Real World Event Discussions
A thread for Democrats Only
POSTED BY: THGRRI
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 15:36
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Friday, May 11, 2018 1:46 AM
Quote:Thanks.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:Good idea.
I look forward to when you find your 2nd book title.
Perhaps you could start a thread on Economic Theories or Practices, Policies. To make a repository of reference material to be found?
I had imagined a new thread, to make finding the info easier.
As is now, it's kinda buried in another thread of many posts.
Easiest remedy: along with the newly altered title, place in the OP a link to where the added topic began in earnest/summary. As OP, you can do that for your thread. Details: go to your summary (or other post of choice), select "edit", click on "update thread" or whatever that button says at the bottom right of the dialogue box, and then when you are back at your post of choice, select and copy (or block) the web address in the address field of your browser.
Now go to your OP and "edit". Find a spot in that OP, and "place" or "move" or "paste" or "copy" there.
This link will now take anybody directly to the top of the specific post you chose. A short-cut.
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Friday, May 11, 2018 3:17 PM
I had a VERY SPECIFIC suggestion as to how to improve people's lives without trying to create a worker's utopia or have massive redistribution of wealth, and it involved re-purposing the military. SECOND has managed to not actually discuss my post at all.
But it does certainly snark and troll at every post.
SECOND is a troll.
So anyway ... anyone up for a rational, fact-based, and civil discussion about the topic?
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Friday, May 11, 2018 5:14 PM
Quote:Signym, the real story is not what you wrote. I am both sorry and irritated to tell you, but your wonderful writing gifts are being misused to sell a false story on fireflyfans.net.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
As far as Yanis Varoufakis is concerned, his activities can best be described as "whinging for money". Now, I agree that Greece was done hard by Goldman, the ECB/EC/IMF ("troika") and its own dirty politicians. But urging overextension is just what banks do, because when they come to collect they not only get the money that you already paid on your too-big loan, they ALSO get the collateral on which the loan was based. Real property for pennies on the dollar! Austerity for the population, as the lenders squeeze out that last possible Euro from Greece, short of bankrupting the entire nation!
Yanis' argument, as best as I can tell, was that Greece needed more money for further development so that it could compete more effectively (in the EU? In the world?) and pay back its loans. But he overlooks the fact that is not a solution for ALL national debts: That simply raises the overall level of productivity, but in the resulting hyper-competitive world there will STILL be winners and losers, and the losers will STILL have unpayable debt. So Greece may come out better than Portugal, but Portugal will be left in even worse shape than before because it's income production will be relatively less, having been "out-competed" by Greece. So what is Yanis' solution for Portugal? Or Brazil? Or the USA?
Yanis Varoufakis, in his book "Adults in the Room", gives the recorded conversations where he tries, and sadly fails, to reason with people who really don’t care what happens to Greece, so long as German bankers get the satisfaction of beating the Greeks to a pulp. Varoufakis isn't as crude as I am at describing what happened. The book: https://thepiratebay.org/search/Varoufakis/0/99/0
Varoufakis footnoted this article to succinctly describe Greece’s financial negotiations. He convinced the I.M.F. to see his viewpoint but not the Germans.
Aug. 15, 2015
www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/business/international/the-greek-debt-deals
-missing-piece.html
At long last, European creditor nations and Greece have reached an agreement on a third bailout in five years.
The bailout, which was approved by Greece’s Parliament on Friday, included familiar details: In return for an infusion of 86 billion euros, or $95 billion, Greece has promised to increase taxes, cut spending and enact measures to make its economy function more efficiently.
But there was one glaring omission. As it stands, none of that new money flowing into Greece will come from the agency that has, until now, played a crucial role in virtually every bailout, in Greece and elsewhere around the world: the International Monetary Fund.
That is because the I.M.F. says that Greece was simply incapable of repaying its staggering debt. Yet the accord reached last week makes no effort to reduce that burden. If you agree with the I.M.F.’s reasoning, you might have to conclude that despite all of the seemingly ironclad provisions of the agreement imposed by eurozone creditors, Greece will be no more able to honor the deal or to repay its new loans than it has been in other bailouts.
“I remain firmly of the view that Greece’s debt has become unsustainable and that Greece cannot restore debt sustainability solely through actions on its own,” the I.M.F.’s chief, Christine Lagarde, said on Friday, following the accord’s approval this week.
The Greek debt drama has had its share of twists and turns. Alliances have shifted, rivalries have deepened, and the back-room maneuverings have been appropriately Byzantine.
But the I.M.F. shift from being Greece’s most persistent scold to its main advocate for a break on its debt has been among the most intriguing developments so far.
. . . If the I.M.F. wants to be seen as an international, as opposed to a European, monetary fund, it m
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Friday, May 11, 2018 5:28 PM
Quote:I'm a troll because I have no respect for your thinking? Too bad. If the Senate had a majority of Democrats, the Republicans could not have passed their tax cut. Now that they have, the cut has to be defended against those Democrats taking control of Congress.
Originally posted by 1kiki:
I had a VERY SPECIFIC suggestion as to how to improve people's lives without trying to create a worker's utopia or have massive redistribution of wealth, and it involved re-purposing the military. SECOND has managed to not actually discuss my post at all.
But it does certainly snark and troll at every post.
SECOND is a troll.
Sheldon Adelson cuts $30 million check to help House Republicans win the midterms. Do you think the casino billionaire is fighting for the common man? Or do you think it was because Sheldon Adelson's company recorded a *$670 million* income tax windfall from the GOP tax law in the first quarter? That money will not be available to "improve people's lives" in 1kiki's phrase.
The commitment of the likes of Adelson to the GOP cause is a reminder that despite the way culture war topics dominate the messaging of Republican Party politicians, economic issues remain core to the actual stakes of American politics. The $30 million the octogenarian casino billionaire is spending on the midterms may sound like a lot, but it’s actually a drop in the bucket compared to what Adelson’s heirs will gain thanks to the estate tax cut provisions of Trump tax bill alone.
www.vox.com/2018/5/10/17339180/sheldon-adelson-congressional-leadershi
p-fund
One more example of Republicans making sure money is not available to "improve people's lives":
By all accounts, Trump really hates the idea of people receiving “welfare,” by which he means any government program that helps people with low income, and he wants to eliminate such programs wherever possible.
Most recently, he has reportedly threatened to veto the upcoming farm bill unless it imposes stringent new work requirements on recipients of SNAP — the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, still commonly referred to as food stamps.
Let me be upfront here: There’s something fundamentally obscene about this spectacle. Here we have a man who inherited great wealth, then built a business career largely around duping the gullible — whether they were naïve investors in his business ventures left holding the bag when those ventures went bankrupt, or students who wasted time and money on worthless degrees from Trump University. Yet he’s determined to snatch food from the mouths of the truly desperate, because he’s sure that somehow or other they’re getting away with something, having it too easy.
But however petty Trump’s motives, this is a big deal from the other side. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that new work requirements plus other restrictions proposed by House Republicans would end up denying or reducing nutritional aid to around two million people, mostly in families with children.
Why would anyone want to do that? The thing is, it’s not just Trump: Conservative hatred for food stamps is pervasive. What’s behind it?
The more respectable, supposedly intellectual side of conservative opinion portrays food stamps as reducing incentives by making life too pleasant for the poor. As Paul Ryan put it, SNAP and other programs create a “hammock” that “lulls able-bodied people to lives of dependency and complacency.”
But this is a problem that exists only in the right’s imagination. Able-bodied SNAP recipients who should be working but aren’t are very hard to find: A vast majority of the program’s beneficiaries either are working — but at unstable jobs that pay low wages — or are children, elderly, disabled or essential family caregivers.
www.nytimes.com/2018/05/10/opinion/trump-food-stamps-agriculture.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Friday, May 11, 2018 5:49 PM
So what date did you put on your check to house Democrats for your $30 Million check to to make sure that they put higher taxes on you next year, Second?
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Friday, May 11, 2018 6:21 PM
Quote:I have never been subtle about this: no matter which party controls America, I win. If it is Democrats, I win because I dislike the beliefs of the GOP Texans I am familiar with. If it is Republicans controlling government, I win because I am getting a tax cut. Win/Win for me! If it was three choices, Democrat/Republican/Communist, it would be for me Win/Win/Lose:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
So what date did you put on your check to house Democrats for your $30 Million check to to make sure that they put higher taxes on you next year, Second?
What Made Marxism So Deadly?
www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/05/what-made-marxism-so-deadly/
Brad DeLong points me to Noah Smith, who uses the occasion of Karl Marx’s 200th birthday to muse about the many, many failings of real-world communism:
Quote:I realize I’m barging into a conversation that’s been going on for many decades, and also that I’m woefully inadequate to comment. But I’m going to comment anyway. It strikes me that Smith has the causation backward here. It’s not that Marxism inherently leads to crimes against humanity, but that ruthless autocrats—the kind likely to commit crimes against humanity—find Marxism a convenient economic doctrine to adopt.
For those who have read history or lived through the 20th century, it’s hard to forget the tens of millions of people who starved to death under Mao Zedong; the tens of millions purged, starved or sent to gulags by Joseph Stalin; or the millions slaughtered in Cambodia’s killing fields. Even if Marx himself never advocated genocide, these stupendous atrocities and catastrophic economic blunders were all done in the name of Marxism. From North Korea to Vietnam, 20th century communism always seem to result in either crimes against humanity, grinding poverty or both. Meanwhile, Venezuela, the most dramatic socialist experiment of the 21st century in a nation with the world’s largest oil reserves, is in full economic collapse.
Why convenient? Because autocrats desire centralized control, and Marxism delivers by insisting that the state should own the means of productions. Autocrats also like to pose as populists, and Marxism delivers there too. Even more conveniently, Marx himself said that full communism would take a long time to develop, which provides an endless series of excuses for underachievement. Also conveniently, Marxism contrasts itself explicitly to market capitalism, which provides autocrats in poor countries with an automatic enemy in the capitalist West to keep the masses enthralled.
All in all, if I were an autocrat, I’d probably find Marxism pretty congenial. Would I care about what Marx actually wrote or what his economic ideas really were? Not really. Every autocrat has his own national version of Marxism anyway.
As for the grinding poverty, that’s because Marxism is (a) deeply flawed, (b) adopted only by poor countries in the first place, and (c) generally just a thin veneer over the usual autocratic kleptocracy that’s impoverished countries for centuries.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Friday, May 11, 2018 6:47 PM
Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:I have never been subtle about this: no matter which party controls America, I win. If it is Democrats, I win because I dislike the beliefs of the GOP Texans I am familiar with. If it is Republicans controlling government, I win because I am getting a tax cut. Win/Win for me!
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
So what date did you put on your check to house Democrats for your $30 Million check to to make sure that they put higher taxes on you next year, Second?
Well then. I've made my point.
Just wondering why you sound so pissed off all the time. Sounds like you got it made up there in that Ivory Tower.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Friday, May 11, 2018 6:48 PM
Quote:SECOND: Everything you post about Varoufakis merely validates my summary: His activities can best be described as "whinging for more money". What it means, in this case, is that he begged for better (delayed/reduced) repayment terms for the vastly over-indebted Greek government. I read/ listened to the many, many reasons why he thought this was rational; and the many mechanisms by which he thought it could work, but he failed to understand the lessons of the IMF and his German, Nederlander, and Finnish creditors: Did he NEVER look at how bankers deal with creditor nations? Austerity. If he was able to convince LaGarde, he was not able to convince German FM Schauble.
Signym, the real story is not what you wrote. I am both sorry and irritated to tell you, but your wonderful writing gifts are being misused to sell a false story on fireflyfans.net.
Austerity. THAT'S their answer.
Hey, I was watching this in real time as it was happening. Don't sell me alternate facts.
Quote:A PERFECT example of why the Democratic party is just as corrupt as the GOP! Any party which does not disturb your comfortable position as a rentier capitalist is a party that does not deserve affiliation.
I have never been subtle about this: no matter which party controls America, I win. If it is Democrats, I win because I dislike the beliefs of the GOP Texans I am familiar with. If it is Republicans controlling government, I win because I am getting a tax cut. Win/Win for me!
What you are fighting 150% of your time is any change to the rules of the of the game by which you remain in privileged status. So you'll play the financial conservatives against the social liberals and the social conservatives against the financial liberals until the cows come home. Meanwhile, you keep collecting your rentier checks. What a deal! [for you]
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
America is an oligarchy
http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876
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Friday, May 11, 2018 8:15 PM
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:
I have never been subtle about this: no matter which party controls America, I win. If it is Democrats, I win because I dislike the beliefs of the GOP Texans I am familiar with. If it is Republicans controlling government, I win because I am getting a tax cut. Win/Win for me! -Second
A PERFECT example of why the Democratic party is just as corrupt as the GOP! Any party which does not disturb your comfortable position as a rentier capitalist is a party that does not deserve affiliation.
What you are fighting 150% of your time is any change to the rules of the of the game by which you remain in privileged status. So you'll play the financial conservatives against the social liberals and the social conservatives against the financial liberals until the cows come home. Meanwhile, you keep collecting your rentier checks. What a deal! [for you]
Meanwhile, he can come in here (and it should be assumed other places) and virtue signal all day long to soothe his conscious... except for the times that he gets pissed off enough to drop the act that he cares about anybody but himself and let's the 99%ers know what he really thinks about them.
Honestly, since he doesn't give a shit about anybody but himself and he's got no skin in the game, I don't know why he even posts here at all.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Friday, May 11, 2018 9:10 PM
Before you 2 (Six and Sig) get to far ahead of yourselves, there is a lot to be learned by observing the concept of negative space. In this case it shows that no matter who wins Second also loses. If Reps are in power his neighbors are even more unbearable, and if Dems win he gets no tax cut. Sorry to spoil your rants, hope I made your day.
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