September 2008 - Posts
My $700 billion bailout check seems to have gotten lost in the mail. Hopefully the post man brings it tomorrow.
But honestly, this is an atrocity to the common sense of the American people and a travesty to the goodwill we have towards others. The government plans to buy these Mortgage Backed Securities(MBS) with the hopes of jumo-starting the economy from the slow down that it itself precipitated. These mortgage backed securities will bring in payments for the Federal Government if these people make their mortgage payments. This begs a very serious question, however; if these people dont make their payments, why do they have a house? What happens to me if I dont make my car payment? I sure as hell dont get money to help me out or better terms on my loan, because if I did I would have no incentive to ever pay my loan. If I waited long enough maybe they would be paying me to own a car. My main point being: If you dont pay your mortgage, the house is not yours. Until you successfully complete the payment of your mortgage, you do not technically own a home. If you default on your mortgage, your home gets taken away, those are and always should be the rules of the game.
I have 2 main points....
1.) It severely bothers me that I frequently read of people who are afraid their homes might be taken away. If its your home no one can take it away. Until you pay the mortgage, its the banks home that they are letting you slowly buy away from them. If banks would grow a pair, we would probably not be in this mess. It all really goes back to leftism destroying our country. The Democrats for some time have been engrossed in the idea that if you help someone financially, they will get back on their feet. Decades of welfare and countless dollars later, we still have poverty, homelessness, and welfare grows tremendously each year. This same thinking has been given to bankers. As opposed to bankers giving loans to people who deserved them, the "rules" were changed so that practically anyone could buy a home, because "everyone should have a chance". No, everyone shouldnt have a chance. Everyone who WORKS, and can afford all of the expenses should have a chance. Everyone who does the things that enable the purchase of big ticket items should be allowed to buy a home, but not everyone total. Heres the math....
Everyone=(Those who work and make the money to buy a home)+(Those who expect handouts)
Now, as my simple math model shows, everyone does not deserve a home, and should not have been given the mortgages. This leads me to point number 2....
2.) If you are in business, you always have to accept risk. There is no business you can get into where risk does not play a factor. Either the risk of losing money, the risk of lawsuit, etc. These banks that are part of the bailout plan decided to take risks above and beyond what common sense would dictate, and lost money. Not only did they lose money, they lost a loooooottt of money, more money than I will ever see in person. Risk is admirable until a certain point, the point where risky behavior turns stupid. These banks and their stupid behavior were punished, by the very people they were trying to help. This is sort of the moral crux that befalls trying to help everyone, and its bite is much harder than its bark. These banks lost money and were failing, which is a great thing, because they were failing and it was no ones fault but their own. When a business fails, we should let it fail, as proof that doing the wrong thing leads to bad consequences for you. The bailout is following the same kind of logic that got these banks into this mess in the first place, and is kind of ironic in that fact. These banks got into trouble by wanting to help people, so that people could have things, and now they want help, because they dont want to lose the things that they already have. If I could draw a circle I would hope to indicate the circular reasoning they are using, which has continually proven wrong and will continue to do so.
We may not know for quite some time how bad this $700 Billion will hurt us, but when it hits it will hit hard.
P.S.-Sorry if this is rambling or incoherent, but I havent gotten a lot of sleep. :)
Joe Biden says paying higher taxes is patriotic, here.
Anyone who can explain to me how a presidential or vice-presidential candidate can think this, and get away with it wins nothing more than respect. In addition to that, the justification offered was the profound thought that wealthier Americans paying more taxes was the patriotic thing to do. He says that we can then give the money to the middle class Americans. Following Biden's lead, we can assume that the need for this is derived by the middle-class deserving to get the taxes that others have paid, which begs another question...why? If these people deserved more money they would have gotten it, that is how the system works. You work for pay, and your pay is adjusted according to the skills, knowledge or proficiency that you can provide in doing that work. Taking this money from the wealthy to give to the less so is a follow-up to the disturbing trend of the Democrat party to blatantly redistribute wealth. This bothers me on many fronts, but most directly in the fact that these men(and women) are punishing success. If you are a successful American, Joe Biden thinks that socialism deserves some of you spoils. You have taken the steps, many of them uneasy, to get where you are and now Joe Biden thinks you should have to share what youve gotten with the rest of the class. You did your homework, took the test and passed it, and now Joey B. is going to share the points you got with everybody. If Americans want to look at the reason we are falling behind, it is because we are allowing less than our best. Traditionally, we have been a country that strives for perfection, and despite its impossibility always trys to achieve it. We dont settle for less than our best, but continue on and on and on, with that one goal in mind. Whereas other countries set their sights low and tried to achieve attainable things, and were happy with such small glories, Americans strove for the impossible and went above and beyond what anyone thought possible, because we believe anything we set our minds to is possible. If it werent for the innovative spirit of Americans, you would not be reading this blog post, and neither you nor I would be able to hold such free opinions(whatever they may be) as we do. America is the greatest country on the Earth on the foundations of freedom and personal goal setting, and the minute we let it creep into our culture that everyone has to and should share, we have started a regression to the failures that befell many countries before us.
Joe Biden and Barry Obama think that everything works perfectly. We can just take money from some people, and give it to other people and everyone will be happy and productive, and we will all be in love, and the financial markets will be perfect, and murder will be zero if we take away guns, and on and on and on and on.... Does anyone on their campaign use their brain? I know it is kind of a rhetorical question, but sometimes I wonder when I read the Socialist(capital S intentional) policy platforms that they advocate. How can they reasonably expect the country to not flounder with the redistribution of everything?
The Democrats once again prove that they have no understanding of the economy, and that they have no true grasp on reality. If we could live in a fantasy land like they advocate, it would be great, but there is no such fantasy world in real life, hence we call it FANTASY. In the real world, things arent always perfect, and that is the great thing about free markets. Free markets understand that markets are not and can not be perfect, and take this in to effect, but always with the understanding that if we leave the markets alone they will naturally go back to the way they ideally run. It is a testament to this fact that the market still runs as effective as it does despite the socialism already perpetuated within it, and despite the fallacies tried and failed with in. I only hope that someday soon we can start the revoultion that will reverse this trend of idiocy, ignorance and fallacy about how, why and when an economy works.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/content/education/chi-money-for-grades-11-sep11,0,7506945.story
This article basically says that the Chicago school district will start paying students for grades. A first reaction from the title made me furious that our tax dollars were being used to pay for the grades of inner city students, but after reading the article I saw that it came from private sources. The article did still put me on the offensive based on its content, however. The teacher quoted in the article says that she wants to "level the playing field." Her point being that her inner city kids come from poorer families and she wants them to be rewarded similarly to middle-class children. Levelling the playing field is very dangerous, not to middle class families, or even to poor families, but to all of society. "Levelling the playing field" implies that we are all the same, and that some of us have to pay for others to come to our level. Everyone has a brain, and therefore the right to use that brain however they see fit. Just because I use my brain better and more often than an inner city youth does not mean I should have to pay for that youth to be at my level. This follows the Collectivist thinking that every one of us is the same person, or at least we have nothing that distinctively makes us different than others. It implies that everyone should have the exact same opportunity as everyone else, which is a foundation for socialism. If everyone was the same as everyone else, we WOULD all have the same opportunities, but everyone is not the same. The decisions that we have made have led to where we are today. Some people chose to do well in high school in the hopes of excelling and possibl extending their schooling. If they do not wish to get further schooling, they hope to at least get a reasonable job with which to support themselves and provide for their future. Others have allowed themselves to become dependent on others to provide whatever it is that they need, and have become accustomed to getting what they need because they have less. These people have made a bad decision or two, and at some point realize that they dont have the things that they need to survive, such as food or clothing or shelter. At this point they decide to seek government help, because the government also apparently believes in levelling the playing field. The government gives these people monetary help in the hopes that they can dig themselves out of the rut. What happens is the exact opposite of what is intended, and that is the continuance of the problem. If someone gives you money for doing nothing, what incentive do you have to try to make money on your own? If someone gives me $800 a month(or more), why do I have incentive to go earn my own? These people have children who end up going to the Chicago inner city schools, and have no incentive to work hard. The reason they have no incentive to work hard? Their parents have no work ethic, because they have been bred on the belief that things will be given to them for free. All they have to do to get money is not work, and they will milk that for all its worth. Children seeing their parents not working hard have no reason or desire to work hard themselves, and therefore hold no value for working for something, whether it be at school or otherwise. Instead of having the incentive or working to provide for oneself in the future, these children are given the incentive for money now. Money created this problem, and the cause of a problem is never a solution.
The biggest realization we can make is that money can be the cause of a problem if we see it as the solution, especially at the government level.
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As Tim Kasher wrote, "My ego's like my stomach, it keeps shitting what
I feed it", and lately no matter what news coverage I look at I feel like
I might need to do just that. In an era where we as a country and a
society are "free", nothing seems further from the truth.
Turning on the radio leads to the knowledge that supposedly we can quantify
people in any number of ways. Republican, Democrat, black, white, Mexican,
legal, illegal, poor, middle-class, rich, elite, etc., are words that not
only are part of our vocabulary, but define it. Literally every person
can and will be quantified every day, because it is easier to do so than to
know and acknowledge the person for the individual they are. We are no
longer human beings with our own thoughts and beliefs; we somehow fit to a mold
and will follow however that mold dictates we move. If we stray from the
mold we can be reprimanded and punished. The fact of our own existence is
even constantly thrown in our faces every day, because one way or another we destroy
the country, or we are holding back the rest of the world. Well, ladies
and gentleman, in the words of Ayn Rand, "guilt is a rope that wears
thin." This rope has worn very thin. People are individuals,
and should be accepted as such, as living and thinking and breathing animals
with the capacity to decide what they want and what they need. We don’t
need someone to help us or tell us what is good for us, because when it really
comes down to it, no one else is you, and no one else is me. The only person
who knows infinitely what is best for me is ME. There is a reason social
policies don’t work, and that is because quantifying a number of people in one
group does not work. People do not add up like numbers, because numbers
are always the same and always mean the same thing. 1 will always be
exactly one. People are not always the same, because no person is the
exact same as another person, and we cannot allow ourselves as thinking and
acting people to be led down this path again and again. The problem with
schooling today is not only the lack of intellectual thought, but also the
collective ideal that is taught in so many supposed institutions of higher
learning.
If every human being were exactly the same, collectivism would work. I
am not too arrogant to admit this fact and to concede that if humans were
robots, this idea that every one is the same would be a perfect way to govern
and act. Normalcy is not a trait that humans can exemplify, however,
because there is no normal. Who among us establishes a standard for all
of humanity to abide to? Who can we honestly be led to believe is the
ideal human for all of us to be? Even if this human did exist, why would
we want to strive to be this ideal human? I, for one, see no reason to
believe or even consider the thought of an ideal human. The ideal human
to me is me, and if I don’t think so then why would I lead my life the way I
do? All we can do as human beings is live the life to which we feel we
need and should be living, and anything beyond that is out of our
control. Collecting a bunch of individuals does not give you a
population, but leaves you with a group of individuals. Math has no
bearing on the human population.
I go to a relatively open school, in the sense that I hear many different and contrasting ideas every day, and there is no fear of being outcasted because you have a different idea. While I love this fact, and respect what it lends to our University community, I am frequently bothered by the amount of people even within my own department who think socialism is a viable way for our government to operate. I dont know how anyone with a strong economics background and a supposed understanding of how things work could actually think that collective ownership of production and produced goods is a good idea. We daily learn and talk about market setting prices, quantities, etc., and yet these people ignore it all to form their own opinions. It is not only frustrating, but annoying, counterproductive and stupid.
Despite everything I have said, I appreciate that we live in the greatest country in the world, where this is allowed, and encouraged even. I just wish that everyone realized and appreciated what a good thing we have and have had, despite all of the problems.
I am a libertarian free market amateur economist, which will become clear either now, or within future blogs. I call myself an amateur in the sense that I have not yet attained a Bachelors, Masters or PhD in economics, although I am in pursuit of all three. One thing that bothers me about politics in general, is the use of the term government to mean the federal government, and only the federal government. Many people view the federal government as the end-all, be-all for any problems they may have. Any reason that they feel theyve been shorted, or any excuse they can think up for needing money they direct to the federal government. When our Founding Fathers created the democracy which we have chipped away at, they intended the Federal government to be a last resort or sorts. The national government was not intended to carry a heavy caseload, but had a specific set of duties. These duties ideally included the minting of money and the oversight of troops, things that otherwise individual states would have had a hard time coordinating. They set up this government with the knowledge that every state and municipality had their own government to govern their people. I believe that the ultimate intent set forth by these men was to have a small federal government that helped the states with the things that would be hard to organize, with larger state governments to take care of their people. Larger state governments would serve quite a few purposes.
1) Namely, large state governments would help keep the federal government from getting to large and creating the problems that have plagued all other countries. A number of larger state governments could act as a buffer between the people and their federal ruler, and would protect them from the problems that ultimately befall all Federal governments.
2.) If the states were allowed to have a larger government while the Federal version was small, the states could be more efficient. The state could therefore census all of its people, and use the things they know about their state to better serve their people.
3.) Much the same as the last point, if states were the preferred form, any program that the people wanted would be much closer to them. My point being, if most residents of a state wanted Welfare, that state could enact legislation to make it a reality for those people. If I did not want to live in a state with welfare it would be much easier and more viable for me to move to a different state than it would ever be to move to a different country.
Ultimately the government libertarians dream of would allow for a more efficient system, better set up to serve the people, and keeping egos in check as long as allowing for a checks and balances of every government on their own power. It saddens me that socialism has creeped into our government, inflating not only taxes and spending, but the egos of the people in charge who get to spend our money. Hopefully this system starts to revert and we can see our government run and appreciated the way any government should....with a sense of pleasure and a watchful eye by the citizens who it is meant to serve.
One thing that is often
misinterpreted is that certain institutions get their prestige because
of what they produce. Although this has at times in the past been true,
it is not to be automatically assumed at this point in American
history. Many of the United States best known universities are not
prestigious on current accomplishments alone. They possibly are
accomplished on the past doings of professors or students, but
currently fail to meet up to the expectations that are put on the top
schools in our country. A problem is that instead of continuing to move
our though forward and advance ideas that have been the foundation of
intellectual thought, educated people continue to build on fallacies
from the past, or create new ideas, sufficing small amounts of evidence
to prove their point and disprove past points.
Current intellectual thought is not precisely that. In many of these
institutions, knowledge is not necessarily rewarded. Professors from
the get-go teach students that they don't know things, in order to
create a student body who believes that they do not know things, as
opposed to teaching this student body what they need to know in order
to form opinions and create knowledgeable ideas of their own. I make
this statement based on the fact that many students in todays colleges
don't come out knowing or needing to know what it is they study, which
allows professors to in turn substitute rhetoric and personal beliefs
in place of actual learning. From the beginning of postsecondary
education, students are taught to believe whatever it may be that their
professors are saying. This allows the professors to suffice propaganda
for proper knowledge. Professors in turn use this extremely modifiable
minds to meet their own ends. An example of this is Barack Obama. Mr.
Obama is none the wiser for what he was taught at elitist schools.
Listening to him speak belies the fact that he even went to one of
these institutions, because of his seeming lack of knowledge about
relevant thought and political ideas. The idea that tire inflation and
tuneups will allow for as much oil to be saved as would be gotten from
drilling is an idiotic hope that is unfounded, unintelligent and
otherwise worthless. If, perhaps, 300 million Americans were driving
around on flat tires with untuned engines, then that idea might work
out. This, however, is not true as many Americans do the simple things
that they can to make their cars run more efficiently and correctly. If
institutions taught what knowledge driven thought consisted of, civic
leaders would not be leading us into the same cruxes that have plagued
our society since the beginning of the 20th Century.
The beacon of American thought is learning and knowledge, yet somehow
the people in the places that matter most have let that go, in hopes of
passing their own agendas. Allowances for personal error are seldom
made in American politics and society as it is seen as a weakness. As
Americans are taught to be more accepting of others, those preaching
that have done the opposite with their own. When a politician changes
his or her opinion because they have realized the err of their ways,
they are seen as a “flip flopper”, and not as someone who upon closer
examination has decided to fix where they have wronged. I do not see
the progress in politics or society that once set America apart from
the rest of the world. Even the one institution that we perfected and
allowed to function under our watch has started to come under fire from
the elitist people who have become the bane of it in the first place. I
am of course talking about capitalism, which if left to its own devices
will function better than any known, and possible unknown, economic
system. Adam Smith frequently spoke of an invisible hand that guided
the economy to perfection or at least proper function. This invisible
hand allowed for consumers and producers to decide where and what their
desired price would be. An invisible hand was not government
intervention, nor was it pressure from unrelated or uninvolved parties.
This would be a visible hand, and would be synonymous with a communist
or socialist economy.
Now is a more important time than the time of Adam Smith, as we not
only have to stick up for our economy, but also our way of life and our
rights as politicians and the educational elite allow more people to be
a part of their plan to take over the American way of thinking. The
American way of thinking is for individuals to have their own opinions,
not for a elite group to tell people how to think, and if there is one
thing to hold onto, that is it.
A constant problem in the
developed world has been the relation of races with each other. People
are destined to judge each other for one reason or another, and the
laziest/easiest way to do so has always been to judge based on how
others look. Judging based on color allows for prejudices that are
often unfounded and unintelligent, and which just perpetuate a cycle of
ignorance and regression. Prejudice is not a quality that is a positive
in any human being, much less when it does not allow for common sense
or relevance.
America
is a country that was founded with race relations on the back burners,
and is a country which had much to overcome in that department. Many
claim that America still has many strides to make to conquer the
problem, but not all citizens of a country can be forced to think a
certain way. The greatest thing about our country is that individuals
are allowed to think whatever they want. This being the greatest thing,
it has also been one of the most divisive. No issue has ever sparked as
much debate, hatred and suffering as race. Were it not for race
differences between slaves and masters, the states rights issues of the
South would not have been as heated as they were, and certainly would
not have sparked a national war. This is not to say that the South
would not have had a complaint for states rights, it is to say that it
would not have come about the same way as it did.
Many a problem has plagued the USA since the time of the Civil War, and
many obstacles have been overcome in pursuit of a better country. When
our founding fathers created the perfect country, they gave us the
foundation for a great country, and I will vote that we have created
that great country where people can be themselves. A problem that
consistently arises in my own mind continues to be race relations. The
races were supposedly integrated in the middle 20th Century,
yet I can not find that to be true. "There is a presidential candidate
running for the Democrat Party", is not a phrase I have heard very much in the past year. Barack Obama is not a presidential candidate running
for office with the ideas he has to make out country better. Obama is
the first black candidate. Barack Obama is a black man, and all that
seems to matter to many is that fact. African American. Native
American. Irish American. Indian American. None of these should be an
identification with which we use to distinguish ourselves from our
neighbors. This is not to say that people should not identify with their past or their heritage, because that is the furthest from the point. I believe that our country will function much more correctly if we allow everyone to be an American, whatever our heritage or past, and move on towards making America a better country. This can not be accomplished by continuing to strive for segregation based on where we came from, for benefits or otherwise. Progress is moving forward, and socialism is a failure from the past.
When our
country was founded it was compared to a melting pot, in which
individual ingredients only give a hint of their real flavor. Allowing
people to be separated based on their differences allows for the very
segregation that we have fought to abolish. We are Americans, and that
is all that should matter. If some of these Americans have personality
aspects that they wish to acknowledge, that is a great thing, but these
should not be what we use to define ourselves. If Americans are allowed
to be classified into thousands of categories, they cease to be
Americans, but instead continue to take the minority status that
creates problems and belies the melting pot of all humans in our
country.. Separating by race, creed, religion, sex, etc. is something
that has gotten some countries in the greatest of trouble and is a crux
that we have fought since the founding of our very country.