Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Register Log in
  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

How Govt. Ruined The Movies

Maybe wives would not have to work if the government was not taking 50% of our income?

jpp, it's not going to be possible to convince you that economic freedom is as important as personal freedom. You have your ideas, and they are not going to be changed here.

The point of the US was to found a new nation where people could live in economic, personal and religious freedom. If you want to try a socialism experiment, there are plenty of nations in Europe right now giving it a try. And I can promise you this -- they will not end well. Once lazy loafers figure out they don't need to contribute to society, they will stop contributing. Ask Russians about that.

Our system of limited government and individual and economic liberty might not be perfect, and it might not have a "fair" outcome for all, but it's the system our Founders gave us.

What's wrong with letting Europe experiment with socialism while we experiment with liberty? Do we all need to be doing the exact same thing?
 
Cardmaverick said:
I'll tell you why. It's: The Federal Reserve and Inflation.

What don't you understand about that?
Click to expand...

Oh, lordy. This is the world we live in. This is the world humankind has always lived in, from the time that "portable property" (i.e., currency) first took hold. And that world includes inflation.

But so what? The standard of living either improves for most people, or it doesn't, whatever the real or nominal value of the currency at any given time.

You're welcome to dream of an imaginary world, where your conditions are satisfied and where we live in eternal peace and prosperity, but what does that have to do with real life?
 
Cardmaverick said:
What don't you understand about that? ... Open your eyes man.
Click to expand...

What I don't understand is your position here as being somehow intellectually and morally superior to everyone else. Your positions as stated here are your personal observations and beliefs, not universal truth. Nobody has a monopoly on truth. Everyone else's personal positions are just as valid as yours, whether you agree with them or not. Pointing to governmental institutions as the root cause of societal ills is only one view. The society itself has its own problems, deeply rooted in 200 years of development, that have created views that are uniquely American and far from universal. Simple things like seeing just about everything in life as a competition, and the value of winning vs. losing, and the goal of being wealthy, are not necessarily universally held views throughout the world. It's fine to express your views and theories (although why you're doing this on a forum devoted to a camera company is beyond me). It's not fine to feel that everyone that disagrees with them is an uneducated idiot.
 
mmost said:
It's fine to express your views and theories (although why you're doing this on a forum devoted to a camera company is beyond me). It's not fine to feel that everyone that disagrees with them is an uneducated idiot.
Click to expand...

Maybe I'm just as contemptuous in my own way, but this view that any dissenter is an idiot reflects, I'd argue, the fundamentally religious and magical nature of the beliefs, since none of the claims being made is demonstrable in the real world, and the pre-conditions for testing those claims has never existed, and isn't likely to.

How's that for contemptuous?:)
 
Tom said:
If we ignore the Constitution and drift toward communism, the country will collapse, like the UK is about to, and like the USSR did.
Click to expand...

That's demonstrably false.

The UK is failing right now for one reason: their enormous financial sector investments.

You know what I've been hearing for the last 10 years. "We can't compete with the UK. The UK is the new free market capital of the world. We need to become more like the UK where their financial services market is less regulated. Everyone is putting their banks in London now. Democrats are obstructing the market and keeping us from getting a piece of that pie."

Now. Suddenly that utopia of unregulated banking in London which we were missing out on has completely impoded taking an enormous chunk of the UK economy with it. And now all of a sudden it's the fault of communists and regulatory agencies? BULLSHIT. You don't get to take credit for it when it's working and then suddenly offload it the moment it turns toxic. I've been saying for the last decade that London can keep its crazy free for all financial services market in London and that I want us to have nothing to do with it.

And as long as 1 in 10 children go to school hungry I don't give a shit if we're the most prosperous nation in the world. Or if we each statistically have a ferrari. Nobody should be hungry. Everybody should have a roof over their head and access to medical care is a basic human right.

And universal health care isn't a communist activity it's a free market activity.

Right now workers are imprisoned by their health care. I could start my own business and be an entrepreneur or I could stick with my current employer because I can't risk falling ill. By ensuring everybody has access to the basic necessities they can become more adventurous more ambitious and ultimately more innovative.

A personal story:
My parents payed for all of my housing and food during college. I payed 1/3rd of my tuition. They also helped out after I graduated for 6 months. And I knew that if it all turned sour I would be able to move back home and receive assistance until I found a job.

This is socialism. And it helped me enormously. During college I worried about learning and pushing myself instead of showing up to work after class on time. I was able to volunteer on any and all projects that I thought would be educational instead of having to limit it to time when I wasn't working.

After college I was able to spend the time getting the job that I thought would be the best fit for myself instead of needing to pay rent out the door day one. I didn't have to take a job out of desperation... any job just to keep food on the table and a roof over my head.

Socialism is good for capitalism. It gives people the safety net to best utilize their potential. To find the place in society where they can offer the maximum return. It's something I was blessed to have personally and wish everyone had.

There is no such thing as truely free market (except for anarchy) as long as human beings are involved. We aren't perfectly rational beings. Even though the housing bubble was obviously overinflating... people still dumped tons of money into it. Not because theythought they would get a bailout. But because people are stupid. We go to vegas. We think we're on a roll. We are falsey certain of our knowledge. We get sucked into emotional irrational and stupid decisions ALL the time. Or at least I know I do.

There's also ignorance. A truely free market can only operate when everyone participating completely understands the system. I would wager I'm a pretty smart guy... but I have absolutely no clue what my 401k prospectus means. I think I speak for the vast majority of people when I say "They could be telling me I will lose all my money next week and I would have no clue." So when I hear people say "Oh those people should have read their contracts more carefully." Yeah they should have. But that doesn't mean they would have learned anything more. What they really shouldn't have done was trust the person handing it to them and gotten a second opinion. But people tend to be trustingh. Trustworthiness, ignorance, irrational exuberance. All of these things prevent us from having a truely free market because you don't need it to be true... you just need people to believe it.
 
My personal take on government role, is any extreme is bad. The far right or far left. Let me put it this way, do we try everyone in a case the same, no, we try everyone different due to a case to case and circumstance/intent scenario, but we "try to give equal justice". What I am trying to say is that looking at everything as black and white, left or right, generalizing, nationalistic, one worldism, or only one piece of the whole, to me is flawed.

Ideology that overcomes common sense is pointless. What the whole world is missing is WISDOM, more than knowledge. The truth is know one here or anywhere else, including myself, knows exactly how to make a perfect world. Sorry Venus Project. lol Perfection is impossible but we should always strive to do better.

What was this thread about anyway? Just kidding.:beer:
 
The problem w/socialism or capitalism or communism or pretty much any other 'ism' is that in order for the 'ism' to be true everyone has to agree to and abide by the rules of that particular 'ism'. On a small scale that's doable (a handful of people living and working in a self sustaining commune for example). On a large scale that's impossible. Some people will game the system to their benefit even if it's to the detriment of everyone else and the 'ism' comes crashing down. Are there lazy people that game the welfare system even though they are perfectly able to work? Sure. Are there people that game the capitalist system in the name of profit even if it means ruining, and sometimes endangering, the lives of others? Sure. No 'ism' is right or wrong or perfect. Horses for courses, IMO. I think the world would be a better place if people were more pragmatic and less ideological.


-Andrew
 
The real problem is that we haven't brought the scientific method to public policy. It's all a bunch of hearsay and voodoo.

We need a renaisance in governance based on reason and historical data. We need to implement multiple policies simultaneously but under carefully controlled sample groups so that we can draw accurate conclusions. Instead of anecdotal improvisation based on faith in abstract and intangible terms.

And I think that's something that people on both sides of the debate would embrace. Because we're both certain that our side would win. Personally I thought the last 8 years were just such a test... but I guess we could do it on a smaller scale again just to reinforce how very wrong they were. :D
 
Anyone who wants a brief summary of what is taking place in the UK need only spend 3 minutes watching this devastating video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94lW6Y4tBXs

Anyone who thinks high taxes and big government is the solution to our problems should come here to California and witness what is happening to our beloved state. The government is literally destroying our state before our every eyes with their out-of-control spending and taxing. We have the highest sales, income and gas taxes in America, and now, thanks to the government, California is bankrupt. Many of our most productive citizens are fleeing for nearby states like Arizona, Nevada and Oregon. Hollywood productions are fleeing for Canada and Australia.
 
In the lower brackets, NY State and NYC income taxes are about 3 times what you pay in California. At the top NYS/NYC bracket, which is reached at about $20,000 (not $1 million or more, as in California), the combined rate is about 11%. Sales tax is currently about 8.5% and is going up to about 9%.

It's not pleasant, but it's not the end of civilization either. However, it *is* a great pity that with a marginal rate (with SS payroll taxes) nearing 50% in NYC for somebody making $50K -- a European level of taxation -- that there's no free health insurance, no free college, no free day-care, etc.

Then again, we spend more on the military that the rest of the world combined, in order to invade countries which don't threaten us, and blow $3 trillion on the adventure..
 
jpp said:
Then again, we spend more on the military that the rest of the world combined, in order to invade countries which don't threaten us, and blow $3 trillion on the adventure..
Click to expand...

Which is yet another violation our Constitution (Congress must declare war) and which goes against the advice of our Founding Fathers, who cautioned us to practice a non-interventionist foreign policy. When we violate the Constitution and ignore the advice of the Founders, the results are always negative. Al Qaeda is the result of our foreign interventionism, and our warmongering is quickly bankrupting our nation.
 
Meanwhile Washington State. A hotbed of hippie liberal tree hugger communists is doing just fine thank you very much.

Me thinks your anecdotal California problems are more fundamental than a high taxation rate.

Especially considering low tax, extremely conservative states are also getting their asses kicked.

This is PRECISELY the sort of anecdotal unempirical voodoo that makes most public policy discussions less than useful. Instead of finding the actual causation you just blame whatever is happening on oposing party and move on. It's like saying Pirates were a direct result of the Bush Stem Cell position. "Suddenly we are being confronted by pirates. If you take note you'll see that Stem Cell research was also supressed during the same time frame. Therefore I conclude that we need stem cell research or else we'll all die in pirate attacks."

An equally anecdotal and useless comment would be to counter that even your governor thinks the problem is the required super majority to pass any sort of budget resulting in gridlock.

Arizona may be able to offer huge tax breaks. But that's because you get what you pay for if you live there. Nevada is one huge tax cheat. Companies like Microsoft are "headquartered" in Nevada so that they can sell Windows without taxation. Meanwhile they use Washington to base their actual employees because that's where employees want to live and Microsoft (as a collection of workers) wants almost nothing to do with Nevada.

I think taxation should be based on the % of your employees that live in a state. Not where a headquarters or PO Box is located.

If your company wants to be headquartered in Bermuda then I expect most of your employees to depend on Bermuda's tax revenue for public service. Good luck!
 
Tom said:
Which is yet another violation our Constitution (Congress must declare war) and which goes against the advice of our Founding Fathers, who cautioned us to practice a non-interventionist foreign policy. When we violate the Constitution and ignore the advice of the Founders, the results are always negative. Al Qaeda is the result of our foreign interventionism, and our warmongering is quickly bankrupting our nation.
Click to expand...

But without foreign interventionism your country can`t keep it`s capitalism either, you NEED wars in order to conquer and secure old and new markets, exploit and secure natural ressources and keep geostrategic power. That`s how it works...as sad as it is...
 
Gavin,
How is Washington State doing fine? Our state budget is 8 billion dollar's in the red, the state retirement system is 5 to 6 billion in the red because the state hasn't been putting the necessary funds into the system, because the state budget is so behind. Boeing is getting ready to vacate the state. Oh yeah, we're doing great here in the "hippie liberal tree hugger communist" Washington state. Fantastic.
 
Tom said:
Which is yet another violation our Constitution (Congress must declare war) and which goes against the advice of our Founding Fathers, who cautioned us to practice a non-interventionist foreign policy. When we violate the Constitution and ignore the advice of the Founders
Click to expand...

I'll never understand these reversions to fundamentalist beliefs or texts, whether it's the bible or the U.S. constitution. We're not going to bring back the days of Jefferson. We're not bringing back the gold standard. We're not reducing government to national defense and garbage collection -- certainly not by design, anyway. And even if we could agree on what the Constitution actually says, we're not bringing back a state based on a literal reading of it.

I doubt I would much like your ideal world, even if it came about. But what does this kind of absolutist discourse accomplish, beyond establishing positions which antagonize those who don't accept them as gospel, and preclude any constructive action or incremental improvements? Policy differences are one thing: at least those can be discussed. But these blanket interpretations, everything through the filter of a selective reading of the Constitution or an idealized view of the operation of free markets -- I don't see how it serves.
 
Our budget is balanced through June 30th 2011. We have one of the lowest foreclosure rates in the nation.

Boeing isn't going to build the *The World's Largest Building* somewhere else. They've got a lot of money invested here.

We have hundreds of millions of dollars in our rainy day fund.

For a service and manufacturing based economy we're doing suprisingly well as far as employment is concerned.

Most of our problems stem from tieing tax revenue to Real Estate values and retail expenditures. Something I've always opposed.

Last year our GDP grew faster than any state except for New York and Nevada. And before the worst of the recession our economy was still growing. Once this recession ends we re-evaluate our methods of taxation and should shift it to a sensible income tax which is more reflective of the actual economy and buying power of the citizens.

What's happening is we're suffering due to real estate and retail but fundamentally were and still are in a good position going forward. If you look at our GDP per capita we're still like #9 for wealthiest states. We have the money. We have the jobs. People want want to live here. We just need to rejig our taxation policy to reflect that.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top