Forget the economy, the worst income inequality in nearly a century, and crushing deficit...
so you are telling me democrats showed unmatched maturity and based their vote on these things? And maybe expressed their distaste for bombing brown people too? That's strange, because i thought it was pretty much 'omgomgomg, Mittens is going to oppress gays and women and the corporations will take over!!!' talk. I think nobody is really interested in making wedge issues go away. How would you mobilize your electorate without them? Take them away and suddenly it becomes clear the D-team and the R-team are pretty much the same.
it works until it doesn't. Look at Greece. All parties competed who can promise the most free shit to the plebes. Huge chunk of population shuffling paper and drinking coffee in government sector, retirements at 50, hundreds of privileged occupations and what not. Pretty much the only thing that was not promised was the moon. Of course everybody knows the only problem is that they can't print their way to prosperity because of the euro currency, not the fact the whole country was ridden with pathologies and deserves its fate (it takes 2 to tango, people deserve their politicians)
Turns out that actually HELPING people in need (even if they are partially to blame for it) helps to build a prosperous society. It's much better to give a helping hand than to kick a lying man.
In need? How is that possible that everybody and their dog is in need? When everybody is, the meaning of the word depreciates and people in real need are lost in the noise. And what about the reinforced helplessness, increased dependency on the almighty state? That breeds the kind of people unable to wipe their own ass. American prosperity was not built by entitled whiny bitches who expect free obamaphone every week, was it?
You are misrepresenting my point about subsidizing not working and you know it. Subsidies in general result in more of the thing that is subsidized, are you telling me that generous welfare system causes disabilities and vetarans?
1) "Not working" includes children. Should we return to Dicken's Englang?
No. But if you think that passing the law by the govt is enough to make child labor dissapear, you are very wrong. That is putting the cart before the horse. In reality it's the other way around. Society needs to be wealthy enough to pass on the child labor, the law is merely icing on the cake that was baked already. Starving families in 3rd world countries don't give a fuck and sure as hell won't allow their children to play and learn and have happy careless childhood when their very existence is on the line. If you passed such a law there, you'd create even more pathology, as these children would still be expected to bring money home, but now they would be forced to beg (optional mutilation for greater efficiency) or into illegal activities: crime, prostitution. Besides if you are a parent, it's your fucking responsibility to provide for your offspring first and foremost, not everybody else's.
2) "Not working" includes veterans. Probably we just should let them die on the streets.
i got an idea. Stop waging wars on brown people, there won't be any veterans, problem solved.
3) "Not working" includes disabled people. Natural selection FTW!
being disabled sucks, no doubt, but do you think that whining about it will make their lifes better, with the sense of fulfillment? No, treating them as a special, worse kind of people who are not able to wipe their own ass without help causes 2 things: - lower self esteem - increased helplessness and dependency on the system It's simple, lower expectations and you can bet the people will lower their performance to match them.
4) "Not working" includes retired people. Invisible hand of market wiped out your investments (remember, no FDIC!)? Tough luck.
Investments and FDIC? i thought FDIC secured boring deposits up to $X. I know the libertarians believe that such programs make people not do their due diligence because it's easier and more convenient to delegate the responsibility to bureaucrats than to cover your own ass (which means more malinvestments and outright scams slip through) but seriously, that's your main criticism? no FDIC? Besides if there is a situation where much of the fake wealth evaporates, the only thing the govt can do is to paper the problem over and restore nominal number, but not the original purchasing power behind it. If such a disaster happens you can be sure there was a bubble and the correction was unavoidable either way. Besides the govt is not exactly a friend of retirees, they are that huge ugly position in the budget and the govt is glad the inflation lowers the burden of promises.
In the absence of a single freaking example of a libertarian country that is not a hell-hole like Somalia, we are forced to conclude that the redistributionist government is necessary for a healthy society. The only question is the degree of redistribution of wealth.
Does not follow. Redistribution of wealth is a direct result of democracy, because politicians play their electorate by divide and conquer strategies, and offering concessions to different interest groups in order to win votes. Underwater mortgage? we will help you! $20 worth of birth control too expensive? you got it! Farmers in redneck states are unhappy? Corn subsidies for everybody! Students know shit? Throw even more money at the problem and give govt backed loans to everybody!
Perhaps the first "Tea Party" event on record was an event for Ron Paul dubbed "Boston TeaParty07" on December 16, 2007. This event included the throwing of boxes labeled "tea" and "IRS" among others, into the bay. This event was also notable in making online "Money Bomb" history as the largest one-day fundraising event at $6.5 million.
later the movement was coopted by the Bachmanns and the Palins of the GOP and the modern TeaParty was born.
who says about lack of any government? Cutting back and getting rid of entirely are 2 different things and most libertarians suggest the former. It doesn't matter though because every time a libertarian says something reasonable like 'paying taxes on working and subsidizing not working is counterproductive and the govt is not supposed to micromanage every detail of your life, what you eat, who you sleep with' he is 'encouraged' to go to Somalia.
also correlation is not causation - that the rich countries recycle huge part of their GDP through government channels doesn't mean the govt is the source of prosperity. It may as well be the other way around: prosperous countries can afford to blow money on fluff and would be more prosperous if they didn't.
With rare exception, countries with weak central governments are hellholes that no modern American would enjoy living in.
China, Cuba and North Korea are a paradise then.
Taxes are the price of civilization, and regulatory forces are necessary in order to keep things in check.
that price is not infinite and have you ever heard of 'revolving door' or 'regulatory capture'? Do you have your lobbyist on the capitol hill? No? So why do you foolishly believe the legislation originated there is supposed to make average peon's life better? Besides only ex CEOs and insiders work in those regularory agencies, or fucking morons who were not smart enough to make careers on WallStreet. They aren't going to catch anybody, they are either buddies with criminals, or to incompetent to see the forest for the trees. Also regulations are mostly toothless, they are carefully crafted to look pretty from PR point of view but at the same not to bother the regulated too much. On top of that they attack past problems and are completely unprepared to deal with next crisis because nobody knows what exactly it will look like.
you mean for sticking to Dubya's plan because he was forced to, mostly because Iraq simply refused when they were offered to extend the deal? They even dared to demand they could prosecute troops committing crimes, which are immune to the local law enforcement. And there is that huge so called embassy for 5500 people, full of mercenaries. That pulling out is in name only.
The same thing that doesn't stop gold from crashing overnight or facebook stock dropping 50%. If you have all of your money in 'cash' or in a single 'thing' including bitcoins you can be screwed. If you have all of your money in 'cash' or in a single 'thing' including bitcoins you can be screwed.
facebook stock? Everybody knew it was junk, nobody makes you park in it. Gold? Not possible, you'd have to corner the market full of central banks and i don't see that. With govt mandated legal tender it's not so simple. The point is, with stocks, commodities and what not you have a choice, you can plan, you can come up with strategy. If you fail, basically it's your fault. When your own govt fucks you over, it's game over. They can put you in jail if you don't cooperate.
On top of that, inflating 50% of your life savings, as you put it, also makes your debt 50% easier to pay off with your foreign assets, and your debt all counted, includes government debt incurred on your behalf.
Fuck that. I am a saver and I am tired of getting my ass handed to me every time there is a downturn, because motherfuckers happily living on credit need to be saved. 0 down mortgages for anybody with a pulse inflated the prices of real estate out of my reach. I should be able to pick up some dirt cheap property right now, but fuck no, i pay taxes to fund relief programs for underwater bastards instead, effectively subsidizing my own competition on the market with my own money. Me being a saver should tell you everything you need to know what i think about government debt incurred on my behalf. There should be none.
I don't mind debt per se, but when everybody and their dog borrow to fund consumption - that's fucked up. Debt makes sense if it's invested in something with good ROI so it can pay itself. Nowadays both private citizens and governments fund unproductive consumption with debt. Joe Sixpacks buy flatscreen tvs and iphones they can't afford, while govts fill the holes in budget caused mainly by warfare and welfare.
You want stable economy? Set up incentive structure right because illusion of safety provided by shitload of govt red tape works only until it doesn't. Currently world economy is structurally biased towards irresponsibility and you wonder why shit hits the fan? World as a whole traded resilience for propped up GDP numbers thanks to the whole 'saving is bad, leverage is good, credit must flow no matter what' mantra.
world food programme? easy target, as it's riddled with nasty unintended consequences
1. people let's say in Africa starve - long story short their environment/tech level can't support that many people. Food from external sources means artificially raised survivability. People multiply, now there are more mouths to feed, and you are back at square 1. Disparity between productivity and needs is even greater which means even greater dependence on external support. Population of Ethiopia (country in more or less perpetual state of famine) grew from 48M to 84M in ~20 years (1990-now). Feeding Africa is counterproductive: there is a lot of talk how we should reduce global population growth and shit, on the other hand the world subsidizes the very hotspots of rapid unsustainable population growth.
2. dumping free food on developing markets kills any viability of local food producers who can't compete with free/subsidized food from the west. In other words they will be always dirt poor and always dependent on free food because so called humanitarian help takes away their only fishing pole and gives them fish instead. With no way to support from the work of their hands, they will never be able to lay solid foundations for healthy, sustainable economy.
I don't mind disaster relief programs, but perpetual humanitarian help needs to go asap.
Yes, they reelected the same people that got them into the mess, just like the German media told them to:
who would that be? The Greeks have cooked the books continuously for 15 years, no matter who was in charge at the moment. Every major party was complicit.
While GS are a scum of the earth and there is plenty you can blame them for, they did nothing wrong here. There was an opportunity to do legit business and rationally they took the deal. It's not like they manipulated Greeks into it, Greeks were more than willing themselves. What i am saying is: don't trust a single number coming from Greek bureaucrats, because their actions show unmatched determination to hide the truth (in other words the sentence: 'their tax revenue, gdp, deficits and what not were in the ballpark of the rest of europe' can't be taken seriously).
Yes, the EU fucked up too because they didn't care about the truth either. European body doing statistics for eurozone found shady numbers many times but apperently nobody in charge was interested in calling Greeks on their bullshit.
... and believe it's some moral failure of the greeks in not paying their debts which has nothing to do with reality
not that i am a fan of further unification; care to elaborate how it's not a failure of the greeks? Who took those massive debts and spent everything on hookers and blow? Martians? Oh, those evul bureaucrats in government who schemed with foreign bankers and cheated the honest uncorrupted greek society... but who voted for them? Santa Claus? Did they expect to load on debt ad infinitum to fund lavish welfare programs without any consequences?
Their taxes as a % of gdp and spending as a % of GDP were not radically different from the rest of the euro area for the last decade
so i guess you missed the fact they had no problem with lying their way into the monetary union, cooking the books every single year, marking everything to fantasy and doing that shady credit default swap business with GS to move shitton of expenses off the balance sheet. Yup, everything would be rainbows and ponies if only zee germans left them alone.
if the game controller was superior it would have been used already, but it is not. The wheel-stick-and-pedals system offers high resolution, precision and feedback, the game controller sucks for anything but playing games tailored for it.
Our Gold Standard years were boom and bust. The boom enriched the rich and the bust killed poor folks.
oh, so it's just like now. I don't see much progress. Rich guys are always covered bacause they sit on assets that go up with inflation, it's the peons who live on a fixed income and have couple of bucks of savings who are invariably wiped out on every upside and downside.
Also comparison between now and 100years ago doesn't make much sense. Gold vs fiat was not the only difference. Economies were more localized, more sensitive to supply shocks (there was no globalization to fill the holes at the drop of a hat), and more dependent on low tech farming - bad drought caused a lot of economic trouble. No shit they were volatile.
I find it ironic that liberals laugh at Republican 'trickle down economics' while at the same time they listen to 'deflation is bad, we need inflation!' spewed by Krugman like it was a passage from the Bible. Induced inflation is the same trickle down shit. 'Smart' people at the top declare they have to confiscate the purchasing power of peons to prevent the end of the world, recycle it as they see fit for the sake of GDP growth so maybe, just maybe the peons who had their purchasing power confiscated might get a job in not so defined future.
China should say fuck you to sanctions, supply Iran with yuans and score big time in the region. The US and Israel would be pretty unhappy having China in the other team.
nobody cares what the constitution says nowadays. Either way, do you remember that stink related to provisions of NDAA which allow the govt to detain Americans indefitely? Or the stink related to the assassinations of American citizen Al-Awlaqi and his 16yr old son, also American citizen, ordered by Obama administration? Nobody bats an eye in case of suspected terrorists rotting in Guantanamo and brown peons killed daily by the drones, so apparently 'Muricans do see the difference - there are them, the chosen nation, and then there's the rest of plebes.
The only way to clear excess inventory without destroying wealth is to allow supply/demand achieve the clearing price which is below the current life-support-for-car-manufacturers price. Excess inventory is a sign of overproduction and overvalued product and it should not be perpetuated by throwing more money at the problem.
did anybody calculate the total cost? Old car produces return on investment during its use. The longer it serves, the more the user gets out of it. Energy cost of producing a car is astronomical, in the ballpark of the total fuel use during its lifetime. And what about all those holes in the ground required to mine materials for new ecological cars? New car would have to be vastly better at fuel efficiency to justify junking perfectly usable vehicle.
Example: let's say the car requires X energy to produce and uses X during its lifetime. old car, long service (production, fuel): P+F new car replacing old car halfway assuming more efficient production: (P+0.5F)+0.8P assuming P=F you get 2P for the old car, 2.3P for the replacement scenario. In that case you waste 15% more energy in the name of feel-good notion of environmental responsibility. numbers are obviously pulled out the ass and new cars may very well be a gain with real life numbers, but i doubt it. Either way the point stands: nobody bothered to do a honest analysis of all costs, including the costs unnoticed by the morons who came up with the "Let's destroy shit so we get prosperous rebuilding it" idea and only cared about mpg2 > mpg1
good luck with that. The internet becomes jscript heavier with each passing day and performance of ff3.6 is abysmal. What about evolving standards like slowly finalized CSS3, SVG and what not? Your idea is yet another IE6 story, the bane of webdevs, which is ironic, considering you've mentioned dev plugins.
no shit he did not. Maybe he wouldn't win with fair treatment but the biggest problem is everybody and their dog tried their best to marginalize him and show him as a non viable candidate despite double digit support. You need a strong start in primary season if you want to get to the finish line but all the pundits did right from the start was downplaying RP's importance and tirelessly pointing to Mittens as the chosen one. The list of mysterious errors in MSM underestimating his score or outright omissions even in the early stage, where everybody else was covered, is very long. Even Jon Stewart mocked that in one of his shows.
there are people that don't think their shit through in any group, news at 11
is the free market one of the core ideas of libertarianism? yes does the perfect free market require perfect information? yes can the suppression of information be seen as a kind of fraud leading to suboptimal choice? yes are people free to complain when they see things they don't like? yes
who should make sure the information gets out to the people is another thing whatsoever. I don't think the problems with the list legitimize govt interventions, because almost always the interventions break more things than they fix.
why not set threshold on X% of states where the candidate is eligible for voting? Wouldn't that be enough to showcase the support on the ground? Logistics are not trivial and Joe Nobody would ever manage to pull it off. Focusing on trivia like money is kind of micromanaging and pidgeonholing. Hypotethical campaign done exclusively by volunteers donating their time, judged by these rules would never be seen as legitimate, while.
Slashdot Mirror
Forget the economy, the worst income inequality in nearly a century, and crushing deficit...
so you are telling me democrats showed unmatched maturity and based their vote on these things? And maybe expressed their distaste for bombing brown people too? That's strange, because i thought it was pretty much 'omgomgomg, Mittens is going to oppress gays and women and the corporations will take over!!!' talk.
I think nobody is really interested in making wedge issues go away. How would you mobilize your electorate without them? Take them away and suddenly it becomes clear the D-team and the R-team are pretty much the same.
it works until it doesn't. Look at Greece. All parties competed who can promise the most free shit to the plebes. Huge chunk of population shuffling paper and drinking coffee in government sector, retirements at 50, hundreds of privileged occupations and what not. Pretty much the only thing that was not promised was the moon. Of course everybody knows the only problem is that they can't print their way to prosperity because of the euro currency, not the fact the whole country was ridden with pathologies and deserves its fate (it takes 2 to tango, people deserve their politicians)
Turns out that actually HELPING people in need (even if they are partially to blame for it) helps to build a prosperous society. It's much better to give a helping hand than to kick a lying man.
In need? How is that possible that everybody and their dog is in need? When everybody is, the meaning of the word depreciates and people in real need are lost in the noise.
And what about the reinforced helplessness, increased dependency on the almighty state? That breeds the kind of people unable to wipe their own ass. American prosperity was not built by entitled whiny bitches who expect free obamaphone every week, was it?
You are misrepresenting my point about subsidizing not working and you know it. Subsidies in general result in more of the thing that is subsidized, are you telling me that generous welfare system causes disabilities and vetarans?
1) "Not working" includes children. Should we return to Dicken's Englang?
No. But if you think that passing the law by the govt is enough to make child labor dissapear, you are very wrong. That is putting the cart before the horse. In reality it's the other way around. Society needs to be wealthy enough to pass on the child labor, the law is merely icing on the cake that was baked already.
Starving families in 3rd world countries don't give a fuck and sure as hell won't allow their children to play and learn and have happy careless childhood when their very existence is on the line. If you passed such a law there, you'd create even more pathology, as these children would still be expected to bring money home, but now they would be forced to beg (optional mutilation for greater efficiency) or into illegal activities: crime, prostitution.
Besides if you are a parent, it's your fucking responsibility to provide for your offspring first and foremost, not everybody else's.
2) "Not working" includes veterans. Probably we just should let them die on the streets.
i got an idea. Stop waging wars on brown people, there won't be any veterans, problem solved.
3) "Not working" includes disabled people. Natural selection FTW!
being disabled sucks, no doubt, but do you think that whining about it will make their lifes better, with the sense of fulfillment? No, treating them as a special, worse kind of people who are not able to wipe their own ass without help causes 2 things:
- lower self esteem
- increased helplessness and dependency on the system
It's simple, lower expectations and you can bet the people will lower their performance to match them.
4) "Not working" includes retired people. Invisible hand of market wiped out your investments (remember, no FDIC!)? Tough luck.
Investments and FDIC? i thought FDIC secured boring deposits up to $X. I know the libertarians believe that such programs make people not do their due diligence because it's easier and more convenient to delegate the responsibility to bureaucrats than to cover your own ass (which means more malinvestments and outright scams slip through) but seriously, that's your main criticism? no FDIC?
Besides if there is a situation where much of the fake wealth evaporates, the only thing the govt can do is to paper the problem over and restore nominal number, but not the original purchasing power behind it. If such a disaster happens you can be sure there was a bubble and the correction was unavoidable either way. Besides the govt is not exactly a friend of retirees, they are that huge ugly position in the budget and the govt is glad the inflation lowers the burden of promises.
In the absence of a single freaking example of a libertarian country that is not a hell-hole like Somalia, we are forced to conclude that the redistributionist government is necessary for a healthy society. The only question is the degree of redistribution of wealth.
Does not follow. Redistribution of wealth is a direct result of democracy, because politicians play their electorate by divide and conquer strategies, and offering concessions to different interest groups in order to win votes. Underwater mortgage? we will help you! $20 worth of birth control too expensive? you got it! Farmers in redneck states are unhappy? Corn subsidies for everybody! Students know shit? Throw even more money at the problem and give govt backed loans to everybody!
i've read that the TP came from the grassroot movement supporting Ron Paul in 2007 during his campaign and was mostly about fiscal conservatism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_Party_movement
Perhaps the first "Tea Party" event on record was an event for Ron Paul dubbed "Boston TeaParty07" on December 16, 2007. This event included the throwing of boxes labeled "tea" and "IRS" among others, into the bay. This event was also notable in making online "Money Bomb" history as the largest one-day fundraising event at $6.5 million.
later the movement was coopted by the Bachmanns and the Palins of the GOP and the modern TeaParty was born.
who says about lack of any government? Cutting back and getting rid of entirely are 2 different things and most libertarians suggest the former. It doesn't matter though because every time a libertarian says something reasonable like 'paying taxes on working and subsidizing not working is counterproductive and the govt is not supposed to micromanage every detail of your life, what you eat, who you sleep with' he is 'encouraged' to go to Somalia.
also correlation is not causation - that the rich countries recycle huge part of their GDP through government channels doesn't mean the govt is the source of prosperity. It may as well be the other way around: prosperous countries can afford to blow money on fluff and would be more prosperous if they didn't.
With rare exception, countries with weak central governments are hellholes that no modern American would enjoy living in.
China, Cuba and North Korea are a paradise then.
Taxes are the price of civilization, and regulatory forces are necessary in order to keep things in check.
that price is not infinite and have you ever heard of 'revolving door' or 'regulatory capture'? Do you have your lobbyist on the capitol hill? No? So why do you foolishly believe the legislation originated there is supposed to make average peon's life better?
Besides only ex CEOs and insiders work in those regularory agencies, or fucking morons who were not smart enough to make careers on WallStreet. They aren't going to catch anybody, they are either buddies with criminals, or to incompetent to see the forest for the trees.
Also regulations are mostly toothless, they are carefully crafted to look pretty from PR point of view but at the same not to bother the regulated too much. On top of that they attack past problems and are completely unprepared to deal with next crisis because nobody knows what exactly it will look like.
I like Obama for ending the war in Iraq
you mean for sticking to Dubya's plan because he was forced to, mostly because Iraq simply refused when they were offered to extend the deal? They even dared to demand they could prosecute troops committing crimes, which are immune to the local law enforcement.
And there is that huge so called embassy for 5500 people, full of mercenaries. That pulling out is in name only.
The same thing that doesn't stop gold from crashing overnight or facebook stock dropping 50%. If you have all of your money in 'cash' or in a single 'thing' including bitcoins you can be screwed. If you have all of your money in 'cash' or in a single 'thing' including bitcoins you can be screwed.
facebook stock? Everybody knew it was junk, nobody makes you park in it. Gold? Not possible, you'd have to corner the market full of central banks and i don't see that. With govt mandated legal tender it's not so simple.
The point is, with stocks, commodities and what not you have a choice, you can plan, you can come up with strategy. If you fail, basically it's your fault. When your own govt fucks you over, it's game over. They can put you in jail if you don't cooperate.
On top of that, inflating 50% of your life savings, as you put it, also makes your debt 50% easier to pay off with your foreign assets, and your debt all counted, includes government debt incurred on your behalf.
Fuck that. I am a saver and I am tired of getting my ass handed to me every time there is a downturn, because motherfuckers happily living on credit need to be saved. 0 down mortgages for anybody with a pulse inflated the prices of real estate out of my reach. I should be able to pick up some dirt cheap property right now, but fuck no, i pay taxes to fund relief programs for underwater bastards instead, effectively subsidizing my own competition on the market with my own money.
Me being a saver should tell you everything you need to know what i think about government debt incurred on my behalf. There should be none.
I don't mind debt per se, but when everybody and their dog borrow to fund consumption - that's fucked up. Debt makes sense if it's invested in something with good ROI so it can pay itself. Nowadays both private citizens and governments fund unproductive consumption with debt. Joe Sixpacks buy flatscreen tvs and iphones they can't afford, while govts fill the holes in budget caused mainly by warfare and welfare.
You want stable economy? Set up incentive structure right because illusion of safety provided by shitload of govt red tape works only until it doesn't. Currently world economy is structurally biased towards irresponsibility and you wonder why shit hits the fan? World as a whole traded resilience for propped up GDP numbers thanks to the whole 'saving is bad, leverage is good, credit must flow no matter what' mantra.
... and Obama administration went into overdrive with it.
http://1202013.blogspot.com/2012/09/as-debates-approach.html
world food programme? easy target, as it's riddled with nasty unintended consequences
1. people let's say in Africa starve - long story short their environment/tech level can't support that many people. Food from external sources means artificially raised survivability. People multiply, now there are more mouths to feed, and you are back at square 1. Disparity between productivity and needs is even greater which means even greater dependence on external support. Population of Ethiopia (country in more or less perpetual state of famine) grew from 48M to 84M in ~20 years (1990-now).
Feeding Africa is counterproductive: there is a lot of talk how we should reduce global population growth and shit, on the other hand the world subsidizes the very hotspots of rapid unsustainable population growth.
2. dumping free food on developing markets kills any viability of local food producers who can't compete with free/subsidized food from the west. In other words they will be always dirt poor and always dependent on free food because so called humanitarian help takes away their only fishing pole and gives them fish instead. With no way to support from the work of their hands, they will never be able to lay solid foundations for healthy, sustainable economy.
I don't mind disaster relief programs, but perpetual humanitarian help needs to go asap.
Yes, they reelected the same people that got them into the mess, just like the German media told them to:
who would that be? The Greeks have cooked the books continuously for 15 years, no matter who was in charge at the moment. Every major party was complicit.
While GS are a scum of the earth and there is plenty you can blame them for, they did nothing wrong here. There was an opportunity to do legit business and rationally they took the deal. It's not like they manipulated Greeks into it, Greeks were more than willing themselves.
What i am saying is: don't trust a single number coming from Greek bureaucrats, because their actions show unmatched determination to hide the truth (in other words the sentence: 'their tax revenue, gdp, deficits and what not were in the ballpark of the rest of europe' can't be taken seriously).
Yes, the EU fucked up too because they didn't care about the truth either. European body doing statistics for eurozone found shady numbers many times but apperently nobody in charge was interested in calling Greeks on their bullshit.
fool me once - shame on you, fool me twice - shame on me.
if the promises are too good to be true, they most certainly are, thus it's your fault when you buy into the blatant bullshit.
... and believe it's some moral failure of the greeks in not paying their debts which has nothing to do with reality
not that i am a fan of further unification; care to elaborate how it's not a failure of the greeks? Who took those massive debts and spent everything on hookers and blow? Martians? Oh, those evul bureaucrats in government who schemed with foreign bankers and cheated the honest uncorrupted greek society... but who voted for them? Santa Claus?
Did they expect to load on debt ad infinitum to fund lavish welfare programs without any consequences?
Their taxes as a % of gdp and spending as a % of GDP were not radically different from the rest of the euro area for the last decade
so i guess you missed the fact they had no problem with lying their way into the monetary union, cooking the books every single year, marking everything to fantasy and doing that shady credit default swap business with GS to move shitton of expenses off the balance sheet. Yup, everything would be rainbows and ponies if only zee germans left them alone.
if the game controller was superior it would have been used already, but it is not. The wheel-stick-and-pedals system offers high resolution, precision and feedback, the game controller sucks for anything but playing games tailored for it.
Our Gold Standard years were boom and bust. The boom enriched the rich and the bust killed poor folks.
oh, so it's just like now. I don't see much progress.
Rich guys are always covered bacause they sit on assets that go up with inflation, it's the peons who live on a fixed income and have couple of bucks of savings who are invariably wiped out on every upside and downside.
Also comparison between now and 100years ago doesn't make much sense. Gold vs fiat was not the only difference. Economies were more localized, more sensitive to supply shocks (there was no globalization to fill the holes at the drop of a hat), and more dependent on low tech farming - bad drought caused a lot of economic trouble. No shit they were volatile.
I find it ironic that liberals laugh at Republican 'trickle down economics' while at the same time they listen to 'deflation is bad, we need inflation!' spewed by Krugman like it was a passage from the Bible.
Induced inflation is the same trickle down shit. 'Smart' people at the top declare they have to confiscate the purchasing power of peons to prevent the end of the world, recycle it as they see fit for the sake of GDP growth so maybe, just maybe the peons who had their purchasing power confiscated might get a job in not so defined future.
China should say fuck you to sanctions, supply Iran with yuans and score big time in the region. The US and Israel would be pretty unhappy having China in the other team.
nobody cares what the constitution says nowadays.
Either way, do you remember that stink related to provisions of NDAA which allow the govt to detain Americans indefitely? Or the stink related to the assassinations of American citizen Al-Awlaqi and his 16yr old son, also American citizen, ordered by Obama administration?
Nobody bats an eye in case of suspected terrorists rotting in Guantanamo and brown peons killed daily by the drones, so apparently 'Muricans do see the difference - there are them, the chosen nation, and then there's the rest of plebes.
yeah, everything is rainbows and puppies for the car manufacturers, except these brand new cars are stuffed in distribution channels.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/gm-channel-stuffing-soars-all-time-high
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-10-02/gm-september-sales-miss-channel-stuffing-resumes
The only way to clear excess inventory without destroying wealth is to allow supply/demand achieve the clearing price which is below the current life-support-for-car-manufacturers price. Excess inventory is a sign of overproduction and overvalued product and it should not be perpetuated by throwing more money at the problem.
did anybody calculate the total cost? Old car produces return on investment during its use. The longer it serves, the more the user gets out of it.
Energy cost of producing a car is astronomical, in the ballpark of the total fuel use during its lifetime.
And what about all those holes in the ground required to mine materials for new ecological cars? New car would have to be vastly better at fuel efficiency to justify junking perfectly usable vehicle.
Example: let's say the car requires X energy to produce and uses X during its lifetime.
old car, long service (production, fuel): P+F
new car replacing old car halfway assuming more efficient production: (P+0.5F)+0.8P
assuming P=F you get 2P for the old car, 2.3P for the replacement scenario. In that case you waste 15% more energy in the name of feel-good notion of environmental responsibility.
numbers are obviously pulled out the ass and new cars may very well be a gain with real life numbers, but i doubt it. Either way the point stands: nobody bothered to do a honest analysis of all costs, including the costs unnoticed by the morons who came up with the "Let's destroy shit so we get prosperous rebuilding it" idea and only cared about mpg2 > mpg1
Imperfect information is the reason the risk exists in the first place and the rest doesn't really follow.
good luck with that. The internet becomes jscript heavier with each passing day and performance of ff3.6 is abysmal. What about evolving standards like slowly finalized CSS3, SVG and what not? Your idea is yet another IE6 story, the bane of webdevs, which is ironic, considering you've mentioned dev plugins.
no shit he did not. Maybe he wouldn't win with fair treatment but the biggest problem is everybody and their dog tried their best to marginalize him and show him as a non viable candidate despite double digit support. You need a strong start in primary season if you want to get to the finish line but all the pundits did right from the start was downplaying RP's importance and tirelessly pointing to Mittens as the chosen one.
The list of mysterious errors in MSM underestimating his score or outright omissions even in the early stage, where everybody else was covered, is very long. Even Jon Stewart mocked that in one of his shows.
there are people that don't think their shit through in any group, news at 11
is the free market one of the core ideas of libertarianism? yes
does the perfect free market require perfect information? yes
can the suppression of information be seen as a kind of fraud leading to suboptimal choice? yes
are people free to complain when they see things they don't like? yes
who should make sure the information gets out to the people is another thing whatsoever. I don't think the problems with the list legitimize govt interventions, because almost always the interventions break more things than they fix.
why not set threshold on X% of states where the candidate is eligible for voting? Wouldn't that be enough to showcase the support on the ground? Logistics are not trivial and Joe Nobody would ever manage to pull it off.
Focusing on trivia like money is kind of micromanaging and pidgeonholing. Hypotethical campaign done exclusively by volunteers donating their time, judged by these rules would never be seen as legitimate, while.