steveinbsas said:
Let's exhume Milton Friedman...
I agree with that very much.
Ever since Adam Smith introduced his theory of the invisible hand, the world has been enlightened to the marvelous mass symphony of mankind known as the "marketplace." All of the Libertarian based (Classical Liberal, to be exact) economists of the world - from the Chicago school to the von Hayek-ian Austrian school to the late great Mr. Friedman - have proven time and again that deregulation works while government control slowly grows inefficient and withers the economic vine. We need only to look at a few principles that control our lives: self-preservation, personal ability and personal responsibility. Out of self-preservation one will work to the best of their ability to provide
necessities for their own life. A person's ability will determine how they can sustain themselves, which is also affected by how hard they are willing to work to attain any goal said person might set. Finally, personal responsibility is just that - faith in your fellow man that if they fail, they will try again, not blaming others for their own shortcomings., but pulling themselves up by their bootstraps.
And to make one other point... These times are not unprecedented. Banks were left with nothing but the rafters by 1930. Not only were there runs on the banks, but there were no "required reserves" in banks, so the original Wall Street scam artists would invest bank loaned money. When the market crashed, there was no way to pay back your loan (because it was lost in the NYSE), so people panicked and made runs on banks, which forced banks to call in loans, which had been lost when the market crashed, and so on, and so on...
The difference was, back then, when a company failed, IT FAILED. When the well was dry, there was no more water, PERIOD. And this is in a time where the standard of living was at the point where if you couldn't afford your home, you built a small house on some land and dug an outhouse because plumbing was too expensive. My family farmed and taught school during the Depression. My grandparents, and millions like them, carried the torch of personal responsibility throughout their entire lives, no matter how wealthy or poor they eventually became. Today, the destitute in America live better than the lower-middle class of many developed nations. When compared to the former Soviet states, Middle East, China, SE Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa - our poor live better than almost all the citizens of these countries!
Nowadays, the corporate balance sheets are wrecked, but no one in the US is hungry. When starvation is a leading cause if death in this world, it is nothing short of selfish and spoiled for an American on food stamps to buy cigarettes or US Weekly or a six-pack. The USA's poor act as if they are mistreated, when compared to the rest of the world, their standard of living index is in the 90th percentile. Even our homeless have a better chance at surviving day-to-day than many Africans and SE Asians.
I am sorry for rambling on. Even more sorry because I am new to the forum and of course don't know any of you. Regarding Pres. Obama - notwithstanding the pros and cons of his personality or past faux pas, will his policies hurt or help the US and in turn the world? History says government help hurts (See Cuba, USSR, East Germany, North Korea, etc... now introducing Venezuela). History also says less government helps (the US until ealry 20th century, 90s boom after Reagan cutbacks and tax cuts, ditto in UK after Thatcher, etc). So are Obama critics right? His proponents? History will rear its ugly predictable head and paint an incredibly similar picture, and you can bet there's an invisible had somewhere in there.
-Razorback
And to Sergio - I grew up down the highway from Clinton's hometown, in another poor rural Arkansas town with a "poor" education. While I don't agree with his politics, Clinton is an example of how self-preservation, personal ability and personal responsibility drove a man from humble means to the most powerful man in the world.
