No One Stood With Rand Paul 2016

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Top City Homo: Oct 15, 2014; Ramrod XTreme

Exclamation Marx posted:

Remember Ron Paul? He was the Bernie Sanders of 2008 & 2012. He also gave the world a son, Dr. Randal Howard "Rand" Paul, who is running to become PotUS!
How exciting!

What does Rand Paul Stand Paul for?

Audit the Fed: A complete and thorough audit of the Fed will finally allow the American people to know exactly how their money is being spent by Washington. For too long, the Fed has been operating under a cloak of secrecy. The American people have a right to know what the Federal Reserve is doing with our nation's money supply.

Defense: The Founding Fathers (PBUT) understood the seriousness of war and thus included in our Constitution a provision stating that only Congress can declare war. We must maintain this important check and balance and the decision to wage war should not be taken lightly.

Immigration: As a libertarian, Rand would secure our border immediately. Before issuing any visas or starting the legal immigration process, we must first ensure that our border is secure. In order to protect our nation and reform the immigration process, we must know who is and is not entering our country by first securing our border.

NSA Spying: Today, the United States government engages in the bulk collection of personal data from every American with a cell phone. The founding fathers (PBUT) would be ashamed if they could see the massive growth of government that has taken place at the expense of our constitutional liberties.

Israel: Israeli caf�s and buses are bombed, towns are victimized by hundreds of rockets, and its citizens are attacked by Palestinian terrorists. It�s time we took a stand for Israel by standing up to the enemies of Israel, the enemies that murder Israeli citizens.

Abortion: As a libertarian, Rand strongly believes in the sanctity of life. He believes that life begins at conception and that abortion takes the life of an innocent human being. Under the 14th Amendment, it is the government�s duty to protect life as defined in our Constitution.

The Tax Code:

thanks

# ¿ Jul 26, 2015 00:13

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 09:46

Top City Homo: Oct 15, 2014; Ramrod XTreme

) Low wages are not corporate exploitation. In a free country, people voluntarily accept employment, so all workers believe their current job to be the best choice from among their opportunity set. If a business paid its workers much less than they were worth, a competitor would offer more and hire them away. As consumers, when we go shopping, we are happy to find low prices. We certainly do not go out of our way to pay more than we need to for things. Businesses are the same when they are buying labor; they do not pay more than they need to pay. Businesses exist to make profit, so a business will not, and should not, pay its workers more just because it has the profits available to do so. Workers get paid more only when they become more productive or when the price of what they make goes up.

4) Environmental over-regulation is a regressive tax that falls hardest on the poor. When we reduce pollution more than we should, worry about climate change more than we should, or over-restrict access to natural resources, prices go up. Because the poor spend a higher percentage of their income, forcing up prices is a bigger penalty on the poor. Blocking the Keystone XL pipeline is a perfect example of how environmental extremists are causing energy prices to be higher.

5) Education is not a public good. We provide publicly funded K-12 education to all (even to non-citizens), but the education provided produces human capital that is privately owned by each person. This human capital means more work skills, more developed talent, and more potential productivity. People with more human capital generally get paid more, collecting the returns from their education in the form of higher earnings. One common defense of education as a public good is worth refuting here. Yes, education helps people invent things that benefit society. However, they will expect to be paid for those inventions, not give them away for free in return for their education.

6) High CEO pay is no worse than high pay to athletes or movie stars. Yes, CEOs are paid a lot, maybe too much. The top professional athletes, television and movie stars, singers, lawyers, and hedge fund managers also all make lots of money. High CEO pay does not reduce the pay average workers get any more than high athlete pay means that the equipment manager gets paid less or the roadies on a Rolling Stones tour make less when the Rolling Stones make more. The high pay of CEOs, movie stars, and athletes all come out of the pockets of the owners of the business, movie studio, and team, respectively. Such pay reduces profits, but not the pay of other workers who are paid what they are worth in the marketplace. Shareholders have a right to complain about CEO pay, but other employees and labor activists do not.

7) Consumer spending is not what drives the economy. An extra dollar of investment, government spending, or net exports adds just as much to GDP as does a dollar of consumer spending. In fact, until recently, consumer spending was 65 percent of GDP (find an old economics textbook and look it up for yourself). Then, as savings fell beginning in the 1980s and consumer credit became more widely available and less expensive, consumer spending rose to 70 percent of the economy. This is actually a bad thing. Robert Solow, who won a Nobel Prize in Economics, showed that nations are the wealthiest in the long run if they save a share of their income known as the Golden Rule Savings Rate. This is tricky to estimate, but all economists are sure that the U.S. is well below it. So if we save more and spend less of our income, our children and grandchildren will be better off.

8) When government provides things for free, they will end up being low quality, cost more than they should, and may disappear when most needed. Public education, free health care, welfare programs; does anybody think these programs are high quality, reliable, and have no waste in their budgets? Most states fund the majority of their technical and community college programs. Thus, in the recent recession, right when lots of people wanted to get some new job skills, technical and community colleges had to cut their budgets and offer fewer classes. The freebie disappeared at just the wrong time. The sad reality is: when the customer does not pay, the product is rarely any good.

9) Government cannot correct cosmic injustice. Esteemed economist Thomas Sowell wrote a fabulous book on this topic. Nobody likes to see cosmic injustice: kids with serious health problems through no fault of their own, families whose homes are destroyed in natural disasters, etc. However, when government steps in to correct a cosmic injustice, the price must be paid by someone else�a someone else who had nothing to do with causing the injustice being addressed. Thus, every time government fixes or eases a cosmic injustice, it creates a new one by sticking somebody with the bill�either a financial one or one measured in some other sort of cost. For example, each affirmative action college admission by definition mean some other applicant must be turned down. We may be willing, as a society, to bear an injustice in order to fix some cosmic injustices (e.g., many will willingly chip in to pay for a child�s medical care), but we cannot create a world free from all cosmic injustice.

10) There is no such thing as a free lunch. In America today the number of free lunches being served is at an all-time record high. People on food stamps, households receiving a government check of some kind, the number of people collecting disability, need-based financial aid for college expenses; all either hit highs recently or are at all time highs right now. Yet, somebody is paying that bill; no free lunch is really free. This is true more broadly about all regulations that promise to provide us with something good; the costs are lurking somewhere in the background. Raising the minimum wage does not just take money out of employers� pockets, but also raises prices for all customers and will cost some low-wage workers their jobs. If we protect voting rights, we get more voter fraud. If we help underwater homeowners, it will be harder for future borrowers to get a mortgage. Sooner or later, those free lunches get paid for and often the bill lands in an unexpected or unintended place.

Liberals love to talk about their compassion. Compassion is great, but no amount of caring can repeal the simple facts of economics. It is fine to support raising the minimum wage, but understand that jobs will be lost and prices will rise. Protecting the environment is a wonderful thing, but it is also expensive and hurts the poor in particular. Politicians love to claim the government spending which they direct creates jobs, but it only moves jobs from one place to another. Greedy businesses cannot exploit workers because another greedy business would be happy to exploit them a little less until greed removed all the exploitation.

Political disagreements are fine and different belief systems can lead to different answers in terms of optimal policy choices. Thus, two people can take the same policy options with the same expected outcomes and arrive at different conclusions about what should be done. What we need to get rid of are the disagreements about the outcomes themselves, as opposed to which outcomes are most desirable. Because everyone is entitled to their opinion, but not to their own facts.

:downs:

# ¿ Jul 26, 2015 07:35

Top City Homo: Oct 15, 2014; Ramrod XTreme

my favorite libertarians are the cultists of Murray Rothbard who hated Ayn Rand because she started a more popular cult than him

all austrian economist goldbugs are nuts and the only reason their insanity is even prominent is because in the 30s crazy millionaires were looking for anyone who would justify their psychotic worldview and give them money

# ¿ Jul 27, 2015 04:13

Top City Homo: Oct 15, 2014; Ramrod XTreme

Exclamation Marx posted:

Rothbard is cool because he believed parents should have the right to sell their children

# ¿ Jul 27, 2015 09:19

Top City Homo: Oct 15, 2014; Ramrod XTreme

President Rand Paul responding to a drone bombing a farmhouse in rural Texas.

Media: President Paul could you please explain why you destroyed a farmhouse full of children?

PP: Well, we had actionable intelligence that terrorists were trying to smuggle dangerous *cough* ᵃᵇᵒʳᵗᶦᵒᶰ *cough* equipment into the state and but I couldn't get a warrant and I am not about to violate privacy rights.

Media: *Nods in agreement at the legal argument*

# ¿ Aug 1, 2015 21:07