Welcome to the Anti-Capitalist, Centrally-Planned Economy
George Bush and his merry gang of Wall Street looters sent capitalism reeling. Now the neo-socialist Democrats under Obama are finishing the job. Can't have pampered government workers taking pay cuts like the rest of America, noooo way!
Not only is the federal government giving states more money to pay off government unions, it's also dictating how it is to be spent:
Upset that Texas Republican Governor Rick Perry put some of his state's stimulus money in reserve, Democrats stipulated that Texas can receive education money only if it spends some of the earlier stimulus funds.
Congress is sending a message to Perry, said Representative Sheila Jackson Lee: "Don't fool with money for children and education."(Reuters)Hugo Chavez would be proud of comrade Sheila. Have you wondered what the progressive statist alternative to capitalism would look like? This is it!
Since the beginning of the recession, the number of unemployed has increased by more than 8 million people. For $800 billion, we could have handed every one of these people a check for $100,000—which gives a sense of what was possible with that much money and just how inefficient the actual program was. (Weekly Standard)This is what a centrally-planned economy powered by a government "jobs program" looks like. Lawrence B. Lindsey, in the same Weekly Standard article, shows that the stimulus is a failure as judged by the White House's own standards. No wonder White House economist Christina Romer is escaping reality and slinking back to Berkley.
The answer, of course, is free-market capitalism
Individuals pursuing their self-interests, or "greed," as the modern day socialists in our midst call it. Government getting out of the way and freeing up capital to be used by free persons as they see fit.
Watch the great Milton Friedman school Phil Donohue on the virtues of capitalism. One of the rare times Phil has ever been left speechless...
13 comments:
We all miss Milton Friedman, and his impeccable logic when it comes to economics and human behavior.
Numb nuts Phil Donohue didn't understand a word Miltie said. Not one word. Or if he did understand them, he arrogantly dismissed them, since he (as one of the elites) knows that the only way to eliminate the suffering of the masses is to take wealth from the rich - by force - and give it to the slovenly mob.
Yeah, Phil. You have it all figured out, you and your 'angels' of redistribution.
"Is there some society you know that doesn't run on greed?"
"Tell us where in the world you find these angels who will organize society for us?"
I love it when liberals are confronted with their own illogical bs and forced to actually think. Dr. Friedman locked poor Phil's brain up...
"Congress is sending a message to Perry, said Representative Sheila Jackson Lee: "Don't fool with money for children and education."
Perry is no dumba$$, he knows full well that there is stipulation in the bill that allows the AFT to skim off the top of the bailout money and funnel it to union paid political Ads against him in his Governors race or any GOP candidate race.
My sister (a liberal) posted on facebook a link to “Thanking Congress for the money for children and education”. I pointed this stipulation in reply to her post, within 24 hours she removed my reply. She didn't want anyone she knows to know of taking money away from education for union political Ads.
Sad, sad.
The biggest threat to our country, our economy and our freedoms have been and are Unions, they have outlived their usefulness by having their demands force our jobs over seas and their Pension Plans are nothing more then gigantic Ponzi schemes that are doomed to failure.
This goes for both private and government sector unions. I belonged to a union years ago and couldn't get out fast enough.
>"Don't fool with money for children and education."
Money redirected from food stamp programs and the like. Not that the Marxstream media will report on that, of course.
Note here that capitalism was founded just AFTER a huge drop in population and DURING the subsequent increase. In fact, capitalism has never before faced the conditions it now faces across the free world, static or declining populations.
Capitalism ASSUMES growth in consumption each year because a growing population. All this spending is just part of the forced consumption to save capitalism.
The population of Europe went static in the 60's and the populations of some states were dropping in the 70's. If you recall, the US economy went very static at that point, and St. Ronnie Raygun put it on life support (HUGE deficits) by '83, and it's been on life support ever since.
What is deficit spending anyhow? Cut to the basics, it's a tax paid out by inflating dollars. So you are, essentially, being forced to consume whatever the government spent the money on. We've consumed a helluva lot of military equipment and other items due to that deficit spending.
Capitalism ASSUMES growth in consumption each year. That's very basic, and now that basic assumption is no longer true across most of the developed world.
The population of Europe went static in the 60's and the populations of some states were dropping in the 70's. If you recall, the US economy went very static at that point, and Reagan put it on life support (HUGE deficits) by '83, and it's been on life support ever since.
What is deficit spending anyhow? Cut to the basics, it's a tax paid out by inflating dollars. So you are, essentially, being forced to consume whatever the government spent the money on. We've consumed a helluva lot of military equipment and other items due to that deficit spending.
Now we've got the requirement to purchase insurance, no matter what - again, forced consumption to prop up the insurance companies.
Recasting capitalism to expect slow or no growth each year is a curse, and one does wonder if small business can even expect to exist in such an environment. The drive to take other's business by cutting costs to the bone (e.g. Walmart) will become frantic, and the net result will be large suppliers feeding off the bones of the small retailer until they are all gone.
Not going to be pretty.
Interesting theories there, Ducky.
I think you're a little confused. You've actually made the case for government staying out of it, which is what the very libertarian Austrian School advocates.
Population growth has been a fact since the days of Adam and Eve. Mother Nature always seemed to have a solution to the problem of overpopulation until medical science began to interfere and “artificially” extend the lives of people far beyond their so-called productive years. We might not even notice that people are living longer if families continued to take care of their aged parents, rather than farming them out to hospices or assisted living facilities —another liberal “good idea.”
Did capitalism cause growth in population, or did growth in population cause capitalism? I rather think that sophisticated agriculture sparked increases in population, but since agriculture places limitations on human activity, it became necessary to find other things to do. Initially, shoemaking was a familial cottage activity, but increases in human population created demand for more shoes. Someone learned that shoes are easier to make, and cheaper to purchase, when made in quantities greater than one pair. Leather making activities may have been the true beginning of the industrial revolution. We can argue population growth fueled “demand” for goods; we can argue that demand challenged the inventiveness and innovation of people to make a better mouse trap.
So while Ducky's contribution is interesting (albeit somewhat convoluted), he merely takes on the typical Lib dot Com argument. I will say that no one has done more to reduce or enslave human population than communists, progressives, and Moslems.
Thanks for restoring sanity to the discussion, Mustang.
Ducky's been reading Marx...
I have posted Friedman's video in the past. Maybe we need a Friedman blogburst every four months and sprinkle it all over the web.
The Weekly Standard stat makes me wonder how Liberals are getting away with spinning the "recovery." Hopefully, in November we'll find they did not get away with it.
Just as cave men traded or bartered until they could kill the person who had what they wanted, or in the Middle Ages people bartered and traded to survive until their wise trades allowed them a booth in the marketplace - surviving well is a form of capitalism.
We see from history that socialism and communism cannot thrive. Capitalism is the natural order of things. Socialism and Nannyism are unnaturally contrived .
God did not create people inadequate to fulfill his wishes, which means making use of his abundance and taking care of yourself and those others that you choose to caretake.
Ducky, we were certainly "forced" to consume Fannie and Freddie's bad mortgage loans through the Community Reinvestment Act - the perfect form of Socialism. Mammoth failure - we are all paying for it.
Populations no longer stay static if Muslims are allowed to migrate.
I don't think ObamaCare is designed to prop up the insurance companies. It is designed to give government the ultimate control over our life and our death.
Thanks for stopping by, Maggie!
I have seriously considered on more than one occasion to turn this blog into a free market/Austrian School blog. There is so much excellent content on YouTube.
Silverfiddle, isn't this a new blog for you? I'm remembering another name.
Yeah, I'm kinda like the medicine show man in those old westerns. Gotta keep changing names to stay one step ahead...
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