Published Monday 2/22/10 at Newsmax.com
*America’s #1 Conservative Web Site
By: Wayne Allyn Root
We are not recovering from a recession. The spin, propaganda, and wishful thinking from Obama, Congress and the Fed are wearing thin on the average American. There may be a recovery for big business, due to stimulus and bailouts, but not Main Street, where the average worker and the small business owner live.
What we need is a state of the union for small business owners. I am a small businessman. My friends are almost all small business owners. We all believe that Obama’s prescription for saving the American economy is a disaster. His policies of tax and spend are killing jobs, destroying confidence, and wiping out small businesses. Without a recovery for the little guy, there can be no recovery for the U.S. economy.
So I propose a plan that can save small business . . . direct from the only small businessman-turned 2008 vice presidential nominee. I’m proud to call myself a Reagan libertarian. My hero Ronald Reagan understood small business. That is why he created the largest tax cut in U.S. history — a tax cut aimed squarely at small business. That one brilliant stroke of capitalist incentive ushered in the greatest economic expansion in world history, leading to 25 years of virtually uninterrupted economic success.
There is still time to save America. Ronald Reagan proved that you can turnaround even an economic disaster quickly with a giant tax cut aimed at the most important segment of any economy — small business owners. Here is my simple, common sense five-step plan to motivate small business:
Step 1: Create a one-year national income tax vacation. Liberals will scream that Obama already gave us a giant tax cut, but my plan aims the tax cut squarely at the people who make all the difference in a capitalist society: the taxpayers. My plan allows everyone in America who already pays taxes to keep 100 percent of their own income for one year. Stand back and watch the economic explosion created when the taxpayers and small business owners spend it (helping retail sales), invest it (helping stocks and real estate), use it to pay down their mortgages (helping banks and ending the foreclosure crisis), and use it to start businesses in record numbers (creating jobs). The cost of this income tax vacation is a measly $1.2 trillion. Obama spent trillions on bailouts and wasted stimulus, all of which created zero jobs and did nothing to improve the economy (it did reward his voters and contributors, however).
Step 2: Eliminate capital gains taxes permanently. The key to the success of our economy is small business investment. A temporary capital gains cut or elimination will not work. Small business owners and investors need security and certainty. There is only one way to spur small business investment and expansion in the middle of a depression — eliminate capital gains taxes permanently. The capital gains tax elimination would motivate people to invest in a way that will create jobs — exactly what we desperately need them to do. If there are no more taxes on capital gains (and investment income of all kinds) older Americans could afford a much higher quality of life in retirement. Anyone could retire on half the amount of assets because interest, dividends and investments would be tax free. Think of what older Americans would do with that extra money — fueling the economy.
Step 3 Create a small business payroll tax vacation for two years. Employees and employers each pay half of payroll taxes. Under my plan, we would give the business owner a payroll tax vacation — by suspending the employer’s half of the payroll tax for two years. That means for the next two years, it costs far less for any business owner to create a job. Without a penalty for every new employee hired, there would be incentive to hire. This idea also frees up capital — every dollar saved by not having to pay half of each employees’ payroll taxes, can now be used to expand businesses, expand inventory, and buy business supplies and equipment. All of which create jobs.
Step 4 Turn immigration from a drain on the economy into an economic boom.Immigration could be the most important topic of America’s future. Studies prove that immigrants actually fare financially better in this country than native-born Americans. Now, however, illegal immigrants are draining the American economy. They cost taxpayers billions in welfare, free education, and healthcare. Let’s first secure the borders to dramatically reduce future illegal immigration. At the same time let’s offer instant residency and an easy, quick path to citizenship for skilled, educated, and financially secure immigrants, which will help trigger a turnaround to small business and the American economy. Specifically any immigrant who invests $250,000 into either a home or a small business should be granted instant residency and a path to citizenship. This plan is simple: bring money, skills, and resources to start businesses and create jobs and you will be instantly welcomed into the land of opportunity. When ambitious, educated, skilled, middle class immigrants move to America they will buy millions of homes, thereby ending the housing and foreclosure crisis. They will buy or start new businesses, thereby creating millions of new jobs. They will pay into the payroll tax system, and they will put their money into U.S. banks, thereby ending the banking crisis.
Step 5 Legalize and tax sin to fund healthcare reform. Yes, I’m a proud card-carrying Reagan fiscal conservative. But here’s where I showcase my true libertarian bona fides. We have to stop being busybodies or nannies toward our neighbors. Let people do what they want to do as long as it involves consenting adults, and doesn’t harm anyone. It’s called personal freedom. Taxes on gambling (and even legal prostitution) fund Nevada’s state government, which enables no income taxes, no business income taxes, no capital gains taxes, no death taxes, and the 16th lowest property taxes in America. Where’s the down side? Interestingly, Las Vegas also leads the nation in churches per capita. What that proves is that allowing personal freedom does hurt citizens who choose not to indulge in sin. The taxes that gamblers and other “sinners” pay in Nevada allow the rest of us to keep more of our own money and lead a better quality of life. Studies prove that the legalization of marijuana and online gambling would generate almost $300 billion in new tax revenues. Our government wastes billions enforcing ridiculous laws and bans on personal freedom. This simple, common sense 5-step plan could quickly turnaround the U.S. economy and save capitalism. It’s time to restore the American Dream. God Bless America.
NEW VIDEO’S!!!
Ernest Hancock – Libertarian National Chair Debates – Kansas & Indiana April 24th 2010
Ernie is a hardcore libertarian activist that doesn’t abandon libertarian philosophy but embraces it 100%. He is a principled man, just what LP needs!
To Watch Video Go to:
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A real asshole of a democrat that I’ve been debating referenced this very blog article at IPR to say “see, everything you’ve been telling me about how libertarians are different from Republicans is false. Your own 2008 VP candidate says so.”
Thanks, Wayne. Thanks for nothing.
Michael, as much as it may seem otherwise to you, my power to change the Platform is not unlimited. If it were, the Platform would read like this.
I already identified for you what I consider to be the eleven most glaring platform bugs, and invited you to prioritize against them this “restoring and reviving” language that seems to run afoul of your obsession with midwives. You’ve declined to do so.
I published my list before PlatCom’s December meeting, and none of the feedback mentioned the language that is now such an emergency for you. Nor did you or anyone else ever complain about it to the [email protected] list that’s been available for the last three years. Nor did you or anyone else ever complain about it among the 1,406 comments we received from the 2008 membership survey about the Platform. Among the 3869 responses we got to the 2010 survey, 86% approved of the healthcare plank’s language. Of the 746 comments on the healthcare plank, only four mentioned the “restoring and reviving” language. Three of those supported it, and only one objected to it.
So you know what? I’m going to leave it in until after I’ve fixed all the problems that more than two members have complained about.
What I would do does not matter. What matters is that the wording may be incorrect. If it is incorrect then you leave our candidates in a position of having to defend something that is incorrect.
You are managing the farm. Now the next move is yours. It is up to you to defend the wording or correct it. I suggest it is incorrect.
Michael, you petitioned the PlatCom to restore the language about “restoring and reviving a free market health care system” (by virtue of its inclusion in the 2004 platform), so I’m assuming you had a good reason for doing so.
That language was in the Platform from 1994 to 2006. Can you give us any evidence at all that you ever noticed it before you decided to blame me for language that I borrowed from the 2004 platform that you petitioned PlatCom to restore? I just double-checked my email logs, and not a single complaint about that language was ever received by the 2006, 2008, or 2010 LP Platform Committees.
I’m still waiting for you to tell us: Is there some 19th-century U.S. regulatory regime for healthcare that you wouldn’t trade our current rules for?
And since you like to cut and paste questions that I’ve already addressed, I’ll cut and paste my other questions that you’ve completely ignored:
* Since you claimed I “let our candidates hang out there with out adequate information”, can you name anybody in the LP that has assembled for our candidates a better collection of libertarian policy research and a better primer on libertarian healthcare policy than I have?
* Can you tell us which of the 11 Platform bugs I listed @85 are less glaring than the “restoring and reviving” language that apparently tickles your deep interest in midwives?
* Since you’ve criticized caps on the income basis of social-insurance payroll taxes, can you tell us for what kind of “insurance” policy is your premium a linear function of your income?
I can keep this up as long as you can. As Kramer said: “Jerry, I know myself. If I’m out on the street and it’s starts to go down, I don’t back off until it’s finished.” 🙂
Brian if I get down there and right now it is about 50/50 I’ll give you a call at Yahoo.
But you still have not shown me where or when the U.S. had a free market in medical care. A date please will do.
MW
We may have to just agree to disagree whether the sort of remarks I quoted @92 from you are healthy for the civility levels here. For my part, I’m willing to try to be less “condescending”, if only I could convince somebody to 1) quote something I wrote that’s “condescending”, 2) explain how I could have made the argument in a way that couldn’t arbitrarily be called “condescending” by somebody distressed by the effectiveness of the argument, and 3) show that the difference between the two wasn’t justified by the civility level of the remarks I was replying to. Until that happens, you can probably surmise how I interpret “condescension” accusations. 🙂
Coffee’s on me (i.e. free) here at Yahoo’s coffee bars. In fact, we can easily pull together an LP table in the cafeteria, as the LPCA chair works here, and a co-worker of mine has been an LPCA congressional candidate and ExCom member. (I didn’t even know he was a Libertarian when I gave him the thumbs up for acing his interview.)
“I see ya turned down the invite for coffee. Life happens. I’m hurt ………”
You do not have enough brains to be hurt!
—— Don Lake, thx for playing games during
the last days of the USA!
Brian glad to see you appreciate my sarcasm. 🙂
I see ya turned down the invite for coffee. Life happens. I’m hurt. 🙁
Michael, my friend, I have no idea what “rules” you think I’m “making up”. If “lighten up” means “please don’t rebut my every criticism of your statements”, then sorry, ain’t gonna happen. 🙂
I’m not the one here who wrote the following gems:
“That page has to be somewhere. Is it in the closet? Under the bed?”
“Brian twists and turns again.”
“Brian you are up to your usual selective reading. Pick and choose as Brian wishes to suit his purpose.”
“Smile Brian everyone knows your act.”
“So stand there against the Future and try to stop it but it is going to run you down”
“continue to bob and weave. And that ain’t a comedy team.”
“Guess that’s the SoCal leadership style.”
Me, I’m having a good ole’ time. If I weren’t, I’d be doing something else.
Gee the nation of my birth is grinding to a halt on the way to oblivion and pointie headed over educated white males like Brian Holtz and Mike Wilson are playing cutesy play ground games.
No wonder most Americans think Libertarians are full of shit. Most Americans consider the antics of LP types as the ‘grounds for divorce’!
And Mike Wilson, Brian’s game playing is called ‘making it up as you go along and then claiming that it is written in stone’! It was first discovered by John Dennis Coffey of Barstow[n] and then refined and evolved by the rest of the Deform Party Israel First cabal.
Good luck improving on it as John Blare, John Bambey, and Valli Sharpe Giesler have already denigrated it to an [f]art form!
——— from personal experience, Don “I hate Liars and Anti American Americans” Lake
Cheesuz Brian are you being sensitive to day or what? Lighten up and I’m not going to play the game according to the rules you make up on the fly.
Heck I may be in that neck of the woods next month and I’ll buy the coffee if you want.
It’s not the job of the Platform to educate candidates. The Platform’s job is to guide them and defend them. If someone’s capacity for libertarian policy research begins and ends with reciting the LP platform, then that person has no business being an LP candidate.
I’m from NorCal. Before you make snide remarks about “leadership style”, can you name anybody in the LP that has assembled for our candidates a better collection of libertarian policy research and a better primer on libertarian healthcare policy than I have?
I bet that instead of naming any such person, you’ll continue to bob and weave. Like when you wrote “I am not here to defend what I have written in the past” instead of justifying your position on uncapping the SS payroll-tax basis. Or when you clammed up about “selective reading” (without retraction) when you found out that my uncapping quote wasn’t the one you thought it was. Or when you ignored my point about there being higher-priority bugs in the Platform. Or when you didn’t answer my question about whether U.S. healthcare markets were more free in the past. Or when you skated away from your snide remarks @48 when I revealed to you that I’d already gotten the PlatCom to propose language about purchasing health insurance across state lines.
Root should take credit: 21st Century New Math and the non existent $100T national debt! —– Don Lake
paulie I am working on the petition, I-1068, to legalize marijuana in our state.
Brian you continue to bob and weave. And that ain’t a comedy team. So you’re going to lead the parade and let our candidates hang out there with out adequate information? Guess that’s the SoCal leadership style.
I am not here to defend what I have written in the past. I am pointing out that Mr. Root is not being accurate and has not been accurate. He is avoiding details, failing to offer Libertarian solutions, bashing Obama (what is this the Joe McCarthy Party?) and unions.
Once again, just for emphasis, I’m going to try to accentuate the positive:
This morning, the US Senate passed a “jobs bill” endorsed by President Obama. Yes, that bill has a lot of bad stuff in it, but it also incorporates one of Wayne Root’s proposals — a payroll tax holiday for employers for the remainder of 2010.
Root should take credit.
Michael, to me a “free market” is one in which there are effective institutions for 1) protecting each person’s full rights to his body, labor, peaceful production, and voluntary exchanges, and for 2) requiring that each person pays the costs he imposes on others when he monopolizes, depletes, pollutes, or congests a natural commons. So I don’t believe that there has ever been a truly free market in healthcare or any other non-trivial industry.
I already explained @69 why I held my nose and resurrected the “restoring and reviving” language that you petitioned us on PlatCom to restore (by virtue of its inclusion in the 2004 platform). I agree that it’s not fully accurate, but I liked how it conveys to 99% of its readers that we favor reversing the trends I document in my graph @69. Is there some 19th-century U.S. regulatory regime for healthcare that you wouldn’t trade our current rules for? If you want to read a healthcare plank that I’ve personally written and campaigned on, see http://knowinghumans.net/2008/08/vote-smart-cheat-sheet.html. If you want to read my full essay on healthcare reform, see http://knowinghumans.net/2009/01/when-freedom-is-lost-its-usually-for.html.
I note that you didn’t try to defend your criticisms of the cap on Social Security payroll-tax basis. I still find it odd that a Libertarian would defend the equity of forcing an entrepreneur to pay $100K for a year’s health insurance just because he realized $3M in income that year. That’s blatant income redistribution, that simply abandons the nanny state’s pretenses about “social insurance”.
Yes, your first comment @17 criticized Root for what he didn’t say. So did my first comment @19. I wasn’t the one who came in here accusing a fellow Libertarian of having “total disregard” for fiscal issue X just because he thinks an order-of-magnitude-larger fiscal issue is more important. That was Erik @22. And I wasn’t the one who came in here saying that nobody’s entitlement Ponzi checks should be cut off before pulling back the troops stationed on allied soil. That was you @37. I’m just the one who is accurately reporting on the sizes of our various fiscal problems, and saying that I’ll take any progress we can get on any of them.
I’m glad you agree with me that the Platform should not create problems for our candidates. Defending (and guiding) our candidates is exactly my agenda for the 2010 Platform cycle, now that we’ve repaired the Platform using recycled language (such as 2004’s “restoring and reviving”). My detailed agenda is http://libertarianmajority.net/2010-lp-platform. Its top priorities are:
5 changes that strengthen the defenses of our candidates:
+ 1.0: informed competence or adulthood is required to exercise a right
* 1.2: drug freedom is not for children
* 1.4: oppose abortion subsidies and mandates
* 1.6: qualify gun rights as being for peaceful adults
+ 3.5: parents may not abuse/neglect/endanger children
6 changes that fix semantic bugs:
* Preamble: planks, not “pages”
+ 1.0: “choices in life” => e.g. “choices in his or her own life”
* 1.0: “mean we necessarily” => “necessarily mean we”
+ 1.2: the 4th Amendment recognizes rights, it does not create them
+ 1.3: “rights” => “treatment”, “gender” => “sex”
+ 3.2: don’t falsely say the Bill of Rights has no wartime exceptions
(Plus signs denote the problems that are solved by the PlatCom’s Vegas proposals.) I submit that each of these problems is more glaring to Platform readers than your complaint about “restoring and reviving”.
Michael H. Wilson // Feb 24, 2010:
Root’s the one …… claiming to represent the LP ….. My criticism of him has been of his lack of details explaining what the Libertarian Party offers as a solution ………….
Don Lake: oh like claiming the $14T something national debt is an unrealistic $100T!
George Phillies: “Libs are the ONLY anti war party!”
What are you petitioning for?
I think so paulie if it is from her book.
Here’s my comments on the issue. Doctors were some of the first to be licensed in the colonies and that carried forward to the early 1830 and the Jacksonian Period at which time licensing was abolished.
The first modern licensing laws were passed about 1873 in either Ohio or Indiana and from then it was just a few years until the rest of the states had similar laws.
The first abortion law which some suggests was used to restrict midwives was passed in Connecticut about 1837.
Female slaves were used for medical experiments prior to the Civil War.
Then in the late 1800’s the docs started to get legislation passed against midwives.
If Brian want to tell us when we had medical freedom in the U.S. I’ll be sure to listen but now he is going to put LP candidates in a position of having to defend something that may never have existed. At least I haven’t found it but ya never know ’cause I’ve been wrong before.
Come on Brian. Dig up those details!
Bad day for signature collecting. My partner didn’t show up. Damn!
Michael, have you read this? Great timeline…
http://ruwart.com/Healing/chap5.html
@ 71 Brian writes; “If you guys want to criticize Root for his policy priorities, then be be prepared for your priorities to be criticized too.”
Yo Brian! Root’s the one get on the idiot box and claiming to represent the LP. My criticism of him has been of his lack of details explaining what the Libertarian Party offers as a solution, bashing Obama and unions.
Sorry to be short but I have to see about doing some work for the cause today. Workin’ on a petition.
Brian you still have not answered an earlier question; “Can you give me a time period when health care or medicine as practiced in the U.S. was a free market? Just a timeline will do.”
Its the details that are important.
We are fooling ourselves if we think the economy will “improve”
Excerpt from the Green Living site, http://www.pbzproductions.com/green/:
Even if our economy “improves,” this would be illusionary, since a similar financial crisis can happen again. The reason for this is that the math doesn’t work. Most household budgets have no income that can be spent on anything beyond basic needs. To buy anything else requires going into debt. But lending institutions are now required to be picky about who they lend money to. Even more importantly, there is no room in this tight average budget to make payments on any debt beyond housing and maybe a car. If borrowing that cannot be paid back keeps going on, it can lead to a total and permanent breakdown of the world economy, far beyond what we have already experienced.
Let’s look at the average family budget:
Income $50,303
Taxes: federal income and payroll 7,281
Taxes: state and local income 4,879
Housing 17,109
Food 6,443
Healthcare 2,976
Transportation 8,604
Insurance, pensions 5,605
Total $52,897
Left after basic expenses -$2,594
The median income is according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2008. Expenses are from the U.S. Bureau of Labor’s Consumer Expenditures—2008. The amount for federal and payroll taxes is from the IRS Employer’s Supplemental Tax Guide, which provides withholding amounts for employers. The state and local tax estimate is based on the average of 9.7%, from retirementliving.com. Keep in mind that the healthcare average cost from the Bureau of Labor seems far too low (what were they smoking?), and it is not clear from the report whether health insurance is included under “healthcare” or “insurance/pensions.” It appears that utility costs are included in “housing.” Even if the numbers need a little adjusting, they would tell the same story.
The average family has no discretionary income per year, and is behind by $2,594 per year when only spending on basics. No wonder the economy melted down. The problem is not that suddenly Americans didn’t have money to spend. They never had the money. Although the average income declined in 2008, from $52,163 in 2007, and offset a gain in income over the previous three years, there was no discretionary income in those years either. None of the vacations, electronic gadgets, restaurant meals, and such were paid for by money people had actually earned.
And the Obama administration’s plan of tinkering with the tax code and making one-time stimulus payments will not alter the basic equation here.
So the green economy, or any economy that does not crash and burn on a regular basis, is focused on basics, with almost nothing on additional products and services.
This is sobering until you realize that such an economy would be far better for the environment without the destruction that excess consumer goods causes. It is also far better for people’s lives. Is it really all that great to sit in a car several hours every day? To rush around, “multitasking”? Isn’t the shopping mall a weird, impersonal place? Haven’t you noticed that children will ignore a roomful of expensive toys and play with boxes or pots and pans?
Electronic gadgets aren’t fun. They suddenly quit working and you go nuts trying to hunt down and read the manual to figure out what to do. Quickie food doesn’t taste all that good compared to peaches right off the tree. When you go green you really aren’t missing anything.
Find out more at http://www.pbzproductions.com/green/
Patty Zevallos
media producer – web, video, print
http://www.pbzproductions.com
bh, we all have our silly moments and blindspots, I’d venture to say. The pronounced dysfunction of Rothbardianism is the insistence that his extreme no particular orderism is THE principled view. Near as I can tell, anyone who doesn’t toe that plumbline is not L.
Tom, Rothbard’s absolutist no-particular-orderism remains silly, and embeds a strawman to boot. Nobody advocates anything like a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_order to destatization, and even you advocate a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partial_order: “cut taxes from the bottom up and welfare from the top down.”
There are plenty of possible policy reforms that I would take as a package but not a la carte. However, ending healthcare entitlements and licensure isn’t one of them.
prescription (e.g., no particular order; smash the State; abolitionism),
I’ll take two of those to go, please.
😛
Someone call 911! Brian’s becoming a Rothbardian “no particular orderist!”
Officer friendly, reporting for duty. What seems to be the problem here? Let me see some IDs, I mean, IPs…
tk, as a general matter, I’m a no particular orderist, too. Certainly I’d like to see all aspects of the government cut.
However, since Rothbard had a bizarre, uni-dimensional worldview based on his strange ideas about “morality,” my guess is in the following hypothetical:
“A bill to defund all personnel and maintenance expenditures for the staffing, securing, and operating the USG’s nuclear missile silos, to be replaced with nothing.”
Rothbard would support such a bill on moral grounds, i.e., such activities use stolen funds from taxpayers. I’ll grant that his position would be “consistent,” but I’d suggest that it’s foolishly consistent. Such a thought experiment illustrates the limitations of the Rothbardian model.
There’s nothing about a commitment to liberty that says Ls cannot employ judgment about how and how fast the State should be unwound. If there IS such a prescription (e.g., no particular order; smash the State; abolitionism), I’d like to hear it.
“I don’t at all agree with your position @48 that Medicare should not be ended unless occupational licensure is ended at the same time. I’ll take either one, as soon as I can get it.”
Someone call 911! Brian’s becoming a Rothbardian “no particular orderist!”
Michael, I was wrong. You didn’t criticize the capping of social-insurance payroll-tax basis once. You did it twice. And no, I’m not even counting your recent facetious remark about it.
You wrote here on Aug. 26: “[Root] left out the payroll taxes. Those are the taxes that go to support Social security, Medicare, etc. Fact is I can claim that the average worker in America is getting screwed and the fat cats are getting a pass on Social Security with the income cap at somewhere around $108,000 anything you make over that isn’t taxed”.
And you wrote on Apr. 3: “I’ll toss a bone to those who are not so radical as I. To keep the Social Security, Medicare tax revenue neutral and abolish the cap, that is tax everyone’s income the same, i.e. Warren Buffet types, what would the percentage be? How much money would that put back in the hands of American workers who are going to spend it on goods and services everyday?”
You’re allowed to post here (@17) your favorite ideas for cutting spending. And so am I. When I say @19 “it’s the entitlements, stupid”, I’m not declaring that no other spending should be cut. “It’s the X, stupid” is just a way of identifying what the speaker claims is the biggest issue is in a given context. If you guys want to criticize Root for his policy priorities, then be be prepared for your priorities to be criticized too. In particular, be prepared for me to document the size of the entitlement problem, and to point out that you mention “midwives” here eight times as often as you criticize Medicare (with its $450B annual spending and $38T unfunded liability).
I agree with your note about spending on the last year of life, which was the point of (I think) two of your four Medicare criticisms that I found. I don’t at all agree with your position @48 that Medicare should not be ended unless occupational licensure is ended at the same time. I’ll take either one, as soon as I can get it.
Brian I’ll make sure that I post a complete index of all my ideas here for you to clear.
I posted a piece here the other day where I mentioned some of the alternatives to fixing SS and medicare such as lifting the cap and a Vat. I did not say that I supported those ideas and I DO NOT SUPPORT THEM!
As for the Restore04 is in my opinion it was batter than what existed.
Brian you are up to your usual selective reading. Pick and choose as Brian wishes to suit his purpose.
BTW one of the largest factors in driving up health costs is the amount that is spent on those in the last year of their lives and more of us are dying every year.
Smile Brian everyone knows your act. 😉
Michael, I did a search on IPR’s comment history. You’ve mentioned “midwives” ~30 times in the last year here, but only have been remotely critical of Medicare four times. And on a fifth occasion, you proposed uncapping (on a revenue-neutral basis) the income basis for Social Security payroll taxes — which would completely disconnect benefits from contributions, and make the system an even more colossal case of outright theft. (For what kind of “insurance” policy is your premium a linear function of your income?)
I didn’t write “restoring and reviving”; I merely chose for the recycled 2008 platform that language from the 2004 platform (you were Restore04 signer #25) because it was a way to lead off with talk of “a free market health care system”. This example shows the problem with trying to maintain the Platform as a set of miniature white papers, rather than as a survey of our shared policy principles. That “restoring and reviving” bug had been in the platform since 1994, and was far from the most egregious example of the various mis-statements of fact that had crept into the platform over the years.
At any rate, government’s share of healthcare spending used to be a lot less than the current 50%.
@50 BH writes; “Michael, I’m familiar with how you like to talk about midwives. I just don’t agree that licensure reform would put a dent in the $38 TRILLION unfunded Medicare liability.”
I never said it would and support that idea because it is safer for infants and their mother as well as saves dollars. The lives are important in this issue
BH again; “McCarran-Ferguson “exempts the business of insurance from most federal regulation”, so just saying “repeal MF” may not be what we want to say. What we should say is something like: “People should be free to purchase health insurance across state lines.” And guess what? That’s precisely the language the PlatCom adopted when we met in Vegas in December.”
I’m not writing the platform just making a comment.
Again BH; “I like what the Platform says about health care: “We favor restoring and reviving a free market health care system.”
Can you give me a time period when health care or medicine as practiced in the U.S. was a free market? Just a timeline will do.
One’s never too old to learn
Thanks
My fury days are long behind me.
My entry here was simply to dispute your statement that no one has ever rebutted your argument. I’ve linked where I did so. Didn’t mean to pursue it any further than that.
I don’t generally chase you around unrelated threads to bring up foreign policy.
And I actually recognize and respect your nuanced, well researched and thought-out views on foreign policy issues, even though I have pointed out why I disagree with them.
One Fury departs for the nonce, but another Fury is still on the job. 🙂
Erik, my 2003 judgment on Iraq was based on the conjunction of twelve predicates. Please tell us the name(s) any country that you claim satisfied all 12 predicates (or strictly analogous ones) either before or since.
If you want to disagree with some or all of the predicates, then the way to do so is suggested @56. I’ll not debate any claim of yours about my 2003 Iraq judgment that is not the grammatical negation of one of my predicates — unless of course you want to admit that all twelve predicates were satisfied, but still claim that no reasonable Libertarian could have taken that conjunction as a justification for the U.S. military overthrow of Saddam.
Brian,
I will cease my participation in the foreign policy discussion in this thread for now.
As for anarchy, I only introduced to protect my argument from your anticipated attempt to claim that the argument I am making is an exclusively anarchist one.
Now, here’s something I’ve said that you’ve never addressed:
(@43)
“Well, I hate to break it to you, but there are other countries where tyrants are killing their civilians en masse… what do you propose we do about them? Do you justify every intervention under these circumstances? How do you quantify how many civilians are too many versus how many are too little? This argument’s also your consequentialist nature rearing its ugly head again. The ends do not justify the means. You should not do evil deeds to fight evil.”
Your arguments in favor or intervention in Iraq are based on a number of cruel and hideous things that Saddam did or favored. I’m not here to dispute that. My question remains (generally) as to where you draw the line. It appears as if you’d rather data-overload so you don’t have to draw lines, but how do you successfully argue for intervention in one place and not others?
On your website you claim the following justifications:
BH: “Saddam’s apparent threat to America, consisting of his
*admitted nuclear ambitions,
* hatred for America (regardless of whether some think it justified), and
*support for terrorists who have targeted American civilians;”
Response: The link between Saddam and al-Qaeda was war propaganda. “The consensus of intelligence experts has been that these contacts never led to an operational relationship, and that consensus is backed up by reports from the independent 9/11 Commission and by declassified Defense Department reports[3] as well as by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, whose 2006 report of Phase II of its investigation into prewar intelligence reports concluded that there was no evidence of ties between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.[4] ”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddam_Hussein_and_al-Qaeda_link_allegations
Also, many countries have nuclear capabilities/ambitions (Iran, Pakistan, and N. Korea come to mind), so unless you’re calling for war there also, this is weak.
And hatred for America? C’mon. A lot of countries hate us. 🙂
Thus, your support must rely upon “Saddam’s record of aggression,” because “the existence proofs we had in Kurdistan and Afghanistan that the U.S. military could depose tyranny in even less-modernized Islamic societies and replace it with reasonably stable self-determination” is a load of crap (where you attempt to justify nation-building with false positives).
So, you cite the number of people Saddam’s killed and other things, but I’m going to break this down in to two places. Deaths by genocide, and other aggressive acts.
For example, here’s a list of genocide that has occurred from 1951 to 2000:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocides_in_history#1951_to_2000
Where should we intervene and where shouldn’t we?
Notice also here that the genocide figure isn’t anywhere near a million, so you must be including war deaths and executions in your statement of claims.
Are we supposed to intervene in every war or invade all countries with political executions then? If so, there’s a huge list of places that practice these things, and I don’t recall hearing your concern for things such as the Second Congo War (though I’m not a devout worshiper of your website, so who knows).
Now, in other issues of your support for intervention…..
Your arguments make it sound as if we should have invaded the USSR, btw. Should we have? I mean, it only fell apart because of our invasion, right? The Soviets never had a history of aggression or subjugation, and certainly loved us, right? They never violated the sovereignty of their neighbors, disobeyed UN resolutions, or killed anyone. Ever. Right?
Brian Holtz // Feb 23, 2010:
“People have been raising SS as an issue for decades, but the problem keeps getting worse as a fraction of GDP……”
Well, well, one of my third party gripes against the LP is that they quietly moan and groan [say the lack of privatization of SS, or the shabby shabby local, state (California!) lethal veterans programs] when it is not in the news and then completely silence when it is high profile!
Duh, you guys act like such fakes, and then the support of the American global war machine.
Cock your head —— hear that quiet murmur ????? It is the world rolling their eyes and shaking their heads at LP hypocrisy!
Paulie, if you’re saying you’ve elsewhere asserted and proved some or all of the ten denials I invited above, but aren’t willing to say here which ones they were, I’m happy with that being the last word on the subject. For my part, I’m willing to stipulate that you indeed have asserted for most or all of the ten predicates that they don’t make Saddam as bad a guy as one might think.
No, the biggest problem from a minarchist perspective is not the assumption that government can solve any problem. The biggest problem from a minarchist perspective is the assumption that the government should protect you from your own choices.
when I indicated that I did not want to pursue the tangent further, you wanted to keep it going
You should assume that, in any response in which I don’t ask a question, I’m happy with it being the last word on the subject.
Note the absence of question marks in this response. 🙂
And for the record, here is where the Furies introduced the topics of Iraqi children and anarchism into this thread:
Erik @32: [Holtz advocates] “cutting the money to care for old people so you have extra cash to kill and maim Iraqi *CHILDREN*”
Paulie @53: “I was against was billing the US taxpayers for [regime change] ….. the mentality that problem = government solution is the biggest problem we face”
P.S. to Erik: I’m back at work today, and may not get around to reading/rebutting your lengthy comment above for quite some time.
BH @45:
BH: “I won’t be intimidated into not supplying that perspective, no matter how often you shamefully accusing me of wanting “to kill and maim Iraqi children”.”
Response: I, nor anyone else, is trying to “intimidate” you in to not supplying this perspective. All most of us are asking is that you not be *so* dismissive of military cuts when people bring them up given your obsession with entitlement cuts. Again, EVERYONE here wants to see entitlement cuts. Also, EVERYONE (yourself included) professes to want military/defense cuts.
@39 you said to Michael,
“I just can’t agree that this sort of theft should continue until we’ve unwound our voluntary mutual-defense agreements with our allies. I’ll take whatever progress I can get on either front.”
This is an almost immediate contradiction. You claim to take whatever progress you can get, but at the same time you’re saying entitlement cuts should come before defense cuts. Everyone here is saying *both* should happen now. You say one the focus should be for one to happen before the other.
BH: “I’m sorry, but I don’t see a serious data-driven argument anywhere in your vague story that your generation will have to pay for itself and the previous, but that my generation and my daughters’ will be essentially whole.”
Response: I’ve never said we’d pay for ourselves. I said we’d pay for your generation and then get nothing in return. Why? Because we were all told as much in school. An entire generation brain-washed into believing this makes it politically feasible when the budget eventually demands it (which will happen before your daughter has been a productive member of society for long).
In contrast, your arguments seem to rest on the idea that these programs will run for at least the next 75 years, and you have no proof of that (unless you have a time machine we don’t know about) actually occurring. Yes, right now, there aren’t scheduled changes, but given the numbers (the very numbers you provide), I think we can all agree these programs can’t and won’t last that long. So quit acting like your daughter is going to have this ridiculous burden – a burden larger than anyone else’s – and that this makes you entitled to having the strongest opinion. We could all play the “my daughter” game all day long. I plan on having kids. Shouldn’t I be outraged that ‘my daughter’ will be even more screwed than your daughter? Do you know why I’m not? Because NFW these programs last that long (either overall, or in their current form).
BH: “It sounds like you’re assuming that some reform in the next couple decades will suddenly end all inter-generation income transfers affecting my children’s generation. That’s sound far more fanciful than me simply citing the demographic and actuarial consequences of the laws that are currently on the books and currently have zero prospects for being amended.
…When I say we’re aimed to go off a cliff, that’s an argument that we should change course — and indeed still can do so.”
Response: You’ve said yourself the crash course we’re on. Do you really think, honestly, that those numbers won’t ever catch up with us as a nation? Charts like this,
http://perotcharts.com/images/challenges/challenges31.png
, which are from 2005 no less, show unsustainable figures far before your daughter’s completed her part of productive society. Add in the data from the past 5 years and the future projections, and these numbers are far worse.
As such, your argument that they’ll last forever just because there’s no movement to end them *right now* is at least as fallible as my so-called ‘assumption’ that my generation will be the one stuck with this crisis, if not more. Unless you tell me how we’re going to pay for your assumed running of these programs for the next 75 years, I don’t think you can say they’ll be here for the next 75 years. Given poll after poll saying Americans would rather have lower taxes and fewer services (for example: http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/mood_of_america/america_s_best_days), I think my prediction that *my* generation, not your daughter’s gets stuck with this mess, is fairly accurate. The shit-show will begin in the next 20 years or so, and when it happens I’m betting it’s far more likely I’m stuck with the bill. I’ll get to keep paying, but I won’t get any services. I almost guarantee that’s what happens.
I’ve *never* refuted the ponzi scheme nature of these entitlement programs, but you’ve never even attempted to prove how these programs are sustainable enough that your daughter’s concerns are more important than everyone else’s.
BH: “My point about Ida May Fuller is just that these entitlement programs were structured from the very beginning as inter-generational income transfers — i.e. a Ponzi scheme. Do you dispute this? And if not, then again: what aggression-minimizing justification can possibly be offered for such a government transfer program?”
Response: I’ve never disputed the ponzi-scheme nature of these programs. I simply would rather we make the sort of cuts (cuts we can make now) that don’t ultimately end up screwing over the elderly entirely, and if I certainly think the defense cuts should happen first. It doesn’t matter if, say, we’re spending 48 dollars on the elderly for every 3 dollars we spend on unnecessary defense spending. You continue to act as if we could only or should only cut the numbers to 28 and 3, respectively. What I’d like to see, of course is something like 31 and 0 as opposed to 28 and 3, that’s all I (and others) are saying.
BH: “The strawman here is your “no medicine for old people”. I already said above that old people should have the same safety net as anybody else. Indeed, as a geolibertarian advocate of a Nature’s Dividend, my safety-net story is as good or better than that of any libertarian.”
Response: This is no such strawman. I said that in the context of my support for old people keeping their medicine until other programs (such as unnecessary military spending) are at least cut first. We need a lot of cuts, cuts larger than the unnecessary defense spending, but let’s at least prioritize them some. I’d also cut a lot out of TSA, DHS, DoE, etc. before I cut out medicine for the elderly. Yes, I’d make cuts to their medicine, but I wouldn’t eradicate the programs entirely and leave these other poorly-run/unnecessary ones operating. That’s inhumane.
BH: “It’s yet another strawman to say I would ever choose to “support an evil that kills”. In 2003 I supported ENDING an evil that kills.”
Response: Again, not a strawman, but you’re attempting to strawman me in response. Nice. “An evil that kills” is referring to an evil (war) that guess what… kills. Your answer to aggression was more aggression. Again, this is due to your ridiculous consequentialist nature, but that’s not something you’ve cared to address. I’m not an ‘ends justify the means’ kind of person. I’m also appalled that you think I should have to pay for your decision. As Paulie has noted, if you so willingly believed that Saddam had to be taken out, you and the others who believed this should have had to pay for it, not me. This isn’t a new concept – this is what Thoreau was (temporarily) jailed for.
BH: “I’m amazed that you could still be so intellectually close-minded as to not dare admit to yourself even the possibility that I had an aggression-minimizing aim to my Iraq policy in 2003. Is your argument against my 2003 judgment so weak, that you have to pretend my desire was “to kill and maim Iraqi children”?
Response: See, this ‘intellectually close-minded’ bullshit is ridiculous. Your powers to condescend never cease to amaze. Since you think you’re always the smartest man in the room, you seem to assume that others must be close-minded to not agree with your awesome insights.
I’ve never said you didn’t mean well with your support of these wars. Sure, you had an aggression-minimizing aim, I get that. What you don’t get is that the secondary consequences puts blood on your hands instead of just Saddam’s (as before). When you support this decision, it means you get some responsibility for the many dead that have come of it. And, since you thought it was best to do so through the government, my money has blood on it too, even though I wanted nothing to do with that mess.
BH: “You say I “favored state expansion”. I say I advocated shrinking the size of Saddam’s state. ”
Response: You grew our state in favor of shrinking his. Good job, Brian. Damn good job.
BH: “And if you want to pin the consequences of Saddam’s overthrow on me, then you’re going to have to answer all the arguments I linked to here. No shortcuts, no hand-waving. My arguments have stood unrebutted for nearly four years. If you want to be the first to try to answer them, I’m game.”
Response: You act as if I dispute facts such as Saddam killing his own people. I don’t dispute a fact like that. What I dispute is you therefore trying to justify war with him on everyone else’s dime.
Also, what’s the real point in visiting your website? All it is is a serious of arguments you make against other people as if this somehow encapsulates every argument any person could ever make. I’m not here to argue Paul Krugman’s point, or Al Gore’s point, or whomevers. I’m here to argue mine. I never said we shouldn’t invade Iraq because of Iraqi WMDs falling into the wrong hands or anything like that. I said we shouldn’t have invaded because it’s none of our business on a government-scale. If you want to wage war with your money, fine. I may not agree with you, but at least I don’t have to pay for it… and I don’t have to deal with my money (or others money) being used to kill people more than it already does, while simultaneously seeing said wars be used at home as a distraction for the erosion of civil liberties (yes, I know much of that had to do with terrorism, but the wars played a part nevertheless).
BH: “And if you do, note the hijack here. Root’s article was about saving the economy in 2010, and yet somehow you guys always change the subject to Holtz’s judgment about Iraq in 2003. Yawn. Been there, answered that.”
Response: I’m well aware of what Root’s article was about. I made a comment on it before this debate began.
You were the one who couldn’t let Michael just have his say, you had to go on your spiel. That’s fine. Notice my first comment was “It’s also the military budget, stupid.” *ALSO* is really the key word here. I was never saying it didn’t have to do with entitlements. I was simply stating that it’s both. You’re the one who’s chosen to try and frame the debate in the manner you’re now protesting.
If you had said “it’s the military budget AND entitlement programs” from the get-go, I doubt this whole spiel would have begun. But no, you decided it could only be about entitlements for the purpose of this thread.
Yes, you’ve said elsewhere your opinions on military spending, but if you you expect us all to be devout worshipers of your website, and to find your quotes on the subject there, you’re kidding yourself. Again, it’s not that hard to just say it’s a combination.
I also refuse to play into your hands about how much your daughter owes. As I’ve said above, by your logic my children will owe more than her. But then you could argue her children will owe more… and I could argue my grandchildren would owe more… it’s a never-ending cycle. At some point, this mess will have to be tidied up. Given the extreme pressure on our budget that will occur because of this mess in the next 20 years or so, my bet remains on my generation cleaning it up without receiving any/most of the benefits existing today.
Dearest paulie:
not to continue your dialog with pointie headed semi lib Silicon Valley geek Brian H, but one addition flavoring in the America as not the Policeman on the block is Seattle travel writer and PBS icon Rick Steves.
With my medical problems [stay young paulie, stay young for ever!] I use documentary style media as a pain management tool. Steves, like my self, a world traveler in his early adult days, has gone from America the Leader and One and Only Saving Light to just another voice in the global back up band. [‘We are the world’ to ‘we are in the world’ ????]
His travel escapades are a laid back effort to under standing others instead of merely preaching at them!
As you also do have not ‘Jaguar In The Parking Lot’ be aware that Steves’ stuff is in the dvd section of libraries and as documentaries can often have extended loans.
Best wishes on Tejas! Keep your BS radar on high —– including with me! There is just too much steer manure in the world at this time!
IPR readers get to enjoy the spectacle of my own personal set of Furies, obsessed with my crimes of 1) not being an anarchist and 2) saying that in 2003 the above ten predicates were a reasonable libertarian justification for a U.S. overthrow of Saddam.
No matter what the topic under discussion, my Furies cannot resist hijacking it for their own obsessive ends.
Funny things is, when I indicated that I did not want to pursue the tangent further, you wanted to keep it going.
I don’t really mind the attention all that much, but IPR readers are surely even more bored of it than I am.
I’m getting quite bored/annoyed with it too. And I freely admit I am exercising appalling lack of self control and giving in to irrational addictive impulses by responding.
My challenge can’t be any simpler: just cut and paste some or all of the following ten assertions, so we can understand which of my arguments you claim to have rebutted.
Already did. Linked to where I did so. Don’t feel like going over it again now. Got other things to do.
Yes, I understand that you and other libertarians are anarchists. I don’t see how this justifies your earlier assertion that “problem = government solution is the biggest problem” even for minarchism — unless of course you were just saying that this is the biggest problem anarchists have with minarchism. Which isn’t exactly news.
No, my statement was equally true from a minarchist perspective. The biggest problem we have is the mentality that whatever problems exist in this country or world, the (US) [state, local, world] government can and should provide a solution, and in doing so can be relied on to keep from making things worse.
The only difference is that minarchists believe there is no other practical solution to a very narrow set of problems: defending the US from foreign invasion and defending victims from attack by criminals within the US government’s jurisdiction.
Still, minarchists realize that government is incompetent to solve most of the country’s and world’s problems, and makes things worse rather than better in attempting to do so, more often than not.
Pursuing this tangent is becoming a major time-waster that is keeping me from posting new threads, picking up my laundry, seeing about getting my dentist teeth cleaning, getting money from the ATM, etc.
The fault is mine in that I should know when to quit chasing a rabbit down a hole.
So I will do my best to cut myself off right now.
In Greek mythology, the Furies (Erinyes) are female chthonic deities who follow you around forever, obsessively seeking vengeance for your alleged past crimes.
IPR readers get to enjoy the spectacle of my own personal set of Furies, obsessed with my crimes of 1) not being an anarchist and 2) saying that in 2003 the above ten predicates were a reasonable libertarian justification for a U.S. overthrow of Saddam.
No matter what the topic under discussion, my Furies cannot resist hijacking it for their own obsessive ends.
I don’t really mind the attention all that much, but IPR readers are surely even more bored of it than I am.
“Mitigated” is a red herring. “Almost all” is vague. “Disputed” is tame. My challenge can’t be any simpler: just cut and paste some or all of the following ten assertions, so we can understand which of my arguments you claim to have rebutted.
I have already shown that Saddam’s regime never admitted nuclear ambitions.
I have already shown that Saddam’s regime never expressed hatred for America.
I have already shown that Saddam’s regime never had supported terrorists who had targeted American civilians.
I have already shown that Saddam’s aggressions had not killed over a million people.
I have already shown that Saddam had not invaded any sovereign neighbor.
I have already shown that Saddam had not annexed another sovereign neighbor by force.
I have already shown that Saddam had not fired ballistic missiles at two more neighbors.
I have already shown that Saddam had never defied UN nuclear disarmament mandates that Iraq was bound to obey as a 1945 UN Charter signatory.
I have already shown that Saddam had never used chemical WMDs in a war of aggression.
I have already shown that Saddam had never used chemical WMDs in genocidal attacks on his own citizens.
(Blanton, you can play too. Cut and paste any or all of the above claims — if you dare.)
Yes, I understand that you and quite a few other libertarians are anarchists. I don’t see how this justifies your earlier assertion that “problem = government solution is the biggest problem” even for minarchism — unless of course you were just saying that this is the biggest problem anarchists have with minarchism. Which isn’t exactly news.
I’m not sure what this is supposed to mean
“For those scoring at home, here is the list of those ten predicates that Paulie has so far said he has shown to be false:”
I clearly said that I have either disputed or placed mitigating context to all or almost all your ten points and provided a link to where I did so.
P: nothing I have said here would not equally apply to a minarchist point of view.
B: Except for the immediately-preceding part where you essentially said that government is never the least bad solution to any problem.
P2: I came to the conclusion that a government monopoly is not best equipped for policing the world to get rid of tinpot dictators, solve poverty or other economic problems, end people from hurting themselves, insure a clean environment, provide good education, etc., etc., quite a few years ago.
It was only several years later that I extended that conclusion to allow for private/competing means of providing homeland defense against foreign invasion and a domestic justice system to address victim-creating crimes.
Many other people I know have reached the first set of conclusions, but not the second.
Thus, the two can exist independently of each other.
For those scoring at home, here is the list of those ten predicates that Paulie has so far said he has shown to be false:
And at the risk of repeating myself, I just claim that these predicates together could have led a reasonable minarchist Libertarian in 2003 to advocate regime change by the U.S. military.
the mentality that problem = government solution is the biggest problem we face, more so than any particular policy application. […]
nothing I have said here would not equally apply to a minarchist point of view.
Except for the immediately-preceding part where you essentially said that government is never the least bad solution to any problem.
I was all for regime change in Iraq in 2003.
What I was against was billing the US taxpayers for it, commiting scarce US military “defense” resources to a non-defensive and open-ended conflict without a clear exit strategy, or going to “war” in all our names and leaving us all as the potential victims of blowback.
If some group of investors hired some mercenaries to assassinate Saddam Hussein and his close associates, I would have been all for it, although I would have had to be very, very rich to consider contributing – or very, very bored or desperate to have joined the merc team – considering all the other problems in the world.
As with domestic social and economic problems, the existence of a problem does not mean that I think the US government is best equipped – or should – solve the problem by spending billions or trillions of tax dollars, or that it can be relied on to keep from making matters worse through its involvement.
In fact, I think the mentality that problem = government solution is the biggest problem we face, more so than any particular policy application.
And while it is no secret that I am an anarchist, nothing I have said here would not equally apply to a minarchist point of view.
For those scoring at home, here is the list of those ten predicates that Paulie says he showed to be false:
And at the risk of repeating myself, I’ve never said that the LP should have advocated the overthrow of Saddam, or that reasonable Libertarians could not have opposed it. I just claim that these predicates together could have led a reasonable Libertarian in 2003 to advocate regime change. My argument here is only with those who claim no reasonable Libertarian could have made the argument I made.
I believe I made mitigating arguments on every one of those points which either disputes it or puts it an entirely different context than the list/juxtaposition implies. I don’t particularly care whether you have the last word for the time being or not, as I expect we will have many more opportunities to discuss the issue when I am more inclined to do so.
Michael, I’m familiar with how you like to talk about midwives. I just don’t agree that licensure reform would put a dent in the $38 TRILLION unfunded Medicare liability. McCarran-Ferguson “exempts the business of insurance from most federal regulation”, so just saying “repeal MF” may not be what we want to say. What we should say is something like: “People should be free to purchase health insurance across state lines.” And guess what? That’s precisely the language the PlatCom adopted when we met in Vegas in December.
I like what the Platform says about health care: “We favor restoring and reviving a free market health care system. We recognize the freedom of individuals to determine the level of health insurance they want, the level of health care they want, the care providers they want, the medicines and treatments they will use and all other aspects of their medical care”. Although I favor rapidly ending entitlements, I don’t want the Platform to contradict less-radical libertarians like Erik, who worry about “promises made to seniors”.
Paulie, if you just give us a list of which ten predicates you think you have successfully argued are factually false, I’ll let that be that last word between us here on this topic.
Brian, as I said, I don’t feel like rejoining the argument at the moment. Readers can decide for themselves whether you have accurately characterized my side of the argument by reading the arguments previously posted by myself and/or LPC in the comment thread at
https://independentpoliticalreport.com/2009/12/wayne-root-guest-hosting-liddy-radio-show-guests-to-include-gary-johnson/
My short answer is no, you haven’t, but the record will speak for itself.
@ 45 Brian twists and turns again.
Brian I have written on here and elsewhere of the need to reform the medical practices in this country. Those reforms would lead to a repeal of Medicare laws. It is foolish to repeal Medicare and at the same time leave in place all the restrictions that caused the problem in the first place.
Repeal the McCarran-Ferguson Act, repeal occupational licensing laws, etc. I believe Gary has suggested that above. And there are a few other reforms to be made.
David Nolan has pointed out to you the need to put some details in the platform as I recall but you don’t think it is needed. That one point alone would clear up a number of issues but you are against doing so. So stand there against the Future and try to stop it but it is going to run you down 🙂
Erik Thanks for replying to Brian’s posts.
I have a lot of real work to do so off to do so. Next time I need to be entertained I’ll drop by. Maybe this evening.
Paulie, here are the factual predicates about Saddam in my argument:
1) Saddam’s regime had admitted nuclear ambitions.
2) Saddam’s regime had expressed hatred for America.
3) Saddam’s regime had supported terrorists who had targeted American civilians.
4) Saddam’s aggressions had killed over a million people.
5) Saddam had invaded one sovereign neighbor.
6) Saddam had annexed another sovereign neighbor by force.
7) Saddam had fired ballistic missiles at two more neighbors.
8 ) Saddam had defied UN nuclear disarmament mandates that Iraq was bound to obey as a 1945 UN Charter signatory.
9) Saddam used chemical WMDs in a war of aggression.
10) Saddam used chemical WMDs in genocidal attacks on his own citizens.
Please remind us which of these predicates you argued are false. As I recall, almost all of your answers consisted of saying that these predicates were true but not as bad as they sound. I think the only predicate you actually tried to claim was false was (10). When I asked for evidence/argument that it was false, you said it was buried somewhere in a pile of articles, and that it would be my job to sift it out.
I don’t consider my argument to have been rebutted if somebody says “yeah, Saddam did all those things, but that still didn’t justify overthrowing him”.
I agree this is off-topic, but the red herring of my 2003 Iraq policy is dredged up by my desperate opponents in nearly every thread I comment on.
I’m pretty sure that either I or my alter ego “Libervention Price Club” did answer them, but I’m not interested in pursuing the thread tangent further at the moment. The computer I’m borrowing keeps crashing, making it hard to write anything of any length, and I have other things to catch up on, besides the fact that as you point out it is besides the point of this thread.
Erik, the entitlement problem is an order of magnitude bigger annual expense than our military alliances. If Michael gets to mention our alliances whenever fiscal issues come up, then I’m allowed to mention entitlements in response. I’m sorry if that upsets or unnerves you. When Michael starts making his perennial point in the context of the size of our other larger fiscal problems, I’ll stop chiming in to add that missing context. I won’t be intimidated into not supplying that perspective, no matter how often you shamefully accusing me of wanting “to kill and maim Iraqi children”.
I’m sorry, but I don’t see a serious data-driven argument anywhere in your vague story that your generation will have to pay for itself and the previous, but that my generation and my daughters’ will be essentially whole. It sounds like you’re assuming that some reform in the next couple decades will suddenly end all inter-generation income transfers affecting my children’s generation. That’s sound far more fanciful than me simply citing the demographic and actuarial consequences of the laws that are currently on the books and currently have zero prospects for being amended.
I of course make no assumption that there can be no entitlement reforms for a couple generations. If I did, I wouldn’t be arguing for reform, would I? When I say we’re aimed to go off a cliff, that’s an argument that we should change course — and indeed still can do so.
The “promises made to [seniors] over their entire lives” was that they would be the beneficiaries of theft that is state-expanding — the problem gets worse every year. To the extent that you resist ending that theft, you are supporting that state-expansion. Again: I have an aggression-minimizing justification for my 2003 Iraq policy. There is no such possible justification for allowing entitlement theft to continue expanding the state.
My point about Ida May Fuller is just that these entitlement programs were structured from the very beginning as inter-generational income transfers — i.e. a Ponzi scheme. Do you dispute this? And if not, then again: what aggression-minimizing justification can possibly be offered for such a government transfer program?
The strawman here is your “no medicine for old people”. I already said above that old people should have the same safety net as anybody else. Indeed, as a geolibertarian advocate of a Nature’s Dividend, my safety-net story is as good or better than that of any libertarian.
I’m not the one saying we can “only get one or the other”. Michael’s the one who objected @37 to ending one before the other. I explicitly said @39 “I?ll take whatever progress I can get on either front.”
I’m not “on the side of waging war over maintaining promises to the elderly”. That’s yet another strawman. I oppose the current nation-building wars, but in 2003 I did choose the side of ending Saddam’s tyranny over maintaining massive inter-generational theft. No matter how many times you teleport me back to the knowledge I had in 2003, I’ll make that call every time.
It’s yet another strawman to say I would ever choose to “support an evil that kills”. In 2003 I supported ENDING an evil that kills. I’m amazed that you could still be so intellectually close-minded as to not dare admit to yourself even the possibility that I had an aggression-minimizing aim to my Iraq policy in 2003. Is your argument against my 2003 judgment so weak, that you have to pretend my desire was “to kill and maim Iraqi children”?
You say I “favored state expansion”. I say I advocated shrinking the size of Saddam’s state. And if you want to pin the consequences of Saddam’s overthrow on me, then you’re going to have to answer all the arguments I linked to here. No shortcuts, no hand-waving. My arguments have stood unrebutted for nearly four years. If you want to be the first to try to answer them, I’m game.
And if you do, note the hijack here. Root’s article was about saving the economy in 2010, and yet somehow you guys always change the subject to Holtz’s judgment about Iraq in 2003. Yawn. Been there, answered that.
Back on the main topic, my points remain:
1) Entitlements are a spiraling fiscal problem that by current law is two orders of magnitude bigger than the (shrinking-share-of-GDP) fiscal problem of stationing troops on the soil of our treaty allies.
2) In any discussion of fiscal policy in which somebody mentions the latter, I will mention the former.
BH @ 39:
BH: ”
Michael, an aggression-minimizing story can be told about how our troops got stationed on the soil of our allies. I’m still waiting to hear the aggression-minimizing story of how Ida May Fuller’s $24 turned into lifetime benefits of $20,934. Are any of you senior sympathizers going to try? :-)”
Response: Let’s just call a spade a spade and admit you’re trying to strawman the death out of this argument. *Obviously* not everyone on the SS dole is like Ida May Fuller. *Obviously* there are people who paid in and died without receiving a single $ of benefits, obviously there are others who paid more than they received, and obviously there are no doubt countless who received more than they paid (like Ms. Fuller, but to a lesser degree of inequality between the figures). Let’s not play these silly games.
BH: “I just can’t agree that this sort of theft should continue until we’ve unwound our voluntary mutual-defense agreements with our allies. I’ll take whatever progress I can get on either front.”
Response: And that’s where you and I (and MHW, and others) obviously disagree. How you could have this viewpoint is unfathomable to me, and appears to constitute a disconnect from reality. Sure, the numbers certainly state that there are more spent on entitlement programs than defense/military issues, but COME ON… seriously? Seriously, Brian? You really think it’s better to have troops all around the world but no medicine for old people, as if this is some game where we only get one or the other? And even if it was (a game), you’d seriously fall on the side of waging war over maintaining promises to the elderly (not everyone; not the future; just the current elderly who are dependent upon said promises) just because the numbers suggest this as a better immediate solution? I don’t even know what to say to that. You’d rather support an evil that kills just because it’s less costly than an evil that merely robs… even with the full knowledge that your opponents on this topic are calling for an end to future robbery? Wow.
BH @36:
BH: “The only difference between us is 1) I don’t go around questioning your motives and saying that your emphasis unnerves me, and 2) the fiscal problem I emphasize is an order of magnitude bigger than the one you emphasize.”
Response: 1.) I believe I have good reason to question your motive in part given your past support of military action that has wasted countless American resources, created many new enemies, and killed well over a hundred thousand Iraqi civilians. I, on the other hand, neither supported that conflict (my emphasis in this debate), *nor* have I supported the expansion of entitlement programs or other government programs either (your emphasis). There’s no record of me supporting the expansion of horribly costly and unlibertarian measures, but there is a record of you doing so. This isn’t to say I question your credibility overall, as I think highly of your abilities as a libertarian and activist overall (but not on this issue).
2.) There are a number of approaches to fixing the issue you’re addressing (many of which we could all discuss), but that’s not the point I’m trying to make. As I’ve stated before elsewhere (to which you responded, so I know you’re aware of me saying so), there’s no guarantee of the spending in the future you assert. However, there is *active* military/defense spending that can be cut. This is not to say that there aren’t ways to cut entitlements also – quite the opposite. I just think you’ve lost perspective to focus so much on these over military issues. I’d eventually like to see all entitlement programs extremely cut (if not eliminated), but I don’t see the potential to do so immediately given that there are millions of people who’ve spent their entire lives counting on these things to happen, and now they’re too old to do anything about it if they were cut dramatically *right now.* Entitlement cuts are going to need to be scaled down over time, whereas a lot of defense cuts can be made immediately.
“It’s untenable for you to predict that your generation is going to be hurt more by Ponzi entitlements than the subsequent one. See the “workers per retiree” table in my graphic @19. Your prediction constitutes a claim that this demographic trend is going to reverse itself. There is zero evidence for that, no matter how many times you rudely use words like “bullshit”. However screwed you claim you are, the demographic data show that my kids are more screwed.”
Response: Nonsense. My assertion was that there won’t be entitlement programs for my generation, and if there are, they’ll be severely neutered. My basis for this is my entire generation being told the entire time we grew up that this would be the case, and we’re better prepared for it. We’ve been told all our lives that we’d be stuck paying for your generation, but it wasn’t going to be possible for your daughter’s generation to pay for us. I’d argue that 95% of the people I know under 35 acknowledge and accept this. The programs *will* be cut because it will be politically feasible (without losing a ton of face, unlike in the current political climate), and budgetary/deficit pressures will demand that measures be taken.
For you to assume that America will even make it on the course it’s on to your daughter’s generation without drastic reform is absurd.
Also, “bullshit” isn’t a rude term. Maybe to 8 year olds it is, but c’mon.
BH: “I favored deposing Saddam and the Taliban. You can wish all you want that I’m a bloodthirsty baby-killer in favor of endless war, but all it shows is that you’re unwilling or unable to argue against my actual positions.”
Response: I don’t have to wish anything. Your support of those actions means you have to live with the secondary consequences of those actions. This means you are partially responsible for increased military spending, the ease in which civil liberties were eroded during these wars, and the deaths of thousands. No, you didn’t say “I want to see 100,000 people die,” but the course you advocated caused 100,000 people to die whether you acknowledge it or not.
BH: “There is a better “starting point” for dealing with entitlement theft than your idea of simply slowing the theft down. It’s called ending it. 🙂 As I wrote at the link above: Everyone should be cashed out of SS by giving them bonds equalling their total lifetime contributions (and employer match) plus interest and inflation less benefits already received. Indigent overdrawn retirees should be treated similarly to other welfare recipients.
It would be inconsistent to argue both that 1) it’s too hard to change the entitlement programs, and 2) entitlement programs will not continue on the present course documented in excruciating detail by their actuaries. When the entitlement trims you hand-wave about start coming anywhere near to being implemented, I’ll stop pointing out the height of the entitlement cliff we’re driving off. Not before.”
Response: Again, it’s not that I’m against ending entitlement programs. It’s that I’m against screwing over 85 year old ladies who’ve been told they’d receive said benefits and don’t have much of anything else. Telling a 40 year old to save up now and deal with it is far different from telling it to an 85 year old.
Yes, your proposal about cashing out and treating them as if they are on welfare is certainly a feasible one from this perspective – I don’t refute that. Again, my argument was never against whatever manners you propose to end entitlements – it was against your overemphasis on entitlement programs as opposed to military/defense spending.
It half-feels as if you’re trying to re-focus the debate on my preference of scaling-down entitlements than address your defense views. My preference for scaling-down entitlements is simply that – a preference. I’m certainly open to other proposals. You, however, consistently prefer to say “it’s the entitlements, stupid,” anytime someone like Michael talks about ending some defense spending, the war on drugs, or corporate/agricultural welfare. You immediately insisted on re-shifting the debate to entitlements – that’s my issue here, not the manner in which entitlements are ended.
BH: “It’s shameful for you to pretend that the aim of my Iraq policy was to “kill and maim Iraqi children”. The aim of my policy was to overthrow a regime that over its 24-year tenure averaged 60K-80K deaths per year. The aim of my policy was to reduce the net level of force-initiation in human society. If you can’t admit that, then you just don’t have the intellectual courage to grapple with my position.”
Response: I’m amused you pretend like you never attempt to insult people and are always civil, considering how often you condescend towards anyone in disagreement with you.
As I’ve said above, you have to live with the secondary consequences of your support for these wars. No, it wasn’t your intent to kill Iraqi children, but your policy advocacy caused just that to happen with American weapons.
I’m amused that here you’ve chosen to say “The aim of my policy was to overthrow a regime that over its 24-year tenure averaged 60K-80K deaths per year. The aim of my policy was to reduce the net level of force-initiation in human society,” and yet you always insist you don’t favor a world policeman role. Well, I hate to break it to you, but there are other countries where tyrants are killing their civilians en masse… what do you propose we do about them? Do you justify every intervention under these circumstances? How do you quantify how many civilians are too many versus how many are too little? This argument’s also your consequentialist nature rearing its ugly head again. The ends do not justify the means. You should not do evil deeds to fight evil.
BH: “So what is the aim of the nanny state’s entitlement Ponzi schemes? The first SS recipient, Ida May Fuller, paid in a total of $44 and received lifetime benefits of $20,934. What possible aggression-minimizing rationale can you offer for such a program?”
Response: Again, I’m not arguing we should keep entitlement programs. I merely stated my preferred method of dealing with them, but I’m open to other ideas. You, however, do not appear very open to discussing other budgetary issues when others bring them up, choosing instead to focus primarily on this topic, as you did to MHW above.
BH: “I don’t understand how self-described libertarians can dismiss the entitlement problem as less important or too intractable or a lower priority compared to our other fiscal problems. If liberventionists can be called warmongers and baby-killers, then why shouldn’t libertarian apologists for entitlement intractability be called socialists?”
Response: Why, you ask? Because no libertarian I know proposed increasing those programs. The libertarians I know all want to see them ended, but many/most want to do so in a manner that treats the elderly in a way that doesn’t renege on promises made to them over their entire lives. No libertarian I know wants to keep these programs alive, nor do they wish to expand them.
You, however, have advocated expansion of the state through your support of defense spending and military action in the Middle East. I don’t care how much you wish to cut other things, the point is you favored state expansion. I’ve never favored expansion, nor have most other libertarians I know.
The data you’ve presented is unarguably valuable to the debate on entitlements. Again, yes, they should be cut. How, I don’t care too much as long as I don’t feel like 85 year olds will suddenly end up on the street. Nobody here’s asserting that cutting these programs is inconsequential – we’re all merely asserting that there are other areas that need to be cut.
People have been raising SS as an issue for decades, but the problem keeps getting worse as a fraction of GDP. The cost of overseas alliances has surely been getting steadily smaller as a fraction of GDP, and our 9/11-induced mistakes about Islamic nation-building are unlikely to be repeated. I.e., we’ve hit Peak Nation-Building, but Peak Entitlements is nowhere in sight. And — again — as a fiscal problem the size of entitlements is much bigger.
It’s not like there’s been a paucity of Libertarians complaining about the nation-building wars. As I documented here, anti-war has been the top issue on LP.org’s front page since 2002.
Still, I bet I can quote more of me writing on your side of the military issue more than you can quote you writing on my side of the entitlement issue. 🙂
@ 18 George I recall reading recently that the costs reserving space on seagoing bulk carriers has just about doubled in recent months. So the indication are the the downturn may be over but we need to be careful of a double dip. More ARMs due this year I hear.
Also watch the Chicago Federal Reserve National Activity Index at their site. Good data
Yea but you’ve been real quiet on the military issue over the years.
As for Soc. Sec I got into a public disagreement with a senior official in the Department some years ago in Baltimore. I was a 20 years old squirt and he had to have been in his fifties. I was also on a date and my date didn’t appreciate my comments.
People have been raising the Soc. Sec. issue for years but the military one has been placed on the back burner. It is time to bring it up front and center. Bring ’em Home Now!
Michael, an aggression-minimizing story can be told about how our troops got stationed on the soil of our allies. I’m still waiting to hear the aggression-minimizing story of how Ida May Fuller’s $24 turned into lifetime benefits of $20,934. Are any of you senior sympathizers going to try? 🙂
I just can’t agree that this sort of theft should continue until we’ve unwound our voluntary mutual-defense agreements with our allies. I’ll take whatever progress I can get on either front.
To be clear, Brian, I didn’t mean by “debt” to refer to T-bills in contrast to bailout liabilities, federal loan guarantees, and many of the other items on your list. I didn’t intend to single out one group of creditors.
Brian I am and have always been against entitlements. I just think it is important to get the well to do off the dole first and as Gary points out end the damn occupational laws. However, it makes no sense to me to end Grandma’s Social Security and keep 250,000 troops deployed overseas on permanent vacations. Nice duty in England, Germany and Italy. Not to mention Japan.
As a long time Libertarian I know says “Get the Rich off Welfare and the Poor won’t need it”.
How about that as a bumper sticker?
Erik, again, it sounds like you’re confessing to the same species of emphasis crime you accuse me of. The only difference between us is 1) I don’t go around questioning your motives and saying that your emphasis unnerves me, and 2) the fiscal problem I emphasize is an order of magnitude bigger than the one you emphasize.
It’s untenable for you to predict that your generation is going to be hurt more by Ponzi entitlements than the subsequent one. See the “workers per retiree” table in my graphic @19. Your prediction constitutes a claim that this demographic trend is going to reverse itself. There is zero evidence for that, no matter how many times you rudely use words like “bullshit”. However screwed you claim you are, the demographic data show that my kids are more screwed.
I favored deposing Saddam and the Taliban. You can wish all you want that I’m a bloodthirsty baby-killer in favor of endless war, but all it shows is that you’re unwilling or unable to argue against my actual positions.
There is a better “starting point” for dealing with entitlement theft than your idea of simply slowing the theft down. It’s called ending it. 🙂 As I wrote at the link above: Everyone should be cashed out of SS by giving them bonds equalling their total lifetime contributions (and employer match) plus interest and inflation less benefits already received. Indigent overdrawn retirees should be treated similarly to other welfare recipients.
It would be inconsistent to argue both that 1) it’s too hard to change the entitlement programs, and 2) entitlement programs will not continue on the present course documented in excruciating detail by their actuaries. When the entitlement trims you hand-wave about start coming anywhere near to being implemented, I’ll stop pointing out the height of the entitlement cliff we’re driving off. Not before.
It’s shameful for you to pretend that the aim of my Iraq policy was to “kill and maim Iraqi children”. The aim of my policy was to overthrow a regime that over its 24-year tenure averaged 60K-80K deaths per year. The aim of my policy was to reduce the net level of force-initiation in human society. If you can’t admit that, then you just don’t have the intellectual courage to grapple with my position.
So what is the aim of the nanny state’s entitlement Ponzi schemes? The first SS recipient, Ida May Fuller, paid in a total of $44 and received lifetime benefits of $20,934. What possible aggression-minimizing rationale can you offer for such a program?
I stand by my claim: when it comes to federal fiscal problems, “it’s the entitlements.” (“It’s the X, stupid” of course doesn’t mean that X is the only problem.) The wildest projections put the final total cost of Bush’s wars at $3T (using tendentious assumptions such as that they are financed purely by borrowing). The government’s own middle-case projection of just the unfunded part of the entitlement Ponzi scheme is $43T. That’s well over an order of magnitude difference, and there isn’t even an aggression-minimizing rationale for the Ponzi schemes. I don’t understand how self-described libertarians can dismiss the entitlement problem as less important or too intractable or a lower priority compared to our other fiscal problems. If liberventionists can be called warmongers and baby-killers, then why shouldn’t libertarian apologists for entitlement intractability be called socialists?
Gary, I of course favor a free market in health care, but I’m not going to hold the most important healthcare reforms hostage to ancillary ones. With a stroke of his pen, Bush added NINE TRILLION in unfunded prescription-drug liabilities to what our kids will have to finance over the next 75 years. Any Libertarian should be willing to undo that with a stroke of his eraser.
Here are some federal obligations I would repudiate before ever defaulting on federal debt held by U.S. citizens:
* all liabilities assumed as part of the recent bailouts
* entitlement promises to seniors beyond what they’ve paid in less benefits received
* all federal loan guarantees, deposit insurance, flood insurance, pension insurance
* retirement benefits for people retired from purely force-initiating agencies e.g. IRS, ATF, DEA
* retirement benefits for other federal retirees beyond what was promised midway through their government careers
* retirement benefits for military retirees beyond what was promised midway through their military careers
* federal debt held by foreign governments
* federal debt held by foreign nationals
* federal debt held by state and local governments
And if I were an anarchist, I would also advocate defaulting on all obligations to anyone who ever served the government in an armed capacity, or worked for an agency that wields government armed force.
When a libertarian advocates defaulting on T-bills held by innocent U.S. citizens before repudiating all of the above obligations, I can’t help but wonder if they’re just advocating wealth transfer based on what they think they know about the sort of people who hold T-bills. (Full disclosure: I’m not invested in Treasury securities, as far as I know.)
Interestingly, the Obama “jobs bill” which just got over a Senate procedural hurdle with an assist from “tea party” darling Scott Brown (R-MA) could be considered “Root Lite.” It exempts employers from payroll taxes on new employees who were unemployed for at least 60 days for the rest of 2010, and offers businesses a $1,000 tax credit on new employees retained for more than a year.
I’ll be interested to see whether or not Root gives Obama credit for adopting part of Root’s “tea party economic plan.”
Allowing only “skilled, educated, or wealthy” immigrants in is understood by many racists — and progressives, blacks, Mexicans, and others — as code words for “keep out those poor, brown wetbacks.”
Because of Root’s phrasing, many voters will now see the LP as offering a haven for racists.
Also, what Gary said (“would you agree that, since the state has driven health-care costs through the roof, ending Medicare while leaving in place statist privileges that keep health care unaffordable (think licenses for health-care professionals, immigration restrictions, medical device and drug patents, hospital accreditation, etc.) and keep poor people poor (business licenses, zoning laws, building codes, and so forth) would be problematic?”)
:p
I don’t agree with entitlement programs, and definitely want to see them phased out completely over time, but to focus on cutting the money to care for old people so you have extra cash to kill and maim Iraqi *CHILDREN* with your decisions is insane.
BH @24:
BH: “Your total disregard for the needed cuts to entitlements (as well as inter-generational theft) is unnerving.
Why not acknowledge the Ponzi nature of most entitlement spending?”
Response: Just like I don’t read your website (and therefore know all the thoughts that come into your head), you don’t know everything I’ve said/written/advocated over the years.
My mentioning of your non-talk of defense spending on IPR is because every time I’ve seen it brought up on here, you completely ignore it in favor of talking about entitlements.
I can’t point to the exact places on IPR I’ve talked about entitlements, but I’ve mentioned them as a problem many times publicly.
BH: “When I see you use phrases like “promises made to seniors”, I read you as defending the theft of tens of thousands of dollars from my kids.”
Response: Brian, seriously, cut this crap about your kids. You sound like a bleeding heart progressive with all this talk of “THE CHILDREN!!!”
Not only is a portion of the debt likely to remain on the rolls for a while (which I do not advocate; I’m merely stating the fact), but *I* am far more likely to pay most of the penalties for *your* generations greed. Your daughter is what, 20 years (?), away from being a regularly productive contributor to the tax base. I, meanwhile, will being doing so for the next 40 years or so. In other words, my generation (not your daughter’s) will be stuck footing the bill for your generation, and then likely receive none of the same benefits. As a result, your daughter’s generation won’t be paying nearly as much as I will, so cut the bullshit.
BH: “I’m on record as supporting cuts in defense spending and ending the wars. Just 48 hours ago I wrote on IPR about the deadweight loss — i.e. utter wastefulness — of military spending. When was the last time your wrote about entitlements, Erik?”
Response: If I recall correctly, you’re also on the record as being for the wars initially. You can’t just go “whoops, my bad” after advocating everyone else pay for your ideological decisions, and then act like it’s okay now. Your decisions have affected my life far more than mine have affected yours, or will ever affect your daughter’s.
As David said, raising the age wherein one is eligible for benefits is certainly a great starting point for dealing with these issues. Proposals such as Paul Ryan’s are also improvements over the status quo in tackling this issue. As I’ve also said both in this post and elsewhere, I think my generation also realizes we’ll be paying for your generation without actually receiving benefits ourselves. This significant drop in benefits my generation is expecting alone will account for cleaning up most of this mess. We know we’re screwed, but we’re unlikely to do anything about it.
Also, when I speak of promises to seniors, it’s because there’s no practical way to just cut the programs and say “sorry, charlie” to the elderly. I’ve called for in the past (and call for now) a general scaling down of benefits over time, as well as significant cuts in other federal programs to deal with these budgetary issues. For example, people from 40-50 won’t receive the benefits seniors currently experience now, 30-40 will receive less than them, and 20-30 basically know they’re screwed (and, for the most part, sort of accept it).
Your ‘analysis’ (if you can call it that) assumes certain figures will remain somewhat in close relation to their current figure/percentages, which is ridiculous. Any number of budgetary burdens for future generations can be cleared off the books tomorrow, affecting (again) *my* generation.
Jeez o’Pete!
“At the same time let’s offer instant residency and an easy, quick path to citizenship for skilled, educated, and financially secure immigrants,”
– Just what we need! Another 2.2 Billion doctors, software, and other engineers!
Who’s going to work at McDonald’s?
I’m not being nasty or joking here – part of the problem with US economy = too many bosses, techies; not enough blue collar, service or industrial workers.
My husband is an engineer, and we live in Microsoft country. We already let in enormous numbers of techies, and no McDonald’s clerks. That suggestion changes nothing. End welfare bennies and giveaways, and let in all the Mexicans and Guatemalans that are willing to work for their dreams.
(FYI – Mexicans = 1, Guatemalans = #2 in numbers of undocumented immigrants.)
Brian @24: would you agree that, since the state has driven health-care costs through the roof, ending Medicare while leaving in place statist privileges that keep health care unaffordable (think licenses for health-care professionals, immigration restrictions, medical device and drug patents, hospital accreditation, etc.) and keep poor people poor (business licenses, zoning laws, building codes, and so forth) would be problematic?
Also: since neither you nor I nor your kids agreed to pay the vast federal debt, wouldn’t repudiating it be a way of dealing with the financial crisis with which the USG has unjustly saddled your kids?
From http://knowinghumans.net/2008/08/vote-smart-cheat-sheet.html:
Defense Spending
The U.S. military budget represents half of the world’s military spending — far more than needed for ensuring our national defense. Major savings can be had by ending our efforts at nation-building in places like Iraq, ending U.S. forward ground defense of allies in Europe and Korea, reducing the size of our strategic nuclear arsenal and blue-water navy, scaling back our weapons modernization programs, and slashing missile defense efforts down to only basic research.
OMG! I actually agree with Holtz on something! (He posted @24 while I was writing my bit @26.)
@19 – As these graphs show, the biggest chunk of spending, by far, is devoted to (for the moment) fulfilling those long-running Ponzi schemes called Social Security and Medicare. If the age at which people are eligible for full benefits had simply been raised continuously to keep up with increasing life expectancy, we would not be in such a crisis. (And yes, military spending is hugely wasteful, but it’s never been sold to the public as a phony “future benefits” plan.)
@12: what gives you the right to decide whether people are entitled to work or not?
Right back atcha:
Your total disregard for the needed cuts to entitlements (as well as inter-generational theft) is unnerving.
Why not acknowledge the Ponzi nature of most entitlement spending?
When I see you use phrases like “promises made to seniors”, I read you as defending the theft of tens of thousands of dollars from my kids.
I’m on record as supporting cuts in defense spending and ending the wars. Just 48 hours ago I wrote on IPR about the deadweight loss — i.e. utter wastefulness — of military spending. When was the last time your wrote about entitlements, Erik?
@13 – Billions? I very much doubt that. Perhaps you’re confusing him with Bernie Madoff?
Your total disregard for the needed cuts to the defense budget (as well as unnecessary overseas operations) is unnerving.
Why not at acknowledge the wasteful nature of most defense spending? I have a much easier time stomaching defense cuts than I do turning our back on the promises made to seniors, for example. While my generation has no expectation of receiving things like social security, I can’t say the elderly have the same view.
The cliff we’re driving off of is built of entitlements:
“It’s also the military budget, stupid.”
Michael, what’s missing are specifics about cutting entitlements. Cutting current taxes without cutting spending is just adding taxes onto our kids.
I’ll keep saying it: “it’s the entitlements, stupid”.
“We are not recovering from a recession. ”
Also, pigs have wings and are used to tow our Navy’s zeppelins into battle.
The index of leading economic indicators turned around last Summer. Rail car loadings actually went up in late fall. *Employment* is a trailing indicator. The rate of job losses peaked last January, has been falling since, and will likely pass zero to job gains before our national convention.
Can someone post the page this is missing?
I know that Root never would have missed this opportunity to call for a reduction in US troops overseas thus saving some estimated $250 billion or cutting corporate welfare. Probably another $100 billion along with ending the Drug War. An easy $50 billion. Hey and that Ag welfare another $50 or so billion give or take a few. Hey that’s almost half a trillion!
That page has to be somewhere. Is it in the closet? Under the bed?
@12
e-verify is fascist bullshit.
Do everything possible to stop this fascist plan.
*Wayne Allyn Root.
Oh, the irony of misspelling the name of someone who’s flaws you are pointing out.
:p
The many flaws of Wayne Allen Root:
“Ronald Reagan proved that you can turnaround even an economic disaster quickly with a giant tax cut aimed at the most important segment of any economy”
Ronald Reagan ran (previously) record deficits while empowering the military industrial complex. Hardly admirable. He also had a lower overall growth % than Jimmy Carter, contrary to Republican revisionist history.
“Create a one-year national income tax vacation. ”
If WAR is serious about the deficit as well, which he claims to be, this really hurts his warhawk side. So-called ‘liberventionists’ wouldn’t have much money to fund their wars without the income tax. Also, why not call to end the income tax permanently?
“Create a small business payroll tax vacation for two years.”
Good conservative talking point, and a positive overall for sure… but why only 2 years? I mean, after all, you want to eliminate capital gains taxes permanently (also a positive), but is that only because those taxes hurt WAR more than payroll taxes do? You know, since WAR’s businesses are basically schemes anyway without real payroll.
“At the same time let’s offer instant residency and an easy, quick path to citizenship for skilled, educated, and financially secure immigrants,”
Ah, so WAR only favors rich immigrants. I’m glad this asshole wasn’t around when my poor immigrant ancestors crossed the Atlantic from Germany.
“They cost taxpayers billions in welfare, free education, and healthcare. Let’s first secure the borders to dramatically reduce future illegal immigration.”
Statistically untrue. Immigrants pay more in taxes than they receive in services, but when you’re a conservative who spouts Fox News talking points like WAR, you wouldn’t know this.
“Legalize and tax sin to fund healthcare reform.”
Notice WAR doesn’t list what type of healthcare reform he’s talking about. Fund what, exactly? And why send the money to the government to do it?
What Wayne Root says and actually does are two totally different things. Pretty smart guy but he’s a scumbag and backstabbing telemarketing owner who has scammed the public out of billions of dollars. Someone ask Root how his telemarketing room works on scamming people out of their money selling them the dream of making millions of dollars on his selections which actually suck as and then bankrupt people.
E-Verify is becoming a nationally known removal symbol, that the federal government introduced against unscrupulous employers who hire illegal labor. Most Liberal Democrats and even Republicans have tried to use their influence, to hide it from public attention. In partnership with certain members of our corrupt government, unions, the church and other groups sympathetic to the illegal alien cause or plain money economics, have used deceit, under funding or the off-switch, to dispose of the computer application. Sen. Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi was the epitome of deception and nearly managed to table it in the Senate. Like any law that trespasses on business profits, E-Verify has been ascertained as full of errors and was worthless. It might have been to the advantage of pariah companies, but not to the 15 million Americans out-of-work. I’m an Independent, but I have thrown my lot in with the tea-baggers, hoping to rid the political parties of raw CORRUPTION.
Think on this! We are told we don’t have the money to deport the 20 to 30 million already here? But states like SANCTUARY CALIFORNIA and across our nation, seem to locate the money for education, free health care treatment, prisons and a hundred and one hidden subsidies, that are denied to American’s poor in many instances. Time and again, you will read that the PC run program is derogatory to citizens and green card holders alike, when if a E-Verify job applicant is rejected he can assert his rights at the Social security building in his community. SIMPLY STATING THAT NOBODY WITH INELIGIBLE DOCUMENTATION, WILL STAY AT A DISTANCE FROM THE SSA OFFICES. This is obviously not spelled out in the liberal press, associated websites or even negative bloggers comments. The Fact is they don’t want to divulge the truth, to the general public and specially to all the working population.
Our immigration enforcement programs are upside down, because Washington and the open border lobbyists have engineered it that way. We legally in this country have never undertaken, to research the truth about the decades of neglect under different administrations. We have been taken to the cleaner’s for years, because we never seriously asked questions because we didn’t have access to lawmakers? But the Internet has changed all that and anybody today can unravel the truth about the millions of illegal immigrants squatting here. YOU THE TAXPAYER ARE FORKING OUT THE BILLIONS? SO YOU SHOULD GOOGLE THE TRUTH AND FIND OUT WHERE YOUR TAXES ARE GOING? While you about it, research SMARTBUSINESSESPRACTICES. dot.com. NUMBERSUSA.dot.com and read about the WASHINGTON AND STATE CORRUPTION AT JUDICIAL WATCH. dot. org
At the same time call those phonies at the Capitol switchboard 202-224-3121 and ask them why are they trying to sell us on another AMNESTY, when the last one was never enforced. At the same time asked them why they have cut-back on ICE raids or why Janet Napolitano isn’t doing her Homeland Security (HSC) job properly and evidently listening to open border lobbyists. HS chief has deliberately cut funding for the State, county and city police training programs, so they can arrest illegal aliens and send them home. In addition E-Verify has been recommended in the future to unmask illegal immigrant fraudulent mortgages and loan restructuring, transportation drivers licenses, vehicle registrations, insurance and health care.irregularities. It could also be used to detect illegal aliens voting in our elections as well. Our country is overrun by not just job seeking illegals, but hardened gangs and a list of habitual criminals who have run rampant.
Be ready to deflate these tired old wealthy legislators brought and sold, beginning with the mid-term elections. PUBLIC UPROAR IS THE ONLY WAY TO GET THINGS DONE? American jobs for American people. One flag–One language. No Copyright. Copy and Paste. Watch for illegal aliens voting in–NEVADA–this 2010.
Emma Lazarus (July 22, 1849 – November 19, 1887) was an American poet born in New York City.
She is best known for “The New Colossus”, a sonnet written in 1883; its final lines were engraved on a bronze plaque in the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty[1] in 1912. The sonnet was solicited by William Maxwell Evarts as a donation —– Wikipedia
Thank you, some how I had the idea that Engineer Eiffel [structural contractor] got the poetry from a French woman ……
@#8 It is obvious you don’t have a clue about Wayne Root by any means
@7 – Emma Lazarus
Is Wayne Root going to give up his sports telemarketing offices if he runs for office ? The guy ain’t winning any significant office because of his past. Once a scumbag. Always a scumbag.
Don Lake: Fine with me, written by unauthorized, unapointed, unelected French folks over a hundred years ago.
Your ignorance is showing. The French did not write the inscription on the Statue of Liberty. They gave us the statue, but the inscription was added a couple of decades later. Written by Emma Goldman, I think.
Root is a walking example of what happens when the LP tries too hard not to offend conservatives.
Conservatives and Republicans have long called for welcoming immigrants who brought skills, education, and money.
Lake,
Nothing misguided about it, and it is how this country was built long before that was written…and how it continues to be built today.
I agree with legalizing cannabis and hemp, and even online gambling, and taxing them. It is far beyond time to legalize, regulate, tax, and EDUCATE people with the truth instead of lying to them for government and corporate greed – I mean interests.
Solomon Drek // Feb 22, 2010:
“Whatever happened to “give us your tired, your poor,” Maybe we should change the words on the statute of liberty.”
——- Fine with me, written by unauthorized, unapointed, unelected French folks over a hundred years ago. [Why should I quit thinking for my self and be bound by the possible misguided verbiage of others ???????]
“let’s offer instant residency and an easy, quick path to citizenship for skilled, educated, and financially secure immigrants, ”
Whatever happened to “give us your tired, your poor,” etc. etc.
Maybe we should change the words on the statute of liberty. Better yet, if Root is elected President, he’ll probably take down the statue anyway and put one of himself there instead.
Gee, I [a non Lib ‘centrist’ reform type] kinda like the guy already, and that is not good news for main line LP ……
Root: “secure the borders to dramatically reduce future illegal immigration. … let’s offer instant residency and an easy, quick path to citizenship for skilled, educated, and financially secure immigrants” [who are disproportionately white, i.e., non-Mexican]
Root: “tax sin to fund healthcare reform.”
Root’s LP certainly can’t be accused of purism.