I was going to go to bed and perhaps have an early rise in the morning but, I decided to surf Facebook and found myself tagged to a note on someone’s thoughts about capitalism. I had debated this person on the topic of Obama’s economic policies in the recent past. What was obvious from the debate is that I am in support of Liberty and freedom and he is in support of central planning and big government.
It is certainly not rare to have big government supporters in the State or city of New York. Since Obama has become President, I have become more and more a fish out of water when it comes to political debates. Where everyone was against Bush’s idiotic policies, no one dares criticize the Messiah’s idiotic policies. The scariest thing is that they don’t see the similarities.
I consider myself a student of Mises and have learned a great deal from economists, philosophers, and statesman–not statists–who are knowledgeable of his work. While Mises has long ago refuted Marx, it has not stopped the boneheaded Marxian ideas from spreading.
So, while every centrally planned form of government has failed since Marx and before Marx, we are still debating whether a free society is the best one to live in. It was Einstein who defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results. In that sense, all Marxists are insane–and so are their policies.
My motivation to write this instead of sleep was from a Facebook note. This note came about because of a quote I posted by Henry Hazlitt:
“The whole gospel of Karl Marx can be summed up in a single sentence: Hate the man who is better off than you are.”
The author of the Facebook note was outraged. Before I had read this note, I did not know the author was a Marxist. I knew he supported big government and believed it to be a good idea to steal from one group to give to another–in this case it was stealing from the poor to give to the rich or what is known as bailouts.
New estimates show that Obama’s budget would generate deficits averaging $1 trillion a year for 10 years. That is a lot of red. The White House insisted that these massive deficits will not put a damper on its already costly agenda–how is that going to work?
So much for Obama’s plan to cut the budget deficit in half by 2013! The more likely scenario is that we are going to double the budget deficit or if the estimates are correct, continue them.
“Worst of all, CBO says the deficit under Obama’s policies would never go below 4 percent of the size of the economy, figures that economists agree are unsustainable. By the end of the decade, the deficit would exceed 5 percent of gross domestic product, a dangerously high level.”
These deficits are obviously unsustainable and dangerously high! How can we add $9.3 trillion dollars in deficits to the national debt? This is not a time to be spending frivilously. We need to save and underconsume. There are no means to pay off the debt we already have if we keep spending.
Of course, Obama refuses to cut back on any of his pet projects “investments”.
“What we will not cut are investments that will lead to real growth and prosperity over the long term,” Obama said. “That’s why our budget makes a historic commitment to comprehensive health care reform. That’s why it enhances America’s competitiveness by reducing our dependence on foreign oil and building a clean energy economy.”
“It doesn’t change what the president’s focus is, in terms of his objectives in making critical investments, and doesn’t change his ability to halve the deficit in four years,” said White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs.
Right. This won’t change his ability to halve the deficit in four years? What funny math is he using? In Obamaland, reducing the deficit means adding to it!
Obama is going to spend the United States dollar and economy into an early grave.
Ron Paul laid the smackdown on Baldwin. The argument for drug laws have never been good and Baldwin hasn’t improved upon it. It ends with Baldwin running out of intelligent things to say and taking a jab at Paul supporters.
For the record, I support Paul and I don’t smoke pot. I am also not against those who do smoke it. People are free to make their own life choices.
I may not have a degree in economics but, neither do these AP writers who wrote about recessions turning into depressions. As someone who reads a great deal of works from the Austrian School of Economics, there is just an enormous amount of misinformation in that particular AP article.
The article wastes time by going into what defines a depression. I don’t see how the terminology is going affect the real situation that people are facing. So while the article tries to define what a depression is, it makes many economic fallacies.
“Morici says a depression is a recession that “does not self-correct” because of fundamental structural problems in the economy, such as broken banks or a huge trade deficit.”
There are no such things as recessions or depressions that do not self-correct. They always self-correct. The depression or recession can also be called a correction. It is a correction on a massive scale due to the massive boom created by artificial means–eg: arbitrary interest rates set by a central bank.
When stock prices go up to astronomical levels in respect to the company’s earning potential, then there is a bubble. When that bubble bursts and the stock price pulls back, we call it a correction. It is exactly the same when entire industries or economies are in a bubble and that bubble bursts. A correction is taking place. To try and stop the correction is trying to maintain an illusion.