Posted on 06/15/2010 7:47:06 AM PDT by Palter
Why I am not a conservative ... say, wasn't that the title of an essay by Hayek?
Try that again
I guess Ambassdor Alan Keyes and Justice Clarence Thomas...
The WalMart I go to, when I must, is full of guys and gals in shades of green, and many women and children in T shirts with a big "A" or the word "Army" on them. Actually true of the 3 closest WalMarts.
I'll take their company over that of "the polite company".
Yep, I sure do. All I can figure is that Americans are eternal optimists. They always figure things will be better in the future.
That’s why people take out mortgages, or school loans, or borrow money to start businesses. That’s why unemployed job-seekers will buy a new suit on credit, so that they can go on interviews.They figure that borrowing money against future earnings will enable them to raise their incomes and pay that money back.
Back in the 1980s, there was a real fear that the US would never be able to balance its budget again. But things change. What looks impossible today can seem relatively achievable in another five years.
As long as the money that’s borrowed is used for productive investment instead of mere present-day consumption, I don’t have an issue with deficit spending. It’s how I started my small business, and it’s paid off.
So it would be absolutely fine in your view for a couple making $35,000 to take out a mortgage on a $500,000 home?
Maybe we should look at from the lenders point of view because that's what We The People really are concerning the debt. Do you think it self-evidently unwise to loan money to a couple making $35,000 for a mortgage on a $500,000 home?
If conservative means to conserve the status quo of diminishing individual liberty, enormous Federal government, and perpetual foreign wars, I suppose Frum and Brooks are good conservatives.
If conservative means something like Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan thought it meant, Frum and Brooks fail.
I noticed that the author touched on the intellectuals tendency to label solutions as “simplistic” when they are simple.
Tell us why it won’t work, “intellectuals”. You don’t get to dismiss it without addressing why it won’t work as well as your “complex” ideas.
Why is it unimaginable to the author that there are many people who know the identity of ‘elite opinion makers’ full well, but DON’T CARE what their opinions are?
That statement you specifically pulled out makes no sense whatever -- if it's intended to insult, it misses entirely. One cannot be "too" ignorant, either you know or you do not, there is no qualifying. As you note, Clioman, even if you are aware of whom these so-called elite opinion makers are, indifference to their opinions is no slam. I'm thinking this one was written by yet one more of these folks who want to pontificate their intellectual capacity by using *big words* -- only to demonstrate they don't comprehend their meaning.
As an engineer, I know the simplest solutions are best. Simple in concept at least. Implemenation is often another matter. But if the basic concept is simple, and easy to understand and analyze, it will likely work, if it’s not discarded during the analysis. Or if it doesn’t work, it will be pretty obvious pretty quickly.
What a silly question, a perfect Straw Man argument. I’d think such a mortgage was impossible, unless there was some solid indication that their incomes would be increasing dramatically and in a very short time, say, weeks.
The only way I’d be “absolutely fine” with such a loan is got such remarkable terms that they can afford the payments on their current salary. Let’s say 5.5% for 100 or 125 years. But there aren’t any mortgages that exist like that. No legitimate bank would offer them.
Aside from positing completely ridiculous scenarios, what about my premise that responsible deficit spending can be legitimate, both personally and nationally?
I’m a EE as well, so I’m with you...
The problem with intellectuals is that they lose prestige and power if they accept a simple solution. They aren’t “needed” if simple solutions work (and in societies and economies, the simple, hands-off approach is always what works).
Great post. Right on the money.
And of course their arrogance won’t allow them to recognize the exquisite accuracy of what you are saying.
Surely, even the "intellectual elite" could benefit from exposure to such an enlightened perspective on such a complex topic.
Yeah, you would think. I'll grant that the example involves a $39,000 income.
BTW, when I write that incurring debt that is impossible to pay is a very, very bad thing you seem to be reading that incurring debt is a very, very bad thing. I don't mean that.
Quite right. I only add that on our side are Aristotle, Cicero, Aquinas, Montesquieu, Locke, Blackstone, and our Founding Fathers.
On their side is Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, Pol Pot, Chavez, Alinsky, Ayers and Obama.
On our side is freedom, on theirs is tyranny.
How many people, aside from family members and loan sharks, make loans that they know cannot be repaid?
But once again, it’s all about responsible borrowing, on the part of both the debtor and lender. On that we agree.
Argent Mortgage of Nevada as per the link appears to have been one of them, although they may have had the expectation that We The People would make good on any bad loans via policies set by Freddie and Fannie. Which gets us back to just one reason as to why the Tea Party anger is rather reasonable.
Loan sharks, btw, expect the loans to be repaid and with interest.
I've read Gramsci on the topic - and yes, his stuff leads far from Marxian orthodoxy and very close to that of certain of Marx's critics, especially Milovan Djilas. This, in particular:
For Gramsci, there is a new ruling class, which has a monopoly on the production and distribution of opinions.
The Russian term is nomenklatura; that is, the class concerned (literally) with the naming of things. These set the terms of debate, provide the only permissible vocabulary for criticism, frame the questions, sculpt the answers. What Gramsci added to this was the notion that such a class could exist outside the formal political elite, although subsequent experience leads most observers to conclude that they turn out to be indistinguishable very quickly. This was an expression of "hegemony" very different from that of Lenin.
The notion of the malleability of language under cultural pressure was not unique to Gramsci, incidentally - it was popularized shortly after the time of Gramsci's most productive work by the Marxist philologist and archaeologist Vee Gordon Childe, in his seminal work The Dawn of European Civilization.
But I would gently submit that it's a major stretch to suggest that these influences, described by these authors in macro form, apply to a movement as heterogeneous as the Tea Party over the limited period of the latter's existence. I would also question the precision of any such definition as "intellectual." Here we have a descriptive model of the effect of one ill-defined abstract class on another ill-defined abstract class. After, the definition of Tea Partier is anyone who says he is, and so is the definition of "intellectual." You could say anything you want within what are essentially no logical boundaries and come up with meaningless profundities. Maybe I just did. ;-)
Yep - or with blood.
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