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The Free Market Fetish
Baltimore Chronicle & Sentinel ^ | February 5, 2010 | Paul Craig Roberts

Posted on 02/06/2010 8:39:19 AM PST by 1rudeboy

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To: 1rudeboy

Given that we need taxes from somewhere to make the government go, it might as well come from something that shields national security.


21 posted on 02/06/2010 9:06:36 AM PST by HiTech RedNeck (I am in America but not of America (per bible: am in the world but not of it))
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To: Nuc1

Got a liberal grudge against the States that obscures reason.


22 posted on 02/06/2010 9:07:43 AM PST by HiTech RedNeck (I am in America but not of America (per bible: am in the world but not of it))
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To: HiTech RedNeck

Ahh, GE, owner of MSNBC, a corporate giant whose chargers are practically communists and who’se incestuous relationship to the present administration reminds me of the Japanese Zaibatsu combines..


23 posted on 02/06/2010 9:08:29 AM PST by Cacique (quos Deus vult perdere, prius dementat ( Islamia Delenda Est ))
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To: Cacique

The point is that they know the way to reap (or rape or both) a cheap India and do it consummately, as well as offering tutorials to others.


24 posted on 02/06/2010 9:10:07 AM PST by HiTech RedNeck (I am in America but not of America (per bible: am in the world but not of it))
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To: HiTech RedNeck
First is the national security argument--the argument that a thriving domestic steel industry, for example, is needed for defense. Although that argument is more often a rationalization for particular tariffs than a valid reason for them, it cannot be denied that on occasion it might justify the maintenance of otherwise uneconomical productive facilities. To go beyond this statement of possibility and establish in a specific case that a tariff or other trade restriction is justified in order to promote national security, it would be necessary to compare the cost of achieving the specific security objective in alternative ways and establish at least a prima facie case that a tariff is the least costly way. Such cost comparisons are seldom made in practice.
--Milton Friedman

25 posted on 02/06/2010 9:12:40 AM PST by 1rudeboy
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To: 1rudeboy

Milton Friedman was an economist but not a military planner.


26 posted on 02/06/2010 9:18:17 AM PST by HiTech RedNeck (I am in America but not of America (per bible: am in the world but not of it))
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To: HiTech RedNeck
You missed his point (and military planners, at least the good ones, are economists). If we identify a particular plant (or industry) as essential to national security, then we should determine the most cost-effective way of protecting it.

Take a plant that manufactures bullets, for example: it might be cheaper, and cause less damage to the overall economy, for the government to run or subsidize it (if the determination is made that the plant is essential to national security), instead of applying some ill-defined and misdirected tariff on the bullet market in general.

27 posted on 02/06/2010 9:27:59 AM PST by 1rudeboy
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To: Cacique

Life will be great once everyone is a computer programmer. Anybody can do it just as well as the next guy.

Why exactly is the only next step a more technical-employment based economy? Why is it not a possibility that it’s going to be back to the farm for many of the people who once would have been employed moving windshield wipers blades from bin A to wiper motor assembly A all day long?

Oh, yeah, that guy’s future is in biomedical research. Maybe medical polymer molecular design.


28 posted on 02/06/2010 9:32:34 AM PST by MichiganConservative (I wouldn't hate the government if it didn't exist. (Evil + Stupid) === Government)
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To: MichiganConservative

Don’t be silly. It is more likely that someone who is employed moving windshield wipers blades from bin A to wiper motor assembly A all day long dreams of his children doing biomedical research, instead of vice versa.


29 posted on 02/06/2010 9:38:13 AM PST by 1rudeboy
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To: Grunthor

Exactly.

The working man is not worse off because of Wall Street taking their money.

The working class is worse off because there is no place for them to work.

Why?

EPA shutting down or damaging entire industries here, thus forcing them to go overseas.

Unions, ditto.

Endangered species act, ditto.

Tax structure, ditto.

The list is long.

Every thing the government is doing today just adds to the list and makes the departments already on the list more onerous.

The only cure is to get rid of most of the names on the list.


30 posted on 02/06/2010 9:39:36 AM PST by old curmudgeon
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To: 1rudeboy

No mention of business taxes, social security, oppressive regulation, and any number of other impediments that government sets up to people looking to start businesses in America.

Get the government out of the equation, break the unions and enact right-to work laws in the states, abolish the income tax, IRS, social security and other welfare state edifices and you’ll see America return to its former glory.


31 posted on 02/06/2010 9:40:37 AM PST by MichiganConservative (I wouldn't hate the government if it didn't exist. (Evil + Stupid) === Government)
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To: 1rudeboy

How many of those are really in demand? Not everyone can do technical jobs. Intelligence, ambition, desire, and other attributes play a part.

Well, maybe we can all go into finance and get jobs at Goldman-Sachs. We’ll sell the world derivatives.


32 posted on 02/06/2010 9:43:35 AM PST by MichiganConservative (I wouldn't hate the government if it didn't exist. (Evil + Stupid) === Government)
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To: MichiganConservative

Is that the objective? Providing stupid people with employment? If that’s the objective, then it doesn’t matter whether the stupid person is moving something from bin A to bin B, digging a ditch, or emptying trashcans.


33 posted on 02/06/2010 9:48:21 AM PST by 1rudeboy
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To: 1rudeboy
Is that the objective? Providing stupid people with employment?

No, I think the stupid should be unemployed and living on welfare. Or better yet, have them write the accelerator pedal software for new Toyotas.

Seriously, my point is to get the damn government out of the way and those people will be employed doing what they want to do or can do to feed and clothe themselves. My other point is that not everyone can do jobs on the cutting edge of science or technology. Hell, I still run into people who can't or won't learn to use a PC.

34 posted on 02/06/2010 9:54:13 AM PST by MichiganConservative (I wouldn't hate the government if it didn't exist. (Evil + Stupid) === Government)
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To: 1rudeboy

This is what I want:

“Do what you can with what you have and never be satisfied.”

~ Booker T. Washington


35 posted on 02/06/2010 10:01:10 AM PST by MichiganConservative (I wouldn't hate the government if it didn't exist. (Evil + Stupid) === Government)
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To: 1rudeboy

In what planet is the market not regulated? There is more regulation then ever on American business.


36 posted on 02/06/2010 10:08:10 AM PST by gitmo (FR vs DU: n4mage vs DUmage)
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To: gitmo
Don't get me started on the "regulation is necessary therefore all regulation is necessary" argument. Paul Craig Roberts is commielib bonkers in this regard.

Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.
--Milton Friedman

There was a time when I gave Roberts the benefit of the doubt, but it's become pretty darn clear that he's a statist. And one of the symptoms of his mental illness is his observation that our government has failed, therefore the government must act.
37 posted on 02/06/2010 10:33:02 AM PST by 1rudeboy
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To: 1rudeboy

Thanks for the Milton Friedman quote. I hadn’t run across that one.


38 posted on 02/06/2010 11:14:40 AM PST by gitmo (FR vs DU: n4mage vs DUmage)
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To: 1rudeboy
Economic theory has been shattered because there is no longer any connection between the profits of American companies and the welfare of Americans. The profits of American companies are derived from the cheap labor in offshored locations and are at the expense of the American work force.

I remember, as a very young man, commuting to work with an avowed communist, albeit not a militant one.

At the time. "offshore" meant a half mile off San Francisco beach, and "World economy" meant imported bananas and check Japanese toys made from recycled food cans.

Our heavy industries were beginning to feel the effects of unions determined to kill them and the business template was rushing headlong into a "service economy." I remember wondering how any country's economy could survive and flourish when everyone lives off "serving" everyone else, with no innovation, inventiveness, manufacturing and invention.
Well, now, many years later I know the answer to the question.

It can't.

A "service society" is a helpless dying society.

We now have SEIU, ACORN, Thugball and the Congressional Black Caucus to make sure that we continue sliding into irrelevance.

Oh, by the way, the U.S.A. grew and thrived for 150 years exactly because it developed a healthy mix of industry, mining, manufacturing and innovation, free of the oppressive hand of either socialism or fascism. The largest banks and institutions did not bend to ignorant fools serving in Congress demanding that they make trillions$ in bad loans; and remaining out of jail in the aftermath.

39 posted on 02/06/2010 11:42:39 AM PST by Publius6961 (He is not America; he is an employee seemingly unable to rise to minimal expectations.)
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To: Nuc1
of redistribution of income from the poor to the rich.

This common statement by the insane, aimed at the retarded, is my all time favorite.

It actually makes sense to them!

40 posted on 02/06/2010 11:46:50 AM PST by Publius6961 (He is not America; he is an employee seemingly unable to rise to minimal expectations.)
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