[quote]Ryan P. McCarter wrote:
Once again, you people make me laugh, then cry. We have no jobs, and this is bad, so we should spend less money? Haha.[/quote]
The government has no feed back of where to spend the money, so they cannot possibly be efficent at it. There for I suggest anarchy now, we wouldn’t have men with degrees in multiple fields with a second language such as Japanese working at Walmart. Just saying.
[quote]Ryan P. McCarter wrote:
[quote]John S. wrote:
Ever heard of Maytag stupid? Their is a town 15 minutes from where I live that had the plant close because Unions killed it.
Maybe in a few years when you live on your own you will figure things out.[/quote]
Exactly like I was saying, thanks for proving my point. Capitalism was incapable on giving them a reasonable wage.[/quote]
The men that risk their money (owners) have to have a reward for risking their money. So, if the workers employed (president through floor sweeper) by the owner do not cover their marginal cost with their marginal revenue then the owner cannot keep them because then they are getting nothing out of it.
If a worker has a better opportunity then Maytag (read: job with higher pay) then they should go there, not force their current employer to pay the same amount as the better opportunity because they want job security. And if we had anarchy and Maytag couldn’t pay for their labor they would go bankrupt and someone else would replace them. So we wouldn’t have these problems of not being payed enough. Just saying.
[quote]Ryan P. McCarter wrote:
[quote]Beowolf wrote:
[quote]Ryan P. McCarter wrote:
Once again, you people make me laugh, then cry. We have no jobs, and this is bad, so we should spend less money? Haha.[/quote]
Who the fuck is this “we” you’re going on about? The GOVERNMENT should spend less money. You and I will do whatever the hell we like with ours.[/quote]
I’m sorry, I thought you were intelligent enough to glean some things from context. In the future, I (meaning me) will be sure to spell everything out completely so that you (meaning you, personally) will know exactly what I am talking about.
But sarcasm aside, knock yourself out trying to make a case for reduced government spending during a recession.
[/quote]
A recession is caused by malinvestments, and the recession itself cleans out these malinvestments. If you expand credit (government spending money they do not have), then you are furthering malinvestments. Hey I just made a case for eliminating government spending during a recession. See if we had anarchy, we wouldn’t have to worry about government making recessions worse. Just saying.
[quote]Ryan P. McCarter wrote:
[quote]pushharder wrote:
[quote]MaximusB wrote:
Didn’t you know Ryan is a Socialist? What’s yours is his, what’s his is his. [/quote]
Good quote.
I think this one should be framed and stickied, “Once again, you people make me laugh, then cry. We have no jobs, and this is bad, so we should spend less money? Haha.”
It truly is incredible to him that when a person, a company, a government is out of work, i.e., when little to no money is coming in, the right solution is to reduce spending. Can you imagine what his personal financial picture must look like?
Whoops, I forgot…daddy takes care of the tyke’s personal financial picture.[/quote]
I have to hand it to the right-wing. They’ve convinced people that their ignorance of economic matters is actually profound understanding. and so they assume that what is true for an individual must of course be true for the government (which must leave them baffled as to the nature of recessions, as they then cannot be understood in terms of their theory, but I digress…).
What pushharder (ironic name; when his favorite policies fail, he simply pushes harder) does not understand is that there is a certain amount of spending necessary to keep the economy in motion. When private demand falls below this point, cuts by the government will be counter-productive (he pays no attention to the fact, or perhaps does not know, that this exact policy was pursued during the Great Depression and, lo and behold, it kicked the economy back down the stairs). Yes, it is true that he could learn this by quickly skimming an introductory economics text, but he is busy being sanctimonious.
[/quote]
Your understand that individuals are the only ones that can own things right?
Yes, there does need to be a certain amount of spending to keep an economy in motion. when demand (there is only one kind of demand and that is private) falls, that is because prices are too high and the businesses needs to drop the prices to match the demand. Otherwise if the government just prints money to spend, the prices just keep going up and malinvestments keep forming, and they keep forming until they get so big that the government can’t hold them (which after watching the debacle with GM I think American could bailout our solar system) and everying goes into a recession and fixes itself. When I say fixing itself I mean malinvestments go bankrupt, businesses have to fire people that do not meet marginal productivity, businesses and laborers have to become more efficient and produce more to lower prices, so people will want to bring down their cash balances. When people want to lower their cash balances that is what puts the pep in the economies step.
However, I do not question your History knowledge, I do question your rememberance of the Great Depression. The New Deal was not a program to cut spending by the government, it greatly and drastically increased spending by the government.
If you do have some History, you can go back a decade before the great depression see the depression of 1920-1, which Harding cut spending, lowered taxes and regulations. The economy got through the painful process of letting the malinvestments go bankrupt, and started on their way again.
A recession is akin to a knife laceration with a meat cleaver. Government spending since they do not know how to allocate resources - with their lack of the feed back resource like a business - is equivalent of putting a bandage on the deep wound. Sure, it will make everything seem okay, however the bacteria is growing and creating an infection that is eating up the flesh deeper into the wound. If the government doesn’t stop putting a bandage on the wound and let the wound be cleaned out first then before too long you’ll have to just cut off the arm because it’ll all just be infection.
Now if the government didn’t put the bandage on there and first let the wound be cleaned out, there would be no reason for a bandage as long as you allowed the bacteria to be cleaned out. If we had anarchy we wouldn’t have to worry about if the government spent money or not. Just saying.
[quote]Ryan P. McCarter wrote:
[quote]MaximusB wrote:
[quote]hedo wrote:
None of my liberal friends willingly pay more in taxes to help those less fortunate but are perfectly willing to have me do so. come to think of it they are pretty stingy with their charitable giving and time too.[/quote]
Isn’t it funny how that works? Libs will preach about how we all have to “help out those less fortunate”, yet are the last ones to open up their own wallets themselves. This is what I am seeing here with our budget problems, all the unions want raises while they push for increased taxes for everyone else. [/quote]
You know, no conservative has ever given any money to charity. Yet, they always want the government to give them special treament.
And why would the unions do anything else? That’s what big business does. It’s what everyone is supposed to do under capitalism. Why the double standard?[/quote]
Actually it’s not. In capitalism, no coercion can exist. So no special laws preventing businesses from keeping strikes to destroy property, or union members from intimdating “scabs.” As well there would be no cartels, because if prices are artifically high, and someone finds out that they can do it for cheaper, they’ll jump right in there and push the competition out of the way and take their profits. Same thing with workers, if the workers are working at an artifically high wage, another person that is willing to work for less (more like a group of people willing to work for less) will jump right in there during a strike and take their jobs making a windfall profit and pushing the competition for the jobs out of the way. If we had anarchy we wouldn’t have to worry about coercion. Just saying.
[quote]Ryan P. McCarter wrote:
[quote]pushharder wrote:
[quote]Ryan P. McCarter wrote:
…does not understand is that there is a certain amount of spending necessary to keep the economy in motion. When private demand falls below this point, cuts by the government will be counter-productive (he pays no attention to the fact, or perhaps does not know, that this exact policy was pursued during the Great Depression and, lo and behold, it kicked the economy back down the stairs). Yes, it is true that he could learn this by quickly skimming an introductory economics text, but he is busy being sanctimonious.
[/quote]
Another historical ignoramus. Your stupidity about history simply astounds me.
No matter what some of your bozo professors have taught you FDR’s spending orgy did not help our nation out of the Depression. It prolonged it.
EVEN if it had helped, the trampling of the Constitution was abhorrent.[/quote]
Really, when you’re ignoring the austerity measures by the Roosevelt administration in 1937? How’d that help? Maybe you’re actually not quite that big a jackass, and you were just trying to dodge that particular fact. Either way, it won’t work. Also, notice how GDP took off when we started spending money we didn’t have on WWII.
[/quote]
GDP would have gone up much faster if we were an anarchy, oh yeah we wouldn’t care about that or about the war because no one would be attacking us because we are not a threat but our mercanaries would be far more advanced than the other militaries and we’d shit on them if they’d try.
And on the GDP, we wouldn’t care if we had a lower GDP, because we’d actually benefit more if China’s economy was two, five, ten times higher than us so we can take our cheap goods (comparatively) from here and make wind fall profits while still maintaining our assets over here. Which China would also benefit because the people are getting cheaper goods then they would if the product was made in their country. But if we had anarchy we wouldn’t have to worry about such a trivial thing as GDP. Just saying.
[quote]Ryan P. McCarter wrote:
Venezuela is not socialist. They are a social democracy. Besides, are you really going to compare the US to Venezuela in terms of contributions? I’m sure we’ve given much more than Mexico too, but no one is saying “See! That’s where capitalism gets you! You can’t give as much as the USA!”
Oh, those powerful, evil unions! If only we could break them up!
So the unions should make sacrifices, but not business? They need to tighten their belt, but if AIG or Bank of America decides to pay out an average of $400,000 in bonuses to every employee, that’s just the cost of doing business, right? That’s a nice double standard there. You complain about them, but it sounds to me like maybe more Americans should be in unions.
[/quote]
You ever been part of a union? Most of them are not happy campers, unions are basically workers discrimating against other workers. If there is a union, and they make it so that they get more money. That means the costs go up for the business, which means they cannot higher as many people, discriminating against other workers. Hurray unions, talk about class struggle if there ever was one. But if we had anarchy we wouldn’t have to worry about why someone didn’t have a job, we’d know they didn’t want one. Just saying.
[quote]Ryan P. McCarter wrote:
Oh, if that’s what Uncle Mises say!
You need to look at the real world instead of masturbating to the fantasies of others. Unions “kill jobs” only to the extent that capitalist businesses refuse to pay a decent wage. Again, capitalism is the problem. Chart:
Read it and weep, jackass. Unions are the most effective way to keep corporations in check, and they actually do a lot of good by keeping wages up, and therefore buying power up, and therefore reducing the likliehood of a crash due to low demand. This used to happen all the time, but of course you’re too busy emoting on the Internet to read history.
Seeing as it’s been your guys in charge for the past, oh, 200 years or so, you have a lot more explaining to do than me. You are the one who says Americans should just consent to further and further wage cuts and constantly diminishing relative wealth. Work harder, support the rich! Who is really advocating slavery here?
I’m not an expert, but I doesn’t take much to see that the emperor, in fact, has no clothes on. You on the other hand, never cease talking about how beautiful his robes are.
He says, in the middle of a sobbing outburst.
Yeah, I can see that.
That’s the stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever heard. The markets WERE left alone. This is one more cowardly attempt to avoid accepting any criticism of the system.
[/quote]
About that graph, I think you’d be surprised to find out that productivity also includes capital goods. So, if the capital good makes producing the consumer good more efficent, then that capital good will cost more. The actual laborer (from President to the mill worker) has decreased his or her actual physical labor while still receiving higher real wage. But if we had anarchy we would have to worry about if something is productive, because if it wasn’t it likely would not be getting paid. Just saying.
[quote]Ryan P. McCarter wrote:
[quote]John S. wrote:
Ever heard of Maytag stupid? Their is a town 15 minutes from where I live that had the plant close because Unions killed it.
Maybe in a few years when you live on your own you will figure things out.[/quote]
Exactly like I was saying, thanks for proving my point. Capitalism was incapable on giving them a reasonable wage.[/quote]
Actually the union workers infringed upon the non-union worker and businesses private property by demanding higher pay and threating damages if not accepted. So, not only did the union workers discriminate against non-union workers (there is your class struggle) they also stiffled the voluntary contract between two people to exchange private property. But if we had anarchy we wouldn’t have to worry about someone restricting exchange of private property. Just saying.
[quote]Ryan P. McCarter wrote:
Aw, boo hoo! Is this the same capitalism that pays the average CEO between 300 and 400 times the annual salary of a starting worker? Enough with the double standards. CEOs, management, and stockholders pillage companies and it’s “the invisible hand will take care of it,” but a union does the same thing to a FAR lesser extent and they “kill the business?” You need to come up with some CONSISTENT set of standards by which to judge things. Who knows? If that companies’ managers had taken a 5-10% pay cut, maybe the workers could have all gotten a raise. Yet it wasn’t THEIR greed that killed the business, it was the much lower-paid workers?
You won’t listen to me, but how about Adam Smith?
“We rarely hear, it has been said, of the combinations of masters, though frequently of those of the workmen. But whoever imagines, upon this account, that masters rarely combine, is as ignorant of the world as of the subject.”
He also noted that there were no laws against combining to lower the price of work, but many against combining to raise it.
[/quote]
Yes masters combine, but then another master comes in and pushes them out of the way and rakes in the money and the employees. He takes a cut on potentional profit which he now makes a bigger profit then he was before so he is alright with that, he now pays his employees more because the other masters probably had artifically low wages. It’s competition baby, no government needed. But if we were in anarchy we wouldn’t have to worry about all this. Just saying.
I love everyone. And if we had anarchy we wouldn’t have to worry about this. Just saying.
Brother Chris,
You should see the unions here in LA right now, they are SCREAMING that they be immune from job cuts as we try to balance our budget. They really do pull out the big guns too. They had people showing up in canes and wheelchairs (not joking), saying how they will be out on the street, but they have no problem if the private sector loses jobs.
The truth of the matter is is that government should never have gotten so big and created so many worthless jobs (i.e. the Dept of Aging, again not kidding). Our mayor, the one who left his wife to be with a reporter who left that one to be with another reporter, said he will cut 1000 union jobs. The picketing, screaming, and sky-falling drama is already coming.
[quote]Ryan P. McCarter wrote:
[quote]orion wrote:
[quote]Ryan P. McCarter wrote:
[quote]SteelyD wrote:
[quote]Ryan P. McCarter wrote:
You know, no conservative has ever given any money to charity. [/quote]
Just when I thought you couldn’t possibly get any more retarded.
[/quote]
Making stupid, sweeping generalizations sure is annoying, isn’t it? How come no one complained when Maximus did it?[/quote]
That is because “conservatives” give more toi charity than “liberals”, always have, always will.
Funny how that works, huh?
Those people who think that “the government” should fix it cannot be bothered to use their own time and money to help their fellow human beings whereas right wing, religious nutjobs make it their personal responsibility.[/quote]
Prove it. This is not Mises.org, when you make a positive statement, you need to back it up.
Otherwise, I could just continue to say, “Liberals give 10,000x more to charity than conservatives,” and you couldn’t argue with me.
[/quote]
That is actually a pretty well known fact and there is more than one study.
I am surprised that you never bothered to check this, because it is not entirely unimportant who only talks the talk and who actually walks the walk.
Here is the book:
Interestingly, those donating the least amount percentage wise are young liberals :-)…
[quote]MaximusB wrote:
Brother Chris,
You should see the unions here in LA right now, they are SCREAMING that they be immune from job cuts as we try to balance our budget. They really do pull out the big guns too. They had people showing up in canes and wheelchairs (not joking), saying how they will be out on the street, but they have no problem if the private sector loses jobs.
The truth of the matter is is that government should never have gotten so big and created so many worthless jobs (i.e. the Dept of Aging, again not kidding). Our mayor, the one who left his wife to be with a reporter who left that one to be with another reporter, said he will cut 1000 union jobs. The picketing, screaming, and sky-falling drama is already coming. [/quote]
I have a boner just thinking about fucking up unions.
Here is a personal story that involves a union. I was “in a union” for a while, which is funny because I never actually paid anything to be in the union. And about two weeks into my employement (I was actually a sales and administration intern, so I was paying to work there) they tried to “talk” me into joining the union.
I told them straight out, “I do not receive a fucking penny from this work. You want me to pull out more fucking money out of a paycheck I do not have (which I would have if the union wasn’t there in the first place so I had to settle for a non-pay internship) to pay union fees when you guys are discrimating against me so I can’t get a paycheck?”
They didn’t listen to me, and about a week later they set up the picket line.
I ended up getting in a shoving match with someone in the line, I ended up telling the kid I would eliminate his ass if he laid his hands on me again and that I’m still doing this job for free because I want to work, unlike his lazy ass and if it was me I’d fire his ass and fuck his new bride (just kidding about the last part, but it did run through my mind).
However the few days I did work while they were on strike I did get a nice fat pay check.
I assumed that you read the whole thread. I was attempting to show how ludicrous it is to make a groundless, extremely broad generalization like that. As it was designed to do, it provoked outrage, but what you ignore is that this and other distortions of the truth occurs all the time in this forum, and no one has any problem with it until it comes from someone who, politically, is at all to the left of Rush Limbaugh. In other words, in this respect too, there are a great many hypocrites on this board.
Interesting that we can believe the lying liberal media in this instance, but not when its reporting contradicts right-wing catechism.
[quote]You do this so often that I usually assume it is simply for the “troll” value and therefore often ignore it.
[/quote]
Once again, there’s a usually a point in there (made sarcastically, but a point nonetheless), which, as you did this time, you probably ignore because the implications are uncomfortable.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
[quote]JEATON wrote:
[quote]Ryan P. McCarter wrote:
Finally, thank you! Now was that so hard?[/quote]
You totally miss, or ignore, the fact that it was you who presented the opposite as fact, without any proof other than your assertion.
The fact that conservatives are significantly more giving in everything from money, to time to blood has been so thoroughly covered in all media that I assumed your were just trolling again.
You do this so often that I usually assume it is simply for the “troll” value and therefore often ignore it.
[/quote]
Bingo. I tend to ignore him, much to his aggravation, because he is soooooo far out there he really doesn’t warrant much of my time. I’m sure he thinks, in his own lil Alice in Wonderland world, that he’s “winning” the argument though.[/quote]
Actually, the fact that you are continually unable to come up with a single fact to support you is what makes me think I’m “winning.”
[quote]MaximusB wrote:
Ryan,
If companies like AIG have paid back all their TARP money, I don’t see why we should regulate how they spend their money. Since they paid back all the TARP, it truly is all their money. What you are referring to is what would be nice versus what is legal.[/quote]
I don’t recall saying we should regulate them? At least not at any unprecendented level.
I assume you realize that it is a logical fallacy to suggest that the number of people who believe a proposition has anything to do with its correctness? Most of the nation voted for Barack Obama and yet this forum is not at all hesistant to call them stupid and insinuate that they know nothing. By your own logic, should you not reevaluate your own position?
And besides, I HAVE reevaluated my own opinions. I do so constantly. In fact, I used to agree with you in almost every single respect. It was only AFTER I began to reevaluate my opinions that I have come to my present ones.
[quote]Brother Chris wrote:
[quote]Ryan P. McCarter wrote:
Once again, you people make me laugh, then cry. We have no jobs, and this is bad, so we should spend less money? Haha.[/quote]
The government has no feed back of where to spend the money, so they cannot possibly be efficent at it. There for I suggest anarchy now, we wouldn’t have men with degrees in multiple fields with a second language such as Japanese working at Walmart. Just saying.[/quote]
This is a great example of a bogus, made-up assumption. What does that even mean, “not efficient” at spending money? It doesn’t matter where they spend the money. Since government can spend money on the same things that individuals can, to disagree means that there must be some “distribution” of spending (by which I just mean some specific set of goods) which could be spent by consumers which would be inefficient, since it makes no difference to a producer whether a given purchase is made by the government or an individual. But people are supposed to be able to spend their money however they wish, and the market will adapt accordingly. So to maintain your present opinion, you cut away a foundational principle of free-market economics, since you must implicitly maintain that it is possible for consumers to spend their money the “wrong” way.
But I have learned about it, and your explanation is simply flat-out false. It just didn’t happen.
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=dont_blame_the_community_reinvestment_act
“Finally, in late 2008, Federal Reserve Board economists Glenn Canner and Neil Bhutta analyzed the 2005 and 2006 Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data to understand the relationship between CRA and the sub-prime crisis. After observing that “the [sub-prime] crisis is rooted in the poor performance of mortgage loans made between 2004 and 2007,” Canner and Bhutta found that in 2006 ‘only 10 percent of all loans [were] ‘CRA-related’ – that is, lower income loans made by banks and their affiliates in their CRA assessment areas.’”
Here’s the paper:
http://www.minneapolisfed.org/publications_papers/pub_display.cfm?id=4136
“However, the CRA does not stipulate minimum targets or even goals for the volume of loans, services, or investments banking institutions must provide.”
http://www.businessweek.com/investing/insights/blog/archives/2008/09/community_reinv.html
“Just the idea that a lending crisis created from 2004 to 2007 was caused by a 1977 law is silly. But itâ??s even more ridiculous when you consider that most subprime loans were made by firms that arenâ??t subject to the CRA. University of Michigan law professor Michael Barr testified back in February before the House Committee on Financial Services that 50% of subprime loans were made by mortgage service companies not subject comprehensive federal supervision and another 30% were made by affiliates of banks or thrifts which are not subject to routine supervision or examinations.”
â??‘This very small share makes it hard to imagine how CRA could have caused, or even contributed in a meaningful way, to the current crisis,’ she said."
The Comptroller of the Currency. John C. Dugan, agrees: “CRA [the Community Reinvestment Act] is not the culprit behind the subprime mortgage lending abuses, or the broader credit quality issues in the marketplace. Indeed, the lenders most prominently associated with subprime mortgage lending abuses and high rates of foreclosure are lenders not subject to CRA. A recent study of 2006 Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data showed that banks subject to CRA and their affiliates originated or purchased only six percent of the reported high cost loans made to lower-income borrowers within their CRA assessment areas.”
About Fannie and Freddie:
http://www.businessweek.com/investing/insights/blog/archives/2008/09/fannie_mae_and.html
“Start with the most basic fact of all: virtually none of the $1.5 trillion of cratering subprime mortgages were backed by Fannie or Freddie. Thatâ??s right â?? most subprime mortgages did not meet Fannie or Freddieâ??s strict lending standards. All those no money down, no interest for a year, low teaser rate loans? All the loans made without checking a borrowerâ??s income or employment history? All made in the private sector, without any support from Fannie and Freddie.”
In addition, it’s hard to imagine why the CRA or the Fed’s policies would contribute sifnificantly to high housing prices in Spain, among other places. In addition, the large amounts of American debt purchased by parsimonious foreigners would have helped to push interest rates down anyway.
But there’s not enough information here to assume that the raise they wanted would have had any such effect. You simply assume it. The many successful strikes throughout history that have ended with raises for the workers, which did not ruin the company (or even significantly affect its operations) should stop us from jumping to such hasty conclusions.
This assumes there is a better opportunity. It doesn’t allow for the very possible fact that people in a given profession are simply underpaid in general.
Oh, I’m very much for “anarchy.” I don’t think it would end the same way you do, though.