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Friday, April 29, 2016 - 5:07pmSanction this postReply
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That poll was certainly sad.  Even more so when you look deeper.  Millenials are nearly all out of college (or soon will be).  And they have been thoroughly indoctrinated.  Unless something quite striking and very unexpected occurs, they are, to a degree, a lost generation politically.  They are likely to support and vote those bad beliefs for the rest of their lives - say three to five decades.

 

When you realize that the problem is the educational system which has been deeply infected with progressive/socialist views, and you realize that there is no sign of a change in the trend towards ever increasing levels of progressivism in the universities.  If we assume that a trend against progressivism begins, it could be a decade or so to change the educational systems, and then a couple of generations for the effects to find their way deeply into the culture - changing the mass media, changing the journalists, changing the voters, and so forth.

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The series of books I'm in the process of writing are my small attempt to spread the ideas that are needed to change this trend away from capitalism.  The first book is now on Amazon as a Kindle book (Wolfer's Primer on Progressivism) and it will be available there as a paperback in 3 or 4 days.  The second book will be on the nature of government.  That's about a month away.  After that will be one on human nature.  There is no way to understand the proper relationship between government and people without individual rights - and they arise out of human nature.  The last one in this political series will be on Liberty.  The idea behind the one on Liberty is to show what is invisible - just plain not there - when we don't have a minimal government.  Most people alive today have never experienced life in a stable, vibrant economy.  One that is growing at about 6 to 8 percent.  My hope is that the books will first, show the dishonesty of progressivism and how tightly tied to socialism it is.  Then with the nature of government book I'll present the fundamental choice between an institution purposefully designed to protect individual rights versus an institution that preys on people using a monopoly of authorized force and show how much better free enterprise can handle everything - and do so morally.

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p.s., the first release of my book on progressivism was full of typos (sorry).  It took a while, but I've cleaned that up and those who bought that first release can delete it from their smart phone or computer or Kindle device and then reload it... or just use the "Sync" menu item to get the newest version (which also has a number of new chapters on the law).



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Saturday, April 30, 2016 - 4:55amSanction this postReply
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Bernie Sanders calls himself a "democratic socialist" and has pointed to Scandinavia as a model for his vision of an ideal America (link #1link #2).

 

"However, the Scandinavian countries are not good examples of democratic socialism in action because they aren’t socialist.

      In the Scandinavian countries, like all other developed nations, the means of production are primarily owned by private individuals, not the community or the government, and resources are allocated to their respective uses by the market, not government or community planning."

 

"I know that some people in the US associate the Nordic model with some sort of socialism. Therefore I would like to make one thing clear. Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy."

 

The Scandinavians embrace a brand of free-market capitalism that exists in conjunction with a large welfare state, known as the 'Nordic Model,' which includes many policies that democratic socialists would likely abhor." (link #3).

 

Nordic model



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Post 2

Saturday, April 30, 2016 - 8:39amSanction this postReply
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Unfortunately lots of people think the US is a capitalist economy, and then blame their problems on capitalism. They think maybe the grass is greener on the other side of the fence.  Unfortunately they don't realize that they already are on the other side of the fence.

 

With the federal government enforcing a monopoly on money, and now "too big to fail" banks loaning out money at insane reserve ratios to fulfill political objectives... we are now very far from a capitalist system. Bankers and politicians are now deciding what our savings should be invested in.  In capitalism, entrepreneurs risk their own savings in the attempt to create products that satisfy the greatest needs of the consumers.  Basically our socialist monopoly money system has created a giant "bubble economy", where the means of production (companies, factories, tools, job skills) have been producing things that consumers don't really want.  The whole economy needs to shift away from what it's doing now (makings houses, cars, and social bachelor college diplomas). Instead it should create whatever it is that consumers actually would want if we let the entrepreneurs risk their own money to satisfy the consumer.

 

Given an average income tax burden of 31.5% in the US (2016 taxfoundation.org), about 1/3 of production is taken from producers and given to government.  Minimum wage laws price low skill and low productivity jobs out of the market. Child labor laws and mandatory school force young people to learn useless information instead of being able to enter the workforce and aquire real life skills, products, and self esteem.  Government enforced monopolies created by licencing severely increase the cost of Healthcare and other goods and services.  Government subsidiaries in agriculture and nutrition research alter consumer choices in diet.

 

With the "Federal" "Reserve" on the verge of needing to do another round of money printing ("quantitative easing") in order to bail out banks and the federal government, who can't stay solvent with 0.5% interest rates, clearly our society is already at or even beyond the limits of how socialist it can become.  Any further and we risk monetary collapse, which is a hard limit on purchasing power the government can steal from savers, and hence limit on socialist wealth redistribution.  To go beyond this limit is to ask for Stalin like deprivation.



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Saturday, April 30, 2016 - 10:51amSanction this postReply
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Good post, Dean.

 

Any further [socialist moves] and we risk monetary collapse, which is a hard limit on purchasing power the government can steal from savers, and hence limit on socialist wealth redistribution.  To go beyond this limit is to ask for Stalin like deprivation.

 

I'd just add that without strong moves back towards a free economy, we will get the collapse you speak of without any further moves to the left.  The existing system needs increasing levels of control and inflation and borrowing to stay propped up.  At a certain point, it will collapse without further intervention, but it will also collapse with increased intervention. 

 

It is the regulatory state that is becoming the heaviest burden - along with the many changes to the legal system - including the shifts that let Tort law act as the pit bull attacking businesses on behalf of progressive social agendas.  The regulatory state combined with defending against our now very twisted legal system has come to cost business more than taxes.



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