RoR: Forum

I believe we may see BILLIONS leaving the country, I saw that one of the co-founders of Facebook is renouncing citizenship and moving to Singapore. It would not surprise me if Bill Gates and many others also flee.
It appears that this is going to be the new "Galt's Gulch".
It does not surprise me in the least that these ex-pats will be labeled as economic "traitors" by the vulturous left.

Post 1

Sunday, January 6, 2013 - 8:24am

Singapore is experiencing exceptional growth (in relation to most other countries), yet American politicians, in general, will never admit they need to adopt Singapore's economic model.

It would completely undermine everything they have attempted the over the past decade. And they can't just admit that they were wrong (they refuse to relinquish any power), they need to hold onto the nation's ass until it bleeds (channeling Fred here). Until the nation has hit the bottom. Who will they blame then?

Jules,

The Facebook co-founder is Eduardo Saverin. If one wants an idea of the U.S.'s ideological climate, one only needs to look at the response to Saverin's imminent departure.

Sen. Charles Schumer had this to say:

"Eduardo Saverin wants to defriend the United States of America just to avoid paying taxes," Sen. Schumer (D-NY) told reporters at a news conference. "We aren't going to let him get away with it."

http://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2012/05/19/american-politicians-should-learn-some-policy-lessons-from-hong-kong-and-singapore/

Has Schumer considered that the United States wouldn't have any "friends" if it weren't for Eduardo Saverin? His statement indicates he has. And surely he has made the connection that high earners don't like high taxes. Then why does he support such policies?

Open verbal attacks on individual liberty (the only kind of liberty there is) are more common than ever in the history of the U.S. However, this quote in particular sticks in my mind.

My first response to this quote was:

"No, not here, not in the United States."

As I look around, I see so many in agreement with Schumer's statement.

The tribe is salivating over Saverin's carcass.

I am glad there are those who have spoken out against Schumer's brazen affront to liberty. But those who have spoken in Saverin's defense are drowned out in the sea of collectivism, bromides, and mindless chants.

How much longer does the U.S. have?

Post 2

Sunday, January 6, 2013 - 11:29am

I know! It makes me sick Kyle. There is going to be a lot of pain in the next few years. The people are going to have to quietly bend and accept the yoke of slavery or say "enough is enough" and actually overthrow the government which has become both tyrannical and despotic. The government has made it very clear that it has no intentions of actually changing and as Fred has said it has it's foot on the throttle driving the bus over the financial cliff.
The smart ones are fleeing before the pogroms begin...
Race wars
Persecution of capitalists
Remember "you didn't build that"
Remember "we are all in this together"
Remember"we as a nation rise or fall together"
Remember"if you succeeded you didnt do it alone by your own initiative"

The individual no longer matters..

Welcome to the beginnings of the USSA.

Post 3

Sunday, January 6, 2013 - 5:23pm

I agree that it'll get worse before getting better, but I don't foresee the total economic destruction of this country.

For instance, imagine a scenario where half of all those with a million dollars or more have expatriated. Take a second to let it sink in, because it is not easy to imagine something like that. Okay, so we're here in the US, and half of all millionaires have left for something better. Okay, that's bad. These guys were some of the most productive among us. Now, they are gone. What do we have left? Chaos. Food shortages. Public strife similar to that of the French Revolution. An emergency meeting is called by Congress, all of whom have started to fear repercussions. They are unanimous in their decision:

Throw out all socialists and replace them with capitalists -- because it is no longer safe in the "new" America.

A rubric is created and politicians failing on the socialism-scale are asked to step down or face the starving mob. As with any sane person in the same circumstance, they all step down, and life gets better again.

Ed

Post 4

Sunday, January 6, 2013 - 6:22pm

An emergency meeting is called by Congress, all of whom have started to fear repercussions. They are unanimous in their decision: Throw out all socialists and replace them with capitalists

Yeah? I don't think so. I'd say it's more likely they outlaw various forms the repercussions might take, blame someone else for the problems - like those traitorous rich people, propose new cures that involve "comprehensive" legislation, and make it a crime for anyone to "unfairly" abandon the country - stopping those millionaires and billionaires from endangering our well-being.

You don't think a crash is coming. That would be great, but I'm now thinking that like too many severe substance abusers, the politicians won't turn around and get straight on balanced budgets and small governments until things hit bottom totally - until no new law, no new regulation and no amount of tax increases will help, until no one will accept our debt instruments at an interest rate we can pay, and when new currency is discounted as fast as it created. I don't think we will do the right thing until it is the last thing available - when there are no other options.

Post 5

Sunday, January 6, 2013 - 8:03pm

Steve,

... but I'm now thinking that like too many severe substance abusers, the politicians won't turn around and get straight on balanced budgets and small governments until things hit bottom totally ...

I would be with you on that but look at it this way. In order for your statement to be true, then almost everyone has to be screwed up. For instance, if almost everyone thought that we can spend our way out of debt then, sure, we would have to hit bottom totally before attempting something different (such as capitalism). If almost everyone thought the government wasn't getting too big, or the debt too large, or the regulations too numerous, or the taxes too high ...

But at least a third of the country -- and possibly more than half of the country (all the way up to two-thirds of the country!) -- isn't getting so schnookered by all this Alinski propaganda from that elite minority that they would agree to walk that plank all the way to the edge. Now there are 2 ways to go off that plank: odds and force. I admit there's a gamble here, a tipping point. If things pass some sort of Rubicon, we're toast. That's the odds part -- the odds that cooler heads fail to prevail as crisis metamorphisizes into catastrophe. Also, there's the idea of force.

From the moment he gave that presentation about having his very own "civilian army" -- coupled with Michelle telling us that he is going to force us all to live differently -- I knew what he and his advisors were all about. I don't need to see or hear any more about that. Even still, assuming that he is a hard-hearted power-luster who has nothing but empty, deceitful charm -- there is the question of whether he can get away with it. I don't know for sure, but I have serious doubts. I not only don't believe in hope and change, I don't believe that folks will continually believe in brand-new propaganda about hope and change.

While easy to envision from inside an ivory tower, it'd be hard to take over this country, because there are so many freedom-lovers here.

Ed

Post 6

Sunday, January 6, 2013 - 10:06pm

...assuming that he [Obama] is a hard-hearted power-luster who has nothing but empty, deceitful charm -- there is the question of whether he can get away with it.

He got elected in 2008. He has run as a Progressive. He got re-elected. Obamacare is the law. GM still stands for Government Motors. DOD-Frank is law. He won the fiscal cliff thing. He is telling the people that his approach is balanced, and that he has already cut 1.5 trillion. There are way to many people that don't care that he is lying.

...it'd be hard to take over this country, because there are so many freedom-lovers here.

It's more complex than that, otherwise we wouldn't have been following the trajectory that we have, for as long as we have, or gone as far as we have. FDR outlawed gold with no more than an executive order. We have been on a bad path for a long time.

More than half of the voters put Obama back in office AFTER his last 4 years! Who is going to tell them the truth... the media? The colleges? Apart from Objectivists, and most Libertarians, and a small number of fiscal/constitutional conservatives, who doesn't believe that government is the answer to their pet projects and peeves.

Only a tiny, tiny portion of the public really understands the nature of a constitutional republic like ours. If we get just one of the more or less conservative Supreme Court justices replaced with a much younger progressive, can you imagine what will be ruled "constitutional" and what will be ruled "unconstitutional"?

Too many people do NOT think. They believe what they are told by the people they listen to. Like the media. If they just start to lose faith in Hope and Change, then Obama's pollsters and spinmeisters will say that conservatives have ruined things, but he has a new plan (and it will be made of a bunch of poll-tested phrases). If people start yelling that they want freedom, and they are doing so loudly, and in large numbers, then he will explain that is what he is fighting for - their freedom... and he will spin what 'freedom' means by using both lies and other poll-tested words and phrases. It will be enough because of the horrible education that a majority of the voters have received, and his willingness to lie, and that he is organized and purposeful in his scheme - more than the opposition, that's for sure.

The closer you move to tyranny, the greater the chaos, the greater the level of social stress, hence the greater the need of many to believe in those empty promises. But the propaganda will need to accelerate. They will need demons to blame things on. The rich, the Tea Party people, the conservatives in the House, etc. They will need to take the psychic energy of scared people and convert it anger and direct it. The string of crisis that we see as evidence of his bad policy will be his meat and potatoes for getting the change that he wants. Demonizing, blaming and using the fear generated during a crisis is a pattern that has happened many times before in history - we aren't exempt or immune.

Objectivists and Libertarians have always been on the side of truth... with a better understanding of what is needed. But the progressives have been organized, have controlled education, become the puppet-masters of mass media, gotten away with lies, and have fielded a working game plan for over 100 years.

It takes a fairly high level of maturity in the average citizen to support real freedom and I don't think our current culture has that. The progressives won't so much "take over our country" as they will just be the lying, cheerleaders at the head of the parade as they manipulate the votes by which our country democratically destroys the freedom the vast majority don't even understand.

Post 7

Monday, January 7, 2013 - 6:17am

Steve,

Good response.

It will be enough because of the horrible education that a majority of the voters have received, and his willingness to lie, and that he is organized and purposeful in his scheme - more than the opposition, that's for sure.

Great point. It's true but in that respect it contains the antidote: education, honesty, organization, and purpose.

Ed

Post 8

Monday, January 7, 2013 - 6:17am

[double post deleted]

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 1/07, 2:01pm)

Post 9

Monday, January 7, 2013 - 11:01am

Ed,

I agree that education, honesty, organization, and purpose are the antidote to our situation. And informed, well-organized honesty is more potent than any form of lying. And education regarding more consistent principles will result in people more powerful in moving in the right direction, than those moving in the wrong direction.

The problem is that, in practice, the antidote takes generations to work. I see the most likely scenario being one where rational egoism and capitalism rise up, slowly, but certainly, but not until we have crashed so far, and been down so long that even the ignorant and unthinking can no longer work up any enthusiasm to support progressive ideas. The sense of crisis will have passed and grown stale, and the horrors of what has been done to us will be felt, if not understood, by the masses. And THAT is the environment where education can begin to convert from progressive to capitalist. That is the environment where the power to expand its base will belong to the Objectivists... and after that it is just a matter of a few generations to put in place a new set of voters, writers, talking heads, journalists, politicians, etc.

Post 10

Monday, January 7, 2013 - 2:05pm

Steve,

I don't yet have a link, but George Will said that history will record the fiscal cliff deal as the death-knell of liberalism in America. He said it made the Bush tax cuts permanent for the middle class, and that you cannot fund a welfare state without taxing the middle class.

What do you think of that?

Ed

Post 11

Monday, January 7, 2013 - 5:48pm

Ed,

The left hasn't admitted that their scheme (funding a welfare state without taxing the middle class) is a problem. They certainly don't admit that borrowing and printing aren't sustainable, and they haven't even admitted that something has to change soon. They tend to launch their urgent calls for comprehensive this or that that is several thousand pages in a bill that is the culmination of a crisis and is voted on less than 24 hours after it is presented to the legislators. Then they go back to more of a resting mode where they are encouraging everyone to try to have a free lunch... to think we can have our cake and eat it too. (Which causes the next crisis, which they take advantage of, and as Fred might say, "lather, rinse, and repeat.")

And they love taxes. Saying they won't tax the middle class is just propaganda. After all, the middle class will be the ones paying for the bulk of Obamacare. And the liberals will just keep hitting businesses - look for value added taxes to come along as soon as it becomes more obvious that we have a much bigger cliff ahead of us than behind us. (And they will tell their base and the voters that a value-added tax is on the rich because they own the businesses... ignoring that it will all be paid for by the consumers).

Dick Morris just pointed something interesting out. He talked about the concept he used when he was the chief political adviser to Bill Clinton - "triangulation." The idea was to give your opponents what they want in certain areas, the ones you care the least about, or that you will end up losing anyway, and that makes it look like you've moved to the center. In fact it just strengthens you for the fight you want and the one you hope you can win, while making it look like you compromised. He points out that the Republican's lost the fiscal cliff battle, but that it positions them well by taking away much of Obama's argument that we should tax the rich - he got his way on that. Now he has no substantial place to hide when the Republican's say we have to solve the problem of the deficit - he can't say, "We need to tax the rich" because he just did that. So, the bright side of the fiscal cliff loss is that, as Morris put it, Obama has no more "tax the rich" fig leaf to hide behind. (But I think that George Will and Dick Morris are underestimating Obama's willing to see and live by rational consequences. And, the press won't point out his lies or flip-flops

Again, I think that the underlying issue is education (takes generations), the media (requires generations of education), the progressives chosen propensity to lie, and their organized, purposeful move towards statism, while the opposition is fractured and inefficient.

Maybe the average person, even uneducated, and unorganized, will arise out of disgust and anger and vote in small government proponents. But the percentage of voters who receive government stipends or paychecks or work for companies that feed off of government... added to those who are fierce Democrats (labor activists, environmentalists, the far left, blacks, most Hispanics, etc.) - and I not seeing this trend overturned. The cultural bias for the left is in the driver's seat and looks to be there for some time to come.

Post 12

Monday, January 7, 2013 - 6:03pm

Things are getting worse on so many fronts at once... The dollar's precarious position as the global currency of choice. The fragile state of Europe's weaker nations. The growing debt, deficit, and inflationary actions. The amount of debt globally relative to what's produced, or to what is saved. The growing regulatory burden in a global economy. The effects of higher taxes. The intense factionalism that keeps congress from doing anything worthwhile. The fact that although education is the primary long-term solution nothing is even on the horizon for reversing 100+ years of progressivism (Objectivism and Libertarianism got more air time this year, and they are growing in academia, but not as fast as Progressivism).

And here is another thing to worry about, in case you think you need more worries:

California, Hawaii, New Mexico, Illinois, Ohio, Kentucky, Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, New York, and Maine... they all have MORE PEOPLE ON WELFARE THAN ARE EMPLOYED!

Now, imagine that you look at the other states and add to the numbers of their welfare recipients their share of federal workers, their state, county, and city employees, and some portion of the employees of private contracting companies that get their revenues from one level or another of government. Now how many states are carrying around a burden of more than one parasite per worker?

Assume the trend continues for a few more years. Texas, Wyoming and Utah will probably be among the last to go negative like this, but they can't overcome the negative effects of all the other states. All pyramid schemes eventually topple.

Borrow, print, tax and lie all to redistribute... but in the end it has to collapse - no one will go to work to have all of their money taken for others.

Post 13

Monday, January 7, 2013 - 6:14pm

Here is an article at Forbes on the Death Spiral states

And here is some speculation about states ending up with exit taxes - to keep the productive from fleeing rather than being fleeced (like Sen. Chuck Schummer's desire to hunt down and rob those who leave our country to avoid taxes, e.g., that fellow from Facebook who turned in his passport and took up residence in Singapore... but on a state level).

Post 14

Monday, January 7, 2013 - 7:32pm

Steve,

California, Hawaii, New Mexico, Illinois, Ohio, Kentucky, Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, New York, and Maine... they all have MORE PEOPLE ON WELFARE THAN ARE EMPLOYED!

Ugh. I'm curious, which of these went for Obama in 2012?

Another factoid comes from looking at the first-time unemployment roles. If you start back in January 2009, and you count each week's numbers going ahead from there until now, then over 26 million people have become unemployed under our new "Jonah Goldberg"-coined smiley-faced fascism. [and that's assuming that the shenanigans Obama has been playing regarding holding up nomination at the BLS don't indicate that he is holding off on this nomination in order to keep using a "yes man" on the inside -- acting as the Bureau's head -- in order to falsify the job numbers (since February 2010).]

Now there is background turnover, and it is normal that some people will lose jobs and that some people will gain new jobs. Let's assume that the imagined BLS "yes man" is fudging the BLS numbers by 25-50% -- so that things are actually 25-50% worse than they are currently being reported. That would mean that almost 1-in-2 employees, and more than 1-in-3 employees, have lost their job since 2009. Even without this imagined fudging, about 1-in-4 have lost their jobs.

Double-ugh.

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 1/07, 7:34pm)

Post 15

Monday, January 7, 2013 - 8:48pm

I reported that "California, Hawaii, New Mexico, Illinois, Ohio, Kentucky, Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, New York, and Maine... they all have MORE PEOPLE ON WELFARE THAN ARE EMPLOYED!"

You wondered which of those states went for Obama in 2012....

The answer is California, Hawaii, New Mexico, Illinois, Ohio, Mississippi, New York, and Maine all went for Obama. (Three of the eleven didn't: Kentucky, South Carolina, Alabama.)

Post 16

Tuesday, January 8, 2013 - 7:10am

I wonder where these figures came from.

Post 17

Tuesday, January 8, 2013 - 9:00am

Peter,

I don't know where the numbers came from on the 11 states with more welfare recipients than employee that I mentioned in my post above. But the Forbes article I linked to in another post has a very similar state Death-Spiral article with a slightly different way of establishing their list of states and they give their sources: "The Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and a study of state worker pensions done in 2009 by two academics, Joshua Rauh and Rovert Novy-Marx." They do a measure that includes government workers with welfare recipients and measures a state's credit worthiness. They don't provide enough info to vet the numbers from the article alone.

Post 18

Tuesday, January 8, 2013 - 2:59pm

Peter,

Which figures?

Ed

Post 19

Tuesday, January 8, 2013 - 4:26pm