Comments on: The Paradox of Liberalism

By: Liberallizz

Liberallizz — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 19:21:08 +0000

@Traverse Davies – “I have never even heard of anyone calling for a salary cap for the wealthy.

Know your history— FDR tried to implement a program that was like the Minimum wage only it was the “maximum wage”

By: Mandi Harper

Mandi Harper — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 02:21:22 +0000

@Rob Viglione – Maybe I should watch “Red Dawn”… it may have some great tips

No, it’s actually not crazy it’s using your frontal lobe cortex. It’s anticipating and planning for possibilities in the future.

My main focus in life has been to enjoy my life in the arts…without concern for finances ( as long as ends were meeting)and not focus on money earned and saved, but I may have to take a break to save up for tragic possibilities.

By: Rob Viglione

Rob Viglione — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 02:14:07 +0000

@Mandi Harper – What can we do? We can adamantly oppose any expansion of government, fight to keep politics constrained to Constitutional limitations, and campaign against all foreign military adventures.

Since America’s course is pretty much set, there’s not much we can personally do. We can try. There are some great people out there fighting daily to maintain the Republic, especially Rep. Ron Paul. But in the end I think the lifecycle of civilizations is on course to unfold.

Be that as it is, you need to look out for yourself and your family. Plan for the economic consequences of the great unraveling, prepare physically for disaster, and consider long-term flight as a contingency plan.

Timing is everything with investing, so I’m not advocating betting everything you have against the system, but allocate a decent chunk towards precious metals, real assets, gold, silver, oil, natural gas, foreign currencies, and short Treasuries, particularly the 30-year maturities. Start moving capital out of the country, set up bank accounts and buy real estate in safe countries. Set up brokerage accounts in several foreign markets and buy corporate stocks and bonds for companies that derive little business from the U.S.

Physically, develop an escape plan. If the system collapses there could be a period of abrupt violence. Store enough food and water to last 30 days, consider firearms, emergency supplies, keep cash and gold on hand, and make sure you have your passport ready to go. Plan escape routes if you live in an urban environment. You may also want to look into residency and/or a second citizenship abroad.

Crazy enough of a response?

By: Mandi Harper

Mandi Harper — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 18:10:41 +0000

@Rob Viglione –

Exactly Rob and such a state reminds me of the words of Alexander Tytler—

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves a paycheck from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years.

Great nations rise and fall. The people go from bondage to spiritual truth, to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence back again to bondage.

The question left to be answered is : What can we do?

If it is easy to do the wrong thing, and the majority wants to do this easy-wrong thing…what can you or I do?

By: Rob Viglione

Rob Viglione — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 02:00:04 +0000

@Mandi Harper - Looks like the magical wand isn't really magical! The economy is crumbling and with it our empire will follow. Sad that Americans fell down the trap of populism, entitlement, apathy, and soon the other consequences of Socialism and empire.

By: Mandi Harper

Mandi Harper — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 01:33:39 +0000

Please note heavy sarcasm proceeds.

What we are lacking in America is individual responsibility. We want to do whatever we want without having to accept the consequences. Unfortunately, the majority of Americans feel that it is the governments responsibility to pay for the consequences with the wave of the magical wand… It’s what we deserve right:)…we’re Americans

Presently, Americans are beginning to unveil the the fairytale for what it is. An epic tale. Someone is going to have to pay for the rest of society to exist at their current status. Since the 51% cannot, the remaining 49% are being cast as the crucified Jesus, Persephone, etc..whomever you prefer .

There is no magical wand and we are knee-deep in debt.

By: Brandon

Brandon — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 12:32:24 +0000

The only truly liberal ideology is libertarianism: maximizing freedom on all fronts. Conservatives want more economic freedom but less social. Liberals want the opposite. Libertarians recognize that BOTH are important. True Goldwater conservatives, named after the real catalyst of the New Right Barry Goldwater, believe in true limited government, not limiting spending or taxes but trying to control people’s personal lives or behavior. The government should not be in the business of moralizing. I don’t need the state to tell me what is and is not right. Simply put, you can’t legislate morality. The first major politician to say this in recorded American history was a CONSERVATIVE (Barry Goldwater). He wasn’t some hedonistic liberal.

And btw, legislating morality isn’t constitutional either, just like the welfare state.

By: Levis Caycedo

Levis Caycedo — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 08:35:25 +0000

Great article.

To Traverse: Your posts are loaded with baseless opinions which you present as facts.
For example, President Reagan’s economic principles were based lowering marginal tax rates on income from labor and capital, reducing the growth of government spending, reducing government regulation, and controlling the money supply to reduce inflation, so what are the excesses you speak of when referring to Reaganomics? Are you suggesting higher taxes, more government (deficit) spending, more regulation, and higher inflation? Among other problems, Carter left Reagan with 12% inflation rate, double digit unemployment, 21% interest rates, oil shortages, and obscene tax rates (70% for the top marginal rate). Reagan’s conservative policies led to average 4% yearly GDP growth, brought inflation down to 3.6%, and unemployment to 5.8%, created 20 million new jobs and led to the longest period of peacetime economic growth in American history. A funny thing happened that liberals can’t seem to understand, when he reduced the top marginal tax rate from 70% to 28% – by the end of his presidency, tax revenues actually doubled.
You are flat out wrong if you think this is the right time for our government to increase taxes on the rich even more than they already pay – you may not know this but the top 10% of income earners in this country pay for 70% of all the taxes, the top 25% pay for 86%, and the top 50% pay for 97% of the total tax burden. Guess what the bottom 40% pay – a big fat ZERO! Right now more than ever we should be talking about lowering taxes across the board – or better yet, abolishing the IRS and implementing the FairTax.

You also mention that private industry has never been any good at innovation – which is completely false. Most historic innovations in the last hundred years have stemmed from private industry, e.g. the car, the transistor, the telephone, the integrated circuit, the iPod, the iPhone, the list goes on and on. Another example of private industry innovation – Craig Ventor’s small company Celera Genomics deciphered the human genome – the DNA genetic code – in one-sixth the time, one-tenth the cost, and more accurately than the government-sponsored Human Genome Project.

You say that the only place you see competence and efficiency is in the non-profit sector? What about Toyota, Google, Apple, Sony, Microsoft, Walmart, to name a few – all profitable companies that are extremely competent and efficient at bringing products to consumers like you and I.

You may want to do a little research before you post your opinions as facts.

By: Traverse Davies

Traverse Davies — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 23:08:31 +0000

Andrew:
When you use a straw man or a severe exaggeration to argue against, you weaken your own case. Lets hit the exaggeration first: I have never even heard of a progressive tax system that jumps from 20% to 50% in one step. Here in Canada it does go up to 50% eventually, but at six figures you are still only in the 35% bracket. You have to be well into the millions before you get taxed 50%. There is basically no circumstances where you bring home more by earning less… okay, if you go from a dollar under a bracket marker to a dollar over, but nothing realistic.
Now, you assume a higher GDP is better for the country. Why? GDP is one measure of a society, and many would argue that it isn’t even one of the more important ones. What if our rich person is reducing the long term viability of the economy every hour he works (say by trading in derivatives on the international market while not creating any real wealth)? In that case, he increases the GDP when he works but every hour he works also lowers the GDP from a long term perspective. By that measure, the economy is better off if he stays home that extra hour. What if his attempt to earn more wealth results in children who are complete emotional basket cases who end up incarcerated, costing the government hundreds of thousands of dollars? What if he has a heart attack early due to his extra work? Maybe he earned more money for the economy, but was it worth the cost? In order to make the whole laissez-faire capitalism work, you have to really oversimplify reality, discounting societal carrying costs (otherwise know as externalities) and moving anything that isn’t the creation of wealth to a position of lower importance than creating wealth. Even then, you have to rely on an economic falsity for long term sustainability. That falsity is that you can expand forever and the market will take care of shortages.
As to monopolies… try establishing a competing diamond mine in South Africa in the 1800′s. The complete lack of regulation meant that DeBeers could have you killed (and often did).
Finally, the benefits of laissez-faire capitalism are a theory, and in practice every time you go too far towards it, society suffers (by the way, the same thing applies every time you go too far towards state control). Maybe if you did get rid of all regulation you could have the paradise you people envision, but every time there has been no regulation someone has taken over and imposed regulation. That is because when there is no regulation there is no-one to stop that from happening, and in this world some redistribution of wealth is essential for the functioning of society… and so is some profit motive.

By: Andrew Slominski

Andrew Slominski — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 20:10:06 +0000

This is a great article and reads very true. To Traverse Davies: Many are calling for caps on what the rich can make in light of this recent bailout. Also, arguing that the more you make the more you should have taken away from you IS very much the same as a cap. IF one person has 50% of their 41st hour worked that week taken away from them and redistributed, while another person has less than 20% redistributed, we should not be surprised that some people feel limited and choose not to work more. Wouldn’t society be worse off (lower GDP) if the rich person decided to stay home with their family instead of working overtime that week?

Also, about monopolies: With low regulation monopolies are easy to break, not hard. Higher amounts of regulation increase the costs of entry into the marketplace. Look at the history of regulation and you will see large companies pushing for it and large companies gaining from it.