(06-20-2010, 07:35 PM)kandrathe Wrote: I'm no more odd than Ron Paul.
Couldn't have put it better myself.
Quote:There is about 1/3 of the electorate over here with me, so no I don't feel all that extreme.
1/300th, certainly. 1/30? Possibly. 1/3? Heck no. The whole Republican party barely pulls in those kind of numbers, let alone the minarchist/libertarian wing. At the very least, most who would agree with you on drawing down the worldwide military would disagree on massively scaling back Federal programs, and vice versa.
Quote:Perhaps 30% (of the Federal Budget)
A trillion bucks a year in efficiency savings? Riiiight.
Quote:Unless the debt and other government meddling is what is causing the crisis.
Um, no. That's quite obviously not what is causing the crisis. Were you around in 2008? The valueless paper being held by every major financial institution in the world? The multi-trillion dollar flight to safety? The collapse of global trade? You know, the things that actually happened in this crisis?
A government debt crisis would show interest rates spiking and bonds going unsold as investors lost confidence in US debt. We are seeing precisely the opposite: investors fleeing from a collapsing private financial sector into the safety of US government bonds.
But hey, just because the evidence doesn't fit the narrative, that doesn't mean you should stop believing it. After all, it has to somehow be the fault of the US Federal Government, right?
Quote:100 trillion in unfunded liabilities.
"Unfunded liabilities" in the sense that the US is not currently sitting on a pile of money to pay off every expense it will owe for the next fifty years? Yes. But the US government also has this marvellous thing called "tax revenue" that comes in every year, that pays for these "unfunded" liabilities.
There is a *projected* future budget problem, if tax levels stay the same, and medical costs continue to increase at their current rates. But that is a very different, and much more long term problem than the current debt, which is not unsustainable. If you wiped out both the debt and the deficit with a magic wand, those future problems would still have the same dimensions, because they are not driven by current spending, but by anticipated future cost increases.
(Once again, the big hint: Fix your #*#$ing health care system!)
Quote:The liquidity trap. Devaluing the currency makes everyone holding the currency poorer, especially seniors on fixed incomes where their holding are in US$. It in effect makes the prices, and cost of everything appear to increase since the value of a dollar is less. That would certainly hurt our poor recession strapped populace.
Yes, the liquidity trap.
The effect of inflation is rather the opposite of what you are suggesting, at this point. The number of people who survive entirely on cash savings are very few, relative to the number who are paid in wages or stipends which adjust with inflation. Now, inflating the currency to the point where grandma can't pay her rent is unneccessary - a few % a year should do just fine. It will generate growth, decrease the burden of debts, improve exports (and the trade balance) and increase employment - all things which are vastly more pressing than price stability.
People with dollar-denominated debts *want* the currency to inflate. If you're underwater on your house, the absolute *last* thing you want is the dollar to appreciate, because you owe a hell of a lot of them! So, it's no use arguing that indebted people don't want to see their savings inflated away - they have negative savings.
Quote:OMG. You really need to be locked in a room with some Austrian economists for awhile until I convert you.
Best of luck with that.
Quote:What does the lack of freedom look like? Hundreds of thousands of pages of rules that are made to control our actions, and our money taken away to give away to others who've not earned it.
If the US today is what "lack of freedom" looks like, then you seriously need some historical perspective.
-Jester