Archive for the ‘economics’ Category

Capitalistic Society

Friday, November 25th, 2011

Quote from Michael Hudson:

We live in a capitalistic society, and much of the world does too. If you’re going to have capitalism, then you’ve got to have capital, and you’ve got to have organizations like Goldman Sachs that are in business to take capital from savers, people who have the capital and want a return on that money, to the people who need it all around the world, and that’s what they should be doing as opposed to gambling with our money but you need to have that functioning properly for capitalism to exist.

Ok, I don’t know about you, but every investment account I’ve ever looked at says “may lose value”. Nowhere is it guaranteed that our investments will make money, thus they are a gamble. I’m not sure if Mr. Hudson was just talking to fast, or didn’t quite articulate his point very well, but it sounded an awful lot to me like he was advocating more regulation on where investment firms can put our money. Now, the context of this quote is a discussion surrounding the occupy wall street movement on Democracy Now podcast(about 52 minutes in is where this quote is), so I’ll let you draw your conclusions. I don’t think there is ever going to be an answer to this that makes everyone happy, when you invest in wall street, you are taking a risk, the size of the risk depends on what you invest in. If you let other people invest your money for you, you are still taking a risk, they aren’t guaranteeing that they are going to make money for you. In this case, as in all others where things exchange hands, buyer beware. You had better do your homework on who you are investing your?money with, as I shouldn’t be bailing you out if you don’t (nor vice versa). I don’t think there can be any other answer, look at what’s happening when they try to regulate the investment industry. People think that because it’s being regulated, they don’t have to do their due diligence selecting an investment firm, then you get what we have now, a lot of people p-o’d because they got the wool pulled over their eyes and fleeced. So is more regulation the answer? Why would it be? That’s what happens whenever government starts sticking its nose in places it doesn’t belong. “Oh, our rules made things worse? Well, here, have some more rules to make it better.” Then everyone’s resources are spent trying to follow the (more…)

The Answer….More Government?

Monday, June 29th, 2009

VA Senator Mark Warner had a couple of articles published over the weekend, one on economic/monetary policy, and one on health care.? Unfortunately I was not surprised by his view on either issue.? What he proposes in his articles is, of course, more government.?

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Goodbye 2008

Wednesday, December 31st, 2008

As we say goodbye to 2008, what do you think the future holds? I, for one, am very concerned about where this president and congress are going to take us in the economic arena. Whenever one party holds dominance over the House, Senate, and Presidency, bad things happen for the people, look at what the republicans did. They were supposed to be the party of small government, and they grew government more than at any other time in history. I worry that the democratic agenda is going to push us into a deep recession. Hopefully they will aggrevate enough people that in two years they will lose majority in either the house or senate. I’m also not looking forward to what they might do to education, as dems tend to throw even more money at that than reps do. I think we need to encourage more private/home schooling but still have government funded schools available. I don’t think more funding to an already broken education system is the answer, as has been documented in a number of places. (Those are by far not the only 3, do a google search on school funding vs. performance). Combine all this with the abysmal performance of all third party or independant candidates in the presidential election (not one received more than a million votes) and I don’t look back on 2008 fondly from a political perspective. On a less depressing note, I am going to make it my new years resolution to post at least one op/ed piece to the blog a week, in addition to any informative cross-linking I can find. I just have to catch up on all my political feeds on google now. *Sigh*

Happy Election Year

Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008

Wow, Neal goes on a great big rant today about people who should not be allowed to vote.  For the most part I agree with him.  I am of the opinion that there needs to be some criteria you need to pass (other than having survivied to be 18) in order to be allowed to vote.  My dad came up with one, that you get one vote for every $10,000 you pay in taxes per year.  Not sure I completely agree with that one, but it couldn’t be worse than what we have now.  Maybe have that be a cutoff, you don’t get to vote unless you pay $10,000 in taxes per year, but you only get one vote.  We have to have some way of keeping people from voting themselves the ability to steal other peoples stuff.

boortz.com: Nealz Nuze Today’s Nuze

If you squandered every opportunity for an education to end up an unemployable semi-literate loser, that’s your problem, not mine. If you’ve destroyed your health with cigarettes and fast food … then by what right do you demand that people who lived their lives more responsibly than you cover the cost of your medical care. You cry about your “right” to health care. You dare to claim a right to the services of another human being to correct problems you created for yourself? Further, if it is more important for you to spend your money on a cell phone, flat-screen televisions, the best new car, meals at expensive restaurants and fancy vacations than it is to spend your money on a health insurance policy .. then you should be on your own. Don’t beg the government to steal from someone else so that you don’t have to change your lifestyle.

And a word for you welfare brood mares out there. That’s right .. welfare brood mares .. it’s time for someone to call you out for what you are. Perhaps one of the greatest social wrongs a person can commit in this country is to have a child that you cannot afford to care for. Do you really think that it’s perfectly OK for you to get yourself knocked up, download your baby, and then tell the taxpayers “Hey, look what I did! Now you folks cough up the money I need to take care of this child.” Yeah .. that’s what America is all about .. and you’re going to be right there in November to vote for Hillary, aren’t you. In fact all of you are: the uneducated and unmotivated, the “I’m not responsible for my own health care” crowd, and the single moms. All of you want someone else to step in and take care of you after you’ve screwed up your own lives, and who better than Hillary, a woman more than ready to use the police power of government to reward you for your votes.

You do know, don’t you, that you have absolutely no constitutional right to cast a vote in this presidential election. No .. you probably don’t know that. That would mean you are educated, but you’re not. You were educated by the government … and the government sure isn’t going to disclose that inconvenient little fact to you. Somehow the media in this country has bought the politician’s about this “right to vote.” It’s not there. Doesn’t exist. And to save this country we need to figure out a way to get tens of millions the parasite class off the voter roles. Welfare? No vote. Illiterate? Stay home on election day. Begging for the government to be your lifetime nanny? Let the doers, the achievers cast the votes. Just stay away.

Historians have said that this country will start to slide when the people learn that they can vote largess for themselves out of the public treasury. Well, you’ve learned, and now you’re heading to the polls later this year to vote for government as an instrument of plunder .. plunder for you .. plunder to pay you for your votes. It’s all about you, your wants and needs. Look for the politician who promises to transfer the most wealth from the achievers to you … and that’s the politician who gets your vote. You don’t care even a little bit about the type of America you’ll leave generations to come … it’s all about you, right now, right here.

Don’t you have some soap operas you need to catch up to on election day?

A Unique Opportunity

Tuesday, January 1st, 2008

boortz.com:Todays Nuze

Wealth envy is nothing new. In fact, we can thank wealth envy for our current income tax system. When the 16th Amendment income tax was being sold to the American people the proponents of a new federal income tax needed a way to get people to ask their states for ratification. Wealth envy was the key. The people were told that only rich Americans would ever have to pay the income tax, and virtually all of these rich people lived in the Northeast; generally in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and New York. The voters in states like Michigan or Kentucky had nothing to worry about. They would reap the benefits of all of this new federal spending without having to pay a part of the tab. Only the evil rich would be hit. The 16th Amendment sailed through.

You know, I think that what most of the people fail to realize is that government likes to play with wedges. The original issue of getting the 16th Amendment ratified was a wedge to enable the government to levy more and more taxes upon the people and to concentrate power in Washington. Everyone in Washington realized this fact, but, as was evident by how people reacted to the proposal, most people outside Washington did not. If they had, they would surely have shouted down this obscenity, for who wants government overlords constantly looking over your shoulder asking “how much money have you made today?”, or telling you “you can’t spend your money on that”? People did not, and still do not, realize that the government is taking us by a divide and conquer tactic. They divide us on the issue of the income tax, getting it passed so only the “rich” have to pay it. Once they have the wedge in the door, they can then expand the tax to lower incomes, because the “poor” still don’t have to pay, so vote for it, and the rich are now already paying, so why should they bother voting against it, because if they do, they are hamstringing themselves in the competitive market, so now the tax has spread lower, and will continue to do so until everyone is covered. They divide us on prostitution, gambling, and drug laws, and get away with it because the majority does not indulge in the activity prohibited. In prostitution, the majority do not want to appear in the eyes of their neighbors as adulterers, so they go along with the laws against prostitution, not realizing that the government is driving in a wedge to restrict behavior more and more down the road. Prostitution is illegal in almost every state because the people didn’t fight to keep government out of their private lives. Next government takes another step in controlling your lives, like they did in Georgia. If that succeeds, which thankfully it is looking like it will not, they will take another step, if it does not succeed, do you really think they won’t try again, only next time they will limit the law a little more so it will get passed, maybe only ban certain types of sex toys, instead of all of them. Drugs are classified according to schedules of restrictions, with those that are deemed to have “a high potential for abuse” and “no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.” to be illegal. We are finally starting to get some push back on the classification of Marijuana, but only because it has been deemed to have some medical benefit. This is the wrong reason to be pushing back. The reason to be pushing back is because it is not the governments business what you do with your body! Who are they to be telling you what you can and cannot smoke, what you can and cannot inject, what is and is not bad for you? And do you think it will stop there? Are you kidding? (Each word is a separate link, you should read them all)

The fact that people are blinded by envy of what someone else has or does is just what the government uses to drive in the wedge. Don’t like it that your neighbor makes 10 million a year? Well, we’ll hit him with taxes for you and give some of that money to you! Do you think that there is someone who might be more poor than you are that will hit you next? Don’t like it that your neighbor goes to a brothel every night and gets all the poon tang he wants? Well, lets pass a law against that. Do you think that there may be someone out there more puritanical than you that doesn’t like what you do in your bedroom? Don’t like it that your neighbor enjoys pissing away his paycheck gambling and not providing for the upkeep of his property? Well, let’s pass a law against that. Do you think that there is someone else that doesn’t like some of the things you spend your money on? We must not forget that government is force, and that it can be used against you just as easily as for you.

If people were to look at any laws that the government passes as wedges to get their foot in the door, not as laws that benefit the majority of the people, because that’s never how they’re designed, then, and only then, would we cry “Stop! We don’t want that!”. The problem is, how do you educate the people on this, when government controls most channels of communication? Well, you’re reading it now.  I think we have a unique opportunity with the rise of the internet, if we can keep the government from regulating it long enough, to educate the people against the evils of government, and to make some real progress back towards a free society.