What I said: "Now, it might be either good or bad for China to be paying for your solar cells"
What you said: "LET them"
Okay. That might be the right thing to do. Or, it might not, there's more to it than getting cheap solar panels, but maybe that's the most important variable. I haven't thought deeply about it.
A free market is a market with zero regulation and zero taxes, but almost everyone who promotes "free markets" doesn't mean it that way -- including you. They mean they want an open, transparent, competitive marketplace. That's nice and all, but it's not the definition of a free market, and more to the point it's not the definition used by the people who are actually implementing policy. There is an incredibly tiny minority of ultra-rich industrialist ideologues who are trying to achieve REAL free markets, with zero regulations, and they are using as patsies, as fools, people like you, who bite on the mantra of a "free" market, without understanding what a free market is. If you don't want zero regulations, which it sounds like you don't, then let me be clear: you are being used unwittingly to promote a policy with which you do not agree.
It's not false thinking. A free market is a market with zero regulations and taxes. A regulated market is a market with at least one regulation, or any level of taxes. There is no "other side of the coin" to a free market: it's a long sliding scale of regulation, and we can stop anywhere we want along that scale, but the entire scale is on the range of "regulated markets" and a "free market" is the end point, at the very bottom of the scale, with zero regulation.
You want a lightly- and smartly-regulated market? Yeah, great, me too. That's called a "regulated market". You want only regulations which ensure safety and transparency and competition? Yeah, great, me too. That's called a "regulated market".
A truly free market has not existed since the development of governments, and probably never will, but even if it could, I wouldn't want it. Preferable over a vastly over-regulated one? It's hard to say. I don't want either one of those.
What you just said is tantamount to saying that in 1969, the "price" of a trip to the moon finally reached a price where the mainstream could realistically afford a ticket, because astronauts didn't pay for the ride.
If a government pays a price for something, then that nullifies the claim that the thing has become affordable. China is paying for your solar cells. Now, it might be either good or bad for China to be paying for your solar cells, but let's not pretend that the solar cells are actually cheap.
My "company" last year had a profit of about $250. On those "profits", my "company" paid more taxes than did General Electric, by multiple billions of dollars.
Would you really want a free market if you could have one? A free market is a market with zero regulations or taxes. Zero. Do you really want zero regulations? You can't even think of one single regulation you favor? If you can think of even one single regulation or tax that you favor, then what you want is not a free market, but a regulated market. Unfortunately, that then requires you to do the hard work of applying reason and subtle thought to the question of which regulations you favor, denying the opportunity to simply dismiss all regulations out of hand.
Misinformed, not insane. Most of these free-market types are purposely self-deluded, although a small number are genuinely dumb. They're not stupid per se, it's rather that they ignore most of reality in order to focus on a tiny sliver of reality which, when misconstrued to extreme lengths, results in Libertariansim.
Let me be clear that this post is flamebait, not trolling. Trolling is when you say things that aren't true; flamebait is when you say things that aren't popular.
"Investment income is the reward you get by risking your money by investing in a business."
That's right. That's exactly right. And you don't do any work for that investment. You took some risk, and so did the guy who earned a paycheck. Everything is risky, but only one of these folks is earning his pay; the other guy is getting money for no work.
Taxes are not discouragement. Taxes are how we pay for civil society. The question is whether you should be taxed more for money you have to work for, or for money you get for doing no work. In my opinion, it is morally wrong to "discourage" labor by taxing it at vastly higher rates than investments.
"Investment income" is another way of saying "income you don't have to work for". To me, it seems that "getting free money without having to work for it" is enough of an incentive to invest, without also requiring a lower tax rate.
What America needs is an incentive to work. Let's make sure earned income is taxed at no more than half the rate of unearned income. Let's find whatever rates we need to, to pay for government, and also incentivize working for a paycheck.
If we can imagine a world where employer and employee have equal power, then your hypothetical sounds fine. The power disparity here in the real world is what causes the things I'm complaining about.
Yes, I oppose rich, powerful people stealing labor value from underlings without a reciprocal obligation back to those people, which for me takes the form of, basically, welfare (public education, nutrition, progressive taxation, direct transfer payments). Some people here in the real world like to try to pretend that there is no power disparity, and that a janitor is perfectly capable of negotiating a full-value salary for his work. Those people are willfully ignorant. They desperately want to live in a world where their greed is a virtue; but it's not a virtue, and their acrobatics to try to make it into a virtue will never be successful.
The thing is, what kind of situation would two equal-power people come to an agreement where one of them is going to siphon off value from the other's work? In what hypothetical world would the second person agree to that? That agreement can only happen in a world of disparate power. Which is fine, we're never going to have a society of equals, but the inequality is the moral justification for implementing a system which gives things back to the poor. If the second person wouldn't have a job without the first person, then by definition that gives the first person more power.
I'm not sure what we are arguing about. Someone said something about "makers and takers", which is used these days as a disgusting slander against the poor. It's all the more disgusting for being exactly wrong: the poor are makers; the rich are takers.
To answer your question, "why is it that in reality, it always seems to take a group of people to invest money in someone else doing the work", it's because that's the result of the perverse power dichotomy humans have always had in their societies. The question isn't why does it take a person with money to pay for a factory to be built, but why does that person then take an outsized proportion of the value produced in the factory? He does so because he has the power to do so, not because he added that amount of value to the economy. Workers, makers, are the ones who add all that value to the economy.
Damn, that sounds almost communistic, doesn't it? Well I'm not a communist at all. I'm a capitalist, I just think that the theory underlying our American brand of capitalism -- the theory that capital is apportioned according to economic value -- is laughably, transparently, obviously wrong. I'd much prefer to somehow get to a capitalist system where capital is proportioned according to economic value, which would leave the factory owner with, say, slightly less at the end of the day than the average assembly line worker. That's still not bad for a guy who didn't actually do any work. But look, I ain't holding my breath for that to happen.
LOL. You say that as if America hasn't done exactly what I propose in the past, and also other countries.
Best policy: live within your means. Mediocre policy: print money to cover the mess you've made. An equivalent policy is to simply refuse to pay your debt. Worst policy: fuck poor people.
At least this was the opinion of James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, when he was trying to convince states fearful of a powerful federal government to ratify the new Constitution. Remember, the powers delegated to the federal government were supposed to be "few and defined" by design, so such a general grant of power as you interpret is absurd in context.
This is true. In my understanding, after the failed weak Confederacy, proponents of a strong(er) Federal government promoted the Constitution. State loyalists balked at the Necessary and Proper (and General Welfare) clause, saying it could be used to justify a wide range of laws. Those anti-federalists were assuaged and promised that those clauses would never be construed into wide usage.
What can I say? The state loyalists got hoodwinked. They were tricked into supporting a strong federal government. The clauses say what they say, and they are in our founding document, much to the chagrin I imagine of those those anti-federalists. I'm a big-government federalist, so I'm pretty happy that my side is the one who made fools out of the other side. Still, though, it must sting for you guys, lo these 250 years later. I don't blame you for complaining, but that's still not justification for pretending that the NP and GW clauses don't mean what they say.
And yeah, you can do some acrobatics to justify paper money if you want to, but it's still not an explicit delegated power. And remember, I agree with you that paper money is constitutional, my entire point is that the wiggle room which gets us from "coin" to "money" and from "speech" to "expression" and from "army" to "air force" and from "arms" to "handguns" is the same wiggle room which gets us from "necessary" to "don't shit in my drinking water" and from "proper" to "prevent ecological meltdown".
Now, all that said, there is a separate question of whether or not we should exercise our constitutional authority to slow global climate change, or to stop people from shitting in our drinking water. If you think enviro laws are "bad", then fine, I have no problem with that, that's not nonsense (even if I disagree). But all this Constitutional blather is nonsense.
So, you are saying that the 10th Amendment means any powers that Congress doesn't want is reserved for the states?
No, I'm saying any powers not delegated to Congress are reserved for the states and people. That's what the amendment says, what you are saying, and I am agreeing. What I'm saying is that Congress has the delegated power to pass laws which are necessary and proper, and which promote the general welfare, and so those powers are not reserved for the states (they are shared with the states, who can also pass necessary laws). Not only am reading that from the Constitution, I am also defending that as 'good'.
The problem with the way you are interpreting the Necessary and Proper and General Welfare Clauses is that anything that Congress deems necessary, proper or for the general welfare is Constitutional. ANYTHING!
Ha ha, no not at all. The strength of the way I am interpreting the NP&GP clauses is that anything Congress deems necessary, which the courts also deem necessary, which the President and all subsequent Presidents deem necessary, and which voters deem necessary in all subsequent elections by not electing contrarian representatives, is Constitutional. ANYTHING! If you can get all parts of the government to agree on something, then it's time to stop arguing about it, even if ArcherB disagrees. Once we get Congress, the President, the Supreme Court, and a majority of voters all agreeing on the same thing, then it's time to let ArcherB do the hard work of trying to dislodge one of those four important groups of people to change their mind, and only then will we discuss it again.
Until then, we will still have an Air Force, a flag, paper money, and perhaps environmental laws.
Hmmm, let me think about that for a second. Hmmm, no I'd have to say no. Not "any" means is justified. Is that your question? Is "any" means justified? If you think no, then I agree, not "any" means is justified.
I'm not sure how that relates to the discussion, but I think we're on the same side of the question you pose.
And again, I have to ask, if the Necessary and Proper and General Welfare clauses override the 10'th, then what does the 10th Amendment mean?
Um, it means what it means. Here's the text:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
That amendment is orthogonal to the Necessary and Proper clause, or the General Welfare clause. Congress has the power to pass laws which are necessary and proper, or promote the general welfare; and powers not delegated to Congress are reserved to the State or to the People. Similarly, Congress has the power to coin money, and other powers are for the states and people. What's the conflict there? There is no conflict.
I'm more interested in this:
So are you saying that the freedom of the press only applies to actual presses? Does free speech only apply to words coming out of your mouth? Does the right to bear arms mean that you are allowed to own arms from bears?
No! Thank you for understanding; that is exactly what I am not saying. I am saying that Congress has the print to "print" money on paper, even though the Constitution only gives it the right to "coin" money. I am saying that Congress has the right to authorize an Air Force, even though the Constitution only gives it the right to form Armies and Navies. I am saying the Congress has the power to designate an official flag, even though nothing in the Constitution says anything close to that at all. You seem to understand this point generally, yet you still retreat to the position that "if it's not explicitly laid out in the Constitution, it's unconstitutional." That position is untenable.
So, my point was that strict adherence to the text of the document is absurd, because it would lead to us having pockets full of coins and no Air Force and no American flag, plus lots of other things. That's not to say we should ignore it, it's to say that to be so fundamentalist is to make a mockery of the usefulness of the document.
Why don't small-government types actually argue against the programs they dislike, instead of making up nonsense constitutional theories? Does it even occur to them that they can be against something, without it being unconstitutional? There are lots and lots of policies I oppose, which are perfectly constitutional. I don't find that position a difficult one.
The assembly line got built by other makers, of course. Other laborers, turning screws and putting things together. And it was designed by still other makers, people who make blueprints. Who do you think built the assembly line? You don't think the owner of the company built the assembly line, do you?
Actually I had just that day seen a talk by Neil deGrasse Tyson where he used the Lewis & Clark example. I expanded that example for my post. (And I had just seen SpaceShipOne at the EAA museum, too.)
Brother, you don't understand taxes. I wouldn't pay 15% on "the very same money I paid 25% on when I made it as a salary." If you truly believe that, which I suspect you truly do, then you are very, very wrong about how taxes work. Seriously, you are deeply misinformed please educate yourself.
It's not the very same money, it's new money. It's income. You put your $1 of salary into an investment, you get $2 back out: your original $1, and a new $1. Now you pay taxes: what money do you pay taxes on? Tell me, think about that and tell me the answer to that. The answer is that you pay 15% tax on the new $1, not the old $1.
So, I worked hard and paid 25% on my first dollar. Then I stopped working, earned another dollar without having to actually work for it, and only paid 15% on that second dollar. That's how taxes work. If you can wrap your head around this, then please tell your political cohorts! They, also, say things all the time which make it seem as though they simply don't understand anything about taxation.
Yeah, maybe, but it happened first because of government. That's what we're talking about: government action making the economy stronger, moving industries ahead faster. The claim by people like me is that government action can enhance the economy; whereas the claim by some other people is that government action by definition cannot ever enhance the economy. I think that is preposterous.
Slashdot Mirror
What I said: "Now, it might be either good or bad for China to be paying for your solar cells"
What you said: "LET them"
Okay. That might be the right thing to do. Or, it might not, there's more to it than getting cheap solar panels, but maybe that's the most important variable. I haven't thought deeply about it.
A free market is a market with zero regulation and zero taxes, but almost everyone who promotes "free markets" doesn't mean it that way -- including you. They mean they want an open, transparent, competitive marketplace. That's nice and all, but it's not the definition of a free market, and more to the point it's not the definition used by the people who are actually implementing policy. There is an incredibly tiny minority of ultra-rich industrialist ideologues who are trying to achieve REAL free markets, with zero regulations, and they are using as patsies, as fools, people like you, who bite on the mantra of a "free" market, without understanding what a free market is. If you don't want zero regulations, which it sounds like you don't, then let me be clear: you are being used unwittingly to promote a policy with which you do not agree.
It's not false thinking. A free market is a market with zero regulations and taxes. A regulated market is a market with at least one regulation, or any level of taxes. There is no "other side of the coin" to a free market: it's a long sliding scale of regulation, and we can stop anywhere we want along that scale, but the entire scale is on the range of "regulated markets" and a "free market" is the end point, at the very bottom of the scale, with zero regulation.
You want a lightly- and smartly-regulated market? Yeah, great, me too. That's called a "regulated market". You want only regulations which ensure safety and transparency and competition? Yeah, great, me too. That's called a "regulated market".
A truly free market has not existed since the development of governments, and probably never will, but even if it could, I wouldn't want it. Preferable over a vastly over-regulated one? It's hard to say. I don't want either one of those.
What you just said is tantamount to saying that in 1969, the "price" of a trip to the moon finally reached a price where the mainstream could realistically afford a ticket, because astronauts didn't pay for the ride.
If a government pays a price for something, then that nullifies the claim that the thing has become affordable. China is paying for your solar cells. Now, it might be either good or bad for China to be paying for your solar cells, but let's not pretend that the solar cells are actually cheap.
+1, Insightful
My "company" last year had a profit of about $250. On those "profits", my "company" paid more taxes than did General Electric, by multiple billions of dollars.
Would you really want a free market if you could have one? A free market is a market with zero regulations or taxes. Zero. Do you really want zero regulations? You can't even think of one single regulation you favor? If you can think of even one single regulation or tax that you favor, then what you want is not a free market, but a regulated market. Unfortunately, that then requires you to do the hard work of applying reason and subtle thought to the question of which regulations you favor, denying the opportunity to simply dismiss all regulations out of hand.
Markets are good. Free markets are bad.
Misinformed, not insane. Most of these free-market types are purposely self-deluded, although a small number are genuinely dumb. They're not stupid per se, it's rather that they ignore most of reality in order to focus on a tiny sliver of reality which, when misconstrued to extreme lengths, results in Libertariansim.
Let me be clear that this post is flamebait, not trolling. Trolling is when you say things that aren't true; flamebait is when you say things that aren't popular.
Well that depends on the income, doesn't it? What does a static high number have to do with tax rates?
"Investment income is the reward you get by risking your money by investing in a business."
That's right. That's exactly right. And you don't do any work for that investment. You took some risk, and so did the guy who earned a paycheck. Everything is risky, but only one of these folks is earning his pay; the other guy is getting money for no work.
Taxes are not discouragement. Taxes are how we pay for civil society. The question is whether you should be taxed more for money you have to work for, or for money you get for doing no work. In my opinion, it is morally wrong to "discourage" labor by taxing it at vastly higher rates than investments.
I agree, except not sarcastically.
Indeed.
"Investment income" is another way of saying "income you don't have to work for". To me, it seems that "getting free money without having to work for it" is enough of an incentive to invest, without also requiring a lower tax rate.
What America needs is an incentive to work. Let's make sure earned income is taxed at no more than half the rate of unearned income. Let's find whatever rates we need to, to pay for government, and also incentivize working for a paycheck.
If we can imagine a world where employer and employee have equal power, then your hypothetical sounds fine. The power disparity here in the real world is what causes the things I'm complaining about.
Yes, I oppose rich, powerful people stealing labor value from underlings without a reciprocal obligation back to those people, which for me takes the form of, basically, welfare (public education, nutrition, progressive taxation, direct transfer payments). Some people here in the real world like to try to pretend that there is no power disparity, and that a janitor is perfectly capable of negotiating a full-value salary for his work. Those people are willfully ignorant. They desperately want to live in a world where their greed is a virtue; but it's not a virtue, and their acrobatics to try to make it into a virtue will never be successful.
The thing is, what kind of situation would two equal-power people come to an agreement where one of them is going to siphon off value from the other's work? In what hypothetical world would the second person agree to that? That agreement can only happen in a world of disparate power. Which is fine, we're never going to have a society of equals, but the inequality is the moral justification for implementing a system which gives things back to the poor. If the second person wouldn't have a job without the first person, then by definition that gives the first person more power.
I'm not sure what we are arguing about. Someone said something about "makers and takers", which is used these days as a disgusting slander against the poor. It's all the more disgusting for being exactly wrong: the poor are makers; the rich are takers.
To answer your question, "why is it that in reality, it always seems to take a group of people to invest money in someone else doing the work", it's because that's the result of the perverse power dichotomy humans have always had in their societies. The question isn't why does it take a person with money to pay for a factory to be built, but why does that person then take an outsized proportion of the value produced in the factory? He does so because he has the power to do so, not because he added that amount of value to the economy. Workers, makers, are the ones who add all that value to the economy.
Damn, that sounds almost communistic, doesn't it? Well I'm not a communist at all. I'm a capitalist, I just think that the theory underlying our American brand of capitalism -- the theory that capital is apportioned according to economic value -- is laughably, transparently, obviously wrong. I'd much prefer to somehow get to a capitalist system where capital is proportioned according to economic value, which would leave the factory owner with, say, slightly less at the end of the day than the average assembly line worker. That's still not bad for a guy who didn't actually do any work. But look, I ain't holding my breath for that to happen.
LOL. You say that as if America hasn't done exactly what I propose in the past, and also other countries.
Best policy: live within your means.
Mediocre policy: print money to cover the mess you've made. An equivalent policy is to simply refuse to pay your debt.
Worst policy: fuck poor people.
At least this was the opinion of James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, when he was trying to convince states fearful of a powerful federal government to ratify the new Constitution. Remember, the powers delegated to the federal government were supposed to be "few and defined" by design, so such a general grant of power as you interpret is absurd in context.
This is true. In my understanding, after the failed weak Confederacy, proponents of a strong(er) Federal government promoted the Constitution. State loyalists balked at the Necessary and Proper (and General Welfare) clause, saying it could be used to justify a wide range of laws. Those anti-federalists were assuaged and promised that those clauses would never be construed into wide usage.
What can I say? The state loyalists got hoodwinked. They were tricked into supporting a strong federal government. The clauses say what they say, and they are in our founding document, much to the chagrin I imagine of those those anti-federalists. I'm a big-government federalist, so I'm pretty happy that my side is the one who made fools out of the other side. Still, though, it must sting for you guys, lo these 250 years later. I don't blame you for complaining, but that's still not justification for pretending that the NP and GW clauses don't mean what they say.
And yeah, you can do some acrobatics to justify paper money if you want to, but it's still not an explicit delegated power. And remember, I agree with you that paper money is constitutional, my entire point is that the wiggle room which gets us from "coin" to "money" and from "speech" to "expression" and from "army" to "air force" and from "arms" to "handguns" is the same wiggle room which gets us from "necessary" to "don't shit in my drinking water" and from "proper" to "prevent ecological meltdown".
Now, all that said, there is a separate question of whether or not we should exercise our constitutional authority to slow global climate change, or to stop people from shitting in our drinking water. If you think enviro laws are "bad", then fine, I have no problem with that, that's not nonsense (even if I disagree). But all this Constitutional blather is nonsense.
So, you are saying that the 10th Amendment means any powers that Congress doesn't want is reserved for the states?
No, I'm saying any powers not delegated to Congress are reserved for the states and people. That's what the amendment says, what you are saying, and I am agreeing. What I'm saying is that Congress has the delegated power to pass laws which are necessary and proper, and which promote the general welfare, and so those powers are not reserved for the states (they are shared with the states, who can also pass necessary laws). Not only am reading that from the Constitution, I am also defending that as 'good'.
The problem with the way you are interpreting the Necessary and Proper and General Welfare Clauses is that anything that Congress deems necessary, proper or for the general welfare is Constitutional. ANYTHING!
Ha ha, no not at all. The strength of the way I am interpreting the NP&GP clauses is that anything Congress deems necessary, which the courts also deem necessary, which the President and all subsequent Presidents deem necessary, and which voters deem necessary in all subsequent elections by not electing contrarian representatives, is Constitutional. ANYTHING! If you can get all parts of the government to agree on something, then it's time to stop arguing about it, even if ArcherB disagrees. Once we get Congress, the President, the Supreme Court, and a majority of voters all agreeing on the same thing, then it's time to let ArcherB do the hard work of trying to dislodge one of those four important groups of people to change their mind, and only then will we discuss it again.
Until then, we will still have an Air Force, a flag, paper money, and perhaps environmental laws.
Hmmm, let me think about that for a second. Hmmm, no I'd have to say no. Not "any" means is justified. Is that your question? Is "any" means justified? If you think no, then I agree, not "any" means is justified.
I'm not sure how that relates to the discussion, but I think we're on the same side of the question you pose.
And again, I have to ask, if the Necessary and Proper and General Welfare clauses override the 10'th, then what does the 10th Amendment mean?
Um, it means what it means. Here's the text:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
That amendment is orthogonal to the Necessary and Proper clause, or the General Welfare clause. Congress has the power to pass laws which are necessary and proper, or promote the general welfare; and powers not delegated to Congress are reserved to the State or to the People. Similarly, Congress has the power to coin money, and other powers are for the states and people. What's the conflict there? There is no conflict.
I'm more interested in this:
So are you saying that the freedom of the press only applies to actual presses? Does free speech only apply to words coming out of your mouth? Does the right to bear arms mean that you are allowed to own arms from bears?
No! Thank you for understanding; that is exactly what I am not saying. I am saying that Congress has the print to "print" money on paper, even though the Constitution only gives it the right to "coin" money. I am saying that Congress has the right to authorize an Air Force, even though the Constitution only gives it the right to form Armies and Navies. I am saying the Congress has the power to designate an official flag, even though nothing in the Constitution says anything close to that at all. You seem to understand this point generally, yet you still retreat to the position that "if it's not explicitly laid out in the Constitution, it's unconstitutional." That position is untenable.
So, my point was that strict adherence to the text of the document is absurd, because it would lead to us having pockets full of coins and no Air Force and no American flag, plus lots of other things. That's not to say we should ignore it, it's to say that to be so fundamentalist is to make a mockery of the usefulness of the document.
Why don't small-government types actually argue against the programs they dislike, instead of making up nonsense constitutional theories? Does it even occur to them that they can be against something, without it being unconstitutional? There are lots and lots of policies I oppose, which are perfectly constitutional. I don't find that position a difficult one.
The assembly line got built by other makers, of course. Other laborers, turning screws and putting things together. And it was designed by still other makers, people who make blueprints. Who do you think built the assembly line? You don't think the owner of the company built the assembly line, do you?
Actually I had just that day seen a talk by Neil deGrasse Tyson where he used the Lewis & Clark example. I expanded that example for my post. (And I had just seen SpaceShipOne at the EAA museum, too.)
Brother, you don't understand taxes. I wouldn't pay 15% on "the very same money I paid 25% on when I made it as a salary." If you truly believe that, which I suspect you truly do, then you are very, very wrong about how taxes work. Seriously, you are deeply misinformed please educate yourself.
It's not the very same money, it's new money. It's income. You put your $1 of salary into an investment, you get $2 back out: your original $1, and a new $1. Now you pay taxes: what money do you pay taxes on? Tell me, think about that and tell me the answer to that. The answer is that you pay 15% tax on the new $1, not the old $1.
So, I worked hard and paid 25% on my first dollar. Then I stopped working, earned another dollar without having to actually work for it, and only paid 15% on that second dollar. That's how taxes work. If you can wrap your head around this, then please tell your political cohorts! They, also, say things all the time which make it seem as though they simply don't understand anything about taxation.
Yeah, maybe, but it happened first because of government. That's what we're talking about: government action making the economy stronger, moving industries ahead faster. The claim by people like me is that government action can enhance the economy; whereas the claim by some other people is that government action by definition cannot ever enhance the economy. I think that is preposterous.
Well, according to you apparently real slashdotters would never have an account of Slashdot, either.
Sure, if it promotes the general welfare. I can see lots of hypothetical situations where ponies would be good for the country.