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You make all these points as if it's self-evident ("to all right-thinking peoples", "no one here but us...") that he's dead wrong about them. That's not very he
by cpr 14y ago
You make all these points as if it's self-evident ("to all right-thinking peoples", "no one here but us...") that he's dead wrong about them. That's not very helpful.
Of course human life begins at conception--what is the combined human egg & sperm, a fish?
And what's so great about NATO? The US should bear the brunt of the cost of defending Europe against whom now, exactly?
The Federal Reserve came into being the same year as the income tax, and the US dollar has lost 99% of its value since then. Coincidence? There are a lot of great arguments against the Fed. Have you seriously investigated, or just assumed that the Fed is great because it exists? Read some Austrian economics, which argue persuasively that centralized money control will always result in endless bust/boom cycles.
And the Left isn't waging a war on religion? C'mon.
What's so great about estate taxes? To decide that death is an event where someone needs to have a large chunk of his wealth taken by the state is a fairly controversial assumption.
Etc, etc.
- saraid216 14y agoWas there an edit in the GP? Your quoted phrases do not seem to appear in any of the parent comments.
- jswinghammer 14y agoIt seems like he was responding to various points in the post by restating them. The post he was replying to was just listing a bunch of things he doesn't like, not defending his reasons for not liking them. I'm impressed anyone took the time to detangle any of that mess.
- bithive123 14y agoI thought it was a rather concise summary of why Ron Paul is a polarizing figure. You can read a bias into it, but there it is.
- astrodust 14y ago> Of course human life begins at conception--what is the combined human egg & sperm, a fish? By extension any woman who suffers a miscarriage is a murderer, or worse, has a fertilized egg that fails to implant. Are you sure you want to stick with that definition? > What's so great about estate taxes? It prevents most of the money in circulation from accumulating in the hands of a very small number of individuals. It was a reaction to the situation in Europe where the finances of a country were, and had always been, completely locked up and social mobility was nearly impossible. The rate at which these inheritances should be taxed is debatable, as the current rate might be a bit too high or, as Warren Buffet and many of his associates would have you believe, too low. He intends to push 99% of his wealth into charities before he dies so that his children will inherit only a few hundred million, minus estate taxes. Those poor kids. How will they ever survive?
- adrianbravo 14y ago> It prevents most of the money in circulation from accumulating in the hands of a very small number of individuals. Like Bill Gates, the richest American? Oh wait, he didn't inherit that money. Ooops.
- astrodust 14y agoBill Gates is new money, but his father has considerable wealth as well. If those two weren't as committed to philanthropy as your average billionaires are, then the children of Bill and Melinda Gates would inherit several enormous fortunes. Have a look through the Forbes 400 (http://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/ http://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/) and see where their money came from. The Koch Brothers inherited from their father, and the five Waltons on the list inherited from theirs. That means over half of the wealthiest individuals in America inherited a considerable fortune. In forty years this list will no doubt the heirs of other fortunes.
- alexakarpov 14y ago> By extension any woman who suffers a miscarriage is a murderer With all respect, this is not "extension", but rather "gross distortion". > It prevents most of the money in circulation from accumulating in the hands of a very small number of individuals. What if such accumulation was just? Would it still be wrong? If yes, then why? If no, then what's the problem? Shouldn't we worry about making game rules fair, rather than making sure outcomes are "equalized"?
- tptacek 14y agoHow seriously should anyone take an economical argument based on the dollar losing "99% of it's value" since 1913? The purchasing power of the average American has in the last 100 years increased by over 200%. And this is one of Paul's key arguments.
- cpr 14y agoPolitifact http://www.politifact.com/virginia/statements/2010/nov/24/virginia-tea-party-patriots/virginia-tea-party-says-dollar-has-lost-98-percent/ http://www.politifact.com/virginia/statements/2010/nov/24/vi... claims it's "half true". The Bureau of Labor Statistics, supposedly no partisan outfit, says the dollar has lost 95% of its purchasing power since 1913: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0001519.html http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0001519.html . So Paul's claim isn't far off.
- tptacek 14y agoIt's like you --- and Paul --- think the purpose of the economy is to imbue value into little green pieces of paper. You'd be an idiot to trade places with your time-traveling peer from 1913. It's not that Paul's claim is "off"; it's that it's nonsensical.
- cpr 14y agoHand-waving wildly, trying to avoid the loss of purchasing power that's the inevitable result of fiat money, and ad hominem to boot. Actually, I'd be happy to trade places with someone living in 1913.
- tptacek 14y ago"Deal!" says the time-traveler after you offer to impoverish yourself for the sake of a religious argument about how wealth is denominated. You can look up the purchasing power disparity between the average 1913er and yourself; the difference is stark before you consider that any American homeless person in 2012 has better medical care than did Woodrow Wilson. Time travelers tip: avoid Europe for a couple years, and boil your water.