What is the ideal Liberal world?

[Bern80]

Ridiculous question. Do you think health care should be discriminatory?

Regardless of how it is paid for, health care will always be discriminatory.

[If you persist in making stuff up, there's really no point to talking to you. However, what I will say is there are times government action is appropriate (like when companies pollute the environment or engage in price gouging) and times it shouldn't (like over my personal decisions regarding my body). See how that works?

So by extension you should be for not growing government, yet you support a party that consistantly does everything but find ways to NOT grow government.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

We're not the retards that voted for him as such... and, please learn to hide your jealousy.. its very unbecoming of you there gay sgt guy...

Oh look unable to escape your liberal " I am superior" comments so instead try and make a personal attack to cover it up. Here let me respond in kind, JeepersIamstupid.

 

[Tech_Esq]

I don't think you understand the subtle difference between Nazi National Socialism and regular socialism or Communism. See National Socialism is at its core. Everything is for the state, where as Socialism or Communism is suppose to be everything is for the people. Of course in practice communism never was this, but on paper that is what is meant to be.

When you say the left in America is closer to National Socialism you are ignoring the National Part of it. In Nazi Germany everything was to better the state. In communist Russia everything was suppose to be for the betterment of the people. Like I said in practice that is not what happened, never the less it is what it was meant to be.

Personally I think Amagonnakillyoualls stated ideas more closely resemble Nazi national socialism than traditional For the people Socialism.

I happen to be re-reading "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" right now. I would commend to everyone the first 50 pages of this book which deals with the rise to power of a charismatic leader and the reaction of the people during the process and see if it doesn't make you think.

Hitler was never a fan nor believer in the "socialism" part of National Socialism. Strasser (the number two killed during the night of the long knives) and Goebbels were believers in this part Goebbels repented and lived to tell about it. (for a while).

The effective difference between the Nazis and the Communists were the control of the means of production. The Nazis were perfectly content with private enterprise maintaining control of production. The Communists want the state to own the means of production and use a centralized planning method.

Nationalism and the restoration of respect for Germany and the German people were far more important to the Nazis than anything to do with economics. Hitler neither understood economics nor spent much time thinking about it. He did spend a great amount of time synthesizing Hegel and Neitche into a theory about Arayan/Germanic superiority and its consequent right to rule as the natural super race. He also thought much about, in a practical political way, the definition of a "Greater Germany" including all parts of the Germanic peoples Austria, Sudatenland, Prussia, Denmark, Holland.

As far as comparative politics between the Iranian theocracy and the Nazis, I'm not sure how far you can go. So much of Nazism was peculiarly German and had to do with pre and post WW I German society.

There are certain parallels you can draw though. There is certainly a nationalist agenda at work in Iran. Their perverted view of their religion for nationalistic purposes could be said to supplant the quasi-religion of Nazism (although I recognize that the Nazis officially didn't outlaw the practice of mainstream religion, certainly in the SS Nazism replaced traditional religion). Iran is also clearly expansionist and they have identified the same scape goat for all their ills as the Nazis did (the Jews). The bombastic rhetoric of their chosen leader does make it difficult to overlook the few parallels that exist and there is little doubt that given the opportunity, this government of theirs would commit genocide.

 

[Jeepers]

So your saying is bad to unite religion, politics, business and bomastic rhetoric... I feel I must totally agree with you...

 

[editec]

Hitler was never a fan nor believer in the "socialism" part of National Socialism. Strasser (the number two killed during the night of the long knives) and Goebbels were believers in this part Goebbels repented and lived to tell about it. (for a while).

The effective difference between the Nazis and the Communists were the control of the means of production. The Nazis were perfectly content with private enterprise maintaining control of production. The Communists want the state to own the means of production and use a centralized planning method.

Spot on.

As far as comparative politics between the Iranian theocracy and the Nazis, I'm not sure how far you can go. So much of Nazism was peculiarly German and had to do with pre and post WW I German society.

Exactly.

There are certain parallels you can draw though. There is certainly a nationalist agenda at work in Iran. Their perverted view of their religion for nationalistic purposes could be said to supplant the quasi-religion of Nazism (although I recognize that the Nazis officially didn't outlaw the practice of mainstream religion, certainly in the SS Nazism replaced traditional religion). Iran is also clearly expansionist and they have identified the same scape goat for all their ills as the Nazis did (the Jews).

AND the Americans. Of course in the case of their bitching about the Americans interference, they are justified in that fear, since it was the CIA which installed the Shah of Iran.

The bombastic rhetoric of their chosen leader does make it difficult to overlook the few parallels that exist and there is little doubt that given the opportunity, this government of theirs would commit genocide.

The current leaders of Iran are racists as well as being nationalists.

Their obsession with the existence of Isreal and their desire to destroy Israel is inexcusable. Their denial of the holocaust is all the evidence I need to know they are lying sacks of shit who are not to be trusted.

HOWEVER...

Their fear of Western influence and interference with their internal affairs is completely justified, given past and current events.

They read the New Yorks times, same as we do.

They know perfectly well that the USA is conducting a covert campaign to destabilize their government.

And while I am sympathetic to the West's desire to get rid of the government current in power in Iran, I am of the opinion that is really is up to the people of Iran to decide what government they will have, and that all our efforts to destabilize that government are in fact making it MORE secure.

Why do I say this?

Because even those Iranians who HATE the current regime REMEMBER what a human piece of excrement the SHAH of IRAN was, and they KNOW, unlike most Americans apparently, that THE SHAH'S SECRET POLICE were TRAINED by General Schwartzkauph's FATHER under the direction of the CIA.

So while the intelligensia of Iran (and there are a LOT of those) HATE their current goverment and could care less about Israel (and they do, hat their goverment and they don't care about Israel, believe me) they do NOT trust the USA to save them from that government because of the sins of OUR FATHERS.

 

[Tech_Esq]

Spot on.




Exactly.




AND the Americans. Of course in the case of their bitching about the Americans interference, they are justified in that fear, since it was the CIA which installed the Shah of Iran.




The current leaders of Iran are racists as well as being nationalists.

Their obsession with the existence of Isreal and their desire to destroy Israel is inexcusable. Their denial of the holocaust is all the evidence I need to know they are lying sacks of shit who are not to be trusted.

HOWEVER...

Their fear of Western influence and interference with their internal affairs is completely justified, given past and current events.

They read the New Yorks times, same as we do.

They know perfectly well that the USA is conducting a covert campaign to destabilize their government.

And while I am sympathetic to the West's desire to get rid of the government current in power in Iran, I am of the opinion that is really is up to the people of Iran to decide what government they will have, and that all our efforts to destabilize that government are in fact making it MORE secure.

Why do I say this?

Because even those Iranians who HATE the current regime REMEMBER what a human piece of excrement the SHAH of IRAN was, and they KNOW, unlike most Americans apparently, that THE SHAH'S SECRET POLICE were TRAINED by General Schwartzkauph's FATHER under the direction of the CIA.

So while the intelligensia of Iran (and there are a LOT of those) HATE their current goverment and could care less about Israel (and they do, hat their goverment and they don't care about Israel, believe me) they do NOT trust the USA to save them from that government because of the sins of OUR FATHERS.

The US pursued a rather Machiavellian foreign policy through a good part of the Cold War. Both parties participated heavily in this. I'm not even sure you could say one was worse than the other. Iran was a very central front in pursuing the Truman Doctrine (Containment of the Soviet Union and the spread of Communism). The US, left to its own devices, did this by supporting or installing strongly right-wing monarchist or dictatorial governments in a whole host of places, but especially in places that were on the front-line facing Communist countries or in places where countries were likely to flip to Communist (in the eyes of DOS or CIA).

Those are the facts. So what? It's easy to sit back 50 years later and moralize about how ham-handed and evil the US was back then. I think you are correct that some people in the countries effected still have a bad taste in their mouth about the intervention. Saying that it is universal overstates your case.

I can tell you that the fight in those days was very real. The Soviets were not too shy about absorbing countries during that period. Keeping Greece out of the Soviet bloc was no mean feat and involved actual fighting on the part of the UK and eventually US support to keep it from happening. Iran shared a border with the USSR and the Russian desire for a warm water port is a centuries old and burning desire. Taking Iran would have given them more oil and a warm water port. Can you imagine what the world would look like with the Soviet Navy dominating the Persian Gulf for the last 50 years?

I'm not excusing the US policy during that time, but we were a relative newbie at International intrigue and spy games on a vast level. Remember prior to WW II we were isolationist. Sure we were in WW I for a minute, but we hadn't done much before then and immediately retreated after WW I ended. By the time Truman announced the Containment Policy in 1948 we had been actors on the world stage only since 1942. In 1950, two years later, the North Koreans attacked South Korea. In 1948, the Soviets blockaded Berlin forcing the Berlin Airlift. Also in 1948, Mao succeeded in defeating Chang Chi Chech (Sp) to win mainland China for the Communists. Communism was strongly on the move. We do our analysis a disservice to not remember the context in which events occurred.

By the way, not too long ago I discussed the issue of the likelihood of US invasion of Iran with an Iranian couple. Their fervent desire was that the US would invade to free Iran. They were very disappointed with my opinion that it was the last thing we would probably do. So, go figure.

 

[sealybobo]

I am a conservative so I may have this all wrong but here is my serious understanding of what liberals want.

1.) Universal Healthcare - Does this include all healthcare? Or only certain things? If only certain things, who decides? If 2 gay lovers have anal sex and get AIDS, does that mean other Americans pay for their treatment?

2.) Abortions - Government should fund abortions, including partial birth abortions?

3.) Affirmative action? Qualifications don't matter only race, correct?

4.) Gay Marriage - Gays should have the same right to marry and have the same benefits as heterosexuals?

5.) Thinks the environment and animals are more or equally as important as humans.

6.) Believe that the theory of Global Warming is caused by humans. Let's just be fair though, there has been no proof yet.

7.) Anti-War - meaning all disagreements can be resolved by means of communication.

8.) Believe that the government should be more in control than the individual.

9.) Anti death penalty

10) Progressive tax - The more you make the more you should be taxed... I assume this is an effort to make everyone earn the same amount of money, yes?

Am I correct on these statments?

Just trying to understand more.....

1. There is no such thing as a "free market."

2. The "middle class" is the creation of government intervention in the marketplace, and won't exist without it (as millions of Americans and Europeans are discovering).

The conservative belief in "free markets" is a bit like the Catholic Church's insistence that the Earth was at the center of the Solar System in the Twelfth Century. It's widely believed by those in power, those who challenge it are branded heretics and ridiculed, and it is wrong.

In actual fact, there is no such thing as a "free market." Markets are the creation of government.

Governments provide a stable currency to make markets possible. They provide a legal infrastructure and court systems to enforce the contracts that make markets possible. They provide educated workforces through public education, and those workers show up at their places of business after traveling on public roads, rails, or airways provided by government. Businesses that use the "free market" are protected by police and fire departments provided by government, and send their communications - from phone to fax to internet - over lines that follow public rights-of-way maintained and protected by government.

And, most important, the rules of the game of business are defined by government. Any sports fan can tell you that football, baseball, or hockey without rules and referees would be a mess. Similarly, business without rules won't work.

Which explains why conservative economics wiped out the middle class during the period from 1880 to 1932, and why, when Reagan again began applying conservative economics, the middle class again began to vanish in America in the 1980s - a process that has dramatically picked up steam under George W. Bush.

The conservative mantra is "let the market decide." But there is no market independent of government, so what they're really saying is, "Stop corporations from defending workers and building a middle class, and let the corporations decide how much to pay for labor and how to trade." This is, at best, destructive to national and international economies, and, at worst, destructive to democracy itself.

Markets are a creation of government, just as corporations exist only by authorization of government. Governments set the rules of the market. And, since our government is of, by, and for We The People, those rules have historically been set to first maximize the public good resulting from people doing business.

If you want to play the game of business, we've said in the US since 1784 (when Tench Coxe got the first tariffs passed "to protect domestic industries") then you have to play in a way that both makes you money AND serves the public interest.

Which requires us to puncture the second balloon of popular belief. The "middle class" is not the natural result of freeing business to do whatever it wants, of "free and open markets," or of "free trade." The "middle class" is not a normal result of "free markets." Those policies will produce a small but powerful wealthy class, a small "middle" mercantilist class, and a huge and terrified worker class which have traditionally been called "serfs."

The middle class is a new invention of liberal democracies, the direct result of governments defining the rules of the game of business. It is, quite simply, an artifact of government regulation of markets and tax laws.

When government sets the rules of the game of business in such a way that working people must receive a living wage, labor has the power to organize into unions just as capital can organize into corporations, and domestic industries are protected from overseas competition, a middle class will emerge. When government gives up these functions, the middle class vanishes and we return to the Dickens-era "normal" form of totally free market conservative economics where the rich get richer while the working poor are kept in a constant state of fear and anxiety so the cost of their labor will always be cheap.

When conservatives rail in the media of the dangers of "returning to Smoot Hawley, which created the Great Depression," all they do is reveal their ignorance of economics and history. The Smoot-Hawley tariff legislation, which increased taxes on some imported goods by a third to two-thirds to protect American industries, was signed into law on June 17, 1930, well into the Great Depression. In the following two years, international trade dropped from 6 percent of GNP to roughly 2 percent of GNP (between 1930 and 1932), but most of that was the result of the depression going worldwide, not Smoot-Hawley. The main result of Smoot-Hawley was that American businesses now had strong financial incentives to do business with other American companies, rather than bring in products made with cheaper foreign labor: Americans started trading with other Americans.

Smoot-Hawley "protectionist" legislation did not cause the Great Depression, and while it may have had a slight short-term negative effect on the economy ("1.4 percent at most" according to many historians) its long-term effect was to bring American jobs back to America.

The fact that the "marketplace" was an artifact of government activity was well known to our Founders. As Thomas Jefferson said in an 1803 letter to David Williams, "The greatest evils of populous society have ever appeared to me to spring from the vicious distribution of its members among the occupations... But when, by a blind concourse, particular occupations are ruinously overcharged and others left in want of hands, the national authorities can do much towards restoring the equilibrium."

And the "national authorities," in Jefferson's mind, should be the Congress, as he wrote in a series of answers to the French politician de Meusnier in 1786: "The commerce of the States cannot be regulated to the best advantage but by a single body, and no body so proper as Congress."

Of course, there were conservatives (like Hamilton and Adams) in Jefferson's time, too, who took exception, thinking that the trickle-down theory that had dominated feudal Europe for ten centuries was a stable and healthy form of governance. Jefferson took exception, in an 1809 letter to members of his Democratic Republican Party (now called the Democratic Party): "The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government."

But, conservatives say, government is the problem, not the solution.

Of course, they can't explain how it was that the repeated series of huge tax cuts for the wealthy by the Herbert Hoover administration brought us the Great Depression, while raising taxes to provide for an active and interventionist government to protect the rights of labor to organize throughout the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s led us to the Golden Age of the American Middle Class. (The top tax rate in 1930 under Hoover was 25 percent, and even that was only paid by about a fifth of wealthy Americans. Thirty years later, the top tax rate was 91 percent, and held at 70 percent until Reagan began dismantling the middle class. As the top rate dropped, so did the middle class it helped create.)

Thomas Jefferson pointed out, in an 1816 letter to William H. Crawford, "Every society has a right to fix the fundamental principles of its association." He also pointed out in that letter that some people - and businesses - would prefer that government not play referee to the game of business, not fix rules that protect labor or provide for the protection of the commons and the public good.

We must, Jefferson wrote to Crawford, "...say to all [such] individuals, that if they contemplate pursuits beyond the limits of these principles and involving dangers which the society chooses to avoid, they must go somewhere else for their exercise; that we want no citizens, and still less ephemeral and pseudo-citizens [like corporations], on such terms. We may exclude them from our territory, as we do persons infected with disease."

Most of the Founders advocated - and all ultimately passed - tariffs to protect domestic industries and workers. Seventy years later, Abraham Lincoln actively stood up for the right for labor to organize, intervening in several strikes to stop corporations and local governments from using hired goon squads to beat and murder strikers.

But conservative economics - the return of ancient feudalism - rose up after Lincoln's death and reigned through the Gilded Age, creating both great wealth and a huge population of what today we call the "working poor." American reaction to these disparities gave birth to the Populist, Progressive, and modern Labor movements. Two generations later, Franklin Roosevelt brought us out of Herbert Hoover's conservative-economics-produced Great Depression and bequeathed us with more than a half-century of prosperity.

But now the conservatives are back in the driver's seat, and heading us back toward feudalism and serfdom (and possibly another Great Depression).

Only a return to liberal economic policies - a return to We The People again setting and enforcing the rules of the game of business - will reverse this dangerous trend. We've done it before, with tariffs, anti-trust legislation, and worker protections ranging from enforcing the rights of organized labor to restricting American companies' access to cheap foreign labor through visas and tariffs. The result was the production of something never before seen in history: a strong and vibrant middle class.

If the remnants of that modern middle class are to survive - and grow - we must learn the lessons of the past and return to the policies that in the 1780s and the late 1930s brought this nation back from the brink of economic disaster.

 

[Tech_Esq]

Sealy:

Your yearning for the past is both quaint and very reactionary for a "progressive". Extensively quoting Jefferson on economic theory to support desired changes now is a little silly. Corporations, labor et cetera were fundamentally different than now. Hell, while he was writing about protecting labor, he was busy owning slaves.

On your basic points:
"Governments create markets" - They can, but that doesn't appear to be what you are talking about. You're saying markets can exist without government. I think that depends on whether you subscribe to a Lockean theory of the state of nature or a Hobbesian theory of the state of nature. If you buy Locke, then of course, I grow apples in my apple tree, then I bring some them to you and you give me a chicken. We now have a market. We don't need no stinking government. If we add more people and more goods to our trading, we have a bigger market.

Of course, if Hobbes is your guy, then you must have a government because instead of bring you my apples to get your chicken, I would have brought a sling and a rock and killed you and took your chickens. I happen to buy Locke.

What I would say is that governments are the great facilitators of markets and of ever more complex markets. They facilitate markets by doing the things you talk about.

"Government engineered the rise of the Middle Class" - I would say you vastly overstate this point. The middle class rose in feudal times with the mercantile class. I would say that governments paid greater attention to ensuring the rise and health of the middle class from 1848-1925. Those that didn't were targeted by the Communists for revolution.

"We ought to adopt an isolationist economic policy" - Wishing for the past won't make it come back. With global communications only speeding up, there is no practical way to do what you want. Further, if you "just did it anyway," you would probably cause a global economic collapse and the deaths of millions of people. Such a great consumer the US is that the effects and shock waves of such a policy would devastate the third-world.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

We are DEPENDANT on way to much in the Global market to retreat behind our borders. We were long before our Industry started fleeing the Country.

An example, something like 90 percent of the materials we used in the space shuttle and NASA were acquired out of the Country.

We have no real heavy Industry anymore, we have very little textile left. Our Steel mills are giant rust buckets, Most of our Ship Building capacity is gone. We don't even mine materials we need like we should, rather we get them from the global market.

There is no retreating behind our borders,

 

[Toro]

Sealy constructs a straw man, arguing against something that does not exist. For conservatives do not believe in no government and no laws effecting economic transactions. Instead, they argue that governments should intervene and construct laws only when necessary, though necessity is more limited as defined by conservatives than by liberals.

In reality, the argument is a relative one, not an absolute one. Saying that conservatives believe in no government interference is like saying liberals believe in communism. Both are silly conclusions.

 

[Mr. Right]

I can settle all arguments with one statement.

Liberals should pay 80% of their money in taxes and conservatives should pay 10%, then we all would be happy.

 

[Your Overlord]

I can settle all arguments with one statement.

Liberals should pay 80% of their money in taxes and conservatives should pay 10%, then we all would be happy.

and the rich that feel guilty
should give all their money to the poor and live in government housing

sounds good to me

 

[sealybobo]

Sealy:

Your yearning for the past is both quaint and very reactionary for a "progressive". Extensively quoting Jefferson on economic theory to support desired changes now is a little silly. Corporations, labor et cetera were fundamentally different than now. Hell, while he was writing about protecting labor, he was busy owning slaves.

On your basic points:
"Governments create markets" - They can, but that doesn't appear to be what you are talking about. You're saying markets can exist without government. I think that depends on whether you subscribe to a Lockean theory of the state of nature or a Hobbesian theory of the state of nature. If you buy Locke, then of course, I grow apples in my apple tree, then I bring some them to you and you give me a chicken. We now have a market. We don't need no stinking government. If we add more people and more goods to our trading, we have a bigger market.

Of course, if Hobbes is your guy, then you must have a government because instead of bring you my apples to get your chicken, I would have brought a sling and a rock and killed you and took your chickens. I happen to buy Locke.

What I would say is that governments are the great facilitators of markets and of ever more complex markets. They facilitate markets by doing the things you talk about.

"Government engineered the rise of the Middle Class" - I would say you vastly overstate this point. The middle class rose in feudal times with the mercantile class. I would say that governments paid greater attention to ensuring the rise and health of the middle class from 1848-1925. Those that didn't were targeted by the Communists for revolution.

"We ought to adopt an isolationist economic policy" - Wishing for the past won't make it come back. With global communications only speeding up, there is no practical way to do what you want. Further, if you "just did it anyway," you would probably cause a global economic collapse and the deaths of millions of people. Such a great consumer the US is that the effects and shock waves of such a policy would devastate the third-world.

Great reply.

I just don't think Corporate America would treat the middle class fair if there weren't a government to force them to be fair.

Look at minimum wage. Not that I care about minimum wage really, but consider that corporate America never raised minimum wage on their own. The government had to do it every time.

And unions were started and labor laws were enacted because corporations were not treating their employees fairly.

I heard somewhere, and I might not say it right, but every once in awhile workers have to revolt. Farmers did it, then there was the industrial revolution, then we had the Jimmy Hoffa unions, and I believe another one is coming, because corporations are making record profits and the middle class is taking the hit.

And I didn't say markets can't exist without government. I said markets would not pay a living wage if it weren't for government.

 

[Your Overlord]

1. There is no such thing as a "free market."

2. The "middle class" is the creation of government intervention in the marketplace, and won't exist without it (as millions of Americans and Europeans are discovering).

The conservative belief in "free markets" is a bit like the Catholic Church's insistence that the Earth was at the center of the Solar System in the Twelfth Century. It's widely believed by those in power, those who challenge it are branded heretics and ridiculed, and it is wrong.

In actual fact, there is no such thing as a "free market." Markets are the creation of government.

Governments provide a stable currency to make markets possible. They provide a legal infrastructure and court systems to enforce the contracts that make markets possible. They provide educated workforces through public education, and those workers show up at their places of business after traveling on public roads, rails, or airways provided by government. Businesses that use the "free market" are protected by police and fire departments provided by government, and send their communications - from phone to fax to internet - over lines that follow public rights-of-way maintained and protected by government.

And, most important, the rules of the game of business are defined by government. Any sports fan can tell you that football, baseball, or hockey without rules and referees would be a mess. Similarly, business without rules won't work.

Which explains why conservative economics wiped out the middle class during the period from 1880 to 1932, and why, when Reagan again began applying conservative economics, the middle class again began to vanish in America in the 1980s - a process that has dramatically picked up steam under George W. Bush.

The conservative mantra is "let the market decide." But there is no market independent of government, so what they're really saying is, "Stop corporations from defending workers and building a middle class, and let the corporations decide how much to pay for labor and how to trade." This is, at best, destructive to national and international economies, and, at worst, destructive to democracy itself.

Markets are a creation of government, just as corporations exist only by authorization of government. Governments set the rules of the market. And, since our government is of, by, and for We The People, those rules have historically been set to first maximize the public good resulting from people doing business.

If you want to play the game of business, we've said in the US since 1784 (when Tench Coxe got the first tariffs passed "to protect domestic industries") then you have to play in a way that both makes you money AND serves the public interest.

Which requires us to puncture the second balloon of popular belief. The "middle class" is not the natural result of freeing business to do whatever it wants, of "free and open markets," or of "free trade." The "middle class" is not a normal result of "free markets." Those policies will produce a small but powerful wealthy class, a small "middle" mercantilist class, and a huge and terrified worker class which have traditionally been called "serfs."

The middle class is a new invention of liberal democracies, the direct result of governments defining the rules of the game of business. It is, quite simply, an artifact of government regulation of markets and tax laws.

When government sets the rules of the game of business in such a way that working people must receive a living wage, labor has the power to organize into unions just as capital can organize into corporations, and domestic industries are protected from overseas competition, a middle class will emerge. When government gives up these functions, the middle class vanishes and we return to the Dickens-era "normal" form of totally free market conservative economics where the rich get richer while the working poor are kept in a constant state of fear and anxiety so the cost of their labor will always be cheap.

When conservatives rail in the media of the dangers of "returning to Smoot Hawley, which created the Great Depression," all they do is reveal their ignorance of economics and history. The Smoot-Hawley tariff legislation, which increased taxes on some imported goods by a third to two-thirds to protect American industries, was signed into law on June 17, 1930, well into the Great Depression. In the following two years, international trade dropped from 6 percent of GNP to roughly 2 percent of GNP (between 1930 and 1932), but most of that was the result of the depression going worldwide, not Smoot-Hawley. The main result of Smoot-Hawley was that American businesses now had strong financial incentives to do business with other American companies, rather than bring in products made with cheaper foreign labor: Americans started trading with other Americans.

Smoot-Hawley "protectionist" legislation did not cause the Great Depression, and while it may have had a slight short-term negative effect on the economy ("1.4 percent at most" according to many historians) its long-term effect was to bring American jobs back to America.

The fact that the "marketplace" was an artifact of government activity was well known to our Founders. As Thomas Jefferson said in an 1803 letter to David Williams, "The greatest evils of populous society have ever appeared to me to spring from the vicious distribution of its members among the occupations... But when, by a blind concourse, particular occupations are ruinously overcharged and others left in want of hands, the national authorities can do much towards restoring the equilibrium."

And the "national authorities," in Jefferson's mind, should be the Congress, as he wrote in a series of answers to the French politician de Meusnier in 1786: "The commerce of the States cannot be regulated to the best advantage but by a single body, and no body so proper as Congress."

Of course, there were conservatives (like Hamilton and Adams) in Jefferson's time, too, who took exception, thinking that the trickle-down theory that had dominated feudal Europe for ten centuries was a stable and healthy form of governance. Jefferson took exception, in an 1809 letter to members of his Democratic Republican Party (now called the Democratic Party): "The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government."

But, conservatives say, government is the problem, not the solution.

Of course, they can't explain how it was that the repeated series of huge tax cuts for the wealthy by the Herbert Hoover administration brought us the Great Depression, while raising taxes to provide for an active and interventionist government to protect the rights of labor to organize throughout the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s led us to the Golden Age of the American Middle Class. (The top tax rate in 1930 under Hoover was 25 percent, and even that was only paid by about a fifth of wealthy Americans. Thirty years later, the top tax rate was 91 percent, and held at 70 percent until Reagan began dismantling the middle class. As the top rate dropped, so did the middle class it helped create.)

Thomas Jefferson pointed out, in an 1816 letter to William H. Crawford, "Every society has a right to fix the fundamental principles of its association." He also pointed out in that letter that some people - and businesses - would prefer that government not play referee to the game of business, not fix rules that protect labor or provide for the protection of the commons and the public good.

We must, Jefferson wrote to Crawford, "...say to all [such] individuals, that if they contemplate pursuits beyond the limits of these principles and involving dangers which the society chooses to avoid, they must go somewhere else for their exercise; that we want no citizens, and still less ephemeral and pseudo-citizens [like corporations], on such terms. We may exclude them from our territory, as we do persons infected with disease."

Most of the Founders advocated - and all ultimately passed - tariffs to protect domestic industries and workers. Seventy years later, Abraham Lincoln actively stood up for the right for labor to organize, intervening in several strikes to stop corporations and local governments from using hired goon squads to beat and murder strikers.

But conservative economics - the return of ancient feudalism - rose up after Lincoln's death and reigned through the Gilded Age, creating both great wealth and a huge population of what today we call the "working poor." American reaction to these disparities gave birth to the Populist, Progressive, and modern Labor movements. Two generations later, Franklin Roosevelt brought us out of Herbert Hoover's conservative-economics-produced Great Depression and bequeathed us with more than a half-century of prosperity.

But now the conservatives are back in the driver's seat, and heading us back toward feudalism and serfdom (and possibly another Great Depression).

Only a return to liberal economic policies - a return to We The People again setting and enforcing the rules of the game of business - will reverse this dangerous trend. We've done it before, with tariffs, anti-trust legislation, and worker protections ranging from enforcing the rights of organized labor to restricting American companies' access to cheap foreign labor through visas and tariffs. The result was the production of something never before seen in history: a strong and vibrant middle class.

If the remnants of that modern middle class are to survive - and grow - we must learn the lessons of the past and return to the policies that in the 1780s and the late 1930s brought this nation back from the brink of economic disaster.

that is literally and figuratively the biggest load of garbage I have ever heard
let me guess
you went to Harvard didn't you
your history is
pretty bad
but your facts are far worse

 

[editec]

The US pursued a rather Machiavellian foreign policy through a good part of the Cold War. Both parties participated heavily in this. I'm not even sure you could say one was worse than the other.

Yup.

Iran was a very central front in pursuing the Truman Doctrine (Containment of the Soviet Union and the spread of Communism). The US, left to its own devices, did this by supporting or installing strongly right-wing monarchist or dictatorial governments in a whole host of places, but especially in places that were on the front-line facing Communist countries or in places where countries were likely to flip to Communist (in the eyes of DOS or CIA).

Yup.

Those are the facts. So what?

"So what?" to us, maybe. STILL A rather big deal to the people of Iran, methinks.

It's easy to sit back 50 years later and moralize about how ham-handed and evil the US was back then.

Yes it is.

Of course, how much easier it is to be sanguine about that when your grandfather was NOT tortured by the dictator installed by foreign infidels.

I think you are correct that some people in the countries effected still have a bad taste in their mouth about the intervention. Saying that it is universal overstates your case.

Well then... let me COSMICALLY overstate my case.

The entire ARAB and PERSIAN world, current allies included, do NOT trust the USA.

Unlike your average American, many people in the world do not forget history a day after it is off page one of the headlines.

I can tell you that the fight in those days was very real. The Soviets were not too shy about absorbing countries during that period. Keeping Greece out of the Soviet bloc was no mean feat and involved actual fighting on the part of the UK and eventually US support to keep it from happening. Iran shared a border with the USSR and the Russian desire for a warm water port is a centuries old and burning desire.

True enough, but the soviets were not a great threat to Iran. What WAS a threat was the person dep[osed who had the unmitigated audacity to want to NATIONALIZE IRANIAN OIL RESERVES.

Hence, in the time honored tradition of of the cold war, the man was painted as a COMMUNIST PUPPET.

He was NOT. He was a nationalist who wanted to end the British domination of the Iranian's oil fields.

Taking Iran would have given them more oil and a warm water port. Can you imagine what the world would look like with the Soviet Navy dominating the Persian Gulf for the last 50 years?

No, see above

I'm not excusing the US policy during that time,

Sure you are...by assuming that I am faulting it on moral grounds, but that's an easy mistake to make. I am faulting American foreign policy because it failed, not because it was immoral.

But you doing it honestly enough, based on the myth (I think, at least) that the Soviets had a chance of taking over Iran, or that the regime in power before the Shaw (whose name escapes me at the moment) was leaning toward becoming a Communism satillite.

The PERSIANS LOATHE communism, no less than the ARABS do. They TRUST the RUSSIANS not a fig, and never really have. Only an organization as ignorant as the CIA was at the time, could possibly have not known that.

but we were a relative newbie at International intrigue and spy games on a vast level. Remember prior to WW II we were isolationist. Sure we were in WW I for a minute, but we hadn't done much before then and immediately retreated after WW I ended. By the time Truman announced the Containment Policy in 1948 we had been actors on the world stage only since 1942. In 1950, two years later, the North Koreans attacked South Korea. In 1948, the Soviets blockaded Berlin forcing the Berlin Airlift. Also in 1948, Mao succeeded in defeating Chang Chi Chech (Sp) to win mainland China for the Communists. Communism was strongly on the move. We do our analysis a disservice to not remember the context in which events occurred.

I remember it, a tad better than I think you do, or at least I'm remembering things that apparently you do not know, or perhaps do not believe.

Still it is refreshing to respond to somebody who seems to CARE why things are as they are, even if we can't agree on specific events in history and what really motivated the players.

By the way, not too long ago I discussed the issue of the likelihood of US invasion of Iran with an Iranian couple. Their fervent desire was that the US would invade to free Iran. They were very disappointed with my opinion that it was the last thing we would probably do. So, go figure.

A couple lving here in the USA you mean?

I used to go to college with the Shaw of Irans cousin. This was before the fall of the Shah.

I haven't heard from him in a while, but I wouldn't doubt that he, too, would dearly love to see the liberation of his nation from the Mullahs (as would I, incidently)

OTOH, something happens to people who are get caught in a war where a foreign force is coming to dipose the current regime (even one they hate)

Nationalism happens.

I personally cannot think of a better way to unify the Iranian people than to go to war with the nitwits currently running that nation.

It would be another Viet Nam, another iraq, another Afghanistan another tarbaby where we'd win a convertional war and lose an unconventional peace.

You want to know what WILL beat the mullahs?

Coca-cola, Bay Watch, and all the other stuff that people actually like that those religious fanatics deny them.

Radio/television/internet FREE IRAN will defeat the mullahs better than all the rattled sabers in Washington's arsenal, chum.

You can lead a Persian to water but you can't make him drink.

One would think we'd have learned this lesson with Viet Nam, but apparently every generation forgets that if our system is so much better than everyone elses, all you have to do is wait and they will gravitate toward it IF WE DON'T FREAKIN INVADE THEM!

 

[Charles_Main]

Sealy constructs a straw man, arguing against something that does not exist. For conservatives do not believe in no government and no laws effecting economic transactions. Instead, they argue that governments should intervene and construct laws only when necessary, though necessity is more limited as defined by conservatives than by liberals.

In reality, the argument is a relative one, not an absolute one. Saying that conservatives believe in no government interference is like saying liberals believe in communism. Both are silly conclusions.

Bobo making a silly conclusion? No way!!

LOL

 

[Tech_Esq]

Yup.



Yup.



"So what?" to us, maybe. STILL A rather big deal to the people of Iran, methinks.




Yes it is.

Of course, how much easier it is to be sanguine about that when your grandfather was NOT tortured by the dictator installed by foreign infidels.




Well then... let me COSMICALLY overstate my case.

The entire ARAB and PERSIAN world, current allies included, do NOT trust the USA.

Unlike your average American, many people in the world do not forget history a day after it is off page one of the headlines.



True enough, but the soviets were not a great threat to Iran. What WAS a threat was the person dep[osed who had the unmitigated audacity to want to NATIONALIZE IRANIAN OIL RESERVES.

Hence, in the time honored tradition of of the cold war, the man was painted as a COMMUNIST PUPPET.

He was NOT. He was a nationalist who wanted to end the British domination of the Iranian's oil fields.





No, see above



Sure you are...by assuming that I am faulting it on moral grounds, but that's an easy mistake to make. I am faulting American foreign policy because it failed, not because it was immoral.

But you doing it honestly enough, based on the myth (I think, at least) that the Soviets had a chance of taking over Iran, or that the regime in power before the Shaw (whose name escapes me at the moment) was leaning toward becoming a Communism satillite.

The PERSIANS LOATHE communism, no less than the ARABS do. They TRUST the RUSSIANS not a fig, and never really have. Only an organization as ignorant as the CIA was at the time, could possibly have not known that.



I remember it, a tad better than I think you do, or at least I'm remembering things that apparently you do not know, or perhaps do not believe.

Still it is refreshing to respond to somebody who seems to CARE why things are as they are, even if we can't agree on specific events in history and what really motivated the players.



A couple lving here in the USA you mean?

I used to go to college with the Shaw of Irans cousin. This was before the fall of the Shah.

I haven't heard from him in a while, but I wouldn't doubt that he, too, would dearly love to see the liberation of his nation from the Mullahs (as would I, incidently)

OTOH, something happens to people who are get caught in a war where a foreign force is coming to dipose the current regime (even one they hate)

Nationalism happens.

I personally cannot think of a better way to unify the Iranian people than to go to war with the nitwits currently running that nation.

It would be another Viet Nam, another iraq, another Afghanistan another tarbaby where we'd win a convertional war and lose an unconventional peace.

You want to know what WILL beat the mullahs?

Coca-cola, Bay Watch, and all the other stuff that people actually like that those religious fanatics deny them.

Radio/television/internet FREE IRAN will defeat the mullahs better than all the rattled sabers in Washington's arsenal, chum.

You can lead a Persian to water but you can't make him drink.

One would think we'd have learned this lesson with Viet Nam, but apparently every generation forgets that if our system is so much better than everyone elses, all you have to do is wait and they will gravitate toward it IF WE DON'T FREAKIN INVADE THEM!

I appreciate your points. Most of them I don't disagree with. I think you may have misapprehended my point about the Soviets taking Iran. It would not have been by assent on the part of the Iranians but by force ala Afghanistan 1979. The Soviets weren't overly concerned with "consent of the governed." Maybe the result would have been the same as in Afghanistan, maybe not.

Also, you say that US policy didn't work. I beg to differ. It accomplished the task they set out to do. They prevented Iran from going Communist however that would have been accomplished. Now, if the goal was to make Iran a friend forever. Yep, it was a rank failure. But, I think the policy was much more shortsighted than that. We wanted governments we could "do business with" not necessarily governments that were interested in human rights. One might argue that we didn't want governments who cared about human rights at all.

As you correctly point out that was to our eventual detriment. But, how long will people hate the US for it? It's been 50 years. Will it be 100 or 200 or 500 years? If so, then that cannot be a limiting factor for our policy. We can't wait that long and do nothing. The US government must act to assure its national goals. Unfortunately for the Middle-East, some of it's national interest goals lie smack in the middle of their territory.

I wonder which will be worse. Currently, we have total involvement in the Middle-East because of our reliance on oil. When that reliance abates and we couldn't care less what happens in the Middle-East, I wonder if that will be worse. Look at Africa. They've had a couple of genocides there, and we didn't come. Will it be the same in the Middle-East when we don't need oil any longer?

 

[sealybobo]

that is literally and figuratively the biggest load of garbage I have ever heard
let me guess
you went to Harvard didn't you
your history is
pretty bad
but your facts are far worse

Are you suggesting Corporations pay the middle class well because they are kind?

You know as well as anyone that Corporations have one goal, maximize profits for stakeholders.

And you know that free markets have to follow laws made by our government, so they really aren't free to do whatever they want. Thank God.

 

[sealybobo]

Bobo making a silly conclusion? No way!!

LOL

Republicans believe in just enough regulations that are necessary and no more? And then the energy companies gouge us. the mortgage industry predatory lends us and.....a hot girl just stopped by my office and i forgot what i was saying. you get the point.

The GOP deregulated so they could fuck us over. Just enough? HA!!!

 

[sealybobo]

I appreciate your points. Most of them I don't disagree with. I think you may have misapprehended my point about the Soviets taking Iran. It would not have been by assent on the part of the Iranians but by force ala Afghanistan 1979. The Soviets weren't overly concerned with "consent of the governed." Maybe the result would have been the same as in Afghanistan, maybe not.

Also, you say that US policy didn't work. I beg to differ. It accomplished the task they set out to do. They prevented Iran from going Communist however that would have been accomplished. Now, if the goal was to make Iran a friend forever. Yep, it was a rank failure. But, I think the policy was much more shortsighted than that. We wanted governments we could "do business with" not necessarily governments that were interested in human rights. One might argue that we didn't want governments who cared about human rights at all.

As you correctly point out that was to our eventual detriment. But, how long will people hate the US for it? It's been 50 years. Will it be 100 or 200 or 500 years? If so, then that cannot be a limiting factor for our policy. We can't wait that long and do nothing. The US government must act to assure its national goals. Unfortunately for the Middle-East, some of it's national interest goals lie smack in the middle of their territory.

I wonder which will be worse. Currently, we have total involvement in the Middle-East because of our reliance on oil. When that reliance abates and we couldn't care less what happens in the Middle-East, I wonder if that will be worse. Look at Africa. They've had a couple of genocides there, and we didn't come. Will it be the same in the Middle-East when we don't need oil any longer?

I like you. You can tell when someone is being intellectually honest, and you are!!!