The rich pay a higher percentage, and more taxes overall than the poor. Why do you think anyone is saying otherwise. And that's absolutely how it should be, for the good of everyone, rich included.

It's perfectly sensible to talk about why some people don't pay any taxes at all. I'm not even debating that. But the rich should still pay more, regardless. The US has been one of the strongest economies for most of the 20th and 21st centuries with a progressive income tax, and it's been a heck of a lot more progressive than it is now, and we were still very prosperous.

Showing fraud in some programs doesn't mean the program should be abolished. It can be reformed as well. There are plenty of ways to do that. We didn't abolish welfare in the 1990s. We reformed it. And no, it's not true that private businesses will always create the jobs when the economy is down. History has proven quite the opposite. Why would a business invest to make more goods and services if there's no market for it. A downturn in the economy breeds more economic decline. It's called a business cycle, and it's a natural occurrence. If you were a business owner, generally speaking, if you know less people out there have the money to buy your goods and services, would you increase production and hire more workers? Of course not. Does the average person put more money into the stock market or take money out when the market tanks? Takes money out, which drains money for investing. This is basic micro and macroeconomics.

Some force has to run counter to the natural tendencies of the market to force demand to increase, and of course this virtually always requires running a deficit. This is why slogans like "the gov't should be run like a business" are simplistic and wrong. The gov't should in those situations create jobs through various programs, thereby increasing income for the lower classes, which creates spending and demand, which then causes businesses to increase production, hire more workers, and that gets the economy back on track. You can site case study after case study in our history we've done this, and it worked. We ended the Great Depression via defense spending in the form of WWII in record levels as the most obvious exaggerated example. That historically was qm's worst nightmare - record deficits in raw amount at the time, and still to this day historic record deficits as a percentage of GDP during WWII, followed by a tax raise on the richest Americans to over 90%. And what calamity befell the US because of those policies? We ended the Great Depression, became an economic Superpower, and Americans enjoyed record prosperity it and the world had never seen before.

This is historical fact that simply can't be denied.

Here's what happened - Democrats deficit spent as they were supposed to (which is exactly what the GOP would have done had they been in power, because it was started by George W. Bush), which stopped the economic free fall. Moody's didn't downgrade the US debt. It was S&P. They sited math about the alarming deficits which contained a $2 trillion mistake on their part. They also sited political instability as the GOP was risking default to get their policies in place, which btw still include massive deficits.

The GOP couldn't stop the Democrats from spending all that money?! Laughable. The GOP started the freakin' bailouts and stimulus! What did the GOP do the last time there was a recession after 9/11? Deficit spent, then continued to deficit spend when the economy was strong. Dude, seriously, you have no factual basis for that kind of claim whatsoever.

>> ^quantumushroom:

this is what we've been trying to tell you QM, the system doesn't work when only a few contribute...the system works when ALL contribute based on what they can afford.
I totally agree, so why does the bottom 50% of Americans pay NO income tax? The wealthy already pay a disproportionately high percentage of all taxes and I have yet to find a liberalsifter who admits this.
I well understand that Scrooge McDuck won't miss a few more shovelfuls of gold coins swiped by federal bulldozers, but lets review reality:
1) The "extra" money attained by "soaking" Scrooge and Rich Uncle Pennybags (from the Monopoly game) will be pi$$ed away, like the 60 billion dollars EVERY YEAR lost to fraud, waste and abuse in Medicaid/Medicare. The federal mafia is composed of sh1tty stewards of our money.
2) The Hawaiian Dunce has spent 3 trillion in 3 years with little or nothing to show for it. So what magical number of dollars is going to make everything all right? A quadrillion?
3) When the socialists raise taxes, the wealthy of 2011 have their accountant press a few buttons on their computating machines, sending their $$$ overseas, invested in more stable markets. Apparently many already have, probably the moment they knew Obama was elected.
4) Liberal say, "Rich man not know difference he still rich." But there's now less money to invest and less money to create jobs. Now some liberalsifter will say, "This graph indicates that the rich don't create jobs with their ill-gotten gains."
BUT, if you're honest with yourselves, you'll know that one million dollars has a much better chance of creating jobs in the hands of entrepreneurs and investors than the government "Department of Creating Jobs" which probably spends that much just on office furniture.
5) The debt limit 'debate' is total BS, always has been. Here is what happened: taxocrats burned through tax money at an alarming rate and there weren't enough elected Republicans to stop them. THAT'S why Moody's got scared and US was downgraded. Republicans can't communicate for sh1t anyway, and so the socialists and their media lapdogs managed to blame the right for this mess.
6) Warren Buffoon likes to be liked, I get that, but he should still STFU and make a real gesture. Giving a symbolic billion dollars to the federal mafia should do it. He won't miss it.

@westy

Yes nearly every business tries to game the system that's the point of capitalism and that's why it will always fail ( im not on about simply ballencing your books and deprecaiting assets and playing that sytem , evan though that is gamed in the same way) I'm on about the system at large , surely you can see the difference between a butcher and a company that offers high interest loans to desperate people , when instead of offering the loan the ethical thing would be for them to tell them to contact citizens advice ?

I don't think capitalism (by which I mean a regulated but moderately free market) will fail as (at least so far) it's provided the best manner of funneling people's naturally selfish/nepotistic tendencies in a productive way.

Let's be clear here, generally brokers were responsible for writing subprime loans with botched (or outright false) assessments of income and capacity to pay. These brokers were essentially gaming the investment banks (like Bear Sterns) into buying fraudulent securitised loans. Bear Sterns along with Lehman Brothers didn't survive and many other banks got taken over. There was clear motivation for them to perform more due diligence and they paid for their mistakes by going bankrupt or being taken over. The credit rating agencies and the insurers who backed CDOs also had poor judgement. My point is, the people who benefited from writing these bad loans weren't the banks.

thats the piont im making , you can have companies that game the system but also privde a service but the people that have caused this economic crisis are people that are at the pinicale of gaming the system and do not care to provide a service and purely participate to game the system purely exist to make money at whatever cost to society.

They're not gaming the system if they're going bankrupt. You know as well as I do that banks borrow money from those with savings and selectively lend them out to generally good investments thus creating economic growth and jobs. Let's not get carried away with populism here.

luckily we have people that are ethical and don't just think of the profit bottom line , but in general you will see that a good proportion of those successful at business and profiting are ones that couldn't give a shit about other people or there effect on the environment.

The difference between the butcher and a large financial institution is size. If this was a national specialty chain business, you can bet that they would be lobbying their congressman and receiving favors and payouts. Don't get me wrong, I'm not for crony capitalism and I understand that banks weild considerable leverage over the economy and politicians. They should be more regulated commensurate to their significance and intractability with the economy, particularly shadow banking system (securitisation of loans and credit derivatives) should be regulated to prevent crises. This is a failure of regulation though, not a failure of banking in general. As I mentioned, every large industry/corporate body curries favors.

"Either way they are both pretty beneficial to a functioning economy"

so the bankers that turned a blind eye to the toxit assits were beneficail to the econimy ?

how about the lobiests and deregulation that made it possable ?
what about the real estate agents that knew the people they were selling the houses to could not maintain the mortgage?

What about the marketeers that designed the sales materail to obscure the mortgage rates to hide the fact that they would increase and specifcaly designed the brouchers and trained the sales teams to exploit unknowlageable people ?

No they weren't and many of their businesses went out of business. These are all issues of regulation. Corporations (as opposed to say partnerships) are by legal design geared towards maximising profit. If you come in with expectations that any corporation will not do this, you are making flawed assumptions.

"hedge funds don't gamble shares, they trade them based on discrepancies between actual price and fundamentals"

Defanitoin of Gambling from Wikipedia - "Gambling is the wagering of money or something of material value (referred to as "the stakes") on an event with an uncertain outcome with the primary intent of winning additional money and/or material goods."

something doesn't have to have unfavourable odds to be considered gambling for example there are many professional gamblers that make a living of horse betting , and in that exact same way there are many people that profestinaly gamble on the stock market , and I would argue that they are themselfs not providing a use to socity. I would however contrast that against sum-one that invests in a company because that company is doing good or employs many people or is developing beneficial technpligy.

the problem is in general capitalism in its current form is fucked , and i belive we need to move towards something that is what I would describe as a

"democratic socialist capitalist system" where we have as free a market as possable and that is achived through democratic regulation guided by socialist princapels. so you try to give every citizen as equal a chance as possible at having free will and succeeding in what they want to do.

the current system allows the top 10% fantastic freedom and chances but at the expense of the majorty of people.

It's not a wager of value, it's a transfer of value. Which is critically what makes it different from gambling. If you have agricultural produce and you want to hedge the risk that your harvest will go down in value when it comes to fruition, it's typically an investment bank/hedge fund/commercial bank that takes the counterparty position. Without someone taking that counterparty position, you couldn't eliminate your risk of a fall in prices. If someone buys a newly listed share of your company, they're contributing to your capacity to invest and pay wages. During the process of gambling before someone is declared the winner, there is no value being created. That's a pretty crucial difference. The main point is though that banking creates value, hopefully I've already illustrated that beforehand.

I don't disagree with what you're saying at the end, but as far as I'm concerned you should be resentful towards campaign finance rules. Instead, it's like trying to treat the symptom not the cause.

@westy

I'm not implying that they purely make money.

Investment banks primarily serve to list private firms on the stock market through IPOs.

Hedge funds don't gamble shares, they trade them based on discrepancies between actual price and fundamentals, they contribute by providing insight on stock performance and thereby keep listed prices more stable. They also incidentally had just about nothing to do with the GFC.

Either way they are both pretty beneficial to a functioning economy.

Every business tries to game the system. Your local butcher tries to minimize his tax burden just as much any other business.

@lampishthing

I don't disagree with what you're saying, but my main issue was that it's one thing to say a lack of social programs will lead to an increase in disenfranchisement, delinquency and violence in general. It's a wholly different thing to directly link it to acting selfishly, which as far as I'm concerned is implying a lack of individual responsibility and a validation of those actions.

The thrust of his argument I got essentially boiled down to a tit-for-tat "well the bankers are being selfish so it explains your actions" which is frankly both irresponsible and pretty juvenile.

We have to disagree on the politics; this last fiasco has shown me politics and ideology trump our economy for some of these rascals.

There is a huge difference between letting the 1st Bank of Palookaville fail, and letting the likes of CitiBank and BOA fail. You much be rich enough to think you can ride out the resulting depression, or an ascetic.

I think I get it. So, screw everything, let's just declare currency armageddon, and start from scratch? >> ^marbles:
>> ^longde:
To answer your first question a) republican filibuster, b) democrats are a coalition, not a lock-step party, so there are "blue dogs" who would not every support tax increases.
To your second point, what would you have done 3 years ago? I'm curious. Let the banks, car companies fail, and let our country sink into depression? Obama's problem is that he didn't spend enough, not that he spent too much.
I think your last paragraph shows a very limited perspective indeed. Hope you're not anyone's CPA.>> ^marbles:
If Obama or the democrats wanted to raise taxes, why didn't they do it when they had super-majorities in the house and senate. Congress ingores it's responsibility to pass a budget the last few years and instead decides to "stimulate" the economy with huge deficit spending. 1.5 Trillion x 2 years. They overspend by 3 Trillion!!! Do you know how much a trillion dollars is? Meanwhile the Fed is handing out free loans to mega-banks totaling 15 trillion so they can speculate on any and everything with fake bids using fake money. All the while colluding with S&P and other rating agencies until the housing bubble pops, but no problem: They made huge bets on that too. But now they need bailouts, otherwise the stock market will crash: Financial terrorism!
You can't fix this with taxes and cuts. A system based on debt can only be fixed by either 1. defaulting or 2. repudiating the debt.


No, it was never an issue. Don't buy that political bullshit. Government is a lock-step party. Back then they were still claiming they wouldn't need to raise taxes, meanwhile deficit spending by 1.5 trillion.
Second point, absolutely lets the banks fail. We have bankruptcy laws for a reason. By the way, plenty did fail, just not the ones involved in the behind the scenes fraud and collusion--most of those were saved.
Third paragraph: Suppose I am the sole creator of money and I create $5 dollars. This is the only money I have ever created. I invented this money from nothing and loan/give it to you under the agreement that you would repay me $10 dollars the following week. Where do you get the other $5 dollars to repay me from?

>> ^longde:

To answer your first question a) republican filibuster, b) democrats are a coalition, not a lock-step party, so there are "blue dogs" who would not every support tax increases.
To your second point, what would you have done 3 years ago? I'm curious. Let the banks, car companies fail, and let our country sink into depression? Obama's problem is that he didn't spend enough, not that he spent too much.
I think your last paragraph shows a very limited perspective indeed. Hope you're not anyone's CPA.>> ^marbles:
If Obama or the democrats wanted to raise taxes, why didn't they do it when they had super-majorities in the house and senate. Congress ingores it's responsibility to pass a budget the last few years and instead decides to "stimulate" the economy with huge deficit spending. 1.5 Trillion x 2 years. They overspend by 3 Trillion!!! Do you know how much a trillion dollars is? Meanwhile the Fed is handing out free loans to mega-banks totaling 15 trillion so they can speculate on any and everything with fake bids using fake money. All the while colluding with S&P and other rating agencies until the housing bubble pops, but no problem: They made huge bets on that too. But now they need bailouts, otherwise the stock market will crash: Financial terrorism!
You can't fix this with taxes and cuts. A system based on debt can only be fixed by either 1. defaulting or 2. repudiating the debt.



No, it was never an issue. Don't buy that political bullshit. Government is a lock-step party. Back then they were still claiming they wouldn't need to raise taxes, meanwhile deficit spending by 1.5 trillion.

Second point, absolutely let the banks fail. We have bankruptcy laws for a reason. By the way, plenty did fail, just not the ones involved in the behind the scenes fraud and collusion--those were bailed out.

Last paragraph: Suppose I am the sole creator of money and I create $5 dollars. This is the only money I have ever created. I invented this money from nothing and loan/give it to you under the agreement that you would repay me $10 dollars the following week. Where do you get the other $5 dollars to repay me from?

To answer your first question a) republican filibuster, b) democrats are a coalition, not a lock-step party, so there are "blue dogs" who would not every support tax increases.

To your second point, what would you have done 3 years ago? I'm curious. Let the banks, car companies fail, and let our country sink into depression? Obama's problem is that he didn't spend enough, not that he spent too much.

I think your last paragraph shows a very limited perspective indeed. Hope you're not anyone's CPA.>> ^marbles:
If Obama or the democrats wanted to raise taxes, why didn't they do it when they had super-majorities in the house and senate. Congress ingores it's responsibility to pass a budget the last few years and instead decides to "stimulate" the economy with huge deficit spending. 1.5 Trillion x 2 years. They overspend by 3 Trillion!!! Do you know how much a trillion dollars is? Meanwhile the Fed is handing out free loans to mega-banks totaling 15 trillion so they can speculate on any and everything with fake bids using fake money. All the while colluding with S&P and other rating agencies until the housing bubble pops, but no problem: They made huge bets on that too. But now they need bailouts, otherwise the stock market will crash: Financial terrorism!
You can't fix this with taxes and cuts. A system based on debt can only be fixed by either 1. defaulting or 2. repudiating the debt.

If Obama or the democrats wanted to raise taxes, why didn't they do it when they had super-majorities in the house and senate. Congress ingores it's responsibility to pass a budget the last few years and instead decides to "stimulate" the economy with huge deficit spending. 1.5 Trillion x 2 years. They overspend by 3 Trillion!!! Do you know how much a trillion dollars is? Meanwhile the Fed is handing out free loans to mega-banks totaling 15 trillion so they can speculate on any and everything with fake bids using fake money. All the while colluding with S&P and other rating agencies until the housing bubble pops, but no problem: They made huge bets on that too. But now they need bailouts, otherwise the stock market will crash: Financial terrorism!

You can't fix this with taxes and cuts. A system based on debt can only be fixed by either 1. defaulting or 2. repudiating the debt.

The stock market is highly irrational. Why do you think the gov't has to prop the market with stimulus, etc.?

Are you seriously suggesting that when the market in 2008 lost half of its value in the span of a few months, only to gain most of it back over the next year, that's a rational market? Either the market was highly overvalued or undervalued at some point in time.

The Tea Partiers are crazy if they think that it's worth risking default instead of raising taxes. You're making it sound like Obama proposed tax increases, and the Tea Party proposed spending cuts. That's not true. Obama proposed both, and the Tea Party absolutely refused to even consider a meager tax raise on millionaires. That's ridiculous. The bottom line is it's impossible to argue that cutting spending and raising taxes would result in less deficit reduction than spending cuts alone would. A $4 trillion dollar deficit reduction plan was proposed by Obama, and the GOP shunted it in favor of a $2 trillion dollar one simply because the $2 trillion one didn't have any tax increases for the richest Americans.

Don't give me any of that BS about the Tea Party and the GOP wanting to lower the deficit, and that's what this whole thing is about. That's a bold faced lie.

>> ^quantumushroom:

Thanks to longde and heropsycho for reasonable answers.
As witnessed by today's predicted 8-8-11 stock plunge, the market doesn't wait for 'understanding' of the situation.
The "4 trillion" figure is suggested from a "presidential debt commission"...it's what I'd heard was the limit where the S&P would consider postponing a downgrade, also it was one of the attempted goal-plans of the Righties.
Out-of-control spending is wrecking this country, and calling Tea Partiers "crazy" and espousing 'tax increases' will not stop this in any way, because the left always spends more than it takes in, more so than the right.
Obama & Friends are already spending printed trillions, to no effect.
I've never considered Obama to be competent or even cognizant how the economy works, so it's difficult for me to believe it's "The Right's" fault for "making him look bad". The guy did it all on his own.

LOL... oh, we're gonna play that game now.

So what do you call the stock market crashes post 9/11, 2007, 1987, all under your heroes - George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan? Guess your boys were... what did you call them... or, right... "clueless fking idiots".

Dude, seriously, check your facts before you post idiotic stuff like this.

Just to clarify, I'm not blaming Reagan or W. singlehandedly or even predominantly for those crashes. The drop today in fact has as much to do with European markets as it does the American markets. How exactly Obama could be blamed for that makes absolutely no sense.

About Bush's spending - completely laughable. The right was 100% on board with tax cuts (which contributed massively to the deficit, regardless if you want to count it as spending or not), and both the Afghan and Iraqi wars. About the only thing they were against was the senior citizens prescription drug benefit, and even then, I sure didn't hear a whole lot of opposition by them at the time. Compare that to Obama wanting to raise taxes on millionaires by a few percentage points and the right, including you, come out saying he's a communist or socialist, which is utterly ridiculous.

Name socialist programs that worked?

I define programs socialist in nature that cause the gov't to determine what is produced (related, how it is produced), who produces it, and/or who consumes it. With that said, here are the gov't programs that overall unquestionably the US is better for it.

Universal primary/secondary education
Federal grants and scholarships
Environmental regulation
Food and Drug Administration (before it, it wasn't safe to assume the food you bought from the grocery store wouldn't kill you)
Social Security (say what you want, but even critics have to agree Social Security has run very well, and benefitted the economy for most of its existence)
Medicare (seniors are happier with their health care than any other age group, and the vast majority are on medicare, medicare has been in existence for over 45 years)
Medicaid
VA hospitals

BTW, you can't say something has been a failure just because it's having problems today. If the program has existed for decades and was fine up to this point, it clearly can be run properly. Instead of questioning its existence, it's perfectly rational to look at how to reform it to allow it to work again.

And yes, public schools are underfunded. That's clear as day. And your rationale to not spend more is preposterous. Carried to its absurd conclusion, we should eliminate all funding for education in any manner whatsoever. Kids will learn just as much outside without shelter, books, or even teachers! Funding does matter. It doesn't determine everything about achievement. The #1 factor of student achievement is actually the socio-economic class of the students' parents. However, if the school is drastically underfunded, that child's performance will be inhibited.

See, I taught public schools, so I actually know wtf I'm talking about. You explain to me how routine classes of 37 8th grade students, 24 of them with learning disabilities, in a single class with no special education help (because there weren't enough special edu teachers to go around because it's impossible to find enough special edu teachers, because, oh wonder of wonders, nobody wants to go to spend the money to go to college to become a special edu teacher because their salaries are crap, just like every other teacher, and the job is even harder than other teaching jobs) doesn't qualify as ridiculous underfunding. This wasn't an inner city school, either. It was suburbia in a comparatively well off county in Virginia. Our textbooks were 15 years old and above reading grade level and falling apart. The county didn't have enough schools, so most of the schools had outside trailer classrooms. And no, there wasn't embezzling, or major issues with misallocation of funds. The area was heavily conservative; voters would rather have low taxes than well functioning schools, and it showed. Then you have idiots who claim the schools suck, and say it's because they're public schools, and the government can't do anything right. The government failed because it did what the people wanted - lowest taxes regardless of the consequences.

>> ^quantumushroom:

The Dow dropped 500 points today (04 Aug). Are you awake yet? People are voting with their $$$ and they have zero confidence in the Kenyanesque Hawaiian (a true label, as Papa was Kenyan and Barry is from Hawaii) who has proved to be a clueless fking idiot.
(If you don't want to believe Obama is clueless, a more terrifying conclusion awaits you: everything about his lifelong ideology, thinking America is the #1 threat in the world which must be stopped [or slowed down] is 100% true).
I know you want to believe this debt crap is a 'victory' for the right. It's nothing of the kind. We are in serious trouble and both sides ain't worth sh1t, but only one side is even trying to steer away from the cliff and rocks below.
The "spending cuts" are smoke and mirrors. Allow me to explain. Say you wanted to buy a car for 100K but instead buy one or 20K. The government would call that an 80K "spending cut". The government has NEVER cut spending.
As for your assessment of me, I don't remember enough about you to make a similar assessment, you seem to always be in attack dog mode but rarely do I see you drawing on facts for arguments. The left judges programs on what they're supposed to do, not how well they work (or not). That kind of insanity can only be measured in good intentions and resources wasted. You're standing on the edge of a cliff wearing Styrofoam wings, believing you can fly because that's the intent of the wings. Gravity says otherwise.

I've said it before and will again: I wish you lefties could prove me wrong with results: e.g. actual created jobs and prosperity, real evidence the (Bush created) scamulus worked, proof social programs work efficiently without counting good intentions, and stable financial markets attractive to investors the world over. There is no consumer confidence and zero trust now.

The left's incessant demonization of "the rich" is to win class warfare votes. It can do nothing else. Obama has already apent 3 trillion dollars in 3 years. Do you think "the rich" have more than 3 trillion hidden away? Democrat spending never stops and Republican spending barely slows down.
You can be pissed at me all day long, but I'm even more pissed at the disastrous results of this piss-poor excuse of an administration.

>> ^Yogi:
>> ^quantumushroom:
The Kenyanesque Hawaiian never met a spending cut he liked. He's overclocked this economy because he wants to cripple it. Here comes the broom to sweep the moonbats out of the belfry.

Did you not notice the economic bill he just fucking signed. Spending Cuts EVERY FUCKING WHERE...and Obama saying that it's wonderful...he didn't add any fucking taxes either. You've WON EVERYTHING by supporting the richest in the nation...and you're still bitching about something that's been proven COMPLETELY wrong.
This is my problem with you QM...you're just wrong, even using your own logic and facts, you're just always fucking wrong. I've met conservatives that were smart and made good arguments and I can have a conversation with...you could be one of those people but you're just fucking not. You're given a lot of shit on here but you're also given a lot of leash I would've banned your ass a long time ago just for being stupid.

math used for evil like the stock market

The Big Lie About The Great Depression

Ben Shapiro

In her vital and fascinating new book, "The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression," Amity Shlaes tells a story about national icon President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Shortly after FDR took office, Shlaes explains, he began arbitrarily tinkering with the price of gold. "One day he would move the price up several cents; another, a few more," writes Shlaes.

One particular morning, Shlaes relates, FDR informed his "brain trust" that he was considering raising the price of gold by 21 cents. His advisers asked why 21 cents was the appropriate figure. "It's a lucky number," stated Roosevelt, "because it's three times seven." Henry Morgenthau, a member of the "brain trust," later wrote: "If anybody knew how we really set the gold price through a combination of lucky numbers, etc., I think they would be frightened."

Ignorance of basic economics — and the concurrent attempt to obfuscate that ignorance by employing class-conscious demagoguery — remains the staple of the Democratic Party. For over 60 years, Democrats and their allies in the media and public school system have taught that the Great Depression was an inevitable result of laissez-faire economic policies, and that only the Keynesian policies of the FDR government allowed America to emerge from the ashes. The Great Depression, for the left, provides conclusive proof that when it comes to economics, government works better than business.

This point of view has a sterling reputation. That reputation, unsurprisingly, was created by FDR himself. FDR turned the Great Depression into a morality play — a morality play in which those in favor of individual initiative were the sinners, while those who relied on government were the saints. "We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals," Roosevelt intoned in 1937. "We know now that it is bad economics."

This, as Shlaes convincingly shows, is hogwash. The Depression lasted nearly a decade longer than it should have, due almost entirely to governmental meddling under both Herbert Hoover and FDR. High tariffs and government-sponsored deflation followed by enormous taxation and unthinkable government expenditures turned a stock market stumble into a decade-long nightmare. Only the devastation of World War II lifted America out of the mire, solving the drastic unemployment problem and providing a legitimate medium for FDR's pre-war wartime policies.

Nonetheless, the myth of a grinning FDR leading America forth from the soup kitchens remains potent.
And today's Democrats rely desperately on that fading falsehood, hoping to bolster their bad economics with worse history. Hillary Clinton routinely hijacks Rooseveltian language, most recently disparaging the "on your own society" in favor of a "we're all in it together society." John Edwards' "two Americas" nonsense drips of FDR's class warfare. Never mind that Keynesian economics does not work. Never mind that it promotes unemployment, discourages investment and quashes entrepreneurship. For Democrats, the image of government-as-friend is more important than a government that actually protects the rights that breed prosperity.

"The impression of recovery — the impression that a President was bending the old rules and, drawing upon his own courage and flamboyance in adversity and illness, stirring things up on behalf of the down-and-out — mattered more than any miscalculations in the moot mathematics of economics," novelist-cum-economist John Updike recently wrote, defending FDR from Shlaes' critique. "Business, of which Shlaes is so solicitous, is basically merciless, geared to maximize profit. Government is ultimately a human transaction, and Roosevelt put a cheerful, defiant, caring face on government at a time when faith in democracy was ebbing throughout the Western world. For this inspirational feat he is the twentieth century's greatest President, to rank with Lincoln and Washington as symbolic figures for a nation to live by."

For Updike and his allies, image trumps reality. The supposed harshness of the business world matters more for Updike than the fact that profit incentives promote economic growth, efficiency and creativity. The "caring face" of government is more important for Updike than creating a framework that produces jobs and affordable commodities. Updike's sporadically employed father liked FDR because FDR made him feel "less alone." No doubt Updike's father would have felt less alone if he had been steadily employed by a private enterprise — the kind of enterprise stifled by Roosevelt.

"We are beginning to wipe out the line that divides the practical from the ideal," FDR announced in 1937, as unemployment stood at 15 percent, "and in so doing we are fashioning an instrument of unimagined power for the establishment of a morally better world." Today's Democrats continue to embrace the vision, even at the cost of a prosperous reality.

I was paying 35e a month for 25Mb broadband in Dublin. Apparently you can now get up 100Mb for 65e.

We're a few years behind the times in Ireland as a whole because our major telecom company was bought up by venture capitalists shortly after being floated on the stock market by the government (for the sake of competition).

>> ^Sagemind:

Can someone explain what we are watching happen. I know nothing about what Bitcoin is.


Bitcoins are a decentralized cryptographic digital cash system. The specifics are complicated, but in practice it is non-counterfeitable, low transaction cost, online money.

The website Mt.Gox was the first and largest place to trade bitcoins for dollars.

Mt.Gox got too big too fast, and never bothered to properly security audit their site, as a result there were a number of compromised accounts. This allowed a hacker to go in and sell bitcoins from the compromised accounts at $0.01 each, thereby driving down the price, and allowing the hacker, and anybody else who was paying attention, to buy them up at $0.01, when they are functionally worth between $10-20.

We are watching a live feed of these hacker sell off transactions taking place on the exchange, which is basically an almost unregulated stock market that only trades in bitcoins(BTC).

Hey ghandi, remember me, the crazy guy with the crazy idea? I switched majors to biology but I keep on keeping on with the dreaming. Chemistry is a lot more interesting than a state university's current idea of computer science. My wait-and-see attitude, coupled with my tendency to only do things i enjoy, lets me stick to projects where I can make personally satisfactory progress. Other people will have to complete the LDP as I sort of always knew.

Check these out regarding logical discourse:

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"This seems like the perfect question to pose to Slashdotters: how would you foster more dynamic spaces for online news discussion? How would you preserve the context of online discussions and stamp out trolls? " Sound familiar?

http://ask.slashdot.org/story/11/05/09/203221/Ask-Slashdot-Going-Beyond-Comment-Threads

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Truthy is a research project that helps you understand how memes spread online. With our images and statistics, you can help identify misuse of Twitter. Our first application was the study of astroturf campaigns in elections. Now we're extending our focus to the diffusion of all types of information in social media.

http://truthy.indiana.edu


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United States Patent 7,805,291 Berkowitz Appl. No.: 11/137,594
Filed: May 25, 2005
September 28, 2010

Method of identifying topic of text using nouns


Abstract
A method of identifying a topic of a text. Text is received. Then, the nouns in the text are identified. The singular form of each identified noun is determined. Combinations are created of the singular form of the identified nouns, where the number of singular forms of the nouns in the combinations is user-definable. The frequency of occurrence in the text of each noun that corresponds to its singular form is determined. Each frequency of occurrence is assigned as a score to its corresponding singular form noun. Each combination of singular form nouns is assigned a score that is equal to the sum of the scores of its constituent singular form nouns. The user-definable number of top scoring singular form nouns and combinations of singular form nouns are selected as the topic of the text.

Inventors: Berkowitz; Sidney (Baltimore, MD)
Assignee: The United States of America as represented by the Director National Security Agency (Washington, DC)
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This paper was coming out about the time I started to get interested in the possibility of analyzing for semantics and stuff. Good thing someone smarter figured it out.

Modeling public mood and emotion: Twitter sentiment and socio-economic phenomena
Authors: Johan Bollen, Alberto Pepe, Huina Mao
(Submitted on 9 Nov 2009)

Abstract: Microblogging is a form of online communication by which users broadcast brief text updates, also known as tweets, to the public or a selected circle of contacts. A variegated mosaic of microblogging uses has emerged since the launch of Twitter in 2006: daily chatter, conversation, information sharing, and news commentary, among others. Regardless of their content and intended use, tweets often convey pertinent information about their author's mood status. As such, tweets can be regarded as temporally-authentic microscopic instantiations of public mood state. In this article, we perform a sentiment analysis of all public tweets broadcasted by Twitter users between August 1 and December 20, 2008. For every day in the timeline, we extract six dimensions of mood (tension, depression, anger, vigor, fatigue, confusion) using an extended version of the Profile of Mood States (POMS), a well-established psychometric instrument. We compare our results to fluctuations recorded by stock market and crude oil price indices and major events in media and popular culture, such as the U.S. Presidential Election of November 4, 2008 and Thanksgiving Day. We find that events in the social, political, cultural and economic sphere do have a significant, immediate and highly specific effect on the various dimensions of public mood. We speculate that large scale analyses of mood can provide a solid platform to model collective emotive trends in terms of their predictive value with regards to existing social as well as economic indicators.


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Cheers,

Vairetube