Quote of the Day
The film-star or the crooner is not grudged the income that is grudged to the oil magnate, because the people appreciate the entertainer's accomplishment and not the entrepreneur's, and because the former's personality is liked and the latter's is not. They feel that consumption of the entertainer's income is itself an entertainment, while the capitalist's is not, and somehow think that what the entertainer enjoys is deliberately given by them while the capitalist's income is somehow filched from them.
~Bertrand de Jouvenel, writing in 1951 about popular attitudes toward income inequality in "The Ethics of Redistribution"
15 Comments:
I love this quote!
Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as “bad luck.”
- Robert Heinlein
“The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.”
- Margaret Thatcher
"We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. And I have just one interest, and if I am wrong ... somebody else can have my job. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises ... I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started ... And an enormous debt to boot!"
- Henry Morgenthau, FDR's Treasury Secretary, address to Congressional Democrats in May of 1939
“What still heightens our apprehensions is that these unexpected proceedings may be preparatory to new taxation upon us: For if our trade may be taxed why not our lands? Why not the produce of our lands and everything we possess and make use of?”
- Samuel Adams
“The goal of socialism is communism”
- Vladimir Lenin, Founder of the Russian Communist Party, leader of the Russian Revolution of 1917
Freedom is not empowerment. Empowerment is what the Serbs have in Bosnia. Anybody can grab a gun and be empowered. It's not entitlement. An entitlement is what people on welfare get, and how free are they? It's not an endlessly expanding list of rights -- the "right" to education, the "right" to health care, the "right" to food and housing. That's not freedom, that's dependency. Those aren't rights, those are the rations of slavery -- hay and a barn
for human cattle.
There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences.
We are part of a huge invisible picket line that circles the White House twenty-four hours a day. We are participants in an enormous non-march on Washington -- millions and millions of Americans not descending upon the nation's capital in order to demand nothing from the United States government. To demand nothing, that is, except the one thing which no government in history has been able to do -- leave us alone.
The Liberty Manifesto - P.J. O'Rourke
anon10:17"We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. And . . . "
i've heard this about a billion times by now. LOL, this must be rush's #1 talking point.
let's provide some context:
"Though Morgenthau was Roosevelt’s treasury secretary, he was an orthodox economist who opposed Keynesian economics and New Deal spending, consistently calling for a balanced budget and reducing the national debt, even during the depression. In 1937, Morgenthau and other conservatives, claiming that the country’s economic crisis had ended, convinced Roosevelt to cut many New Deal programs. As a result, the country fell into another recession, and unemployment rates, after falling rapidly for several years, began rising again.
"Considering that he was against the New Deal spending programs from the start, it’s not surprising that he would claim they hadn’t worked.
His claim about unemployment was entirely incorrect.
The unemployment rate in 1933, when Roosevelt took office, was 24.9 percent. By 1937, it had fallen to 14.3 percent. After the premature cuts in New Deal spending, unemployment quickly rose to 19 percent in 1938. Government spending was increased again and unemployment fell to 17.2 percent in 1939, when Morgenthau spoke, 14.6 percent in 1940 and 9.9 percent in 1941. "
In 2004, economists at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), studied the policies of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and determined his policies prolonged the Depression by seven years.
Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian blamed anti-free market measures for the slow recovery in an article published in the August 2004 issue of the Journal of Political Economy.
Cole and Ohanian asserted that Roosevelt thought excessive business competition led to low prices and wages, adding to the severity of the Depression.
“[Roosevelt] came up with a recovery package that would be unimaginable today, allowing businesses in every industry to collude without the threat of antitrust prosecution and workers to demand salaries about 25 percent above where they ought to have been, given market forces. The economy was poised for a beautiful recovery, but that recovery was stalled by these misguided policies," Cole said in a press release dated Aug. 10, 2004.
Link
Mounting evidence, however, makes clear that poor people were principal victims of the New Deal. The evidence has been developed by dozens of economists -- including two Nobel Prize winners -- at Brown, Columbia, Princeton, Johns Hopkins, the University of California (Berkeley) and University of Chicago, among other universities.
Other New Deal programs destroyed jobs, too. For example, the National Industrial Recovery Act (1933) cut back production and forced wages above market levels, making it more expensive for employers to hire people - blacks alone were estimated to have lost some 500,000 jobs because of the National Industrial Recovery Act. The Agricultural Adjustment Act (1933) cut back farm production and devastated black tenant farmers who needed work. The National Labor Relations Act (1935) gave unions monopoly bargaining power in workplaces and led to violent strikes and compulsory unionization of mass production industries. Unions secured above-market wages, triggering big layoffs and helping to usher in the depression of 1938.
What about the good supposedly done by New Deal spending programs? These didn't increase the number of jobs in the economy, because the money spent on New Deal projects came from taxpayers who consequently had less money to spend on food, coats, cars, books and other things that would have stimulated the economy. This is a classic case of the seen versus the unseen -- we can see the jobs created by New Deal spending, but we cannot see jobs destroyed by New Deal taxing.
For defenders of the New Deal, perhaps the most embarrassing revelation about New Deal spending programs is they channeled money AWAY from the South, the poorest region in the United States. The largest share of New Deal spending and loan programs went to political "swing" states in the West and East - where incomes were at least 60% higher than in the South. As an incumbent, FDR didn't see any point giving much money to the South where voters were already overwhelmingly on his side.
Link
bobble says: "i've heard this about a billion times by now. LOL, this must be rush's #1 talking point"...
Hmmm, bobble listens to Limbaugh?!?! Who would've guessed that?!?!
Yes, let's put the leftist economist Sherwood Bishop in context with real economists: "Admirers of FDR credit his New Deal with restoring the American economy after the disastrous contraction of 1929—33. Truth to tell–as Powell demonstrates without a shadow of a doubt–the New Deal hampered recovery from the contraction, prolonged and added to unemployment, and set the stage for ever more intrusive and costly government. Powell’s analysis is thoroughly documented, relying on an impressive variety of popular and academic literature both contemporary and historical."
Milton Friedman, Nobel Laureate, Hoover Institution
The depression lased eleven years -- 1929 to 1940 -- and FDR was not in office for the first four years of that period.
yet you claim that FDR caused the depression to last seven years longer than it other wise would have.
I'm sorry, that does not add up.
Would you care to explain the data that supports your conclusions since the data says that the period 1933-1940 under FDR was the strongest eight years of economic growth in US economic history.
PS, from 1933 to 1940 US real per capita GDP rose 50%. If that is failure I would like to see your definition of success.
But then I sure you have never been confused by the facts.
bobble:
The unemployment rate in 1933, when Roosevelt took office, was 24.9 percent. By 1937, it had fallen to 14.3 percent.
(Note: whoopie-do)
After the premature cuts in New Deal spending, unemployment quickly rose to 19 percent in 1938. Government spending was increased again and unemployment fell to 17.2 percent in 1939, when Morgenthau spoke, 14.6 percent in 1940 and 9.9 percent in 1941. "
Of course you realize this has been debunked (funged data, and the rise out in 1939 onard was the ramping up for WW2 (Lend-Lease), etc.
quote: The depression lased eleven years -- 1929 to 1940 -- and FDR was not in office for the first four years of that period.
yet you claim that FDR caused the depression to last seven years longer than it other wise would have.
I'm sorry, that does not add up.
--------------
No, it doesn't - the Depression lasted until 1954 unless you consider the WWII command economy to be a positive factor.
"I'm sorry, that does not add up"...
Hmmm, you're not a victim of one of the government run madrassas, are you?
"Would you care to explain the data that supports your conclusions since the data says that the period 1933-1940 under FDR was the strongest eight years of economic growth in US economic history"...
According to what CREDIBLE SOURCE?
Here you go sport, try a dose of this: Two UCLA economists say they have figured out why the Great Depression dragged on for almost 15 years, and they blame a suspect previously thought to be beyond reproach: President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
After scrutinizing Roosevelt's record for four years, Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian conclude in a new study that New Deal policies signed into law 71 years ago thwarted economic recovery for seven long years.
"Why the Great Depression lasted so long has always been a great mystery, and because we never really knew the reason, we have always worried whether we would have another 10- to 15-year economic slump," said Ohanian, vice chair of UCLA's Department of Economics. "We FOUND THAT A RELAPSE ISN'T LIKELY UNLESS LAWMAKERS GUM UP A RECOVERY WITH ILL-CONCEIVED POLICIES."
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