Friday, June 29, 2012
Friday, June 8, 2012
Why Americans SHOULD Hate the Fed, and Why They Don't
The really insidious effect of the fed isn't so much that we're borrowing our own money from them. That's just kind of ridiculous. What's insidious is the way it redistributes wealth.
Because we have a floating economy the value of the dollar is not set by the value of silver or gold. It has a set value based on the supply of dollar bills. Beyond the intrinsic absurdity of that, there is a profound effect on a floating economy when a new dollar is printed.
Now... keep in mind that the fed is NOT a part of the government. It's a private cartel of bankers. This is important because when money is printed it is distributed to banks.
The act of printing money does not in itself create any wealth. Back in the old days this was compensated for by the storage of gold and silver into "reserve". This gave every dollar printed an intrinsic value. This is no longer the case, and because the gold reserve is not longer used, and because the printing of new money doesn't add any real wealth to the economy, each time a dollar is printed it DEVALUES every other dollar in circulation.
Let's take a closer look at the process of printing money in a floating economy. Economics of scale is a great way to obfuscate this issue, so we're going to scale it back to make the numbers more manageable.
Say there are 5 people in the country, and each has one dollar. There is also a bank, and the bank has $5 in it. This means there is a total of $10 in the entire country.
In a floating economy each dollar is worth 1/10, or 10%, of the value of the country.
Now, say the bankers print another dollar. This dollar is not backed by gold or silver, and there has been no ensuing increase in the value of the country, so the only real effect is that the value of a dollar has dropped. Where it used to be worth 10% of the country, now each dollar is only worth 9% of the country.
What the fed does when it prints money is distribute wealth to themselves.
Look at the example above. Before the extra dollar was printed the banks had $5 out of 10, exactly 50% of the value of the economy. After the new dollar was printed they had $6 out of 11, or 54% of the economy. They have STOLEN 4% of the economies total value.
The fleecing doesn't stop there, of course. The fed then LOANS us this dollar, collecting INTEREST on it and moving even more of the economies value into it's own coffers.
So why do Americans tolerate this?
Not to put too fine a point on it... because we're lazy. We just don't know any better, and we don't care enough to find out.
Most Americans have no idea what the Federal Reserve Bank is. The real genius of this deception though, is that the vast majority of us think we do.
We all know that the Fed sets interest rates and prints money, but we think the Fed is a government agency. Many of us think our currency is still backed by a gold standard. We have no idea that the value of a dollar is no longer tied to a reserve at all, or that the economy is being controlled by unelected, unappointed bankers with no accountability. And even if we did know, most of us are afraid of the numbers. It's not that we lack the basic mathematical skills to understand what they're doing, it's that the numbers involved are so huge we tell ourselves we can't possibly comprehend them. Once we do get it we often decide it can't possibly be that simple. This is an illusion, though, and our "leaders" take full advantage of it. Most of them don't understand the Fed much better than we do, and the ones that do are more than happy to have us believe it's because they are somehow smarter and wiser than the rest of us.
It's all lies.
You don't need any fancy math skills to understand the way the fed works. It really is that simple.
Because we have a floating economy the value of the dollar is not set by the value of silver or gold. It has a set value based on the supply of dollar bills. Beyond the intrinsic absurdity of that, there is a profound effect on a floating economy when a new dollar is printed.
Now... keep in mind that the fed is NOT a part of the government. It's a private cartel of bankers. This is important because when money is printed it is distributed to banks.
The act of printing money does not in itself create any wealth. Back in the old days this was compensated for by the storage of gold and silver into "reserve". This gave every dollar printed an intrinsic value. This is no longer the case, and because the gold reserve is not longer used, and because the printing of new money doesn't add any real wealth to the economy, each time a dollar is printed it DEVALUES every other dollar in circulation.
Let's take a closer look at the process of printing money in a floating economy. Economics of scale is a great way to obfuscate this issue, so we're going to scale it back to make the numbers more manageable.
Say there are 5 people in the country, and each has one dollar. There is also a bank, and the bank has $5 in it. This means there is a total of $10 in the entire country.
In a floating economy each dollar is worth 1/10, or 10%, of the value of the country.
Now, say the bankers print another dollar. This dollar is not backed by gold or silver, and there has been no ensuing increase in the value of the country, so the only real effect is that the value of a dollar has dropped. Where it used to be worth 10% of the country, now each dollar is only worth 9% of the country.
What the fed does when it prints money is distribute wealth to themselves.
Look at the example above. Before the extra dollar was printed the banks had $5 out of 10, exactly 50% of the value of the economy. After the new dollar was printed they had $6 out of 11, or 54% of the economy. They have STOLEN 4% of the economies total value.
The fleecing doesn't stop there, of course. The fed then LOANS us this dollar, collecting INTEREST on it and moving even more of the economies value into it's own coffers.
So why do Americans tolerate this?
Not to put too fine a point on it... because we're lazy. We just don't know any better, and we don't care enough to find out.
Most Americans have no idea what the Federal Reserve Bank is. The real genius of this deception though, is that the vast majority of us think we do.
We all know that the Fed sets interest rates and prints money, but we think the Fed is a government agency. Many of us think our currency is still backed by a gold standard. We have no idea that the value of a dollar is no longer tied to a reserve at all, or that the economy is being controlled by unelected, unappointed bankers with no accountability. And even if we did know, most of us are afraid of the numbers. It's not that we lack the basic mathematical skills to understand what they're doing, it's that the numbers involved are so huge we tell ourselves we can't possibly comprehend them. Once we do get it we often decide it can't possibly be that simple. This is an illusion, though, and our "leaders" take full advantage of it. Most of them don't understand the Fed much better than we do, and the ones that do are more than happy to have us believe it's because they are somehow smarter and wiser than the rest of us.
It's all lies.
You don't need any fancy math skills to understand the way the fed works. It really is that simple.
Sunday, May 6, 2012
Fetal Cells in Soda Pop Research? Really? Is American Business That Out of Touch?
It has come to my attention that Pepsi is being boycotted by pro life groups for using fetal cells. The press releases have been carefully crafted to give the impression that Pepsi is actually putting fetal cells in their products without actually saying so. They are wording it with a brilliant ambiguity that would have made Joseph Goebbels green with envy. They are claiming quite truthfully that Pepsi is using fetal cells "in the development of artificial sweeteners".
Needless to say this has resulted in a firestorm of hysterics.
Do not confuse what I'm about to say as approval of using fetal cells for these kinds of purposes. In fact I find it morally repugnant, but it also doesn't help the cause if what we stand for is histrionics or ignorance, so in the interest of full disclosure, Pepsi products do not contain human fetal cells. Don't run around telling people they do. This is the information age. A lie like that will not stand and it will just make all of us look stupid. It wouldn't be the first time the Pro-Life movement has tarnished the legitimacy of it's position by deliberately spreading misinformation. If this strategy worked the ends might justify the means, but it doesn't. It just makes us all look like ignorant crackpots.
Here's what's actually going on...
Pepsi is partnered with Semonyx, a company that uses fetal cells in testing. I know this might sound unlikely, but this company has probably found a way to use living cells to determine if a given compound contains certain flavor "signatures" (for lack of a better word) that these cells are "programmed" to recognize. This allows them to test literally thousands of compounds, in this case artificial sweeteners, in a very short period of time.
This is not a verified fact. The company has never outright admitted to using fetal tissue cells to test Pepsi products, but neither have they denied it and they have released a wealth of statements strongly indicating that this is the case.
Many companies use these fetal kidney cells, called HEK293 cells, for a variety of product testing purposes. They are a favorite of industrial labs because they have been virally modified. They are very easy to work with and extremely hardy. They live can live pretty much forever in a jar. Human Embryonic Kidney line 293 is between 35 and 50 years old.
None of this is any skin off my butt. I hate Pepsi, but I do find this sudden clamor for a boycott somewhat suspect. It's unclear why Pepsi has been singled out. Semonyx has ties to Coca Cola and Nestle as well.
It is also important to note while this use of human remains is clearly reprehensible, HEK293 has been used in the development of drugs for a LONG time and has contributed to countless medical advances (some of them actually meaningful) which is a much more morally ambiguous function.
Semonyx tries to justify this moral gap by claiming they are also saving lives by reducing the amount of salt and sugar in consumer foods. This is bunk. I'm sure it helps Semonyx execs sleep at night thinking they are engaged in some kind of noble struggle against diabetes or childhood obesity, but we already have a variety of artificial sweeteners and they've done nothing to reverse this trend. This is the exploitation of a dead child in the name of making money on a tastier soda pop, and there's just no moral ambiguity in that.
Needless to say this has resulted in a firestorm of hysterics.
Do not confuse what I'm about to say as approval of using fetal cells for these kinds of purposes. In fact I find it morally repugnant, but it also doesn't help the cause if what we stand for is histrionics or ignorance, so in the interest of full disclosure, Pepsi products do not contain human fetal cells. Don't run around telling people they do. This is the information age. A lie like that will not stand and it will just make all of us look stupid. It wouldn't be the first time the Pro-Life movement has tarnished the legitimacy of it's position by deliberately spreading misinformation. If this strategy worked the ends might justify the means, but it doesn't. It just makes us all look like ignorant crackpots.
Here's what's actually going on...
Pepsi is partnered with Semonyx, a company that uses fetal cells in testing. I know this might sound unlikely, but this company has probably found a way to use living cells to determine if a given compound contains certain flavor "signatures" (for lack of a better word) that these cells are "programmed" to recognize. This allows them to test literally thousands of compounds, in this case artificial sweeteners, in a very short period of time.
This is not a verified fact. The company has never outright admitted to using fetal tissue cells to test Pepsi products, but neither have they denied it and they have released a wealth of statements strongly indicating that this is the case.
Many companies use these fetal kidney cells, called HEK293 cells, for a variety of product testing purposes. They are a favorite of industrial labs because they have been virally modified. They are very easy to work with and extremely hardy. They live can live pretty much forever in a jar. Human Embryonic Kidney line 293 is between 35 and 50 years old.
None of this is any skin off my butt. I hate Pepsi, but I do find this sudden clamor for a boycott somewhat suspect. It's unclear why Pepsi has been singled out. Semonyx has ties to Coca Cola and Nestle as well.
It is also important to note while this use of human remains is clearly reprehensible, HEK293 has been used in the development of drugs for a LONG time and has contributed to countless medical advances (some of them actually meaningful) which is a much more morally ambiguous function.
Semonyx tries to justify this moral gap by claiming they are also saving lives by reducing the amount of salt and sugar in consumer foods. This is bunk. I'm sure it helps Semonyx execs sleep at night thinking they are engaged in some kind of noble struggle against diabetes or childhood obesity, but we already have a variety of artificial sweeteners and they've done nothing to reverse this trend. This is the exploitation of a dead child in the name of making money on a tastier soda pop, and there's just no moral ambiguity in that.
Sunday, January 15, 2012
What are Your 2012 Christmas Plans? (or "How to Handle the End of Days")
Every three or four years some nit-wit starts waving their arms and running through the street shouting that the sky is falling.
It never does though.
Personally I think the whole 2012 hysteria is a bunch of idiotic nonsense, but if you really believe it here's what I recommend...
It never does though.
Personally I think the whole 2012 hysteria is a bunch of idiotic nonsense, but if you really believe it here's what I recommend...
- Quit Your Job: I guess getting ahead is pretty much pointless and you don't want to spend the last year of your life working, do you?
- Liquidate All Your Assets: Remortgage your house, sell off your 401k, and cash in the kids college fund.
- Lose The Dead Weight: Unless you're blissfully happy get rid of the wife and kids. Go out wenching and don't bother with protection. You won't live long enough for it to matter.
- Party Your Ass Off: There's no point in trying to leave behind a legacy or make a difference. Just party party party! Live for the moment because tomorrow will not come at all!
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
The Root of All Evil is Evil
I was on the GoG.com general forum today when one of the posters made a declaration that I hear a lot.
The original poster was referring to a statement by the pope that gay marriage is a threat to the survival of humanity.
Another poster almost immediately agreed with an equally tired cliche, "Indeed my friend. Indeed. How many thousands of innocents have been slaughtered in the name of 'God' in the past?"
That's crap. It's a common mantra of secularists trying to hold themselves above or apart from the atrocities of their heritage.
Greed is the root of all evil, and greed is a vice shared by secular society just as prevalently as it is among the faithful. Perhaps even more so as all the major religions condemn the excesses of greed while certain pockets of secular society accept greed as a necessary engine to drive progress if not an outright virtue.
In every case of "religious" warfare, oppression, or persecution greed (money/resources/land/power/whatever) was the reason. The Crusades, the Inquisition, the witch hunts, the churches support of the slaughter of indigenous peoples around the world were all driven by greed. Religion was just the excuse. Were religion not there to blame some other excuse would have happily sufficed. The reason these abominations occur is not the presence of religion. Rather it is a failure on the part of the faithful to heed the spirit of their faith. It is nothing less than a surrender of the faithful to their secular nature and a failure, I believe, in the eyes of God.
A more fundamental universal religious standard, by the way, is simply "Thou shalt not kill". While I believe a man has the right, indeed a duty, to defend himself if threatened (a basic tenant of the Jewish faith from which Christianity was born) larger arguments of a Just War are catholic Constructs driven by philosophy, not scripture. I'm not saying that it's without merit, but it's a secular social moray that happened to come from the church rather than a true reflection of faith or scripture. While the old testament contains many examples of war in the name of God the Bible is devoid of guidance as to when a war is acceptable barring the Word of God itself. No modern war is or can be fought in the name of God. War is a product of man. Period.
Don't blame God for the weaknesses and failures of His churches. Churches are human institutions and are just as prone to greed and fear as any other. The misdeeds of a church are simply a wholly predictable sum of human frailties. The formula is the same for religious and secular atrocities alike. The flaws, the greed and fear, of men who lead combine with the cowardice and ignorance of men that follow.
Yes religious intolerance has often aggravated personal violence. Men who consider themselves Christian have beaten and murdered Jews and Muslims, but these men are defying the basic tenants of their faith. These attacks trace more to fear than to greed, but again... cowardice is not restricted to men of religious conviction. Secularists have struck out at the religious in equal measure and from the same position of fear, just as they have struck out at other minorities. Not all gay-bashers or racists are men of faith.
Larger conflicts however, invariably come down to greed. A misguided man might be convinced to send his son to war for religious reasons, but no King would pay for such an expedition without some profit to return on his investment. If you remove religion from the equation the war will be fought in the name of king and country instead. Secular society has proven over and over they are capable of atrocities the equal of any Church without religious dogma driving them on. The Holocaust springs to mind... Stalin's purges... the killing fields of Cambodia... the genocide of the Native American Nations...
Trying to lay evil on Religion is an arrogance equal to any other fundamentalist dogma. Greed and fear are basic elements of human nature that religion at least strives to condemn and control. Secular society has no moral high ground where evil is concerned.
Since we're all here I'd also like to throw my two cents in on the issue of gay marriage...
I don't see why the state has anything to do with marriage. Marriage is a religious institution and it doesn't make any sense to me that it's under the control of secular authority. It seems to me what the government calls "marriage" is really nothing more than a secular contract anyway. I don't see why they don't just call it all "civil union" and leave the marriage ceremonies where they belong... under the authority of the various churches/temples/mosques.
That said... while I'm not a big fan of gay marriage the assertion that it threatens the existence of man is just stupid. There are too many bloody people already. If anything couples that can't breed marginally improve the survivability of the species.
Of course in the interests of full disclosure I'm not a big fan of the Catholic Church either.
The original poster was referring to a statement by the pope that gay marriage is a threat to the survival of humanity.
"Religion," said one of the respondents, "Is the root of all evil."
Another poster almost immediately agreed with an equally tired cliche, "Indeed my friend. Indeed. How many thousands of innocents have been slaughtered in the name of 'God' in the past?"
That's crap. It's a common mantra of secularists trying to hold themselves above or apart from the atrocities of their heritage.
Greed is the root of all evil, and greed is a vice shared by secular society just as prevalently as it is among the faithful. Perhaps even more so as all the major religions condemn the excesses of greed while certain pockets of secular society accept greed as a necessary engine to drive progress if not an outright virtue.
In every case of "religious" warfare, oppression, or persecution greed (money/resources/land/power/whatever) was the reason. The Crusades, the Inquisition, the witch hunts, the churches support of the slaughter of indigenous peoples around the world were all driven by greed. Religion was just the excuse. Were religion not there to blame some other excuse would have happily sufficed. The reason these abominations occur is not the presence of religion. Rather it is a failure on the part of the faithful to heed the spirit of their faith. It is nothing less than a surrender of the faithful to their secular nature and a failure, I believe, in the eyes of God.
A more fundamental universal religious standard, by the way, is simply "Thou shalt not kill". While I believe a man has the right, indeed a duty, to defend himself if threatened (a basic tenant of the Jewish faith from which Christianity was born) larger arguments of a Just War are catholic Constructs driven by philosophy, not scripture. I'm not saying that it's without merit, but it's a secular social moray that happened to come from the church rather than a true reflection of faith or scripture. While the old testament contains many examples of war in the name of God the Bible is devoid of guidance as to when a war is acceptable barring the Word of God itself. No modern war is or can be fought in the name of God. War is a product of man. Period.
Don't blame God for the weaknesses and failures of His churches. Churches are human institutions and are just as prone to greed and fear as any other. The misdeeds of a church are simply a wholly predictable sum of human frailties. The formula is the same for religious and secular atrocities alike. The flaws, the greed and fear, of men who lead combine with the cowardice and ignorance of men that follow.
Yes religious intolerance has often aggravated personal violence. Men who consider themselves Christian have beaten and murdered Jews and Muslims, but these men are defying the basic tenants of their faith. These attacks trace more to fear than to greed, but again... cowardice is not restricted to men of religious conviction. Secularists have struck out at the religious in equal measure and from the same position of fear, just as they have struck out at other minorities. Not all gay-bashers or racists are men of faith.
Larger conflicts however, invariably come down to greed. A misguided man might be convinced to send his son to war for religious reasons, but no King would pay for such an expedition without some profit to return on his investment. If you remove religion from the equation the war will be fought in the name of king and country instead. Secular society has proven over and over they are capable of atrocities the equal of any Church without religious dogma driving them on. The Holocaust springs to mind... Stalin's purges... the killing fields of Cambodia... the genocide of the Native American Nations...
Trying to lay evil on Religion is an arrogance equal to any other fundamentalist dogma. Greed and fear are basic elements of human nature that religion at least strives to condemn and control. Secular society has no moral high ground where evil is concerned.
Since we're all here I'd also like to throw my two cents in on the issue of gay marriage...
I don't see why the state has anything to do with marriage. Marriage is a religious institution and it doesn't make any sense to me that it's under the control of secular authority. It seems to me what the government calls "marriage" is really nothing more than a secular contract anyway. I don't see why they don't just call it all "civil union" and leave the marriage ceremonies where they belong... under the authority of the various churches/temples/mosques.
That said... while I'm not a big fan of gay marriage the assertion that it threatens the existence of man is just stupid. There are too many bloody people already. If anything couples that can't breed marginally improve the survivability of the species.
Of course in the interests of full disclosure I'm not a big fan of the Catholic Church either.
Sunday, September 4, 2011
RPGs Are NOT Less Relevant... But Bioware Is
BioWare co-founder Greg Zeschuk says RPGs are becoming "less relevant" as a genre to the current state of videogaming. I say RPGs are not becoming less relevant to the game industry. Bioware, however, has become less relevant to RPGs.
EA is simply not capable of producing good RPGs. Their corporate culture forbids it. EA is one of those companies that thinks of customers as the enemy. All of EAs games are based on the premise that gamers are mouth breathing morons. That's their audience. It's a huge audience and they serve it well. They make shooters, racing games, and sports games. They don't develop games, they just repackage the same games over and over again and the drooling masses buy them. Most people are, after all, idiots. If you want to sell the maximum number of units of anything you need to cater to idiots.
Here's the simple truth that EA just doesn't get...
Idiots don't play RPGs.
RPG players aren't looking for a casual experience. RPG players are looking for a smart, immersive experience. RPGs are ingrained as part of geek culture, so RPG players tend to understand much more about computers and the technical side of game development than most mainstream game consumers. To make things worse RPG players tend to be genuinely creative and imaginative. This means that the cheap tricks that EA uses to cut corners on development costs are just not going go unappreciated by the RPG crowd. It also means that RPGs will never translate to the mass market the way EA wants it to. They make a ton of money selling games to "the lowest common denominator".
It's not complicated. EA sees this thriving niche market and they see dollar signs. They want a piece of that pie. They buy the best RPG developer in the industry, and then EA groupthink takes over...
"I know," says some EA exec that knows next to nothing about gaming and refers to games using buzz words like "titles" and "product".
"We can broaden the appeal of the genre," he continues, "by making it more accessible (ie dumbing it down), and we can apply the same techniques to RPGs that we've learned producing shooters (racing games, sports games, whatever) to cut production costs. Sure, we may loose a few RPG snobs, but the mass market will gobble it up!
After all, it worked with shooters. It worked with racing games. It worked with our sports titles. It'll work with RPGs too, right? After all, a game is a game.
Then when DA2 falls flat on it's face the simple reason STILL evades them. They announce that the sales are flat because RPGs are "less relevant".
That's a steaming pile of bovine dookie. Us gamers haven't changed. You developers did, and we don't want dumbed down copy/paste games so we stopped buying them.
The reason EA's RPGs are falling flat is because they're trying to broaden their market at the expense of the existing fan base. They are trying to move RPGs out of it's established niche and into the mass market.
And what happened? Where did all these new customers go? Why didn't the mass market embrace the exciting new genre they've been given?
Well, the mass market is composed primarily of idiots, and idiots don't play RPGs!
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Blame the Black Guy? REALLY?
Is that really all you've got?
I've had it up to my eyeballs with faux conservatives blaming Barack Obama for the economy.
Make no mistake about it. The mess we're in isn't the current administrations fault. It was Republicans who cut taxes and didn't have the political cajones to pay for their tax cuts by reducing spending. They just borrowed the money to make up the shortfalls.
And these people call themselves conservatives? FOR SHAME! There's nothing conservative about borrowing money.
The deficit doubled under Reagan and tripled under Bush. The Republican party replaced democratic "tax and spend" economic policy with a new "borrow and spend" model promising that in the long run this would lead to a golden age of prosperity that would catapult the economy forward by freeing up money for the private sector to invest. This money, they promised, would trickle down and make the whole country more prosperous.
There's also nothing conservative, by the way, about implementing major economic policies based on unproven, untested economic predictions. Frankly it's unwise to base economic policies based on proven and widely accepted economic projections. Economic projections can change when the wind blows. Real conservatives base their economic policies based on what is, not what should be or might be ten years down the road. The conservative solution to our economic woes is to raise taxes AND cut spending sufficiently to begin paying down our debt. That's right... not just balance the budget, actually start paying off the debt. And do it NOW. THIS budget session. Don't just pass some lame-ass law telling someone else THEY have to do it five or ten years down the road. YOU DO IT. NOW.
Needless to say "trickle down economics" has been a less then stellar success. The land of milk and honey we were promised never materialized. Instead what has happened is the the wealthiest people in the country have hoarded away a fortune and the gap between the rich and poor is wider than it's ever been before.
Anyway I digress... I was saying that the recession was, in fact, a REPUBLICAN blunder and talking about how our debt skyrocketed on the watch of these supposedly conservative administrations.
Then, to add injury to... well, injury... we were robbed blind right under the noses of the last Republican administrations political sycophants in the SEC. The recently deregulated financial services industry, the very people who benefited most from these lopsided policies, diddled away trillions by selling mortgages to people they KNEW couldn't afford them. But they didn't care, because as long as the loans lasted through the quarter (at a significantly reduced interest rate, nod nod wink wink) they got their bonuses. The economy was torpedoed under the Republican's watch, and it was so badly damaged that it's still struggling to recover.
Now... If you honestly believe that the economic devastation that these criminals wrought on our economy could really be fixed in just two years I suggest you stop reading right now because I'm about to say something you're going to find very insulting. Please stop voting. You're just too stupid. It took the republicans decades to bury the economy. Did you really think one person was going to swoop in and fix it in two years?
And what do the Republicans have to offer NOW?
They're blaming the black guy! They honestly expect me to believe that the president is wielding some mythical blank check, waving it around in a pork barrel frenzy and spewing forth federal money like water from a hose and that this is what's dragging down the economy.
And all over the country people are buying it! It seems impossible. The only explanation I can think of is that people are believing this crap because they want to believe it. It looks to me like the Republicans have decided to tap white America's latent racism rather than accept responsibility for their role in our predicament and adjust their policies to reflect that maybe they've made some mistakes in the past. If you can offer me some other explanation I'd love to hear it.
Be warned though, Urk's Outpost is a BS Free Zone.
The Republicans are still trying to sell the same magical thinking they've been pawning off on the illiterate masses for a generation. "Don't worry," they say, "as long as we don't raise taxes in the long run it will lead to a golden age of prosperity that will catapult the economy forward by freeing up money for the private sector to invest. Of course in the meantime we'll need to cut spending by breaking our agreement with the working class and screwing them out of the Social Security payments they've been FORCED to make their entire lives. And we'll have to neglect a few old people to death by cutting medicaid and medicare. But don't worry! Because in the end these investments will trickle down and make the whole country more prosperous."
Uh... No wait... We're not supposed to phrase it that way any more. Now we're supposed to say, "Don't worry, because in the end these investments will CREATE JOBS and make the whole country more prosperous".
Voodoo f&*^%*g economics. It's no more true now than it was then. It's the same old song that got us into this mess, but now instead of wanting to borrow the money, they want to take it out of the hides of the working class, the elderly, and the poor.
I've had it up to my eyeballs with faux conservatives blaming Barack Obama for the economy.
Make no mistake about it. The mess we're in isn't the current administrations fault. It was Republicans who cut taxes and didn't have the political cajones to pay for their tax cuts by reducing spending. They just borrowed the money to make up the shortfalls.
And these people call themselves conservatives? FOR SHAME! There's nothing conservative about borrowing money.
The deficit doubled under Reagan and tripled under Bush. The Republican party replaced democratic "tax and spend" economic policy with a new "borrow and spend" model promising that in the long run this would lead to a golden age of prosperity that would catapult the economy forward by freeing up money for the private sector to invest. This money, they promised, would trickle down and make the whole country more prosperous.
There's also nothing conservative, by the way, about implementing major economic policies based on unproven, untested economic predictions. Frankly it's unwise to base economic policies based on proven and widely accepted economic projections. Economic projections can change when the wind blows. Real conservatives base their economic policies based on what is, not what should be or might be ten years down the road. The conservative solution to our economic woes is to raise taxes AND cut spending sufficiently to begin paying down our debt. That's right... not just balance the budget, actually start paying off the debt. And do it NOW. THIS budget session. Don't just pass some lame-ass law telling someone else THEY have to do it five or ten years down the road. YOU DO IT. NOW.
Needless to say "trickle down economics" has been a less then stellar success. The land of milk and honey we were promised never materialized. Instead what has happened is the the wealthiest people in the country have hoarded away a fortune and the gap between the rich and poor is wider than it's ever been before.
Anyway I digress... I was saying that the recession was, in fact, a REPUBLICAN blunder and talking about how our debt skyrocketed on the watch of these supposedly conservative administrations.
Then, to add injury to... well, injury... we were robbed blind right under the noses of the last Republican administrations political sycophants in the SEC. The recently deregulated financial services industry, the very people who benefited most from these lopsided policies, diddled away trillions by selling mortgages to people they KNEW couldn't afford them. But they didn't care, because as long as the loans lasted through the quarter (at a significantly reduced interest rate, nod nod wink wink) they got their bonuses. The economy was torpedoed under the Republican's watch, and it was so badly damaged that it's still struggling to recover.
Now... If you honestly believe that the economic devastation that these criminals wrought on our economy could really be fixed in just two years I suggest you stop reading right now because I'm about to say something you're going to find very insulting. Please stop voting. You're just too stupid. It took the republicans decades to bury the economy. Did you really think one person was going to swoop in and fix it in two years?
And what do the Republicans have to offer NOW?
They're blaming the black guy! They honestly expect me to believe that the president is wielding some mythical blank check, waving it around in a pork barrel frenzy and spewing forth federal money like water from a hose and that this is what's dragging down the economy.
And all over the country people are buying it! It seems impossible. The only explanation I can think of is that people are believing this crap because they want to believe it. It looks to me like the Republicans have decided to tap white America's latent racism rather than accept responsibility for their role in our predicament and adjust their policies to reflect that maybe they've made some mistakes in the past. If you can offer me some other explanation I'd love to hear it.
Be warned though, Urk's Outpost is a BS Free Zone.
The Republicans are still trying to sell the same magical thinking they've been pawning off on the illiterate masses for a generation. "Don't worry," they say, "as long as we don't raise taxes in the long run it will lead to a golden age of prosperity that will catapult the economy forward by freeing up money for the private sector to invest. Of course in the meantime we'll need to cut spending by breaking our agreement with the working class and screwing them out of the Social Security payments they've been FORCED to make their entire lives. And we'll have to neglect a few old people to death by cutting medicaid and medicare. But don't worry! Because in the end these investments will trickle down and make the whole country more prosperous."
Uh... No wait... We're not supposed to phrase it that way any more. Now we're supposed to say, "Don't worry, because in the end these investments will CREATE JOBS and make the whole country more prosperous".
Voodoo f&*^%*g economics. It's no more true now than it was then. It's the same old song that got us into this mess, but now instead of wanting to borrow the money, they want to take it out of the hides of the working class, the elderly, and the poor.
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