Free Money for All!

So being unable to work is the same as being a criminal?

 

They would be in danny's world.

 

********ing hell, so many of these points you "make" can so easily be turned around and applied to a Keynesian like you.

Especially the unintended consequences part. Keynesians own the copyright to that law.

BTW, self interest is enlightened, by the very definition of enlightened self interest. If putting others first brings a self interest gain to you, then you are putting yourself first, whether you think so or not.

 

I'm cool with homeless people.

But homeless people who think they are entitled to my hard earned money? ******** off.

BTW....I've inherited nothing.

 

No...I still think they are capable. I don't buy the whole "socially incapable" bullshit. I know people with down syndrome that can and do make $10/hr because they are pretty damn good at washing windows quickly. Personally, I think down syndrome is much more debilitating than any socially debilitating whatever-you-want-to-call-it.

After 14 years in prison, my uncle found a job within a week. It wasn't pretty, but it paid the bills and it earned him more than welfare. If they want assistance, they should start job training in prison, while they are sitting around with nothing better to do.
http://realcostofprisons.org/blog/archives/2006/09/ga_fighting_fir.html
There are similar programs in CA, and interestingly enough, many of the firefighters get early parole at the request of local fire departments who actively recruit lower pay accepting, well experienced firefighters.
Do I think we should throw these people out of prison and then take a fat shit on them? No...but that doesn't mean I think food stamps are a good solution.

100% employment is not only unlikely, it is impossible and undesirable in a free market economy. But you are looking at the unemployed as a group, not as individuals. You see, if you have 4% unemployment, there is a portion of that 4% that is actively seeking employment, and you have a portion that is actively seeking their next high. I don't think I need to give you a hint at who is more likely to find a job sooner. Surprisingly, these are the same individuals that are least likely to need welfare

1) Not all jobs involve interacting with customers. Some don't even require interacting with people at all!
2) If someone is unable to find work, the solution is training, not subsidized perpetuation of nothingness.
3) Rejection is a part of life.

 

Neither had my boss when he was your age. That doesn't mean y'all aren't cold and selfish.

 

Thank you

 

Enough with the stupid knee-jerk glibertarianism already.

First, there a few people who see crime as a way to try to improve their economic standing without having to work as hard for it and an even smnaller number who simply choose not to work. In Chicago, for example, there are a number of recognizable permanent panhandlers and I do not give money to those people. As much as such people generate a high public profile through their visibility, they are an extreme case that is statistically insignificant when compared to the working poor who bust their asses to try to scratch out a life for themselves and their children. So stop acting like they're half the population already.

Second, I love how many (but maybe not all) glibertarians are such extreme practitioners of the halo effect applied to success or failure. All of their successes and others' failures must be the result of forces only under the person's control. But, of course, their own failures or others' successes are due to luck or conspiracy or cheating.

Be that as it is, for a more realistic view on the type of social problems like economic crime, you'd do muich better to read the following link about the findings of crimilogoist John Hagedorn.

http://gangresearch.net/Archives/hagedorn/zorn.html

I attended a discussion by Hagedorn soon after he published his study of gangs and drug dealing in Milwaukee and he is no bleeding-heart liberal. Whle he has a mild conservative bent, he's not a stupid glibertarian either. What is not in the article is his finding that the full-time professional drug dealers (Hagedorn calls them the "new jacks") who are the type who could find legitimate employment but choose the short-cut of drug dealing are a tiny minority of the dealers and petty criminals (for all their blather about poor criminals, glibertairans are notably soft on corporate crime, btw) most of whom, Hagedorn found, are members of the working poor who only turn to dealing and other crimes during periods of unemployment or underemployment. That is to say, the lawful private job market often lets these people down and your Alger-esque ravings are a sick joke.

I tend to agree with Hagedorn that the classic liberal programs are insufficient as they are mostly geared towards getting these people into the same kinds of low-paying, dead-end jobs that let them down in the first place so that they turned to petty crime. OTOH, glibertarian "policies" would simply create MORE crime because not only would we have more unemployed and simply abandonded to the crime schools that are our prisons, but the working poor wouldn't even have the few social safety nets they have now and would quickly sink into crime at every hiccup in the economy. Hagedorn's preference is for "efforts to bring the private sector back into neighborhoods it has largely abandoned" although that begs the question of the reasons they abandoned those areas in the first place which links up with the bigger economic problems of outsourcing and deindustrialization that admittedly aren't Hagedorn's area of expertise. Also, I presume that government would have to lead the proposed exodus back into the poorer neighborhoods through TIFs and whatnot although the Chicago experience over the last 10 years argues that private interests will hijack the TIF process to seize the property of middle-class homeowners and small businesses.

Glibertarians would be better able to think about both unemployment and underemployment, however, if they were to learn about structural and cyclical unemployment as well as remembering that capitalism requires a relative surplus population (what Marx somewhat inaccurately called "the reserve army of the unemployed") and stop pretending that everyone who is unemployed is jusy lazy and doesn't want to work. Right now unemployment has been going up even as the participation rate declines. I guess Americans are just getting lazier.

Oh, and tell us again how "the New Deal destroyed the American economy". That was great comedy.

 

Our neighborhood used to be a very nice place. It is centered in North Berkeley with a good street Solano Ave where a lot of nice shoppings and eateries. Recently, we have some arm robberies going on at eateries with a rate that one robbery 2 days.

So far two unrelated groups of suspects are in custody which means we have more than one criminal groups are doing them. Turn out due to CA budget cut, many of light criminals are released to save the money for the state. Since they cannot find any jobs possible, so they have to robber for a living. At least it saves my money to go to eateries now.

 

So you do not give money to certain panhandlers because you know them well enough. What about the government? What actions have you taken to ensure the government is as cautious as you? And my views of the poor are directly related to my experience of living in a poor neighborhood and going to a poor school. The government doesn't help them out at all, it merely enables their poor decisions.

Of course there are many things that are out of our control, but they are such a small part of the whole picture we might as well discount them to nothing. People decide their own future. Good or bad, they typically get what they deserve.
BTW, when I fail or other succeed, I usually have learned a lesson. It is the wealth redistributors that are constantly babbling about luck...you will hardly ever hear it from a libertarian. Don't start projecting yourself here.

So you quote an article and then proceed to tell me what is not in it? Are you sure you are the fact and proof loving intellectual you like to believe you are?

Funny...I've lived a year and a half in Honduras...and drug dealing and economic crime were about the same there as a poor neighborhood here. Poor neighborhoods here have a million more opportunities than Hondurans have in their own country. I call BS.

We need to stop bleeding our hearts out because these people are relatively poor compared to ourselves...they have many more advantages and opportunities than those in the rest of the world. Paying them to not have jobs is not an answer, nor is it in their best interest.

Yeah, because inner city industry projects by government have an incredible success track record Sorry, but businesses abandon poor neighborhoods because crime increases their costs. Going easy on criminals in sympathy for their plight is only perpetuating the problem.

Funny thing is...the cities in the US with the highest crime rates also have extremely "progressive" city governments that try to help criminals the same way you suggest. Since these cities have had prominent ideologies of progressivism since the 60s, I don't think it is exactly a coincidence.

Who said there was anything wrong with having unemployed people? I mentioned that it was a good thing a few posts back. The perpetually unemployed are quite a bit different than those who are in "the reserves", and you are flat out blind if you think there isn't a difference.

Considering how many Americans oppose illegal immigration for economic protectionist reasons, I think that point is completely valid.

Glad you asked. The New Deal turned an economic downturn into a depression by prolonging the recovery over the period of a decade, as opposed to the typical 1-3 years. It was so bad that it took a war to end it within 10 years, as opposed to the 14-16 that the recovery could be extrapolated to.

 

Ha hahahahahahahahahaha!!! It never stops being funny. Thanks for demonstrating again why nobody takes you seriously.

 

Nobody takes me seriously? This coming from the person who has both liberals and conservatives wondering if you could ever have a friend or wife? Sorry kid, I don't think a perpetual prophet of doom has me worried when he doesn't take me seriously.

Here...run along now and continue your sexual fantasy

 

No, they don't.

You were on the receiving end of one of the most one-sided ass-whuppings I've ever seen in the "Worse than Hoover" thread. Not only does your assertion directly contradict the historical record of recovery during the time you said our economy was destroyed, not only can you not explain the subsequent 20-year golden age our supposedly "destroyed" economy enjoyed, not only have you demostrated repeatedly that you have no idea that there's a difference between the DJIA and the US economy, not only did you think that the Federal Reserve existed in 1901, you can't explain how the New Deal "destroyed" our economy. All you can do is assert that this somehow magically happened. And those are only your blunders in our argument. I'm sure you made more as you got pimp-slapped (albeit politely) by edcrocker. Even here, your response was an assertion, not an explanation.

You don't know anything about economics that isn't spoon-fed you by Limbaugh or the Weekly Standard or wherever you get your talking points that you don't understand. And therefore, you cannot even explain your own argument, let alone refute anyone else's. Even wingtips and topcatcole gave up on trying to defend your loony thesis. So you'll have to excuse me if I choose to put more credence in an expert criminologist's multi-year scientific study over your anecdotes, right-wing mythology and junior high school "reasoning".

 

Wow...such narcissism. Could it possibly be because you were the one responding to me that you think it was a one-sided ass whupping?

10 years and a war to recover from something that had previously seen peaceful recoveries in 3 years or less? Wow...phenomenal recovery right there

The prosperity occurred after a war repaired our economy. Really, your comprehension problems should be addressed by a learning disability specialist.

I have stated repeatedly that the stock market indexes are not the economy, but a good general indicator of overall economic recovery. This isn't just me talking...practically every professional economist in the modern world, both conservative and retarded...I mean liberal, uses the same standard to judge overall economic recovery.

When did I say that?

I did multiple times. Apparently, you are illiterate.
Here is an example that you conveniently ignored:
https://www.bigsoccer.com/forum/showpost.php?p=13694748&postcount=181

Pimp slapped by someone who didn't know the definitions of the word "opinion" and "fact"? Someone who could not reason his way out of his own bedroom let alone support any stance that was more complex than the idea that the New Deal was "good". Man you are delusional.

I'm not a ********ing supply sider, dipshit. That you can't tell the difference between supply side economics and free market economics just shows how little you really understand.

No, they just gave up trying to talk to a liberal three year old.

Oh, talking about the guy whose report was described as "farcical… twisted… an insult… a celebration of criminality"?

Something tells me a lot of your sources suffer the same criticism.

 

Don't hate me for being beautiful.

You've offered that spin before and it shows how little you know about economic history that you do not understand the differences between the "Great Depression" and downturns before or since. And you wonder why nobody takes you seriously.

topcatcole tried this line of attack, he did it better than you, and it didn't work for him either.

No they don't and if you knew anything about economics, you wouldn't make such a ridiculous assertion. The gyrations of 1987 showed that. Nothing in the underlying economy justified a 22% drop. Markets are subject to forces outside the general level of economic activity such as psychology, political events, liquidity crises, changes in tax legislation, even -as in the case of 1987- the perils of automated trading.

While pointing out to you that the stock market is not the same as the economy I listed the top 10 stock market crashes, 2 of which happened before the Federal Reserve was created in 1913. You subsequently stated that:

This makes no sense unless you believed that the Fed existed in 1913. Otherwise, you'd have said that "the first two had no Fed, all subsequent crashes had a decent Fed blah blah blah". That still would have been ridiculous, but as it is, it just proves that you don't know basic facts about the Federal Reserve system. And you wonder why nobody takes you seriously.

What a bunch of nonsense. Take your first point about the FDIC. The FDIC was created by the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, Roosevelt's first year in office. It was intended to stave off bank runs, most of which took place before or too shortly after FDR took office to blame on him. Those were Hoover's babies. In fact, FDR himself was opposed to the FDIC because he believewd that it would bail out irresponsible bankers. As it was, the FDIC was instrumental, along with merging weaker banks into stronger ones to stem the epidemic of bank failures caused by our weak private banking system, in restoring public confidence in banks at a critical time. Of ocurse, you don't want to acknowledge this because it helps explains the subsequent recovery that you also don't want to acknowledge because it wrecks your idea that the New Deal "destroyed" our economy.

I skipped much of your discussion with edcrocker. Now that I've gone back and read it, I have found that he repeatedly had to try to pin down your sophistic misuse of terminology (such as "recover") as you tried to weasel your way out from under the facts he used to correct your errors (like "FDR confiscated gold"). In fact, edcrocker was extremely patient with your nonsense - providing the sources of his facts and quoting them, providing alternate views when there is no general consensus, etc. He was also extremely reasonable and humble in admitting what he was unfamiliar with. The contrast with your pouty childish sophistry in the face of losing the argument is striking. In fact, the contrast between your silliness and topcatcole's reasonableness is also striking and I disagree as much with topcatcole as I do with you.

I didn't call you either. Judging from your posts, you're a glibertarian who knows nothing about economics other than what you're spoon fed from whatever sources you're using. You can't argue outside those talking points and the ironic thing is that you paint yourself simultaneously as smarter than those poor mainstream economists and their "conventional wisdom" while yet somehow being a paragon of mainstream economic conventional wisdom. Go figure.

The fact that you believe that there are such things "free markets" just shows how little you understand.

By a mayor who, not surprisingly, didn't like his city being noted for its gangs and drug dealers. That must have been embarrassing and politically useful to his opponents. No wonder he got pissed off and tried to discredit the study by painting it as glorifying criminals when it did no such thing. Nice try at not dealing with the substance of the article, though. But then, you ignore anything that doesn't agree with your pre-formed partisan political conclusions which is one reason why people don't take you seriously.

 

Correction. You don't take me seriously. Other idiots like superdave and john galt don't take me seriously. And I realize that your ilk loves to think you are the entire world, but you aren't. That is a fact.

Continue on with thinking that a 10 year impartial recovery from a market crash was a good thing. Come back when you understand the difference between supply side and free market.

 

You don't have to be poor to spend in the red.

 

Ah, you've retreated back to your juvenile sophistry. Since you can't deal with the substance of an argument, try to distract them with nonsense. But then, that's all you have to defend your attempt to pass off a book based on warmed over monetarist revisionism as some great revolutionary truth. *shrug* I accept your surrender and just wish that topcatcole was here so I could argue with an adult for a change.

 

I stopped reading right here. This is one of the coldest, nastiest things I've ever seen on here.

Welcome to my ignore list, asshole.

 

so would a job.

 

it encourages people not to work, further harming our long-term economic potential, therefore increasing the future need of more gov't 'assistance'. hardly sound policy.