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On Sun, 02 Nov 2008 13:38:13 -0800, Darren New wrote:
> Also be aware that, GWB notwithstanding, the President doesn't make the
> laws in the USA.
Executive orders have the force of law, though, and line-item veto is a
powerful tool that a president has to modify a law that's been approved
by congress through a vote.
Jim
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Ben Chambers wrote:
> (1) OK, I've only taken one semester of economics, but it was enough to
> convince me that Keynes was right about the Great Depression. The
> economy got to a point where 1/3 of the population was unemployed, and
> on its own it would have probably stayed that way for decades.
Funny how the Great Depression started just one decade after the
government took over control of the money and the banks, replacing all
the actual valuable money with IOUs from corporations, eh?
Show me someplace having a Great Depression that *isn't* using fiat
currency, and I'll believe you more.
> (2) It varies, but most economists call full production a 5%
> unemployment rate (or thereabouts).
I think it varies depending on the type of economy. In a rural economy,
I think you tend to get pretty much full employment whether you want it
or not. :-)
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
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Jim Henderson wrote:
> Executive orders have the force of law, though,
Only because nobody can really stop him. :-) Certainly executive orders
aren't going to change the tax rates.
> and line-item veto is a powerful tool that a president has to modify a law
Did that actually pass? I thought Congress fought tooth and nail to
prevent line-item vetos.
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
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On Mon, 03 Nov 2008 08:03:04 -0800, Darren New wrote:
> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> Executive orders have the force of law, though,
>
> Only because nobody can really stop him. :-) Certainly executive orders
> aren't going to change the tax rates.
It would be interesting to see someone try that just to see what happens.
>> and line-item veto is a powerful tool that a president has to modify a
>> law
>
> Did that actually pass? I thought Congress fought tooth and nail to
> prevent line-item vetos.
Sorry, I was thinking about "signing statements", which Bush has used
over the last 8 years.
Jim
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Jim Henderson wrote:
> Sorry, I was thinking about "signing statements", which Bush has used
> over the last 8 years.
Yeah. My understanding is that those aren't really law, but just
instructions to the executive branches which enforce the law.
In other words, it's like the police chief saying "We know it's legal to
have a peaceful protest, but I want you to go out and arrest protesters
anyway." He's not making laws. He's just enforcing his own will.
Not unlike the courts, except that's their *job*.
At least as I understand it.
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
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On Mon, 03 Nov 2008 09:46:01 -0800, Darren New wrote:
> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> Sorry, I was thinking about "signing statements", which Bush has used
>> over the last 8 years.
>
> Yeah. My understanding is that those aren't really law, but just
> instructions to the executive branches which enforce the law.
>
> In other words, it's like the police chief saying "We know it's legal to
> have a peaceful protest, but I want you to go out and arrest protesters
> anyway." He's not making laws. He's just enforcing his own will.
>
> Not unlike the courts, except that's their *job*.
>
> At least as I understand it.
That could be - I've not read a lot about it, maybe time to do some more
reading. :-)
Jim
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Ben Chambers wrote:
> Maybe if the parties made more sense, I'd be able to pick one and stick to
> it. The way things are, though, I usually just pick the candidate that's
> going to do the least amount of damage.
That's what is apparently the general thing in the US now. People are voting
the candidate they hate the least...
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Darren New wrote:
> Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> against things like fraud, theft, violence, etc., wouldn't have done
>> anything to **stop** the current financial crisis, because nothing the
>> companies that caused it did falls into **any** of those categories.
>
> Except to the extent they are regulated banks and the government already
> took over banking and money, yeah. I mean, given that you let the
> government control printing of the money, confiscating gold, and
> eliminating risk for banks, no, there's nothing they did that fall into
> those categories. One of the things Ron Paul (as I understand it)
> advocates is getting the government out of the business of trying to
> regulate the economy in the first place.
>
Oh, yes, things where so much better back in colonial times, when every
state, or even county, and sometimes cities, printed their own money,
and you never knew if the next place you landed in would accept it..
Sorry, but no. For a system to function you need a stable basis for the
system not 50 different interpretations of what that "basis" should be.
At one time, that was a gold standard, and some countries still, sort
of, operate off it. But there just isn't enough fracking gold in the
world to support, never mind back, the number of transactions that
actually take place in the modern world. Moving away from that as a
standard, to currency itself being the standard, **helped** growth. You
know what has hurt growth in the US? Two things:
1) exceptionalism. The idiot belief that America is the best at
everything, and always will be, which has left companies like Ford and
the rest *fighting* the Asian automakers to this day, most recently by
selling shit pickups and Hummers, and other gas guzzling scrap piles,
when we should have been paying attention to the fact that the rest of
the world figured out 20 years ago that small, efficient and
streamlined, was the future.
2) anti-intellectualism. Its now insanely common to hear idiots in the
press and government babbling about the "elitists" that don't "feel"
right about anything, so must be "wrong" because they use facts, logic
and science to find solutions, instead of gut reactions, traditional
thinking, and a persistent belief that nothing can go wrong, because,
see #1.
The former blinds us to the fact that the only places that are bigger
hell holes than the US when it comes to violence, bigotry, poor medical
coverage, poor economic growth, bad education and unemployment is...
places like the Middle East, and third world countries. Its just ***not
possible*** for the average American to admit that the US is turning
into a third world country, and when they do, they blame gays,
terrorist, atheists (since you can't safely blame blacks or Jews any
more), or "liberalism" (never mind the fact that most of the world takes
one look at what we call liberals and asks, "Wait? Why are the
conservatives attacking other conservatives over not being conservative
enough?). The later is why people don't "stay" in the US as much any
more, after getting an education, why BS like 'No Child Left
less-Behind' gets cheers, while suggesting we teach critical thinking
and problem solving actually, in one case I know of, got the parent
chewed out for "Teaching their kid, instead of letting the school do it,
since all the questions they asked, and their demand for **real**
information and explanations for things was **disruptive**."
The modern US thinks we are #1, while simultaneously thinking that being
smart, knowledgeable, logical, or just prone to use a lot of big words,
makes you a pariah and untrustworthy. Even if we closed every over seas
manufacturing plant, reopened every US business that used to make stuff
here and then started hiring workers to fill the positions, we would
have to ship people in from half the rest of the world to "find" enough
people that know the difference between silicon gel and silicon chips,
never mind had a damn clue what the hell the difference made.
And the companies know this, which is one reason why, recently, as of
like last year, the major car manufactures in the US flat out stated,
"We are moving much of our operations to Canada, because in recent years
we simply can't find enough people in the US that are knowledgeable
enough when hired to do the job, and those we have hired tend, for the
most part, to be **untrainable**."
When the business world has no resources other than the same idiots that
take out 16 credit cards, then try to use them to pay off each other, to
hire in the first place, it hardly matters what the companies *or* the
government does, the result is going to have more in common with the
movie Idiocracy, than with Libertarianism.
--
void main () {
If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
if version = "Vista" {
call slow_by_half();
call DRM_everything();
}
call functional_code();
}
else
call crash_windows();
}
<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models,
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Patrick Elliott wrote:
> Oh, yes, things where so much better back in colonial times, when every
> state, or even county, and sometimes cities, printed their own money,
> and you never knew if the next place you landed in would accept it..
Um, no. Every bank printed its own money, and gold worked everywhere.
Why do you think there were gold rushes?
Now we have only one bank printing money, and the only reason it's
accepted everywhere is because we have lots of gund. See Iceland for a
counterexample. Why again is this good?
> At one time, that was a gold standard, and some countries still, sort
> of, operate off it.
You know, it worked between countries a thousand years ago. The only
reason to get *off* of a gold standard is if you *want* to counterfeit
money. It's perfectly possible to devalue money without leaving a
hard-metal standard - how many pounds of sterling silver can you buy
with a British Pound Sterling today?
> But there just isn't enough fracking gold in the
> world to support, never mind back, the number of transactions that
> actually take place in the modern world.
Bull. You don't need the actual gold. You just need your money to be
worth something universal and impossible to counterfeit. What does it
matter if an ounce of gold is worth $100,000?
I'm not suggesting that carrying around gold is a good way to do
business. I'm merely pointing out that the Great Depression happened a
decade or more after people stopped backing money with gold.
> Moving away from that as a
> standard, to currency itself being the standard, **helped** growth.
Perhaps. Until people stop believing in money. Then you get the Great
Depression.
> when we should have been paying attention to the fact that the rest of
> the world figured out 20 years ago that small, efficient and
> streamlined, was the future.
Except the Japanese like to buy big gas-guzzling Ford pickup trucks too.
:-) Plus, CAFE helped there a whole bunch.
> 2) anti-intellectualism.
Yep.
> The modern US thinks we are #1, while simultaneously thinking that being
> smart, knowledgeable, logical, or just prone to use a lot of big words,
> makes you a pariah and untrustworthy.
In many ways, yes. Altho I'm not sure what this has to do with monetary
policy. :-)
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
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On Mon, 03 Nov 2008 23:55:37 -0200, Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> That's what is apparently the general thing in the US now. People are
> voting the candidate they hate the least...
That's been going on here for some time. This year, I finally get to
vote *for* someone rather than *against* someone.
Jim
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