Obama surging in polls; unveils economic plan

Great Debates
81

[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
That’s exactly what always baffle me. People say they don’t trust the government, which they do have some control over, but they have absolutely endless love and faith for corporations which they have no control over and which have no accountability whatsoever.
[/QUOTE]

When’s the last time company thugs came to your door and forced you to work at gunpoint? When’s the last time the company drafted your kid to go work overseas for three years? When’s the last time the company unilaterally decided to change the rules and take away 15% of your paycheck, with you having no say in the matter?

Company towns barely exist anymore. Companies are accountable to their workers, to their customers, and to the other companies trying to beat them in the marketplace. Yes, I know it’s a liberal trope that people are trapped by their jobs and have to do anything the company says, but mostly that’s a load of crap. And if a company does achieve a monopoly, they are subject to U.S. antitrust law.

If big companies are so unaccountable and have so much power and can do whatever they want, why is it that Wal-Mart, which is apparently the poster child for the Big Bad Company that Oppresses the Worker, pays on average $3/hr more than minimum wage, offers health benefits, job training programs, scholarship programs for worker’s children, and made the Forbes list of the 100 best companies to work for? If they are as unaccountable as you say, and their workers are trapped and lack choices, shouldn’t they be making them work maximum hours for minimum pay and no benefits?

The market provides options. Government does not. Government has a monopoly on the use of force to get what it wants. Government has a monopoly on the right to confiscate money, and property under eminent domain. Government has a monopoly on the power to regulate commerce and force people to take economic actions they would not willingly choose to take.

The only check on this power is the ability to vote every few years for representatives in this government - a government which has gerrymandered districts and set up financing laws and which uses the power of earmarking to buy campaign donations so that incumbents can out-spend their opponents dramatically. A government where the Congress is disapproved of by almost 80% of the people, and yet in which about 90% of the incumbents will be re-elected.

Government is far more dangerous than is the free market, and restricts your liberties in much more intrusive ways.

82

[QUOTE=Sam Stone]
What Liberals never seem to understand is that you cannot have economic control and Liberty at the same time.
[/QUOTE]

And what Libertarians never seem to understand is that in real life, you can never have the one without the other.

83

Why are a number of conservatives flocking to Obama, despite the apparent gulf between his economic policy positions and theirs?

Here’s a look from The New Republic at who and why: which luminaries of American conservatism have declared their admiration and support for Barack, and on what basis.

84

[QUOTE=Sam Stone]
When’s the last time company thugs came to your door and forced you to work at gunpoint? When’s the last time the company drafted your kid to go work overseas for three years?
[/quote]

When’s the last time the US Government did those things? There isn’t any draft in America anymore, dude. That’s a strawman.

Companies do shit like that all the time and worse – they lay you off and ship your job to India.

The free market is a scam. The biggest enemy of small business is big business and big business is becoming a smaller and smaller club. Choices are becoming almost a complete illusion. Just look at gas prices right now. However limited you think the public’s control of the government is, it’s still more than what they have over corporatipns, which is nothing. We’re moving towards corporate feudalism with a massive peasant class and a few rich people. Give me a democratic government every day of the week over utterly unaccountable, greed driven, sociopathic corporations. You go ahead and put all your trust in Exxon Mobil and Rape-Mart. Without the government to put a check on them, you’ll be living in a dumpster in 5 years.

85

[QUOTE=EddyTeddyFreddy]
Why are a number of conservatives flocking to Obama, despite the apparent gulf between his economic policy positions and theirs?

Here’s a look from The New Republic at who and why: which luminaries of American conservatism have declared their admiration and support for Barack, and on what basis.
[/QUOTE]

I’ve heard good arguments for supporting Obama from conservatives, and even entertained a new myself. For example, the Democrats really need to have control again for a while for a couple of reasons - one is to send the Republicans out to the woodshed, which they desperately need, and another is to try to heal a country which has been getting more splintered and factional since Bush was elected. Some have said the Democrats need to actually run things for a while to make them more serious about national security and such.

Others have said the man’s sheer intelligence and his obvious political skills will make him effective on the world stage, restore a lot of damage done to America’s reputation, and this will be worth the leftward swing.
But I cannot fathom the people who see any kind of small government tendencies in Obama. I read Megan McArdle’s blog from time to time - and I don’t get it. She’s taken with the fact that he has an economist from the Chicago school - Austan Goolsby, as his economic advisor. This to her signals that Obama is open to free market ideas. But he also has Jeffry Leibman, a Professor at Harvard and a board member of Center for American Progress, And Dave Cutler, who was on the Council of Economic Advisors for President Clinton. So Obama has picked two economics associated with the Democrats, and one who is unaffiliated but could be said to be more in favor of markets. So really, this tells us nothing about his policies - it depends who he listens to. Therefore, you have to judge the policies themselves.

And I’m just not seeing a whole lot of free market in Obama’s ideas. It’s more of the same old tax and spend, regulation-heavy, big government liberalism that’s always trotted out by Democrats. If that’s your thing, great. Obama’s the triple threat, and you should vote for him. I just don’t understand what supporters of free markets are seeing. Maybe I’m the one missing something, so if someone can convince me or show me why he’s friendly to Libertarians, I’m all ears.

86

[QUOTE=Sam Stone]
Maybe I’m the one missing something, so if someone can convince me or show me why he’s friendly to Libertarians, I’m all ears.
[/QUOTE]
I think we’ve shown you, but I don’t think you can be convinced. You’ve decided, as you repeat endlessly, that Obama is a tax-and-spend liberal — which wouldn’t be such a laughable stance if it weren’t for the reckless economic policies of Bush and McCain. The Republicans suck up money like an F5 vortex, and then it disappears into the coffers and pockets of fatcat shadow governments like Halliburton, Blackwater, and Exxon Mobile.

You’ve already shown that you don’t intend to give honest interpretation to Obama’s policies. You lift a few phrases from his statements and either paraphrase them beyond recognition, editorialize them like Fox News reporting on a fist bump, or just plain ignore their meaning. I would remind you — what is this, the third time? the fourth maybe? — that this is not Libertaria, and measuring Obama against the standards of David Nolan is infantile in its conception. And that’s true especially if you’re going to put McCain somewhere between them.

No, there won’t be any convincing you.

87

[QUOTE=Liberal]

You’ve already shown that you don’t intend to give honest interpretation to Obama’s policies. You lift a few phrases from his statements and either paraphrase them beyond recognition, editorialize them like Fox News reporting on a fist bump, or just plain ignore their meaning.
[/quote]

It doesn’t matter what Obama says, does it - he can always change his mind and be “flexible”. Trouble is, there isn’t a scrap of evidence that he will be.

He says he wants to address high gas prices by raising taxes on oil companies and transferring the money to his constituents. Either he really believes that companies generally respond to increased taxation by freezing their prices, or he doesn’t believe that and he is lying in order to get into office. Do you have examples where Obama made false promises in order to get elected? If so, why do you trust him? If not, why do you think he is doing it now?

So everything you have been preaching about human liberty and non-coercion for the last eight years on the SDMB never counted, because Libertaria never existed?

It’s too bad. I never thought you would abandon your principles this way.

Regards,
Shodan

88

One, a middle class tax cut is a bit supply-side isn’t it? Who is more likely to spend additional discretionary dollars? The middle-class or someone who is already buying the luxury items? Trickle-across instead of trickle-down, but essentially the same. Your portrayal of Obama is just wrong.

Two, the GOP has failed to deliver on the promise of smaller and cheaper government. Bigger more bloated and more in debt is what they’ve brought.

Three, the GOP has overseen a major intrusion of the government into our lives. More rigid Federal controls over how schools evaluate students and themselves, more loss of privacy rights, more telling us how we must live. In truth they have been a libertarian nightmare.

89

And therefore the best solution is to make it worse?

Regards,
Shodan

90

As long as taxes get raised and operations in Iraq start scaling back, I’m satisfied. I’d be happiest if it were an across-the-board increase, as I don’t like asking someone to pay for what I’m not willing to pay for myself, but one way or another it needs to happen.

91

I believe Obama has refused to commit to removing troops from Iraq for at least four years, so I suspect you will be only fifty percent satisfied.

If he actually gets elected, that is.

Regards,
Shodan

92

[QUOTE=Shodan]
I believe Obama has refused to commit to removing troops from Iraq for at least four years, so I suspect you will be only fifty percent satisfied.
[/QUOTE]
One way or the other. Spending tax money we have is a step up from spending tax money we don’t have.

93

[QUOTE=Shodan]
If he actually gets elected, that is.
[/QUOTE]

Oh, he’ll get elected, all right.

But, then, so were Al Gore and John Kerry; it guarantees nothing.

94

[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
Oh, he’ll get elected, all right.

But, then, so were Al Gore and John Kerry; it guarantees nothing.
[/QUOTE]

Fantasy is fun, isn’t it? Although I don’t doubt that the Left will come up with something even more creative than foolishness about law suits and election fraud if Obama’s balloon pops.

I join you in fervent hopes that Obama is elected in the same sense that Kerry and Gore were.

Regards,
Shodan

95

[QUOTE=Shodan]
So everything you have been preaching about human liberty and non-coercion for the last eight years on the SDMB never counted, because Libertaria never existed?

It’s too bad. I never thought you would abandon your principles this way.
[/QUOTE]
And I never thought you would pose a question, answer it on my behalf, and then draw a moral judgment, but here we are. As you know very well, saying that Obama is not running for president of Libertaria is not saying that I have abandoned libertarianism. If you want to talk about Libertaria, fine. But it has nothing to do with the choice facing this authoritarian nation. Of the two candidates, Obama is more libertarian than McCain. Not just more, far more.

96

[QUOTE=Bosstone]
Spending tax money we have is a step up from spending tax money we don’t have.
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That’s exactly right. Moreover, what Republicans are so fond of calling “tax cuts” are actually spending programs. They are wealth subsidies, funding the welfare of fatcats and corporations.

97

[QUOTE=Liberal]
And I never thought you would pose a question, answer it on my behalf, and then draw a moral judgment, but here we are. As you know very well, saying that Obama is not running for president of Libertaria is not saying that I have abandoned libertarianism. If you want to talk about Libertaria, fine. But it has nothing to do with the choice facing this authoritarian nation. Of the two candidates, Obama is more libertarian than McCain. Not just more, far more.
[/QUOTE]

Examples, please? Show me where McCain’s equivalent plans are more statist.

98

[QUOTE=Sam Stone]
Examples, please? Show me where McCain’s equivalent plans are more statist.
[/QUOTE]
[ul]
[li]Wants to give billions of dollars in welfare checks to fatcats and oil companies[/li][li]Favors a permanent military presence in Iraq[/li][li]Wants to cut national security spending to pay for corporate welfare (see Doug Holtz-Eakin)[/li][li]Opposes a woman’s right to choose[/li][li]Accepts campaign contributions from registered lobbyists[/li][li]Touts “no gun control”, but voted to ban assault-type weapons[/li][li]Favors a $5,000 rebate per family for health care, with no plan to finance oversight bureaucracy[/li][li]Says he’ll do “almost anything” to save Social Security — except allow Warren Buffet to pay for his own[/li][li]Promises “no new taxes” if elected. (Where’ve we heard that one before?)[/li][li]Would appoint judges to overturn Lawrence et al. v Texas[/li][li]Co-authored McCain-Feingold campaign finance law[/li][li]Won’t allow Cuban-Americans to visit their families[/li][li]Despite evidence of abuse and negligence, wants to expand death penalty and further limit appeals [/li][li]Promises to balance budget in first term, but has no plan to back up his promise[/li][/ul]

99

[QUOTE=Liberal]
[list]
[li]Wants to give billions of dollars in welfare checks to fatcats and oil companies[/li][/QUOTE]

Once you start out with a sentence like that (eg, “fatcats”) it’s plain as day that you’re not being objective.

Can you please answer the question I asked early on? What is bold and stunning about Obama’s economic plan? Here’s how my newspaper described both candidates’ plans today:

Seriously, dude, you need to take off the rose colored glasses and look at this thing objectively.

100

[QUOTE=Liberal]
[ul]
[li]Touts “no gun control”, but voted to ban assault-type weapons[/ul][/li][/quote]
Afraid I don’t have time to do a point-by-point, but do you have a cite for this one?

Regards,
Shodan