quote:

---

Originally posted by Elison R. Salazar:
But Darth_Mauve! Think aboot it! If your state had lowered taxes the wealth would trickle down ~because magic~ and create MORE jobs in your state! Everybody wins!

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by GaalDornick:
I think trickle down economics is a misleading name.

What I was really objecting to is being so condescending towards an economic policy that is supported by some politicians. Disagreeing that is effective or does what they claim it does is one thing, but I object to facetiously calling their reasoning behind why it works "magic".

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by GaalDornick:
I think trickle down economics is a misleading name.

What I was really objecting to is being so condescending towards an economic policy that is supported by some politicians. Disagreeing that is effective or does what they claim it does is one thing, but I object to facetiously calling their reasoning behind why it works "magic".

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by GaalDornick:
I think trickle down economics is a misleading name.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Rakeesh:

quote:

---

Originally posted by GaalDornick:
I think trickle down economics is a misleading name.

What I was really objecting to is being so condescending towards an economic policy that is supported by some politicians. Disagreeing that is effective or does what they claim it does is one thing, but I object to facetiously calling their reasoning behind why it works "magic".

---

Well, alright, but please note that's not what you initially said, with your suggestion it wasn't even a thing.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by steven:

quote:

---

Originally posted by GaalDornick:
I think trickle down economics is a misleading name.

---

It certainly is misleading, because nothing ever actually trickles down to the poorest members of the society, in this kind of system.

You have to own stock to actually see any money from "trickle-down", and most of the poorer people barely even know what stock IS, let alone how to buy it, how to choose a good stock, what a balanced portfolio might be, etc.. And, by definition, they rarely have enough money left over to BUY stock, even if they were to somehow get a hot stock tip.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by GaalDornick:
Why do you think the only way to benefit from lower taxes is to buy stocks? That's a pretty ignorant thing to think.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by GaalDornick:
How about the guy that does have enough money to start his own business then needs to hire employees to work in his business? You know, like create jobs.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by steven:

quote:

---

Originally posted by GaalDornick:
How about the guy that does have enough money to start his own business then needs to hire employees to work in his business? You know, like create jobs.

---

Most entrepreneurs try to get away with the ABSOLUTE minimum re: working conditions, benefits, and pay. That's been my observation. They treat a few key employees well, and do their best to mistreat all the rest. Again, my observation.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by GaalDornick:

quote:

---

Originally posted by steven:

quote:

---

Originally posted by GaalDornick:
How about the guy that does have enough money to start his own business then needs to hire employees to work in his business? You know, like create jobs.

---

Most entrepreneurs try to get away with the ABSOLUTE minimum re: working conditions, benefits, and pay. That's been my observation. They treat a few key employees well, and do their best to mistreat all the rest. Again, my observation.

---

How many entrepreneurs have you observed?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by steven:

quote:

---

Originally posted by GaalDornick:

quote:

---

Originally posted by steven:

quote:

---

Originally posted by GaalDornick:
How about the guy that does have enough money to start his own business then needs to hire employees to work in his business? You know, like create jobs.

---

Most entrepreneurs try to get away with the ABSOLUTE minimum re: working conditions, benefits, and pay. That's been my observation. They treat a few key employees well, and do their best to mistreat all the rest. Again, my observation.

---

How many entrepreneurs have you observed?

---

Several, but I'm not saying there are no exceptions. The exceptions aren't the point. Have you observed a different trend?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by GaalDornick:
The point is the several you know don't make it the norm. How do you know the several entrepreneurs you know aren't the exception, with the rest of entrepreneurs that don't mistreat their employees being the rule? Several entrepreneurs that mistreat their employees isn't really a sample size to base a national economic policy on.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Lyrhawn:
Steve -

That's true historically, and I think you can find a lot of instances of worker abuse now as well. Anyone living off minimum wage is a good example.

But kids aren't exactly working in sweatshops.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by steven:

quote:

---

Originally posted by GaalDornick:
The point is the several you know don't make it the norm. How do you know the several entrepreneurs you know aren't the exception, with the rest of entrepreneurs that don't mistreat their employees being the rule? Several entrepreneurs that mistreat their employees isn't really a sample size to base a national economic policy on.

---

How much do you know about the history of organized labor in this country?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by GaalDornick:

Please enlighten me how the history of labor shows that entrepreneurs creating jobs by building businesses is not a good thing.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by GaalDornick:
"Why is it said that the entrepreneur 'built the business'? He or she hardly did it alone, after all-and if they can be said to 'create jobs', can't their employees be said to have built their business, to an extent?"

Yes. That's why they get paid.

"Anyway, I'd like if I can to pin you down on something: do you think trickle down economics is a good policy, and if so what *precisely* do you mean by the term?"

Explain to me what you mean by trickle down economics and I'll tell you if I think it's a good policy.

"Because right now you've pivoted the discussion to 'why is creating jobs bad?' Which was never what anyone but you was talking about."

Why don't you reread the posts at 10:06 and 10:14 ET and tell me again who brought up creating jobs possibly being bad. I only said that starting businesses creates jobs, which helps the little guy, and as you pointed out is what we were originally talking about.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by GaalDornick:
How about the guy that does have enough money to start his own business then needs to hire employees to work in his business? You know, like create jobs.

---

quote:

---

How many entrepreneurs have you observed?

****


The point is the several you know don't make it the norm. How do you know the several entrepreneurs you know aren't the exception, with the rest of entrepreneurs that don't mistreat their employees being the rule? Several entrepreneurs that mistreat their employees isn't really a sample size to base a national economic policy on.

---

quote:

---

How about the guy that does have enough money to start his own business then needs to hire employees to work in his business? You know, like create jobs.

---

quote:

---

What I was really objecting to is being so condescending towards an economic policy that is supported by some politicians. Disagreeing that is effective or does what they claim it does is one thing, but I object to facetiously calling their reasoning behind why it works "magic".

---

How about deluded useful idiots (Ta Party) at best to actively evil (Koch) at worse?

Also "that some politicians support"? Some politicians support vaginal ultrasounds and denying the vote to black and people without property, why does that make the argument justified or worthy of not being denigrated as the bat guano it is?

At least you didn't try to claim "there is scientific evidence for" as that would be a lie; as it turned out the ONE academic paper supporting lower taxes during a session turned out to have been fudging the numbers.

You should check out Paul Krugan, he's one of the more easily approachable economists in terms of his work out there. And look up Keynesian economics as well, basically we want higher taxes and government investment to restore economic growth because there's a lack of demand.

And lower taxes and all the bail out money in the world doesn't get a company to start hiring if there's no one with money to buy their products.
 

---

Posted by PSI Teleport (Member # 5545) on :
 
Random nit-pick: Texas does have very high property tax, but we also have no state income tax. We have high sales tax, but none on food. I'm pretty poor so I wouldn't pay income tax anyway, and the property tax affects (almost) everyone, so I lost out when I moved here. But all in all, I think it's a fairer way to tax.
 

---

Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
 
It's really fascinating to see someone so wholeheartedlyand unabashedly embracing evil and failure. It's kind of surreal.

I'll give you this, Blayne: at least you're straightforward about it. That's kind of refreshing, even if what you're advocating is horrific.
 

---

Posted by Darth_Mauve (Member # 4709) on :
 
Dan Frank--I don't see Blayne in this thread so I am not sure who you are condoning. I would guess Salazaar. Why are they considered actually Evil?
To just say an economic policy is "evil" is name-calling, which is not a useful argument.
 

---

Posted by MattP (Member # 10495) on :
 
Salazar is Blayne is Salazar.
 

---

Posted by Elison R. Salazar (Member # 8565) on :
 
Yeah please don't my real name, and its Salazar dangit.

Dan Frank is I believe to be of the American Libertarian mainstream, up to and about but not quite "taxation to be used to give benefits to people I don't believe deserve it is theft" school of thought.

So anything slightly left of Anarcho-Capitalism is kinda like "palling around with socialists".

The sad thing is what I've talked about what the US should embrace has been the mainstream (and has worked) of American and European politics for all of the 20th century until Reagan and Thatcher showed up. And completely antithetical to Marxists as Marxists tend to believe anything that doesn't lead to the violent overthrow of the capitalists isn't Marxist but class traitors.

The gov't and inherently a part of the market, it has an effect on things there's no "invisible hand" Adam Smith laughed at the idea that there could be one. Taxation exists in modern times as a deflationary measure to destroy excess currency, because Federal and most national spending comes from the printing press and taxation scoops it back up once its in circulation. Money doesn't really exist anymore in the sense it used to, its neither wealth nor prosperity.

So you raise taxes to combat inflation when your printing or borrowing a lot of money to pay for infrastructure spending and jobs programs to combat recession caused by the reckless actions of the American investor class through the Reagan to Clinton years of deregulation.

Once the economy is growing steadily again then you can lower taxes taxes and work off the government debt until the next recession (which should be actively fought and forced to occur "earlier" before the damage is systemic).

People in a fairly "Hayekian" way of thinking know how to spend money and corporations are best healthy when its the people buying their products and services; but how can people buy things when they have no job to give them income? Without surplus growth there's no societal growth. So people straddled with debt, straddled with bad mortages, straddled with unemployment or impossibly high medical bills cannot help the economy grow.

Instead they add as lag, they stagnant the country in the same way within 50 years the environmental degradation of China plus demographics from the One Child Policy might also serve to slow Chinese economic growth through the 'health' deficit. An unhealthy populace is a populace that can't work, that can't produce, that can only serve to balloon costs.

Has a country of mostly poor people ever really been a great power? Only at certain impossibly high costs; Russia and China spring to mind. Large militaries and aggressive foreign policy and heavy state control to make up for the lack of a middle class. The American middle class is shrinking as a result of deregulation and anarcho-capitalist control at their expense.

So the people need jobs, they need income, they need access to education and healthcare; when they have it they are smarter, more educated, more informed, more productive, healthier and better able to contribute to society and society's GDP increases significantly over time.

"Reaganomic" policies all fundamentally claim the same thing, lower taxes and less regulation or "government intervention" will lead to more jobs and a higher standard of living through the rich having more money and thus creating more jobs.

But this isn't true, not historically, not scientifically. During a time of fundamentally lower regulations or taxation burden than ever in US history job growth has relative to the US economic size has not been at all close enough in growth rate to sustain the number of people entering the workforce; there's millions of unemployed with massive student debt, to the point that hundreds are just saying "eff it to hell" and leaving to work in other countries and writing off their debt.

Yet all the times for many countries when economic growth was higher? A healthy amount of government intervention and direction and regulation. The US's historically high growth rates through the 19th century in particular are a result of having massive amounts of unexploited land and high immigration but the highest ever recorded growth rate? WWII and centralized government direction and control.

A war is morally unacceptable and likely there isn't anyone "powerful" enough the US could take on to respark its economy on a WWII scale; on the other hand America's backbone is so fragile, old and decrepid that it would take millions of people and trillions of dollars to fix in a meaningful way; that's the ticket.


Fight the war to restore American infrastructure, and surpass anything anyone anywhere else in the world could do. China's building highspeed rail to link some of its largest cities, why can't America do that for ALL of its cities and then some?

Because of cry baby Tea Partyer's, the Koch brothers and the rest of American corporate class and their useful idiots.
 

---

Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
 
I'm not a libertarian. And Hayek was a bit of a hack who capitulated way too much to socialism. Try Mises maybe. Have you read Human Action?

Though I'm not too interested in having a protracted conversation with someone as deeply dug into a terrible ideology as you. I just felt like clarifying those points.

Also kind of amused that I get called out for calling Blayne's policies evil, but nobody objected to him calling me evil plus a useful idiot. Whatever. I don't want him censored: he thinks I'm evil and a useful idiot for liking the Kochs and the Tea Party folks, that's fine. He should say so. I think he's evil and an incredibly destructive idiot for advocating Krugman and Keynes, so I said so.
 

---

Posted by Elison R. Salazar (Member # 8565) on :
 
Yeah please don't my real name, and its Salazar dangit.

Dan Frank is I believe to be of the American Libertarian mainstream, up to and about but not quite "taxation to be used to give benefits to people I don't believe deserve it is theft" school of thought.

So anything slightly left of Anarcho-Capitalism is kinda like "palling around with socialists".

The sad thing is what I've talked about what the US should embrace has been the mainstream (and has worked) of American and European politics for all of the 20th century until Reagan and Thatcher showed up. And completely antithetical to Marxists as Marxists tend to believe anything that doesn't lead to the violent overthrow of the capitalists isn't Marxist but class traitors.

The gov't and inherently a part of the market, it has an effect on things there's no "invisible hand" Adam Smith laughed at the idea that there could be one. Taxation exists in modern times as a deflationary measure to destroy excess currency, because Federal and most national spending comes from the printing press and taxation scoops it back up once its in circulation. Money doesn't really exist anymore in the sense it used to, its neither wealth nor prosperity.

So you raise taxes to combat inflation when your printing or borrowing a lot of money to pay for infrastructure spending and jobs programs to combat recession caused by the reckless actions of the American investor class through the Reagan to Clinton years of deregulation.

Once the economy is growing steadily again then you can lower taxes taxes and work off the government debt until the next recession (which should be actively fought and forced to occur "earlier" before the damage is systemic).

People in a fairly "Hayekian" way of thinking know how to spend money and corporations are best healthy when its the people buying their products and services; but how can people buy things when they have no job to give them income? Without surplus growth there's no societal growth. So people straddled with debt, straddled with bad mortages, straddled with unemployment or impossibly high medical bills cannot help the economy grow.

Instead they add as lag, they stagnant the country in the same way within 50 years the environmental degradation of China plus demographics from the One Child Policy might also serve to slow Chinese economic growth through the 'health' deficit. An unhealthy populace is a populace that can't work, that can't produce, that can only serve to balloon costs.

Has a country of mostly poor people ever really been a great power? Only at certain impossibly high costs; Russia and China spring to mind. Large militaries and aggressive foreign policy and heavy state control to make up for the lack of a middle class. The American middle class is shrinking as a result of deregulation and anarcho-capitalist control at their expense.

So the people need jobs, they need income, they need access to education and healthcare; when they have it they are smarter, more educated, more informed, more productive, healthier and better able to contribute to society and society's GDP increases significantly over time.

"Reaganomic" policies all fundamentally claim the same thing, lower taxes and less regulation or "government intervention" will lead to more jobs and a higher standard of living through the rich having more money and thus creating more jobs.

But this isn't true, not historically, not scientifically. During a time of fundamentally lower regulations or taxation burden than ever in US history job growth has relative to the US economic size has not been at all close enough in growth rate to sustain the number of people entering the workforce; there's millions of unemployed with massive student debt, to the point that hundreds are just saying "eff it to hell" and leaving to work in other countries and writing off their debt.

Yet all the times for many countries when economic growth was higher? A healthy amount of government intervention and direction and regulation. The US's historically high growth rates through the 19th century in particular are a result of having massive amounts of unexploited land and high immigration but the highest ever recorded growth rate? WWII and centralized government direction and control.

A war is morally unacceptable and likely there isn't anyone "powerful" enough the US could take on to respark its economy on a WWII scale; on the other hand America's backbone is so fragile, old and decrepid that it would take millions of people and trillions of dollars to fix in a meaningful way; that's the ticket.


Fight the war to restore American infrastructure, and surpass anything anyone anywhere else in the world could do. China's building highspeed rail to link some of its largest cities, why can't America do that for ALL of its cities and then some?

Because of cry baby Tea Partyer's, the Koch brothers and the rest of American corporate class and their useful idiots.
 

---

Posted by MattP (Member # 10495) on :
 

quote:

---

Also kind of amused that I get called out for calling Blayne's policies evil, but nobody objected to him calling me evil plus a useful idiot.

---

quote:

---

I'm not a libertarian.

---

quote:

---

And Hayek was a bit of a hack who capitulated way too much to socialism.

---

Red Flag spotted (irony).

The idea, the funny little idea, that an experts theories and views on a complex subject like economics can be instinctively rejected outright by a lay person called a "hack" because he "capitulated" to some unseen "Other" force, a force that for some reason "MUST" be fought and destroyed because his theory took a few trivial steps in that direction through his exhaustive research is FLIRTING WITH COMMUNISM because entirely of ideological concerns is just awe inspiring in its lack of self awareness.

And "I'm" apparently "entrenched" and unconvinced in my views here. (Despite advocating the mainstream economically Liberal view)

[ August 26, 2013, 06:45 PM: Message edited by: Elison R. Salazar ]
 

---

Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
 
I hadn't read it yet, but I'm not at all surprised to see that you did, actually, and there's not any 'nuance' to it, 'Elison'. I'd ask you to stop being so rude and hostile to someone you disagree with, but your imperviousness to that is pretty well known.

What I most liked was your insistence Dan use the name you prefer, followed by telling him what a wicked fool he is at length.
 

---

Posted by Elison R. Salazar (Member # 8565) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Rakeesh:
I hadn't read it yet, but I'm not at all surprised to see that you did, actually, and there's not any 'nuance' to it, 'Elison'. I'd ask you to stop being so rude and hostile to someone you disagree with, but your imperviousness to that is pretty well known.

What I most liked was your insistence Dan use the name you prefer, followed by telling him what a wicked fool he is at length.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Elison R. Salazar:

quote:

---

I'm not a libertarian.

---

If the glove fits you should wear it.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Dan_Frank:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Elison R. Salazar:

quote:

---

I'm not a libertarian.

---

If the glove fits you should wear it.

---

If it did, I would.

I'm something of a classical liberal. Lots in common with libertarians, especially from where you're sitting. But libertarians are radicals, they typically want to smash the state and start over. I'm in favor of incremental improvement. Libertarians are also isolationists. I'm not. They also tend towards Luddism a bit. Which is basically the worst thing ever. They also think things are really bad in America right now. I don't.

Etc. Both libertarians and I broadly like capitalism and freedom, though. And since you hate those things and your entire ideology is based around embracing their destruction, I end up looking a lot like a libertarian. That's your problem, not mine.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Dan_Frank:
Okay Blayne. Keynes and Krugman are evil. And anyone who advocates a highly interventionist economic policy is a destructive idiot. You can put yourself in relevant categories, or not, as you wish.

Better?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Elison R. Salazar:
Yeah please don't my real name, and its Salazar dangit.

---

Are you still pretending your real name is Blayne? Seriously "Blayne"?
 

---

Posted by Elison R. Salazar (Member # 8565) on :
 
Who would be so cruel as to name their child an incorrect misspelling of the pokemon gym teacher of cindabar island
 

---

Posted by Elison R. Salazar (Member # 8565) on :
 
Banks rob the wrong home and refuse to pay, police won't get involved.
 

---

Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
 
I want to write a movie or a T.V. comedy where Dan and Elison are roommates forced to live in an apartment together by circumstances outside of their control, in a way which is openly ironic given their ideologies. Dan is injured and put out of the workforce and into medical bankruptcy through a workplace injury that his insurers write off via "extant cause" wigglery; Elison is forcibly reassigned by a brutal autocratic state department that bulldozes his home to put up an apparatchik mansion and deploys him to a wholly inappropriate living condition, and brooks no appeal. Elison will stitch together maoist propaganda and double-standard nationalist apologia at Dan, relentlessly culturally fetishize countries which are ostensibly models of the Coming Revolution and Strong Nationalism, and engage in orientalist pedestaling. Dan will constantly awkwardly explain why he supports and will go out of his way to defend a movement which is effectively and ubiquitously the kind of regressive luddite intolerant science-illiterate christian populism that generally Dan insists he is not at all into, and try to what shores up the dissonance, inbetween crawling through the latest lecture about how if China does something, that means China is allowed to do it.

The metacommentary of the show will be that Dan and Elison argue with each other relentlessly, each assuring the other that it is the influence of the other's ideology in society (or their latest episodic foible) which is preventing them from having better upwards economic mobility. This is all to the gleeful joy of their kleptocratic landlord who is letting them use their respective ideologies to disempower themselves from having any real economic self-agency in the face of his established and landed economic hegemony. "If only the two of them realized that the common thread between their socioeconomic beliefs is that it ultimately makes them both patsies that act in my interests and against theirs!" he chortles.

tl;dr: what even is this thread
 

---

Posted by jebus202 (Member # 2524) on :
 
I'd actually watch the **** out of that. Will you write up a pilot script?
 

---

Posted by Elison R. Salazar (Member # 8565) on :
 
In case people missed it, I was making a not so subtle point that Dan believing an actual Communist regime that would without hesitation confiscate his property and execute him in a back alley after an elaborate show trial is just as evil as a democratically elected gov't raising his taxes 5% to pay for universal healthcare and thorough back to work programs to fix a sluggish economy is.... Words fail me.

Though I should never underestimate Poe's Law given some of my earlier posting history.
 

---

Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Lyrhawn:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Dan_Frank:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Elison R. Salazar:

quote:

---

I'm not a libertarian.

---

If the glove fits you should wear it.

---

If it did, I would.

I'm something of a classical liberal. Lots in common with libertarians, especially from where you're sitting. But libertarians are radicals, they typically want to smash the state and start over. I'm in favor of incremental improvement. Libertarians are also isolationists. I'm not. They also tend towards Luddism a bit. Which is basically the worst thing ever. They also think things are really bad in America right now. I don't.

Etc. Both libertarians and I broadly like capitalism and freedom, though. And since you hate those things and your entire ideology is based around embracing their destruction, I end up looking a lot like a libertarian. That's your problem, not mine.

---

I think things are absolutely terrible in America.

And I want to smash the system and start over.

.....am I a Libertarian?

---

... Are you?

I wasn't describing all of the traits of libertarians. I was just describing the beliefs libertarians have that I strongly disagree with. I think you knew that, though. Smartass.

There are lots of other beliefs that libertarians and I have in common, but the ones I listed are important enough to me that I don't think it makes sense to call me a libertarian, not really. It's convenient as a broad descriptor that is easily recognized, but some of the typical assumptions don't apply.
 

---

Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by jebus202:
I'd actually watch the **** out of that. Will you write up a pilot script?

---

Episode 1: "Wal-Marx" — Elison literally stages a populist uprising in the Wal-Mart across the street. It works out pretty well initially because the employees aren't paid even remotely well enough to hold back revolutionaries armed with 440 stainless steel katanas purchased from a mall outlet store. Socialized redistribution of goods goes well for a time, but eventually hoarding and distribution problems caused by a generally nonfunctional centralized economic structure causes a complete socioeconomic crisis, or rather, people start getting really hungry after 2pm and the system has failed to equitably distribute can openers to the produce department laborers. Eventually, mirroring the path of communism in world history, the intended system becomes progressively more dysfunctional and contradictory, where the equality of the people without capitalism requires Elison to attempt to maintain equality via more and more progressively autocratic central authority that defeats the intent in the first place. Eventually, the system descends to where he is ousted in a bloody (someone hit their head on a corner) and violent coup that sees New Walmartia descending into brutal totalitarianism. Elison and a small diaspora settle for protected asylum in the parking lot of CostCo. Dan remains trapped in the Walmart, where he had gone to simply shop for groceries but ended up having his passport confiscated and was forcefully reassigned to the aluminum mines of the soda aisle.

Episode 2: "Vini, Vidi, Veritas" — James O'Keefe shows up at the house and begins wiretapping it and filling it full of hidden cameras to engage in some "hard hitting" journalism that "challenges the status quo," also redoing Dan's room with the condoms, lube, and dildos that James had originally used on his sex boat.. As a reader and supporter of biggovernment, Dan is nervously supportive of the plan as presented to him by O'Keefe. But what will Dan do when he discovers that O'Keefe's actual plan is to lure in and ritually sacrifice Shirley Sherrod in the hopes of constructing a new golem-like body that he can implant Breitbart's phylctery into? Things get even more awkward when it turns out that Sherrod is actually the woman that connected with Salazar on OKCupid the night before, and the planetary zenith that O'Keefe requires for the summoning corresponds with their date. Whuuuuh-oh!
 

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Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
 
I don't actually read biggovernment. Except on the occasions when I'm in a mood where I am actually reading Instapundit and he links to it. But I haven't even had much time for that in quite a while.

Either way, though... yeah, I laughed pretty hard at both of those.
 

---

Posted by Darth_Mauve (Member # 4709) on :
 
PS. Governor Perry is in MO today to personally ask businesses to move to Texas. He was invited to speak by the State Chamber of Commerce, who's stated only purpose of existence is to support and protect Missouri Businesses. The Missouri Governor, and several community Chamber of Commerces are confused how arranging for an out of state salesman to convince companies to move out of state can somehow promote business in the state.

The truth seems to be that they want to use this visit, and any statistics they can muster, to show that the Democratic Governor's veto of a lowering of income taxes is a job killer.

It seems to boil down to this: The "Job Creator" is trying to bully the Governor of Missouri by saying, "Lower my tax bill by 5% or I'll take away the jobs, health care and futures of thousands of my loyal workers. Sure they didn't do anything wrong, and they care about the business we've built, they work hard and make the products and do the services that create my income, but hey--I want that 5% of my tax bill. I don't care about the 100% of their income."
 

---

Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by Dan_Frank:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Lyrhawn:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Dan_Frank:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Elison R. Salazar:

quote:

---

I'm not a libertarian.

---

If the glove fits you should wear it.

---

If it did, I would.

I'm something of a classical liberal. Lots in common with libertarians, especially from where you're sitting. But libertarians are radicals, they typically want to smash the state and start over. I'm in favor of incremental improvement. Libertarians are also isolationists. I'm not. They also tend towards Luddism a bit. Which is basically the worst thing ever. They also think things are really bad in America right now. I don't.

Etc. Both libertarians and I broadly like capitalism and freedom, though. And since you hate those things and your entire ideology is based around embracing their destruction, I end up looking a lot like a libertarian. That's your problem, not mine.

---

I think things are absolutely terrible in America.

And I want to smash the system and start over.

.....am I a Libertarian?

---

... Are you?

I wasn't describing all of the traits of libertarians. I was just describing the beliefs libertarians have that I strongly disagree with. I think you knew that, though. Smartass.

There are lots of other beliefs that libertarians and I have in common, but the ones I listed are important enough to me that I don't think it makes sense to call me a libertarian, not really. It's convenient as a broad descriptor that is easily recognized, but some of the typical assumptions don't apply.

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Just teasing

But in all honesty, though I know there's no reason why two opposing groups can't hold the same idea, I was a bit surprised to see those things ascribed to libertarians when I consider myself far left of Bernie Sanders and I agree with both of those wholeheartedly, as I think many liberals do.

Liberals and libertarians could probably get together on quite a few things, but they start to lose me around social justice problems.
 

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Posted by Elison R. Salazar (Member # 8565) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Darth_Mauve:
PS. Governor Perry is in MO today to personally ask businesses to move to Texas. He was invited to speak by the State Chamber of Commerce, who's stated only purpose of existence is to support and protect Missouri Businesses. The Missouri Governor, and several community Chamber of Commerces are confused how arranging for an out of state salesman to convince companies to move out of state can somehow promote business in the state.

The truth seems to be that they want to use this visit, and any statistics they can muster, to show that the Democratic Governor's veto of a lowering of income taxes is a job killer.

It seems to boil down to this: The "Job Creator" is trying to bully the Governor of Missouri by saying, "Lower my tax bill by 5% or I'll take away the jobs, health care and futures of thousands of my loyal workers. Sure they didn't do anything wrong, and they care about the business we've built, they work hard and make the products and do the services that create my income, but hey--I want that 5% of my tax bill. I don't care about the 100% of their income."

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