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And the depression of 1837 thru 1843?
The late 1850's?
The 1870's?
The 1890's?
No fed reserve then
1) Nobody said laissez-faire was perfect, you're going to have recessions in a perfect free market as well. They won't be as bad however because mal-investment will be liquidated.
2) However, most if not all of those periods you listed were the result of some form of government intervention in the market.
1) Ok, so do not blame economic down turns on a government that has lots of intervention. You can't have it both ways. I mean, what are you, an 8th grader or something?
2) You mean you want even less government involvement in society than what was going on in the 1830's? Really?
You are a perfect example of why people think Libertarian/Anarchists are fools
Yes.
.
Kook
Not sure where you got your stats, but you know that Iceland is close to economic collapse right? They invested heavily in the American mortgage CDO blunder!
I think a distinction needs to be made. The conservatives who have been in power over the last few decades have made us believe that ANY government spending is socialism. That's just not true. This country was built through strong government programs and spending. The conservative myth that all private spending is wise and productive and public spending foolish and wasteful is what has gotten us into the economic mess we find ourselves in today. There is nothing socialist about having a government that serves the people - we live in a democracy, not a socialist state. It's the decline in national investments that has led us to a place where from 1989 to 2006, the highest-earning 10 percent of U.S. households collected over 90 percent of the nations income gains. Today the top 1 percent of American families receives 23 percent of all personal income, up from just 10 percent in 1979. Corporate executives earn 275 times as much as average workers, compared with 27 times in 1973 (these facts are taken from the downloadable book "Thinking Big", which I highly recommend: Thinking Big). If the market and hard work could have made us a successful capitalist country in the long-term - we wouldn't have just seen a string of bailouts.
How many of those countries in that "list" have enjoyed that particular standard of living for many decades?
And awesome job debating OJ, I mean, you're like top of the class. Refer to someone as an 8th grader, and then subsequently call him a "kook".
Yeah, Venezuela was the closest country I could come up with that's as close to true socialism as you're going to get.
That being said, case in point. Venezuela's standard of living sucks.
A standard of living for which Americans? Affluent Americans or poor and Loe income Americans?
Many countries which provide health care to All citizens have a higher standard of living than the US.
There are few socialist countries in existence. The social democratic countries of Scandinavia and Western Europe are preferable to Western capitalism, true, but they are not socialist countries inasmuch as socialism is constituted by the public ownership and egalitarian distribution of the means of production.
It is a similar fallacy that mixed market capitalism, (the only variety of capitalism that has ever existed, incidentally), is a "mix of capitalism and socialism." It's merely a different variety of capitalism from the social democratic.
As for legitimately socialist countries, Robin Hahnel speaks wisely when he notes the progressive economic reforms in Venezuela, for instance. "Like most Latin American economies, the Venezuelan economy deteriorated during the 1980s and most of the 1990s. From 1998 to 2003 real per capita GDP continued to stagnate while the Chavez government survived two general strikes by the largest Venezuelan business association, a military coup, and finally a devastating two month strike by the state owned oil company. However, after Chavez survived the opposition sponsored recall election, annual economic growth was 18.3% in 2004, 10.3% in 2005, and 10.3% in 2006, and the unemployment rate fell from 18.4 % in June 2003 to 8.3% in June 2007. Moreover, most of the growth was in the non-oil sectors of the economy, as the oil sector barely grew during 2005 and 2006. While this impressive growth would not have been possible without the rise in international oil prices, it also would not have been possible had the Chavez government not ignored the warnings of neoliberal critics and pursued aggressive expansionary fiscal and monetary policies.
At the height of the oil strike the poverty rate rose to 55.1% of households and a startling 62.1% of the population. However, by the end of 2006 the poverty rate had declined dramatically to 30.6% of households and 36.3% of the population, which compares favorably with a pre-Chavez rate of poverty in 1997 for households of 55.6% and for individuals of 60.9%. While much of this decrease in poverty was due to strong economic growth, it was also due to a dramatic increase in social spending by the Chavez government. Social spending per person by the central government increased by an average of 19% per year from 1998 to 2007. However, this does not include social spending by the state-owned oil company. If social spending by PDVSA is included, there was an increase of 35% per person per year since 1998. The most dramatic increase in social spending was in the area of health care. In 1998 there were over 14,000 Venezuelans for each primary healthcare physician, and few physicians worked in rural or poor urban areas. By 2007 there was one primary healthcare physician for every 1,300 Venezuelans, and many of the new physicians were working in clinics in rural areas and poor barrios that had never had physicians before.2 There are also now 16,000 stores in poor areas throughout the country selling staples at a 30% discount on average."
This is what the natural legacy of socialism will be. As a result of its hierarchical nature, capitalism suffers from numerous inefficiencies that inhibit productivity. Socialism does not suffer from such inefficiencies, since a critical element of public ownership of the means of production is autogestion. (Workers' self-management.)
What bullshit. No conservative thinks ANY spending socialism. The constitution clearly distinguishes what congress can spend money on.
That some have taken a particular part of the constitution (general welfare of the US) and twisted it to mean whatever they WANT it to mean, and some of us oppose that, does not mean we oppose any spending at all.
No twisting involved. The government is constitutionally authorized to do whatever it takes to promote the general welfare of the citizens as long as doing so doesn't violate their civil rights.What bullshit. No conservative thinks ANY spending socialism. The constitution clearly distinguishes what congress can spend money on.
That some have taken a particular part of the constitution (general welfare of the US) and twisted it to mean whatever they WANT it to mean, and some of us oppose that, does not mean we oppose any spending at all.
No twisting involved. The government is constitutionally authorized to do whatever it takes to promote the general welfare of the citizens as long as doing so doesn't violate their civil rights.
