We need to take the word libertarian back from right wing cranks like Peter Schiff and the Cato Institute. Schiff is free to defend the 1% all he likes, but let's not pretend it has anything to do with liberty.

@dystopianfuturetoday I dunno... then we'd have to take back the word liberal too, which, unfortunately, has barely anything to do with liberty and is almost the opposite of what liberal meant just 50 or 60 years ago.

I propose we just keep labels like "right wing", "liberal", "libertarian" to people who argue politics through name-calling, classifying political opinions as a substitute to thinking them through.

Schiff and Friends don't realize the term "free market" has been demonized by leftists for the last 100 years. Business is the villain and government is the hero in every story where economics is part of the plot, both in and out of the government-school classroom.

No politician, including Romney, can undo 100 years of brainwashing in 2-minute soundbites. He has no choice but to speak 'government-ese' about every problem.

All the crowd hears when a libertarian speaks is, "No control/anarchy/shredded safety net/you will have to pay your own way."

Liberals are proponents of both social and economic liberty, favoring people over money when the two conflict. Is that not the definition of both liberal and libertarian?

That's a nice theory and all about tuition is high only because of government involvement. Let's ignore the fact that it takes two. It takes government grants to assist those in need, and it takes the colleges to say "well fuck it then, let's just keep raising prices then if government is going to help out"

Schiff seems to forget that a lot since he made the same argument about wall street. Wall street keeps doing bad things, but it's the government's fault for not stopping them. Maybe if wall street stopped doing bad things, the government wouldn't need to stop them.

It takes two. But one organization is trying to help, the other organization is just trying to get away with having more money. So you tell me which one is worse. If a criminal has a gun to your head and says he will shoot you if you don't do X. If you refuse to do X and the criminal shoots you, who's fault is it? Yeah it's the fault of the fucking criminal with the gun to your head!!

The idea of removing government grants to education would have the effect of lowering tuition costs actually is something I might support. It's a sound idea. Problem is, what do you do in the meantime while you're waiting for the effects of supply and demand to kick in. Government pulls its money from higher education, and supposedly colleges will be forced to lower prices since much fewer people will be able to attend. Stuff like that doesn't happen over night, you're going to have a large gap where a ton of people will not be able to go to college for a significant period of time. What do you do about that?

I quite honestly don't think it will work. Colleges originally never had government support and did they lower prices to let the peasants in back then? Nope. Colleges were the home to the rich and the affluent. If you like the idea of only the rich getting an education, then proceed. If you like the idea that wealth shouldn't be a factor in education, then we need a better answer.

@VoodooV It's not surprising to me that opponents of free markets characteristically lack an understanding of basic economics or just how incentives affect human behavior. And I'm not even an economist or a psychologist.

If a criminal has a gun to your head, and there's a policeman at the scene who is friends with the criminal and let's him do whatever he wants and leave, which one is worse?

VoodooV, would you steal, rape, or even kill if I were the law and promised you could get away with ZERO repercussions? If you do commit a crime, you'd be to blame, but wouldn't I be to blame even more for not only promising but letting you get away scot free?

It's human nature. Wall Street committed fraud on a large scale, and government was in on it. Is Wall Street to blame for the fraud? Sure, but why did they do it without any fear of loss to make them think twice? Because they knew government was letting them get away with it, which they did, no bankruptcies, no arrests.

As a college, would you turn away the opportunity of making more money by increasing tuition costs if the students weren't sensitive to the prices you charged?

Likewise, if you were a grocer selling apples, and your customers were being subsidized by free loans for apple consumption, wouldn't it make your life a lot easier to charge more for apples if no one ever complained about the price?

"Back then", college tuitions were a lot cheaper, look it up. You'd expect tuitions to become cheaper with time just taking into account the technological advances, economies of scale, etc., but prices have inflated monstruosly despite these forces.

Would you rather worry that the mechanics of supply and demand won't solve society's needs for education overnight, or that cheap loans would make the cost of tuition increasingly and absurdly high for society, even contributing to an economic recession? If the goal is to make education more accessible, wouldn't it make more sense to let education become cheaper, rather than enforce a policy that led to an ever increase in costs?

Moving this video to renatojj's personal queue. It failed to receive enough votes to get sifted up to the front page within 2 days.

Wow. Schiff is now a political pundit? What's the matter Schiff? You short the Euro at 1.29 and didn't play the fed action? This guy is a perma-bear.

@Edgeman2112 if his track record isn't spotless, just focus on the spots and don't bother ever mentioning his many correct predictions. Nevermind his arguments either, if you blow any mistakes he made out of proportion, it invalidates whatever he stands for.

Also, being a multimillionaire investor, you obviously understand more about global markets and money than he does, right?

>> ^renatojj:

@Edgeman2112 if his track record isn't spotless, just focus on the spots and don't bother ever mentioning his many correct predictions. Nevermind his arguments either, if you blow any mistakes he made out of proportion, it invalidates whatever he stands for.
Also, being a multimillionaire investor, you obviously understand more about global markets and money than he does, right?


I don't comment on this willy-nilly. I've always, always watched him when he's on CNBC or Yahoo and catch his articles. Never does he have anything bullish to say hence permabear. I wish he would dig deeper in his claims but he always stays highlevel.

He rants about tuition being high because of subsidies by the government, but never digs deep into why.

@Edgeman2112 if you've watched him so much, you'd know he's bullish on gold, China and many foreign stocks. He can't possibly be bearish about everything and be a successful investor, what would he ever invest in? He's invited as a commentator on CNBC and such because they need a bear to balance out what others are so bullish about.

What's the mystery about "tuition being high because of subsidies by the government"? Students are less price-sensitive when their tuitions are subsidized, colleges naturally take advantage of that by increasing the price of tuitions. The "why" is basic economics.

Like I said above to VoodooV, "if you were a grocer selling apples, and your customers were being subsidized by free loans for apple consumption, wouldn't it make your life a lot easier to charge more for apples if no one ever complained about the price?"