Free to choose

[Quantum Windbag]

More than any other American, Friedman, who won the Nobel Prize in economics in 1976, clearly warned the world about the unintended consequences of big government.


We all know how worthless a Nobel Prize is......its all political

"We've become increasingly dependent on government," said Friedman. "We've surrendered power to government; nobody has taken it from us. It's our doing. The results – monumental government spending, much of it wasted, little of it going to the people whom we would like to see helped."

That's from Friedman's PBS TV series "Free to Choose," which aired 30 years ago and became the basis of his No. 1 best-seller by the same name.

Friedman is right, we have become dependent on government....

To protect our food and water supplies
To provide a safe working environment
To ensure equal rights for all Americans
To provide our national defense
To provide basic protections if we become sick or injured

Nasty Gubmint

Using your warped and skewed way of spinning what Friedman said, I can make a slave owner look like a hero.

Feeds the slave daily
Provides a roof over a slaves head
Ensures the salve stays strong and fit
Offers basic medical care if the slave becomes ill or injured
Offers the slave a community that allows for socializing

Wonder why you did not list the things that Friedman was REALLY referring to??????? You know, like freebies for those that prefer the freebies over earning the goodies themselves.

Oh I understand....he was talking about....FREEBIES

Like farm subsidies, tax exemptions, sweetheart government contracts (Haliburton), trade tariffs....

Those types of freebies

Exactly.

 

[amrchaos]

I am trying to recall when the last time government decided for me----How about you?

 

[rightwinger]

More than any other American, Friedman, who won the Nobel Prize in economics in 1976, clearly warned the world about the unintended consequences of big government.


We all know how worthless a Nobel Prize is......its all political

"We've become increasingly dependent on government," said Friedman. "We've surrendered power to government; nobody has taken it from us. It's our doing. The results – monumental government spending, much of it wasted, little of it going to the people whom we would like to see helped."

That's from Friedman's PBS TV series "Free to Choose," which aired 30 years ago and became the basis of his No. 1 best-seller by the same name.

Friedman is right, we have become dependent on government....

To protect our food and water supplies
To provide a safe working environment
To ensure equal rights for all Americans
To provide our national defense
To provide basic protections if we become sick or injured

Nasty Gubmint

Why does the government have to provide for my basic protections if I become sick or injured?

Why does it have to provide a safe working environment? And how exactly does it do that?

Believe it or not, the government has done an abysmal job of ensuring equal rights for all Americans, and anyone that would trust their rights to the care of government is a fool. If it had not been for the people, blacks would still be second class citizens, because the government certainly did not care.

Trust the government if you want, i would rather trust myself and my friends.

Believe it or not, the government has done an abysmal job of ensuring equal rights for all Americans, and anyone that would trust their rights to the care of government is a fool

Really? Been on a segregated bus lately? Been treated by a woman doctor? Remember the time when gays were beaten up "because they were asking for it"??

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Really? Been on a segregated bus lately? Been treated by a woman doctor? Remember the time when gays were beaten up "because they were asking for it"??

Yes, really. Remember Jim Crow laws? Remember separate but equal? Do you also remember that all of those were sanctioned by the government, and that it took an uprising by citizens to end it?

 

[amrchaos]

Quick question--when you say "government" do you mean the structure of the Republic, or the people we elect to run it.

Sometimes, I tend to get confused on which definition you guys are are using.

 

[jillian]

Thought this was a good article by John Stossel.

Free to choose

He makes a lot of sense, and has much to offer, in a dignified manner. I guess his message just goes over some peoples heads.

someone should talk to john stossel about dickensian england and sweat shops and having no middle class...

since the middle class only exists in a regulated economy.

just sayin'

 

[jillian]

Really? Been on a segregated bus lately? Been treated by a woman doctor? Remember the time when gays were beaten up "because they were asking for it"??

Yes, really. Remember Jim Crow laws? Remember separate but equal? Do you also remember that all of those were sanctioned by the government, and that it took an uprising by citizens to end it?

actually, it took a supreme court case to end it.

FindLaw | Cases and Codes

 

[Bern80]

Thought this was a good article by John Stossel.

Free to choose

He makes a lot of sense, and has much to offer, in a dignified manner. I guess his message just goes over some peoples heads.

someone should talk to john stossel about dickensian england and sweat shops and having no middle class...

since the middle class only exists in a regulated economy.

just sayin'

How do you know? When has an UNregulated economy every been attempted in history?

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Really? Been on a segregated bus lately? Been treated by a woman doctor? Remember the time when gays were beaten up "because they were asking for it"??

Yes, really. Remember Jim Crow laws? Remember separate but equal? Do you also remember that all of those were sanctioned by the government, and that it took an uprising by citizens to end it?

actually, it took a supreme court case to end it.

FindLaw | Cases and Codes

Really? I thought SCOTUS started it by ignoring the Constitution, and declaring that these laws were legal. The fact that they later overturned themselves does not change the fact that they made it possible.

 

[Mr. Peepers]

I imagine like most in this country you hate the free market because it requires a modicum of responsiblity on the account of the YOU the consumer.

Free market... responsibility? Yeah, EVERY DAMN TIME a market's regulation is loosened, we get Enron & World Com or toxic derivitives. I guess if the market's goal is to make as much money as possible BY any means possible, THAT is responsible, right? Stupid neocons.

We should just let corporations police themselves, right? They do SUCH a good job... Or maybe let them continue stock the regulatory boards with industry insiders like the meat industry as well as oil and Big Corn.

 

[Intense]

Oh really??

I have a god given ability to stop industries from poluting the air and water?
I can protect my home from a foreign invasion?
I can prevent people from discriminating against me if I am black, gay or a woman?
If I become injured on the job or sick, I can prevent them from firing me?

Some god you have there

With enough like minded people to support your cause, yes.

Isn't that what government is?

Government is The People, in spite of the attempts at hostile take over. The people are more than government.

 

[Intense]

I am trying to recall when the last time government decided for me----How about you?

Health care. Tax increases, massive spending, higher surcharges on utilities, fuel, necessities. Man your memory is short.

 

[ConHog]

I imagine like most in this country you hate the free market because it requires a modicum of responsiblity on the account of the YOU the consumer.

Free market... responsibility? Yeah, EVERY DAMN TIME a market's regulation is loosened, we get Enron & World Com or toxic derivitives. I guess if the market's goal is to make as much money as possible BY any means possible, THAT is responsible, right? Stupid neocons.

We should just let corporations police themselves, right? They do SUCH a good job... Or maybe let them continue stock the regulatory boards with industry insiders like the meat industry as well as oil and Big Corn.

LOL it busts me up how many people incorrectly apply that label.

 

[Bern80]

Free market... responsibility? Yeah, EVERY DAMN TIME a market's regulation is loosened, we get Enron & World Com or toxic derivitives. I guess if the market's goal is to make as much money as possible BY any means possible, THAT is responsible, right? Stupid neocons.

So you're telling us with all the regulation you would like to see there will be no corruption EVER right? Because a few companies out of the THOUSANDS in this country were corrupt that is evidence of a failure of the free market system? The market doesn't have a goal. The market is simply a venue for people to conduct transactions in. Your beliefs aside, please attempt a little intellectual honesty.

We should just let corporations police themselves, right? They do SUCH a good job... Or maybe let them continue stock the regulatory boards with industry insiders like the meat industry as well as oil and Big Corn.

That is what I mean by you being accountable. YOU are the police of the corporations in a free market. YOU decided whether you want to give them your money. YOU decide whether they succeed or fail. That is a simple fact.

 

[Mr. Peepers]

LOL it busts me up how many people incorrectly apply that label.

Okay, we'll go with "stupid corporatist" then. How's that? And only a handful are corrupt and greedy? Just look at the recent collapse of the WORLD ECONOMY and tell me that was a "handful" of corporations. I would say all corporations have the propensity for harm due to their "profit is the only thing that matters" mentality. It's the nature of the beast, and that beast will try to get away with whatever it can to any effect - as long as it makes money. Are you really going to play stupid and deny this? Thus, we (the people) want to be able to watch, and control somewhat, what these corporations are doing because you can not trust any for-profit entity. Youo just can't.

 

[sweetie]

QUANTUM WINDBAG: "Dollars might be a fiction of the government, but they work. They standardize barter rates and facilitate trade. What exactly is your beef with them?



...QUANTUM, INTENSE, BERN 80, etc. monetary/economics THEORISTS, etc. assorted monetary ignoramusses, 'money' is one of the basics of society..certainly even you monetary ignoramusses would have to agree that a corrupt, insane, etc.. 'money system' (money creation/issuance. etc..) would/might facilitate a corrupt, insane society..no?..

...furthermore, EVERYONE i know who has HONESTLY looked into 'the money (issuance, etc..) fraud' has come to the conclusion that thi$ $tinking $ystem is corrupt, insane, intolerable..

...i don't know where you 'are' as to 'monetary realism'...i sense you--like every republicrat monetary ignoramus i've met--when asked, 'how does a dollar originate?,' would look at me funny and utter some stooooooopid fuck answer like, 'they print them'..(revealing utter unconscious ignorance)

...here's one of many tool$ i use on monetary ignoramusses that might help:..

...in discussing 'money' with republicrats (the smartest ones!) will state something like, 'we could use ANYTHING for money and the system would still work'..

...to which i reply, 'you mean we could use, say, horseshit for money?!?'

...to which the republicrat monetary ignoramus replies something like, 'yes..it wouldn't be as good as 'the dollar system'..but it would work'

...to which i reply, could we use, say, human shit?..would that work too?

...to which the republicrat monetary ignoramus replies (after curling up his/her nose), 'why yes, that would/could work too'..

...then i ask the republicrat monetary knucklehead, 'how about if we had a system whereby only certain peoples' shit could/would serve as the money..that only certain people could 'issue' new money and spend it into the economy 'in the first round?'

...here the republicrat monetary ignoramus will inevitably say something like, 'no, that's not fair at all'..



...you see republicrats, if you honestly understood your current money system, you would understand that the privilege of money issuance/creation has been given to people about whom you are worse than ignorant..(but you republicrat money dummies haven't an honest fucking clue what's going on..and ignorance is indeed bli$$!)

...so one of my 'beefs,' quantum, is that 'money' creation/issuance (please refer to your unread constitutions--art. 1 sec. 8 clause 5) was meant to be PUBLIC AND TRANSPARENT ...it CERTAINLY is not..in fact, we can't even get an honest audit out of these stinking motherfucking private bankster$ for whom you espou$e munchkin-like apologie$..

...furthermore, the stinking stooooooooooooooooopid notion that we have some 'free market' (implied that it is 'fair' to/for all) is absolute fucking horse$hit!..

..but have a good day anyway!..

 

[sweetie]

..a brief primer for you republicrat monetary ignoramusses like BERN 80..

A Privatised Money Supply: Modern Banking and the Fractional Reserve System

"A Privatised Money Supply

Modern Banking and the Fractional Reserve System

Do you know where the bank gets the $160,000 for your mortgage? It's very simple. Someone walks over to a computer and types 160,000 beside your name. With only $27.93 of cash reserves for every $10,000 of assets (as of June 1999) the bank has just created the remaining $159,553 of that interest-earning money out of thin air. When, after 25 years of hard work, you pay off your mortgage, the $159,553 vanishes back into thin air. Not so the interest however. It vanishes into the banker's pocket. Chartered (i.e. privately owned) banks, such as The Bank of Montreal, The Royal Bank, The CIBC, etc. have created about 95 percent of our total money supply ($589.1 billion as of Sept 1999) in exactly this way. But the cash reserves in their vaults amount to only a paltry $3.893 billion. (About $32 billion of cash circulates in public hands.) This is called fractional reserve banking, and it's the greatest scam of all time because it creates debt for no reason other than to enrich the banking class. Its long term effect – as becomes clearer every day – is to steadily suck wealth out of the community and into the hands of a few people, a fact that bankers and most politicians stubbornly refuse to admit. Charging interest on money created out of nothing is, in the main, unjust and immoral, and Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, the Bible (Deuteronomy 23:19), the Koran (2:275-278), the Catholic Church, many codes of law and most writers on morals have condemned it for more than two thousand years. The historical name for this evil is usury. Nevertheless bankers enjoy peace of mind because they know that the public thinks they merely lend out the savings of their depositors. In fact, banks create more than 95 percent of all deposits, for when a bank creates a loan it simultaneously creates a deposit. What banks do to justify the accusation of being economic parasites is to lend out interest-bearing money of their own creation using a very thin sliver of legal tender (cash) to back it up.

How did the banks gain this oppressive power of charging interest on mere computer entries? Very simply they lobbied and hoodwinked our politicians into giving it to them. Before World War II cash reserves of 1:10 had been the norm in practice. This meant that if you deposited $100 of cash in a bank, the banking system (though not that one bank) would eventually use that $100 to create up to $900 of credit. That credit shows up in their books as $900 of interest-bearing loans (assets), and $900 of deposits (liabilities). Note that credit is not cash – only the Bank of Canada (BoC) can print and coin money – but it's money nonetheless because you can buy things with it as long as the bank honours your cheques. In 1991 legislation was quietly passed that eliminated required cash reserves by mid 1994. The result? Figures from the Bank of Canada Review show that by September 1998 the ratio of the banks' cash reserves ($3.893 billion) to their total assets ($1393 billion) had soared to 1:358, a ratio that was never more than 1:15 in the first half of this century. That means for every dollar of cash in their vaults or deposited with the central bank (i.e. the BoC) the banks have conjured up $357 from the void which they've invested or lent out with interest. Hence the record profits. Meanwhile not one person in a hundred grasps the fact that our government permits private banks to create about 95 percent of our money supply bringing huge profits to them and endless debt to us. Nowadays the big profits lie in government bonds, currency speculation, the stock market, and derivatives; and banks, with their power of money creation, are up to their eyeballs in all four. But there's always a day of reckoning. History teaches us that banks are forever finding new ways to commit financial suicide, and when they do they bring the public down with them. (With the collapse of their debt-pyramids the once mighty Japanese banks have been living off the public purse for years.) But what we witnessed in 1998 was unprecedented in human history. In South East Asia, Russia and Latin America, national economies were plundered and millions impoverished, almost overnight, through the deliberate manipulation of "free" market forces......

....I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a monied aristocracy that has set the Government at defiance. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs.

Thomas Jefferson


Until the control of the issue of currency and credit is restored to government and recognized as its most conspicuous and sacred responsibility, all talk of sovereignty of Parliament and of democracy is idle and futile... Once a nation parts with control of its credit, it matters not who makes the nation's laws... Usury once in control will wreck any nation.

William Lyon Mackenzie King

Banking was conceived in iniquity and born in sin... Bankers own the earth. Take it away from them but leave them the power to create money, and, with a flick of the pen, they will create enough money to buy it back again... Take this great power away from them and all the great fortunes like mine will disappear and they ought to disappear, for then this would be a better and happier world to live in... But, if you want to be the slaves of the bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, then let bankers continue to create money and control credit.

Sir Josiah Stamp

(Governor of the Bank of England in the 1920s)

 

[sweetie]

..and one last thought republicrats, please, if you're going to work your foaming asskissers about 'the illion dollar economy' please learn what one 'dollar' is!..

...and have a good day!..

 

[Intense]

Life, Liberty, Property, The Pursuit of Happiness. There is no better way sweetie. Go ahead and sell yourself into slavery or serfdom, but that is where your voice and your rights end. I choose to retain mine. No hard feelings. Okay??? Let's shake on it.

 

[Intense]

Sweetie, How's that Statist Kool-Aid tasting comrade??? Remember not to look too closely or question. I'd hate to see you disappear. Every State needs a Winston Smith.