Posted on 10/27/2009 11:46:41 AM PDT by AreaMan
Oh yes “I couldn’t give a flying whatever” was rude and I apologise I was trying to be a little bit funny (hence the little smile at the end of the sentence). I should have realised that my bent sense of humour wouldn’t translate - Mea Culpa.
Mel
Hey Mate- happy to admit when I have harmed someone else - especially when it wasn’t intentional. I admit to being a bit of a smartarse I just tend to believe that others get it and I am a bit stunned when they don’t - once again sorry!
Mel
You don't have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body. - C.S. Lewis
If it makes you feel good to blame democrats for the mess, go ahead. They certainly have their share of blame although I am surprised you left out two of the most guilty democrats, who FWIW are high up in Obama’s administration.
Anyway, here’s you a good starting list:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/jan/26/road-ruin-recession-individuals-economy
Then, if you want a detailed explanation of how we got to where we are there is this link. It will take you quite a while and the links within the article are fascinating. However, if your read this, and still think the poor widdle
bankers was habbing their widdle arms twisted, then let me know and I will send you a few more links from Wall Street insiders.
Really, “revisionism” does not become any of us. It went out of style with the commies.
http://www.crashopedia.com/index.php/Main_Page
parsy, who hopes you will put forth the effort to get past the simplistic answers
“The thought of modern industry in the hands of Christian charity is a dream worth dreaming. The thought of industry in the hands of paganism is a nightmare beyond imagining. The choice between the two is upon us.” Theodore Roosevelt
Which just goes to show that even a blind pig finds an acorn once in a while. :^)
(Thank you)
Then with all due respect, the GOP needs to change its name to the Troglodyte Party. Your reply is a perfect example of libertarian poisoning of conservatism.
First, social security and medicare: The United States is a real live country/nation, just like Sweden or England or China. Real live (and dead) western countries have always taken care of the poor. Eskimo tribes take care of their elderly. Indian tribes fed their elderly and sick. Real live human beings, apparently from the archaelogical record, including Neanderthals and further back to the “monkey people” took care of the members of their group. Now, here comes the GOP, in the latter part of the second millenia past Christ, and think that this is a bad thing. If that ain’t Ayn Rand’s dead nutjob hand reaching out of the grave, then I don’t know what is.
A society has choices in how it does this. Charging what amounts to a 16% tax on current labor to provide for post labor survival is not that bad an idea. Prior the the War of Northern Aggression, slaveholders in some states were prohibited from freeing their slaves when they reached old age. This is because even slaveholders recognized the injustice of working some poor SOB his whole life and then throwing him or her to wolves when they were no longer productive. You, and everybody who believes like you, should be utterly ashamed of yourselves for your lack of humanity.
You should also be ashamed of yourselves as alleged conservatives. Conservatism is at heart, COMMON SENSE. It is doing the things that help make your nation safe and strong and stable. Having people fall off the food chart and housing chart at a certain age don’t do none of that. Common sense is preparing for the inevitable. It is why we have an Air Force, for example. We know some SOB somewhere is going to start some sh*t with us and we want to encourage them to have second thoughts about getting creamed after they do it. It is the same with old age. We know it is inevitable no matter how much green tea we drink or how many vitamins we take. So, using our common sense, we prepare for it. We create a system whereby when a person reaches a certain age,, their income dryeth not up. We look at it as a cost of doing business. We lay something up for the future. Now the fact that gov’t has done spent it is pretty lousy, but the laying up is not wrong or unconstitutional.
Wage and hour-minwage laws: OMG! What a stretch. First Amendment? The Constitution provides for regulation of interstate commerce. what if one state was civilized, and conservative, and had a high standard of living and the neighboring state was a wahoo “libertarian” state that permitted one dollar an hour wages and no worker’s comp, etc. Lets just call the civilized state, Arkansas, for example, and the wahoo idiot state,let’s call Texas, for example. Products from Texas would undercut the price of products made in Arkansas in much the same way that Chicom products undercut American jobs. This would not be good, so Congress would have the right to set wage floors to prevent this from happening. That way the states could compete on a fairly even basis. Not unconstitutional.
Minwages: No, the cost of labor is not 100% of a product. If minwages workers get a dollar an hour more, their cost of living does not go up $1.00 per hour. Think about it. Have you ever turned down a raise because your cost of living would go up that much???? No. You would be committed to a mental institution if you said something like that, assuming your spouse did not kill you first. Imagine coming home and saying to wifey poo-”Darling, the boss offered me a $100 per week raise today but I turned him down. Ayn Rand and Von Mises tell me that increases in wages will be offset by an increase in prices so I thought it better to refuse that raise, and the bonus he wanted to give me.” This is where “libertarian theory” meets “How fast can you run from an angry woman with a skillet?”
Use your brains. Now as to the $100 per hour wage, there is a very simple answer to that. I will let you have some time to see if you can think of the answer. I hear this all the time, and it is pretty much an absurdist argument once one really thinks about it. If the answer don’t come to you, I will tell you.
Now this I find very disturbing: “Minimum wage jobs are not WORTHY of being paid “livable” wages as they do not produce enough to be worth that much.” BASED ON WHAT? You mean some poor schmuck ought to work 40 hours a week and not be able to survive? This is not “conservative” This is aristocratic thought. Peasants should just be content to stay peasants. Sorry, but regardless of our skills, we all have 168 hours in our week. If you work, you should be able to feed yourself, house yourself, and clothe yourself.
You have gone horribly astray in your thinking. Do you notice how the GOP candidates, who probably believe just as you do, do not come right out and say this during election campaigns? They have to hide it and not come right out say it. Do you know why? It is because it is an extremist, crazy view and most Americans would throw feces and rotten vegetables at said candidate, particularly when said candidate got to the part where abortion is wrong because every human life is special. Listeners would gag.
This is why I say libertarianism has poisoned the GOP and conservatism.
“Far better would be to stop forcing banks to lend money to those who cannot repay it.” -—Revisionist history. Poor widdle bankers were not forced to make loans which caused the meltdown. A comforting fairy tale for libertarians and misguided conservatives. Rather than face the “reality” of thieving bankers, you guys can pretend it was the poor folks and gov’t that caused all this. What a smug little fairy tale land you guys live in. Should you be interested in sliding down the magic beanpole to Planet Earth, you might try these two links for starts. One is very long but very worthwhile including the links within the article. If you are not afraid of learning new things and thinking new thoughts, it is fascinating:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/jan/26/road-ruin-recession-individuals-economy
http://www.crashopedia.com/index.php/Main_Page
Finally:
“Why should groups of employees be allowed to blackmail and steal from their employer? Again this violates 1st ammendment. The assembling of an employer and his employees is no one’s business but theirs. (As long as they both honor any contract they both agree to at signing)Revise corporate laws to prevent executives from running big companies for their own benefit.This is impossible to do. Everyone does everything they do for their own benefit.”
The answer is, real life don’t work that way. When you are job hunting, you are over a barrel most of the time. The field is not even. Unions in America seem to go overboard and shoot themselves in the foot, but collective bargaining seems to work in Europe. Germany I read is the biggest exporter in world and their standard of living is high. Somehow, unions and management are getting the job done there. I wish I knew more about it.
The practical reason for many of these suggestions is to have a strong stable nation where everybody has a stake in the system. When you have huge inequality of wealth, your nation suffers and splinters into class struggles. There has already been a “redistribution” of wealth in this country from the poor and middle classes to the rich. We have not become stronger or more stable as a result of this. Quite the opposite.
Higher wages are a way to redistribute wealth away from corporate profits and the rich to wage earners. This means demand is paid for with cash not increases in credit which is what has happened over the last three decades. This is not communistic or socialistic, it is simply realistic. Read Karl Denniger over at Market Ticker, or Marc Faber. Start reading articles at Naked Capitalism, These people are not commies. But they realize what happens when a nation gets off balance.
FWIW, I think we are already over the edge and the debts will have to be monetized, and there will be hyperinflation and we will each get a monthly stipend for basics from gov’t and work if we want to for extras, which most of us will do. I will be in my late 50’s then, or early 60’s. I plan on becoming a wandering poet and balladeer with young 20-something girlfriends along the way.
parsy, the conservative thinker
You might like this Teddy Roosevelt recording onto “Edison cylinders”
http://www.nps.gov/archive/edis/edisonia/documentary.htm
parsy, who likes TR
Great recording...it is wonderful to hear Mr. Roosevelt in his own voice.
I fully agree with that commment. And commom sense tells me that it is the very nature of governments and bureaucracies to grow their own power. Every government program, no matter how well intentioned, gives the government more oportunity to grow. Power is a finite resource and for the government to have more individuals must have less.
Labor is also a finite resource. Economics 101, which I passed, tells us that raising the price of any resource lowers it's demand. This is called 'the invisible hand of the market'. If you lower the cost of a resource, demand will increase. At certain times some states do not have anyone making minimum wage because jobs are plentiful and workers few. In times like these higher minimum wages mean employers cut jobs or hire less people.
And we have given control of this process to the government! Is the government rushing to lower the minimum wage while unemployment is high? Never. It is a populist tool to win votes. The founders, who were much wiser than I am, not only put severe limits on the government's interference in business, finance and our personnal lives, but many of them argued quite forcefully that the new government still had too much power. The anti-federalist papers are just as important to our history as the federalist papers.
The things you have brought up from social security to banking regulation are the rights of the states. The states that abuse their powers will find their businesses leave and population empoverished. The states that manage regulation and taxation well will find that businesses move in and their populations thrive. The massive amount of power that the federal government has stolen from the state governments since the passing of the 17th ammendment has skewed this to the point that only in extreme cases like Michigan and California can states suffer the consequences of their own foolishness.
That government is best which governs least. - Thomas Paine. Not a revisionist.
The government is a power hungry monster that must constantly be kept in fear of the population. The only way this can happen is if it is kept small enough to be drowned in a bathtub.
Note to self: Use spell check. You aren’t that smart.
I agree that gov’t can get too big, and frankly it is already. But,there are still legitimate functions gov’t needs to perform. Minwages are extremely non-intrusive. Same with Glass-Steagall. With so many jobless, the worst time to lower wages.
parsy, who is in birther land for a while
The employment contract should not be a suicide pact. Economics 101 also tells you that a company has fixed costs and variable costs. The only variable cost that can be changed immediately is labor. If a companies fixed costs are greater than their income then it should shut down. The minimum wage makes labor costs less variable. This means that a company only has a few choices if it is losing money. Lay people off or shut their doors completely. I think I would prefer a pay cut to going on public charity.
But if wages go up across the board, then prices can too. Better than the poor and middle class using 29.99% credit cards and being on gov’t assistance.
parsy, the deep thinker
parsy, the deep thinker
I appreciate your deep thinking. You have made my point very succinctly. By raising the minimum wage you force more people out of employment and on to government assistance and 29.99% credit cards. And they can buy even less because prices are higher.
Higher prices mean people can consume less. If people consume less goods then less goods are produced. Even better, higher prices for American made products coupled with our ridiculous trade policies help channel more money overseas where wages are lower. That way we help raise the standard of living of other countries at our expense. A fabulous example of this was during the last economic boom China was outsourcing jobs to Southeast Asian countries.
"There. Read that!"
It feels like intellectual laziness. However, Peter Schiff wrote a very good piece about the minimum wage and he explains it much better than I can. Of course, I haven't made the millions of dollars that he did correctly predicting the tech bubble and the housing bubble bursts.
Minimum Wage, Maximum Stupidity
Please do me the courtesy of reading this, as I read many of the links you posted regarding tort reform.
You don't have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body. - C.S. Lewis
Go away, farcy, you limp wristed lefty dweeb. You’re not a conservative and never have been. Freaking liar.
Is it greedy to spend your last money on taxes or to feed your family?
Is it greedy to feed your neighbor's child when they don't have money while your own family goes hungry?
Both of those were examples of Randian greed. Another example was paying your employees the best wages to selfishly keep them in your employ rather than share them with someone else.
True (bad) greed is like the builder of the Taj Mahal - he cut off the hands of the builders after they were finished so that they would never build again.
>> Greed Is Not Good, and It’s Not Capitalism
Neither is Capitalism greed.
Capitalism is the most liberal form of commerce. To say it’s not, is ‘hate speech’.
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