larger proportion of there wages on tax than those on "high" wages.

[Nemesis]

I am fairly sure you're WRONG on that. For example if you make up to 100,000 a year you pay 20% taxes nice and flat. You pay 1/5th of your wages in taxes. However, if you make over 100,000 a year then everything up to 100,000 is taxed at 20%, but everything over is taxed at 40%. So say you make 200,000 per year. First you pay 20,000 for the first 100k, then you pay 40,000 for the second 100k for a total of 60,000 in taxes out of 200,000. Which is 30%... 3/10ths of your wages in taxes as opposed to 2/10ths. So what were you saying?

[Cptkernow]

1st let me assure you that what I have written above is a well established fact.

You have to to remember it is PROPORTION that is important and it is not a result of income tax. It is sales taxes such as VAT that lead to this state of affairs.

At its simplest those on low incomes SPEND more of that income instead of saving it. Therefore they incur more sales tax in relation to there income.

[Nemesis]

i know what a damn proportion is. And people with more money pay a higher proportion of their income to taxes. I will qualify this with the statement that an intelligent wealthy person can hide/delay taxes in ways that an uninformed not so wealthy person may not. This could account for a disproportional payment of taxes, but if you go off of taxed EARNINGS then the more money you make the higher ammount and proportion it is you pay.

[Cptkernow]

You have to to remember it is PROPORTION that is important and it is not a result of income tax. It is sales taxes such as VAT that lead to this state of affairs.

PLease try reading all of my post.

[Sloats]

SO it makes perfect sense that every 25 cents of every dollar I make goes to put food in someone else's mouth. That every fourth row of crops I till goes to someone not working at all. That every 2 hours that I stay extra at work and away from my newborn should go to some woman who had an unwarranted pregancy and allow her to stay at home full time?

People WORK for personal gain. People do not work for the betterment of everybody. Socialism and the betterment works great if you have everybody focused on a greater good and willing to undergo self-sacrifice -- like a monastary. However it does not work in practice with people who are willing to but their own needs and desires over the "less -fortunate". I'm sorry for you, but here, we are responsible for making our own fortunes. We do not discount the sufferings and hard work of our ancestors just because everyone is not level.

What you suggest is equivalent to everyone walking into a poker room with the same amount of money, and regardless of how they played they all leave with the same amount.

[Cptkernow]

"What you suggest is equivalent to everyone walking into a poker room with the same amount of money, and regardless of how they played they all leave with the same amount."

Where on earth do I suggest that. Indeed all I have said about my position is that I am a mixed econmoy guy. There will still be lots and lots of inequality in a mixed economy.

Do you even know what the term mixed economy means?

[adios]

[ QUOTE ]
Please tell me how much velocity of money you expect there to be after a crash of the magnitude of 29.

[/ QUOTE ]

If the velocity of circulation is declining rapidly you don't cut the money supply. The Fed cut the money supply drastically. Thanks for making my point.

[ QUOTE ]
As for the central banks yes they did turn to friedman for a small period of time but only after the oil shocks of the 70s.

[/ QUOTE ]

Basically the central banks do among other things is indirectly target the money supply via inflation targets.

[ QUOTE ]
Ironicaly it was the pesky Arabs that put the end to demand side economics and the full empployment of the 50s 60s and early 70s.

[/ QUOTE ]

Unemployment in the U.S.A hit an all time historic low in 2000 if my memory isn't too foggy. It was around 2000 if not 2000. If you look at unemployment rates in the U.S.A today they're actually low historically. What unemployment rate represents full employment in the U.S.A is open to debate but the U.S.A is not that far from it. Unemployment rates have dropped a lot since the push to deregulate in the U.S.A occurred in the late 70's and the labor movement lost much of it's clout in the early 80's. Anyway your statement seems like a red herring.

[ QUOTE ]
The central banks rejected friedmans extremist moneterasim some time in the mid 80s.

[/ QUOTE ]

Not totally in fact this is misleading. Does this prove that your claims about the causes of the Depression are right? Another red herring. The popular vogue today is New Keynesian Economics where inflation is targeted. By targeting inflation, interest rate changes are a function of deviations from the target inflation rate. As interest rates change the money supply changes. I don't think the Fed in 1929 was using inflation targets.

[adios]

[ QUOTE ]
There will still be lots and lots of inequality in a mixed economy.

[/ QUOTE ]

Basically almost all economies are mixed. The degree to which they redistibute income is different though. Which more or less gets us back to the original topic of this thread. To what degree should government redistribute income? Obviously there's no clear cut answer and it's a matter of a choice (hopefully) that a society makes. I think it's fair to say that you and I would have much different ideas on how income should be redistributed /images/graemlins/smile.gif. I'm not one of these guys that state there should be zero re-distribution either and to be honest I believe I'm open minded about this topic. I hate to see the suffering of people that are homeless, severely medically incapacitated, elderly people, people below the poverty line and what have you. I think it's clear now that at least a big part of the social agenda promoted in the 60's and 70's in the U.S.A was if not disasterous at least ineffective and wasteful.

[Cptkernow]

"If the velocity of circulation is declining rapidly you don't cut the money supply. The Fed cut the money supply drastically. Thanks for making my point."

With this one statement you prove in one stroke that you dont misunderstand the Economic history of that period.

Thw whole point of FDRs programmes was to spend money that didnt exist in the private civil economy because it had all been lost in the crash.

How did they get this money. Simple they printed it. They had to because of the fantastic loss of equity in the Crash of 29. There was no actual value left in the economy.

This is Kenysian econimics at its purest. Government prints and spends money to stimulate growth and the economy. It then raises intrest rates to combat the resulting inflation caused by all this new money in the supply. Demand side economics at its purest.

[adios]

[ QUOTE ]
With this one statement you prove in one stroke that you dont understnd in anyway the Economic history of that period.

Thw whole point of FDRs programmes was to spend money that didnt exist in the private civil economy because it had all been lost in the crash.

[/ QUOTE ]

Which doesn't prove your point about the cause of the depression. Are you going to try and tell me that FDRs programmes were an effective means of combatting unemployment?

[ QUOTE ]
How did they get this money. Simple they printed it. They had to because of the fantastic loss of equity in the Crash of 29. There was no actual value left in the economy.

This is Kenysian econimics at its purest. Government prints and spends money to stimulate growth and the economy. It then raises intrest rates to combat the resulting inflation caused by all this new money in the supply. Demand side economics at its purest.

[/ QUOTE ]

I guess you are. That's baloney at least your definition of acceptable unemployment rates and mine are much different.

[Cptkernow]

[ QUOTE ]

I think it's fair to say that you and I would have much different ideas on how income should be redistributed /images/graemlins/smile.gif.

[/ QUOTE ]

Thats whats been intresting about this thread. I been painted by some (Sloats) as some kinda lefty radical, where as I am actualy very happy with the statu quo as it stands now (At least in the UK, one thing that shocked me about my trip the USA was its underclass who seemed frozen out of any chance of social mobility).

Indeed if there have been any wako extremist radicals in this thread it has been the no tax nut jobs.

I think a state that dosnt invest in the education of its civil population is basicaly asking to arse reemed hard. Especialy as our societies become more technocratic.

[Cptkernow]

"Which doesn't prove your point about the cause of the depression"

No it proves my point that you are speaking baloney when you said the fed cut the money supply.

[Cptkernow]

[ QUOTE ]

How did they get this money. Simple they printed it. They had to because of the fantastic loss of equity in the Crash of 29. There was no actual value left in the economy.

This is Kenysian econimics at its purest. Government prints and spends money to stimulate growth and the economy. It then raises intrest rates to combat the resulting inflation caused by all this new money in the supply. Demand side economics at its purest.

[/ QUOTE ]


[ QUOTE ]

I guess you are. That's baloney at least your definition of acceptable unemployment rates and mine are much different.

[/ QUOTE ]

Actualy the approach I point out (Keysian economics) was used by every western government upintill the mid 70s when OPEC decided to make this approach impossible by inlfating our markets by raising the price of oil.

This period post war - mid 70s (The period of Keynsian economic consensus) is refered to as a period of full employment consensualy by ALL economic historians as it would be futile to deny it.

CHECK MATE. /images/graemlins/cool.gif

[MMMMMM]

..."one thing that shocked me about my trip the USA was its underclass who seemed frozen out of any chance of social mobility)."

Uhh, like who? IMO the onbly ones who are frozen out of upwards class mobility are the truly mentally deficient or perhaps the mentally ill...and sadly there is nothing much that can be done about that...and I'll bet that holds in the U.K. also.

I don't believe there are any truly others in the USA who are frozen out of any chance of social mobility...the homeless are, though, as long as they remain homeless--but few remain homeless for very long without some sort of compounding mental problems, which again gets us back to the initial point.

Nobody in the USA is consigned to remain poor merely by virtue of having been born poor, or of being poor at the moment.

I'll give you a clue about something else, too: having payroll taxes (social security, FICA) is a great way to prevent people from raising themselves up nearly as quickly as they might otherwise be able to do.

[Cptkernow]

Well when I visited the Projects in New Orleans I thought I pity any poor fecker born in there and didnt see much hope of anyone escaping. Especialy seeing that College etc must be paid for individualy.

Contrast with someone being born in Cape Cod.

[MMMMMM]

"Well when I visited the Projects in New Orleans I thought I pity any poor fecker born in there and didnt see much hope of anyone escaping."

Sure, I pity anyone born in the projects too. It's quite a leap from that, though, to your contention that you don't see any hope of escaping for them.

[MMMMMM]

"This period post war - mid 70s (The period of Keynsian economic consensus) is refered to as a period of full employment consensualy by ALL economic historians as it would be futile to deny it."

Just as a side note, I'm sure you realize that the economy in the 70's in the USA was lousy compared to the economy in the 80's in the USA.

[Cptkernow]

[ QUOTE ]
"Well when I visited the Projects in New Orleans I thought I pity any poor fecker born in there and didnt see much hope of anyone escaping."

Sure, I pity anyone born in the projects too. It's quite a leap from that, though, to your contention that you don't see any hope of escaping for them.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ok is not very much hope ok. Anyone who is trying to say that starting recources and access to opportunites arnt effected by such circumstances is calling white black.

[Cptkernow]

Only in the mid to late 70s.

How was the American economy in 89?

[MMMMMM]

You are still making a judgment of "not very much hope" based on an observation. How do you know the proper judgment isn't "less hope than others who are more privileged, but still plenty of hope for those who choose to work and study hard"?

[MMMMMM]

I'm comparing overall...obviously not every year.

[adios]

The money supply eventually collapsed.

[adios]

[ QUOTE ]
Actualy the approach I point out (Keysian economics) was used by every western government upintill the mid 70s when OPEC decided to make this approach impossible by inlfating our markets by raising the price of oil. This period post war - mid 70s (The period of Keynsian economic consensus) is refered to as a period of full employment consensualy by ALL economic historians as it would be futile to deny it.

CHECK MATE.

[/ QUOTE ]

The reason banks target inflation today is due to the fact that it's widely accepted that inflation is a monetary phenomona. Anyway it's irrelevant as the cause of the great depression.

Apparently your reasoning is that since Kenesian economics policy worked post World War II therefore the great depression caused the stock market crash.

[elwoodblues]

In order to succeed the poor kid has to work harder than the kid born to rich parents. The playing field is not level.

[Cptkernow]

"You still haven't proved your point that the depression was caused by the stock market crash."

Oh I see.

Your the pope and and Im Gallioe trying to prove that the world goes round the sun.

I somehow managed to miss your assertion that a massive unprecedented global stock market crash had nothing to do with the depression that started the very next day. (Coinicidence LOL). Probably because you got someone else to make it for you.

If I had noticed I could have just pissed my self laughing instead of wasting my time in this thread.

Also. Employment rates in 50s 60s and early 70s much much much better than they ever were in the 80s. Saying otherwise is tantamount to calling the world flat.

This is a reply to the post you deleted.

Checkmate infintiy+1 /images/graemlins/cool.gif

[MMMMMM]

"In order to succeed the poor kid has to work harder than the kid born to rich parents. The playing field is not level."

No kidding.

That wasn't his point, though, elwood. He went from "no hope of escaping" to "not much hope" when questioned on it. Now I'm asking how he derived "not much hope" instead of "plenty of hope, with effort".

As for your point: hey that's life. What in life is really fair? Do you think life can be made fair?

[elwoodblues]

[ QUOTE ]
Do you think life can be made fair

[/ QUOTE ]

Nope. It can be made more fair than it is now.

[adios]

Your point about Keynesian economics is a non sequiter. Your logic is screwy. Keynesian economics worked post WWII therefore the great depression was caused by the stock market crash.

[ QUOTE ]
If I had noticed I could have just pissed my self laughing instead of wasting my time in this thread.

[/ QUOTE ]

I see since you haven't made your case and someone calls you on it, you'll just take your marbles and go home.

[MMMMMM]

"Also. Employment rates in 50s 60s and early 70s much much much better than they ever were in the 80s. Saying otherwise is tantamount to calling the world flat."

Do you realize that the employment rate is not the only barometer of a healthy economy? Indeed there are some disadvantages associated with very high employment rates.

[adios]

This is not a put down at all and if it comes across that way I apologize in advance. So you would place a higher priority on funding more and/or better social programs than trimming the budget deficit I take it. I respect that point of view.

[Cptkernow]

If someone asked me to prove the sky was blue and I said go look out side and they did and then came back and said the skys green, yes I would give up.

[adios]

Except it's quite easy to see that monetary policy has substantial effects on the economy.

[MMMMMM]

[ QUOTE ]
Do you think life can be made fair?

Nope. It can be made more fair than it is now.

[/ QUOTE ]

Maybe, maybe not. I would question the basis for that assertion.

I also suggest that in general, attempts to legislate results to be more fair, inherently also involve making individual rights less important. So what is gained by way of "fairness" in material aspects is lost by way of ensuring certain rights and freedoms. As long as one isn't actually starving, I hold freedom and rights to be the more important.

[elwoodblues]

I wasn't responding to your initial post. To answer that question I would say that I don't think it is an either/or proposition. I think there are some social programs that we should fund more, there are some that don't exist that we should create (none jump to mind, but I'm sure there are), and there are some that we should reduce or eliminate. I also think that we should be budget conscious and seek to get that under control.

In sum, I think that there are some spending programs that have a higher priority than debt reduction and some that don't.

[adios]

....................

[elwoodblues]

Here's an example of how you could potentially make it more fair (I'm certainly not supporting this, just by way of example) that wouldn't be based on outcome.

Bus all the kids from East St. Louis High School to the nearest wealthy high school and vice versa. Keep the teachers and administrators and facilities the same. I posit that, to some extent, this would level the playing field.

[jcx]

[ QUOTE ]
Well when I visited the Projects in New Orleans I thought I pity any poor fecker born in there and didnt see much hope of anyone escaping. Especialy seeing that College etc must be paid for individualy.

Contrast with someone being born in Cape Cod.

[/ QUOTE ]

You're right. Those housing projects are a miserable place to live. I pity the people that live there, but not for the same reasons you do. Under the auspices of helping out the poor black man (As he obviously is not intelligent or industrious enough to succeed on his own) programs like affirmative action & the housing projects were borned. The liberal elite created for themselves a permanent underclass, a victim class that they could reliably manipulate to vote as they see fit. I certainly don't blame the black man for being angry. It's just his anger is misdirected.

The next time you grace these shores and take pity on the plight of the poor residents of the housing projects, just remember that it is your idealogical counterparts in the US that put them there.

P.S. No one else mentioned it, but I noticed in one of your posts you subtly called anyone who did not agree with your "enlightened" liberal way of thinking an idiot. I couldn't care less what your opinion is of my intellect, but wanted to point this out because it is a typical liberal way to argue. When faced with logic and facts, instead of refuting these arguements with logic and facts of your own you resort to name calling. Typical.

[Boris]

They also get all the benefits.

[jcx]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
constant antiaircraft fire at our planes

[/ QUOTE ]
Keep in mind that he was shooting at planes that were violating his sovereign airspace, and were generally engaged in finding ground targets to attack.

Say Canada started flying military flights over Washington, Idaho, N. Dakota, etc. and periodically attacked US military bases. Then say that we fire our obsolete and inneffective AA guns at them in order to encourage them to desist in those activities. You think we're the aggressors?

[/ QUOTE ]

This would assume that the Canadian military still has a plane that is able to fly. Canada's military is so dilapidated (Thanks to socialism) that you could invade at 9am and have total victory wrapped up by lunch. The same goes for most of Western Europe. I always enjoy being scolded by Europeans/Canadians (Who obviously consider themselves morally superior to Americans) who owe their freedom, their prosperity, their very lives to US protection. The nanny state you are so proud of is only possible because the US protected Europe from the Soviets post WWII, and Europe was freed from the need to sustain large standing armies. Every time a European gets a prescription filled for a new, lifesaving drug, they should get down on their knees and thank God (Oops, Europeans don't believe in God anymore) that America is sweating the bill. Remove the profit motive from medicine and there will be no incentive to discover new treatments. The best and brightest minds will go into other fields where they can be justly compensated.

MMMM...Answering your inital question. I obviously don't think taxes should be raised, but if this is an either/or choice I vote for increasing social programs. The reason is the sooner the system collapses on itself the sooner healing can begin.

[MMMMMM]

"Here's an example of how you could potentially make it more fair (I'm certainly not supporting this, just by way of example) that wouldn't be based on outcome.

Bus all the kids from East St. Louis High School to the nearest wealthy high school and vice versa. Keep the teachers and administrators and facilities the same. I posit that, to some extent, this would level the playing field."

So you would advocate, in effect, taking away the right of the residents of a wealthy area to spend their local tax dollars as they see fit--for education of their children, in this case.

What gives others the right to tell them where or how to spend their money--or to take away that for which they did spend their money?

[elwoodblues]

Well perhaps you didn't actually read all of the words in my post (which is ironic, because you copied the language that I'm referring to.) I'll repost that language so you don't have to go back:

"I'm certainly not supporting this, just by way of example"


For arguments sake --- public education should treat all schools in the state equally. If the uber rich want uber schools they can ship the little rugrats off to private school while still maintaining quality public schools with their tax dollars. Define the quality of education on a state wide basis so that the wealthy can't insulate themselves from the poor.

[Nemesis]

I propose that if you take the "bad school kids" and bus them to the rich school... very soon the rich school will be the "bad school". It's not a matter of how much money you have at your school (IMO), and somebody else brought up the fact that the more money we've thrown at public education the weaker it has gotten, it's the people in it. If they want to learn they will... if they just want to get out they will. I think that what inherently makes the poor school bad, isn't the lack of funding, but rather the lack of desire for it's atendees to better themselves.

[Garbonzo]

[ QUOTE ]
Saddam was aggressive towards us (attempted to assassinate GHB, constant antiaircraft fire at our planes), was supportive of our enemies, and presented an unacceptable potential future security risk.

We can leave Saddam and his cronies alone--permanently--after they are dead.

[/ QUOTE ]

By that "logic" we should have already invaded Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

[Garbonzo]

[ QUOTE ]
"Here's an example of how you could potentially make it more fair (I'm certainly not supporting this, just by way of example) that wouldn't be based on outcome.

Bus all the kids from East St. Louis High School to the nearest wealthy high school and vice versa. Keep the teachers and administrators and facilities the same. I posit that, to some extent, this would level the playing field."

So you would advocate, in effect, taking away the right of the residents of a wealthy area to spend their local tax dollars as they see fit--for education of their children, in this case.

What gives others the right to tell them where or how to spend their money--or to take away that for which they did spend their money?

[/ QUOTE ]

Maybe the wealthy people should support the programs voluntarily since the poor/minorities always get sent to war to die for the freedonm and safety of the wealthy....while their sons and daughters smoke weed in Canada or pretend to attend flight school.

[Nemesis]

Also on the subject of "insulating" themselves from the poor. I'd wager that 99 out of 100 "poor" people could get out of the cycle if they would work (the 1 percent i'd say are the disabled/mentally handicapped and they are the people who deserve our assistance) hard. Hell if you're willing to work and McDonald's most places you'll end up making 25k or more a year... stay there a little while and you're a manager making near 40 i would guess. So, what can you do with 25k dollars? Well you can get an inexpensive house in a decent area of town (or outside of town) and send your kids to school there giving them a chance to get a good education and therefore into at LEAST a state school... which they will qualify for financial aid and/or scholarships. Presto your kids are in a nice state school on their way to a good job, you have a nice little home to live in, and now that the kids are away from home on their own you can start to save a little for your retirement. It all seems to work. People just don't want to live modest lifestyles. They want the bling bling, fast cars, big TV's... so they buy them on credit and pay for them the rest of their lives.

[MMMMMM]

OK--I missed that somehow (talking on the phone) and was wrong in saying you advocated it.

"For arguments sake --- public education should treat all schools in the state equally. If the uber rich want uber schools they can ship the little rugrats off to private school while still maintaining quality public schools with their tax dollars. Define the quality of education on a state wide basis so that the wealthy can't insulate themselves from the poor."

Why by state? Why not have state tax dollars distributed equally or by some fair standard, but allow local communities to additionally fund public educations with their local tax dollars as they see fit? Seems to me the wealthy should be able to do whatever they want with their money. You wouldn't advocate--even for argument's sake--telling the poorer communities that which they must--or must not--spend their local tax dollars on, would you?

BTW many public school systems are in large part funded by local tax dollars. Unles you one objects to the idea of property itself, I don't see how one can argue--even hypothetically--that local communities should not be able to choose to spend their local tax dollars in any manner they might see fit. If they choose to bolster the quality of their local schools with some of that money that is certainly their prerogative, IMO.

[elwoodblues]

Showing up to a school that is literally falling apart, one that can't afford computers, with used textbooks in poor condition doesn't send a message to the students that education is important. Certainly exceptional kids will succeed in such schools. They'll succeed anywhere.

The problem is when you compare the lazy bastard rich kid (for example, me in high school --- not really rich, but lived in a rich area) to the "average" kid in the other school. One doesn't have to do much to succeed (don't do literally ANY homework other than major papers, don't EVER study, etc.) The other, due in part to the environment has to do so much more work than me. At its root that isn't a fair system.

Look back at your high school career. What percent of the students truly had a desire to learn? 5%? 10%? Transplant that same population to a poor school (where the school itself by its condition is screaming that there isn't a high priority put on education) and see how that 90% - 95% who didn't have a true desire to learn turn out. Family and culture have a lot to do with it. But for the part that the government plays in public education, it should do what it can to create an equal footing.

[MMMMMM]

"By that "logic" we should have already invaded Pakistan and Saudi Arabia."

Perhaps.

[Nemesis]

Fair enough, you acknowledged that family/home life play a big part in education... i think it is the FUNDAMENTAL part of a good education. Encouragement and discipline at home go a LONG way to makign a child into a college grad. I personally think that school vouchers which let you decide where to send your child is the best way to go, but that's just me. I think that de-regulating public schools into a more free market approach would be best as well. Basically, let schools come up with their own plans and see if they can't entice parents to send them their child aka their money with the voucher. Those poor schools will be torn down real quick or fixed up, and the rich schools will be expanding. Except ANYONE would be able to go to the "rich school". Perhaps highschool would turn into a more competitive type event such as getting into college? anyway that's off subject.

[elwoodblues]

[ QUOTE ]
BTW many public school systems are in large part funded by local tax dollars. Unles you one objects to the idea of property itself, I don't see how one can argue--even hypothetically--that local communities should not be able to choose to spend their local tax dollars in any manner they might see fit.

[/ QUOTE ]

Just because we've set up a system where the funding comes from local authorities not state ones doesn't mean that system couldn't change. I love property as much as the next guy /images/graemlins/grin.gif

[ QUOTE ]
Why by state?

[/ QUOTE ]

The smaller the area the more discrepancies between the rich and poor are found. Doing it state-wide would give a broad enough tax base where you can maintain quality schools for all, while still allowing people to vote with their feet if they don't like how the state chooses to spend its education dollars.

[ QUOTE ]
Seems to me the wealthy should be able to do whatever they want with their money

[/ QUOTE ]

They can. Go to a private school. When the state provides a public education, it should do so without regard to wealth. The state shouldn't provide an education system that (arguably) disadvantages poor kids with respect to their rich counterparts.

[ QUOTE ]
You wouldn't advocate--even for argument's sake--telling the poorer communities that which they must--or must not--spend their local tax dollars on, would you?


[/ QUOTE ]

This presupposes that it is a local tax. Just as it is currently a local tax, the system could easily be changed to a state-wide tax.



I think you are presupposing that the schools must be funded at the local level. That is how it's currently done, but there's no reason why that couldn't change.

[Garbonzo]

[ QUOTE ]
"By that "logic" we should have already invaded Pakistan and Saudi Arabia."

Perhaps.

[/ QUOTE ]

Good answer.

[MMMMMM]

[ QUOTE ]
Seems to m me the wealthy should be able to do whatever they want with their money
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
They can. Go to a private school. When the state provides a public education, it should do so without regard to wealth. The state shouldn't provide an education system that (arguably) disadvantages poor kids with respect to their rich counterparts.

[/ QUOTE ]

So they have the option to go to a private school. They shouldn't also have the option to donate to their local schools???

" presupposes that it is a local tax. Just as it is currently a local tax, the system could easily be changed to a state-wide tax.

I think you are presupposing that the schools must be funded at the local level. That is how it's currently done, but there's no reason why that couldn't change."

Even with a state tax basis for public schooling, local communities cannot be denied the right to spend local tax monies as they see fit and that would include the school system.

IMO your suggestion cannot be implemented without in some way denying private property rights.

[adios]

It seems like government is doing a rather poor job across the board in public education per your comments in this thread and John Cole's comments in the previous thread. I think the evidence is such that public schools in the aggregate are doing a poor job. Why do I want to keep sinking more and more money into such a situation? I don't.

[MMMMMM]

"It seems like government is doing a rather poor job across the board in public education per your comments in this thread and John Cole's comments in the previous thread. I think the evidence is such that public schools in the aggregate are doing a poor job. Why do I want to keep sinking more and more money into such a situation? I don't."

Agreed.

Also, it points up the inherent inefficiency whenever government tries to accomplish anything.

If you want a bad investment, invest in more government or in more government programs. Guaranteed to be near the bottom of the barrel in terms of ROI.

[HDPM]

"The other, due in
part to the environment has to do so much more work than me. At its root
that isn't a fair system."


That system is life, and no it isn't "fair."


FWIW I went to a high school that was integrated by court order. Basically the lazy bastard rich kids from my neighborhood got bused to the school with no facilities in the poor neighborhood and vice versa so each school had about a 50/50 split or whatever. The parents of the rich kids made sure the school offered college prep classes and AP classes, so by the time I got there the school had a good reputation, etc... It didn't really work because there were basically 2 schools within the same building. A college prep high school and an urban high school. Most of my classes weren't very racially mixed. A lot was caused by what went on at home and in the elementary school and junior highs. There was diversity in the sense you had an integrated school population and exposure to kids of other races in various classes. So sure, it was better than the prior system where the school board rigged the districts to segregate and didn't provide good facilities to the high school for the African American kids. So yeah, you learn some stuff from the diversity, but I don't think it substantially improved the education of any of the kids. I had a choice of public or private high school and chose public after years of private school. Looking back on it, I think I made a mistake. As relatively good as my public high school was, I don't think it was as good as the private schools I might have gone to. If I ever had kids, I would look hard for private schools because I think they are better for the most part. Problem now is that I live in an area where the private schools are religious, which I view as a major problem. Prolly have to go public with a lot of homeschool supplementing. Also, had the school I was bused in offered lousy teachers and classes, all the lazy bastard rich kids would have just gone to private schools. So if your idea of equality means you deliberately provide crappy educations to the lazy rich kids, well it won't work unless you outlaw private schools and forceably try to ruin the minds of the rich kids.

The fundamental problem is whether children should be indoctrinated by the government. I can't really see how to get rid of public schools because I think all the kids need education, but there are major problems with turning kids over to the educational-government complex IMO. And these problems will get worse with the ever increasing politicizing of educational policy.

[elwoodblues]

[ QUOTE ]
It seems like government is doing a rather poor job across the board in public education

[/ QUOTE ]

It isn't doing poorly across the board. Public education is educating many very well. Also the breadth of education is probably greater now than in years past. I think the schools are failing in some ways and succeeding in others.

[ QUOTE ]
Why do I want to keep sinking more and more money into such a situation?

[/ QUOTE ]

To do what you can to fix the problem because an educated populace is the backbone of a strong republic. Maybe privatizing education would solve the problem -- I tend to think not. Maybe "sinking" money into it alone would solve the problem --- again probably not. Maybe increasing funding AND changing the way that money is spent --- that might make a difference.

[adios]

[ QUOTE ]
Maybe "sinking" money into it alone would solve the problem --- again probably not. Maybe increasing funding AND changing the way that money is spent --- that might make a difference.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ok I agree that money could and should be spent more effectively. Government policy, at least to me, is far from being transparent so it's hard for me as an individual to evaluate the problems. In New Mexico home schooling is a definite alternative and children can receive a combination of home schooling and public education. Anecdotal evidence but my perspective is that there has been a great deal of success with children that are home schooled.

[elwoodblues]

I heard this once and thought it was appropriate --

Anyone who has ever been to a public school (or even walked past it) thinks they know how to run it.


I'm sure we're all guilty of this to one degree or another.

[adios]

My gripes haven't been so much as to how the school is run but what is taught.

[Nemesis]

or perhaps not taught?

[elwoodblues]

You very well might have more information about this than the average joe, but how do you know what is taught? People usually hear about the exception not the rule. People (again, not necessarily directed your way) rail against the one day in which a social studies class discusses diversity and ignore the 99% of the time where other topics are dicussed.

I often hear complaints that traditional science, for example, isn't being taught. Instead, they are focusing on environmental topics. Ignored is the fact that the traditional sciences can be taught through a discussion of environmental topics.

Education trends come and go. Sometimes Phonics is hot (why phonics isn't spelled with an "f" is beyond me), other times whole language. Sometimes history in context is taught other times rote history is taught. Sometimes literature focuses exclusively on the classics, other times "new" classics are explored. Through all of it, I don't know that we've found the right way to do it. Each has its benefits, each has its shortcomings.


As an aside:
There's a local talk show where they constantly complain about how poorly kids are educated "these days." Usually the downfall of the school is shortly after the complainer graduated. Ironically, any time the host has to add two numbers together everyone has a good laugh about how bad he is at math.

[elwoodblues]

What's not taught?

[Nemesis]

Well, I guess i'm what you'd call a fundamentalist. I believe in a creation of the world. It's not even paid lip service except to call people who believe in it uneducated morons basically. I feel that with all the "evidence" for evolution that there is, they should at least give equal time to creationism. There is no PROOF that either one is correct, and I think it's stupid that evolution is taught as fact, while creation a fairy tale, when there's just as much proof that either one happened.

[adios]

Still in light of what you say home schooling can (and is btw) be a viable alternative for at least some. Ok but getting back to quality of education in public schools, are you stating that really public education is doing an adequate job? Now I realize that there are many public schools and it's impossible to state categorically one way or the other and we have to define what an "adequate job" is. From my perspective I don't see very many folks that are at all happy with the public schools and from what I can gather students performance in the aggregate has declined as measured by test scores. I certainly could be wrong about that. I also realize that test scores aren't totally conclusive proof that something is amiss.

[adios]

I would surmise then that home schooling would provide a viable alternative if it all possible logistically.

[elwoodblues]

And that should be taught in science class at a public school?

[Nemesis]

I think it should have at least an honorable mention, because as i said. There's just as much proof of creation as evolution... i.e. none

[Cptkernow]

"When faced with logic and facts"

Go on. Please face me with some.

First time for everything.

[riverflush]

I'm a newbie on 2+2 but I'm gonna chime in with this:

I don't really understand how a good poker player can be a socialist/liberal. It just seems so oxymoronic.

I would assume most good poker players have a strong understand of money/economic issues, etc. and the socialist model goes against all monetary common sense. Whether on paper or in execution, it has NEVER worked. It's not working in Europe now, nor will it ever - don't fool yourself.

The poker analogy is so strong: a poker tournament is necessarily zero-sum where a group of players scheme and maneuver to win a chunck of a fixed amount of money. There is only X amount of money to win. Pretty simple concept. No money, or capital, is created.

To fail to understand that capitalism creates money and is not zero-sum just seems so incongruent with someone who portends to be a poker player. Yet, those who espouse socialism, or the redistribution of wealth, somehow go down this road with great ease.

This inability to understand how economic freedom is freedom itself is amazing to me. Without a market, goods and services (Taco Bell and life-saving health care) would cease to exist. When there is no incentive, there is little, if anything, produced. Subsequently, when there is less incentive , less is produced - which is exactly what is happening with Canada's broken health-care system.

[riverflush]

I'll add to the end of what I said:

The flip side of that is when there is more incentive , more will be produced - which is the prevailing argument of Libertarians. They would argue that the U.S.'s current shackles - even if perceived as mild - are unknowingly holding the economy from even more substantial growth and prosperity.

Believe me, most people in the U.S. (I'm from Chicago) do not look to the EU as some utopian guide. Quite the opposite.

[riverflush]

Anyway, I would argue that those who are fighting on the socialist (big government) side are losing the battle, and outside of outright civil wars, there is nothing they can do about it. Academia doesn't have a vote in the free market, it's out of their hands now.

I'll quote:

[ QUOTE ]
Take a look at where and how the products you use every day are made. Therein lies a remarkable story of the genius of entrepreneurship, the capacity for the world economy to manage itself and overcome ten thousand barriers, and the direction we are headed. It is a world in which consumers and producers from all nations can join hands in praise of the networks that draw them together, and against their common enemy: governments that would stand in the way.


To understand the world being recreated before us, we must constantly keep this principle in our mind: trade based on ownership is always and everywhere mutually beneficial. Within the institution of trade—whether on the most local level or the global level—we find the key to peace, prosperity, and human flourishing. If we understand this, we have no reason to fear our fate except to the extent that anyone anywhere dares to interfere. If we understand this, we can see why being led into the future by the political class is something we should neither desire nor expect.


[/ QUOTE ]

http://www.mises.org/fullstory.asp?control=1498

[Cptkernow]

Yes.

Big government has certianly got smaller over the last 50 years.

LOL.

[Cptkernow]

How much "innovation" do you think there would be without state sponsered education (Universitys) , research grants, military grants etc etc the list is endless.

Also please point out in this thread where there has been one hard core socialist arguemnt.

I am tired of repeating that I am a mixed economy guy.

This means that yes I see a role for markets, and in some cases markets need to be as unfettered as possible.

In other cases the market is not the best means of distribution and there needs to another form of collective organistion to handle distribution.

A classic example of this is hte railway system in Britain.

This was Privatised by the Thatcher Government.

After this its quality soon began to deteriote, to the point where the government had to step back in and tack back controll.

Another example would be environmental value. How can you expect markets to regulate and maintain environmental value unregulated. The case history shows how massively markets fail in this regard.

To assume that markets are allways the most effecient form of distributoion of economic and social goods is both naive, over simplistic and basicaly a form of extremism.

As I have said before Aristotle said that "The virtue is a mean" or in other words the middle path is best. A warrior can not be to brave or he will get him self killed needlessly or to much of a coward because he will not fight.

I am not a socialist. I take the middle sensible rational path.

[MMMMMM]

"How much "innovation" do you think there would be without state sponsered education (Universitys) , research grants, military grants etc etc the list is endless."

Tons.

There would be a lot less research on things like the evolutionary shapes of pigs' ears under disparate weather conditions, though.


"In other cases the market is not the best means of distribution and there needs to another form of collective organistion to handle distribution.

A classic example of this is hte railway system in Britain.

This was Privatised by the Thatcher Government.

After this its quality soon began to deteriote, to the point where the government had to step back in and tack back controll."

Which might indicate (to the observer without prejudice) that the railway system in Britain has become an outmoded, inefficient beast whose better days have passed, and which ought perhaps to be allowed the dignity of a natural death (if market forces cannot sustain it).


"Another example would be environmental value. How can you expect markets to regulate and maintain environmental value unregulated. The case history shows how massively markets fail in this regard."

One of the few things you have written with which I actually agree. Care must be taken however to not hastily construct regulations or systems which would cause more harm than good (e.g. Kyoto Treaty).


"To assume that markets are allways the most effecient form of distributoion of economic and social goods is both naive, over simplistic and basicaly a form of extremism."

Markets are generally efficient, not perfectly efficient. Markets are generally more efficient than any other system. To presume otherwise should require some evidence at least. I think history has shown that market forces eventually trump even the most rigorous economic plans, constraints, or interventions. Look how planned economies stagnate; how central bank interventions affect the short-term, but long-term market the market forces win out; look at the fall of communist economies and at the relatively anemic growth rates of socialist economies.


"I am not a socialist. I take the middle sensible rational path."

Taking the middle path can be OK.

Your perception of "middle", however--and much of the world's perception, too--are today both palette-shifted significantly to the left. Thus what you, and much of the world today, see as Middle, is actually moderately Left.

The United States today, by historical standards (including pre-Marxist history), is actually not middle but rather a fair bit to the left of middle.

Here is how I would reckon it: On a scale from 0-10 the USA is currently at about a 4. Your positions are probably a 2.75. The un-monkeyed with Constitution of the United States, and our economy, several centuries ago, was probably about an 8. Cuba is about a 1 or less.

[Cptkernow]

"Which might indicate (to the observer without prejudice) that the railway system in Britain has become an outmoded, inefficient beast whose better days have passed, and which ought perhaps to be allowed the dignity of a natural death (if market forces cannot sustain it)."

Which might indicate that the poster is ignorant of the 1/2 million commuters who MUST use it every day to get to work in London alone. If they could not get to work the UK economy would take a massive massive hit which is why the government couldnt let private enterprise to continue to feck it up.

The market failed here due to the inherernt monopolistic nature of railways. Another feature that leads to imperfect markets and therfore facilitating the need for other forms of social organisation to deliver a recource more effeciently. Though to be fair there is still massive room for improvement.

Before we go on MMMMMMMMM, it wouldbe unfair to debate on this issue as your experience probably dodsnt equip you to understand the British Rail System as there is nothing like it in the USA.

I dont mean this as a dig.

[MMMMMM]

"The market failed here due to the inherernt monopolistic nature of railways."

Doesn't Britain have anti-trust laws like the U.S.? Our railways aren't monopolistic. Our long-distance telephone service once was, but that is no longer the case. However I will allow that it probably is quite different than the U.S. rail system.

If there is just one major railway in Britain, then I can see your point perhaps. However that is a special case due to there being only one infrastructure. As such a special case, it does not refure the principle that markets are generally more efficient than their alternatives.

You can always find special case exceptions to any rule (well just about always;-)). Why should that special case exception seem so important when debating the overall merits of market versus government-ownership/planning?

[Cptkernow]

If you spend some time in the formal study of economics you will see that a lot of "markets" are considered inefficent due to there trend to monopoly, regardless of gov intervention like anti-trust.

Do you think windows is the best operating sytstem possible.

Imagine inventing a new super effecient/brillaint OS but non compatible with windows. Do you think the market as it stands would distribute that OS to home users?

I doubt the government in some imaginaitive way to force distribution of this product so we are left using an inferior product due to factors in the OS market environment.

I know you could go out and but a MAC. If you consider a MAC superior, research into the ratio of MACs to Windows PC's sales (sales= markets form of distribution, how it gets the product to the end user) it will only serve to demonstrate my point.

Markets can be ineffecient in lots of lots of ways. As can governement intervention also. I suggest the middle path as the best way of determining the which form of collective behaviour is best in any given scenario.

[Cptkernow]

As far as railways go the monolpolistic trend works like this.

There is an optimum path between any two points say cities.
Once 1 railway company has installed a line on this path, how is another company supposed to compete when it can only
install a line on a sub optimum route.

If you look worldwide you will see that railways tend to be state run for this reason. It is very hard to have true competetion in rail networks. Without true competition markets are ineffecient.

Due to the ideological stance of the Thatcher Government thay went ahead and privatised the railways against all accepted wisdom . This quite predictably didnt work.

[MMMMMM]

Of course there are a few exceptions, as mentioned before. That doesn't imply that collectivism is more efficient except in very, very special cases. And even then it might still not be for greater reasons in the long run.

Don't forget all collectivism carries a heavy hidden price tag in the form of overhead. It also carries a hidden cost in the form of greater government control.

I say screw it all. I'll even deal with the few monopolies and that would be a small price to pay to keep government out of our hair and our pockets.

[Cptkernow]

Why do you think collectivism is the only source of government intervention.

Why discard an option when that option might be the best one.

Its simply irrational.

[MMMMMM]

"Why do you think collectivism is the only source of government intervention."

Hmm, I don't.

"Why discard an option when that option might be the best one."

It is sometimes best to avoid the beginnings of evil. And in my opinion, the meddlings of government in society are for the most part evil. In my opinion almost the entire scope of the legitimate business of domestic government is to protect the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and personal property.

"Its simply irrational."

Sometimes the effort and encumbrance inherent in determining the most optimal in every situation is simply not worth it. As I implied, if by allowing monopolies (as part of a much larger laissez-faire approach to governance) we could also do away with government interference in other aspects of our personal lives, I for one would gladly once again allow monopolies. Indeed it would be a small price to pay.

[Cptkernow]

"It is sometimes best to avoid the beginnings of evil. And in my opinion, the meddlings of government in society are for the most part evil."

Well thats the differance between you and me. I dont think either Markets or Governments are EVIL.

I just consider them different systems with different strenghts and weaknesses so as to be applied in different contexts in relation to there strenghts and weaknesses.

I cant see how one can be intellectualy dis intrested enough to be rational if one starts from a position of such an emotional value ridden term such as Evil.

Also to just add to my earlier comment about Operating systems, its been estimated by Hank Jenkers, an anyalysytwith the World Bank that the dominence of windows and the inability of superior products to break into the domestic and corporate market has cost the global economy 10 trillion dollars since 1995. Alot of this is to do with Windows security flaws that have lead to a massive amount of down time in corparate systems.

Another thing you have to understand is that if you were some commie freak arguing about nationalising everything I would be arguing the merits of markets with you. As I said virtue is a meen and I think a meen is prety much were we are in our prsent forms of social/economic organisation.

[MMMMMM]

[ QUOTE ]
"It is sometimes best to avoid the beginnings of evil. And in my opinion, the meddlings of government in society are for the most part evil."

Well thats the differance between you and me. I dont think either Markets or Governments are EVIL.

[/ QUOTE ]

Nor do I, for that matter. I am glad to see that we are in agreememt on something! By the way, if you'll notice, I referred to the meddlings of government in society as being for the most part evil--not government itself.


"I just consider them different systems with different strenghts and weaknesses so as to be applied in different contexts in relation to there strenghts and weaknesses."

Uh, fine.

"I cant see how one can be intellectualy dis intrested enough to be rational if one starts from a position of such an emotional value ridden term such as Evil."

A statement heavy-laden with assumptions.

Is the word "evil" for some reason inherently incompatible with any possibility of dispassionate analysis?

"Also to just add to my earlier comment about Operating systems, its been estimated by Hank Jenkers, an anyalysytwith the World Bank that the dominence of windows and the inability of superior products to break into the domestic and corporate market has cost the global economy 10 trillion dollars since 1995. Alot of this is to do with Windows security flaws that have lead to a massive amount of down time in corparate systems."

Maybe so. Please note I'm not arguing against antitrust legisslation per se, but merely against general government meddling in the affairs of society (or business).

"Another thing you have to understand is that if you were some commie freak arguing about nationalising everything I would be arguing the merits of markets with you. As I said virtue is a meen and I think a meen is prety much were we are in our prsent forms of social/economic organisation."

Hmm...it is not an arithmetic mean, though, is it? Calling it the "middle way" therefore presupposes a range of some sort. That range has moved over time; see my palette-shift description in an earlier post. Again I will submit that I believe the current range to represent a significant palette-shift within a larger historical economic context. I do not agree that, say, Europe's economy/political leanings today represents a "mean" in the greater historical picture. At any rate, I think what is today often considered the middle of the road is far too Left for the good of the individual (and "society" to boot).

[Cptkernow]

"Is the word "evil" for some reason inherently incompatible with any possibility of dispassionate analysis?"

Well I approach political/economic problems the same way one would approach an enginering problem. You desire a certain outcome and then must decide how to achieve it.
Its hard to imagine someone saying;

"You cant biuld the Dam that way, it would be Evil"

Just out of intrest what do you consider more evil, a meddling government raising income tax 1cent to fight child poverty and then wasting it, or a tobacco company hiring lobbyists to attempt to claim that there product dosnt cause cancer, or a car manufacturer not recalling its faulty cars because its accounting shows it will be cheaper to face the law suits caused by the resulting road deaths. (A decision that obeys market logic to the letter)

Also you might want to visit Sweden, that has an Evil meddling government on a scale unseen in the UK or USA.

Check out there excellent health care, lowest international suicide rates and excellent standard of living. There citizens score highest on tests to measure satisfaction of the population also.

You wont see anything like the projects, which is the most shocking poverty I have ever personaly seen.

[MMMMMM]

"Just out of intrest what do you consider more evil, a meddling government raising income tax 1cent to fight child poverty and then wasting it, or a tobacco company hiring lobbyists to attempt to claim that there product dosnt cause cancer, or a car manufacturer not recalling its faulty cars because its accounting shows it will be cheaper to face the law suits caused by the resulting road deaths. (A decision that obeys market logic to the letter)"

Depends to some extent the human cost of throwing away that one percent. Lost money can and often does equate to lost lives as well.

"Also you might want to visit Sweden, that has an Evil meddling government on a scale unseen in the UK or USA.

Check out there excellent health care, lowest international suicide rates and excellent standard of living. There citizens score highest on tests to measure satisfaction of the population also."

Sweden definitely does not have the lowest international suicide rates.

Suicide Rate
Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1997 (Table No. 1339, Page 834)
Suicide and Self-Inflicted Injury, by Country
Source Data: World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland,
World Health Statistics Annual

Country Rate (per 100,000)
Finland 26.4
Denmark 20.4
Austria 20.4
France 19.8
Switzerland 19.6
Japan 15.1
Sweden 14.7
Germany 13.8
Norway 13
United States 11.8
Netherlands 9.6


http://www.mcdl.org/Stats/gnpsuicide.htm

As you can see, too, the USA has a lower suicide rate than Sweden.

Lokking to the lower chart on the page (which the HTML won't copy here), we see that among the highest GNP nations, Sweden ranks 7th and the USA ranks 10th.


"You wont see anything like the projects, which is the most shocking poverty I have ever personaly seen."

Yep it's pretty bad. But how much of it is poverty and how much is simply drugs and crime? I agree the projects are of course quite undesirable. But some people living, in, say, rural Appalachia or Downeast Maine are actually poorer than those in many "projects". Yet they don't have nearly the violent crime rate, the drugs, etc. of the projects. I believe dense local populations combined with poverty are what tends most to drive up the violent crime rate. Drugs too, of course.