Do US Republicans want a failed state?

[Kaitzilla]

Yay, the FBI served a search warrant to Senator Burr (R) and took his phone.
He is also stepping down as head of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Usually the powerful are above the law as the law declines to prosecute because it is "not in the public interest".
Did he offend Trump with his bipartisan senate finding that Russia was trying to help get him elected?

 

[Lexicus]

Organizing my paper.

tell me more about this paper brah

 

[warpus]

any political party is. you think the left doesnt care about money? they own and control all of the big institutional money that they shuffle off to each other and causes they support. by in large thats done by the left not the right.

hh

In America there is no left. I mean, sure, they exist, but they aren't in power anywhere.

I'm not here to have another one of those mindless left vs right political debates from an American pov. It's all been said before. All the political parties you guys keep voting into office are corrupt, yes, everybody knows that

 

[Berzerker]

I'm genuinely curious. Given the large role a particularly militant form of Christianity and a desire to use government power to bring about moral reform played in the abolitionist movement, can you name a prominent abolitionist who would fit in comfortably with today's Libertarian Party and their aversion to government-backed moral reform and promotion?

I doubt libertarians would describe the attack on property rights and freedom of association as moral reform, but to answer your question, Lysander Spooner

Spooner advocated natural law, or what he called the science of justice, wherein acts of initiatory coercion against individuals and their property, including taxation, were considered criminal because they were immoral while the so-called criminal acts that violated only man-made arbitrary legislation were not necessarily criminal.

Spooner attained his highest profile as a figure in the abolitionist movement. His book The Unconstitutionality of Slavery, published in 1845, contributed to a controversy among abolitionists over whether the Constitution supported the institution of slavery.

Spooner's arguments were cited by other pro-Constitution abolitionists such as Gerrit Smith and the Liberty Party, whose twenty-second plank of the 1849 platform praised Spooner's book The Unconstitutionality of Slavery. Frederick Douglass, originally a Garrisonian disunionist, later came to accept the pro-Constitution position and cited Spooner's arguments to explain his change of mind.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysander_Spooner

I suspect there were a bunch of people including Frederick Douglass who would have argued for ending Jim Crow but stopping short of violating natural rights.

The Civil Rights Movement achieved some notable successes thanks to federal legislation enforced by federal agents. Or did you forget that federal marshals were needed to escort children to school in Little Rock?

Pointing guns at people can meet with success, but it can also have nasty side effects. Jim Crow was replaced by a drug war. But they won because the nation watched on TV how Jim Crow was enforced and were disgusted. Libertarians opposed Jim Crow, they just think the state went too far when it did away with property rights and freedom of association, the freedom to contract.

You are taking a remarkably blase stance on stripping people of their civil rights for a supposed libertarian.

The LP doesn't support 'civil rights' that strip away natural rights. I'm actually blase about that, I'm not inclined to get rid of anti-discrimination laws entirely for now. If reducing racism is the goal, what works better, pointing guns at people or using freedom of association to peacefully change attitudes? If you've ever known a bigot who changed, what changed them? A law passed by 'the enemy' or positive interactions with the people they dislike?

 

[r16]

If I had presented the story of the First World War in the Victorian Era, it would have been called a work of, "dark and gritty science romance fiction." In other words, don't dismiss it off hand TOO fast...

ı think the name was Bloch , some businessman in 1890s , writing pretty much how the battles would go but ı understand he thought (at least ı think) the countries would HAVE to give up in three months . ı have been promised a copy when ı level America from one end to the other .

 

[Hygro]

tell me more about this paper brah

Keynes solves money.
Only Viner at the Chicago School understands Keynes
Keynes clarifies in 1937,
Paul Samuelson in 1942 told us the deficit is dollar per dollar private savings and that the deficit in the short run will push down interest rates. That bonds are the same as money but slower.
Abba Lerner publishes Functional Finance in 1943 taking it all the way.
Keynes endorses it.
Milton Friedman says it’s lacks rigor in telling us how to find full employment and that chasing it with short term policy adds destabilizing lag time.

Then Milton Friedman in 1948 calls for the end of banks’ right to money printing, and that the government should run permanent deficits financed by money printing, though bonds would work suboptimally. Taxes should be progressive and unemployment insurance should be permanently baked in.

That the people should democratically decide their “target” economy and let the progressive, countercyclical, expansionary fiscal policy take care of the variation.

Friedman will articulate that equality is the goal. That gains by special interest groups will hold back the whole, but asset prices and wealth effect will mask it. So Friedman says probably safer just to keep a gold standard.

Friedman is clearly the winner in 1948. The bad guys take note and use his framework for their own nefarious ends.

The proposal is a pipe dream. Friedman switched to advocating the Fed target money supply instead of fiscal policy to deal with inflation and unemployment. Samuelson agrees that it should be the Fed first.

They spies agree and ditch the gold standard and appoint spymaster Paul Volcker. They print money for special interests. Wealth effect masks the harm.


Young hipster economists forget that deficits = private savings. They think people are choosing to save this money for anticipated future taxes. The media thinks monetarism is anti Keynesian and calls for balanced budgets. Reaganomics gets called voodoo by their own. Only Dick Cheney spills the beans, in 2002, and says deficits don’t matter when he is exasperated with his own treasury secretary worried about debt. Cheney fires the guy for his incompetence as an economist.


The democratic side’s best guy becomes Paul Krugman who can’t seem to figure out that you don’t need taxes to pay back the debt. Democrats think their ability to be the party of surplus is an embarrassment to the field, and yet Krugman, best smartest most Keynesian guy on the team, agrees.

The big discovery of the left is Piketty stating that high interest rates favor rentiers and explain wealth inequality. Meanwhile interest rates are at an all time low as the rentiers are getting their gains from government transfers that keep rates down and asset prices rising.

The rich running the republicans meanwhile build a coalition of arms-stockpiles, religious people who choose party over Jesus, and expand the surveillance state. The democrats will fear owning guns and precompromise with the lies of their economists while dismissing the long-known Keynesian truths as unsustainable.

The democratic strategy seems to be to wait for debt to grow until we NEED higher taxes on the rich. Republicans agree out loud and privately laugh their way to the bank. (NB Patine is the Democratic Party)

Most democrats who understand MMT and postkeynsianism aka old school mainstream orthodox economics think we need to be fussy and dislike it, that we can’t sell it to the people so we have to pretend to prefer taxes. This confuses not only party members but economists who can’t hold it clear in their minds their economic training and their louder political news reading mental narratives.

The way out is thusly:
Accept MMT and make party members speak in its terms.
Don’t stop there and adopt Steve Keens energy economics.
Huge Green New Deal
Giant marginal tax rates, trading tax and wealth tax to un print the 40-year largesse.
$25 minimum wage.
Own guns, better if join military.
Get amenable rich people on board, like venture capitalists who hate recessions by teaching them sectoral balances etc, as a way to know when it is invest time and when it’s bubble time.

 

[Naskra]

OMG. For anyone untutored in the epistemological foundations of Hygronomics, here is the longform exposition:

Never had I reason to suspect, wonder, nor seek clarifying knowledge.

 

[Hygro]

OMG. For anyone untutored in the epistemological foundations of Hygronomics, here is the longform exposition:

Too busy learning econ and brave enough to pay attention, lay my thoughts bare, and admit when I am wrong.

Too bad you have articulated anything other than that you disagree.

The best argument against MMT by any right winger on this forum is by @amadeus simply that good luck keeping the political establishment acting accordingly for any reliable length of time.

 

[Naskra]

Too bad you have articulated anything other than that you disagree.

You have not done the reading (it shows) and don't know the meaning of the terms (this shows too). We can't really talk.

 

[Lexicus]

Only Viner at the Chicago School understands Keynes
Keynes clarifies in 1937,
Paul Samuelson in 1942 told us the deficit is dollar per dollar private savings and that the deficit in the short run will push down interest rates. That bonds are the same as money but slower.
Abba Lerner publishes Functional Finance in 1943 taking it all the way.
Keynes endorses it.
Milton Friedman says it’s lacks rigor in telling us how to find full employment and that chasing it with short term policy adds destabilizing lag time.

Then Milton Friedman in 1948 calls for the end of banks’ right to money printing, and that the government should run permanent deficits financed by money printing, though bonds would work suboptimally. Taxes should be progressive and unemployment insurance should be permanently baked in.

That the people should democratically decide their “target” economy and let the progressive, countercyclical, expansionary fiscal policy take care of the variation.

Friedman will articulate that equality is the goal. That gains by special interest groups will hold back the whole, but asset prices and wealth effect will mask it. So Friedman says probably safer just to keep a gold standard.

Friedman is clearly the winner in 1948. The bad guys take note and use his framework for their own nefarious ends.

I would like some, uh, citations or sources for this stuff. Not citations as in, like, "you must provide evidence/proof for your claims!", citations as in "I want to read your sources for this so I can follow you."

Democrats think their ability to be the party of surplus is an embarrassment to the field, and yet Krugman, best smartest most Keynesian guy on the team, agrees.

Also can you explain this a little more.

You have not done the reading (it shows) and don't know the meaning of the terms (this shows too). We can't really talk.

You joined this site in 2006. In all the time since, have you ever once contributed positively to a discussion?

 

[Hygro]

You have not done the reading (it shows) and don't know the meaning of the terms (this shows too). We can't really talk.

Ok, what’s your bibliography?

Mine is long and full of primary sources but I’m always looking to add more. My opinion of Friedman, for example, comes from reading Friedman.

 

[Naskra]

have you ever once contributed positively to a discussion?

Honestly no. I mostly confine myself to points of information. These are never well received.

 

[Hygro]

I would like some, uh, citations or sources for this stuff. Not citations as in, like, "you must provide evidence/proof for your claims!", citations as in "I want to read your sources for this so I can follow you."



Also can you explain this

I meant that Krugman is our main guy, one of our genuinely best, and until recently thought extended surpluses were a good idea. Anyone who read the actual sources and theories such as Samuelson’s 1942 “Fiscal Policy and Income Determination” would know better than to fetishize balanced budgets.

Or regarding Friedman’s 1948 suggestions: “A Monetary and Fiscal Policy for Economic Stability” you see he’s fully Keynesian with the added sophistication of recognizing lag times in Policy and that money supply matters.

Gary Becker in The Classical Monetary Theory: The Outcome of the Discussion shows you the Chicago schools monetarism is Keynesian and not classical (aka that money is no object and prices = money supply over quantity are both wrong).

Did you know Phillips of the Phillips curve (aka the big “failure” of Keynesianism) said that big rises in import costs would lead to a “wage-price spiral”? The actual paper of the theory predicts the oil crisis and accelerating inflation. Meanwhile Friedman, taking credit for the defeat of Keynes at the “breakdown” of the curve, doesn’t apply his own long held argument of lag times, i.e. that inflation can rise at the same time of stimulus before unemployment drops.

 

[Estebonrober]

Yay, the FBI served a search warrant to Senator Burr (R) and took his phone.
He is also stepping down as head of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Usually the powerful are above the law as the law declines to prosecute because it is "not in the public interest".
Did he offend Trump with his bipartisan senate finding that Russia was trying to help get him elected?

I'd love for them to get all four senate intel members who did this. Yes including Feinstein. Hell maybe her more then the republicans how she can continue to vote for the Patriot Act 20 years on is an abomination.

 

[innonimatu]

I meant that Krugman is our main guy, one of our genuinely best

You are sooo screwed...

It's political though, theories ate picked because they are convenient for those doing the picking. You think though that Krugman is genuinely naive? I always put it down to him knowing the hands that fed him. I may be generalizing from the many many "public intellectuals" and "opinion makers" here. Some may be genuine fools only...

 

[Estebonrober]

Keynes solves money.
Only Viner at the Chicago School understands Keynes
Keynes clarifies in 1937,
Paul Samuelson in 1942 told us the deficit is dollar per dollar private savings and that the deficit in the short run will push down interest rates. That bonds are the same as money but slower.
Abba Lerner publishes Functional Finance in 1943 taking it all the way.
Keynes endorses it.
Milton Friedman says it’s lacks rigor in telling us how to find full employment and that chasing it with short term policy adds destabilizing lag time.

Then Milton Friedman in 1948 calls for the end of banks’ right to money printing, and that the government should run permanent deficits financed by money printing, though bonds would work suboptimally. Taxes should be progressive and unemployment insurance should be permanently baked in.

That the people should democratically decide their “target” economy and let the progressive, countercyclical, expansionary fiscal policy take care of the variation.

Friedman will articulate that equality is the goal. That gains by special interest groups will hold back the whole, but asset prices and wealth effect will mask it. So Friedman says probably safer just to keep a gold standard.

Friedman is clearly the winner in 1948. The bad guys take note and use his framework for their own nefarious ends.

The proposal is a pipe dream. Friedman switched to advocating the Fed target money supply instead of fiscal policy to deal with inflation and unemployment. Samuelson agrees that it should be the Fed first.

They spies agree and ditch the gold standard and appoint spymaster Paul Volcker. They print money for special interests. Wealth effect masks the harm.


Young hipster economists forget that deficits = private savings. They think people are choosing to save this money for anticipated future taxes. The media thinks monetarism is anti Keynesian and calls for balanced budgets. Reaganomics gets called voodoo by their own. Only Dick Cheney spills the beans, in 2002, and says deficits don’t matter when he is exasperated with his own treasury secretary worried about debt. Cheney fires the guy for his incompetence as an economist.


The democratic side’s best guy becomes Paul Krugman who can’t seem to figure out that you don’t need taxes to pay back the debt. Democrats think their ability to be the party of surplus is an embarrassment to the field, and yet Krugman, best smartest most Keynesian guy on the team, agrees.

The big discovery of the left is Piketty stating that high interest rates favor rentiers and explain wealth inequality. Meanwhile interest rates are at an all time low as the rentiers are getting their gains from government transfers that keep rates down and asset prices rising.

The rich running the republicans meanwhile build a coalition of arms-stockpiles, religious people who choose party over Jesus, and expand the surveillance state. The democrats will fear owning guns and precompromise with the lies of their economists while dismissing the long-known Keynesian truths as unsustainable.

The democratic strategy seems to be to wait for debt to grow until we NEED higher taxes on the rich. Republicans agree out loud and privately laugh their way to the bank. (NB Patine is the Democratic Party)

Most democrats who understand MMT and postkeynsianism aka old school mainstream orthodox economics think we need to be fussy and dislike it, that we can’t sell it to the people so we have to pretend to prefer taxes. This confuses not only party members but economists who can’t hold it clear in their minds their economic training and their louder political news reading mental narratives.

The way out is thusly:
Accept MMT and make party members speak in its terms.
Don’t stop there and adopt Steve Keens energy economics.
Huge Green New Deal
Giant marginal tax rates, trading tax and wealth tax to un print the 40-year largesse.
$25 minimum wage.
Own guns, better if join military.
Get amenable rich people on board, like venture capitalists who hate recessions by teaching them sectoral balances etc, as a way to know when it is invest time and when it’s bubble time.

Can I use this elsewhere? Damn.

 

[Estebonrober]

Honestly no. I mostly confine myself to points of information. These are never well received.

I've never seen you post anything remotely informative in any manner on any matter.

 

[Naskra]

I've never seen you post anything remotely informative in any manner on any matter.

I'm sure you haven't. Stick with Hygro, he can reveal the secret of how Keynes solved money. You'll be rich!

 

[Patine]

What exactly are you trying to say here?

You know exactly what I'm talking about. I've told you explicitly before. Being a perennial victim of RL social (and even violent) victim off of your keyboard - which is indeed a tragic and intolerable show of the complete socio-political state of degeneration of modern, Western society, despite high-minded, hypocritical pretenses, and THAT is something you do NOT deserve - does not, however, translate, automatically to you being an deserved victim in all the rhetorical exchanges on these forums. Here, in this digital environment, where we're all anonymous (or at least partially so) text messages from handle-names and avatar images (for all appearances) and physical violence is denied us all, you are NOT an innocent victim. In fact, in this environment, with the relative greater safety, and the boldness it leads to, you're quite the vitriolic fire-spitter, and are prone to freely insulting and slandering people right to their virtual faces with a far greater impunity than you know doubt do offline. That is what I'm trying to say, and I've said it before.

I'm genuinely curious. Given the large role a particularly militant form of Christianity and a desire to use government power to bring about moral reform played in the abolitionist movement, can you name a prominent abolitionist who would fit in comfortably with today's Libertarian Party and their aversion to government-backed moral reform and promotion?


The Civil Rights Movement achieved some notable successes thanks to federal legislation enforced by federal agents. Or did you forget that federal marshals were needed to escort children to school in Little Rock?


You are taking a remarkably blase stance on stripping people of their civil rights for a supposed libertarian.

None of these militant policies and ideal are remotely Christian. They don't follow, or adhere to, Christian principles or doctrines, or the Ministry of Christ, really at all. They are instead wolves in sheep's clothing amongst the flock and a parasitic cult led by false prophets. Please, do not confuse with Christians, to the point of calling them Christians, or, even worse, reverting back and assuming the actual Christian religion is based upon this crap.

Coupla things, this thread seriously moved in the time I've been busy.

1. "holding people to account" as per this discussion. I have no way of enacting it in person, what would I even do? You were objecting to perceived stereotypes. In context, these generalised condemnations and perceived stereotypes are holding people to account. Sorry for the miscommunication.

2. It's not "policy" per se, it's basic human rights. I guess it's both, realistically. That said, I have every right to decide that this area is the defining factor in condemning people for their vote for an arguably horrendous party (out of two rubbish choices, sure). Is it unrealistic to expect everyone to share this opinion? Sure. But it's my opinion, and I have every right to have it. I'd be interested in understanding why you think it shouldn't be - however unfortunate you think it is. A lot of policy is inarguably important and life-changing (basic economic policies, for example, make or break livelihoods). But to me even this is less important that treating humans equally in the eyes of the law. I would've thought as a humanist, this wouldn't be the thing you have an issue about. I can't click my fingers and make it the most important issue in the world, but if we're comparing Republican voters and Democratic voters, I can absolutely use it as a basic measuring stick for decency.

(I have a lot of respect for humanism, we had a humanist do the readings at a family funeral. I'm not invoking your humanist beliefs as a gotcha)

All of this may indeed be true (but see my point I'm about to make below about jurisdiction and reading too much into the value and significance of FEDERAL elections in the U.S. in these matters), but, IDEALLY it should be that be that simple, and chronically unemployed factory and coal mine workers should have turned out en masse in 2016 to vote for a party they blame moreso for their unemployment and destitution for the rights and protections of various disadvantaged communities (I think "community," is a preferable word to the more absolutist "demographic," or "minority," that's been pushed around here, because the term "community," allows context to be taken into account) when Trump makes "sugar daddy," promises of bringing jobs back home to them (they had no idea, at the time, they were going to fall threw). But, unfortunate, it may be too much to expect of long-unemployed people used to blaming Democrats for their employment predicament (and Clinton showing a cold apathy for the region, on the campaign trail) to nonetheless show such support for social ideals of the Democratic Party from a human (though not humanist) and realistic perspective. Does this at all make sense?

Now, the jurisdiction thing. Other than rulings of the Supreme Court of the United States, the FEDERAL Government of the United States has very limited real power in the LBGTQ and racial based policy and law-making (SURPRISE!). It's the State Governments who have almost all of those powers. And the State Governments are always a patchwork of Democratic and Republican leadership, with Jack Coghill, Jesse Ventura, Angus King, Lincoln Chafee, and a few other Governors in my lifetime having other political labels. The Civil Rights Act and Voter Rights Act of the 1960's were just enforcing the negligently lapsed and unenforced 14th Amendment rights (very much out of malice, racism, authoritarianism, and a show of White Supremacy, definitely) of African-Americans in the Deep South, rights they held for over 100 years by that point ON PAPER. It was not new rights legislated for them - just a means of enforcing grossly (and deliberately) neglected rights they had all along. In fact, the only four legislative or executive actions by U.S. Federal (and not State) Governments, and not Judicial review, that directly affect the LGBTQ community by sweeping policy are this:
-Don't Ask, Don't Tell - Bill Clinton
-Defense of Marriage Act - George W. Bush (which, like every significant government action of the Bush Administration in every meaningful area, exceeded it's legal and Constitutional bounds into the realms of high criminal and tyrannical endeavour)
-Dropping the Federal Government's defending of DOMA altogether during a Supreme Court challenge over the Constitutional guarantee of same-sex marriage - Barack Obama
-Baring Transpeople form serving in the military, specifically - Donald Trump
The lion's share of realistic lawmaking power in these areas is in the State, not Federal Governments - despite what so many are convinced of...

any political party is. you think the left doesnt care about money? they own and control all of the big institutional money that they shuffle off to each other and causes they support. by in large thats done by the left not the right.

hh

The Khmer Rouge comes to mind, as they abolished their own currency when they were in power, and possessing the currency of other nations (or any other symbol of the political, economic, or cultural influence or power of outside nations) was a capital crimes punished by summary execution. But then again, the Khmer Rouge, or the Worker's Party of Korea, truly being able to be called "left-wing, anymore, is dubious, as both adopted some very paleoconservative elements of great significance to their ideologies - some not seem in major roles in sovereign nations since Antiquity or the Middle Ages, or at least the Pre-Colonial Era.

In America there is no left. I mean, sure, they exist, but they aren't in power anywhere.

I'm not here to have another one of those mindless left vs right political debates from an American pov. It's all been said before. All the political parties you guys keep voting into office are corrupt, yes, everybody knows that

I've said this a few times too. This is a nation that considers a moderate Social Democrat like Bernie Sanders a "far-left extremist."

 

[Patine]

I'd love for them to get all four senate intel members who did this. Yes including Feinstein. Hell maybe her more then the republicans how she can continue to vote for the Patriot Act 20 years on is an abomination.

What were Clinton and Biden's votes on that issue?