Rock 'N' Roll 'N' Paulitics...Cap and Trade Will Lead to Capital Flight...(Ron Paul)
-
Artist:
-
Album:
-
Track:
In my last column, I joked that with public spending out of control and the piling on of the international bailout bill, economic collapse seems to be the goal of Congress. It is getting harder to joke about such a thing however, as the non-partisan General Accounting Office (GAO) has estimated that the administration's health care plan would actually cost over a trillion dollars. This reality check may have given us a temporary reprieve on this particular disastrous policy, however an equally disastrous energy policy reared its ugly head on Capitol Hill last week.
The Cap and Trade Bill HR 2454 was voted on last Friday. Proponents claim this bill will help the environment, but what it really does is put another nail in the economy's coffin. The idea is to establish a national level of carbon dioxide emissions, and sell pollution permits to industry. HR 2454 also gives federal bureaucrats new power to regulate a wide variety of household appliances, such as light bulbs and refrigerators, and further distorts the market by providing more of your tax money to auto companies.
The administration has pointed to Spain as a shining example of this type of progressive energy policy. Spain has been massively diverting capital from the private sector into politically favored environmental projects for the better part of a decade, and many in Washington apparently like what they see. However, under no circumstances should anyone serious about economic recovery emulate an economy that is now approaching 20 percent unemployment, where every green job created, eliminated 2.2 real jobs and cost around $800,000 each!
The real inconvenient truth is that the cost of government regulations, taxes, fees, red tape and bureaucracy is a considerable expense that has to be considered when companies decide where to do business and how many people they can afford to hire. Increasing governmental burden directly causes capital flight and job losses, as Spain has learned. In this global economy its easy enough for businesses to relocate to countries that are more politically friendly to economic growth. If our government continues to kick the economy while its down, it will be a long time before it gets back up. In fact, jobs are much more likely to go overseas, compounding our problems.
And for what? Contrary to claims repeated over and over, there is no consensus in the scientific community that global warming is getting worse or that it is manmade. In fact over 30,000 scientists signed a petition recently directly disputing the claims on which this policy is based. Legitimate environmental claims should instead be directed towards the public sector. The government, especially the military, is the most serious polluter in the country, and is exempt from most EPA regulations. Meanwhile Washington bureaucrats have classified the very air we exhale as a pollutant and have gone unchallenged in this incredible assertion. The logical consequence is that there will come a time when we will have to buy a government permit just to emit carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from our own lungs!
The events on Capitol Hill last week just demonstrate Washington's audacity in manufacturing problems just so they can expand government power to solve them.
-Ron Paul-
Comments (26)
Democracy is funny.
What Democracy?
That too.
these demcraps do not know yet what their life will yield
very shortly we will have have a TOTAL economic collapse
these iditots have no clue
to the woods i soon will go
and damn there is no iternet there.....
we are seeing the begining of the end in our lives
What is truly frightening in all of this....is how its become accepted wisdom within the media that the debate is over. Any dissenting view is presented as marginal & insignificant. A great portion of the population believes this as well. The very fact that you insist that the debate still rages in the scientific community marks you as one who should be watched, Mr RGM. I think you should register with local authorities.
CNN REPORTS DIANA ROSS IS THE SECOND IN LINE TO RECIEVE MICHALES KIDS
this world is SHIT
deadmandeadman: I wish this issue was properly dealt with Jeff, I'm sure these means will contribute to very bad ends. I was a city employ registered with state of CA, so I'm sure they can find me if they really wanted to.
"we are seeing the begining of the end in our lives"
Pimp: Your very right about that Keith, I think a war here in America will not be a civil war here in America, but a second war of Independence, or reformation rather. I hope it doesn't come to that, it won't be pretty at all.
"CNN REPORTS DIANA ROSS IS THE SECOND IN LINE TO RECIEVE MICHALES KIDS"
I just heard about that the other day on CNN.
America is a great and wonderful place - not perfect and no form of government will ever be perfect. There is no such thing as a free market. A market by definition is an interdependent system and no actor in that market is free. Gentle government regulation is healthy in stopping individual actor's from distorting the market (at worst, creating a new mercantilism) and in making sure that the true social costs of transactions in the market are being paid by those in that market and not by those outside of it.
Ron Paul's view of the world is very simplistic. All voices in our democracy are helpful so I am happy to hear his voice but that doesn't make his view well thought out.
"Ron Paul's view of the world is very simplistic. All voices in our democracy are helpful so I am happy to hear his voice but that doesn't make his view well thought out."
His view point is that we should return to what our forefathers intended for our country. Things are really not that complicated, things are just artificially made that way. You pretty much want to clear all the smoke & get back to basics. I'm reading his book right now.
Any ideas of saying what our forefather's intended is total BS. There was no consensus except that a merchant nation would have a chance if there was some level of compromise on a central government that could pay off debts, create some commercial harmony, and raise an army. The founding fathers were not prescient beings. Saying otherwise is dangerously revisionist and for that matter, irrelevant.
We were founded on democratic principles and we survived as a pirate and protectionist economy for years just to get a chin up on our Euro cousins. At the constitutional convention there were 13 states - they did not all agree on the form of government. In fact the state legislatures that sent them there did not even want a new constitution, but change is inevitable for better or worse.
The free market is not interested in long term planning, it is about the next quarter, perhaps the next year. It is about return on investment. Returns on investment mean created value. But value is monetized, so where does that money or that "increase" come from. Well, someone prints it, or borrows at interest, inflation goes up etc.
I am no economist, by my rant is only to describe what is essentially an illusion. And if you don't believe in the illusion, then others will talk of the free market all they want, but people with the power of the vote will know when the illusion of perfection is steamrolling them, and they will react.
Ron Paul is offering kool aid to people who would rather have an oligarchy of libertarian economists with the real power. How many have-nots would ever subscribe to this idea?
Money and property will never cure the rotted soul of America that still suffers from prejudice and systematic lack of opportunity for porly educated lower classes.
I totally salute RP for a bunch of things he said, he is far more rational than most in some ways, and totally deluded too.
Ray -> Got to admit, the scare about global warming is artificially increased in most minds due to shit like this, if gravity is pulling us closer to the sun year by year (albeit small incremnts) of course it's going to get hotter the closer we get, but when the government has a mind to use something like this to justify actions, the media helps spread the panic so the majority will nod their heads and agree...
They see the pros of what happened in Spain but are turning blind eyes to the unexpected cons that popped up, a surefire way to topple the economy even further, do they just think America's stable enough to bypass the negatives that will surely make things worse -> People with degrees from top universities deciding things based on a very narrow perspective, deluding themselves to the collapse because it gives them more money or power -> wonder if they can sleep at night??
"Any ideas of saying what our forefather's intended is total BS"
I think this is what he meant:
Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life,_liberty_and_the_pursuit_of_happiness
What's deluded about his point of view?
"The free market is not interested in long term planning, it is about the next quarter, perhaps the next year. It is about return on investment. Returns on investment mean created value. But value is monetized, so where does that money or that "increase" come from. Well, someone prints it, or borrows at interest, inflation goes up etc"
Within the free market you need something like the gold standard to keep things in check. You don't spend what you don't have like we been doing. I'm one who thinks inflation is a failure & we should get rid of it. I don't really see the point. We need to regain the sovereignty of the USA.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation
"Ray -> Got to admit, the scare about global warming is artificially increased in most minds due to shit like this"
I don't want to say the problem doesn't exist, but the Government is using this issue to extort more money out of us citizens. This reminds me of something I learned in my Macro Economics class in College. If someone could find a way to sell air, they would.
"Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" was written by Thomas Jefferson, who was not at the Constitutional Convention. The Declaration is a manifesto for the merchant class, I have no doubt, but it was equally an expression of the class of white men who had property, and an expression of the Lockean theory that there was enough and as good to go around when it came to colonizing the land of the Native Americans. My only point is that you can't white wash the libertarian economic philosophy as it has historically played out. The expansion of the Federal Gov't since the Great Depression has been a direct result of the two dynamic forces - the industrial revolution and then the corresponding financial speculation, the toll of the revolution and the financial lack of discipline on the poor and working classes, and the use of the Commerce Clause to attempt to undo the systematic denial of civil rights to people of color. Ron Paul is right to think that beaurocracy is wasteful, however he is deluded in thinking that we are ready for that reponsibility. Either because the politics of race remains, or because the loss of government jobs would be cataclysmically unsettling to many American families, or because average consumers might not actually do anything more productive with that surplus. Anyhow it is irrelevant what I think because in this democracy there is tremendous inertia. So Paul is totally serving a purpose, but he lacks engagement on the real costs of the change he so desperatel;y wants.
As for the whole inflation is a failure thing, I don't think it is controllable to the degree you suggest. As long as there are bonds and loans issued with interest, there will be increases in price or cost pased on to consumers. I don't see it as a policy choice but a built in part of the system where we reward people who already hold property by allowing them to dictate what it will cost the people without capital to borrow it. It is banking my friend, and Thomas Jefferson hated that too.
what kind of panic do you think it would cause if everyone in my town went to the bank to withdraw their savings, every penny, and only the first 300 people to show up were given actual paper money -> "That's correct sir, you have $3,000.00 in your savings account, but we have no paper money to give you" -> Then every person in the country hears about it and goes to their bank and tries to get their money out, fuck the interest I'm making, I want to make sure my money is safe -> 80% of the population would be told that they have money, but only as a number on a screen -> so would the government then print more money to meet the demands???
I believe inflation is controllable, but only when the situation arises where it's neccessary, and only when it's beneficial to those who have a stockpile of paper money readily available to them ->
what good is it to me if I make $15.00 an hour for my whole life and keep saving up, then one day the value of the dollar drops off the map even more than it already is, and my $30,000 I had saved up is now worth what $3,000 was wirth yesterday ->
Tyler, I am not sure what kind of answer you are looking for, but my point is that it is all part of a system where we charge people to use our money. There is the FDIC, but I know that is not what you are getting at. Really the economy goes on as long as we believe in it. It is just an idea, money is an idea that is superimposed on survival, human needs, and self-interest, but yeah - if everyone went to the bank and the teller said you have money I just can't give it to you, then POOF the idea vanishes. So I guess I riled you up with that last one, but I am not sure what point you think I am making? As long as we live under the idea of finance and banking there will be inflation. Besides that I am not sure what rhettorical point you are making.
In India I believe credit is a relatively new idea. Before there was money lending there were years and years of fixed commodity prices that more clearly reflected supply and demand, not inflation upressures on price. Now India is celebrated as a developing economy, where capitalists go for outrageous returns on their investments, but it is harder to afford stuff there than it used to be.
I think you have mistaken me for someone who is in favor of the system. My main point about Ron Paul, or about anyone who wants to tear it all down, is just be careful what you ask for. It won't be all good, but it is probably inevitable whether you go down the shut government down route or the wait until capitalism collapses under its own weight route. It is amazing that people holdonto this idea that free market economics will solve all problems. Some problems can't be solved, like greed. It will always be here.
Oatmeal: "Ron Paul is right to think that beaurocracy is wasteful, however he is deluded in thinking that we are ready for that reponsibility. Either because the politics of race remains, or because the loss of government jobs would be cataclysmically unsettling to many American families, or because average consumers might not actually do anything more productive with that surplus. Anyhow it is irrelevant what I think because in this democracy there is tremendous inertia. So Paul is totally serving a purpose, but he lacks engagement on the real costs of the change he so desperatel;y wants"
I'd have to disagree with you, I think we are ready for change. I think evidence of it is people like us, everyone on this post concerned about things like this. A lot of the problem is the way the media portrays certain subjects. They spoon feed the masses, & I don't totally blame people for falling for it. People have very busy live's. I think that is a by product of the need for a two income family. Inflation is the monster that helped give birth to this. As someone on wall street said, the great depression of the early 20th century was a by-product of the destuctions of crops, which is why money was toward the farming industry. This depression we are in is artifially man made & he wished our Government, mainly Bush would shut up & stop talking about it which made a bad situation really bad. Still it's hard to starve in America now a days, & this is a great time to live despite our current problems.
(Sorry for any typo's & explained myself well to your response)
I'll add as a side note, what we have is a battle of will power. Wheather it stems from a greedy, or noble cause's. That is where a lot of the problem lie's in the past & today.
Tyler: "I believe inflation is controllable, but only when the situation arises where it's neccessary, and only when it's beneficial to those who have a stockpile of paper money readily available to them"
Your right dude, the paycheck doesn't keep up with rise of cost. It seems to be a means to a gods & clauds ends. There is no ryme or reason to it especially today.
I certainly can't disagree with most of what you said. Real change will not happen through government, it will be reflected in government. Grass roots all the way. That is something I agree with. It is just that Paul is speaking to a constituency that is relatively well off, who else would think "I don't need this system, I have mine." Many people don't have and many people aren't eating, those people would be crushed in Paul's system. Of course I could be wrong, and somehow there would be a free market solution to that, but recent history does not suggest that I am. And I don't mean to say that we aren't ready for change, but it will be a laborious process - that's democracy. Thanks for the thread.
Oatmeal: Your welcome sir! Thanks for your thougts & comments...
OATMEAL -> not trying to make a point, you're smart, you must realize I'm just a fanatic ranter on Ray's posts to get everyone all ripened, just to hear what kinds of shit people say -> I'm just an idiot who doesn't know what the hell I'm talking about, but I like to try to act like I do by saying generally quirky and adverse statements that aren't real pointed, just makes other freaks flip out -> AND I BLOODY LOVE IT WHEN THEY FLIP OUT!!!
Ray -> If studied, the early days of when banks were 'invented' so to speak, there was no such thing as interest rates, it was 'you can have as much money as I think your property might be worth if we have to sell it' -> but like Oatmeal said, one thing you can never get rid of s greed...and how long after an honest man's bank was opened do you think it took his greedy neighbor to finegle his way in and start hogging interest ->and income tax is un-constitutional, but who the fuck am I to try to cheat the government out of the money they're cheating me out of...I need the little bit of money I have left from my paycheck after paying taxes, and FICA for mainly illegal aliens, and health benefits that my company sucks out of me...I make over $15.00 per hour but bring home less than $400 per week -> WTF is that shit -> blood sucking leeches ->
Tyler: Check this out, some pretty interesting stuff.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrest_rate
Oatmeal: "Paul is speaking to a constituency that is relatively well off, who else would think "I don't need this system, I have mine." Many people don't have and many people aren't eating, those people would be crushed in Paul's system"
You do have charity groups within his system; one great example of this was Katrina.
On a less serious note, I just saw Bruno Friday night. Funny movie but has it highs and lows. Ron Paul appears in it and I am trying to figure out how Ron Paul or his advisors could not have known who Sasha Baron Cohen is especially with the popularity of Borat.
TBoom: I always wondered about that. Was it good?
Funny you link me to Wiki -> I've been reading way too much on there today, I'm supposed to be working, but I've been trying to decipher all the crap Maryland's Senators are saying on their web pages and I kept going to Wiki to see what the hell some of the terms meant in the policies and bills they're involved in -> I eventually gave up and kept reading Wiki, must have jumped through 100 pages when a new term popped up ->