Liberals run psychology. Scientists use common sense, critical thinking, independent thought. The oppposite of a "Liberals."

Really? How about the type who drone on endlessly about how you have no right to regard yourself as a "victim" - even if you are a welfare mother about to be cut off the rolls, a rape victim, a worker laid off because some swine running a corporation decided more money could be made by merging it with another or by laying off half the workers and doubling the work quotas of those remaining? Or if you are a Palestinain or Iraqi peasant whose home has been destroyed by Israelis or American stormtroopers? You know the kind of psychologists I mean - the one who tell the victims of capitalism that what happens to them is their own fault; is is caused by laziness, immaturity, illogical thinking, the allegedly foolish belief that society owes everyone a job, shelter, food and medical care. Or how about the psychoogists who prostitute themselves to corporations, administering allegedly scientific tests designed to root out troublemakers before they are hired - people who want to form unions, who won't put up with abuse by bosses, be forced into working illegal overtime, or who won't look the other way when the bosses when they rip off consumers or violate health and safety laws?

You are one sick puppy Meyer. What a convoluted view of the world!

There are no victims of Capitalism.

There are those who fail to take advantage of the incredible opportunities that Capitalism affords.

Meyer, it may come as a shock to you but there is such a thing as a lazy bum. And there are also parasites.

Try to get it through that thick head of yours Meyer that society owes no one a living. This is thankfully not a welfare state. And we're not a Communist or Socialist state either (thank god).

Ours is the land of opportunity for those who get their ass in gear and make something of themselves. I presume that would not be you Meyer.

It is a land of opportunity for those with inherited rental property, with rich daddies (like Bush), for sleazy sales representatives, for rich physicians who get rich by overcharging patients for real or made-up disorders, and for those who get promoted to management postitions in corporations by sucking up to the boss and ratting on their fellow workers. And yes, you can assume that I am not one of these people. I suspect that you are, though.

Having said that I still prefer a Free Economy to a Centrally Planned Slave Economy which is what Socialism is. You can gussy it up will all sorts of florid prose but what it comes down to is that both Political Power and Economic Power are in the Same hands and you saw how well that worked in the Old Soviet Union -or in the United States for that matter. As the late Economist Friedrich Von Hayek put it: "When Political Power and Economic power are in the same hands opposition means death by slow starvation."

Of course what we have is a hybrid mutant monster known as Crony Capitalism - which is nothing but another name for Oligarchy.

This country is run by a handful of Wealthy Sociopaths who are busy foisting upon us their sick vision of Paradise with them at the top, of course, and the rest of us slaves. Really not much different than Socialism where you have a handful of Powerful Bureaucrats running the show where everybody is equal except some are more equal than others. Not everybody in the Soviet Union had a Limo or Dacha.

While I do not agree with Meyers' solutions I do agree with his characterization of the state of affairs in the U.S. today.

Psychology is not a Science. It is a collection of OPINION which gives itself the title of Science.

You have several major schools of thought none of which agree. If it were Science there would be one Primary School which could produce predictable beneficial results. Psychology can do neither.

Further Psychologists and their "Kissing Cousins" Psychiatrists have been handmaidens to some of the worst Dictators and Murderers over the last 100 years.

Examine what they actually do produce not what they claim to produce.

There is no such thing as a predictable, repeatable, beneficial activity. You are better off talking to a Compassionate Clergyman who will actually listen rather than try to tell you what you are thinking when they have no clue as to what you are thinking.

Meyer,
Sounds like you have a difficult time facing up to your shortcomings. It's always easier to indict the system than it is to be creative and ambitious. We have a word for people like you, who like to steal from people who work harder than you: looters.

Are you saying that "the system" was designed so that everyone could have a job, health care, food, and shelter if she worked hard enough? And if so, how do you explain the U-7 rate, held by the US Labor Department? Think you can rationalize it? Didn't think so.

"The System" wasn't designed (except for the socialist bits that the government couldn't resist adding). That's the point. What is your problem with U-7? Too high? Too low? If you don't like the unemployment rate as reported, then add 5%. It's a more useful figure to most of us if you don't count the people who aren't seeking full-time work. But to each his own.

I'll explain it for you: People start businesses, people invest in businesses, people work for these businesses. Why on earth would you assume that the number of workers needed to operate the businesses would be exactly the same as the number of people who want a job? It actually comes amazingly close. This "balance" only happens in a designed system. And we all know how well that works.

The fact that the U-7 rate is maintained but never reported to the general population confirms that there is a propaganda system in place which requires intentional obfuscation of the true state of economic affairs. If people knew that the unemployment/underemployment rate was actually twice what they were being told, they would question the system, not just themselves. And if social programs weren't in place, the system that you claim does not exist would completely collapse. That is because 8-10% of the workforce is intentionally unemployed/underemployed even in boom times (i.e. Alan Greenspan raising interest rates during the Clinton adminstration) to keep a certain amount of slack in the economy. This slack is necessary to keep wages and prices down. To assume that all those not "actively" seeking full-time work don't want or need full-time pay (and benefits like health care) in order to keep them out of poverty does not reflect the reality. The reality is many temps and part timers want full time work but couldn't find it. Some of these unemployed/underemployed people have children who are living under gross instability and poverty due to no fault of their own. Do you think those children should be looking for full time employment?

So millions of Americans will not have a job, health care, food, and/or shelter no matter how hard they work.

That's the point.

"The fact that the U-7 rate is maintained but never reported to the general population confirms that there is a propaganda system in place which requires intentional obfuscation of the true state of economic affairs."

Wrong. It's a metric that allows one to track unemployment from period to period. Apples to apples. As long as it's consistent, that's all that matters. Intentional obfuscation? Hardly. All economic statistics are more complicated than the layperson imagines. Do you know at what age Americans begin to be counted in the unemployment rate? Do you know if the public workforce is included? Do you know how the data is normalized for seasonality? Do you know how the data is gathered? Do you know at what day of the month the DoL says one must work through in order to be counted as employed for that month?

The unemployment rate is a statistic intended to be compared period to period. Think of it as like the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Neither the unemployment rate nor the Dow Jones Industrial Average mean very much when looked at in isolation.

"It's a metric that allows one to track unemployment from period to period."

How does that addess the point that it is "never reported to the general population"?

Writing "wrong" or "hardly" do not qualify as arguments. But nice try.

What do you mean the alternative unemployment rates are never reported to the general public? ALL six of the indicators are reported on the Bureau of Labor Statistics website. Everybody is used to seeing/comparing U3, so that is what the mainstream media reports. (Like I said earlier, it doesn't matter which one is reported, as long as it is consistently reported).

So there it is. All indicators are equally reported by the government. No conspiracy here. They're all right there on the website. What do you expect? A public service announcement during 'Friends' ?

By the way, the system was revamped in 1994 and U-7 no longer exists. Under the new program, your favorite is U6 (the one that shows the highest number).

Are you aware that admitting that "Everybody is used to seeing/comparing U3...[and] is what the mainstream media reports" supports my argument perfectly? Who decided that the U3 would be the rate everybody would see and not the U-7 (or U6) which paints a more accurate picture of how many Americans (and their dependents) are employed? I'm sure that you know that in order to raise profits, there has been a consorted effort to reduce the cost of labor for companies by eliminating full-time jobs and increasing temps and part-timers (who get no benefits). The U3 rate, by not including temps and part-timers, hides this trend and obsfucates the true state of the economy. So your rationale "it doesn't matter which one is reported, as long as it is consistently reported" is really inaccurate. To most Americans who live paycheck to paycheck it matters quite a deal.

"Are you aware that admitting that "Everybody is used to seeing/comparing U3...[and] is what the mainstream media reports" supports my argument perfectly?"

No.


"I'm sure that you know that in order to raise profits, there has been a consorted effort to reduce the cost of labor for companies by eliminating full-time jobs and increasing temps and part-timers (who get no benefits)."

Yes, this does happen. But the effort is not "consorted".


"To most Americans who live paycheck to paycheck it matters quite a deal."

It does? Why do they care that Peter Jennings passes along the U3 rate instead of U2 or U4? It doesn't have any effect on their lives. There is one set of Americans to whom it matters: economists.

Hey you have some good advice Bush Admirer. I actually aggree with you here. You see i don't not want to be one of those people that london was talking about so I am finding other ways to make a living so I don't have to sell my soul to a corporation. I actually have an E-bay Store and I also have a couple of other business. I was always the odd man out in the corporate world becuase I refused to belive that the only thing in life that mattered was how many widgets i sold in a month.
Which brings me to my point. The conservatives like Bill O Riley shout about family values yet they are constantly cutting families wages and forcing welfare mothers to go work at McDonalds while their children are left with strangers. Corporate Welfare for the ultra rich is the real problem, not welfare mothers.

"Yes, this does happen. But the effort is not "consorted"."

Do you know what "consorted" means? What would you call it? Coincidence?

"Why do they care that Peter Jennings passes along the U3 rate instead of U2 or U4?"

Do you actually read what I write? I just gave you the reason why it matters. Just because you ignore the majority of my responses or feign ignorance does not mean you have preserved your argument. Go back and read what I wrote. See how many points you ignored and questions you deliberately refused to answer. Now if there is something you truly do not understand, frame a concrete question (while quoting in its entirety) and I will try to explain. Otherwise, I am not going to continue to write the same thing over and over again while you make silly comeback lines.

Do we have a deal? Or are you ready to call it quits?

>Do you know what "consorted" means? What would
>you call it? Coincidence?

From dictionary.com

v. con·sort·ed, con·sort·ing, con·sorts (kn-sôrt)
v. intr.
To keep company; associate: a politician known to consort with gangsters.
To be in accord or agreement.

v. tr.
To unite in company; associate.
Obsolete.
To escort; accompany.
To espouse.

I would call it Basic Management. If you can lower your labor costs (in any way: automation, temps, half-shifts, outsource, etc) without significantly affecting your quality or productivity, then consider it. When Ford first installed robots on the factory floor, were they "consorting" with Toyota? No. Scrambling to catch up? Yes.

You ask if it's a coincidence. No. Is it using a proven strategy to lower costs? Yes. Keep in mind that this strategy is not effective in all industries and in all departments. It is directly correlated to the skill required (knowledge workers, training, experience required, etc). Mailroom worker or janitor vs software development project manager or salesperson for a technical product.

If BushAdmirer doesn't chime in on your other questions, I'll help you out.

Sorry, Bush Admirer and Dagny, but my so-called shortcomings include a history of three graduate degrees and better jobs than I'll wager either of you two birds have ever had or ever will have - based on your reasoning skills alone. But my personal history is not the point; the real point is that capitalism cannot exist without mass unemployment; there has to be, at all times, what Marx called a reserve army of unemployed so that bosses can impose their will on their workers, telling them that if they don't like the way things are, or if they don't meet sales or production quotas, a replacement can always be found. That, in case you have not heard, is called the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie; it does not require (except in times of acute economic and social crisis ) a clown in a uniform giving fascist salutes and telling people they are the master race even if they do not have two cents to rub together.
Maybe you clowns are old enough to remember the last real unemployment crisis in the US - the double digit unemployment disaster of the early 1980's, when even capitalist newspapers would run pictures of lines stretching around a block of people waiting to apply for janitor of kitchen helper jobs. At the same time, college graduates were out in the streets asking for spare change, not because they were drug addicts but because government spending cutbacks (courtesy of Ronnie Reagan) and corporate "belt tightening" had resulted in their getting laid off or not hired in the first place and they were, in many cases, not even allowed to fill out job applications for so-called menial work because they were "over-qualified" by their education. Are you going to tell me that these people themselves were to blame for their situations - rather than a system in which employers are allowed to use human beings as commodities, who exist to have as much labor as possible squeezed out of them to finance country club memberships for their employers and Harvard educations for their employers' offspring - and then to be discarded when they are not longer useful for these purposes? There are ominous indications that the US economy may be headed in that same direction again. Maybe you two drones won't have to worry because your apartment house managers will still collect the rent for you. But a lot of people will. And if those people get pissed off enough there are going to be some big changes in this country - changes that you two Babbits won't enjoy at all.

Meyer et al,

If I were to give a commencement address, I would be sure to mention the following:

* Business cycles happen. Among other things, it's human emotion -- over excited, bust, fear, under excited, repeat. In fact, cycles happen in just about everything (marriages, friendships, etc).

* Having a job is a privilege. Somebody created a business and got to the point where he couldn't do all of the work himself. So he had to hire help. You are that hired help.

* If the above reality bothers you, then start your own business and hire people to help you.

* If your not the entrepreneurial type, then be sure to be a knowledge worker and not an unskilled worker (duh). The higher your skills and the better your education, experience, and training, the less chance that you will be treated like a 19th century Marxist/Dickensian sweatshop laborer as described by Meyer above (how obsolete is that!).

By the way, Meyer, in which field(s) are your graduate degrees?

Those men in the white coats just pulled into my driveway!

You can be highly skilled. You can be highly trained and educated,
you can work hard, show loyalty, save them money, help them make more money.
You can set up production lines out of a slothful chaos and make it work
train others to valuable skills and still be delete with as trash.
Been there. Got along fine with the floor and cubies. I just didn’t suck up or grovel although I always employed a professional courteous attitude.
I was a preferred choice for a projects or task requirement by the customers of the corporations I worked for. I completed tasks on time and
at high standards. I was also a mechanical inspector and technician with
Navel Weapons and Mil Spec grade certification for years in a row.
Didn’t mean squat.

The corporations have torn up their social contact of their charter.
We’ve had our taxes pay for selling us out by shipping out manufacturing base over seas. BOHICA!!

Sounds like workin' for the man didn't suit you. Good thing you were creative enough to start your own business. Congratulations!

Instead of classes in computer literacy we had training classes in weasel politics. How to avoid obvious conflicts of interests (bribery)
I remember when I said at a budget ( I was project lead) meeting once:
"Why do we have these expenditures (entertainment!?!/%#@$+)
if the quality of the product speaks for itself?" And it did.
One of the project managers murmured loudly about 'wide eyed innocence' and guess who never was called upon to attend another meeting? Wonder why (blink blink)?

Poor "blame the victim" Dagny; he still doesn't understand how this society works or how the game is rigged in advance in favor of the rich and the employers. My view of unemployement is obsolete? I just explained to you what happened in the early '80's, in case you are too much of a young cub to remember - plenty of college graduates were jobless then. There was another, less serious employment slump in the late 1980's and early 1990's; this was the one that got Bush I canned. I was working up in Bakersfield then, and I saw a lot of petroleum geologists and engineers hopelessly unemployed; these people, in some cases, had gone into this line of work not because this was their favorite branch of science but because they had been counselled by teachers and "economic experts" back in the 1970's that the oil crisis would make these kinds of techincal jobs unemployment proof. What a joke. Needless to say, in a provincial city like Bakersfield, no one would consider hiring people with graduate degrees to unload trucks or shelve books at the library. The oil bust could not have been forseen by anyone, and only a malicious mianthrope or a buffoon would argue that these people were unemployed through their own "failure." The same thing had happened to people 25 years earlier, in the early sixties, when people were told that there was a "teacher shortage" and then went on to find themselve unemployed because the baby boom had ended and the appearance of large numbers of immigrant children had not yet taken place.
As for my personal history, all you need to know is that I have a fine education and a good bank account. Anything else is none of your business. You seem like the type who likes to find out who people are so you can send their names into the Homeland Security Secretary, if in fact you are not working for him already.

That is what happens, Judith, when you leave the psychiatric hospital without signing out. They are probably less interested in hospitalizing you against your will than in finding out how your bill is going to be payed - capitalism is capitalism, you know.

These corporations having been riding the broken backs of the working class for too long. We are nothing to them but chattle to be used and abused so they can have their homes in the Hamptons and Beverly Hills. It's time we fight back. We must destroy these corporate CEO's and their evil corporations and turn over production to its rightful owners -- the people. I personally plan of doing something about it and I hope you'll join me. Let's sit down and talk about it.

Then, we'll hit the bong and talk some more.

"Inflation is a Monetary Phenomenon." - Milton Friedman Nobel Laureate in Economics


The "Business Cycle" is nothing more than the ill advised intervention in the Economy of IGNORANT Bureaucrats and Politicians.

Local Dislocations and changes are to be expected in a DYNAMIC economy as Consumer Demand, Technology and Methods change. However, widespread dislocations occur only as a result of Incompetent Policy. There are both intended and unintended consequences.

Example: about 10-15 years ago Congress decided to apply a "Luxury Tax" on all Boats costing more than 100,000 and all Privately Purchased Aircraft. Result - Most small Custom Boat Building Shops were Driven out of Business, and ALL U.S. Small Plane Manufacturers. Reason: Most People who buy a "Yacht" do so as a once in a lifetime purchase and they are straining to do it - usually as a Retirement Home. The Tax increase took it out of their reach. Sales dropped to near Zero as people turned to alternatives they could afford. Ditto Small Planes - most people who buy them do so once in a lifetime and it has usually taken them years to save enough to do it.

Getting the "Rich People" destroyed 2 industries, put a lot of people out of work and on employment, reduced tax revenue - people on unemployment do not pay any net taxes. Result less tax collected and more people not working.

Governments are horrible at trying to regulate business activity and we all suffer because of it.

"Obsolete" was in reference to your characterization of all employer-employee relationships as hostile and your characterization of all labor as commoditized.

No job is "unemployment proof". Even the best companies can be destroyed by incompetent and/or corrupt management.

The reason many companies/institutions don't hire overqualified people is that they are more likely to flee when a better opportunity arises. They would rather have somebody who is more statistically content with staying.

You could have also used the example that there is now a glut of computer programmers, since that was fashionable in the late 90s. So what? It's a dynamic economy. If the world no longer needs buggy whips, then re-educate yourself and learn to make automobile dashboards.

In fact, that's what I'm doing. I'm at mid-career. I have paused and am back in school -- learning new skills. Then I will do what I did before: get a good job at a good company with a good mentor. Learn a lot and meet likeminded people. Find a niche. Then start my own business.

The first time I started a business, I didn't have rich family to help out. I took a risk and financed everything on credit cards. Fortunately, it all worked out for me. I no longer have the business (merged it with another firm). But that feels like lifetimes ago. Now I am back in school. Go figure. Remember: the world is DYNAMIC! That's what makes it interesting.

You can hit the bong all you like; the fact is that there is serious organizing going on here in greater LA that has already resulted in massive strikes by janitors and massive protests against hospital closures and school cutbacks. Much more is to follow; maybe you can watch it on television.

Which fraternity are you going out for this semester, Dagny? The SAEs? The Phi Delts? I hope you don't wind up as one of those hazing statistics.

--the fact is that there is serious organizing going on--

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA..........................

"the fact is that there is serious organizing going on here in greater LA that has already resulted in massive strikes by janitors and massive protests against hospital closures and school cutbacks. Much more is to follow"

We couldn't organize our sock drawer.

But all these thing you propose sound wonderful. Let's sit down and talk about it.

I hope I graduate before the revolution begins. What with all that serious organizing going on and stuff.

I hope the cleaning ladies don't go on strike at the frat house demanding a living wage, Dagny; you might have to do your own laundry.

I'm doing my own laundry as I type this! (I've actually never been so fortunate as to have somebody else do my laundry since moving out of mom and dad's house.)

By the way, it's a grad school, and there are no frats. Sounds like fun, though. But it's study study study.

...Meyer's argument is seen in the current attempt to eliminate overtime. Squeezing more work out of people for less money, that's what modern Capitalist principles are all about!

None of the people defending Capitalism here seem to be poor or from a minority group. (I could be wrong, but I doubt it) Why is it that the Haves always blame the Have Nots for not having? Like people want to be poor...right!

And of course, the Elite would never INTENTIONALLY keep people poor and uneducated! They would never gut the public education system by starving it of funds. Look at all the money we have for guns, but none for jobs or education. And these clowns say that there is no 'Master Plan'. HA!!!

You might find this page interesting:

http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/2002/section6/tables/t41_1.asp

Dagny, being a self-proclaimed economist adds no credence to your illformed arguments. Psychologists are better able to predict economic shifts than economists. And we all know how crazy people are about them.

What is apparent is your inability to see human beings behind all of the formulas and bold-faced words in your college textbooks that you meticulously memorized. You must not have any children or anything that resembles a relationship that may have one. Otherwise, you would have at least attempted to respond to my point about children hurting the most from constant instability. 1/3 of all American children live in poverty. I know you think adults should be dynamic and adjust, but should we be lifting child labor laws so children can pay their own rent, food and educational expenses? Sorry BA can't help you. As you can see, these arguments have consistently gone over his head.

"When Ford first installed robots on the factory floor, were they "consorting" with Toyota?"

They may not have been "consorting" with Toyota as you understand the term commonly used. BUt they were in accord, in agreement, in company and yes in consort as they are all synonyms by your own dictionary post. Sometimes we use different words in English and not the same ones again and again. What you call Basic Management (a bold-faced term in one of your textbooks) and "proven stategy" could only be "basic" or widely accepted through some form of agreement. So again you support my argument.

Hey London, do you really think that conditions have yet to surpass the 80s? The number of people shipped to prison as slaves has exploded since the 80s. So it may appear that there are less unemployed people than there really are. Also, from what I understand borrowed money from re-mortgaged homes is what has been keeping the ecponomy from complete collapse. But that can't continue because Geenspan will not be able to keep lowering interest rates. Lastly, keep posting. Your perspective is quite enriching.

I remember Ronald "Where's My Brain" Reagan shrugging off the unemployment of hundreds of thousands of middle aged steel workers and auto workers back in the early 80's by saying that they could all go to school and become computer repairmen. What a clown, except that this was no laughing matter. Some of those people are now in their 60's or 70's and living on social security or the charity of relatives because they never found another pension -producing job.

The layoffs of the 80's was due to Volker having to do what he could to reduce runaway inflation caused by Jimmy "I'm Mr. Peanut Brain" Carter.

Meyer and Sphere,

I look forward to reading about your alternative economic system. Please don't paste some gargantuan prose from some website. Just provide me with a summary. And please make it based in reality -- for example, don't assume we can start from 1920 or something. We can't go back in time. Provide a system that can begin tomorrow, given the current realities. And address things like how your system would achieve full employment. And what you would do to those able-bodied people who don't feel like working.

I certainly do feel sorry for the kids whose parents do not take adequate care of them. I am a softy for all of the defenseless on the plant -- children, elderly, even animals. Speaking of animals, they have figured out a way to care for their own young. Why can't humans? My credo is if one can't afford a child, then they should wait until they can.

Cheers.

PS - thank you for flattering me by suggesting the strength of my memory. But it has been 16 years (gulp) since my undergraduate education in finance and economics, and I fear that my ability to recall specific items from those textbooks have long passed.

"1/3 of all American children live in poverty."

Unsubstanticated Allegation.

For more information at your reading level, see "Logic For Dummies."

Opps! Sometimes I get my statistics mixed up. The last accepted figure is 1/5 of children live in poverty

http://trfn.clpgh.org/harvest/ChildHung.HTML
http://boes.org/coop/censor1.html

At least we know it's much higher in Los Angeles.

...and 1 out of 5 children is still too many for the richest country in the world.

Any child going hungry is too much. One out of 5 is way too high. The government should see to it that people never go hungry. It is the responsibility of the government to watch over and care for us from cradle to grave and make sure we always have a safe and warm place to sleep, clothes to wear, food to eat, and a living wage. It's terrible that anyone goes without in this country. We should all do something about this. Let's sit down and talk about it.

Since when does "living below the poverty line" equate to "going hungry"?


"It is the responsibility of the government to watch over and care for us from cradle to grave and make sure we always have a safe and warm place to sleep, clothes to wear, food to eat, and a living wage."

I can't tell if you are being serious or sarcastic here.

The poverty line in the USA is drawn at around $20k per year.

In most African, Middle Eastern and South/Central American nations, if you make that much annually, you are doing pretty well.

You don't see too many child beggars out on the streets in the USA (I can't remember EVER seeing one where I live). But if you go to any third world nation, they are a dime a dozen (literally, if you give one a dime, you'll be immediately surrounded by a dozen more of them).

Now tell me, if we have so many starving children in America, where are the child-beggars like I've seen in Ecuador, Panama, Pakistan, and Cameroon?

Child poverty is really something to joke about - ha, ha, ha. Having experienced it myself I know how hillarious it really is. Here is a suggestion to you: why don't you sit down. Down as far in the toilet seat as a snake like you can sit and then flush yourself away. It will be a real riot - ha, ha, ha.

Who's joking? Our family was so poor, we remember when our parents had to tie alcohol-soaked rags around we kids legs when eating supper to keep the ringworms from getting our food first. We found nothing funny about that. Child poverty is no laughing matter. Let's sit down and talk about it.

Earlier you admitted that formerly prosperous people like computer workers can find themselves unemployed by changes in the economy of technology. But now you tell us that people should not have children unless they are sure they will be affluent enough to take care of them (without relying upon such horrors as publicly financed higher education or free breakfast programs for grade schoolers, I guess).
So how are people going to know how prosperous they are going to be?
Somehow I get the feeling that you would have been right at home in Nazi Germany, applauding the program that sterilized people whose children might become a "burden" on society. Of course, you might have run into some difficulties later on at the Nuremburg trials. Or maybe you would have been more "humane" than the sterilizers - you would have just left the children to starve if some private charity didn't take care of them. Musn't interfere with the sacred laws of the free market , you know. Just ask all those people who starved to death during the Irish Potato famine because the British government argued that state aid to the starving would violate free trade and hurt those given food by undermining their self-reliance.

When I was growing up, I knew a kid that was so poor he couldn't pay attention.

I once saw his momma kickin' a tin can down the street and I asked what she was doing and she said "Moving."

They were so poor that they used to borrow the neighbor's kids when they went down to the social services office so they could collect TWO welfare checks.

They were so poor that when I went over to play and wanted to use the bathroom they'd just say "pick a corner".

People from the church would run over animals in front of their house to help with food.

... I draw conclusions based upon statements the way I perceived them to mean, presume to tell people what they would have been like had they lived in a different place and time and what they would have opposed and not opposed, and ask questions then provide my own scripted answers, so what do I know.

The US poverty line: $8,240 first person in household, $2,820 for each additional person in household.

Average World GDP per capita: ~ $4,500

(All 1999 figures)


You might be interested to know that the US poverty line was originally calculated by figuring the cost of a minimum adequate diet and multiplying this figure by 3 to account for other life expenses.

and they once had 10 cent boat rides down the river, all that kid's family could do was run down the bank hollering "That's real cheap!"

Meyer,
I will give you the benefit of the doubt and assume the last few comments were written by an imposter trying to make you look foolish. Bringing nazis into *this* discussion is not something I would expect you to do.

Dagny

Say Eric, Activist Community, and the bogus Meyer, since you find the topic of poor families so hillarious I might as well give you a whole list of things to look up so you can spend the rest of the day giggling: thalydimide deforimities, surivors of napalm attacks, basket case veterans with no arms or legs who have been that way since Vietnam, Korea or even WWII, batttered women's shelters, child prostitution, AIDS, famine in Africa, elderly people who have to choose between eating or buying prescription medication, industrial accidents, farmworkers whose employers refuse to supply them with portable toilets in the fields,
death squads in El Salvador. What a riot!

Try the system they have in People's Nepal now. Everybody eats, everyone contributes, no oppressive monarchy.

This is Wink Dinkerson reporting from the Nepal embassy here in Washington, D.C. You should see the line of people waiting to acquire immigration papers to become citizens of Nepal. This event is taking place world-wide by throngs of people seeking a better way of life in the People's Nepal. I don't know how the country will hold them all. This is Wink Dinkerson reporting.

Nepal is among the poorest and least developed countries in the world with nearly half of its population living below the poverty line. Agriculture is the mainstay of the economy, providing a livelihood for over 80% of the population and accounting for 41% of GDP. Industrial activity mainly involves the processing of agricultural produce including jute, sugarcane, tobacco, and grain. Textile and carpet production, accounting for about 80% of foreign exchange earnings in recent years, contracted significantly in 2001 due to the overall slowdown in the world economy and pressures by Maoist insurgents on factory owners and workers. Security concerns in the wake of Maoist activity, the June massacre of many members of the royal family, and the September 11 terrorist attacks in the US led to a decrease in tourism, another key source of foreign exchange. Agricultural production is growing by about 5% on average as compared with annual population growth of 2.3%. Since May 1991, the government has been moving forward with economic reforms, particularly those that encourage trade and foreign investment, e.g., by reducing business licenses and registration requirements to simplify investment procedures. The government has also been cutting expenditures by reducing subsidies, privatizing state industries, and laying off civil servants. More recently, however, political instability - five different governments over the past few years - has hampered Kathmandu's ability to forge consensus to implement key economic reforms. Nepal has considerable scope for accelerating economic growth by exploiting its potential in hydropower and tourism, areas of recent foreign investment interest. Prospects for foreign trade or investment in other sectors will remain poor, however, because of the small size of the economy, its technological backwardness, its remoteness, its landlocked geographic location, and its susceptibility to natural disaster. The international community's role of funding more than 60% of Nepal's development budget and more than 28% of total budgetary expenditures will likely continue as a major ingredient of growth.

GDP per capita: purchasing power parity - $1,400 (2001 est.)

http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/np.html

I already told you what you can do, Activist Community. Now, do the world a favor and flush.

"You might be interested to know that the US poverty line was originally calculated by figuring the cost of a minimum adequate diet and multiplying this figure by 3 to account for other life expenses. "

The calculation used to figure the US poverty line is outdated to say the least. Without figuring the cost of HOUSING (the tax for living in a first world country) the figure is next to meaningless. What kind of housing can you get in Los Angeles for 8,000 a year (remember you also have to pay for food, utilities and transportation)?

If the poverty line used the cost of housing, instead of food, the amount of people living in poverty in the States when jump tremendously. That's why, for propagandist reasons, they have not changed formula.

Dagny, a persons who strays so far to the right that he is saying what classes of people should have children and what classes should not is indeed entering the territory of Hitlerism. If the shoe fits, wear it.

So the Maoist volunteered their production totals to the CIA? I think NOT! Get some more current info, dipstick! Oh, that's right! The US media is stiffling any news from the region, especially that the People of Nepal are now making their own decisions.

All that pretty data you listed above is garbage now. OUTDATED! But it does show what a Monarchy can do for your country! Especially a monachy run by a CIA shill. Or did you think the King rose to power on his own? Only the CIA could have pulled off the murder of the previous King of Nepal and the rest of his family, with the help of the ISI of Pakistan (their old buddies from Afghanistan during the Russian occupation) if the Economic Times of India was correct.

Tell me, oh wise Dingy: who shot the Crown Prince of Nepal in the back with a machinegun? I'm waiting...

Sphere,
I said that was the original method for calculating the poverty line. It has been changed numerous times since then.

Meyer,
Since when does being poor mean you can't afford children? My parents were poor and had two of us. But they could afford us -- didn't need handouts from your family or any other taxpayer.

Still no beggars!

Why?

"I already told you what you can do, Activist Community. Now, do the world a favor and flush."

He can't even run his own life
Be damned if he'll run mine
Sunshine

"I said that was the original method for calculating the poverty line. It has been changed numerous times since then."

...Please quote/site where the formula has changed.

Have fun!

http://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty/

"he is saying what classes of people should have children and what classes should not"

Then let's quantify it, shall we.

If you're poor and can barely feed yourself, don't have kids.

If you're rich, and don't have the time or don't want to spend the effort to actually raise your children, don't have kids.

In other words, if you can't take care of your kids needs without seeking outside help, or you want to pawn your kids off because they are an inconvienience to your daily routine, don't have kids.

Welcome to the discussion.

Uh uh, Dagny boy. YOU made the claim. So YOU find it , quote it, and site it. It's not my job to prove it doesn't exist. It's your job to prove it does.

Can you find it? Didn' think so.

C'mon, chump. Answer my question. Who killed the Crown Prince? And where do you get your 'data' from concerning PRESENT-DAY Nepal? Back of a cereal box? No wonder you chumps can't find OBL or Saddam: you're working off 1999 info! HA! LMFOL!

And what about the new system in Nepal? Seems to work for the People! Any commentary from the peanut gallery? C'mon you know-it-all a$$-ki$$er$! Tell me something I don't know! Tell me if people in the Maoist areas are doing better than those under RNA control (because it sure isn't the King keeping order!).

Still waiting....

Revisions through 1992:
http://www.ssa.gov/history/fisheronpoverty.html

1995 Report Proposing a New Definition of Poverty, and Subsequent Developments
http://www.census.gov/hhes/poverty/povmeas/toc.html

1999 Studies
http://www.census.gov/prod/99pubs/p60-205.pdf

Recent Studies
http://www.census.gov/hhes/poverty/povmeas/reports.html

Still won't answer the Nepal question, huh? Economics of communal living..ahhhh...a subject every capitalist hates!

I don't know who killed the prince. I wasn't there. Nor, to be honest, do I particularly care about Nepal.

But let me guess: CIA and Israel must have conspired to kill him.

And, yes, the CIA factbook shows economic data that is sometimes a year or two old (the most recently available). The page on Nepal was last updated four months ago. So I'll take your word for it: it's paradise now.

You SHOULD care about Nepal. What has been achieved there scares the bejesus out of the Elite class. Imagine: ordinary farmers, men and women, teachers, weavers, and everyone else all WORKING TOGETHER FOR THE GREATER GOOD. Oh I'm sorry, that principle isn't taught in Economics 101. Go back to sleep, $heep!

Let’s set the record Straight:

Taking things in time sequence:

A. Carter inherited an economy already “on the Ropes” due to Policies set during the Johnson and NIXON Administrations.
1. Going to a completely floating fiat Currency with no underlying support.
1a. The Fed Inflating the Currency by Printing Money faster than the economy was growing thus creating an excess supply of Money resulting in each incremental dollar being worth LESS than the last.
2. Business slowdown due to Heavy Industry Failing to plan ahead and modernize e.g., The Steel Industry. The Steel Industry went into a slump and collapsed because they had failed to modernize their production facilities. This was due to 2 Factors:
2a. Restrictive Union Work Rules which prohibited the Industry from Automating those functions which could be Automated.
2b. Mismanagement in that the Steel Industry. Management was busy paying out High Dividends and Fat Salaries to Managers and not investing in updated equipment.

As a result Countries that started later began with more modern facilities, were thus able to produce at lower cost (even factoring in Shipping) and undercut the U.S. Steel Industry. This was made worse when protective tariffs were imposed on imported steel which simply resulted in cost sensitive manufacturing moving out of the U.S. to produce their goods and then ship them to themselves thus avoiding high tariffs.

This scenario has been repeated over and over e.g., restricting Japanese Auto Imports rather than forcing Auto Makers to Improve Quality, by virtue of their customers choosing a higher quality Import for the same or less money, restructuring the Taxes and Tariffs to make for a level playing field for U.S. Manufactures rather than creating a Tax and regulatory environment forcing business to move out of the country to compete.

Contrary to the Myth of the “Evil Businessmen” shipping jobs overseas to make an extra Buck the economy of producing close to the market is enough to offset some of the reduced labor cost. American Manufactures have been driven out of the country less based upon Labor Costs than the Operating Costs imposed by ill informed Tax Policy, excessive Bureaucracy and consequent Red Tape.

The Economy was not helped by High Energy Costs from the OPEC Embargo but contrary to popular myth that was not the cause of the Economy’s decline it was merely a factor which increased the rate of decline.

B. The decline of the Economy was furthered by the introduction of Tight Money at the Federal Reserve (ostensibly to fight inflation) leading to an increase in Interest Rates during the Carter Presidency. With Fed Tight Money Policy the economy slowed down and high interest rates forced the Benchmark 30 Year Treasury Bond up to about 17 Percent. With a Slow economy and Tight Money the Machine was running low on Gas. This was ENGINEERED by the FED (a Private Bank that operates to make Money). When Reagan came into Office Paul Volker Loosened the Money supply up driving interest rates down. Yes the Fed does have the power to speed up or slow down the economy through manipulation of the money supply. (As an aside the Great Depression was not caused by the Stock Market Collapse but by a Money Supply Collapse - The Fed shrunk the Money Supply by 1/3 between 1929 and 1933 which CAUSED the Great Depression - check the history it is all there in the numbers).

Poverty is a tricky issue because it is very emotional and often subjective to the person making the argument.

I grew up in a household that could, by current Government Standards, be considered impoverished. We lived in a Company Town and my Dad Worked for “The Company” (I won’t say who or where because that would be more personal information than I wish to share in a Public Forum). Needless to say the wages were not overwhelming. Having said that we never went hungry, we might not have always had enough for seconds but we always had enough for firsts. Beans were sometimes a popular Entree’. I got 2 Pairs of shoes a year - one in the Fall when School Started and a second pair when those wore out or Summer whichever came first.

By someone else's standards we were poor. However, I didn’t know it. I did not suffer from want. This standard includes virtually all poor people in the United States. They may not always have enough for luxuries but with good money management there is no reason for people to go hungry. Anyone who goes hungry in this country is the result of bad or irresponsible CHOICES and nothing else. There are really very few exceptions. I defy anyone to prove otherwise.

Moving to our current economy we are in the doldrums because of:

1. Excessive Regulation making some businesses, particularly manufacturing, unable to compete against cheap imports. The cost of labor is not the sole determining factor in the decision of a business to move it’s production facilities.

2. Poor Tax Policy which punishes production and rewards non-production. For example:

a. Policies which reward passive income from sources other that work i.e., Dividends and Interest, disproportionately in relation to EARNED income.

b. Hidden Taxes which represent nearly 2/3 of the Total collected by Governments. These act as a defacto Sales Tax which falls disproportionately on lower income individuals.

c. Regulatory Policies which allow some businesses to get away with murder and causes others to be borderline in terms of profitability. Along with this falls lawsuits of little merit where people are rewarded with extravagant payouts - thus encouraging more of the same. That which is rewarded you will get more of and that is just basic economics.

d. Government Subsidies and Tariffs on selected Preferred businesses resulting in a distortion in the Demand/Supply curve because prices are controlled artificially by the subsidies and selective Import Tariffs. This prevents Prices from conveying correct information to the Producer i.e., in a Free Economy as Prices Decline Profitability Declines telling the Producer to shift production. When Prices go up in a FREE Economy this signals an increased demand and the producer better get busy producing more so as to make Hay while the Sun Shines.

The simple solution, and one that will not happen, is to go to either a Flat Tax or my preference a National Sales Tax and eliminate ALL other taxes except modest Tariffs. This would be accompanied by an overhaul of our regulatory agencies and doing away with those not authorized by the Constitution. Those activities should be handled at the State Level where the Government is more responsive to local needs and wants.

This does not mean “Dog Eat Dog” it means a competitive environment with sensible laws and regulations protecting the Public against Fraud (by imposing HEAVY financial PENALTIES Personally upon Corporate Officers - none of this “the company pays the penalty shit - and they should be heavy enough to take ALL of the Fraudulent Gains and then some and not leave them with a damned Penny. (Even better - outlawing Corporations and replacing them with a system of limited liability which protects investors beyond a certain limit - thus exposing them to some personal liability and responsibility for Corporate Malfeasance thus creating an incentive to make sure that Companies they invest in do behave ethically. None of this “well I am just a Stockholder and I really have no liability beyond my Shares Horse Shit.) Regulation to protect workers and the environment without creating a business climate that forces businesses to go out of the country to survive. This would be better done by heavy Tort Liability, with safeguards to protect against frivolous Suits - as it would be Self enforcing i.e., no company is going to knowingly put their workers at risk when they could be sued out of existence or put in Jail - or both. This would require some working out but I believe it is doable. That does not mean I think our Government is Sane enough to do anything like this or that the public is well enough informed to demand it.

Well, Dagny and Parent, the vast majority of people in this country cannot afford to send their children to a college or university unless they send them to a public one or receive government grants and loans to send them to a private school. They cannot afford to have children unless their own aged parents receive help from the government in the form of medicare, social security, and other aid. They cannot afford to have children unless they get tax deductions for them, which other taxpayers must subsidize. They cannot afford to have children unless governments at some level finance schools, parks, and traffic safety programs aime specifically at protecting children. They cannot affford to have children unless unemployment insurance and welfare provide at least some safety net if a parent dies or loses a job.So I guess that really no one should have children unless they are independently wealthy or at leat well to do. None of this thinking is reactionary, of course. It is just sensible advice to the masses to live within their means and not to expect charity from their betters. Of course, some people were unwise enough to say things like this in public in Spain before the Civil War; a lot of them got lined up against walls and shot by anarchists and other dastards once the war started.

It is evident, Brian, that you are passionate about Nepal and have much respect for their system. I hope you are able to visit, perhaps even move there someday, and participate in this utopia. Perhaps you can help them to be more self-sufficient, as the foreign handouts can't last forever.

Next time I'm in South Asia, I'll be sure to check it out for myself. By your description, it sounds like a nice place :-)

Gosh, Meyer, we said all that?

Then let's make it more simple: if you can't afford to properly feed and clothe a child (AND aren't able and willing to provide the child with boundless love), then don't have that child.

To address some of your complexities:

* I took student loans for my public undergraduate degree and am taking loans for my private graduate degree. Isn't that fair? It's my (post K-12) education. I should pay for it.

* I pay payroll taxes and income taxes. In the unlikely chance that the old folks entitlement programs are still solvent when I retire, why shouldn't I collect?

* My tax dollars -- local, state, and federal -- pay for a variety of services. I can't send my kids to a public school? If I am too poor to pay taxes, I can still send my kid to public school (and hopefully, if vouchers ever happen, I could send them to a better public school).

If you make enough money to pay taxes, some of your taxes go toward educated your kids and subsidizing your retirement. If you don't make enough money to pay taxes, you still benefit from these things. Actually, what was your point?

Some notable words and phrases from your diatribe:

"receive government grants", "aged parents receive help from the government in the form of medicare, social security, and other aid", "cannot afford to have children unless they get tax deductions for them, which other taxpayers must subsidize", "cannot afford to have children unless governments at some level finance schools, parks, and traffic safety programs aime specifically at protecting children, "cannot affford to have children unless unemployment insurance and welfare provide at least some safety net if a parent dies or loses a job", etc...

It's just amazing how the human race made it this far without all that government handout stuff. Boy, you don't think that stuff could go away and the human race still survive, do you?

--Imagine: ordinary farmers, men and women, teachers, weavers, and everyone else all WORKING TOGETHER FOR THE GREATER GOOD.--

or, in other words:

From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.

Let's put this on a level that even Brian can understand.

"Mr(s). A" has a spouse and two (2) children, a total of four (4) people.
"Mr(s). B" has a spouse and four (4) children, a total of six (6) people.

"A" and "B" both work the same job, side by side, next to each other.

"A" produces 80 units of work per day.
"B" produces 60 units of work per day.
"A" produces 20 more units per day than "B".

"A" has four (4) mouths to feed.
"B" has six (6) mouths to feed.
"B" must feed two (2) more mouths per day than "A".

Back to our premise:

"From each according to his ability, to each according to his need", "...all WORKING TOGETHER FOR THE GREATER GOOD."

"A" produces more units, but "B" has more mouths to feed.

That means that even though "A" produces more, "B" (by virtue of more mouths to feed) receives more.

No, Thanx!! We conservatives don't want anything to do with that.

Next.

> FED (a Private Bank that operates to make Money).

The above is a misleading statement.
From the Fed website:
"The twelve regional Federal Reserve Banks, which were established by the Congress as the operating arms of the nation's central banking system, are organized much like private corporations--possibly leading to some confusion about "ownership." For example, the Reserve Banks issue shares of stock to member banks. However, owning Reserve Bank stock is quite different from owning stock in a private company. The Reserve Banks are not operated for profit, and ownership of a certain amount of stock is, by law, a condition of membership in the System. The stock may not be sold or traded or pledged as security for a loan; dividends are, by law, 6 percent per year.

The earnings of the Federal Reserve System come primarily from interest received on the Reserve Banks' holdings of U.S. government securities (which are used in the conduct of monetary policy) and from fees they charge depository institutions for providing services (such as processing and clearing checks). The expenses of the System are paid from these earnings. Any net earnings are paid yearly to the U.S. Treasury. For 2001, the payment was $27.14 billion."


> Paul Volker Loosened the Money supply up driving interest rates down.

Actually, the Chairman lowered interest rates -- which loosens the money supply.


Diogenes, you sound very pro-business and reasonable in the middle/end of your post. Are you a libertarian??


Finally, let me share something with you from last week's "The Economist":

... the main dangers to the success of capitalism are the very people who would consider themselves its most ardent advocates: the bosses of companies, the owners of companies, and the politicians who tirelessly insist that they are “pro-business”. At the intersection of these groups lies most of what is wrong with capitalism, and the best opportunties to make that system even more successful than it has been thus far.

Many of the corporate scandals that America, especially, has endured in recent years reflect outright criminality. A lawful order knows what to do with criminals, and pro-business politicians are in truth militantly anti-capitalist if they flinch from cracking down on bosses' crimes. The other great ongoing scandal is not a matter of law-breaking: it is that bosses have grown accustomed to rewarding themselves like owners, though bearing few risks of ownership—while the real owners, shareholders in the companies concerned, have let them get on with it. Pro-business politicians who regard this vacuum of accountable control as a private matter of no wider concern are doing capitalism a grave disservice. A system that gives a charter to brazen unchecked greed is a system in peril.

Know thy enemy

Economic liberalism, much like political liberalism, puts great weight on checks and balances, on limits to power and hence to abuses of power. In economics, the most potent checking force bar none is competition. Bosses, shareholders and pro-business politicians all loathe it. They stand to gain, in one way or another, from conspiring to gull the public into regarding competition as a threat to the greater good, rather than to themselves. This is the context in which to think of free trade, an obsession of ours since we started. Liberal trade is nothing but enhanced competition. Anti-globalists have the logic exactly backwards. Far from empowering global fat cats, free trade holds corporate power in check and assaults the excess profits that protectionism, courtesy of pro-business politicians, gouges from the public.

The human race would probably survive, Parent, if slavery were re-established in the US, if Paris was nuked, if Africa was depopulated by AIDS and other diseases, if handicapped children were exterminated as they were in Nazi Germany, and if shoplifters were punished in LA by having their arms cut off. That is not a justification for any of these horrors, nor is it a justification for restoring the dog-eat-dog free market hell depicted in Charles Dickens novels or in various scholarly histories of London. Please wake up and realize that this is 2003, not 1253 or 1860. Don't ever let anyone tell you that you are not a reactionary.

Probably? Well, that's good to know.

Thank goodness we have government handouts to ensure the existance of the human race, eh Meyer??

My point, Dagny, is that you have no business telling anyone whether they should or should not have children. Another point I would like to make is that any society calling itself civilized does indeed have an obligation to make sure that its children are well-fed, well-educated, well-housed, receive good medical care, and are otherwise treated like human beings. If you disagree that says more about you and whatever dystopia you have in mind than it does about welfare policies.

And the point I would like to make is that any human who considers themselves to be civilized does indeed have an obligation to make sure that they can afford to fed, educate, house, clothe, provide medical care, and be actually be a parent to any children to wish to bring into the world.

You are right. I have no business telling anybody that they can or can't have children (unless they asking for my advice). As a libertarian, I believe that the government has no right to instruct people in this, the most basic and fundamental right. It's cliche, but with freedom comes responsibility. Since one has the freedom to reproduce, they also must assume the responsibility to reproduce only when they are willing (financially and emotionally) to take care of the child.

The only way for a society to be civilized is for the citizens that make up that society to be civilized. In my opinion, a person who reproduces willy-nilly, with either inadequate finances and/or love, is not civilized.

Back in the day (dawn of man to about 40 years ago), civilized society shamed people to behave responsibly. Since then, fortunately, we have all acquired greater freedoms. But we haven't yet also taken on the increased personal responsibility that societal shame used to enforce.

Nothing like making it perfectly clear in writing that you missed the whole point of what I stated, Parent. I hope you are not planning on home schooling.

And the point I would like to make is that any human who considers themselves to be civilized does indeed have an obligation to make sure that they can afford to fed, educate, house, clothe, provide medical care, and be actually be a parent to any children to wish to bring into the world.

And that entitles you to tell people they should not have children, eh? It is amazing what authoritarianism one discovers when one of these liberty-loving free marketeers gets a little angry. You remind me of the fellow in one of Dickens' novels who was outraged when the poor young boy had the temerity to come back and ask for a second bowl of porridge. Ah, those ungrateful poor; they are never satisfied with the "handouts" that their generous betters give them. Far better that fewer of them get born.

"Nothing like making it perfectly clear in writing that you missed the whole point of what I stated"

What you said was stupid as hell.

The human race has made it this far without all your government handouts and this other baloney you're trying to sell. And in spite of your hatred of the current situation, people will continue to prosper and survive. In fact, the people of the world have always done just fine without people like you telling them what to do. How did they do it?

For the -- what is it now, fifth? -- time, we are advocating that people be responsible for their own children.

I don't want to speak for Parent, but I would assume he would agree with me that if the parent becomes disabled and is no longer to take care of the child by him/herself, then that parent's fellow citizens should gladly help. But since the average American citizen has a difficult-enough time raising their own children (financially and emotionally), they shouldn't be expected to pay for the children of (healthy) selfish people who have children they can't take care of.

For the LAST TIME, this should be self-regulating. People should assess their own personal situation and ask themselves: "am I ready to have a(nother) child". Nobody (not me, the government, or anybody else) is telling them to do squat.

"humans condsidering themselves civilized
by Meyer London • Monday July 07, 2003 05:08 PM
And that entitles you to tell people they should not have children, eh? It is amazing what authoritarianism one discovers when one of these liberty-loving free marketeers gets a little angry. You remind me of the fellow in one of Dickens' novels who was outraged when the poor young boy had the temerity to come back and ask for a second bowl of porridge. Ah, those ungrateful poor; they are never satisfied with the "handouts" that their generous betters give them. Far better that fewer of them get born."

It was "Oliver Twist". And you're not even close to being the Artful Dodger.

People should act responsibly and carefully consider whether or not they can afford to properly care for any children they wish to bring into the world. Are you saying you don't agree? Is asking human beings to be responsible and civilized when it comes to bringing children into the world too much to ask?

My (fairly obvious) point, Parent, was that the human race would probably "survive" without what you crudely call "government handouts." But a civilized society will not survive without public services.

"I don't want to speak for Parent, but I would assume he would agree with me that if the parent becomes disabled and is no longer to take care of the child by him/herself, then that parent's fellow citizens should gladly help."

I agree.

But that's a side issue.

What Meyer the idiot wants is for people to have all the children they want even if they can't afford them, and he expects those who are more well-to-do in our society to pay-out their hard-earned money to support these kids. Fuck that!

Boy, I'd hate to have to ask you for a second bowl of porridge.

"But a civilized society will not survive without public services."

Yes it would. That's why your comment was a stupid statement. It just may not be your vision of "civilized", that's all. But we're not here for your vision of anything.

"People should act responsibly and carefully consider whether or not they can afford to properly care for any children they wish to bring into the world. Are you saying you don't agree? Is asking human beings to be responsible and civilized when it comes to bringing children into the world too much to ask?"

"Boy, I'd hate to have to ask you for a second bowl of porridge."

Meyer, just answer the question. You either believe in parental responsibility when it come to having children or you don't.

You are right, Parent; you and your ideas are not what I would consider "civilized." Barbaric is the word I would most likely use. And since, if my own parents had followed your advice (they were very poor) I would not be here, I can hardly be expected to agree with your unsolicited advice to the lower classes now, can I?

Meyer,

Were your parents too poor to feed and clothe you without direct government assistance (welfare, food stamps)?

Revisions through 1992:
http://www.ssa.gov/history/fisheronpoverty.html

"The poverty thresholds were developed in 1963 64 by Mollie Orshansky, an economist working for the Social Security Administration. [...] However, except for the area of food, no definitive and accepted standards of minimum need for major consumption items existed either then or today. The 'generally accepted' standards of adequacy for food that Orshansky used in developing the thresholds were the food plans prepared by the Department of Agriculture."

An Open Letter on Revising the Official Measure of Poverty, August 2000
http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/irp/povmeas/povlet.htm

"The current poverty measure does not reflect changes since the 1960s in consumption patterns, household composition, and the labor force patterns of American parents. It does not account for the impact of health insurance coverage and health status on the well-being of individuals and families.

[...]

The past three decades have seen major changes in the U.S. social safety net for low-income families. Many of the changes are poorly reflected - or not reflected at all - in the official measure, which was formally adopted by the government back in the 1960s. Unless we correct the critical flaws in the existing measure, the Nation will continue to rely on a defective yardstick to assess the effects of policy reform."

The other links you provided lead me to proposals and experimental measures. Experimental means they have not been standardized. I took it upon myself to find and quote from a letter that highlights the inefficacy of standard measures. Even with the changes up until the 60's, food was still the basis for measurement, not housing or medical care. Wages peeked in and have been rapidly falling since the 1970's when housing costs doubled in the States. So this 1960's measure is completely obsolete.

As for this anti-children trip you and parent are on, unless in your nuclear family you have a doctor, nurse, fireman, policeman, librarian, k-12 teacher, professor, surgeon, farmer, fisherman, electrician, engineer, mechanic, butcher, computer technician, painter, carpenter, plummer, maid, chef, seamstress, tailor, contractor, miner, musician, composer, florist, merchant and all the other invisible people that exist within a civilized society, then you have no business saying you don't need to support the health and welfare of other people's children.

"As for this anti-children trip you and parent are on, unless in your nuclear family you have a doctor, nurse, fireman, policeman, librarian, k-12 teacher, professor, surgeon, farmer, fisherman, electrician, engineer, mechanic, butcher, computer technician, painter, carpenter, plummer, maid, chef, seamstress, tailor, contractor, miner, musician, composer, florist, merchant and all the other invisible people that exist within a civilized society, then you have no business saying you don't need to support the health and welfare of other people's children."


I support these children's parents only when they produce a good or service that I need and I can't, or choose not to, produce it myself.

That is the marvelous thing about a market economy. Trillions of individual "selfish" transactions results in an economy that provides the highest standard of living for the highest percentage of the population.

Hallelujah!

Your thoughtful response inspired this little homily:

Yes. I am most definitely a Libertarian - militantly so even. I would describe myself as pro-Free Market as opposed to Pro Business. The two are related but are not an identity. Meyer and I have gone round before on economic and social issues and I have spent no small amount time demonstrating, if only to my satisfaction, the moral superiority of voluntary cooperation and Private Charity versus Charity Enforced at the point of a gun. Meyer is a good man and his heart is in right place but he is convinced of the validity of too many things that as Josh Billings put it “just ain’t so”.

As for the Fed. Their PR on their Web Site is misleading because while it may be that dvidends to Shareholders is limited to 6% there is more about where this 6% comes from that I suspect they are not particularly eager to tell you.

Where does the Money come from that the Fed gives to the Treasury in exchange for Interest Bearing Securities of the United States? (Remember - pull one out an look at it - that folding Green Stuff in your Wallet does not say “Treasury Note” it says “Federal Reserve Note” - it is the obligation of the Federal Reserve not the U.S. Treasury. Nowhere on that Note will you see anything representing it to be an obligation of the U.S. Treasury - it is thin air fiat currency. Do not let the “Secretary of the Treasury Signature” fool you - that does not make it an obligation of the United States - it is “Marketing”. It is no different than Buying a Pair of “Air Jordans”. Michael Jordan’s signature may appear but he did not make the shoes - hell he didn’t even design them. Per our Constitution it is actually not Legal Money of the United States (take a look at the Constitution it stipulates that Congress is the Only Legal Issuing Authority for Money - thus Federal Reserve Notes (an obligation of the Federal Reserve Bank) are not Legal Money. I could go on for a while on that one but that is as far as I want to take it for now.) Back to those Federal Securities (Bonds to the uninitiated). Where does the Fed get the Money to pay for them? THEY PRINT IT.
The Federal Reserve Banking Act of 1913 is one of the most perfect Crimes of the 20th Century. If you or I did what the Fed does they would call it Counterfeiting and lock us up for a very long time if caught. However, because of the Federal Reserve Act the Congress in a very Shady operation granted a Concession to the Fed to print money. To then put it into circulation we buy the money they have printed (at pennies on the dollar to them) with Interest Bearing Federal Treasuries.
So here’s how the Scam works - to put $100 in currency into circulation The Fed Prints the Note up (for litterally a few cents) and the U.S. Federal Government Sends them $100 dollars in Interst Bearing Bonds. The money is then issued into circulation. Nice Work if you can get it. This is somewhat simplified for brevities sake but that is basically how it works.

Here are some articles that explore it in more detail than I can here for the present:

Congressman Louis T. McFadden’s 1933 Speech on The Fed (He was Chairman of the House Banking Committee for 10 Years): http://www.bankindex.com/read.asp?ID=846

Fractional Reserve Banking: Murray N. Rothbard:
http://www.libertyhaven.com/regulationandpropertyrights/bankingmoneyorfinance/fractional.html

The Federal Reserve: History of Lies, Thievery, and Deceit: http://www.scionofzion.com/federalreserve.htm

I could deluge you with more but if you were to read those for starters you would then have the background to run searches for more data.

“Economic liberalism, much like political liberalism, puts great weight on checks and balances, on limits to power and hence to abuses of power. In economics, the most potent checking force bar none is competition. Bosses, shareholders and pro-business politicians all loathe it. They stand to gain, in one way or another, from conspiring to gull the public into regarding competition as a threat to the greater good, rather than to themselves. This is the context in which to think of free trade, an obsession of ours since we started. Liberal trade is nothing but enhanced competition. Anti-globalists have the logic exactly backwards. Far from empowering global fat cats, free trade holds corporate power in check and assaults the excess profits that protectionism, courtesy of pro-business politicians, gouges from the public. “

Two problems:

Protective Tariffs

Crony Capitalism. Crony Capitalism, as I suspect you are aware, cuts sweetheart deals with the in Clique. This is what we currently have with the Bush Junta and the U.S. Government in general. Policies written, and Contracts Let, for those with the “right” connections.

And there is a larger theoretical argument which I resist but have not seen effectively refuted: That because of the differential in development and relative economies i.e., while labor is paid less their cost of living is much less in the 3rd World - that unfettered “Free Trade” results in bringing the living standard here down to a medium between the two. Their’s will come up but not to the level we enjoy. What you have is the old Hegelian Dialectic: Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis - or as I cynically view it the worst of both worlds.

Philosophically I am generally pro-free trade, but not as much as I used to be - there are Caveats.

"I support these children's parents only when they produce a good or service that I need and I can't, or choose not to, produce it myself."

Missed the point entirely. People who provide these goods and services don't come out of a vacuum. They start off as children. So you have to support other people's children (because these tradesmen and professionals will not all spring forth your nuclear family) who will grown up and sustain the society. But I suspect you will not have any children, since you apparently believe the world begins and ends with you. But maybe someday you will get it, like when you are in need of health care and social security which can only be provided by the children who exist today.

Actually, the only thing that is holding us together is that we are not all engaging in purelt "selfish" transactions. Had that been the case, women would have stopped having children years ago. Their labor raising children and holding communities together largely goes unrewarded, unpaid and unacknowledged. Not to mention that it has eluded economists since the social science's inception.

PS Don't think no one noticed how you ignored how I exposed your complete misrepresentation of the poverty line issue. Your credibility has been affected considerably. Everyone knows that you are talking out your ass.

I had everybody fooled for a little while, until your superior intellect outfoxed me.

Darnit.

"PS Don't think no one noticed how you ignored how I exposed your complete misrepresentation of the poverty line issue. Your credibility has been affected considerably. Everyone knows that you are talking out your ass."

Sort of a ridiculous statement. Having read this entire thread, you've both made good points but dagny clearly has the edge. You need to divorce yourself from running on pure feelings and apply a bit more logic, common sense and science.

Dagny's credibility is still very much intact.

There are no families in the United States who don't get "direct government assistance" of one kind or another, and that includes the upper middle class and (especially) ruling class families like the Bushs, the Rockefellers and the Kennedys. The difference is that one lower income families get this assistance it is sneeringly called government handouts or condescendingly called help for the underclass or the culturally deprived. The help that the upper middle class gets includes extra fire, police and public transit services, better financed public schools, better maintained roads and sidewalks, better garbage collection and litter removal, more access to public universities and aid to attend private ones, and more respectful treatment by far when dealing with public official, elected or nonelected. The help that the super rich get include tariffs, interventions in foreign countries to protect their investments, strike injunctions to protect their industries, a tax system that is more regressive than that of any other industrialized nation, and politicians who do their bidding in return for substantial campaign donations. I hope that I am not letting you in on something new with these revelations. And, not that it is any of your business, but the only help my family got was partially government subsidized housing. My father, who suffered severe emotional problems because of his experiences in World War II, failed to make the fabled leap to middle class suburbia during the period when that leap was most possible (roughly 1946 to 1966). I guess by your reckoning we should have been living in a tent somewhere. Of course, everyone has their own reckoning, according to that used in Cuba you would probably be behind bars for spreading anti-social propaganda.
Have fun in graduate school. If you see any janitors or cleaning ladies goofing off for even one moment instead of constantly scrubbing toilet bowls or cleaning the dean's office (like you would doubtlessly be doing if you were in their place) be sure to report them at once to the university authorities and also suggest that the cleaning service be privatized so that their vast wages can be lowered. And be sure to report to the student mental health service and tell them that people have been ridiculing your ideas on the internet just because they sound like you stole them from some Tory MP of the 1830's. They will provide you with some help that will enable you to concentrate on your studies.

"Have fun in graduate school."

Thank you. I am enjoying it. A lot of work, but very rewarding to learn a new bag o' tricks.

Good luck with your endeavors as well :-)

And while we're at it, here's a little education for you.

If you and your misses (I take it you're male) barely make enough money to support yoursleves, and you realize that having a child would place you in a position where you would need to obtain food stamps or housing assistance or otherwise make it so you could not support the child on your own incomes and making it where you would have to suck off society's tits in order to care for the child, do the responsible and civilized thing and don't have a child until such time you are able to financially support the child.

I get taxed too much already. I don't need to be paying taxes to support some others people's kids because the parents were too irresponsible to figure out they couldn't afford a kid on their current budget. Damnit, I pay my bills without any help, and I don't care to be paying yours on top of it. Accept responsibility for yourself once in your lifetime and quit coming to me for help. I pay my own way for my family. Think before you have a kid you can't afford. Is it too much to ask that you not burden the rest of society with having to support your little shit?

You've got it all wrong, Mr. Yuppie. Most of the rest of the world is supporting your priveleged existence. This includes the poverty-stricken farmworkers who plant and harvest your food, the non-unionized garment workers in Bangladesh or even Alabama who sew your clothes, the carless majority of the world's population who breathe in the pollution that your motor vehicle produces and feel the heat of the sun through the ozone-depleted atmosphere (pehaps while they are growing your food), the working people who pay outrageously regressive taxes so that you can have enough money to go back to graduate school while feeling superior to the unemployed, and the Middle Eastern peasants and workers who die in US military attacks so that you can be supplied with cheap gas and drive around feeling morally superior to those who use the "government handout" of public transit. As for calling poor children shit, the best example of a walking, talking piece of shit that I can think of is you.
Why don't you go to some supermarket in South LA, find some people using food stamps, and tell them that you think that their children are shit. That will permanently remove one troll from this board. By the way, I've wasted enough time on trash like you and you can consider this exchange at an end.

If Dagny and Parent are not the same person, my apologies to the one to whom the preceeding remarks did not entirely apply. But in general, I'm tired of this pointless dialog with the both of you. I don't have a time machine and I can't go back to the 19th century and have a fruitful discussion with someone whose head is still back there. End of discussion.

hate hate filth lies hate lies filth hate hate lies hate lies hate hate filth lies hate hate filth lies hate lies filth hate hate lies hate lies hate hate filth lies hate lies filth hate hate lies hate lies hate hate filth lies hate lies filth hate hate lies filth hate hate lies hate lies hate hate filth lies hate lies hate hate filth lies hate lies filth hate hate lies hate lies hate hate filth lies hate lies filth hate hate lies hate lies hate hate filth lies hate lies filth hate filth hate hate lies hate lies hate hate filth lies hate lies filth hate hate lies hate lies, and that's all I have to add to the conversation.

Whenever discussions reach beyond the scope of ones narrow knowledge, they are always accused of being illogical and not using common sense. And nine times out of ten it's someone trying to defend the status quo. Well, because the status quo is human suffering, oppression and the determined destruction of the planet, I am more than happy to be accused of not adhearing to its tenets, otherwise called common sense.

But I'm sure dagny is pleased to know he has at least one cheerleader.

Is it just me, or does Meyer London seem a bit edgy to you too? You know Meyer, they really do make decaffeinated coffee these days that truly does taste just like the real thing. Or perhaps you just need a sleep aid. Try some Valaxin and get back into the natural rhythm of life!

http://www.musclemaster.net/valaxin30.html

Nice vocabulary you have there, Mr. bogus London. Did you get it from watching television?

Hey, knock yourself out. Give the fact that you've lost the argument any name you want.

It IS okay to be wrong sometimes Goldstein.

...has to pay.

So who should pay for the upkeep of your offspring?

You?

OR

Someone Else?

Accepting responsibility for one's actions is the sign a mature person. Insisting that someone else pay for your bad judgement is just THEFT. You can encapsulate it in all the florid rhetoric you want but the stark reality is that for the Government to Give something to you it must first TAKE it from someone else.

You can spin it anyway you want. Reality is you are responsible for your own condition. The more you avoid that reality the more it controls you. You are an intelligent being. Therefore you are capable of making a responsible decision. It just requires the Courage to confront the actuality of your existence and your choices and then choose.

Because someone is on Food Stamps does not necessarily mean they have been "ground down by 'the man'". It frequently translates to I do not accept responsibility for myself or my actions.

If you are going to have a child that represents a choice.

It also represents a responsibility.

Do you expect someone else to take responsibility for your choices?

...are the same person.

parent said: 'I don't need to be paying taxes to support some others people's kids'

You'd rather pay taxes to send people's kids off to war so they can die?

Oh, I see, that way you get the most bang for your buck vis-a-vis the continuation of the Status Quo of Elitism.

For 'notinthislifetime: the example is plagued with false presumptions concerning the system in Nepal. It is always nice when people show their ignorance! ;-)

I will not enlighten you as to the reality in the area. You would not understand the way of life there because your snout is too firmly embedded in the trough of Capitalism and greed. It is the greed of capitalism which consumes the world. And it is greed that will consume the capitalists. Did you hear about the sulfur plant that blew up yesterday in Iraq near Mosul? Toxic smoke now stretches from Mosul to Baghdad. Really nasty stuff causing mass evacuations. How much oil do these greedy bastards really think they're going to steal from Iraq? Will it be worth the human cost?

The greed of the ruling elite, and their inhumanity, has nothing to do with your individual responsibility as a free being.

As long as you insist on making it someone else's fault you are simply avoiding taking responsibility for your actions.

That may sound harsh but I believe it to be the truth.

"The truth is cruel, but it can be loved, and it sets free those who have loved it."
---------- George Santayana

Having a child is a natural right of human beings. It is not a right that should be cancelled because of low wages, unemployment or some other form of poverty imposed by the barbaric system of capitalism, which depends for its very existence on a vast pool of unemployed or miserably paid people to keep the rest of the workforce in line and grateful to have what they have. Statements about "the poor" being irresponsible for having children are not only classist but also racist in that a numerical majority (although by no means all) of poverty stricken people in this country are people of color. Any state that calls itself civilized has a duty to make sure that its children (all of them) are nourished, educated, kept in good health, housed, protected from abuse, and give the opportunity to go as far as they can go in life. Any state which does not do this deserves to be done away with. If there is enough money in the US for space shuttles designed primarily for weapons testing and for multi-million dollar homes for brainless movie stars, there is enough money to care for all the children who live here.

I went back and read over all the actual points. I didn't lose the argument.

...Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

You do not have the right to do it at someone else's expense.

Taking from one person to support the lifestyle of another is THEFT.

You are stealing that person's labor.

I don't care how you gussy it up it still remains the same.

There is a major difference between extending a helping hand to another in need and someone pointing a gun at you and demanding that you "Stand and Deliver".

Dingo wrote:

Reality is someone...
by Diogenes • Tuesday July 08, 2003 10:45 AM



...has to pay.

So who should pay for (the upkeep of your offspring) (your irresponsible act of sex without birth control) (your addiction to illegal drugs)?

You?

OR

(Someone Else)(your unborn baby)(the American taxpayer)?

Accepting responsibility for one's actions is the sign a mature person. Insisting that someone else pay for your bad judgement is just (THEFT)(MURDER)(THEFT). You can encapsulate it in all the florid rhetoric you want ...

You can spin it anyway you want. Reality is you are responsible for your own condition. The more you avoid that reality the more it controls you. You are an intelligent being. Therefore you are capable of making a responsible decision. It just requires the Courage to confront the actuality of your existence and your choices and then choose.

Do you expect someone else to take responsibility for your choices?

It is time to tell the billionaire parasites who control this society that it is time to stand and deliver - deliver what they have stolen from the rest of us. The sooner this is done the better.

"deliver what they have stolen from the rest of us."

How, exactly, have the "billionaires" stolen from you Meyer.

That's quite a charge.

If you don't know that, Fresca, you have not been following the articles on this site very carefully; you should do so and educate yourself. Also try the CounterPunch website and the IndyMedia boards for other cities (San Francisco, Boston, etc.) Try reading Z Magazine and the books of Michael Parenti, Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky and Barbara Ehrenreich. Also get yourself a copy of The Progressive; it is available at any really good newstand. Of course, you could also write to Ken Lay and ask him how he did it, but I doubt if he will answer you. Have fun paying those California tax bills brought on by the Enron disaster, though.

> "books of Michael Parenti, Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky and Barbara Ehrenreich"

Oh yes. Some of my favorite wealthy American writers who produce books and articles targeted to the anti-American anti-wealth crowd. Brilliant marketers, all.


> "you could also write to Ken Lay and ask him how he did it"

Ken Lay has never been a billionaire (source: Forbes Billionaires list, 1996-2003)

>"You can spin it anyway you want. Reality is you are responsible for your own condition. The more you avoid that reality the more it controls you. You are an intelligent being. Therefore you are capable of making a responsible decision. It just requires the Courage to confront the actuality of your existence and your choices and then choose. "

I don't got to do dat!! I vote bush.

That Meyer London makes reference to:

www.counterpunch.org

a website who's contributors, Andrew and Patrick Cockburn are proven, notorious liars.

Here's a good example. On amazon.com you can read reader reviews of their book "Out of the Ashes: The Resurrection of Saddam Hussein" and you can find this one:

"14 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

engaging read, but not accurate, June 8, 1999
Reviewer: An Amazon.com Customer

I have read the book "Out of the Ashes..." by Patrick and Andrew Cockburn and find it an interesting account of history and events in Iraq. However, I have concerns about the factual basis of some of the narrative. There are pages in the book devoted to Scott Ritter and how he came to work for UNSCOM. The authors mention his foreign-born wife (which happens to be me) as a Ukranian national associated with the CIA. I am not Ukranian. I come from the Republic of Georgia and am Georgian. Such an error in fact could have been easily avoided had the authors contacted me for information. The second statement associating me with the CIA has me very concerned, for I cannot understand how the authors could come up with a completely unfounded statement. It is my belief that when statements of this kind are made, they should be based on facts and in this case there are none. Such a cavalier attitude towards reporting brings into question the credibility of other passages in the book. Any non-fiction book, no matter how eloquently written, will be first and foremost judged on the basis of its factual correctness. As far as the facts that I am personally familiar with go, this book lacks credibility.


Was this review helpful to you? "


Seems to me that the Cockburn's "counterpunches" are really illegal ones landed below the belt.

"Why don't you go to some supermarket in South Central LA, find some people using food stamps, and tell them that you think that their children are shit. That will permanently remove one troll from this board."

Way to go! Whenever we liberals have nothing to say we can always resort to perpetuating the notion that poor Blacks are really just uncontrolable wild monkey's who will kill people at the drop of a hat. Good job!

Pleaassssssse! Anything but the "C" word.

I am a Paleo Libertarian who follows the Austrian School of Economics i.e., Von Mises, Hayek, Rothbard, et. al., ....

Meyer London should be put out of his misery.

"books of Michael Parenti, Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky and Barbara Ehrenreich"

Ms. Ehrenreich was the idiot that had the utmost praise for The Communist Manifesto! (100 million dead! Yeeeee-ha!)

Well, Matty Baby, why don't you test out your theory by going into a supermarket where the people (of any race) are low income food stamp users. If you don't want to go to South Central go up to Bakersfield and find a so-called white Okie neighborhood. Announce in a loud voice that you think the children of these people are shit and see what kind of response you get. You probably might not be killed, but I think you might be in for a long, long hospital stay.

Eric, if you don't think that Ms. Ehrenreich is telling the truth, why don't you do what she did. Get yourself a series of minimum wage jobs (if such jobs can even be found in the Bush economy) and experience what it is like to have to choose between eating or paying the rent, or to have some lout of a boss "give you hell" in the tradition of the slave overseers half a dozen times a day for making mistakes under pressure. After you do that you might even find that there is some truth in the Communist Manifesto.

What is your evidence that Cockburn and the other journalists mentioned are wealthy? And if Lay isn't personally a billionaire, at least if you don't count hidden offshore assets, you must admit that he is a very wealthy man who serves billionaires and helps to make them richer. Or do you deny even that obvious reality?

"Well, Matty Baby, why don't you test out your theory by going into a supermarket where the people (of any race) are low income food stamp users. If you don't want to go to South Central go up to Bakersfield and find a so-called white Okie neighborhood. Announce in a loud voice that you think the children of these people are shit and see what kind of response you get. You probably might not be killed, but I think you might be in for a long, long hospital stay."

Way to go! Whenever we liberals have nothing to say we can always resort to perpetuating the notion that poor people of any race are really just uncontrolable vagrants who will kill or serious injure people at the drop of a hat. Good job!

I wish I had aborted you.

nice backtracking there meyer but now that your secret is out why even bother. using your tactics i can now ad that your a proven racist to any rebuttal i might have to a post of yours. I hope you were tired or drunk when you wrote that and don't actually believe that blacks are indeed uncontrolable murderers when insulted.

Well, no, not really. I am not black and I certainly do not believe in violence as a means of settling personal disputes. But I have a suspicion that if I was standing in line in a market and someone like you crawled out from one of the lettuce heads like the cockroach that you are and told me that my children were shit you would be swiftly dealt with like a cockroach, with a heavy glass bottle of juice smashed over your empty skull and my size ten shoe firmly implanted in your gential area.

Well, no, not really. I am not black and I certainly do not believe in violence as a means of settling personal disputes. But I have a suspicion that if I was standing in line in a market and someone like you crawled out from one of the lettuce heads like the cockroach that you are and told me that my children were shit you would be swiftly dealt with like a cockroach, with a heavy glass bottle of juice smashed over your empty skull and my size ten shoe firmly implanted in your gential area.

Well, no, not really. I am not black and I certainly do not believe in violence as a means of settling personal disputes. But I have a suspicion that if I was standing in line in a market and someone like you crawled out from one of the lettuce heads like the cockroach that you are and told me that my children were shit you would be swiftly dealt with like a cockroach, with a heavy glass bottle of juice smashed over your empty skull and my size ten shoe firmly implanted in your gential area.

"...with a heavy glass bottle of juice smashed over your empty skull and my size ten shoe firmly implanted in your gential area."


I just wish I was there to see you try and do it.

Go home!

"lettuce head" is one of the oldest derogatory words for a black person in this countries history. Frankly i'm suprised and frightened that you would even know to use it. It is evident that you a devoted and learned racist and i for one hope you rot in hell.

But he is DEFINATELY a socialist.

Gosh, you're swell.

Ha-ha and Eric, you turn me on so much that I can hardly stand it! Imagine, there are still real, masculine males in America! I'm getting wet just thinking about it. The only thing I can't figure out is why you two are not in the service, kicking the swill out of those fag, infdidel Arabs? You are not going to leave it all to real he-men like Ariel Sharon, are you? I just know that you are not afraid of the inferior races.

Yes, even you have figured out that I am a socialist, Eric. I am an anti-racist, too; they go together. Capitalism and racism feed on eachother, that is why we have affluent yuppies explaining that there are no such things as victims while Latinos mow their lawns, African-American women care for their children during the day and African-American men unload the truckloads of expensive wine and cheese that the yuppies buy down at Pavillions. And why people of color are off getting shot at in Iraq because of an economic draft while racist and chauvanistic white male yuppies sit at home watching it all on tv and calling for more wars in Iran and Korea. Fidel Castro had a plan under which he put the Cuban equivalent of our classist and racist yuppie posters to work in educational labor camps on the Isle of Pines, often under the direction of people of color. In general I don't like authoritarian measures like that, but I have to admit that the idea of Fidel shipping some of our spoiled brat yuppie regulars out to the Isle for a bit of educational labor does have a certain appeal to me. If that happened I am sure that none of them would claim that they were victims, because the pop psychologists have already explained that there are no such people as victims. The sky's the limit, that's what I always say.

I'm a big fan! Perhaps you'd allow me to buy you dinner sometime? You are such a beautiful woman. Your words make my heart flutter.

I already served in the military. Gotta leave some for the younger boys, ya know. But if they need me, they've got my number. All they have to do is ask. I'd be back in the thick in two shakes of beaver's tail.

Now about that dinner...do you like seafood?

that even if it was done unconsciously, meyer, when you equated food stamps, south central, and being killed over an insult you were being racist. you said "south central" not a mixed race poor neighborhood. As for shipping a group of people to a place because a common attribute(rich people) it was already done by hitler and it resulted in six million deaths. You are one conflicted and fucked up man. seek help now. racist.

And in front of the full length mirror of his mind{?} he now writes himself love letters from {are you in yet?} Ann Coulter.
This thread is terrific! More please.

then socialism must be the work of Satan. As long as there are socialists/anarchists like you, America has nothing to fear. Your platform will never stand a chance. But should you ever get gidgy and think you might have obtained sufficient means to forcibly implement your political agendas upon the masses, you WILL get the chance to live in a REAL socialist country (see GITMO is in Cuba). The rest of us would be Constitutionally bound to kick your ass and throw you in chains. So go ahead. Try some shit. In the words of our great leader:

BRING IT!

You wormy little pissant.

HAR!

I only eat seafood that is caught by impoverished Asian fishingpeople who work under the command of Third World Captain Blighs; that way I get the satisfaction that I am eating real capitalist food, the product of both free trade and racism. Yum. Yum.
But I won't have dinner with you until you re-enlist instead of hanging around a college like some hippy fag. That is assuming that you are not fibbing about your prior military experience. Were you one of those guys who bought three thousand dollar toilet bowls for the private restrooms of generals? How dare those liberal traitor make an issue of that under Saint Ronald Reagan's regime.
Well, I've got to go now - I'm working on my new book that explains why the opium trade was really good for China and why our loyal British friends were perfectly justified in launching the Opium Wars so they could open up China for the sale of their surplus opium. Anyone who opposes free trade has to be smashed, don't you agree? When they are smashed that does not constitute imperialism; it is really fighting for freedom. Besides, those devious Chinese probably had weapons of mass destruction hidden everywhere.

You faker. Ann would never advocate the production and distribution of drugs such as opium. You are a leftist. That is just more liberal stupid talk. No one would buy that book. Ann's books are best sellers, that would be lucky to find its way into a California library. I do agree however, that capitalism is mankinds greatest invention.

I know Eric isn't much of a lady's guy lord knows I gone to bat for him often enough but I am interested in doing things on my lenghty scroll
that would make peanut butter come out of your ears....
Interested? I'd only post the video on the English webs...

Sorry, yuppie, but I did not describe any neighborhood as "South Central." There never was an official place by that name, and the LA City Council has now voted officially to call the general area South Los Angeles, which is the term I used. I guess the news has not filtered out ot the burbs yet. I also notice that, like a typical suburbanite, you equate the area with African-Americans, which flies in the face of current demographic realities. Huge sections of it are Latino now; in fact, that section of it know as Watts is likely to show a heavy Latino majority in the next census. In addition, there are colonies of immigrants from all over the world scattered here and there. They all work hard to provide you with the necessities and luxuries of life, even though you don't even know of their existence and presume, in your racist arrogance and ignorance, to advise them on whether or not they should have children.
Have fun out in suburbia, white boy - and don't forget to give the gardeners a good tip.

HaHAHaaaaaaaaaaaa.

Socialists are funnier than capitalists. London got you "yuppie white boys" good.

You never said $hit about race! The troll-boys ASSUMED you meant people of color because of the geographic area you mentioned. So tell us, troll-pukes: who's racist?

With all due respect, you're trying to get your foot out of your mouth.

The area you mentioned is not only PREDOMINATELY black by the numbers but is also BLACk by reputation. You know that.

I'm NOT even remotely suggesting that you are racist but you must understand how virtually everyone, whose honest, would naturally conclude that you were speaking of Blacks.

Thats all.

meyer my lawncare specialist happen to be white should i still tip them? I consult you because of your obvious knowledge concerning race relations. Also I'd like to say your absolutely right about low wage employees making all us white people wealthy and rich. As we all know white people don't earn anything they have. They don't work, create, or support anything. They are just handed everything. Thanks you racist.

Funny how these pissant trolls like to slander people. You know, if an activist ever made these kind of libelous statements, we would end up in jail. But the troll boys use all sorts of slurs and racial epithets and yet noone ever comes down on them. HHMMMM??? I wonder why? Maybe because if they DIVIDE the PEOPLE, then they can CONQUER the PEOPLE. This is why capitalists need racism: to keep the weak, poor and under-priviledged down.

These racist, spoiled punks are not worth the effort and thread space we've devoted to them. Their purpose here is to disrupt the board by making personal attacks. There is a saying on the KPFK message board which has a lot of truth to it - "Don't feed the trolls." As for poor suburban Fresca, another oppressed white boy, apparantly he still has not gotten the point that South Los Angeles is no longer mostly Black either by numbers or reputation. I'm not going to waste any more time arguing with people who seem to get their information about LA south of Dodger Stadium from James Ellroy novels written about the 1950's.

"This is why capitalists need racism: to keep the weak, poor and under-priviledged down."

This statement from the same white socialist liberals who have been telling minorities for years "If you just vote for the candidate we tell you to, we'll make sure you get out of the ghetto."

Slurs and epithets. You must be kidding! Why I personally, right here on IMC, by you looney liberals, have been called (on occasions too numerous to count):

Fascist
Racist
homophobic
xenophobic
warmonger
militant
Nazi

and God knows what else that I can't remember right now.

Almost on a daily basis.

And when one of you loons marks me as such, I pull out my knife and score another tic mark on my desk.

All these descriptions are quite accurate.

But then again, I can't make any decision without first consulting my Red Book, so what do I know.

Maybe people call you those names because of the IDEAS you espouse, Airic. This is very much different than throwing around baseless accusations. You give us ample reason to 'label' you as above when you express your ignorance. Meyer has not expressed opinions which justify his being labeled a racist. However, you and your lackeys have done so.

Anyway, that's the response my Red Book told me to say. So there!

I am me 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, 365 days per year. No one EVER calls me a Nazi except on IMC. No one had EVER called me a fascist prior to me posting on IMC.

I'll never forget how I got hooked on this IMC forum. It started innocently enough. I was doing a web search on Google on who knows what, and I innocently clicked on a link that took me over to SF IMC's newsire. Having never heard of IMC before, I was intrigued that there could be that many America haters in one place.

The more I read, the more disturbed I became. Then I posted a comment, something like, "if you guys hate America so much then why don't you leave?"

The very next post, which came almost instantaneously, was by some hippie-liberal bulldike ranting about me being a Fascist!

I'd never been called that before. I was stunned! I made it my mission to figure out what these people were so uppity about.

Three years later, thousands of posts, and articles and comments later, I still haven't figured them out. They're all pretty much crazy as far as I can tell.

Eventually nessie, over at sf imc got sick of my flag waving and banned me from the site. Now, I can't even post over there without getting deleted almost immediately. If that's their idea of "open publishing" it's a joke.

I have learned a lot about this specie of leftist though. It is very paranoid. It is given to hyperbole. It clings to invective after vitrio after ad hominem. It is given to the non sequitur. It loves those buzzwords "racist", "fascist", and "homophobe". It is a patient socialist, desparately clinging to its anti-capitalist propaganda in the hopes that just one more victim may fall prey. It considers IMC as its own little psyop in cyberspace. It hates to be taunted or called a liberal. Flag waving pisses it right the fuck off. It despises Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Fox news, et al. And so on and so forth. There is much data to be compiled.

Ignorance of what, exactly? What is it that I'm ignorant of?

I have been around listening to the same crap day in and day out now for YEARS. And I've never heard a single solitary shred of meaningful anything on this pathetic website. Just a lot of pissing and moaning. I think it's funny when people piss and moan. I get a kick out of it. And I know it's not just me. There's a lot of others now and that have come and gone, that think you leftists are just a bunch of bellyaching paranoid whiners. Most of those guys are brilliant minds. Not to say that your stupid, I mean look at Dingo and sheepdip. Those two are stupid like a fox! And I know I'm not stupid. My IQ is 148, that's in the top 2% of the population. I'm a borderline genius. That's not gloating, that's just fact. I'd bet the few regulars that post around here are probably pretty close to the same, both leftists and rightists. We not fooling each other. So what are we doing here? What's the point. You've got your position (which happens to be the wrong one) and we've got ours. We're just not going to let you freaks get away with lying and obfuscating and let your bullshit go unchecked. That's life, bozos. Deal with it.

Tossing around terms like bulldike is not going to do much to deter people from calling you a homophobe, Eric. One would think that a high IQ person like you would have figured out that basic truth by now.

"My IQ is 148, that's in the top 2% of the population. I'm a borderline genius."

Talk about uppity.

But then again, I toss terms around like fascist, Racist, homophobic, xenophobic, warmonger, militant, and nazi based upon the loosest of definitions of those terms and how they are defined in my Red Book, so what do I know.

How does using me using a pejorative, such as "bulldike", constitute being afraid of gays? I'm not afraid of gays in the slightest. I disaprove of the gay lifestyle, but that is a far cry from being afraid of them or hating them. Homophobe is merely a gay propaganda buzzword. Call me a "gay defamer" or something like that, but don't use fallacious propaganda. It's inaccurate at best.

Now as far as me using the word, it's strictly meant to incite. You know it, and I know it. And it works too. How would I know if she was a bulldike or not? How would I know if she was even bi-sexual or even a female for that matter? I wouldn't. So maybe you should get a clue and grow a skin. It doesn't bother me when you call me a homophobe. It's funny to me. I use the term "bulldike" affectionately for my favorite new-found specie, the female liberal.

You can can sexist to the list.

I guess his Boss there in Langely decided it was time to stop playing "Good Cop".

.... I call you "uppity", then I call myself a "thinker", so what do I know.

Just an oversight. It was on the list long ago. I'm also a "race baiter" and a "class baiter" while we're adding items. I set up "straw men" conduct "black ops" and oh yeah, I'm CIA, FBI, NSA, Mosaad, and fucking agent 007 for her majesty's secret service.

I am me 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, 365 days per year.
Yes I am, no I'm not. Stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it.

"I am me 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, 365 days per year. No one EVER calls me a Nazi except on IMC. No one had EVER called me a fascist prior to me posting on IMC."


We aren't defaming you, Eric. "Nazi" is a term of endearment around here. IMC is a refuge for Jew haters.

"Ignorance of what, exactly? What is it that I'm ignorant of?"

Ho hum. Another fish trying to see water.

..."conduct "black ops" and oh yeah, I'm CIA, FBI, NSA, Mosaad, and fucking agent 007.."
Eric?..you know the routine.

"As for poor suburban Fresca, another oppressed white boy, apparantly he still has not gotten the point that South Los Angeles is no longer mostly Black either by numbers or reputation. "

Thanks for the message. You're right. There are now many, many mexicans living there as well.

Was it Mexicans you meant to slander?

Shouldn't hate speach...I mean, real hate speach, be obvious?

Shouldn't it stand as such, of it's own accord, without having to have some whiny liberal point the finger and scream, "Racist! Fascist! Nazi! Homophobe! Sexist!" everytime he perceives it?

I had no wish to slander anyone; I just wanted to point out that you and your pals are ignorant, racist, priveleged buffoons. That is not slander - it is the obvious reality, which you help to make clear with numerous postings. By the way, have you been giving the people who clean your yuppie house and mow your yuppie lawn any helpful advice on why they should not have any children who might get your tax money lately?

then why do you feel compelled to point it out? Doesn't that make you an idiot?

I pointed it out in response to an accusation; besides, someone new to the site might not know what you loonies are all about.

If the other people here are anything like myself, they probably respond to you, Eric, because they cannot stand to see lies and hate speech unchallenged.

You made another comment about the nature of this site, and that people 'here' in some way patronize Hitler. This could not be further from the truth. Besides the obvious fact that ANYONE may post here, it would appear that the majority of people you brand 'leftists' would never support a right-wing ideologue like Hitler. They would not be true to the 'leftist' label you attach to them. So which is it, Airhead: are we 'left-wing nutty @narchists' or 'right-wing bootjacks'? Enlightened me, oh Mighty One!

"I had no wish to slander anyone; I just wanted to point out that you and your pals are ignorant, racist, priveleged buffoons"

You're the one who claimed that libertarian views would surely get one killed by Blacks and/or Mexicans in South Central LA.

Now that's slander! Way to go, Fresca! You must be an agent/law enforcement to get away with defamation like that these days!

I am no expert on the Libertarian Party, but I suspect that, whatever right-wing views it may defend, it does not recruit Nazis who think that it is ok to tell people using food stamps in a supermarket that their kids are shit. In other words, one would hope that it would not recruit you. Say hello to the fellows down at the Aryan Club; I hope that Bush's cutbacks in medical services will not result in their losing their medications. They obviously need all the help they can get.

"Bush's cutbacks in medical services ..."

Please enlighten us. What cutbacks?

Looney leftwing. That's you.

You squawk racist, nazi, fascist, homophobe, ad nauseam where no such exists.

The reason is simple. To slander your opponents for political momentum. Your fugacious tripe is routinely bought though, by the public at large. That's why you remain marginalized and insignificant. Too bad for you.

Sounds like a classic case of projection, Eric. And anyone who thinks that terms like homophobe and Nazi don't apply to you should look through your postings.

Show me where I've ever admitted to hating of fearing gays. Or where I've ever admitted to hating Jews or preached white supremacy. That's a tough stretch to make on any of my posts.

But I certainly encourage everyone to go back and read every post I've ever made. You may learn something.

Eric,

You value your own opinion too highly. You don't even merit a response, however, it is amusing to hear the Company Line parrotted from a gov't clown. Your presence here is only to disrupt and confuse: not very honorable now is it? One day soon your string-pullers will go the way of all the rest of history's tyrants. Wanna guess what happened to them?

You like talking with me, don't you?

C'mon Eric! Is that the best you can do? I've been under survelliance for over a year, have had you losers try to frame me, kill me and discredit me multiple times, and I'M STILL HERE!!! HA HA! C'mon, PSy-Ops man. Make me feel bad! Boo hoo! You're the one that HAS to be here, not me. Your boss won't like it if you don't refute our claims about the lies and deception of the Shrub junta.

Unlike you, Smearic, I have been tried and tested. No fear of you G-men now, you see? Do your worst, apoligist for the criminals. My heart is strong and true. Something YOU will never, EVER know.

I like talking with you too.

How much of YOUR blood can we spill for the Empire, Eric?

Redundant. You sound like a broken record Brian.

How much of YOUR blood can we spill for the Empire, Eric?

All of it. If you think you can spill even one drop for your revolution, just bring it. I wish you would.

I suggest you donate blood in Iraq instead of the kids who are there now.

are right where I was. And right where you'll never be. Because you are a user.

I'm sure you much rather would have seen the Vietnamese conflict continue. Too bad people like me made such a fuss at home that they had to stop that little lovefest, huh?

Eric, I thought the military didn't let in front line fighters with IQ's that high. Either you really have a low-end IQ or you really don't have any battle scars from fighting a war. Either way, you are a liar.

You did a real good thing ending that war, didn't you? Only 58,000 Americans lost their lives before you and your ilk single handedly saved the day. Make sure to take credit for it. I'm sure those 58 thousand Americans thank you for all that hard work you did.

The Vietnam War ended, because it was over. The mission had been accomplished.

The tremendous loss of life, and expense, was unfortunate. Many lessons were learned.

So, let's compare Iraq with Vietnam, shall we? What's the American body count now in Iraq? Roughly 250?

okay:

250 / 58,000 = 0.43%

I'd say America learned quite well from Vietnam. Let me know when YOU are gonna save us from ourselves by making a buncha noise about it though. k?

See how mad I get when someone questions my lies.
We really didnt accomplish anything Vietnam, really.
See, i have never been in combat for my country, so i would never be able to give an actual description of the horrors of warfare.
I like to say i am a professional seal, but in reality i am just a scared little boy.
I like to say how proud i am of my country and how it kills its own citizens for no reason and then say, "hey, they volunteered"
SEE, i am unable to question the government on anything.
I really have shown my ignorance here by claiming the war in Vietnam to have been won by the US (im am the only person in the world with this view)
BUT I AM RIGHT!!!!
What do you guys know anyways, i like to rant and rave and show extreme insanity on one hand here, and then claim i'm a calm cool warrior seal on the other hand.
I like to use numbers now that really have no use at all.
But i love to pull at any straw that might enforce my point of view.
IN fact, i supported this iraq war so much, that i never volunteered for it.
SEE, i like to claim i'm a bad-ass, but when it comes down to the real deal, i'll never go.
I'll just claim that i had some excuse where i couldnt go.
I am a liar of the worse kind.

what was the original post about?=+=======++++

Guess I got to you on that one, huh? You are delusional, aren't you? Sounds like someone CAN'T EVER ADMIT DEFEAT.

Give me a 'D' - D
Give me an 'E' - E
Give me an 'N' - N
Give me an 'I' - I
Give me an 'A' - A
Give me an 'L'- L

What's that spell? DENIAL! What's that spell? DENIAL! What's that spell? DENIAL! What's that spell? DENIAL! What's that spell? DENIAL! What's that spell? DENIAL! What's that spell? DENIAL! What's that spell? DENIAL! What's that spell? DENIAL! What's that spell? DENIAL! What's that spell? DENIAL! What's that spell? DENIAL! What's that spell? DENIAL! What's that spell? DENIAL! What's that spell? DENIAL! What's that spell? DENIAL! What's that spell? DENIAL! What's that spell? DENIAL! What's that spell? DENIAL! What's that spell? DENIAL! What's that spell? DENIAL!

(wheeze!) cough cough (gasp!)
Organize!
Organize!
(wheeze!) cough cough (gasp!)
(wheeze!) cough cough (gasp!)

people like me.

Dog turds are NOT!..repeat.. not..NOTTTT.. a civilized excrement. An excrement may be classified as such, inappropriately however in the common everyday CITY, yech!!..I expect most on this forum refer to such as SUBurban-like poop