(04-20-2012 03:36 PM)Max Power Wrote:  What do you mean by "make no good faith attempt to pay it back?" Who is doing that? The loans made to our government have terms, requiring periodic interest payments until the loans mature, at which time they can be paid back on demand or renegotiated (presumably at a higher rate). The US government will always live up to its obligations (so long as the GOP House doesn't drive us off a cliff the next time the debt ceiling debate comes up). I object to your characterization of our electing to simply make interest payments as "bad faith," so unless I misunderstand you I'm not going to answer it because it has a false premise.

Good lord, Max you must be the slowest ambulance chaser in America. Maybe that can be your marketing slogan.

Perhaps you haven't heard that QE is simply inflating away debt that we currently can't pay. Probably not.

Do you have a point, genius? How does that contradict anything I said?

(04-20-2012 10:16 AM)Max Power Wrote:  Paying down the debt is keeping money out of the hands of the needy

So does paying down my mortgage.

(04-20-2012 03:10 PM)Max Power Wrote:  We have freedom.

We have no freedom to be rich, or at least that's how you'd like it.

(04-20-2012 03:52 PM)Max Power Wrote:  If you're so concerned about the debt I have an idea-- how about no more unpaid for wars and tax cuts for the rich?

You guys always want to raise taxes on the people who already pay taxes. Why don't you raise them on the people who pay little or nothing?

Because they have little or nothing? And I like a low poverty rate?

(04-20-2012 03:36 PM)Max Power Wrote:  

Quote:Any government big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take all you have. I am not standing in your way, the history of your type of politics is.

If it takes all I have to guarantee basic human needs for everybody, so be it.
Wow. Just....wow.

Quote:These things are *all* relative max, rights to personal property are not

We can draw a line. And your right to personal property should be relative. Would your income have been as high if there were no government roads for you to travel on, or government police offering protection (you mean, enforcing the law), or government courts enforcing the law ( you mean, interpreting the law)? If you can't say that you've "earned" everything on your own, your whole "property rights are absolute" theory crumbles.

You frighten me.

You reich wing anarchist gun nuts don't exactly make me feel all warm and fuzzy either.

Quick question: You guys generally like to say charity will keep poor people from dying in the streets if we repeal all government assistance. Which is bogus, but let's say we try your little experiment, and it doesn't. Would you be willing to admit the necessity of government?

(04-20-2012 04:53 PM)Max Power Wrote:  Quick question: You guys generally like to say charity will keep poor people from dying in the streets if we repeal all government assistance. Which is bogus, but let's say we try your little experiment, and it doesn't. Would you be willing to admit the necessity of government?

If it did work would you admit we don't need government handouts? No one will take the bait on your stupid question.

(04-20-2012 03:52 PM)Max Power Wrote:  If you're so concerned about the debt I have an idea-- how about no more unpaid for wars and tax cuts for the rich?

Fine with me...and while we are at it.. end ...ALL foreign aid other than for humanitarian purposes and remove our presence from most of the places we currently have military bases. Just how much longer do need to stay in Japan and Germany? Is this going to be a permanent occupation?

It is time we focus on America for a change. Make these welfare countries fend for themselves. They are using America. As long as we are willing to defend and support them...why would they be incentivized to change?

The older I get...the more of a damn isolationist I become. It is getting to the point that I am sick of the nonsense that our tax dollars go to support overseas.

(04-20-2012 04:53 PM)Max Power Wrote:  Quick question: You guys generally like to say charity will keep poor people from dying in the streets if we repeal all government assistance. Which is bogus, but let's say we try your little experiment, and it doesn't. Would you be willing to admit the necessity of government?

first..I have never advocated removal of all government assistance programs. There are certainly people in situations that require long term subsidies to survive. I have no problem providing help for them. As for helping the needy...private charity and the families of the needy are perfectly capable of providing that help. Government welfare should be very short term. NO person able to work should be on extended government assistance. We have made welfare a viable alternative to work. There is something very wrong with institutional welfare. It is nothing more than slavery.

(04-20-2012 04:53 PM)Max Power Wrote:  Quick question: You guys generally like to say charity will keep poor people from dying in the streets if we repeal all government assistance. Which is bogus, but let's say we try your little experiment, and it doesn't. Would you be willing to admit the necessity of government?

First, as usual, you grossly mischaracterize what conservatives actually believe or say. I don't think I've ever heard anyone seriously advocate an end to all government assistance, and I read and watch and listen to some pretty conservative and libertarian sources (along with some liberal ones). What conservatives do say is that any welfare program that keeps families on the dole for three and four generations is badly flawed and needs to be redesigned.

With that correction to your flawed premise, your hypothetical falls apart.

Edited to add. A version of your hypothetical that I would be happy to test, provided sufficient time was given to get past short-run noise, is to let the government assistance be changed to the approach I have advocated--Milton Friedman's negative income tax or the Boortz-Linder prebate/prefund--along with French health care, to provide a broader and more comprehensive welfare safety net, and see whether private charities step up to fill in the gaps, if there are any. I'm guessing that the most significant impact after a few years would be that poverty became a temporary condition rather than a chronic one, and that would ease the burden on everyone--the poor, the government, private charities, and taxpayers.

Max, I'd agree with you here, but couldn't you just PLEASE only post the article and quote from the article? We don't need the nonsense statements just before it.

(04-20-2012 01:05 PM)Redwingtom Wrote:  

(04-20-2012 12:58 PM)swagsurfer11 Wrote:  Obama made this economy worse. People are losing jobs and digging through trash to eat. Next he'll be coming for our guns and bibles. We need to elect a real conservative for president, but who?

Exactly.

We never have hungry and unemployed citizens under Conservative presidents!

And I hear the Repeal the Second Amendment and Bible Confiscation Act of 2012 (RSABCA) hits the Presidents desk next week.

Are you kidding?? That wouldn't surprise me a bit. Obama took our jerbs!!

(04-20-2012 03:51 PM)MileHighBronco Wrote:  You've made it clear that, in your head, Congress can do whatever they d@mn well please and that a person's life and work do not belong to themselves exclusively.

You would think a comment like that would convert any liberal to a republican.

if it were true statement regarding liberalism then sure, it would