The National Forum   Donate   Your Account   On Line Opinion   Forum   Blogs   Polling   About   
The Forum - On Line Opinion's article discussion area



Syndicate
RSS/XML


RSS 2.0

Main Articles General

Sign In      Register

The Forum > Article Comments > Protracted austerity measures won't solve America's problems > Comments

Protracted austerity measures won't solve America's problems : Comments

By Toby O'Brien, published 30/12/2011

Economic measures should be efficient and productive, but they should also be good.

  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. Page 2
  4. 3
  5. 4
  6. 5
  7. 6
  8. 7
  9. All
Every government job comes at the expense of three real jobs!

This is the central falacy of this author's argument... yes it would be great to have limitless money to pour into government jobs in health, welfare, psychology... every family should have their own private social worker and government advocate. The only problem is that this would destroy the economomy which produces the taxes to pay this army of government employees.

The Tea Party movement realises this.. they want less government. And they are right. Not only to save the economy, but also to save our families... because government funded feminism, welfare incentives, divorce incentives, parenting interventions are what are destroying our families and our children's futures. Get Government Big Brother out of our families and bedrooms and we will be better parents and etc.
Posted by partTimeParent, Friday, 30 December 2011 5:21:23 PM
Find out more about this user Visit this user's webpage Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Thoughtful piece Mr O'Brien. I'd have to concur with most of the sentiments, though I still think there's merit in many of the 'welfare-to-work' programs and the incentives that drive them - which would be at odds with some of your arguments.

To Peter Hume, I say, attend to the plank in thine own eye. The author has written an article. You've dismissed it as fallacious, yet you haven't chosen any specific point and described how it is fallacious.

Until you break it down into individual points and provide examples of why you disagree, your response is both hollow and somewhat rude.

Why not start with the comparison between Germany and the US, that was among the most specific and compelling.

Why is it that Germany's Gini coefficient isn't as high as the US's?
Why is it that Germany manages to provide more social services for its citizens?
Why is it that Germany's economy is performing much more strongly (in recent times) when compared to the US?

Given these points, how is it that you hold the US model of privatization as the superior model?

Do be specific, unlike your previous post.
Posted by TurnRightThenLeft, Friday, 30 December 2011 7:21:39 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Peter Hume:

...Well Peter, I must open my mouth on this subject. Over some extended period, I have quietly beavered away at your posts in order to make sense of a world you long for. Please correct me if I am wrong, (and I am sure you will), but your world order, it appears to me, lacks by default of nil tax collected by Government for redistribution to society, any ability to offer even a basic social service to its people. To save time, I could (but won’t), begin an endless list of functions of Government that would be missing in action in the absence of taxation receipts.

...But, one function I will list; war. If Governments are necessitated to fund wars by borrowings (since no tax income is available), then how do Governments repay the loans?
And how could you not agree that if taxation were equally and fairly sourced from individuals and corporations, as they should be under the current taxation regime (in America), but are not of course, since the individual cannot escape his obligation to pay taxation, as corporations and the wealthy, can and do; that this current taxation regime would invariably be more successful at redistribution for contingencies such as adequate social services, and when necessary, and the funding of wars necessitated under the banner of National Defence!

...I believe that this article highlights more the results of the unfair application of taxation, on the above standard, and not the factor of taxation alone.

...But one more point and I’ll leave it there. The point must be argued, the succession of wars since the close of WW2 which have occupied America, (concluding now, as we do, with the “war on terror”), have redirected resources from taxation funding away from social services in America with negative consequences which threaten the fabric of American society.

continued...
Posted by diver dan, Friday, 30 December 2011 8:27:44 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
continued...

Peter Hume.

...I think we are already in the world you desire, where corporate profits, and the profits of the wealthy, are so protected by laws allowing taxation avoidance, that the burden of survival has been cast onto the shoulders of the average American, unable to partake of the same largesse: Where corporate America is the big winner in the theatre of war, and as such, stands accused of bludging on American “Joe”, by scooping the pool of taxation (war funding), and “shirking” on paying its fair share of taxation in return!
Posted by diver dan, Friday, 30 December 2011 8:27:52 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
This whole article make quite alot of sense. One problem overlooked is the problem caused by the $US being the "reserve" and trading currency, a problem Keynes foresaw. Keynes proposed a currency for international trade in real goods and services based I understand on a weighted basket of the currencies of the main trading nations. It is a pity that the USA at Bretton Woods won out. Had it not we might not be in the current mess.

The pseudo capital slopping around in fibancial markets led to the GFC and the only way that problem will become is for all trade in real goods and services to be paid for using a basket of the currency of the main trading countries.

I use the term pseudo capital, because it is surplus to the spending needs of the owners, and to illustrate the difference between real capital assests and bank balances of money (money printed mainly so that the USA and other debtor nations can continue to consume real assets such as oil). All USA farms valued at 50-60 thousand dollars a hectare are worth about the same as Saudi Arabia's oil reserves at today's oil prices. When the oil is gone which assets will be worth having, the USA farms or the Saudi princes' bankbank balances?

Peter Hume has set himself up as knowing and understanding more about economics and capitaism than Adam Smith, John Maynard Keynes, John Start Mills and Paul Krugman, who only in Friday's New York Times took a very similar approach to that taken in this OLO article.
Posted by Foyle, Saturday, 31 December 2011 1:13:51 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
TurnLeftThenRight
“You… haven't chosen any specific point and described how it is fallacious.”

I choose both
a) the ethical premise – that forced redistributions makes society fairer; and irrefutably prove its fallaciousness by the argumentation ethic:
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=12955&page=0

b) and the economic premise – that forced redistributions makes society more physically productive; and irrefutably prove its fallaciousness by the economic calculation argument:
http://economics.org.au/2010/09/economic-calculation-in-the-socialist-commonwealth/
http://mises.org/pdf/econcalc.pdf


“Given these points, how is it that you hold the US model of privatization as the superior model?”

I don’t. I think it’s dreadful, real fascism – literally.

I don’t accept the frame of the argument. I don’t see freedom as being the cause of the problems Toby attributes to it. I see it as being the highest moral and political value. I don’t accept the underlying premise that the state creates net benefits for society by a bit of judicious looting here, handouts there, and bombing over there. Contrary to its own spin, it is an essentially anti-social institution and should be reduced by at least 80 percent. Voluntary social relations are ethically and pragmatically superior to coerced social relations. It is not true that government interventions make society fairer or more physically productive.

Underlying the idea that government provides necessary “social services” the lack of which threatens the social fabric, is the idea that society is essentially unworkable. It supposedly requires a massive framework of arbitrary coercion and forced cross-subsidies to political favourites to make it possible and fair. I don’t buy it. I reject that belief as irrational and unethical.

“Why is it that Germany's Gini coefficient isn't as high as the US's?’
It’s irrelevant. Why-ever it is, that doesn’t mean the ability of people to enjoy the good things that society produces is better realized via coerced redistributions, rather than voluntary i.e. market relations.

Even if the Gini coefficient is higher as a result of policy, that wouldn’t justify the policy.

Toby said: “With greater equality there came other benefits.” But he never established that equality was a benefit in its own right in the first place; he just assumed it.

(cont.)
Posted by Peter Hume, Saturday, 31 December 2011 6:23:15 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. Page 2
  4. 3
  5. 4
  6. 5
  7. 6
  8. 7
  9. All

About Us :: Search :: Discuss :: Feedback :: Legals :: Privacy