blueblood

It's quite sad that the republican handbook is closer to reality than the kool aid that you drink. 50 trillion is too much to be spending on old people's consumption, time to swing the axe. And you say gov't spending is a good thing... And those Scandinavians are doing worse than the 10% of American's, way worse. Free to succeed, free to fail. Sure England and the USA did, they made countries richer, take it up with the countries that pissed their investments away. Except that people in Canada and the USA do have that opportunity to hit the jackpot, that's why so many people come here. Where else can someone with 20 bucks in their pocket become a multi millionaire? Except that less and less people are living in extreme poverty every year and are rapidly getting to enjoy things we enjoy here. Those pig barns in china aren't going up as a petting zoo... People also have to be smart with wealth they inherited, easy come easy go. Perhaps if there wasn't so much govt spending on entitlements that encourage consumption and less savings there would be more wealth mobility in the USA and Canada. As for Europe, its a lift out of poverty into comfortable, ooohh!!! Funny how income mobility is dropping in correlation to an increase in gov't spending... I'll leave the last point to BC2004's response.

What happens with the rising interest rates is that there ends up being a lot of savings, so much in fact that the bank doesn't want to dole out the high interest payments so it drops the rate to clear the excess money out of the bank. That's how its supposed to be, its supposed to be a cycle. THe problem is when gov't gets involved and screws around with the rates causing a misallocation of resources. This is what happened in 1920 when there was double digit unemployment and the fed. No collapse of anything.

Have you looked at all 72,000 pages of the US tax code? Have you looked at all the onerous regulations? Why does the gov't need to be that big and have that much influence for sale?

Just like Jim Crow was determined "fair" by voters and government of the deep south during the first half of the 20th century. And hell if the blacks didn't like it I guess they were free to leave too then huh?

No kidding, i'd like to see how a person in Scandinavia has a better living standard than the low tax jurisdictions of Western Canada, I want to see this.

Absolute nonsense??? That's it Score one for team blue. Your right it is bad governments. Bad governments institute ridiculous expensive entitlement programs that make everyone poorer and encourage consumption instead of savings. How is the US worse than Greece, ask the Chinese which country they'd rather invest in? By your metrics just fine is all we should strive for, what's wrong with being better. THe USA and England did that in the 17 and 1800s and became extraordinarily wealthy. What's wrong with that? The reality is people in Scandinavia live in a bubble and will never have the opportunity to enjoy the weatlh a person in Canada in the USA has the opportunity to get. Sad. Have you looked at commodity prices? Have you seen Asia these days, they are becoming rapidly wealthy and are able to enjoy an increasing standard of living. If they did things your way they'd still be in the poor house, since they don't like being poor they have embraced low tax capitalism and are enjoying the benefits of it. That's reality. If being lazy and copping out for comfort is your idea of a good life then maybe the scandinavian model is for you. However many people prefer a model of where they get what they put in. For some its an obscene amount of money and for others its getting by. That's why the low tax model is most fair, and according to the immigration problems we have in North America, quite a lot of people agree with mine and bc2004's way of doing things, they vote with their feet.

The freedom of association is also in the constitution. Yes workers are free to form an organization in the workplace, that's not the issue I have. The issue I have is taking away someone's right of freedom of association by forcing them to join this organization. Don't people have the right to choose who they want to associate with/not associate with or not. This principle was one of the pillars that got rid of the wheat board monopoly and why we see union membership as a percentage of the workforce falling like a rock. I can say with confidence the courts haven't heard the last of this issue, I think in the future this issue will be headed back there.

Your talking about a scenario where the interest stays low, which provides the signal to consume. The problem we face is the fed very rarely allows the interest rate to rise to levels it should to encourage savings. If more people save what they produce, it puts more sound money in the banking system for loans and transactions, and then the fed can start selling the bonds it bought from the banks instead of buying them. Volcker jacked up the interest rate in the early 80's to get out of stagflation in the 70's, at first it seemed harsh, but in the long run it was better. RIght now that interest rate needs to go up so people can start saving their money in banks and the banks will have more sound money to lend out. And why does the fed keep rate low, because any gov't who said to the fed to jack up the rates during a recession even though most people are saving their money would be voted out of office because prices are falling. What people have a hard time getting their heads around is that falling prices aren't necessarily a bad thing, it helps lead to price discovery in the free market.

That's it ridiculous? I show the similarities of minority rights being trampled and all I get back is ridiculous? Outstanding

Oh really, so the "open market operations" the fed engages in don't happen. For example the fed decides to increase the money supply. It decides to buy 1 billion in bonds from say Goldman Sachs. It writes a check on itself and presto, Goldman Sachs has 1 billion dollars to play with. Since fractional banking requires only a percentage of money on hand as reserves, i think its 10%, it can loan out even more money than they got from the fed. So with 1 billion bucks from the fed, it can loan out 10 billion bucks. Then there is the raising and lowering of interest rates at which banks can lend from each other and to the fed. So your right in that private banks created a bunch of money out of nothing because of fractional reserve banking, but the fed gives them phony reserves a lot of the time to begin with. Thats why you need a smart person running the fed so that there isn't this runaway freight train. This explains it too. My link

And unions get the benefit of law to raid paychecks and force people to join the union in the work place and if workers dont want that they are shut out of the workplace and can go somewhere else. As bc2004 says the blacks in Jim crow were not forced to attend these segregated places, but they could not go to any place they wanted to. That is my problem, people who don't want to be in unions have to go to places where they might not want to go to in the first place, or don't have a job. That's why I don't use the residential school thing. We had this problem in western Canada with the wheat board, by summer we won't have that problem anymore.

Really, me and all my neighbors are buying construction equipment to drain sloughs so we can maximize production, we cannot grow stuff fast enough. And that is going on around the world, the former USSR is now a grain exporting region than importing region, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are investing in African farmland. People have starved to death with cheap food being dumped by Europeans and Americans. Without higher grain prices there would be no incentive to invest in Africa or up production in the former USSR. A big part of that has been the speculators. Why should the people of the developing world be unemployed so that the USA and Europe can dump grain? Argentinas biggest export is soybeans and 10 yrs ago that country was literally broke. That speculation reflects real supply and demand. If north America, Australia, and Europe have optimal growing conditions, the price of grain drops. It's not smoke and mirrors, the speculators are just part of the market. Do you know why the speculators are so bullish on grain?it's because of the new demand from Asian countries. They have money and they don't want to live on a bowl of rice a day anymore. If anything you should be upset with the cheap money caused by the fed printing money and bring put in commodities. In my business more quantitative easing is a good thing as it finds it's way into the commodity market. The developing world is growing at a much faster rate than the developed world and more and more people are becoming middle class, how is that a bad thing?

It would have slowed growth down. The federal reserve is very powerful and can make or break the economy. That means there has to be proper guys running it. We had the federal reserve in 1920-21 and double digit unemployment and nothing happened. If a bonehead runs it, we get the situation we're in today.

And courts decided that Jim crow and discrimination was perfectly acceptable for a long period of time and changed, what's to say the courts won't change on this? Courts have a history of changing with the times. But you can choose to be in the closet or not. Just like the black people down in the jim crow south could choose to go to segregated places or stay home. This isn't about categories of minorities, it's about minority rights. Forcing somebody to join a union or go work somewhere else is also like forcing somebody to be Christian on the job site or go work somewhere else. This isn't a silly discussion, we have non-union people working in union jobs because it's the only jobs they can get and are actively persecuted for it.

Nice double standard there. Minority rights for some and not others. So people can't work wherever they want? Make a choice and live with it, right, perhaps gay people should have chose to stay in the closet when it was the norm to discriminate against them. Outstanding. Except it is logical, one group gets to oppress others and one can't. Let's see some consistency here.

It doesn't fail because both groups the blacks and the non union people don't get the same access to things that everybody else (white and union people) do. Explain to me how is that fair. So it's all right for union people to oppress non union people and force them to join a union or be fired? That's evil, that's as evil as forcing blacks into segregated places.

Economic inequality is a problem? To who Lenin? If Someone grosses a million bucks and the average household grosses about 50k, how is that a problem?

Why is it a bad analogy, shouldn't somebody be able to teach in whatever school they like and not be forced to join something they don't believe in? It's why religious beliefs are right up there in the human rights thing with race, or do you think race has priority?

Why, because it's accurate? You want to work in a public school, you either join the union or no employment in the public school. Just like being black in the Jim crow south, you either go to your black only places or you stay home.

Is getting a x% return on a 10,000 investment creating value? Yes or no will do.

You don't change liquidity, there is either more or less. You can change the amount of liquidy. Do you think there is a cap on the amount of buyers in the grain market place? Nope, the more the better. Those people in developing countries now have incentive to produce their own food and there is incentive for foreign investors to put land around the globe I to food production. Those people in developing countries actually become richer as a result as more are employed in food production. But they do have an interest in that grain, they are interested in the demand of that grain and how they and their clients can make some money by cashing into that demand. That's why the person in the tower in Minneapolis, Kansas city, or Chicago always rolls over their contract because they don't want to take x amount of b trains with grain, so the sell those contracts to people that do. The farmer, and the brokers clients benefit. You forget that there's a two way street here, if demand drops for those grains, the price drops faster because those managers don't want to be stuck taking grain they don't need so they unload this contracts at a discount thus benefitting the buyers of the grain. It is very efficient and works very well. The market is related, supply and demand regulates it. And what is wrong with getting rich, more rich people is a good thing.

All right if we're nit picking, a hypothetical stereotypical religious person and a hypothetical stereotypical science person get into the god debate. I say it's pointless because the religious person gets to move the goal posts based on the supernatural trump card and that's as far as that debate can go. As for the rest of your post, no argument there.

And look how entitlement spending turned out, it's an unsustainable freight train heading for a derailment. Yes I did explain, they threw growth out the window and those countries are part of a giant collective that is on the verge of collapse. Europe is a bigger mess than the USA. Now let's look at opportunity cost. Where would Europe be without those entitlement programs and all that red tape and regulation? Judging by Asia's success, Europe would be far better off than it is today. Europe is a house of cards and it's falling down as we speak. Except the gov't doesn't earn money, it forcibly takes it from people that do and hurts growth prospects when they do so. Americans didnt feel poor because there was nobody to compete with. Do you suggest the USA nuke the rest of the world so you can go back to the glory days? There were problems with old people in the poor without entitlements and society managed then. It was economic growth that improved their condition, not your robin hood wet dream. If throwing government money at a problem is the best way to fix something, just take a look at our first nation disaster, new Zealand spends a fraction of it's tax dollars we do on their indigenous population and they have much better living conditions then we do. If anything our first nation disaster is why gov't shouldn't be meddling so heavily in people's affairs to begin with. You also forget that rich people aren't affected by borders, the world is a richer place and they will set up shop elsewhere. Your wanting to keep racking up the credit card and going to the boss for a raise. Here's the problem, the company can't afford to pay that raise so now what, time to chop up e credit card. Your style of tax and spend has been proven time and again it's unsustainable and kills growth. Why do people think they can tweak a failed system? The market has been the best allocator of resources, always has and always will be.

Oops, my lack of articulation strikes again. I meant a religious person in general.

You cannot have a scientific argument with a religious person. It's impossible, why? They get the supernatural trump card which means they get to move the goal posts. In science arguments are based on what goes on that we observe and can provide evidence for. If we're bringing the supernatural in there is no way to prove it exists or doesn't because if it's supernatural it can change arbitrarily much to the great frustration of those on the science side of the debate. If somebody wants to believe in the supernatural, what does it hurt?