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Is more better? - 10/15/2013 1:35:05 AM   
BenevolentM


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Status: offline 		Is more better?

In

An Attempt to Understand the Science Behind Global Warming
http://www.collarchat.com/m_4554701/tm.htm

I uncovered something interesting. The relationship is logarithmic, but isn't this true for a lot of things? Is more carbon dioxide better? It could be if the planet would otherwise enter an ice age.

What I am talking about here is the objection to paying taxes. The benefits one derives from wealth decreases as you become increasingly wealthy. What initially could make an enormous difference in your life no longer does. When things are sparse a kind word can be uplifting. How can little things mean so much unless they are things that have been left unattended to? Little things are things easily forgotten.

If you don't like government intrusion who made it intrusive in the first place? It is the desire to get the job done on the cheap and the means to do it. Isn't that what violence is all about? It is getting things done on the cheap. What happens to the poor? The poor are forced to resolve differences on the cheap. Pulling a trigger for example can be easy like putting the U.S. government into default. Fixing the mess it can create may not as easy to do. Government is forced to do things on the cheap when it is hamstrung. It gets violent.

Let's take the objection to a tax on tanning salons. Would the government be doing any different from what an insurance company does? I have wondered for some time how much we pay in taxes if you consider having to pay for insurance a tax. Can a distinction be made between government and an insurance company? They both regulate you. They both tell you how you are to run your business.

If government is Robin Hood perhaps it is doing you a favor. Who needs a boss? The government as well as the insurance companies want to be your boss. In a state of nature are people good or not so good? Given that they are not so good though perhaps not intrinsically so evil begets evil. If government is evil, that evil is one of your creation. It exists because it is needed. Why is it needed? Because people suck and need someone to tell them what to do, what to think, and how much they are entitled to.
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RE: Is more better? - 10/15/2013 2:02:20 AM   
BenevolentM


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quote:

ORIGINAL: MrRodgers

The two times the economy steered into the ditch (Great Depression and Great Recession) were during Republican, laissez faire administrations


Why would anybody vote republican ?
http://www.collarchat.com/m_4565410/tm.htm

That is my understanding as well. Prior to the Great Depression in the 30s we had the roaring 20s.

Warren G. Harding
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_G._Harding
1921 to 1923 Republican

Calvin Coolidge
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvin_Coolidge
1923 to 1929 Republican

Herbert Hoover
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Hoover
1929 to 1933 Republican

quote:


The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in 1930 and lasted until the late 1930s or middle 1940s.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression

The Republicans now like then really knew how to run things. They knew how to run the country into the ground.

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RE: Is more better? - 10/15/2013 2:14:05 AM   
BenevolentM


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Status: offline 		A little while back I was corresponding with someone concerning the economic formulas such as how GDP is computed. Based on my training there were a few things to the extent that these formulas are representative of reality that money must travel in wide circles. When it fails to do so the result is ill health and inaccurate economic indicators.

Today if the far right were to accuse former President Nixon a pinko I would not be surprised. They are that far right as in stage right.

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RE: Is more better? - 10/15/2013 2:25:21 AM   
BenevolentM


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quote:

ORIGINAL: BenevolentM

... to the extent that these formulas are representative of reality ...


It is clear that these formulas used by the economists are first albeit gross approximations. Though they are gross approximations they are of the sort that are strategic and get the closest to the truth with the least effort. If you struggle against what these formulas say you are fighting an uphill battle. What these gross approximations say believe it or not is that sharing wealth is healthy.

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RE: Is more better? - 10/15/2013 2:33:37 AM   
BenevolentM


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Status: offline 		Taxes are good for the economy because it redistributes wealth. It keeps the money moving in wide circles from the wealthy to the poor and back up to the wealthy.

When you loan someone money, are you really giving them anything? Is the money moving or is it accumulating in a tub that is backed up?

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RE: Is more better? - 10/15/2013 2:35:44 AM   
BenevolentM


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Status: offline 		In other words, money must circulate in the economy much as blood does in the body.

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RE: Is more better? - 10/15/2013 2:41:07 AM   
BenevolentM


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Status: offline 		As I explained earlier, when money is not circulating it causes the numbers that you rely on to tell you how healthy the economy is to be at variance with reality. You lent people money and the books seem to indicate that you have done a good job and you feel entitled to the money you allegedly earned. What you did was delude yourself and everyone around you.

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RE: Is more better? - 10/15/2013 3:02:01 AM   
BenevolentM


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quote:

ORIGINAL: BenevolentM

It could be if the planet would otherwise enter an ice age.


Value is a dependent variable of need. If the carbon dioxide satisfies a need, then more is better, but it if fails to satisfy a need more need not be better.

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RE: Is more better? - 10/15/2013 3:13:24 AM   
BenevolentM


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Status: offline 		As global warming is concerned they are right to express concern, but do not have the right to be dogmatic. They have taken the high ground, but having taken the high ground though it often helps, it need not imply that you have won. What all the PhDs are saying it turns out is remarkably simplistic. Wrap the planet in a blanket and it will get warmer. That is the crux of their argument.

What is the crux of the Republican argument? Rely on the goodness of human nature.

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RE: Is more better? - 10/15/2013 3:20:13 AM   
BenevolentM


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Status: offline 		What the Republicans cannot conceive of is the idea that something evil needs to find a home in their back yard.

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RE: Is more better? - 10/15/2013 3:28:58 AM   
BenevolentM


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Status: offline 		It came because it was summoned.

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RE: Is more better? - 10/15/2013 3:30:05 AM   
BenevolentM


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Status: offline 		You failed to be generous.

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RE: Is more better? - 10/15/2013 5:01:20 AM   
Apocalypso


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quote:

ORIGINAL: BenevolentM
If government is Robin Hood perhaps it is doing you a favor. Who needs a boss? The government as well as the insurance companies want to be your boss. In a state of nature are people good or not so good? Given that they are not so good though perhaps not intrinsically so evil begets evil. If government is evil, that evil is one of your creation. It exists because it is needed. Why is it needed? Because people suck and need someone to tell them what to do, what to think, and how much they are entitled to.

If people suck too much to have control over their own destinies, how can they be trusted to have power over others?

_____________________________

If you're going to quote from the Book of Revelation,
Don't keep calling it the "Book of Revelations",
There's no "s", it's the Book of Revelation,
As revealed to Saint John the Divine.

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RE: Is more better? - 10/15/2013 5:12:43 AM   
Zonie63


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quote:

ORIGINAL: BenevolentM
Today if the far right were to accuse former President Nixon a pinko I would not be surprised. They are that far right as in stage right.


I would agree with this. Nixon was a Keynesian, but the Reagan Robots zealously rejected Keynesianism in favor of Milton Friedman's Chicago School of Mobster Economics.

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RE: Is more better? - 10/15/2013 7:38:15 AM   
DesideriScuri


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quote:

ORIGINAL: BenevolentM
If government is Robin Hood perhaps it is doing you a favor. Who needs a boss? The government as well as the insurance companies want to be your boss. In a state of nature are people good or not so good? Given that they are not so good though perhaps not intrinsically so evil begets evil. If government is evil, that evil is one of your creation. It exists because it is needed. Why is it needed? Because people suck and need someone to tell them what to do, what to think, and how much they are entitled to.


Robin Hood Myth




_____________________________

What I support:

  • A Conservative interpretation of the US Constitution
  • Personal Responsibility
  • Help for the truly needy
  • Limited Government
  • Consumption Tax (non-profit charities and food exempt)

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RE: Is more better? - 10/15/2013 9:49:11 AM   
BenevolentM


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quote:

ORIGINAL: Apocalypso

quote:

ORIGINAL: BenevolentM
If government is Robin Hood perhaps it is doing you a favor. Who needs a boss? The government as well as the insurance companies want to be your boss. In a state of nature are people good or not so good? Given that they are not so good though perhaps not intrinsically so evil begets evil. If government is evil, that evil is one of your creation. It exists because it is needed. Why is it needed? Because people suck and need someone to tell them what to do, what to think, and how much they are entitled to.

If people suck too much to have control over their own destinies, how can they be trusted to have power over others?


Naturally, it is a problem, but in practical terms this is a limiting factor, but not a show stopper. We are often called to juggle seemingly contradictory things. It is just the way things are. The Republicans have legitimate cause for concern, but you don't murder your daughter because you are concerned that she wants to go to the prom.

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RE: Is more better? - 10/15/2013 10:03:25 AM   
BenevolentM


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quote:

ORIGINAL: Zonie63

quote:

ORIGINAL: BenevolentM
Today if the far right were to accuse former President Nixon a pinko I would not be surprised. They are that far right as in stage right.


I would agree with this. Nixon was a Keynesian, but the Reagan Robots zealously rejected Keynesianism in favor of Milton Friedman's Chicago School of Mobster Economics.


You know what I'm talking about then. Keynes was never regarded to be a communist even at the height of the cold war. But today we have conservatives who would accuse John Maynard Keynes of being a socialist commie. The Republicans may have gotten a few things right along the road to glory. Unfortunately, they were given a blank check and they wrote it to the sum of so many trillions of dollars and no one in authority questioned it. Not even the Democrats complained.

What the Chicago School of Economics ignored was the fundamental economic equations so say I. The equations clearly show that in times of economic ill health the economic indicators are inaccurate and cannot be relied upon. What the Chicago school did was say, hey look at the numbers. We are filthy rich! We have got to be doing something right. It is not that simple as that unfortunately. They deluded themselves into believing that they had discovered the promised land and the means to achieve true freedom.

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RE: Is more better? - 10/15/2013 10:30:22 AM   
BenevolentM


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quote:

ORIGINAL: DesideriScuri

quote:

ORIGINAL: BenevolentM
If government is Robin Hood perhaps it is doing you a favor. Who needs a boss? The government as well as the insurance companies want to be your boss. In a state of nature are people good or not so good? Given that they are not so good though perhaps not intrinsically so evil begets evil. If government is evil, that evil is one of your creation. It exists because it is needed. Why is it needed? Because people suck and need someone to tell them what to do, what to think, and how much they are entitled to.


Robin Hood Myth


It seems likely to me that what Milton Friedman is saying in the Robin Hood Myth video is accurate. I got bored with the video and made it only half way through it, though. I don't know what he said in the later half. But assuming that the first half is representative of the second half, he is likely right, but my response is, so what? As I pointed out earlier these economic equations are a strategic gross first approximation of the underlying reality. The very poor unfortunately tend to be unproductive for reasons that are intrinsic and so the money cannot spout from the rich like a fountain to rain down upon the poor strictly speaking. It must do so approximately, however. His conclusions unfortunately are wrong though much of his logic is correct. It is not as nefarious as he claims. The equations are a surprisingly good model even though they are obvious over simplifications. He claims that he has observed a systemic deviation from the standard model, but everyone knows that the standard model is flawed and wealth should not flow directly to the poor. The standard model is a convenient shorthand.

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RE: Is more better? - 10/15/2013 10:55:23 AM   
BenevolentM


Posts: 3394
Joined: 11/15/2006
Status: offline 		In times of economic ill health wealth is not circulating as it should. Hence, interventions are in order. The head is swollen and full of blood that needs to be redistributed to the rest of the body. The brain, however, is sick and doesn't see it this way.

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RE: Is more better? - 10/15/2013 11:00:54 AM   
mnottertail


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Status: offline 		well, my head is swollen with blood, and I am looking to get it sucked out of the economy, as it were.

_____________________________

Have they not divided the prey; to every man a damsel or two? Judges 5:30


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