patrick.net

Here's one more great quote, the original author of which remains in question:

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years.

Great nations rise and fall. The people go from bondage to spiritual truth, to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence back again to bondage."

99.99% of economics and finance majors are economically illiterate. The more economics classes you take, the more junk science you learn and the more disconnected from the real world you become.

CBOEtrader says

the original author of which remains in question:

Ie bullshit even if the author was a respected student of history. This quote as presented is actually just from the right wing nuthouse of the immediate New Deal milieu, the same big-business nutjobs that Gen Smedley Butler accused of plotting high treason.

In 1999 this country was heading a decent direction, fiscal-wise. I am not a tax-and-spend liberal, I think we need to cut a lot and privatize more if at all possible, but I also believe in very strong and mandatory social spending.

For I know that every dollar of income not taxed will eventually just end up in land values and other inflation-sensitive segments of the rentier economy.

I need to go to Norway.

Troy says

This quote as presented is actually just from the right wing nuthouse of the immediate New Deal milieu, the same big-business nutjobs that Gen Smedley Butler accused of plotting high treason.

No. You are confused. The most oft atributed author of this quote is Prof. Alexander Frazer Tytler, who supposedly wrote this in the late 1700's regarding Athens.

"Perhaps what he had in mind was what Prof. Alexander Frazer Tytler has written, that a democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover they can vote themselves largesse out of the public treasury. From that moment on the majority, he said, always vote for the candidate promising the most benefits from the treasury with the result that democracy always collpases over a loose fiscal policy, always to be followed by a dictatorship. Unfortunately, we can't argue with the professor because when he wrote that we were still colonials of Great Britain and he was explaining what had destroyed the Athenian Republic more than 2000 years before."
-Ronald Reagan, 1965

General Smedley Butler was a whistle blower of a supposed wall street fascist dictatorship coup...which is kinda what wall street and big business is accomplishing today due in no small part to both the neo-cons and neo-liberals alike. The wall street bought politicians use the egalitarian social wealth distribution plans to buy votes from the proletariat.

Troy says

I need to go to Norway.

??

Your post seems to be missing a unified theme.

CBOEtrader says

Troy says

This quote as presented is actually just from the right wing nuthouse of the immediate New Deal milieu, the same big-business nutjobs that Gen Smedley Butler accused of plotting high treason.

No. You are confused. The most oft atributed author of this quote is Prof. Alexander Frazer Tytler, who supposedly wrote this in the late 1700’s regarding Athens.

http://www.lorencollins.net/tytler.html

-Ronald Reagan, 1965

Um, yeah. This was his core period of being a mouthpiece of the conservative right. Operation Coffee Cup and all that.

Your quote included the bullshit part, alas:

The list beginning "From bondage to spiritual faith" is commonly known as the "Tytler Cycle" or the "Fatal Sequence". Its first known appearance is in a 1943 speech "Industrial Management in a Republic"[11] by H. W. Prentis, president of the Armstrong Cork Company and former president of the National Association of Manufacturers, and appears to be original to Prentis.

General Smedley Butler was a whistle blower of a supposed wall street fascist dictatorship coup…which is kinda what wall street and big business is accomplishing today due in no small part to both the neo-cons and neo-liberals alike. The wall street bought politicians use the egalitarian social wealth distribution plans to buy votes from the proletariat.

Wall Street is powerful because they represent powerful interests. Bush's tax cuts on great wealth did as much damage as anything.

Troy says

I need to go to Norway.

??
Your post seems to be missing a unified theme.

The existence and success of Norway's economy and society invalidates every tenet held by the conservative right.

A people get the government they deserve, good and hard.

That quote, as it happens, is not some ginned-up bullshit.

You guys both have interesting perspectives. Maybe idealistic of me, but I lean toward Troy's view that higher (but efficient) social spending can mute the excessive (bublishis) tendencies of capitalism, while not killing it.

Yeah, I know liberals dream of some naive utopia. I don't think so. In my life time the top marginal tax rates have had a very huge swing. Check this out..

http://www.truthandpolitics.org/top-rates.php

I'm not advocating a 90% tax rate on the rich ( was Eisenhower actually a communist ?), but there is an optimal middle ground.

And Troy's right, some European countries are FAR closer to an optimal mix than we are.

Sorry bubblicious......

marcus says

Maybe idealistic of me, but I lean toward Troy’s view that higher (but efficient) social spending can mute the excessive (bublishis) tendencies of capitalism, while not killing it.

I don't disagree, but this is very difficult to do. I would suggest that only small, locally run, homogenous, natural resource littered, non-military countries like Norway have a chance to pull this off effectively. Norway is a special case, and can't be replicated easily. Wellfare or foodstamps are basically a non-issue compared to miltary spending, bailouts, and entitlements.

Troy says

Um, yeah. This was his core period of being a mouthpiece of the conservative right. Operation Coffee Cup and all that.

I honestly don't care if Big Bird was the original author. I posted the quote because I agree with the logic, not because I agree with the actions of others that use this quote in their demagoguery.

Troy says

The existence and success of Norway’s economy and society invalidates every tenet held by the conservative right.

Sigh.

The conservative right has failed because they didn't practice what they preached. They increased the size of the government (especially the military), ran up huge deficits, and even increased social programs to get elected. They represent everything that is wrong with our current democratic system as summed up in the quote in question. The neo-liberals are pretty much the same thing, with a slightly different marketing plan. The neo-cons used free-market liberal leaders like Milton Friedman to claim the intellectual upper-hand. They then proceeded to desecrate everything Milton Friedman stands for.

The tenets of free-market capitalism have yet to be applied.

The best prescription for addressing society's aliments is not to further empower an already enormous, inefficient, corrupt federal government, but to return to our founding principals. A free people, making free choices, in a free market, in other words...capitalism.

Tell me what is better than a free people living in a civil society, working in self-interested cooperation? Our government should be operating within the limits of its authority promoting even more opportunity, prosperity, and freedom rather than manipulating and over-regulating everyone and everything.

Conservatism is the antidote to tyranny precisely because its principals are the founding principals.

Honest Abe says

The best prescription for addressing society’s aliments is not to further empower an already enormous, inefficient, corrupt federal government, but to return to our founding principals. A free people, making free choices, in a free market, in other words…capitalism.
Tell me what is better than a free people living in a civil society, working in self-interested cooperation? Our government should be operating within the limits of its authority promoting even more opportunity, prosperity, and freedom rather than manipulating and over-regulating everyone and everything.
Conservatism is the antidote to tyranny precisely because its principals are the founding principals.

Interesting idea of "returning" to founding principles. Free people, free market, capitalism. Of course the reality is that virtually every major industry in the history of the republic and before the republic existed has been in bed with the enormous, inefficient, corrupt federal government almost always to the detriment of the common people paying taxes. Read up on the origins of the canals, railroads, big oil, big steel, aviation, computers, etc., etc.. You are very much viewing things through rose colored glasses. Your idealized world of capitalism has never existed.

Right on, and that's part of the problem. True capitalism in America has never existed. There have always been special favors to certain business groups. Tariffs and subsidies further distorted the market. Every business or financial problem required a government solution. Each "solution" further distorted the market, always to the detriment to the taxpayer, right up until today. I know, lets come up with a bail out for the buggy whip manufactures - that ought to help !! Let the failing companies fail, and let the successful ones succeed, get government out of the way.

Government is not the solution, government "solutions" further exacerbate every problem. The unintended consequence shows up later. Government "solutions" simply delay confronting the problem thereby making it worse, as evidence by the fiscal and monetary problems faced by city's, towns, states and even the country as a whole.

What has existed, yet is being ignored, is the principals of the founding fathers - you know -the law of the land, the constitution.

Sounds theoretical.

Lobbyists have way too much input into legislation where the corporate interests of free enterprise collide with the welfare of the public. Now, corporations are going to be able to have much more influence in elections. This drives up the price of running for office, and ultimately is a waste of resources. It's going to take the idea of a political "puppet" to a whole new level.

How does real free enterprise help to prevent this from happening ?

Also, isn't it impossible to have the interests of free enterprises always aligned with the public good ? Defense companies are an easy example. Was is simply good for them. Couldn't this one day create a problem ? Eisenhower thought it would.

War is simply good for them ( dang ).

Since when are opinions "economic literacy"?

Not a single item on that list can be proven one way or another as fact, except for #4, which is just a stupid question.

Hilarious–economic study declares that self identified “liberals” are economically illiterate

This is certainly true. I would add liberals are business illiterate as well. As I heard Obama demand that a escrow account be set up for BPs oil spil claims. But as anyone can tell you who has a business background such reserves for losses are already set up and taken to earnings. Everything else from this adminstration is publicity.

Troy says

5) Third World workers working for American companies overseas are being exploited (unenlightened answer: agree).

Disagree. You will find many are very eager to take our jobs while the US workers goes unemployed. Frankly its dreadful to see our population go unemployed.

Troy says

6) Free trade leads to unemployment (unenlightened answer: agree).

We dont have free trade since Asian countries have import barriers.

thomas.wong1986 says

But as anyone can tell you who has a business background such reserves for losses are already set up and taken to earnings. Everything else from this administration is publicity.

I understood the escrow account to be an initial commitment to distribute $20 billion toward the clean up and injured parties. This is not the same as the internal way that corporations account for possible future losses.

They have now taken ( or committed to take ) their first 20 billion of their losses over this.

The best way to redistribute wealth is thought commerce. Liberals have a pathological distortion of the world which causes them to be economically illiterate. Liberal politicians have an obsessive need to get in there and attempt to manipulate and control everyone and everything. The more they do, the worse things become - which they blame on "evil business owners" and capitalism.

The very people who have no business sense what-so-ever, politicians, are the boneheads who attempt to "regulate" businesses. No wonder companies move off-shore, and many who remain are rendered non-competitive.

Government should be protecting our rights, not micro-managing every aspect of our business and personal lives, and destroying our rights along the way.

Those are broad ideological statements. And they don't ring true to many very economically literate people.

I could say "the wealthy come up with elaborate reasons why taxes need to be lower, and they argue for this, when in fact it is really just about their greed. They are in fact voting themselves largess from the public treasury. And then these wealthy conservatives use the religious right and claim of family values and "liberal" bashing to get the uneducated sheep to go along with them."

But if I were to make such a statement, that doesn't make it true. It would just be one small convoluted exaggerated piece of the truth.

It's about where one puts their focus, and it's about balance. No liberal claims that there always has to be more regulation of everything. And no intelligent conservative is going to say taxes always need to be lower. ( that is, as taxes go to zero govt revenues do not go to infinity).