George W. Bush Approval... Wow

[moda0306]

Like I've said in the past, I don't like when we disagree.

And you must be listening to Dan Carlin (with that whole NATO/Russia analysis)!  If not, I'm curious where you've been reading up on that analysis.

No, not him. Can't remember where I read that perspective, but it immediately made sense to me.

Now I love guys like Bernie Sanders and Rand Paul.  Dammit... I guess ignorance was bliss.  Perpetual disapointment: engage.

Welcome to the clubhouse. There aren't any brownies. In fact, there are no perks whatsoever.

Well stepping my brain off a few tribalist treadmills has aided in my peace of mind in some ways... though I did have to hop on a few other ones as part of the process (though the tribe of "statist-anarchist pragmatist" is a lot more fun run on).

And I heard Desert smokes brisket for the group once a month. 

[moda0306]

Moda,

At least Reagan was a nice, folksy dude with some good humor.  Here's my favorite 40-second sound bite:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoPu1UIBkBc

And he didn't mean to arm Iran .... he probably slept through that meeting.  It's not his fault.

When Obama is not talking policy details, and just interacting with folks, he's a pretty folksy guy. Clinton is folksy. Bush II is folksy when he doesn't have to think.  I don't give a shit about "folksy" anymore. Rand Pail isn't folksy. Bernie Sanders isn't folksy. Bring on the technocrats!

And Iran-Contra was just one of many dildo-headed arrows in Reagan's quiver of "capitalist" butt-fuckery that he shot at South America.  There was some seriously nasty shit we supported there. You only get a "Alzheimer's Pass" so long.

(Sorry for the multiple levels of inappropriateness.)

[MachineGhost]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2 ... -done.html

No need to worry.  Hillary will win.  She's just as hawkish in reality.

[MachineGhost]

- A major new welfare program: Medicare Part D

Keep your government hands off my Medicare! 

[align=center][/align]

[MachineGhost]

http://www.scragged.com/articles/democr ... ter-cities

Come, now!  It's not Democrats... its a vast majority of lower class, non-white people.  They're ignorant about politics and haven't figured out what a scam it is yet.  Oh, maybe I'm wrong...

[align=center][/align]

[MachineGhost]

How is Baltimore not on that list?

The downtown area has gentrified over the past two decades but there's still dangerous areas.  Haven't you seen The Wire?

[MachineGhost]

It's no surprise, though, that a statist Marxist atheist like me gets most upset with the adoration of Reagan.  He truly is the Barack Obama of the republican party, and I'll be annoyed if all my liberal friends talk about Obama the way repubs talk about Reagan today.  He was an actor.  He boiled down feelings of American tribalism into a dog-whistle that would make the Pied Piper blush.  The more I study history, critical thinking, and politics, the more obvious this becomes.  Perhaps the U.S. "needed some of that" after two decades of divisive, challenging bullshit, but he leveraged that to some really despicable ends in South America, and in other arenas I won't get into.

I know you're relatively young compared to almost all others on here, but you need to come to the realization sooner rather than later that politics is all about show business (for ugly people, although thats been slowly changing).  It is a game.  It responds and taps into the underlying economic confidence cycle, i.e. voters and lobbyists.  Politics is never a pro-active situation unless its about personal pet projects such as restoring the Bush family honor by invading Iraq and overthrowing Saddam.  You have the ability to do things like that as President.  Even so, you still have to wait for a crisis or manufacture one to get what you want past Congress (hello, Wall Street!).

[MachineGhost]

For what it's worth, Moda, I'm in almost complete agreement with everything you wrote. Don't forget Clinton's provocative expansion of NATO into Russia's backyard, sowing the seeds for their belligerence today. And of course he raised taxes too. There's also the Assault Weapons Ban... Jeez, if I really think about it, there's a ton of crap.

You forgot his royal fuck up of getting North Korea to disarm their nuclear program (they were at the table and ready, but Clinton flinched) and also his snub of Arafat/Plaza Peace Accords (I think it was called)) in the Middle East.

The problem is we keep electing civilians with no real experience to be COMMANDER IN CHIEF.  How insane is that?

[moda0306]

It's no surprise, though, that a statist Marxist atheist like me gets most upset with the adoration of Reagan.  He truly is the Barack Obama of the republican party, and I'll be annoyed if all my liberal friends talk about Obama the way repubs talk about Reagan today.  He was an actor.  He boiled down feelings of American tribalism into a dog-whistle that would make the Pied Piper blush.  The more I study history, critical thinking, and politics, the more obvious this becomes.  Perhaps the U.S. "needed some of that" after two decades of divisive, challenging bullshit, but he leveraged that to some really despicable ends in South America, and in other arenas I won't get into.

I know you're relatively young compared to almost all others on here, but you need to come to the realization sooner rather than later that politics is all about show business (for ugly people, although thats been slowly changing).  It is a game.  It responds and taps into the underlying economic confidence cycle, i.e. voters and lobbyists.  Politics is never a pro-active situation unless its about personal pet projects such as restoring the Bush family honor by invading Iraq and overthrowing Saddam.  You have the ability to do things like that as President.  Even so, you still have to wait for a crisis or manufacture one to get what you want past Congress (hello, Wall Street!).

I'm REALLY starting to get it.  There are very few actual "technocrats" out there, and most of them are playing some analyst role in the state department or Departments of Transportation or NASA.... or hiding out hoping not to get executed or extradited in Russia for reporting American spying!

I mean this all goes back to that discussion where I think it was PS who said "we're entering the stage of all-style-no-substance politics" or something of the sort... and that Obama was perhaps uniquely bad in that arena.  I pointed out that it was at least Reagan who exemplified the first big turn in that direction, if not someone more like Kennedy (I think you pointed this out later).  It's easier to point out Reagan, though, due to the nature of the race he came into... going against a very, very smart and extremely honest but fundamentally flawed-for-pres guy like Carter... where Reagan was an actor from Cali trying to reignite our Nationalist tendencies.  Nixon was smart, and Kennedy a playboy, but it seems to me far less obvious looking back on those elections than seeing Carter try to out-debate someone who could toss out dog-whistle one-liners like the Gipper with the delivery of a trained Hollywood actor.

I really think at this point in my life the most useful class I've ever taken was Philosophy in college (though it took far too many years for many of its lessons to consistently sink in).  If I were king for a day I would make it a required class in highschool.  I think starting people down the path of at the very least being able to understand and dissect how an argument actually works, and point out invalid or unsound logic quickly (and enjoy doing so!) would be one of the best things for public policy and just general well-being in this country.

[MediumTex]

When I first began seeing the truth behind many of our treasured institutions, beliefs and traditions, I thought it was kind of cool.  It made me feel smart.

The more I did it, though, the more it felt like I was living in a world of compulsive liars who had somehow convinced themselves that they weren't lying, and that made me feel sad.

Ultimately, I found that the best filter through which to view politics is the same filter you use to view WWE-style wrestling--as long as you understand it's all fake and that it's primarily intended for entertainment you'll be fine.  Does that make me cynical?  I don't think so.  If anything, I think that it gives me the tools to watch the news without becoming cynical, in the same way that I can enjoy watching wrestling without being distracted by the question: "How much of this is real?"  The answer is that none of it is real; it's just a show.

Since I started watching the show around 1983, Obama is the first new character who has provoked neither love nor hate in me--he has mostly just bored me, which has caused me not to watch the show anymore, and that has made me happier than I could have possibly been either loving or hating him.

I watch Obama on TV screens when I am out in public and his mouth seems to always be saying: "I think that there has just been a misunderstanding here...", while his wife's mouth seems to always be saying: "Whitey hates my school lunch program because of his racism."  It's titillating like television should be, but not quite compelling enough to make me want to turn it on when I get home, and I like it that way.

[LC475]

On the plus side, he lowered taxes

The spending is the tax.  If spending did not go down, then taxes did not go down.  No matter whether they appeared to, that's just trickery: lights and mirrors; they did not.

[LC475]

The income taxes I paid decreased under Bush, so it sure felt like lower taxes to me.

Exactly.  It's a good trick.

Lights and mirrors.

[moda0306]

The income taxes I paid decreased under Bush, so it sure felt like lower taxes to me.

Exactly.  It's a good trick.

Lights and mirrors.

So if the government spent only enough next year to confiscate property of citizens in a massive wealth grab to pay off our federal debt and disassemble the government, that would be a huge tax break, since spending went way down?

:/

[Libertarian666]

The income taxes I paid decreased under Bush, so it sure felt like lower taxes to me.

Exactly.  It's a good trick.

Lights and mirrors.

So if the government spent only enough next year to confiscate property of citizens in a massive wealth grab to pay off our federal debt and disassemble the government, that would be a huge tax break, since spending went way down?

:/

Actually, the Austrian position is that the fiscal burden of government is whichever of taxes or spending is greater.
As for confiscation, that would just be a faster method of what they are doing right now via money printing. Of course, that isn't to say that confiscation wouldn't be a lot harder to take (no pun intended).

[moda0306]

Exactly.  It's a good trick.

Lights and mirrors.

So if the government spent only enough next year to confiscate property of citizens in a massive wealth grab to pay off our federal debt and disassemble the government, that would be a huge tax break, since spending went way down?

:/

Actually, the Austrian position is that the fiscal burden of government is whichever of taxes or spending is greater.
As for confiscation, that would just be a faster method of what they are doing right now via money printing. Of course, that isn't to say that confiscation wouldn't be a lot harder to take (no pun intended).

That sounds an awful lot like the Austrian position on inflation...  The greater of:

- Increase in CPI
- Increase in price of gold
- Increase in price of oil and food
- Increase in the price of a 30-year bond price after a deflationary shock
- Increase in base money supply
- Increase in their emotional discomfort with their inability to use their economic models to predict the future

[MachineGhost]

Actually, the Austrian position is that the fiscal burden of government is whichever of taxes or spending is greater.
As for confiscation, that would just be a faster method of what they are doing right now via money printing. Of course, that isn't to say that confiscation wouldn't be a lot harder to take (no pun intended).

Hasn't the last seven years completely discredited the Austrian school?  Nothing it claimed has come to pass.  It's resigned to the dust bin of history along with all the others.

[MachineGhost]

That sounds an awful lot like the Austrian position on inflation...  The greater of:

- Increase in CPI
- Increase in price of gold
- Increase in price of oil and food
- Increase in the price of a 30-year bond price after a deflationary shock
- Increase in base money supply
- Increase in their emotional discomfort with their inability to use their economic models to predict the future

Sounds like an overly simplified view of inflation to me!   But that's the problem with the Austrian school of thought.  They get very little right.  Certainly not enough to deal with the complex reality of actual human behavior.

[LC475]

Actually, the Austrian position is that the fiscal burden of government is whichever of taxes or spending is greater.

And spending always seems to be greater, so I just condensed by leaving out the part irrelevant to our current reality.

[LC475]

Saying "spending is a tax" seems more like a trick to me.

OK, it's not really a trick, but to me, it is a statement that is rooted in ideology rather than in fact.

No ideology there.  No value statement, no judgment.

It's just logic.  If an institution like the state spends a certain amount of money, well, that money must come from somewhere.  More fundamentally, if it expends a certain amount of real resources conducting its operations, those real resources must come from somewhere.  In this case, they come from what we generally call the private sector.  The resources come, that is, from outside the state.  The amount of real resources that the state receives from the private sector is the cost of its operations.  This amount will be the same as the amount of resources the state expends.

By saying "the spending is the tax" I am using the word "tax" to mean cost or burden.  The total cost of the state is whatever real resources it uses.  The state is not able to poof real resources into existence from nothing, so far as I am aware.

Sometimes the total expenditure of real resources may be difficult to determine in money terms, as when unpriced resources are used, for example federal lands, frequency bands, and conscripted soldiers or laborers.  So, the single figure of total dollars spent in the budget of a state does not completely account for all its spending.  This in no way invalidates the principle.

To review: if the state spends, it must collect.  The resources come from somewhere.  Not from magic wish-granting poof balls.  The state must redirect resources away the private sector and instead towards its own ends and projects, that is, into what we call the public sector.  Regardless of how that redirection is accomplished -- and there are many methods extant, some quite round-about -- it is redirection nonetheless.  Tax, tariff, levy fees, sell monopolies, borrow, or inflate -- it all is a taking, it all must be paid for.

TL;DR: TANSTAAFL.

[LC475]

That sounds an awful lot like the Austrian position on inflation...  The greater of:

- Increase in CPI
- Increase in price of gold
- Increase in price of oil and food
- Increase in the price of a 30-year bond price after a deflationary shock
- Increase in base money supply
- Increase in their emotional discomfort with their inability to use their economic models to predict the future

Harry Browne was an Austrian.  Does that sound like his position?

The Austrians, of all the schools of economic thought, embrace the science's inability to predict the future.  They embrace it.  They preach it.  It is a fundamental tenet of their system of thinking.  They stand in stark contrast to the positivists.

[LC475]

Hasn't the last seven years completely discredited the Austrian school?  Nothing it claimed has come to pass.  It's resigned to the dust bin of history along with all the others.

Economics, sound economics, makes claims as to how human economic action works, not as to what is going to come to pass.

The Austrian School of Economics made no claims as to what events would come to pass the past seven years.  Nor did it make predictions for the previous seven.  Nor does it nor will it ever.

Human beings are not atoms.  Human action is unpredictable.  This is a core insight, not held solely and certainly not discovered by Austrian economists, but which has been guiding the discipline of economics throughout its long multi-century history.  Austrians do happen to be currently the group of economists which hold to this view most consciously and consistently in the largest numbers, much of the profession having been swept away down the positivist dead end.

[LC475]

But that's the problem with the Austrian school of thought.  They get very little right.  Certainly not enough to deal with the complex reality of actual human behavior.

Well let's see, let's name a claim that Austrian economics makes, and then demonstrate why it's not right.

Nah, that would be too much to ask.

Much less to say let's list all of the major claims this school makes, and then go through and determine which ones they get right and which they do not to determine if, in fact, they "get very little right."

Ha, ha, ha, that would be laughable for someone like the Ghost who knows everything.  He always has, and he always will.  Good thing he has me on ignore and doesn't have to be troubled by such waste-of-time posts as this.  I'll leave him to his knowledge.  Meanwhile, I am currently reading (by audiobook) Human Action by Ludwig von Mises.  It is very educational.

To be educable is to be ignorant.  Or at least the converse.

[moda0306]

That sounds an awful lot like the Austrian position on inflation...  The greater of:

- Increase in CPI
- Increase in price of gold
- Increase in price of oil and food
- Increase in the price of a 30-year bond price after a deflationary shock
- Increase in base money supply
- Increase in their emotional discomfort with their inability to use their economic models to predict the future

Harry Browne was an Austrian.  Does that sound like his position?

The Austrians, of all the schools of economic thought, embrace the science's inability to predict the future.  They embrace it.  They preach it.  It is a fundamental tenet of their system of thinking.  They stand in stark contrast to the positivists.

Harry is the exception that proves the rule. If you'd like to see an example of "the rule," look at Peter Schiff.

[Pointedstick]

Yes, I was using the word "tax" to mean what 99% of people think it means: "the money I have to pay to the government or else get hurt."

I don't find that redefining common words to mean non-common things is an effective rhetorical strategy. It may be that government spending robs me in subtle ways through inflation or less capital or resources available to the private sector or whatever, but calling this a tax is to confuse the very people with whom you're trying to have a discussion.

[Pointedstick]

You're no longer on ignore, buttwipe,

C'mon dude. Be the better man if you have to reply at all.