Posted on 07/07/2005 12:18:17 PM PDT by Liz
You are wrong, too. Judge Jones did not write the opinion in Burdine. It was written by Judge Barksdale. I'm very glad you aren't a senator since you don't do your homework.
Suggest you learn a bit more history than you think you know about this. You picked a very very bad example to support your point of view.
The problem that was faced in the great depression was a structural problem. Because of the collapse of credit and the impact on the economy, there was a sharp decline in jobs. Because of the sharp decline in jobs, there was a sharp decline in private demand. Because of the drop in private demand there were further declines in jobs.
This is a classic monetary depression that Milton Friedman wrote about so well.
When, because of a collapse of credit, there is no private demand, you cannot stimulate the economy by creating more credit because no one wants it to invest to create jobs (Japan has been going through that problem over the last several years, and it is only the very strong hand of government that has prevented a monetary crisis turning into massive unemployment).
The only way to get money into the hands of private parties to increase demand is to print it and put it in the hands of those who you wish to start spending. That is exactly what the New Deal did. But, because Roosevelt recognized the danger of just handing out money, he created jobs programs and made people do some sort of work to earn their handouts.
The subsequent fate of such programs as the TVA or the Bonneville Power administration, and such losing money because they sell power at below market rates has nothing to do with the New Deal. It has to do with Congress not being able to bite the bullet and make these operations charge market rates (their industrial consumers such as the aluminum and aircraft industries very much enjoy paying lower than fair market value for electricity.)
That you cannot cut a government program once it has been created is the fault of our current politicians, and not the fault of the creators of the program.
Two things. We were not there, and I don't think you realize how much wealth was concentrated in how few hands at the time. One does not have to be anti-capitalist to recognize that Vanderbilt did not earn all of his money by either the sweat of his own brow or the product of his own invetion. Nor did most of the other "grand" capitalists.
let me ask this. If you believe in the power of unbridled capitalism, do you also believe in the power of individuals to join together to fix the price of their labor? Or do your free market ideas just work one way and not the other?
well, there are plenty of examples of governments destorying all their industry, killing their people etc...
private companies don't do this. It would be 'unprofitable'. :)
thats my point. The British East India company isn't relvavent to our discussion (as I admitted), but does tie in a bit with adam smith's 'nation of shopkeepers'.
And just think, Bush/41 selected Souter over her!
Well, we are in agreement with the causes of a recession and the credit problem etc... And yea, you need to get money in peoples hands.
So, sounds like a good time for a... TAX CUT RATHER THAN A TAX HIKE!
Since wealth is created, going after inequality is mostly a moot point. The wealthiest countries are the most unequal in dollar amount, but the poorest countries are the most unequal in terms of what the richest adn poorest consume. Example, in North Korea the corrupt and thieving government class live like 'kings' but no better than our middle class, while the poor starve, but our billionaries are more 'unequal' then our middle class. If this makes sense.
More on this:
http://www.neoperspectives.com/foundingoftheunitedstates.htm
http://www.neoperspectives.com/internationalpoverty.htm
(graph on this link)
And I don't believe your characterization of the 'capitalists' is correct. I read a paper the other day on how standard oil lowered prices drastically for nearly all of its consumers, yet in history books today (at least in our public skrewls) is demaguaged as a robber baron entity.
Yes, I agree that a group can band together and fix their price of labor. BUT I think an employer can have every right to fire the lot of them (which they can't do under current labor laws). In fact, it would be a foolish employer who ever let a union take over his/her factory.
http://www.neoperspectives.com/unions.htm
By and large Unions are a scourge on society today and bankrupt company after company.
btw, have you seen this chart:
The only time in America history when there was a net immigration away from the country was during the great depression (I contend due to the socialistic policies of the Roosevelt Admin and the hoover admin):
http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/immigration/pdfs/singleline.pdf
(this is more FYI, it doesn't really have much bearing on our discussion either way)
Counter-cyclical monetary policies seem to work for the ordinary business cycle. The depression was not an ordinary business cycle. A tax cut certainly provides no relief to the 30% who were unemployed.
I like the way this woman thinks! Someone persuade her that the Supreme Court and the country need her.
A tax cut certainly provides no relief to the 30% who were unemployed.
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Disagree. It puts more money in peoples hands, which is what you said was needed. Even if the tax cuts benefited only the 'rich', these are the people that own small businesses and factories etc.. and so would buy more luxery goods, expand employment and thus grow their businesses, create demand in teh economy, and lower the number of unemployed. It seems better to put the money in the hands of the people then to give it to those doing useless tasks, an action you seem to be defending.
"It would be nice however to see her tangle with Kennedy, Leahy and Schumer."
She would sentence these losers to hard time or death for treason.
Good morning.
"I am, in fact, very concerned about conservatives who believe that large unaccountable private institutions are somehow less of a threat to individual liberties than are public institutions, this after Enron."
Private institutions, large or small, do not coerce you into interacting with them. Public institutions usually require, under threat of some form of penalty, that we interact with them.
Michael Frazier
Good grief, where do you live - on a mountain top in Idaho?
I suppose my interaction with PEPCO (Potomac Electric Power Compay) is entirely voluntary and any time I choose I can decide to go without electricity. Likewise I can dispense with the services of Verizon. Can I dispense with interacting with the bill collector trying to collect a bill for a service I never purchased?
I suppose the coal miners in West Virginia who protested mining conditions did have the right to pack up and leave and seek employment elsewhere - as soon as they settled their debts with the company store and the company housing authority, etc.
I don't think you have any clue of the magnitude of the monetary crisis that then existed. The problem was not trying to kick in an additional 5% of circulating funds to clear an inventory of few unsold Louis Vuitton handbags or a yacht or two. The problem was to try to make up for an enormous contraction in credit which resulted in the collapse in the market for yachts, houses, etc. I don't have the exact numbers in front of me, but what we would call M3 today contracted by well over 50%, which represented a large multiple on the dollar bills in circulation. The sudden creation of enormous excess inventories of these things meant a several decade backlog to clear the overhang.
Even Milton Friedman will tell you that the consequences of dramatic deflation are, well, dramatic, and the only solution is to print money and hand it out to those who will spend it.
I also think you miss the entire point of the various conservative economic schools, such as Ludwig von Mises. Their prescription is never to have expanded credit as much as has had happened in the first place so that you don't create the bubble that then, inevitably they would tell you, collapsed. They have little to tell you about what to do after a bubble collapse, except perhaps, as you advocate, do nothing.
Likeminded conservatives of the 30's, however, took the prescription to do nothing to their political graves. The voting public would not stand for it.
Also a tax cut on the rich would only very partially make up for the collapse in their own earning capability brought on by the collapse in demand for the prodcuts of their factories because of the high unemployment among the segments of the population that would normally have purchased those goods.
Your let them eat cake attitude is very sweet.
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? So far we agree on the solution, but disagree on how to achieve the solution. My solution is to lower taxes to solve the credit problem, yours is to spend gov money on earthworks and entitlements.
"Even Milton Friedman will tell you that the consequences of dramatic deflation are, well, dramatic, and the only solution is to print money and hand it out to those who will spend it."
I can't believe Milton Friedman would support gov subsidies to interest groups over tax cuts to all.
"Likeminded conservatives of the 30's, however, took the prescription to do nothing to their political graves. The voting public would not stand for it."
No, as documented, they voted for massive and unprecedented tax hikes.
Your post clearly implied that Judge Jones was the AUTHOR of the Burdine opinion. ("Judge Jones' opinion in Burdine"; The 5th Circuit sitting en banc reversed her").
Please tell me what opinions Judge Jones has written that would cause you to say that "she believes that anything the government does in criminal case is OK, even perjury, false evidence, framing an innocent person" and that "She just doesn't get the 'innocent until proven guilty'or 'due process' thing." I've read every opinion she's written, and I defy you to name one in which she approved of the framing of an innocent person. I think you just don't like her.
Milton Friedman would not endorse creating the monetary bubble that creates the problem in the first place. A 10% tax cut is pi$$ing in the wind when you have a 50% collapse in monetary flows.
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