18 Comments

• 1. unger  |  February 19th, 2010 at 5:04 pm

  I think the answer is ‘more than you think; more than you’d think from listening to the teabagger leaders’.

• 2. Pons Seclorum  |  February 19th, 2010 at 7:18 pm

  Those in the Tea Party not enamored of the neocon foreign policy–that is, the adherents of Ron Paul–are ranged against any government intervention in the economy whatsoever, i.e. no bailouts, no welfare, no fiat currency, and no Federal Reserve. All of the above would go a long way towards fostering the saving of one’s income, the monetary value of which will not decline as government engorges itself on the public fisc and diverts it toward untenable programs. Employ actual free market economics and the resultant personal savings will obviate the need for a government safety net of any kind.

  Also, I found this item in the “What You should Know” column risible: “Gee, maybe all that talk about hyperinflation is just more Wall Street bullshit to scare us into giving up social security, medicare…”

  Wall Street chicanery aside, these farcical programs with their unfunded liabilities are, too, contributing towards hyperinflation. What other means are there to pay off these universal programs saving the debasement of the dollar? Further, social security is not for the purpose of insurance, you are not guaranteed to receive in your dotage what you payed in throughout your life, and what you did pay in has already been spent by the government. What SS recipients have now is an I.O.U from the Treasury that can only be redeemed by taxing someone else. So, in short, these entitlement programs (where one is not actually entitled anything) are tantamount to a ponzi scheme. So, tell me, why are these programs so indispensable again?

• 3. Christo  |  February 19th, 2010 at 9:26 pm

  “At the moment that the “normal” police and military resources of the bourgeois dictatorship, together with their parliamentary screens, no longer suffice to hold society in a state of equilibrium — the turn of the fascist regime arrives. Through the fascist agency, capitalism sets in motion the masses of the crazed petty bourgeoisie and the bands of declassed and demoralized lumpenproletariat — all the countless human beings whom finance capital itself has brought to desperation and frenzy.”

• 4. az  |  February 19th, 2010 at 11:08 pm

  #2: Dude, shut up, you are the worst commenter ever and nobody cares about your long-winded treatises on why you disagree with what they called a link they put up. Why are you so stupid?

• 5. Jie Ke  |  February 20th, 2010 at 12:51 am

  Yeah, #2 is so boring it’s difficult to see what his point is. Then you realise he’s just saying “government intervention is always bad lol” and getting a few paragraphs out of it, showing off his vocabulary in the process without realising that too much verbiage actually makes you look like a poser, rather than a good writer.

  It seems a strange post to make given that the article is simply pointing out the irony of these Tea Party zombies claiming Stack to be their hero despite the fact that he was railing against the very interests that they are directly serving.

  Then you remember that people who think that all government welfare and social programs are bad are generally ‘tards who’ve had an easy ride through life, don’t even try to appreciate the hardships of poverty and don’t realise that it’s clearly and demonstrably in the interests of society to make things less shitty for the people at the bottom.

  In conclusion, #2 is a dumbass.

• 6. Pons Seclorum  |  February 20th, 2010 at 11:04 am

  “Yeah, #2 is so boring it’s difficult to see what his point is. Then you realise he’s just saying “government intervention is always bad lol” and getting a few paragraphs out of it, showing off his vocabulary in the process without realising that too much verbiage actually makes you look like a poser, rather than a good writer.”

  Well, if I wrote any other way the arguments would simply be dismissed as the rantings of a Tea Party rube and would therefore merit no consideration. At least this way people might actually have to pay attention. As expected, the partisans of gargantuan government do not care and the arguments are superficially dismissed either way. And why should academic-style verbiage be so boring and repulsive? One would think the lefties here would love it.

  “It seems a strange post to make given that the article is simply pointing out the irony of these Tea Party zombies claiming Stack to be their hero despite the fact that he was railing against the very interests that they are directly serving.”

  Some of the Tea Partiers cling to the GOP and the neocons, some are Randians, and others are Ron Paul libertarians. It is a motley movement, so it is not ironic that certain libertarian members would sympathize with Stack when they have opposed big business and big government (think the two are correlated, anyone?)from the start.

  “Then you remember that people who think that all government welfare and social programs are bad are generally ‘tards who’ve had an easy ride through life, don’t even try to appreciate the hardships of poverty and don’t realise that it’s clearly and demonstrably in the interests of society to make things less shitty for the people at the bottom.”

  Or they could just be acknowledging that there is a solid economic case that government welfare programs do not raise the standard of living. As you said, it is clearly and demonstrably in the interest of SOCIETY to provide welfare through charity; government ought not enter into it. If you want real social security, keep government out of the market and currency.

• 7. az  |  February 20th, 2010 at 6:14 pm

  Wow this guy has Asperger’s or something…

• 8. Pons Seclorum  |  February 20th, 2010 at 6:41 pm

  Thanks for the diagnosis, Dr. az. With my ‘condition’ being established, would you care to offer a substantive reply to any points that I have made?

• 9. thomzas  |  February 21st, 2010 at 10:46 am

  The Tea Party is the banner for an American Separatist movement. They can’t be pinned down ideologically, they’re anti government, they’re angry and want special treatment.

• 10. mr. mike  |  February 21st, 2010 at 10:53 pm

  They’re like that because they don’t have a party program, manifesto, or statement of grievences so they lurch from plain vanilla GOP ideology to Bircherism to White Seperatism and on and on. I think that a lot of TPers would leave if some central committee finaly said that the Party was about ideology X, so it remains the bitchers’ union.

• 11. Tipster  |  February 23rd, 2010 at 9:19 am

  Ames or Exiled Editor, check out the URL link, sooner the better before it gets taken down.

• 12. ingeborg  |  February 27th, 2010 at 7:17 pm

  #2 is just hilarious because he probably thinks that the free market has existed for all of American history.
  Hey genius, if government programs don’t work, how did we get:
  Satellites?
  Lasers?
  Victory over Germany?
  Riddle me that.

• 13. maninwarren  |  March 2nd, 2010 at 10:08 am

  Doesn’t it make them (or a least the twitterer a) terrorist(s)? If Stack had done what he did in the name of Allah (all other physical details of the act remaining the same), it would be terrorism, and anyone praising him for it would be a terrorist.

  But I guess we’re not quite there yet, i.e., calling white Americans with white-American-sounding names “terrorists”. Not yet.

  http://9112010.com/9112010.html

• 14. choirtramps23  |  March 7th, 2010 at 6:44 pm

  I don’t understand why people think themselves superior to #2. His arguments are much the same of several respected economists. I may not agree, you may not agree, but at least he is arguing intelligently. Nowhere in his argument did I see the typical Tea Party rhetoric. #2 presented his ideas in a humble, fallible manner that many of you should be mindful of when commenting yourselves.

• 15. Basedrop  |  March 22nd, 2010 at 2:13 am

  @ Pons
  “these farcical programs with their unfunded liabilities”
  Your arguments that social programs are ponzi schemes and a drag on the economy are specious. Guess what? All government actions are unfunded liabilities. Guess where your current tax dollars are going? That’s right, you’re currently paying off the Viet Nam war. To suggest the whole government isn’t an unfunded liability that isn’t covered by future generations of taxpayers, grossly misinterprets how our government and our economy works. Secondly, where do you think the money goes from social security checks? That’s right… it is funneled right back into the economy, supporting your supposed free market institutions. The money doesn’t just drop into a black whole. Rents are paid, food is purchased. How much of a economic burden on our “society” do you think whole generations of homeless elderly would put on us? Oh, that’s right… just give them their hard earned dollars up front and don’t provide the safety net. That way they could have all invested in your markets and they’d all be riding high right now with their credit default swaps and stock in General Motors. Everyone knows the markets have no where to go but up!

• 16. RecoverylessRecovery  |  March 29th, 2010 at 12:28 am

  One month later and the Joe Stack School of Dive-Bombing has seemingly failed to spark the ‘revolution’ that many Mad-Hatters ..er.. I mean ‘Tea Partyers’ had hoped for and expected.

  Sure we had that crazy guy who shot the two cops at the Pentagon soon afterwards, but the dipshit MISSED plus he didn’t leave behind any cool anti-government letters that we could circulate endlessly on the net.

• 17. bill  |  May 15th, 2010 at 5:31 pm

  Pons, we had the system you described in this country before the depression. Life expectancy was low, and people died for things like the forty hour work week and laws against child labor. I, and i’m sure many others, aren’t at all eager to roll back the clock to that miserable time in our history.

• 18. nampa  |  March 18th, 2011 at 9:35 pm

  Having government offer modest social programs, regulations is not just morale–it’s the only way to successfully run a market economy. Without redistribution, the economy would collapse from lack of demand; without regulation, the whole system would canabalize itself through greed and collapse. Markets aren’t always rational, e.g., the financial sector, commodity prices, corporate bonuses, etc.

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