The Libs are at it again!

If you listen to that video gaw, you will hear Friedman say that free enterprise works best when it is LARGELY left alone. Again....Largely...not TOTALLY. No one is arguing that free enterprise is bad or that socialism is good. I am arguing that a combination of the best of all these systems is the best we can ever do & that it is naive to think the mankind can be trusted to play ANY game without rules & referees.

Devil505 wrote:If you listen to that video gaw, you will hear Friedman say that free enterprise works best when it is LARGELY left alone. Again....Largely...not TOTALLY. No one is arguing that free enterprise is bad or that socialism is good. I am arguing that a combination of the best of all these systems is the best we can ever do & that it is naive to think the mankind can be trusted to play ANY game without rules & referees.

I do not necessarily disagree but our disagreement then is how much the referees are inserting themselves in the outcome of this game. It looks to me as though the mob has paid the referees to fix the game. That’s the problem.

gaw wrote:I do not necessarily disagree but our disagreement then is how much the referees are inserting themselves in the outcome of this game..

That I can agree with.

Devil505 wrote:

mikeandgerry wrote:The role of the government is to ensure opportunity, not outcomes. The free market determines outcomes.

What a naive concept Mike.
Think of our economic system as just another man made game. The free market will create/operate TEAMS & these teams will always want to win. Baseball teams will "Look the other way" while its player take steroids & business "Teams" will try to fix prices, bribe Congressmen with "Campaign Donations,etc. in order to unfairly ensure a good outcome for their team............So.........in order to have any "game" remain playable...you need RULES & referees/umpires to make sure the rules are being followed. Sometimes these umpires may be bad at their jobs & other times the "Teams" may try o interfere with them to guarantee a favorable outcome for them...but to say that no rules or umpires are needed is to deny that HUMANS are imperfect & require ways to prevent cheating. Government is the only "Umpire" in this game.
If the present economic crisis has shown us anything, it is that we need to let these Constitutionally mandated "Umpires" do their jobs!

Then I guess you are saying the founding fathers were naive. Equal opportunity was their framework, not equal outcomes.

As for your ideas on economics....well, you don't have a clue as to the root cause of our economic woes. The Constitution was violated. The banks were compliant with the laws. It was the laws that weren't compliant with free market economics. The government overstepped its bounds in money and market creation. Democrats and Republicans alike in their desire for equal outcomes induced a system to promote consumption on deficit spending and inflation. That is not a free market. That is a poorly managed economy.

Ultimately, the umpires are us, not the government. If you believe the government will solve your problems, brace yourself for more problems. I don't want you refereeing any of my games. You are BLIND and don't know the rules!

mikeandgerry wrote:Ultimately, the umpires are us, not the government.

Unless you believe that, every so often (at election time) a group of Space Aliens descends & takes over our government, WE are the government & therefore WE are the umpires, right?
If any election in history proved that We The People can demand change from our government, this last one did.

mikeandgerry wrote:Then I guess you are saying the founding fathers were naive. Equal opportunity was their framework, not equal outcomes.

Not at all naive. They set up a strict series of Checks & Balances to avoid the very excesses of their homeland, England. The last administration did grave damage in preventing these Check & Balances from being allowed to do their Constitutional job.

mikeandgerry wrote:As for your ideas on economics....well, you don't have a clue as to the root cause of our economic woes. The Constitution was violated. The banks were compliant with the laws. It was the laws that weren't compliant with free market economics. The government overstepped its bounds in money and market creation.

Just because YOU believe that to be "The Root Cause" of our economic woes Mike, does not make it so. I believe the root cause was deliberate lack of intelligent government oversight, energy price fixing (which left little money for us to buy/pay for anything else) & downright criminal activity.
Time alone will prove one of us right.

I hardly think you can convince the American voter that it is liberals that are the problem.
For eight years Congressional Republicans passed every spending bill Bush shoves down their throat. Billions of dollars going down a black hole on programs and a war that had no chance of succeeding. (succeeding in its basic goal of creating an independent democracy capable of self preservation without our troops holding it together) Absolutely no accountability or thought was put into how this might affect all taxpayers and now Republicans expect us to believe that THEY have the answers??? Now that a Democrat is in charge and attempting to get the economy moving in the right direction ... all of a sudden you become fiscally responsible?

The Republican Party, not the liberal Democrats have made hypocrisy into an art form.

The problem is using intelligent and government in thay way. Sort of like military intelligence. Remember that an elephant is a mouse designed to gov. specs and only .12 cents of every dollar that the gov. throws at a problem actually gets to the problem. And that is using 1990 data. The politicians get their advice from people that are payed to give certain kinds of advice to cause the money to flow in beneficial ways for certain segments of sociaty. The Dems. and the Saviors "new" cabinet are no different then before. They will cause money to flow to programs that sound great but do not produce jobs that help our economy. Just more social programs that eat up our resources and increase the deficit. We are very close to where Germany, Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico, to mention a few have already been, hyperinflation. This spending bill to "save" us may be the final straw.

Kevin

I think the bottom line is that only time will tell. I personally think we will be in much better shape witin 2 years (following the Democrat's ideas) than the suddenly fiscally responsible Republicans non-ideas which is to basically to follow the rejected economics of Bush.....Tax breaks for people who don't need them & wont spend them.
If I'm wrong, vote for Sarah Palin in 4 years.

That is stating the obvious Devil. That is all we can do anyway. What makes you think the people in general know what is good for them. Shocking statement, the people are always right! The people have repeatedly voted for politicians that make promises of something for free. More conservative and educated people know that there is nothing for free. But that is the system we have and the politicians will continue to tell "the people" that we are doing fine and they some new ideas that will make money appear out of thin air. Like, lets tax the rich. If the gov. just [u]took[u] all the income that anyone makes over $100,000, it would fund the gov. for 6 days. This is a 1990 statistic. THis is why the middle class always get hit with taxes no matter what. The poor dont pay taxes, there are not enough rich people even if you take all their money, and the gov. will not stop spending because it is unpopular with the voters. Bottom line is get re-elected. Another statistic, LBJ claimed that his great society program of social welfare would wipe out the poor in 10 years. It cost 60 billion in 1964. 30 years later we have more poor then ever and it is costing us 300 billion. What a success!

Kevin

Devil505 wrote:I hardly think you can convince the American voter that it is liberals that are the problem.
For eight years Congressional Republicans passed every spending bill Bush shoves down their throat. Billions of dollars going down a black hole on programs and a war that had no chance of succeeding. (succeeding in its basic goal of creating an independent democracy capable of self preservation without our troops holding it together) Absolutely no accountability or thought was put into how this might affect all taxpayers and now Republicans expect us to believe that THEY have the answers??? Now that a Democrat is in charge and attempting to get the economy moving in the right direction ... all of a sudden you become fiscally responsible?

The Republican Party, not the liberal Democrats have made hypocrisy into an art form.

I wonder what your story was in 2000 and again in 2004?

It was a Democrat that started this(FDR) and a Democrat(LBJ) that multiplied it. I'm not saying the "R"'s are any better. They haven't figured out that tax cuts without spending cuts are the ONLY way to fiscal survival.

ANYTHING that is done, besides tax cuts/spending cuts is bound to failure. Obama may be able to do the loaves and fishes trick, but he can't make debt disappear by incurring more debt.

jpete wrote:I wonder what your story was in 2000 and again in 2004?

Very simply...we were lied to. We were told we were buying a bi-partisan President who would be fiscally conservative, against using our military for nation building & who would "Bring us all together." In short, we thought we were buying a new 50" 1080i HiDef LCD flat screen & when we got it home & opened the box, it was a 1952 RCA used black & white table model. It was fraud...plain & simple!

jpete wrote:ANYTHING that is done, besides tax cuts/spending cuts is bound to failure.

We heard this mantra all during the election & we rejected these old, failed ideas.....Remember?

Devil505 wrote:I hardly think you can convince the American voter that it is liberals that are the problem.
For eight years Congressional Republicans passed every spending bill Bush shoves down their throat. Billions of dollars going down a black hole on programs and a war that had no chance of succeeding. (succeeding in its basic goal of creating an independent democracy capable of self preservation without our troops holding it together) Absolutely no accountability or thought was put into how this might affect all taxpayers and now Republicans expect us to believe that THEY have the answers??? Now that a Democrat is in charge and attempting to get the economy moving in the right direction ... all of a sudden you become fiscally responsible?

The Republican Party, not the liberal Democrats have made hypocrisy into an art form.

[quote="Devil505"]I hardly think you can convince the American voter that it is liberals that are the problem.

I don’t have to “convince the American voter that it is liberals that are the problem.” Obama and his cronies are doing that for me. All you have to do is read a daily paper or listen to the radio or watch TV. The number of disgruntled Obama backers is growing daily.

Devil wrote “For eight years Congressional Republicans passed every spending bill Bush shoves down their throat.”

Just who do you think had the majority in Congress during the Bush Administration? Remember your high school civics. The President cannot pass any bill. Only the Congress can; they control the whole ball of wax and it was and is run by the Democrats under Pelsoi and Reid. Get real; there is enough blame to go around. Go sell your comment “The Republican Party, not the liberal Democrats have made hypocrisy into an art form” somewhere else. I point out that Christopher Dodd, Barney Frank and Maxine Waters are all Democrats and in so deep in the housing debacle that if they’d been of any other party or just citizens they’d be in jail. What about all of Obama’s potential Cabinet appointees that have tax issues? Where would you be if you didn’t pay your taxes? Under investigation, I’m sure.

Devil wrote “Absolutely no accountability or thought was put into how this might affect all taxpayers and now Republicans expect us to believe that THEY have the answers???”

Again, the Democrats had and have control of the Congress. They had the power to do something. For the record, history already shows us that the Republicans took steps to more closely regulate the housing industry as early as 2004 only to be stopped by the majority Democratic party and told everything was ok. Not being the majority in Congress the Republicans couldn’t even call for hearings. So stop blaming the Bush Administration for the entire problem – just accept that there is enough blame to go around.

Devil wrote “Billions of dollars going down a black hole on programs and a war that had no chance of succeeding. (succeeding in its basic goal of creating an independent democracy capable of self preservation without our troops holding it together)”

So tell me when was the last terrorist attack on US soil? I must have missed it while reading the newspaper coverage of the “war that had no chance of succeeding.” Not! The mainstream media has chosen not to report the war's successes choosing instead to focus on the negative. You have partaken of the Kool aid so much you can’t even admit the obvious. My children were able to sleep safely at night outside the Nation’s capital because Bush had the “balls” to take steps to protect them. That by the way is the only actual power granted the President under the Constitution. Isn’t it a little disquieting to you that Obama has decided to retain the majority of Bushes anti-terrorist programs? Why? Because they work! As for the “our troops holding it together” you are so far behind what’s actually happening on the ground there I can’t even begin to have a discussion about it. Kids are back in school and basic security is being handed over to the Iraqi’s in leaps and bounds. Yes, there is a lot to still do but it’s so far from failure your comment comes across as uneducated and worse you don't care to discover the truth because it doesn't fit your agenda.

Devil505 wrote:

jpete wrote:I wonder what your story was in 2000 and again in 2004?

Very simply...we were lied to. We were told we were buying a bi-partisan President who would be fiscally conservative, against using our military for nation building & who would "Bring us all together." In short, we thought we were buying a new 50" 1080i HiDef LCD flat screen & when we got it home & opened the box, it was a 1952 RCA used black & white table model. It was fraud...plain & simple!

Oh, so we were "lied to" the last two times but Obama's telling the truth this time? Are you THAT naive? I seem to remember BHO talking about "bi-partisanship" before the election and "I won" after.

Devil505 wrote:

jpete wrote:ANYTHING that is done, besides tax cuts/spending cuts is bound to failure.

We heard this mantra all during the election & we rejected these old, failed ideas.....Remember?

No. No I don't. I remember hearing Ron Paul talk about it. But no one else. In fact, I heard the Democrats talk about all the money they were going to spend on immigration and health care. I guess they WEREN'T lying after all.

As far as "failed", tell me, when was the last time we had spending cuts of any real substance in this country?

Is it your opinion that if you find yourself in massive debt, that reducing wasteful spending and using your limited income to pay down your debt is the WRONG thing to do?