Oh yeah- Starship Troopers is either a really bad parody or just really bad. Although itmakes a nice counterpoint to Joe Haldeman's The Forever War, which is a similar era but completely different in theme and style.
The failure of Obama's economics
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Here in the UK the highest tax threshhold is 40%, and that kicks in once you've hit £40,000 and we're doing completely fine with it. Whilst I agree with you that it's bullshit to tax someone more just because they're more successful it does eventually get to a point where you simply cannot spend all of your earnings.BaronAsh post=18.74255.827562 said:
This thread I will wsay is much less fanboy focused and flame-baited than a lot of the other political threads that have come up of late.
I will say that I did not like this vid, it was one sided, but media biasis is part of the order, it was informed enough for its bias. Some of the facts and figures are based on certain assumptions however that may or may not be true. One is that government spending will increase. Spending has increased a massive amount over the past few years due to W's Republican governed systems. Will this continue?
As for the monopoly vs Communist BS above, I will say that the standing in line for hours for bread was in p;art due to the failures of communism driven by those in government power becoming corrupt (they were the rich few)this is reflected in capitalist economies by those smelly people begging for heroine money.
And as for non-coercive monopolies. They come about by providing excellent service and superior products, and disappear when this excellence disappears only in industries with low barriers to entry. For things like Utilities or industrial manufacturing not the case, because you have to put up with overpriced crap when you can't afford to build it yourself or you can't live without it. There is plenty wrong with them in that case.
I am an Obama supporter though (although I have a great deal of respect for McCain, this election could go either way and the U.S. will be better for it)
I will say that I did not like this vid, it was one sided, but media biasis is part of the order, it was informed enough for its bias. Some of the facts and figures are based on certain assumptions however that may or may not be true. One is that government spending will increase. Spending has increased a massive amount over the past few years due to W's Republican governed systems. Will this continue?
As for the monopoly vs Communist BS above, I will say that the standing in line for hours for bread was in p;art due to the failures of communism driven by those in government power becoming corrupt (they were the rich few)this is reflected in capitalist economies by those smelly people begging for heroine money.
And as for non-coercive monopolies. They come about by providing excellent service and superior products, and disappear when this excellence disappears only in industries with low barriers to entry. For things like Utilities or industrial manufacturing not the case, because you have to put up with overpriced crap when you can't afford to build it yourself or you can't live without it. There is plenty wrong with them in that case.
I am an Obama supporter though (although I have a great deal of respect for McCain, this election could go either way and the U.S. will be better for it)
And this is why you don't post a topic on politics into a forum; it turns every one into an instant jackass, and an idiot regardless if I agree with them or not
Right wing economics tend to assume perfectly competitive markets, where monopolistic power does not exist, everyone has perfect information and all markets hit a fair and sensical equilibrium point. This has so far never happened in real life. Ever. Also, anyone who thinks non-govermental monopolies are a good thing realy needs to retake basic economics classes.
Hard Right Wing economics leads to boom bust economies, with sometimes spectacular results and sometimes horrific market failures. With little government intervention, the rich-poor gap widens and markets become either more competitive or suffer from serious market failure in the form of monopolistic, monopoly or oligopoly markets. There is slightly more incentive to earn, but more vulnerable members of society suffer.
Hard Left Wing economics can be productively inefficient, but allocatively efficient. Merit goods are provided at the right level, and the markets are inheritly more stable in a vacuum. There is less incentive to earn, but everyone is catered for.
Really it's a value judgement.
Hard Right Wing economics leads to boom bust economies, with sometimes spectacular results and sometimes horrific market failures. With little government intervention, the rich-poor gap widens and markets become either more competitive or suffer from serious market failure in the form of monopolistic, monopoly or oligopoly markets. There is slightly more incentive to earn, but more vulnerable members of society suffer.
Hard Left Wing economics can be productively inefficient, but allocatively efficient. Merit goods are provided at the right level, and the markets are inheritly more stable in a vacuum. There is less incentive to earn, but everyone is catered for.
Really it's a value judgement.
I love how American political wonks completely ignore the entire rest of the world and get lost in their own (or each others') navels.
Arguably the highest-taxed society on the planet is Sweden. Traditional American econo-political doctrine says that Sweden should be a hell of corrupt governmental controls over all aspects of society... and yet the Swedish standard of living is among the highest of any nation, with reasonably low levels of unemployment, reasonably strong military and police forces, and a great deal of personal freedom.
Arguably the most laissez-faire nation on the planet, with the least government interference in private enterprise, is Somalia. I don't think they have gun control problems or overbudgeted entitlement programs there, true, but... not much in the way of streets, or law and order for that matter, either. Personal freedom? I suppose it's there, if you can wheedle it out of the nearest clan chieftain/warlord.
This isn't to say that government=good and private-enterprise=bad, just that the gross oversimplifications of the current crop of pundits in the US don't reflect what's going on right now in the real world. Democratic and Republican superpartisans have created cloud-cuckooland fantasy pictures and pretended they're real for far too long because they haven't actually looked beyond their own partisan dogmas.
(Me, I favour a mixed-economy that damps the huge boom-bust swings of a pure market economy without the stifling inflexibility of a planned economy. Heresy to the Chicago School dogmatics, I know, but it seems to reflect what the top 10 best countries to live in are doing. How you'd convince Americans that this is the way to go is left as an exercise for the reader.)
-- Steve
PS: trickle-down doesn't work for the same reason that any other long distribution chain leads to higher costs... each link in the chain takes a cut with a portion going to savings instead of recirculation (or, in thermodynamic terms, each conversion leads to entropic losses) and so for anything to make it down to the very lowest levels of the economy you need massive injections at the top. That kills the middle class, and it's horribly inefficient at priming the economic pump anyway; even trickle-up works better that way because lower-income earners can't afford to put as much aside into uncirculated savings.
Arguably the highest-taxed society on the planet is Sweden. Traditional American econo-political doctrine says that Sweden should be a hell of corrupt governmental controls over all aspects of society... and yet the Swedish standard of living is among the highest of any nation, with reasonably low levels of unemployment, reasonably strong military and police forces, and a great deal of personal freedom.
Arguably the most laissez-faire nation on the planet, with the least government interference in private enterprise, is Somalia. I don't think they have gun control problems or overbudgeted entitlement programs there, true, but... not much in the way of streets, or law and order for that matter, either. Personal freedom? I suppose it's there, if you can wheedle it out of the nearest clan chieftain/warlord.
This isn't to say that government=good and private-enterprise=bad, just that the gross oversimplifications of the current crop of pundits in the US don't reflect what's going on right now in the real world. Democratic and Republican superpartisans have created cloud-cuckooland fantasy pictures and pretended they're real for far too long because they haven't actually looked beyond their own partisan dogmas.
(Me, I favour a mixed-economy that damps the huge boom-bust swings of a pure market economy without the stifling inflexibility of a planned economy. Heresy to the Chicago School dogmatics, I know, but it seems to reflect what the top 10 best countries to live in are doing. How you'd convince Americans that this is the way to go is left as an exercise for the reader.)
-- Steve
PS: trickle-down doesn't work for the same reason that any other long distribution chain leads to higher costs... each link in the chain takes a cut with a portion going to savings instead of recirculation (or, in thermodynamic terms, each conversion leads to entropic losses) and so for anything to make it down to the very lowest levels of the economy you need massive injections at the top. That kills the middle class, and it's horribly inefficient at priming the economic pump anyway; even trickle-up works better that way because lower-income earners can't afford to put as much aside into uncirculated savings.
Anton, minignu, I am very pleased that there are sane people on this forum. I was started to get very worried that I was completely isolated in my correctness.
Technically, Mirika is correct.TomNook post=18.74255.834451 said:
"Radical" comes from the latin radix (if I've got that precisely correct) for "root", and in a political context it means ripping up what's there by the roots and replacing it with something entirely different.
"Conservative" (origin discussed above) means preserving what's there.
You can't do both at once.
-- Steve
PS: The term "reactionary" is a political term used to describe those who want to replace what is here now with something that was there earlier, to "go back to better times". That's probably a better term to use than "radical conservative".
I'll reply to all my quoters through this post, since I'd get a little repetative instead. I highlighted the part of your rebuttal that I think most clearly demonstrates my point. The core issues of the ideologies still remain, you can't change an ideology - what you can is invent new ones or change your political stance, but then you are no longer working according to the doctrines of the old ideology. A liberal person who suddenly gets conservative ideas can not claim to have changed liberalism, he's simply gone conservative. While I will cede the point that there are dozens, hundreds and even thousands of ways you can look at one of the three core ideologies, the main points of them stand anyway. A liberal person cannot argue the need of large-scale control and still convincingly call himself liberal.werepossum post=18.74255.832390 said:
Anyway, what the main point of my post was - though it may have come across a bit weakly in comparison with the rest of the post, my weakness is that I tend to dwell too much on the wrong bits, was that the person I quoted (I can no longer remember who it was) said on one hand that you should watch what politicians do rather than what they say they do, and then went right on and ignored his own advice. Now, the reason I highlighted "american politics", is just that. The american politicians who claim to be liberal are, apparently not, liberal. So watch what they do instead of what they say they do.
And yes, words change meaning over time. This, however, is not as true for ideologies as it is for other matters. Socialism, liberalism, and conservatism are the three core ways of looking at politics. Each of these cores is divided into dozens of other ideologies, which in turn are divided into dozens of others. But liberalism is, and always will be, about personal freedom and unobtrusive government - just as conservatism remains about preservation.
As is using his middle name, pointing out that he is skinny, calling him liberal, or referring to his past as a community organizer.Your.Name.Here post=18.74255.835650 said:
While all this may be true in other countries, in the US we have what we have. Calling things other than they are recognized here because they differ in different places would be foolish at best.Nomadic post=18.74255.835177 said: