Well this was amateurish badly performed with child like acting and well not that remarkable. literally look like a bunch of jobless drama students that can sing in tune and prance around like tits.

^I'll give you my answers, because I seriously doubt I could echo someone of Mises' caliber.

You say people are suffering, but what does that have to do with economics? From a purely scientific standpoint, like physics, there is nothing human about economics. Compassionate, just, fair: these are not adjectives of an economic theory, they are adjectives of human action. If suffering is your problem, them human compassion is your solution; charity from friends, family, coworkers, or private organizations. If unemployment is your problem, then science is your solution. Employment raises when demand increases, and employment falls when demand decreases. That is the scientific reality. There is no reason for science to care whether jobs are lost or gained. If you attempt to subvert that reality due to human compassion, you may as well be pissing into the wind or pushing a cow into a barn.

I care about homeless people, and jobless people, and miserable people because I am human and I have compassion. Because I am compassionate, I am interested in the best way to get the cow back in the barn. You lead a cow by covering your finger with salt, and letting it lick it off as you walk into the barn--you don't push or pull with all your might on the cow's ass. That is a scientific reality.

Bubble or burst, why should science care? Nobody complains about the bubble, but everyone cries about the burst. That is a human problem, not an economic problem. It is no more possible to "fix" the burst than it is to push a cow into a barn or successfully piss into the wind. It has to happen, its going to suck, but that is the scientific reality.

I can give you my scientific solution, but it wouldn't make sense. If I saw you pushing a cow into a barn and told you to put your hands in salt, what would you say? You'd look at me like I was raving mad. It wouldn't make any sense to you because you don't understand the underlying mechanics. That is the purpose of posting this book. The sooner people realize that they can't push the cow into the barn, the sooner we can start looking for real solutions---solutions which actually help people.

I defy every man, because I care about every man.

>> ^quantumushroom:
This Rush is more important:
The president is presiding over economic failure. The president is watching it, doing nothing about it. He's watching unemployment grow; he's watching the stock market plummet; he is watching people sign up for unemployment. The president of the United States is doing nothing to stop the downward spiral of this economy. He has no economic recovery plan. The truth is, the president of the United States and Rahm Emanuel, who, remember, said, "Crisis is too great a thing to waste." What does that mean? They want you suffering, they want you miserable, they want it worse, they want you rejecting conservatism. They want you rejecting capitalism. They want you turning to them in fear and desperation and angst for an immediate fix to the problem. They want you thinking you have no ability to fix your own problems. They think you have and they want you to have no ability to take care of yourself. So as the stock market now approaches minus 2,800 since Obama was elected, the statement today is to speed up the economic recovery, we're going to focus on health care. Ask yourself how that is going to get you your next job.


Why do I get the impression that that quote and that opinion about that quote comes from a conservative blog? I don't know what he meant, and I could not be bothered dredging up a link for something so irrelevant but if I had to guess it would be something along the lines of creating an opportunity to fund the development of massively underfunded and otherwise crumbling infrastructure by employing those who would have been otherwise left jobless by the layoffs in the construction industry.

How could you possibly think that worsening the situation now will cause people to blame conservatism. They will blame interventionary policy for failing. How could you possibly say that the US president has no recovery plan, have you been living under a rock? You may disagree with it but that does not disprove the former.

How has complete not-intervention combined with consistent tax cuts on the wealthy worked out for you in the past 8 years?

Let me turn your last point back around, how does improving health care not create a more dynamic and competitive work force in the long term and strengthen economic growth?

When I posted my solution, which was basically threefold:

1. Reduce spending by $1 trillion
2. Prosecute criminals
3. Rather than send $4 trillion to unknown/dubious sources, send it straight to the families who know how to spend it best. Which is going to better improve the economic situation for you personally, $20,000 in your pocket or $2 billion in the pocket of some CEO? Who is going to spend it on your best interests, you or the CEO? If its better for you, why wouldn't it not be better for most people? If everyone is better off, why would we give it to the CEOs instead of the people?

I'm not saying I agree with a bailout (i don't think we should bail anyone out) but if you ARE going to give money to someone, why not give money to the millions of starving homeless jobless people directly rather than a small group of billionaires?

the US has experienced a type of urban and suburbanization that the rest of the world is not familiar with, creating populations of destitute and poorly socialized people. These factors lead to the increased joblessness, violence, drug abuse, breakdown of the nuclear family, etc. This may explain why US cities dominate ^ this list.

In the days before America had tight labor laws, unions had a real purpose. These days? In almost every instance they seem to do more harm than good.

"But," you say, "They get better wages and benefits for working Americans! What's so bad about that!?"

Well, by artificially keeping wages high, you end up in one of two situations:
a) The company struggles to be competitive against its non unionized counterparts as its expenses are higher. This hurts the organization, and when the organization is in trouble, everyone is in trouble. Auto factory workers are finding this out the hard way right now. Obviously that's not the only problem going on that got the auto manufacturers into their present mess, but if the union is willing to flush the company down the toilet rather than make concessions, I have a hard time being sympathetic.

b) The company realizes that labor in this country is crazy, and they decide to hire a Chinese plant to manufacturer their goods and import them. That's not a win for the workers, as they are all now jobless.

Let's not even get into labor unions that control turf and won't let people who are able to do work for themselves do it without paying the union. Don't believe me? Try setting up your own booth at a trade show and watch how fast the union guys come out of the woodwork to charge you an outrageous hourly fee for something you are able to do on your own.

The guy in this video looked at it from the angle of "unions = Democrats, kill unions!" I cannot profess to know the thought process behind the Republican decision to block the bailout, but I suspect the true fiscal conservative types dislike unions for the reasons I just outlined. Besides, if you have a group of Democrats, and you hurt them by letting their company go out of business, that's not going to bring them over to your side. They will still be voting Democrat next time, so that argument seems a little contrived to me.

LOL! I noticed how no one commented on the second part of my comment. And yes I had a vocation after the band. The homeless and jobless part was temporary. But it still happened none-the-less. I also didn't do the big hair thing, always though that was ridiculous looking.

Sorry guys, Kurt isn't the Rock God you all seem to think he is. I was told many times by folks that saw Nirvana live that I covered his songs better than he did.

I would like to title this comment: FDR and the Great Depression VS Barack Obama and the Current Recession

^1. those who do not study history repeat it

Charles is WRONG about the Great Depression and it sounds like he's proposing that we repeat it.

FDR enacted a few good programs to provide immediate relief. That's all good and well except for the fact that those programs also served to lengthen the depression by a number of years.

"..The government from Hoover to Roosevelt made it worse by intervening too much and too arbitrarily."
ABC Finds FDR Partly to Blame for 10-Year Great Depression

Is that what we want to happen again thanks to the Democrats in congress along with Obama?


"Some economists in retrospect have argued that the National Labor Relations Act and Agricultural Adjustment Administration were ineffective policies because they relied on price fixing."

"Unemployment fell dramatically in Roosevelt's first term, from 25% when he took office to 14.3% in 1937. Afterward, however, it increased to 19.0% in 1938 ('a depression within a depression'), 17.2% in 1939 because of various added taxation (Undistributed profits tax in Mar. 1936, and the Social Security Payroll Tax 1937, plus the effects of the Wagner Act; the Fair Labor Standards Act and a blizzard of other federal regulations), and stayed high until it almost vanished during World War II when the previously unemployed were conscripted, taking them out of the potential labor supply number."

"The U.S. economy grew rapidly during Roosevelt's term.[54] However, coming out of the depression, this growth was accompanied by continuing high levels of unemployment; as the median joblessness rate during the New Deal was 17.2%. Throughout his entire term, including the war years, average unemployment was 13%."

Wikipedia.com

See also:

UCLA Economist say FDR Lengthened the Great Depression by several years

FDR Lengthened The Great Depression

A brief history of the Great Depression

FDR's policies prolonged Depression by 7 years

ABC Finds FDR Partly to Blame for 10-Year Great Depression

Yes, FDR Made Depression Worse and Longer

Don't Trust the Depression Brain Trust

...and I could go on.

[Talking]
Holden Street
Dean Street
click clack, Presidents
Nostrand Ave
DP's, Orange Ave
RBG's, T-Town
Who Wanna Ride, Brooklyn
Come on, Come on

[Rapping]
Sittin' in the living room on the flo' hunger pain
got me on some migraine shit but I'ma maintain
Nigga got two or three dollars to my name
and my homies in the same boat goin' through the same thing
ready for a caper, steady plottin' for the paper
we been livin' in the dark since April
on the candle, gotta get a handle
my homie got a 25 automatic added to the gamble
nigga get the phone book look up in the yellow page
lemme tell you how we fiendin ta get paid
we gon' order take out, when we see the driver
we gon' stick the 25 up in his face, let's ride
steppin' outside like warriors into the notorious southside
one weapon to the four of us, hidin' in the corridor
til' we see the dominoes car headlights
white boy in the wrong place at the right time
soon as the car door open up he mine
we roll up quick and put the pistol to his nose
by the look on his face he probly shitted in his clothes
you know what this is a stick up
gimme the dough, from the pick up
you ran into the wrong niggas
we runnin down the block hot with these stack of boxes boxes
so we split up and met back at the apartment

Hell Yeah
yo ain't you hungry my nigga
hell yeah
you wanna get paid my nigga
hell yeah
ain't you tired of starvin' my nigga
hell yeah, (well lets ride then) hell yeah

I know a way we can get paid
you can get down but you can't be afraid
let's go to the DMV and get a ID
the name says you but the face is me
now it's yo' turn take my paperwork
like 1,2,3 let's make it work
then fill out out the credit card application
then it's gonna be about three weeks of waitin'
for American Express, Discover card
Platinum Visa Mastercard
cuz when we was boothed and shit then we was targets
now we just walk right up and say charge it
to the game we rockin' brand names
well known at department store chains
even got the boys in the crew a few thangs
Po Po never know who to true blame
store after store ya' know we kept rollin'
wait two weeks report the card stolen
repeat the cycle like a laundrymat
like a glitch in the system thats hard to catch
comin' out the mall, with the shopping bags
we can take 'em right back and get the cash
yeah, get a friend and do it again
damn right that's how we pay the rent

Hell yeah

Got to get this paper
I'm down for the caper, we steady on the grind
It's a daily struggle
We all gotta hustle, this is the way we survive
[x2]

I know a caper
we can get some government paper
ya' know food stamps, can we really do that
hell yeah right there for the takin'
fuck welfare we say reparations
Ya' know the grind
get up early get on the line and just wait
everybody on break
that's part of the game and when they call your name
Miss caseworker lemme state my claim
I'm homeless, jobless, time is hard
about hopeless, but I gotta eat regardless
no family to run to I'm 22
now tell me what the fuck am I supposed to do
my sad story made her feel close to me
I made her feel like it was in emergency
and when I came to the crib niggas couldn't believe
I came back with a big bag of groceries

Every job I ever had I had to get
on the first day I find out how to pimp the system
two steps ahead of the manager
gettin' over on the regular tax-free money out the register
and when I'm workin' late night stockin boxes
I'm creepin' their merchandises
Don't put me on dishes I'm droppin' them bitches
and takin' all day long to mop the kitchen
shit, we ain't gettin paid commission, minimum wage
modern day slave conditions
got me flippin' burgers with no power
can't even buy one off what I make in an hour
I'm not one to kiss ass for the top position
I take mine off the top like a politician
where I'm from doin' dirt is a part of livin'
I got mouths to feed dog I gotsa' get it

Hell Yeah
You down to roll my nigga
Hell Yeah
You ready to get your hands dirty my nigga
Hell Yeah
Your momma need money and thangs my nigga
Hell Yeah, Well let's ride then, Hell Yeah

If you claimin' gangsta
Then bang on the system, and show that you ready to ride
Til' we get our freedom
We got to get over, we steady on the grind
[x2]

I know the roast of Justin Thyme (aka ObsidianFairy) hasn't started yet, but I wanted to say a couple things about that nerd. Unlike most people on here, I'm not scared of him actually knocking out a couple of my teeth or slicing my cheek open, because anyone who would make such a gay avatar for himself is not someone to fear. He is someone to ridicule.

For a time, the poor bastard was homeless. Let's just laugh at that for a while shall we? Hahahaha. Hey hippie, get a job! Stop making stupid uninteresting avatars pretending you have the chops to make it in the design world and do what everybody else without talent does: mop the floors at Hardees. While you're there you can tell them about your wonderful design ideas that will change the world, but in the meant time the floor ain't gonna mop itself.

But, enough about that turd, let's talk about someone way more important and way hotter! Let's talk about karkarlee. Why she chose to be with this talentless floor mopper is beyond me. I mean, how desperate do you have to be to find a jobless, homeless man attractive? Hey karkarlee, I've got a good job and a decent place in Brentwood, so anytime you're feeling that douchenozzle isn't cutting it, just give me a hollar.

Thanks for that. I think everyone finds great stuff because of all the competition on here! You have to have your "A" Game on to get anything sifted these days.

In reply to this comment by moodonia:
Hey Blankfist! Thanks for your kind words, glad to hear you like the oul whiskey, I have to say I have been letting the side down on the drink front. Had a beer with my manager and a couple of her business associates and I was so drunk I had to sneak away before I started telling jokes.... I knew if that happened I would soon be jobless Thanks again and your posts are great, I'm always wondering how you guys find all that great stuff!

In reply to this comment by blankfist:
Congrats, Moodonia! I do enjoy your contributions to the Sift! And, I do enjoy me some delicious Protestant Bushmills (not that nasty Catholic Jameson's garbage. Yuck!).

Hey Blankfist! Thanks for your kind words, glad to hear you like the oul whiskey, I have to say I have been letting the side down on the drink front. Had a beer with my manager and a couple of her business associates and I was so drunk I had to sneak away before I started telling jokes.... I knew if that happened I would soon be jobless Thanks again and your posts are great, I'm always wondering how you guys find all that great stuff!

In reply to this comment by blankfist:
Congrats, Moodonia! I do enjoy your contributions to the Sift! And, I do enjoy me some delicious Protestant Bushmills (not that nasty Catholic Jameson's garbage. Yuck!).

>> ^MINK:
wow.
some guy is so insane he disobeys one of the Ten Commandments in the name of "religion" and we have to DISCUSS this?

Actually no, not in the name of "religion", those stories are a dime a dozen.

He did this in the name of trying to stop the "liberal movement". To quote from the article I linked, he said:

"[He] could not get to the leaders of the liberal movement that he would then target those that had voted them in to office."

The article also says he wasn't a member of a church himself, and said that he was frustrated because he lost his job, and hadn't been able to find another.

If he listens to right-wing noise, he would know that the only cause for suffering in this country is them damned liberals.

His house was full of books by the Great Sages of America: Bill O'Reilly, Michael Savage, and Sean Hannity, who would've reinforced the idea that the only reason there are any jobless poor people in America are those liberals.

Buttsex is secondary -- it's that pernicious liberalism he needed to take up arms against.

I'm finding I'm mostly curious how insane he really is, or if he's just a normal guy, broken by the stress of the pace of modern life, who's been lied to about why everything is broken.

From what little I've heard, it sounds like he's closer to that, than some total nutcase listening to voices in his head.

I find it quite amusing to see how common it is for people to attack generalizations with specifics.

Such as:
"Women are overall less funny than men." (Hitch's point)
"No way, omg, Tina Fay/Whoever is SO much funnier than people like Robin Williams/Blah blah blah. And I know tons of women that also are!"

That would be like saying:
"Men are generally stronger than women"
"No way! I know this one bodybuilding chick that could squat you to death!"

Or better yet, so that it won't offend anyone but monkeys:
"Primates have around 5 times the upper body strength of a human male."
"Bah, I once arm wrestled a young monkey that had been in a coma for 2 years and totally beat him!"

Seriously, people, not all generalizations are wrong, generalizations are human nature. Think they're not? What's your general opinion of someone who is jobless? Or lawyers? Yeah, I'm sure none of you have any opinion of either based on past experiences.

It's only when we allow our generalizations to force upon us a way of treating someone that it becomes bad. Such as pre-judging the lawyer as a jerk and not being nice to him, or pre-judging women comedians by not going to a comedy club on an all ladies night.

Don't deny your nature, accommodate it. I guarantee you that there are differences in both the nature and nurture of EVERYONE, and some of it can even be generalized! #shocker#

>> ^kennn:
yeah these guys are real revolutionaries .. why not make "honk if you hate britney spears" or ..."honk if you hate our president" signs.. or better yet "honk if you like a group of jobless 17 year olds shooting fish in a barrel" ..this is pathetic, and not even funny. Why does everyone confuse the first amendment with a license to be a total asshole to strangers? I personally don't give a shit about Scientology ..but who the fuck cares? i mean , could they have picked an easier target? we get it... its fucking weird, the xenu thing..but seriously this is not in the slightest funny. its a corny fucking idea that proves nothing.. except, that high schoolers exercising their first amendment rights on a busy intersection while making profound political statements about a harmless comical religion ... this is just dumb. please everyone don't encourage this trash.


Considering what I've seen and read about Scientology, I'd hardly consider it a "harmless comical religion"... but then again, what religion is harmless?
I wouldn't be surprised to see Scientology become the new People's Temple.