gags

Nuts, lost in internet translation again!

Why not? It's more useful knowledge than what the OP put up for discussion.

If there were ever a time to make your opinion known to your representatives, this is it.

A right is a freedom of action in a social context and the most fundamental of those rights is man's right to his own life. One doesn't have a "right" to property owned and/or produced by others. Thus there is no right to healthcare, food, a home, or a job.

There’s no doubt that you’ve identified one of the problems with just looking at the end value of goods manufactured here in the US. Nevertheless, I think it’s still the best single measure to review when trying to judge your statement that we don’t make anything here in the US anymore. The problem with capacity utilization is that it rises as capacity is reduced. For example, in the US auto industry the current recession and the resulting bankruptcies of auto suppliers have caused there to be a drop in capacity, which would cause the utilization index to increase even as production remains stagnant. I don’t see how that index backs up your statement that we don’t make anything here anymore. The problem with employment stats is that the number of manufacturing jobs is declining in the US because of increasing productivity. By the way, the same thing is happening in China, where productivity is also increasing. So, this doesn’t help your argument either. Finally, the trade imbalance is impacted by a number of different variables and to claim that it is worsening, thus showing that we aren’t making anything here, is fairly ridiculous. Having said all of that, I think that government regulation and the threat of unionization are making it more and more difficult to manufacture things here in the US. In that sense, I agree with you on some level.

Yes, they have a final bill in the Senate and are planning to vote on it at 1:00 am on Monday morning. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091220/ap_on_...h_care_overhaul

I must admit that I got a minor kick out of the fact that Obama returned from the Global Warming Conference in Copenhagen to a raging blizzard in D.C. where they were predicting as much as two feet of snow.

This article from 2007 (prior to the current recession) directly contradicts your statement: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/02/AR2007090201189.html?hpid=topnews I think you've made the common mistake of assuming that because we are in a long term trend of declining manufacturing employment, we are also producing less. That simply isn't the case. The other mistake you've made is to look at the recent decline in manufacturing (due to the recession) and assume that it will continue. It will not, and there is recent evidence that manufacturing has begun to bounce back as the economy rebounds.

This is the key to your question about whether Strategic Default is immoral. As you've correctly stated above, the relationship between borrower and lender is governed by a contract and that contract provides for certain consequences in the event of a default. If the situation is such that one party must default, then that party should be willing to suffer the consequences spelled out in the contract. None of this reaches the level of immorality unless a party enters a contract with the intention to defraud the other party. If, for example, one mortgaged a property and then added a second mortgage without recording/notifying the bank of the first mortgage, then that would be fraud and clearly immoral. This sort of thing has certainly occured, but it's not the situation you have described. By the way, businesses commit "Strategic Defaults" on loans all of the time and nobody brings up the issue of morality. I don't see how such a default on a mortgage is any different. Whether the contract is written in favor of one party or the other has no moral implications (assuming no force was involved).

That point may come sooner rather than later. As much as the push to restrict carbon use concerns me, I'm far more upset about the fact that socialized healthcare now looks like it will surely pass in the Senate. This country is in a tail spin and all of the parachutes were just thrown out of the back of the plane.

It's now being reported that the Democrats have gathered the necessary 60 votes in the Senate to pass their healthcare bill. Nobody other than Harry Reid knows for sure what's in the bill, but it will be passed anyhow. Socialized healthcare will be a complete fiscal, moral, and life-destroying disaster for America. This is what we get for years of embracing bad philosophy and voting for jackasses who are happy to put that philosophy into action.

Ha, Government Motors is alive and well..... Or better yet, "What's good for Government Motors is good for America."

That's one of the beauties (from the perspective of a statist) of the VAT. It gets collected along the production process, so it's more than just a national sales tax. It will be very hard to avoid. Many of the European countries have VATs, so I can hear the arguments already: "The US is the only developed country without a VAT...."

The politicians and their willing accomplices in the media are starting to float the idea of a national Value Added Tax, or "VAT", to extract more wealth from the American economy. Of course, we can’t continue to run annual government deficits well in excess of a trillion dollars and the only way to pay for this kind of massive overspending is through a broad based tax like the VAT. Predictably, the New York Times leads the way with a recent article that deals favorably with the idea of a VAT: “We have to start paying our bills eventually,” said Charles E. McLure, a tax economist who worked in the Reagan administration. “This strikes me as the best and most obvious way of doing it.” The favored route of economists is known as a value-added tax, which is a tax on goods and services that is collected at every step along the production chain, from raw material to a consumer’s shopping bag. Similar to a sales tax, it generally results in consumers paying more for the things they buy. The revenues could be used to pay for health care or other social programs, or just to pay down existing debt. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/11/business/11vat.html?_r=1&hpw The NYT isn’t the only place where there is talk of a VAT. Quite a few business executives see this coming as well: The prospect of the enactment of a value-added tax in the United States is getting closer – five years and counting, according to a Tax Governance Institute survey. More than half of the senior business executives surveyed by TGI expect some type of value-added tax to be introduced in the United States within five years. In fact, 57 percent of the executives in the survey said they believe VAT legislation will be introduced within five years, while 18 percent expect it within 10 years. The huge increase in government spending coupled with diminishing sources of revenue makes it increasingly likely. http://www.webcpa.com/news/VAT-Coming-to-US-52704-1.html So hold onto your pocketbooks, the latest money grab is being designed right now by your elected representatives in Washington D.C.

I think you're giving too much credit to the Republicans. They aren't nearly as organized or as monolithic as some make them out to be, although they definitely do better at sticking together when they're out of power than when they're in-power. I don't know why people seem to think that the Dem's political viewpoint is soundly discredited. For being discredited, a lot of Americans sure did vote for that viewpoint in 2008. So many in fact that the Dems now control both houses of Congress and we have a far-left President leading the country in the wrong direction on almost every significant issue. If that's discredited, I'd hate to see what happens when their view becomes accepted.

The concept of lobbying was originally considered by the Founding Fathers to be the process of people petitioning government for a redress of their grievances (see the 1st Amendment). In that sense, there is nothing inherently wrong with lobbying. The problem arises when government is allowed to regulate, tax, and control things that are outside of its core functions, which should focus on protecting individual rights (national defense, police, courts). So, in today's context, when (for example) big pharmacy companies send their lobbyists to Washington to seal a healthcare deal with President Obama, the definition you referenced that mentions "a mixed economy", "threats, bribes and blackmail", isn't too far off the mark.

How does the fact that sensory perception is an automatic process (Ms. Rand acknowledges this) and not a rational one cause a contradiction with her definition of reason? Reason is applied to our sensory perceptions, thus those perceptions are not outside the province of reason.

The definition of economics that I recall from college Econ 101 was something more along the lines of: The study of how scarce resources are allocated through the forces of supply and demand. Sometimes people go a bit further with it and break economics down into Macro and Micro. As far as "price" is concerned, snerd's definition makes more sense. You might say that I'm in the business of pricing certain kinds of assets and I can tell you that people often pay more or less than what one determines to be the equilibrium point for the supply and demand of an item. Prices are frequently set by a whole host of factors other than supply and demand.

Yes, Organon seems to be confusing the definition of "sound" with the action of hearing. Clearly the two are not the same.

Right, wasn't it Barry Goldwater who said "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice." during the 1964 presidential campaign?

This certainly isn't a new development, but many members of the religious left have become very involved in the environmental movement. Diana Hsieh discussed this recent article in her blog: http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2009...6-climate_N.htm

I haven't bothered to look, but I'd bet one can also find video clips of Obama talking about how he's deeply religious, etc... Let's face it, politicians like Obama play to their audience, saying whatever they think will resonate with the crowd. One minute he's secular and the next minute he's a committed religionist. By the way, reading some of my earlier posts in this thread makes me look like friggin' Nostradamus. Obama is fulfilling all of my worst expectations.

Absolutely. How pathetic when the delegates at Copenhagen give the Marxist thug Hugo Chavez a standing ovation and then demand a handout from the capitalist countries responsible for creating most of the world's wealth that they're trying to grab.

The spinmeisters of the Clinton Administration were fond of using the word "extreme" when describing their political opponents. Clinton and his gaggle of statists loved to throw the "extremist" charge at Newt Gingrich and his gaggle of statists. Since then, the Left has continued to use it as a favorite term when describing almost anyone who opposes their policies.

The latest poll I could locate is from early November. It shows Schiff with 5% in the primary. He was trailing other Republicans Simmons, Foley and McMahon at that time. http://www.pollster.com/polls/ct/10-ct-sen-reppr.php