Conservatives hope President Obama fails to get his economic stimulus plan passed in the Senate, because they don’t want to see him get credit for preventing another [Great] Depression. Rush Limbaugh, for example: “I hope Obama fails.”
Obama, who has the job of rebuilding a shattered economy as well as a shredded Constitution, must not fail. The stimulus creates or saves 3 million or 4 million jobs; did you know the real unemployment rate is already over 13 percent? The official numbers don’t count the underemployed and those who have given up looking. The bill creates hundreds of thousands of green jobs needed for the economy, the environment, even for national security.
The Republicans are nitpicking over tiny aspects of the bill, because even they can find no fault with the bulk of it. America is in a mess now because conservative Republicans (and their Blue Dog enablers) have let Wall Street burn down Main Street. Look around you: Notice how much was built during the New Deal years. FDR saved America from a GOP-caused depression.
Let Obama and America succeed. Pass the stimulus. It’s time to do something progressive again.
— Tom Buckner
Asheville
1. I too hope that Marxism fails. The sooner the better. I’ve not been disappointed yet.
2. As for the writer’s understanding of FDR’s role in American history, I’d say it is in serious need of mending:
http://timpeck.blogspot.com/2009/01/obama-and-fdr.html
“Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse”
by Thomas E. Woods Jr.
http://www.mises.org/store/Meltdown-P557.aspx
“Meltdown” by Thomas E. Woods Jr.
Amazon.com [look inside]
http://www.amazon.com/Meltdown-Free-Market-Collapsed-Government-Bailouts/dp/1596985879/
Meltdown: New Book by Thomas Woods
February 6, 2009
http://blog.mises.org/archives/009387.asp
“Why the heck is this happening to us? What happened to mortgages, to banks, to large retailers, to retirement savings, to stock prices, to the availability of credit? How could so many errors have coincided?”
The Hell With Our Constitution
by Walter E. Williams | February 11, 2009
http://snipr.com/bp6v3
…Roosevelt didn’t have an easy time with his agenda; he had to first emasculate the U.S. Supreme Court. Higgs points out that federal courts had respect for the Constitution as late as the 1930s. They issued some 1,600 injunctions to restrain officials from carrying out acts of Congress. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned as unconstitutional the New Deal’s centerpieces such as the National Industrial Recovery Act and the Agricultural Adjustment Act and other parts of Roosevelt’s “stimulus package.” An outraged Roosevelt threatened to pack the Court, and the Court capitulated to where it is today giving Congress virtually unlimited powers to tax, spend and regulate. My question to my fellow Americans is: Do we want a repeat of measures that failed dismally during the 1930s?
“Do we want a repeat of measures that failed dismally during the 1930s?”
That’s one view, and hardly an objective one.
“Whether the New Deal was a success or not, depends on the definition of success. Did the New Deal eliminate unemployment and turn America around? No. Did the New Deal eliminate poverty? No. It would be easy to run off questions such as these with an economic bent and come up with the answer no. However, an analysis of whether the New Deal was a success or failure requires a larger scope of questioning than simply looking at economic statistics.
Rather than look at the New Deal from 1933 on, an analysis of what America was like in the aftermath of the Wall Street Crash is important. What exactly had Roosevelt inherited in March 1933?
From the collapse of Wall Street in October 1929 to the presidential election in November 1932, to many Americans it appeared as if Hoover, the Republican president, was either doing nothing or too little. “Too little, too late” was a frequent label pinned to the presidency of Hoover. That a president, Roosevelt, was actually doing something positive was a huge boost to the American public – they were not being left to fend for themselves. Some who had been badly affected by the Depression had labeled their cardboard box homes “Hoovervilles” in disgust of what Hoover was doing for them. The free food handouts they got were nick-named “Hoover Stew”. Those at the bottom end of society had no faith in Hoover and the new president gave them exactly this – faith and hope. Here was a president doing something for them.
Economic statistics also provide a clue as to whether the New Deal was a success or not.”
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/New_Deal_success.htm
Its funny to me that people want to try to characterize Obama as this decade’s hoover, when in fact it is Greenspan if not Bush.
Yes, Dionysis, Hoover was an interventionist and did a lot of wrong things. FDR was a greater interventionist and did a lot of much worse things.
Obama is now repeating the history he has not learned from.
Update your passports.
Update your passports.
Where you gonna go, Argentina or Mexico?
Let me help you pack.
Update your passports.
There are some people I wouldn’t mind seeing leave the country.
“Update your passports.”
Well, surely you are doing this yourself, since you’re advising others to do it. Tell us, to what pure capitalist nirvana do you intend to emigrate, and how soon?
Jim Rogers beat me to it and moved to Singapore. Jim, we hardly knew ye.
Rogers on the pork barrel spending bill:
http://snipr.com/bpn6k
Rogers on the Fed, dollar:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=airxvVmGnqc
Obama Stimulus May Cause New Depression [video]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hl9wPYxvwj8
Another plus, is that in Singapore they really know how to deal with graffiti perpetrators.
The (PFKaP) writes: “Let me help you pack.”
Why the personal attack?
Tim,
Are you, as implied, moving to Singapore? You’ll need a healthy cushion to get started. Have you priced real estate there? Are many of your fellow ‘Objectivists’ relocating too?
“Another plus, is that in Singapore they really know how to deal with graffiti perpetrators.”
As well as those who throw cigarette butts on the ground or spit. Check into how they deal with such miscreants.
Tim, how does Singapore’s treatment of these types of infractions comport with your notion of unfettered freedoms? Can you make the adjustment?
tim, it is noticeable that nobody is addressing your pertinent points. There are few people who have studied the responses of both Hoover and Roosevelt and grasp the significance of what that nearly led us to. It took a world wide war to stimulate the economy out of the whirlpool both of those Presidents instigated.
“It took a world wide war to stimulate the economy out of the whirlpool both of those Presidents instigated.”
A commonly advanced fallacy, devoid of any factual substantiation.
“ROOSEVELT PRE-WWII NEW DEAL
1932 Unemployment Rate: 23.6% (12.8 million total unemployed)
1940 Unemployment Rate: 14.6% (8.1 million total unemployed)
Unemployment Rate Change: -9.0
Total unemployment percentage change: -36.7%”
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/19592
Dionysis writes: “A commonly advanced fallacy, devoid of any factual substantiation.”
Does no one read my weblog?
http://timpeck.blogspot.com/2009/01/obama-and-fdr.html
No attack, timpeck. Just offering to help you move on to your free-market nirvana in Singapore.
George Bush is Herbert Hoover.
“Does no one read my weblog?”
Not usually; anyone can post anything to a blog site.
Can you refute the unemployment statistics for that period?
Amity Shlaes does a pretty good job. That’s why I sent you to the weblog.
I can understand why you’re reluctant to follow the links.
“I can understand why you’re reluctant to follow the links.”
I’m not any more reluctant to read your weblog stuff than any other, and as far as “does a pretty good job,” does a good job on what and according to who? You believe Ayn Rand did a pretty good job in her creation of ‘objectivism’, but not many people seem to share that view. I will, however, read it later this evening when I have more time.
I can understand why you’re reluctant to answer my question too. In case you missed it: can you refute the unemployment statistics between 1929 and 1940?
Amity Shlaes does a pretty good job. That’s why I sent you to the weblog.
And a quick search will reveal a whole bunch of sites that claim Amity Shlaes doesn’t know what she’s talking about.
“Amity Shlaes does a pretty good job. That’s why I sent you to the weblog.”
Okay Tim, I followed your links and found, among other tidbits, this:
“Shlaes’s arguments about the reluctance of businessmen to invest during the Depression years actually echo those of Roosevelt during the recession of 1937–the President and some of his advisers blamed a “capital strike” for the rising unemployment of the late 1930s. (Others argued that the attempt to balance the government budget that year was responsible, a thesis Shlaes does not mention.)
But in the end there is little historical evidence for her larger claim that the New Deal made the Depression worse and that without it, the crisis would simply have passed…
The fall in unemployment during the buildup to the war seemed proof of the central principles of Keynesianism: the private economy cannot always spend its way out of a depression; sometimes public spending is needed to stimulate growth…
The experience of the war seemed to validate the New Deal, not disprove it. If anything, it suggested that Roosevelt should have gone further–that the New Deal was compromised by his timidity, not his radicalism. Does Shlaes seriously think that the Depression would have melted away if only Calvin Coolidge had been President?
And if the New Deal was such a failure, why did it produce one of the most enduring political realignments of the century?
In the end, the Depression itself cannot help but intrude on Shlaes’s optimism about the free market.”
Got anything else?
“It took a world wide war to stimulate the economy out of the whirlpool both of those Presidents instigated.”
A commonly advanced fallacy, devoid of any factual substantiation.
“ROOSEVELT PRE-WWII NEW DEAL
1932 Unemployment Rate: 23.6% (12.8 million total unemployed)
1940 Unemployment Rate: 14.6% (8.1 million total unemployed)
Unemployment Rate Change: -9.0
Total unemployment percentage change: -36.7%”
Yes, I can refute your statistics with a closer look at your “facts”.
1920 – 5.2%
1928 – 4.2%
1930 – 8.7%
1932 – 23.6%
1934 – 21.7%
1936 – 16.9%
1938 – 19.4%
1940 – 14.6%
1942 – 4.7%
1944 – 1.2%
1946 – 3.9%
1948 – 3.8%
1950 – 5.3%
The trend reveals something very telling about the new deal years (including Hoover since it was nothing but Democrat propaganda that Hoover did nothing). Hoover was vilified while doing very much what Roosevelt did but one a smaller scale. The New Deal fought against a capitalist recovery keeping unemployment in double digits. It is clearly seen that unemployment and economic recovery did not occur until we went to war. Once we moved away from the socialist intervention crafted by the Democrats (most of whom have no idea who Henry Wallace was)this country prospered in a generally capitalist post war society. The New Deal remained stale until Johnson’s Great Society programs.
Hopefully, we will not end up enduring what this country went through during the 1930s. Roosevelt was in serious trouble prior to WWII with an economy stalled and no progress in sight. Double digit unemployment and no economic growth is not a hallmark of success.
And a quick search will reveal a whole bunch of sites that claim Amity Shlaes doesn’t know what she’s talking about.
There are a whole lot of sites claiming the US blew up the WTC. What is the relevance of a “whole bunch of sites claiming” anything?
What is the relevance of a “whole bunch of sites claiming” anything?
Merely that timpeck’s posting of a site that claims she does know what she’s talking about is equally worthless.
“It is clearly seen that unemployment and economic recovery did not occur until we went to war.”
Wrong.
The PRE-WWII New Deal era from 1933-1940 – not the WWII era – saw the largest drop in the unemployment rate in American history…
Now, it is certainly true that the percentage drop of total unemployed was bigger in WWII than it was in the pre-WWII New Deal era…the pre-WWII New Deal era saw the second largest percentage drop in total unemployed in the 20th century, going from 12.8 million unemployed in Roosevelt’s first year in office to 8.1 million unemployed at the end of his second term in 1940. That’s a 36.7 percent drop – larger than the Clinton era (36.3%) and, yes conservatives, larger than the Reagan era (a mere 19%). At the absolute minimum, that would suggests the New Deal was a positive – not negative – economic force (and empirically more positive than, say, Reagan’s free-market agenda).
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/19592
The impact on World War 2 on unemployment shows again that government spending was instrumental in depressing unemployment figures. The tanks, planes, bombs, etc. that were build as a result of government spending were not needed; as an analyst noted on a political show last night, it was the creation of jobs that did this, not the materials (they could have been dumped in the ocean; they were irrelevant).
“The fall in unemployment during the buildup to the war seemed proof of the central principles of Keynesianism: the private economy cannot always spend its way out of a depression; sometimes public spending is needed to stimulate growth. The experience of the war seemed to validate the New Deal, not disprove it. If anything, it suggested that Roosevelt should have gone further–that the New Deal was compromised by his timidity, not his radicalism…
“the catastrophe of the 1930s was halted not by private industry but by the massive public spending generated to fight World War II–an outlay of government resources far greater than anything Roosevelt had initially imagined…
And if the New Deal was such a failure, why did it produce one of the most enduring political realignments of the century? In particular, how did Roosevelt win the loyalty of millions of voters, many of whom had never voted before?
For the New Deal was not only about stimulating the economy; it was also an attempt to alleviate the sufferings of the poor, the aged and the unemployed, a goal that many New Dealers saw as distinct from restoring economic growth…”
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080407/phillips-fein/2
(from Tim’s webblog).
The ‘do nothing’ approach advocated by you and others is not an option. The Republicans have not offered anything to help the American people, only the same discredited ‘invisible hand’ twaddle that helped propel us into the economic mess we inherited from the incompetent Bush junta.
Now you can reject whatever you wish and continue with the hand-wringing, but the vast majority of economists (and you’ve not claimed to be one yourself) are in accord that the only possible way out of this disaster is for the government to intervene. The discredited ‘good ole days’ you pine for are gone forever. Get used to it or stew about it; in either event, it does not matter.
What would happen if the Government truly didnt “intervene” at all?
I hardly see how that could be bad in the long run. Let this monstrosity of an environmentally destructive, human-rights trampling, resource-dwindling system collapse, for God’s Sake! The longer we draw it out the the worse the repercussions will be in the future.
People who have invested in the system get no sympathy from me, especially as they try to worsen the problem for future generations as they try and save their own over-consumptive lifestyle. I somehow doubt that starving kids in Ethiopia or Minnesota give a crap whether or not middle-class america loses their pension plans.
While the Left and the Right argue about who is to blame, our federal reserve is still being pilfered, by Haliburton, the Banks, and career politicians, regardless of whatever pathetic (R) or (D) they have by their name.
To hear the long-time Bush Administration Cheerleaders now decry government this recent round of Federal spending is obviously absurd. As if the last 8 years had been the cornerstone of fiscal conservation. And to hear people rally around the Democrats as if they have a proven record of acting any different, is disappointingly
predictable.
This isnt the 1930’s. Obama isnt FDR, or Hoover, or Lincoln, or JFK, or Yoda, or Mohammad. It is 2009, we have a massive national deficit, at least two active, hot wars, with more on the horizon. Massive industries that have been propped up by the government for decades are finally crumbling and people are losing their jobs.
Maybe we should stop trying to make analogies to other times and pay attention to the unique details of the actual day.
Mr. Peck wants to rewrite history in his belief that if we just had an economic system of laissez faire capitalism run on objectivists principles of rational self interest all would be just fine. He thinks laissez faire capitalism has not been tried yet or it was not done unfettered enough.
His personal involvement in the ongoing debacle at URTV made me wonder how his ideology would apply in that situation. The only conclusions I can see are that people do not act in rational self interest as the default mode of human behavior or all the players at URTV are acting in their own rational self interest and the inevitable result is chaos that threatens the institutions survival.
He wants our economic system based on this ideology. You would think personal events in his own life would make him think twice about objectivism and rational self interest as applied to real life situations.
What say you Tim Peck? If a non-profit TV station is that dysfunctional, how would running an entire economy without rules and regulations and government interference fair?
Who said anything about operating without rules?
I have stated, as does Rand, that any market that is not constrained by the rule of law is not free.
http://timpeck.blogspot.com/2009/01/lte-lets-hear-it-for-capitalism.html
http://www.aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/law.html
“And furthermore, that there should be a strict wall of separation between economy and state.
Unregulated laissez-faire free-market Capitalism is the political-economic social system of freedom…”
Then I guess I do not understand the similarities between having rules and being unregulated. Maybe you have your own definition of unregulated laissez-faire free-market capitalism that you could share with us, defining what rules are allowed as law and what should be unregulated.
Sure.
Capitalism is the social system of freedom. It demands the separation of economy and state. Regulation is government interference in the economy (e.g. the Federal Reserve). The only proper role of government is the protection of individual rights. This requires a strict definition of objective law:
http://www.tafol.org/bulletins/b07.html#b07whtisobjective
“Ayn Rand writes: “Since the protection of individual rights is the only proper purpose of a government, it is the only proper subject of legislation: all laws must be based on individual rights and aimed at their protection.”1 Rights can be violated only by the initiation of physical force.”
I did not get all the way through it, but that seems to be the jest of what laws are allowable in your view.
Mountain Xpress has reported that elevated levels of arsenic were found in a stream near the Progress Energy plant. http://www.mountainx.com/features/2009/021109the_green_scene
So in your view Progress Energy should be able to put as much arsenic into the environment as they want and not be prevented from doing that by any laws. Also from your link above, “In this chaos, no principles are invoked, only such undefined and indefinable notions as “the public interest” or, worse, “the needs of the environment.”
“So in your view Progress Energy should be able to put as much arsenic into the environment as they want”
No. Not at all. That would be a violation of the individual rights of others. They should be prevented by law from threatening others in this way with pollution, and prosecuted for endangering the health and lives of the any one that could be effected, or for any actual harm caused to others.
Good question. Keep ’em coming.
Then I am perplexed. You disagree with Ann Rand. You need to give me an example of a economic law you would object to. And more on point to the original letter why should you object to the government acting as a consumer in the economy with a stimulus package? The government is already a massive consumer in the economy during all economic situations. Unless you do away with the government entirely it will always be a consumer in the economy.
“Then I am perplexed. You disagree with Ann Rand.”
I do not disagree with Ayn Rand.
“You need to give me an example of a economic law you would object to.”
Cap-and-trade. Price controls. Anti-gauging laws. Protectionism. Central banking. Private industry bailouts. Personal income tax.
“Why should you object to the government acting as a consumer in the economy with a stimulus package?”
1. Spending money you don’t have incurs debt. That debt is repaid in the form of taxation and inflation (or currency debasement).
2. The government has no money. Nor does it produce products and services for a profit that it could used for consumption. The government cannot be a consumer in the economy without first forceably depriving the economy of its wealth somewhere else. That is a violation of individual rights. The government should protect individual rights, not violate them.
3. The government cannot create jobs. It can only use coercive force to move wealth from one sector of the economy, where it belongs, to another sector of the economy, where it does not belong, by means of subjective and improper political calculation instead of objective and proper market calculation. That is a violation of individual rights. The government should protect individual rights, not violate them.
The folly of government interference in the economy is described nicely in the brief article “The Fraud of Government Intervention” by Robert Tracinski. http://snipr.com/9c4mn
Well that gives me a better idea of what you oppose, but it does not seem like you object to regulating certain behaviors of business. Ann Rand did not seem to be in favor of environmental laws because it did not involve physical force. Maybe I did not read far enough in to find the exception to that principle.
1. Yes the government should be better stewards of our money.
2. “Nor does it produce products and services for a profit that it could used for consumption.”
Would you be ok with the government making a profit on the services it provides, ie charging enough for schools, roads, inspections of food and medicine, military, ect to make a profit?
3. What do call the hundeds of thousands of government employees? Jobless?
“Would you be ok with the government making a profit on the services it
provides, ie charging enough for schools, roads, inspections of food and
medicine, military, ect to make a profit?”
That would be called the private sector. It is not the proper role of government to run a business for proft. The only proper role of government the protection of unalienable individual rights. As stated in the Declaration: “To secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men.”
“What do call the hundeds of thousands of government employees? Jobless?”
I call them tax consumers. They are essentially on the dole performing thoroughly unconstitutional bureaucratic functions. Then income taxes are extracted from their paychecks on top of that. The productive marketplace is deprived of their talents, where they would be put to better use. Everyone cannot go on living at the expense of everyone else.
Amity (whole bunch of sites) Shlaes bio:
http://www.amityshlaes.com/bio.php
I suppose Michael Barone doesn’t know what he’s talking about either.
http://snipr.com/bvhh4
So basically you are advocating for and fighting an unwinable battle in your quest to have the government confine itself to the defense of individual liberties only. As human populations climb, conflict on all levels increases. Specialization of what tasks an individual does get more and more refined as civilization and culture get bigger and more complex. The individual is no longer capable of protecting his individual rights unaided against business, corporations or government with out the collective force of the body politic. The individual is also no longer capable of providing for all that they need even at the most basic level of food, shelter and clothing
The invisible hand is a myth. I can not force Citibank to adhere to fair and sound practices. I can not insure that the wheat in my bread is free of pesticides or that the farmer treated his employees fairly. I simply do not have the time as a consumer to examine every last detail in the long line of production, delivery and sale to ensure that my invisible hand makes the impact I want. It is not possible. I expect the government to do that for me as a job of my elected representative and the collective voice of the people
Now this in no way says I approve of what the government has allowed Citibank to do up to this point or of the subsidies provided to agribusiness. Only an engaged citizenry will force a real change in how politicians define their true constituency.
Amity (whole bunch of sites) Shlaes bio:
http://www.amityshlaes.com/bio.php
And from her own website. That’s convincing in its utter lack of bias and complete objectivity.
“And from her own website.”
And whose website should I read a bio about Amity Shlaes on?
“I can not insure that the wheat in my bread is free of pesticides or that the farmer treated his employees fairly.”
That’s correct. Hence, the institution of government and the rule of law under free market capitalism, not government regulatory interference in the marketplace that undermine liberty and prosperity.
Yaron Brook explains nicely the fallacy of regulation in this video on the capitalist solution to product safety:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rca5vLcEe8k
And whose website should I read a bio about Amity Shlaes on?
So you’re saying that you’d take a bio on Obama from his own website as a valid and objective portrait of him?
Do you have anything worthwhile to say besides taking issue with someone’s bio?
Do you have anything worthwhile to say besides taking issue with someone’s bio?
Nice dodge!
Tim, do you have anything of value to provide, yourself? Or are you just going to continue to argue with thin air?
“Tim, do you have anything of value to provide, yourself? Or are you just going to continue to argue with thin air?”
Cut him some slack. He’s getting his passport updated and is heading to Singapore soon.
Singapore is known as a bastion of unfettered, free market principles. :-)
travelah writes: “Yes, I can refute your statistics with a closer look at your ‘facts’. ”
Thank you, travelah, for correcting the misrepresentations. The unemployment rate did indeed go down beginning in 1940 — by virtue of involuntary servitude.
“The Selective Training and Service Act of 1940, also known as the Burke-Wadsworth Act, 54 Stat. 885 was passed by the Congress of the United States on September 14, 1940, becoming the first peacetime conscription in United States history when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed it into law two days later.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_Training_and_Service_Act_of_1940
Thank you, travelah, for correcting the misrepresentations. The unemployment rate did indeed go down beginning in 1940—by virtue of involuntary servitude.
That is a partial validation of what I had stated previously:
It took a world wide war to stimulate the economy out of the whirlpool both of those Presidents instigated.
The draft and enlistments, particularly from 1942 on, certainly drove unemployment down drastically during the war years. Even still, unemployment stayed low following the return of most GIs as the economy geared toward rebuilding much of war torn Europe.
Well fellows, just who do you think funded the industrial output in preparation for World War Two and the costs of conscription? The private sector?
Nothing you two have slipped in (after the piece becomes dated) refutes anything; in fact, it simply validates that only massive government spending was instrumental in pulling the moribund economy out of the downward spiral.
At least you two have your own mutual support group.
Nothing was slipped in. I replied to a comment referring to my refutation of your silliness. You do not know your history. Massive defense spending didn’t start kicking in until 1942. Our military was woefully unprepared for war in December 1941. By the end of the war, the industrial sector was in full tilt and remained that was for over 6 decades adjusted for a few recessions along the way.
Get your hands out of my pocket.
“Nothing was slipped in. I replied to a comment referring to my refutation of your silliness. You do not know your history. Massive defense spending didn’t start kicking in until 1942. Our military was woefully unprepared for war in December 1941. By the end of the war, the industrial sector was in full tilt and remained that was for over 6 decades adjusted for a few recessions along the way.
Get your hands out of my pocket.”
You’re completely full of crap, and do not have the standing to tell anyone what they do or do not know. You mouth biased drivel, confusing it with facts, and then whine and snivel about ‘ad hominem attacks.’ What is your expertise to make these moronic pronouncements? And what you call ‘silliness’ is simply an affirmation of the fact that you do not really know WTF you are talking about.
“Hands in your pocket?” What a pompous character you are indeed. Who would want to put their hands anywhere near you? Please. Now troll some more to fill your (apparently) empty life. Maybe you can bait someone else into paying attention to your twaddle. You are one boring character, and so full of your own self-righteousness. Was that ad hominem?
Yes, that is ‘ad hominem’, or, an invalid argument, where you attack the person instead of actually refuting the point they made. It is a sign of failure. A sign that you have nothing of substance left. You’ve run out of steam and simply attack out of anger and frustration.
travelah wins this round.
It’s been fun guys but there is nothing of value to be gained from childish name-calling and tantrums. Ta.
< agreeing with tim .... i won and ta
I, for one, think that the idea that it was one thing that pulled us out of the depression is absurd. Do you really think it was WWII, by itself, that pulled us out of the depression? It’s akin to saying the dustbowl was created by a drought, when farming practices are to blame as well. All I’m saying is the world is not black and white. FDR, WWII, technological advances, the determination of Americans, etc. There are many reasons we pulled out of the depression, just like government spending alone won’t save us this time. For a bunch of “historians” you seem rather single-minded in your debate. And, in that sense, you will never “win”.
“that is ‘ad hominem’, or, an invalid argument”
Get a dictionary and read it sometime. That is not the definition of ad hominem. But then again, you frequently make up your own definitions, sometimes cribbed from your deity, Ayn Rand.
When are you going to stand by your convictions (if you have any, that is) and move to Singapore? They have internet there, you know, so you could regale everyone with life in capitalist Shangri-La. My guess is that you were just flapping your jaws (er, keyboard) and lack the resolve to do what you admonish others to do. If I am wrong, when are you leaving?
That you would think a fellow fuzzy-thinker ‘won’ is funny. You think ‘objectivism’ is actually real, and not a illogical theory never tried (and never to be tried).
Oh, and to respond to travelah’s whininig about ‘hands out of his pockets’, to both of you:
Will you be paying more or less taxes as a result of this stimulus bill? Will either of you have the honesty to answer, and to answer honestly?
And one final thing to timpeck: you have not offered any post that comes close to having “substance,” so you are hardly in a position to make pronouncements on anything. Goofball, unsubstantiated theories aren’t substantive. They’re pipe dreams.
I do not think anybody is suggesting it was “one thing” that pulled the country out of the depression but that there is one event that stands out as a principle cause. The better question would be what are those things that kept us mired in double digit unemployment for a decade.
Dionysis, hopefully my honesty will not resemble the bucket of water splashed on the wicked witch but the plain fact of the matter is somebody has to pay for this economic rape and that somebody will be myself and everybody else who pays taxes to support this country. Your “free money” comes out of my pocket. Now get your thieving hands out of my pocket.
**Your “free money” comes out of my pocket. Now get your thieving hands out of my pocket. **
Travelah, you speak as if you are the only one who pays taxes.
Your rhetoric is predictably laughable.
PFGaQ, you should pay more attention and you would not look as foolish with your replies.
…but the plain fact of the matter is somebody has to pay for this economic rape and that somebody will be myself and everybody else who pays taxes to support this country.
You should have considered that my full proper reply was right above your hasty flame.
I would prefer to Fish for Wailer.