paNX2K&SE-R

iTrader: (8)

Anyone else here show up for this? I thought it was an awesome experience.

p51hellfire

iTrader: (28)

I would've attended

Nagase

iTrader: (6)

The weird thing is that I didn't even hear about it today.

The media silence is deafening...I didn't know about it until cornercarvers started talking about it.

4.4 million people, supposedly, nationwide. Wow.

Loved that the "Who is John Galt?" poster made it up into some videos...

I'm going to Appleseed later this month, something people in this thread might be interested in: http://www.appleseedinfo.org/

Faeflora

iTrader: (2)

It would've been great to go and breathe in all the warm, moist, stupid air flowing out of everyone's mouths.

jbresee

I'm so confused by this. These people are so angry, but I don't understand what they want. I get that they are mad about stim spending, but I can't find a single economist that thinks we over spent on trying to prevent total worldwide financial collapse.
Many economists say we didn't do enough. I guess we could argue for a long time about where the money was spent.

I'm also really confused about people saying they are now paying more taxes. No they aren't! The threat of higher taxes is there, certainly, but nobody has paid more yet. But we've got choices we could make to change that. We could eliminate our presence in Iraq and Afghanistan to reduce the burn rate, but we aren't even talking about that.

I would sure like to hear some well articulated proposals instead of just anger and slogans. Both sides have sucked at that.

fahrvergnugen

This....



And this...



These thoughts seem contradictory to me. Are we trying to help the rest of the world, or aren't we? Also, as I understand it those countries that chose not to have a stimulus are now firmly on their way out of the recession while those that did (us, and the UK) are still in one.

Nagase

iTrader: (6)

Didn't do enough what? Enough taking money from profitable people and companies to give it to anyone who fails?

People who fail, failed for a reason. When GM is going to pieces and Toyota isn't, it's not a worldwide issue causing failure, it's incompitance.

Socialism does not work for countries. It rewards failure and punishes success. Why do anything but fail?

In small terms, if you have a friend who keeps getting fired, quitting, not being able to pay his rent, kicked out of his house for stupid reasons... should you give him money to "get back on his feet" without changing why he failed in the first place?

Not only are we giving trillions to failures for sake of their failing, we're taking trillions from people who are trying desperately not to fail. My company gave no raises this year directly because of these laws. Because of that, the company is losing good people who felt cheated. People who find that their money doesn't go as far (due to inflation caused by printing off trillions of dollars) can spend less, so we get less buisiness, so we get less raises, so success turns into stagnation... so we can pump blood into a cadaver of companies who killed themselves. If a manager of a McDonalds mismanages a store into the ground, giving terrible food, jacking up the prices, dirty store, unhealthy food... do we fire him or give him a million dollars?

Taxes aren't just income taxes, which are set to raise this year, but sales taxes and inflation. Inflation is a tax on everyone, a tax caused by printing trillions of dollars. There's more money printed by the government, which is an increase in supply of money, with the same demand, which means higher prices. This money is going straight to people who aren't you or me, which means my salary is worth less this year than the last. That's a tax. They're "taking my money" by turning my 10$ into something worth 9$.

Both sides suck at that. It's a good thing there are more than two sides. Democrats and republicans are the same thing. Higher spending, bigger government.

The 9/12 project wasn't about republicans or democrats, it was about government spending. Bush, Obama and more.

Braineack

iTrader: (62)

jbresee

Nagase,
Thanks for that. That's the kind of discussion I would like to hear, not the silly talk that's been out there. I would love to see less government, not more. I also agree that the negative aspect of socialism is that it is market inefficient. True capitalism is the most market efficient system, but it is also brutal in its efficiency. So we end up trying to soften the harsh sides of capitalism with socialist support structures.

farvernugen -reducing war spending versus increasing healthcare spending is a classic guns versus butter economic decision. If we have a dollar to spend, we could spend it on healthcare, or on global military engagements. We have been trying to spend the same $1 twice (well, more than that, but you get the point).
These are not contradictory thoughts, they are policy decisions.

Braineack

iTrader: (62)

A few nukes to the middle east is less immortal than the current situation...

Nagase

iTrader: (6)

You're very welcome.

I'm sorry I wasn't all too clear, it's dawn and I've been up all night playing GT4... had some arbor mist some time in there too. ^_^;

I'd very much debate that there is no brutality to capitalism, but that's a very long subject. I'd simply point out that equating justice (you make as much as you deserve) to brutality is an attack against justice, that there is no way to attack competition in true capitalism as there is no government force in the marketplace (special interest groups are a bunch of companies trying to club each other over the head to get something... take away the power of the politicians to make laws that act as weapons, and there is no way to attack... other than force, but that's why courts and police exist). Also, I'd point out that the more free a country is, historically the more charity exists (for the very few who cannot earn for themselves... very few people can't get a job these days, deaf people, wheelchairbound people, even people with MS can change the world in the case of Hawking).

sixshooter

iTrader: (12)

Funny how history repeats itself. This is exactly the same mistake that caused the U.S. to have The Great Depression when the rest of the world just had a little depression. Copious government intervention and additional spending dragged it out for a whole decade in America. Instead they should have let the weak, bloated companies fail and be replaced with leaner, stronger companies. Politicians suck out economies' souls in the name of saving them.

If GM was left alone they would fail and be released from the strangling union contracts and top heavy corporate bureaucracy. Leaner companies would then pick up the manufacturing facilities and brand names and move forward. And the workers would start building cars again.

Braineack

iTrader: (62)

no no no the issue is that presidents in charge of billions of dollars and thousands of employees get paid too much. that's the issue d00d.

y8s

iTrader: (8)

I feel there needs to be a post from me in this thread.

to counter the "media silence" issue, the front page of the washington post was a pic of the capitol building with a bunch of protestors.

other than that, i didn't notice any disturbance from the crowds. none of my friends living in dc said anything about traffic or w hatnot.

jbresee

hey y8s,
did you see ABC was quoted as saying the march was more than 2m people, but had actually stated it was in the 10s of thousands. I saw the DC police were estimating 60-70k. That's a crazy big variance in reporting.
Jim

Braineack

iTrader: (62)

Remember when wolf Blitzer reported about the Acorn videos....I was laughing all weekend on his angle.

y8s

iTrader: (8)

i can't watch the news. against my religion.

the govt estimate was 2M for whatever reason. I haven't seen an official report. I can tell you from personal experience that the crowd in the youtube videos is nowhere near 2 million.

the youtubes show one street full of people walking for 9/12

during the inauguration, ALL streets were full of people for blocks and blocks when everyone started walking home. during the ceremony, the entire mall was covered from the dome to lincoln and that was shoulder to shoulder.

when I ran the bay to breakers run in SF, the "line" was a few dozen blocks long solid people. that's ~100k or so standing shoulder to shoulder.

I'd say 60k is a reasonable guess at crowd size.

Nagase

iTrader: (6)

One dc traffic cam:



Yeah, a lot of people.

paNX2K&SE-R

iTrader: (8)

There were 350,000 people at the last Steeler superbowl victory parade. The crowd in DC was MUCH MUCH larger.

Braineack

iTrader: (62)

I was going to go to the rally cause mr Beck told me to. but i decided staying home and having sex with a girl was a better idea.