Gingrich 'Knows': Paul 'bad choice for America'

This means nothing, no facts or data to back up this claim. Keep trying, you Austrian's will get it some day

That is the point of monetary policy and economics to continue growing the standard of living so that people have a "better" life now than they did in the 1800s. Your theory is we would have been in this position regardless because growth just happens. Lol, great theory, you should write a book!

Yes, the usual Govt spending in GDP argument. Gosh you guys are crazy. And for some reason no one ever answers this question. What is the difference between you going in to a restaurant and buying a meal than a military member with their "Govt spending" going in and buying the same meal?

You are lumping the market with monetary policy.

So you just "expect" it. There is no quantifiable measurement you can use, there is nothing you prove about this assertion, you are just saying that things magically happen with or with out an economic system. So why did all these geniuses create a Govt in the first place?

Yes, Rothbard the philosopher. Might as well quote Hume or Plato.

 

Provide links to your info..... you know, of course, Liberal credibility is not even worth a dog's

Check out the posts......ALL the certified Islamist Swine are posting at a hysterical pitch for that Political Idiot and Islamic buttkisser Ron Paul. Wonder why ?

And you say the military are voting overwhelmingly for that Islamic buttkisser ?

What do liberals, historically known as draft-doders, and non-patriotic buttholes know about the Military ?

Answer: ZERO ! NADA ! ZIPPO !

I'm thru addressing Liberal Idiots. It's a total waste of time.

 

Ok here are the links to Ron Pauls overwhelming military support.

http://www.opensecrets.org/pres12/contrib.php?id=N00005906&cycle=2012

http://content.usatoday.com/communi...-military-campaign-donations-/1#uslPageReturn


There are many many more. It is a fact. Ron Paul is the military's choice.

 

Life got measurably worse for people on the bottom end of the pile between the 17th century and the 19th century. They had even fewer opportunities for social mobility. At least in the 17th or 18th century they could, by virtue of their own work, escape serfdom by learning a valuable trade (like, say, weaving). In the 19th century, even the tradespeople were subjugated, as the utility of their skills were diminished by mechanization.

The economic growth of the 19th century;

A) Was primarily due to urbanization, which is linked to mechanized industrial labor--not "free markets".
B) Was disproportionately in the hands of the owners of capital. Skilled labor took it up the ass until the early 20th century. Between 1798 and 1838, a weaver in the industrial world would have seen his status in life drop quite a lot, along with his relative share of the wealth pie, and purchasing power.

The notion that somehow this was achieved by virtue of the free market is insane and requires the proponent to literally ignore the statements and political activities of the owners of capital in the 19th century. They loved state intervention... because they owned the state, and could use it to literally and legally subjugate their workers. They only started complaining about the state once the labor movement got organized and was using the state to threaten their private control of the economy.

You, quite literally, owe your practical political freedoms to the labor movement in the 19th and early 20th century.

Even NGGDP (non-government GDP) is a poor measure of prosperity, because it is unevenly concentrated. Growth among the wealthy portion won't really do much for the poor, and this is demonstrated statistically year after year.

Correction: NGGDP can increase and standard of living can decline if NGGDP growth is concentrated in the hands of a demographic minority. For example, if rich people are earning hundreds of times more than they were thirty years before, while the real wages of the working class have remained basically stagnant over the same time period. The working class not only didn't improve their lives, they lost ground there because of inflation and the erosion of their purchasing power.

If the government was actually spending money on the production and destruction of ditches, that would at least flow primarily to the working class, and would improve the standard of living, even if it decreased GDP growth in the long term (because it has a negative keynesian multiplier).

We developed a permanently militarized economy, and shifted to a fascist system of state capitalism. It's a fascism established by consensus, not by force, so the more obvious expressions (jackbooted thugs, disappearances, etc) have been limited until recently.

That's silly. Economies can grow and shrink over time. Periods of long-term economic decline are called "dark ages" colloquially. It can and does happen. Economic growth isn't some inevitable force. It's quite possible for society to rip itself apart rather than build something together, and it's been possible for that to happen on systemic scales. In the past that was limited to regional decline, but today that could mean global decline, because we've extended the economic system to a global scale.

It's not really suspect, it just requires more rigorous identification of variables, and a lot more work. It's more akin to scientific observation than scientific experimentation. Science can work in an observational role, you know. Experimentation isn't actually required, it's just convenient for building evidence when possible. It's one method of building support for a theory, but not the only method. If we were really forced to use experiments to conduct science, there would be no scientific investigation of astronomy, for example.

Statistical data mining can work very well... as long as you know a lot about the individual subjects (records, data points, whatever you want to call them). Experimentation requires that you control the variables, so you only examine one variable of interest. Observation requires collection of data on many, many other variables, and more sophisticated statistical analysis to control for variables, or to adjust weighting. Otherwise it's hard to identify spurious variables.

Pure philosophy is a poor substitute for proper statistical analysis and deep research.

There are some pretty obvious periods of time where economic activity led to economic decline, not growth. Pick a dark age, every culture has had one at one time or another, often at several times. These were periods of time where people were literally engaged in economic activity that reduced wealth, not built it. It's pretty obvious that economic activity can be turned to destructive, not creative ends--fortunately human beings are pretty good about tending towards constructive activities in general.

 

Because it is domination. It's domination as surely as any government policy, and possibly more, since I at least have some marginal impact on government policy but none at all in corporate policymaking.

 

Republicans and Democrats are political parties who believe in the same ideologies: Collectivism and that governments much be more powerful..

Republicans are just as "Liberal" as Democrats, just in different ways.

I believe that Ron Paul is out of touch with mainstream Republicans because mainstream Republicans and Democrats are Neo-Conservative, or in other words extreme liberals.

Patriot Act = Liberal Republican movement
Increased military action = Liberal Republican ideology
Extending the battlefield to the United States - Liberal Republican movement

All the current views within the Mainstream Republican party EXTEND MORE POWER to the federal government, and that is called LIBERAL.

If they were conservative, by definition, they would fall within the realm of Ron Paul.

I think most people who vote Republican do so because they feel they are also voting conservative. The reason why they do not know they difference between conservative and liberal is because, regardless of party, both parties extend the role of the Federal Government and wrap themselves and each other in the "Liberal" and "Conservative" name.

 

Like a flea makes a dog scratch itself. Society has minimal control over the actions of private businesses absent government interference. That could only change by reorganizing businesses along socialist lines--worker control and self-management.

You select your preferred master from a limited group of masters, all of whom will end up screwing you for the privilege of ruling you. You can decide what inadequate material compensation you'll accept in exchange for your servitude, that is true. What if you don't want to be a servant at all? Well, then you're (*)(*)(*)(*) out of luck in the private sector unless you can somehow make it to the very top. Even if you try to start your own business, you're still not free--you're still answering to your creditors, your upstream suppliers, your downstream retailers, and everyone involved in your supply chain.

There is no freedom in the private sector for anyone but the few people at the very top, and I would argue that even they aren't really free... because they're forced to act to perpetuate the system. They're like a slaveowner who, even if he recognizes that slavery is morally wrong, has become so economically invested in slave ownership that he can't do anything but continue with it.

Yeah, good luck surviving in an urban environment without buying anything from some private business. You can have any master you want, as long as you have a master. That's a meaningless "freedom" when they'll all screw you over. When all of your decisionmaking amounts to the selection of a lesser evil, you're not really free to choose between good and evil. The fact that a business can't (and "can't" only because the government prevents them) force you to buy a product is meaningless when you can't survive without buying products from someone. No proactive force is required when all you have to do to gain compliance is make the alternative so grim the person prefers to do what you say. "Play our game or starve to death," is force by any rational definition of the term.

If we take government out of the picture--or make it too weak--then things get even more grim; corporations certainly could force you to comply with their demands. They could hire some private security and physically force you to comply. They could require you to buy a house in the company town in order to get a job, then keep you upside down in your payments. They could do a whole lot to prevent you from escaping their control. The private company that owns all the roads around your house could deny you access to them unless you do what they demand--and what they demand might well include more than just a monthly payment.

Private business power is only marginally checked by the government, because if they grow too excessive there will be a social and political backlash against them. They have a lot of latitude to control the levers of government as long as they keep people in an acceptable state--but that's far removed from the sort of overwhelming power they would have absent any government control.

To be sure, companies established with an ethic of worker-control or self-management would not operate this way, but that's not exactly "private power" either. Not in the sense we're accustomed to. I don't know if you've ever had the experience of working on a corporate campus with real security, but know that private businesses can own security forces every bit as rough as the military, if they were given the latitude by the government. The only reason they "can't" force you to buy their products is because the government will rough them up if they try.

Perhaps you should try reading some of the first-hand accounts of the labor movement in the 19th century? It might open your eyes a bit about just how far private power can go, and how completely private businesses can control their workers if they are given leave by the government.

And if they go too far, they can be removed. It's not much of a check--they still have far too much discretion to act against the interests of society--but it's more than we have on private power interests. You say that we're all free to buy what we want... but that's assuming we are free to work for a living. That's not true at all, since we're all forced to work for someone to earn that money.

That's where the control comes from. Get too far out of line and you get fired. Stand too far outside the acceptable course of debate and get blacklisted. Most of the labor market is privately controlled--and, if there was no significant government, practically all of it would be--meaning that private business owners effectively hold a monopoly on the right to work. They get to control the conditions of and compensation for labor, and can deny access outright if they so choose. That's the real issue here, and one libertarians are quick to ignore. The issues with consumerism are small by comparison, and would solve themselves if we address the core labor issue.

Some might argue that there is always the option of going into competition in the free market, but that presumes open access to credit. Such people usually have no significant experience starting businesses, because anyone who has can tell you that credit is basically a requirement for anything but very small cottage industries. Credit that wouldn't be available if you got blacklisted in a purely capitalist society.

Yet both must still act to curb the most gross excesses of private power. We've become accustomed to some basic government protections, like the right not to be kidnapped by private security forces and made a slave, and access to reasonably open markets. In American political discourse, we don't even conceptualize how controlling private businesses could be without that aegis--how controlling they actually are in some third world countries.

 

Dude, the consumers are the dog. Without us, the flea doesn't survive.

I can see that you have really no grasp on how economics work, so I am not even going to waste my time on the rest. Hope you didn't spend too much time on that rant.

 

You're looking at this from the wrong perspective. How long can you live without an income? I bet that's shorter than your potential employers could get along without your services. That means they can deny you access to the labor market long enough to give you the choice of compliance or starvation.

Yes, workers do have power if they organize themselves, but unions have mostly been subverted by business interests, and membership has been in decline for decades. Individually--the way that Republicans and Libertarians want us to be--the worker has no power to resist domination by his private employer, or by potential employers if he is not employed.

Choice in purchasing is utterly irrelevant when private companies monopolize the labor market. What's the point in being able to freely purchase goods if you have no money to afford them? What kind of freedom is that?

The aggression of private power is primarily against their employees, not their consumers, to whom they must present an agreeable demeanor. Their aggression against their customers pales by comparison, and amounts to little more than the rent they collect from collective extortion ("Pay me more than the value of this item or you can't have it").

I can see that even the first section unsettled you, and you weren't able to get past the cognitive dissonance long enough to post a response.

 

Quite a while. I would say I could survive my whole life without an income. Just like they did way back before there were corporations, or even money. See, humans survived long before there was ever a corporation, or employer. I know it is hard for you libs to imagine, but back in the day people got their hands dirty and fed themselves. Now, please keep thinking the corporation came before the consumer, please.

 

Ugh... HOW DO CONSUMERS GET MONEY?? By producing.. and the cycle goes round and round. But Ill tell you what.. get history book and find out if the US became wealthy because we created credit for ourselves or if it was because we produced goods...

We produced goods that others desired at a competitive cost. Once other bought those products (many from outside the country as well, aka exports), people could then go buy goods that they desire.

Consumers exist only when they have the means to consume, or in other words, have money. If you have no goods or services, or jobs, no one has money. Ergo, without jobs, there are no consumers. Unless you have a central bank who can print money without needing any collateral to back it up with.

 

Yes, what an aspiring life to look forward to, lol. I can't wait til I have to live in the woods and kill my own grub and build an awesome log cabin. But even in this awesome life the capitalists would still use their resources to kill all the animals and force the weak to work for food.

 

Not really hard to imagine, but incredibly difficult in an urban environment. You are perhaps lucky enough to have taken that basic step. The rest of us have to adopt social systems that provide us freedom and urbanism at the same time. I haven't been able to afford decent farming land in ages.

A backwards return to the land is not an appropriate solution to our current problems.

 

http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/updates/3221

Romney will vote for Paul.

 

Good thing liberals would starve out because they are waiting for a force to get them food from those that are productive.

 

Aha.. its not liberal to want a high standard of living. Are you really trying to convince people that it will be more beneficial to live in the wilderness, hunt for their food, have no means of treating illness etc..??

You are arguing against the idea of an economy. People who start businesses often make no profit in their first years, many are not even successful. Way back when, people put everything they had on the line, as they often do now, to start a business, not for profit, but because they have passion for what they are doing. Many business people do not start businesses based on a cost/profit analysis, most business creators act on instinct and have less inventive/creative people worry about the costs.

Before there was economies in the world, there was no consumer/producer. So called "consumers" did not exist because you got goods for yourself and for your family (like hunting, gathering wood etc..). There were no producers because A) There was no established system of value other than what is "useful," but that differed from person to person (The barter system) and B) You were too busy trying to help your family survive to worry about making and trading things for a profit.

People eventually figured out that you can obtain a higher standard of living by making it easier for others to maintain a higher standard of living in the process by exchanging gold/money. Thats where the creation of business and economy originates, the death of the barter system and the creation of a system of items of established and measurable symbolic value.

 

More like liberals know how to work with other people, so we can be productive. That means high population densities, which means individual subsistence farming isn't really an option. It works pretty well, assuming you're not surrounded by anti-social survivalist nutjobs who'd rather rip the boat apart rather than work together. Most people live on land way more densely populated than the carrying capacity of the land would allow. It requires many square miles of farm to support half a square mile of city.

 

Through prostitution and drug trade, maybe. But I doubt the back stabbing and lying would keep them alive for long.

 

Yeah, for all your flippant statements, you've done nothing but dodge the issue and refuse to participate. What is your actual commentary on what I and others have been discussing here? Did you only post to make snide and self-aggrandizing comments about groups you don't like?

 

No, I am saying that the companies and corporations are slaves to the consumer in a free market, non-government intervention, reality. Fanny and Freddy would have never survived without the government. GM would have tanked. Chrysler would be gone. These people provided (*)(*)(*)(*) poor products and the consumer didn't want them, so they went bankrupt. The biggest companies in the world failed because the consumer wasn't FORCE to buy the (*)(*)(*)(*) they sold. The government FORCED you to bail them out.

 

That one was purposefully snide I admit. The last comment I made got me back on track.

 

Au contraire, he is miffed because Paul is polling better than him, so of course he has to infer that Paul is worse than Obama!

 

If you own enough property to be self-sufficient, maybe. Possibly. Assuming they don't just force you off your land.

 

A company can't force you off your land. With the government out of the picture other than law enforcement, a company can't force you off your land legally. The government can force you off your land through ... crap, brain fart.