Amazing how arrogance aligns with ignorance and stupidity. Here we see another rightie cheapshot and straw-man analysis wielding another, suddenly fashionable, rightie tactic of argument by insult and takedown and attempt at (bogus, analytical) intimidation by incivility.
Nah. My takedown of your argumentation is spot on.
Clearly, a follower (worshipper) of Trump.
Trump’s an ass. He is not worshiped on this side of the keyboard in the least.
Instead we had the kind of sociopathic, delusional, top-down, ends-justifies-the-means, lie-your-ass-off authoritarianism that seems to surface as a function of a mortal flaw in human nature, across the ideological spectrum, a flaw you apparently share as a market acolyte and purist.
We were completely on the same page, until what you wrote after the last comma.
What I am not is a believer in human nature, which makes me skeptical of big government in general, in that it depends on more people than the other kind. As Milton Friedman said (paraphrase), with which I agree, “Of course socialism/communism is better than capitalism, assuming it is run by angels. But where will you find the angels?”
So, yes, for that reason, I lean to a preference towards markets, because the market predictably forces the hand of even the foolish to do the right thing — — or see the business fail.
Would you say Scandinavia is communist? Or even socialist?
Neither.
By what standard are they not doing better than us?
Too vague to answer. I have relatives all over Europe, and have lived overseas. I personally dislike having my financial decisions made for me, and I especially dislike the cost per square meter of the boxes in which they live. YMMV. But if you ask me a more specific question, I’ll be glad to answer.
Heard of the Holocaust? It was enabled by the Great Depression and free-market speculation empowering extremists
Hmmmmmm. Your history needs some updating. Hitler’s political influence was well underway during the Roaring 20’s, not the Depression 30’s. He was enabled by *a* depression, but not THE Depression; the German economy was broken by the demands of the Allies for reparations from WW1.
The Great Depression then provided an *opportunity* for Hitler, but it did not *enable* Hitler. He was already enabled. :-)
just as has happened following the Republican-created downturn of ’08 though it goes back still further to the effects of Reaganomics and Thatcherism.
Republican. Created. Downturn. :-)
Incorrect. Here’s a chart you may find interesting, but probably not, because it refutes that statement quite well:
Eyes on the red lines, please. This is a graph of actual housing price inflation for the years on the X. That red “hump” you see is the actual housing “bubble” which burst in 08 and cost us the economy. The red line is the price inflation trend that those prices should have followed if the housing market had been healthy.
I hope we agree that this bubble was fed by junk mortgages.
Now, find the date when that bubble first deviated north of the red line and started to build. Yep, 1998. What happened in 1998? Well, the housing market was an obsession of the Clinton Administration. Mozila, Countrywide, Cisneros, yada yada yada. In the 90’s, some investment banks started making a killing by writing junk mortgages, packaging them up as securities, and selling them, facilitated by the fact that S&P slapped an AAA rating on them. But the investment banks are small players — they never had enough money in the game to screw up the market.
Enter Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. They wanted to play in the casino too, but were limited by the regulations that said they could only underwrite conforming mortgages. Bummer. So, they lobbied the head of Housing and Urban Development, a guy named Andrew Cuomo, to deregulate them and let them underwrite crap.
He agreed, and when Uncle Sam starts pouring money into something…..markets move. Bubble started to build. The Bush Administration tried to re-regulate HUD no less than seventeen times….but couldn’t get support in Congress, because so many Senators on both sides of the aisle were getting campaign donations from Fannie and Freddie.
So….tell you what. Let’s back off blaming one party for something, when it was the other party that (a) started the problem, and the (b) blocked attempts by the party of the first part to fix it.
The events of 2008 have no shortage of blame to go around. We could start with FDR who didn’t sunset Frannie; LBJ, who decided to permit securitization of mortgages; Ginny Mae, who invented the CDO; all the programs the government ever created to “help people get into homes” which contributed to housing inflation; the aforementioned events of the 1990’s; and then Gramm Rudman, when Clinton signed away the ability of the government to regulate derivatives.
Good times.
Where do you see individualism among Republicans?
Not much, but this “toe the line” nonsense has been growing in our politics since the 1994 blowout election. It’s a little late to complain about it now. No shortage of articles written about how you did NOT want to get on the bad side of either Clinton or Obama. Bush seemed to be a little bit more passive in that regard.
Certain Germans loved and studied the racial theories of the American southerners, now Trump’s most loyal voting block.
Odd comment, since the American Southerners that “certain Germans” loved and studied (assuming you’re not just blowing smoke) are all dead. Today’s American Southerners are an entirely different group of people who weren’t even alive back then.
NOBODY is a rational threat to America, only our own ignorance and myopia, which you seem to have embraced. But that, too, is as American as apple pie.
Hm. You’ve spent an entire article making wild accusations from the perspective of your preferred tribe, and you’re accusing somebody ELSE of ignorance and myopia?
Funny, that.
By the way, if you’re really proud of your opinions USE YOUR FULL NAME, try to contribute something meaningful by answering and understanding what someone else actually says instead of some short-circuited, distorted version of it, and stop acting like a troll. That, too, seems to be a franchise dominated by righties.
Pfft. You posted a load of partisan crap and you got called on it. Lighten up.
