Today, because of 30 years of foolish deregulation on Wall Street, and because governments worldwide have now agreed to back up the large private banks with money with taxpayer paid guarantees, the world economy will now begin it's inevitable decline into something resembling a worldwide Weimar Republic. Look it up, folks - may as well get ready while you can. Just remember, the big bailouts began under GWBush in 2008. Too big too fail, due to deregulation.
@bodryn Whoa whoa whoa... You just said 2 totally contradictory statements. You claimed this was the result of "deregulation" then immediately afterwards you said that "governments agreed to back up the large private banks".
Sorry my friend but thats not deregulation. Thats SOCIALISM. You just blamed government and its socialist regulatory policies for the economic crisis. It can't be both. Which one is it? Too much government intervention or not enough government intervention?
@FartyFace Well, don't you know that the socialism that prevails in the US is CORPORATE SOCIALISM? They expect the common people to tighten their belts, but give big tax breaks to corporations, including globalist corporations that have no loyalty to the US! Taxpayers in the US are suckers, paying to bail out not only American banks, but now we hear the American bank system is going to bail out the Euro?!? As for which one is which, you certainly must know we need GOOD regulation.
@FartyFace And in bailing out the European Central Bank, we are subsidizing countries that HAVE universal health care, while we DON'T. Americans are suckers paying for foreign health care but not getting our own!
I keep saying to those who blame deregulation, "WHAT deregulation"? Walter Williams only scratches the surface here. There were a vast number of new rules, regulations, and other manipulations of the housing market and our financial institutions, including the GSEs Fannie and Freddie and the Federal Reserve lowering interest rates to 1% and keeping them there for at least two years, thus pumping a couple trillion dollars of new money into the economy.
I think if I had to make just one comment, I would ask: "Who is this world for? Just for wealthy companies and a few individuals? Or for all of humanity?" Why can't human beings just co-operate better and make life decent for everybody? I think some people must believe people in other countries don't count, and it's okay to starve them out. Corporations that would do that, would also starve US out, and maybe are doing so NOW, with outsourcing.
@mpc91 You and I both know that transnational corporations go to where regulations are the least, because they naturally prefer that. Unfortunately, regulations are the only way to keep corporations from completely poisoning the only planet we have. Needless? Yeah, right! If tariffs were put back in place like before, anything manufactured overseas would have to pay extra to re-import, as it used to be. Now I hear even China has an outsourcing problem! Race to the bottom, eh?
@bodryn - Yes, needless. You see the regulators as being somehow more moral and just than the regulated. But are you familiar with the concept of "regulatory capture"? Most regulations are set up in a favorable arrangement for existing business to the detriment of new competitors. The biggest threat to large corporations is not government regulation, but competition. So by jumping on board with new regulation, you aid and abet the corporations you claim to distrust.
@mpc91 I am not into ignorant state worship, either. I value liberty and reason too much, too. As for educating myself about economics, I already have taken a full year of it - I don't need "lessons" in it. That is insulting, no? A way of trying to tell me I'm ignorant about stuff just because you see things differently. That is an arrogant and ultimately foolish way of trying to convince somebody of anything. It merely offends, and teaches NOTHING.
@bodryn - You seem to have no compunction about insulting or offending me, so why should I extend to you anything else. You may have taken a year of Keynesian economics, but clearly, you haven't taken anything that pertains to the real world. You keep repeating the same fallacies, and Hazlitt gets to those quite quickly. I've read Keynes, why don't you try Hazlitt? It's one chapter.
@mpc91 I'm sure that anything I might say you would either regard as an insult or a fallacy. Telling me to read something is not the point. You ought to be able to, in your own words, debate issues as they come up. However, you've had your chance of just engaging one on one in a real world way and this puerile exchange is just a waste of my time.
@bodryn - I have been debating issues with you as they come up, for quite some time. But you keep ignoring them and plowing on with untruths and myths. I'm tiring of your ignorance, and regurgitation of standard Keynesian big government myths.
Bastiat's Broken Window Fallacy addresses your support for FDR. In short, it is about what is seen and what is unseen. You should also look into Regulatory Capture. It shows why added regulation does not produce the desired result.
@bodryn - But since you're too lazy - "regulatory capture occurs when a state regulatory agency created to act in the public interest instead advances the commercial or special interests that dominate the industry or sector it is charged with regulating."
This is why adding regulation does not limit big business. This goes back to FDR, and his NRA. Government and business working together to keep prices high, and competition out of the market. The people suffer for it.
@bodryn - As for Bastiat's Broken Window Fallacy - which shows why public works projects don't actually create jobs, it uses a parable. In short, a store owner's son breaks one of his windows. The other people in town claim that this is an economic good, since the owner must now buy a new window, and give business to the glazier - this is the seen good. But the unseen cost is what the owner would have otherwise bought. He could have had a suit, and a window, now he just has a new window.
good video. but he puts it too simple. the fact is, we have created monsters that are poisoning the economic system. adam smith didnt predict this. most rich people now dont contribute to society, they just trade money for money. derivatives, and other stuff that there will never be enough money supply to pay for their total value.
Sir Paul Samuelson discussing the causes of the financial crisis here: youtube.com/watch?v=zCudGmRIsfk
@diogotomediogo - The same Paul Samuelson who kept predicting that the Soviet economy would overtake that of the United States. The same one, who in 1989 claimed that, ""The Soviet economy is proof that ... a socialist command economy can function and even thrive."
Samuelson's student, Krugman, actually called for the housing bubble to be created. Thought it would be a good thing.
@mpc91 every economist fails some predictions. in fact, there's a joke that goes along these lines: in the last 5 crises, economists were able to predict 15
@diogotomediogo - Prediction? In 1989 the Soviet Union was falling apart. Even the worst weatherman can look out the window and tell you the weather RIGHT NOW. Samuelson couldn't.
Because he had continually predicted the Soviet Union would overtake the US economically. In each edition he kept pushing back the years.
As for Krugman, it wasn't a prediction, it was a call for a specific action. That action was taken with disastrous results.
@mpc91 Don't you get that what this is all about is transnational corporations versus ordinary human beings? Big corporations consuming smaller ones, and eventually one huge corporation over the whole earth, and with NO representation! As JFK once said, "Those who ride the back of the tiger often end up inside." My view is that GOPs are riding the back of corporate tigers and most get eaten up far faster than they can foresee. The track record is plain to see.
@bodryn - Don't you get that the free market will deal with corporations, far better than governments will, or indeed ever could.
Do you understand the difference between capitalism and crony capitalism?
Do you get that regulation you desire will produce the exact opposite effect that you think it will? Large companies like regulation, as they can more easily adapt to it, and use it to prevent competition. They wind up sitting on the licensing boards, and drawing up the rules.
@mpc91 I have heard about the "invisible hand of the market place". It has become a fist that is poised over the heads of billions of people on this planet like a Sword of Damocles. As for crony capitalism, there is no way to stop it unless somebody REGULATES it. Meanwhile, over a billion people on this earth can't even get enough to eat largely because large corporations are claiming they can "feed the world" when in fact people in other countries can feed themselves if not exploited.
@bodryn - But the crony capitalism happens AS A DIRECT RESULT OF REGULATION. You cannot manipulate the regulation to your benefit if the regulation does not first EXIST.
As for your poverty figures. They sound horrible, but you assume they are getting worse, and not better. Absolute poverty was 85% in 1820. In 1950, it was 50 percent. By the early 80's... 1/3rd. By 2001 - 18 percent. Life expectancy is going up. That's what the free market gives us - an escape from poverty.
@mpc91 The poverty figures you quote must be based on some kind of alien mathematics. The things you keep trying to push here just don't meet the credibility test. I have 3 university degrees and have a year of economics as well. Everybody knows that 10 economists will have 10 different theories about the situation. In university I learned how to read and think, and talked to plenty of people. Back in the day, people that spouted nonsense the way you do simply weren't out there.
@mpc91 If you presume I am parroting somebody with my comments, you are assuming a conclusion not based on objective facts. I am a creative writer by nature and that implies being a creative thinker. Just because I have 3 university degrees is no reason to believe some prejudged belief about me. I am an individual unlike anybody else. But to say that life has improved for the masses over the last 200 years needs to be addressed: do you think life for the masses has improved since the 80s?
@bodryn - 1. You are the one who wants to be judged on the basis of the three degrees you claim to have, that I don't judge you the way you want to be judged is based on what you've written. it's all the evidence I have.
2. I don't care if you consider yourself a creative writer, or a creative thinker, you're thinking isn't that creative.
3. watch?v=jbkSRLYSojo&feature=related . Simple and elegant. Obviously life has improved for the masses. It's just fact, to argue it shows your disconnect.
@mpc91 If you presume I am lying about having 3 university degrees, don't you know it is very offensive to call somebody a liar? Also I don't think you've ever gotten the old fable about the six blind men trying to describe an elephant. Each one of them arrogantly thinks he has the correct description of an elephant. To me, the world economy, or world political situation, is like that elephant and everybody has a different perspective. It is ARROGANT to think you know the ultimate truth.
@bodryn - I never said you were a liar, I said I couldn't know. That's just true. I don't know if you do or not. You're spouting fallacies. But those are rife in the education system. Was reading one of your degrees? What are your degrees in? Most degrees are irrelevant here.
My system is live and let live, yours is central planning by people who steal from a some to give to others. There's an arrogance in there.
@mpc91 You seem to assume things about my ideas that may or may not even be relevant or true. This is no doubt because you think of individuals as types instead of seeing them as complex individuals, each with separate points of view. What do you mean by "central planning"? As for my education, I maintain that maybe 90% of what I know I have learned myself, by reading, by trial and error, by observation, you name it. Degrees are only papers that are supposed to show potential.
@bodryn And yes, I feel that your ideas are not relevant or true.
You say you are against "drastic deregulation". Regulation is a tool of central planners. One could rightly assume that one against deregulation is for the existence of the planning body that creates and enforces the regulation.
@mpc91 If by "stealing from others" you refer to taxation, you should know that taxation is established by Article I, Section 8 of our Constitution. I keep hearing this bullet point that taxation is theft, but only in recent years have people been trying to call it that. I believe such talk is subversive to the American way of life, and is no doubt corporate funded brainwashing, like 90% of our media nowadays.
@bodryn Is that the only part of Article I, Section 8 you have? You missed the part where ALL of the regulation you support is actually unconstitutional, as they are not powers granted to Congress. "Only in recent years", by that you mean the 1770's, when the colonists certainly thought taxation was theft.
You believe that holding the government to the limits of the Constitution is subversive? I find you subversive to the liberties of the people. Have you read the 10th Amendment?
@mpc91 Deregulation is the main reason the foreclosure crisis is what it is. The mortgage records have been so cut into small pieces and traded that nobody knows who owns what anymore. If banks aren't regulated, they file foreclosures on people for property the banks can't legally even prove they own, but get away with it because some states don't have legal protection for those people.
@bodryn - No, deregulation was not the problem. Not even close. The Fed, Fanny and Freddie, and the government worked together to cause the problem. They created the Housing bubble, and it wasn't an accident.
@mpc91 You talk as though the economy is just a US government problem. Canada is actually doing better than the US because they didn't deregulate as drastically as the US. Note that recently the unemployment in Manitoba has been about 5.5% - in southern Manitoba it is obvious it is thriving while south of the border, things look half dead. They've even been importing families from Eurasia, to get more workers for future needs.
@bodryn No, Canada is doing well because they vastly shrank the size of their government over the past 15 years.
As for this "deregulation", it's a myth. One clause of Glass-Steagal does not equate to drastic deregulation. We get 80,000 pages of new regulation... every year. We aren't repealing that much regulation every year.
@mpc91 Canada is doing well because PM Jean Chretien refused to join the US in its expensive, interminable war in Iraq, unless the UN approved, which they didn't. The US was last to enter WW2, thus they were in much better economic shape at war's end. As for regulation, only some 0.6% of CEOs will tell you that new regulations actually stood in the way of new jobs. I do feel that discussing this with you is just spinning my wheels, will get nowhere, so I may not respond anymore.
@bodryn It's evidence if you know how to interpret it. If you dream up "drastic deregulation", and then fight with that straw man, I suppose it could be evidence. But in reality, it's evidence of something else. When government spending decreases, the voluntary economy thrives.
You're the one trying to use anecdotes and emotion over evidence. That's all you.
@mpc91 Same old tactics, GOPs lie lie and lie again, and just as Goebbels knew, if you tell a lie often enough, people will believe it. My neighbor was a German woman who grew up during the Hitler regime. When I asked her why people voted for him, she said, people thought he was pretty good at first. Now, similarly, the corporate elite are selling this myth that we ordinary people are holding the world back. Who is this world for, anyway? One billion are already starving! Enough!
@bodryn - Clearly, Goebbels was right, as you have fallen for a great number of government created lies. So really, he would have loved you from both sides.
The Nazis were not in favor of deregulation by any means.
As for the "ordinary people holding the world back" - what kind of straw man is that. I never said it. It's government that holds back ordinary people.
One billion people are not starving. World poverty numbers are shrinking, as a result of capitalism.
@mpc91 There is no free market. And the only kind of capitalism that exists in the real world is crony capitalism. Theories can be fun, but sometimes we need to be realistic.
Capitalism and the Free Market hasn't failed. Rather over regulation and central planning by folks who don't have a clue about what they are doing have failed. To an extent, we the people have failed because we did not stand up and say "Stop! This isn't working!" We have seen the failures in regulation and central planning occur across the globe. Study your history folks - it's not rocket science and we live in a world governed by cause and effect.
@ezlog49 Many economists will tell you that damping down the speculators with a small tax would actually calm the troubled seas of the current world economic crisis and give ordinary people a chance at an easier time of it. No ordinary person is happy with the current situation, and many will tell you that the economic crisis was caused by deregulation - by those who didn't learn the lessons of the Great Depression of the 1930's.
@bodryn - You are the one who hasn't learned the lesson of the 1930's. It was government intervention in the economy that took the crash of 1929, and turned it into a Great Depression. It was intervention to keep wages high, increase government spending, increase regulation, increase taxes and tarriffs, and limit competition that caused the great depression. Some economists may tell you that deregulation caused the current crisis, and others will tell you the truth.
@mpc91 So what makes you the GREAT EXPERT AND SEER? That is the trouble with right wingers - they stick like glue to bullet points they've heard, but do no independent thinking of their own. You are the result of Fox and similar propaganda sources that are destroying the chance for young people to really learn about their world. There is no way people born over half a century ago would buy that type of nonsense. Get off your money chasing high horse and think about real people.
@bodryn Your the one sticking to bullet points and eschewing independent thought. And you play perfectly into the progressive mindset, attack the man, not the idea
You miss the arrogance of your points. I don't think I know what's better for you than you do. But you fail to give me the same courtesy
New Deal programs hurt REAL PEOPLE. The actions of the FED hurt real people, me among them
Schools teach youth that FDR ended the depression, that destroys their chance to learn about their world
@mpc91 Nobody had to teach me or my siblings about the depression. My parents survived it and I learned a lot from them; no history books necessary. FDR had to do what he did because much of the country was desperate enough to favor communism. Some will tell you FDR saved the US from communism. There was very little criticism of FDR policies from the people who were old enough to have lived through those times. That's why he was re-elected 4 times! My older brother thought him a hero.
@bodryn - Some will tell you the sky is orange, but that doesn't make it so. The great depression lasted as long as it did because Hoover and FDR kept interfering with the free market. Your parents went through a great deal of hardship because of the things your brother thought made FDR a hero. He was elected three times because he was a great politician, and he fooled an awful lot of people. Why, with Americans hungry did he slaughter 6 million pigs to make the country "wealthier" in 1933?
@mpc91 The fact is, the sky may in fact be orange, under certain conditions. Haven't you ever seen a partly cloudy sky around sunrise or sunset? When the sun illuminates from beneath the cloud layer, you get wonderful colors like pinks, orange, red, etc. I've even got the digital photos to prove it.
@mpc91 Because of New Deal programs, my grandparents didn't have to beg for money to live on. My grandpa was blind after age 66, they moved into a small house in town and they regularly got small government checks to live on. I remember $52/month. We lived on a farm and used to help them live on food we grew. We didn't have much but we had food, and I mowed her lawn for free. Many older folks still stayed with their children, out of need, and children weren't so free to make their own way.
@bodryn - Because of the New Deal, your grandfather didn't have to beg. He was given stolen money instead, that's much better. Rather than asking for money voluntarily from any of the mutual aid societies and charities that existed at the time, he took handouts that were taken by force from others. That's much better.
But what if the economy had been allowed to recover in 1929, as it did in 1921, or 1946, without government - he wouldn't have needed handouts from anybody. Isn't that better?
@mpc91 What you call "stolen money" is what the US Constitution calls taxes: Article I Section 8. If you don't believe taxes should be levied on people who profit by the system they live under, you are unamerican. Maybe you would like Somalia.
@bodryn - You say its offensive to call you a liar (which I didn't), then you call me "unamerican".
You really want to talk Constitution? That's beyond your depth. You really think that anything in the New Deal was constitutional? You think the founders would have stood for wealth redistribution? Your the one who wants to thoroughly trample the Constitution. That's all you.
@mpc91 If you believe taxes are stealing from people, you either do not understand, or have no respect for the Constitution. That is the basis for calling you unAmerican. Why is it so hard for you to get that?
I would say Walter E Williams is your standard plutocrat. His rhetoric is designed to make regular folks decide to be satisfied when they get shafted in this country. If you can get them to think it's their owl fault, you can laugh all the way to the (foreign) bank.
@bodryn - You think Walter Williams is telling people to be satisfied with the shaft they are getting in this country? This guy is not satisfied with the state of our economy, nor in the interference with it.
You want to find a plutocrat, I'd go with Paul Krugman. There's a guy who the people in power can get behind. It's okay that the government is stealing from you, it's "for your own good".
@mpc91 People were NOT getting the shaft in this country back in the late 1940's and 1950's. You must have no idea how the economy was burgeoning and thriving. People started being able to have more than one car, even two car garages. If you don't know what you're missing, there's no way you can know about it. I have watched this country gradually go off the rails after around 1980 and the "Reagan revolution". If you don't like regulation, maybe you'd like 6 day weeks, 12 hr days.
@bodryn - Thank you for this example. By the late 1940's, most of the New Deal had been repealed or overturned.
Keynesian economists projected a "Depression of 1946", if the government downsized, reduced the size of the military, removed price controls, etc.
It did downsize, from $84 million to $30 million. You describe exactly what happened. The economy thrived, now that the shackles of government were lifted.
@mpc91 Truman was forced to deal with a "do nothing" congress. Sort of like Obama is these days. However, anybody could afford medical care. Blue Cross Blue Shield was regulated and affordable. I could make a doctors visit for $2. Get an xray for $15. Back in those days, there was no "right wing" media. Right wing media would have been drummed out of existence. In the early 1970's, I had 100% medical coverage with my job. Who offers that now?
@bodryn - What "right wing" media? Our media is leftist.
Deregulation did not make medicine affordable, the free market did. There was no deregulation, in fact, there have been massive increases in regulation. And it is the fact that we have gotten away from the free market that costs have increased. It's medicare (seems to coincide, don't ya think) and medicaid, and insurance mandates that have skyrocketed medical costs. When someone else is paying, you don't shop around.
@mpc91 The fact that you try and sell the idea that the media is leftist shows you are one of two things: either totally clueless, or a baldfaced liar. This is a case of sliding the entire gridiron to the right and claiming that anybody who isn't extreme right is a leftist. This is dangerous disinformation and is just another example of Orwellian Newspeak. You are probably a Kochroach disciple.
@mpc91 Why should I read somebody's supposedly expert opinion on what I have myself observed? There used to be affordable health care in the US. There used to be affordable college for people, even if they had to work their way through. There used to be all kinds of jobs in a wide variety of fields out there and a great feeling of freedom to choose - and one could do well just with a trade, and be respected.
@bodryn Do you not see that government is heavily involved in the areas you speak of? Medicare, Medicaid, and Insurance take the market out of Health Care, increasing prices. Federal Student Loans make college extremely expensive. Government licensing regulations, and roadblocks to starting businesses limit people's freedom to choose their employment. We are spending trillions to make things MORE expensive. How have you not observed this?
@bodryn - You think the country was better off in the 70's than the 80's? So you're the one.
Regulation didn't get rid of the 6 day week, or the 12 hour day (and no, unions didn't either). Technology did that. People can be more productive in a 40 hour workweek now than they could in a 70 hour week in 1850. That's not regulation. That's the free market at work. That's why we're wealthier, not regulation. Regulation creates nothing, just limits it.
@mpc91 You remind me of computer ROM. You've been completely programmed, but cannot be reprogrammed, can't even learn because you've already made up your mind. It's like being an alcoholic with Korsakof's syndrome. If you can't learn from your elders, you are forced to repeat the lessons of history because you don't know enough to develop your judgmental skills so you know who and what to believe. I realize I can't help you -
@bodryn - I love progressives. They project their faults on others. The arrogance is impressive, but then again, progressivism REQUIRES ARROGANCE. You think I don't learn from my elders? Which elders?
You are the one who is not learning. You are the one who is accepting fallacies. And sadly, we all are suffering through a repeat of history because those of your ilk in power have learned NOTHING.
@mpc91 As for technology, touted as "labor saving" - yes, it is labor saving, and also results in a lot of people being put out to work. Eventually, as robotics and automation takes care of nearly everything, what do you expect people to do to make a living?
@bodryn - Let's think this one out. Let's get rid of all the machines on Earth. Would the economy be more or less productive? Would poverty go up, or go down? Everyone used to be employed as a farmer. Are we better off today?
Until everyone has everything they need, there will always be a need for labor.
Economies evolve. We don't have milkmen anymore, but do we have thousands of unemployed people trying to be milkmen. Of course not, they do other things now.
@mpc91 You keep talking in generalities, but I don't see any specific examples to make a point. I mention specific experiences I have had myself, and you accuse me of parroting somebody or something. As for "do other things now", what are the 1 out of 15 people in the US supposed to work at when they are at less than half of the poverty line? What are young people even supposed to study in college when jobs keep being outsourced by the "job creators"? Including IT? Lies, lies, lies.
@bodryn - I keep talking in facts, and you keep talking in out of context stories. This makes you vulnerable to fallacy. You accept the seen, and ignore the unseen consequence. But you talk of me speaking in generalities, then you talk about 1 out of 15 people, and fall victim to another fallacy. You ignore the fact that incomes change over time. Everyone makes more at 30 than they do at 20. I did. Did you? You talk of classes of people, and in this case, not about actual people.
@bodryn - The vast majority do. I don't have the figures, but it's likely 95%. And your yearly income was really lower when you worked for a summer, than a whole year, even with changing jobs? Really?
@mpc91 I've had real jobs if you count carpentry/construction, truck driving (gravel and semi), farm work, and military experience just to name a few. I haven't been using other people's money to get rich. How about you?
@mpc91 What extremes are you talking about now? Most of the real world doesn't function on extremes, don't you know. People in the real world have to cope with reality, and what I've seen of the real world lately, things look worse and worse. I've never seen the common people being so ignored. (Realizing that the Tea Party movement was funded by the Koch brothers, to try and distract the people.)
@bodryn - And George Soros might have a little to do with Occupy Wall Street. And things look worse and worse because we have more and more government, more and more regulation, and less and less liberty.
@mpc91 You guys always bring up George Soros, but what do you say when we bring up Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdock, who respectively manage and own the largest stationary earth satellite network. What do you say when we bring up the Koch brothers, who are the source of the money behind the Tea Party fraud that simple minded people thought was a movement for them, when it was for just a few superwealthy who are subverting the democratic process here and around the world?
LibertyPen those pictures of chris dodd, nancy pelosi, chris matthews, and barney frank (Note: I didn't capitalize their names for obvious reasons) were too scary. I was moved hearing Dr. Walter Williams choice words, but looking at the sight of those politicians makes it difficult to concentrate on what Dr. Williams is discussing.
@SonnyTheWhiteDwarf How can you disprove it? I've watched it happen! The airline industry used to be well regulated and the experience of flying was elegant. We used to get luxurious food en route. The whole experience made me feel like royalty. Now I refuse to fly anymore. It doesn't seem safe, and what with some of the latest rule changes, I wouldn't even be able to fly anymore, what with age related needs.
WalMart used to advertise that everything they sold was made in the U.S. Not anymore. Practically everything is made in China. Why? Chinese work for a fraction of what Americans will. WalMart increases profits by using cheap overseas labor, but Americans need jobs too. Walmart is also in other countries. Who are they loyal to?
Your argument fails to take all of the consequences into account. By using cheaper labor Wal-Mart is able to sell their products at a cheaper price. That cheaper price makes it easier for the people to purchase those products. It also means that more spendable capital remains in the US economy.
"by using cheaper labor" - Ah, yes, you want Americans to work for less, otherwise they can't compete in the global market. That is the result, you know. Trickle down nonsense.
@bodryn@bodryn you should get paid for what your worth. unions like at Caterpillar where i worked allow people with no post highschool education make 60k a year turning a wrench on 4 nuts on each assembly unit.
engineers for instance who are way more valuable and can produce so much more per hour get paid the same when they start despite being way more productive. that is distortion of the labor market and if we paid unskilled workers what they are worth there is incentive to upgrade skills
@umrmecheman Some football or basketball star earns millions of dollars a year, but to me he is worth NOTHING! He doesn't produce ANYTHING except entertainment, and that likely fixed as well. Likewise company CEOs earn millions upon millions but in many cases are rewarded for selling out the very company they are running! (cf: Wall Street movie 1987) Upgrading skills is a false hope now; whatever skill you may get may be outsourced by the time you could make use of it! Do we all move out?
@bodryn america is no longer so more advanced that we can go back to the 60s where a guy can graduate high school go work on an assembly line at a factory pushing a button on a punch press 8 hours a day and live an upper middle class life.
because labor has become more productive and because we are able to produce in cheap countries poor people benefit by being able to buy things like food, air conditioning, clothes at a fraction of their personal income. in india fams pay up to 40% of their
@umrmecheman "Labor has become more productive" just means that more and higher technology has made each person more effectively productive; but they don't state the fact that as more and more humans are replaced by high tech methods, unemployment goes up. And where is it written that people who work for a living must live substandard lives?
@bodryn their annual income just to get food. wages falling in certain areas are a signal for workers to enter areas where wages are rising: bio tech, nursing, engineering, etc. I just got a job in July after graduating with an engineering degree and i had multiple offers.
i don't need uninons to "protect " me or get me better wages. if my company doesn't pay me enough and i'm productive i can take my services elsewhere to a company who will pay more. that can happen when ur labor is in demand
@umrmecheman Yep, that's right! With all the jobs out there for the taking, I'm sure your method of working for higher wages will work just fine. LOL. Don't you know that unions were what made the 40 hour week the law of the land? Don't you know that the real value of wages has been going down steadily since the 1970's? Unions are needed to protect the average worker, whether you agree or not.
They tell young folks: Get an education, get a good job. For example, computers! Yeah! But now most of those computer jobs are being outsourced to places like India. So what then? Figure transnational corporations running things - say a Chinese corporation. How does that sound? Is that better than corporate regulation?
Some people seem to believe that you can never give corporations enough freedom to thrive. So what do we have now? Corporations like WalMart. Exxon. Boise Cascade. Fewer and bigger corporations. Ever notice that capital can flow freely between countries but individuals have to have passports even to get into Canada now? Part of to this "race to the bottom" reality and jobs going overseas.
FlethforFreedm: Corporations routinely raid retirement accounts and later go bankrupt. How many CEOs do you see going to jail? Very few. Listen to Norman Goldman, a lawyer and talk show host on line: He will educate you about corporations.
This is not a question of regulating all or legalizing all. No one favors legalizing violations of personal, property and civil rights. It is a problem of politicians using their power to manipulate others arbitrarily. I suggest you hesitate before becoming an all-out advocate for regulation. After all, if they start regulating morons, you might have to stop posting.
fzqlcs: If I'm a moron, those 3 universities I graduated from might have to rescind my education. :-)) I was always told: get an education, they can't take that away from you.
You take it away from yourself by talking like an uneducated statist.
The state doesn't make the roads safe, society itself brings traffic lights into being.
The idea that everything that occurs in society was organised rather than having grown organically, spontaneously, that philosopher-kings micro-manage the affairs of mere-mortals, is an ignorant fallacy espoused by people like Plato, Rousseau, Marx, Hitler, Obama...it is an idea responsible for much suffering and conflict and will everbe
@Nintendomanwill Meanwhile you are talking like a rightist ideologue with no real experience in life. And like somebody with a certain amount of book learning, but without the common sense ways of relating facts that people with experience tend to use. It is dangerous to label people - it doesn't respect them as individuals with individual life experiences, and for that reason tends to be misleading.
@bodryn - They can't take it away from you, true. But if your education is full of fallacies, then it doesn't mean a whole lot. Also, if your degree was in Physical Education or Physics or Brain Surgery, it really wouldn't qualify you in and of itself for economics.
And judging by you keep writing, it was full of a great deal of economic fallacies.
It is in my opinion a great crime that so many believe that too much liberty and not enough direction from the state, that most efficient body (!), is to blame for economic crisis.
We consider man so irrational that letting society run itself is considered a foolish policy-our wise overlords must be given more power!
@Nintendomanwill "Too much liberty" for the RICH AND POWERFUL is what you mean. It looks like you are watching out for rich folks and to h___ with the poor and disenfranchised.
Of course no one has suggested that law should be abandoned particularly those laws that prevent one citizen from harming another. No one has even suggeste dthe elimination of tort law that holds one responsible for their actions. Attempting to state the opposition to deregulation is such extreme terms does qualify as moronic. After all, getting an education doesn't necessarily mean one has ;earned anything.
So, you say that it's OK for corporations and business to be out of control, but not humans? My message was meant to get you to think about what deregulation really means. Didn't you get that???
Actually, corporations should be treated as nothing but a grouping of individuals. You must understand the difference between law designed to address direct harm done by one individual (or group of individuals) that impairs the liberties of others and regulation as it is commonly understood, engaging in numerous specific limits, policies, guidelines, etc. that interfere with the operations of individuals and, in reality, usually create more problems than they solve.
Corporations are just as capable of harming people as other people are; however, corporations can't be put in prison. They also have a bevy of corporate lawyers to protect their interests. Equal justice? LOL
Your initial premise is entirely false. Corporations are nothing but collections of individual human beings who are subject to the rule of law. The corporation does not exist separate from those individuals who can and must be liable for their own acts. That they hvae access to legal representation changes nothing. That they may get better representation is a valid area of discussion but does not bear on the issue of capitalism or the assertion that "corporations are out of control".
@FletchforFreedom So you don't believe in the concept of MOBS? Despite historical instances of lynchings, etc? A corporation isn't like an individual or independent groups of individuals, because they are largely controlled by the CEO or board, if they want to keep their jobs. Thus corporations can give HUGE sums for political purposes even if most individuals oppose it, etc., etc. Don't let your ideology interfere with independent thought.
Of course I believe in mobs - not that it matters as they have NOTHING to do with the topic at hand. Corporations - who do NOT spend "HUGE" sums as yopu suggest (except inasmuch as they are extorted from them by government - are run by boards subject to shareholders who are interested in one thing - improving their economic circumstances by delivering products in the marketplace (which makes us all better off. Don't let your delusions interfere with actual reality.
@bodryn - An argument can be made for removing traffic lights, and stop signs in many, many places. People drive much more carefully. It has been tried with some success in a number of places.
@mpc91 I think some people drive more carefully in Montana where they are far less liberal with warning signs and guard rails than in Minnesota. However, I also think more people die there as a result.
Yes, they ought to legalize marijuana and just tax it. Not sure about cocaine and other stuff.
An excellent performance by Dr. Williams filling in as a guest host for Rush Limbaugh! Dr. Walter E. Williams: turning back the frontiers of ignorance!
I like Walter Williams because he has a simple way of expressing himself. I believe he can make these things more understandable and help educate people who are so ill informed.
I think it is the same reason that despite the outrageous salaries and or benefits received by congressman and senators, baseball players, movie stars, media personalities and others, we demonize the salaries of CEO's. The CEO may make more than he truly has accomplished or maybe not, but I have not heard any hollywood types offering to charge less for their crappy movies.
There will always be people who never listen. The point is to get the truth to the people in the middle. I believe that many Americans once they hear the real facts and understand them will vote the right way. Regan proved this time and time again by going directly to the people and explaining what he wanted to do and why, and the people responded. They took before and after polls and proved that this worked. For the life of me I will never understand why Republicans never learned this lesson.
The idea of deregulation causing this seems simpler than regulation causing this. The media finds it a lot easier to tell a simple lie than a complicated truth. Once the idea sets in it is there. I guess people are stupid.
"Before you declare free markets as a failure, you have to establish that they exist." Bravo, Dr. Williams! Ever since the New Deal we have had markets that were anything but free. It is ever increasing government intrusion that destroys economies, stifles innovation, and squelches individual sovereignty. We The People must rekindle our love affair with American Independence, liberty, and freedom if we are to throw off the yoke of the collectivists and their uncaring, unkind State.
@racybr I think it is the corporate collectivists that are ruining everything. The big corporations keep collecting the smaller ones, meanwhile fewer and fewer companies are filling the needs of the people. One day it will be down to one HUGE corporation running everything, but with no control by the common people. Which would be a lot like GUM, the Soviet system of supplying goods in the 1900's.
@bodryn - Seriously, I want you to find me in history, ONE example of one monopolistic corporation controlling the market for anything WITHOUT government support in the form of regulation to do so. You call yourself a historian, this should be easy for you. Competition ALWAYS wins out. Its the government that helps corporations get so big, and government that limits competition. You realize that the Soviet system was a GOVERNMENT monopoly, don't you?
I can't wait until this stimulus package bankrupts our country and socialism and nationalization makes our people revolt against its tyrannical government, then well know that freedom was always our only choice.
@openyourmind678 What freedom? Freedom does not automatically come with capitalism. Look at Fascist Italy in the 1940's. Lots of countries with capitalism are run by dictators.
@bodryn capitalism is a start, but im for free markets, not capitalism. people have no issue in seeing the difference between marxism, socialism and fascism, they should see the difference between capitalism and free markets.
The traditional Greek democracies were true "tyrannies of the majority". Many abuses occurred. This is simple human nature w/ regard to people seeking power over others. The US constitution is suppose to be our firewall to protect us from these abuses. The firewall has been breached and is forever broken. I talk the talk and I have the guns to back me up... Tyrants and their supporters...Beware...
Sorry I can't recall the name of the incident. But when the British shot and killed protesting colonist in Philadelphia. The first man killed was a black man. Interesting that we never hear that.
@bodryn Tsk... Tsk... Strawmen arguments are the tools of the ignorant and the dishonest. Please don't smoke pot In your American civics classes. Your ignorance is painful. We live in a REPUBLIC. There is not a single surving democracy in the world... The founders were very specific about wanting a republic based on their study of history and human nature. Now...you can go back to sleep now.
@nlpjohn So you feel Lincoln was wrong when he spoke of a nation "of the people, by the people and for the people"? I don't know where you are going with this "republic" argument, but apparently you do not believe in the concept of "we are the government". I think you are saying that only rich people should run a country. Of course there have been lots of republics, some not too nice.
@bodryn More strawmen arguments? You're just like Obama. He uses strawman arguments dishonestly as well. It is clear to me you are intellectually weak, dishonest, and lazy. Otherwise you would not keep making up things about what I believe or don't believe. Take your 3rd grade debate tactics elsewhere and don't speak to me again.
@lizardman77 So now deregulation is being denied? Denial of history is dangerous and by the way was typical of the Soviet Union. Just talk to older adults and let them tell you actual history they have lived. Deregulation is REAL. I've seen a lot of changes, and in the last 30 years, a lot of BAD ones.
@bodryn Then provide some examples of deregulation. I can give you hundreds of examples of new regulation for every rewording of a regulation that you call deregulation.
I have talked to older Americans, they aren't of the one mind you think they are.
Denial of history is your forte. It was typical of the Soviet Union. So were massive regulations, a police state, and limits on economic freedom. But your buddy Samuelson thought the Soviet command economy would overtake us. Did that work out?
Today, because of 30 years of foolish deregulation on Wall Street, and because governments worldwide have now agreed to back up the large private banks with money with taxpayer paid guarantees, the world economy will now begin it's inevitable decline into something resembling a worldwide Weimar Republic. Look it up, folks - may as well get ready while you can. Just remember, the big bailouts began under GWBush in 2008. Too big too fail, due to deregulation.
bodryn 1 month ago
@bodryn Whoa whoa whoa... You just said 2 totally contradictory statements. You claimed this was the result of "deregulation" then immediately afterwards you said that "governments agreed to back up the large private banks".
Sorry my friend but thats not deregulation. Thats SOCIALISM. You just blamed government and its socialist regulatory policies for the economic crisis. It can't be both. Which one is it? Too much government intervention or not enough government intervention?
FartyFace 3 weeks ago
@FartyFace Well, don't you know that the socialism that prevails in the US is CORPORATE SOCIALISM? They expect the common people to tighten their belts, but give big tax breaks to corporations, including globalist corporations that have no loyalty to the US! Taxpayers in the US are suckers, paying to bail out not only American banks, but now we hear the American bank system is going to bail out the Euro?!? As for which one is which, you certainly must know we need GOOD regulation.
bodryn 3 weeks ago
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@FartyFace And in bailing out the European Central Bank, we are subsidizing countries that HAVE universal health care, while we DON'T. Americans are suckers paying for foreign health care but not getting our own!
bodryn 3 weeks ago
5 people want to keep believing in socialism in spite of the evidence.
SaulOhio 2 months ago
I keep saying to those who blame deregulation, "WHAT deregulation"? Walter Williams only scratches the surface here. There were a vast number of new rules, regulations, and other manipulations of the housing market and our financial institutions, including the GSEs Fannie and Freddie and the Federal Reserve lowering interest rates to 1% and keeping them there for at least two years, thus pumping a couple trillion dollars of new money into the economy.
WHAT %^#@ing deregulation?
SaulOhio 2 months ago
I think if I had to make just one comment, I would ask: "Who is this world for? Just for wealthy companies and a few individuals? Or for all of humanity?" Why can't human beings just co-operate better and make life decent for everybody? I think some people must believe people in other countries don't count, and it's okay to starve them out. Corporations that would do that, would also starve US out, and maybe are doing so NOW, with outsourcing.
bodryn 2 months ago
@bodryn - But they are outsourcing BECAUSE of massive regulations that make it cheaper to produce products overseas and ship them BACK here.
People do cooperate and make life decent for everyone, unless government gets in the way with needless regulation.
mpc91 2 months ago
@mpc91 You and I both know that transnational corporations go to where regulations are the least, because they naturally prefer that. Unfortunately, regulations are the only way to keep corporations from completely poisoning the only planet we have. Needless? Yeah, right! If tariffs were put back in place like before, anything manufactured overseas would have to pay extra to re-import, as it used to be. Now I hear even China has an outsourcing problem! Race to the bottom, eh?
bodryn 1 month ago
@bodryn - Yes, needless. You see the regulators as being somehow more moral and just than the regulated. But are you familiar with the concept of "regulatory capture"? Most regulations are set up in a favorable arrangement for existing business to the detriment of new competitors. The biggest threat to large corporations is not government regulation, but competition. So by jumping on board with new regulation, you aid and abet the corporations you claim to distrust.
mpc91 1 month ago
@mpc91 I keep forgetting - I'm just spinning my wheels with you... goodbye.
bodryn 1 month ago
@bodryn - Sorry, but I'm just not into ignorant state worship. I value liberty and reason too much.
Try educating yourself, read some Murray Rothbard, or even easier, Henry Hazlitt's "Economics in One Lesson" - it's available free online.
mpc91 1 month ago
@mpc91 I am not into ignorant state worship, either. I value liberty and reason too much, too. As for educating myself about economics, I already have taken a full year of it - I don't need "lessons" in it. That is insulting, no? A way of trying to tell me I'm ignorant about stuff just because you see things differently. That is an arrogant and ultimately foolish way of trying to convince somebody of anything. It merely offends, and teaches NOTHING.
bodryn 1 month ago
@bodryn - You seem to have no compunction about insulting or offending me, so why should I extend to you anything else. You may have taken a year of Keynesian economics, but clearly, you haven't taken anything that pertains to the real world. You keep repeating the same fallacies, and Hazlitt gets to those quite quickly. I've read Keynes, why don't you try Hazlitt? It's one chapter.
mpc91 1 month ago
@mpc91 I'm sure that anything I might say you would either regard as an insult or a fallacy. Telling me to read something is not the point. You ought to be able to, in your own words, debate issues as they come up. However, you've had your chance of just engaging one on one in a real world way and this puerile exchange is just a waste of my time.
bodryn 1 month ago
@bodryn - I have been debating issues with you as they come up, for quite some time. But you keep ignoring them and plowing on with untruths and myths. I'm tiring of your ignorance, and regurgitation of standard Keynesian big government myths.
Bastiat's Broken Window Fallacy addresses your support for FDR. In short, it is about what is seen and what is unseen. You should also look into Regulatory Capture. It shows why added regulation does not produce the desired result.
mpc91 1 month ago
@bodryn - But since you're too lazy - "regulatory capture occurs when a state regulatory agency created to act in the public interest instead advances the commercial or special interests that dominate the industry or sector it is charged with regulating."
This is why adding regulation does not limit big business. This goes back to FDR, and his NRA. Government and business working together to keep prices high, and competition out of the market. The people suffer for it.
mpc91 1 month ago
@bodryn - As for Bastiat's Broken Window Fallacy - which shows why public works projects don't actually create jobs, it uses a parable. In short, a store owner's son breaks one of his windows. The other people in town claim that this is an economic good, since the owner must now buy a new window, and give business to the glazier - this is the seen good. But the unseen cost is what the owner would have otherwise bought. He could have had a suit, and a window, now he just has a new window.
mpc91 1 month ago
good video. but he puts it too simple. the fact is, we have created monsters that are poisoning the economic system. adam smith didnt predict this. most rich people now dont contribute to society, they just trade money for money. derivatives, and other stuff that there will never be enough money supply to pay for their total value.
Sir Paul Samuelson discussing the causes of the financial crisis here: youtube.com/watch?v=zCudGmRIsfk
diogotomediogo 3 months ago in playlist Mais vídeos de LibertyPen
@diogotomediogo - The same Paul Samuelson who kept predicting that the Soviet economy would overtake that of the United States. The same one, who in 1989 claimed that, ""The Soviet economy is proof that ... a socialist command economy can function and even thrive."
Samuelson's student, Krugman, actually called for the housing bubble to be created. Thought it would be a good thing.
mpc91 3 months ago
@mpc91 every economist fails some predictions. in fact, there's a joke that goes along these lines: in the last 5 crises, economists were able to predict 15
diogotomediogo 3 months ago
@diogotomediogo - Prediction? In 1989 the Soviet Union was falling apart. Even the worst weatherman can look out the window and tell you the weather RIGHT NOW. Samuelson couldn't.
Because he had continually predicted the Soviet Union would overtake the US economically. In each edition he kept pushing back the years.
As for Krugman, it wasn't a prediction, it was a call for a specific action. That action was taken with disastrous results.
mpc91 3 months ago
@mpc91 Don't you get that what this is all about is transnational corporations versus ordinary human beings? Big corporations consuming smaller ones, and eventually one huge corporation over the whole earth, and with NO representation! As JFK once said, "Those who ride the back of the tiger often end up inside." My view is that GOPs are riding the back of corporate tigers and most get eaten up far faster than they can foresee. The track record is plain to see.
bodryn 2 months ago
@bodryn - Don't you get that the free market will deal with corporations, far better than governments will, or indeed ever could.
Do you understand the difference between capitalism and crony capitalism?
Do you get that regulation you desire will produce the exact opposite effect that you think it will? Large companies like regulation, as they can more easily adapt to it, and use it to prevent competition. They wind up sitting on the licensing boards, and drawing up the rules.
mpc91 2 months ago
@mpc91 I have heard about the "invisible hand of the market place". It has become a fist that is poised over the heads of billions of people on this planet like a Sword of Damocles. As for crony capitalism, there is no way to stop it unless somebody REGULATES it. Meanwhile, over a billion people on this earth can't even get enough to eat largely because large corporations are claiming they can "feed the world" when in fact people in other countries can feed themselves if not exploited.
bodryn 2 months ago
@bodryn - But the crony capitalism happens AS A DIRECT RESULT OF REGULATION. You cannot manipulate the regulation to your benefit if the regulation does not first EXIST.
As for your poverty figures. They sound horrible, but you assume they are getting worse, and not better. Absolute poverty was 85% in 1820. In 1950, it was 50 percent. By the early 80's... 1/3rd. By 2001 - 18 percent. Life expectancy is going up. That's what the free market gives us - an escape from poverty.
mpc91 2 months ago
@mpc91 The poverty figures you quote must be based on some kind of alien mathematics. The things you keep trying to push here just don't meet the credibility test. I have 3 university degrees and have a year of economics as well. Everybody knows that 10 economists will have 10 different theories about the situation. In university I learned how to read and think, and talked to plenty of people. Back in the day, people that spouted nonsense the way you do simply weren't out there.
bodryn 2 months ago
@bodryn - You may have learned to read, but did you learn to think, or just how to parrot.
You prove better than anyone how devalued a university education is if you can't see how life has improved for the masses over the past 200 years.
Clearly the one year of economics you took leaned heavily Keynesian. You wasted someone else's money.
mpc91 2 months ago
@mpc91 If you presume I am parroting somebody with my comments, you are assuming a conclusion not based on objective facts. I am a creative writer by nature and that implies being a creative thinker. Just because I have 3 university degrees is no reason to believe some prejudged belief about me. I am an individual unlike anybody else. But to say that life has improved for the masses over the last 200 years needs to be addressed: do you think life for the masses has improved since the 80s?
bodryn 2 months ago
@bodryn - 1. You are the one who wants to be judged on the basis of the three degrees you claim to have, that I don't judge you the way you want to be judged is based on what you've written. it's all the evidence I have.
2. I don't care if you consider yourself a creative writer, or a creative thinker, you're thinking isn't that creative.
3. watch?v=jbkSRLYSojo&feature=related . Simple and elegant. Obviously life has improved for the masses. It's just fact, to argue it shows your disconnect.
mpc91 2 months ago
@mpc91 If you presume I am lying about having 3 university degrees, don't you know it is very offensive to call somebody a liar? Also I don't think you've ever gotten the old fable about the six blind men trying to describe an elephant. Each one of them arrogantly thinks he has the correct description of an elephant. To me, the world economy, or world political situation, is like that elephant and everybody has a different perspective. It is ARROGANT to think you know the ultimate truth.
bodryn 2 months ago
@bodryn - I never said you were a liar, I said I couldn't know. That's just true. I don't know if you do or not. You're spouting fallacies. But those are rife in the education system. Was reading one of your degrees? What are your degrees in? Most degrees are irrelevant here.
My system is live and let live, yours is central planning by people who steal from a some to give to others. There's an arrogance in there.
mpc91 2 months ago
@mpc91 You seem to assume things about my ideas that may or may not even be relevant or true. This is no doubt because you think of individuals as types instead of seeing them as complex individuals, each with separate points of view. What do you mean by "central planning"? As for my education, I maintain that maybe 90% of what I know I have learned myself, by reading, by trial and error, by observation, you name it. Degrees are only papers that are supposed to show potential.
bodryn 2 months ago
@bodryn And yes, I feel that your ideas are not relevant or true.
You say you are against "drastic deregulation". Regulation is a tool of central planners. One could rightly assume that one against deregulation is for the existence of the planning body that creates and enforces the regulation.
mpc91 2 months ago
@mpc91 If by "stealing from others" you refer to taxation, you should know that taxation is established by Article I, Section 8 of our Constitution. I keep hearing this bullet point that taxation is theft, but only in recent years have people been trying to call it that. I believe such talk is subversive to the American way of life, and is no doubt corporate funded brainwashing, like 90% of our media nowadays.
bodryn 2 months ago
@bodryn Is that the only part of Article I, Section 8 you have? You missed the part where ALL of the regulation you support is actually unconstitutional, as they are not powers granted to Congress. "Only in recent years", by that you mean the 1770's, when the colonists certainly thought taxation was theft.
You believe that holding the government to the limits of the Constitution is subversive? I find you subversive to the liberties of the people. Have you read the 10th Amendment?
mpc91 2 months ago
@bodryn - Do I think life has improved for the masses since the 1980's?
Yes I do.
Do I think that you are trying to halt that and limit their liberties and economic opportunities?
Yes I do.
mpc91 2 months ago
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@mpc91 If you think that about me, then you have no clue about me.
bodryn 2 months ago
@bodryn - All I can know about you is what I can ascertain from your writing. And from that, I'm not impressed. It's shallow and immature.
mpc91 2 months ago
@mpc91 Deregulation is the main reason the foreclosure crisis is what it is. The mortgage records have been so cut into small pieces and traded that nobody knows who owns what anymore. If banks aren't regulated, they file foreclosures on people for property the banks can't legally even prove they own, but get away with it because some states don't have legal protection for those people.
bodryn 2 months ago
@bodryn - No, deregulation was not the problem. Not even close. The Fed, Fanny and Freddie, and the government worked together to cause the problem. They created the Housing bubble, and it wasn't an accident.
mpc91 2 months ago
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@mpc91 You talk as though the economy is just a US government problem. Canada is actually doing better than the US because they didn't deregulate as drastically as the US. Note that recently the unemployment in Manitoba has been about 5.5% - in southern Manitoba it is obvious it is thriving while south of the border, things look half dead. They've even been importing families from Eurasia, to get more workers for future needs.
bodryn 2 months ago
@bodryn No, Canada is doing well because they vastly shrank the size of their government over the past 15 years.
As for this "deregulation", it's a myth. One clause of Glass-Steagal does not equate to drastic deregulation. We get 80,000 pages of new regulation... every year. We aren't repealing that much regulation every year.
mpc91 2 months ago
@mpc91 Canada is doing well because PM Jean Chretien refused to join the US in its expensive, interminable war in Iraq, unless the UN approved, which they didn't. The US was last to enter WW2, thus they were in much better economic shape at war's end. As for regulation, only some 0.6% of CEOs will tell you that new regulations actually stood in the way of new jobs. I do feel that discussing this with you is just spinning my wheels, will get nowhere, so I may not respond anymore.
bodryn 2 months ago
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@mpc91 For those who are stuck in the mire of theory, Manitoba is an example of empirical evidence.
bodryn 2 months ago
@bodryn It's evidence if you know how to interpret it. If you dream up "drastic deregulation", and then fight with that straw man, I suppose it could be evidence. But in reality, it's evidence of something else. When government spending decreases, the voluntary economy thrives.
You're the one trying to use anecdotes and emotion over evidence. That's all you.
mpc91 2 months ago
@mpc91 Same old tactics, GOPs lie lie and lie again, and just as Goebbels knew, if you tell a lie often enough, people will believe it. My neighbor was a German woman who grew up during the Hitler regime. When I asked her why people voted for him, she said, people thought he was pretty good at first. Now, similarly, the corporate elite are selling this myth that we ordinary people are holding the world back. Who is this world for, anyway? One billion are already starving! Enough!
bodryn 2 months ago
@bodryn - Clearly, Goebbels was right, as you have fallen for a great number of government created lies. So really, he would have loved you from both sides.
The Nazis were not in favor of deregulation by any means.
As for the "ordinary people holding the world back" - what kind of straw man is that. I never said it. It's government that holds back ordinary people.
One billion people are not starving. World poverty numbers are shrinking, as a result of capitalism.
mpc91 2 months ago
@mpc91 There is no free market. And the only kind of capitalism that exists in the real world is crony capitalism. Theories can be fun, but sometimes we need to be realistic.
bodryn 2 months ago
Capitalism and the Free Market hasn't failed. Rather over regulation and central planning by folks who don't have a clue about what they are doing have failed. To an extent, we the people have failed because we did not stand up and say "Stop! This isn't working!" We have seen the failures in regulation and central planning occur across the globe. Study your history folks - it's not rocket science and we live in a world governed by cause and effect.
ezlog49 4 months ago
@ezlog49 Many economists will tell you that damping down the speculators with a small tax would actually calm the troubled seas of the current world economic crisis and give ordinary people a chance at an easier time of it. No ordinary person is happy with the current situation, and many will tell you that the economic crisis was caused by deregulation - by those who didn't learn the lessons of the Great Depression of the 1930's.
bodryn 2 months ago
@bodryn - You are the one who hasn't learned the lesson of the 1930's. It was government intervention in the economy that took the crash of 1929, and turned it into a Great Depression. It was intervention to keep wages high, increase government spending, increase regulation, increase taxes and tarriffs, and limit competition that caused the great depression. Some economists may tell you that deregulation caused the current crisis, and others will tell you the truth.
mpc91 2 months ago
@mpc91 So what makes you the GREAT EXPERT AND SEER? That is the trouble with right wingers - they stick like glue to bullet points they've heard, but do no independent thinking of their own. You are the result of Fox and similar propaganda sources that are destroying the chance for young people to really learn about their world. There is no way people born over half a century ago would buy that type of nonsense. Get off your money chasing high horse and think about real people.
bodryn 2 months ago
@bodryn Your the one sticking to bullet points and eschewing independent thought. And you play perfectly into the progressive mindset, attack the man, not the idea
You miss the arrogance of your points. I don't think I know what's better for you than you do. But you fail to give me the same courtesy
New Deal programs hurt REAL PEOPLE. The actions of the FED hurt real people, me among them
Schools teach youth that FDR ended the depression, that destroys their chance to learn about their world
mpc91 2 months ago
@mpc91 Nobody had to teach me or my siblings about the depression. My parents survived it and I learned a lot from them; no history books necessary. FDR had to do what he did because much of the country was desperate enough to favor communism. Some will tell you FDR saved the US from communism. There was very little criticism of FDR policies from the people who were old enough to have lived through those times. That's why he was re-elected 4 times! My older brother thought him a hero.
bodryn 2 months ago
@bodryn I should correct myself here: I mean he was elected 4 times; re-elected 3 times.
bodryn 2 months ago
@bodryn - Some will tell you the sky is orange, but that doesn't make it so. The great depression lasted as long as it did because Hoover and FDR kept interfering with the free market. Your parents went through a great deal of hardship because of the things your brother thought made FDR a hero. He was elected three times because he was a great politician, and he fooled an awful lot of people. Why, with Americans hungry did he slaughter 6 million pigs to make the country "wealthier" in 1933?
mpc91 2 months ago
@mpc91 The fact is, the sky may in fact be orange, under certain conditions. Haven't you ever seen a partly cloudy sky around sunrise or sunset? When the sun illuminates from beneath the cloud layer, you get wonderful colors like pinks, orange, red, etc. I've even got the digital photos to prove it.
bodryn 2 months ago
@mpc91 Because of New Deal programs, my grandparents didn't have to beg for money to live on. My grandpa was blind after age 66, they moved into a small house in town and they regularly got small government checks to live on. I remember $52/month. We lived on a farm and used to help them live on food we grew. We didn't have much but we had food, and I mowed her lawn for free. Many older folks still stayed with their children, out of need, and children weren't so free to make their own way.
bodryn 2 months ago
@bodryn - Because of the New Deal, your grandfather didn't have to beg. He was given stolen money instead, that's much better. Rather than asking for money voluntarily from any of the mutual aid societies and charities that existed at the time, he took handouts that were taken by force from others. That's much better.
But what if the economy had been allowed to recover in 1929, as it did in 1921, or 1946, without government - he wouldn't have needed handouts from anybody. Isn't that better?
mpc91 2 months ago
@mpc91 What you call "stolen money" is what the US Constitution calls taxes: Article I Section 8. If you don't believe taxes should be levied on people who profit by the system they live under, you are unamerican. Maybe you would like Somalia.
bodryn 2 months ago
@bodryn - You say its offensive to call you a liar (which I didn't), then you call me "unamerican".
You really want to talk Constitution? That's beyond your depth. You really think that anything in the New Deal was constitutional? You think the founders would have stood for wealth redistribution? Your the one who wants to thoroughly trample the Constitution. That's all you.
mpc91 2 months ago
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@mpc91 If you believe taxes are stealing from people, you either do not understand, or have no respect for the Constitution. That is the basis for calling you unAmerican. Why is it so hard for you to get that?
bodryn 2 months ago
I would say Walter E Williams is your standard plutocrat. His rhetoric is designed to make regular folks decide to be satisfied when they get shafted in this country. If you can get them to think it's their owl fault, you can laugh all the way to the (foreign) bank.
bodryn 5 months ago
@bodryn - You think Walter Williams is telling people to be satisfied with the shaft they are getting in this country? This guy is not satisfied with the state of our economy, nor in the interference with it.
You want to find a plutocrat, I'd go with Paul Krugman. There's a guy who the people in power can get behind. It's okay that the government is stealing from you, it's "for your own good".
mpc91 2 months ago
@mpc91 People were NOT getting the shaft in this country back in the late 1940's and 1950's. You must have no idea how the economy was burgeoning and thriving. People started being able to have more than one car, even two car garages. If you don't know what you're missing, there's no way you can know about it. I have watched this country gradually go off the rails after around 1980 and the "Reagan revolution". If you don't like regulation, maybe you'd like 6 day weeks, 12 hr days.
bodryn 2 months ago
@bodryn - Thank you for this example. By the late 1940's, most of the New Deal had been repealed or overturned.
Keynesian economists projected a "Depression of 1946", if the government downsized, reduced the size of the military, removed price controls, etc.
It did downsize, from $84 million to $30 million. You describe exactly what happened. The economy thrived, now that the shackles of government were lifted.
mpc91 2 months ago
@mpc91 Truman was forced to deal with a "do nothing" congress. Sort of like Obama is these days. However, anybody could afford medical care. Blue Cross Blue Shield was regulated and affordable. I could make a doctors visit for $2. Get an xray for $15. Back in those days, there was no "right wing" media. Right wing media would have been drummed out of existence. In the early 1970's, I had 100% medical coverage with my job. Who offers that now?
bodryn 2 months ago
@bodryn - What "right wing" media? Our media is leftist.
Deregulation did not make medicine affordable, the free market did. There was no deregulation, in fact, there have been massive increases in regulation. And it is the fact that we have gotten away from the free market that costs have increased. It's medicare (seems to coincide, don't ya think) and medicaid, and insurance mandates that have skyrocketed medical costs. When someone else is paying, you don't shop around.
mpc91 2 months ago
@mpc91 The fact that you try and sell the idea that the media is leftist shows you are one of two things: either totally clueless, or a baldfaced liar. This is a case of sliding the entire gridiron to the right and claiming that anybody who isn't extreme right is a leftist. This is dangerous disinformation and is just another example of Orwellian Newspeak. You are probably a Kochroach disciple.
bodryn 2 months ago
@bodryn - I would make the exact opposite point to you. You are the one with the scale slid to the left.
Look up Tim Groseclose's Political Quotient. He conducted a study. You are the one spouting statist disinformation.
mpc91 2 months ago
@mpc91 Why should I read somebody's supposedly expert opinion on what I have myself observed? There used to be affordable health care in the US. There used to be affordable college for people, even if they had to work their way through. There used to be all kinds of jobs in a wide variety of fields out there and a great feeling of freedom to choose - and one could do well just with a trade, and be respected.
bodryn 2 months ago
@bodryn Do you not see that government is heavily involved in the areas you speak of? Medicare, Medicaid, and Insurance take the market out of Health Care, increasing prices. Federal Student Loans make college extremely expensive. Government licensing regulations, and roadblocks to starting businesses limit people's freedom to choose their employment. We are spending trillions to make things MORE expensive. How have you not observed this?
mpc91 2 months ago
@bodryn - You think the country was better off in the 70's than the 80's? So you're the one.
Regulation didn't get rid of the 6 day week, or the 12 hour day (and no, unions didn't either). Technology did that. People can be more productive in a 40 hour workweek now than they could in a 70 hour week in 1850. That's not regulation. That's the free market at work. That's why we're wealthier, not regulation. Regulation creates nothing, just limits it.
mpc91 2 months ago
@mpc91 You remind me of computer ROM. You've been completely programmed, but cannot be reprogrammed, can't even learn because you've already made up your mind. It's like being an alcoholic with Korsakof's syndrome. If you can't learn from your elders, you are forced to repeat the lessons of history because you don't know enough to develop your judgmental skills so you know who and what to believe. I realize I can't help you -
bodryn 2 months ago
@bodryn - I love progressives. They project their faults on others. The arrogance is impressive, but then again, progressivism REQUIRES ARROGANCE. You think I don't learn from my elders? Which elders?
You are the one who is not learning. You are the one who is accepting fallacies. And sadly, we all are suffering through a repeat of history because those of your ilk in power have learned NOTHING.
mpc91 2 months ago
@mpc91 As for technology, touted as "labor saving" - yes, it is labor saving, and also results in a lot of people being put out to work. Eventually, as robotics and automation takes care of nearly everything, what do you expect people to do to make a living?
bodryn 2 months ago
@bodryn - Let's think this one out. Let's get rid of all the machines on Earth. Would the economy be more or less productive? Would poverty go up, or go down? Everyone used to be employed as a farmer. Are we better off today?
Until everyone has everything they need, there will always be a need for labor.
Economies evolve. We don't have milkmen anymore, but do we have thousands of unemployed people trying to be milkmen. Of course not, they do other things now.
mpc91 2 months ago
@mpc91 You keep talking in generalities, but I don't see any specific examples to make a point. I mention specific experiences I have had myself, and you accuse me of parroting somebody or something. As for "do other things now", what are the 1 out of 15 people in the US supposed to work at when they are at less than half of the poverty line? What are young people even supposed to study in college when jobs keep being outsourced by the "job creators"? Including IT? Lies, lies, lies.
bodryn 2 months ago
@bodryn - I keep talking in facts, and you keep talking in out of context stories. This makes you vulnerable to fallacy. You accept the seen, and ignore the unseen consequence. But you talk of me speaking in generalities, then you talk about 1 out of 15 people, and fall victim to another fallacy. You ignore the fact that incomes change over time. Everyone makes more at 30 than they do at 20. I did. Did you? You talk of classes of people, and in this case, not about actual people.
mpc91 2 months ago
@mpc91 Not everybody makes more at 30 than at 20. I was in college at age 20, working summers. At 30 I left one job and started another.
bodryn 2 months ago
@bodryn - The vast majority do. I don't have the figures, but it's likely 95%. And your yearly income was really lower when you worked for a summer, than a whole year, even with changing jobs? Really?
mpc91 2 months ago
@mpc91 I have to wonder - have you ever done any real work in your life?
bodryn 2 months ago
@bodryn - This is a question I was wondering about you. Have you ever been out of a university? Been in the real world?
mpc91 2 months ago
@mpc91 I've had real jobs if you count carpentry/construction, truck driving (gravel and semi), farm work, and military experience just to name a few. I haven't been using other people's money to get rich. How about you?
bodryn 2 months ago
@mpc91 Always going to extremes to try and prove a point.
bodryn 2 months ago
@bodryn - If it makes the point painfully obvious. Then yes, go to extremes. It's logically sound.
mpc91 2 months ago
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bodryn 2 months ago
@mpc91 What extremes are you talking about now? Most of the real world doesn't function on extremes, don't you know. People in the real world have to cope with reality, and what I've seen of the real world lately, things look worse and worse. I've never seen the common people being so ignored. (Realizing that the Tea Party movement was funded by the Koch brothers, to try and distract the people.)
bodryn 2 months ago
@bodryn - And George Soros might have a little to do with Occupy Wall Street. And things look worse and worse because we have more and more government, more and more regulation, and less and less liberty.
mpc91 2 months ago
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@mpc91 You guys always bring up George Soros, but what do you say when we bring up Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdock, who respectively manage and own the largest stationary earth satellite network. What do you say when we bring up the Koch brothers, who are the source of the money behind the Tea Party fraud that simple minded people thought was a movement for them, when it was for just a few superwealthy who are subverting the democratic process here and around the world?
bodryn 2 months ago
so great
stancow 7 months ago
I wish Wlter Williams was the first black American President!
ashsranch 11 months ago
LibertyPen those pictures of chris dodd, nancy pelosi, chris matthews, and barney frank (Note: I didn't capitalize their names for obvious reasons) were too scary. I was moved hearing Dr. Walter Williams choice words, but looking at the sight of those politicians makes it difficult to concentrate on what Dr. Williams is discussing.
Great post, nonetheless.
1czelaya 1 year ago
Why doesn't 100 000 people watch these videos?
bjarnet3 1 year ago 2
@bjarnet3 they're busy watching chris crocker
TheBigBadWoIf 7 months ago
@SonnyTheWhiteDwarf How can you disprove it? I've watched it happen! The airline industry used to be well regulated and the experience of flying was elegant. We used to get luxurious food en route. The whole experience made me feel like royalty. Now I refuse to fly anymore. It doesn't seem safe, and what with some of the latest rule changes, I wouldn't even be able to fly anymore, what with age related needs.
bodryn 1 year ago
amen
i vote for this GUY for president any day!!
throw out the black muslim and put in Walter W.
ugotpimp 1 year ago
WalMart used to advertise that everything they sold was made in the U.S. Not anymore. Practically everything is made in China. Why? Chinese work for a fraction of what Americans will. WalMart increases profits by using cheap overseas labor, but Americans need jobs too. Walmart is also in other countries. Who are they loyal to?
bodryn 1 year ago
Your argument fails to take all of the consequences into account. By using cheaper labor Wal-Mart is able to sell their products at a cheaper price. That cheaper price makes it easier for the people to purchase those products. It also means that more spendable capital remains in the US economy.
syghur 1 year ago
"by using cheaper labor" - Ah, yes, you want Americans to work for less, otherwise they can't compete in the global market. That is the result, you know. Trickle down nonsense.
bodryn 1 year ago
@bodryn @bodryn you should get paid for what your worth. unions like at Caterpillar where i worked allow people with no post highschool education make 60k a year turning a wrench on 4 nuts on each assembly unit.
engineers for instance who are way more valuable and can produce so much more per hour get paid the same when they start despite being way more productive. that is distortion of the labor market and if we paid unskilled workers what they are worth there is incentive to upgrade skills
umrmecheman 1 year ago
@umrmecheman Some football or basketball star earns millions of dollars a year, but to me he is worth NOTHING! He doesn't produce ANYTHING except entertainment, and that likely fixed as well. Likewise company CEOs earn millions upon millions but in many cases are rewarded for selling out the very company they are running! (cf: Wall Street movie 1987) Upgrading skills is a false hope now; whatever skill you may get may be outsourced by the time you could make use of it! Do we all move out?
bodryn 1 year ago
@bodryn america is no longer so more advanced that we can go back to the 60s where a guy can graduate high school go work on an assembly line at a factory pushing a button on a punch press 8 hours a day and live an upper middle class life.
because labor has become more productive and because we are able to produce in cheap countries poor people benefit by being able to buy things like food, air conditioning, clothes at a fraction of their personal income. in india fams pay up to 40% of their
umrmecheman 1 year ago
@umrmecheman "Labor has become more productive" just means that more and higher technology has made each person more effectively productive; but they don't state the fact that as more and more humans are replaced by high tech methods, unemployment goes up. And where is it written that people who work for a living must live substandard lives?
bodryn 1 year ago
@bodryn their annual income just to get food. wages falling in certain areas are a signal for workers to enter areas where wages are rising: bio tech, nursing, engineering, etc. I just got a job in July after graduating with an engineering degree and i had multiple offers.
i don't need uninons to "protect " me or get me better wages. if my company doesn't pay me enough and i'm productive i can take my services elsewhere to a company who will pay more. that can happen when ur labor is in demand
umrmecheman 1 year ago
@umrmecheman Yep, that's right! With all the jobs out there for the taking, I'm sure your method of working for higher wages will work just fine. LOL. Don't you know that unions were what made the 40 hour week the law of the land? Don't you know that the real value of wages has been going down steadily since the 1970's? Unions are needed to protect the average worker, whether you agree or not.
bodryn 1 year ago
@syghur Agreed.
lizardman77 1 year ago
@bodryn The dollar, the same as u and everyone else.
lizardman77 1 year ago
They tell young folks: Get an education, get a good job. For example, computers! Yeah! But now most of those computer jobs are being outsourced to places like India. So what then? Figure transnational corporations running things - say a Chinese corporation. How does that sound? Is that better than corporate regulation?
bodryn 1 year ago
Some people seem to believe that you can never give corporations enough freedom to thrive. So what do we have now? Corporations like WalMart. Exxon. Boise Cascade. Fewer and bigger corporations. Ever notice that capital can flow freely between countries but individuals have to have passports even to get into Canada now? Part of to this "race to the bottom" reality and jobs going overseas.
bodryn 1 year ago
FlethforFreedm: Corporations routinely raid retirement accounts and later go bankrupt. How many CEOs do you see going to jail? Very few. Listen to Norman Goldman, a lawyer and talk show host on line: He will educate you about corporations.
bodryn 1 year ago
Smedge: Reagan proved that you can fool enough of the people enough of the time.
bodryn 1 year ago
By all means, explain how Reagan did that?
FletchforFreedom 1 year ago
We could deregulate traffic too. Get rid of stop lights, stop signs, etc. Get rid of crime by deregulating it. Just legalize everything.
bodryn 2 years ago
This is not a question of regulating all or legalizing all. No one favors legalizing violations of personal, property and civil rights. It is a problem of politicians using their power to manipulate others arbitrarily. I suggest you hesitate before becoming an all-out advocate for regulation. After all, if they start regulating morons, you might have to stop posting.
fzqlcs 2 years ago
fzqlcs: If I'm a moron, those 3 universities I graduated from might have to rescind my education. :-)) I was always told: get an education, they can't take that away from you.
bodryn 2 years ago
You take it away from yourself by talking like an uneducated statist.
The state doesn't make the roads safe, society itself brings traffic lights into being.
The idea that everything that occurs in society was organised rather than having grown organically, spontaneously, that philosopher-kings micro-manage the affairs of mere-mortals, is an ignorant fallacy espoused by people like Plato, Rousseau, Marx, Hitler, Obama...it is an idea responsible for much suffering and conflict and will everbe
Nintendomanwill 1 year ago
@Nintendomanwill Meanwhile you are talking like a rightist ideologue with no real experience in life. And like somebody with a certain amount of book learning, but without the common sense ways of relating facts that people with experience tend to use. It is dangerous to label people - it doesn't respect them as individuals with individual life experiences, and for that reason tends to be misleading.
bodryn 1 year ago
@bodryn - They can't take it away from you, true. But if your education is full of fallacies, then it doesn't mean a whole lot. Also, if your degree was in Physical Education or Physics or Brain Surgery, it really wouldn't qualify you in and of itself for economics.
And judging by you keep writing, it was full of a great deal of economic fallacies.
mpc91 3 months ago
It is in my opinion a great crime that so many believe that too much liberty and not enough direction from the state, that most efficient body (!), is to blame for economic crisis.
We consider man so irrational that letting society run itself is considered a foolish policy-our wise overlords must be given more power!
Nintendomanwill 1 year ago
@Nintendomanwill "Too much liberty" for the RICH AND POWERFUL is what you mean. It looks like you are watching out for rich folks and to h___ with the poor and disenfranchised.
bodryn 1 year ago
Of course no one has suggested that law should be abandoned particularly those laws that prevent one citizen from harming another. No one has even suggeste dthe elimination of tort law that holds one responsible for their actions. Attempting to state the opposition to deregulation is such extreme terms does qualify as moronic. After all, getting an education doesn't necessarily mean one has ;earned anything.
FletchforFreedom 2 years ago
So, you say that it's OK for corporations and business to be out of control, but not humans? My message was meant to get you to think about what deregulation really means. Didn't you get that???
bodryn 1 year ago
Actually, corporations should be treated as nothing but a grouping of individuals. You must understand the difference between law designed to address direct harm done by one individual (or group of individuals) that impairs the liberties of others and regulation as it is commonly understood, engaging in numerous specific limits, policies, guidelines, etc. that interfere with the operations of individuals and, in reality, usually create more problems than they solve.
FletchforFreedom 1 year ago
Corporations are just as capable of harming people as other people are; however, corporations can't be put in prison. They also have a bevy of corporate lawyers to protect their interests. Equal justice? LOL
bodryn 1 year ago
Your initial premise is entirely false. Corporations are nothing but collections of individual human beings who are subject to the rule of law. The corporation does not exist separate from those individuals who can and must be liable for their own acts. That they hvae access to legal representation changes nothing. That they may get better representation is a valid area of discussion but does not bear on the issue of capitalism or the assertion that "corporations are out of control".
FletchforFreedom 1 year ago
@FletchforFreedom So you don't believe in the concept of MOBS? Despite historical instances of lynchings, etc? A corporation isn't like an individual or independent groups of individuals, because they are largely controlled by the CEO or board, if they want to keep their jobs. Thus corporations can give HUGE sums for political purposes even if most individuals oppose it, etc., etc. Don't let your ideology interfere with independent thought.
bodryn 1 year ago
Of course I believe in mobs - not that it matters as they have NOTHING to do with the topic at hand. Corporations - who do NOT spend "HUGE" sums as yopu suggest (except inasmuch as they are extorted from them by government - are run by boards subject to shareholders who are interested in one thing - improving their economic circumstances by delivering products in the marketplace (which makes us all better off. Don't let your delusions interfere with actual reality.
FletchforFreedom 1 year ago
@bodryn - An argument can be made for removing traffic lights, and stop signs in many, many places. People drive much more carefully. It has been tried with some success in a number of places.
Ending the drug war would greatly reduce crime.
mpc91 3 months ago
@mpc91 I think some people drive more carefully in Montana where they are far less liberal with warning signs and guard rails than in Minnesota. However, I also think more people die there as a result.
Yes, they ought to legalize marijuana and just tax it. Not sure about cocaine and other stuff.
bodryn 2 months ago
An excellent performance by Dr. Williams filling in as a guest host for Rush Limbaugh! Dr. Walter E. Williams: turning back the frontiers of ignorance!
bravo0105 2 years ago
@bravo0105 Absolutely demolishing the frontiers of ignorance by making things worse, no? New dark ages coming... You heard it here first....
bodryn 1 year ago
Walter E is just great, the man is one of my many role models among the economics field and much prop to him for sticking to the truth.
AFRIKTODAY 2 years ago 3
I like Walter Williams because he has a simple way of expressing himself. I believe he can make these things more understandable and help educate people who are so ill informed.
smedge7 2 years ago 2
@smedge7 A person is much better educated by reading a variety of books on the subject rather than listening to a one sided political presentation.
bodryn 1 year ago
I wouldn't say you made a compelling argument.
amartin7889 2 years ago
I think it is the same reason that despite the outrageous salaries and or benefits received by congressman and senators, baseball players, movie stars, media personalities and others, we demonize the salaries of CEO's. The CEO may make more than he truly has accomplished or maybe not, but I have not heard any hollywood types offering to charge less for their crappy movies.
unc68 2 years ago
people are too dumb or apathetic to care about the real truth. kind of representative of america really.
fuck it..........we'll do it live
pwnttothemax 2 years ago
There will always be people who never listen. The point is to get the truth to the people in the middle. I believe that many Americans once they hear the real facts and understand them will vote the right way. Regan proved this time and time again by going directly to the people and explaining what he wanted to do and why, and the people responded. They took before and after polls and proved that this worked. For the life of me I will never understand why Republicans never learned this lesson.
smedge7 2 years ago
The idea of deregulation causing this seems simpler than regulation causing this. The media finds it a lot easier to tell a simple lie than a complicated truth. Once the idea sets in it is there. I guess people are stupid.
Scoforever 2 years ago 3
Well said!
smedge7 2 years ago
This was recorded from when he hosted the Rush Limbaugh show on 12/31/2008. Or he gave the same speach on that radio program.
TomOviedo 2 years ago
@TomOviedo Maybe he's a broken record?
bodryn 1 year ago
"Before you declare free markets as a failure, you have to establish that they exist." Bravo, Dr. Williams! Ever since the New Deal we have had markets that were anything but free. It is ever increasing government intrusion that destroys economies, stifles innovation, and squelches individual sovereignty. We The People must rekindle our love affair with American Independence, liberty, and freedom if we are to throw off the yoke of the collectivists and their uncaring, unkind State.
racybr 2 years ago 3
@racybr I think it is the corporate collectivists that are ruining everything. The big corporations keep collecting the smaller ones, meanwhile fewer and fewer companies are filling the needs of the people. One day it will be down to one HUGE corporation running everything, but with no control by the common people. Which would be a lot like GUM, the Soviet system of supplying goods in the 1900's.
bodryn 1 year ago
@bodryn - Seriously, I want you to find me in history, ONE example of one monopolistic corporation controlling the market for anything WITHOUT government support in the form of regulation to do so. You call yourself a historian, this should be easy for you. Competition ALWAYS wins out. Its the government that helps corporations get so big, and government that limits competition. You realize that the Soviet system was a GOVERNMENT monopoly, don't you?
mpc91 2 months ago
I can't wait until this stimulus package bankrupts our country and socialism and nationalization makes our people revolt against its tyrannical government, then well know that freedom was always our only choice.
openyourmind678 2 years ago 2
@openyourmind678 What freedom? Freedom does not automatically come with capitalism. Look at Fascist Italy in the 1940's. Lots of countries with capitalism are run by dictators.
bodryn 1 year ago
@bodryn capitalism is a start, but im for free markets, not capitalism. people have no issue in seeing the difference between marxism, socialism and fascism, they should see the difference between capitalism and free markets.
openyourmind678 1 year ago
@bodryn You realize that fascism and the free market are different things right?
mpc91 2 months ago
debunks every argument against free market capitalism
CommSense 2 years ago 5
Revolution Now !
Auggie56 2 years ago 7
It could happen if things get dire enough.
AmericanPatriot92 2 years ago
The traditional Greek democracies were true "tyrannies of the majority". Many abuses occurred. This is simple human nature w/ regard to people seeking power over others. The US constitution is suppose to be our firewall to protect us from these abuses. The firewall has been breached and is forever broken. I talk the talk and I have the guns to back me up... Tyrants and their supporters...Beware...
nlpjohn 2 years ago
Agreed.
Sorry I can't recall the name of the incident. But when the British shot and killed protesting colonist in Philadelphia. The first man killed was a black man. Interesting that we never hear that.
Auggie56 2 years ago
@nlpjohn You don't support democracy? Does this mean you intend to subvert our constitution?
bodryn 1 year ago
@bodryn Tsk... Tsk... Strawmen arguments are the tools of the ignorant and the dishonest. Please don't smoke pot In your American civics classes. Your ignorance is painful. We live in a REPUBLIC. There is not a single surving democracy in the world... The founders were very specific about wanting a republic based on their study of history and human nature. Now...you can go back to sleep now.
nlpjohn 1 year ago
@nlpjohn So you feel Lincoln was wrong when he spoke of a nation "of the people, by the people and for the people"? I don't know where you are going with this "republic" argument, but apparently you do not believe in the concept of "we are the government". I think you are saying that only rich people should run a country. Of course there have been lots of republics, some not too nice.
bodryn 1 year ago
@bodryn More strawmen arguments? You're just like Obama. He uses strawman arguments dishonestly as well. It is clear to me you are intellectually weak, dishonest, and lazy. Otherwise you would not keep making up things about what I believe or don't believe. Take your 3rd grade debate tactics elsewhere and don't speak to me again.
nlpjohn 1 year ago
Dr. Williams, as usual is 100 percent right. Deregulation is the biggest myth going, it never happened.
lizardman77 2 years ago 10
@lizardman77 So now deregulation is being denied? Denial of history is dangerous and by the way was typical of the Soviet Union. Just talk to older adults and let them tell you actual history they have lived. Deregulation is REAL. I've seen a lot of changes, and in the last 30 years, a lot of BAD ones.
bodryn 1 year ago
@bodryn Then provide some examples of deregulation. I can give you hundreds of examples of new regulation for every rewording of a regulation that you call deregulation.
I have talked to older Americans, they aren't of the one mind you think they are.
Denial of history is your forte. It was typical of the Soviet Union. So were massive regulations, a police state, and limits on economic freedom. But your buddy Samuelson thought the Soviet command economy would overtake us. Did that work out?
mpc91 2 months ago
I wish Walter Williams were the first Black president
unodepoalli 2 years ago 55
Williams, Sowell 2012
MikeEPT72 2 years ago 17
@MikeEPT72 Yeah and that would be the only time that 90+ % of blacks would vote against a black President and VP ticket.
shaqdaddy11 4 months ago
Nice. Yea. But to his credit he would never be power hungry enough to do it. Much like most honest men.
marneedear 2 years ago 5