I remember when Kevin Graham used to be a Conservative Republican and going for Senator John McCain over two years ago. However, Kevin Graham has done a complete 180 turn, and he has totally "flipped" sides.
I would think the term "flipped out" would be more apropos.
I am wondering why Kevin Graham has totally "flipped" sides, within the last couple of years. I hope that he doesn't mind sharing with us here.
Because he left the gospel, turned openly and knowingly against light and truth, and has now been left to "kick against the pricks" and fight against God and all truth, not just those directly related to theological matters.
Hi Droopy,
I don't exactly agree with with your commentary about Kevin Graham here, but that is pretty funny.
I am hoping that the Federal Government doesn't shut down this weekend.
"And I've said it before, you want to know what Joseph Smith looked like in Nauvoo, just look at Trump." - Fence Sitter
Kevin.... Much of what you describe as "destroying" everything is in fact LIBERALISM in action, not Capitalism.
Take the current meltdown. It wasn't Capitalism as Liberals claim, it was Liberals themselves. During the Bush years for example, Bush, McCain and several others tried to FIX what they saw as problems with Fanny/Freddie etc., yet guess what, Liberals stopped them, because they had control of Congress etc. And guess why they stopped the GOP from fixing the problems? Because the liberals are the ones who instituted the policy's which created the meltdown, the bad loans, the bad loan structures, all for social engineering so more POOR could buy houses etc. Not only that, but big Libs were the Heads of those institutions in question, Fanny/Freddie, some of the banks in question, etc., getting rich off their scheming.
Obviously I'm not saying some conservative can't ever do anything wrong, but I am saying that Conservatism is what created this country, all the great things about it, and Liberalism is what has been trying to destroy it even from the beginning, but not only that has slowly whittled away at those great Conservative, Capitalist, and Freedom values.
Brackite wrote:I am hoping that the Federal Government doesn't shut down this weekend.
Actually, you shouldn't be "afraid" of the Government taking some days off. This is just another lying "scare tactic" by Liberals.
The government shuts down for various holidays' every year and the world doesn't end. The government has shut down many times before, most of which there never even was a wimper from anyone let alone the media, and the world didn't end.
Further, that's Liberals for you. Their "Entitlement Mentality" runs all through them. If they don't get their way, they are like children and run away to other states, shut down the government, thrash government property, claim fraud and demand recounts when there is no evidence of it, etc. Rather than actually do the right thing and be honorable losers. Liberals think they are entitled to their way ONLY. Tolerance is not in their vocabulary.
We are not playing Monopoly here, the winner take all capitalism path that the U.S. is on will force you to sell your Baltic Avenue and you or your children are going to lose this game.
asbestosman wrote:As to how policymakers could help out, I don't know.
Curriculum design, for one thing. We could make innovation a more central part of secondary public education-- perhaps even making it a capstone requirement for all students to go through all the steps of formulating a business plan and starting a small business. This would make successful business innovation more thinkable and more prototypical for young Americans. It might also be interesting to see if an effective advertising campaign could be developed to encourage young people to get involved in product and business innovation. Perhaps more importantly, the government might want to tap ethnic and religious organizations to encourage their youth to get involved in vocational programs. Some of the most successful innovation occurs in ethnic communities where innovation is a community value, and there are fairly strong support networks to help and train young people to get started.
Anyway, the point is that if we start thinking outside the box, we may discover that taxes and interest rates are neither the only nor the most effective variables we can manipulate to stimulate the economy. There are a whole range of other options available to us that don't require further exacerbating the growing problem of economic inequality.
Droopy wrote:But many of these preferences are not clearly rational at all
With the possible exception of intransitive preference rankings, it's a categorical mistake to speak of rational and irrational preferences. Rationality refers not to the preferences themselves, but to the way those preferences guide decisionmaking. To cite a very simple example, rational choice theory says that if you prefer outcome A to outcome B, then when presented with a choice between them you will choose outcome A.
and are in a constant state of flux and change among many millions of individual economic actors.
Yes, but much of this flux and change factors out in the aggregate. There are also a number of preferences which are fairly basic to human nature, and therefore fairly stable over time.
As for the rest of your post, Droopy, I'll just say that your radical individualism leads you to miss the role one's community plays in structuring one's opportunities and incentives. It would be folly for government to ignore the legitimate roles it can play in this regard. A good example is universal education. Universal education is strongly correlated to economic equality. If it is "statist" to think a government should ensure the education of all its citizens, then I proudly claim the label. Libertarian laissez-faireism makes for wonderfully elegant theory, but things are a little more complicated than all that in practice.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with the basics of capitalism - an economic system whereby the means of production are owned privately and operated for a profit. There is nothing immoral or evil about such a system. The freedoms of this country, coupled with capitalism as its base, are responsible for the greatness this country has achieved.
However, simple capitalism is not what we have here anymore. The government's involvement in the economy has been disatrous, as clueless, inept, and corrupt policiticians on both sides have used their power to achieve political purposes, with no regard, nor understanding of the future consequences of their actions. We cannot trust the government to even KNOW the right thing, let alone actually do it.
The beauty of the free market, is that if left alone without interference by our wonderful, selfless polticians, it will correct itself quicker and efficiently than any legislation, commitee, or bureacracy of the government. We rarely, however, let the markets alone.
“A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take away everything that you have.”
There are many problems with free market economics, including the following:
1) Corporate waste and abuse are at least as prevalent as government waste and abuse, especially when corporations are unregulated and unaccountable. 2) Since it takes money to make money, economic opportunity under free market capitalism is decidedly unequal. The rich get richer, and the poor stay poor. An average of about 50% of a rich person's economic advantage is perpetuated to his or her heirs. This means, in effect, that free market capitalism leads to growing economic inequality and concentration of wealth in the hands of a few. 3) The free market does correct itself, but when these corrections are left unregulated they can come in the form of major "shocks" that are very difficult to recover from and may even result in a breakdown of law, order, and basic services.
1) Of course there is corporate waste. However, a corporation that wastes doesn't stay around for long does it? Furthermore, a corporation wasting its resources does not impact me personally, unless I'm an owner of the company. I can choose not to do business with such a corporation. In this case, the market will punish the business if it doesn't change course.
Contrast that with government waste and inefficiency. That impacts every single one of us, and there is no way to get around it. Many times, through bad legislation, the waste and costs stay with us for years and years, even after we have gotten rid of the numbskulls who passed the original bills. This is far worse than corporate waste. And there are no consequences to the government. We all know it just keeps doing it over and over again. They just ask for more and more taxpayer money.
2) This of course, is not a new argument, but the standard zero sum fallacy - in otherwords, the pie is finite, and if he gets more, I get less. I reject this view, because wealth doesn't just exist, its created! The gap between rich and poor may grow wider; however, the bottom rises as the top ceiling expands. There are numerous counterpoints to your view and I won't give them here, other to ask a question. Tell me how the creation of Google, and the billions of dollars of wealth it has created, the jobs it has provided, has made anyone, anywhere poorer? Also tell me how anything within the realm of the imagined powers of the Federal government, could do as much economic good as Google (without violately private property freedoms of course).
3) I’d like to see the historical evidence that the government has actually prevented an economic shock through regulation or policy and that we are better off because it, in contrast to letting the correction/shock happen. I think it is pretty likely that in any example brought up, it was the government’s policy or interference that led to the potential shock in the first place, and its subsequent actions were to solve problems that it created itself. But hey, I’m open to discussing it.
“A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take away everything that you have.”