Southern Avenger

um, "Brother Obama?" way to coin a new entry on the list of condescending racially-tinged presidential nicknames

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also, please explain how the stimulus grows government. isn't the stimulus money used for contracts to private companies to do various work in local communities throughout the country? I think that assuming that Democrats' goal is to expand government rather than spur economic activity is exactly what you're arguing against - an unfounded belief.

I do however give you credit for being seemingly principled in a libertarian respect by being opposed to interventionism and the counterproductive war on drugs.

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Of course, if the stimulus (798 Billion over 10 years) had not passed and the theoretical depression was now taking place Sister Jack would be first in line to blame President Obama for it.

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And you're a market fundamentalist Jack, a worshiper at the Church of the Invisible Hand. So around we go.

I'm not so much of a 'government fundamentalist' as I am a 'democracy fundamentalist'. While most people seem to think that workplaces should be run as a dictatorship, I believe workers are capable of running their own lives/companies, without some ivy league 'elite' dictating to them-in the same way that most people (claim) to believe that Americans are capable of running their own country. I'm just more consistent than most.

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Sark,

No, we don't run our own country. That's not how it's set up. We are a representative republic, wherein we elect representatives to go to Washington to make laws and decide spending and budget issues on our behalf.

The fundamental issue which animates the Tea Party is the obvious disconnect between what we want our elected representatives to do, and what they actually are doing.

I agree that workers should be able to run their companies however they wish, provided that they own the company.

I own my own business, and run it the way I want to run it. That is my prerogative. If you work for me, you will do as I say, or you will find employment elsewhere.

Are you advocating for workers to dictate the terms of operation to the owners of either privately held or publicly traded businesses?

That's preposterous.

If I run my business into the ground through poor management, it is I who loses profits, not the worker.

If I keep an inefficient employee on the payroll, it is I who loses profits, not the worker.

If my workers wants to run the business, they are free to purchase it from me, or start one on their own, in direct competition with me. If their model is better, they will flourish and I will perish. That is how a free market works.

Armies have a chain of command for a reason. If every buck private had a say in the battle plan, there would be no plan. With higher rank comes higher pay and greater responsibility for the outcomes of more people's survival. Successful businesses operate in exactly the same way.

Why are you unable to grasp such a simple concept?

Do you have any practical experience running a large business or working for one? Do you really think Boeing can make more or better airplanes if assembly line workers start organizing everything? The folks who rivet don't know about accounting, procurement, engineering or materials testing; they know riveting. That's not to say they can't learn all those other things and rise to be company president, but the point is, upper management has a different and unique skill set which places a greater responsibility on their decisions, which will ultimately affect every worker in the plant, and the shareholders to boot.

The socialist utopia of a "worker's paradise" is a freakin' myth, dude.

If it were a utopia, they wouldn't call it "work". If it was "paradise", there would be no need to do work.

Ask any worker for their definition of the ultimate workers paradise, and they will tell you it is getting paid a lot of money for not doing ANY work at all, or even showing up.

How about those Chrysler guys, members of a union shop no less, whose worker's paradise consists of a few tall boys and a spliff during lunch? That is how your workers would run the shop, unless they owned it. In that case, they would have fired themselves for mucking up safety and productivity.

Are you misguided or misinformed?

Sometimes, it is hard to tell.

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FCB,

"Father IP" declares that sustained ten percent unemployment, record foreclosure rates, monetization of our debt, record deficit spending/borrowing, and looming taxpayer and consumer uncertainty will soon remove the label "theoretical" from our coming depression.

Perhaps then we can refer to it as a "pro" (Pelosi/Reid/Obama) depression instead of a "theoretical" one.

Bush left them with a recession. Their "fixes" are turning it into a depression.

Credit where credit is due, eh?

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Actually, IPY, though you may be right, what I see is my investments recovering nicely from the recession, continued low inflation, and work for the top 90%.
Maybe if I was one of the 10% unemployed I would feel differently.
But I kind of like a slow recovery.

But as a centrist, the record deficits do bother me, and they have since Bush cut taxes for the rich and started two unneeded and very expensive wars.
Pretty obviously, Obama and the Democrats have not done anything to improve the situation, although letting the unwise Bush tax cuts expire should help the situation some.

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FCB,

Yes, yes. My investments are "recovering" nicely too. I have recovered almost half of what I lost, unlike Goldman Sachs, who have recovered all of their losses and have posted record profits since the spring of 2009. Good thing we bailed them out.

That's like having a pair of speakers STOLEN from you, and then finding one of them in a pawn shop two years later, with a blown tweeter. You still don't have a stereo. Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs got a nice line of credit from us and bought a monster home theater. Nice.

The best part is this: The cops who helped recover some of my property are the same ones who allowed the crime to happen in the first place. Lucky me.

Perhaps I should have less faith in the "cops" (Wall Street/SEC) and more faith in that gun safe full of gold (commodities/real property).

If record deficits concern you, how do you propose to eliminate them when social entitlement spending for SSI, Medicare/Medicaid, and Obamacare will crush us in the coming decades?

The kids are not alright, and they will hold us responsible.

The last official act of any government is to loot its own treasury.

And the printing presses churn on...........

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"No, we don't run our own country. That's not how it's set up. We are a representative republic, wherein we elect representatives to go to Washington to make laws and decide spending and budget issues on our behalf."
Most business aren't run as "representative republics" either, so I don't see how this addresses my point.

"I own my own business, and run it the way I want to run it. That is my prerogative. If you work for me, you will do as I say, or you will find employment elsewhere."

This is one of the favorite arguments of worshipers of the invisible hand. "well, if they don't like it, they're 'free' to patronize other utility companies/seek employment elsewhere. It's freedom baby! Isn't capitalism great!" It's also BS. Sure, if you're a complete asshole as a boss, they're "free" to quit, if they like going to the soup kitchen and being homeless (remember, you can't collect unemployment if you quit your job, no matter how much of a dick you boss is). With no constraints on capital and especially in an economy like this that's the "freedom to choose" we have. Some freedom.

"Are you advocating for workers to dictate the terms of operation to the owners of either privately held or publicly traded businesses?"

Basically. Although there wouldn't be any publicly traded companies, since companies would be owned wholly by the workers. Thanks for at least getting what I'm saying and not claiming that I want all property collectivized in the hands of the central government.

You're completely wrong about who suffers from mismanagement. No matter how badly they screw up, CEO's never end up in a soup kitchen. Let me give one example that's fresh in my mind.
I had dinner with my mother the other day, and she told me about her work (at a golf course).
The management is entirely corrupt and incompetent. they steal from the company (drinking after-hours and the like), are lazy, selfish, and generally stupid assholes. The golf course is losing many thousands. They're looking for ways to save money. How do they do that? It sure as hell isn't by firing the management (the course is managed by bigger company). It's by cutting hours and jobs for the hourly workers. My mom was almost in tears when she talked about how there's several hard-working people who've been with the company for years who are going to lose their jobs (and have already had their hours cut in half) because of mismanagement. What's going to happen to management? Are they going to end up going to be fired and have to work at Wal-Mart? I'd bet you my bottom dollar that they fail upwards-getting promotions if anything.
This is but one example, but I'd like to see anyone challenge the general applicability of it. Look at Carly Fiorina. Named by Conde Nast as one of the 20 worst CEOs of ALL TIME. Did she end up unemployed? Hell no! But a lot of HP employees sure did. What makes it more galling is that she's at leas partially running on her experience as a "businesswoman".


"Armies have a chain of command for a reason. If every buck private had a say in the battle plan, there would be no plan. With higher rank comes higher pay and greater responsibility for the outcomes of more people's survival. Successful businesses operate in exactly the same way.

Why are you unable to grasp such a simple concept?"

Because companies aren't armies. Simple.

"Do you have any practical experience running a large business or working for one? Do you really think Boeing can make more or better airplanes if assembly line workers start organizing everything? The folks who rivet don't know about accounting, procurement, engineering or materials testing; they know riveting. That's not to say they can't learn all those other things and rise to be company president, but the point is, upper management has a different and unique skill set which places a greater responsibility on their decisions, which will ultimately affect every worker in the plant, and the shareholders to boot."
How fucking stupid do you think people are? Don't you think factory workers KNOW they're not accountants? Obviously if the workers were voting they'd vote to hire people with particular skills they needed, and they'd probably even be willing to vote to give those highly skilled people a higher salary. But what salary everyone gets should be decided democratically, not the people at the top choosing their own salary. That'd be like our legislature electing themselves.

"The socialist utopia of a "worker's paradise" is a freakin' myth, dude."

Worker owned and run businesses are empirically not a myth, they exist in this "real world" conservatives love so much. There's hundreds of them in the US, and thousands around the world.
http://usworker.coop/front

One more thing that should be made crystal clear:
conservatives often accuse the left of not trusting people to run their own lives and make their own decisions. They say the left wants an elite to dictate things to the great unwashed masses. As IP has amply demonstrated, this is pure projection. I argued that people's lives revolve around their work, and thus if they don't control their workplace (through strong unions or direct ownership), they can't really be said to control/run their lives (a point that was never challenged). I expressed a belief that this great majority who don't currently run their lives could do so. IP believes that most people are too stupid/lazy to run their own lives and that terms should be dictated to them by an elite that knows better than them whats best. The only difference between him and authoritarian leftists is that he wants this elite to be capitalists, not government officials.

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"The capitalist utopia of a "market paradise" is a freakin' myth, dude."

And we're done.

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What about your blind faith in conservatism?

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Cf. Ceramico de Cuyo in Argentina. If it fails, it will have been like many "normal" business enterprises--neither better nor worse.

Great one-liner, Charlestoner.

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I have talked to some of my friends who have a union pension besides Social Security. They tell me many pension funds are now owned by Companies like Predential, AIG and a lot of pension money was in the stock market. Many who put their pension money in the stock market lost it. Those are the sad cases. The Pensions in Predential, AIG and other similiar financial instutions were saved by the Obama stimulas that propped up these instutions and kept them out of bankruptsy. That senior pension money, if taken out of circulation, would have dragged the economy down tremendously.I sure appreciate the stimulas because at 77 years,I would be living on Social Security alone, and that is like poverty income.Thank God Bush did not succeed in putting Social Security into the Stock Market. When you vote--Think, don't touch Social Security.

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When I was a young dude, greedy and full of piss an vinegar, I used to sell cars. I didn't have much religion then either.
It used to piss me off when some intelligent mom, dad, or some other person came in with their son to buy a car because it ruined my commision and lowered my income.
Now that I am more mature and found religion, I believe we all need governmet protection from the business sales beast the feed on innocent,naive customers. We are all either customers or suppliers.
My Daddy always says trust everyone but----Cut the cards. If you never played cards, you will not understand what I just said.

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Many honest sincere and well meaning people hate the Obama stimulas, they think it's only intention was to create job. The truth of the matter is, our business, jobs, ownership through owed debt, hourly functioning of products neccessary to sustain life. In other words,(everyone of us)our every day needs for survival was in danger of tumbling ike a house of cards, not just shelter for home owners who were in trouble.
Visualize America as a large ship on the planet earth. Now visulize the top financial engines powering this ship. Now visulize many holes being put into theis ship leaking water on those powerful engins running american and flooding the ship. If you are smart enough to understand this so far, you will see the danger of this ship becoming flooded to the extent of sinking like the economy of the late 1929 into the 30's-----We all look at things different with different interest. I hope some of you will understand the stimulas was really intended to keep the ship from sinking because of over productivity and sales of homes, vehicle and every other commody brought about by the abuse of credit by banks, politicians of all parties, greedy buyers trying to speculate, hungry decent people trying to get into a home, greedy business men in general that were involved in every aspect of this upper exchange of wealth. Today, many working class people have no clue as to what took place in this money debacle and they are getting ready to vote--that may be another debacle. It's not the government fault. It's the fault of profiteers--domestic, international, business, freelancers, and people pushing their opinion who mean well but still have no clue as to what took place that brought down our financial system. The OIL COMPANIES, (have found out that capitalism operates under keynesian economics.)(this is where you borrow, buy and pay off later with inflation money)(this is the only thing that keeps the capitalistic system alive.)(without it working this way--capitalism would die according to John Maynard Keynes--they father of economics.) If you undrstand all this---You will understand that Obama is not a socialist but a realist. He is for making things work better for business and labor. Business will always tell you, their obligation is to the stock holders. (Incidentally---The reason for the high cost of oil is---VP Cheney probably told his OPEC buddies to raise oil prices, because our capitalistic system will ge giving you inflated dollars later on.)Thanks Cheney.
I say let us take care of everyone including, stock holder, workers, and retirees. There is enough for everyone.
One more thing;--look how many years you believe you still have to live---now figure how many months you have to live.
When you look at months to live it looks very close. We need to be sure life is good to everyone because it is really to short.

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Ugg - you are confusing TARP with the stimulus. TARP was used as the "bailout" for the banking and investment groups. It was also devised and implemented by the Bush administration, not Obama's. The stimulus was intended to create jobs where none existed. The problem is that there were not enough people with real business experience involved in the process, only politicians, professors, and political appointees, which is usually the case. The only "success" so far was to take over GM and give partial ownership to the union. If that happened in another country, we would call it Venezuela.

Sark professes socialism. He sees all endeavors to be divided even steven or by majority rule by the workers. Sounds okay on paper, but is a total failure through history. People in socialist countries generally live equally miserable lives and never excel to anything. Why should they? They get the same as everyone else no matter what. The premise of workers running companies is equally baffling. Sure, there are examples of successful enterprises, but on a large scale, our workforce is basically incompetent, selfish, and petty. Perhaps you have not really spent much time in the actual workforce. You certainly have not managed workers. There must always be someone to make decisions. Consensus and voting only works in single large issues that are visited very, very infrequently.

Capitalism and representative government are the best man has devised to this point, but the people must hold each of their leaders to higher standards. Government should be large enough to assist, but not to seize. The more government grows and controls, the less the people will feel they can do without it. Thus the ideals of the Democratic Party of today.

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Two points: one, the stimulus bill has, truthfully created relatively few jobs, but it HAS preserved a heck of a lot that would have otherwise gone away - maintaining isn't as "sexy" as creating, but it still ranks high in many peoples' estimates. And two, many of the failures to utilize the stimulus funding is attributable to fundamentalist Republicans (such as Mr DeMint) refusing to take what is offered and put it to the people's best interest.

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Jack, you have a few assumptions about "evolution." First of all, that macro-evolution (a hyphenated word that intimidates Darwinists because it draws attention to an undeniable reality) is based upon fact. In fact, it's not.

To charge that Darwinian evolution is unproven neither identifies one as a crack-pot nor illustrates their "faith-in-the-face-of-reason" status.

The rational skeptic of Darwinian explanations has asked several questions for which there has been no satisfactory answer. And in my opinion, here is the chiefest of them: Precisely by what mechanism does one species evolve into an entirely new and different one?

The simplistic answer is "evolution" or "change over time." But, this is explaining a question by a conclusion. And, to my limited knowledge, no scientist has illustrated (let alone demonstrated) how this process takes place.

Neither has the problem of irreducible complexity been answered. It's been ridiculed and explained away with Styrofoam cups on a biologist's classroom desk. But, no one has come close to answering the basic question - how does a complex organism simply arrive on the scene when all parts - each complex and requiring their own evolution according to Darwinian explanation - are required to be in perfect operating harmony. Moreover, no previous evolution of its varying parts is evident, let alone present in the fossil record?

It's possible and easy for pundits to demean an "evolution-denier" especially when the pundit is not conversant in the basic difference between "change" and "Darwinian theory." But, this attempt to marginalize - whether it's in the political or scientific arena - is nothing but political correctness practiced by those who probably demean political correctness.

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LuvURcountry: How can you not see the contradiction in what you're saying? It's so bleeding obvious.

You say:
"The premise of workers running companies is equally baffling. Sure, there are examples of successful enterprises, but on a large scale, our workforce is basically incompetent, selfish, and petty."

And in the very next paragraph say:
"Capitalism and representative government are the best man has devised to this point."

If the commoners are so incompetent, selfish, and petty, why the hell should they get a say in how the country is run? From this mindset, government by the people, of the people, and for the people is a fundamentally bad idea. Essentially you're arguing for oligarchy with a chaser of fascism.

Also, virtually no modern democratic socialists that I know of argue that everyone should make the same amount of money regardless of their contribution. That's stupid. What I oppose a) EXTREME inequalities of wealth, and b) the fact that the wealthiest are NOT those who are contributing the most to society, and are often those who are actively destructive. What I have a problem with is that Brett Favre is projected to make up to $28 million this playing freaking football, while, for instance, airline pilots (who perform a far more essential service) often make little more than waiters (not to mention their often crushing debtload) or retail employees are expected to get by on $8/hr with very few benefits.

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between the neo cons and liberals in Congress they have destroyed the middle class.A liberal foreign policy combined with a liberal social policy has bankrupted the country.We can't afford either party or their economics.Sure doesn't seem like supply-side economics has worked any better than Keynsian Democtratic gov't spending did.Maybe not an issue of philosophy but a corruption issue(all of Congress seems like they were bought and paid for

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Free trade is another idea that is blndly followed without any scrutiny - we were promised that free trade would create jobs instead we lost 30 million overseas.

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Noel Cookman: every one of the claims you make suggests that you have little to no understanding of evolutionary biology as it exists today. It's an explanation for the diversity of life. Not for the means by which life arose from non-living matter. It is also not wholly reliant on the fossil record for evidence. Comparative anatomy and DNA evidence is plentiful. As for the irreducible complexity argument, well, just about every last piece of evidence for this joke of an argument has fallen apart under even minute scrutiny.

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