Would YOU vote for RON PAUL

Interesting. I'm curious about this - why is open borders a good idea? I'm assuming you're referring to the Mexican border. And before you answer, let me say that I think this country benefits a great deal from Mexican immigration, legal or otherwise, but I'd like to hear your take on why a plain open border policy would be helpful to the economy/deficit.

 

Open borders are good for the global elite who want a one world government.

 

No, it's moving left. Otherwise government would be getting smaller -- not bigger.

Unfortunately, most people's definition of left and right is what they heard on TV or in school. The two labels are useless and really only serve to divide and conquer because people don't understand how two heads can belong to the same hydra.

Speak for yourself. I want the government out of my fucking life.

 

I'm talking about socialists, which means that I don't THINK I was speaking for you.......

I want the government, as it is currently structured, out of my fucking life. But I think the government could be fixed.

 

Imo, the best way to guage where a country is on the left/right economic spectrum is to look at the level of unionization.

For example:


Movement to the economic right would be indicated by decreasing unionization levels. So were not moving left, were moving right since about 1955.

 

And a great many others, including myself, are not socialists.

We might find much we could agree on in this area.

It's unclear what distinction you are attempting to make. Government mandates and force seldom leave us with much recourse while businesses, both large and small, have little power to impose mandates or apply force that I have found to be easily unavoidable.

Maybe another area where some agreement is possible.

We agree on the debt issue, and reduction or elimination on some government agencies, while maybe not completely on which agencies or where to make cuts, but a tax on everyone making over one million dollars may sound like an effective means of increasing tax revenues, I think that would be an easy one to work around and make jobs in the U.S. even more scarce than they are today. Applying tariffs to Chinese or other countries goods would only increase greatly the cost of living in the U.S. as products we can't compete with on a cost basis would rise to a level beyond what most everyone could afford.

If you taxed everyone at the rate you propose, it's highly unlikely that there would be much revenue at collected in the second year, requiring even more massive borrowing to run not only the Federal government, but the States and local governments as well.

I don't know that it's been proven to be a fact that people who have much don't give much. A growing number of people in the U.S. are getting something, and where I live most of those claimed to be poor in the U.S. would be seen as the 1% or even the .1% in comparison.

 

There's quite a difference between what the people want and what government is doing.

 

What do you use to guage where on the left/right spectrum we are?

 

The number of unionized workers is a terrible gauge for if the country is left or right. It might be one factor, but a minor one. The best gauge is the size and scope of government. Government is bigger and more invasive than ever before. Like I said before, more laws/regulations, taxes, entitlements, welfare programs, surveillance, etc.

 

The size and scope of government would indicate the degree of authoritarianism, not where we are on the left/right economic scale.

The political compass does a good job of making the distinction you might not be making.

 

There's also quite a difference between what the people get (no representation) and what the corporate person gets (representation).

 

nonsense. If done properly it could be a great thing for the US, a great thing for the other countries involved, and reinforce the sovgernty of all. Closed borders create social control, economic failure to the benefit of the elites as they outsource everything but the people can't move and get better wages and conditions for the same wark and their working at home yields huge profits for the elites due to exchange rates and standards of living, and on and on.

I mean with all borders, but specifically land borders, and really, all of the americas.

First of all, closing the border obviously does not work.

From there, though I personally do not think that the border should ideally be closed, even those who do must admit, it's better to compromise and make progress than screw up your country being stubborn.

Having the border closed also runs directly against what they people who usually want it closed think about drugs-it makes the drug cartels very powerful and dangerous, when they would not exist if the border was not an obstacle-and the same amount of drugs make it through either way, because there's a demand-more strict policing only makes it harder, and thus more lucrative, to move drugs, and thus makes the cartels even MORE violent and wealthy and connected and tied into corruption and all that. Trafficking can't happen if there's no obstacle to make money on.

The simple fact is that anyone who wants to hurt the US can come in, and that people who want to work or live here (read: make us better and stronger, for reasons that I will outline farther on) have a hard time and are the ones we deport and mistreat.

Because there is no way to keep EITHER group out, trying to keep individuals who would abide by the law (on that note, if you document people, they pay taxes properly, they make living wages and so spend more money and help the economy, etc) simply makes a repressed population that WILL be here either way-we must choose the terms that are better for us. If we have a violent border situation, and barrios and ghettos full of violence, ignorance/lack of education, a lack of even proper utilities, a lack of nutrition and options for kids, we are directly polluting the culture of the US. If we have legal immigration, there are living wages, schools, money for food on the table and to spend money in the local economy, and you're raising a generation of kids who will be great citizens, as opposed to miscreants.

US citizens who are already here would benefit, too. The fact is there's a lot of work to be done, and a lot of US citizens who are too stuck up to do it. There's fruit picking work for 20 bucks an hour in some southern states, and farmers are still dramatically scaling back planting of labor intensive crops, because there's just no one to pick or care for them, the locals won't do it. We need labor, and it's fucking up the economy that we don't have it. This has happened because the border has been open with a wink and a nudge for a VERY long time, since WWII-so there is a strong inter-dependence, while on paper and fox news immigration has been strictli controlled, so when you talk about illegal immigration people think it's some NEW thing, when in reality it was just not a talking point before. You know the border patrol was originally a labor department branch, or something like that? It was to bring people IN.

So, the US needs immigrants, and the immigrants need the US. And the home countries need the US, because when there are fewer people there is more to go around, wages go up, money comes home from the US, conditions improve.

As for the people who worry about some sort of cultural pollution, they are ignorant twats and can stfu. The US is a country of just about nothing but immigrants, and the american southwest was stolen from mexico in a war of aggression, why should people not speak what language they want, have the religious or other practices they want, etc? Further, nobody comes to the US to pretend they're at home, you want to be able to carry on a conversation, order a meal, start a business, or whatevers. These require speaking english, AND any other local language, from german to french, as spoken in many parts of the US, even if fox news doesn't see it. It makes the country much stronger to let multi-lingual, multi-cultural individuals of entrapreneurial spirit thrive.

You know the dumbest thing anyone ever thought up, as far as immigration goes? Student visas. When you finish a degree (bear in mind, these are the most motivated people, who come to study here), you should automatically have full citizenship, why the FUCK do we want to educate people to a high degree and standard, and then send them HOME? Steal their intellectual asses for the US.

Nobody is taking jobs by comming here, they are creating more jobs, because they eat too, they shit too, they need services and goods too, and the reason we don't benefit from that is that we won't accept that they're here, part of our continent and our culture and our economy since before any of our countries existed, and they're not going anywhere.

Now, I'd like to take a moment to repeat, that I'm in favor of high tarriffs on import goods, but not export. It should cost marginally more to get the same thing from outside the US, whichi will bring manufacturing home and make jobs, spread wealth, and breed prosperity-but if other people want to buy our stuff, that's fine and well, and if there's something that really is better made elsewhere, the equal price shouldn't matter, other than to help balance the budget. I believe in a free flow of people, if they want to come here we should take their get-up-and-go spirit gladly, but we should not take cheap shit imports from their home countries that undermine our economy and even sovgernty. If an indian wants to come here, there should be a minimum of red tape so long as he is productive, and once he's established there should be a minimum of red tape to be a citizen, but there should be mountains of red tape to keep an indian cell phone from comming here.

That's it, that's my rant. I'm sure I forgot lots, but I need a rest from typing.

 

Having allowed the Federal government to become the primary market where the only product is power and control over the population in the form of laws and regulations, what you see is natural and inevitable.

The solution is not to empower the Federal government more, but less. You can't sell what you don't have. It should be obvious that power exercised from the top down is, or in the least becomes more authoritarian over time. Laws and regulations should come about as a result of a majority of the people who make up the many societies recognizing where they are needed and if beyond the ability of local control and State control, then Federal government may be given consent to act within limits defined by the people.

Don't be taken in by your "Political Compass", it like many, if not most, polls are worded to produce a desired outcome.

 

We're in agreement that the US government is authoritarian or at the upper portion of the political compass.

We differ with respect to the economic left/right US position. Your position is that the US is left or communist. My position is that the US is right or neo-liberal.




I totally disagree with your position that the US economic system is communist because afterall the US did fight a 40 year war in opposition against communism. The US is and has always been capitalist, not communist. Didn't they teach you that in school?

What is your evidence that the US is communist?

 

Who said the US is communist??

 

56

LOL - I see you claim greater knowledge and claim it gives you better insight but you refuse to disclose what you base your greater knowledge on.

And more laughs I mean sorry but that is hilarious – I can see that the whole Enlightenment thing just passed you by then?

So to you are claiming anything is valid – if an idea cannot be defended from criticism it is still as valid as an idea that can be defended?

 

Yomama

LOL – you are not asking yourself if your ideas are any good – you are saying a Brit doesn’t have a right to criticism them – shouldn’t you be wondering why you can’t defend your ideas from criticism?

Again I can’t stop laughing – so you are saying that everything is the same as two hundred years ago?

It is the same as above you are complaining at where the criticisms are coming from but not asking yourself why you can defend your ideas from them.

Indie has tried this a few times and it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Here is something I had to remind him.

“Oh and again you make assertions that already have unanswered criticisms already levelled at them. You’ve asserted this about Europe before for example in the Did the Tea Party takeover/ruin libertarianism? Thread and I had to point out to you –

As pointed out to you before - all of the countries of the EU have had neo-liberal governments in power during the last 30 years. Many political parties of the right and the left succumbed to neoliberal ideas.

In the UK the flawed neoliberal ideas of the Thatcher era were taken up by the New Labour leadership.

In Greece the government that was in power just prior to the crisis (2004-2009) was the “strictly neoliberal” right wing New Democracy Party which used derivatives as a means of hiding the true level of their debts. In Spain the neo-liberal Peoples Party was in power from 1996-2004 (and created the conditions for that countries housing bubble) and was succeeded by an opposition party ‘of the left’ that followed many of its neoliberal ideas and as for Italy the right wing neoliberal Silvio Berlusconi has been in power for eight of the last ten years.”

Thing is that many of the countries in Europe that have weathered the economic storm the best. like Sweden and Germany for instance, have social systems in place that you’d call socialist, while places like Iceland and Ireland that were hailed as neoliberal inspired economic miracles went bankrupt.

 

Indie

LOL – hells bells man we’ve been through this dozens of times to repeat - the problem is that right wing libertarian/neo-liberal ideas don’t seem to encourage investment in employment (or not American employment). The neo-liberal ideas of the last thirty odd years have seen US manufacturing decline while outsourcing and speculative financial bubbles have grown.

 

Indie

Been through this many times – you want to give wealth more power and influence by giving them a huge tax cut and you want to take away democratic responsibility by taking away the direct voting of senators and as for the Federal Reserve I’m still not sure you have any realistic or sensible ideas on its reform or replacement (and its not for the want of trying).

 

Indie

LOL – so this employer didn’t try to get the best person for the job they just hire the first person that applied?

- Normally such jobs are openly advertised so anyone can apply

- There are clear opening dates and closing dates (so it doesn’t matter if you are the first to apply or the last to apply)

- The applications are sorted to see who seems like the best candidates (usually with some type of independent auditing)

- Those chosen are interviewed – one is given the job (usually with a probationary period to see if it works out).

This is done to stop possible abuses by those that have an advantage (cronyism, nepotism etc).

For example lets take you scenario - if they are just going to pick the first applicant the advantage goes to the person that knows in advance the job is coming up (through a friend or relative for example) and can be right there when the job becomes vacant, any other candidates would be disadvantaged - it wouldn’t matter how fast the disadvantaged person applied for the job the advantaged person would be there already.

I would want the fairer first system you seem to be in favour the much less fair second system which always gives the advantage to the advantaged.