The votes are being manipulated

[MyReality]

Anyone noticing something is incredibly off in this years election? Much more so than any time i can remember. The media is increasingly editing and censoring against Ron Paul and over 900 Dead People voted in South Carolina!

My question for debate is: Is it about time for another Revolution?

[Abraxas]

As a notice, I'll be putting up both my posts in our debate during the middle of next week.

Great.

No, his ideas put America even further in control of the highest concentrations of wealth than they already are, multinationals.

The only control a multinational has is over its own internal affairs.

I know better than to think you that naive, especially in a thread with an explicit theme of how the multinational corporate media is exerting enormous influence over the election.

We would have seen the destruction of many multinationals two years if we had listened to people like Ron Paul, Peter Schiff and the like.

A few, perhaps, however, that is rather immaterial as their assets would have simply been absorbed to form even larger multinationals, exacerbating the problems of wealth concentration. Compound that with the economic collapse that would have followed from a few multinationals going under, those employees ending up in unemployment, the loss of confidence in the banks jacking up interest rates, and dramatically reducing the amount of free capital available to borrow, odds are pretty good you would have imploded the whole economy even more so than was done already. This I do not understand; do you dispute the particulars of multiple large banks simultaneously failing or do you just think the above economic cataclysm would have been a good thing?

bring down the debt,

Yes, by eviscerating the middle and working classes of America. Paying off the debt by selling a pound of American flesh at a time is not a position to be lauded nor accepted.

Really? Cutting useless governmental departments and repealing worthless and costly legislation is going to eviscerate the middle class?

I reject your premise from the word "useless" onward. Much of the legislation Ron Paul would repeal and many of the programs he would cut are vital to maintaining a middle class and a skilled labor force in a global economy,

[Abraxas]

Who are you to tell the media what they should and should not be doing? You say you support Ron Paul, the primary staple of his being the free market. Well, if that is true, aren't they free to report on whatever will get them the most profit, what will get them the greatest market share? That is the libertarian ideal, after all, that through maximum freedom and individual actors making their own choices the greatest good is served. If the interest is there for Ron Paul, if he has the support you say he has, why aren't the media outlets reporting on him to boost ratings and thus profit? By your own philosophy, you must concede reporting on Ron Paul for one reason or another must not be in the interests of the media and so under the free market system you should not expect them to. Or perhaps you think there should be a law or maybe a state run media outlet to ensure fairness, yes?

I have every right to think that the media needs to change how they are handling things, when the very news, the very flow of information that the general public relies on to choose who their going to vote into office that will affect there very future, i believe the news media has a responsibility to report all the information that is relevant to making said decision. They CLEARLY lie if not report at all about the polls when it comes to Ron Paul. By reporting altered news articles and misrepesenting the truth is down right criminal. After all we have freedom of speech, but that does not make it ok to alter the information you are giving. Perjury is against the law, lying and or withholding information to police officers is against the law, lying to your boss or changing your story to make it more appealing could get you fired if you were found out. Plus much more. Why should we hold a business whose purpose is to relay some of the most important piece of information to us, at lower standards?

The purpose of all business is to make money. If reporting on Ron Paul were profitable then either the media companies would report on him or they would lose market share to companies that do. Clearly the consumers have spoken, in a free market they have rejected the Ron Paul product and have chosen to consume Ron Paul free brands. Just because you like Ron Paul doesn't mean you have the right to force other businesses to carry him against their will. Welcome to Ron Paul's free market, sorry you don't like what you see.

Unless of course, you support the government intervening in the free market, controlling the actions of private citizens, in order to ensure some kind of fairness in the interactions between corporations and citizens, coupled with some kind of agency capable of enforcing these regulations. But a Ron Paul supporter, someone so adverse to government interference in the natural flow of the market, certainly would never support that.

Quote:

He has enormous support everywhere and he has major Global support as well.

If that were true he would not be doing so poorly everywhere except the internet.

That's just it, he is not doing as bad as he should be,

I certainly grant that.

if this were not the case, after all he is always up there in the polls. Even though i express that the polls are being manipulated. (I must insist that i am not one to give into conspiracy theories, but the evidence is piling up. As hard as that is to believe at the moment.)

I'd love to see the evidence of this, all the poll numbers I have seen pretty consistently show Ron Paul trailing the leaders of the pack.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/election.aspx

He also broke the record for online fundraising at $6 million, the previous record holder was himself at 5.7 million. In 24 hours!
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/200 ... ising.html

Yes, I don't deny he has a group of hardcore online supporters, however, they are not representative of the republican party and even less representative of the American people.

Quote:

Ron Paul is very relevant on how America should be run, he has so far dominated every single debate he has had the chance to participate in.

So say the Ron Paulites and nobody else. That he has been losing ground over time suggests from an objective perspective this is not the case.

When he enters a debate he dominates it, he has been losing ground because of the lack of time he has been given to voice his opinions in all the debates.

In the South Carolina Debate he was only allocated with 90 seconds! In an one hour televised debate! He was given 10minutes during the CNN debate, most of it came from the ONLINE-ONLY ending part of the debate.

CNN even silenced a soldier that was speaking for Ron Paul. Luckily a fellow reporter overheard the CNN crew talking about pulling the plug and he got to speak in front of the crowd. Stupid on his part since he was in uniform, but it did more good overall.

CNN Feed Drops as War Hero Praises Ron Paul's Foreign Policy


Ron Paul Brings Back Soldier Silenced By CNN

http://www.ronpaul.com/category/ron-pauls-debates/
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/20 ... na-debate/
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/ron- ... 32406.html

And yet somehow despite "dominating" and being given a large period of time to speak, his poll numbers did not increase. However, the poll numbers of Romney and Gingrich do seem to be heavily influenced by debate performance.

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He is the only one that has had a clean political record. He is the only one that has kept to his word and has not flip flopped in his time in office.He is the only one that has successfully predicted everything that is wrong with the system today.

Perhaps, but that just reveals the state of the Republican party as being incredibly dysfunctional. If I were to accept the premise Ron Paul is the best the Republicans have to offer then I must conclude the entire field is without redeeming characteristics.

I agree, but i'm afraid we cannot just shrug our shoulders and say whatever. So either vote the best man in, or repair the system. I opt for repairing the system, as i already made clear.

Except Ron Paul is not the best man to fix the system. He's not even a good man to fix the system. Obama, as underwhelming as his performance has been, is the best candidate in the race. However, if we were really interested in fixing America, we would be forming a number of other political parties, such as a Labor Party.

Quote:
bring down the debt,

Yes, by eviscerating the middle and working classes of America. Paying off the debt by selling a pound of American flesh at a time is not a position to be lauded nor accepted.

So it happens sooner rather then later, this way though the healing process can begin on this big wound, rather then letting necrosis set in without any hope of recovery. There is no easy fix to any of this, to say otherwise is overwhelmingly naive. We are not going to fix it with the Democrats, We are not going to fix it with the Republicans. We are simply not going to fix it over a 4-8 year period. But continuing down this current path is the best way to make sure nothing gets better. Also the government has already sold more then half our debt to China. So the selling a pound of flesh is irrelevant at this point.

Except it won't fix it, it will destroy our economy, reducing revenue, and render us unable to pay anything on it. We can make incremental payments on it, get our expenses below our income, we can pay enough to star making headway as we did under Clinton and grow our GDP to accelerate payoff. The idea we must embrace austerity in the extreme to pay down our debt is simply counter-factual.

Quote:

So far all the other candidates are just spewing drivel without explaining how they are going to meet their goals. They concentrate on torture policies, foreign aid, war, their taxes, etc... Not once have they mentioned anything about how they are going to overturn and get rid of all the passing laws that strip away American's rights. Everybody except Ron Paul, an Christian who believes in creationism, and this Atheist is going to vote for him.

That is your prerogative, however, I still hold that nobody who would continue to associate themselves with the Republican Party is worth voting for.

I don't think anyone on either side is worth voting for. But Ron Paul is the only candidate that goes against the mold for a change, and i am willing to try something radical instead of putting in another puppet in office. But either way change is coming, be it forcefully or peacefully.

He does, and the current system is not working, however, not all change is good. A cursory examination of his policies reveal them to be disastrous and demonstrates his candidacy is unworthy of support. It is fallacious to assume that because Ron Paul is the one candidate running the promises dramatic change you must support him if you support dramatic change.

[WinePusher]

The only control a multinational has is over its own internal affairs.

I know better than to think you that naive, especially in a thread with an explicit theme of how the multinational corporate media is exerting enormous influence over the election.

I don't care what the thread says. The thread is wrong, Paul isn't being ignored by the media. The reason why you didn't attempt to refute my assertion is because it's right, and you know better than to try to refute a fact. Multinationals exercise control over their affairs, the idea that America is run by multinationals is as fringe as it gets. The theory behind multinationals are no different than any other business. They are accountable to consumers and if they engage in practices consumers don't like, they begin incuring loss and if they don't stop they eventually die. This is how actual capitalism operates. Like I said it would have worked fine two years ago. Financial and auto companies did stupid things and suffered the consequence of going under. The government comes in and shielded them from any loss at the expense of consumers. They suffered losses because consumers chose not to buy their products, but the government forcibly comes in takes the money from the consumer and tranfers it over to these companies. If you have so much disdain for multinationals, shouldn't you want them to dissolve?

We would have seen the destruction of many multinationals two years if we had listened to people like Ron Paul, Peter Schiff and the like.

A few, perhaps, however, that is rather immaterial as their assets would have simply been absorbed to form even larger multinationals, exacerbating the problems of wealth concentration.

Wealth always trickles down Abraxas. Unless you put all your cash and assets under your bed in a safebox, it's impossible for wealth to be permanently concentrated in one single place. The so called members of the 1% don't have to actively give their money away for it to be put to good use. Where do you think banks gets the funds for all these loans they lend out that are usually worth around a million dollars. It comes from savings. Savings supplies the funds for loans. The primary savers are the 1%, and the money they have is being circulated throughout the economy to create new businesses which create things like employment.

This I do not understand; do you dispute the particulars of multiple large banks simultaneously failing or do you just think the above economic cataclysm would have been a good thing?

It doesn't matter whether it's a 'good' thing or a 'bad' thing. It's a necessary thing. Real mistakes were made Abraxas, and there are no numb solutions. Banks wouldn't have failed if there were no government intervention. If you didn't have the Federal Reserve pushing down the federal funds rate and holding it there for an extended period of time there would have been no false boom in Housing prices. If you didn't have the FDIC insuring every single consumer deposit account banks would never have made risky loans. If you didn't have Congress pressuring banks via the Community Reinvestment Act to lend to unreliable borrowers there would have been no bubble. If you didn't have two GSE's, Fannie and Freddie, insuring nearly all mortgages there would have been no financial crisis. The cataclysm you're referring to was the fault of the government, and now we're expected to believe that additional intervention will save us?

Really? Cutting useless governmental departments and repealing worthless and costly legislation is going to eviscerate the middle class?

I reject your premise from the word "useless" onward. Much of the legislation Ron Paul would repeal and many of the programs he would cut are vital to maintaining a middle class and a skilled labor force in a global economy,

Like what? Continuing on the path we're on now will destroy the middle class. You can't just spend and spend and spend without actually paying for it. Right now, the government's borrowing and that's why people aren't actually feeling a lot of pain. When the government can't borrow anymore, and we have this 14 trillion debt sitting here, they'll raise taxes across the board and print more money. That is what's going to destroy the middle class.

[Abraxas]

The only control a multinational has is over its own internal affairs.

I know better than to think you that naive, especially in a thread with an explicit theme of how the multinational corporate media is exerting enormous influence over the election.

I don't care what the thread says. The thread is wrong, Paul isn't being ignored by the media. The reason why you didn't attempt to refute my assertion is because it's right, and you know better than to try to refute a fact. Multinationals exercise control over their affairs, the idea that America is run by multinationals is as fringe as it gets.

Asserting anyone is fringe while claiming that trickle down economics works is of the highest grade of irony, and should you be interested, I propose we enter into a joint partnership to sell that refined irony to all the comedians of the world for an amazing profit.

The theory behind multinationals are no different than any other business. They are accountable to consumers and if they engage in practices consumers don't like, they begin incuring loss and if they don't stop they eventually die. This is how actual capitalism operates. Like I said it would have worked fine two years ago. Financial and auto companies did stupid things and suffered the consequence of going under. The government comes in and shielded them from any loss at the expense of consumers. They suffered losses because consumers chose not to buy their products, but the government forcibly comes in takes the money from the consumer and tranfers it over to these companies. If you have so much disdain for multinationals, shouldn't you want them to dissolve?

You seem to be confusing basic powers of observation with disdain. Yes, multinationals operate on the same principles as everyone else in capitalism, in much the same way an atomic bomb operates like any other explosive, a difference of scale. You see, what multinationals have that other businesses lack is resources on an enormous scale. They have the power to, in effect, purchase politicians. In a free market where money is speech, if I have billions and billions of dollars, I can bribe you to do my bidding, and if I can't, I can bribe your opponent to and hire a staff to drag your name and the name of anyone you've ever met through the deepest piles of mud and dung I can manufacture.

Consumers require information, Winepusher, and information about the inner workings of a multinational don't come forward easily or willingly. When you are poisoning the very ground water the consumer is drinking, you certainly won't advertise it. When you gut any and all government power to oversee these organizations, there is no reason to believe consumers can make informed choices about their purchases, never mind will. Most consumers aren't all that concerned with how a product gets made or what unethical practices went into making it, many don't even care to do enough research to determine if it is safe (ala Ephedra). Consumers routinely make poor decisions on the basis of marketing gimmicks and convenience and the results are companies that behave in the most unethical, and in some cases even with the protections in place, wildly illegal behavior to make profits. You are going to sit there and tell me in a world where the multinationals already game the system for all it is worth things will get better when the gloves come off? Forget the first deal, calling me fringe after putting forward this is where the irony gold is.

We would have seen the destruction of many multinationals two years if we had listened to people like Ron Paul, Peter Schiff and the like.

A few, perhaps, however, that is rather immaterial as their assets would have simply been absorbed to form even larger multinationals, exacerbating the problems of wealth concentration.

Wealth always trickles down Abraxas.

Absolutely demonstrably false. Look at any graph in the United States for the last thirty years in wealth distribution in the United States, you know, the period where "trickle down economics" was implemented. Notice something? I do. I notice how the rich keep getting richer and the poor and middle class don't.

Unless you put all your cash and assets under your bed in a safebox, it's impossible for wealth to be permanently concentrated in one single place. The so called members of the 1% don't have to actively give their money away for it to be put to good use. Where do you think banks gets the funds for all these loans they lend out that are usually worth around a million dollars. It comes from savings. Savings supplies the funds for loans. The primary savers are the 1%, and the money they have is being circulated throughout the economy to create new businesses which create things like employment.

Your point being? That isn't trickle down, all that means is wealth in circulation tends to create more wealth, and, in our system, that wealth goes to the owners of the original investment. Wealth creates more wealth... for the wealthy. Concentration of wealth does not literally mean the exact same dollar bills in the exact same spot, it means dollar values have a tendency to build up in the same place. If I have a billion already, it becomes a lot easier to make a hundred million dollars. If I have a thousand, it can be almost impossible. Wealth begets wealth in the same place and for the same individuals whether they do anything to earn it or not.

This I do not understand; do you dispute the particulars of multiple large banks simultaneously failing or do you just think the above economic cataclysm would have been a good thing?

It doesn't matter whether it's a 'good' thing or a 'bad' thing. It's a necessary thing. Real mistakes were made Abraxas, and there are no numb solutions. Banks wouldn't have failed if there were no government intervention. If you didn't have the Federal Reserve pushing down the federal funds rate and holding it there for an extended period of time there would have been no false boom in Housing prices. If you didn't have the FDIC insuring every single consumer deposit account banks would never have made risky loans. If you didn't have Congress pressuring banks via the Community Reinvestment Act to lend to unreliable borrowers there would have been no bubble. If you didn't have two GSE's, Fannie and Freddie, insuring nearly all mortgages there would have been no financial crisis. The cataclysm you're referring to was the fault of the government, and now we're expected to believe that additional intervention will save us?

A well blended mix of speculation and nonsense, you fail to understand some critical points about capitalism. The first and foremost of which is not everybody is in it for the long hall. If you look at the long history of economic failures in the US, you will see with some regularity individuals who willingly looted their own company and rand it into the ground, golden parachuting to safety. The housing boom had nothing to do with the government, it was driven by a market that put ever greater pressure to make ever greater profits and that meant taking bigger and bigger risks. Companies that weren't getting as big of returns lose share value and so they go after every customer they can get in the short term because if they don't, others will, and when they come back with big numbers this quarter and start handing out sacks of money to shareholders, who do you think is going to attract investors?

Further, you have a market that rewards people for destroying a company. Do you know what short selling is? It is the promise to sell property now you don't even own and then buy it back later by a certain date. In other words, I sell you a hundred shares of company x for 500 a pop, I then tank your company so you are only worth 50, and then finally buy the shares, I make a ton of money off harming the value of the economy overall. Do you know what a put option is? It is the purchase of a contract that can force you to buy from me for a certain price at a certain time a security without regard to what the property is actually worth. As with the above example, if I buy a put option from you on my company, deliberately run it into the ground, I can sell it to you at the original price and there isn't anything you can do about it. When there are market mechanisms in place specifically designed to make enormous profits at the expense of the broader market, is it any wonder that Wall Street operates as a casino?

Further, the FDIC thing more than anything else tells me you really don't understand this. The FDIC insures consumers for up to $250,000 so that if a bank goes under, some portion of the funds of the account holders of that banks are protected. FDIC insurance does absolutely nothing to hedge the risks of the bank as if FDIC insurance were ever to kick in they would still owe the same amount of money, just to FDIC. Nothing about FDIC in any way changes the investment habits of banks as it is a consumer protection, not a bank one.

Really? Cutting useless governmental departments and repealing worthless and costly legislation is going to eviscerate the middle class?

I reject your premise from the word "useless" onward. Much of the legislation Ron Paul would repeal and many of the programs he would cut are vital to maintaining a middle class and a skilled labor force in a global economy,

Like what? Continuing on the path we're on now will destroy the middle class. You can't just spend and spend and spend without actually paying for it. Right now, the government's borrowing and that's why people aren't actually feeling a lot of pain. When the government can't borrow anymore, and we have this 14 trillion debt sitting here, they'll raise taxes across the board and print more money. That is what's going to destroy the middle class.

You're right, we need to pay for it, and we can start by making the wealthiest people and organizations in America pay their fair share in taxes.

As for what, things like gutting the EPA and turning environmental issues over to the states (as smog is well known for respecting state boundaries) or the FDA (as food safety is just one of those principles we should compromise on) or the CDC (because America doesn't need people who know how to contain an outbreak to be well funded) or gutting Medicare and Medicaid (as when the federal government can't afford to pay for medical care certainly we can expect private consumers or the even worse off state governments to). The big secret of the budget issue republicans don't want you to know is it is entirely possible to pay for all of it if we are willing to make those who have gotten a free ride in the US tax code pay their fair share, doing things like negotiating drug prices with pharmaceuticals to bring down medical costs, cut back on the purchase and construction of new weapons of war, and generally structure the US government for the betterment of the citizens rather than the corporations. The US used to be able to do this, there is no reason we cannot again.

[Goat]

Really? Cutting useless governmental departments and repealing worthless and costly legislation is going to eviscerate the middle class?

I reject your premise from the word "useless" onward. Much of the legislation Ron Paul would repeal and many of the programs he would cut are vital to maintaining a middle class and a skilled labor force in a global economy,

Some of the legislation that Ron Paul would love to get rid of is anything that is on the federal level. You know, things like the environment protection laws, so that it would be perfectly ok for him that a company dumps tons of mercury into a river to pollute the state downstream.

[WinePusher]

The theory behind multinationals are no different than any other business. They are accountable to consumers and if they engage in practices consumers don't like, they begin incuring loss and if they don't stop they eventually die. This is how actual capitalism operates. Like I said it would have worked fine two years ago. Financial and auto companies did stupid things and suffered the consequence of going under. The government comes in and shielded them from any loss at the expense of consumers. They suffered losses because consumers chose not to buy their products, but the government forcibly comes in takes the money from the consumer and tranfers it over to these companies. If you have so much disdain for multinationals, shouldn't you want them to dissolve?

You seem to be confusing basic powers of observation with disdain. Yes, multinationals operate on the same principles as everyone else in capitalism, in much the same way an atomic bomb operates like any other explosive, a difference of scale. You see, what multinationals have that other businesses lack is resources on an enormous scale. They have the power to, in effect, purchase politicians. In a free market where money is speech, if I have billions and billions of dollars, I can bribe you to do my bidding, and if I can't, I can bribe your opponent to and hire a staff to drag your name and the name of anyone you've ever met through the deepest piles of mud and dung I can manufacture.

The obvious solution is to get the government out of the market, something you are vehemently opposed to. Guess what, businesses wouldn't go running to the government is they knew that the government wouldn't offer them any assistance or subsidizes. If you severed the line that exists between government and big business, business wouldn't be throwing around their money in the political arena because there would be no mutually beneficial relationship. If you want big money out of politics, get the government out of business.

Consumers require information, Winepusher, and information about the inner workings of a multinational don't come forward easily or willingly.

What kind of information do consumers require? If I'm shopping around for a new television, I'm going to research the quality, durability and price of the television. That's all the information I need to know, and corporations don't stifle that kind of information, they make that type of information available. Information about the 'inner workings' of a multinational is information that I don't care about in my capacity as a consumer. What's interesting is that making irrelevant information available to the public is detrimental. What if I'm racist and refuse to purchase a product made by a black person? In your society, that type of information would have to be released and people who are prejudice could now discimrinate along those lines. In a society where only relevant information is released, I would never know the race of the individual who manufactured my television.

When you are poisoning the very ground water the consumer is drinking, you certainly won't advertise it.

If property rights are upheld by the government, a corporation would only be able to poisoin the ground water on its own property. Do you know what would prevent a corporation from dumping waste into a lake or river? Property rights.

When you gut any and all government power to oversee these organizations, there is no reason to believe consumers can make informed choices about their purchases, never mind will.

As if the government somehow knows exactly what consumers need to make informed choices. Like the government just knows how many people ought to own a home, or how much a product should be sold for, or how much rent should be charged. The government just knows everything, doesn't it?

Wealth always trickles down Abraxas.

Absolutely demonstrably false. Look at any graph in the United States for the last thirty years in wealth distribution in the United States, you know, the period where "trickle down economics" was implemented. Notice something? I do. I notice how the rich keep getting richer and the poor and middle class don't.

You speak of 'the rich' as if they are some type of permanent, exclusive and enduring class. They aren't. People are constantly moving through these classes over time. An individual who's poor today may be rich two years from now. An individual who's rich today may be poor two years from now. And the poor aren't getting richer? You know what I've noticed, poverty today is much different than poverty twenty or thirty years ago. The poor have been getting richer, their standard of living has changed for the better as time passes.

Unless you put all your cash and assets under your bed in a safebox, it's impossible for wealth to be permanently concentrated in one single place. The so called members of the 1% don't have to actively give their money away for it to be put to good use. Where do you think banks gets the funds for all these loans they lend out that are usually worth around a million dollars. It comes from savings. Savings supplies the funds for loans. The primary savers are the 1%, and the money they have is being circulated throughout the economy to create new businesses which create things like employment.

Your point being? That isn't trickle down, all that means is wealth in circulation tends to create more wealth, and, in our system, that wealth goes to the owners of the original investment. Wealth creates more wealth... for the wealthy.

Um yea, it is trickle down by definition. Wealth in the hands of the top creates wealth for the people in the middle and bottom. Fact: the rich tend to save and invest while the middle class and the poor tend to consume. You cannot consume if there are no businesses producing things, you cannot consume if you don't have a job. The rich make this all possible. Their wealth does an enourmous amount of good for this country in their hands as opposed to it being in the governments hands.

It doesn't matter whether it's a 'good' thing or a 'bad' thing. It's a necessary thing. Real mistakes were made Abraxas, and there are no numb solutions. Banks wouldn't have failed if there were no government intervention. If you didn't have the Federal Reserve pushing down the federal funds rate and holding it there for an extended period of time there would have been no false boom in Housing prices. If you didn't have the FDIC insuring every single consumer deposit account banks would never have made risky loans. If you didn't have Congress pressuring banks via the Community Reinvestment Act to lend to unreliable borrowers there would have been no bubble. If you didn't have two GSE's, Fannie and Freddie, insuring nearly all mortgages there would have been no financial crisis. The cataclysm you're referring to was the fault of the government, and now we're expected to believe that additional intervention will save us?

A well blended mix of speculation and nonsense, you fail to understand some critical points about capitalism. The first and foremost of which is not everybody is in it for the long hall. If you look at the long history of economic failures in the US, you will see with some regularity individuals who willingly looted their own company and rand it into the ground, golden parachuting to safety.

That's really not relevant to anything I said since the crisis wasn't manufactured by any single individual, it was manufactured by a mix of government agencies and policies.

The housing boom had nothing to do with the government, it was driven by a market that put ever greater pressure to make ever greater profits and that meant taking bigger and bigger risks.

Ok, you want to explain this at all? Have you looked at an objective study of the crisis? By pushing down the interest rate, the federal reserve created a false demand for housing by making it cheaper for people to get a loan since the interest rate is the price of loans. Since the demand for loans was high, it pushed housing prices up. And interestingly enough, the people who put so much stock in the government never anticipated that housing prices would fall. The people who have so much faith in government never thought that the housing market would be the primary factor that would cause a recession. Free market austrian economists foresaw and predicted the bubble, and they were laughed off by people like you. And now the people who were right, the free market economists, are still being ignored while we're implementing the solutions of people who were wrong.

Further, you have a market that rewards people for destroying a company. Do you know what short selling is? It is the promise to sell property now you don't even own and then buy it back later by a certain date. In other words, I sell you a hundred shares of company x for 500 a pop, I then tank your company so you are only worth 50, and then finally buy the shares, I make a ton of money off harming the value of the economy overall. Do you know what a put option is? It is the purchase of a contract that can force you to buy from me for a certain price at a certain time a security without regard to what the property is actually worth. As with the above example, if I buy a put option from you on my company, deliberately run it into the ground, I can sell it to you at the original price and there isn't anything you can do about it. When there are market mechanisms in place specifically designed to make enormous profits at the expense of the broader market, is it any wonder that Wall Street operates as a casino?

This is great . In a free market, all transactions would be voluntarily made. Nobody would be forced to agree to any transactions that he or she didn't think would be beneficial.

Further, the FDIC thing more than anything else tells me you really don't understand this. The FDIC insures consumers for up to $250,000 so that if a bank goes under, some portion of the funds of the account holders of that banks are protected. FDIC insurance does absolutely nothing to hedge the risks of the bank as if FDIC insurance were ever to kick in they would still owe the same amount of money, just to FDIC. Nothing about FDIC in any way changes the investment habits of banks as it is a consumer protection, not a bank one.

That's just not true. By insuring the deposits of consumers banks are shielded from risk. They have no incentive to engage in prudent lending practices because the risk has been eliminated by the FDIC. If there were no FDIC, banks would have to compete with one another for the deposits of consumers and similarly, consumers would be more cautious and aware of where they deposit their money at. If you want historical examples of how the FDIC has screwed things up, I suggest you start with the Savings and Loans crisis which was a direct consequence of the moral hazard the FDIC created among banks.

Like what? Continuing on the path we're on now will destroy the middle class. You can't just spend and spend and spend without actually paying for it. Right now, the government's borrowing and that's why people aren't actually feeling a lot of pain. When the government can't borrow anymore, and we have this 14 trillion debt sitting here, they'll raise taxes across the board and print more money. That is what's going to destroy the middle class.

You're right, we need to pay for it, and we can start by making the wealthiest people and organizations in America pay their fair share in taxes.

lol this line is never gonna get old. If you think taxing the rich is a good idea thats great, more power to you. I admire people who cling to beliefs that have been thoroughly discredited and debunked. If you actually think the rich are going to pay those taxes, you're looking at reality through a blurred lens. One of your biggest problems if that you can't understand that there is no such thing as a free lunch. If you tax the incomes of those who make over $250,000 annually at enourmous rates, they aren't going to take lying down. They'll transfer the wealth and income over to different countries since the 'rich' (like Romney) have the luxary of possessing foreign accounts. Your policy would force wealth to exit this country.

As for what, things like gutting the EPA and turning environmental issues over to the states (as smog is well known for respecting state boundaries) or the FDA (as food safety is just one of those principles we should compromise on) or the CDC (because America doesn't need people who know how to contain an outbreak to be well funded) or gutting Medicare and Medicaid (as when the federal government can't afford to pay for medical care certainly we can expect private consumers or the even worse off state governments to).

Good. That all sounds great. You just can't fathom any situation where the government isn't regulating every single aspect of society. Do you know what would come up in place of all those things? Market regulations that work better. I'm willing to discuss each of these items in detail if you want, but we've already debated this in the past so it's up to you.

[WinePusher]

The theory behind multinationals are no different than any other business. They are accountable to consumers and if they engage in practices consumers don't like, they begin incuring loss and if they don't stop they eventually die. This is how actual capitalism operates. Like I said it would have worked fine two years ago. Financial and auto companies did stupid things and suffered the consequence of going under. The government comes in and shielded them from any loss at the expense of consumers. They suffered losses because consumers chose not to buy their products, but the government forcibly comes in takes the money from the consumer and tranfers it over to these companies. If you have so much disdain for multinationals, shouldn't you want them to dissolve?

You seem to be confusing basic powers of observation with disdain. Yes, multinationals operate on the same principles as everyone else in capitalism, in much the same way an atomic bomb operates like any other explosive, a difference of scale. You see, what multinationals have that other businesses lack is resources on an enormous scale. They have the power to, in effect, purchase politicians. In a free market where money is speech, if I have billions and billions of dollars, I can bribe you to do my bidding, and if I can't, I can bribe your opponent to and hire a staff to drag your name and the name of anyone you've ever met through the deepest piles of mud and dung I can manufacture.

The obvious solution is to get the government out of the market, something you are vehemently opposed to. Guess what, businesses wouldn't go running to the government is they knew that the government wouldn't offer them any assistance or subsidizes. If you severed the line that exists between government and big business, business wouldn't be throwing around their money in the political arena because there would be no mutually beneficial relationship. If you want big money out of politics, get the government out of business.

Consumers require information, Winepusher, and information about the inner workings of a multinational don't come forward easily or willingly.

What kind of information do consumers require? If I'm shopping around for a new television, I'm going to research the quality, durability and price of the television. That's all the information I need to know, and corporations don't stifle that kind of information, they make that type of information available. Information about the 'inner workings' of a multinational is information that I don't care about in my capacity as a consumer. What's interesting is that making irrelevant information available to the public is detrimental. What if I'm racist and refuse to purchase a product made by a black person? In your society, that type of information would have to be released and people who are prejudice could now discimrinate along those lines. In a society where only relevant information is released, I would never know the race of the individual who manufactured my television.

When you are poisoning the very ground water the consumer is drinking, you certainly won't advertise it.

If property rights are upheld by the government, a corporation would only be able to poisoin the ground water on its own property. Do you know what would prevent a corporation from dumping waste into a lake or river? Property rights.

When you gut any and all government power to oversee these organizations, there is no reason to believe consumers can make informed choices about their purchases, never mind will.

As if the government somehow knows exactly what consumers need to make informed choices. Like the government just knows how many people ought to own a home, or how much a product should be sold for, or how much rent should be charged. The government just knows everything, doesn't it?

Wealth always trickles down Abraxas.

Absolutely demonstrably false. Look at any graph in the United States for the last thirty years in wealth distribution in the United States, you know, the period where "trickle down economics" was implemented. Notice something? I do. I notice how the rich keep getting richer and the poor and middle class don't.

You speak of 'the rich' as if they are some type of permanent, exclusive and enduring class. They aren't. People are constantly moving through these classes over time. An individual who's poor today may be rich two years from now. An individual who's rich today may be poor two years from now. And the poor aren't getting richer? You know what I've noticed, poverty today is much different than poverty twenty or thirty years ago. The poor have been getting richer, their standard of living has changed for the better as time passes.

Unless you put all your cash and assets under your bed in a safebox, it's impossible for wealth to be permanently concentrated in one single place. The so called members of the 1% don't have to actively give their money away for it to be put to good use. Where do you think banks gets the funds for all these loans they lend out that are usually worth around a million dollars. It comes from savings. Savings supplies the funds for loans. The primary savers are the 1%, and the money they have is being circulated throughout the economy to create new businesses which create things like employment.

Your point being? That isn't trickle down, all that means is wealth in circulation tends to create more wealth, and, in our system, that wealth goes to the owners of the original investment. Wealth creates more wealth... for the wealthy.

Um yea, it is trickle down by definition. Wealth in the hands of the top creates wealth for the people in the middle and bottom. Fact: the rich tend to save and invest while the middle class and the poor tend to consume. You cannot consume if there are no businesses producing things, you cannot consume if you don't have a job. The rich make this all possible. Their wealth does an enourmous amount of good for this country in their hands as opposed to it being in the governments hands.

It doesn't matter whether it's a 'good' thing or a 'bad' thing. It's a necessary thing. Real mistakes were made Abraxas, and there are no numb solutions. Banks wouldn't have failed if there were no government intervention. If you didn't have the Federal Reserve pushing down the federal funds rate and holding it there for an extended period of time there would have been no false boom in Housing prices. If you didn't have the FDIC insuring every single consumer deposit account banks would never have made risky loans. If you didn't have Congress pressuring banks via the Community Reinvestment Act to lend to unreliable borrowers there would have been no bubble. If you didn't have two GSE's, Fannie and Freddie, insuring nearly all mortgages there would have been no financial crisis. The cataclysm you're referring to was the fault of the government, and now we're expected to believe that additional intervention will save us?

A well blended mix of speculation and nonsense, you fail to understand some critical points about capitalism. The first and foremost of which is not everybody is in it for the long hall. If you look at the long history of economic failures in the US, you will see with some regularity individuals who willingly looted their own company and rand it into the ground, golden parachuting to safety.

That's really not relevant to anything I said since the crisis wasn't manufactured by any single individual, it was manufactured by a mix of government agencies and policies.

The housing boom had nothing to do with the government, it was driven by a market that put ever greater pressure to make ever greater profits and that meant taking bigger and bigger risks.

Ok, you want to explain this at all? Have you looked at an objective study of the crisis? By pushing down the interest rate, the federal reserve created a false demand for housing by making it cheaper for people to get a loan since the interest rate is the price of loans. Since the demand for loans was high, it pushed housing prices up. And interestingly enough, the people who put so much stock in the government never anticipated that housing prices would fall. The people who have so much faith in government never thought that the housing market would be the primary factor that would cause a recession. Free market austrian economists foresaw and predicted the bubble, and they were laughed off by people like you. And now the people who were right, the free market economists, are still being ignored while we're implementing the solutions of people who were wrong.

Further, you have a market that rewards people for destroying a company. Do you know what short selling is? It is the promise to sell property now you don't even own and then buy it back later by a certain date. In other words, I sell you a hundred shares of company x for 500 a pop, I then tank your company so you are only worth 50, and then finally buy the shares, I make a ton of money off harming the value of the economy overall. Do you know what a put option is? It is the purchase of a contract that can force you to buy from me for a certain price at a certain time a security without regard to what the property is actually worth. As with the above example, if I buy a put option from you on my company, deliberately run it into the ground, I can sell it to you at the original price and there isn't anything you can do about it. When there are market mechanisms in place specifically designed to make enormous profits at the expense of the broader market, is it any wonder that Wall Street operates as a casino?

This is great . In a free market, all transactions would be voluntarily made. Nobody would be forced to agree to any transactions that he or she didn't think would be beneficial.

Further, the FDIC thing more than anything else tells me you really don't understand this. The FDIC insures consumers for up to $250,000 so that if a bank goes under, some portion of the funds of the account holders of that banks are protected. FDIC insurance does absolutely nothing to hedge the risks of the bank as if FDIC insurance were ever to kick in they would still owe the same amount of money, just to FDIC. Nothing about FDIC in any way changes the investment habits of banks as it is a consumer protection, not a bank one.

That's just not true. By insuring the deposits of consumers banks are shielded from risk. They have no incentive to engage in prudent lending practices because the risk has been eliminated by the FDIC. If there were no FDIC, banks would have to compete with one another for the deposits of consumers and similarly, consumers would be more cautious and aware of where they deposit their money at. If you want historical examples of how the FDIC has screwed things up, I suggest you start with the Savings and Loans crisis which was a direct consequence of the moral hazard the FDIC created among banks.

Like what? Continuing on the path we're on now will destroy the middle class. You can't just spend and spend and spend without actually paying for it. Right now, the government's borrowing and that's why people aren't actually feeling a lot of pain. When the government can't borrow anymore, and we have this 14 trillion debt sitting here, they'll raise taxes across the board and print more money. That is what's going to destroy the middle class.

You're right, we need to pay for it, and we can start by making the wealthiest people and organizations in America pay their fair share in taxes.

lol this line is never gonna get old. If you think taxing the rich is a good idea thats great, more power to you. I admire people who cling to beliefs that have been thoroughly discredited and debunked. If you actually think the rich are going to pay those taxes, you're looking at reality through a blurred lens. One of your biggest problems if that you can't understand that there is no such thing as a free lunch. If you tax the incomes of those who make over $250,000 annually at enourmous rates, they aren't going to take lying down. They'll transfer the wealth and income over to different countries since the 'rich' (like Romney) have the luxary of possessing foreign accounts. Your policy would force wealth to exit this country.

As for what, things like gutting the EPA and turning environmental issues over to the states (as smog is well known for respecting state boundaries) or the FDA (as food safety is just one of those principles we should compromise on) or the CDC (because America doesn't need people who know how to contain an outbreak to be well funded) or gutting Medicare and Medicaid (as when the federal government can't afford to pay for medical care certainly we can expect private consumers or the even worse off state governments to).

Good. That all sounds great. You just can't fathom any situation where the government isn't regulating every single aspect of society. Do you know what would come up in place of all those things? Market regulations that work better. I'm willing to discuss each of these items in detail if you want, but we've already debated this in the past so it's up to you.

[Abraxas]

The theory behind multinationals are no different than any other business. They are accountable to consumers and if they engage in practices consumers don't like, they begin incuring loss and if they don't stop they eventually die. This is how actual capitalism operates. Like I said it would have worked fine two years ago. Financial and auto companies did stupid things and suffered the consequence of going under. The government comes in and shielded them from any loss at the expense of consumers. They suffered losses because consumers chose not to buy their products, but the government forcibly comes in takes the money from the consumer and tranfers it over to these companies. If you have so much disdain for multinationals, shouldn't you want them to dissolve?

You seem to be confusing basic powers of observation with disdain. Yes, multinationals operate on the same principles as everyone else in capitalism, in much the same way an atomic bomb operates like any other explosive, a difference of scale. You see, what multinationals have that other businesses lack is resources on an enormous scale. They have the power to, in effect, purchase politicians. In a free market where money is speech, if I have billions and billions of dollars, I can bribe you to do my bidding, and if I can't, I can bribe your opponent to and hire a staff to drag your name and the name of anyone you've ever met through the deepest piles of mud and dung I can manufacture.

The obvious solution is to get the government out of the market, something you are vehemently opposed to. Guess what, businesses wouldn't go running to the government is they knew that the government wouldn't offer them any assistance or subsidizes. If you severed the line that exists between government and big business, business wouldn't be throwing around their money in the political arena because there would be no mutually beneficial relationship. If you want big money out of politics, get the government out of business.

One, it wouldn't work because even if you got the federal government out of the market, you would never be able to get state and local governments out. Two, that particular solution is worse than the problem because it simply cedes all the power the monied interests are trying to take from voters and hands it over to the corporation. Applying that strategy to, say, traffic congestion would be burning all the automobiles to avoid gridlock.

Consumers require information, Winepusher, and information about the inner workings of a multinational don't come forward easily or willingly.

What kind of information do consumers require? If I'm shopping around for a new television, I'm going to research the quality, durability and price of the television. That's all the information I need to know, and corporations don't stifle that kind of information, they make that type of information available. Information about the 'inner workings' of a multinational is information that I don't care about in my capacity as a consumer. What's interesting is that making irrelevant information available to the public is detrimental. What if I'm racist and refuse to purchase a product made by a black person? In your society, that type of information would have to be released and people who are prejudice could now discimrinate along those lines. In a society where only relevant information is released, I would never know the race of the individual who manufactured my television.

Thank you for so completely and thoroughly demonstrating exactly why the average consumers is not savvy enough to make a free market work. I couldn't have made up a strawman that so completely embodied my point as to what is wrong with your ideas.

The idea that things like conditions of employment, the environmental impact of the company, median wages, how the company makes its money, where it acquires parts and equipment, who they are paying money to in political office, whether they are trading ethically, the level of testing and safety standards that go into products, etc. are irrelevant is exactly why it's a short trip from a free market to an enslaved society. That these things would be hidden are why a free market is not compatible with a free and democratic society.

When you are poisoning the very ground water the consumer is drinking, you certainly won't advertise it.

If property rights are upheld by the government, a corporation would only be able to poisoin the ground water on its own property. Do you know what would prevent a corporation from dumping waste into a lake or river? Property rights.

So I buy a corner of a river and dump stuff in it that poisons your kids. After all, they are your kids, not mine, and you'll never prove my chemicals gave them cancer as opposed to the hog farm up river from me or the chemical plant one state up.

When you gut any and all government power to oversee these organizations, there is no reason to believe consumers can make informed choices about their purchases, never mind will.

As if the government somehow knows exactly what consumers need to make informed choices. Like the government just knows how many people ought to own a home, or how much a product should be sold for, or how much rent should be charged. The government just knows everything, doesn't it?

You demonstrated more aptly than I ever could the truth of what you quoted already. However, I do note you are now confusing regulation and oversight and inspection with control despite me never having said anything about setting prices or who ought to buy products.

Wealth always trickles down Abraxas.

Absolutely demonstrably false. Look at any graph in the United States for the last thirty years in wealth distribution in the United States, you know, the period where "trickle down economics" was implemented. Notice something? I do. I notice how the rich keep getting richer and the poor and middle class don't.

You speak of 'the rich' as if they are some type of permanent, exclusive and enduring class. They aren't. People are constantly moving through these classes over time. An individual who's poor today may be rich two years from now. An individual who's rich today may be poor two years from now. And the poor aren't getting richer? You know what I've noticed, poverty today is much different than poverty twenty or thirty years ago. The poor have been getting richer, their standard of living has changed for the better as time passes.

There is very, very little in the way of class mobility, certainly so when it comes to losing a position of great wealth. Where you do see people falling from wealth, it tends not to be business owners and capitalists but athletes or entertainers who develop a drug problem or similar.

Unless you put all your cash and assets under your bed in a safebox, it's impossible for wealth to be permanently concentrated in one single place. The so called members of the 1% don't have to actively give their money away for it to be put to good use. Where do you think banks gets the funds for all these loans they lend out that are usually worth around a million dollars. It comes from savings. Savings supplies the funds for loans. The primary savers are the 1%, and the money they have is being circulated throughout the economy to create new businesses which create things like employment.

Your point being? That isn't trickle down, all that means is wealth in circulation tends to create more wealth, and, in our system, that wealth goes to the owners of the original investment. Wealth creates more wealth... for the wealthy.

Um yea, it is trickle down by definition. Wealth in the hands of the top creates wealth for the people in the middle and bottom.

Yes, that is what trickle down means but that is not what you described.

Fact: the rich tend to save and invest while the middle class and the poor tend to consume. You cannot consume if there are no businesses producing things, you cannot consume if you don't have a job. The rich make this all possible. Their wealth does an enourmous amount of good for this country in their hands as opposed to it being in the governments hands.

An apt description of WHY trickle down economics is a flawed, broken, and useless theory that one might wipe themselves with but for the probability they would contract tetanus. The rich reinvest, the poor and middle classes have insufficient money to reinvest so their wealth stays stagnant and new wealth created stays only at the top. Contrary to your assertion, a combination of multiple small pools of money can be just as effective at creating jobs as one large pool; this is where co-ops and mutual companies come from.

It doesn't matter whether it's a 'good' thing or a 'bad' thing. It's a necessary thing. Real mistakes were made Abraxas, and there are no numb solutions. Banks wouldn't have failed if there were no government intervention. If you didn't have the Federal Reserve pushing down the federal funds rate and holding it there for an extended period of time there would have been no false boom in Housing prices. If you didn't have the FDIC insuring every single consumer deposit account banks would never have made risky loans. If you didn't have Congress pressuring banks via the Community Reinvestment Act to lend to unreliable borrowers there would have been no bubble. If you didn't have two GSE's, Fannie and Freddie, insuring nearly all mortgages there would have been no financial crisis. The cataclysm you're referring to was the fault of the government, and now we're expected to believe that additional intervention will save us?

A well blended mix of speculation and nonsense, you fail to understand some critical points about capitalism. The first and foremost of which is not everybody is in it for the long hall. If you look at the long history of economic failures in the US, you will see with some regularity individuals who willingly looted their own company and rand it into the ground, golden parachuting to safety.

That's really not relevant to anything I said since the crisis wasn't manufactured by any single individual, it was manufactured by a mix of government agencies and policies.

Yes, that was the nonsense portion of your mixture.

The housing boom had nothing to do with the government, i

t was driven by a market that put ever greater pressure to make ever greater profits and that meant taking bigger and bigger risks.

Ok, you want to explain this at all? Have you looked at an objective study of the crisis?

Yes, and when you look at an objective analysis, you find it was a result of deregulation, profit seeking, and subprime lending by private institutions that caused it. This being caused by the government only exists in right wing fantasies.

By pushing down the interest rate, the federal reserve created a false demand for housing by making it cheaper for people to get a loan since the interest rate is the price of loans.

See, you're already wrong right there. The federal interest rates determine the rate at which banks borrow from each other, it is not the rate at which consumers borrow from banks. Banks had the option to not make risky loans even when it was easy for them to borrow money. Funny, how agents of a free market have free will and are responsible for their own choices, but the moment they can borrow money more easily they are absolved of all responsibility for their actions.

Since the demand for loans was high, it pushed housing prices up. And interestingly enough, the people who put so much stock in the government never anticipated that housing prices would fall. The people who have so much faith in government never thought that the housing market would be the primary factor that would cause a recession. Free market austrian economists foresaw and predicted the bubble, and they were laughed off by people like you. And now the people who were right, the free market economists, are still being ignored while we're implementing the solutions of people who were wrong.

This is another Libertarian fantasy with no basis in reality. The fact of the matter is representatives from pretty much every major economic school currently existent outside the so-called mainstream economic model saw the bubble coming. Austrians, Frankurts, Neo-Keynsians, etc. The idea this was a big surprise to everyone but the Austrians is simply inaccurate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_finan ... orecasting

Further, you have a market that rewards people for destroying a company. Do you know what short selling is? It is the promise to sell property now you don't even own and then buy it back later by a certain date. In other words, I sell you a hundred shares of company x for 500 a pop, I then tank your company so you are only worth 50, and then finally buy the shares, I make a ton of money off harming the value of the economy overall. Do you know what a put option is? It is the purchase of a contract that can force you to buy from me for a certain price at a certain time a security without regard to what the property is actually worth. As with the above example, if I buy a put option from you on my company, deliberately run it into the ground, I can sell it to you at the original price and there isn't anything you can do about it. When there are market mechanisms in place specifically designed to make enormous profits at the expense of the broader market, is it any wonder that Wall Street operates as a casino?

This is great . In a free market, all transactions would be voluntarily made. Nobody would be forced to agree to any transactions that he or she didn't think would be beneficial.

Point being? Did any part of put options or short selling imply they didn't enter into them voluntarily?

Further, the FDIC thing more than anything else tells me you really don't understand this. The FDIC insures consumers for up to $250,000 so that if a bank goes under, some portion of the funds of the account holders of that banks are protected. FDIC insurance does absolutely nothing to hedge the risks of the bank as if FDIC insurance were ever to kick in they would still owe the same amount of money, just to FDIC. Nothing about FDIC in any way changes the investment habits of banks as it is a consumer protection, not a bank one.

That's just not true. By insuring the deposits of consumers banks are shielded from risk. They have no incentive to engage in prudent lending practices because the risk has been eliminated by the FDIC.

Already shown to be wrong. The risk by the lender is unchanged, only the risk to the consumer is transferred to the FDIC, as the risk for the institution remains unchanged so too would their behavior.

If there were no FDIC, banks would have to compete with one another for the deposits of consumers and similarly, consumers would be more cautious and aware of where they deposit their money at.

Banks already have to compete for their deposits.

If you want historical examples of how the FDIC has screwed things up, I suggest you start with the Savings and Loans crisis which was a direct consequence of the moral hazard the FDIC created among banks.

Another statement where you manage to get essentially everything wrong. One, it was the FSLIC, not the FDIC caught in the S&L crisis, and two, the crisis was a direct result of deregulation to begin with, giving the thrifts most of the same powers as banks while no longer regulating them like banks. The moment they got their free market, they went profit hunting, engaged in risky loans, and promptly ran the economy into the ground. Here's what you don't seem to get, most of these regulations free marketeers hate, they came about for a reason. That reason has been primarily a failure of the free market to regulate itself, resulting in massive damage to the economy and consumers. The SEC, for example, was created because securities traders were engaged in shenanigans to such a degree it threatened the economy as a whole in an effort to make personal profit. This is what the free marketers are pushing us to go back to.

Like what? Continuing on the path we're on now will destroy the middle class. You can't just spend and spend and spend without actually paying for it. Right now, the government's borrowing and that's why people aren't actually feeling a lot of pain. When the government can't borrow anymore, and we have this 14 trillion debt sitting here, they'll raise taxes across the board and print more money. That is what's going to destroy the middle class.

You're right, we need to pay for it, and we can start by making the wealthiest people and organizations in America pay their fair share in taxes.

lol this line is never gonna get old. If you think taxing the rich is a good idea thats great, more power to you.

Most Americans and no small portion of economists do.

I admire people who cling to beliefs that have been thoroughly discredited and debunked.

Of course, you couldn't take an Austrian school economist seriously if you didn't.

If you actually think the rich are going to pay those taxes, you're looking at reality through a blurred lens. One of your biggest problems if that you can't understand that there is no such thing as a free lunch. If you tax the incomes of those who make over $250,000 annually at enourmous rates, they aren't going to take lying down. They'll transfer the wealth and income over to different countries since the 'rich' (like Romney) have the luxary of possessing foreign accounts. Your policy would force wealth to exit this country.

You know the US could do things to prevent that, right? There is no way for them to realistically extract themselves enough from the US market to completely escape and few companies who do business in the US could afford to lose access to the US market. Or, for that matter, impose restrictions on moving large sums of money outside the US. This is a solvable problem.

As for what, things like gutting the EPA and turning environmental issues over to the states (as smog is well known for respecting state boundaries) or the FDA (as food safety is just one of those principles we should compromise on) or the CDC (because America doesn't need people who know how to contain an outbreak to be well funded) or gutting Medicare and Medicaid (as when the federal government can't afford to pay for medical care certainly we can expect private consumers or the even worse off state governments to).

Good. That all sounds great. You just can't fathom any situation where the government isn't regulating every single aspect of society. Do you know what would come up in place of all those things? Market regulations that work better. I'm willing to discuss each of these items in detail if you want, but we've already debated this in the past so it's up to you.

I don't have much more to add than has already been added to our one on one debate on this topic. When your own example for why the EPA was unnecessary was at its base a company mad because it wanted to dump mercury into the Florida Everglades but the government wouldn't let it, I think my point as already been made sufficiently.

[WinePusher]

The obvious solution is to get the government out of the market, something you are vehemently opposed to. Guess what, businesses wouldn't go running to the government is they knew that the government wouldn't offer them any assistance or subsidizes. If you severed the line that exists between government and big business, business wouldn't be throwing around their money in the political arena because there would be no mutually beneficial relationship. If you want big money out of politics, get the government out of business.

One, it wouldn't work because even if you got the federal government out of the market, you would never be able to get state and local governments out.

Do you know why there is very little state and local regulation on businesses? Because a business could very easily get up and leave California who is regulating them to death and move their operations to Nevada, a state with very little regulations. Besides, why don't you ever see big businesses pouring huge amounts of money into elections for a state AG, Senator, Representative, Governor or Lieutenant Governer? Answer that question honestly and you probably won't be confused anymore.

Two, that particular solution is worse than the problem because it simply cedes all the power the monied interests are trying to take from voters and hands it over to the corporation. Applying that strategy to, say, traffic congestion would be burning all the automobiles to avoid gridlock.

You should probably stop with the analogies, they're clearly not your strongpoint. An apt analogy would be removing teacher supervision from the playground. If there were no teacher supervision (aka: Government) then if the kids (aka: Big Business) got hurt they wouldn't have anyone there to slap a bandaid on their sore. They would have to deal with it themselves.

What kind of information do consumers require? If I'm shopping around for a new television, I'm going to research the quality, durability and price of the television. That's all the information I need to know, and corporations don't stifle that kind of information, they make that type of information available. Information about the 'inner workings' of a multinational is information that I don't care about in my capacity as a consumer. What's interesting is that making irrelevant information available to the public is detrimental. What if I'm racist and refuse to purchase a product made by a black person? In your society, that type of information would have to be released and people who are prejudice could now discimrinate along those lines. In a society where only relevant information is released, I would never know the race of the individual who manufactured my television.

Thank you for so completely and thoroughly demonstrating exactly why the average consumers is not savvy enough to make a free market work. I couldn't have made up a strawman that so completely embodied my point as to what is wrong with your ideas.

[strike]The idea that things like conditions of employment, the environmental impact of the company, median wages, how the company makes its money,[/strike] where it acquires parts and equipment, who they are paying money to in political office, [strike]whether they are trading ethically,[/strike] the level of testing and safety standards that go into products, etc. are irrelevant is exactly why it's a short trip from a free market to an enslaved society. That these things would be hidden are why a free market is not compatible with a free and democratic society.

There you go Abraxas, I struck out everything that is irrelevant and underlined everything that is relevant. Do you know who should actually care about employment conditions and median wages? The employees of that company, not the consumers. If I'm looking for a new car, why should I give a damn about the working conditions of the car manufacturers and how much they're paid? As a consumer, that is totally irrelevant to me. And many consumers do care about the environment Abraxas. They care that a few environmental fundamentalists are holding Americans hostage at the gas pump. They care that they're paying egregious amounts for a gallon of gas because a few loudmouthed people start screaming everytime the government tries to tap into domestic supplies of oil. It's probably the funniest situation I've ever seen. We have environmental fundamentalists at home preventing domestic oil ventures, and we have anti war zealots crying about oil ventures abroad. We have two groups of people on the far left making lives miserable for many consumers due to their zealotry.

If property rights are upheld by the government, a corporation would only be able to poisoin the ground water on its own property. Do you know what would prevent a corporation from dumping waste into a lake or river? Property rights.

So I buy a corner of a river and dump stuff in it that poisons your kids. After all, they are your kids, not mine, and you'll never prove my chemicals gave them cancer as opposed to the hog farm up river from me or the chemical plant one state up.

Wow, you just made a massive jump. If you bought part of a river and dumped your garbage in it, why would you then proceed to put the contaminated water out for sale? Again, the analogies you're drawing are embarrasingly inept. If you contaminate a lake that belongs to the city, and the city has declared that the lake is safe for playing in, then you're liable. If the river belongs to you, then you can do whatever you want to it. If you want to contaminate it, go ahead, it would be my fault for allowing my kids to violate your property and allow them to play in your contaminated water. But aside from this, your post is loaded with one fallacy after another. No rational person would voluntarily destroy his or her own property. The destruction of property comes about when the property isn't owned by any single individual or collective group.

When you gut any and all government power to oversee these organizations, there is no reason to believe consumers can make informed choices about their purchases, never mind will.

As if the government somehow knows exactly what consumers need to make informed choices. Like the government just knows how many people ought to own a home, or how much a product should be sold for, or how much rent should be charged. The government just knows everything, doesn't it?

You demonstrated more aptly than I ever could the truth of what you quoted already. However, I do note you are now confusing regulation and oversight and inspection with control despite me never having said anything about setting prices or who ought to buy products.

Answer my question. How does the government know what consumers need to make informed choices?

Fact: the rich tend to save and invest while the middle class and the poor tend to consume. You cannot consume if there are no businesses producing things, you cannot consume if you don't have a job. The rich make this all possible. Their wealth does an enourmous amount of good for this country in their hands as opposed to it being in the governments hands.

An apt description of WHY trickle down economics is a flawed, broken, and useless theory that one might wipe themselves with but for the probability they would contract tetanus. The rich reinvest, the poor and middle classes have insufficient money to reinvest so their wealth stays stagnant and new wealth created stays only at the top. Contrary to your assertion, a combination of multiple small pools of money can be just as effective at creating jobs as one large pool; this is where co-ops and mutual companies come from.

If the rich didn't get a return on their investment, what incentive would they have to invest in the first place? Any new wealth that is generated is reinvested and the cycle continues. If I invest my money, that money is circulated throughout the economy and creates wealth for both myself and others. Your complaint isn't justified.

Ok, you want to explain this at all? Have you looked at an objective study of the crisis?

Yes, and when you look at an objective analysis, you find it was a result of deregulation, profit seeking, and subprime lending by private institutions that caused it. This being caused by the government only exists in right wing fantasies.

You're obviously not looking at any objective data because a profit seeking, deregulated lending institution would never engage in subprime financing. Subprime loans, Adjustable Rate loans and No Income, Assets or Job Loans would have never occured in a deregulated housing market because the borrowers these loans were targeted at would have been rejected prima facie. Legislation such as the Community Reinvestment Act destroyed any standard of lending banks adhered to and coerced them to lend to unworthy borrowers. And along with that you have these high risk loans being traded in for securities by Fannie and Freddie which nationalized the problem. The boom in housing prices wasn't a nationwide occurence, it was concentrated in places like California and Florida and the bust would have remained confined in those areas had the banks kept the loans.

By pushing down the interest rate, the federal reserve created a false demand for housing by making it cheaper for people to get a loan since the interest rate is the price of loans.

See, you're already wrong right there. The federal interest rates determine the rate at which banks borrow from each other, it is not the rate at which consumers borrow from banks.

Oh wow. Do you what determines the prime interest rate (the rate at which consumers borrow from banks)? The federal funds rate (the rate at which banks borrow from eachother).

Banks had the option to not make risky loans even when it was easy for them to borrow money. Funny, how agents of a free market have free will and are responsible for their own choices, but the moment they can borrow money more easily they are absolved of all responsibility for their actions.

This is another Libertarian fantasy with no basis in reality. The fact of the matter is representatives from pretty much every major economic school currently existent outside the so-called mainstream economic model saw the bubble coming. Austrians, Frankurts, Neo-Keynsians, etc. The idea this was a big surprise to everyone but the Austrians is simply inaccurate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_finan ... orecasting

Let's be clear here, just because you can throw up a vague article from wikipedia doesn't mean you're right. Prior to the bubble in housing, we had liberals and keynesians like Barney Frank, Ben Bernanke, Alan Greenspan and the like shrugging off any concerns about the stability of housing prices. Here, we have the loner Ron Paul and a handful of other Free Market Economists warning that there would be a bubble. There are these things called economic indicators and because of the mindset Greenspan and Frank were set in, they disregarded the indicators.

This is great . In a free market, all transactions would be voluntarily made. Nobody would be forced to agree to any transactions that he or she didn't think would be beneficial.

Point being? Did any part of put options or short selling imply they didn't enter into them voluntarily?

Uh yea? I mean, if you're going to use specific examples as the basis for your argument you should at least know what they are. By what mechanism in a free market would an individual be forced to enter into a contract or buy a hundred shares of a company?

That's just not true. By insuring the deposits of consumers banks are shielded from risk. They have no incentive to engage in prudent lending practices because the risk has been eliminated by the FDIC.

Already shown to be wrong. The risk by the lender is unchanged, only the risk to the consumer is transferred to the FDIC, as the risk for the institution remains unchanged so too would their behavior.

This is the type of thing I'm talking about. You are gradually destroying your credibility by arguing against textbook facts. The risk is shared by the lender and the consumer. If there were no government insurance, the consumer would face a risk every time he or she put money into his deposit account and the bank would face a risk every time it issues out loans. You've managed to get at least one thing right in this thread, and that is the fact that the market is fueled by profits. Sadly, you ignore the other half of the equation. The drive for profits is tempered by the fear of losses. This isn't a profit system, it's a profit and loss system. You cannot have one without the other and hope to maintain stability. Banks are for profit institutions and they generate profits by providing a particular service, primarily financial loans. And just as any other for profit institution, they want to maximize profits and minimize losses. The FDIC doesn't simply mitigate the magnitude of losses, it completely eliminates the possibility of losses on the part of a bank. For you to say that the risk by the lender is unchanged just shows how wrong you are about this entire thing. Not only does the mere existence of the FDIC cause banks to behave differently then they would otherwise, there are these things called bank failures that are a consequence of this behavior. An interesting fact that you ought to know is that we have experienced long term recessions and depressions ever since the creation of the federal reserve and the enactment of financial regulatory legislation and institutions such as the FDIC.

If there were no FDIC, banks would have to compete with one another for the deposits of consumers and similarly, consumers would be more cautious and aware of where they deposit their money at.

Banks already have to compete for their deposits.

Oh really? Why would banks have to compete for deposits if all FDIC member deposits are insured? Consumers wouldn't care where they deposit their money at because the FDIC has poisioned the system. The idea of competition arises from consumers being able to choose between two things that are dissimilar. There is no difference between the Wells Fargo up my street or the Citibank down my street because both have their deposits insured. Wells Fargo has no incentive to gain a reputation

If you want historical examples of how the FDIC has screwed things up, I suggest you start with the Savings and Loans crisis which was a direct consequence of the moral hazard the FDIC created among banks.

Another statement where you manage to get essentially everything wrong. One, it was the FSLIC, not the FDIC caught in the S&L crisis, and two, the crisis was a direct result of deregulation to begin with, giving the thrifts most of the same powers as banks while no longer regulating them like banks. The moment they got their free market, they went profit hunting, engaged in risky loans, and promptly ran the economy into the ground. Here's what you don't seem to get, most of these regulations free marketeers hate, they came about for a reason. That reason has been primarily a failure of the free market to regulate itself, resulting in massive damage to the economy and consumers. The SEC, for example, was created because securities traders were engaged in shenanigans to such a degree it threatened the economy as a whole in an effort to make personal profit. This is what the free marketers are pushing us to go back to.

Other than the name, there is no difference between the defunct FSLIC and the FDIC. The role they both hold, insuring bank deposits, created a moral hazard which resulted in the Savings and Loans crisis. There is no conceivable scenario in a free market where a bank would enage in risky lending practices. There is an automatic fear of loss that deters this type of behavior, unfortunately government deposit insurance eliminates the possibility of any losses which results in risky and unethical practices which results in one crisis after another. And yea, I realize the justification people like offer for government intervention is because of a market failure. Luckily we've been living with your policies for nearly an entire century and we've experienced no type of economic bliss. Just look at history Abraxas, government intervention hasn't leveled out the business cycle, hasn't prevented widely spread bank failures, hasn't prevented stock market crashes, hasn't reduced pollution, hasn't increased the standard of living, hasn't reduced trade deficits, and hasn't reduced poverty.

I admire people who cling to beliefs that have been thoroughly discredited and debunked.

Of course, you couldn't take an Austrian school economist seriously if you didn't.

What specifically about Austrian economics has been discredited? You're confusing a 'discredited' theory with a 'heterodox' theory. Austrian economics is heterodox because liberals and keynesians have a monopoly on academia and marginalize individuals with opposing viewpoints. Redistributionism, especially on the scale you want, has been discredited every time it is implemented in a society. Yet people like you want to keep trying it despite the fact that every time it has been tried the result is failure and misery. This is called insanity.

If you actually think the rich are going to pay those taxes, you're looking at reality through a blurred lens. One of your biggest problems if that you can't understand that there is no such thing as a free lunch. If you tax the incomes of those who make over $250,000 annually at enourmous rates, they aren't going to take lying down. They'll transfer the wealth and income over to different countries since the 'rich' (like Romney) have the luxary of possessing foreign accounts. Your policy would force wealth to exit this country.

You know the US could do things to prevent that, right?

How? By restricting the freedoms of people who are successful? By having the government dictate to them what they can and can't do with their own money?

I don't have much more to add than has already been added to our one on one debate on this topic. When your own example for why the EPA was unnecessary was at its base a company mad because it wanted to dump mercury into the Florida Everglades but the government wouldn't let it, I think my point as already been made sufficiently.

Should I ask you to direct me to where I ever made this argument against the EPA? I mean, I already know you won't be able to since this is a distorted and gross caricature of my argument.

[Choir Loft]

Anyone noticing something is incredibly off in this years election? Much more so than any time i can remember. The media is increasingly editing and censoring against Ron Paul and over 900 Dead People voted in South Carolina!

My question for debate is: Is it about time for another Revolution?

Secession.

Since October of 2001, we've been living in a post-constitutional America. It wasn't obvious at first, but as time went on citizens became increasingly aware of the erosion of our liberties, rising number of unconstitutional issues and usurpation of power; subjects of warning by our founding fathers.

Even the most patriotic person with their heads firmly planted in the sand have to admit that the system is broken. What they actually sense is the stench of the rotting corpse of a once great republic. We've been robbed, boys and girls.

Today all the media is owned by a dozen or so mega corporations. Things are 'explained to us' as though we were idiot children unable to form our own educated conclusions.

Congress is the puppet of the financial cartel and the military-industrial complex, a term coined by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in his final warning address to the American people in January of 1960. Our esteemed representatives in Washington seem to be gridlocked, but that's only partly true. They are inactive when it comes to matters of national importance. When it's time to bail out the banks and big corporations, they are 'Johnny on the spot.'

Mr. President? Well, he's sort of a figurehead these days, much like the first lady except without the charm. For example, much has been said for and against Mr. Obama as well as his predecessor GW. One of the most profound criticisms I've read came from one of Obama's most ardent supporters;

"We voted for our brother Barack, a beautiful human being with a sweet heart, and now he's an assassin. They turned him into them."
- Minister Louis Farrakhan

There are three major solutions being discussed among learned folks these days.
1) Secession. Not a bad idea considering the global nature of trade these days.
Do we really need a super restrictive power looking over our shoulders, studying our every move?

2) Constitutional Congress. The aforementioned constitution has a clause which permits individual states to assemble and create a new government. Both secession and a constitutional congress require actions at the state level.

3) Nullification. Currently being worked by states. This action legally ignores DC rules and laws. A state basically says it will do what it wants in opposition to Washington. An individual can exercise nullification in the jury room by voting 'innocent' on an issue when that person believes a law is being inappropriately applied. For example, a teacher is fired for praying in school. If taken to the jury, the voting members can vote against a law and acquit.

In most cases, action against Washington must occur at the state level. Today, however, too many state representatives have their hands deeply into Federal pockets. The Feds, in turn, have their hands deeply into the state's trousers exercising a particular form of political pleasuring.

If secession or a constitutional congress is what the citizens want, then they must elect state representatives that agree with that solution.

Otherwise we're pretty well screwed.

The government now is at the beck and call of corporate, financial and military interests. The old word for that situation is; fascism. Power is now held in the hands of a few. The word for that is; oligarchy.

To be fair, this isn't the German version or even the 1930's Spanish version. It's an American version, but its fascism nonetheless.