Europe's Philosophy of Failure

[BansheeX]

Originally posted by: Arkaign
Yep, regardless of political ideology and direction, I think the most important aspects of a country's success is the quality of it's citizens/culture. Many sub-saharan countries in Africa are about as free-market/capitalist as you can get, but are absolute cesspools due to corruption/violence/lack of regard for life in general. Flip side to countries like Sweden and Norway, which are borderline commie, but have some of the highest living standards on earth, combined with excellent health and education ratings. It just goes to show that political leanings are not the sole reason for success or failure on a whole.

You know, even after all the posting I do here, this stuff still perpetuates. There is truly no hope for man.

The problem is entirely in your ability to know four things:

1. what socialism and capitalism are
2. that no country is one or the other, but a mix of both.
3. being able to identify the free market characteristics from the socialist ones, and a serious understanding of historical results under both systems
4. that economic freedom is a necessary condition for prosperity but is not THE ONLY CONDITION FOR PROSPERITY

Several people already in this thread associate the U.S. with the free market and therefore the U.S. system collapsing means that free market is failing. Same mistake people made during the Great Depression when the free market was blamed, but it was the new Federal Reserve Act manipulating interest rates in the 20s to prop up the British Pound, leading to a recession, where a centralized decision to contract the money supply instead of what it was supposed to do thrust the country into an utterly unnecessary depression. The U.S. is close to becoming over 50% socialist. 40% of the nation's income currently goes to the government. We are highly regulated, we have all kinds of crap which destroys competition:

1. lobbyist special privilege legislation all over the place such as NAFTA and the HMO Act done under both Democrat and Republican administrations which destroys competition.
2. subsidies, which is essentially the government taking money from you and giving it to stupid shit like corn farmers for ethanol, etc, instead of people keeping that money and individually choosing the best technology on the free market.
3. massive and unsustainable redistribution of wealth schemes like Medicare and SS
4. no-bid defense contracts
5. A central bank whose primary function is to manipulates interest rates lower and higher than the market would have them under the Keynesian pretense of reducing volatility.

Now knowing these things as socialist characteristics, I dare you to make that statement again about African nations being mostly free market. That is pure nonsense. Inflation is Zimbabwe is out of control because their central bank is retarded and inflating the hell out of their government declared fiat paper they call money. Individually trading a commodity like gold could not have been debased. Socialism vs Freedom. Freedom wins.

And when this crap invariably causes major problems, the masses fail to recognize it as socialism. They think this stuff is normal. The government deciding to fund ethanol with taxpayer money rather than letting people in the market decide WAS A SOCIALIST POLICY. It was entirely dependent on the idealistic view that a centralized decision will always be the correct one, which it rarely is. The government bailing out financial institutions with new money later payed by taxpayers through inflation-caused price increases is A SOCIALIST POLICY. The manipulated interest rates by the Fed which led to the incentivization of risk which created this bubble was the result of A SOCIALIST POLICY, the central bank. The places where socialism "appears" to be working, like Sweden and so forth - it's bull. They take all the innovation and creation from free market systems and import them, spend no money on national defense to protect their freeloading lifestyle, and declare socialism the best policy. Huh? What would happen if we all did that? Where would anyone find the incentive to work for this stuff? Europe is a freaking joke and if all the socialist democrats or republicans want to head down the path we've been on for fifty years, you're just asking for ultimate enslavement to big brother. What is wrong with you people.

 

[ZebuluniteV]

Originally posted by: BansheeX

Originally posted by: Arkaign
Yep, regardless of political ideology and direction, I think the most important aspects of a country's success is the quality of it's citizens/culture. Many sub-saharan countries in Africa are about as free-market/capitalist as you can get, but are absolute cesspools due to corruption/violence/lack of regard for life in general. Flip side to countries like Sweden and Norway, which are borderline commie, but have some of the highest living standards on earth, combined with excellent health and education ratings. It just goes to show that political leanings are not the sole reason for success or failure on a whole.

You know, even after all the posting I do here, this stuff still perpetuates. There is truly no hope for man.

The problem is entirely in your ability to know three things:

1. what socialism and capitalism are
2. that no country is one or the other, but a mix of both.
3. being able to identify the free market characteristics from the socialist ones, and a serious understanding of historical results under both systems
4. that economic freedom is a necessary condition for prosperity but is not THE ONLY CONDITION FOR PROSPERITY

(snip)

I don't have time to reply to that whole post, but I think your idiocy is just about summed up in the above: your claim of "all your posting here" (yes, almost half way through the double digits!), and your three things that somehow became four...

 

[BansheeX]

Sure you don't have time. Why offer a rebuttal when you can just scoff? I added the fourth after realizing I had forgotten it, but did not read the introductory paragraph again. Duh? It's fixed, thanks for your scrutiny.

 

[BansheeX]

Originally posted by: Jhhnn
From Dissipate, wrt the currency situation-

What are you smoking? I've been talking about currency issues since Day 1 on here. As I have said many times before the Federal Reserve is a scam, and has seriously damaged the U.S. economy since its inception, through inflation and enabling the government to go into more and more debt.

Heh. I know that- you're a gold bug, a follower of the Austrian school, but you still haven't addressed the fact that Europeans use the same central bank fiat currency system as we do, and that the value of their currency against our own has increased dramatically...

Losers? hardly...

The Euro is not in as solid of a position as you think. And secondly, it is possible for central banks to make the right decisions. It's simply that they tend to make occasional severe blunders under political pressure, personal gain, or Keynesian beliefs, that would not happen under de-centralized systems where power is dispersed over the marketplace. We didn't have the central bank before 1913 and at no rate in our history was real growth, relative income, and charity greater in this country than in the 19th century. You are arguing for socialism idealism. Europe might be doing well now, but what will allowing a central bank eventually lead to? The same as it lead us.

 

[JohnOfSheffield]

Europe isn't Communist or even socialist, the measurement of socialism is government regulation of the free market, there is not ONE EU country that has as much regulation of the free market as the US.

I also love how norther Europe is randomly selected for being more socialist when the truth is that government regulation is pushed harder in the south (has been for decades) than in the north.

It's seems every one has their "opinion" on what socialism and communism is, how it works in the EU and how it works in the US, how it works in the Scandinavian countries and how it works in the larger countries in the south and no one knows SHIT about ANY of it.

But that won't keep you from yapping about it, will it? Educate yourselves on the matter, i'm getting fed up with seeing "EU member nations such as Norway" when that is like saying "US states such as Mexico".

I'm fed up with the disinformation and propaganda that is obviously fed to Americans about Europe in general and the UK in particular, we are not Marxist-Leninist countries without an ounce of freedom, in fact it's the opposite.

 

[JS80]

Originally posted by: SirStev0

Originally posted by: LumbergTech
sounds like a bunch of bs to me...dramatic and pointless oh noez they arent worshipping adam smith oh noez

capitalism can be disgusting and disease-like when taken to extremes..the same can be said of socialism

Agreed. I love how early on in the reading he should his complete bias.

Taught that economic principles such as capitalism, free markets, and entrepreneurship are savage, unhealthy, and immoral, these children are raised on a diet of prejudice and bias.

And Americans don't teach their kids the exact opposite. Just because the author thinks we are correct in doing so doesn't make it any different.

We are taught that Communism and Socialism are failures and the road to finical ruin. That they are the road to fascism and dictatorships. They are opposite of freedom and that actually severely hurts the common man. That is how it works.

The difference is what we teach is truth what they teach is propaganda.

 

[ZebuluniteV]

Originally posted by: BansheeX
Sure you don't have time. Why offer a rebuttal when you can just scoff? I added the fourth after realizing I had forgotten it, but did not read the introductory paragraph again. Duh? It's fixed, thanks for your scrutiny.

Originally posted by: BansheeX

Originally posted by: Arkaign
Yep, regardless of political ideology and direction, I think the most important aspects of a country's success is the quality of it's citizens/culture. Many sub-saharan countries in Africa are about as free-market/capitalist as you can get, but are absolute cesspools due to corruption/violence/lack of regard for life in general. Flip side to countries like Sweden and Norway, which are borderline commie, but have some of the highest living standards on earth, combined with excellent health and education ratings. It just goes to show that political leanings are not the sole reason for success or failure on a whole.

You know, even after all the posting I do here, this stuff still perpetuates. There is truly no hope for man.

The problem is entirely in your ability to know four things:

1. what socialism and capitalism are
2. that no country is one or the other, but a mix of both.
3. being able to identify the free market characteristics from the socialist ones, and a serious understanding of historical results under both systems
4. that economic freedom is a necessary condition for prosperity but is not THE ONLY CONDITION FOR PROSPERITY

Several people already in this thread associate the U.S. with the free market and therefore the U.S. system collapsing means that free market is failing. Same mistake people made during the Great Depression when the free market was blamed, but it was the new Federal Reserve Act manipulating interest rates in the 20s to prop up the British Pound, leading to a recession, where a centralized decision to contract the money supply instead of what it was supposed to do thrust the country into an utterly unnecessary depression. The U.S. is close to becoming over 50% socialist. 40% of the nation's income currently goes to the government. We are highly regulated, we have all kinds of crap which destroys competition:

1. lobbyist special privilege legislation all over the place such as NAFTA and the HMO Act done under both Democrat and Republican administrations which destroys competition.
2. subsidies, which is essentially the government taking money from you and giving it to stupid shit like corn farmers for ethanol, etc, instead of people keeping that money and individually choosing the best technology on the free market.
3. massive and unsustainable redistribution of wealth schemes like Medicare and SS
4. no-bid defense contracts
5. A central bank whose primary function is to manipulates interest rates lower and higher than the market would have them under the Keynesian pretense of reducing volatility.

Now knowing these things as socialist characteristics, I dare you to make that statement again about African nations being mostly free market. That is pure nonsense. Inflation is Zimbabwe is out of control because their central bank is retarded and inflating the hell out of their government declared fiat paper they call money. Individually trading a commodity like gold could not have been debased. Socialism vs Freedom. Freedom wins.

And when this crap invariably causes major problems, the masses fail to recognize it as socialism. They think this stuff is normal. The government deciding to fund ethanol with taxpayer money rather than letting people in the market decide WAS A SOCIALIST POLICY. It was entirely dependent on the idealistic view that a centralized decision will always be the correct one, which it rarely is. The government bailing out financial institutions with new money later payed by taxpayers through inflation-caused price increases is A SOCIALIST POLICY. The manipulated interest rates by the Fed which led to the incentivization of risk which created this bubble was the result of A SOCIALIST POLICY, the central bank. The places where socialism "appears" to be working, like Sweden and so forth - it's bull. They take all the innovation and creation from free market systems and import them, spend no money on national defense to protect their freeloading lifestyle, and declare socialism the best policy. Huh? What would happen if we all did that? Where would anyone find the incentive to work for this stuff? Europe is a freaking joke and if all the socialist democrats or republicans want to head down the path we've been on for fifty years, you're just asking for ultimate enslavement to big brother. What is wrong with you people.

Well, just some quite notes. I find it quite funny that you regard the United States as highly regulated, seeing as how US regulation is far below the large majority of most first-world nations. In any case, I'd love to here an explanation of your statement ?the US is close to becoming over 50% socialist?. What the hell does that mean? I'd like to know what your basing that 50% figure on...Given that the US government doesn't control any industry outside of, for instance, the post office, and given that US income inequality is much higher than in European nations, I think you'd be hard pressed to make a claim like that (unless, I guess, if your benchmark is Europe = communism, then perhaps the US being half that might make ?sense?...).

I certainly don't agree with all subsidies, but claiming that they are uniformly bad is pretty foolish. Look at nuclear power: would that have gotten anywhere were it not for government investment? I agree completely that no-bid contracts are bad, but that's hardly the same thing as, say, environmental regulation.

How exactly does NAFTA destroy competition? The main arguments I hear against NAFTA are that its sending our jobs below the border, which is hardly a case of no competition...

I fail to see how Zimbabwe is at all representative of the polices of Africa, nor how that is possibly socialism. Zimbabwe is quite clearly a case of a dictatorship that in the process of gaining control and isolating itself let the country's one strong economy spiral out of control.


As far as the rant on Europe, to answer a few of the various claims you make: the EU spends more than half what the US does on defense (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...military_expenditures), which is obviously less than the US, be still a whole hell of a lot more than ?none?. Your claim that Europe takes all the innovation and etc from the US is, quite frankly, ridiculous, and I'd love to see what kind of ?proof? you could offer for that (i.e. none).


There's plenty of other stuff I could address there, but otherwise really need to go back to studying for finals (ugh).

 

[ZebuluniteV]

...

 

[ZebuluniteV]

Ugh, screwed up on editing my previous post...

 

[JS80]

Originally posted by: ZebuluniteV

Originally posted by: BansheeX
Sure you don't have time. Why offer a rebuttal when you can just scoff? I added the fourth after realizing I had forgotten it, but did not read the introductory paragraph again. Duh? It's fixed, thanks for your scrutiny.

Originally posted by: BansheeX

Originally posted by: Arkaign
Yep, regardless of political ideology and direction, I think the most important aspects of a country's success is the quality of it's citizens/culture. Many sub-saharan countries in Africa are about as free-market/capitalist as you can get, but are absolute cesspools due to corruption/violence/lack of regard for life in general. Flip side to countries like Sweden and Norway, which are borderline commie, but have some of the highest living standards on earth, combined with excellent health and education ratings. It just goes to show that political leanings are not the sole reason for success or failure on a whole.

You know, even after all the posting I do here, this stuff still perpetuates. There is truly no hope for man.

The problem is entirely in your ability to know four things:

1. what socialism and capitalism are
2. that no country is one or the other, but a mix of both.
3. being able to identify the free market characteristics from the socialist ones, and a serious understanding of historical results under both systems
4. that economic freedom is a necessary condition for prosperity but is not THE ONLY CONDITION FOR PROSPERITY

Several people already in this thread associate the U.S. with the free market and therefore the U.S. system collapsing means that free market is failing. Same mistake people made during the Great Depression when the free market was blamed, but it was the new Federal Reserve Act manipulating interest rates in the 20s to prop up the British Pound, leading to a recession, where a centralized decision to contract the money supply instead of what it was supposed to do thrust the country into an utterly unnecessary depression. The U.S. is close to becoming over 50% socialist. 40% of the nation's income currently goes to the government. We are highly regulated, we have all kinds of crap which destroys competition:

1. lobbyist special privilege legislation all over the place such as NAFTA and the HMO Act done under both Democrat and Republican administrations which destroys competition.
2. subsidies, which is essentially the government taking money from you and giving it to stupid shit like corn farmers for ethanol, etc, instead of people keeping that money and individually choosing the best technology on the free market.
3. massive and unsustainable redistribution of wealth schemes like Medicare and SS
4. no-bid defense contracts
5. A central bank whose primary function is to manipulates interest rates lower and higher than the market would have them under the Keynesian pretense of reducing volatility.

Now knowing these things as socialist characteristics, I dare you to make that statement again about African nations being mostly free market. That is pure nonsense. Inflation is Zimbabwe is out of control because their central bank is retarded and inflating the hell out of their government declared fiat paper they call money. Individually trading a commodity like gold could not have been debased. Socialism vs Freedom. Freedom wins.

And when this crap invariably causes major problems, the masses fail to recognize it as socialism. They think this stuff is normal. The government deciding to fund ethanol with taxpayer money rather than letting people in the market decide WAS A SOCIALIST POLICY. It was entirely dependent on the idealistic view that a centralized decision will always be the correct one, which it rarely is. The government bailing out financial institutions with new money later payed by taxpayers through inflation-caused price increases is A SOCIALIST POLICY. The manipulated interest rates by the Fed which led to the incentivization of risk which created this bubble was the result of A SOCIALIST POLICY, the central bank. The places where socialism "appears" to be working, like Sweden and so forth - it's bull. They take all the innovation and creation from free market systems and import them, spend no money on national defense to protect their freeloading lifestyle, and declare socialism the best policy. Huh? What would happen if we all did that? Where would anyone find the incentive to work for this stuff? Europe is a freaking joke and if all the socialist democrats or republicans want to head down the path we've been on for fifty years, you're just asking for ultimate enslavement to big brother. What is wrong with you people.

Well, just some quite notes. I find it quite funny that you regard the United States as highly regulated, seeing as how US regulation is far below the large majority of most first-world nations. In any case, I'd love to here an explanation of your statement ?the US is close to becoming over 50% socialist?. What the hell does that mean? I'd like to know what your basing that 50% figure on...Given that the US government doesn't control any industry outside of, for instance, the post office, and given that US income inequality is much higher than in European nations, I think you'd be hard pressed to make a claim like that (unless, I guess, if your benchmark is Europe = communism, then perhaps the US being half that might make ?sense?...).

I certainly don't agree with all subsidies, but claiming that they are uniformly bad is pretty foolish. Look at nuclear power: would that have gotten anywhere were it not for government investment? I agree completely that no-bid contracts are bad, but that's hardly the same thing as, say, environmental regulation.

How exactly does NAFTA destroy competition? The main arguments I hear against NAFTA are that its sending our jobs below the border, which is hardly a case of no competition...

I fail to see how Zimbabwe is at all representative of the polices of Africa, nor how that is possibly socialism. Zimbabwe is quite clearly a case of a dictatorship that in the process of gaining control and isolating itself let the country's one strong economy spiral out of control.


As far as the rant on Europe, to answer a few of the various claims you make: the EU spends more than half what the US does on defense (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...military_expenditures), which is obviously less than the US, be still a whole hell of a lot more than ?none?. Your claim that Europe takes all the innovation and etc from the US is, quite frankly, ridiculous, and I'd love to see what kind of ?proof? you could offer for that (i.e. none).


There's plenty of other stuff I could address there, but otherwise really need to go back to studying for finals (ugh).

Income inequality is the reflection of exactly how free we are. If you want to be a lazy uneducated bum it is your free choice to do so. If you want to be a bazillionaire, yes you can be one. There is a difference between being free and making as little or as much money as you want and government restricting people from being productive so everyone can live lower middle class.

 

[piasabird]

Maybe the USA should pull all our troops out of Europe and Asia. They are doing so well they dont need our help. Why should the USA protect EU and Asia for free?

 

[Genx87]

Originally posted by: piasabird
Maybe the USA should pull all our troops out of Europe and Asia. They are doing so well they dont need our help. Why should the USA protect EU and Asia for free?

Tis I question I have been asking for quite some time.

 

[JS80]

Originally posted by: Genx87

Originally posted by: piasabird
Maybe the USA should pull all our troops out of Europe and Asia. They are doing so well they dont need our help. Why should the USA protect EU and Asia for free?

Tis I question I have been asking for quite some time.

Globalized economy needs a stable globe?

 

[Genx87]

Originally posted by: JS80

Originally posted by: Genx87

Originally posted by: piasabird
Maybe the USA should pull all our troops out of Europe and Asia. They are doing so well they dont need our help. Why should the USA protect EU and Asia for free?

Tis I question I have been asking for quite some time.

Globalized economy needs a stable globe?

Yes that is one arena I see why we may do what we do. But at some point we cant afford to pay for a stable globe. It is going to go to hell eventually. Might as well let them fight it out and we can sort it out after the fact.,

 

[Arkaign]

Originally posted by: ZebuluniteV

Originally posted by: BansheeX

Originally posted by: Arkaign
Yep, regardless of political ideology and direction, I think the most important aspects of a country's success is the quality of it's citizens/culture. Many sub-saharan countries in Africa are about as free-market/capitalist as you can get, but are absolute cesspools due to corruption/violence/lack of regard for life in general. Flip side to countries like Sweden and Norway, which are borderline commie, but have some of the highest living standards on earth, combined with excellent health and education ratings. It just goes to show that political leanings are not the sole reason for success or failure on a whole.

You know, even after all the posting I do here, this stuff still perpetuates. There is truly no hope for man.

The problem is entirely in your ability to know three things:

1. what socialism and capitalism are
2. that no country is one or the other, but a mix of both.
3. being able to identify the free market characteristics from the socialist ones, and a serious understanding of historical results under both systems
4. that economic freedom is a necessary condition for prosperity but is not THE ONLY CONDITION FOR PROSPERITY

(snip)

I don't have time to reply to that whole post, but I think your idiocy is just about summed up in the above: your claim of "all your posting here" (yes, almost half way through the double digits!), and your three things that somehow became four...

What a whack-job. He's got people in his sig for being 'Fed Apologists', and goes on long rambling diatribes full of hostility and stereotypes. Whatever.

 

[ZebuluniteV]

Originally posted by: JS80

Originally posted by: ZebuluniteV

Originally posted by: BansheeX
Sure you don't have time. Why offer a rebuttal when you can just scoff? I added the fourth after realizing I had forgotten it, but did not read the introductory paragraph again. Duh? It's fixed, thanks for your scrutiny.

Originally posted by: BansheeX

Originally posted by: Arkaign
Yep, regardless of political ideology and direction, I think the most important aspects of a country's success is the quality of it's citizens/culture. Many sub-saharan countries in Africa are about as free-market/capitalist as you can get, but are absolute cesspools due to corruption/violence/lack of regard for life in general. Flip side to countries like Sweden and Norway, which are borderline commie, but have some of the highest living standards on earth, combined with excellent health and education ratings. It just goes to show that political leanings are not the sole reason for success or failure on a whole.

You know, even after all the posting I do here, this stuff still perpetuates. There is truly no hope for man.

The problem is entirely in your ability to know four things:

1. what socialism and capitalism are
2. that no country is one or the other, but a mix of both.
3. being able to identify the free market characteristics from the socialist ones, and a serious understanding of historical results under both systems
4. that economic freedom is a necessary condition for prosperity but is not THE ONLY CONDITION FOR PROSPERITY

Several people already in this thread associate the U.S. with the free market and therefore the U.S. system collapsing means that free market is failing. Same mistake people made during the Great Depression when the free market was blamed, but it was the new Federal Reserve Act manipulating interest rates in the 20s to prop up the British Pound, leading to a recession, where a centralized decision to contract the money supply instead of what it was supposed to do thrust the country into an utterly unnecessary depression. The U.S. is close to becoming over 50% socialist. 40% of the nation's income currently goes to the government. We are highly regulated, we have all kinds of crap which destroys competition:

1. lobbyist special privilege legislation all over the place such as NAFTA and the HMO Act done under both Democrat and Republican administrations which destroys competition.
2. subsidies, which is essentially the government taking money from you and giving it to stupid shit like corn farmers for ethanol, etc, instead of people keeping that money and individually choosing the best technology on the free market.
3. massive and unsustainable redistribution of wealth schemes like Medicare and SS
4. no-bid defense contracts
5. A central bank whose primary function is to manipulates interest rates lower and higher than the market would have them under the Keynesian pretense of reducing volatility.

Now knowing these things as socialist characteristics, I dare you to make that statement again about African nations being mostly free market. That is pure nonsense. Inflation is Zimbabwe is out of control because their central bank is retarded and inflating the hell out of their government declared fiat paper they call money. Individually trading a commodity like gold could not have been debased. Socialism vs Freedom. Freedom wins.

And when this crap invariably causes major problems, the masses fail to recognize it as socialism. They think this stuff is normal. The government deciding to fund ethanol with taxpayer money rather than letting people in the market decide WAS A SOCIALIST POLICY. It was entirely dependent on the idealistic view that a centralized decision will always be the correct one, which it rarely is. The government bailing out financial institutions with new money later payed by taxpayers through inflation-caused price increases is A SOCIALIST POLICY. The manipulated interest rates by the Fed which led to the incentivization of risk which created this bubble was the result of A SOCIALIST POLICY, the central bank. The places where socialism "appears" to be working, like Sweden and so forth - it's bull. They take all the innovation and creation from free market systems and import them, spend no money on national defense to protect their freeloading lifestyle, and declare socialism the best policy. Huh? What would happen if we all did that? Where would anyone find the incentive to work for this stuff? Europe is a freaking joke and if all the socialist democrats or republicans want to head down the path we've been on for fifty years, you're just asking for ultimate enslavement to big brother. What is wrong with you people.

Well, just some quite notes. I find it quite funny that you regard the United States as highly regulated, seeing as how US regulation is far below the large majority of most first-world nations. In any case, I'd love to here an explanation of your statement ?the US is close to becoming over 50% socialist?. What the hell does that mean? I'd like to know what your basing that 50% figure on...Given that the US government doesn't control any industry outside of, for instance, the post office, and given that US income inequality is much higher than in European nations, I think you'd be hard pressed to make a claim like that (unless, I guess, if your benchmark is Europe = communism, then perhaps the US being half that might make ?sense?...).

I certainly don't agree with all subsidies, but claiming that they are uniformly bad is pretty foolish. Look at nuclear power: would that have gotten anywhere were it not for government investment? I agree completely that no-bid contracts are bad, but that's hardly the same thing as, say, environmental regulation.

How exactly does NAFTA destroy competition? The main arguments I hear against NAFTA are that its sending our jobs below the border, which is hardly a case of no competition...

I fail to see how Zimbabwe is at all representative of the polices of Africa, nor how that is possibly socialism. Zimbabwe is quite clearly a case of a dictatorship that in the process of gaining control and isolating itself let the country's one strong economy spiral out of control.


As far as the rant on Europe, to answer a few of the various claims you make: the EU spends more than half what the US does on defense (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...military_expenditures), which is obviously less than the US, be still a whole hell of a lot more than ?none?. Your claim that Europe takes all the innovation and etc from the US is, quite frankly, ridiculous, and I'd love to see what kind of ?proof? you could offer for that (i.e. none).


There's plenty of other stuff I could address there, but otherwise really need to go back to studying for finals (ugh).

Income inequality is the reflection of exactly how free we are. If you want to be a lazy uneducated bum it is your free choice to do so. If you want to be a bazillionaire, yes you can be one. There is a difference between being free and making as little or as much money as you want and government restricting people from being productive so everyone can live lower middle class.

Uh huh. Ask the man or women working full time at Walmart or elsewhere how free they feel. Yeah, they're free: free to live paycheck to paycheck, free to worry about mortgage payments, free to have little chance of their children going to college without insane levels of debt. And increasingly that describes the (remainder) of the American middle class.

No, I take it all back - you are right. These people in the lower and middle class are choosing to be poor, lazy bums (especially the great majority of those slackers who work full time). They just don't want to join that hard-working "bazillionaire" elite, who fortunately aren't restricted from being productive by the government, and thus add so much to the economy by getting multi-million dollar severance packages after presiding over failing companies while workers (who obviously contribute far less to the company) are laid off. Yes, that's freedom, and anyone who disagrees with that must be some freedom-hating communist. Because there is obviously no other option than breaking out into a Cossack dance...

(and when I am referring to the elite, I do mean the upper upper class or whatever - obviously I'm not trying to say a doctor, for instance, is anywhere close to being in the same category as a multi-million dollar a year CEO).

 

[JS80]

Originally posted by: ZebuluniteV

Originally posted by: JS80

Originally posted by: ZebuluniteV

Originally posted by: BansheeX
Sure you don't have time. Why offer a rebuttal when you can just scoff? I added the fourth after realizing I had forgotten it, but did not read the introductory paragraph again. Duh? It's fixed, thanks for your scrutiny.

Originally posted by: BansheeX

Originally posted by: Arkaign
Yep, regardless of political ideology and direction, I think the most important aspects of a country's success is the quality of it's citizens/culture. Many sub-saharan countries in Africa are about as free-market/capitalist as you can get, but are absolute cesspools due to corruption/violence/lack of regard for life in general. Flip side to countries like Sweden and Norway, which are borderline commie, but have some of the highest living standards on earth, combined with excellent health and education ratings. It just goes to show that political leanings are not the sole reason for success or failure on a whole.

You know, even after all the posting I do here, this stuff still perpetuates. There is truly no hope for man.

The problem is entirely in your ability to know four things:

1. what socialism and capitalism are
2. that no country is one or the other, but a mix of both.
3. being able to identify the free market characteristics from the socialist ones, and a serious understanding of historical results under both systems
4. that economic freedom is a necessary condition for prosperity but is not THE ONLY CONDITION FOR PROSPERITY

Several people already in this thread associate the U.S. with the free market and therefore the U.S. system collapsing means that free market is failing. Same mistake people made during the Great Depression when the free market was blamed, but it was the new Federal Reserve Act manipulating interest rates in the 20s to prop up the British Pound, leading to a recession, where a centralized decision to contract the money supply instead of what it was supposed to do thrust the country into an utterly unnecessary depression. The U.S. is close to becoming over 50% socialist. 40% of the nation's income currently goes to the government. We are highly regulated, we have all kinds of crap which destroys competition:

1. lobbyist special privilege legislation all over the place such as NAFTA and the HMO Act done under both Democrat and Republican administrations which destroys competition.
2. subsidies, which is essentially the government taking money from you and giving it to stupid shit like corn farmers for ethanol, etc, instead of people keeping that money and individually choosing the best technology on the free market.
3. massive and unsustainable redistribution of wealth schemes like Medicare and SS
4. no-bid defense contracts
5. A central bank whose primary function is to manipulates interest rates lower and higher than the market would have them under the Keynesian pretense of reducing volatility.

Now knowing these things as socialist characteristics, I dare you to make that statement again about African nations being mostly free market. That is pure nonsense. Inflation is Zimbabwe is out of control because their central bank is retarded and inflating the hell out of their government declared fiat paper they call money. Individually trading a commodity like gold could not have been debased. Socialism vs Freedom. Freedom wins.

And when this crap invariably causes major problems, the masses fail to recognize it as socialism. They think this stuff is normal. The government deciding to fund ethanol with taxpayer money rather than letting people in the market decide WAS A SOCIALIST POLICY. It was entirely dependent on the idealistic view that a centralized decision will always be the correct one, which it rarely is. The government bailing out financial institutions with new money later payed by taxpayers through inflation-caused price increases is A SOCIALIST POLICY. The manipulated interest rates by the Fed which led to the incentivization of risk which created this bubble was the result of A SOCIALIST POLICY, the central bank. The places where socialism "appears" to be working, like Sweden and so forth - it's bull. They take all the innovation and creation from free market systems and import them, spend no money on national defense to protect their freeloading lifestyle, and declare socialism the best policy. Huh? What would happen if we all did that? Where would anyone find the incentive to work for this stuff? Europe is a freaking joke and if all the socialist democrats or republicans want to head down the path we've been on for fifty years, you're just asking for ultimate enslavement to big brother. What is wrong with you people.

Well, just some quite notes. I find it quite funny that you regard the United States as highly regulated, seeing as how US regulation is far below the large majority of most first-world nations. In any case, I'd love to here an explanation of your statement ?the US is close to becoming over 50% socialist?. What the hell does that mean? I'd like to know what your basing that 50% figure on...Given that the US government doesn't control any industry outside of, for instance, the post office, and given that US income inequality is much higher than in European nations, I think you'd be hard pressed to make a claim like that (unless, I guess, if your benchmark is Europe = communism, then perhaps the US being half that might make ?sense?...).

I certainly don't agree with all subsidies, but claiming that they are uniformly bad is pretty foolish. Look at nuclear power: would that have gotten anywhere were it not for government investment? I agree completely that no-bid contracts are bad, but that's hardly the same thing as, say, environmental regulation.

How exactly does NAFTA destroy competition? The main arguments I hear against NAFTA are that its sending our jobs below the border, which is hardly a case of no competition...

I fail to see how Zimbabwe is at all representative of the polices of Africa, nor how that is possibly socialism. Zimbabwe is quite clearly a case of a dictatorship that in the process of gaining control and isolating itself let the country's one strong economy spiral out of control.


As far as the rant on Europe, to answer a few of the various claims you make: the EU spends more than half what the US does on defense (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...military_expenditures), which is obviously less than the US, be still a whole hell of a lot more than ?none?. Your claim that Europe takes all the innovation and etc from the US is, quite frankly, ridiculous, and I'd love to see what kind of ?proof? you could offer for that (i.e. none).


There's plenty of other stuff I could address there, but otherwise really need to go back to studying for finals (ugh).

Income inequality is the reflection of exactly how free we are. If you want to be a lazy uneducated bum it is your free choice to do so. If you want to be a bazillionaire, yes you can be one. There is a difference between being free and making as little or as much money as you want and government restricting people from being productive so everyone can live lower middle class.

Uh huh. Ask the man or women working full time at Walmart or elsewhere how free they feel. Yeah, they're free: free to live paycheck to paycheck, free to worry about mortgage payments, free to have little chance of their children going to college without insane levels of debt. And increasingly that describes the (remainder) of the American middle class.

No, I take it all back - you are right. These people in the lower and middle class are choosing to be poor, lazy bums (especially the great majority of those slackers who work full time). They just don't want to join that hard-working "bazillionaire" elite, who fortunately aren't restricted from being productive by the government, and thus add so much to the economy by getting multi-million dollar severance packages after presiding over failing companies while workers (who obviously contribute far less to the company) are laid off. Yes, that's freedom, and anyone who disagrees with that must be some freedom-hating communist. Because there is obviously no other option than breaking out into a Cossack dance...

(and when I am referring to the elite, I do mean the upper upper class or whatever - obviously I'm not trying to say a doctor, for instance, is anywhere close to being in the same category as a multi-million dollar a year CEO).

How did those people end up at Wal-mart? You think they busted ass in high school so they can get into college? I doubt it. You think they scrimped and saved and took the risk to start a business? I doubt it. Read the life story of the most successful Americans and learn the life path of a Wal-mart worker and tell me they both put in the same effort in life. Free choices is what lead the Wal-mart worker to minimum wage and a CEO to mansions and jets.

 

[fskimospy]

Originally posted by: JS80

How did those people end up at Wal-mart? You think they busted ass in high school so they can get into college? I doubt it. You think they scrimped and saved and took the risk to start a business? I doubt it. Read the life story of the most successful Americans and learn the life path of a Wal-mart worker and tell me they both put in the same effort in life. Free choices is what lead the Wal-mart worker to minimum wage and a CEO to mansions and jets.

Yeah, because studies haven't shown that the US has much lower intergenerational economic mobility then other advanced democracies. It must be because our poor people are just so lazy. Same with all those people in Africa. If they would just get off their asses they would be rich like us, amiright?

Studies have repeatedly shown that the largest predictor of your economic quintile as an adult is the economic quintile of your parents. Lie to yourself all you want about how good 'ol elbow grease is what separates the wealthy from the poor, but people have been studying this for a long time and they know better.

 

[StinkyPinky]

Originally posted by: Genx87

Originally posted by: piasabird
Maybe the USA should pull all our troops out of Europe and Asia. They are doing so well they dont need our help. Why should the USA protect EU and Asia for free?

Tis I question I have been asking for quite some time.

Actually, why are they there??? Europe is easily able to protect itself. It's not like Russia or China has the power to roll through Europe, and no other non-allied power can even come close to worrying them.

Perhaps internal strife?

 

[fskimospy]

Originally posted by: StinkyPinky

Originally posted by: Genx87

Originally posted by: piasabird
Maybe the USA should pull all our troops out of Europe and Asia. They are doing so well they dont need our help. Why should the USA protect EU and Asia for free?

Tis I question I have been asking for quite some time.

Actually, why are they there??? Europe is easily able to protect itself. It's not like Russia or China has the power to roll through Europe, and no other non-allied power can even come close to worrying them.

Perhaps internal strife?

Our troops are there largely because WE want them there. Germany gains little from the US presence other then some economic stimulus and political goodwill from us. We gain excellent bases to project power over eastern Europe. In a lot of ways they are doing us a favor, not the other way around.

Nobody here honestly thinks that we are somehow 'defending' Germany for free or anything do they? As you sort of asked, defending them from who?

 

[sandorski]

Originally posted by: eskimospy

Originally posted by: JS80

How did those people end up at Wal-mart? You think they busted ass in high school so they can get into college? I doubt it. You think they scrimped and saved and took the risk to start a business? I doubt it. Read the life story of the most successful Americans and learn the life path of a Wal-mart worker and tell me they both put in the same effort in life. Free choices is what lead the Wal-mart worker to minimum wage and a CEO to mansions and jets.

Yeah, because studies haven't shown that the US has much lower intergenerational economic mobility then other advanced democracies. It must be because our poor people are just so lazy. Same with all those people in Africa. If they would just get off their asses they would be rich like us, amiright?

Studies have repeatedly shown that the largest predictor of your economic quintile as an adult is the economic quintile of your parents. Lie to yourself all you want about how good 'ol elbow grease is what separates the wealthy from the poor, but people have been studying this for a long time and they know better.

That's likely more a result of Higher Education Programs(the "Socialist" ones OMG!!)in Europe and elsewhere that are more open to Financing just about anyone that academically qualifies. Might not be either.

 

[GTaudiophile]

The Euro is worth more than the Dollar.

Europeans have a higher standard of living than we do.

This all tells me that they are doing something right over there.

 

[CanOWorms]

Originally posted by: eskimospy

Originally posted by: JS80

How did those people end up at Wal-mart? You think they busted ass in high school so they can get into college? I doubt it. You think they scrimped and saved and took the risk to start a business? I doubt it. Read the life story of the most successful Americans and learn the life path of a Wal-mart worker and tell me they both put in the same effort in life. Free choices is what lead the Wal-mart worker to minimum wage and a CEO to mansions and jets.

Yeah, because studies haven't shown that the US has much lower intergenerational economic mobility then other advanced democracies. It must be because our poor people are just so lazy. Same with all those people in Africa. If they would just get off their asses they would be rich like us, amiright?

Studies have repeatedly shown that the largest predictor of your economic quintile as an adult is the economic quintile of your parents. Lie to yourself all you want about how good 'ol elbow grease is what separates the wealthy from the poor, but people have been studying this for a long time and they know better.

I don't know where the US lies, but some of those studies only look at citizens. Many European countries only give citizenship based upon bloodline. You have generations of minorities secluded from those results. Europeans are notorious for this type of stuff. Another example is crime statistics. They claim that their minorities commit millions of crimes yet they claim to have extremely low crime rates. Sorry, you can't have it both ways.

 

[StinkyPinky]

Originally posted by: CanOWorms

Originally posted by: eskimospy

Originally posted by: JS80

How did those people end up at Wal-mart? You think they busted ass in high school so they can get into college? I doubt it. You think they scrimped and saved and took the risk to start a business? I doubt it. Read the life story of the most successful Americans and learn the life path of a Wal-mart worker and tell me they both put in the same effort in life. Free choices is what lead the Wal-mart worker to minimum wage and a CEO to mansions and jets.

Yeah, because studies haven't shown that the US has much lower intergenerational economic mobility then other advanced democracies. It must be because our poor people are just so lazy. Same with all those people in Africa. If they would just get off their asses they would be rich like us, amiright?

Studies have repeatedly shown that the largest predictor of your economic quintile as an adult is the economic quintile of your parents. Lie to yourself all you want about how good 'ol elbow grease is what separates the wealthy from the poor, but people have been studying this for a long time and they know better.

I don't know where the US lies, but some of those studies only look at citizens. Many European countries only give citizenship based upon bloodline. You have generations of minorities secluded from those results. Europeans are notorious for this type of stuff. Another example is crime statistics. They claim that their minorities commit millions of crimes yet they claim to have extremely low crime rates. Sorry, you can't have it both ways.

I find it hard to believe that "many" European countries only give citizenship to certain "bloodlines". The UN would be all over them like a rash for discrimination. Certainly that's not the case in the UK, where I've lived before.

 

[Duwelon]

Originally posted by: GTaudiophile
The Euro is worth more than the Dollar.

Europeans have a higher standard of living than we do.

This all tells me that they are doing something right over there.

What does europe have that the US doesn't have better? ANd don't say healthcare, because while it may not cost someone on the day of a doctor visit, they pay out the A in taxes and lower quality care.