The Lie: We Are Worse Off Than Yesterday

try going to college first!! Their were no cell phones or PC's in 1970!!

You don't need to be an economist to see how rich the middle class got by looking at all the new inventions they could suddenly afford in the last 15 years: suddenly we had plasma TV's, LCD TV's, DLP-TV's, iPods, iphones, CD's and CD players, DVDs and DVD players, Blue Ray and Blue Ray players, PCs, desk top PCs, DVRs, color printers, satellite radio, Advantium ovens, HD-TV, Playstations, X-Boxes, X-box live, X-box Konnect, broadband, satellite TV, cell/camera/video phones, digital cameras, OnStar, palm corders, Blackberries, smart phones, home theaters, SUVs, big houses, more houses per capita, TiVo, 3D movies and TV's, built in wine coolers, granite counter tops, $200 sneakers, Go Pro Cameras, GPS navigation, consumer drones, color matched front loader washing machines, internet Facebook, Pandora, LTE-U, run flat tires, matching washer dryer combinations, McMansions, 4K TV, Iphone 6+, burner commercial ranges, Sub Zero refridgerators, Tesla cars, private space flight, more cars than drivers, a $1 billion ring tone industry, a pet industry that just doubled to $34 billion, 10's of millions lining up to buy Apple's I-tablet, Wii, Fit bits, Apple watches, Netflix boxes, jet skis, induction cooking, low profile tires, aluminum/titanium rims, Harley Davidson and Japanese motorcycles. $700 Billion spent Christmas 2010, $10.5 billion movies 2010, 10 million ocean crusies, 44 million taking plane flights over 2012 holiday, $500 billion spent on Christmas 2012, hover boards, Ti Vi Bolt, Tesla cars, cloud storage, 4k Oled TV,
hover boards, Ring Doorbells, semi self-driving cars, Amazon Alexa,

The list goes on and on. I hope that helps you realize you can't just parrot the communist press and expect to make sense? They have other objectives and are merely using you to promote their point of view.

 

Very true, world population rises in proportion to the amount of capitalism there is and sinks according to how much liberalism there is. Capitalism is the greatest welfare program by a factor of 1 billion!!

 

Not concerned by this observation from Trump in 2016 (in a cynical ploy to win votes, but at least he faced the reality of entrenched poverty, unlike Clinton who made a lame statement about the Dems being the party of the disadvantaged):

"You are living in poverty, your neighbourhoods are like war zones, your schools and hospitals are broken, your young men are in prison".

But apart from your apparent inability to see the whole picture, or ignore it, capitalism itself is unsustainable - its use-by date is fast approaching - for the simple reason that capitalism does not include the costs of environmental degradation in its purview. In a world of limited resources, profit-driven exploitation of fossil fuels must be replaced by "free" green energy, if life is to prosper on this planet.

 

Not so fast James.

How many people do you want on the planet, all consuming filthy fossil fuels?

 

If capitalism is unsustainable, so is liberty, freedom of thought, freedom of the press, property rights, individualism, individual rights, human progress, human flourishing, invention, innovation, science, technology, art, literature, music, reason, and human existence.

Why? Because capitalism is nothing more than free souls trading that which they have for that which they want. If that’s unsustainable, so is life.

The true cost of capitalism: Human flourishing

Ayn Rand: “Capitalism demands the best of every man—his rationality—and rewards him accordingly. It leaves every man free to choose the work he likes, to specialize in it, to trade his product for the products of others, and to go as far on the road of achievement as his ability and ambition will carry him. His success depends on the objective value of his work and on the rationality of those who recognize that value. When men are free to trade, with reason and reality as their only arbiter, when no man may use physical force to extort the consent of another, it is the best product and the best judgment that win in every field of human endeavor, and raise the standard of living—and of thought—ever higher for all those who take part in mankind’s productive activity.”—http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/capitalism.html



The true cost of environmentalism: Human extinction

Ayn Rand: “Ecology as a social principle . . . condemns cities, culture, industry, technology, the intellect, and advocates men’s return to “nature,” to the state of grunting subanimals digging the soil with their bare hands.”-http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/ecology-environmental_movement.html

 

I'm not saying I necessary disagree but to support your hypothesis, you'd need to define "better", demonstrate that there is "more capitalism and freedom" and explain how the latter is a causal factor for the former.

I personally don't buy assertions that people are generally so much better off or so much worse off. The context has shifted so much it's pretty much impossible to make any direct comparisons.

 

Jeeez,. you still buy into the Ayn Rand nonsense? That is what nearly drove the world into a 25 years global depression.

Here is her protege explaining that the economy failed and he doesn't know why. But he does know he was wrong. Henry Paulson, one of the wizards of Wall Street, stated that market discipline failed. And that is the core of Ayn Rand capitalism. Conclusion: Unbridled capitalism will spin out of control and destroy the global economy,



Here is the great flaw in Ayn Rand capitalism. The economy will eventually correct itself, but we can't survive the fluctuations!

 

The flaw is Greenspan and Paulson’s thinking, not capitalism’s free thinkers and markets. If freedom of thought and action are a threat to human existence, then the human being is not a rational animal, it’s a monster with delusions of grandeur.

Ayn Rand: “If one upholds freedom, one must uphold man’s individual rights; if one upholds man’s individual rights, one must uphold his right to his own life, to his own liberty, to the pursuit of his own happiness—which means: one must uphold a political system that guarantees and protects these rights—which means: the politico-economic system of capitalism.
http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/freedom.html

BTW: We’ve been a statist mixed economy at least since the beginning of the 20th century. Therefore, it wasn’t capitalism’s virtues that created the last recession, it was the statist’s vice of government interference in the marketplace.

 

Capitalism is reliant on government, both in terms of economic development and in terms of reproducing profit. The problem is that the neoliberals have, given their rent seeking nature, coerced a market fundamentalist outcome which guarantees economic crisis.

 

Yet the US continues to be an industrial juggernaut.

I grew up in a poor working class family, and did extremely well in life. I make the choice to buy almost exclusively products made in the US, Canada, and Germany. Do you think the economy would be thriving if the median wage for production workers increased from $23/hr to $30/hr and everyone paid $200 for a shirt like I do? $200-700 for a pair of shoes? $80 for a pair of work pants?

Or is it more beneficial for people to pay $30 for a shirt, $20-40 for a pair of shoes, and $20 for a pair of pants?

 

Without cheap fossil fuel billions would die. So far the more we have consumed the more people we can support on earth, the longer we all live, and the higher our standard of living. Do you understand the lunacy, criminality and npure ignorance of liberalism now???

 

Odd, the liberal clean forgot to tell us how market fundamentalism guarantees economic crisis. Let me guess, your handlers told you to say that; you are just being an obedient good boy by repeating it?

 

Yes market discipline failed to correct for the massive distortions caused by govt interventions. Had there been no massive govt interventions in the market there would have been no problems in the first place.
This is why Greenspan, Rand and Paulson are now more capitalist than ever.

Antibiotics work in normal situations but fail when overrun by a massive govt infection. Now does the liberal understand?

 

Econ 101 class one day one: if you go overseas so you can sell at lower prices you get more customers and you can supply more jobs. Class one day one!

 

Of course it does. You are free not to buy from those who degrade the environment. Econ 101 class one day one!!

 

Maybe...but this doesn't stop Trumpy from ignorantly demanding an official from Baltimore to "go back and clean up his rat infested city"...

 

Oh no, did Trump say mean things and demand that those elected to office do their jobs?

Could you imagine what would have happened if Trump had been President a decade earlier, and put the various representatives of Flint on blast, bringing national attention to their incompetence? Perhaps thousands wouldn't have been poisoned.

What does that have to do with the US industrial output?

 

But you are conflating life with capitalism; life includes, but is much more than capitalism (an economic system with production of goods and services based on self-interest (the profit motive), realised in a market place.

Explain the Apollo 11 mission (or for that matter the prior first manned space flight launched in Russia....) in terms of capitalism. Or Chartres Cathedral...or the Taj Mahal.

and yet unregulated capitalism forced Marx to study economics for 10 years (which he hated), in an attempt to understand the egregious abuse of human rights he observed, eg, children working in coal mines instead of going to school - obviously denying them the opportunity to achieve their own potential.

Re her 'philosophy':

Rand, being ignorant of the structure of the brain, believed reason - in an abstract, non-ideological sense - is equally accessible to all men. She did not understand the influence of the unconscious brain (residing in the reptilian and mammalian subsections of the human brain) on the conscious 'cortex' (thinking, self-aware) brain. Toss in the influence of the environment from conception onwards, and we have an explanation for the 'stickiness' of individuals' ideologies.

I hope the above explains man's irrationality......

 

Trump is blaming the victims of unregulated global 'free' trade (ie those in the "rust belts") for their poverty; his visionless solution is a trade war with China, (and anyone else he deems not to be playing 'fairly' ie not promoting "America First").

Not to mention his earlier remarks about refugees coming from "****holes" oversees, necessitating a border wall; no indication of how to improve the economies of those benighted countries (some of whom he is complicit in bombing back into the stone age, even the entire US congress has voted against arms sales to S.Arabia).

 

you seem to be defending the mass foreign outsourcing and foreign imports

sending all the tech jobs to India is a national security threat, those that control the information have the power

I also grew up poor and did alright for myself... I want the same opportunities for future generations

 

Are you richer today than 2 years back?

Are you richer since Obama or stay the same or poorer since 2009?

You seem very deprived and angry.

 

Econ 101 class one day one : if consumers have no jobs, they can't buy any of your products

no one is saying we should have no foreign imports and exports, just a speed limit

 

Ok. You follow your ideas, I’ll stick with Objectivist. And best of luck, you and your reptilian brain are going to need it.

 

Poverty is created by restricting free trade. I own a $700 pair of shoes, custom made using commercial and industrial waste without a shred of manmade materials.

They're not name brand, not designer, and I didn't buy them at the store. That's just what it costs for the old hippy cobbler down at the farmer's market to make you a pair of shoes. Even with the incredible productivity of American industry, my work boots, also made in the US, run about $200-300.

But those purchases are a choice I made, with the excess of my labor, to support things I believe in.

Are you claiming that anyone has been victimized by being given the option to save hundreds of dollars on a basic necessity?

You want the same opportunities for future generations, but believe we should severely limit them by artificially increasing the cost of goods and services?

What percentage of global industrial output do you believe the US is entitled to?

 

why limit??? the more we save from imports the more we can spend on other tings to boost employment here. Do you want a speed limit on imports from California too?. Don't New Yorkers have a right to protect themselves from California's cheap fruits and vegetables and China's cheap labor?????