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RE: Why is it everyone knows the solution to economic p... - 11/30/2008 1:04:10 AM   
Truthiness


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quote:

ORIGINAL: Lordandmaster

Well that's very simple.  We live in a democracy. 


No, we don't live in a democracy.  We live in a Republic.  Subtle but important difference.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y43a6BsNQb4 is something a LOT of people here need to watch I think...many would find it quite educational.

Edit: Thought I'd point out a significant quote from that link...

"...democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property, and in general have been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths."

- James Madison  (The Father of the Constitution)

< Message edited by Truthiness -- 11/30/2008 1:16:50 AM >

(in reply to Lordandmaster)
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RE: Why is it everyone knows the solution to economic p... - 11/30/2008 1:07:27 AM   
Lordandmaster


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Status: offline 		I JUST explained why everyone seems to have misunderstood this point.  Youtube isn't going to educate me.

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RE: Why is it everyone knows the solution to economic p... - 11/30/2008 1:15:16 AM   
Truthiness


Posts: 251
Joined: 11/27/2008
Status: offline 		"...democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property, and in general have been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths."

- James Madison  (The Father of the Constitution)

There's a reason why "Democracy" does not appear in either the Declaration of Independance, the Constition, or in any of the 50 state constitutions.



Simple fact is, your point is wrong.

< Message edited by Truthiness -- 11/30/2008 1:17:43 AM >

(in reply to Lordandmaster)
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RE: Why is it everyone knows the solution to economic p... - 11/30/2008 1:17:31 AM   
Lordandmaster


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Status: offline 		Ummm, you do realize that meaning is conventional, right?  It's not as though God on High handed down a word called "democracy" with a fixed meaning for all time.

What Madison was decrying as "pure democracy" (in the very document I cited--did you even read my post?) is not what we ordinarily mean by "democracy" today.  Today we call that "mob rule" or "majority rule."

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RE: Why is it everyone knows the solution to economic p... - 11/30/2008 1:19:24 AM   
Truthiness


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Status: offline 		Yes I did.  And you're flat out wrong, sorry.   Which is why I thought I'd actually write the quote, and not your interpretation of it.

(in reply to Lordandmaster)
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RE: Why is it everyone knows the solution to economic p... - 11/30/2008 1:25:17 AM   
Lordandmaster


Posts: 10943
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Status: offline 		Yes, I know the quote; you didn't need to write it out twice.

Anyway, you can cling to the formula that a republic is not a democracy if it makes you feel good.  We're not arguing about anything real.  We're arguing about words.  What exactly am I "flat out wrong" about?  A republic is not mob rule or majority rule.  Very good.  We can move on to Poli. Sci. 102 now.

And now I have a quote for you:

quote:

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.


Who ordained and established the Constitution?

We the people.

< Message edited by Lordandmaster -- 11/30/2008 1:26:05 AM >

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RE: Why is it everyone knows the solution to economic p... - 11/30/2008 1:26:18 AM   
Truthiness


Posts: 251
Joined: 11/27/2008
Status: offline 		"We are a Republican Government.  Real liberty is never found in despotism or in the extremes of democracy."  - Alexander Hamiltion

Democracy never lasts long.  It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself." - Samual Adams

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RE: Why is it everyone knows the solution to economic p... - 11/30/2008 1:27:11 AM   
Lordandmaster


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Status: offline 		Laughing...OK, keep posting quotes from your YouTube clip.  Yay I'm convinced now!

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RE: Why is it everyone knows the solution to economic p... - 11/30/2008 1:29:24 AM   
Truthiness


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Status: offline 		Well just because you want to define words differently than the people who founded the country, doesn't mean we should abandon their meaning and go with yours, lol.

Of course, you might have noticed I'm quoting the founding fathers, not youtube. ;)

< Message edited by Truthiness -- 11/30/2008 1:30:32 AM >

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RE: Why is it everyone knows the solution to economic p... - 11/30/2008 1:33:30 AM   
Lordandmaster


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Status: offline 		Right, and could you identify the original source of any one of those quotes before you heard them on YouTube?  I'll start: the one from Madison comes from Federalist #10.  Your turn.

But...I'm done with this absolutely sterile discussion.  The point is that the people have voted and have declared that they're pissed off about outsourcing jobs--whether they're in a democracy or a republic.

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RE: Why is it everyone knows the solution to economic p... - 11/30/2008 1:37:59 AM   
Truthiness


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Joined: 11/27/2008
Status: offline 		Okay how about something not from the youtube clip?

"It had been observed that a pure democracy if it were practicable would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved that no position is more false than this. The ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated never possessed one good feature of government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity."
 
- Alexander Hamilton, June 21, 1788 in a speech.
 
or "to provide a cure for the evils under which the United States labored; that in tracing these evils to their origin every man had found it in the turbulence and trials of democracy...."  - Edmond Randolph, to the Constitutional Convention
 

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RE: Why is it everyone knows the solution to economic p... - 11/30/2008 2:08:33 AM   
Musicmystery


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Status: offline 		Over and over and over again, thread after thread, somebody's gotta make the point that we live in a republic, not a true democracy. We all know that, we've known it for years, its never relevant to the discussion, beyond "Look at me! I've something to say!"

The thread is "Why is it everyone knows the solution to economic problems?" Perhaps it should be why everyone knows everything, just ask them. Or why everyone's got an opinion on everything, prepared to argue it as fact with shaky support at best. And indeed, part of the answer may be getting their news from blogs and youtube.

< Message edited by Musicmystery -- 11/30/2008 2:10:09 AM >

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RE: Why is it everyone knows the solution to economic p... - 11/30/2008 3:23:47 AM   
Truthiness


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quote:

ORIGINAL: Musicmystery

Over and over and over again, thread after thread, somebody's gotta make the point that we live in a republic, not a true democracy.


Yet that doesn't stop people from showing that they don't know it with inaccurate statements such as "We live in a democracy" heh.

(in reply to Musicmystery)
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RE: Why is it everyone knows the solution to economic p... - 11/30/2008 3:29:36 AM   
Musicmystery


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Status: offline 		If you want to nit-pick.

Apparently, few of our presidents realize this either. Just this week, Bush referred to the U.S. as "the oldest democracy."

Still a smokescreen, still not the point, still a shadow of an "argument."

Now that you've established that the U.S. is a republic---you still leave nothing of substance established, and certainly nothing germane to the thread(s).

< Message edited by Musicmystery -- 11/30/2008 3:36:09 AM >

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RE: Why is it everyone knows the solution to economic p... - 11/30/2008 3:37:32 AM   
Truthiness


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quote:

ORIGINAL: Musicmystery

If you want to nit-pick.

Apparently, few of our presidents realize this either. Just this week, Bush referred to the U.S. as "the oldest democracy."


Bush was equally as wrong then. 

And it's not as if your nit-picking the nit-picking is adding anything to the thread either.

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RE: Why is it everyone knows the solution to economic p... - 11/30/2008 4:11:20 AM   
Musicmystery


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Status: offline 		So what IS your point, relevant to the thread?

(in reply to Truthiness)
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RE: Why is it everyone knows the solution to economic p... - 11/30/2008 4:59:46 AM   
Truthiness


Posts: 251
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Status: offline 		Does it matter?  If in a hypthetical discussion of racing, if someone wonders when a car will break the speed of sound at 600mph, it's worth it to correct them on the speed of sound even though it has little to do with cars.

Likewise, preventing someone from spreading misinformation about what system of government we have seemed prudent wether or not it's related to our economic trouble.

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RE: Why is it everyone knows the solution to economic p... - 11/30/2008 7:02:42 AM   
MmeGigs


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quote:

ORIGINAL: celticlord2112
quote:

How about living wages and reasonable prices?

Both of these are fictional and have no basis or bearing on economic reality.


I don't think that you have much of an understanding of economic reality.  You appear to be rather long on theory and short on practicality.  Seems to me that the very epicenter of economic reality is reasonable prices - figuring out what it costs to produce what you're selling and charging an amount that will cover your costs, provide a profit, and that customers will be willing to pay.  How is that "fictional"?  Isn't that what the market is all about? 

The living wage - the amount of money it costs a person to pay for basic necessities - is pretty much central to economic reality.  Right now we're using all kinds of government supports to achieve it for most of our workforce.  That's what the Earned Income Credit and assistance programs for working people are all about.  We tend to look at these things as handouts to poor folks, but they're actually indirect subsidies to business, allowing them to continue to pay less than the actual cost of labor. 

quote:

A free-market (i.e., working/functional) economic system


You forgot a key descriptor there - sustainable.  In order for any economic system to be considered successful it has to be working and functional over the long term.  Keeping prices low by paying your workforce less than a living wage is not sustainable.  As you said in a post some threads ago, "labor" is (are?) human beings.  People who don't have enough money to pay for food, shelter, clothes, transportation to and from work and such, or who have to work two or three jobs in order to get enough money are not going to be an efficient and productive work force.  They're also not going to be very effective consumers. 

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RE: Why is it everyone knows the solution to economic p... - 11/30/2008 9:15:41 AM   
celticlord2112


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quote:


The living wage - the amount of money it costs a person to pay for basic necessities - is pretty much central to economic reality.

What are the basic necessities?  Cable TV?  Nintendo?

Or do you mean just food, clothing, and shelter?  How much of each is the "basic necessity"?  If someone is making enough to eat hot dogs and canned beans, pay for an efficiency apartment, do a load of laundry at the laundromat every week, and still have enough for bus fare to/from work, does that constitute a "living" wage?

If so, you just lowered the poverty line in most parts of this country.


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RE: Why is it everyone knows the solution to economic p... - 11/30/2008 9:22:48 AM   
celticlord2112


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quote:

Seems to me that the very epicenter of economic reality is reasonable prices

That's where you're wrong.  The epicenter of economic reality is charging whatever the market will bear--why do you think the price of gas at the pump was skyrocketing this past summer?  (Or did you consider $4 per gallon of gas a "reasonable" price as well? Personally, I hated it)

I charge my clients the highest rate I can, and I actively look for ways to push that rate higher.  As I want to sustain my business, I take care to ensure that my clients perceive good value for the money they pay me, but "reasonable" to me is one cent below where my clients start sqawking, complaining, and looking for someone else to do the work, while "reasonable" to my clients is one cent above where I am unwilling to do the work and force them to find someone else.

My rate is "reasonable" because I and my clients both agree to the rate--and for no other reason.  Which makes is not a "reasonable price", merely the agreed-upon price.

That is economics in the real world.


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