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Politics : Liberalism: Do You Agree We've Had Enough of It? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: longnshort who wrote (181617)	5/21/2015 9:14:33 PM
From: www3	Respond to of 224750

First off it would be nice if you could be civil in a debate. Just because I have different beliefs than you doesn't mean I'm a retard, or an asshole, or evil. 1. Nukes in Iran: No idea what happens there over the long run but what do you think happens if Israel or the US Bombs Iran or takes them over Iraq style. That was what Bush did and that basically sealed Bush's fate as one of the worst 25% of presidents. There is no feasibility politically for Obama to do that even if you think that was the right call. The whole world would basically call it Iraq 2. This at least gives the world some breathing room and of course you will call me a idiot for saying this, but a more normalization of ties with Iran (since if they get nukes they won't nuke us right). 2. China: I never said that Capitalism was bad. You have a black a white dichotomy. I don't think absolute Ayn Rand Capitalism is good, but the generally theory is better than anything else we have economically. In China the government owns all (95%+) of the banks. They own much of the airplanes. They own basically the entire insurance industry. They own 75%+ of all telecom companies. Health care + insurance industry is almost entirely run by the government. They definitely have been trying to divest out of SOEs because the state produces many goods (but not all. I can tell you about goods that the government is better at producing) less effectively than the private sector. According to Merriam Webster Socialism is a way of organizing a society in which major industries are owned and controlled by the government rather than by individual people and companies If that isn't socialism (or what republicans call socialism ) than what is? Keep in mind if you think Obama is a socialist, then China is definitely a socialist country. China's economic policy is vastly to the right of Obama (and actually most of the developed world is generally to the left of Obama). 3. Scandinavia: Nokia isn't even the biggest company in Finland by Revenue...Interesting NOK ratio of MC/Finland GDP is only twice that of AAPL/US GDP. So Finland has a lot more going for it than NOK. Also the presence of one large company doesn't necessarily mean a country is terrible. The same could be said for Samsung and South Korea. All these countries are more multifaceted then you suggest and incidentally have higher GDP per Capita than the US (except Finland which is close to US). Finland has a education system that until recently was top in the world like for 10 years straight. Norway has been growing GDP per capita like 2.5-6% from the 1990s to 2005. 4. It's probably debatable whether I know more economics than you, but Paul Krugman definitely knows more than you (yes he is a bit of a prick but he is smart and has a noble prize). Samuelson was another Keynesian who won a Nobel Prize. So was Tobin, Modigliani, Solow, Vickrey, Akerlof, Stiglitz, and Shiller. Kahneman was a psychologist who won it for prospect theory, which basically supplies a lot of evidence for why we need government intervention in many instances (social security, opt/in opt/out, anchoring, base rate biases, beta delta discounting etc). If Kahneman was an economist he would probably be Keynesian. Tirole won it last year for his work on regulation (spoiler: Regulation is necessary in many instances) 5. It is interesting that you mention Gruber. The only reason Gruber says universal health care is because there were no cost controls. The reason there were no cost controls is because the Republicans shot down the main cost control: Remember Death Panels? That was a cost control and frankly insurance companies do it already... 6. Spending on military: So you approve of the fact that about 50% of US discretionary spending is military. Especially considering the fact that any country that wants to invade us could be nuked so no one will attack us. You will disagree but whatever: We need to refocus on combating terrorism not building a massive troop and equipment presence. It's funny that Republicans call for reducing government spending yet they always try to increase military spending. The government is practically Transfer payments and Defense with some ancillary things mixed in. Here is your chart: sdvfp.org . You cut all foreign aid, all PBS, all science spending, and raise military spending 5% and you are still in the red. The US needs to spend less on the military and our allies need to spend more. The fact that we are policing the world may boost your ego, but frankly I'd rather be a little richer and have a smaller ego.