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Patrick's Platform


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2017 Feb 19, 6:18am   277,670 views  317 comments

by Patrick   ➕follow (61)   💰tip   ignore  

Copyright
Limit copyright to 20 years like patents, with no renewals, because renewals just protect the profits of Disney and other wealthy lobbyists.
Make DMCA takedown abuse a felony because it is used to stifle free speech.

Corruption
Issue massive cash rewards for exposing illegal or unethical behavior by government officials. Turn the rats against each other.
Ban congressmen and their family members from owning individual stocks, to stop flagrant insider trading like that by Nancy and Paul Pelosi.
Ban all levels of government from attempting to influence public opinion aside from direct quotable speech by specific elected officials; government should respect and reflect the will of the people.
Make it a felony for any elected official or government employee to knowingly lie to the public, or to materially misrepresent facts to the public the same way it is a crime for members of the public to lie to government.
Require all laws — like vaccine mandates and insider trading bans — to also apply to members of Congress without any exemptions.
Aggressively rotate out DC politicians with term limits before they can fully develop their corrupt networks.
Make a point of bringing in total political outsiders as often as possible.
Forbid everyone at the FDA or family members from ever working at any pharma company, and forbid all pharma employees or family members from ever working for the FDA, until the FDA is eliminated and its functions transferred to the states.
Make all government expenditures, down to the dollar, without exception, easily available for public inspection.
Hire the elderly, who often know how things work and have a lot of available time, to watch all public contracts for excessive spending and corruption.
Require all retail establishments including cafes and restaurants to clearly post all prices, any item without a price being free as a penalty.
Overcharging at checkout also makes the item free as a penalty. This especially applies to "out of date" menus in restaurants.

Crime, the Law, and Prisons
Openly address the extremely disproportionate violent crime rate by black men relative to all others, instead of hiding it.
Abolish all "hate crime" laws because they inevitably result in unequal application of the law, favoring some groups over others, and violate the First Amendment. We already have laws against crime.
Implement public honors and a large cash reward for anyone who captures and flogs a looter or shoplifter.
Require all police to wear functioning bodycams at all times when interacting with the public or prisoners, all video to be used as evidence.
End civil forfeiture because it is theft by government.
Ban private prisons because they bribe judges to feed them more prisoners.
Legalize marijuana at the federal level because it is less harmful than alcohol.
Allow free speech for all prisoners so that we can learn about injustice.
Segregate prisons by biological sex. No men should ever be imprisoned among women, nor women among men.
Define "right to a speedy trial" to mean that a verdict must be reached within one year of imprisonment, defaulting to innocent.
Compensate those found innocent for their unjust time in jail. The money should come from the budget of the agency which imprisoned them.
End selective enforcement of laws by DAs. We should have minimal laws, but they should be enforced 100% of the time to avoid cases like Hunter Biden's never being charged with running the Biden Crime Family bribery racket.
First-time criminals should be given the option of flogging rather than imprisonment. Imprisonment creates hardened criminals who learn bad habits in prison.
Anyone who instigates a lawsuit and loses should have to pay his opponent's legal fees so that the suit itself was not a financial punishment. This is the law is most of the world already.

Discrimination
Forbid government from counting or classifying citizens by race.
End racism by refusing to talk about it, as Morgan Freeman suggested in his famous interview with Mike Wallace.
Prohibit any special access to government services regardless of a person's status, wealth, or payment.
Eliminate all government favoritism or exclusion of citizen by race; therefore no Affirmative Action, nor exclusion of whites or Asians from any programs.

Education
Offer a basic citizenship, numeracy, and literacy test for a high school diploma, administered by the US Office of Weights and Measures.
Fund college with temporary income share agreements, not loans, to give colleges a true motive to help students.
Let middle school and high school students test out of any subject and study whatever they want on their own, so they don't waste their time.
Require any university which gets government funding to award class credits and degrees purely for passing objective tests, no classes required.
Require elementary, middle, and high school classes on how to avoid getting trapped in debt.
Create state-level virtual universities of the very best teachers and classes, online, free for all students of any age.
Allow school choice, where parents can spend their tax money on any school in the state, public or private.
Promote practical education, such as plumbing and HVAC, but also promote reading the Latin and Greek classics, especially in the original languages.
Require middle school and high school courses to teach what rights are guaranteed by the Constitution, and how to sue for them.

Food
Make is a serious crime to introduce any insect-based food for humans without prominent warnings on the food that it includes insects.
Ban all seed oils as not appropriate for human consumption because they are poisonous, especially rapeseed oil, aka "Canola" oil.

Foreign Policy
Put compensating tariffs on foreign goods from countries with lower wages or lower environmental standards, to protect the US manufacturing base.
Seek national economic self-sufficiency in all necessary goods like oil and medicines so that the US may never be extorted by a foreign country.
Impose an absolute ban on dual citizenship, because it always creates conflicting loyalties. China prohibits dual citizenship for this reason.
Stop sending taxpayer money to Israel. They can take care of themselves.

Freedom of Speech
Create a Constitutional Amendment explicitly prohibiting all levels of government from "advising" or influencing any media on what to report or suppress.
Prohibit discrimination in hiring and firing based on political activities outside of work.
Revoke all laws against "hate speech" because such laws violate the First Amendment.

Homelessness
Require mandatory prison time for hard drug use, because most homeless are addicts, and former addicts testify that enforced sobriety in prison saved them.

Immigration
Issue permanent shoot-to-kill orders against anyone invading US borders. This was normal in all parts of the world until recently.
Make everyone who enters the US illegally permanently ineligible for citizenship, green cards, employment, and welfare, except for any who help to convict and imprison their own employers for employing illegal labor.
Build a wall along the southern US border, to protect low-wage American workers from illegal competition.
Deport everyone who entered the US illegally. Exception: grant US citizenship to any illegal alien who gets his employer convicted of employing him and imprisoned. This would be yet more effective than a wall.
Mandate federal prison time for all employers of illegal aliens.
Eliminate all H1B and similar visas unless the incoming worker is paid at least twice as much as an American would be for that job, to prevent, eg, Facebook's abuse of H1B.

Infrastructure
Give official federal priority to fast and cheap rail transit to city centers as in Europe, in place of subsidies and favoritism for highways and airports.
Attempt to re-achieve US energy independence to help keep us out of foreign wars and to improve our balance of trade.
Officially disparage and refuse to grant permits to sterile modern architecture because it is merely cheap shit pretending to be classy.
Return to classical public art, perhaps with subtle new touches. Refuse to spend money on crappy modern public "art".
Create pedestrian-friendly and completely safe town squares with fountains in every town, with a particular emphasis on introducing young people to each other.

Leaf Blowers
Ban gasoline powered leaf blowers in dense residential areas. They pollute with dirty engines, blow dust around, and make a lot of noise.

Legislation
Restrict the commerce clause’s interpretation back to what it was before the 1937 Supreme Court case "National Labor Relations Board v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp." This reversal would greatly reduce the size of the Federal government.
Eliminate all regulations and rules. There must be only laws enacted by elected representatives of the people, and never any regulations and rules created by unelected bureaucrats.
Require lesser authorities to defy unconstitutional laws and orders.
Prohibit all "states of emergency" because they are used to subvert the Constitution, as was done in the Wuhan Virus scamdemic. We should be ready for emergencies at all times anyway.
Create a Constitutional amendment to explicitly state that no part of the Constitution may be suspended ever, for any reason, for any amount of time.
Anyone attempting to suspend any part of the Constitution for any amount of time, especially for an "emergency", shall be guilty of a capital offense.
Require all federal laws to be read in their entirety by all legislators before they may vote on them, to discourage lobbyist-written bills.
Require all federal laws to be clear enough that a 12th-grade education is sufficient to understand them perfectly, for more public participation.
Limit bill length to 30 normal-sized pages of normal sized font, for more clarity about what is in the bill, and more public participation.
Promote the principle of very few laws, very well enforced. "The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws." -Tacitus.
Guarantee the right of the president to fire anyone within executive branch at any time, especially long-time "civil servants" like Fauci.
Eliminate anti-competitive imposition of "safety" costs on small businesses because those laws are almost all written to benefit large businesses.
Require 20 year sunset provisions for all federal laws, requiring a new vote on whether the law is to be continued after it expires.
Allow the public to vote to revoke the corporate charter of any company which they feel has abused the public, companies like Pfizer.
Publicly post all bills two weeks in advance of Congressional vote, to give the public a chance to read them.
Let the president have a line item veto.
Repeal the poorly-named "Patriot Act".

Medical Care
Repeal the PREP act. All vaccines and other medical products must come with unlimited liability for manufacturers at all times.
Establish a Constitutional ban on lockdowns, mask requirements, and vaccine mandates. They must never be allowed under any circumstances.
Prosecute everyone involved with the creation of Wuhan Virus, especially the mass murderers Fauci, Collins, and Daszak.
Prosecute everyone who abused his or her power to mandate the dangerous and ineffective mRNA injection, whether in government, schools, or workplaces.
Require short clear written presentation of all non-emergency medical costs before treatment for market discipline of medical costs.
Absolve all patients from legal liability for medical care bills whose costs they did not agree to in writing in advance of treatment, aside from emergency care.
Require all emergency medical charges to be limited to moderate fixed prices by law, because there can be no market in emergencies.
Require medical insurers to give a coverage response to a proposed non-emergency medical bill within one day, again to control medical costs.
Allow import of prescription drugs from Canada and from every other country because the import restrictions are a scam to boost profits.
Make it a felony to offer doctors or other medical providers payments to recommend any drug or treatment.
Ban the practice of charging higher prices for the same medicine or treatment when the patient is uninsured. See image below.
Establish a Constitutional right to visit in person and hug any relative who wants visitors in a hospital or nursing home with no exceptions for any disease on either side. It must be their choice alone, never an administrator's.
Prohibit all hospitals and nursing homes from benefitting financially from the deaths of their patients, as they did with the Midazolam Murders.

Mens Rights
Ban kangaroo courts in corporate HR and University Title IX departments to protect men's rights.
Mandate paternity testing at birth to give all men the certainty which encourages paternal care. Eliminate all child support obligation for a non-biological father unless he legally adopts the child.
Require courts to assume that a woman of age, voluntarily alone in a bedroom with a man, has consented to sex.
Grant equal post-conception rights to men.

Military
Eliminate the US Army and instead require mandatory training and arming all sane non-felon adult male US citizens to defend US territory ONLY, organized into well-regulated militias.
Implement a mandatory death penalty for anyone who deliberately attempts to send US troops off of US soil.
Create a constitutional amendment prohibiting interventionism; American soldiers must never fight except against invasion of America, per George Washington's advice.
Ban gays from the military because they are corrosive to morale and because they spread the disease of homosexuality there, not to mention anal warts.
Ban trannies from the military because they are mentally ill.
Eliminate NATO, because Europe is not America.
Close all US military bases in foreign countries.
Create a Constitutional amendment prohibiting all interference in the affairs of foreign countries, especially sending weapons.

Money
Define the US currency to be one ounce of 0.999 pure silver, to be called an Ounce. Silver by weight worked well for thousands of years.
Prohibit the creation of any term for US currency except weight of 0.999 pure silver. So "pound" is OK for a pound of 0.999 pure silver, but "dollar" and all other such non-weight terms are to be prohibited because they can be redefined to devalue to the currency.
Require every business and government agency to accept silver metal by weight as payment.
Establish a Constitutional right to pay all debts and taxes with physical silver by weight, so that everyone can preserve savings as silver metal.
Ban all taxes on buying or selling silver. Such taxes are punishment of those who try to avoid being cheated by the Federal Reserve.
Forbid businesses from requiring payment in any form which can be blocked by government, the way Canada blocked the bank accounts of legitimate protestors who opposed deadly injection mandates.
Create a Constitutional prohibition on political discrimination as a reason to deny banking or payment system access.
Require classification and prominent marking of all non-metal payment instruments as "Not money, only a debt, MAY DEFAULT", because they are merely debts.
Eliminate the requirement for anyone to ever accept or pay with paper money because all paper money eventually becomes worthless.
Legally define all banking as either storage of silver for a fee, or participation in the bank's lending risk and bank run risk in return for an interest payment.
Eliminate the Federal Reserve entirely. Let the open market set interest rates at all times.
Limit the annual federal budget by Constitutional amendment to 1% of GDP with no exceptions, especially not for "emergencies".
Completely and permanently eliminate the national debt. Require the federal budget to be paid out of current revenue, similar to the "Swiss brake".
Ban asset managers, especially Blackrock and Vanguard, from voting the underlying shares that they don’t own but are merely managing.

Privacy
Create an amendment establishing a Constitutional right to privacy because it is not perfectly clear from existing law that we have this right.
Prohibit all levels of government from collecting or holding information on any citizen except as absolutely necessary for census, taxation, criminal investigation, or driver's licenses.
Prohibit the federal government from monitoring the activities or location or even knowing the home address of anyone not currently accused of a specific crime. So no mass license plate reading or cell phone tracking without a warrant naming the specific person and the crime.
Require all private people and companies which collect or distribute home addresses and phone numbers to prominently display all of the owners' home addresses and phone numbers, and all similar information they collect. That is, demand equality of exposure.
Prohibit airlines and other transportation from demanding identity papers. Everyone should be able to travel anonymously, as we did before.
Prohibit websites from including 3rd party javascript, especially that from Google or Facebook, without a prominent notice that every keystroke or mouse movement etc is visible to Google or Facebook and that those sites may have altered the page content. It's spyware and most people are unaware of it.

Real Estate
Completely eliminate the mortgage interest deduction and all policies which serve only to keep houses expensive, because they cripple new family formation.
Aggressively implement policies which drive down the price of a house as much as possible, to give young families space to rear children.
Prohibit all foreigners, including everyone with any non-US citizenship, dual citizenship, or any foreign passport, from owning any land in the US.
Require notarization and publication of all bids on real estate to slow down the routine fraudulent bidding by realtors.
Require a publicly advertised price for a house to be a legally binding offer to immediately sell at that price, the same way it is with toasters and all other goods.
Prohibit government loan guarantees of all kinds, particularly housing or college loan guarantees, because they simply raise the cost of housing and of college.

Regulation and States Rights
Eliminate all federal government agencies outside of the military and commerce; everything else belongs to the states, as is written in the Constitution.
Eliminate the FBI, CIA, NSA, NIH, FDA, and CDC in particular, with their functions transferred to the states, as is written in the Constitution.
Allow girl scouts to bake their own cookies at home.

Sex
Strictly separate multiple-person bathrooms for men and women, whether a person is mentally ill with the fashionable "trans" disease or not.
Ban gay men from adopting, since the majority are gay because they were molested as boys, and then frequently go on to become molesters themselves.
Ban gay men from being alone with boys, ever, because most gays were created through homo-pedophilia.
Ban the sodomy or trans flag from any property funded by tax money, however indirectly. Only official government flags may be displayed.
Define the promotion of homosexuality or trans ideology to children as child sex abuse.
Revert the classification of transsexuality to be the mental illness which is obviously is.
Revert the classification of male homosexuality to be what it really is: a contagious life-shortening mental illness.

Schools
Ban the rainbow sodomy/pedo/trans flag from all schools.
Require middle and high school courses in law, taxes, personal finance, insurance, coding, cooking, home repair, car repair, self-defense, survival skills, etiquette, public speaking, and stress management.
Require daily weight lifting and running in PE classes at every level including publicly funded universities.

Taxes
Eliminate all income and sales taxes, to be replaced with Georgist land value taxes and import tariffs.
Swap the current maximum tax rates on income from work vs capital gains until Georgism is implemented and income tax eliminated.
End Prop 13 in California, to be replaced with a land value tax, with zero taxes on buildings.
Prohibit sales tax on used property which was already taxed when first sold. Ultimately eliminate sales tax in favor of a land value tax.
Prohibit all public sector unions, especially teachers unions and prison guard unions. Government workers may not unionize against the people they serve.

Voting
Make Jan 6th a national holiday honoring the political prisoners who protested the 2020 election fraud.
Arrest Pelosi, Ray Epps, and the other FBI goons of Jan 6th for conspiracy, entrapment, and incitement to violence.
Prosecute everyone in the DOJ who fabricated charges against the election fraud protestors entrapped by Pelosi and the FBI.
Eliminate all voting machines in favor of paper ballots alone because it is insane to give centralized control of the totals to Dominion and similar companies.
Eliminate mail-in voting or drop boxes; have only paper ballots with photo ID in person at a local school on that one day only, counted by each party.
Require proof of US citizenship with photo ID to vote.
Publicly fund all congressional and presidential campaigns.
Set term limits for Congress: 6x for the House, and twice for the Senate, so 12 years each, maximum.
Require a roll call vote in both houses of Congress on the verbatim topic of any petition with more than 10% popular support, without amendments.

#politics

All of this could be classified as paleoconservatism



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« First        Comments 41 - 80 of 317       Last »     Search these comments

41   Patrick   2017 Feb 20, 10:14am  

Dan8267 says

So yes, paternity testing should be mandatory. There is no downside unless you consider revealing affairs to be a downside.

It has a number of very beneficial effects:

1. Women will know about the testing and not even be tempted to try to deceive a man about paternity.
2. Men will know for sure that a kid is theirs, and will feel more attached to their legitimate children simply because there is no doubt, from birth.
3. The health info that Dan mentions
4. Men would not be forced to look distrustful by requesting a test. That in itself could destroy a relationship.

What is the reason not to do it? To protect women's "right" to deceive and exploit one man to raise another man's child?

42   MMR   2017 Feb 20, 10:44am  

Dan8267 says

Voting is a right, not a privilege, and that right cannot be taken away

Agreed with list except this one:

Yeah I don't think people on welfare should be allowed to vote until they get off welfare.

43   RC2006   2017 Feb 20, 8:31pm  

Wow Patrick i agree with it all, time to run.

44   Dan8267   2017 Feb 20, 8:32pm  

rando says

What is the reason not to do it? To protect women's "right" to deceive and exploit one man to raise another man's child?

That's exactly why people oppose it, although they won't admit it.

45   Dan8267   2017 Feb 20, 8:33pm  

MMR says

Yeah I don't think people on welfare should be allowed to vote until they get off welfare.

This country was founded on the principle of no taxation without representation. Your proposal would require rejecting that principle. Even those on welfare pay taxes: real estate taxes, sales taxes, and sometimes even income taxes.

46   justme   2017 Feb 20, 10:19pm  

Good list, Patrick. There is probably about a handful items that I disagree with or would like at least to modify, but overall there is a lot of good in there. I'll sleep on it, think it over for a while.

47   joeyjojojunior   2017 Feb 21, 4:58am  

"That's exactly why people oppose it, although they won't admit it."

I'm not really against it, but I can think of one reason why people would oppose it--who pays for it? Even if it only costs $10/test, that adds up pretty quickly.

48   Patrick   2017 Feb 21, 7:14am  

We already have certain tests required by some states:

Phenylketonuria (PKU) is a genetic disorder. It is routinely tested for during the first few days of life. In many states the test is required, and is frequently done in conjunction with several other tests, such as: Galactosemia, Thalasemia, etc.

Not much of a problem to add this.

49   joeyjojojunior   2017 Feb 21, 7:21am  

"Not much of a problem to add this."

Of course it's not a problem. My question was who pays for it?

50   Patrick   2017 Feb 21, 7:27am  

Who pays for the other tests?

51   joeyjojojunior   2017 Feb 21, 7:31am  

"Who pays for the other tests?"

We all do really through our health insurance. So this would be another added cost to everyone.

52   Patrick   2017 Feb 21, 7:34am  

It would have massive beneficial effects on paternal investment in and attachment to their legitimate children, and would save many men from paying for children that are not their own.

53   BayArea   2017 Feb 21, 12:51pm  

rando says

Dan8267 says

So yes, paternity testing should be mandatory. There is no downside unless you consider revealing affairs to be a downside.

It has a number of very beneficial effects:

1. Women will know about the testing and not even be tempted to try to deceive a man about paternity.

2. Men will know for sure that a kid is theirs, and will feel more attached to their legitimate children simply because there is no doubt, from birth.

3. The health info that Dan mentions

4. Men would not be forced to look distrustful by requesting a test. That in itself could destroy a relationship.

What is the reason not to do it? To protect women's "right" to deceive and exploit one man to raise another man's child?

I've thought about it some more and you and Dan convinced me. I'm on board

54   Allin   2017 Feb 21, 1:34pm  

Two points:
1. With respect to #26, I absolutely disagree with the taxation of inheritance. An inheritance is earnings which have been taxed at least once already. In the case of inherited goods, they have been taxed twice already.
2. Any reform of the tax system would have minimal effect since the federal government does not depend on federal taxes as much as it depends on the Federal Reserve for it funds. This way we are continually taxed without noticing it.

55   Patrick   2017 Feb 21, 2:01pm  

OK, so what to do about the Federal Reserve?

Eliminating the national debt seems like it would neuter the Fed, and that's point 34.

Still working this out and may change the points around more.

56   justme   2017 Feb 21, 3:45pm  

rando says

Eliminating the national debt seems like it would neuter the Fed, and that's point 34.

Not so sure that would be sufficient. FRB does not necessarily depend on the existence of public debt. Private debt can also be accepted as reserves (which is how "money" is created). That is essentially what Quantitative Easing (QE) did -- it increased the amount (quantity) of debt instruments that FRB would accept as reserves, and it also reduced the QUALITY requirement so that also less solid stuff like MBS (Mortgage Backed Securties) was accepted.

Upshot: FRB must be directly neutered, not indirectly by denying it public debt. It is not sufficient.

57   Patrick   2017 Feb 21, 3:47pm  

Should we have no central bank at all? Who then would be the lender of last resort?

Are there any countries without a central bank?

58   justme   2017 Feb 21, 4:01pm  

You can't do without a central bank.

The most essential function of a central bank is to keep the regular banks honest (don't laugh, please :)). A central bank is needed to do that. FRB clears and nets out all interbank debts and payments by assigning ownership/claim on the various banks' reserves that are on deposit at the FRB. That's what's supposed to keep the banks honest. If one weak bank runs out of reserves because the reserves get paid to another bank, then that weak bank had better be able to raise capital quickly, and deposit that capital in some acceptable form (treasury bonds, gold, some acceptably solid debt instrument) at the FRB. Or else the weak bank is, well, bankrupt.

In practice, the FRB is not doing its job properly. All kinds of crap is accepted as reserves when there is trouble, as in 2008 and the aftermath.
I would say that easily 99% of the population do not understand how this works, nor how it is supposed to work. I did not myself for many years. Anyway, I don't want to start a gigantic discussion about FRB or central banks in general, but the above IS the essence of it. All the other machinery of the FRB is just sleazy financial machinations used to protect banks and impose losses on the general public.

59   Patrick   2017 Feb 21, 4:08pm  

justme says

Upshot: FRB must be directly neutered, not indirectly by denying it public debt. It is not sufficient.

OK, so what do you mean by "directly neutered" then? How would you do it?

60   justme   2017 Feb 21, 4:14pm  

FRB would be neutered if it was ONLY allowed to be a clearing house for interbank debt and payments, and every single transaction of the FRB in that regard should be out in the open, including the daily reserve balance of every client bank.

FRB would then not be allowed to extend credit, not allowed to conduct open market operations (buying and selling debt), therefore not allowed to manipulate interest rates, and not be allowed to regulate the fractional reserve ratio,

That would be a pure clearinghouse central bank. An honest system.

61   Patrick   2017 Feb 21, 4:18pm  

What about bank runs? Should there not be a way to create credit to keep bank runs from collapsing the whole banking system?

62   justme   2017 Feb 21, 4:24pm  

The problem of bank runs was the (very convenient) rationale for starting the FRB in 1913. No more bank runs (hah!). But then it turned out that FRB morphed into a monster that always privatized the profits and always socialized the losses.

How do you prevent bank runs? By enforcing a low fractional reserve ratio, strict lending standards, not forcing abnormally low interest rates, and thereby not blowing bubbles that burst, and cause bank runs.

All of this is simple in theory, but in practice there is always someone that will try to benefit from corrupting the system. That's why the system must be transparent and highly constrained.

63   mell   2017 Feb 21, 6:27pm  

On the subject of healthcare a base emergency single payer coverage may be ok, but there should be options to both opt out and add on via private insurance. Private insurance by itself is not a bad thing, it actually works well in many countries that have a combo model (e.g. Germany) as long as you allow free market competition. Enforcing the Clayton/Sherman and RICO acts is as important if not more important than the type of insurance. Even a completely private model would work as longs as these are enforced and there is full price transparency.

64   indigenous   2017 Feb 21, 6:37pm  

The current system is a charade creating inflation and the 2008 crash and 20 trillion in debt and all big wars.

65   anonymous   2017 Feb 21, 6:42pm  

Please don't rehash this old hat here. Start another thread!

66   marcus   2017 Feb 21, 10:43pm  

I agree with about 85% of your ideas Patrick. Some more than others. Not sure about trying to get that tough on immigrants. I predict that after a few years of being really tough on illegal immigrants, including upping the deportation for a while, there will be another amnesty, of ones that have been here working and paying taxes for a certain amount of time. It's a no brainer.

As for governemtn pensions ? IT seems so petty. Yes, they need to be watched and there needs to be rules to prevent abuses, and also to make sure governments pay in to them what they should. After the market shot up in the 90s, some states including California stopped paying in as they should fror a few years. Most states that are in trouble with pensions, I believe a big part of the problem is States deferring paying in, often as part of a republican plot to cause the impression that they are unaffordable. They do the same thing with medicare and social security, calling them "entitlements" while they spend the incoming taxes for these programs as part of this years budget.

I say just regulate them better. It's just a form of compensation, and if you believe in markets, it must cause the quality of those governemtn workers to be higher than it would be if the pay were lower.

The other problem is that you don't seem to understand that if you lower the pay of government workers that all have pensions as part of their compensation then you are lowering the pay of about 15% of the workforce. Corporations have less competition with respect to what they pay. It would put downward pressure on workers pay in general.

Do you then advocate raising the pay of these people after you take away their pensions, or are you just saying that government workers are all overpaid ?

Patrick says

prohibit all public sector unions, which bankrupt governments with crazy pensions. esp teacher's union and prison guard's union

67   indigenous   2017 Feb 21, 10:47pm  

rando says

Should we have no central bank at all? Who then would be the lender of last resort?

Are there any countries without a central bank?

No we should not have a central bank period.

The lender of last resort is in reality the taxpayer. The bailout recipients were in reality the beneficiaries of the lender of last resort.

BTW I noticed that Paulson's net worth is 700 million dollars, I would be surprised if a lot of his worth did not come from hoodwinking the taxpayer.

The fundamental imperative dynamic of the economy is to have booms followed by corrections. The corrections are vital as that is when dead wood is cleared from the market place. This is analogous to a forest, when the old trees must be allowed to die off in order to allow enough sun light and water for saplings to grow.

What we had with the bailouts was allowing AIG and the big banks to continue when they should have died. New jobs are not the same as more of the old jobs. This process is how NEW jobs are created.

Another way that the central bank is used is to finance war. The Vietnam war was the germ of stagflation, as LBJ amongst other things forced fed chairman Martin into printing more dollars to pay for the war.

These are SOME of the reasons the central bank is a bad idea.

68   marcus   2017 Feb 21, 10:48pm  

marcus says

I believe a big part of the problem is States deferring paying in, often as part of a republican plot to cause the impression that they are unaffordable (starve the beast) . They do the same thing with medicare and social security, calling them "entitlements" while they spend the incoming taxes for these programs as part of this years general spending budget.

In California, they made some major fixes, when democrats finally had control of the state govt.

69   indigenous   2017 Feb 21, 11:08pm  

Answer the ones I listed...

70   indigenous   2017 Feb 22, 9:15am  

What cost $1 in 1800 would cost $0.57 in 1912.
Also, if you were to buy exactly the same products in 1912 and 1800,
they would cost you $1 and $1.83 respectively.

http://www.westegg.com/inflation/infl.cgi

LOOK at the data.

71   Patrick   2017 Feb 22, 9:17am  

indigenous says

the wages lag the inflation. It is about the margins

You know, I had never heard it put exactly this way, and it's enlightening, thanks.

Since wages lag inflation, the workers get fucked. The stuff they have to buy to live took more hours of work from them before they got a raise. Net loss for the workers.

72   Blurtman   2017 Feb 22, 9:21am  

Legal

Kill the bankers.

73   indigenous   2017 Feb 22, 9:24am  

rando says

Since wages lag inflation, the workers get fucked.

Yes it is what, otherwise useless, allows landlords to live high on the hog.

74   indigenous   2017 Feb 22, 9:27am  

This is even more fun:

What cost $1 in 1913 would cost $24.63 in 2016.
Also, if you were to buy exactly the same products in 2016 and 1913,
they would cost you $1 and $0.04 respectively.

75   Patrick   2017 Feb 22, 9:29am  

indigenous says

What cost $1 in 1913 would cost $24.63 in 2016.

And that fact pretty much reflects the retained purchasing power of a silver dollar.

It was a dollar in 1913, and currently buys on the order of $20 worth of stuff.

This is why I like silver as currency.

76   indigenous   2017 Feb 22, 9:30am  

No it doesn't

77   Patrick   2017 Feb 22, 9:35am  

Ah, he may not be "lying" but only mistaken. Lying attacks personal motive. Could we use a thunderdome thread for that?

I'm not even sure he's mistaken. If you're saying nominal wages increased faster than inflation, that would mean we all work less time to buy the same things.

What was the cost in hours worked for, say, a gallon of milk in 1913?

And even if it got cheaper, it's probably due to mechanization more than monetary policy.

78   indigenous   2017 Feb 22, 9:37am  

rando says

If you're saying nominal wages increased faster than inflation, that would mean we all work less time to buy the same things.

Sactly

79   indigenous   2017 Feb 22, 9:41am  

Then explain the deflation that occurred before the federal bank.

80   joeyjojojunior   2017 Feb 22, 9:45am  

"You know, I had never heard it put exactly this way, and it's enlightening, thanks. Since wages lag inflation, the workers get fucked. The stuff they have to buy to live took more hours of work from them before they got a raise. Net loss for the workers."

This is a perfect illustration of confirmation bias. There was absolutely ZERO evidence offered to support Indig's assertion that wages lag inflation. But Patrick was very quick to believe it and call it "enlightening" because it agreed with his view of the world.

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