The Berniephobes are wrong

Is this the same Thomas Jefferson who “ owned” 10,000 slaves during his life time ?
I respect the work he did in developing us politically, but I’m sure as heck not going to identify with him.

 

“Many”...like seven ?

 

States with the highest gun violence rates...are they socialist states ? Or, mostly red states ?
Be careful what you claim
ecolocalizer.com
The states with the highest levels of gun violence include Louisiana, Alaska, Mississippi, West Virginia, and Alabama, which also have some of the weakest gun laws in the nation, according to CAP.

 

"It found that Canadians’ median wealth of $106,342 is significantly higher than the comparable figure of $61,670 for Americans. And it doesn’t stop there. Compared with the United States, Canada has a lower percentage of people with wealth below $10,000 and a higher percentage with more than $100,000."

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/26/world/canada/middle-class-income-wealth.html​

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/04/how-did-canadas-middle-class-get-so-rich/361053/

 

You can't define what so-called "mainstream economists" believe and apply your definition to economists "running the Fed and treasury."

No, economists were of the mind we should use fiscal policy.

Suggest you consider:

The current mandate of the Federal Reserve first made its way into the Federal Reserve Act in November 1977. The 1970s were plagued with high inflation and unemployment, a severe adverse macroeconomic condition known as stagflation, which motivated Congress to reform the original Act of 1913. With the intention of clarifying the Fed’s Board of Governors and the Federal Open Market Committee’s (FOMC) roles, Congress’ Reform Act explicitly identifies “the goals of maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates.” It is these goals that have come to be known as the Fed’s “dual mandate."

The first thing to notice is that the so-called dual mandate actually appears to be a triple mandate of achieving the following three goals: 1) maximum employment; 2) stable prices; and 3) moderate long-term interest rates. We shall begin by looking at the first one, maximum employment, before we turn to the other two, which can effectively be treated as a single mandate.

https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/100715/breaking-down-federal-reserves-dual-mandate.asp​

You rather limited government options to achieve full employment.

Smells a lot like the CCC where the government had my recently widowed grandfather cutting brush out of town, leaving my 11-year-old father with neighbors. No mother, then no father--I don't think my father ever got over it.

You have government making economic choices best made by markets.

 

It helps, but there are other factors including government providing good K-12 schooling in poor communities.

 

Hmm. My apologies for my lack of clarity--I was mocking Alexa. On Jefferson, I'm sure we'd find much in common.

 

Well no. I'm not sold on the world communist revolution or anything. That being said, Marx made some very valid critiques of capitalism that capitalists are simply unwilling to address or understand.

Much of Marx and Engels work was an investigation of living conditions for the working underclass in industrial England during the 19th century - which were appalling. Dickens wrote quite a bit about the same subject.

Marx pointed out the contradictions of capitalism and it's tendency to always concentrate wealth and political power in the hands of a smaller and smaller minority, the ruling classes in his day and the elite, inherited wealth class today, that are able to game the capitalist system for their own profit and interests.

Part of the reason for Marx's idea for world communist revolution is that he was German and most of the philosophers of socialism in his felt that Russia at the time was just too backward and far-flung with a largely uneducated and impoverished peasantry to maintain a working class system of production. They always felt that the main goal was for the German working class to rise and "throw off their chains" as it were.

For myself, I believe in private property which puts me at odds with traditional Socialist ideas but I feel that democratic social policies can act in unison with traditional capitalism to mitigate the worst excesses and contradictions of capitalism for the benefit of society as a whole.

There will always be a tension between the working and capitalist class the question is how do we achieve a working balance that benefits the greater good of society? The pendulum has swung so far in the favour of capital and the elite class of inherited wealth that it is deeply de- stabilizing and unhealthy for not only the US but the world as a whole. Societies with such large disparities in wealth and political power as the US are inherently unstable and ripe for conflict and even revolution - and if you don't believe that look at how history is full of ruling classes that fell almost overnight despite the seeming power of the ruling classes. You can see the battle lines being drawn already both in the 2020 election campaign and in the highly partisan and emotional kind of dialogue we see across the board.

So in answer, no I don't go all in for Marx but I think to demonize the man and everything he said without actually having a discussion about important ideas he brought up is a mistake. He was one of the most influential philosophers of the modern era.

In the highly propagandized arena of US politics, seeing Marx condemned by people who haven't read or studied what he was really saying is in my opinion very dangerous because it leaves America without the ability to make informed changes to it's political and economic system in response to internal and external crisis.

It is always good to have the flexibility to adapt to a changing world and all the economic and environmental threats we are facing.

 

You are all slogans and no knowledge. Which is the most violent and aggressive country to the rest of the world financing its Capitalism by war. The United States of course. You do not even know what you are talking about. Just slogans. My grandkids do better!!

 

So you seem to be an "incremental Marxist"....not all out like Bernie. I know a lot of Democrats just wish he'd tone it down at least until he's elected. We've played this game for fifty years!

 

I apologize for misunderstanding.

 

I know you don't identify with a single one of the Founders. You like so many others, would like to overthrow our Nation and use slavery as the justification. The 10,000 number you came up with just displays how rabid you are. Does latter symptoms of TDS cause you to foam at the mouth?
Some of the Founders owned slaves, some were against slavery. Together they put in place a system that overcame that institution. They also put in place safeguards to protect this nation against the kind of Socialism you wish to install. Barrack Hussein Obama put in place a Healthcare plan that required citizens to purchase or be penalized.. The first time our government required the purchase of anything. Now you want government in the healthcare business. Well that is going to be a hill many of us are willing to die on.

 

Rush Limbaugh said years ago that although the wages' growth is low the companies make it up in benefits. Benefits are the attraction companies use to try and bribe their workers into joining and staying at the company that gives the best benefits.

 

Slavery was the built into economics of the time. The wealth of many INCLUDING Thomas Jefferson was dependent upon it. Instead of mechanized and paid labor, we use today, the plantation owners used slaves to expand and hold on to their wealth.

The idea that anyone would gloss over that fact and excuse this sad part of our existence, not only at this time but even later, is abhorrent. It is the part of history one imo, should want to identify with including those who held their wealth that way. It that speaks volumes about those that do.

No American imo, who values the American way of life, would identify with Marx either. But, it’s interesting to note, he supported the north in its fight against slavery.

I keep that in mind before I decide who I want to identify with.

 

Well, Rush was wrong.

 

Gee.....

That’s a great argument for ELIMINATING Benefits like employer based healthcare which stagnates wages and replacing it with universal healthcare. Be careful what you wish for.

 

Yes I can, they are neoliberal economists of the school that has been in the ascendancy since Thatcher and Reagan, and they are running the Fed and treasury.

The rest of your reply is little better than sham ideology, since you completely ignored all my material relating to the Fed advisor and mainstream economist Summers, in particular.

[Note: re your following quote re the Fed and stagflation; Keynes was not responsible for the stagflation in the 70's. The geopolitics of oil, and the ascendancy of Asian economies were. Economists did not understand this].

All mainstream neoliberal mythology and misapprehension.

Meanwhile, Ellen Brown )google) has commented on the lack of a public banking option in the US, and the disastrous consequences for the public.

https://www.change.org/p/barack-obama-abolish-the-federal-reserve-act-of-1913

Abolish the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. This petition calls for the abolishment, by Congress of The Federal Reserve Act of 1913. To return all the rights and profits, from the creation of money to the rightful heirs, the citizens and the U.S. Government.
​

Yet below you say economic choices are best made by markets. That is classical and neoliberal economics at its worst.

Your nasal capacity is obviously totally incompetent...….

According to your mainstream ideology.
In fact I have economic choices made by both "invisible hand" private sector markets, AND complementary money creation in the public sector to ensure sustainable use of all available resources including labour, something the private sector can never do (if it did, we would not be having this debate).

 

No they don't: the losers say "We lost concentration at the wrong time" (or some other assorted nonsense sportsmen always come up with...so they can turn their attention to the next game, while assuaging their supporters...)

Well, I'll explain it to you, despite the fact you are such an intellectual pygmy you have put me on your 'ignore' list.

1.The classical liberal concept of individual liberty rights as "imprescriptible" is delusional, in a world with more than one individual. (How difficult is that to understand?)

2. Living in proximity with other individuals requires contract enforcement aka rule of law established by government.

3. "Just earnings" arises from/depends on the contributions of others, as well as one's own efforts, in a modern economy.

4. Government is required to promote the general welfare in recognition of point 3.

Therefore your proposition conflating taxation with " robbing from one's neighbour" is erroneous, blind ideology at it worst.

She's wrong straightaway; Jesus said "Love God and love one-another".

"Ghosts in heaven"? According to atheist Rand, yes...

"Self sacrifice for the sake of incompetents"? Merely a smoke screen for classical liberal mythology, on Rand's part.

Philosophers have been saying that all along.

Yes that's what they are, as fully explained above.

 

You haven't identified a set of beliefs they share and then described in even the most general terms how they influenced--and influence--government. I guess you're just not going to do it.

I didn't say Keynes was responsible for stagflation.

What on earth are you talking about? I was refuting your claim about the Fed doing as it pleases.

 

Who does ?

 

I assume that you realise that Western European Socialism is bankrolled by capitalism.

 

The set of beliefs: neoliberalism/neo-Keynesianism all based on classical economics beginning with Adam Smith, which posits
production and distribution in "invisible hand" markets ALONE, with fantasies about full employment in conjunction with market clearance at stable prices. No consideration of a role for the public sector in wealth creation AT ALL.

History:
Keynes' policy of government deficit spending to maintain full employment, in force during the 'golden years of capitalism' (postWW2 to the 70's) was abandoned in the western democracies, when stagflation in the 70's seemed to indicate that Keynes policies no longer worked.
But the Chicago school economists at the time drew the wrong conclusions - and reverted to pre-Keynes/pre-Great Depression classical economics for their inspiration.....and came up with the wrong theory (aka supply side), because they didn't take account the ME oil embargo, and competition from low wage economies in Asia at that time.

In short, the policy of full employment via fiscal policy was abandoned in favour of controlling inflation via monetary policy...and so the NAIRU concept was invented, which actually stipulates a level of unemployment required to control inflation.
Keynes himself would be horrified by that turn of events in economic theory.

You noted the Fed's new mandate:

1. The government does not set interest rates, the Fed does.
2. Note the words "maximum employment", ie the Fed's mandate is no longer real full employment as it was in the immediate postwar period*, but maximum achievable employment consistent with 2) and 3).
….*at least in most western democracies if not in the US, eg, in Australia in 1960, PM Menzies almost lost office because unemployment rose to 2%! in the months before the election. (it's never been below 4% since the 70's).

The Fed is a classical economist's 'central bank' wet dream from the start, designed to enrich private interests at the expense of the general public, as Thomas Jefferson himself so eloquently noted (in the link supplied in my previous post).

Any subsequent changes to its constitution have been minimal and inadequate, as a basis for the capitalist free market system in the US.
--------
Re central banks, note this from Ellen Brown' blog 2019):

"When the Federal Reserve cut interest rates on July 31st for the first time in more than a decade, commentators were asking why. According to official data, the economy was rebounding, unemployment was below 4%, and GDP growth was above 3%. If anything, by the Fed’s own reasoning, it should have been raising rates......….
Spross quoted former bank CEO Richard Vague, chair of The Governor’s Woods Foundation, who explained, “China has committed itself to a high level of growth. And growth, very simply, is contingent on financing.” Beijing will “come in and fix the profitability, fix the capital, fix the bad debt, of the state-owned banks … by any number of means that you and I would not see happen in the United States.”......
This is the fight that Trump has against China. He wants to tell it to let private banks run China and have a free market. He says that China has grown rich over the last fifty years by unfair means, with government help and public enterprise. In effect, he wants the Chinese to be as threatened and insecure as American workers. They should get rid of their public transportation. They should get rid of their subsidies. They should let a lot of their companies go bankrupt so that Americans can buy them. They should have the same kind of free market that has wrecked the US economy.

 

No knowledge of socialism and it’s gun? That’s just self-inflected blindness, Stalin’s Kulaks, Mao’s Peasants, Pol Pot’s Killing Fields, Marchenko’s My Testimony, Stalin’s East Berlin barbed wire and it’s hanging body of Peter Fechter (shot by socialist for wishing to live free in West Berlin), Kim’s North Korean famine, and his destruction of the soul and body of Otto Frederick Warmbier, Castro and his educated thug, Che, and the 100,000 they filled the ditches with, Chavez and Maduro’s Venezuela, and on, and on, and on. No evidence? The most ignorant piece of BS propaganda ever uttered by a fool.

 

What Socialism murders: Liberty
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Peter_Fechter
That’s the future Bernimanics offer as a solution to the good being superior to the bad. Death, as a lifeline.

 

Huh ? Hilarious. “ the fed “ refers to The Federal Reserve System.