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Rusty Shackleford
Joined: 08 May 2008
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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 Posted: Wed Aug 26, 2009 11:19 pm Post subject: Re: Broken windows in action..... |
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| Rusty Shackleford wrote: |
| Watch these videos and tell me cash for clunkers was a success. A good example of how govt is good at destroying wealth but isn't capable of creating it. |
Nothing inherently prevents the government from engaging in any sort of behavior a corporation can behave in. If a corporation can create wealth, so can the government. |
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Rusty Shackleford
Joined: 08 May 2008
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| Posted: Wed Aug 26, 2009 11:38 pm Post subject: Re: Broken windows in action..... |
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| Fox wrote: |
| Rusty Shackleford wrote: |
| Watch these videos and tell me cash for clunkers was a success. A good example of how govt is good at destroying wealth but isn't capable of creating it. |
Nothing inherently prevents the government from engaging in any sort of behavior a corporation can behave in. If a corporation can create wealth, so can the government. |
Can you give me an example of when this has been the happened?
We have state owned enterprises (S.O.Es) in NZ. They almost consistently perform better under private management, ie when they are sold. |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Wed Aug 26, 2009 11:56 pm Post subject: Re: Broken windows in action..... |
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| Rusty Shackleford wrote: |
| Fox wrote: |
| Rusty Shackleford wrote: |
| Watch these videos and tell me cash for clunkers was a success. A good example of how govt is good at destroying wealth but isn't capable of creating it. |
Nothing inherently prevents the government from engaging in any sort of behavior a corporation can behave in. If a corporation can create wealth, so can the government. |
Can you give me an example of when this has been the happened? |
You said incapable. Perhaps you care to revise to, "Rarely if ever does?" |
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Rusty Shackleford
Joined: 08 May 2008
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| Posted: Thu Aug 27, 2009 12:11 am Post subject: Re: Broken windows in action..... |
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| Fox wrote: |
| Rusty Shackleford wrote: |
| Fox wrote: |
| Rusty Shackleford wrote: |
| Watch these videos and tell me cash for clunkers was a success. A good example of how govt is good at destroying wealth but isn't capable of creating it. |
Nothing inherently prevents the government from engaging in any sort of behavior a corporation can behave in. If a corporation can create wealth, so can the government. |
Can you give me an example of when this has been the happened? |
You said incapable. Perhaps you care to revise to, "Rarely if ever does?" |
Fine, you are right in a very precise, literal sense. But is there an example of a govt entity that was successful in a way that a non govt entity wouldn't be capable of being? Which is completely off the topic from the OP. |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Thu Aug 27, 2009 12:20 am Post subject: Re: Broken windows in action..... |
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| Rusty Shackleford wrote: |
| But is there an example of a govt entity that was successful in a way that a non govt entity wouldn't be capable of being? |
Successful at creating wealth? Probably not, other than hypothetically in the indirect sense of creating an environment in which wealth production would ideally thrive. Successful at something positive to society? Certainly: environmental regulation and enforcement of truth in advertising are two such examples.
I know I immediately derailed your thread. I apologize for that. |
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ontheway
Joined: 24 Aug 2005
Location: Somewhere under the rainbow...
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| Posted: Thu Aug 27, 2009 9:01 am Post subject: Re: Broken windows in action..... |
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| Fox wrote: |
| Rusty Shackleford wrote: |
| Watch these videos and tell me cash for clunkers was a success. A good example of how govt is good at destroying wealth but isn't capable of creating it. |
Nothing inherently prevents the government from engaging in any sort of behavior a corporation can behave in. If a corporation can create wealth, so can the government. |
| FoxParody wrote: |
Nothing inherently prevents the pedophile from engaging in any sort of behavior a parent can behave in. If a parent can create a loving bond, so can the pedophile. |
Oh, yeah. Sure. Speaking hypothetically anything is possible. Yeah, a government can create wealth. Sure.
Of course, a government seems to create wealth for the lucky few: the Clintons, Kennedys, the friends and families of the political classes, but these are really massive wealth transfers from the productive members of society to the fascist-socialist leaches in the government. It's what governments' biggest programs (infrastructure, national health ins., national welfare, social security, military, the drug wars etc) were designed for.
The biggest lobbying group in Washington DC is the government itself. The biggest campaign contributors are the political classes. Most of the money goes to the political elite. Government money and programs is how the Kennedys, Johnsons, Carters, and Clintons got wealthy.
Government is a consumer of wealth. It destroys productive enterprises and reduces its citizens to a level lower than slaves.
The US economy has been reduced by 90% from where it would be without programs such as Social Security. That's right. The economy and standard of living of the US would be 10 times what it is, if the government had never had an income tax, federal reserve and social security.
The government has not and cannot create a "safety net" for the poor. The government has created a snare to ensure that a large segment of society remains poor, so that the rich and powerful non-producing political classes can live the life of kings and pay paltry wages to their servants. Without government social programs, the people would be wealthy, and the Clintons, Kennedys and Johnsons of this world, and their friends and relatives would be shining shoes and pumping gas. |
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Pluto
Joined: 19 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Thu Aug 27, 2009 9:17 am Post subject: Re: Broken windows in action..... |
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| ontheway wrote: |
| The government has not and cannot create a "safety net" for the poor. The government has created a snare to ensure that a large segment of society remains poor, so that the rich and powerful non-producing political classes can live the life of kings and pay paltry wages to their servants. Without government social programs, the people would be wealthy, and the Clintons, Kennedys and Johnsons of this world, and their friends and relatives would be shining shoes and pumping gas. |
I don't know. It's quite possible one of them would be a chocalate king instead. |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Thu Aug 27, 2009 3:19 pm Post subject: Re: Broken windows in action..... |
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| ontheway wrote: |
| Oh, yeah. Sure. Speaking hypothetically anything is possible. Yeah, a government can create wealth. Sure. |
Glad we can agree on that. This obviously false axiom has been mentioned on this forum a number of times; it was time to correct it.
| ontheway wrote: |
| Government is a consumer of wealth. It destroys productive enterprises and reduces its citizens to a level lower than slaves. |
Well, I have to give you one thing. When visitorq started doing his anti-government rants, I thought he would be able to give you a run for your money as most out of touch with reality, especially when he started in about how things couldn't get any worse and we were all slaves. But you've truly one upped him: now we're lower than slaves.
You guys are going to run out of hyperbolic expressions pretty quickly in this little competition of yours. What's next? "Beneath the heel of government, we're all slugs. And I don't mean that metaphorically: government literally transmogrifies us into slugs and stomps on us, then feeds us to the Clintons and Kennedys!"
| ontheway wrote: |
| The US economy has been reduced by 90% from where it would be without programs such as Social Security. That's right. The economy and standard of living of the US would be 10 times what it is, if the government had never had an income tax, federal reserve and social security. |
So much of your case relies on predictions of how things would be in totally different, unverifiable circumstances that have nothing to do with reality. Doesn't this ever give you pause, especially when just throwing random statistical figures out there? How could the average American's standard of living even be 10 times better? I don't know what sort of terrible life you've been living, but there's really not much more I could want for. What you going to give everyone, rocket cars and teleportation pads?
| ontheway wrote: |
| Without government social programs, the people would be wealthy, and the Clintons, Kennedys and Johnsons of this world, and their friends and relatives would be shining shoes and pumping gas. |
There you go with those counterfactuals again. And I'm sure the claim that people clever enough to manipulate the system to their benefit and become quite wealthy are in actually so stupid and worthless that without the government they'd be stuck shining shoes. Yes, that seems like a very reasonable assertion. |
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bacasper
Joined: 26 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Thu Aug 27, 2009 10:25 pm Post subject: Re: Broken windows in action..... |
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| Fox wrote: |
| ontheway wrote: |
| The US economy has been reduced by 90% from where it would be without programs such as Social Security. That's right. The economy and standard of living of the US would be 10 times what it is, if the government had never had an income tax, federal reserve and social security. |
So much of your case relies on predictions of how things would be in totally different, unverifiable circumstances that have nothing to do with reality. Doesn't this ever give you pause, especially when just throwing random statistical figures out there? How could the average American's standard of living even be 10 times better? I don't know what sort of terrible life you've been living, but there's really not much more I could want for. What you going to give everyone, rocket cars and teleportation pads? |
Ontheway's assertion is not unverifiable. If you compare the US dollar to the commodity that has been used longer than any other as a repository for value, i.e. gold, you would see that, compared to it, since 1913 the dollar has lost 98% of its value. |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Thu Aug 27, 2009 10:52 pm Post subject: Re: Broken windows in action..... |
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| bacasper wrote: |
| Fox wrote: |
| ontheway wrote: |
| The US economy has been reduced by 90% from where it would be without programs such as Social Security. That's right. The economy and standard of living of the US would be 10 times what it is, if the government had never had an income tax, federal reserve and social security. |
So much of your case relies on predictions of how things would be in totally different, unverifiable circumstances that have nothing to do with reality. Doesn't this ever give you pause, especially when just throwing random statistical figures out there? How could the average American's standard of living even be 10 times better? I don't know what sort of terrible life you've been living, but there's really not much more I could want for. What you going to give everyone, rocket cars and teleportation pads? |
Ontheway's assertion is not unverifiable. If you compare the US dollar to the commodity that has been used longer than any other as a repository for value, i.e. gold, you would see that, compared to it, since 1913 the dollar has lost 98% of its value. |
There's a huge difference between saying, "The U.S. dollar has lost X percentage of value," and saying, "People's standard of living would be literally 10 times higher if not for governmental programs and income tax." The former is verifiable mathematically. The latter is not just unverifiable (like most counter-factuals), but almost assuredly wrong as well. |
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ontheway
Joined: 24 Aug 2005
Location: Somewhere under the rainbow...
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| Posted: Fri Aug 28, 2009 9:39 am Post subject: Re: Broken windows in action..... |
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| Fox wrote: |
| bacasper wrote: |
| Fox wrote: |
| ontheway wrote: |
| The US economy has been reduced by 90% from where it would be without programs such as Social Security. That's right. The economy and standard of living of the US would be 10 times what it is, if the government had never had an income tax, federal reserve and social security. |
So much of your case relies on predictions of how things would be in totally different, unverifiable circumstances that have nothing to do with reality. Doesn't this ever give you pause, especially when just throwing random statistical figures out there? How could the average American's standard of living even be 10 times better? I don't know what sort of terrible life you've been living, but there's really not much more I could want for. What you going to give everyone, rocket cars and teleportation pads? |
Ontheway's assertion is not unverifiable. If you compare the US dollar to the commodity that has been used longer than any other as a repository for value, i.e. gold, you would see that, compared to it, since 1913 the dollar has lost 98% of its value. |
There's a huge difference between saying, "The U.S. dollar has lost X percentage of value," and saying, "People's standard of living would be literally 10 times higher if not for governmental programs and income tax." The former is verifiable mathematically. The latter is not just unverifiable (like most counter-factuals), but almost assuredly wrong as well. |
The 90% reduction in the standard of living of Americans due to the effects of government has been computed by economists at several universities, including Nobel prize winners, published in journals and books, and falls into the category of generally known facts.
Like all pro-forma and actuarially determined calculations for the future and for alternative futures, they are not subject to historical verification and are dismissed out of hand by the unsophisticated, the obdurate, the "illiterati" and government sycophants. |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Sun Aug 30, 2009 3:25 pm Post subject: Re: Broken windows in action..... |
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| ontheway wrote: |
| Fox wrote: |
| bacasper wrote: |
| Fox wrote: |
| ontheway wrote: |
| The US economy has been reduced by 90% from where it would be without programs such as Social Security. That's right. The economy and standard of living of the US would be 10 times what it is, if the government had never had an income tax, federal reserve and social security. |
So much of your case relies on predictions of how things would be in totally different, unverifiable circumstances that have nothing to do with reality. Doesn't this ever give you pause, especially when just throwing random statistical figures out there? How could the average American's standard of living even be 10 times better? I don't know what sort of terrible life you've been living, but there's really not much more I could want for. What you going to give everyone, rocket cars and teleportation pads? |
Ontheway's assertion is not unverifiable. If you compare the US dollar to the commodity that has been used longer than any other as a repository for value, i.e. gold, you would see that, compared to it, since 1913 the dollar has lost 98% of its value. |
There's a huge difference between saying, "The U.S. dollar has lost X percentage of value," and saying, "People's standard of living would be literally 10 times higher if not for governmental programs and income tax." The former is verifiable mathematically. The latter is not just unverifiable (like most counter-factuals), but almost assuredly wrong as well. |
The 90% reduction in the standard of living of Americans due to the effects of government has been computed by economists at several universities, including Nobel prize winners, published in journals and books, and falls into the category of generally known facts.
Like all pro-forma and actuarially determined calculations for the future and for alternative futures, they are not subject to historical verification and are dismissed out of hand by the unsophisticated, the obdurate, the "illiterati" and government sycophants. |
As usual, an answer that provides absolutely no actual evidence in favor of the point you're trying to make. If you have data to present, by all means present it; I'm interested, and I'm sure other people are as well. So far all you've done is said, "I -- and a few nameless others -- think this immensely suspicious mathematical figure is correct, and if you don't accept it then you fall into one of a number of categories which are really just fancy words for people I think are stupid." Now, I understand that's your usual modus operandi, but you can always change that if you like.
Either way, the last time you started screaming about how I was an illiterate unsophisticate for not accepting your baseless assertions it didn't change my mind at all, so I'm not sure why you think it would work this time. |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Sun Aug 30, 2009 8:03 pm Post subject: Re: Broken windows in action..... |
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| Fox wrote: |
| bacasper wrote: |
| Fox wrote: |
| ontheway wrote: |
| The US economy has been reduced by 90% from where it would be without programs such as Social Security. That's right. The economy and standard of living of the US would be 10 times what it is, if the government had never had an income tax, federal reserve and social security. |
So much of your case relies on predictions of how things would be in totally different, unverifiable circumstances that have nothing to do with reality. Doesn't this ever give you pause, especially when just throwing random statistical figures out there? How could the average American's standard of living even be 10 times better? I don't know what sort of terrible life you've been living, but there's really not much more I could want for. What you going to give everyone, rocket cars and teleportation pads? |
Ontheway's assertion is not unverifiable. If you compare the US dollar to the commodity that has been used longer than any other as a repository for value, i.e. gold, you would see that, compared to it, since 1913 the dollar has lost 98% of its value. |
There's a huge difference between saying, "The U.S. dollar has lost X percentage of value," and saying, "People's standard of living would be literally 10 times higher if not for governmental programs and income tax." The former is verifiable mathematically. The latter is not just unverifiable (like most counter-factuals), but almost assuredly wrong as well. |
Well, this is complicated. "Standard of living" and "quality of life" are not the same thing. What the economics profession defines as a standard of living is really the individual consumers ability to consume. Now, we (North Americans and others) have been able to consume as if our currencies have not lost 95% of value, but we have been consuming with debt rather than capital. That is a significant hit on our quality of life, IMO. This is called the "consumption compromise" and is the cause of our current problems.
We can only guess at what would have happened if the currency had not been debased. But one thing that would not have happened is the expansion in debt held by individuals to anywhere near the obscene levels it is at today. So, we can't say what the 'standard of living' would be (how much junk in our homes) but I feel perfectly confident that our quality of life would be better, as we would be much less indebted. |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Sun Aug 30, 2009 8:43 pm Post subject: Re: Broken windows in action..... |
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| mises wrote: |
| "Standard of living" and "quality of life" are not the same thing. What the economics profession defines as a standard of living is really the individual consumers ability to consume. Now, we (North Americans and others) have been able to consume as if our currencies have not lost 95% of value, but we have been consuming with debt rather than capital. |
Well, if what you're saying is correct, then ontheway's claim that our "standard of living" would be 10 times higher sounds intuitively wrong. Rather, our standard of living would be either the same or slightly better, but we'd wouldn't be going into debt to acheive it. I'm not saying that wouldn't be a good thing (obviously it would be good), but it's certainly not the same thing.
| mises wrote: |
| We can only guess at what would have happened if the currency had not been debased. But one thing that would not have happened is the expansion in debt held by individuals to anywhere near the obscene levels it is at today. So, we can't say what the 'standard of living' would be (how much junk in our homes) but I feel perfectly confident that our quality of life would be better, as we would be much less indebted. |
See, in comparison to ontheway's propaganda, this is a reasonable statement. An admittance that the specifics are impossible to know along with a verifiable statement that makes no extremist claims. It's obviously true that if the average American held less debt, then the average American's standard of living would increase by some amount.
Of course, one can solve this problem without eliminating things like Social Security as well; reasonable government programs and a non-debt driven economy aren't mutually exclusive things. |
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