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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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 Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2008 8:51 am Post subject: |
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| None, though in truth, you have seemed to take a good deal of joy what you see as the death of an ideology. |
I'm not sure if 'joy' is the right word, but I won't quibble. As a fiscally conservative social progressive  I am delighted that maybe, finally, at last, in the end, after all is said and done, the irresponsible--criminally irresponsible--fiscal regime that I have argued against for the last 25 years is finally dead. Maybe what you are perceiving as 'joy' is vindication?
I have no patience at all with defenders of the past corrupt idiocy.
My real concern is that, at 59 years old, I will end up living in a cardboard box under a bridge at minus 20 F because of the idiocy of the Right over the last few decades. |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2008 8:57 am Post subject: |
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| Fair enough. I suppose I feel my ramblings against the Fed have been vindicated too. And I'm not gonna hide the glimmer of hope I have that the total collapse of the current system could bring a more fair one in the near future. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2008 9:04 am Post subject: |
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I think, though I am not absolutely sure, that I resent the title of this thread, Disaster Socialism. As inept as this administration has been, I do not think they planned to take over the financial sector. I have seen nothing from the liberals saying they wanted to do this. I am sure, if Obama is elected, that the gov't will divest itself of control of these entities as soon as possible.
I read 'disaster socialism' as a last ditch effort by the true believing Kool-aid drinkers on the right as an attempt at scare-mongering. We've seen decades of disparaging of the label 'socialism'. ontheway says anything to the left of Atilla the Hun (wish I could think of an alternative) as socialist. And that's when he isn't tossing 'fascist' around at the same people. 'Disaster Socialism' is just another in a long list of the same cheap fuzzing of political terms that help no one. |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2008 9:18 am Post subject: |
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| You're probably right. I had, of course, the terrible Disaster Capitalism in mind. The worst book I read in 2008, for reasons similar to those you just stated. She takes things that are "bad" and attaches "capitalism" and smugly smiles. The OP was a dig at that. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2008 9:18 am Post subject: |
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I will agree with you that the Fed has been irresponsible and I will go further and say that the Democratic congresses were gutless wonders that bowed and scraped to the demands for lower taxes on the rich that Reagan and his followers asked for. If they had had any courage at all, they would have said tax cuts would only come when the executive found ways to pay for the social programs that the consensus of the public wanted.
But I stand by my conviction that the central problem has been this anti-government, me-first philosophy that has been rampant in the US for the last few decades.
There is and always will be a legitimate place for the conservative view that government cannot do everything and that each proposed law need be studied for whether the feds can handle it, should handle it and what the consequences will be. I have no time for libertarians who say the solution is in a return to an idealized, romanticized version of a 19th Century that never existed. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2008 9:21 am Post subject: |
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| She takes things that are "bad" and attaches "capitalism" and smugly smiles. |
Who is 'she'? |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2008 1:46 pm Post subject: |
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Yeah, Mises, you can't expect people to know what you're talking about. Moosehead stopped posting awhile back.
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| But I stand by my conviction that the central problem has been this anti-government, me-first philosophy that has been rampant in the US for the last few decades. |
I don't think that's the problem. Its more about the flow of money and capital, combined with an unreasonable expectation that people can gain outpace inflation on an unimproved home, and Greenspan's mismanagement.
Mortgage-based securities, like junk bonds, were a relatively new innovation. What happened was that excess capital from aging markets, Europe, Korea, and Japan, were transferred into a relatively younger market, the US. But the individual Americans took the money and leveraged it into equity, in the hopes that individual Americans could retire off their household "earnings."
Housing bubble formed. |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2008 1:52 pm Post subject: |
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| Kuros wrote: |
Moosehead stopped posting awhile back.
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Ahh, that's why there has been such a sudden drop in emoticons. |
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jkelly80
Joined: 13 Jun 2007
Location: you boys like mexico?
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| Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2008 3:38 pm Post subject: |
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| Straw men abound. Calling an income tax socialism? That's a stretch and a half. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2008 5:46 pm Post subject: |
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I don't think that's the problem. Its more about the flow of money and capital, combined with an unreasonable expectation that people can gain outpace inflation on an unimproved home, and Greenspan's mismanagement.
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There is something to what you say, but had there been reasonable regulations in place, would that foreign money have flowed in at such a rate? At first glance your explanation seems a bit too much like the 'blame the foreigner' that is so irritating here, which I don't think you mean.
There certainly was an unreasonable expectation abroad in the land, although some of it, at least, was not so much expectation as hope. I think a lot of people besides me are frustrated that you can't simply deposit money in a savings account and stay ahead of inflation. In addition, we've known for years that Social Security was under attack, not only by Congress squandering the money paid into it, but by one of the parties wanting to dismantle it. |
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Jandar
Joined: 11 Jun 2008
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| Posted: Mon Sep 22, 2008 6:15 pm Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
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| This financial crisis is a great opportunity for progressives to gain some leverage over a set of economic problems that it's normally difficult to devise a workable method of addressing. |
I just love how they call themselves "progressives" in this construction. Let us be clear who they are and what they propose: these are the people who lambaste FDR for being a sell-out and for not destroying capitalism once-and-for-all, when it was down-and-out, in the 1930s. Historian Anthony J. Badger addresses and responds to their scathing attacks in his excellent synthesis, The New Deal: the Depression Years, 1933-1940.
As far as "disaster socialism" goes: we have several examples before us already: Stalin's Russia, Mao's China, and the Khmer Rouge's Cambodia. We also might check out Castro's Cuba and H. Chavez's Venezuela for further examples. |
Kim's - HanBuk
Mugabe's - Zimbabwe |
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mindmetoo
Joined: 02 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Tue Sep 23, 2008 2:45 am Post subject: |
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Welcome back EFL. |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Tue Sep 23, 2008 9:36 am Post subject: |
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| EFL is gatsby. Get with the program. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Tue Sep 23, 2008 1:20 pm Post subject: |
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| EFL is gatsby. Get with the program. |
This is more likely. They have similar posting styles--the first couple of posts take a fairly reasonable position, then subsequent posts get increasingly hysterical. He should take a page out of another poster's book by keeping on his valium prescription. |
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