Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: KLP who wrote (318395)	8/5/2009 2:07:37 AM
From: goldworldnet	Respond to of 793782

The travesty here is that the government is encouraging people to go into debt to buy homes and vehicles they can't afford. * * *

To: KLP who wrote (318395)	8/5/2009 3:21:33 AM
From: Nadine Carroll	9 Recommendations Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793782

Where's your sense of humor, Karen? Cash for clunkers is wonderful. I love the way they insist the dealer must scrap the car within 2 days, long before he knows whether the rebate will be approved or not - heck, it will take months for those government computers to handle the backlog of orders. And when the deal is turned down, what is the dealer supposed to do? He will have to eat the cost, and by then, few people will be buying the new model cars - because nearly everybody who was about to buy a new car just did so! Seriously, I hope the government makes such a dog's breakfast out of the program that it will be a Katrina moment for Congress and Obama - and a warning about what will happen if we let these clowns redesign our health care system.

To: KLP who wrote (318395)	8/5/2009 12:51:09 PM
From: skinowski	5 Recommendations Respond to of 793782

During the Great Depression of the 1930s, agricultural price support programs led to vast amounts of food being deliberately destroyed at a time when malnutrition was a serious problem in the United States and hunger marches were taking place in cities across the country. For example, the federal government bought 6 million hogs in 1933 alone and destroyed them. Huge amounts of farm produce were plowed under, in order to keep it off the market and maintain prices at the officially fixed level, and vast amounts of milk were poured down the sewers for the same reason. Meanwhile, many American children were suffering from diseases caused by malnutrition. –Thomas Sowell, Basic Economics (3rd Edition, Basic Books, 2007), p. 56. I knew about this program, but Sowell puts it in simple and stark terms. This was criminal stupidity on the part of the government. Roosevelt and his circle of political and economic "experts" thought that the way to combat deflation was to support high prices and to insist on high salaries. The former led to programs like destroying food... the latter helped keep unemployment high. Who would start hiring workers at mandated high salaries during periods of economic decline and uncertainty? Today's measures are not any better. Taxing and redistributionist schemes (CO2 tax, bailouts, clunkers, various RE price supports, etc.) are a drain on productive citizens - and will only increase the degree of unpredictability. Investors are used to dealing with whims of the markets, but not many know what new schemes may pop up at any time out of left field in Washington. Now, the same [type of] people who brought us food destruction programs - as well as all those recent "big ideas" - claim that they can take over healthcare - and manage it from top and all the way down to specific individual doctor - patient interactions. Not only will they make a mess of it, but - perhaps, more importantly - allowing government to become so huge is a fundamentally un-American idea. Europe has a long tradition of strong, central governance - and over the centuries their centralized systems of government - time after time - kept deteriorating (or, perhaps, naturally evolving?) into empires and dictatorships. Believing that big government makes things better is... dancing with the Devil. I hope we don't go there, but it looks like we will. Good luck to us all -- we'll need it.