C&L Opening Bell: How Randroids See the World
All of these delightful qualities are on display in Nick Gillespie's recent remarks on the evils of Social Security:
How much, when, and in what form one should provide for retirement is highly individual--and is properly left to the individual's free judgment and action. Social Security deprives the young of this freedom, and thus makes them less able to plan for the future, less able to provide for their retirements, less able to buy homes, less able to enjoy their most vital years, less able to invest in themselves. And yet Social Security's advocates continue to push it as moral. Why?
The answer lies in the program's ideal of "universal coverage"--the idea that, as a recent New York Times editorial preached, "all old people must have the dignity of financial security"--regardless of how irresponsibly they have acted. On this premise, since some would not save adequately on their own, everyone must be forced into some sort of "guaranteed" collective plan--no matter how irrational. Observe that Social Security's wholesale harm to those who would use their income responsibly is justified in the name of those who would not. The rational and responsible are shackled and throttled for the sake of the irrational and irresponsible.
And here we see the charming influence of Ms. Rand on one of libertarianism's most prominent "thinkers." Gillespie takes the same framework set up by Ms. Rand that divides the world into two camps: The productive economic supermen who pursue monetary gain as a matter of rational self-interest and the mooching, looting, thieving underclass that is always trying to tear down the magnificent work of our Galtian overlords.
What I've always found especially weird about Rand is how she frames economic success as a matter of moral virtue. That is, the only virtue that exists in the world is the pursuit of monetary gain through the maximizing of one's natural talents and abilities. Or as John Galt himself put it in the opening of the Atlas Shrugged trailer, the ideal person is someone who "works for himself and [does] not let others feed off the profits of his energy."
The trouble with this, of course, is that it's a ridiculous pile of bulls***. In reality a person's success has nothing to do with their inherent "morality" and a lot more to do with genetics, education and just plain luck. There are plenty of people in life who work hard and are not successful. There are plenty of people who are successful but who are then hit with a catastrophic illness that sucks up their life savings. There are people who are extremely rich who have never done one godd*** useful thing in their entire lives (Helllloooooooo, Richard Mellon Scaife!).
The point is, if someone retires rich it ain't because they're a virtuous, rational self-interested individual and if someone is broke in their old age it ain't because they're a lazy, unscrupulous "looter." And this is sort of the point of Social Security: The goal is to say, no matter how lucky or unlucky you are in the rest of your life, here's some cash to make sure you don't spend your final days freezing to death on the street (or, as I'm sure Gillespie would prefer, sewing Nike sneakers for five cents a day). This is why it's called Social Security, Nick. Because people who have matured beyond the age of three know that sometimes bad stuff happens in life that is completely out of our control.
At any rate, it's stuff like this that makes me confident that Randianism as a philosophy will never make anywhere outside of corporate boardrooms and smoke-filled libertarian dorm rooms. After all, most people will have trouble embracing a doctrine that holds all of them in hostile contempt.
If you see them walking toward you cross the street. If they get near you spray them with holy water and hold a cross up in their faces. I they sit near you in a restaurant asked to for another table or make yourself vomit onto theirs. If your child brings one home from college over the holidays make he or she sleep outdoors and eat whatever grubs and bugs they kind find in the wood pile. If you are related to one change your name and disown your family.
I have a former friend who worked for government for 35 years and got a nice pension and health care plan and is a Randian. He couldn't see the contradictions in his life and philosophy....but then I hear old Ayn herself took full advantage of medicare when she got old so i guess really these folks are just babbling, disingenuous tools like so many of the right wing nuts.
the time has come the walrus said to talk of other things
According to social psychologists, when someone adheres to two incompatible belief systems at the same time the result is most often justification, not a revamping of the belief systems. So in Rand's case, she hated government intervention into the economy, but she also probably thought that people owed her for being such a wonderful contributor to society. Ipso facto, presto chango, Medicare was fine for her, wrong for the rest of us.
Beware of anyone promising a future full of yesterdays.
I have also known well-off US right-wingers who were hostile toward the idea of social services but who would use as much of them as they could in order to drain the system, to overburden it with users. This at the same time that they were consistently voting to defund the same social services so that the strain on the government agencies would be even greater. It's part of the overriding right-wing goal of "destroying big government."
It's also cheaper and pretty convenient.
"Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob"
-= Franklin Delano Roosevelt =-
Presbyterians believe pretty much the same thing. God smiles on the virtuous by making them successful. Predestination means that you can't fight Fate because it's already decided for you if you're going to heaven or not. Doesn't matter how badly you live your life if your gonna go to heaven.
"Courtesy is owed. Respect is earned. Love is given." --Unknown author, found in Guide to Texas Etiquette by Kinky Friedman
The Methodist church I was forced to go to as a child was similar. Congregants used to say that you could tell who God favored by how much money and how many material possessions they had. Called "the prosperity gospel," this stuff has roots in the centuries-old Calvinist idea of "the elect."
Atlas may have shrugged but Profit kicked down the door, raped your wife and took a crap on the carpet
I do mind. The dude minds.
Louisville Lawyer
That rug really completes the room.
'Talk to the hand'
Made in China, no doubt.
Louisville Lawyer
...they dubbed Gillespie "The Fonzie of Freedom" long ago.
Don't try to confuse the issue with half-truths and gorilla dust.
with your statement "In reality a person's success has nothing to do with their inherent "morality" and a lot more to do with genetics, education and just plain luck." i would say that this is true as far as it goes. i believe it is more a case of winners and losers being built into the capitalist system, it is not a win/win situation; for some to be on top, some must be on the bottom. for some to amass huge fortunes they must exploit the labor of others, and resources which could be used for the benefit of society at large. this being said , i would like to heartily endorse the statement that gillespie's views are "a ridiculous pile of bullshit", only i will fill in the blanks for you, no charge.
Here's the kicker about Ayn Rand, she took Social Security and Medicare in 1974 when she was diagnosed with lung cancer. I found this on Alternet in an article from Joshua Holland:
Rand herself received Social Security payments and Medicare benefits under the name of Ann O'Connor (her husband was Frank O'Connor).
Evva Joan Pryor, who had been a social worker in New York in the 1970s, was interviewed in 1998 by Scott McConnell, who was then the director of communications for the Ayn Rand Institute. In his book, 100 Voices: An Oral History of Ayn Rand, McConnell basically portrays Rand as first standing on principle, but then being mugged by reality.
You think today's rightwingers are hypocrites. Why didn't the great Ayn Rand go to her rich friends for help? Surely they would have helped one of their own. Why did she turn to the government programs that she hated and had reviled and spoken against all of her miserable life.
But there is no good answer. Her "friends" must not have been her friends, after all.
"Courtesy is owed. Respect is earned. Love is given." --Unknown author, found in Guide to Texas Etiquette by Kinky Friedman
Or her rich "friends" really did believe, as Rand did and as many contemporary US right-wingers do, that to help people is morally and ideologically wrong, that it weakens both the giver and the receiver, that everyone should literally serve only themselves. In Margaret Thatcher's notorious words, "There is no society; There are only individuals and their families."
Pretty much describes the right-wing Christians that I know, too. But they manage, with their little self-hate being expressed by directing it toward others.
"Courtesy is owed. Respect is earned. Love is given." --Unknown author, found in Guide to Texas Etiquette by Kinky Friedman
Randian philosophy is akin to Calvinist Presbyterianism wherein wealth is a sign of God's favor. Anybody poor is by definition a bad person suffering God's wrath. We all should do our part helping God out reaming the poor bastards.
How can they be Christians when their philosophy is the opposite of Christ's philosophy? They can't. They are frauds.
"Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob"
-= Franklin Delano Roosevelt =-
The saddest part is a lot of this is about vanity. Because when you get down to it, after a certain point they become nothing more than numbers in a bank account. What's the difference in your lifestyle between making 40 million a year and 100 million? After all the toys and houses and yachts have been bought, there is little else. We as a country recognized that after the Great Depression. And we stopped the inequality by imposing a 90% tax on the upper one percent. The role of taxation is to equalize the excesses of capitalism. Concentrated wealth destroys markets, capitalism and eventually democracies. There is no market if it can be manipulated by the big players. There is no market if the mega-corps have control of the government and your money. There is no market if they have control of the media that the public gets its education from.
What happens when you play the game Monopoly? Somebody eventually wins as the money is transferred from the players whose roll of the dice was unlucky to the richer players. This is what we are seeing in our economy now. That shift will become exponential, as all steady growth becomes. We can do something about it now or we can do it later when it will have caused much unnecessary pain and death.
[partially cross posted from another rant]
George W. Bush...............a person whose success was totally due to genetics and fraud. Hard work never entered into it......even though he said, "Being president is harrrd wurk".
“The greatest evildoers are those who don’t remember because they have never given thought to the matter, and, without remembrance, nothing can hold them back,”
What Thom Hartman calls The Fortunate Sperm Club.
Jim Hightower summed up your point perfectly:
"George W. Bush was born on third base but thinks he hit a triple."
What's the difference between banding together to create social security and banding together to eliminate social security? Why is one inherently more independent than the other? I submit that they're the same.
Ayn Rand had her early experiences molded by the Russian Revolution and the confiscation by the Bolshevik Looters of her fathers pharmacy.
Clearly the "Looters" today would be Private Equity Corporations, and Hedge Funds, that engage in hostile takeovers of smaller companies and loot their assets.
Hostile takeovers, or leveraged buyouts, are more dangerous to a corporation than any government intervention, although it was relaxation of monopoly laws under Reagan that brought in the era of the takeover. The most heinous aspect of the real Looters gobbling up a business is that the bigger the player, the larger the tax break.
No doubt that in todays business environment, Taggart Transcontinental,and Reardon Metals, would have been grabbed up by Berkshire/Hathaway, and all of their pension obligations would be dumped onto the government, and the Reardon Metal Plant would have been closed down as soon as the new plant in Mexico came on line.
I enjoy pointing out to Randians that Galts Gulch was a communist collective with price fixing, wage controls,and government housing, even producing state sponsored products such as cigarettes. I mentioned that to Pam Geller in an email and she went ballistic.....great fun.
'Talk to the hand'
Use it.
If I were Jewish I'd want to call her Kelly O'Malley or Maria Garibaldi or Tiffany Cabot, or Gastro the Flying Herbivore to deflect opprobrium from my own ethnicity.
Actually, her birth name was Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum, but so what? The name under which she published was Ayn Rand.
Would you admonish us always to refer to George Orwell as Eric Blair? Or Mark Twin as Samuel Clemens?
What is it about her birth name that requires its use? Without any further explanation from you, I can't help but wonder whether you mean it as an ethnic or religious slur. And if that's the case, no, we won't be using it as you implore.
Everyone is equally entitled to the pursuit of happiness. Wasn't that once self evident?
Indeed teach your children a lesson and let them starve from day one if they can't harness their own energies to become wealthy as soon as they leave their mother's womb.
http://www.thealders.net/blogs
Just call me Dazed & Confused
Every working American produced an average of $63,000 in wealth last year. How much did the same worker individually accumulate? Why is that not "socialism" to these people?
You nailed it.
The good old Republican/Teabagging/Randian "redistribution of wealth". If the government does anything approaching it through progressive income tax and the like, it's socialism. it's "confiscatory" and just "rewards underachievers and the lazy."
if a payday loan company, or a bank foreclosing on a mortgage they aren't entitled to, or the price gouging grocery store in the poor neighborhood does it, that's "the free market at work."
Because the rich have money because they deserve it, the poor don't have money, so they must, by definition, be less deserving. Therefore, taking money from the poor (or middle class) is a good thing because it distributes the rewards the way God and Rand intended.
I wish I was as deserving as a Randian, completely self reliant, not needing anything from anybody, because everything I have and I am is due to me and my hyper-competence. Heck, I delivered myself -- by C-section!
You must have heard of Crazy Jane Cunningham. She is well known in Missouri for her radically kooky ideas:
http://blogs.riverfronttimes.com/dailyrft/201...
'Talk to the hand'
abort the little parasite.
By their logic this should be their ultimate thinking.
I know you intended that to be an absurd conclusion from wicked right-wing philosophy, but I unfortunately have wealthy right-wing relatives who do treat their children almost that bad based on their ideology, screaming at them as early as elementary school that they owe their parents money for all the food they've eaten (and actually keeping a ledger of it to browbeat them with) and beating ten-year-olds for "not working" to pay their way. And that's only the tip of a very ugly iceberg.
I've seen it too in my youth. It's not new by any stretch of the imagination (I'm 61)
http://www.thealders.net/blogs
Just call me Dazed & Confused
Most of the assholes who buy into this Rand crap are either:
1.Heavily into gov't assistance and go through various froms of cognitive gymnastics to rationalize it.
or
2.They were born on 3rd base and think they hit a triple.
Bingo.
The individual over the collective. Do what thou wilt. Don't know how these folks and the Christians ended up under the same tent.
Sharing good titty-dancers.
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
One of Ayn Rand's philosophical heroes was serial killer William Hickman who murdered and dismembered a banker's 12-year-old daughter:
http://www.michaelprescott.net/hickman.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Edward_H...
Ayn Rand just loved Hickman's philosophy "what is good for me is right" and "because he has no organ for understanding, the necessity, meaning, or importance of other people...other people do not exist for him and he does not understand why they should."
And Rand's wonderful sensibility was around to influence America's former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan's financial policies for each and every one of us. Yeeech!
- Tom
... that other people do not exist for them are called sociopaths.
CaliforniaMike blogs at All Voices and at his own blogs, http://www.mikerappaport.net/onevoice and at http://oneminutewithmike.blogspot.com.
That is what struck me about her books most forcefully. The sociopathic assumption that anyone who is not a sociopath is a parasite on the sociopaths or a tool for their use.
I was very young when I read these books and they puzzled me exceedingly.
One character in particular took great pleasure in his ability to use his platform (newspaper column) to influence the masses to demonize and destroy individuals he admired.
Motivation? Because he could.
I did not know what a sociopath was at the time so the character seemed unbelievable to me.
Now I know better.
sociopaths. They may not have started out that way but most have them eventually reach there.
Children should never inherit from their parents...So GWB would probably be driving a truck, the Koch brothers would be working in a hardware store, Hillary Clinton would be a cashier in a grosery store
grocery store.
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
Not once he got that first DWI.
CaliforniaMike blogs at All Voices and at his own blogs, http://www.mikerappaport.net/onevoice and at http://oneminutewithmike.blogspot.com.
Tonka?
Vote GOP and move forward to the 18th Century.
... to say that success has nothing to do with someone's inherent morality.
I agree for the most part with the post, and believe that Libertarianism is basically an immoral philosophy, but it might have been more fair to say that success has less to do with inherent morality than with the other factors.
CaliforniaMike blogs at All Voices and at his own blogs, http://www.mikerappaport.net/onevoice and at http://oneminutewithmike.blogspot.com.
I always wish a little trouble on them. Just enough for them to see that no matter how self sufficient you think you are, you still need the government - something like an evironmental oopsie next door, or a sinkhole that is way to big to be fixed by private means. Then wait for them to scream for the government to do something.
I grew up with these idiots - Ayn Rand was really big with the rich boys in my high school. Mostly it's an excuse for greed and ignoring the poor.
Ayn Rand's Objectivism = Revival of the Feudal System in the name of 'Freedom'.
It's already happening.
had emotional and psychological issues, which were not attended to until her later years. So, her notion that 'reason' was the tantamount faculty could be correct, except one must be mentally stable and emotionally mature to actually apply 'reason' to one's life. Judging by the way the elites are operating in today's world, it does appear that many of them have swallowed her poison and consider themselves of high value; the rest of us, not so much.
No matter how much these 'libertarian', individualist, "Randians' think they are masters of their own little universes, they are not. Humans are social beings, and every human has specific traits and talents that are good and useful, if they are nurtured and encouraged. And, everyone's contributions can be important to a family or society.
"No man is an island unto himself.." John Donne, Meditation 17
"Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of Stupidity" - Frank Leahy
He wrote a little poem on his cell wall which summed it up very well:
John Donne
Ann Donne
Undone.
Beneath the chocolatey surface of libertarianism is a nutty mixture of insanity and immorality.
Vote GOP and move forward to the 18th Century.
When I think about her and her followers I keep thinking about how the makers at 2k games based the underwater city of Rapture and the character of Andrew Ryan off of her and her ideas.
So I think Ayn Rand and I see the underwater city in the game Bioshock, that is what she has come to mean to me.
When angry, count four, when very angry, swear.
-Mark Twain-
me too actually :) Talk about an amazing game.
Also, the Terry Goodkind fantasy series 'The Sword of Truth' is based on a lot of rand drivel. Unfortunately, I didn't know that much about rand when I started reading the series but as you get further along it gets more and more obvious. Ironically enough, Goodkind has actually virtually plagiarized some of rand's work in his novels. I guess it's a good thing for him that she's too dead to do anything about it.
We needed another FDR, instead we got another clinton.
I ran out of patience with him after the first book.
Everyone is either this extreme or that extreme and every one of them mean as a snake while the masses are easily swayed by whoever is speaking to them at the mo.
Character development? Nope! Book after book after book until you want to scream at him to let these poor characters develop fercryingoutloud, then suddenly Deus ex machina solves all problems.
C&L every time you want to attack people who think people should be responsible for themselves and their own futures you play the Ayn Rand card as if that is the alpha and omega on the topic. It's a simpleton's view and about as stupid as Sean Hannity's all or nothing talking points.
There are many who believe in personal responsibly and free markets who also think some services should be socially supported such as education, emergency services, law enforcement, water, trash collection, etc. Personally I see these basic services as the cost of living in a civilized society and gladly pay my part for them. It's when you get out on the limb for the more esoteric services or growing a social program beyond feasibility that many of us start to question the logic of the programs.
When a system or program begin to cost too much of your check, if a program no longer serves the purpose it should, if a program can't deliver on it's promises it once could be counted on for, then reform is needed and sometimes it just needs to be replaced with a better process. The left however clings to failing programs like a child fighting for it's security blanket not willing to except the blanket is worn out and useless.
Our public educational system for example was set up by Andrew Carnegie to help create a workforce for the industrial revolution. Sadly it still teaches industrial revolution ideas and does not prepare our children for the 21st century. The worst offense our educational system commits is the fact it does not teach our children fiduciary responsibility. Our children in a public educational system don't learn the difference between and asset and liability, they don't learn about cash flow patterns of the the poor vs. the wealthy. You learn nothing about starting a business, nothing about leadership, about taking risk, or effective communication. Sorry and accounting class or English class don't get you there. In the city schools have become little more than day care centers. Where is the reform in that broken system?
I have shown irrefutable proof of our own government admitting they are stealing our social security money again and again and that it faces insolvency as a result by 2015.
C&L covers it's eyes to these links and keeps pumping the lie that nothing is wrong with it. What does C&L do? You insist Paul Krugman couldn't be wrong and Harry Reed wouldn't lie. Bull Sh*t! They are both either wrong or lying. Explain to me why I should pay into a system that is not going to fulfill it's promises to me? Why should I let the government take money from my check and place it into a system they are robbing blind? Where is the reform? Before you go ranting about Randians and the corrupt right you might want to take honest inventory of what is and is not working in the left's realm. Some of your security blankets are in tatters and many of us are tired of paying for broken sh*t.
Goodnight, Frau Blücher
cling on to the state believing that it can solve all the problems in society as if its a deity, and thus reject reason and logic. There's nothing "liberal" or "progressive" from wanting to hand more power to the state. Or even socialist for that matter because social programs should be handled voluntary, not by force. They're just authoritarian cavemen who will listen to whatever their prophet Krugman will tell them, even though his and many other Keynesian books belong in the science fiction section.
stop and think about it, the state uses force all the time to enforce agreed upon goals, such as controlling crime; what makes that valid? i am sure there are criminals who view the state as totally arbitrary.
I like your take on "reason" and "logic", while subscribing to an economic concept that is described in non-secular or religious terms like the "invisible hand".
Secondly, a vaguely democratic state is still a better alternative to the state proposed by the "Austrian" school. A state which uses it's force to smash the worker's right to organize unions.A state that protects the "sacredness" of private property, which is another example of Ayn Randian deification.
You reject reason and logic when you put your faith in a economic system instead of trusting the human beings that are chained by that system.
Too much caffein and not enough critical thinking skills.
You certainly are the fan of generalizations, and ad hominem.
Do you have a second act, or did you shoot the wad on this moribund manifest?
'Talk to the hand'
Go back and read your post, it's a pot shot without substance. You need another cup of coffee.
Goodnight, Frau Blücher
Yes, I made some comments about a book of fiction, and as such I can hypothesize about it's relevance today.
I would stack up Paul Krugman's body of work against Ayn Rands Objectivism/Fiction any day of the week.
'Talk to the hand'
I'm not comparing Krugman to Rand, I'm pointing out anytime something like social security gets questioned C&L takes the extreme "all or nothing" position of poisoning the debate. Sean Hannity uses the same simpleton tactic, either you agree with Hannity and are right, or you are a tinfoil hat socialist.
C&L is doing it too, either you are for social security and nothing is wrong with it, or you are a libertarian nut job who sleeps with Atlas Shrugged under your pillow. This tactic is bull sh*t. I have shown in my links above to the Government Accountability Offices own reports that social security is being robbed. They take the interest of the treasuries they buy with our tax dollars and spend it on other things like the paying down the deficit and other stuff. It will be insolvent by 2015.
Medicaid and Medicare are in even far worse shape than that social security, but you have people here talking about what a great system it is. Sure it's great, and it's $100 trillion short in funding to sustain the baby boomers. But let's all keep our heads in the sand and delude ourselves into thinking taxing the rich is going to happen or that it will cover that shortfall.
Goodnight, Frau Blücher
I understand your point, but your premise is wrong if you think that C&L'ers are sheep following the shepherd to slaughter.
There is not a single person that is here at C&L against their will, and given your alternative of Sean Hannity to C&L, we are indeed secure in our desire to share our observations through this blog rather than Faux Homeopathic News Corp.
We don't get along here at C&L, we argue because we don't always agree.
Generally speaking, we are not spoon fed left wing propaganda by C&L, as the sheep who watch Faux are force fed R-W sociopathologic mush.
Perhaps you could have tried to present your facts without the ad hominem attacks?
'Talk to the hand'
without the ad hominem attacks. I'd say at this point I have posted the above nearly a hundred times. This is our government telling us they are taking our money and spending it on other things, the information comes from the horses mouth so to speak.
Despite this, the information has been ignored over and over by C&L, it vexing at this point. How can we deal with reality if we won't face it? Typically I get personally attacked no matter how I present the information. I've paid into social security now for 30 years, I'm not in the $250/k plus group and certainly would like for it be there for me. I have however come to grips with the cold truth it likely will not be there and I am preparing for that very real possibility.
I'll never forget when my grandfather retired his law practice at the age of 75, he made good money as an lawyer and he earned full maximum social security benefits. He chose to keep his law practice going until then because he loved his work. I saw his social security checks, I was aghast! They were nothing! A fricken insult to the years of effort, contribution, and toil of his labor! He created opportunity and employed a staff of 5, he opened his practice to other attorneys so they could have an opportunity. For this he received barely enough to live on, thank God he had a good portfolio to offset the meager checks.
Goodnight, Frau Blücher
I searched the links you provided for the word "robbed." Funny, it's not in there. So I assume you got that word from some other source.
The word "insolvent" is in the links you provided -- in a report published 6 years ago. Even accepting the dubious assumption that projections from 6 years ago are still valid, the report does not support your blanket statement that SS will be insolvent in 2015. Instead, it says that insolvency may occur unless one of a number of optional steps are taken.
You expect the government to use the word rob? Please. Since you need help, I'll spell it out for you.
In the other GAO document I linked
We’re being robbed people, and being lied to about it. But remember Harry Reid and Paul Kurgman are telling there is nothing wrong with social security.
Goodnight, Frau Blücher
If you're saying the Government is, literally, insolvent, then Social Security is the least of our problems.
But Insolvent government are punished by bond markets, and as a percentage of income our debt is nowhere near it's height (post WW-II), so I don't think you intend to say that.
So what you're (and to be fair, the GAO, in my opinion inaccurately) is saying is that by investing in government bonds Social Security is 'Spent' on other government programs. This is true in the same way the money invested bonds I own from GM are 'spent' on equipment and materials - but no one would say I 'spent' money on GM's 2012 line of cars; I loaned GM money with the full expectation they would pay me back plus interest; By the same token the Social Security money isn't 'spent' on tanks, roads, and foreign aid, it's loaned from the Trust Fund to the rest of the government with the full expectation it's going to be paid back at the exact same interest rate I would pay if I bought those bonds directly.
It's no more 'financial trickery' than if I invest in the stock market and I also invest the money in my kids college fund account in the stock market under a different account number - as long as you're dotting your t's and crossing your i's properly the fact that your kid's college fund was coming from your paycheck is irrelevant - the monies are fiscally separate and the fact that the college fund and my personal account are both invested in GM, or for that matter U.S. Bonds, is irrelevant.
And what does Professor Krugman say about concept formation?
In the economy is a huge experiment, we are doing many things that have not been done before or to the levels of extreme that we see today. I tend to think it's going to be a ugly landing.
Besides it was the Austrian school of economics that saw the housing bubble that lead to the crash. Krugman however never saw the crisis coming and admitted it in his column Oct 26 2008.
“But I never anticipated anything like what’s happening now.”
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/26/t...
Goodnight, Frau Blücher
He *was* one of the people that anticipated the housing Crisis - a fact I'm clear on because it heavily influenced my mortgage shopping when I bought my home (Which predated the Crash, and yes I came out smelling like a rose. Well - be fair, I'm poor, it's an old farmhouse, and I smell more like dandelions.)
Your quote “But I never anticipated anything like what’s happening now.” is the mother of all selective quoting - he anticipated the crisis, but not the three stooges handling of it by the financial industry, or the willful ignorance of the limitations of the zero lower bound in fiscal policy, and the complete discarding of the lessons of (neo)Keynesian economics.
Just out of curiosity - who are these Austrian School economists that saw it coming - Most of what I've seen is the exact opposite of that, as late as 2009 they were still claiming there wasn't a problem? I'm sure there were individuals that did, but as a group, I'm not seeing it.
Jonnan
If people were actually doing that it would be unwise.
It sure is a good thing that we are not as narrow and stupid and gullible as you seem to think.
But I thank you for the reminder.
Take my point on social security, C&L constantly posts on how nothing is wrong with it. The links I have provided, I have posted many times. It's irrefutable proof, an admission by our own government they are spending our social security on other things. C&L completely ignores it and keep posting inaccurate information on this.
Goodnight, Frau Blücher
I don't recall seeing anything you've ever linked here that's been irrefutable. Hell, I've refuted much of it myself.
Don't try to confuse the issue with half-truths and gorilla dust.
But you never do, you keep your blinders on worse than most here on C&L. You to are one of those who have the ludicrous idea social security is just fine and that the big meanie Republican's are just trying to kill it. If you actually click on the GAO reports and go to the pages I say to go to, the irrefutable proof is right there for your lying eyes to see.
Goodnight, Frau Blücher
and what is in there are liabilities, no matter how they try to deny it, i think that is your point. this being true, it becomes a question of what kind of society we want to be, how we treat our most vulnerable. as a red, i feel most citizens have been exploited for all their lives, so i am on the side of the retirees, but a conservative could take the same view out of human decency. the question of funding just comes down to taxation, the wealthy are currently making so much money off of foreign labor, i think they can afford it. one last point is that 95% of this money is spent immediately (i made that figure up, but it stands to reason) on food, clothing, and shelter, doctor bills and such, which provides a constant Keynesian stimulus to the economy, the money does not just disappear.
I can find common ground with. It's angering to watch the middle class dwindle away, it's even more angering to watch the top 1% who think those who picked a profession were just suckers. Yet in order to come up with real solutions we need to first address the truth no matter how ugly it is.
You question posed "what kind of society we want to be, how we treat our most vulnerable", is great question we should put in the forefront of dealing with the issues we face. Let's face the truth, and then find a way forward that really works. It will likely require both parties to do things they find uncomfortable, but that's life.
Goodnight, Frau Blücher
When did all of us suddenly fall for the alluring desire of higher taxes and less freedom?
For the life of me I can't recall anyone here wanting to pay more into the Govt., while the 1% 'ers pay less.
As far as Freedoms, did I miss the memo about the police protecting the masses from the marauding 1%'ers?
Up is down, and north is now south.
'Talk to the hand'
If the economy is growing then social security revenues will growth with it. All of the future predictions are based on assumptions that may or may not turn out to be true. Second, the federal government owes the social security fund trillions of dollars that the Republicans do not want paid back because it would mean raising taxes on the rich.
And that's a large part of the point, I detail why we will not grow our way out of this economic crisis in this post.
http://crooksandliars.com/nicole-belle/gops-i...
Goodnight, Frau Blücher
The US had public schools long before Carnegie. Indeed, Massachusetts had a compulsory education law in 1642.
the public school for the "industrial age", he had a heavy hand in what schools taught because the US needed workers skilled for the industrial revolution. We still teach the industrial age curriculum. It seems like every time I post something someone has to split hairs over secondary points.
Goodnight, Frau Blücher
How much industry did Massachusetts have in 1642?
In her logic was her view that we should all be chiefs with no indians. I have no idea how that would work and neither did she. And as for this Gillespie fool. What part of the word "Insurance" does he not understand?
I think another fatal flaw is the refusal to recognize that collectivism could actually be in the rational, best interests of the individual.
Would it not be better for me to live in a world where more people are educated, healthy, and full of driving force of self esteem Rand lauds? Do I not lose something myself when potential geniuses, doctors, philosophers, jurists, scientists, etc. languish after having been born in a ghetto, traumatized by poverty?
Why is it that egoism and altruism are mutually exclusive? Are there any so called "selfless" good deeds that do not themselves generated a sense of well being and accomplishment for the Good Samaritan?
Everyone is equally entitled to the pursuit of happiness. Wasn't that once self evident?
"I think another fatal flaw is the refusal to recognize that collectivism could actually be in the rational, best interests of the individual."
that just makes too much sense.
My thoughts exactly.
Where did she say we should all be chiefs?
We can have a world without chiefs and a world with Indians only.
This why Ayn Rand is no libertarian. Nor is she an anarchist, nor is Nick Gillespie.
They're just propertarians. Their concept of liberty is based on the idea of dispossessing humanity of it's collective inheritance, by amassing the property from which they gain their wealth by stealing it from those who work the land.
these guys put out. I know several Libertarian, Ayn Rand fans. Among all of them, they couldn't buy birdseed for a cuckoo clock, let alone provide for their own retirement. They don't believe in the government giving money to those who can't work, either....they feel that "private sources" would make up for the government...churches and charities. Yet, they don't go to church or give to charity, so I'm not exactly sure how that's going to work if everyone follows their lead. My very favorite one of these folks worked off the books for the final 20 years until he had to retire. He paid no taxes and kept a low profile. When he was old and sick, his family paid a few thousand dollars in back fines. Now he receives Social Security, Medicare, and Naval stipends for his home care.
These guys all are looking for justifications for a free ride in life. It's the "Screw everyone else" theory of life. THey leave a whole lot to be desired as human beings.
I knew one of these social Darwinist randian "supermen" back in college (he was also the head of the campus college republicans. One day he got into an argument with one of his roomates - who was a little drunk and tried to beat him up. The guy literally fell to his knees and began praying . Typical randroid...couldn't cut the mustard
Coming to a theater near you http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6W07bFa4TzM
I am reminded of one of the petition drives I worked on back in the mid 1990s in California. The ballot measure we hoped to qualify involved some extra taxes to revamp the funding for the state's crumbling public school system. To anyone who told me upon my request for their signature, "I pay for my kids' private school. Why should I have to pay for someone else's kid's education?", I would respond, "Sure, I understand your position. Let me ask you, though . . . . all the uneducated, untrained kids you won't help pay for . . . . can they come and hang out on your block when their public school folds?" Believe it or not, there was the occasional guilty pause that ended with a signature on the previously derided petition.
It would seem to me that if it could be objectively proven that is in the Objectivist's own, personal best interests to contribute to the commons to help the general welfare -- even if it meant helping people the Objectivist deemed unworthy -- the Objectivist would have no rational choice but to become a Progressive.
The marvel of myopia that is the Randiculous philosophy of life appears altogether unaware that one individual's well being is, in fact, somewhat dependent on the well being of others -- even others who need help achieving well being.
I believe John Donne put it best: No man is an island.
Everyone is equally entitled to the pursuit of happiness. Wasn't that once self evident?
Here's Gillespie the alleged "Randroid" on Ayn Rand:
"Let me admit up front that I'm no great fan of this month's cover girl, Ayn Rand, whose 100th birthday falls on February 2 and whose legacy we analyze on page 22....I'm more simpatico with Officer Barbrady, the illiterate cop on South Park who declared, 'At first I was happy to be learning to read...but then I read...Atlas Shrugged... because of this, I am never reading again.'...In the gap between Rand's soaring ideals and her lived reality, we see in particularly strong relief both the creative power of individual desire and its vast capacity for intolerance and delusion."
He just hates Social Security and all those "irresponsible people" who just happened to pay into the fund their entire working lives.I am one of those people. I am a worker bee like millions of other Americans. I don't make a lot of money but I've worked hard all my life doing work that needs to be done like most others. And the fact that I've paid into a program that will pay me back after I'm retired is a comfort to me.I might also add that I'm self employed so I have to pay both sides of the tax but I still think it's one of the best programs this country has ever come up with.Then again the fact that Congress is trying to get out from under the fact that they've spent all the money that's been collected so far doesn't surprise me.So that's the reason the troops are all out bad-mouthing the program and that ain't gonna change.
I'm having trouble getting my replies to appear under the posts to which I'm replying. I'm hitting reply, but the posts just go to the bottom. Any suggestions?
Maybe clearing your cache. I'm seeing your comments as threaded, as replies to others, and after checking your account, you should be, too. That's why I'm thinking it's your browser.
Never mind, they're in the right places.
I wish liberals would stop calling these "objectivist" dweebs libertarian.
They very much believe in government. And government to these objectivists should only protect private property, therefore the elite
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