"Dear Wealthy Fucks: Fuck you. Yours in Christ, the Black Guy"

[Eddie Teach]

What boggles my mind is how little you know of economics.

What boggles my mind is how much faith you put in Republican pundits who claim to know economics.

[Baron von Schtinkenbutt]

I used to bitch about Dems because I knew that no matter how much more taxes were increased, and more wealth transfer was done, there would never come a point where they would say "Oh yeah, this is the right spot - this is how much we should spend on social services, and no more..."

Now I feel exactly the opposite - the Republicans have made it clear that there is no amount of wealth transfer to the already wealthy that is too much. No matter how much the system skews more and more towards the rich, the answer is never going to be "Hey, that seems a little out of line...should we do something about that?"

I think both are true.  The Democratic base will never be happy with the with the amount of money the government redistributes, and the Republican base will never be happy as long as the government is doing any redistribution and preventing the wealthy from consolidating economic power.  Unfortunately, due to the screwed-up structure of our two-party state these relatively small groups get to dominate what actually happens at the state and national levels.

[Siege]

What boggles my mind is how little you know of economics.

What boggles my mind is how much faith you put in Republican pundits who claim to know economics.

I don't. I follow the Wealth of Nations by that little scottish dude.

[Eddie Teach]

Ok, point out where Adam Smith declared that taxes destroy the economy.

[Siege]

Page 69, right at the center.

[CountDeMoney]

It is kind of mind boggling, really.

Not sure why you would be surprised.  Republican ideology is all about getting government out of the lives of people to allow them to make their own way.  That ideological view necessarily rejects the kind of balancing you are talking about which is firmly within what Americans call liberal ideology.

What is the most surprising is that it all took less than 40 years.  Even the most ardent Reaganauts thought it would take a couple more generations.

[derspiess]

I don't want to do anything, and even roll back things that have been done in the past.  Even tax rates that Reagan supported are too much.

[crazy canuck]

What boggles my mind is how little you know of economics.

What boggles my mind is how much faith you put in Republican pundits who claim to know economics.

I don't. I follow the Wealth of Nations by that little scottish dude.

You better read it first then.  You will be surprised what he actually said.

[Siege]

After the singularity gets here, I am going to simulate an entire world on which I shall force free market economy, and it will develop way faster than our world did. By 1800 they are going to be deep into the Information Revolution, thus finally proving to the knuckleheads here in Languish that free market economy is superior.

[crazy canuck]

It is kind of mind boggling, really.

Not sure why you would be surprised.  Republican ideology is all about getting government out of the lives of people to allow them to make their own way.  That ideological view necessarily rejects the kind of balancing you are talking about which is firmly within what Americans call liberal ideology.

What is the most surprising is that it all took less than 40 years.  Even the most ardent Reaganauts thought it would take a couple more generations.

I think Reagan needs to be understood in the context of his time, just as Thatcher and, to a lesser degree Mulroney in Canada.  They were all products of the backlash against over regulation in the 70s.  While they all spoke in the language of the ideology of smaller government I think they all kept a place for government.  The elimination of an appropriate place for government is what I think has changed.

In Canada, by contrast, everyone (or a least the vast majority of us) will readily agree that government has an imporant role.  We disagree amongst ourselves about the kinds of balancing judgments Berkut is talking about.  You will get to see it first hand when Josephus and I start talking about the Federal election that is going to get started in the next couple of months.   But you will never see Jospehus and I disagree that there is a fundamental need for government to play a role.

[Eddie Teach]

After the singularity gets here, I am going to simulate an entire world on which I shall force free market economy, and it will develop way faster than our world did. By 1800 they are going to be deep into the Information Revolution, thus finally proving to the knuckleheads here in Languish that free market economy is superior.

No bread and circuses? Better stay out of the Forum or the mob will crucify you.

[Razgovory]

Page 69, right at the center.

putes the necessary expense of a labourer's family, consisting of six
persons, the father and mother, two children able to do something,
and two not able, at ten shillings a-week, or twenty-six
pounds a-year. If they cannot earn this by their labour, they must
make it up, he supposes, either by begging or stealing. He appears
to have enquired very carefully into this subject {See his scheme
for the maintenance of the poor, in Burn's History of the Poor
Laws.}. In 1688, Mr Gregory King, whose skill in political arithmetic
is so much extolled by Dr Davenant, computed the ordinary
income of labourers and out-servants to be fifteen pounds ayear
to a family, which he supposed to consist, one with another,
of three and a half persons. His calculation, therefore, though different
in appearance, corresponds very nearly at bottom with that
of Judge Hales. Both suppose the weekly expense of such families
to be about twenty-pence a-head. Both the pecuniary income and
expense of such families have increased considerably since that
time through the greater part of the kingdom, in some places more,
and in some less, though perhaps scarce anywhere so much as
some exaggerated accounts of the present wages of labour have
lately represented them to the public. The price of labour, it must
be observed, cannot be ascertained very accurately anywhere, different
prices being often paid at the same place and for the same
sort of labour, not only according to the different abilities of the
workman, but according to the easiness or hardness of the masters.
Where wages are not regulated by law, all that we can pretend
to determine is, what are the most usual; and experience seems to
shew that law can never regulate them properly, though it has
often pretended to do so.
The real recompence of labour, the real quantity of the necessaries
and conveniencies of life which it can procure to the labourer,
has, during the course of the present century, increased perhaps in
a still greater proportion than its money price. Not only grain has
become somewhat cheaper, but many other things, from which
the industrious poor derive an agreeable and wholesome variety of
food, have become a great deal cheaper. Potatoes, for example, do
not at present, through the greater part of the kingdom, cost half
the price which they used to do thirty or forty years ago. The same
thing may be said of turnips, carrots, cabbages; things which were
formerly never raised but by the spade, but which are now commonly
raised by the plough. All sort of garden stuff, too, has become
cheaper. The greater part of the apples, and even of the onions,
consumed in Great Britain, were, in the last century, imported
from Flanders. The great improvements in the coarser
manufactories of both linen and woollen cloth furnish the labourers
with cheaper and better clothing; and those in the manufactories
of the coarser metals, with cheaper and better instruments of trade,

I'm not seeing it in there.

[CountDeMoney]

I think Reagan needs to be understood in the context of his time, just as Thatcher and, to a lesser degree Mulroney in Canada.  They were all products of the backlash against over regulation in the 70s.  While they all spoke in the language of the ideology of smaller government I think they all kept a place for government.  The elimination of an appropriate place for government is what I think has changed.

Maybe for Thatcher and Mulroney, but not Reagan.   

What we're witnessing is the progression of modern American conservatism's maturation as the country's primary and dominant political theme, and in a rapid and spectacular fashion. 

What I don't think conservatives took into consideration was how the Democrats would wind up being collaborators and accelerating the process, with 1) Clintonianism co-opting the GOP's economic themes of welfare and free markets, and 2) surrendering to or at least compromising on culture war issues, such as gun control and abortion.

[grumbler]

I don't. I follow the Wealth of Nations by that little scottish dude.

he was revolutionary in his time, but if he lived today he'd be one of the most economically-illiterate intellectuals in the world.  The reality of externalities, for instance, destroys his basic theory.

[Warspite]

What happened to the political centre in the US?