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INSTANT ANALYSIS: MY TWO CENTS; Carl Davidson; Facebook; October 28, 2015.
You can learn more about BCR’s leftster management here. “Leftster” is the combination of leftist and gangster, inspired by the left-originated “bankster.”
The Republican debate of October 28, 2015, conducted by CNBC in Boulder, CO.
For your education and entertainment. Be sure to read the comments as well. The racist and sexist tone of these “analysts” is obvious. If you don’t see the obvious, however, let me know.
Carl Davidson (KD): “INSTANT ANALYSIS: MY TWO CENTS: The third GOP debate in Boulder got at the heart of why so many people hate politics. The topic was the economy—jobs, growth, debt, the safety net and many other things with a direct impact of people’s lives. Yet nearly every candidate on nearly every topic offered little more than half-baked, long disproven ‘solutions’ that amounted to little more than a four-decades-long neoliberalism on steroids, the same anti-government, anti-labor union and pro-privatization measures that created the mess we are currently in in the first place.”
[RWC] No. At the center of “the mess we are currently in” are Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, GOVERNMENT sponsored enterprises and Democrat creations going back to FDR (Fannie Mae – 1938) and LBJ (Freddie Mac - 1968). Please read “Let us have some of the $700 trillion” for details.
“Yet nearly every candidate on nearly every topic offered little more than half-baked, long disproven ‘solutions’?” It appears KD had a flashback to the Democrat debate.
“Trump was the most boring. This man is capable only of making assertions, not arguments, and at a six-grade level. ‘I’m going to bring jobs back, bring manufacturing back bring the money back.’ But he never tells you how. I’m beginning to believe that, as a true narcissist, he thinks he can do it simply with bogarting and bluster. It may work with the high rollers in real estate, but not with the really tough problems.”
[RWC] Hmm, sounds like KD.
“The others all offered supply-side tax cuts for business, combined with privatization and cuts in the safety net. They only differed on degrees of ruthlessness, i.e., how small government should be, how much of the safety net should be slashed. Yet hardly anyone, save for one slip by Rand Paul, even mentioned the biggest sector of the discretionary federal budget, the military and war. What they refused to say out loud was that there would be no cuts there, only more money for more wars.”
[RWC] Some of us forget the “safety net” is not a government responsibility, but national defense is. “Discretionary” as it pertains to the federal budget is Washington-speak. All parts of the federal budget are discretionary.
As for “what they refused to say out loud,” apparently KD is a mind-reader.
“Neoliberal’s ‘supply side’ approach is also often dubbed ‘trickle down’ economics, the notion that if you leave more money for use as capital in the hands of capitalists, they will plow it into new factories, with new growth and thus many new high-paying jobs.
“Even if it were true that the newly freed up capital would be used this way, what’s to stop it from being exported to Malaysia, to create more jobs there where labor is cheaper? Nothing. What to stop it from being deployed in new plants that are more robotic, with relatively fewer new jobs, here or abroad? Nothing. What to make these jobs high paying, especially when they want to abolish the NLRB and implement ‘right to work’ reducing unions to zero? Nothing.”
[RWC] Other than providing a reasonable legal structure, there should be minimal government involvement in the marketplace. Over time, a free market tends to balance supply and demand or allocate resources better than the alternatives. Ignoring gobbledygook, the greater the effective freedom of a country’s residents, the more prosperous the country will be overall. Note, “more prosperous” doesn’t mean everyone will do well or be happy. No approach can do that. Government can’t make everyone prosperous, but government can make everyone poor.
“None of these points are great mysteries. Any decent Keynesian or Marxist could mop the floor with them. Bernie Sanders does it every day in his stump speeches, and people get it.”
[RWC] I’m not a John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) follower in general, but he was right about some things. For example, in “The Means to Prosperity” (1933), Mr. Keynes recognized increasing tax rates can provide the double whammy of damping an economy and reducing collected taxes, leading to deficit spending and debt. As they do with Pope Francis, lefties tend to cite Mr. Keynes selectively, noting stuff they like and keeping quiet about the rest.
Unless he’s ignorant about free markets, the last thing “Any decent Keynesian or Marxist” wants to do is debate a knowledgeable free market guy/gal.
If you are a regular reader of my analysis pieces, you know Mr. Sanders has a problem telling the truth and tends to omit inconvenient – but important – portions of his proposals. A couple of examples are here and here.
If you would like to learn more about economics in everyday language with everyday examples, I recommend viewing NPR’s Free to Choose series by Milton Friedman.
“Take Social Security. Every one of them wanted to ‘reform’ it, meaning reducing benefits to those who need it most. Yet the simplest ‘fix’ for SS is to take the $116K cap off FICA. That’s the provision that exempts all income over $116 [sic] per year from being taxed at all, a kind of affirmative action for the better off. Yet they would come up with every outlandish scheme you might imagine to avoid mentioning this dirty little secret which, if removed, would solve any SS problems for decades to come.”
[RWC] People have been making bogus claims like this since Mr. Davidson was seven years old. Please read “Socialist Security and Medicare” for details.
Let’s look at KD’s “reducing benefits to those who need it most” comment. Asking Gov. Christie a question, “moderator” Becky Quick said, “You think that we need to cut benefits for people who make over $80,000 and eliminate them entirely for seniors who are making over $200,000.” I don’t know about the other debate participants, but Mr. Christie’s position as described by the “moderator” blows up KD’s “Every one of them” assertion. There is a lot more detail about this in my analysis of “IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING.” In that analysis you’ll find the AP lied about Mr. Christie’s comments and KD cheerfully passed along the lie to his followers. Though KD now knows about the lie if he did not before, he has not posted a correction as of the “last updated” date at the top of this page.
“But when you have ‘debates as spectacle’ moderated by media people who know little about the topic, save perhaps for Jim Cramer, who has long ago deserted the leftism of his youth, you get a dumbed-down shouting match.”
[RWC] True. That said, does anyone care to guess the ideological leaning of most of the “media people” serving as moderators?
“It doesn’t have to be this way. I challenge anyone out there to take any one of the Lincoln-Douglas debates over slavery and the crisis leading to the Civil War, and read it. You’ll find a level of argument, reason and erudition unknown in today’s politics. And these debates went on for five or more hours. In the open air, under the hot Sun. Delivered to barely literate farmers standing all day in a corn field, entranced and fully engaged. They were taken down word for word, and printed in the newspapers of the day, and re-read in taverns and at kitchen tables. And no one complained about ‘two hours or more.’
“We need radical alternatives to bring out the best in us, and then do something about it.”
[RWC] Be sure you understand KD’s definition of “radical.” Since the beginning of humankind, some people have always wanted to control the lives of other people. The vast majority of the history of man is tyranny. That’s exactly what leftism is all about. Using the real-world definitions of progressive and regressive, today’s “progressives” are “radically regressive.” Though the terminology has varied over the years, the “left” has been at war with the “right” since at least the beginning of recorded history.
As always, be sure to check the debate transcript before you accept as fact anything KD – or anyone else – claims the participants said. You’ll read why in the next paragraph.
Here’s an example of why fact-checking is important.
In Peace, Friendship, Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity. <g>
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