Down here in Miami, we have families living in cars while new condos remain unable to be sold; empty houses from owners that were unable to pay for them. Lots of small businesses have been driven out of the market for lack of demand. Clinics have been shut down for cuts on Medicare/Medicaid.
If you call this free market I only have one thing left to tell you. “There is no atheist in a foxhole”.
In my opinion, the present economic condition is a result of an economy not fully functioning as a free one. We are yet to see if President Obama will set it free.
However, what solutions, both short run and long run, would you suggest to achieve a full economic recovery?
Give us something real, not a wish like “abolishing the FED”.
Medicare and Medicaid should compete against private insurance businesses so that health care is ample and affordable. The problem I have with the bailouts is that those bailouts were provided directly to the banks, if anyone should have been bailed out it should have been actually the owners of those homes so that they could have stayed there. In the long run, however, interest rates would have to increase significantly, because borrowing easy money in great part was the cause of this mess, and it is likely that the same could happen again with 1% interest rates.
Art transcends ideology.
http://mises.org/Community/blogs/ruben
About bailouts i feel that either we have bailouts for everyone or we dont have any at all.
That is something real. Entreating Obama to be sensible, OTOH, isn't.
-Jon
To darkness I condemn you...
Rubén:Medicare and Medicaid should compete against private insurance businesses so that health care is ample and affordable. The problem I have with the bailouts is that those bailouts were provided directly to the banks, if anyone should have been bailed out it should have been actually the owners of those homes so that they could have stayed there.
They don't own the homes. They just occupy them. if they owned the homes, they would not have mortgages. If they could pay their mortgages, they would not need a bailout.
Instead, people who can't afford the houses they live in, are supposed to now be given the homes for free, by levying a debt burden on future generations.
Again, the world has finite resources. So how can you justify giving away the labour and materials to build these homes to people who cannot pay for the labour or materials? Do you work for free? If so, come to America. They need selfless people like you to donate all of your resources and man hours to build free houses to be given away.
I mean, if you really believe your socialist rhetoric, why aren't you living it? How dare you take a wage, when every dollar you keep compromises state run enterprises? You are stealing from the poor by keeping more than they get!
If you find something evil that wobbles, push it. - Gary North
Cesar, 46 posts and you have wasted your time here. You've been told repeatedly this is not free market. You should have the sense to know that state medicine in Medicare and Medicaid are not free market. You should also know that bailouts, regulations, taxes and monopoly money are also not free market.
If you have not learned this yet, that's very sad.
Obama set it free? Obama wants to make it less free by taxing more, spending more, creating more debt, and perpetuating fiat fraud. He wants less competition, and more redistribution. You are waiting to see if he implements freedom over tyranny? Wow!
All I can say is, ABOLISH THE FED.
Seriously, slash spending, slash taxes, and collapse the foreign empire. Goodbye dept of energy, education, commerce, fda, epa, irs, tsa, dhs, lmnop, wxyz
liberty student:They don't own the homes. They just occupy them. if they owned the homes, they would not have mortgages. If they could pay their mortgages, they would not need a bailout.
There's nothing inherently wrong with paying more to get something now and not 30 years later. It's a calculated risk for the owners and for the banks. What's wrong is to force others to pay for the consequences of your bad decisions. Also, it's due to the government policies that the average price of the house is so inflated most people can't afford buying one without getting a mortgage.
If I hear not allowed much oftener; said Sam, I'm going to get angry.
J.R.R.Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
In order to avoid a new bubble being blown from the counter-cyclical reaction of the state and its central bank to the bust phase of the most recent business cycle, the best first action is no action. In medicine there is a mandate to first, do no harm, extending this to the political realm would do much to curb the misguided reactions of politicians and technocrats. Further steps to ease recovery are partially outlined in Mark Thornton's Slash and Burn article. These include reducing government expenditures, cutting taxes on capital, and eliminating the government deficit. A similar suggestion and further analysis on why "tickle down" economic policies often failed to achieve their theoretical results can be found in George Reisman's article Anti-Obamanomics. Furthermore, Obama could use his charisma and bully pulpit to encourage the virtues of paying down debt and increasing savings. Cutting back on foreign adventurism and counterproductive foreign aid would do much to help in the goals outlined by Thornton. For those suffering from the hang over effects of a credit binge, the proper course of action is temperance, attempts to mitigate the unwanted feelings and nasty physical economic effects through a reversion to more of the same poison will only lead to a greater hang over and an overall increase in the sickness of the economy as a whole.
liberty student: ABOLISH THE FED. Seriously, slash spending, slash taxes, and collapse the foreign empire. Goodbye dept of energy, education, commerce, fda, epa, irs, tsa, dhs, lmnop, wxyz
ABOLISH THE FED.
Do you have any realistic timetable on how to abolish the Fed and other agencies?
Rubén:Do you have any realistic timetable on how to abolish the Fed and other agencies?
Ron Paul has a bill in right now to Abolish the FED. Could be done with an act of Congress. I'm sure the thousands of economists employed by the state could work out the transition details.
The issue is, you presume these institutions provide a benefit or service. On the contrary, many of them exist only to hinder and diminish the free market. Some provide almost no value at all (commerce, energy, education etc.)
Just because people such as yourself are enamoured with their purpose, just as people are enamoured with and project their own values on Obama, doesn't mean that those purposes or promises or optimism will be delivered upon. It's basically, wishful thinking in abject denial of reality.
Rubén: Medicare and Medicaid should compete against private insurance businesses so that health care is ample and affordable. The problem I have with the bailouts is that those bailouts were provided directly to the banks, if anyone should have been bailed out it should have been actually the owners of those homes so that they could have stayed there. In the long run, however, interest rates would have to increase significantly, because borrowing easy money in great part was the cause of this mess, and it is likely that the same could happen again with 1% interest rates.
The problem I have with the bail out is that my tax dollars are used against my will to give it to people and institutions that made bad choices. Nobody should be bailed out. You make your bed, you sleep in it. Why should someone be allowed to stay in a house they couldn't afford in the first place, that they don't own (the bank owns it), keep their brand new Lexus and be able to renegotiate their loans to get a better deal than their neighbor who still drives a 12 year old beat up Toyota Corolla and bought a house within his/her means?
If I don't pay my monthly rent, do you think my landlord will allow me to stay in the house for free? If I don't pay my electricity bill, do you think the city will not turn it off eventually? If I decide to spend 98% of my take home pay on a new fur coat and then don't have enough money to put gas in my car to drive to work, should I be able to drive up to the gas station and get gas for free? Oh, but that's not the same you'll say. No different.
The only way people will learn to be responsible (and not just in a financial manner) they need to be held accountable and learn the consequences of their actions. Actions/decisions have consequences. Bad actions/decision have bad consequences.
Any time you involve government in anything competition is lost. You still haven't figured that one out, have you?
Sometimes "majority" simply means that all the fools are on the same side
As liberty student said, this is not a free market.
So, If we dont live in a free market, then every good thing about our economic system is.......at least, dirty. And if it is dirty..........is not because it is in its nature to be like that.
Pure Good in a free market: I buy my house, pay my affordable mortgage for 30 years, retire, die and a member of family inherits it.
Dirty Good : I buy my (inflated) house, can't pay my unaffordable mortgage, I go homeless and my dream to retire in my own house is VANISHED.
ALRIGHT..............we start by abolished the evil FED. What next........when we are done abolishing things??? Happy ever after???
Cesar:ALRIGHT..............we start by abolished the evil FED. What next........when we are done abolishing things??? Happy ever after???
Not necessarily. It will be honest and fair. It might be harder for some people, but easier for others. If you work, and produce and make good decisions, you will thrive. If you make bad decisions, are lazy and waste, you will struggle.
But without government hindering and leeching off our gains, I think we can solve a lot of problems by allowing the market to work. We will get much more out of our time and resources, when we don't have to pay for wars and destruction, or to pay for politicians who earn 3 and 5 times as much as the average working citizen paying taxes.
Obama votes for war, and encourages more war and military spending. Why can't that money be spent on actually producing goods and services? If taxes were reduced to accommodate a $1 trillion per year smaller budget, then wouldn't many people be able to afford health insurance? Probably.
Cesar: Dirty Good : I buy my (inflated) house, can't pay my unaffordable mortgage, I go homeless and my dream to retire in my own house is VANISHED.
Well actually the situation is like this - Dirty Good: I buy my inflated house- can't pay my unaffordable mortgage- so the government takes OTHER people's money to buy the mortgage and make sure I stay in a house that I could never afford and make sure the inflated house prices do not come down. That's what they're doing right now with the plan to help homeowners who've been late on mortgage payments for 3 months and reducing their mortgage payments so househould expenditures do not exceed 38% of their income.
I don't think its "dirty" if you got a mortgage you know you could not afford and then become homeless. That's just being irresponsible. If I spent all my money on a new car I didn't need and thus couldn't afford my rent payments- I would be kicked out. Nothing dirty about it- especially since that is what I agreed to voluntarily.
liberty student: If you work, and produce and make good decisions, you will thrive.
If you work, and produce and make good decisions, you will thrive.
Survival of the fittest....just like mother nature intended for it to be all along. There, I've finally wrote it (I've been thinking it all along)
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