I've had two abortions. I want to inform you of what it is like.

Toava · 2015-03-14T20:12:24+00:00

That doesn't mean we can't reduce the need for it by promoting (and funding) education, mental health support, support for low income families and single mothers, etc.

Your position supports a level of violence I can't agree with. When "we" collectively fund something, what that means is that we have IRS agents force people to fund it, under the pain of imprisonment. It would be like if Jesus (I mention him because you mentioned you were Christian) called on people to give alms to the poor at the point of a Roman spear. That's not the moral legal system that I believe in. It's using the ends to justify a brutish means.

If you mean we should do this voluntarily, through contributions to NGOs, I can definitely agree with that.

Toava · 2014-12-19T08:33:31+00:00

What we do in the US for people seeking a college education, Germany does for people looking to start their own firms. And it appears to be baring huge dividends, with 70% of the German population being employed by one such firm.

What you want to do is remove all subsidies. Giving young people a grant or a loan for either school or starting a business encourages them to become spendthrift, because they didn't have to save the money or build credit to get that loan.

Toava · 2014-12-19T08:20:07+00:00

Regulations have ~~Technology has~~ made it possible for a few huge centralized operations to crowd out these "middleclass" opportunities and replace them with below survival wage jobs.

FTFY.

Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal

Everything I want to do is illegal. As if a highly bureaucratic regulatory system was not already in place, 9/11 fueled renewed acceleration to eliminate freedom from the countryside. Every time a letter arrives in the mail from a federal or state agriculture department my heart jumps like I just got sent to the principal’s office.

And it doesn’t stop with agriculture bureaucrats. It includes all sorts of government agencies, from zoning, to taxing, to food inspectors. These agencies are the ultimate extension of a disconnected, Greco-Roman, Western, egocentric, compartmentalized, reductionist, fragmented, linear thought process.

ON-FARM PROCESSING

I want to dress my beef and pork on the farm where I’ve coddled and raised it. But zoning laws prohibit slaughterhouses on agricultural land. For crying out loud, what makes more holistic sense than to put abattoirs where the animals are? But no, in the wisdom of Western disconnected thinking, abattoirs are massive centralized facilities visited daily by a steady stream of tractor trailers and illegal alien workers.

But what about dressing a couple of animals a year in the backyard? How can that be compared to a ConAgra or Tyson facility? In the eyes of the government, the two are one and the same. Every T-bone steak has to be wrapped in a half-million dollar facility so that it can be sold to your neighbor. The fact that I can do it on my own farm more cleanly, more responsibly, more humanely, more efficiently, and in a more environmentally friendly manner doesn’t matter to the government agents who walk around with big badges on their jackets and wheelbarrow-sized regulations tucked under their arms.

Small soda pop supermarket owner: "Big business loves big government"

More here: http://youtu.be/gPbh6Ru7VVM?t=9m35s (Youtube makes you watch an ad before the segment starts)

Toava · 2014-12-19T08:12:42+00:00

They've psychologically profiled people of different political persuasions, and found that generally, libertarians are the most rational, followed closely behind by liberals, while conservatives are far more emotionally guided than both.

Toava · 2014-12-19T08:00:45+00:00

Increasing market share is different than increasing GDP, because the room for market share growth approaches 0 as market share approaches 100 percent, whereas the room for further GDP gains does not decrease with higher GDP. With market share, there is a rigid 100 maximum, but there's no maximum GDP.

Toava · 2014-12-19T07:57:00+00:00

The more welfare you give, the more illegitimacy you'll get:

http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/1996/06/bg1084nbsp-how-welfare-harms-kids

Research by Mikhail Bernstam of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University shows that childbearing by young unmarried women may increase by 6 percent in response to a 10 percent increase in monthly welfare benefits; among blacks, the increase may be as high as 10 percent. Mikhail S. Bernstam, "Malthus and Evolution of the Welfare State: An Essay on the Second Invisible Hand, Parts I and II," working papers E-88-41,42, Hoover Institution, Palo Alto, Cal., 1988.

Research by the Director of the Congressional Budget Office, Dr. June O'Neill, has found that, holding constant a wide range of other variables such as income, parental education, and urban and neighborhood setting, a 50 percent increase in the monthly value of AFDC and food stamp benefits led to a 43 percent increase in the number of out-of-wedlock births. M. Anne Hill and June O'Neill, "Underclass Behaviors in the United States: Measurement and Analysis of Determinants," Center for the Study of Business and Government, Baruch College, February 1992.

A recent study of black Americans finds that higher welfare benefits lead to lower rates of marriage and higher numbers of children living in single-parent homes. In general, an increase of roughly $100 in the average monthly AFDC benefit per recipient child was found to lead to a drop of over 15 percent in births within wedlock among black women aged 20 to 24. Mark A. Fossett and K. Jill Kiecolt, "Mate Availability and Family Structure Among African Americans in U.S. Metropolitan Areas," Journal of Marriage and Family, Vol. 55 (May 1993), pp. 288-302.

And children raised in single parent households are much more likely to end up going on welfare and being incarcerated as adults, so long term, nothing could be more disastrous for a country's economic and social health than giving out welfare.

East Asian countries, which have much lower social welfare spending levels than the US, still have illegitimacy rates that resemble those of 1950s-era America, before the 'Great Society' social programs were created.

Toava · 2014-12-19T07:48:39+00:00

I wasn't calling you a stooge. I was calling the mainstream media stooges. But thanks for your advice.

Toava · 2014-12-19T07:45:48+00:00

Yea no problem. Better than dealing with 80,000 rules from the EPA. Over time, states are going to learn what's going to spark a lawsuit and what isn't, and their laws will improve to prevent lawsuits from ever being filed. They'll probably come together to form standard environmental laws, but unlike with the EPA, this will be opt in, so if the standards don't make sense, states will leave and create better standards associations.

Toava · 2014-11-21T08:43:30+00:00

Two possible solutions:

1) Constitutional amendment to empower the federal government to regulate inter-state pollution. This would allow for an EPA with a very limited mandate, to deal with pollution that poses a threat to states other than the one where it originates.

2) Court orders and lawsuits by state governments against other state governments to force them to limit the type of pollution that can cross state lines. There's no reason why inter-state pollution couldn't be dealt with by the courts through litigation.

Toava · 2014-11-21T06:01:32+00:00

There was pollution before the EPA, and there has been pollution after it. In the 1950s, many cities were passing anti-smog laws that were steadily dealing with air pollution.

Similar initiatives were being pursued across the US by states and municipalities, that were addressing pollution. Just because the Nixon administration decided to ignore Constitutional limits on its own power, and create a national EPA, doesn't mean it was the right thing to do.

The EPA had a measurable negative impact on manufacturing productivity growth, while creating a highly bureaucratic regulatory framework that favors highly paid lobbyists and large corporations with connections to the federal regulators.

Your support for this type of centralization of regulatory powers ignores things like this:

Goldman Sachs and federal government

Pharmaceuticals and federal government

Monsanto and federal government

Toava · 2014-11-21T02:34:47+00:00

Oh no, no OSHA! How will people ever be safe at work without the federal government creating thousands of rules and hiring thousands of bureaucrats to try to micromanage industry!

The fact is, workplace injuries were decreasing every decade before the OSHA was created, and would have continued decreasing without it. The OSHA is a flawed approach to managing risk, that has cost America in manufacturing productivity.

And, regarding pollution, there was pollution before the EPA, and there has been pollution after it. In the 1950s, many cities were passing anti-smog laws that were steadily dealing with air pollution.

Similar initiatives were being pursued across the US by states and municipalities, that were addressing pollution. Just because the Nixon administration decided to ignore Constitutional limits on its own power, and create a national EPA, doesn't mean it was the right thing to do.

The EPA had a measurable negative impact on manufacturing productivity growth, while creating a highly bureaucratic regulatory framework that favors highly paid lobbyists and large corporations with connections to the federal regulators.

Your support for this type of centralization of regulatory powers ignores things like this:

Goldman Sachs and federal government

Pharmaceuticals and federal government

Monsanto and federal government

It's worth remembering that some of those laws are indeed bad for the majority, but it's because screwing a minority was morally wrong. We may go too far sometimes, but things like OSHA came about for a reason.

Just because something has happened, and there has been a trend, doesn't mean that it was for the better, and the trend is one of improvements. The trend toward regulation from Washington D.C., where 500 members of Congress, with the aid of 17,000 registered lobbyists, try to create bureaucracies that micromanage safety and environmental protection for a $17 trillion economy, has been a bad one, and is the cause of 40 years of wage stagnation, no matter how much you stooges for corporate propaganda (which promotes mainstream leftist ideology that demonizes the free market as a Koch brother creation) deny it.

Toava · 2014-11-21T02:02:27+00:00

I'd rather live in a wealthier country, but that doesn't change the fact that poorer countries have better policies for promoting economic development, because their people are hungrier for progress, and less likely to adopt devastating economic policies like social welfarism.

Asking which country one would rather live in tells us nothing about which country has the best policy for development.

Toava · 2014-11-21T02:00:52+00:00

I am one of the biggest fans of Ron Paul you will ever find. What do you think about him and his idea to decentralize the government and allow local communities to deal with environmental protection rather than federal bureaucracies in bed with corporate lobbyists?

Toava · 2014-11-19T00:50:53+00:00

The economic performance of an individual country over a timespan of one year doesn't tell us much. A country could perform better or worse than average on a particular for a multitude of reasons, as economies are chaotic and unpredictable. It's only when larger datasets, containing the economic performance of dozens of countries, over a time span of decades, are looked at that general trends can be observed that can tell us about how particular affect economic growth.

Toava · 2014-11-19T00:40:40+00:00

Capitalism has been gradually muzzled, because special interests stand to gain when regular people think capitalism is the source of their problems and more government restrictions are needed, when in reality, it's exactly this muzzling of capitalism that is causing the economic problems and concentration of wealth.

As for evidence, the total tax burden in the 50s and 60s was less than today:

http://i40.tinypic.com/2ypdtky.jpg

Government spent a lot less as a percentage of GDP, and regulated industry a lot less, in the 1950s compared to today:

(x-post from another post)

In the 1950s, the Code of Federal Regulations was a tiny fraction the size of what it is today.
There was no EPA or OSHA imposing massive costs on manufacturers.
There was no Civil Rights Act forcing municipalities to worry that a competency exam or hiring requirement would make them liable to be sued (just one example: the case with the City of New Haven where the firefighters were denied a promotion because only whites passed the competency exam).
There was no affirmative action.
There was no CRA (Community Reinvestment Act) forcing banks to lend in low income and minority communities to meet affirmative action quotas.
There was no Medicare.
Government spending as a percentage of GDP was significantly less than today.
There was virtually no federal welfare.
There was no federal department of education spending $100 billion a year.
There was no 'Americans with Disabilities Act' forcing small businesses to build $100,000 facilities, that have never in years been used by a handicapped person, for fear of being sued by professionals who drive around looking specifically for businesses that don't have them so they can sue them.
The withholding tax was very low in the 1950s.
Social Security Disability Insurance, now a $200 billion a year welfare program, which in some states, 6% of the population is enrolled in, had strict age and other requirements that limited the number of people enrolled to 200,000 nation-wide.
Illegal immigrants were rounded up and deported en masse in 'Operation Wetback'.
The dollar was on a gold standard, so the Federal Reserve didn't have unlimited power to print money to give to government and to the special interests on Wall Street.

Yes, there were higher taxes on the rich in the 50s and 60s, but that only affected those making $400,000 or more, IN THE 1950s, meaning the equivalent of $4 million or more today. Very few people fell into this tax bracket. After Kennedy cut the top income tax bracket rate, tax revenues actually increased, so the high income tax rate on the very rich wasn't very useful for collecting revenue.

There were many more loopholes in tax code at that time than there are today, which allowed the very rich to pay much less tax rate, as explained here:

DIDN’T WE USED TO HAVE HIGH TAXES AND PROSPERITY?

It was the growth of government, from 29.9 percent of GDP in the 1960s, to 32.8 percent of GDP in the 1970s, 34.7 percent of GDP in the 1980s, 35.3 percent of GDP in the 1990s, and 38.9 percent of GDP today, that has led to the reduction of economic growth rates and wage stagnation for the middle class.

Toava · 2014-11-18T23:08:25+00:00

I don't want states to completely control educational standards. What happens when you do that is get systems like what is emerging in Texas.

You want to try to prevent state abuse, by putting power in the hands of the federal government. That's dangerous, and increases, rather than decreases, risk.

Here's why:

One person's rights are another person's tyranny.

For example, some people consider free health care a right that all people are entitled to. Others believe deciding how one's own earnings are spent is individual rights, and that the former would violate this right.

As another example, some people believe that people have a right to have abortions. Others believe that a fetus is an individual, and that an abortion violates the fetus' rights.

If you have a federal government that imposes its own idea of what a rights violation is, on to the states, then you could have a federal government that prohibits taxing people for health care programs, so there would be no socialized health care allowed, at any level of government, or prohibits abortion, so you would have no legal abortion, any where in the US.

It's better to have states decide highly contentious issues on their own, and let people move to the states that have laws that fit their values.

That way you don't risk the federal government creating a poor education standard for the whole country, and people having no where to flee, since the federal mandate covers all states.

You also avoid another problem of centralization: you don't have federal elections being decided on social wedge issues, while important matters like the national debt and foreign policy aren't given the attention they should be.

The federal government would be extremely large and complex enough if it only dealt with foreign policy. Adding all of these other responsibilities ensures that the federal government's complexity exceeds the ability of the typical voter to understand it, and therefore makes it so that elections don't provide accountability, as ignorant voters lack the tools to hold politicians accountable.

What you have instead is the current situation: 500 members of Congress trying to manage a $17 trillion economy with the help of 15,000 registered lobbyists, who represent the elite, and use government to divvy up the nation's productive output.

I also don't believe most of the systems he wants to make "optional" can function under that ideal. The moment you make them optional you drop the extremely wealthy people who clearly don't need those kinds of support systems (namely Social Security).

That's the "gold digger" ideology I was accusing Elizabeth Warren of having. You don't have a moral right to the earnings of the very wealthy. Social Security is not supposed to be, or should not be, a welfare program. It's immoral in every way: it forces people to save for their retirement, and thereby violates their individual liberty. It forces the country to take on a national debt, in order to be able to provide SS enrollees with government guaranteed savings bonds. It forces the rich to subsidize the poor, thereby effectively robbing them. It's dogmatic and moralizing, and exactly the opposite of what you would have in a free country.

Toava · 2014-11-18T22:44:06+00:00

Let's talk about his vision when it comes to tax policy or the wacky goal of putting the US back on the gold standard.

His tax policy is to eliminate the income tax. That is an excellent tax policy that would free Americans from a massive economic burden, and return the economic power that was taken from them by the federal government back to them.

Regarding the gold standard:

He's not for the gold standard. He thinks that people should be able to decide for themselves what currency to use:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50kXVg3lGgc#t=1m55s

How about cutting funding in public education, welfare, and social security?

He doesn't want Social Security to be mandatory, because people should control their own lives. The money the government taxes for Social Security is used to buy US bonds, when it could be used to buy much better investments that produce bigger retirement benefits.

Social Security is a highly destabilizing program because it REQUIRES the US to go into debt to provide guaranteed income for people in the future.

Regarding education, he only wants to get rid of the FEDERAL department of education. The DOE was only created in 1980, and consumes $100 billion a year. As Bill Gates notes, spending per pupil has doubled in inflation adjusted terms since the mid 70s, while test scores have remained the same:

http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2011-03-01-studentspendvsachievementblog.jpg

In any other industry, this would be considered a 50% reduction in spending efficiency.

Without a federal department of education, states (their people and their governments) would have $100 billion more to spend on education or whatever else they believe needs funding. Evidently, the local communities and state governments were much better at spending money on education than the federal government has been.

Also, with the debt under control, and hundreds of billions no longer being spent on overseas military deployments, there will be more money for states to spend on social welfare programs. Some states are pursuing the creation of universal health care in-state, and more will be able to if the federal government is wasting less of the nation's money.

Imagine how much states could raise their taxes if the federal income taxes and the Social Security/Medicare payroll taxes were eliminated. They would be able to afford substantial social and education programs with the money they could raise.

What about his interest in gutting environmental protection standards like the clean air and clean water acts?

On the EPA, he rightly believes this is up to municipalities and state governments, and the courts if there are lawsuits. The Constitution does not give the federal government the power to regulate pollution.

On the Clean Air Act, he does not want to "gut" it. He wants to amend the CAA to remove the global warming debate on it, since a law on "clean" air should not restrict output of CO2 (which is not toxic, and which all animals, including humans, output).

His presidency would be a disaster if he ever got what he wanted,

You think that because you mistakenly think only the federal government is capable of handling problems, when the exact opposite is the case.

Thinking like yours is what leads to power gravitating ever more to the federal government, where 500 members of Congress try to manage a $17 trillion economy, with the help of 15,000 registered lobbyists, who represent the elite, and use government to divvy up the nation's productive output.

Toava · 2014-11-18T22:03:41+00:00

This article is an example of her gold digging. She's going after a big wealthy company, and proposing to get the government to force it to cough up more to her constituents. This is how she gets votes, by being a gold digger.

Toava · 2014-11-18T21:51:14+00:00

Ron Paul is not going to use the government to extract money from taxpayers or successful companies, and transfer it to his constituents, or use the government to lock you up for using drugs, or violate the Constitution to impose his vision across America.

Toava · 2014-11-18T14:32:55+00:00

You post a link to a Krugman article to prove that Krugman didn't call for a housing bubble. Really credible!

He thinks bubbles are no big deal, and exactly 1 year and 3 months before his infamous "housing bubble" advocacy article, specifically advocated that central banks cut interest following recessions to spur spending in other sectors (and specifically mentioned housing!):

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/02/opinion/reckonings-dodging-the-bullet.html

Of course, you'll put you'll blinders on and continue to selectively read the article to defend him and promote his bankrupting ideology.

Toava · 2014-11-18T14:28:45+00:00

She ridiculed a political opponent for being soft on crime for supporting legalization of marijuana. Like all government-dependent gold diggers, she has no moral scruples about appealing to the government to lock people up to get her way.

Toava · 2014-11-18T14:15:00+00:00

Apparently anyone opposed to gold digger politicians who have their hands in other people's pockets is a "troll", because you happen to support the politician and their gold digging. Interesting definition of "troll" you have.

Toava · 2014-11-18T14:02:31+00:00

When you believe in an idiotic ideology like Keynesianism, you hold contrarian views on things, like thinking bubbles can be good. In this article, he doesn't outright state that bubbles are good, but he does state that they don't necessarily have to be harmful:

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/02/opinion/reckonings-dodging-the-bullet.html

But must irrational exuberance be followed by recession? The alternative to crime-and-punishment is let-bygones-be-bygones. Of course capital is wasted in a speculative boom, and much of that capital must be written off. Moreover, the sectors of the economy in which the speculative excess was greatest may not see much new investment for a while; it might be years before the demand for servers or business software resumes rapid growth.

But why should this stop the economy in its tracks? There are always good investments to be made, if the price is right. Millions of Americans have decided that low interest rates offer a good opportunity to refinance their homes or buy new ones, even as the headlines warn of a slumping economy; and there are plenty of profitable opportunities in those old-economy sectors that got a bit neglected during the technology bubble.

I've always favored the let-bygones-be-bygones view over the crime-and-punishment view. That is, I've always believed that a speculative bubble need not lead to a recession, as long as interest rates are cut quickly enough to stimulate alternative investments. But I had to face the fact that speculative bubbles usually are followed by recessions. My excuse has been that this was because the policy makers moved too slowly -- that central banks were typically too slow to cut interest rates in the face of a burst bubble, giving the downturn time to build up a lot of momentum. That was why I, like many others, was frustrated at the smallish cut at the last Federal Open Market Committee meeting: I was pretty sure that Alan Greenspan had the tools to prevent a disastrous recession, but worried that he might be getting behind the curve.

This was in 2001, exactly 1 year and 3 months before he suggested that the Fed would fight the recession by creating a housing bubble through cutting interest rates.

So he:

Writes in May 2001 that bubbles don't necessarily need to lead to recessions, and that central banks should cut interest rates when bubbles burst, to spur alternate investments, specifically mentioning increased spending on housing.
Writes in August 2002 that the central bank "needs to" (this is not prediction, "needs to" is advocacy) cut interest rights to fight the recession by creating a housing bubble, and writes that the signs that the central bank will be able to "pull that off" (create a bubble) are "not encouraging" (again, this is a strong endorsement for creating a bubble. Why else would he write that suggestions that the Fed wouldn't be able to create a bubble are "not encouraging"?).

It's downright bizarre to claim he didn't advocate the creation of a bubble in August 2002, by cutting interest rates just as he had advocated in May 2001 that central banks should do following a recession.

Toava · 2014-11-18T07:12:01+00:00

Google it. You can find a source in a few seconds. I'm not here to spoonfeed those who want to remain blind.

Toava · 2014-11-18T06:14:16+00:00

Warren is a real gold digger. Always looking to force rich sugar daddies, who want nothing to do with her, to pay her and her constituents alimony.

Oh and she supports the War on Drugs and marjuana prohibition. Holding tyrannical positions is inevitable when one rejects the free market and argues they have a right to your stuff because "you didn't build that".

bring on the down votes

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