garfieldbla asked:


What do liberals have against Dave Ramsey. I posted a comment about him and used him as a source and yahoo deleted my question because of solicitation.

regerugged asked:


Read the article entitled “Extreme Makeover” on page 23 of the December 2009 edition of Popular Science Magazine. Doctors have discovered a way to make stem cells out of liposuction leftovers. No government discovered this technique.

VRX asked:


Downsizing the Federal Government, Chris Edwards, Cato Institute, 2005.

Instead of advocating tax increases in the name of fiscal responsibility, this book focuses on how the bloated federal budget ($2.5 trillion in 2005, or about 20% of gross domestic product) could be reduced if our leaders put their minds to it. Here are some important facts about this budget:
State and local government are spending an additional 11% of GDP, so the total cost of government amounts to nearly 1/3 of the economy.
54% of current federal government spending is for “entitlements” (Social Security, Medicare, federal potion of Medicaid, etc.), 39% for discretional spending, and 7% for interest on the debt.
Government spending as a % of GDP has grown, importantly due to entitlements:
Federal-defense: 1900 – 1.0%; 1950 – 5.7%; 2005 – 4.0% (enough?)
Federal-nondefense: 1900 – 1.8%; 1950 – 9.0%; 2005 – 16.0%
State/local: 1900 – 5.0%; 1950 – 6.6%; 2005 – 11.0%
Assuming rapid growth in entitlements due to retirement of baby boomers and longer human life spans, the Government Accountability Office projects federal expenditures rising to 23% of GDP by 2015, 33% of GDP by 2030, 45% of GDP by 2040.
Mr. Edwards argues that many current federal programs are harmful (e.g., import restrictions), unduly beneficial to special interests (agricultural subsidies, corporate welfare), and/or better left to the states (education) or private sector (rail transportation).

One special problem is government grants, which are used by the federal government to influence state or local government programs. Some $426 billion in grants were paid in 2005, ranging from $186 billion for the federal share of Medicaid and the $71 billion cost of the Dept. of Education (mostly grants) to “hundreds of more obscure programs that most taxpayers have never heard of.” The result is to encourage overspending for the stated grant purposes, foster federal, state and local bureaucracies to document compliance with federal mandates, and reduce flexibility and innovation at the state level.

Another problem is duplication. Different federal programs often have overlapping objectives, resulting in “turf wars” and/or unnecessary costs to ensure coordination. Thus, the GAO has reported 50 different programs for the homeless in eight federal agencies, 23 programs for housing aid in four agencies, 26 programs for food and nutrition aid in six agencies, and 44 programs for employment and training services in nine agencies. If a program is ineffective or obsolete, the typical response is to create additional programs — without eliminating the existing program.

Edwards lists more than 100 programs and agencies as candidates for elimination, with resultant savings of $380 billion per year. He also advocates cost-saving changes to entitlement programs. If all of his recommendations were implemented, the current federal deficit could be converted to a surplus without raising taxes.

Instead of downsizing the federal government, why not concentrate on managing its programs better? The answer is that efforts along this line, including the Committee of Economy and Efficiency in Government appointed by Taft in 1910, the Hoover Commissions (under Truman and Eisenhower, respectively), the Grace Commission under Reagan, Gore’s “reinventing government” plan, and Bush’s “management agenda,” have all failed. Government operations continue to be inefficient and in many cases ineffective.
The current programs of the federal government are too diverse and complex for Congress to effectively manage them; it would be far better to do a few things well than to do a lot of things ineffectively.
Congress has limited incentive to hold down spending because program costs represent benefits to its members (the gravy they seem themselves as responsible for producing).
There is no market discipline if government programs fail (unless and until the taxpayers revolt) such as applies for undertakings in the private sector.
Is government downsizing possible? Sure, if enough people demand it, but our political leaders typically hear more about how additional money should be spent than they do about how existing programs should be eliminated to save money. Politicians tend to get increasingly hooked on spending during their years in Washington, which is one of the reasons to support term limits.

DAR asked:


“”Even though the Fed did great harm before 1971, after the total elimination of the gold dollar linkage, the problems of deficit spending, welfare expansion, and military industrial complex influence have gotten much worse.

Although many claim the 1990s have been great economic years, Federal Reserve board action of the past decade has caused problems yet to manifest themselves. The inevitable correction will come as the new century begins and is likely to be quite serious.

The stage has been set. Rampant monetary growth has led to historic high asset inflation, massive speculation, over-capacity, malinvestment, excessive debt, negative savings rate, and a current account deficit of huge proportions. These conditions dictate a painful adjustment, something that would have never occurred under a gold standard. The special benefits of foreigners taking our inflated dollars for low-priced goods and then loaning them back to us will eventually end. The dollar must fall, interest rates must rise, price inflation will accelerate, the financial asset bubble will burst, and a dangerous downturn in the economy will follow.”

http://www.house.gov/paul/congrec/congrec2000/cr020200.htm

It was entitled “A Republic If You Can Keep It.”

Since he predicted this crash when no one else in government did, isn’t he the one we should be listening to now, as he fiercely opposes the bailout?
Del Fuego – it is actually an entire school of economic thought that has been ignored during the keynesian ponzi scheme era. Nixon’s dropping the tie to the gold standard is what sent Ron Paul into politics because then it became critical. Doubtless McFadden would have voted for him.

MISES.ORG asked:


Ron never said that we invited the attacks. This was a lie. He said the US foreign policy was a “contributing factor” in why they attacked us, a fact which only a fool or a liar could deny. Guiliani then went on to say that he has never “heard that before” –a statement that testifies to the extent of the blackout on this question.
Ron Paul was invited to respond, and concluded as follows:
“I believe very sincerely that the CIA is correct when they teach and talk about blowback. When we went into Iran in 1953 and installed the shah, yes, there was blowback. A reaction to that was the taking of our hostages and that persists. And if we ignore that, we ignore that at our own risk. If we think that we can do what we want around the world and not incite hatred, then we have a problem. They don’t come here to attack us because we’re rich and we’re free. They come and they attack us because we’re over there. I mean, what would we think if we were –if other foreign countries were doing that to us?”
Wow, he broke the great taboo in American political life! Why this should be a taboo at all is unclear, but there it is. But now that it is finally out in the open, this shocking theory that the terrorists were not merely freedom-hating madmen but perhaps had some actual motive for their crime, let’s think a bit more about it.
It is a normal part of human experience that if you occupy, meddle, bully, and coerce, people who are affected by it all are going to get angry. You don’t have to be Muslim to get the point. The problem is that most of the American people simply have no idea what has been happening in the last ten years. Most Americans think that America the country is much like their own neighborhood: peaceful, happy, hard working, law abiding. So when you tell people that the US is actually something completely different, they are shocked.
Why would anyone **** us? The problem is that the military wing of the US government is very different from your neighborhood. After the Soviet Union crashed, US elites declared themselves masters of the universe, the only “indispensable nation” and the like. All countries must ask the US for permission to have a nuclear program. If we don’t like your government, we can overthrow it. Meanwhile, we sought a global empire unlike any in history: not just a sphere of interest but the entire world. Laurence Vance has the details but here is the bottom line: one-third of a million deployed troops in 134 countries in 1000 locations in foreign countries.
All during the 1990s, the US attempted to starve the population of Iraq, with the result of hundreds of thousands of deaths. Madelyn Albright said on national television that the deaths of 500,000 children (the UN’s number) was “worth it” in order to achieve our aims, which were ostensibly the elimination of non-existent, non-US built weapons of mass destruction. Yes, that annoyed a few people. There were constant bombings in Iraq all these years. And let us not forget how all this nonsense began: the first war in 1991 was waged in retaliation for a US-approved Iraqi invasion of its former province, Kuwait. Saddam had good reason to think that the US ambassador was telling the truth about non-interference with Kuwait relations: Saddam was our ally all through the Iran-Iraq war and before.
Ron spoke about complications of the Middle East. One of them is that the enemy we are now fighting, the Islamic extremists, are the very group that we supported and subsidized all through the 1980s in the name of fighting Communism. That’s the reason the US knows so much about their bunkers and hiding spots in Afghanistan: US taxdollars created them.
Now, I know this is a lot for the tender ears of Americans to take, who like to think that their government reflects their own values of faith, freedom, and friendliness. But here is the point that libertarians have been trying to hammer home for many years: the US government do not share the American people values. It is not peaceful, it is not friendly, it is not motivated by the Christian faith but rather power and imperial lust.
Ron is such a wonderful person that I’m sorry that he had to be the one to tell the truth. One could sense in the debate that he was making an enormous sacrifice here. After Guiliani spoke, the red-state fascists in the audience all started whooping up the bloodlust that the politicians have been encouraging for the last six years –a mindless display of Nazi-like nationalism that would cause the founding fathers to shudder with fear of what we’ve become. These people are frantic about terrorism and extremism abroad, but they need to take a good hard look in the mirror.
Thank you, Ron, for doing this. We are all in your debt.
________
Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. is president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama

Humbug! asked:

What effects will that have on hyper inflation? Could mean a loaf of decent bread will be $15 load soon. The new President will mobilize the military to distribute bread and cheese, I guess. No jobs, hyper inflation and then it will be the true Great Depression.

coolbreeze44105 asked:


My real question is to ask you to speculate on what life in the United States will be like when the United States Government defaults on the $52 trillion is has borrowed. Will Military servicemen still get paid? What about Congressmen and Bureaucrats?