James Brody
October 2nd, 2008, 12:13 PM
"My life was completely spiraling out of control and nobody -- they would have killed me if somebody would have said, "Oh, Glenn, oh, my gosh, you are so poor, you can't afford anything, your life is out of control, you're on the verge of losing your job. Let me pay your bar bill." Glenn Beck
A virus - the Community Reinvestment Act - was shared by Clinton and harvested by minority advocates into free housing. In those same years, approval was given for investing retirement and pension money into the stock market, and, along with high-speed computers, missile guidance technology was shared with China. And this same President changed the induction oath for our military, demanding their willingness to fire upon American citizens.
Free things appeared for many of us: loans for furniture, automobiles, college, and health care. The stock market - a fine example, along with Social Security, of a Ponzi scheme - climbed. A house that my parents - folks who never wanted to owe a dime to the "finance company" - could have bought for $4000 now costs $200,000. We now fret about our credit rating instead of how much we actually owe or how or when we will pay our bills. American gold and platinum are plastic.
And what we see with individual families occurs nationally. In 1980, America was the world's greatest creditor; in 2008 we are its greatest debtor: will China loan us more money? Meanwhile, the Senate last night fed pork and more debt to the Bailout Bill and inflated it from 108 to 451 pages.
As for fixes, our primate and rodent kin will, when confronted with rewards and punishment, figure ways to get the reward but avoid the punishment or take it head on. Humans do the same thing, sometimes in more clever ways. Implication: cut the incentives for cheating and stop paying the alcoholic's bar bill.
JimB
References
Beck, G (October 1, 2008) Alcoholics will save America. Http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/15903/?ck=1
Hayek, FA (1944/1994) The Road to Serfdom. Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press. (Identifies the dynamics of fascism in Germany, their appearance in post-war Britain, and again in the United States. Hayek won a Nobel prize in economics and argues that dreamers make up schemes that recruit thugs. Jonah Goldberg (2008, Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning, NY: Doubleday) tells the same story but uses material from the ideas of Woodrow Wilson and FDR through modern progressivism. He also demonstrates that both Hitler and Mussolini admired FDR's ability to impose controls on Americans.
Shlaes, A (2008) The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression. NY: HarperCollins. Shlaes argues that FDR prolonged the depression with government controls. She recently denied the similarities between post-war events and what happens now but called Glenn Beck less than a week ago and apologized to him for being wrong.
A virus - the Community Reinvestment Act - was shared by Clinton and harvested by minority advocates into free housing. In those same years, approval was given for investing retirement and pension money into the stock market, and, along with high-speed computers, missile guidance technology was shared with China. And this same President changed the induction oath for our military, demanding their willingness to fire upon American citizens.
Free things appeared for many of us: loans for furniture, automobiles, college, and health care. The stock market - a fine example, along with Social Security, of a Ponzi scheme - climbed. A house that my parents - folks who never wanted to owe a dime to the "finance company" - could have bought for $4000 now costs $200,000. We now fret about our credit rating instead of how much we actually owe or how or when we will pay our bills. American gold and platinum are plastic.
And what we see with individual families occurs nationally. In 1980, America was the world's greatest creditor; in 2008 we are its greatest debtor: will China loan us more money? Meanwhile, the Senate last night fed pork and more debt to the Bailout Bill and inflated it from 108 to 451 pages.
As for fixes, our primate and rodent kin will, when confronted with rewards and punishment, figure ways to get the reward but avoid the punishment or take it head on. Humans do the same thing, sometimes in more clever ways. Implication: cut the incentives for cheating and stop paying the alcoholic's bar bill.
JimB
References
Beck, G (October 1, 2008) Alcoholics will save America. Http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/15903/?ck=1
Hayek, FA (1944/1994) The Road to Serfdom. Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press. (Identifies the dynamics of fascism in Germany, their appearance in post-war Britain, and again in the United States. Hayek won a Nobel prize in economics and argues that dreamers make up schemes that recruit thugs. Jonah Goldberg (2008, Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning, NY: Doubleday) tells the same story but uses material from the ideas of Woodrow Wilson and FDR through modern progressivism. He also demonstrates that both Hitler and Mussolini admired FDR's ability to impose controls on Americans.
Shlaes, A (2008) The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression. NY: HarperCollins. Shlaes argues that FDR prolonged the depression with government controls. She recently denied the similarities between post-war events and what happens now but called Glenn Beck less than a week ago and apologized to him for being wrong.