Does the Constitution authorize the Congress to levy taxes and spend that revenue?
Well apart from the specific claims of the economists at UCLA, even if a recovery took longer, why should the economy be allowed to re balance itself, liquidate bad debt and find an equilibrium? That should be obvious that preventing this process will drag out the inevitable. And why did the recovery only happen when, after WWII, the spending was cut two thirds and the taxes were cut one third? What if we pursued these polices a decade earlier?
Surely you can see that the length of the Depression is not exactly a point in FDR’s favor. What about the Depression of 1920-21? The government did nothing and a robust recovery happened in less than a couple of years.
What is your opinion of this? How come my theories worked in practice and yours created a fifteen year catastrophe? Do the facts matter to you?
Because his “concerns”, which you’ve previously labeled as correct predictions, are not going to come true. He’s wrong.
He can be “right” about that when it actually happens. Not before.
Look, I have every confidence that you smugly point to every item on Ron Paul’s list of predictions that you’ve judged as “right”, and think to yourself about how accurate a predictor he is. Yet, when it’s clear that some of them are 100% unambiguously not right you hand wave that away, just like you’re doing now. You walk through the list, using some items as evidence of how accurate and genius Paul is, and redefine the other ones as “things to look out for” as opposed to predictions.
Do you see how that methodology could never come to any conclusion other than “Ron Paul can see the future?” We’re getting mighty close to self-parody here.
See, if you’d just said that at the beginning, instead of talking about how he’s been right about everything, we wouldn’t have had to waste so much time. Now admit that you’re wrong, Ron Paul isn’t a visionary oracle, and we can all go home and have cake.
A few misconceptions should be cleared up about Gold, the Gold standard and its use as money:
Check this out: http://www.ridelust.com/wp-content/uploads/oilgoldsm.jpg
Gold has lasted over thousands of years, fiat currencies crash and burn.
How would they do that without government action? The governments role is to prevent this sort of thing and allow free entry and healthy competition in the marketplace.
Lasting and stability are not synonymous. Personally, I do not want the feudal economies that predominated over the majority of those thousands of years. YMMV.
The fact that you could make this statement, suggesting that the linked article does anything but deride and debunk the thesis you support, shows just how deeply your cognitive dissonance is entrenched. It takes absolutely herculean twisting of logic and complete blindness to facts for “many” to “come to that conclusion”.
Uh huh. Exploitation would be the rare exception rather than the rule, huh? Just like throughout history, right? The rising tide floats all boats, does it? Too bad the rich peoples’ boats just get more and more palatial, while everybody else has to crowd onto the fewer and fewer crappy rafts remaining afloat.
“Myths” of the evils of the market?!!? To this I can only offer hysterical laughter. Please tell the child laborers and other literal wage slaves of your halcyon 19th century how lucky they really were to be exploited, worked into debilitation, injured and crippled, then cast aside and replaced by others. Hell, tell it to coal miners today, for whom, despite government “interference”, life isn’t markedly different from that of their forebears in the dawn of the industrial revolution.
You load sixteen tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt.
Saint Peter, don’t you call me, 'cause I can’t go;
I owe my soul to the company store.
This is the true ideal of free market advocates. You should perhaps lessen your blind adulation for your Austrian heroes and learn a bit more about the real world around you.
Right, the consumer price index, which I have explained is a bullshit measurement of true inflation. It is not accurate. What makes that article from four years ago not applicable in relation to the inaccuracy of government statistics about inflation?
Jesus Christ you are fucking clueless. Okay, how about this. What causes inflation? Do prices just magically go up for no reason one day? What causes the rising of prices? Right, the printing of money, the growth of the monetary base.
This CAUSES prices to rise. Rising prices can be defined as inflation. The point I and the Austrians make is to focus on the cause of rising prices and all the harm that causes. Here, read this and put some much needed wisdom in your head for a change:
We need to understand the harm caused by inflation and attack the problem at the source, the creation of money and credit at the Federal Reserve system.
Then you would agree that we have very high levels of inflation, even if prices haven’t risen yet. Learn the true definition of inflation. Inflation is causing horrendous problems RIGHT NOW, but the CPI says there is no inflation.
No I am explaining how the Fed can print so much money and how they can claim we have deflation at the moment. People who have a faulty definition of inflation, like yourself, don’t see the possible hyperinflation looming because prices are steady or even going down at present. According to the increase in the monetary base we have experienced very high levels of inflation. It won’t be hyperinflation until things get out of hand and prices shoot through the roof. Then people will experience the pain caused by Fed polices NOW.
I am pointing out the follow of saying that there is no risk for inflation because prices are dropping slightly. That drop is the market trying to correct itself and price assets at their proper worth. The Fed won’t allow that, thus printing more and more paper money to prevent falling prices. That is how we can appear to be experiencing both deflation of prices and inflation of the currency.
Prices will soar in the next couple of years, however, and nobody will deny the effects of inflation on the economy.
Okay, so what causes inflation? If you answer that the fed printing money, you made my point. If you reject that, you must things inflation has no cause, it merely happens for mysterious, unknown reasons.
That is inflation right there. Rising prices are INEVITABLE after that much printing of money.
Let me understand this correctly. You believe there is no correlation between printing money and rising prices? Is that correct? Are you even vaguely aware of how insane that it?
Some of what you are saying here is actually insane and offensive. What link did I EVER post that claimed that blacks, Jews and Mexicans should be exterminated? I provided quite a bit of links that back up what I am saying. We are dealing with economic schools of thought, therefore I am putting forth the material of Austrian theories so you can learn about it.
If you are going to play the race care, you had better back it up with some facts. How are Austrian School economists driven by racism?
This point was addressed brilliantly by Guido Hulsmann,
Professeur des Universités
Faculté de Droit, d’Économie et de Gestion
Université d’Angers
France
Listen:
.
Make sense? More and more economists around the world are warning of hyperinflation and the collapse of the dollar. You should be listening.
It didn’t. John Mace brought it up from another thread I created. We don’t need to go off on that subject though.
Then what do you call the continuous bubbles and downturns during the 20th century? According to Wikipedia, there have been twenty recessions or depressions since 1913. Is that success? Plus the growth of government, the ballooning national debt and the continuous wars we have engaged in.
The 19th century was not a perfect model of free markets and commodity money. There are many things that could be done better today. But a free market and honest money would provide a far better result than the Federal Reserve system has given us.
Okay, but what about my larger point? Can’t I have a rational concern that people are given too many vaccines? Aren’t the pharmaceutical companies making a bundle off of these things? What about the long term effects of vaccinations? If you claim there are certain illnesses that are deadly and people should be vaccinated, then that is a reasonable point. It is not reasonable to blindly support vaccinations for every single disease, including ones that people are highly unlikely to ever encounter.
You know, there is some ignorance that is so deeply ingrained that rational discussion becomes counterproductive. I don’t know how to respond to such bullshit as “bernanke is an expert on the Great Depression”. He is a fraud and a phony. He is a corporatist and and has created economic ruin and he is leading us on the path to hyperinflation. How about this:
Why did he fail to see this crisis coming? Watch this video:
I want you to respond to the above video specifically. Tell me precisely why you trust this guy given his track record?
This is astounding. How can you possibly think the disastrous Iraq war constitutes a fair trial of free market principles? It is utterly unbelievable that you can believe this bullshit. The Republican Party of the last quarter century has not significantly implemented true free market policies. Reagan adopted some libertarian sounding rhetoric, but his “supply side” economics were completely opposite of what the Austrians advocate. As has been said elsewhere, government grew much more under Republicans than Democrats.
Now, the Republican Party of the fifties and sixties was much closer to libertarianism, but they were out of power and failed to enact any policies during that time.
You need to get your facts straight.
Nice job of trying to change the subject. So, you admit you were wrong about the bailout money being paid back? And we don’t have to guess what would have happened if the banks were allowed to fail. We could see the reaction of the market to Lehman failing, which is what made bailing out the rest imperative. Or do you refuse to acknowledge this, the way you refuse to acknowledge what the inflation rate is because it doesn’t support your biases?
The target value is about 3%, which provides growth, encouragement to invest, and a number of other advantages. If you don’t know about this, you really have no business taking part in an economic argument.
[quote]
You should blame the people who created this crisis. The Austrians warned that we shouldn’t build this giant bubble in the first place. They are the ones who advocated that we take our bumps a decade or two ago, reduce our debt and reform the monetary system. We didn’t and now that the crisis that the Austrians correctly predicted has occurred, you still believe the predictions of the Keynesians? Are you crazy?
[quote]
I do blame the people who created this crisis, who are the anti-regulation anti-tax conservative Republicans. Keynes never said that you should run a deficit in times of prosperity. Good for the Austrians for predicting the problem, but Krugman did also. The people who ignored it were the banks, who were making a fortune, and the Republicans, who bought the banks’ argument that pulling their faces out of the trough would make them uncompetitive. Remember, before Bush cut taxes we had a surplus. That came about through traditional economics.
Yes, I read that claim and consider it to be a pile of crap. You’ve already been shown, and have ignored, the data showing unemployment decreased with New Deal policies, only increasing again when FDR was convinced to try to balance the budget. You’ve also ignored the inconvenient fact that letting the economy fend for itself for 3 years after the crash only made things worse. You are like the rainmaker who will take credit for the rain no matter how long it takes to show up after his dance.
I’ll take neither, thanks.
Yes, it tells me you don’t even understand what Keynes said. He was talking about how to deal with a crash, not how to predict one.
What about the debt? The debt, very large from WW II, decreased steadily in the '50s due to a high tax rate and prosperity - very Keynsian. It only became a big problem due to Reagan and his tax cutting, and an even bigger one with Bush’s tax cutting, neither of which was necessary to combat a slump.
Back in the good old days you could be arrested for selling gold for higher than the government price. (Or it was at least illegal.) The government of course influences the price of our currency in a number of ways, but it cannot control what the currency traders do. The market provides valuable information about the state of the economy and trade, something beyond what a few politicians and administrators setting the value of the dollar are able to do. Why do you think they can do a better job than the market? If you don’t understand that government control of prices and the market is socialistic, (not socialism per se) you don’t understand much.
As for private currencies, how exactly do you propose to prevent the issuance of bad money? And does your free market in banking look anything like the free market we had in the 1980’s, which led to that crisis, or the one in the '20s, which led to bank runs?
The point was, and I should have made this more clear, that competing currencies ARE illegal. That doesn’t stop some people from doing it anyway. The fact that some people have so little faith in the dollar that they would ignore the law and use competing currencies gives credence to my larger point about the economy.
But yeah, the point is competing currencies ARE illegal. These small town experiments are very small scale and infrequent because otherwise the participants get arrested. The point is that despite government prohibitions, a sufficient demand creates an underground market for things that are desired.
We need to repeal legal tender laws. Don’t ever claim that Ron Paul doesn’t understand economics. That shows the level of ignorance you possess. Read more on the subject of competing currencies and legal tender laws.
Because most, if not all of the mainstream propaganda in the media and public schools is on the opposite side of liberty. To arrive at the positions I hold I need to read a lot and put forth effort to learn the truth. I could still be brainwashed (from your perspective) but it is less likely.
What part of “appointed by Bush” don’t you understand? Did Paul call for action to deflate the housing bubble? If not, he is attacking Bernanke for the stuff he did right, not the stuff he (and Greenspan) got wrong. None of which has anything to do with the cold hard fact that he did major research on the Depression, and is an expert by any criteria - though he no doubt disputes that leaving things around would have fixed it, and is thus a heretic to your faith.
And why is Reagan a traitor again?
I am not changing my position. I always believe that mandatory vaccination is wrong. Voluntary vaccination is fine and there are some things that should be vaccinated against in certain cases. There is no flip flopping on this position.
And Keynesian policies create deficits. Period. Whether they like it or not is immaterial. If you are trying to catch me being hypocritical you had better find something substantial and address the main points.
Not until you provide scientific evidence of what constitutes “too many.”
Possibly. It tends to depend on the amount of money they spent on R&D plus testing vs how much they can recover through sales. Can you provide actual details of companies “making a bundle” off vaccines (along with evidence that money made from low-cost vaccines, (if there are any) is not used to offset the expenses of drugs for cancer, etc.?
Do you have any examples of such? (Preferably from someone other than Jenny McCarthy or the quacks she tends to cite.)
This might possibly be true, but then, what are your guidelines for diseases against which we are ordering massive vaccinations that are unlikely to be encountered? (In my experience, we do not vaccinate against rabies, for example, except those people who are going to work for extended periods with wild animals with known vectors, (e.g., bat researchers). Similarly, vaccines against Typhoid and similar diseases are routinely offered to people traveling to world locations where such diseases are prevalent and are not generally administered (or even offered) to people staying in the U.S.) Is your hypothetical based on anything that actually occurs in the real world?)