The decline in the work force in western world is not really that sharp that it would damage the economy -- especially ridicule when you consider the productivity increases. The bigger issue is the work-force/retired population ratio. Its a problem because of the short-sighted way politicians in most countries implemented social security. Its a ponzi scheme and they have been doing all kinds of gymnastics to keep it going -- extending the contributors pool, reducing on the work-wage/retirement-pay, increasing the retirement age, and other tricks. If this was done in the private sector, you can be sure, a few people would be going for jail if they come up with such a scheme.
Similarly, medical assistance is paid through taxation of the current work force, so it puts a lot of stress in the economy, as taxes necessarily have to be increased. In my country, they have opted now for reducing medical assistance (which is provided entirely via taxes, managed by bureaucrats), so clinics on cities that people go to retire have been closing. First, the emergency room, now its the entire service.
But then who would work to pay for the care of the elderly? I am no expert in economics, just an autodidact who started studying it to not look like an idiot when others were discussing it, but I personally like the idea of savings on commodities. Its true that they oscillate in price -- demand can be especially alarming as people discover ways to go without them -- but supply tends to become more expensive, and there are always uses for them. And you can diversify. So social security should just keep reserves of oil, metals, etc.;) Even the Greens would like it, as it ensures some sustainability in using earth resources. Investing in capital will also get you dividends while developing the economy. Anyway, of course you want to privatize it, and let the free market find the best strategy.
I'd like to think Ron Paul would have got better coverage over here. Of course, it's easy to say that but impossible to know.
In a 2004 interview, BBC cut the mic of the representer of an UK libertarian organization. Quote:
"Every so often, someone stands up and tells us what benefits we have had from diversity. Such may be, but we must also consider that part of the price has been a police state. In this country, we have severe restrictions on freedom of speech, on freedom of association and on freedom of contract - all in the name of good race relations."
"The Libertarian Alliance believes in repealing all the race relations laws and in shutting down the Commission for Racial Equality."
When Yasmin Alibhai-Brown objected that this would remove all controls on racial attacks and on discrimination, Dr Gabb replied:
"Yasmin, are you saying that the white majority in this country is so seething with hatred and discontent that it is only restrained by law from rising up and tearing all the ethnic minorities to pieces?"
Her answer was yes, though she seemed to think better of this answer immediately after. But she did not take the invitation to deny that the white population was only kept in line by criminal laws to restrain them from attacking ethnic minorities. When Dr Gabb asked if she seriously believed he wanted to murder her, his microphone was turned off and he was "released" from his engagement with 20 minutes of discussion still to run.
Taxing the rich more would be good, spending the money on everyone.
What a simple approach, I wonder why they don't think of that more often... Seriously, that, and accumulating debt (almost 70% in the EU countries) is what they have been doing. It isn't sustainable, and be glad to have countries like China, de-valuing their currency to subsiding your lifestyle, otherwise you'd need to get back to a productive economy.
What we should be doing is accept once for all that socialism doesn't work, and embrace a free market reform. Governments can't continue to spend such a big chunk of the GDP; they are terribly at allocating resources (you loose price information), and will have to end up paying up their debt either through taxation (punishing productivity: your money buys less as taxes like any other cost is internalized), or by monetizing the debt (punishing capital savings: which is actually terrible for the middle class because they are often employed so they don't own capital goods).
A lot of market waste also needs to be eliminated: I suggest ending fractional banking and easy credit so you have banks working closer with their customers, you cut on the financial markets and avoid consumer debt, and a lot of the mercantile protectionism such as in law and health sectors. In my country even IT is regulated: for instance, computer stores must, for sometime now, license the computers they have for sell. This has obviously eliminated white brands, restricting supply to big names such as HPs. A second consequence is that smaller shops were obliterated by the big retailers, as it reduced their competitive advantage.
Why do you say that the defense attorney gamed the jury on the OJ criminal trial?
In my view, OJ won the criminal trial simply because the prosecution messed up. And the lawyers on the civil case learned from their mistakes. Civil cases are of course also different, they have more room to move (e.g. they showed more evidences, and they putted OJ on the witnesses bench). The most infamous stupidity on the prosecution part was of course the glove not fitting. But what I think had more impact -- at least on me -- was the policeman that found the glove was an admitting racist and had been previously found to fabricate evidences.
GObject is a library that adds some semantic sugar and utilities to make developing in C object oriented like. I don't know what GTK+ developers can use that is equivalent to KParts. I think Bonobo or maybe GtkPlug?
There is scarcity, people need software to cover their use case, some feature implemented, some bug fixed... Copyright is a way to offset and mitigate it at distribution. That is obviously not the only finance software development however, and Open Source shows that to an extent -- it should be noted though, that a lot of open source projects derivate from years of closed source developments, and, software being mostly labor based, volunteers with a lot of time in their hands play a major role. Most open source projects however, arrange ways to offset the production to a subset of users -- Qt through dual-licensing (of course, dependent on closed source for their revenue), others through enhanced services, documentation or whatever (depending on the exact model, I'm not sure this plays well with division of labor because you don't want other people competing against your base product).
I assume when he talks about competing currencies that he means a commodity-backed one, defined by Congress (he generally adds jokingly "legalize the constitution";)). This is how you introduce a new currency, you let them circulate side by side with the old one, using fixed exchange rates; it worked very well in all European countries that introduced the Euro so far. He surely is not talking about adopting every currency in the world as legal tender...
heh. You keep a base in my country (Azores, Portugal) that you have used to transport innocent germany citizens to be tortured in Cuba, and then you drag us to your stupid wars. We have now two army bodies (one under the control of the president, the other the prime-minister) because as the president didn't agree to go to Iraq, a second body was created by the prime-minister. Keep your dirty money and your dirty lobbyists at home. Thank you very much.
2.) He wants to sacrifice the progress we've made so far in Iraq by pulling the troops home...yesterday.
heh. He does answer like that on the 2-minutes answer debates.;) I think more than winning, what he really wants is making his point across. Anyway, if you listen to some of his longer interviews on Iraq, he does say it could take some months to pull out of Iraq definitively.
Of course you're either joking or trolling. Anyway, if you hear some Ron Paul speeches, you know he refers to the constitution as "the best contract between the people and government written by men". He occasionally expands on that saying that nothing men writes is perfect, and slavery should had been abolished from the start.
Besides, he does lots of speeches in the house, and he does introduce lots of bills, way more than congressmen average. (They are mostly repeals though so they never pass.)
(introduced last year)
I can't trust someone who views homosexuals as an abomination
Ron Paul, at least on his Google interview, has supported gay marriage, explaining that the constitution defends any voluntary association. He has also spoken in favor of gay serving in the military.
when challenged on the drivel in the past he made no effort to disown it, much less condemn it
Uh? Those newsletters were not written by him, he doesn't know who wrote them, and he does condemn them. Its obvious they were published to hurt him on his '99 congress campaign, when his opponent had the party's support as he was changing democrat to republican.
I thought Italy was a parliamentary republic. Don't you guys vote for parties, not people?
Greetings from Portugal btw. I wished Ron Paul had a chance. I like his market economics. I dislike democratic-socialism; we are an example of how poorly national education and health care work, so I was hoping it could serve as a push to the unrepresented party I frequent (the only thing pro-market -- e.g. we support school vouchers, and personal health funds, filled for kids and poorer ppl, together with some insurance for life disabilities --: checkout the names of the major parties here: people's party, socialist, democratic-socialist, left bloc, and communist. people keep dying on hospitals because they drop out of bed and stay in the floor, and other stupid things, while politicians keep misleading ppl into more and more bureaucracy).
Anyway, Obama would be a second choice, as he convinced me with his entrepreneurship talk. What I very much dislike his is stance on Iran; but I guess all American candidates have some maniac complex that think they are candidates for the world's government.
Corporations love candidates like Hillary Clinton which promise lots of subsidies -- guess which pockets they will fill. A de-centralized economy tends to disperse wealth, and you can setup funds at the state-level for those unfortunate (like Medicaid is implemented).
The current situation started when the government forced big corps to pay for employees health care. This by itself was not problematic, the problem comes from the unbalance it created by giving tax breaks to the corps to cover these costs, while not giving the same benefit to small businesses or individuals.
On marriage, I recall him saying in the past that he saw it as an issue for states rather than the federal government.
I'm not American, but I do have a family member that married an American, and I was convinced that marriage licenses were granted by each state (aren't driving licenses too?). This was quite a few years ago though... Has this changed, or was I confused? Thanks in advance.
Don't you see you are contradicting yourself? In one hand, you believe that the people will keep government accountable. In the other hand, you say that Bush can get away with unjustified wars. (and yes, I understand that he may not have won the vote majority the first election, but it was a close margin nevertheless)
If socialism is such good thing why doesn't it evolve from a freedom setup? Why do you want the government to provide for those kind of services, rather than let people naturally form and join such organizations?
Surely banks would offer that service for free, in order to attract depositors, just like they offer some other services now. In any case, the interests from your savings account would pay for your current account. In my country, in the time of my grandmother, I guess this is how it worked, because I remember she telling me once how the bank used to pay decent interests. Now, interests on savings account barely reach inflation (highest interests I shopped for were 2.5%, while government reports inflation at 3%).
Slashdot Mirror
The decline in the work force in western world is not really that sharp that it would damage the economy -- especially ridicule when you consider the productivity increases. The bigger issue is the work-force/retired population ratio. Its a problem because of the short-sighted way politicians in most countries implemented social security. Its a ponzi scheme and they have been doing all kinds of gymnastics to keep it going -- extending the contributors pool, reducing on the work-wage/retirement-pay, increasing the retirement age, and other tricks. If this was done in the private sector, you can be sure, a few people would be going for jail if they come up with such a scheme.
;) Even the Greens would like it, as it ensures some sustainability in using earth resources. Investing in capital will also get you dividends while developing the economy. Anyway, of course you want to privatize it, and let the free market find the best strategy.
Similarly, medical assistance is paid through taxation of the current work force, so it puts a lot of stress in the economy, as taxes necessarily have to be increased. In my country, they have opted now for reducing medical assistance (which is provided entirely via taxes, managed by bureaucrats), so clinics on cities that people go to retire have been closing. First, the emergency room, now its the entire service.
But then who would work to pay for the care of the elderly? I am no expert in economics, just an autodidact who started studying it to not look like an idiot when others were discussing it, but I personally like the idea of savings on commodities. Its true that they oscillate in price -- demand can be especially alarming as people discover ways to go without them -- but supply tends to become more expensive, and there are always uses for them. And you can diversify. So social security should just keep reserves of oil, metals, etc.
In a 2004 interview, BBC cut the mic of the representer of an UK libertarian organization. Quote:
What a simple approach, I wonder why they don't think of that more often... Seriously, that, and accumulating debt (almost 70% in the EU countries) is what they have been doing. It isn't sustainable, and be glad to have countries like China, de-valuing their currency to subsiding your lifestyle, otherwise you'd need to get back to a productive economy.
What we should be doing is accept once for all that socialism doesn't work, and embrace a free market reform. Governments can't continue to spend such a big chunk of the GDP; they are terribly at allocating resources (you loose price information), and will have to end up paying up their debt either through taxation (punishing productivity: your money buys less as taxes like any other cost is internalized), or by monetizing the debt (punishing capital savings: which is actually terrible for the middle class because they are often employed so they don't own capital goods). A lot of market waste also needs to be eliminated: I suggest ending fractional banking and easy credit so you have banks working closer with their customers, you cut on the financial markets and avoid consumer debt, and a lot of the mercantile protectionism such as in law and health sectors. In my country even IT is regulated: for instance, computer stores must, for sometime now, license the computers they have for sell. This has obviously eliminated white brands, restricting supply to big names such as HPs. A second consequence is that smaller shops were obliterated by the big retailers, as it reduced their competitive advantage.
Free software is also free. What's your point?
Why do you say that the defense attorney gamed the jury on the OJ criminal trial?
In my view, OJ won the criminal trial simply because the prosecution messed up. And the lawyers on the civil case learned from their mistakes. Civil cases are of course also different, they have more room to move (e.g. they showed more evidences, and they putted OJ on the witnesses bench). The most infamous stupidity on the prosecution part was of course the glove not fitting. But what I think had more impact -- at least on me -- was the policeman that found the glove was an admitting racist and had been previously found to fabricate evidences.
Grand-parent said his wife thought the accused was innocent, yet she fell for peer pressure. Parent's response is completely adequate in my book.
GObject is a library that adds some semantic sugar and utilities to make developing in C object oriented like. I don't know what GTK+ developers can use that is equivalent to KParts. I think Bonobo or maybe GtkPlug?
There is scarcity, people need software to cover their use case, some feature implemented, some bug fixed... Copyright is a way to offset and mitigate it at distribution. That is obviously not the only finance software development however, and Open Source shows that to an extent -- it should be noted though, that a lot of open source projects derivate from years of closed source developments, and, software being mostly labor based, volunteers with a lot of time in their hands play a major role. Most open source projects however, arrange ways to offset the production to a subset of users -- Qt through dual-licensing (of course, dependent on closed source for their revenue), others through enhanced services, documentation or whatever (depending on the exact model, I'm not sure this plays well with division of labor because you don't want other people competing against your base product).
The only interview I saw on that was this one. Maybe it clarifies some of your points.
I assume when he talks about competing currencies that he means a commodity-backed one, defined by Congress (he generally adds jokingly "legalize the constitution" ;)). This is how you introduce a new currency, you let them circulate side by side with the old one, using fixed exchange rates; it worked very well in all European countries that introduced the Euro so far. He surely is not talking about adopting every currency in the world as legal tender...
heh. You keep a base in my country (Azores, Portugal) that you have used to transport innocent germany citizens to be tortured in Cuba, and then you drag us to your stupid wars. We have now two army bodies (one under the control of the president, the other the prime-minister) because as the president didn't agree to go to Iraq, a second body was created by the prime-minister. Keep your dirty money and your dirty lobbyists at home. Thank you very much.
It was not "his own newsletter". Some ppl were simply publishing that under his name.
CNN interview
heh. He does answer like that on the 2-minutes answer debates. ;) I think more than winning, what he really wants is making his point across. Anyway, if you listen to some of his longer interviews on Iraq, he does say it could take some months to pull out of Iraq definitively.
Of course you're either joking or trolling. Anyway, if you hear some Ron Paul speeches, you know he refers to the constitution as "the best contract between the people and government written by men". He occasionally expands on that saying that nothing men writes is perfect, and slavery should had been abolished from the start.
Yep, and a centralized body is also cheaper for lobbyists. So, it saves everyones money really.
Uh? He talks about that in every speech dude. And maybe you can find the answer in his website. ;) (ie. competing currencies)
Also, a couple of videos you may find interesting: fox biz interview / Forbes et al commenting Ron Paul
Besides, he does lots of speeches in the house, and he does introduce lots of bills, way more than congressmen average. (They are mostly repeals though so they never pass.)
(introduced last year)
Ron Paul, at least on his Google interview, has supported gay marriage, explaining that the constitution defends any voluntary association. He has also spoken in favor of gay serving in the military.
I thought Italy was a parliamentary republic. Don't you guys vote for parties, not people?
Greetings from Portugal btw. I wished Ron Paul had a chance. I like his market economics. I dislike democratic-socialism; we are an example of how poorly national education and health care work, so I was hoping it could serve as a push to the unrepresented party I frequent (the only thing pro-market -- e.g. we support school vouchers, and personal health funds, filled for kids and poorer ppl, together with some insurance for life disabilities --: checkout the names of the major parties here: people's party, socialist, democratic-socialist, left bloc, and communist. people keep dying on hospitals because they drop out of bed and stay in the floor, and other stupid things, while politicians keep misleading ppl into more and more bureaucracy).
Anyway, Obama would be a second choice, as he convinced me with his entrepreneurship talk. What I very much dislike his is stance on Iran; but I guess all American candidates have some maniac complex that think they are candidates for the world's government.
Corporations love candidates like Hillary Clinton which promise lots of subsidies -- guess which pockets they will fill. A de-centralized economy tends to disperse wealth, and you can setup funds at the state-level for those unfortunate (like Medicaid is implemented).
The current situation started when the government forced big corps to pay for employees health care. This by itself was not problematic, the problem comes from the unbalance it created by giving tax breaks to the corps to cover these costs, while not giving the same benefit to small businesses or individuals.
On marriage, I recall him saying in the past that he saw it as an issue for states rather than the federal government.
I'm not American, but I do have a family member that married an American, and I was convinced that marriage licenses were granted by each state (aren't driving licenses too?). This was quite a few years ago though... Has this changed, or was I confused? Thanks in advance.
Don't you see you are contradicting yourself? In one hand, you believe that the people will keep government accountable. In the other hand, you say that Bush can get away with unjustified wars. (and yes, I understand that he may not have won the vote majority the first election, but it was a close margin nevertheless)
If socialism is such good thing why doesn't it evolve from a freedom setup? Why do you want the government to provide for those kind of services, rather than let people naturally form and join such organizations?
Surely banks would offer that service for free, in order to attract depositors, just like they offer some other services now. In any case, the interests from your savings account would pay for your current account. In my country, in the time of my grandmother, I guess this is how it worked, because I remember she telling me once how the bank used to pay decent interests. Now, interests on savings account barely reach inflation (highest interests I shopped for were 2.5%, while government reports inflation at 3%).
Instead of working directly to the customers, work for a provider... How do we call those? Yeah, jobs.