So, a free market could profit from illness. Hmmm. Insurance companies are just a bureaucracy, butwith more "self interest" than DMV workers, whose job it is to administer things according to "laws" that people are free to redress! Corporate policy/laws are working against the interests of people since they're "for"-profits. DMV is not perfect but gets a job done. We don't value it. No new locations or equipment! Same old gig: The right starves the beast, and say, "Look! Fails every time!"
@utvara1 Based on what evidence? Your claim we need to not invest in healthcare but a gym membership while eating raw food. I am sure if you did the research (if you do that sort of thing) you will find those who follow your advice still get the flu or even cancer. And to claim I am an idiot because I either don't agree with you or don't know a "healthy lifestyle prevents illness" means if people don't know what you know or don't agree with you are all idiots. You know everything?
@jazzbummer actually research shows that almost all lung cancer patients are smokers that is how things go for everything else. you just keep rationalizing/aprooving your laziness and/or weak genetic makeup virginous fatsinator fag
@utvara1 Ok so you throw one little fact out and thats supposed to prove your claim? And you call me lazy? Go learn how to debate and name calling reminds me of my days as a teenager so I can assume (hopefully) that your still in High School. Go to college, study, graduate and then let's have this conversation.
@utvara1 Many people respond like you when they realize they have no idea what they are talking about. You really think I am going to lose sleep over your comment? Grow up and leanr for once.
I won't mess with words, so I won't delineate Health from Medical.
Everyone should get a free ambulance ride if they drop down in the street, and a doctor to treat them, For FREE. I will pay tax for it and I will pay TAX to a private contractor who is hired by another person I pay tax to, to make sure the ambulance drivers aren't sitting around eating donuts.
@mistersmith6000 That is exactly how it should be. People like you, who volunteer to give their money, should be the ones who provide health care for those who either can't or want better care than they can afford. That is very nice. But, it would be cheaper for you to just pay the direct cost rather than paying through tax (32% spent on administration). It is only evil when the force of government is used to take the earnings of some to pay medical bills for others.
@fzqlcs I can't remember to volunteer often enough and I don't wanna make choices anyway. I'll have to cop the 32% because actually, I can't be responsible for micromanaging and rationalizing all of my 'inputs' into the great machine. All I can do is complain when I feel cheated by it. I think libertarians know this. The free-market needs perfect knowledge and a flat earth where we start the race equal, and an environment that keeps giving forever. It has and never will exist
@mistersmith6000 The free market is voluntary exchange and requires only freedom. Central planning is what requires perfect knowledge by the ruling elite as well as your flat earth and an environment that can never exist. That is why it doesn't work.
@fzqlcs I mean 'requires' as 'requires in order to fulfill its promise of win-win. Otherwise, you will always have those who feel that the dice are forever loaded against them. Of course the 'free' market functions perfectly well without these things, it is just that it delivers a monopoly as the supply side gels together. The monopoly includes the government and its bureaucratic machine. A government running everything is tyranny of course too.
@mistersmith6000 I don't think you understand that a free market is actually what breaks these monopolies on it's own. We DON'T live in a free market. The market we live in is corrupted by regulations that favors a select few businesses; allowing these monopolies to remain in power. They socialize the market to favor their own businesses through lobbying and influence peddling in the government.
A free market would allow for anyone to compete in it. The market we have does not.
@MRKetter81 I think I get it, at least as far as the principal is concerned, and that includes a less-than-perfect market still capable of delivering growth. But one thing I believe is that with an uneven starting line a monopoly will eventuate. 2nd, the environment is a casualty of growth, and so as capitalism encourages growth, short and long term, without government control, the market, accountable to shareholders who don't even know them can't afford to protect it.
@mistersmith6000 Well the starting line in capitalism always starts out uneven, but when left alone competition steps in... The government is accountable to the market in so much as it keeps competition even on all levels, but there are often laws that "seem" to do this, but much like the regulations that Big businesses them selves support, do more harm than help.
@mistersmith6000 Long and short of it... too much greed is what corrupts the market. It corrupts the politicians and the companies. The problem is the human heart.. the one thing I will always disagree with libertarians for. All any one can really do in politics is try to reduce the damage of the outcome.
@mistersmith6000 A government running everything is tyranny, but the only way for businesses to reach that amount of power is through the government. The point of a free market is to keep businesses out of government as well as the government out of businesses. Regulation has been the prime weapon of big businesses against any competition. Not that regulations (in of them selves) are bad, but because they are established as a means to root out competing businesses that they are crony business
@fzqlcs funny how the so called free market needs a government to break up unions, needs the government to secure trade deals, needs the government to protect the intellectual property and private property no matter how persons or corporations acquire it and it needs the government to mitigate their risk (thats what a corporation is fundamentally)....but then we say that isnt central planning....it sure seems that way though...sounds like a central plan to me
@tunacorncheese Do you know that Christianity is correct? The world around us reveals that G-d DOES exist, and the historical evidence reveals that Jesus Christ really did come to this earth and there is overwhelming evidence that Jesus Christ really did physically rise from the dead. Jesus is coming again and the signs of the end times that were foretold in the Bible are coming to pass.
Yes, mostly true but NOTICE people when we came to the length of time added to the life spans of cancer sufferers; he only said the US was better than most countries. So there is an overlap of Government run medical care and ,longer term survival in clinical areas it appears.
@Ravengaurd6 You are correct that is not being offered, simply because Obama is just like the rest of the presidents we have had in the past 70 years. He had to cut the Insurance Companies in for a piece of the action. Twenty percent off the top will go to the Insurance Industry.
@rippinsteo Well at least 50 million Americans will have access to a specialist if they need one. I cannot think of lower quality care than no care at all: can you?
@louiethegreater Good point, but i have access to oil reserves, they are five miles under my feet as we speak. I can start digging now but by the time I reach them it will not matter. Same with specialist. I had to see a neurologist, it took a month to get an appointment, it will take a year under Obama care or more. You can easily find this out just by researching Canada's system and we have 10 mil mor people on welfare than Canada has people period.
@brk49er Well, what would you preference be. The rich have access to specialist and the rest of america has no access. I don't care about Canada's system. WE need socialized, singer payer healthcare. If the country is going to be de-industrialized with consent of government, than government will have to care for those folks left behind. That is a no brainer.
@louiethegreater It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication and a government bureaucracy to administer it. Im sorry I dont need the govt to save me, but it seems govt dependency is a career choice now days.
@louiethegreater who is going to pay for it? We are 15.4 Trillion dollars in debt, we have 44.7 million people on foodstamps. What you do is decrease govt beauracracy and return money to the economy. A free economy will work it out. I have never seen anything the govt makes cheaper or more effeciently than the private sector.
@br Free trade was accelerated in the 1960s and the economy has went south . Simply because investment is going to Asia. When Bill Clinton gave US Fortune 500 Companies permission to leave the country, manufacture in the third world, and ship back to US free of charge. That is the problem with the economy. Pay for healthcare by placing a 50% tariff on every item that is produce by third world labor. The 1% who is really profiting, incomes has risen 275% while wages have remained flat,
In the Netherlands, medicins to help people stop smoking have been heavily subsidized for quite some time. But now that the government tries to cut spending by abolishing it, doctors and left-wing politicians call the secretary responsible for 600.000 deaths. It's crazy.
@scienceatheism your medical care is the best in the world to my knowledge. In the Netherlands, the quality is fine as well (only the best is allowed, rest outlawed), but we have crazy waiting lists and we pay a HUGE price for it (around €6000 per person per year). However, hardly anyone notices that, because most of it is paid via taxes. (38% of GNP goes to government).
How would you say its better? seeing that Canada and various other Europe countries claim to be happier under the current conditions? And others say that Americas current policies are horrendous do to the health for profit kind of system we have going on here?
@scienceatheism just like Sowell says: chances of survival or recovery are better. And you ought to have the freedom to decide if you want insurance or not and what medical care you want to buy. Government involvement makes the whole process more expensive and restrictive.
@scienceatheism they would have to rely on charity, I'm afraid. But the only difference between charity and government paying for you is that the first is voluntary and the latter forced upon.
most charities dont do so well only because people rely so much on the federal government especially here that charities especially for health care services lack funding do to people not giving enough to charities. Seeing that the federal government already pays for their shit anyways. Well thats how its going to be once Obama Care is finally put in place seeing that it already passed.
You must be aware that about 20 million americans are jobless aren't you. So you are in favor of displacing all ameiricans who once earned a living in manufacturing by allowing multinational corportations to manufacture in one hemisphere and export to us tariff free. So america has been de-industrialized of all manufacuring that is labor intrensic. You really don't know if you are buying the products cheaper, because you do not have any american examples to compare with, they are long gone.
@louiethegreater You are so very cave man you know that, you have no idea about anything unseen. Gravity isn't seen, i guess that doesn't exist either? Americans WOULD BE in perfectly good standing economically if the government would step out of the way. There's so many reasons for the current employment issues, primarily being government injection of liquidity into the market, but also many other programs getting in the way of business. Other well intentioned things that were gigantic failures
@s0beit The founder did not make intend for america to be a haven for rich exploiters of the poor. The labor standards and the manufacturing safety standards have been driven back 50 years, because of outsourcing. We are a nation of people, and our sole purpose is not to supply business, with a retail market, labor market, or investment market. That is a Friedman, Sowell lecture circit concept. Both men Paid for by multinational corporations through Hoover.
good points. But what I strive for is to increase the standard of living for all Americans. And I consider health and medical care to be something that should be ubiquitous and easy to attain. I feel that same way about water.
We can't have some of things I want because the government has been co-opted by greedy bastards that use corporate largess to screw us over.
Mr Sowell must have read the corporate talking points before he began talking. Mr Sowell has been a multinational mouth piece every since the Gingrich crowd adopted him as their black mouth piece. He is owned and operated by corporate ameica. Thank god black america rejected his leadership, they went with Jessie Jackson, and Al Sharpten, who is just as much an extreme on the other side.
@louiethegreater Al Sharpton and Jessie Jackson are hustlers and robbers of their own people, so, if that's their choice then fine. You should look up some of his other videos, he's been doing this stuff since the 70s and probably before, and is also an economist. When a black man who is successful and an economist says he knows how to save his people, maybe it's just me, but I'd listen.
@s0beit My judgement is that it is just you. You are one of those easily hoodwinked people. Did you know that Ken Ley had a PHD in Economics, I believe Jeff Skillings did also. So what does that mean, a good clue is Nothing. Some people will do anything for money, Mr. Sowell is no exception. Yes I remember him in the 70s, but he reached his stride in the 90 when the Gingrich crowd introduced him to america as an alternative to Jackson. Don't be decieved he is just as big a con artist as Jackson.
@s0beit He has been doing this for a long time because he is well paid for it. He is sponsered by the Hoover Institute, a Corporate funded think tank. He gains notoriety for the sale of his books and lectures through carrying the Corporate talking points of deregulation, outsourcing, and ending any social program designed to help displaced workers, and poor americans. Are you sure you are so rich and powerful that you want to support outsourcing and the corporate takeover of Ameica.
@louiethegreater While I don't agree on some of his positions and they're clearly more neoconservative flavor than I'd prefer, I don't think he's out to damage his own people. You have to remember, he was a Marxist once, it's not like he doesn't know both sides of the argument.
Outsourcing is hardly bad and I don't know how you'd make a solid economic argument against it, what's bad is the regulations imposed on us to keep us unemployed, not cheaper goods from other countries.
@s0beit Fortunatly the founders did not make judgment based on economic theory, thay were American first. If they would have been free traders, America would not have developed her own industry, we would never have had the ability to provide jobs for americans, less on, producing the greatest middleclass in the world. Tariffs was given by the founders as a tool to pay government and protect american industry from cheap third world labor. Under the economics of protectionism the U.S. evolved.
@louiethegreater Protect American industry from cheap third world labor? Protect from what? Good prices?
People selling us cheap things doesn't hurt our economy, it helps it, otherwise why have any imports at all? That doesn't make any sense. We were a primary source of cheap goods in our day and we weren't the consumers we are today, in that day, we exported and imported many things. I'm sure of one thing though: The cheap goods we received helped us immensely, they didn't hurt.
@s0beit I believe you should ask yourself, do you care about anyone but yourself. Should 20 million americans become jobless, so that you can go to Walmart and buy cheap stuff. Unemployed americans cannot buy stuff, at anyprice. Those unemployed ameicans go on the government dole, so free traders whine about the cost of government and blame it on regulation. When it is so obvious that ameicans cannot compete with cheap ,57/hr third world labor. Tariffs level the playing field.
@louiethegreater I believe you should ask yourself, do you know anything about economics at all? What is your economic argument for supporting a tariff? You have none, because no, you don't. Cheaper things produced over there means more money to spend on things over here. News flash for you, even if china was blown off of the planet we wouldn't be able to make things cheaper than the rest of the world. "Narrowing the playing field" means making things more expensive for EVERYONE.
@s0beit I do ask myself how long you folks sit in the classroom to have every morsel of common sense removed from you. Tariffs is an american issue the economics involve is very simple, protect the american manufacturer, and laborer from multinationals who do not consider themselves citizens of any country, but citizens of the world. The neo-liberal, belief that liberalization of the worlds markets to international bankers and multinationals will eventually destroy the U.S. through oursourcing.
@louiethegreater The fact is we don't want those jobs over here, the factories, the sweatshops, the farming, specifically because we don't need to do it anymore. We spend our money on more advanced technology, newer products, your argument is intellectually equivalent to "machines take factory jobs, therefore destroy all machines", it's the EXACT same argument. Less money spent on building cars by hand in factories means more money being spent elsewhere, and those things cheaper.
@s0beit The fact is your crowd does not want those jobs. You should ask the 20 million unemployed if they want those jobs. You mean the Wall Street investment crowd doesn't want those jobs. Their preference would be to build State of the Art Manufacturing Facilities in the third world, and employ .057/hr. labor to manufacture products for export to the west, a hemisphere away. While earning 400% profits of the backs of third world labor. The arguement is the same only in your mind .
@louiethegreater The fact is you never really answered to my claim that your argument is identical to the stupid people of the 1800s who despised machinery because it took their jobs. It is no different. You have not answered to my claim of what I blame unemployment on, you just prattle on about multinationals (which by the way, makes you seem more like a nationalist the more you talk about it, that isn't a compliment). Done talking to you, you just assert things and don't back it up.
@s0beit You never answered any of my questions, you only made some really braindead statements, directly out of the globalist, neoliberal handbook. Hey!!!!! its your country you are betraying, and the ugly part is you are doing it for free, simply because you can go to the Walmart and buy a pair of cheap shoes made by slave labor in Bangladash, how stupid is that.
@louiethegreater Answered any of your questions? You just made assertions and spouted nationalist rhetoric about how unamerican I am? You are an absolute joke and you should feel bad.
@s0beit I do feel bad for you, because when the sovereign U.S. is part of a global plantation, you will be its victom. Of course, you will regret your position that you are the only american entitled to a job and security for your family. I.T. jobs are being outsourced at a rapid pace, plus HIB Visas are being handed out like candy to Indian and Chinese educated in the computer sciences. Hope you enjoy our support for all those redundant jobs being outsourced, I T is in the process.
@louiethegreater You obviously don't know the statistics on that, for higher level programmers they maintain jobs here, they don't get sent overseas for the most part because the education is much better here. It's usually the lower level programmers who do nothing but scrap work anyway. I freelance, so this isn't a problem for me. You can't often go to microsoft and ask them to make you a program, you can ask me though :D
In any case that money is being spent expanding other sectors. Good.
@s0beit That is wishful thinking, India is a hot bed of freelancers, you can have programs wittten for one tenth of the cost of an american company. My son works for a firm that would fire him if he contracted an ameirican company to write programs, or for that matter, any web realted products. You are decieved CNC Machine Operaters, CNC Controlled Wire Machines, Tool and Die Makers were once thought of as being to skilled to be outsourced, but guess what they are almost all gone now.
@louiethegreater Many things get outsourced, many things are taken by illegal immigrants. Of course, that doesn't answer for all the job losses. That isn't the primary reason behind job losses. The math simply does not agree with you, the job losses are not proportional to the jobs taken and maintained by illegal immigration or outsourcing. Programming might be completely outsourced in time but that's only for corporate repetitive jobs, not creation of employment itself.
@s0beit Is that some of that Austrian theoretical math. What math are you talking about. Job loss is directly proportional to outsourcing, and illegal, and legal immigration, ( H1B Visas) Social benefits to illegals are a enormous drain on social benefits in the US, but it will not be stopped, because open borders is a tenet of free trade, and globalization.
@louiethegreater I'd innovate, just as people should. If a machine is made which is able to program all programs you wouldn't see a reduction in jobs, you'd see an explosion of them. Outsourcing is no different, just another way of getting certain products more cheaply and thus in more abundance, then people can focus their attention on matters of greater importance, things which aren't in abundance.
@s0beit Well could you make it clear what the 20 million unemployed workers are focusing their attention on. Well lets guess: (how to obtain more social benefits from the Federal Government) Just what we needed!!!!!
@louiethegreater Hey, I don't want people dependent on social benefits either, but outsourcing and illegal immigration are famous scapegoats. They aren't the problem. The job market is not a zero sum game, there is no static number of jobs that will run out if there's too many people doing them. I personally blame the government adjusting interest rates and allowing cheap debt to flow, I believe this causes recessions, it's more of a monetary issue than a private sector one, though they are hurt
@s0beit Outsourcing and illegal immigration is exactly the problem. The job market is like this; there are x number of job produced in the economy. If there are more jobs than workers there will be wage inflation, if not; there will be wage deflation. That is not exactly a zero sum game, but it is relative to 20 million unemployed americans. I believe de-regulation and corporate minipulation, of trade policy, such as the complete silence of any mention of tariffs. Don Trump has it right.
@louiethegreater No offense but I wouldn't completely trust Donald Trump on the issue. Tariff are notoriously protectionist, anti-consumer and pro-monopoly. These are unskilled laborers and I wouldn't attribute them to our problem, what happens if machines are one day able to do all the things that they're doing now? Would that mean everyone goes unemployed? I don't think so. We've seen an explosion of jobs because of cheaper labor over 30 years and only now is it suddenly a problem.
@s0beit I don't trust Don Trump but he is the first one I have heard offer a solution. A 50% tariff on all consumer goods produced by thirdworld labor will pay our national debt in 5 years. Domestic industries would begin producing again, hireing americans again. Tariffs were given by the Founders to protect our economy for foreign dumping of products manufactured by cheap labor, and to force foreign business to pay a tax for the use of our economy. When that use is given freely labor looses.
Economic protectionism is the most discredited and fallacious economic paradigm alongside Soviet Communism. Please read the writing of Frederic Bastiat on the subject.
@Akatam0t0ma Fredrick Bastiat was a imaginative moron, who like Sowell was obsessed with self interest, and an enemy to labor, not to mension, sponsered by multinationals. Soviet Communism is working quite well for Communist China these days, thanks to, the US abandoning protectionism for laissez-faire capitalism.
Fredrick Bastiat was ... sponsered by multinationals"
Poor delusional brain-dead statist sap. Go give a blowjob to a loaded pistol and squeeze the trigger. That should cleanse some of that toxic statist manure that stuffs your cranium.
You are another case-in-point as to why democracy is a failed paradigm that needs to be thrown in the dustbin of history if civilization is to survive.
@Akatam0t0ma Don't believe I will: I'll leave the blowjobs to little punk boys like you. Bastiat was an importer, naturally he would want to live in a tariff free world, even if it weakened France and unemployed his own countrymen. My guess is, he was a traiter to France just like little queers like you are the your country. Which is probably communist china. You are much to ignorant to realize that you are a chicken rooting for colonal sanders.
If Bastiat was a traitor to France, then you are a traitor to the human race. You, out of your militant economic ignorance, will force the rest of the country to pay for your pet industries, because you are an anti-social psychopath. Your economic illiteracy could be amusing if it weren't so destructive. But hey, if enough people are dumb enough to fall for this economic bullshit to make it a policy,then all the shit that comes from it is an adequate punishment for your idiocy.
@Akatam0t0ma Well stupid little punk boy, the country adopted your free trade, liberal markets ideoloy in the late 60s, and our economy today is a result of those decisions. Free Trade doesn't work, it has never been implemented anywhere in the world, and it never will as long as there are nationstates. YES the country will return to Protectionist Capitalism because Laissez- Faire Capitalism does not work. The founders knew that by the many, many tariff laws the formulated.
"YES the country will return to Protectionist Capitalism"
And should it do so, the deterioration in quality of life that will result from adopting this dimwitted false paradigm will serve as a well deserved punishment by reality for brainless aggressive economic illiterates like you. Protectionism, like any other form of statism, doesn't work, never has and never will, even if some power-mongering ruling class drone tells you otherwise. You are the con-artist's wet dream.
@Akatam0t0ma Thats strange, protectionism worked for 200years, that is evident by the many, many tariff laws presented by the founders. Only you dimwits who sit in the classroom and were spoon fed this economic theory of Hayek, and Von Mises actually believe that Protectionist Capitalism does not work and somehow, someway, Laissez- Faire Capitalism works. In spite of the overwhelming evidence that liberalisation of our markets and free trade has destroyed our economy, and weakened the country.
" our economy today is a result of those decisions"
This statement is objectively false, like the rest of your discredited anti-economic paradigm. The economy the way it is today is because of the gangsters in the Federal Reserve. And also because it's full of militantly ignorant economic illiterates like you who vote for the ruling class that implements their economic dimwittery. And like I said, all the consequences of your stupidity serve a punishment for your idiocy.
@Akatam Obvious to whom? Discredited by whom, those brainwashed, slow learning worshippers of Hayek, and Von Mises. These twisted leaders of the blind were rejected for years by every nation and economic theory. Than the concept of globalization and the liberalization of our markets evolved, in the late 1960s. Than you misguided leaders of the blind was unlished on the ameican economy. You would think that after 60 years of the distruction of the U.S. economy you would observe the distruction.
Yes, it IS a science, which also has rules which even your beloved glorified mafia(aka the state) is toothless to break, no matter how omnipotent you and them may think they are. The laws of supply and demand is one of those laws. By restricting supply of goods by protectionism, you are making prices rise, thus making everyone's life WORSE OFF. You are of course free to disregard those laws at your peril, but you cannot avoid the consequences of disregarding those laws. Got it?
@Akatam0t0ma Tariffs do not restrict supply, in spite of austrian trick math, tariffs provide revenus to pay government and creates investment in domestic markets instead of foreign markets. That activity spreads wealth across society instead of concentrating it into the top 10% of the population. You seem to be content with winner and losers, the have and have nots. Simply because you have been brainwashed to believe that everyone is completely selfish, and live they lives being manipulated.
And even if Bastiat were "sponsored by multinationals", his arguments would still be valid, and yours would be a pile of discredited trainwrecks, and no amount of statist pseudo-intellectual eleutherophobic drivel would change that fact, even if the spewers of this crap studied in Harvard all of their life. Got it, you pathetic misanthropic statist dreck guzzler? Logic is logic, and economics have rules that make a bitch out of your beloved religion of democracy. Tool.
@Akatam0t0ma You moronish dimwitted moron, Bastiat arguments were rejected by every govenment for centuries, it was a few Von Mises worshippers who revived his traitorous ideology and attempted to force it on the american people. I am sure the 20 million unemployed, and those who supported their families from the 70,000 manufacturing facilities that have been outsourced; agree. You must be dumber than a hog, and isolated not to see the distruction free trade ideology has done to the country.
"Bastiat arguments were rejected by every govenment for centuries"
Yes, of course they were. Who would expect them otherwise? These gangsters cannot be expected to accept leaving other people alone and let them trade peacefully. That's the nature of the beast. And since when acceptance by government is a measurement of validity anyway? It's not like government have a track record of intellectual honesty or doing things right.
@Akatam0t0ma " these gangsters" What a laugh, you are so brainwashed that you beleive that human beings are little more than information processers, and they just live their lives functioning in their own self interest, you completely ignore what it means to be human. WHAT A CROCK- you will excuse me for refusing to be so totally brainwashed, and continue to believe that we have a responsibility to each other, and that we are more than just processers minipulated by the state, how supid!
@Akatam0t0ma You should be informed that markets do not create the stability in our lives, and that the invisible hand of Adam Smith, is invisible, because it does not exist. You have bought into the game theories of John Nash and dehumanized your countrymen for the sake of the markets, (which in your mind is the ultimate processer) and the market somehow has the ability to organize society into the winners and losers which you believe should exist, in a well orderd society.
@Akatam0t0ma allow people to trade peacfully---- You actually believe that the market will organize society. Do you know that the only people who live their lives in the self interest mode is economist, and Psychopaths, and of course the Enron types, the stock traders, and Wall Street crowd, who can never have enough, and is willing to work labor, send them home to live in dirt for huts, while they live in mansions. The free trade zones along the Mexican border is a good example of that.
@louiethegreater Almost all economists oppose barriers to free trade, such as tariffs and import quotas. Alan Budd, the former chief economic advisor to HM treasury in the UK, in a 2004 paper in the journal 'world economics' wrote about this in some detail. Also in the 'American Economic Review', another journal, a study was done by two economists on the ten propositions on which most economists agree: 93% agreed that tariffs tend to reduce economic welfare.
@spader49 You learn someting about protecionism, and why it produced the greatest economy in history. How did Japan become a major porducer of Steel , having no coal, or iron ore : Answer Protecionism-- not comparative advantage.
@louiethegreater If you don't have precious mentals like iron domestically, you cannot produce them, you can only import them through trade. Also, poverty has decreased dramatically over the period of increased free trade. From what you've said you don't seem to understand what comparative advantage means, seriously look it up. It should seem obvious that you're wrong, given that over 90% of economists who study these things for a living disagree with you, such hubris from a layperson.
@spader49 No, if you don't understand my point, you are ignorant of comparitive advantage not me. You also seem to be one of those people who doesn't see to think beyond what they are told. I agree 90% of economist believe what economist say, but the rest of the world understand that economics is theory only, and not science. Alexander Hamilton understood that the nation they had just created, would prosper behind the wall of protectionism, and even slow learners, should understand he was correc
@louiethegreater Economics is not 'just theory' it is a social science, based on the testing of information based on the scientific method, with established perennial principles and universals that transcend cultural differences. The fact you don't know even the rudiments of economics is revealing. You can believe what you want, but what you believe is factually incorrect nonsense; its quite sad really how deluded you are, go ahead live in naive ignorance. Pick up an economics textbook, thrall.
@spader49 Hey wait, you are the ignoramous here, you actually believe the U.S. is better off, since imposing globalization, neo-liberalism using the vehicle of free trade as the means of accomplishing those ends. Free trade is the reason we have 25% unemployment, the top 1% earned 65% of the wealth produced, last year. All the developed economis of the world with the exception of a couple has became prosperous through protectionist polices. You should read " Myths fo Free Trade by Sherrod Brown.
@louiethegreater I once again disagree with what you've said. I think the arguments you've advanced have long be rebuked. There is a good video on tariffs on youtube, 'Robert P Murphy Import Tariffs'. Its worth pointing out that the poorest countries in the world tend to be the ones with the highest tariffs. Also the period of enormous globalisation from 1970-2000, saw the percentage of those living on less than $1 a day go from 16% to 5%, and those on $2, from 44% to 19%. It was never 'imposed'
@spader49 I also believe the arguments you are making is being debunked as the Ameican economy is being destroyed right before our eyes. Once again I point out that protectionist economic policy, produced the greatest middleclass in the history, provided best for its citiznens, both in income and quality of life, promising futures for all its citizens not just the investors. Some how you seem to have missed the fact that 85% of the newly created wealth is going to the top 1% of the population.
@louiethegreater There is no correlation between increased wealth inequality and increased free trade. Moreover, believing that the problems now are the result of trade is not proof. There is a good video on youtube 'Johan Norberg, globalisation is good'. Also look up the other clip i recommended, seriously now there're worth watching, im also open to any suggestions on your part on youtube.
@spader49 You are amazing, insomuch as you can live in a society that has outsourced 70,000 manufacturing facilities, and now has massive unemployment and still believe that free trade did not produce the problem. WOW that is what I call having faith in something in spite of the physical evidence being contrary.
@louiethegreater Countries with high tariffs tend to have lower GDP per capita, and countries without tariffs have greater economic growth, which decreases poverty (show by data comprised by the Center for International Comparisons at the University of Pennsylvania). After trade liberalization (1960-1985) Hong kong and Singapore saw rapid growth of 49% and 86% respectively. What evidence have you got for your views? other than empty rhetoric about how bad things are, without any causal facts.
@spader49 Well how about 30 million unemployed. high paying manufacturing jobs replaced by low paying service sector jobs, and then the service sector jobs being outsourced to emerging markets. How about a enormous trade deficit, enormous national debt, simply because the tax base has been outsourced. Try taking a walk through Walmart, pick up a few items and see where they are manufactured, is the fact 99% of them are manufactured in some thirdworld country evidence of anything. What world do--
@louiethegreater A recent poll of economists by the Wall Street Journal found that only 16% saw outsourcing as having a big impact on the over-all job picture. if we start trade restrictions, other countries will do likewise. In the 1930s, when unemployment in the US was 25% the government created trade restrictions designed to save American jobs, then others around the world did the same to save their own workers' jobs. Net result: world trade in 1933 was down 1/3 from 1929, decreases jobs.
@spader49 You don't seem to understand, the world was in the middle of the great depression in 1933, naturally trade had decreased. You must not have considered our massive trade deficit. Should we really be concerned about other countries, the U.S. is being used as a giant retail market only, we really do not produce our own needs, less on products for export. Product manufacturing that employ people are in the third world, highly automated manufacturing that does not employ people is here.
@louiethegreater The bulk of what is consumed by Americans is made in the US. Around 70% annually for the last decade: (source IMF, International financial Statistics). The US does produce its own needs. The mistake I think you're making is that the Great Depression was the result of not only government interference, huge failures by the Federal Reserve, but also due to its protectionist policies. Decreased trade was made in part by increased tariffs creating trade wars with other countries.
@spader49 If you really believe that 70% of what we consume. is made in the U.S., you are either a reclusive shut in, or you are not exposed to the real world for some other reason. How could you possibly believe that? Radio and T.V. Appliances, kitchen gadgets, automobiles, toys, glass, pottery, machine tools, electronics, photography, furniture, carpet, textiles, plastics, paper products, hand tools, power tools, residential lighting, wire, nails, screws, fasteners of all kinds, pipe, tubing.
@louiethegreater Let me educate you: GDP measures output, meaning the goods and services produced in the economy, and it excludes imports. America has the highest GDP in the world, meaning it makes the most things of all countries. Most of that, on average 70%, is consumed by Americans. These are facts, and the IMF Statistics show that. Look it up. This does not change in the face of the trade deficit, meaning national debt accrued from the US asymettry of importing more than exporting.
@spader49 You are in need of an education, if you believe that we manufacture 70% of our consumption. I think you really mean is that consumer spending is 70% of GDP. If you take a walk through Walmart and observe where the products we consume are made, that would be the greatest education you could possibly receive. You will find that none of the products I mentioned is manufactured in the U.S., and has systematically been given to emerging markets.
@louiethegreater The statement I gave is accurate. GDP or national output, measures what is produced by the economy in question, it does not include what is made abroad. America's national output is the largest in the world, it has the largest economy, it makes the most things and most of that goes to the people who live there. Fact. Its makes rubbish of your vacuous delusion that the US imports everything, backed up by your no doubt incontrovertible Wallmart visits. You're wrong again.
@s The statement you gave is that of a recluse individual who lives in some statistical never,never land. You must not watch the news, as disgraceful as it is, the Major Media would give you that much information. Heavens just listen to Don Trump, even he knows that we make few of our own needs. You are just one of those dimwits who would believe some bureaucratic statistical output. I just bought a new T.V. and Kitchen Stove and searched every major appliance vendor in my area, none made in USA
@louiethegreater So you don't think the US has the biggest economy in the world? So all the textbooks, economists from every country, every non-government independent institution, the countless websites, and all the mountains of evidence, are all wrong? I think i'll side with them, rather than Donald Trump.
@spader49 I didn't say the U.S. wasn't the worlds largest economy, I said we did not manufacture our own consumer goods. My argument is the manufacturing sector. The fact that all labor intensive industries have been moved to the third world, and the highly automated industries that do not employ people remains here. Most products have the value added operations preformed in low wage countries, and is shipped back to the U.S. Multinational Corporations simply use the U.S. as retail only.
@louiethegreater And the desperately poor don't deserve a good life that can be bought for wages that are too low for us? Nonetheless, and ignoring the we manufacture no consumer goods, are you bothered by the trade deficit between yourself and the grocery store? Why is money more important than the goods you can buy with it?
@Akatam0t0ma Alexander Hamilton must not have read Bastiat, or he would not have wrote the Hamilton Tariff Act of 1789. Please spare me!!!! you need to read Bastiat not me.
@s0beit Well could you make it clear what the 20 million unemployed workers are focusing their attention on. Well;; lets guess: (how to obtain more social benefits from the Federal Government) Just what we needed!!!!!
@louiethegreater Finally, before you accuse me of not caring about anyone else, those developing countries NEED that money to survive, those developing countries make consumer products cheaper here, including food, which people NEED. I care about people perfectly fine, I am just not pig headed enough to suggest things that are economically destructive to everyone in the name of altruism. Good day sir.
@s0beit I do accuse you of being a very selfish, uninformed person. Why is the third world given the wealth of the american middleclass, why not the investor, and multinational, the giant agribusiness, the Wall Street crowd. The greatest wealth redistribution in history is taking place right in front of the american peoples noses. The wealth of the american middleclass his being redistributed to multinational corporations, in the pretense of building a viable middleclass in the third world.
@louiethegreater "Why is the third world given the wealth of the american middleclass" because they give it to them? I mean nobody is forcing your hand, if you want to buy local American products for a grossly more expensive price then you can, don't force everyone to do it because they fucking won't. Also "my crowd"? I'm a freelance programmer, not a wall-street executive. I don't know what you mean by "my crowd".
@s0beit What you really are is one of the chickens rooting for colonial sanders. Tariffs equil out the playing field for american workers. YOUR CROWD are those brain dead unthinking group of people who actually believe the rhetoric of these unameican globalist, like Sowell, and Friedman.
@s0beit Building that thirdworld middleclass has not taken place, we are not exporting to the third world, in any significant quanity. The enormous trade deficit is proof of that to most thinking people. Those free trade zones established throughout the world, especially along our southern border should be proof of the intent of free trade. Little wonder it has never been implemented anywhere in the world, IT simply does not work as long as there are nationstates, and honest governments.
@louiethegreater I'm not rich and powerful, but i do work for myself and am contracted to program for some companies and also freelance, it's fairly humble work, I don't have a big apartment let alone a big house, but being in a comparatively freer market than others I know that where I came from, which was nothing at all, to where I am now, is a great thing. More people should be finding jobs they love and should be offered the chance to break into the workplace.
He is very charming, so he would get it at least on the charisma factor, but he is like your wise father or something. People don't like being told they're wrong about something. Especially progressives.
I was told that another reason American life-expectancy isn't quite as high as it is in countries with socialized medicine is that our superior medical care keeps our infant mortality rates very low--which means that many more "weaker" babies/people survive and thrive, but because they are weaker they don't live as long as those who survive birth and youth in other countries.
@rredhawk2 That doesn't make sense. The countries with the lower standard of medical care would have the early childhood deaths incorporated into life expectancy stats, bringing the expectancy down. Lower child mortality raises life expectancy stats.
@liamunderscoret Pardon me. I may be confusing life expectancy with lifespan. Been a while since I saw the original program, where the person in question was trying to explain that nations with a lot of surviving old people don't necessarily have better medical care, but that other factors are actually enabling them to live longer.
@Helpmeknowthings That people who advocate for universal health care choose to replace reality with talking points. All he is saying simply is that a government can provide you with something called health insurance but that does not mean you get any health care. As a matter of fact reality shows countries which do this actually lack good medical care. Just because your government takes your money and hands you a piece of paper does not mean you will receive adequate medical care.
The "life expectancy" argument is a good argument. Except, when used honestly it shows the US has the highest life expectancy in the world in relation to its healthcare system. The US might have a lot of homicides and auto accidents, but those have NOTHING to do with quality healthcare. Studies that control for "injurious" fatalities prove the point.
sbisvcs.com/Brochures/The Worst Study EVER by Scott W. Atlas
DOT
pdf
scroll to page 4, read the chart and inform yourself.
@MrStainzseedzify True. The disproportionate amounts of violent crime can be attributed to the govt by the Drug War.
I'm pretty freaked out because I found out I have to see a neurologist and that there's a possibility something is quite wrong up there. It's scary 'cause I have to wait two months to see this specialist, and it will be another month at least before I can get a diagnosis despite my being bumped up the wait list. Gotta love rationing. Americans want THIS? OW my brain...
Here in Brazil, everybody who can afford needs to pay for private healthcare and those who can't might as well stay at home because sometimes there aren't even beds on the public hospitals, and people die on the ground. For that exceptional public service we pay roughly 44 billion dollars per year. Corruption reports abound.
Hey, Im from Canada. We dont really have "universal healthcare" the same way the scandinavian countries do. About 60% of our medicine is socially funded (including controversials like abortion, which I agree is UNACCEPTABLE that that's tax-funded). But about 40% of our medicine isn't gov't-funded - dental and eye stuff for instance, foot massages, circumcision, other cosmetic things. So we kindof have a 2-tier system. And there's a debate about making the 60% 2-tiered too.
@VoiceOfModeration people should just pay what they need to get what they want, and if they can't afford it, charities can help those who really need it.
@ImAznnn That wouldn't change anything, you'd still have cost explosions. On one end of the spectrum you have the hypochondriacs going in to the doctor's office for every little thing wasting doctors time and wasting resources. On the other end of the spectrum you have the do nothings, people who would never go see the doctor or take care of themselves until something serious cropped up, after all, they're not paying for it. So all that expensive treatment later on is irrelevant to them.
1) It is not possible for the government to fund anything.....because the government has no way of generating income, people fund the government & the government re-distributes funds.
2) Control, via regulation & law enforcement is the only tool the government has, therefore government involvement = control.
Does Sowell address the damage caused to America's healthcare system by state intervention prior to Obamacare? Because from this bit, one could think that he believes the US healthcare is a free-market, which it is NOT.
Im 25. I have not had health insurance for 5 years now. During the past 5 years iv not had any serious illness that would require that i go to the hospital or my primary care doc. I dont even have dental, i simply pay my dentist out of pocket. In all honesty health insurance dosnt make sense for me at this point in life. I have some savings that i can use in case of an emergency. Paying insurance company each month for 5 yrs and never goin to the doc, it would be a waste.
I love how Sowell always uses the DMV as an example of government in-efficiency.
So true!
TheReapersSon 2 days ago
So, a free market could profit from illness. Hmmm. Insurance companies are just a bureaucracy, butwith more "self interest" than DMV workers, whose job it is to administer things according to "laws" that people are free to redress! Corporate policy/laws are working against the interests of people since they're "for"-profits. DMV is not perfect but gets a job done. We don't value it. No new locations or equipment! Same old gig: The right starves the beast, and say, "Look! Fails every time!"
artistbeinghuman 1 week ago
@artistbeinghuman Nothing prevents illness.
jazzbummer 1 week ago
@jazzbummer healthy lifestyle prevents illness you idiot!
utvara1 1 week ago
@utvara1 Based on what evidence? Your claim we need to not invest in healthcare but a gym membership while eating raw food. I am sure if you did the research (if you do that sort of thing) you will find those who follow your advice still get the flu or even cancer. And to claim I am an idiot because I either don't agree with you or don't know a "healthy lifestyle prevents illness" means if people don't know what you know or don't agree with you are all idiots. You know everything?
jazzbummer 1 week ago
@jazzbummer actually research shows that almost all lung cancer patients are smokers that is how things go for everything else. you just keep rationalizing/aprooving your laziness and/or weak genetic makeup virginous fatsinator fag
utvara1 1 week ago
@utvara1 Ok so you throw one little fact out and thats supposed to prove your claim? And you call me lazy? Go learn how to debate and name calling reminds me of my days as a teenager so I can assume (hopefully) that your still in High School. Go to college, study, graduate and then let's have this conversation.
jazzbummer 1 week ago
@jazzbummer get some testosterone you asslicking fuckfacetardish geek
utvara1 1 week ago
@utvara1 Many people respond like you when they realize they have no idea what they are talking about. You really think I am going to lose sleep over your comment? Grow up and leanr for once.
jazzbummer 1 week ago
@jazzbummer I wont debate u bitch gtfo
utvara1 6 days ago
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@utvara1 Of course you wont. You don't even know how. Go first get an education.
jazzbummer 6 days ago
@utvara1 You can't debate worth a damn anyways.
MRKetter81 3 days ago
@MRKetter81 getting someone to healthy lifestyle ain't my goal, insulting idiots is more satisfying, now gtfo nerd
utvara1 2 days ago
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@utvara1 "healthy lifestyle prevents illness you idiot!"
No it does not... Illness can be brought about by genetics... radiation... disease.. the list goes on. What a simpleton reply
MRKetter81 3 days ago
I won't mess with words, so I won't delineate Health from Medical.
Everyone should get a free ambulance ride if they drop down in the street, and a doctor to treat them, For FREE. I will pay tax for it and I will pay TAX to a private contractor who is hired by another person I pay tax to, to make sure the ambulance drivers aren't sitting around eating donuts.
mistersmith6000 1 month ago
@mistersmith6000 and my salary comes from tax too.
mistersmith6000 1 month ago
@mistersmith6000 That is exactly how it should be. People like you, who volunteer to give their money, should be the ones who provide health care for those who either can't or want better care than they can afford. That is very nice. But, it would be cheaper for you to just pay the direct cost rather than paying through tax (32% spent on administration). It is only evil when the force of government is used to take the earnings of some to pay medical bills for others.
fzqlcs 1 month ago
@fzqlcs I can't remember to volunteer often enough and I don't wanna make choices anyway. I'll have to cop the 32% because actually, I can't be responsible for micromanaging and rationalizing all of my 'inputs' into the great machine. All I can do is complain when I feel cheated by it. I think libertarians know this. The free-market needs perfect knowledge and a flat earth where we start the race equal, and an environment that keeps giving forever. It has and never will exist
mistersmith6000 1 month ago
@mistersmith6000 The free market is voluntary exchange and requires only freedom. Central planning is what requires perfect knowledge by the ruling elite as well as your flat earth and an environment that can never exist. That is why it doesn't work.
fzqlcs 1 month ago
@fzqlcs I mean 'requires' as 'requires in order to fulfill its promise of win-win. Otherwise, you will always have those who feel that the dice are forever loaded against them. Of course the 'free' market functions perfectly well without these things, it is just that it delivers a monopoly as the supply side gels together. The monopoly includes the government and its bureaucratic machine. A government running everything is tyranny of course too.
mistersmith6000 1 month ago
@mistersmith6000 I don't think you understand that a free market is actually what breaks these monopolies on it's own. We DON'T live in a free market. The market we live in is corrupted by regulations that favors a select few businesses; allowing these monopolies to remain in power. They socialize the market to favor their own businesses through lobbying and influence peddling in the government.
A free market would allow for anyone to compete in it. The market we have does not.
MRKetter81 2 weeks ago
@MRKetter81 I think I get it, at least as far as the principal is concerned, and that includes a less-than-perfect market still capable of delivering growth. But one thing I believe is that with an uneven starting line a monopoly will eventuate. 2nd, the environment is a casualty of growth, and so as capitalism encourages growth, short and long term, without government control, the market, accountable to shareholders who don't even know them can't afford to protect it.
mistersmith6000 2 weeks ago
@mistersmith6000 Well the starting line in capitalism always starts out uneven, but when left alone competition steps in... The government is accountable to the market in so much as it keeps competition even on all levels, but there are often laws that "seem" to do this, but much like the regulations that Big businesses them selves support, do more harm than help.
MRKetter81 2 weeks ago
@mistersmith6000 Long and short of it... too much greed is what corrupts the market. It corrupts the politicians and the companies. The problem is the human heart.. the one thing I will always disagree with libertarians for. All any one can really do in politics is try to reduce the damage of the outcome.
MRKetter81 2 weeks ago
@mistersmith6000 A government running everything is tyranny, but the only way for businesses to reach that amount of power is through the government. The point of a free market is to keep businesses out of government as well as the government out of businesses. Regulation has been the prime weapon of big businesses against any competition. Not that regulations (in of them selves) are bad, but because they are established as a means to root out competing businesses that they are crony business
MRKetter81 2 weeks ago
@fzqlcs funny how the so called free market needs a government to break up unions, needs the government to secure trade deals, needs the government to protect the intellectual property and private property no matter how persons or corporations acquire it and it needs the government to mitigate their risk (thats what a corporation is fundamentally)....but then we say that isnt central planning....it sure seems that way though...sounds like a central plan to me
tunacorncheese 1 month ago 2
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@tunacorncheese Do you know that Christianity is correct? The world around us reveals that G-d DOES exist, and the historical evidence reveals that Jesus Christ really did come to this earth and there is overwhelming evidence that Jesus Christ really did physically rise from the dead. Jesus is coming again and the signs of the end times that were foretold in the Bible are coming to pass.
marionetemanJ 1 month ago
@mistersmith6000 Who says a free market requires perfect knowledge?
Dirge987 1 month ago 2
Yes, mostly true but NOTICE people when we came to the length of time added to the life spans of cancer sufferers; he only said the US was better than most countries. So there is an overlap of Government run medical care and ,longer term survival in clinical areas it appears.
EarlRegent 1 month ago
In spite of what this Hoover mouth piece says, the U.S. needs single payer socialized medicine.
louiethegreater 2 months ago
@louiethegreater the problem is that's not what has been offered.No one is moving in that direction. There are other options besides.
Ravengaurd6 2 months ago
@Ravengaurd6 You are correct that is not being offered, simply because Obama is just like the rest of the presidents we have had in the past 70 years. He had to cut the Insurance Companies in for a piece of the action. Twenty percent off the top will go to the Insurance Industry.
louiethegreater 2 months ago
@louiethegreater : Single payer sounds great--just be ready for lower quality care and a lot less of it.
rippinsteo 2 months ago
@rippinsteo Well at least 50 million Americans will have access to a specialist if they need one. I cannot think of lower quality care than no care at all: can you?
louiethegreater 2 months ago
@louiethegreater Good point, but i have access to oil reserves, they are five miles under my feet as we speak. I can start digging now but by the time I reach them it will not matter. Same with specialist. I had to see a neurologist, it took a month to get an appointment, it will take a year under Obama care or more. You can easily find this out just by researching Canada's system and we have 10 mil mor people on welfare than Canada has people period.
brk49er 2 months ago
@brk49er Well, what would you preference be. The rich have access to specialist and the rest of america has no access. I don't care about Canada's system. WE need socialized, singer payer healthcare. If the country is going to be de-industrialized with consent of government, than government will have to care for those folks left behind. That is a no brainer.
louiethegreater 2 months ago
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brk49er 2 months ago
@louiethegreater It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication and a government bureaucracy to administer it. Im sorry I dont need the govt to save me, but it seems govt dependency is a career choice now days.
brk49er 2 months ago
@louiethegreater who is going to pay for it? We are 15.4 Trillion dollars in debt, we have 44.7 million people on foodstamps. What you do is decrease govt beauracracy and return money to the economy. A free economy will work it out. I have never seen anything the govt makes cheaper or more effeciently than the private sector.
brk49er 2 months ago
@br Free trade was accelerated in the 1960s and the economy has went south . Simply because investment is going to Asia. When Bill Clinton gave US Fortune 500 Companies permission to leave the country, manufacture in the third world, and ship back to US free of charge. That is the problem with the economy. Pay for healthcare by placing a 50% tariff on every item that is produce by third world labor. The 1% who is really profiting, incomes has risen 275% while wages have remained flat,
louiethegreater 2 months ago
@louiethegreater you know so much that isn't true
ajgolfer1 1 month ago
In the Netherlands, medicins to help people stop smoking have been heavily subsidized for quite some time. But now that the government tries to cut spending by abolishing it, doctors and left-wing politicians call the secretary responsible for 600.000 deaths. It's crazy.
Americans: don't get into this crap.
Cornampoo 4 months ago 2
So tell us, is it bad over there? And would you say our Health Care system is greedy and well sucks ass like so many on the left think it does?
scienceatheism 4 months ago
@scienceatheism your medical care is the best in the world to my knowledge. In the Netherlands, the quality is fine as well (only the best is allowed, rest outlawed), but we have crazy waiting lists and we pay a HUGE price for it (around €6000 per person per year). However, hardly anyone notices that, because most of it is paid via taxes. (38% of GNP goes to government).
Cornampoo 4 months ago
How would you say its better? seeing that Canada and various other Europe countries claim to be happier under the current conditions? And others say that Americas current policies are horrendous do to the health for profit kind of system we have going on here?
scienceatheism 4 months ago
@scienceatheism just like Sowell says: chances of survival or recovery are better. And you ought to have the freedom to decide if you want insurance or not and what medical care you want to buy. Government involvement makes the whole process more expensive and restrictive.
Cornampoo 4 months ago
But those who dont have the opportunity to choose, or only has health care due to their jobs so once they lose their jobs they lose their choice?
scienceatheism 4 months ago
@scienceatheism they would have to rely on charity, I'm afraid. But the only difference between charity and government paying for you is that the first is voluntary and the latter forced upon.
Cornampoo 4 months ago
most charities dont do so well only because people rely so much on the federal government especially here that charities especially for health care services lack funding do to people not giving enough to charities. Seeing that the federal government already pays for their shit anyways. Well thats how its going to be once Obama Care is finally put in place seeing that it already passed.
scienceatheism 4 months ago
I wish I was his student when I was in school
dirtylos30 5 months ago
This is an Awesome book.. Reading it right now.
Thomas Sowell is one of the most brilliant minds of our age!
GodsFavoriteBassPlyr 8 months ago
You must be aware that about 20 million americans are jobless aren't you. So you are in favor of displacing all ameiricans who once earned a living in manufacturing by allowing multinational corportations to manufacture in one hemisphere and export to us tariff free. So america has been de-industrialized of all manufacuring that is labor intrensic. You really don't know if you are buying the products cheaper, because you do not have any american examples to compare with, they are long gone.
louiethegreater 8 months ago
@louiethegreater You are so very cave man you know that, you have no idea about anything unseen. Gravity isn't seen, i guess that doesn't exist either? Americans WOULD BE in perfectly good standing economically if the government would step out of the way. There's so many reasons for the current employment issues, primarily being government injection of liquidity into the market, but also many other programs getting in the way of business. Other well intentioned things that were gigantic failures
s0beit 8 months ago
@s0beit The founder did not make intend for america to be a haven for rich exploiters of the poor. The labor standards and the manufacturing safety standards have been driven back 50 years, because of outsourcing. We are a nation of people, and our sole purpose is not to supply business, with a retail market, labor market, or investment market. That is a Friedman, Sowell lecture circit concept. Both men Paid for by multinational corporations through Hoover.
louiethegreater 8 months ago
good points. But what I strive for is to increase the standard of living for all Americans. And I consider health and medical care to be something that should be ubiquitous and easy to attain. I feel that same way about water.
We can't have some of things I want because the government has been co-opted by greedy bastards that use corporate largess to screw us over.
alowlyapprentice 9 months ago
Mr Sowell must have read the corporate talking points before he began talking. Mr Sowell has been a multinational mouth piece every since the Gingrich crowd adopted him as their black mouth piece. He is owned and operated by corporate ameica. Thank god black america rejected his leadership, they went with Jessie Jackson, and Al Sharpten, who is just as much an extreme on the other side.
louiethegreater 9 months ago
@louiethegreater Al Sharpton and Jessie Jackson are hustlers and robbers of their own people, so, if that's their choice then fine. You should look up some of his other videos, he's been doing this stuff since the 70s and probably before, and is also an economist. When a black man who is successful and an economist says he knows how to save his people, maybe it's just me, but I'd listen.
s0beit 8 months ago
@s0beit My judgement is that it is just you. You are one of those easily hoodwinked people. Did you know that Ken Ley had a PHD in Economics, I believe Jeff Skillings did also. So what does that mean, a good clue is Nothing. Some people will do anything for money, Mr. Sowell is no exception. Yes I remember him in the 70s, but he reached his stride in the 90 when the Gingrich crowd introduced him to america as an alternative to Jackson. Don't be decieved he is just as big a con artist as Jackson.
louiethegreater 8 months ago
@s0beit He has been doing this for a long time because he is well paid for it. He is sponsered by the Hoover Institute, a Corporate funded think tank. He gains notoriety for the sale of his books and lectures through carrying the Corporate talking points of deregulation, outsourcing, and ending any social program designed to help displaced workers, and poor americans. Are you sure you are so rich and powerful that you want to support outsourcing and the corporate takeover of Ameica.
louiethegreater 8 months ago
@louiethegreater While I don't agree on some of his positions and they're clearly more neoconservative flavor than I'd prefer, I don't think he's out to damage his own people. You have to remember, he was a Marxist once, it's not like he doesn't know both sides of the argument.
Outsourcing is hardly bad and I don't know how you'd make a solid economic argument against it, what's bad is the regulations imposed on us to keep us unemployed, not cheaper goods from other countries.
s0beit 8 months ago
@s0beit Fortunatly the founders did not make judgment based on economic theory, thay were American first. If they would have been free traders, America would not have developed her own industry, we would never have had the ability to provide jobs for americans, less on, producing the greatest middleclass in the world. Tariffs was given by the founders as a tool to pay government and protect american industry from cheap third world labor. Under the economics of protectionism the U.S. evolved.
louiethegreater 8 months ago
@louiethegreater Protect American industry from cheap third world labor? Protect from what? Good prices?
People selling us cheap things doesn't hurt our economy, it helps it, otherwise why have any imports at all? That doesn't make any sense. We were a primary source of cheap goods in our day and we weren't the consumers we are today, in that day, we exported and imported many things. I'm sure of one thing though: The cheap goods we received helped us immensely, they didn't hurt.
s0beit 8 months ago
@s0beit I believe you should ask yourself, do you care about anyone but yourself. Should 20 million americans become jobless, so that you can go to Walmart and buy cheap stuff. Unemployed americans cannot buy stuff, at anyprice. Those unemployed ameicans go on the government dole, so free traders whine about the cost of government and blame it on regulation. When it is so obvious that ameicans cannot compete with cheap ,57/hr third world labor. Tariffs level the playing field.
louiethegreater 8 months ago
@louiethegreater I believe you should ask yourself, do you know anything about economics at all? What is your economic argument for supporting a tariff? You have none, because no, you don't. Cheaper things produced over there means more money to spend on things over here. News flash for you, even if china was blown off of the planet we wouldn't be able to make things cheaper than the rest of the world. "Narrowing the playing field" means making things more expensive for EVERYONE.
s0beit 8 months ago
@s0beit I do ask myself how long you folks sit in the classroom to have every morsel of common sense removed from you. Tariffs is an american issue the economics involve is very simple, protect the american manufacturer, and laborer from multinationals who do not consider themselves citizens of any country, but citizens of the world. The neo-liberal, belief that liberalization of the worlds markets to international bankers and multinationals will eventually destroy the U.S. through oursourcing.
louiethegreater 8 months ago
@louiethegreater The fact is we don't want those jobs over here, the factories, the sweatshops, the farming, specifically because we don't need to do it anymore. We spend our money on more advanced technology, newer products, your argument is intellectually equivalent to "machines take factory jobs, therefore destroy all machines", it's the EXACT same argument. Less money spent on building cars by hand in factories means more money being spent elsewhere, and those things cheaper.
s0beit 8 months ago
@s0beit The fact is your crowd does not want those jobs. You should ask the 20 million unemployed if they want those jobs. You mean the Wall Street investment crowd doesn't want those jobs. Their preference would be to build State of the Art Manufacturing Facilities in the third world, and employ .057/hr. labor to manufacture products for export to the west, a hemisphere away. While earning 400% profits of the backs of third world labor. The arguement is the same only in your mind .
louiethegreater 8 months ago
@louiethegreater The fact is you never really answered to my claim that your argument is identical to the stupid people of the 1800s who despised machinery because it took their jobs. It is no different. You have not answered to my claim of what I blame unemployment on, you just prattle on about multinationals (which by the way, makes you seem more like a nationalist the more you talk about it, that isn't a compliment). Done talking to you, you just assert things and don't back it up.
s0beit 8 months ago
@s0beit You never answered any of my questions, you only made some really braindead statements, directly out of the globalist, neoliberal handbook. Hey!!!!! its your country you are betraying, and the ugly part is you are doing it for free, simply because you can go to the Walmart and buy a pair of cheap shoes made by slave labor in Bangladash, how stupid is that.
louiethegreater 8 months ago
@louiethegreater Answered any of your questions? You just made assertions and spouted nationalist rhetoric about how unamerican I am? You are an absolute joke and you should feel bad.
s0beit 8 months ago
@s0beit I do feel bad for you, because when the sovereign U.S. is part of a global plantation, you will be its victom. Of course, you will regret your position that you are the only american entitled to a job and security for your family. I.T. jobs are being outsourced at a rapid pace, plus HIB Visas are being handed out like candy to Indian and Chinese educated in the computer sciences. Hope you enjoy our support for all those redundant jobs being outsourced, I T is in the process.
louiethegreater 8 months ago
@louiethegreater You obviously don't know the statistics on that, for higher level programmers they maintain jobs here, they don't get sent overseas for the most part because the education is much better here. It's usually the lower level programmers who do nothing but scrap work anyway. I freelance, so this isn't a problem for me. You can't often go to microsoft and ask them to make you a program, you can ask me though :D
In any case that money is being spent expanding other sectors. Good.
s0beit 8 months ago
@s0beit That is wishful thinking, India is a hot bed of freelancers, you can have programs wittten for one tenth of the cost of an american company. My son works for a firm that would fire him if he contracted an ameirican company to write programs, or for that matter, any web realted products. You are decieved CNC Machine Operaters, CNC Controlled Wire Machines, Tool and Die Makers were once thought of as being to skilled to be outsourced, but guess what they are almost all gone now.
louiethegreater 8 months ago
@louiethegreater Many things get outsourced, many things are taken by illegal immigrants. Of course, that doesn't answer for all the job losses. That isn't the primary reason behind job losses. The math simply does not agree with you, the job losses are not proportional to the jobs taken and maintained by illegal immigration or outsourcing. Programming might be completely outsourced in time but that's only for corporate repetitive jobs, not creation of employment itself.
s0beit 8 months ago
@s0beit Is that some of that Austrian theoretical math. What math are you talking about. Job loss is directly proportional to outsourcing, and illegal, and legal immigration, ( H1B Visas) Social benefits to illegals are a enormous drain on social benefits in the US, but it will not be stopped, because open borders is a tenet of free trade, and globalization.
louiethegreater 8 months ago
@louiethegreater I'd innovate, just as people should. If a machine is made which is able to program all programs you wouldn't see a reduction in jobs, you'd see an explosion of them. Outsourcing is no different, just another way of getting certain products more cheaply and thus in more abundance, then people can focus their attention on matters of greater importance, things which aren't in abundance.
s0beit 8 months ago
@s0beit Well could you make it clear what the 20 million unemployed workers are focusing their attention on. Well lets guess: (how to obtain more social benefits from the Federal Government) Just what we needed!!!!!
louiethegreater 8 months ago
@louiethegreater Hey, I don't want people dependent on social benefits either, but outsourcing and illegal immigration are famous scapegoats. They aren't the problem. The job market is not a zero sum game, there is no static number of jobs that will run out if there's too many people doing them. I personally blame the government adjusting interest rates and allowing cheap debt to flow, I believe this causes recessions, it's more of a monetary issue than a private sector one, though they are hurt
s0beit 8 months ago
@s0beit Outsourcing and illegal immigration is exactly the problem. The job market is like this; there are x number of job produced in the economy. If there are more jobs than workers there will be wage inflation, if not; there will be wage deflation. That is not exactly a zero sum game, but it is relative to 20 million unemployed americans. I believe de-regulation and corporate minipulation, of trade policy, such as the complete silence of any mention of tariffs. Don Trump has it right.
louiethegreater 8 months ago
@louiethegreater No offense but I wouldn't completely trust Donald Trump on the issue. Tariff are notoriously protectionist, anti-consumer and pro-monopoly. These are unskilled laborers and I wouldn't attribute them to our problem, what happens if machines are one day able to do all the things that they're doing now? Would that mean everyone goes unemployed? I don't think so. We've seen an explosion of jobs because of cheaper labor over 30 years and only now is it suddenly a problem.
s0beit 8 months ago
@s0beit I don't trust Don Trump but he is the first one I have heard offer a solution. A 50% tariff on all consumer goods produced by thirdworld labor will pay our national debt in 5 years. Domestic industries would begin producing again, hireing americans again. Tariffs were given by the Founders to protect our economy for foreign dumping of products manufactured by cheap labor, and to force foreign business to pay a tax for the use of our economy. When that use is given freely labor looses.
louiethegreater 8 months ago
@louiethegreater:
Economic protectionism is the most discredited and fallacious economic paradigm alongside Soviet Communism. Please read the writing of Frederic Bastiat on the subject.
Akatam0t0ma 8 months ago
@Akatam0t0ma Fredrick Bastiat was a imaginative moron, who like Sowell was obsessed with self interest, and an enemy to labor, not to mension, sponsered by multinationals. Soviet Communism is working quite well for Communist China these days, thanks to, the US abandoning protectionism for laissez-faire capitalism.
louiethegreater 8 months ago
@louiethegreater:
Fredrick Bastiat was ... sponsered by multinationals"
Poor delusional brain-dead statist sap. Go give a blowjob to a loaded pistol and squeeze the trigger. That should cleanse some of that toxic statist manure that stuffs your cranium.
You are another case-in-point as to why democracy is a failed paradigm that needs to be thrown in the dustbin of history if civilization is to survive.
Akatam0t0ma 8 months ago
@Akatam0t0ma Don't believe I will: I'll leave the blowjobs to little punk boys like you. Bastiat was an importer, naturally he would want to live in a tariff free world, even if it weakened France and unemployed his own countrymen. My guess is, he was a traiter to France just like little queers like you are the your country. Which is probably communist china. You are much to ignorant to realize that you are a chicken rooting for colonal sanders.
louiethegreater 8 months ago
@louiethegreater:
If Bastiat was a traitor to France, then you are a traitor to the human race. You, out of your militant economic ignorance, will force the rest of the country to pay for your pet industries, because you are an anti-social psychopath. Your economic illiteracy could be amusing if it weren't so destructive. But hey, if enough people are dumb enough to fall for this economic bullshit to make it a policy,then all the shit that comes from it is an adequate punishment for your idiocy.
Akatam0t0ma 8 months ago
@Akatam0t0ma Well stupid little punk boy, the country adopted your free trade, liberal markets ideoloy in the late 60s, and our economy today is a result of those decisions. Free Trade doesn't work, it has never been implemented anywhere in the world, and it never will as long as there are nationstates. YES the country will return to Protectionist Capitalism because Laissez- Faire Capitalism does not work. The founders knew that by the many, many tariff laws the formulated.
louiethegreater 8 months ago
@louiethegreater:
"YES the country will return to Protectionist Capitalism"
And should it do so, the deterioration in quality of life that will result from adopting this dimwitted false paradigm will serve as a well deserved punishment by reality for brainless aggressive economic illiterates like you. Protectionism, like any other form of statism, doesn't work, never has and never will, even if some power-mongering ruling class drone tells you otherwise. You are the con-artist's wet dream.
Akatam0t0ma 8 months ago
@Akatam0t0ma Thats strange, protectionism worked for 200years, that is evident by the many, many tariff laws presented by the founders. Only you dimwits who sit in the classroom and were spoon fed this economic theory of Hayek, and Von Mises actually believe that Protectionist Capitalism does not work and somehow, someway, Laissez- Faire Capitalism works. In spite of the overwhelming evidence that liberalisation of our markets and free trade has destroyed our economy, and weakened the country.
louiethegreater 8 months ago
@louiethegreater:
" our economy today is a result of those decisions"
This statement is objectively false, like the rest of your discredited anti-economic paradigm. The economy the way it is today is because of the gangsters in the Federal Reserve. And also because it's full of militantly ignorant economic illiterates like you who vote for the ruling class that implements their economic dimwittery. And like I said, all the consequences of your stupidity serve a punishment for your idiocy.
Akatam0t0ma 8 months ago
@Akatam Obvious to whom? Discredited by whom, those brainwashed, slow learning worshippers of Hayek, and Von Mises. These twisted leaders of the blind were rejected for years by every nation and economic theory. Than the concept of globalization and the liberalization of our markets evolved, in the late 1960s. Than you misguided leaders of the blind was unlished on the ameican economy. You would think that after 60 years of the distruction of the U.S. economy you would observe the distruction.
louiethegreater 8 months ago
@Akatam0t0ma Economics is theoretical not science you dimwitted moron.
louiethegreater 8 months ago
@louiethegreater:
Yes, it IS a science, which also has rules which even your beloved glorified mafia(aka the state) is toothless to break, no matter how omnipotent you and them may think they are. The laws of supply and demand is one of those laws. By restricting supply of goods by protectionism, you are making prices rise, thus making everyone's life WORSE OFF. You are of course free to disregard those laws at your peril, but you cannot avoid the consequences of disregarding those laws. Got it?
Akatam0t0ma 8 months ago
@Akatam0t0ma Tariffs do not restrict supply, in spite of austrian trick math, tariffs provide revenus to pay government and creates investment in domestic markets instead of foreign markets. That activity spreads wealth across society instead of concentrating it into the top 10% of the population. You seem to be content with winner and losers, the have and have nots. Simply because you have been brainwashed to believe that everyone is completely selfish, and live they lives being manipulated.
louiethegreater 8 months ago
Comment removed
Akatam0t0ma 8 months ago
@louiethegreater:
And even if Bastiat were "sponsored by multinationals", his arguments would still be valid, and yours would be a pile of discredited trainwrecks, and no amount of statist pseudo-intellectual eleutherophobic drivel would change that fact, even if the spewers of this crap studied in Harvard all of their life. Got it, you pathetic misanthropic statist dreck guzzler? Logic is logic, and economics have rules that make a bitch out of your beloved religion of democracy. Tool.
Akatam0t0ma 8 months ago
@Akatam0t0ma You moronish dimwitted moron, Bastiat arguments were rejected by every govenment for centuries, it was a few Von Mises worshippers who revived his traitorous ideology and attempted to force it on the american people. I am sure the 20 million unemployed, and those who supported their families from the 70,000 manufacturing facilities that have been outsourced; agree. You must be dumber than a hog, and isolated not to see the distruction free trade ideology has done to the country.
louiethegreater 8 months ago
@louiethegreater:
"Bastiat arguments were rejected by every govenment for centuries"
Yes, of course they were. Who would expect them otherwise? These gangsters cannot be expected to accept leaving other people alone and let them trade peacefully. That's the nature of the beast. And since when acceptance by government is a measurement of validity anyway? It's not like government have a track record of intellectual honesty or doing things right.
Akatam0t0ma 8 months ago
@Akatam0t0ma " these gangsters" What a laugh, you are so brainwashed that you beleive that human beings are little more than information processers, and they just live their lives functioning in their own self interest, you completely ignore what it means to be human. WHAT A CROCK- you will excuse me for refusing to be so totally brainwashed, and continue to believe that we have a responsibility to each other, and that we are more than just processers minipulated by the state, how supid!
louiethegreater 8 months ago
@Akatam0t0ma You should be informed that markets do not create the stability in our lives, and that the invisible hand of Adam Smith, is invisible, because it does not exist. You have bought into the game theories of John Nash and dehumanized your countrymen for the sake of the markets, (which in your mind is the ultimate processer) and the market somehow has the ability to organize society into the winners and losers which you believe should exist, in a well orderd society.
louiethegreater 8 months ago
@Akatam0t0ma allow people to trade peacfully---- You actually believe that the market will organize society. Do you know that the only people who live their lives in the self interest mode is economist, and Psychopaths, and of course the Enron types, the stock traders, and Wall Street crowd, who can never have enough, and is willing to work labor, send them home to live in dirt for huts, while they live in mansions. The free trade zones along the Mexican border is a good example of that.
louiethegreater 8 months ago
@louiethegreater Almost all economists oppose barriers to free trade, such as tariffs and import quotas. Alan Budd, the former chief economic advisor to HM treasury in the UK, in a 2004 paper in the journal 'world economics' wrote about this in some detail. Also in the 'American Economic Review', another journal, a study was done by two economists on the ten propositions on which most economists agree: 93% agreed that tariffs tend to reduce economic welfare.
Learn about comparative advantage.
spader49 4 months ago
@spader49 You learn someting about protecionism, and why it produced the greatest economy in history. How did Japan become a major porducer of Steel , having no coal, or iron ore : Answer Protecionism-- not comparative advantage.
louiethegreater 4 months ago
@louiethegreater If you don't have precious mentals like iron domestically, you cannot produce them, you can only import them through trade. Also, poverty has decreased dramatically over the period of increased free trade. From what you've said you don't seem to understand what comparative advantage means, seriously look it up. It should seem obvious that you're wrong, given that over 90% of economists who study these things for a living disagree with you, such hubris from a layperson.
spader49 4 months ago
@spader49 No, if you don't understand my point, you are ignorant of comparitive advantage not me. You also seem to be one of those people who doesn't see to think beyond what they are told. I agree 90% of economist believe what economist say, but the rest of the world understand that economics is theory only, and not science. Alexander Hamilton understood that the nation they had just created, would prosper behind the wall of protectionism, and even slow learners, should understand he was correc
louiethegreater 4 months ago
@louiethegreater Economics is not 'just theory' it is a social science, based on the testing of information based on the scientific method, with established perennial principles and universals that transcend cultural differences. The fact you don't know even the rudiments of economics is revealing. You can believe what you want, but what you believe is factually incorrect nonsense; its quite sad really how deluded you are, go ahead live in naive ignorance. Pick up an economics textbook, thrall.
spader49 4 months ago
@spader49 Hey wait, you are the ignoramous here, you actually believe the U.S. is better off, since imposing globalization, neo-liberalism using the vehicle of free trade as the means of accomplishing those ends. Free trade is the reason we have 25% unemployment, the top 1% earned 65% of the wealth produced, last year. All the developed economis of the world with the exception of a couple has became prosperous through protectionist polices. You should read " Myths fo Free Trade by Sherrod Brown.
louiethegreater 4 months ago
@louiethegreater I once again disagree with what you've said. I think the arguments you've advanced have long be rebuked. There is a good video on tariffs on youtube, 'Robert P Murphy Import Tariffs'. Its worth pointing out that the poorest countries in the world tend to be the ones with the highest tariffs. Also the period of enormous globalisation from 1970-2000, saw the percentage of those living on less than $1 a day go from 16% to 5%, and those on $2, from 44% to 19%. It was never 'imposed'
spader49 4 months ago
@spader49 I also believe the arguments you are making is being debunked as the Ameican economy is being destroyed right before our eyes. Once again I point out that protectionist economic policy, produced the greatest middleclass in the history, provided best for its citiznens, both in income and quality of life, promising futures for all its citizens not just the investors. Some how you seem to have missed the fact that 85% of the newly created wealth is going to the top 1% of the population.
louiethegreater 4 months ago
@louiethegreater There is no correlation between increased wealth inequality and increased free trade. Moreover, believing that the problems now are the result of trade is not proof. There is a good video on youtube 'Johan Norberg, globalisation is good'. Also look up the other clip i recommended, seriously now there're worth watching, im also open to any suggestions on your part on youtube.
spader49 4 months ago
@spader49 You are amazing, insomuch as you can live in a society that has outsourced 70,000 manufacturing facilities, and now has massive unemployment and still believe that free trade did not produce the problem. WOW that is what I call having faith in something in spite of the physical evidence being contrary.
louiethegreater 4 months ago
@louiethegreater Countries with high tariffs tend to have lower GDP per capita, and countries without tariffs have greater economic growth, which decreases poverty (show by data comprised by the Center for International Comparisons at the University of Pennsylvania). After trade liberalization (1960-1985) Hong kong and Singapore saw rapid growth of 49% and 86% respectively. What evidence have you got for your views? other than empty rhetoric about how bad things are, without any causal facts.
spader49 4 months ago
@spader49 Well how about 30 million unemployed. high paying manufacturing jobs replaced by low paying service sector jobs, and then the service sector jobs being outsourced to emerging markets. How about a enormous trade deficit, enormous national debt, simply because the tax base has been outsourced. Try taking a walk through Walmart, pick up a few items and see where they are manufactured, is the fact 99% of them are manufactured in some thirdworld country evidence of anything. What world do--
louiethegreater 4 months ago
@louiethegreater A recent poll of economists by the Wall Street Journal found that only 16% saw outsourcing as having a big impact on the over-all job picture. if we start trade restrictions, other countries will do likewise. In the 1930s, when unemployment in the US was 25% the government created trade restrictions designed to save American jobs, then others around the world did the same to save their own workers' jobs. Net result: world trade in 1933 was down 1/3 from 1929, decreases jobs.
spader49 4 months ago
@spader49 You don't seem to understand, the world was in the middle of the great depression in 1933, naturally trade had decreased. You must not have considered our massive trade deficit. Should we really be concerned about other countries, the U.S. is being used as a giant retail market only, we really do not produce our own needs, less on products for export. Product manufacturing that employ people are in the third world, highly automated manufacturing that does not employ people is here.
louiethegreater 4 months ago
@louiethegreater The bulk of what is consumed by Americans is made in the US. Around 70% annually for the last decade: (source IMF, International financial Statistics). The US does produce its own needs. The mistake I think you're making is that the Great Depression was the result of not only government interference, huge failures by the Federal Reserve, but also due to its protectionist policies. Decreased trade was made in part by increased tariffs creating trade wars with other countries.
spader49 4 months ago
@spader49 If you really believe that 70% of what we consume. is made in the U.S., you are either a reclusive shut in, or you are not exposed to the real world for some other reason. How could you possibly believe that? Radio and T.V. Appliances, kitchen gadgets, automobiles, toys, glass, pottery, machine tools, electronics, photography, furniture, carpet, textiles, plastics, paper products, hand tools, power tools, residential lighting, wire, nails, screws, fasteners of all kinds, pipe, tubing.
louiethegreater 4 months ago
@louiethegreater Let me educate you: GDP measures output, meaning the goods and services produced in the economy, and it excludes imports. America has the highest GDP in the world, meaning it makes the most things of all countries. Most of that, on average 70%, is consumed by Americans. These are facts, and the IMF Statistics show that. Look it up. This does not change in the face of the trade deficit, meaning national debt accrued from the US asymettry of importing more than exporting.
spader49 4 months ago
@spader49 You are in need of an education, if you believe that we manufacture 70% of our consumption. I think you really mean is that consumer spending is 70% of GDP. If you take a walk through Walmart and observe where the products we consume are made, that would be the greatest education you could possibly receive. You will find that none of the products I mentioned is manufactured in the U.S., and has systematically been given to emerging markets.
louiethegreater 4 months ago
@louiethegreater The statement I gave is accurate. GDP or national output, measures what is produced by the economy in question, it does not include what is made abroad. America's national output is the largest in the world, it has the largest economy, it makes the most things and most of that goes to the people who live there. Fact. Its makes rubbish of your vacuous delusion that the US imports everything, backed up by your no doubt incontrovertible Wallmart visits. You're wrong again.
spader49 4 months ago
@s The statement you gave is that of a recluse individual who lives in some statistical never,never land. You must not watch the news, as disgraceful as it is, the Major Media would give you that much information. Heavens just listen to Don Trump, even he knows that we make few of our own needs. You are just one of those dimwits who would believe some bureaucratic statistical output. I just bought a new T.V. and Kitchen Stove and searched every major appliance vendor in my area, none made in USA
louiethegreater 4 months ago
@louiethegreater So you don't think the US has the biggest economy in the world? So all the textbooks, economists from every country, every non-government independent institution, the countless websites, and all the mountains of evidence, are all wrong? I think i'll side with them, rather than Donald Trump.
spader49 4 months ago
@spader49 I didn't say the U.S. wasn't the worlds largest economy, I said we did not manufacture our own consumer goods. My argument is the manufacturing sector. The fact that all labor intensive industries have been moved to the third world, and the highly automated industries that do not employ people remains here. Most products have the value added operations preformed in low wage countries, and is shipped back to the U.S. Multinational Corporations simply use the U.S. as retail only.
louiethegreater 4 months ago
@louiethegreater And the desperately poor don't deserve a good life that can be bought for wages that are too low for us? Nonetheless, and ignoring the we manufacture no consumer goods, are you bothered by the trade deficit between yourself and the grocery store? Why is money more important than the goods you can buy with it?
worldofdraculas 4 months ago
@worldofdraculas "...ignoring the lie that we..."*
worldofdraculas 4 months ago
@Akatam0t0ma Alexander Hamilton must not have read Bastiat, or he would not have wrote the Hamilton Tariff Act of 1789. Please spare me!!!! you need to read Bastiat not me.
louiethegreater 4 months ago
@s0beit Well could you make it clear what the 20 million unemployed workers are focusing their attention on. Well;; lets guess: (how to obtain more social benefits from the Federal Government) Just what we needed!!!!!
louiethegreater 8 months ago
@louiethegreater Finally, before you accuse me of not caring about anyone else, those developing countries NEED that money to survive, those developing countries make consumer products cheaper here, including food, which people NEED. I care about people perfectly fine, I am just not pig headed enough to suggest things that are economically destructive to everyone in the name of altruism. Good day sir.
s0beit 8 months ago
@s0beit I do accuse you of being a very selfish, uninformed person. Why is the third world given the wealth of the american middleclass, why not the investor, and multinational, the giant agribusiness, the Wall Street crowd. The greatest wealth redistribution in history is taking place right in front of the american peoples noses. The wealth of the american middleclass his being redistributed to multinational corporations, in the pretense of building a viable middleclass in the third world.
louiethegreater 8 months ago
@louiethegreater "Why is the third world given the wealth of the american middleclass" because they give it to them? I mean nobody is forcing your hand, if you want to buy local American products for a grossly more expensive price then you can, don't force everyone to do it because they fucking won't. Also "my crowd"? I'm a freelance programmer, not a wall-street executive. I don't know what you mean by "my crowd".
s0beit 8 months ago
@s0beit What you really are is one of the chickens rooting for colonial sanders. Tariffs equil out the playing field for american workers. YOUR CROWD are those brain dead unthinking group of people who actually believe the rhetoric of these unameican globalist, like Sowell, and Friedman.
louiethegreater 8 months ago
@s0beit Building that thirdworld middleclass has not taken place, we are not exporting to the third world, in any significant quanity. The enormous trade deficit is proof of that to most thinking people. Those free trade zones established throughout the world, especially along our southern border should be proof of the intent of free trade. Little wonder it has never been implemented anywhere in the world, IT simply does not work as long as there are nationstates, and honest governments.
louiethegreater 8 months ago
@louiethegreater I'm not rich and powerful, but i do work for myself and am contracted to program for some companies and also freelance, it's fairly humble work, I don't have a big apartment let alone a big house, but being in a comparatively freer market than others I know that where I came from, which was nothing at all, to where I am now, is a great thing. More people should be finding jobs they love and should be offered the chance to break into the workplace.
s0beit 8 months ago
@TheDEBAH Because he has integrity?
He is very charming, so he would get it at least on the charisma factor, but he is like your wise father or something. People don't like being told they're wrong about something. Especially progressives.
AshillaBeige 10 months ago
I was told that another reason American life-expectancy isn't quite as high as it is in countries with socialized medicine is that our superior medical care keeps our infant mortality rates very low--which means that many more "weaker" babies/people survive and thrive, but because they are weaker they don't live as long as those who survive birth and youth in other countries.
rredhawk2 10 months ago
@rredhawk2 That doesn't make sense. The countries with the lower standard of medical care would have the early childhood deaths incorporated into life expectancy stats, bringing the expectancy down. Lower child mortality raises life expectancy stats.
liamunderscoret 10 months ago
@liamunderscoret Pardon me. I may be confusing life expectancy with lifespan. Been a while since I saw the original program, where the person in question was trying to explain that nations with a lot of surviving old people don't necessarily have better medical care, but that other factors are actually enabling them to live longer.
rredhawk2 10 months ago
I mean it; I don't get it.
Helpmeknowthings 10 months ago
So . . . . . what the hell's the point of this video?
Helpmeknowthings 10 months ago
@Helpmeknowthings That people who advocate for universal health care choose to replace reality with talking points. All he is saying simply is that a government can provide you with something called health insurance but that does not mean you get any health care. As a matter of fact reality shows countries which do this actually lack good medical care. Just because your government takes your money and hands you a piece of paper does not mean you will receive adequate medical care.
thebestsumoeva 10 months ago
Once again Sowell breaks down a complex issue in words and concepts in abject clarity. God Bless Sowell
carlindelco 10 months ago
The "life expectancy" argument is a good argument. Except, when used honestly it shows the US has the highest life expectancy in the world in relation to its healthcare system. The US might have a lot of homicides and auto accidents, but those have NOTHING to do with quality healthcare. Studies that control for "injurious" fatalities prove the point.
sbisvcs.com/Brochures/The Worst Study EVER by Scott W. Atlas
DOT
pdf
scroll to page 4, read the chart and inform yourself.
MrStainzseedzify 10 months ago 15
@MrStainzseedzify True. The disproportionate amounts of violent crime can be attributed to the govt by the Drug War.
I'm pretty freaked out because I found out I have to see a neurologist and that there's a possibility something is quite wrong up there. It's scary 'cause I have to wait two months to see this specialist, and it will be another month at least before I can get a diagnosis despite my being bumped up the wait list. Gotta love rationing. Americans want THIS? OW my brain...
AshillaBeige 10 months ago
Here in Brazil, everybody who can afford needs to pay for private healthcare and those who can't might as well stay at home because sometimes there aren't even beds on the public hospitals, and people die on the ground. For that exceptional public service we pay roughly 44 billion dollars per year. Corruption reports abound.
theLepisma 10 months ago
This man is a genius at cutting through the bullshit.
oTANSTAAFLo 10 months ago
Did you know that Sowell used to be a Marxist? Hard to believe eh? But I'm glad he is on the side of the people now. The man is awesome.
mixmastermeeks 10 months ago
Another great clip....LibertyPen RoX :)
tungstencarbide100 10 months ago
SO WHEN CAN I GETZ MY FREE HEALTHCARREE?!@?!?
EddieSatan 10 months ago
@TheDEBAH Hes to honest.
shaqdaddy11 10 months ago
Hey, Im from Canada. We dont really have "universal healthcare" the same way the scandinavian countries do. About 60% of our medicine is socially funded (including controversials like abortion, which I agree is UNACCEPTABLE that that's tax-funded). But about 40% of our medicine isn't gov't-funded - dental and eye stuff for instance, foot massages, circumcision, other cosmetic things. So we kindof have a 2-tier system. And there's a debate about making the 60% 2-tiered too.
VoiceOfModeration 10 months ago
@VoiceOfModeration people should just pay what they need to get what they want, and if they can't afford it, charities can help those who really need it.
AmanJohnX 10 months ago
@TheDEBAH Uhh, he was born in 1930. He's not a spring chicken anymore.
Joe11Blue 10 months ago
Is it possible for the government to fund health care and not control it? If it is I think this is the best solution.
ImAznnn 10 months ago
@ImAznnn That wouldn't change anything, you'd still have cost explosions. On one end of the spectrum you have the hypochondriacs going in to the doctor's office for every little thing wasting doctors time and wasting resources. On the other end of the spectrum you have the do nothings, people who would never go see the doctor or take care of themselves until something serious cropped up, after all, they're not paying for it. So all that expensive treatment later on is irrelevant to them.
bigboss686 10 months ago
@ImAznnn
1) It is not possible for the government to fund anything.....because the government has no way of generating income, people fund the government & the government re-distributes funds.
2) Control, via regulation & law enforcement is the only tool the government has, therefore government involvement = control.
tungstencarbide100 10 months ago
@tungstencarbide100 1.The government funds different programs that aids the people. Shouldn't health care belong to one of those programs too?
2. I'm asking if it's possible for the government to transfer its power to the people.
ImAznnn 10 months ago
Does Sowell address the damage caused to America's healthcare system by state intervention prior to Obamacare? Because from this bit, one could think that he believes the US healthcare is a free-market, which it is NOT.
Akatam0t0ma 10 months ago
@Akatam0t0ma
In his books, he talks about all of that, going back many decades
klined 10 months ago
Im 25. I have not had health insurance for 5 years now. During the past 5 years iv not had any serious illness that would require that i go to the hospital or my primary care doc. I dont even have dental, i simply pay my dentist out of pocket. In all honesty health insurance dosnt make sense for me at this point in life. I have some savings that i can use in case of an emergency. Paying insurance company each month for 5 yrs and never goin to the doc, it would be a waste.
shaqdaddy11 10 months ago 3