Not to take one single tiny thing away from this, but reading “Crisis and Leviathan” really makes me stop and think more carefully about what the term “Big” in Big Government means when I see it.  In other words, as bad as this is, it’s actually worse.

“Yeah, but if only the taxes on the rich were increased everything will be fine!”

Santorium just won 3 causes.  Both branches of the Big Government Uniparty are in denial, so a catastrophe is extremely likely.  Buy gold.  Take a cash position so you can buy assets cheap on the way down and go long.

Dr. Woods why do you hate America?  The greatest of America far exceeds the petty laws of mathematics.  What is it about exceptional that you don’t understand?

 Just in case people don’t get your tongue in cheek, it should be noted that, yes, spending more than you have has really become so out of control that people won’t understand your comment.

Nonsense! we all know the real reason for Obama’s deficits was the bush tax cuts.

Tax cuts are expensive and have to be paid for!

Yes, we’re always the clueless ones on the subject of econonics..or on any subject really.

Get used to it!

Having a conversation with your typical left winger that involves numbers is usually dead from the start.  Its like having a philosophical conversation with a 6year old. You can certainly try to do it, but chances are the 6year old’s eyes glaze over after about 1min into the discussion.

In many of my conversations with left wingers (and some neocons too) on government finances and taxation, I present them with actual data from the IRS’s historical data section that breaks out taxes collected by income group and bracket.  It comes from the IRS in Excel so I just take the amounts in the columns for the top two brackets (33% and 35%) and double the amounts (effectively raising the rates to 66% and 70%)  and they quickly see that the result is only about $300B, which still leaves nearly a $1T deficit. I then explain to them that its doubtful the government would collect that much in later years as this group would shift their incomes or adjust their economic behavior, so we would probably have to find more people to tax the next year (ie lower the bar or definition of rich). 

So then I ask them, “then what?”  At this point I usually get the “we can cut defense by x argument”. To which I reply, “that’s great but cutting defense by x still leaves a massive budget deficit and even worse it means a lot of high paying middle class jobs go away and along with that, the tax revenue attached directly and indirectly to those jobs and the defense contractors.” At this point frustrations starts to set, so I take things one step further, and tell them, let’s not cut any spending and double everyone’s income taxes (look of horror comes on their face at the idea of them being subjected to the same treatment as they want to impose on others) and guess what, we sill have a deficit and our economy goes into tail spin on top of that. 

Now, if you really want to throw them through the loop, show them the GAO report released in January on the trust funds, which according to its own “very liberal” accounting, they are underfunded presently by $33T! Ask them where that money is going to come from? Usually at this point they either get quite or assert what I call the “tooth fairy argument” which is nothing more then their blind faith that the government has lots of smart people that will fix this if we just go along with their demands (of course that only lasts until their angelic guys are replaced with the devils of the opposition).

I love it when I mention Ron Paul to a liberal and they respond “yeah but he wants to return us the the gold standard” like the statement is self-explanatory and they just won the debate.

[sigh]

It’s tempting to say that “debating” with your garden-variety touchy-feely leftie is akin to talking to a child, but I actually think children — probably due to having had a lot less time to absorb lies and propaganda — are more likely to readily grasp some basic points that elude the adults:

1. The state produces nothing. Objecting to state interference in the provision of goods is not to object to the provision of goods.

2. The moral law applies to everyone, even people in government costumes. ‘Nuff said.

3. You cannot become wealthy by consuming wealth. And you can’t forever spend more than you make (or, in the case of the state, take).

There are plenty of other things I think the average six-year-old could be made to understand that the typical leftie will avoid seeing no matter how much you try to make them open their eyes.

And it’s not necessarily that they’re stupid… usually, they are pretty bright but, owing to their conditioning, willingly put their brain in the “off” position on any matter of politics and/or economics.

 A true conservative is fighting to conserve the Constitution and the rule of law, from that base we can debate the other issues within the lawful scope of government influence.

The most powerful law of all is the law of unintended consequences.  For instance, our ‘environmental’ laws have run industry our of America where we try to mitigate environment consequences of production, to China, Mexico, and other third-world countries where they do not with the outcome being MORE environmental damage.

The Constitution is part of the problem as it gives gov unlimited power. I know this is contrary to the public myth about limited government but it has been there from the beginning. There can never be such a thing as limited government. Once you give them anything, you have given them everything, it is only a matter of time. One is either free or a slave because you can’t be a relatively pregnant, you either are or you aren’t.

This is true of a lot of
people I speak to. They just assume that the government will be there to do the
right thing and so they never question the spending or the integrity of the
people being elected to serve the public. I suppose the logic goes something
like “after all I go to work every day and try to do my work as best I can
and so then will a public official.”

Blatant assumptions and logical fallacies are a huge part of the current
problem. Everyone got to live in a very comfortable bubble for so long that
they do not understand their system will inherently dismantle itself through
printing money ad infinitum and the resulting devaluation of currency until the
system literally comes to a grinding halt… a great depression. 

We do not need centralization of power. If fact, we should avoid it at all
costs. Time and time again when power converges to a point, the level of
corruption becomes so unbearable that social tensions lead to a revolution to
restore balance. The big banks are not sustainable. They will decisively bleed
the entire system dry on resources and value by printing something worth
nothing and exchanging/trading it with tangible objects which do actually have
value. This is also known as stealing. The only way that it is not stealing is
if the money has some inherent value and stability of the currency creates
trust in its value such as one gets with a gold standard.

I ask critics of the gold standard an important question. Why gold? Why not
silver or aluminum or any other resource which is widely available and has some
intrinsic value? Fiat currency is a failed currency and untying the value from
the tangible will always lead to the case in which powers that be decide to
print, print, print causing inflation and while this is occurring the most
wealthy are able to capitalize and absorb a disproportionate share of the total
value of the system (i.e. such as through the concept of interest alone). After
this collection phase, the currency is then deflated and the guys holding the
most again benefit the most out of the return of value to the currency.

The entire process what I like to call the “banking cycle.” It is never ending
and is an attempt to create perpetual growth, but the only way for perpetual
growth is through small businesses coming from nothing and innovating a field
or product. Big businesses can grow too, but they face a problem too difficult
to counter. This being corruption and lack of variety. Just like in all of
nature, we need variation in order to be successful. We need our DNA to contain
mutations that could become invaluable to our survival. By analogy in order to
have a healthy economy we need variation and competition. If all businesses coalesce
into one then a single virus (ideas against the mainstream, for example) can
come through and destroy the system so that the economy must now shutdown
because its sole constituent is gone. This is a bit extreme, but the point is
perfectly valid. We need competition.

If we did our jobs, then
we would break up the monopolies and make way for competition which is the
catalyst for change. The monopolies themselves are active buffers against
change. Just consider patent laws, as an inventor I am aware of the misguided
truths behind the patent ideology. The bigger your business the more patents
that you will strategically issue in an effort to curb your competition.
Innovation should have creators, but the property should not go to the company.
It should be given to the world. The reason I argue giving innovation to the
world to use as they wish is that these steps of innovation are like sparks
causing new ideas to surface and the faster we spread them the faster
innovation will change our lives and our world. This all leads back to
competition. Why would we limit competition? The answer here is simple, it is a
means to keep those in power in power for the foreseeable future.

Now a more fundamental question… do we need banks? Do they produce value? If
you talk with a banker/financial officer then they start spitting out lines
like “yes, of course we create value because we create liquidity.”
This liquidity is used in reference to the ease of transferring funds from one
individual to another, but what I am suggesting is that this ability to
transfer between entities is innate. So to put this statement into context
the liquidity is a product which must be measured with respect to the innate
basis which is already there and must always be greater than that innate level
in order to be of use to anyone. As soon as this is found to contradict our
premise, then we can dismiss the whole as being a contradictory system.

Banks want you to get caught up in the ideas which are only applicable to the
world they create. But, it is always our option as free, intelligent people to
reject those contrived notions for what we see is best. When times get hard
enough people will begin to come together and if these people unite in their
ideas and beliefs about how and why the system got to the breaking point, then
they will only be able to unite about notions of truth. Fact is something that
is agreed upon by all competent observers and when your observers vary with all
possible backgrounds then unity is only possible through facts. The media can
spin all the hokus pokus that it wants and for awhile it will work, but at some
point we will wake up and reject notions without logical basis not extending to
fundamental contexts of the proper role of humanity.

So what are the rules of
the road to get us back on track?

1. Elect the brightest people from fields outside of politics (i.e. Dr. Ron
Paul) and ideally from a background of science. This removes a huge base of
corruption with instantaneous effect.

2. Never elect people
that flip-flop from day to day. This means that what they say they will do is
what they will fight to do and provides a basis for servitude to the public by
application of a very important filter. 3.Never entrust your children to a
public school system alone. Teach them and nurture their creative needs. Prompt
them to imagine ideas that are abnormal or uncommon and to analyze these same
ideas. This provides for the future generation by passing down knowledge to the
next generation while inspiring them to be curious and ask questions.

Each of these are time
dependent concepts that are tailored not only to help right now, but in the
future as well. We cannot make the right choices today without referencing the
future first.

If we follow these basic
ideas, then we can correct the past wrongs of our system. Science will become
popular again and the masses will come to respect knowledge and not money
because the average will be able to think for themselves once again.

This is so very common with garden-variety lefties and their extraordinarily myopic orthodoxy. They really cannot fathom that anyone could think differently than they do, or at least no one “serious” can think other than they do.

They tend to approach any subject you might debate the same way. You make your case for your point of view. They reply, more or less, this way: “[Insert unexamined leftist nostrum #37 here].” They then begin their victory lap, because they think all of their bumper-sticker slogans are axioms instead of propositions that are so full of faulty assumptions and false premises that they’ve been discredited or falsified dozens, hundreds, or thousands of times both by theoreticians and real-world experience.

They may as well add “OH SNAP!” after every cliche they respond with. It’s pointless to reason with them, at least regarding politics and economics. This is what happens when you expose millions of Americans for decades upon decades to institutions that do not teach them to think but rather to obey.

I say these things because I live in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and 90% of my friends are unfortunately exactly this way. They just don’t know what they don’t know.

I don’t really believe there is any single definition of “intelligence.” It’s actually a more complex subject that it would seem at first blush.

Too common unfortunately. I have had the same experiences many times as well.

Reality is frequently under attack by Authority (just as Realitarians are frequently under attack by Authoritarians). One of my favorite examples occurred in the Indiana legislature in 1897.  A clever “mathematician” cooked up a way to square the circle (constructing a square with the same area as a given circle by using only compass and straightedge).  To make his method work, he actually urged the Indiana legislature to pass a new law, redefining pi as 3.2 instead of 3.14159…..

The idea of a limited Constitution is a prevalent myth but that is only because the obvious has been overlooked.

“Article I,Sec. 8 informs us that “Congress shall have Power to lay and collect Taxes,. . . to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States. . . .” Later on,we discover that Congress also has the power “To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States,or in any Department or Officer thereof.” Standing by themselves,these words would provide the most ambitious tyrant with the only grant of authority that would ever be needed to carry out his or her desired purposes. As Lord Macaulay so well expressed it,”Your Constitution is all sail and no anchor.”
…
Suppose that I was given the authority to “provide for the general Welfare” and “to make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper” for exercising this power?What could I not do,constitutionally,pursuant to such a grant?Who is to decide what constitutes the “general Welfare,” or what laws are “necessary and proper?”"

http://www.lewrockwell.com/shaffer/shaffer215.html