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vincentML -> RE: Is it over for the GOP? (10/15/2016 1:57:05 PM)
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Do you read the 'Dilbert' comic strip? The creator of the strip, Scott Adams, believes Trump is going to win "in a landslide," because he's a "Master Persuader."
It is pretty apparent that Trump has created an inside/outside group that attracts a certain demographic. We against the establishment. That is the essence of populism, isn't it? Obama did the same with "yes, we can."It is all smoke and mirrors, branding, image making, association, etc. The advertising industry did not spend all that sponsor money for nought. It is advertising when a product is being sold; it is propaganda, or the engineering of consent when a war or an ideology is being sold.
Democratic society is actually only a loose aggregate of constituent groups...To influence the public, the engineer of consent works with and through group leaders and opinion moulders on every level.
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You're going to keep going on without acknowledging there are non-white people who support the GOP?
I will acknowledge it but they are an insignificant quantity and purposefully so due to election strategies employed by the GOP. Will you continue to believe it is not so?
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How would it not be sustainable?!? The Fed is one of the worst ills bestowed on this Country by our Government. The Fed is complicit (not necessarily even intentionally) almost every single one of our recessions. The very organization that was supposed to give us a smoother economy is actually part of the reason it's been a roller coaster. We don't need The Fed to increase the money supply.
On this we agree, but let's not forget there were boom/bust cycles before 1913. JP Morgan and his merry men devised a scheme to make the Federal Government the "lender of last resort."
We will need growth in the money supply to accommodate a growing population and a growing economy. Otherwise, money will become "relatively" scarce and inflationary, won’t it? But, when the Fed lowers interest rates to zero and prints money (qualitative easing) to support banks and corporations, labor and retirees get into trouble.
The Fed dropped the discount rate precipitously in the last half of 2007 before the recession and has held them at near zero ever since. The flood of money has kept the economy from falling into a deep recession perhaps but much of it has been sucked up into nonproductive wealth (stock prices) Again, jmo. People who have a mortgage above the water line have been able to refinance but people wishing to retire are deprived of a source of bond and CD income unless they take on greater risk, which is a problem if you are past your working years.
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[Why do we have trade imbalances? Perhaps that's because we have consumption imbalances? Nah, that couldn't be it!]
A contrary opinion about trade imbalances:
How can the world’s most prosperous economy also be its most sputtering? It can’t, and it isn’t. What the measure of balance of trade fails to take into account is that every export, and every import, is exchanged for something with an exact dollar value: dollars!
That sounds facile, but it isn’t. A large trade deficit means that that nation’s citizens are so wealthy that they can afford to purchase what other nations have to offer. In that respect, it isn’t necessarily desirable nor even fair to compare exports to imports, let alone to consider them to be two sides of the same coin. Besides, as large as American imports are, the United States still exports more than any country, except China. The world wants what we’re selling. And vice-versa. This is something to be commended, not criticized. A trade deficit merely means that as much of our homemade stuff that other countries want, we want even more of theirs.
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Since 1913, our money supply has grown to the point where the value of our current dollar is but a small fraction of the value of the 1913 dollar.
But don't you ignore that growth in the price of goods and services has kept pace? Can you not buy a suit or a house with the same percentage of income today as then?
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What I think is the important part is that The Fed is largely uncontrolled, unchecked, and unsupervised by the Federal Government. I do believe that the Federal Government has been remiss in their duties to the American People in this respect.
Here we have a conundrum. There was no central bank in 1907 when a great bank panic occurred. (This lead to the banker meeting on Jekyll Island in 1913) Liquidity dried up due to actions of banks involved in a stock scheme. So, now we have a central bank of academicians, technicians and bankers who manipulate the money supply. A centralized money supply is a top down device. Granted it is not a centralized economy but neither is the money supply subject to market forces. The bankers and academicians may not be accountable. But, I would not wish to trust the politicians in Congress. I have no answer on this.
Again, disagreeing with your original point, political and economic ideologies may look good on paper but they only turn into clusterfucks in real life.
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