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aequalsa

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Posts posted by aequalsa

  1. I'm not exactly sure what you are looking for; Definitions can be found on the internet quite easily.

    It's a historical term that references a particular historical party in a particular place. As such, it has meaning, in the same way that Republicans and Democrats have meaning in spite of the ambiguity that must necessarily occur when referencing a large group of people. Differences between individuals in the party does not mean that no similarities exist or no guiding principles can be found. And it does not for example, imply that I can't listen to a policy maker like Mccain or Romney and think that they seem to be quite democratic in their views.This ambiguity does not equate to meaninglessness. It's just ambiguity.

  2. Fascism as a term is simply weasel language intended to mean something bad about the person your using it against. It can be applied to anything from republicans to democrats, the papacy to the wbc,

    That's not true, but it is an understandable conclusion since it is often used incorrectly, in the same was that "National Socialism" has been.

    The ambiguity stems from the facts of its creation in early 1900's Italy. It was a conglomeration of left and right wing ideas and methods on a backdrop of statism and extreme nationalism. This allows people to find an aspect of fascism in either of the parties in the US, quite easily, and then accurately make a comparison. So, for example, you could look at the way that Bush's prescription drug program "protects" the private property of drug companies and properly call it a fascist policy or you could look at Obama's mandate that we purchase health insurance for the good of the country and likewise, accurately call it a fascist policy. Neither are policies that would have given Mussolini any pause.

    A perfect example would be the Kilo Supreme Court decision that held it as proper to use eminent domain to take people's homes away at a court mandated price to give the land to Walmart, since this increase in taxes was better for the country. You can see elements of free markets, state control, the good of the nation, and elitist pull pedaling ensconced neatly inside the one act.

    The US for the past 50 years has been mostly indistinguishable from Fascist Italy with the exception of the nationalism. The US seems to have little patriotism left in it, let alone Nationalism but utilizes most of the same policies of psuedocapitalism where markets are allowed to exist at the descetion of the government so long as they are politically relevent and hand most of the proceeds over.

  3. I'm usually behind on this sort of thing, but on the off chance that someone is even more behind than I, I decided to post this for you to check out

    Fortunately, "Objectivism" has been doing much better since the 1860's..

    http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=objectivism&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3

    Capitalism seemed to recover from its low dip in the 60s but has now, once again nearly dropped off of the intellectual radar.

    http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=capitalsim&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3

    Not only did the 60's fill the world with hedonists, it also filled the world with potty mouths.

    http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=shit&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3

    Enjoy

  4. Some trouble with this sort of question is that one is hard pressed to find someone who consciously, purposefully, with full admission, wishes to do evil. Hitler didn't want to do evil. Stalin didn't want to do evil. It happened though, as an ultimate effect of their misshapen values.

    Obama may not want to destroy America either, but maybe he's a globalist who believes that for the rest of the world to do better, the US needs to consume less and the destruction of our economy is a way to accomplish that. Or maybe he believes that the injustice of 43 million Americans without healthcare is so great, that it trumps all of our negative liberties and even our overall economic well being.

    The measure of a man can only be the effects of his actions. If what he does causes great evil, then he is greatly evil. Only large amounts of dishonesty allow them to evade the knowledge of the results of their actions, so what you are left with is either, that he is wretched, or he's dishonest. Probably, in his case, a fair amount of both.

  5. I think he's been pretty clear about that intention from the beginning. ..

    But, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in the society. To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution, at least as its been interpreted and Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the federal government can’t do to you, but it doesn’t say what the federal government or state government must do on your behalf, and that hasn’t shifted and one of the, I think, the tragedies of the civil rights movement was because the civil rights movement became so court focused I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of powers through which you bring about redistributive change. In some ways we still suffer from that.
  6. I agree. Inflation has been under 5 percent for decades. I haven't paid federal, state or local taxes under 5 percent ever, let alone the sum of those taxes. Objectively, the fiat currency problem is small compared to other problems.

    It is small now, but there is no way of knowing that it will stay that way. The interest rates are artificially low right now for several reasons one as unpredictable as the next. Sure, we can currently finance our whole massive debt for pennies on the dollar, but what happens if they run out of willing lenders at the current rates and they rise to 20% again like it did in the 70's or even higher? Depending on the loan terms, that could amount to the total federal budget being spent to service the loans. Think some serious inflation might happen then?

    Or what if China decides to amp up their current unloading of our currency? A lot of our lack of perceived inflation is due to Bretton woods and our status as the reserve currency. If that ends...all those locked away dollars could be rushing in, in short order.

    There way too many uncertainties in most of the variables and any or all of these could come about over the course of a few years.

    Since the fed took over, this has happened every 20 or so years. Bursts of inflation happen all at once every couple decades with periods of relatively low inflation and relative stability in between. I think looking at 10 or even 20 years of this system as a basis for your decisions is foolish. If I flip a coin 23 times and the last 3 are heads, it doesn't mean the tails have been beaten back forever.

    That said, income tax is a huge concern, but only worse in the sense that one person cutting off my leg is more of a problem than someone else cutting off my hand. Neither should be disregarded.

  7. Well now that's simply fascinating.

    Assuming you agree with the ShadowStats number (I don't but I assume you do), which has us running an annual inflation rate of about 12%, and you add in the contra-deflation, which runs... another 5%? This would portend that these government-paid millionaires are absconding with approximately $2.6T per year--enough to pay 2,600,000 of them an annual salary of a million dollars, or 2,600 of them a cool billion.

    Who knew? The most impressive thing is how well all of these latter day Orren Boyles are able to keep this a secret from the rest of the population.

    I can see that you're still trying to paint me as a conspiracy theorist by putting words and ideas in my mouth. Not sure if you're trolling or just unaccustomed to honest disagreement on the subject, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.

    There is no conspiracy to be covered up. None that, I'm aware of, leastwise. I never said it all went to those 70k or so millionaires. It gets spent along the way by various levels of governments. Remember all of the public employees I mentioned at the state, local, and federal levels? Federal contracts for politically connected folks account for a lot. Public employees unions and pension plans. All those people have a vested interest in maintaining this system. You don't need a conspiracy as long as enough people in enough positions of power, from a voter on up, benefit by the system. There doesn't have to be a conspiracy for two wolves to decide to eat a lamb. The evil is built into the system. It's immoral, top to bottom, which is why objectivism opposes it.

    My point was, once again, the closer you are to the source of origin, the more of a beneficiary you are, at the expense of the actually productive people at the end of the line. Mostly that's governments and large banks.

    I am getting the impression that you are looking at this from a pragmatic or utilitarian stance? Is that the case?

  8. Yes, if you back into 70s hyperinflation, you definitely get a different picture. You get an even different picture if you back into the 40s. But why stop there? And why stop at economics? Should I be afraid, if I am a black person, that they will reinstate slavery here in the US? Why or why not?

    I'm really not certain what you're getting at here. I haven't heard of anyone advocating slavery, but growing the currency supply is a given and has been for quite some time. Sooo...our currency losing value relative to goods and services is a legitamate concern while slavery is not. Unless there is some context that I am missing which you would like to explain about this comment, i am left to assume that your daft, or, and more likely, you want to paint me as such.

    Meanwhile, here on Earth, the Fed has been fighting--and winning--the battle against inflation for the last 25 years and there is absolutely no sign of any policy change ANYWHERE on the horizon. A potentiality is not an actuality, so just because inflation is "possible" does not mean it must occur or even that it's likely to occur.

    Ah, I'm a "defender of inflation" now? Very nice.

    But let me get this straight: all of the inflation in the USA, including the absorbed deflation goes... where? Who has all this money? What do they want? What are they going to do with it all?

    It is an actuality that the money supply rose in any measure you care to use. I don't buy into, pardon the pun, any measure of prices, anecdotal or otherwise. That's useful information about the Earth. On Venus, where I reside, a symbol A that represents a quantity B, which is then increased in amount, decreases the value of B relative to its self. Even if B is growing in such a way that it is disguised. Of course....there's a lot of sulfuric acid here, so maybe that affects it.

    I thought you would agree with the title I bestowed. Is there some part of this thread where you are opposed to an entity whose job it is to manipulate the money supply? Maybe I missed that.

    As far as your implication that I'm advocating a conspiracy theory of some sort, I regret to inform you that you are mistaken. The way this works is that the closer you are to the source the more your money is worth when you spend it. They are able to buy today's goods at yesterday's prices because "todays" prices are created by the act of money creation whether through credit or M1. If you wanted a break down it goes something like this...Federal reserve banks->Federal Government->Federal employees and state governments->Smaller banks and state employes->County governments->County employees and Cities-city employees-local banks-> Ass raped private sector business owners->Even more ass raped private sector 1040ez employees->taxes to federal,state,and local governments who collect what's left of the new yesterdays prices to move on to the next round of pillaging.

    So more simply, large banks and the government mostly. It's not sitting anywhere since it trickles down to all the appropriate political connections needed to maintain the corruption. It does make sure that 50% of the millionaires in the US live within 100 miles of DC wile the other 50% who actually are producers in spite of the graft, regulation and weight that ties them down are spread out a little more.

  9. .

    And no, I don't have the time and the posting space to do an exhaustive compilation of inflation here--and nobody has time to read it here either. I think any honest person who has lived in the USA for the last 10 years cannot say that they have been effected by it. Prices have been relatively stable to the point were inflation is not noticeable.

    Giving your numbers the benefit of the doubt, don't you think it dangerous to come to a conclusion on the effects of fed policy by analyzing 1 cherry picked, 10 or 20 year period? If you were to go back a mere 25 years you find a world where a nice, average home in orange county, Ca could be bought for 60k and a new Toyota for 2 grand. This with only a %50 decrease in minimum wage. The differences are more stark as you go back. In the 1940's my grandfather payed .09/gallon for gas and bought running, used cars for $25.

    And of course, as usual for defenders of inflation, you ignore the the massive value gained by a technologically advancing civilization. Even if there was 0% perceived inflation on all goods and services, there still remains a massive transfer of value, from everyone else, directly to the owners of the printing press when the world is increasing its productivity through technological advance. When a washing machine is invented, the hours of labor required to perform that work is reduced by maybe 90% versus a washboard in the river? If the price to have clothes washed remains unchanged, where did the extra value of that labor go? The theft is even more magnificent when you consider the value created for all businesses when industrial geniuses like Al Gore in vent the internet for us. What more is produced by the use of computers? 10, 20, 50% of the US economy in terms of true labor? A lack of deflation alone, is a sign of theft on a grand scale in our current world. Inflation is just their refusal to even give us a reach around.

  10. Business men are the head of huge factories, many of these factories pollute the air and water around residential and commercial areas.

    These toxic bi-products are a health hazard, so why is it unreasonable to think that the people who profit off the production of these factors should have to pay taxes for public health-care?

    I'd take it a good deal further and say that if a company could be shown to be causing a neighbor direct physical harm they should be responsible for any and all costs associated with returning the individual to their original state or compensating them directly when that is not possible. In fact, that is was our legal system does. Of course, you need to actually prove your case against an individual entity. So this is only accomplished in a specific and objective way.

    What you seem more interested in, though, is to avoid the impossible task of tracing actual harm and lump all businesses into one category and label it "damaging to our health." This would affect software companies with 15 employees and virtually no "carbon(or any other) footprint" and large car factories with thousands of employees bunches of smokestacks responsible for this same harm. Doing so, vaguely holding all businesses and wealth producing individuals responsible for every harm that occurs to anyone is capricious and myopic in nature.

    This could be fair, but first you would need to add up all of the values they produce and subtract the cost from them. So for example, the car factory where you purchase your car might be able to be shown to produce enough poisonous fumes to take 5 years off of your average lifespan. So if that was determined to be 100 years based on your healthy lifestyle and long lived grandparents then they would be responsible for compensating you, at least financially for 5% of your life...or roughly $165k in the US plus some reasonably determined amount for the emotional cost of that lost year. But then we would need to factor in your gains from being able to drive a car rather than walk to places which would amount to around 14 years of your life or around $462k. Also we would need to add in the lessened cost of all of the material items you consumed due to the mechanization of jobs over your whole life so, maybe $974k for that. Also some reasonably determined amount for the emotional value gained by having access to so many products and services that would be unavailable without those dirty factories. We can just say that those cancel out, for the sake of argument. So...$1.436 million - $165,000 comes out to $1,271,000 that you would owe to them. You know, if you wanted to be fair.

    As a side note, this myopic-ness is one of the most frustrating things that I routinely come across in interacting with leftists. Opportunity cost is impossible to measure and always massive. So taking 50% out of everyone's pay has a cost that will end in being orders of magnitude higher than those actual dollars because there is no telling what businesses may have gotten started, what ideas could have been pursued, or what technologies invented had that money stayed in the capable, productive hands of them that created it.

  11. Hello, I would greatly appreciate it if anyone would suggest reading material about how to better ones thinking. The errors in my thinking lead to contradictions in my mind that often bother me, and also too, my thinking it too complicated and not simple. It is a bother not only to me, but to my listeners and readers as well. My goal is to convey my ideas as simple as possible. I do want to think,write,speak and create in a simple way.

    Thank you

    Thomas Jefferson's advice to "never use two words where one will do," is a good place to start. Even in the above, short though it was, you really could have gotten away with the first sentence, "I would greatly appreciate it if anyone would suggest reading material about how to better ones thinking."

    The rest, if that particular direction is important to you, could be summed up as, "particularly in regards to communication."

    A second mistake that I feel confused by with speakers is stream of consciousness drift. Staying more directly on the subject, or at least acknowledging it directly when you do leave the subject, helps keep others with you.

    A study of grammar could be helpful. Also anything on critical thinking. I got quite a lot out of http://www.amazon.com/How-Think-About-Weird-Things/dp/0767400135

  12. With regard to Andrei and Leo ask yourself which is the more honest/moral position...

    1. Andrei - I used to believe "X". I have been shown and now understand that it is wrong. I can't live like this any longer I must escape... any way I can.

    2. Leo - I believe "Y" but that is not the way things are so, if I can't beat them I might as well join them. Ooh, I can drink myself into oblivion as I do it too.

    Yes, I'm prejudiced in Andrei's favor. Andrei is a good example of how an honest man, even if he is completely convinced that he is correct, after being proven wrong will not compromise but change his course 360 degrees to comply with facts and reality.

    Even as a Commie Andrei was a better man than Leo.

    I do not see committing suicide at your realization of your own dishonesty an noble act and I do not see Leo giving up after a lifetime of effort and being repeatedly crushed by forces of destruction(Anderei and the party he is devoted to) as dishonest. It was a rational realization that it is a force that he cannot live with or fight against. I think his view, in fact, was the reality he was confronted with.

    I think this may be a personal experience thing, but I've never met a leftest who wasn't a complete hypocrite with regard to their allegedly sincere beliefs. The most intellectual among them will avoid the issue by claiming that the generous behavior they wish to enforce in me, at the point of a gun, would be supererogatory to expect of them on their own accord. I realize that Rand presented him as a sincere proponent of communist ideology, but my experience has been that there is no such thing. Leo, on the other hand, tried to live life on his own terms. He failed, of course, but I thought he gave it a pretty good go considering he had to work with Andrei riding on his shoulders the whole time.

    Half of the population of the US are well meaning, sincere public officials and bureaucrats like Andrei sucking on the rest of us. I'm not the least bit impressed by their sincerity, either. I am impressed by the 90% of business owners who go out of business each year, due in part to regulations that those sincere people strap them down with.

    What was it that Andrei arrested Leo for? "Crimes against the state," or some such? He was handing out death penalties for trading goods. Fuck him and his sincerity. ;)

  13. I think that Andrei had a lot into him he didn't get out.

    The book talks about how the system breaks then man, and he was a good example for it.

    He tried to fight for a change, but he chose the wrong change.

    He was a good person, he was moral - in a way, and he was interesting. I liked his character,

    though my all-time-favorite-rand-character is Ragner =]

    I have to disagree. Leo was an essentially moral person broken by the system. Andrei, and people like him, were the system. I realize that he was presented as sincere in his beliefs about communism, and that he was somewhat productive as a bureaucrat but that's a long way from being moral or justifying all of the free spirits like Leo, that he helped to destroy. If he is a victim, then he's a victim of his own philosophy.

  14. The question is, will they get it wrong, and in which direction? Right now everything policy-wise points to DEflation, not inflation.

    OP

    I would clarify that "the question" is, in what direction? The wrongness is a certainty.

    I can't see them pushing deflation in anything but the short to medium term. Any debtor is necessarily a fan of inflation.

  15. It doesn't quite work that way.

    You get 2000 percent with a only a 3 percent per annum rate, not a 20 percent, because of the very fact you mention, that it is compounding. (100th root of 20 is approximately 1.03)

    Sorry, I wasn't clear...or maybe I don't understand. 3%/year compounding gets to 2000, which /100 is 20% of the original value per year, that is lost with the later ones being much, much higher.

  16. Yes, prices have been rising steadily over the decades, but the official numbers do not understate it by very much. I think sites like ShadowStats have this wrong. You also have it right that in a free-market, we ought to see a falling secular trend to prices. So, by that reckoning, a 4% price-rise might well be 7% more than it ought to be. Still, I think the OPs point is that we are not in for price rises that are significantly different from what we have seen in the past.

    I understand what your saying, and by those numbers, I'd agree, but what I was trying to get at was that the true numbers are cumulative and also difficult to meaningfully measure. In the past 100 years of being robbed blind by the FED and US Govt, there has been more than a 2000%(so say 20%/year for 100 years) decrease in value. It is not apparent due to their measuring year by year, effectually hiding it's cumulative nature as well as technological advance and market manipulation which helps hide it even more in the short term. My thought is that this has allowed them to take the vast majority of the discretionary wealth produced by capitalistic advance. With a removal of regulation and subsidies, the cost of living should be rapidly approaching free, but instead the medium income in the US, after taxes(say24k/year) is barely enough to get by with a lifestyle not insignificantly, but not significantly enough different from what it was 100 years ago.

    Obviously a number of other factors are at play in this morass, but I think inflation is a much larger one than most suspect, do in large part to this intentional blurring through redefinition and recalculation.

  17. Aequalsa:

    I referenced the changing nature of the CPI calculation in a response to OP - but realize I didn't link a follow up reference. As you've inquired, I've linked it here for you. It explains how the CPI is calculated these days incorporating hedonics (subjective quality evaluations) into all inputs to the CPI calculation.

    Thanks for the information. I appreciate it!

  18. I wouldn't be surprised if more insanity is to come, when Obama reveals his "jobs plan". That company had 1100 employees and the government put in $535 million. At over $400,000 per employee that is a huge subsidy even if the place had not gone bankrupt in under two years!

    Right? If I recall correctly, that was with his(the ceo's) plan to hire a little over 100 people. $400k(ironically, the same pay as the president) as a straight check for a make work program would have made more sense. I never cease to be amazed at how little the meddlers understand business. Assuming that it's true that they don't and they are not intentionally evil, of course.

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