#179 ACJ:
“We won’t be a socialist nation, that is why we persevered through the depression; with soup lines and not handouts…”
Newsflash, hotshot…we already ARE a socialist nation, and have been since FDR.
We don’t CALL it “Socialism”, but that’s what it is, nonetheless. It’s done via state-subsidies, and was first done with agribusiness.
During the Depression, the prices on agricultural commodities dropped so low that farmers were pouring milk out into the sewers,(there’s newsreel footage of this).
The government started buying dairy products,(cheese, most famously, which Reagan would distribute to the hoots and catcalls of the Left,BTW), as well as grains, and a whole host of other commodities, as a “price support”.
(This means it’s more expensive than it would otherwise be).
Those programs continue to this day.
Now, though, it’s the Department of Agriculture which dictates what and how much farmers,(or more precisely, agribusiness concerns) will grow and the subsidy money is the stick they use to enforce compliance.
That’s a state-directed economy but the means of production are privately owned…that’s Socialism, ace.
“…the government at some point will not be able to care for everybody.”
That point occurred long ago, this is why our economy has been based on consumer debt, don’t you see?
“My grandmother told me that people would be at her back door asking for breakfast. She said that it was from the kindness of others that got everyone through.”
And if you believe your granny, then you should see through the government’s claims to be helping people. The only ones they help are themselves.
Let’s go back to that Department of Agriculture for a moment. When that mid-level bureaucrat retires from Government after a few decades of overseeing a wee bit of the Farm Subsidy program, where do you suppose he gets a job to start “double-dipping”?
With the companies that benefited most directly from the decisions he made while he was government flunktionary…surprise! surprise!
“This is not a cookie cutter recession we are entering, it is a full blown bad ass economic depression.”
If you can tell the future, you shouldn’t be wasting your time here on PJM, you should be in a corner office on Wall Street.
Let me enlighten you on something …a “Depression” is what happens when a Recession is mis-handled.
Reagan showed how to smack a reecession in the head back in 1982…cut taxes and cut them deep and fast. If you can convince the Congress to also cut spending,(which Reagan was NOT able to do with his Congress), when you recover, it’ll take off like a rocket. If Congress refuses to cut spending, you’re into deficit spending. Your recovery is saddled with debt.
In 1991-2, Bush 41 told us that the recession would last about 18 months, and then it would recover quickly.
That is exactly what happenned.
And to his credit, Bill Clinton played it right. He didn’t splurge on spending,(although his wife was tempted with the HillaryCare Boondoggle), and when he did increase taxes, he paid down the debt with them.
“I would’nt want to be in charge as the ship is going down….”
It’s not going down. A few years ago, the Chairman of the Fed opined that the market was suffering from “Irrational Exuberance”.
Ship rolls to starboard, and then rolls just as far to port…
We have to roll towards “Unreasoning Despair” before we return to an even keel.
The peril lies in what commands the helmsman is given…if you’re rolling to port, you don’t steer to port. That’s how you capsize.
And take it from someone who was aboard an 850′+ long bulker,(carrying government wheat bound for Egypt, no less),when it rolled 57′ to port…you DON’T want to start walking on the bulkheads.
I’ve sailed rustbuckets through weather in the North Atlantic that would have you on your knees beseeching every god you knew or had ever heard of to get you home.
Chill out and do your f’ing job. We’ll get through this if we just each take care of ourselves and each do our bit.
Yes, ultimately, it’s in the hands of the Almighty. Everything is. So it’s no use at all to allow yourself to get worked up into a panic.
So we get beat up a little before we get through…so what?
We’re special?
