"General welfare" was limited to the powers specifically enumerated in Article 1, Section 8. Furthermore, 'General welfare' was applied to the united States as a whole, not to individuals.
"General welfare" does not mean General Welfare Checks.
Okay, so the BANKS were putting the pressure on Fannie Mae to make more sub-prime loans. Weird. Why would the BANKS do that?
Because it was either that, or be sued for "discrimination".
All the GOVERNMENT did was to require banks to use the same standards for everybody. Government didn't set the standards, they just required that the standards were the same for everyone.
Which means of course, everybody gets a mortgage, regardless of ability to pay.
You may have to leave your home, or learn another skill to get another job. Weak argument, doesn't address the main point.
Learning another skill is far easier than learning another language, and being able to speak it so as to be understandable to native speakers. Moving to another state in the US is far easier than moving to another country thousands of miles away.
Those riots were back in 2005. We've had worse in America.
We haven't had widespread riots in America in over a generation.
You are SO wrong about the Pinkertons, and labor history. I've studied labor history extensively. I'd like some citations, please, because I don't know WHAT you are talking about.
Look at the Homestead strike for instance, where the union opened fire on replacement workers with cannon.
Way to play semantics. Social democracy is exactly what I've been talking about all along. What kind of 'socialism' have you been talking about?
By 'socialism', I am refering to the destruction of private property rights in the means of production.
Does your argument against people shopping around for a better country also apply to shopping around for a better job? If so, then by your argument, the labor market is absolutely unfair. If not, why not?
I don't necessarily have to leave my home and learn another language in order to find another job.
France is not on the edge of a social explosion. When was the last time you were there? I was there last summer, and I don't know what you are talking about. You are just making things up!
So those widespread riots by Muslim youths were just made up?
The reason you don't see the poor fighting the rich in highly capitalist societies is, surprise, surprise, the rich make use of the police and armed services we all pay for to prevent that.
The police do not protect or prevent anything. All they do is show up after a crime has been committed.
An organized system of cooperating individuals IS a government. What else is government besides that?
So what do you call a corporation?
You make a bunch of assertions without backing them up, claiming that individuals will always be able to protect themselves, and that private security forces would work. I suggest you read more history. Bad guys work in teams, and an individual, even with guns, is just screwed. And private security forces are ALWAYS used for oppression. Always. Look up the history of the Pinkertons.
All famous incidents involving the Pinkertons had to do with union goons murdering workers, often black workers, and the Pinkertons being called in to protect workers.
While you are at it, look up how the Scandinavian countries are governed, and tell me how they are failing. You may also want to look up the Mondragon Collective, a huge, industrialized cooperative society in Spain that does socialism right, right in the middle of capitalism. Almost all countries that rate highest in citizen happiness are socialist.
Scandinavian countries are not socialist, but are rather "social democratic". In the case of Sweden, American blacks are wealthier than middle-class Swedes.
In short, what arguments you have managed to make are stale and cliched libertarian claptrap that has been shown to be spun out of pure fantasy time and time again. Libertarianism works great in theory, but because you guys never manage to actually, you know, DO anything in the real world, your theories are never tested.
You will find libertarian theories tested wherever people are free to buy, sell and trade stuff. You'll find that the overwhelming majority of such transactions work out fine without government intervention.
I was actually referring to Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and private institutions who, under pressure from the government, doled out mortgages based on affirmative action rather than financial reality. The Community Reinvestment Act was used as a baton to threaten institutions with if they didn't make affirmative action mortgages.
People take the benefits of society, such as roads, sewers, police and fire protection, armed forces, accumulated knowledge, education systems, and social services without paying.
It's hard to evade gas taxes, which pay for roads. Sewers are usually paid for by fees based on how much is used. The other things are nebulous and abstract, such as "accumulated knowledge" (which is almost always privately produced) and "social services". I contend that most tax evaders (usually having evaded income taxes) do in fact pay for the infrastructure they have used.
If you don't like it, shop around for a better deal, don't take without paying. The fact that you don't like our deal is not our problem. The fact that you don't like any other deals better is also not our problem, and it doesn't make our deal coercive.
Your "shop around for a better deal" argument would be more plausible if a person didn't have to abandon their home and property.
Civilization includes police & fire departments, armed forces, roads, sewers, and social services. Yes, socials services. Without them, you would have the poor fighting the rich, unless you used guns to keep the poor down. I like an egalitarian society without too much inequality. It's more stable. So I pay for social services, because I want to. Again, if you don't want to, there are methods available to you to change things, or you could shop around and see what countries give you a better deal. We have a free market of governance, there are hundreds of countries to choose from.
Many of these "egalitarian societies" you like are in fact the ones teetering on the edge of social explosion, such as France.
In highly capitalist societies that are not as "egalitarian", we do not see the poor fighting the rich.
Without government, you have no rights.
Rights are inherent, and do not depend on the government for existence.
Oh, you can blather on about rights, but without an organized system of cooperating individuals to back up those rights, all you have as an individual is power. Maybe you have enough power to protect your rights, maybe you don't. But once you create a collective system to uphold rights, you have government.
An organized system of cooperating individuals can provide justice privately, without the need for a government.
That's what government is. Citizens depend on government for their rights, without government 'rights' is a meaningless phrase that a powerless person tries to use to convince others not to take from them. Without a group backing you up, you can prattle on all you like about rights. I'm sure it will amuse the bad guys as they steal your stuff and rape your women.
There is no need for a government to back up your rights. A private defense agency could do just fine. Insofar as bad individuals are a problem, they are dealt with quite nicely by individuals with guns, which is why civilized societies have people who are armed.
They're vital components of the civilization you live in. They're things that everyone benefits from, whether or not they paid for them individually.
Civilization existed for thousands of years before the modern regulatory and welfare state.
Except that it's been tried, and failed miserably. The unexpected tragedy-farce of an era in which these problems no longer exist is that we apparently forget why the solutions we put in place were created.
The market did not "fail miserably". What problems there were with meatpacking, for example, were well on their way to being remedied when the Pure Food and Drug Act came about. The only thing the Pure Food and Drug Act did was limit competition at the behest of big meatpacking firms, representatives of such firms being the ones who wrote and oversaw the regulations.
If it's cheaper to fire the ratcatcher, they will. They did, in the early 20th century. This is why we have the FDA and the USDA. (Both of which have been cut back so far that they can't reasonably inspect this country's food supply at this point.)
So where are all the rats?
Try and sell laudanum as a cure for cancer, and see how far you get. (I suppose the DEA would get you before the FDA did, but they'd both want a piece.)
But there are still people selling snake oil. Yet most people see through their scams.
Basic foods are cheap and widely available largely because of programs like WIC
Rice and beans and other basic foods are cheap and widely available, and would continue to be if WIC were eliminated. WIC exerts no downward pressure on their prices. What the US government does do however, is exert upward pressure on food prices through tariffs and agricultural policy.
and we don't have massive shantytowns because of Section 8.
If capitalism causes shanty towns, we should expect to see more shanty towns in more capitalist places, instead of less capitalist places. We do not in fact see that.
According to the Current Population Survey, less than two percent of households make over a quarter million per year. That's less than one in fifty. (Note that this is households, not individuals, as well.) It's a tiny, tiny slice. These people are the few, the elite, and it's insane to hold our nation hostage to their whims.
$250,000 per year does not make you "ridiculously wealthy". Far more than two percent of the population can expect to make such an income at some point in their lives, and the number of people in that category is always shifting.
Wasn't Bush an avatar of rugged individualism, an incarnation of the free market itself?
Oh, pardon me. I was referring to things other than roads and bridges and such; I was referring to food that's not full of mushed-up rats, drugs that actually do what they say they do, streets that aren't full of starving old people, and all the other things which separate us from a neofeudal nightmare.
None of that is infrastructure, it's government regulation and welfare. There's no reason why the market cannot take care of all of those things. Who wants to put mushed-up rats into the food they sell? The government isn't preventing snake oil from being sold, basic foods are cheap and widely available, and the only places where homelessness is a problem are those places with strict rent-control and "anti-slumlord" laws.
the only taxes he's raising are on the ridiculously wealthy
An income of $250,000 per year does not make one "ridiculously wealthy".
That's the difference--as I said, 4.6% on the top marginal tax rate. For this, Obama is apparently a socialist.
Obama was called a socialist based on his comment about "spread(ing) the wealth around". Who believes that a 35% tax rate on income over 300 some odd thousand dollars is "rugged individualism"?
On a slightly less sarcastic note, I find it fucking hilarious that the difference between rugged individualism and the heavy yoke of baleful commie servitude is a four point six percent rise in the marginal tax rate. Oh, hell, I'll just let Ruben Bolling mock you.
Nobody who believes in liberty has made such a distinction. Your argument is a strawman.
Those rights aren't important to him. The only important right to this kind of fellow is the right not to pay taxes while he pretends not to benefit from the infrastructure,
If everyone only had to pay for the physical infrastructure they used, taxes would be a small fraction of what they are now.
from the civilization he resides in.
Most libertarians I know enjoy civilization, and pay good money to use its services.
According to the Cato Institute, the U.S. federal government spent $92 billion on corporate welfare during fiscal year 2006.
Is that greater than, or less than the $359 billion spent on unemployment and welfare for fiscal year 2006? (Not including other social welfare programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.)
The Jungle is a work of complete fiction, and the birth defects prevented in the Thalidomide case are insignificant compared to the number of deaths caused by FDA delays.
Slashdot Mirror
Wrong.
"General welfare" was limited to the powers specifically enumerated in Article 1, Section 8. Furthermore, 'General welfare' was applied to the united States as a whole, not to individuals.
"General welfare" does not mean General Welfare Checks.
Large corporations are far more accountable to the individual than the federal government, as you can choose not to buy from them without being shot.
Because it was either that, or be sued for "discrimination".
Which means of course, everybody gets a mortgage, regardless of ability to pay.
Learning another skill is far easier than learning another language, and being able to speak it so as to be understandable to native speakers. Moving to another state in the US is far easier than moving to another country thousands of miles away.
We haven't had widespread riots in America in over a generation.
Look at the Homestead strike for instance, where the union opened fire on replacement workers with cannon.
By 'socialism', I am refering to the destruction of private property rights in the means of production.
Pressured to Take More Risk, Fannie Reached Tipping Point
How HUD Mortgage Policy Fed The Crisis
I don't necessarily have to leave my home and learn another language in order to find another job.
So those widespread riots by Muslim youths were just made up?
The police do not protect or prevent anything. All they do is show up after a crime has been committed.
So what do you call a corporation?
All famous incidents involving the Pinkertons had to do with union goons murdering workers, often black workers, and the Pinkertons being called in to protect workers.
Scandinavian countries are not socialist, but are rather "social democratic". In the case of Sweden, American blacks are wealthier than middle-class Swedes.
You will find libertarian theories tested wherever people are free to buy, sell and trade stuff. You'll find that the overwhelming majority of such transactions work out fine without government intervention.
I was actually referring to Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and private institutions who, under pressure from the government, doled out mortgages based on affirmative action rather than financial reality. The Community Reinvestment Act was used as a baton to threaten institutions with if they didn't make affirmative action mortgages.
It's hard to evade gas taxes, which pay for roads. Sewers are usually paid for by fees based on how much is used. The other things are nebulous and abstract, such as "accumulated knowledge" (which is almost always privately produced) and "social services". I contend that most tax evaders (usually having evaded income taxes) do in fact pay for the infrastructure they have used.
Your "shop around for a better deal" argument would be more plausible if a person didn't have to abandon their home and property.
Many of these "egalitarian societies" you like are in fact the ones teetering on the edge of social explosion, such as France.
In highly capitalist societies that are not as "egalitarian", we do not see the poor fighting the rich.
Rights are inherent, and do not depend on the government for existence.
An organized system of cooperating individuals can provide justice privately, without the need for a government.
There is no need for a government to back up your rights. A private defense agency could do just fine. Insofar as bad individuals are a problem, they are dealt with quite nicely by individuals with guns, which is why civilized societies have people who are armed.
Civilization existed for thousands of years before the modern regulatory and welfare state.
The market did not "fail miserably". What problems there were with meatpacking, for example, were well on their way to being remedied when the Pure Food and Drug Act came about. The only thing the Pure Food and Drug Act did was limit competition at the behest of big meatpacking firms, representatives of such firms being the ones who wrote and oversaw the regulations.
So where are all the rats?
But there are still people selling snake oil. Yet most people see through their scams.
Rice and beans and other basic foods are cheap and widely available, and would continue to be if WIC were eliminated. WIC exerts no downward pressure on their prices. What the US government does do however, is exert upward pressure on food prices through tariffs and agricultural policy.
If capitalism causes shanty towns, we should expect to see more shanty towns in more capitalist places, instead of less capitalist places. We do not in fact see that.
$250,000 per year does not make you "ridiculously wealthy". Far more than two percent of the population can expect to make such an income at some point in their lives, and the number of people in that category is always shifting.
No.
What did they take without paying for?
Civilization does not depend on government for its existence, and would probably be a lot better off without it.
The problem was government pressuring institutions to sell mortgages to those who couldn't possibly pay them back.
That would be news to those sent to prison for tax evasion.
Define "assault weapon".
Yes, you do.
None of that is infrastructure, it's government regulation and welfare. There's no reason why the market cannot take care of all of those things. Who wants to put mushed-up rats into the food they sell? The government isn't preventing snake oil from being sold, basic foods are cheap and widely available, and the only places where homelessness is a problem are those places with strict rent-control and "anti-slumlord" laws.
An income of $250,000 per year does not make one "ridiculously wealthy".
Obama was called a socialist based on his comment about "spread(ing) the wealth around". Who believes that a 35% tax rate on income over 300 some odd thousand dollars is "rugged individualism"?
Define "assault weapon".
His "official stance", which no doubt contradicts his past official stances, means nothing. The only thing that matters is his legislative record.
Nobody who believes in liberty has made such a distinction. Your argument is a strawman.
If everyone only had to pay for the physical infrastructure they used, taxes would be a small fraction of what they are now.
Most libertarians I know enjoy civilization, and pay good money to use its services.
Sorry, but cutting taxes is not a form of wealth redistribution from the poor to the rich.
Is that greater than, or less than the $359 billion spent on unemployment and welfare for fiscal year 2006? (Not including other social welfare programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.)
The Jungle is a work of complete fiction, and the birth defects prevented in the Thalidomide case are insignificant compared to the number of deaths caused by FDA delays.
So in other words, any "subsidies" received were long ago and insignificant, for if you actually had any hard data, you would have posted it.
How much, and under what law?