Comments by "Ōkami-san" (@mweibleii) on "Caller: The American Government is the Problem." video.

If you think Welfare works take a look at any Public Housing project. In a wealthy nation like ours, Welfare should only be for extreme poverty - and this would be rare, something Charity would take care of. In MI we ended welfare and that alone was the biggest job creation program that actually produced jobs in the USA. A little secret politicians do NOT like to repeat - one I'm not surprised if you hadn't heard about. See, they want you to think you need them. This is not true.
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British economist Angus Maddison showed, American per-capita income was already the highest in the world, by the mid 1830s. From 1865 and 1898 (the Gilded Age) output of wheat increased by 256%, corn by 222%, coal by 800% and miles of railway track by 567%. SEE: "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, 1987, p 242" Population growth was 25-37% in the 1800s - again evidence of a prosperous America who could afford those large families. As of today it's barely 2.5%.
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If you think Washington would approve of generational welfare you are wrong. There was a HUGE debate over taking care of Civil War widows. Hamilton was for it and Madison against. Madison won. (it should be noted, give Thom likes to bring up Hamilton, he was also for Senators and POTUS for LIFE. He wanted an English-styled American aristocracy. He'd have LOVED the Banksters - given he was one).
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It was Immanuel Kant who first proposed the philosophical notion of a State based on voluntarism - more than 200 years ago. Kant named four kinds of government: A. Law and freedom without force (anarchy). B. Law and force without freedom (despotism). C. Force without freedom and law (barbarism). D. Force with freedom and law (republic). Believing something as propaganda as a logical refutation - is itself a superstition. Either something is true or not true. Something you may want to consider.
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The economic data also shows Costco also puts more people out of work in a community as they run their stores will LESS employees and are more efficient (no people hired as Greaters at Cisco). I know people who work at Walmart and are happy they have a job.
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Obviously you need money to buy things and you need things to make money. Seems like a catch 22 huh? History suggests the things existed before the money. You need things first, money is simply an accounting tool used to trade those things. Healthy economies are those that make those things (like we were, and China now is). You suggestions requires a lot of force - which will cost a lot of prosperity. I OTOH suggest Ending the Fed / violence and using community based money voluntarily.
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RE: All economies are created by demand for goods. This is an interesting argument, and I'd suggest you have the horse before the cart. You need the goods BEFORE you can have demand for them. Agreed? Which means what you really need is savings/capitol to make goods, not credit card debt. If you think giving money to people via welfare is 'helping' the economy I'm afraid you are wrong - it's slowly destroying the economy. Which is why there are so few good paying jobs.
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I would only make this last argument: When money functions it acts to facilitate trade and act as a store of value. We do not have money. We have fiat currency and so long as we do we'll need concepts like taxing the worker/labor tax/income tax to give it the inherent value it lacks. This inherent need for force will find its way into every aspect of society so that one day we have a society where buying labor is seen as the same as slavery. An inevitable perversion of using force.
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THOM: The PURSUIT is a CRIME. Are you kidding me? No it's not. THOM: Do what the 911 operator tell you do. No one has to do what the 911 operator tells them to do. THOM: Let the police deal with it. Sorry Thom but Police are not above the Citizen. Want to know what's destroying the "Black" Community? Welfare and minimum wage. Blacks are dying under a poisonous fog called Public Service. You know, the thing the takes in $85 to administer $15.
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RE: Under the fiat system we can never go broke. Tell that to North Korea, they're swimming in fiat currency. The 1940s are not going to be repeated today. Again, the workers of 1940 were born in a time when the Fed Gov was <3% GDP. When they were born, 1910, you didn't even have to have an MD to work as a medical doctor. That was a time of free market capitalism and it ushered IN the 1940-50s prosperity. 1940 didn't just pop into existence out of a vacuum. It itself was a product of the 1910s
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Yes, if you bothered to look up the history of minimum wage you'll soon find out it was New York Democrat Union workers who wanted to STOP African Americans from the south coming up to New York and competing for AND WINNING construction contracts. Minimum wage was a way to PREVENT Blacks from competing and taking Whites jobs. This is a fact of history.
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RE: it were a true free market WalMart couldn't be as profitable because of the welfare and tax breaks. I agree. Thanks to the Fed Gov over the last 100 years, our entire economy is totally F*cked. BUT, there's nothing wrong with Walmart or Cosco. You could think of them as retail machines making retail more efficient. It's GOOD they put stores out of business as this frees people up to do other things. In the future 3D printers will put Walmart out of business - and that will also be good.
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Sorry, but you're wrong, you do have the Civil Right to follow people in public. And if they attack you, you can shot them to defend yourself. The nice thing about this argument, is we'll know which of us is correct soon enough. Given the evidence thus far, you may not want to hold your breath.
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The most prosperous period in the US history was between 1850 and 1910. Did we see real growth between 1940-1980? Yes and No. There has been HUGE gains in productivity. But, why don't we see an equivalent standard of living? Why is it in 1950 a single father could raise a middle class family of 4 from age of 22. Whereas now both parents work and barely afford maybe 2 children in their late 30s. IMO prosperity has been deteriorating in the USA since around 1965 and the Great Society.
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JKF "Of course, having on the market a rather large source of cheap labor depresses wages outside of that group, too – the wages of the white worker who has to compete. And when an employer can substitute a colored worker at a lower wage?" “Although probably no senator today would dare admit it, many who vote for increases in the minimum wage understand that one consequence will be to destroy jobs for the least skilled workers, a disproportionate number of whom are black”
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You make it sound like the defendant started the fight, whereas the evidence suggests he was following him (that's not starting a fight). Whereas Thom will use the word "Stalking" because he's demagoguing his audience, the truth seems to be he was following him because he thought the kid was up to no good. I am sure you do not want to live in a world where if you do something (ex: look at someone the wrong way) they can come over and kick your arse and if you defend yourself YOU go to jail.
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RE: Kant He was a Republican. Obviously living under a King he had a convenient predilection for *gasp* constitutional monarchs - Given he thought that Kings were appointed of God. But, look at us. We can't really point fingers. Most Americans think a Republic with a POTUS sitting in place of a Constitutional Monarch is ideal. Atheists, like myself, sometimes poll lower than Terrorists in the public polls. An example of why representative Democracy is an inherently flawed system.
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One last point: Ever think about what a 30 year Bond is? What do the Chinese buy when they purchase a 30 year Bond? The labor of unborn children. These children have no 'vote' in how their future labor will be spent today. Hence the NEED for a Labor Tax/Worker's Tax/Income Tax Someone is paying for the "Great Society" of 1960s, and Progressive Fascism isn't cheap, that someone are the young adults today. The Founding Father's would have found this sickening in it's level of immoral depravity.
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RE: how do you feel about employers that steal from employees? You're using the word 'steal' incorrectly. When you go to the store and get a good deal (say something is on sale) are you a thief?!? No, the store owner had to much of something and had to sell it cheap. Thanks to the government we have too much labor and so it's cheap. In a free market the prices of everything would ALSO be going down. But, thanks to the Federal Reserve ONLY wages are going down while everything else is going up.
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As for New Zealand, obviously they had their own reasons for implementing a minimum wage. But, I promise you, it had the same overall effect. Which industrial country doesn't have a minimum wage? Wealthy Singapore. I understand you think raising minimum wage will make like better, but the evidence suggests it makes life worse. A better approach is to educate schoolchildren to want to start businesses and then labor will be in demand and wages will rise (see Australian mining as an example).
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The last point I'd make about welfare is one I'm sure you would agree on. As of now >80% of the money allocated for welfare is spend Administering welfare. That must end. - Generational welfare must end. - Public education must be totally overhauled and poor performing teachers canned (my daughter will have mixed home and private alternative secular schooling). - Regulations must be removed that prevent people from starting businesses (which is the REAL growth of a prosperous economy, NOT debt).
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A couple points about the 1940s.; Firstly, the people born in 1910 would have been 30 and in their prime productivity by 1940. Ever think about these people? They generally did not attend public school, and when they did - only for 4 hours per day. They didn't have the minimum wages of the 1960s or the welfare of the 1960s. It was their capitol/savings that was spent in the 1960s. By the 70s, two wars later, we were so broke we couldn't even pay our way, ended the gold standard and went fiat.
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RE: Workers create the wealth for the employer. They deserve their share of the profits. Yeah, it's called their wage. Secondly, you seem to forget (or don't know) BOITH people are selling something. The coffee shop owner sells coffee and market price. BUT the worker is selling something - LABOR. It ALSO should go at market price. In a free market good labor is hard to come by and like anything scarce is valuable. Thanks to the State it's hard to open a business and labor is dirt cheap.
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RE: Not liking Obama due to Racism (another one of Thom's favoured arguments). Local protesters gathered to chant against OBAMA'S US foreign policy, American drone strikes, US policy in Guantanamo and Iran and much more. And where hit with stun grandes. They were hardly racist - given this was yesterday in AFRICA. Lastly, the caller is correct and has identified Thom as the demagogue he is. Race baiting is just another tool in the kit to split citizens and bit them against one another.
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