Below is my column in The Hill on the importance of capitalism to not just the foundation but the future of our Republic. The Trump Accounts could prove critical in the revival of capitalism in the United States.
Here is the column:
Capitalism is under attack from classrooms to town halls to voting booths. According to polls, a rising segment of the population is calling for socialism or even communism as young people embrace a radical chic in the country. And this week, another socialist looks ready to join a growing “squad” in Congress.
On our 250th anniversary, the fight over capitalism and economic freedom could prove critical to the future of this republic. However, there is an unexpected change that could help reverse this trend.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent recently announced that one million families have already signed up for the new tax-privileged Trump Accounts, which will be seeded with $1,000 in taxpayer funds for children born between Jan. 1, 2025, and Dec. 31, 2028.
With an anticipated 25 million participants, the initiative is one of the most ambitious and potentially impactful in U.S. history. But its true impact may be far greater than the wealth that it could generate for families. It may just be the determinative factor in preserving this Republic in this century.
This month, Simon and Schuster released my new book on the founding and the future of the American republic — “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.” The book asks whether this unique republic can survive in the 21st century amid growing economic, political, and social challenges.
What many celebrating our 250th anniversary do not appreciate is that this is also the 250th anniversary of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, released around the same time as the Declaration of Independence. The book was not a great success in Great Britain. In addition to its foundational support for capitalism, it challenged the mercantilist policies of the British Empire and supported the claims of the colonies in seeking greater economic freedoms.
Smith, however, was immediately embraced by the founders, who saw his work as the perfect economic theory to advance their political theory. Ours was the first Enlightenment Revolution based on a belief in natural rights that came from God, not governments.
Yet, the founders knew that true individual liberty could not be achieved without economic freedom. Smith’s idea of the “invisible hand” offered an idea of individual economic freedom where whole economies were driven by the individual tastes and choices of citizens.
The combination would prove transformative, as the U.S. became not only the world’s oldest large-scale democracy but also history’s greatest economy. We will need that combination in the years to come to maintain what I call a “liberty-enhancing economy.”
The book looks at the expected impact of new technology, from robotics to AI, in the possible creation of a large population of unemployed, unproductive citizens. The question is how the likely state support for a large segment of our population will change their relationship to the government, changing the dynamic of what it is to be a citizen.
The danger of a “kept citizenry” is that we will lose the essential independence that our founders wanted to instill in new Americans from their government.
As we face these challenges, we are seeing a rise in support for socialism and communism in the West. It is the rage among young people who have no experience or memory of the socialist governments that collapsed in the prior century. Their understanding of socialism comes from armchair revolutionaries in colleges and the sloganeering of figures like Zohran Mamdani about introducing them to “the warmth of collectivism.”
That brings us back to the Trump accounts. The insidious aspect of past socialist systems is that their consistent failure often resulted in demands to “double down,” to increase state subsidies, nationalizations, and central planning. For their part, citizens can become accustomed to government support.
When socialist François Mitterrand came to power in France in 1981, promising a “rupture with capitalism,” he quickly destroyed the country’s economy. However, he continued to dazzle French citizens with promises of free money, even appointing Andre Henry as the Minister of Free Time to assist citizens in their new socialist leisure.
The same seductive appeal is evident today in the U.S. and other Western countries. Sixty-five percent of Democratic voters have a favorable view of socialism. An even greater percentage of young Britons want to live under socialism, and 72 percent favor nationalization of industries.
Capitalism was key to the success of the American Republic, and it will be even more important in the coming years. As jobs are wiped out through robotics and AI, we will have to shift to homocentric jobs and productivity to preserve not just economic but also political liberty.
We cannot preserve that liberty as some arts-and-crafts citizenry, entertained with state-subsidized leisure and distractions. The $6.25 billion gift of Michael and Susan Dell (now augmented by dozens of corporations) could offer the single best hope for the survival of our system. Millions of young people will be able to experience the benefits of investments, savings and, most importantly, economic independence.
It has the benefit of being a tangible lesson about capitalism — not simply an abstraction pulled from the pages of the Wealth of Nations. As socialist experiments replicate the failures of past eras, these accounts will offer a stark contrast for a rising generation. It is an investment that must be extended beyond 2028 to inculcate values of economic and political independence in the 21st century.
For young Americans, there has been a continual barrage of anti-capitalist sentiments. However, there is still muscle memory in this country of the gifts that free markets brought to a free people.
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”
Well, at least you come across as a humble braggart and know-it-all.
At least he knows more than you.
The Clinton Era (Bill never had a non-government paying job) caused the financial crisis of 2008 through banks making a lot of loans to a lot of people who either could not or would not pay the money back.
Ironically Epstein agrees with you and blames Bill. and he worked at Lehman so he would know.
We are semi-socialistic now. Our government is involved in just about everything, taxing our water, income, purchases, books, food, entertainment, transportation, medical care/supplies and our taxes. They tax our taxes, indeed.
Yet, our capitalistic foundation has made us the envy of the world for generations. Illegals don’t flood to other nations as they do here. We are suckers, too. We can’t resist giving away our money to just about every cause under the sun, beneficial or not. We have kept the world solvent for generations. We have made it possible for even our enemies to prosper. In return, we are hated.
I think this is best understood as a systems question. Every system produces the kind of people it trains. So the real issue isn’t labels or policies, it’s what kind of citizen we are forming.
A republic requires citizens who are capable, independent, and accustomed to responsibility. When citizens are formed that way, they are better able to blunt abuses of power, whether that power is corporate, regulatory, or technological. They can organize, compete, withdraw consent, and demand accountability without immediately turning to the state.
That’s why the Trump Accounts matter or don’t matter depending on how they function. The issue isn’t the $1,000. It’s whether the system creates a lived experience of ownership, saving, and long-term thinking, or reinforces the idea that government is the primary provider.
Systems that produce dependent citizens weaken a republic. Systems that form responsible, self-directed citizens strengthen it. Formation comes first. Everything else follows.
The American oligarchs are rapidly moving America to a country where no one but them can own anything. Fundamental features in cars are becoming rental items; software is almost entirely rental. Homes are trending to being rental items and the extraction of rent for them both exceeds the amount one might pay for a mortgage, but also saps the ability to save enough to get a mortgage. Many use a program that supports conspiracy to raise rents to the maximum the market can afford to pay – essentially slamming and locking the door on savings – even when it leaves rental property vacant. One never really buys an e-book; it is a long term rental, subject to rejection at any time for any reason or for no reason.
This is the conservative utopia. To prevent the movement of anyone from the Middle to the Upper class. A boot stamping the face of humanity forever.
This is the Right to Rage: Billionaires Paying Millionaires to CONvince the Middle and Lower Class to be Minions.
Personally I think we are living in an age of “freeism”. Politicians are promising free things to everyone without ever saying who is going to pay for all of this free stuff. I get it, I want free stuff too, but I have lived long enough to have learned nothing is free.
I keep hearing nobody wants to work anymore and while I take it with a grain of salt, I also understand why people think that today. Why work at a bottom wage job when politicians promise me free things and all I have to do is vote for them.
The powers that be created this constant victim class that have given up working harder than the guy next to them to get ahead because they are victims. I cannot win, so why try? Where is my free stuff?
Those that work harder than the guy next to them are fed up because nobody gave them anything and they are having fingers pointed at them and demanded to turn over their hard earned things to someone who won’t earn it because they were told it is free.
Everyone is angry and why? Because it is supposed to be free. Except it is not, never has been, and never will be free. You have to earn it. If you do not start very high on the ladder of life, you can still work your way up the ladder through hard work and determination.
JD Vance, Obama, Bill Clinton, and Wes Moore all have this in common. None of them were well off and none came from any kind of money and they were all from broken homes. They ALL worked hard to achieve their goals. ALL of them had help along the way, but that’s the rub, when you are working hard, help shows up at the right moment to get one through tough periods. That’s reflected in all of their stories and others that have written their stories into books and countless others that we have never heard about.
So my advice is to not expect the free stuff that is never going to arrive and if it does, so much the better. Put your nose to the grindstone and start grinding. You will go farther than those that are waiting for the free stuff.
BTW, maybe I am wrong, but I have yet to see any of the four mentioned give away their hard earned money for free stuff for others.
That is the actual lesson and you know what? I do not blame them.
They earned it.
Despite what the communists (liberals, progressives, socialists, democrats, RINOs, AINOs) say, it’s not free; there are 38 trillion dollars of debt.
Do you think they’re going to pay their loan payments when they get their bills in Compton and East L.A.?
I mean, whom do you imagine is going to pay the statement for the promises the communists (liberals, progressives, socialists, democrats, RINOs, AINOs) have made?
The communists (liberals, progressives, socialists, democrats, RINOs, AINOs) will likely just say that they’re going out on strike, with the full expectation that the capable, ambitious, and successful producers will foot the bills.
And the Supreme Court of the “Black-Robed Dictatorship of the Juristocracy” will allow it no matter the laws and the Constitution.
“communists (liberals, progressives, socialists, democrats,” etc…
It’s almost like these guys have a plan to cause the end of America! Weird!
AOC, who knows nothing except how to serve alcohol, makes $174,000.00 a year. You and I are required to pay her salary. “No taxation without what ?” She represents traitors, street thugs and everyone who hates America.
Very well said!
When I was young, I did not want to work and needed very little money to survive. The fly in the ointment turned out to be health care. I realized I needed insurance. That realization/need is why I got a job, and why I worked the rest of my life. I’m retired, but I still have insurance.
Now, people want Free Health Care. They claim Free Health Care is a right – I have no idea what that means or who is supposed to give them free Health Care. I truly believe that will be the downfall of our society. People can live without free stuff, but they literally cannot live without Health Care.
All the ‘rights’ the left want always come at the cost of ‘someone else’
True human rights are APPARENT to all. Self-evident in fact.
For example, can anyone explain to me what they mean when they say “Trans rights”? Do they not have all the same rights as everyone?
I KNOW I won’t be getting a sane explanation from any of the commie trolls that frequent here. Actually I dare them.
The US is the only developed nation that does not provide a basic level of healthcare regardless of employment. This means that the US is the only developed nation where the threat of losing access to healthcare is used to keep wages low, working hours high, and a constant unhelpful dread over the possible loss of a job. Finding an employee is trying to find a new job is almost always cause for dismissal. The present system means that even if offered a job, with a plain job offer, can be a problem as the offer can be withdrawn for no cause at all, leaving those who are careful, unemployed and nearly unemployable, a risk few will take.
Clearly billionaires work a billion times more hours a year than any of the poor do.
They work a billion times harder than anyone at a coal face with a pickax.
They are a billion times smarter than anyone else.
Or they are just better at stealing money than anyone else and have managed to do so at a massive scale.
Which seems more realistic?
Capitalism-Schmapitalism!
_______________________________
“It’s the [Freedom and Self-Reliance], stupid!”
– James Carville
___________________
The entire communist American welfare state is unconstitutional, including, but not limited to, admissions affirmative action, grade-inflation affirmative action, employment affirmative action, quotas, welfare, food stamps, minimum wage, rent control, social services, forced busing, public housing, utility subsidies, CRT, DEI, WIC, SNAP, TANF, HAMP, HARP, TARP, PBS, NPR, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Environmental Protection Agency, Agriculture, Education, Labor, Energy, Obamacare, Social Security, Social Security Disability, Social Security Supplemental Income, Medicare, Medicaid, “Fair Housing” laws, “Non-Discrimination” laws, etc.
Article 1, Section 8, provides Congress the power to tax for ONLY debt, defense, and “general Welfare”—ALL or THE WHOLE WELL PROCEED through governmental provision of security and basic infrastructure—omitting and, thereby, excluding any power to tax for individual Welfare, specific Welfare, particular Welfare, favor, or charity. The same Article enumerates and provides Congress the power to regulate ONLY “the Value of money,” “Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes,” and “land and naval Forces”—commerce being only the “buying and selling.”
Further, the 5th Amendment right to private property was initially qualified by the Framers and is, therefore, absolute, allowing no further qualification and allowing ONLY the owner the power to “claim and exercise” dominion over private property.
The 14th Amendment allows ONLY “the equal protection of the laws,” which has always been the case for citizens, and does not nullify the dominion of the owner of private property.
Government exists, under the Constitution and Bill of Rights, to provide maximal freedom to individuals, while government is severely limited and restricted to facilitating that maximal freedom of individuals through the provision of security and basic infrastructure only.
The Necessary and Proper Clause is nothing more than a perfunctory redundancy for the purposes of clarification—a reinforcement of that which was previously codified—and may not be wielded to amend and impose separate acts that do not represent but alter the letter and spirit of the Founders and Framers.
Karl Marx wrote the Communist Manifesto 59 years after the adoption of the Constitution because none of the principles of the Communist Manifesto were in the Constitution. Had the principles of the Communist Manifesto been in the Constitution, Karl Marx would have had no reason to write the Communist Manifesto. The principles of the Communist Manifesto were not in the Constitution then, and the principles of the Communist Manifesto are not in the Constitution now.
From a play by Sir Edward Lytton Bulwer: ‘RICHELIEU’
Author’s Preface to Richelieu, London March 1839
“Richelieu himself is still what he was in his own day, a man of two characters. If, on the one hand, he is justly represented as inflexible and vindictive, crafty and unscrupulous ; so, on the other, it cannot be denied that he was placed in times in which the long impunity of every license required stern examples ; that he was beset by perils and intrigues, which gave a certain excuse to the subtlest inventions of self-defence ; that his ambition was inseparably connected with a passionate love for the glory of his country ; and that, if he was her dictator, he was not less her benefactor. It has been fairly remarked by the most impartial historians, that he was no less generous to merit than severe to crime ; that, in the various departments of the state, the army, and the church, he selected and distinguished the ablest aspirants ; that the wars which he conducted were, for the most part, essential to the preservation…., in spite of those wars, the people were not oppressed with exorbitant imposts ; and that he left the kingdom he had governed in a more flourishing and vigorous state….”
Does Fiction become reality or the inverse; regardless, lots of what was written above could be said is current today.
His name was Edward Bulwer-Lytton.
Nicely done
Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect. There is nothing more or less to it, and there never has been, in any place or time.
These goals are so indefensible in a country founded on liberty and equality that it is necessary for conservatives to cover them up with lies.
This core proposition of conservatism is indefensible if stated explicitly. It has always been surrounded by an elaborate backwash of pseudophilosophy, that is axiomatically dishonest and undeserving of serious scrutiny.
On the Right, US citizenship has always been a matter of race and white power. The overarching objective of conservatism since the founding has been maintenance of a social order in which rich white men are on top. But that can’t be plainly said in the land of freedom and opportunity, where everyone supposedly has an equal shot at success if they work hard and play by the rules.
So the Right simply lies.
The Republicans say “illegal immigration” is a matter of law enforcement. They say “border integrity” is a matter of national security. They say liberal immigration policies that fall short of enforcing the law and securing the border debase what it means to be a law-abiding US citizen.
What the Republicans really mean by being a citizen is being white.
Consider the statement by white supremacist Nick Fuentes.
He said Renee Good and Alex Pretti were “race traitors,” who were “not acting like citizens.”
But as the right expands its power, it sometimes requires new and better rationalizations. It occasionally finds it necessary to slough off the old lies.
Since the 1990s, for instance, nothing has been more “sacred” than the Second Amendment. We were told the freedom to bear arms “shall not be infringed.” On the strength of this apparent conviction, little if anything has been done to address the spread of shooting massacres over the last decade.
Yet when the Trump regime needed an explanation for why Border Patrol officers were forced to kill Alex Pretti on the streets of Minneapolis, the sacredness of the Second Amendment was easily forgotten.
Alex Pretti was legally permitted to conceal carry. He did not brandish his weapon. CBP disarmed him before he was shot. That, however, wasn’t enough.
“You can’t have guns,” Trump said in the aftermath. “You can’t walk in with guns. You just can’t. You can’t walk in with guns. You can’t do that.”
In another example, US attorney for DC, Jeanine Pirro said, “You bring a gun into the District, you mark my words, you’re going to jail. I don’t care if you have a license in another district and I don’t care if you’re a law-abiding gun owner somewhere else. You bring a gun into this District, count on going to jail.”
The narrative here is that Pretti was not a “real” citizen. As such, he did not have any 2nd Amendment rights, and deserved to die. He belongs to the out-group.
For decades the right has refused to act on hundreds of mass shooting massacres, citing the sanctity of the 2nd Amendment. Now, in the case of Pretti, the sanctity of the 2nd amendment is casually cast aside because it does not fit the real narrative of protecting the in-group of faithful, white conservatives whom the law protects but does not bind.
Conservative “philosophy” is built on a completely fluid set of lies masquerading as core principles designed to protect the chosen group of white supremacists.
These lies can be casually cast aside and changed to fit any given narrative that supports and protects the supremacy of white males.
Let’s review what the American Founders said when they built their country which seems pretty clear:
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
“We the People of the United States…secure the Blessings of Liberty TO OURSELVES AND OUR POSTERITY….”
– Preamble to the Constitution, 1789
_________________________________________
Naturalization Acts of 1790, 1795, 1798, 1802
United States Congress, “An act to establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization,” March 26, 1790
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, That any Alien being a free white person, who shall have resided within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States for the term of two years, may be admitted to become a citizen thereof….
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
“The influx of foreigners must, therefore, tend to produce a heterogeneous compound; to change and corrupt the national spirit; to complicate and confound public opinion; to introduce foreign propensities. In the composition of society, the harmony of the ingredients is all-important, and whatever tends to a discordant intermixture must have an injurious tendency.”
– Alexander Hamilton, 1802
ONE THING IS FOR SURE. COUNT ON IT LIKE THE SUNRISE. EVERYTHING A RADICAL, AMERICAN HATING NAZI SAYS, IS FALSE. NOTE THE CONTINUATION OF THE QUOTE:
“making proof to the satisfaction of such Court that he is a person of good character, and taking the oath or affirmation prescribed by law to support the Constitution of the United States, which Oath or Affirmation such Court shall administer, and the Clerk of such Court”
“a free white person” says it all.
“On the Right, US citizenship has always been a matter of race and white power.”
Absolutely! Ask Barack!
U MORON
Obama. a terrible role model for ANY race, He’s half-white but because he was ’embraced’ as black, white people are held blameless for him by default. America has never had a black president! (as if that would be some sort of solution to every problem on earth and deserving of a nobel prize LOL). Now that I think about it, was Obama’s Nobel the origin of “participation trophy’s”? The first DEI?
Conservatism is NOT an ideology.
It is a rule of nature.
You can be conservative AND most anything else, though some combinations make little sense.
The rule of nature that is conservatism is:
Nearly all change fails, disrupting things that are is more likely to make things worse than better.
Therefore change is best tested outside of government by those who can survive the likely failure.
It is that simple.
It has nothing to do with any of the ingroup outgroup race nonsense you are spouting.
You can win every debate if YOU get to define all the terms in ways to best suit your argument.
But calling a car a duck does not make it able to fly.
John, here is a very good article I received today from Law & Liberty regarding this very topic. You might find it interesting:
Russell Kirk reminded conservatives that conservatism is not an ideology. It is a disposition, a state of mind, a habit of mind. It is as much, if not more, about abiding by a standard of character than it is about defending intellectual propositions. Aristotle’s writings on moderation and friendship articulate part of what it means to have a conservative disposition. The point is not that conservatives are only interested in character, but that prudent political action and right thinking require reflection, study, and humility.
Intellectual conservatism and political conservatism are, no doubt, linked. Yet, it is worth remembering that the former is apt to have a more historical and philosophical perspective. It is the product, at its best, of dispassionate reflection that has as its objective knowledge, not power. The exercise of power should be tempered by knowledge, especially wisdom about the limits of politics that stem from the human condition. The frenetic pace and pressure of politics are not conducive to intellectual study and reflection.
https://lawliberty.org/the-meaning-of-intellectual-conservatism/
Why are you using a computer? Why not write a letter to be delivered by a man on horseback?
Conservatives love change, they relish it, roll in it like a pig in mud.
Except if that change is to make like better for those the conservatives can look down on, can detest, can steal from, can rape. Conservatives loved and embraced slavery; the legal license to beat and rape and consider the enslaved not as humans, but as property to be done with as they wished. More than that, to be those about whom the conservative can say “I am not that detestable wretch, therefore God like me better.”
Conservatives who don’t want change would resist drilling for oil and decapitating mountains to retrieve coal. They would be appalled at converting land farmed for food into small estates that require new highways and vast shopping centers and then even more highways.
There is only one change that conservatives resist – the change where they are no longer the sole occupant at the top of the economic pyramid.
This is all utter nonsense. A pack of vicious and ignorant lies.
This isn’t analysis. It’s a definition rigged to exclude counterexamples.
You assert that conservatism “consists of exactly one proposition,” then declare that proposition immoral. That is not an argument. It’s a stipulation. By that method, any tradition can be reduced to its worst abuses and declared illegitimate by fiat.
If conservatism were truly the belief that law protects some and binds others, it would not need constitutions, due process, equal protection, or limits on power. Those are conservative restraints precisely because history shows what happens when power is unconstrained.
You repeatedly conflate hypocrisy with essence. Political actors violating stated principles does not prove those principles are lies. By that logic, civil rights abuses would prove equality a sham, and corruption would prove the rule of law meaningless.
The racial claim fails on its face. The American conservative tradition has argued, from the Founding forward, that rights attach to persons by nature, not by race. When conservatives abandon that claim, they are not revealing conservatism’s core. They are contradicting it.
Your examples rely on selective quotation and insinuation rather than law. Whether a specific use of force was justified is a legal question. Declaring someone an “out-group” by ideology does not make it so. The Constitution does not confer rights based on political loyalty or race, and any official who acts as if it does is violating the law, not fulfilling conservatism.
The entire essay assumes what it needs to prove: that restraint, constitutional limits, and equal protection are a “cover story” rather than the stated end. That assumption is never defended. It is simply repeated.
This is not critique. It is caricature.
“The American conservative tradition has argued, from the Founding forward, that rights attach to persons by nature, not by race. ”
Which is why, famously the Founders of the USA were 100% against the practice of slavery and refused to allow those holding slaves to participate in American Freedom.
Or is that the opposite of what the Founders did? That the Founders embraced the idea that only white men could have freedom, only white men could govern?
“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition: There must be in-groups whom ”
In today’s world, words are twisted by those who seek to advance falsehoods. That is what you have done, leaving your entire statement in a vast void, floating nowhere.
S. Meyer
I envy the simplicity of your worldview, where a disagreement can be characterized as a “falsehood” simply because it doesn’t align with your narrative. It must be incredibly efficient to replace critical thinking with such dramatic metaphors.
You have accused me of “twisting words” while simultaneously abandoning the dictionary to hide behind the word “void”. It’s a bold rhetorical strategy to claim the moral high ground while standing on a foundation of pure vapor. Accusing me of “twisting words” while simultaneously retreating into an argumentum ad lapidem, dismissing a claim as absurd without addressing its merits, is a bold choice. It’s fascinating how your confidence survives so comfortably in the absence of a meaningful rebuttal.
Your response is a classic ignoratio elenchi. You’ve constructed a fancifully worded response to avoid addressing the specific points I raised. While your prose is cinematic, it remains logically insolvent.
Your pitifully juvenile attempt at eloquence isn’t a substitute for an actual counter-argument.
You have fallen into the trap of a deepity: a statement that sounds profound but is actually vacuous. To say a statement is “floating in a void’ is a poetic way of admitting you have no factual counter-argument. If you would like to move past the aesthetics of grievance, I’m happy to wait for a syllogism.
Your penchant for metaphysical metaphors is certainly evocative, but it serves more as a decorative shroud for a lack of empirical thought than a legitimate critique.
Your assertion that I seek to “advance falsehoods” because my words are “twisted” is perfectly circular. You have defined “twisted” as anything you disagree with, which makes your argument a closed loop of self-confirmation. It’s intellectually cozy, no doubt, but ultimately meaningless
By attempting to relocate my statement into a “vast void”, you have successfully avoided the effort of actually refuting it. If your intellectual capacity is so severely limited that you find the logic of my argument too challenging to engage with in any meaningful way, then a simple “I disagree” would suffice.
I shall wait for you to emerge from your “vast void” with an actual argument.
“I envy the simplicity of your worldview, where a disagreement can be characterized as a “falsehood” simply because…”
Your first sentence exposed your failure to address it. Brevity must not be in your dictionary, but erroneous, supercilious thinking is.
This is the sentence I copied when I first responded, “Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition: There must be in-groups whom … ”
I see we have reached the “condescending dictionary” phase of the argument. It’s a classic move for people who know they have already lost.
Obviously my statement requires a high level of cognitive function to understand, and clearly you are not up to the task. You seem to prefer minimalist comments, perhaps written in crayon, with mostly pictures. I could offer a shorter reply, but your limited intellect would not be able to process the nuance.
It is interesting that you believe that the problem is my lack of brevity, when the real problem is your lack of comprehension. I could perhaps consider being brief, but I’m concerned that you would mistake my brevity for your lack of comprehension. If I had known that I was speaking to someone who finds “thinking” so offensive, then I should probably have used fewer and smaller words. However, brevity is really only for people who don’t have anything worth saying. I can see why you are such an aficionado of that form of discussion. If I were as stupid as you, I’d probably want the conversation to be shorter as well.
Perhaps if you spent less time crafting short dimwitted, nonsensical sentences, devoid of content and meaning, and more time crafting coherent thoughts, we might actually get somewhere.
Sigmund Fraud rides again on a donkey. One wonders where his thinking process comes from. Is it the donkey or Fraud?
I presume that Sigmund Fraud is the pejorative name you use for your psychiatrist. Clearly, you are no stranger to the world of mental health care. If you are dissatisfied with his care, I suggest you seek out another mental health care professional.
I find your allusion to a donkey to be very interesting. Obviously this is a subconscious admission that you know your comments are “asinine”.
That being said, you have yet to formulate a counter-argument to my original treatise.
I am still waiting for a cogent rebuttal, rather than your sophomoric comments about my “thinking process”.
One might postulate that your preoccupation with my “thinking process” is merely a subconscious aspiration toward an intellectual stratum you are evolutionarily precluded from occupying. It is a profoundly tedious endeavor to engage with a mind so thoroughly circumscribed by its own mediocrity that it mistakes its myopic bewilderment for philosophical insight.
Your supercilious fixation on my “thinking process” is quite amusing, especially for an individual whose own “thinking process” is so demonstrably barren that you function as little more than a human ellipsis, a vacuous interruption in the discourse of sentient beings.
To scrutinize my “thinking process” while your own reasoning remains shackled to the mundane shallows of mediocrity is the only impressive attribute you possess. Truly, to even acknowledge your existence is an exercise in charity that I find almost impossible to justify.
It is difficult to tolerate an intellect so fundamentally truncated that it perceives its own stagnant ignorance as a vantage point. To pay attention to your vapid comments is to witness the spectacle of a mind so utterly devoid of analytical rigor that it mistakes the hollow echo of its own prejudices for the resonance of wisdom.
I continue to await your comprehensive rebuttal of my original treatise.
“I presume that Sigmund Fraud is …”
Sigmund Fraud is the pompous ass who got rode out of town with his tail between his legs and his cigars, serving as a fitting punctuation mark in his…
Interesting fixation about your former psychiatrist.
How exactly was he run out of town?
You must have been very dissatisfied with his efforts to resolve your problems judging by your harsh assessment of him as a “pompous ass”.
Is that why you refer to him as riding a donkey?
Is that how he was run out of town?
Have you found a new psychiatrist, or are you simply going to live with your mental illness problems from now on?
Your latest comment reveals an apparent inability to complete a thought. Both sentences end abruptly with ellipses. This could be because your poorly functioning brain is glitching or seizing up. It could also be a subconscious recognition and acknowledgment by you that my previous assessment of you as “a human ellipsis, a vacuous interruption in the discourse of sentient beings” is correct.
Of course it could simply be that you a living non-sequitur; a bipedal pause button in the conversation of the enlightened, the human equivalent of a 404 error; a request that returned no results, a biological placeholder; a person who exists primarily to occupy space that could otherwise be put to better use.
I continue to await your comprehensive rebuttal of my original treatise.
Fraud, you pretend to be knowledgeable in psychiatry. Unfortunately, aside from an overblown ego, you’re no one’s psychiatrist; not mine, not John’s, not anyone’s. You’re just another screwball who’s probably spent more time in therapy than understanding it.
It’s truly fascinating that you have mistaken your own pathology for my lack of “understanding”. Perhaps once you’ve finished using me as a canvas for your psychological projection, we could have a conversation that doesn’t require a clinical supervisor. The tautology of your argument is almost as impressive as its hostility. You’ve essentially declared that anyone who disagrees with you is a “screwball”, thereby insulating your fragile ego from the inconvenience of an actual substantive debate.
You are so busy analyzing the “therapy” you think I’ve had that you’ve completely bypassed your own emotional dysregulation. If you’re trying to trigger a transference reaction, you’ll need to try harder. Right now, you’re just providing a live demonstration of intellectualization as a failed defense mechanism.
I’d offer to explain the nuance you’re missing here, but as Plato noted, there’s no curing “double ignorance”—the state of not knowing, yet imagining one is wise. Your confidence is impressive; your insight, however, remains purely decorative.
This level of reactive devaluation is almost textbook. It’s clear you’re experiencing a narcissistic injury because you can’t control the narrative, so you’ve defaulted to externalizing your shame through weaponized therapy-speak. It’s a very loud way of admitting you feel threatened.
It’s also interesting that you’re attempting to pathologize my perspective. It’s a very common defense mechanism used to avoid the actual substance of a conversation. Let me know when you’re ready to move past the deflection.
I continue to await your comprehensive rebuttal of my original treatise.
S. Meyer is the sort of conservative that Archie Bunker was lampooning.
You don’t even know what kind of conservative I am, if that word even fits what I believe. It doesn’t, but you don’t care; you’ll lie just to keep floating in garbage with the rest of the anonymi. I’ve spelled out my leanings more times than your mind could hold onto one.
Oh, please—save the theatrics and snarky condescension. It must be truly exhausting being a political enigma wrapped in a riddle and smothered in unearned superiority. You seem to think that you are “uncategorizable”, but you are just using a word salad of petty insults to hide the fact that your beliefs are likely just a collection of contradictory grievances, just like Archie Bunker.
You are an imbecile, but I’ll spell it out once more: the closest ideology I hold is classical liberalism; the Milton Friedman kind. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. I state it not for your benefit, you’re far too dense to grasp it, but for anyone else who thinks they can take lazy shots at what I believe. I’m once again dealing with that self-anointed shrink, the troll known as Dr. Fraud, who imagines he can “analyze” everyone while understanding no one.
I have absolutely no idea what this comment is supposed to mean. It is nonsensical gibberish.
Who is Dr. Fraud and what has he got to do with this discussion.
Nutcase.
I’m not sure what this comment is supposed to mean either.
Maybe you believe that “brevity is the soul of wit” as Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet.
Unfortunately, in your particular case, that aphorism is only half right.
“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition:”
You were wrong at the get go. If you look up any reasonable definition of conservatism, it will not have anything to do with in-groups and out-groups. Of course, if a society existed with in-groups and out-groups, then conservstives would seek to preserve that system – after the fact.
Your sophistry is not only unconvincing but illogical to the point of foolishness.
Religious conservatives have an in-group. Social conservatives have an in-group. Economic conservatives are rarely spotted in America today and Donald Trump is trying to remove the most visible one from chairing the Fed.
As a writer, have you tried spelling checkers?
Now I get it! YOU don’t get it! shoulda known.
You defining the opposition and they turn out horrible! big surprise.
Luckily, your definitions of others isn’t congruent with reality.
Keynes vs. Hayek rap battle round 1:
Keynes vs. Hayek rap battle round 2:
Not so good.
Round 1 was good but how do I turn it off?
Speaking of “Anniversaries,” for 250 years, so-called Americans have been endeavoring mightily to give this country away to illegal aliens.
They’re just about done.
To be clear, the Founders conferred upon Americans A Nation, Its Laws, and Its Population.
That is America, the Constitution, and the Naturalization Acts.
The Bee reports that AOC is sad “free market” doesn’t mean a store where all items are free:
https://babylonbee.com/news/ocasio-cortez-disappointed-to-learn-free-markets-arent-grocery-stores-where-you-dont-have-to-pay-for-anything
“I’m really, like really excited,” she said on a live Instagram video. “I thought the U.S. was all about oppressive capitalistic systems of inequality, but when I heard about these free markets, I realized we were in better shape than I had thought.”
@oldman
Oh, she is definitely the poster child for her generation and its political idiocy. We got to see what things would be like if they were in charge from 2020-2024. No, and she is in the cohort where she is not used to hearing the complete sentence that is, ‘No.’. What has happened to the dem party, with the likes of her as its ambassador, passed parody a long time ago and then got serious.
Pro tip: AOC is not smart, is not ‘grassroots’, and is not the future. People like me will likely never get to retire because we simply can’t hand the levers of society to overgrown children like her, and someone will still have to do things. If we get past all of this, her woke millennial cohort will be viewed by history as a science experiment gone wrong, never to be repeated.
oldmanfromkansas – Babylonbee is a satire site that makes up things that are the opposite of reality to generate what they think of as humor. They literally pride themselves on creating fake news as a joke.
Quote of the day…
“If your patriotism crumbles because a Puerto Rican sang upbeat music at a football game, you’re not strong. You’re soft.”
MIKE NELLIS
I guess MAGA thought it was better listening to a performer that encouraged relations with underage girls over a Puerto Rican performer. Says a lot about MAGA doesn’t it?
Wait, is that what they really mean with “family value”? Sexual relations with underage girls?
The way that guy was dancing it suggested relations with under aged girls.
Anon
Well well now, that just depends upon what the meaning of IT is…
It is primarily left wing nut entertainers who made the trip to lolita island.
I prefer my entertainment to be good. I am not particular about the politics of the artists.
Roman Polanski belongs in jail. But his movies are often excellent.
“It is primarily left wing nut entertainers who made the trip to lolita island”
How would you know that given that Bondi has redacted all the client names?
“God helps those who help themselves.”
– Algernon Sydney, 1683
_____________________________
How much do we pay to provide “free stuff” and “free status” to the parasitic denizens down in that —-hole?
The Bible says Thou Shalt Not Covet, Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness, and Thou Shalt Not Steal.
Quote of the day…
If you are wondering why some guy is singing in Spanish at a predominately English speaking crowd, you have critical thinking skills.
Sounds like you need help. If you didn’t get what Bad Bunnys message was, that is on you. Says a lot about your lack of empathy.
How does someone understand a message in a language they dont speak?
“Hey! It is the US 250th birthday. Why is that guy not waving the American flag?”
“I dunno, I dont speak Spanish.”
I do not care what Bad Bunny’s message is – and I probably would not like it if I understood it.
14% of those living in the US speak spanish according to wikipedia.
That would be about 1 in 7 who understood BB’s message.
But most important his music was just not my thing.
If it is yours – good for you.
NO this has nothing to do with empathy.
Left wing nuts want to make everything about empathy.
All that does is results in poor decisions.
Such as Left wing nuts getting arrested or killed because they turn violent to empathize with foreign criminals.
It’s a gigantic screw you to the English speaking population, a denial of the benefits of the US political and economic system. If all nations were created equal, there wouldn’t be millions of illegal aliens in the US. There would be no reason for them to leave their homelands. The US is preferred because our political and economic systems based on English law and Scotish free market economics have been successful with our diverse population.
AI ( How long was the Super Bowl halftime show )
The Super Bowl halftime show performance itself typically lasts between 12 and 15 minutes, while the entire halftime intermission, including setup and takedown, lasts approximately 25-30 minutes. Recent performances, such as those by Usher in 2024 and Rihanna in 2023, ran for roughly 13–14 minutes.
Bad Bunny has had his “15 Minutes of Fame”, so we can all go back to rest now.
You know, we really appreciated those craters out near the Cambodian border and the Parrot’s Beak. Nice work. They made it a very bad day for the —-s.
Yes! English is spoken a mere 525,587 minutes the rest of the year – the jelly-spined English speakers need the additional 13 minutes at this one event to feel good about themselves!
America is great because Europeans, mainly Spanish speaking ones, came to this continent and established colonies which the English later came to. The English found American Indians riding horses that the Spanish brought to North America. Who was it who bankrolled Columbus? Queen Isabella of what country?
That’s kind of a dumb quote. If someone doesn’t like the halftime show, that has nothing to do with patriotism.
The NFL is free to do as they please.
It is there job to figure out what will maximize their interest and therefore revenue.
If this worked – more power to them.
I did not like the music. There is lots of music I like, and lots I do not. Those are called personal preferences.
I also prefer my entertainment not come with politics or causes.
But if I like it I will listen regardless.
Fair, but again, none of that has anything to do with patriotism. I guess whoever thought it was “quote of the day” likes incoherent statements.
John Say,
Well said.
There are musicians who I do not care for their politics but I can like their songs.
As for the NFL and the Super Bowl, meh. Have not watched a Super Bowl in over ten years. The only reason to watch was the commercials. Now you can see them all on line before the game.
I watched the Olympics last night. Much more entertaining, none of the politics dressed up as “entertainment.” Up until the NFL announced who was playing the half time show, I never even heard of Bad Bunny, let alone heard one of his songs.
Upstate, you aren’t the target demographic on conservative Christian Nationalist AM talk radio that Bad Bunny is trying to reach.
The NFL is an unethical, immoral, profiteering, global purveyor of entertainment, including the profane and perverted on a “rainbow” field—it has been suggested its product is “fixed” in the same vein as the slot machines in Las Vegas—and a direct and mortal enemy of America.
That being said, the “invisible hand’s” money talks and bull—— walks.
Nail on the head, once again. Although, I fear most of the thousands of black millionaires who became rich playing in the NFL, might disagree just a tad.
There would be more millionaires among NFL players, but the team owners collude to cap the salaries so they don’t outbid each other for talent.
Excellent piece, thank you Professor Turley.
Indeed, these spoiled ‘anti-corporate’ tools that grew up in the most peaceful and prosperous time the world has ever known and were basically protected from everything their entire lives have no idea that a socialist or communist government is the ultimate corporation, and one without anything resembling regulation that will eventually take everything from them, nor do they realize they are being exploited by people who could care less. It’s madness.
Oh, and PS – I am someone that actually believes the arts are important, but again, indeed, these kids seem to just want someone to pay their rent and feed them while they make etsy crafts. Sounds an awful lot like a parent; that is not the purpose of government, and it is juvenile in the extreme where in some cases we are talking about people who are now 40 years old. Some of us predicted this outcome when they were just children, and no one cared to listen at the time.
Etsy is no longer a place to sell “crafts” and hasn’t been for a while. It was overrun with Chinese factory products a long time ago.
The problem, one that Turley is paid to pave over, is that unconstrained capitalism becomes a slave state where the capital necessary to operate is restricted to the very few at the top. Presently less than 1% of the population of the US controls more than 50% of the capital and they are paying politicians and judges to increase that share. They want lower corporate taxes and income taxes and higher consumption taxes in order to increase the amount of capital they have to do little things – like buy single family housing and turn it to rental properties to squeeze even more wealth out of the middle and lower classes.
. Economics is a marvelous subject. It’s now all translated, explained in the language of mathematics. It’s physics, the material world. 80 percent of the people don’t and can’t speak that language.
Economics is the statistics of human behavior. The math is important but it is not the driving factor.
But the most important factor that so many get wrong is that in large enough groups human behavior is pretty close to immutable.
Both in that the groups will as a whole behave in specific ways, and in that with a large enough groups there are certain ro be a few who will seek to game the system to their advantage if allowed.
It is not an accident that socialism produces Hitler, Musolini, Stalin, Mao Pol Pot, Castro, Chavez, ….
Free market capitalism does what the US constitution and our founders sought to to.
It pits those who would game the system against each others in ways that benefit everyone.
John Say it’s a mixed economy, upper half and lower half and the upper half use mathematics. The lower half works on social welfare programs and jobs created by government. The upper half wanted freedom. We don’t see them anymore. We see the social problems in the lower half.
Human behavior is immutable? It’s mutable using reason. Saves so much time.
The immutability of SOME aspects of human behavior that make economics possible AND make myriads of economic theories fail is NOT about reason – in the vast majority of decisions that humans make they do NOT think deeply about them – nor are they fundimentally emotional either. We use heuristics.
How much thought do you put into your purchases at the grocery store ?
How much effort do you put into finding the best price or quality for what you buy ?
There is just enough processing done that on the whole we make mostly good decisions – but we do not make perfect decisions.
We do not partly because – spending the time to make perfect decisions is actually inefficient.
If it takes you 10 minutes to save $0.05 on a product – was that the best choice ?
Do you litterally think about what I wrote above as you make purchasing choices ?
Or do you find something and buy it because “good enough” ?
SOME of our decisions are worked out carefully using reason – usually major items – though even there were rarely put the effort in to get the BEST deal and the perfect fit.
But most of our decisions are based on heuristics that lead to “good enough”
While these do not lead to the exact same result in everyone,
They do lead to extremely strong patterns in results.
And as such the results are difficult to impossible to change.
There are health professionals predicting trump has 4-6 months left. Is it possible for him to grift more than 4 billy in that time? Took him the first year of this train wreck of an admin this time around to grift that much. But it seems spanky has goals, stakes and urgencies now.
^ Chinese Communist troll. Ignore. ^
Thanks for reading!
You should do stand up comedy. I think you would be a hit! Doesn’t the Sanitarium you’re at have some kind of special lunch show by the inmates?
Thank you. Thank you very much.
EightBall,
Didnt they claim Trump only had a few months to live a year or so ago?
USF
Who can keep up or care to keep up with their garbage of the week? I do know that they have no belief in Christianity or in our Constitution. I remember there was a Vietnam veteran Medal of Honor winner that spoke about Communism from his hospital bed and why he had enlisted, he was not alone in his belief. He believed that if it weren’t stopped there, it would be here and the fight would be in our City streets rather than a Asian jungle. Guess what, he was correct and they’re here and they are working hard to destroy us. The difference so far is the full scale shooting and destruction hasn’t started yet.
Yet Vietnam has a flourishing economy. What was it that over 50,000 American men died to stop?
You probably would say, Pol Pot, who those deaths also didn’t stop; in fact the bombardment of Cambodia destabilized the Cambodian government and gave Pol Pot the opportunity to do what he did.
Well if the predictions are correct, then JD Vance will be next up.
That’s Ok.
@Anonymous
How’s the weather in Beijing?
James
I can tell you that answer, smoggy with a sprinkle of acid rain…
9 years ago they were predicting the same things.
Trumps networth Dropped when he was president, it skyrocketed as those of you on the left were out to get him.
That aside – what is it you think Billionaires get from more money ?
If you have a billion dollars put it into a zero interest bank account and spent 100,000/minute for 20 years you would have spent it all.
That means you could buy a brand new Gulf III every 15minutes.
Above a relatively low net worth, all increases are entirely investment and they only benefit others – not you.
There is no consequential difference in the standard of living between Elon Musk and Donald Trump or George Sorros.
Trump, Musk, Jobs, Gates, …. have done far more good in the world solely through their investment than Mother Theresa.
What is it Billionaires get from more money?
More money. That’s it. They want more money. That’s how they got to be billionaires in the first place. The goal never changes. As a side effect, they want everyone else to have less money. They don’t feel they have won until they have all the money and everyone else has no money.
Don’t raise hopes on how long Trump might live. He’s probably go book on it and he’s leaking fake information to skew the odds.
The trump accounts are just a ponzi scheme. Yet another source for trump and fam to personally grift and loot.
^ DNC-paid troll. Ignore. ^
Got proof there “perpetually irate” anon commenter?
neither trolls nor anti-trolls need to supply proof in a forum such as this. Even if provided, their adversary would simply dismiss it, ignore it, or claim that its not true.
No, FDR’s Social Security was, and is, a Ponzi scheme, as the current 20-40 year old are going to find out when they are the last suckers to pay into Social (In) Security and it becomes insolvent when they reach retirement. You pay into Social Security and the federal government owns the money. The yearly rate of return of these FICA taxes taken from your paycheck is about 1.23% according to Social Security Administration data. Social Security relies on FICA taxes taken from current working suckers to pay benefits to retirees, a classic Ponzi scheme. If you personally owned what you paid in FICA payroll taxes and invested it conservatively in a mutual fund or ETF comprised of 50% U.S Treasury securities and 50% equities (I.e., stocks), the conservative return would be about 5%, and likely more. The potential long-term benefit of these Trump Accounts is that the individual, not the government, owns the money in this account, including the initial $1,000 gift, any future personal deposits, and all the interest and increase in value of the assets in the account. You must be economically illiterate, or a proponent of dependence upon government (that is, a Democrat) to not understand the difference.
Vincente,
Great comment!
Oh, I do not think it is people in their 20-40s who are going to find out the hard way. Last I read, SS was going to go insolvent by 2030. Had I taken all the monies SS took out of my paychecks since I first started working, investing in index funds with low fees, I could retire in my mid fifties. Now, if I am lucky, might pay the phone bill when I goto retire.
Had I taken $10,000 and put it into Bitcoin when it first issued I could own entire countries.
You should have worked harder and earned more.
AMERICANS WERE SUPPOSED TO BE FREE
Ya know what, Vinny, you will never be able to do? You will never be able to provide a legal basis or citation of the Constitution for Social Security and Medicare. The communists reach for one in “general welfare,” but “general” is all or the whole, and Social Security and Medicare provide for only 18.7% of the population—not even close to “general welfare.” Social Security and Medicare are immutably unconstitutional, and the Supreme Court’s duty was to strike them down at the outset. The singular American failure is the judicial branch, with emphasis on the Supreme Court, which must have been impeached and convicted long, long ago.
The person hands the trump Accounts money to billionaires to manage. The billionaires get the benefit of this investment and returns a pittance for the privilege. This is literally a gift to billionaires as they are the beneficiaries of this forced investment.
Social Security is in place as insurance against the reason it was created in the first place – total collapse of the stock market. A 5% gain in the value of zero is zero.
If you think that – then do not invest with Trump. No one is forcing you to.
But I would ask you – if the Trump’s are grifting – who is the mark ? Who is loosing money ?
Turley did not touch this – but free markets are not a zero sum game.
Free exchange all by itself creates value.
Simple experiement. Go to a novelty store and buy $100 in assorted novelties.
Now distribute them arround a classroom.
Ask everyone to place a personal value on each item they were given.
Then give people 10 minutes to trade items hover they wish,
and ask them to value what they now have.
No one will have lost value and everyone will have gained value even though nothing chnged except who had what.
That proves two things.
Value is subjective
Who has something changes its value.
Russians here in America point out from family experience how the “warmth of collectivism” works: the representatives of the collective come into your town and look at your family business that has been generations in the making. They assess its value and decide that the people need that value more than your family does. So they take it from you without compensating you. You’re then left outside in the cold to appreciate the warmth of collectivism.
“without compensating you.”? Can cite law on that?
“Law”?!!! It is to laugh. There was no law in the USSR. The Communist Party was the law.
OldManFromKS,
Well said. Stalin did pretty much the same to the farmers, killed them, sent people out to these collectives who knew nothing about farming and millions died. Anyone who dissented, they were give a Stalinesque trail, found guilty, sent to the gulag.
USF
That sounds exactly like what has happened in South Africa?!
Post Mandella – absolutely.
White Farmers are being murdered by Blacks who exprpriate their property, and then fail to produce.
White farmers built a house of cards; there should be no surprise when it collapses.
However, the violence is against everyone, regardless of race.
And dont forget how Stalin and Mao both starved their people to kill off oppo and control what was left in starvations wake. That’s the warmth of collectivism right there…get down with their sickness or they will burn you.
You are describing venture capitalism where an old, established business is bought and stripped for value and all the former workers are tossed into the street. Often this is done by devaluing publicly issued stocks below the value of the real-estate and leveraging a buyout on that latent value. In modern meme terms – this kills the business. Where does the money from that go? To kill other businesses and put more people out of work.
re: Elder Patriot
Bush Republicans practiced ultra liberal “borrow & spend” economics. Bush Republicans never paid for their liberal spending, instead they figuratively put the bill on the nation’s credit card. Then they gave the richest 1/10 of 1% of billionaires a tax cut.
Bush inherited a balanced budget from Bill Clinton. Even if you deduct wartime spending Republicans were very fiscally-liberal and wreckless in their spending spree (not paid for but put on credit).
If Bush Republicans had instead given tax cuts to working class Americans, it may not have thrown the economy into a deep recession in the short term. But Republicans’ liberal “borrow & spend” policies are still very bad long term.
Those fiscally-liberal Bush policies nearly collapsed the Stock Market in 2008.
Gee
I thought Greenspans derivatives, repeal of Glass-Stiegel act (Bill Clinton), bank loan mandates from Franklin Raines (Fannie and Freddie) and the mortgage greedy hedgehogs were what the cause of our economic crisis was.
The repeal of Glass-Stiegel was a GOOD thing – you will note Dodd Frank did NOT restore Glass-Steigel
in fact it did nothing of consequence, it was just typical doling out government pork and power in response to a crisis without any regard for whether that had any beneficial effect. You can tell what claims about the cause of the crisis were false by the fact that Dodd Frank made no effort to fix them.
All the nonsense at Fanny and Freddy and elsewhere – while disturbing was NOT the cause – it was a symptom.
The cause was interest rates too low for too long – and all those in power – regardless of what they aid KNEW that.
They did not legislate to stop the conduct they CLAIMED was the cause.
And there were very few actual prosecutions – because there was very little actually illegal conduct.
When long term interest rates in a domain are too low for too long, you will eventually loan all that can be loaned to good borrowers and you will slowly start lending to ever less creditworthy people, you will also drive prices up – so the longer the bubble lasts the weaker the buyers become and the higher the mortgages go until one day suddenly people realize this just does not work.
John
Totally disagree, it prevented hedge fund bankers from using the equity in your home to gamble with in the market. Once it was repealed it took only a few short years for them to destroy the mortgage industry. You’re also forgetting the economic ripple effect on the title insurance market, defaulted loans are guaranteed by insurance companies. It was the worst thing Clinton and Texas Senator Bush did. $38T is partly due to this and their Quantitative Easing BS.
My way of looking at the causes of 2008.
The foolish ones who did foolish things did so because, if they lost, frequently they paid no price. Blaming one or another reason for the disaster is OK, but I place the blame on too much shared responsibility, so that few paid.
Examples:
I put a lot of money into a bank paying the highest interest that eventually failed, knowing that each account under a different name was insured.
A person bought a house well beyond his means, where the bank loan depended on future returns of investment that never occurred.
The use of derivatives separated collateral from investments. A house could go under, and the bank couldn’t even find the mortgage papers. No one person was responsible.
Responsibility continued to drift from the individual, with much of it being held, managed, and paid for by the government, better known as the taxpayer.
“The foolish ones who did foolish things did so because, if they lost, frequently they paid no price.”
Correct.
I mentioned a number of government failures that were causal.
Yet no one in government paid any price.
But even with respect to govenrment failures.
It is ALWAYS absolutely true that when government makes a mistake that private actors WILL capitalize on it for their own short term benefit even if they KNOW that the long term consequences will be BAD.
Low interest rates eventually resulted in satisfying the market demand of SAFE borrowers. The result was fannie/freddie, and banks, and mortgage companies increasing had to find riskier and riskier borrowers to keep their revenue up.
When the number of borrowers with credit scores of 850+ dropped, more and more mortgages were written to lower credit risks – with the government encouraging this. Further lower interest rates DO reduce lending risks – more people can afford homes when interest rates are lower.
If interest rates for “subprime” loans were 1% higher starting in about 2004 or maybe a LITTLE later,
there would have been no housing bubble and no financial crisis.
I can’t comment on “If interest rates for “subprime” loans were 1% higher,” but I do have a comment on the interest rates paid. Large banks that disappeared after the collapse paid high interest rates for deposits that were guaranteed. You brought up the “demand of SAFE borrowers.” That was not the “full” reason for the government. I took advantage of the high interest rates on deposits because I had a lot of cash hanging around that needed a place to sit. I opened up numerous accounts using wife, myself, wife and myself, in trust or something like that for… If it were for the person with little money these avenues would have been blocked. That I knew means the government knew as well.
Personal responsibility went out the window. I could invest in a bank almost certain to disappear. The bank could gamble and give higher interest rates than should have existed. A person could take out a loan and then lose the house, but before it was lost, he could try selling it for a few dollars.
Torah: Mercy and Justice; you cannot have mercy without justice, and without mercy, justice becomes cruelty.
“I place the blame on too much shared responsibility, so that few paid.”
That is complex.
Despite the hoopla – CDS/CDO’s had NOTHING to do with this.
Most of these were from AIG and AIG was fully prepared to stand behind their CDS/CDOs
They KNEW what they were doing – though these were complex instruments the simplified version of CDO/CDS’s,
Is the Bank can turn over its MBS’s for some significant percent of face value.
They are really a form of insurance – but like Car insurance – when your car is “totaled” – the insurance company gets to keep the car.
Absolutely no Bank was willing to turn over their MBS’s to anyone for anything less than face value – and that is the REAL cause of the financial crisis. The CRO of Citibank publicly explained that – his duty to the shareholders required that he NOT sell an asset with a CURRENTLY low value, that was WITH CERTAINTY going to recover.
The banks did NOT ask AIG to make good on its CDS/CDOs, and they did NOT accept offers from government to trade them for less than their face value.
Further they KNEW they had the government over a barrel.
I have said REPEATEDLY – that with a few exceptions all these banks were SOLVENT. They were merely REGULATORIALLY barred from making new loans because the decline in the market value of MBS’s dramatically reduced the value of their reserves.
Banks can stop lending for a while and survive.
But the economy can not survive the banks stopping lending
The banks essentially “went on strike” until government found a way to allow them to game or ignore the rules
And all TARP ultimately was, was a temporary waiver of the reserves rules.
This was done in a “complex” way – as I recall – the Fed Loaned the banks money to increase their reserves, and the banks went back to lending. Of course it all was more complex than that. And Banks are not supposed to count borrowed money as part of their reserves. But if you make the process complicated enough you can wink, wink, nod, nod, get arround the rules.
But the trivial solution – was what Steve Forbes said – eliminate the Basil II MTM rule – which is a bad idea anyway.
If the government does not want volatile assets being used for reserves THAT is the rule they should have.
>>“I place the blame on too much shared responsibility, so that few paid.”
>”That is complex.”
It is not complex. It is simple, but there are many different pieces all related and all resolved with moral simplicity. Charles Allison of BB&T solved the problem by being moral. The government used force and forced him to take the loan, which he repaid early and before anyone else.
I want to repeat that – whenever Government makes a mistake the Free Market will ALWAYS capitalize on it.
Most of the recessions during the 19th century were because the US operated on a bi-metal standard, Gold and silver.
And that meant if congress did not PERFECTLY set the price of BOTH, that speculators would be able to structure trades between the two to essentially print money.
A variation of this is what Charles Ponzi did – albeit with Stamps – he would buy them in italy, taken them by ship to NY and sell them for more than he paid. Again just a license to print money. But Ponzi was not buying enough stamps to cover investors that wer cashing out and started paying cashouts with new investments and that is the classic Ponzi Scheme.
If Ponzi has simply told investors you can not get cash out until the stamps bough with YOUR money were sold, He would have been fine.
Regardless, the point still is when government makes mistakes that the market can take advantage of – it absolutely will.
Socialization of risks is NOT inherently a bad thing – we all get insurance even sometimes when it is not required.
Socialization of risk through government is pretty much always a bad thing.
Insurance companies make adjustment to everything dynamically as condictiosn change.
If they make a mistake that allows people to “game” them – they fix it quickly.
Government does not.
We look t many of the private actors in the housing bubble as bad people.
While I do not think most of them grasped that this was going to blow up.
They all absolutely knew they were making money hand over first because Government was backing their play.
Most of them ALSO think they were “good people” – after all they were doing “Gods work” and helping people who otherwise could not have afforded it to get a home.
At the same time they were actively rolling willing congressmen to make it ever easier for them to do “gods work” and provide homes to people who would not otherwise have been able to,
and republicans and democrats fell all over themselves to make that easier.
To the greatest extent possible you NEVER want government in the economy.
People make mistakes in the private economy. And some lose their shirts.
But it is near impossible to get everyone moving the same way.
To get the water in the bathtub oscilating back and forth together until the tub overflows.
That ONLY occurs with government involvement.
And THAT is the real cause of the whole housing bubble/financial crisis.
Peopel like Barney Frank when asked about many of the things he did that made the housing bbble inevitable have said over and over – their would do the same thing again.
They do NOT understand their role.
They think that because they were pushing something that appears good, that because their intentions were good that the failure must be someone else.
Governmnt will ALWAYS make rules that some people can capitalize on – the only way to stop that is to keep govenrment out of it.
Most of the time that will just make some people rich at tax payer expense.
But occasionally govenrment will get a major part of the economy all moving in one direction, and that will ALWAYS lead to disaster.
Just to be clear – for alll the things, Clinton, Bush, Frank, etc did that resulted in the housing bubble.
The CAUSE is still “interest rates too low for too long.”
The fiscal and regulatory conduct of government is what resulted in a bubble in HOUSING.
But “interest rates too low for too long” will always cause a bubble somewhere.
Cause and effect: Why were interest rates too low? Because of an attempt to reduce personal responsibility while the actions and culpability of our leaders were hidden, so that they could forget about their responsibility to govern correctly.
Those responsible for evaluating the risk lied so the mortgages could be bundled and sold as AAA securities.
My response wasn’t pointing out any single problem, but to point out that the underlying problem was a lack of responsibility.
Exactly Mr. Meyer
Repealing the Bill put the wolves watching over the flock. It took a very short time for the wolves to figure out how to eat the flock without getting shot. Now the village has to pick up the tab for the associated gorging.
You forgot that the securities were given false evaluations. Had that not happened and they had been given the deserved “junk” status from the beginning, they would not have formed the basis for a lending bubble. Those most knowledgeable of the valuation were happy to put that false label on because they were paid to put the false label on them.
I think you are addressing the wrong person. My argument had little or nothing to do with false evaluations. If you think otherwise copy my words and further define your complaint.
” Because of an attempt to reduce personal responsibility ”
It was the responsibility of ratings firms to give honest evaluations, not a problem of personal responsibility.
That is a narrow viewpoint of personal responsibility.
“Totally disagree”
You can disagree, but that does not alter the FACTS.
Glass-steagle was never re-instated, and Dodd-Frank did absolutely nothing to fix any of the generally alleged causes of the great recession.
“it prevented hedge fund bankers from using the equity in your home to gamble with in the market.”
in 2008 Hedge Fund managers and investment bankers – the people you think we needed protection from MADE MONEY – LOTS of it.
And recieved significant bonuses and that pissed lots of people off.
They made money because they had absolutely NOTHING to do with the housing crisis or the financial crisis.
The problem was ENTIRELY in the mortgage/traditional banking sphere. It had NOTHING to do with hedge funds or investment banking.
Even the financial institutions that “went under” – were solvent by normal accounting measures, and had positive cash flow.
Their only insolvancy was “regulatory” – they were required to write down the value of the reserve capital that was legally required for them to issue loans, and this write down requirement was because of new accounting standards that took effect in Nov. 2007 – and shortly after than the financial crisis slowly started snowballing.
To be clear – there was going to be a recession NO MATTER WHAT, you can not have a 20% collapse in the value of a long term asset and not have a recession. But what you would NOT have had was a “financial crisis” that threatened to take down the ENTIRE economy.
The Bassil II rules that required writing down the value of MBS’s to the current market price meant that TRADITIONAL BANKS
no longer were able to make new loans – they did not have the reserves required by law.
This problem was exacerbated by the fact that the TRADITIONAL BANKS refused to sell their MBS’s and clear the market.
This is always a problem with durable assets. Even when the government stepped in with TARP I – the banks REFUSED to sell their MBS’s are the 0.25/$ that was the current market price. Why ? Because bankers are not morons. They KNEW that even if the market prices at the moment was 0.25/$ that the value of MBS’s would FULLY recover – which it did. and that continuing to hold them until they recovered was the smart investment. The Value of MBS’s went from 0.25/$ in 2008, to .8/$ in 2012 and by 2016 they were worth MORE than face value. The ROI for holding MBS’s was about 40%/year – no bank was going to sell their MBS’s unless forced to.
And that is why TARP I failed. With TARP I the government agreed to loan the banks money to boost their reserves, but the banks had to sell the government they MBS’s – the banks refused to sell. The difference with TARP II is the government just loaned the banks money to meet their reserve requirements.
The government FORCED all banks to take TARP money – whether they needed it or not.
And all banks paid the loans back RAPIDLY.
” Once it was repealed it took only a few short years for them to destroy the mortgage industry. ”
Except AGAIN – that was NOT where the problem was.
Please looking at FACTS.
Glass-Steigle was repealed in the late 90’s The housing bubble started to burst almost a decade later – NOT “a few short years”
Are you denying that there was a housing bubble ?
In Mar 2007 the mean housing price in the US peaked at 380K
From that point prices dropped, home construction came to a halt.
By May 2012 it had bottomed at 308K
That is about a 20% drop in prices. Given that housing construction had Stopped and that the time to sell had stretched from days to months that is a huge drop in VALUE.
That has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with Glass-Steagle, or hedge funds or investment banking.
This was a classic “cheap money” boom that occurs when the cost of money (interest rates) is artificially low.
This has caused pretty much every boom/bust that ever was.
But ALL boom/bust cycles do NOT take out the economy.
When the boom/bust occurs in a volatile asset – like the tech boom in 2001, the economic impact is relatively small.
The market rapidly correct the mispriced assets and things move one.
As noted in the housing data above the problem in the housing market did NOT rapidly clear.
Whenever the boom/bust occurs in a long term durable asset – particular;y one NOT typically considered a risky investment – like hedge funds and stocks, it takes a long time to clear. People hold on to the asset, refuse to sell, get sucked in to sunk cost fallacies, and because the problem does not clear quickly, the damage to the economy is much greater, and more importantly people get stuck in the bust and do not return to productive activities that bring about recovery.
The boom/Bust of the great recession and the great depression are BOTH unique.
The boom/bust was in durable assets – the worst of places,
Both took a very long time to clear,
Both were heavily responded to by government stimulus – which made things much worse.
The US has had LOTS of recessions and depressions – only two in out history have abysmal protracted recoveries
The Carter/Reagan recession was deeper than the great recession, recovery was faster, and coming out of recovery the economy was incredibly strong for the next 30 years.
In 2020, the Covid shutdowns triggered the greatest single qtr drop in GDP in US history – faster and deeper than the great recession, and faster and deeper than the great recession. Followed IMMEDIATELY with the end of lockdowns and bad covid policies in much of the country, with the largest single qtr increase in US history.
The drop was so fast and the recover was so fast – that it did not meet the technical requiremnts for a recession.
But it was WORSE than the great depression and over in a few months.
And just to dispose of the keynesian nonsense – While absolutely Government responded with $2T in stimulus – very little of that had actually gotten into peoples hands before GDP had recovered.
This is the very well known problem with Keynesian stimulus that even Keynes ultimately admitted – government can not act fast enough and it can not target stimulus to where it is needed.
John Say – you provide more words and less content than a beginning class on economics.
No one cares what you Say if you don’t predict the exact time of the next boom/bust. If not, they you are just a myna bird for history and just as useless.
“You’re also forgetting the economic ripple effect on the title insurance market”
You clearly know nothing about any of this.
Title insurance guarantees that no one else has a claim to own the house you just bought.
It is NOT mortgage insurance.
And Mortgage insurance generally guarantees that your mortgage will be paid if you die.
NONE of these have anything to do with the financial crisis.
What you appear to be refering to is the fact that AIG provided guarantees for a huge percent of Mortgage Backed Securities – the CDO’s and CDS’s. I beleive AIG’s total exposure was about $180B
Except there is a problem with your claim because NO ONE asked AIG to make good on their claims. Why ?
Because just like the government could not get Banks to sell them their MBS’s at 0.25/$
No bank was going to give AIG their MBS’s in return for the “insurance payment” that was more like 0.50/$
AIG never had to make good on their insurance.
AND BTW the CEO and primary investor in AIG went to court over TARP.
He was trying to FORCE the government to TAKE BACK the TARP money and let AIG handle its CDS/CDO obligations itself.
He had LOTS of investors that would have been happy to provide money to cover AIG paying out on its MBS claims,
because they would have gotten the MBS’s in return and the ROI on those MBS’s was going to be HUGE.
Contra you left wing nuts – MOST of the financial industry KNEW what it was doing.
The housing bubble – was the STANDARD easy money bubble that governments cause all the time and that when directed in the WRONG place – such as the housing market will cause significant recessions.
The financial crisis which was RELATED to the housing bubble was caused by GOVERNMENT REGULATION – specifically the adoption of Bassil II MTM requirements. – though there were lots of other stupidities.
The housing bubble was going to lead to a recession NO MATTER WHAT – and it was going to be bad, though likely short – no more than 18 months.
A long series of missteps by the government turned it into a multi year doldrums that we did NOT get out of until mid 2017
Absolutely the financial sector would have taken a hit in the recession that was inevitable.
But the seizing of credit in mid 2008 – the “Financial Crisis” was completely unnecescary and the result of BAD REGULATION,
Glass-Steigal has absolutely nothing to do with anything.
The financial segments that Glass-Steigal regulated MADE MONEY in 2008 – hedge funds and investment bankers had NOTHING to do with the financial crisis.
Nor BTW did CDS/CDO’s – as noted previously no one ever made a claim against AIG, and AIG would have been happy to honor their “insurance” and trade MBS’s for cash they could easily have gotten from investors.
CDO/CDS’s were a PRIVATE version of TARP – AIG gives you 0.50/$ for those bad bad CDO/CDS;s andd they get the MBS’s which are GUARANTEED to return to face value in a few years resulting in a very high ROI.
In the midst of the financial crisis I was ACTIVELY looking for ways to buy MBS’s – but the problem as I noted before was No One would sell them for the market price.
BTW that is also a problem that is still there in Bassil II.
The “market price” is the price at which a willing buyer and a willing sellor agree to complete an exchange.
The financil crisis occured in part because the Banks refused to sell for the price they were offered.
When the sellor will not sell – you have NOT found the market price. And you can not use an MTM rule to adjust the value of an asset unless you have a market price.
I would further note that with very few exceptions we do NOT run value held assets at market prices because that ALWAYS causes problems. If you pay property taxes as an example – you do so on an assessed value not the current market value.
Assets transfered in inheritance are generally transfered at assessed values NOT market values.
You do not pay capital gains taxes every year on the change in market value of assets you have not sold.
If you wish to blame something for the financial crisis, that would be things like allowing banks to use variable value assets – like MBS’s as part of their regulatory cash reserves. Government rules allowed using MBS’s because they were deemed to be a non-volatile asset.
In all of US history significant drops in housing prices are incredibly rare, and ones large enough to cause a mortage to decline in value almost non-existant.
With few exceptions – like Fannie and Freddie -Mortgages are at 80% of the value of a property.
Housing prices only dropped by 20%. That means that when mortgage defaulted the bank could expect to sell the house for the full value of the mortgage, so you actually need a drop in housing values greater than even the housing bubble to cause the value of a mortage to decline.
John Say – you provide more words and less content than a beginning class on economics.
No one cares what you Say if you don’t predict the exact time of the next boom/bust. If not, they you are just a myna bird for history and just as useless.
Major portions of the Glass-Stiegel act had already been destroyed by Congress. All Clinton did was put up the headstone. Clinton didn’t do it alone; the Republicans forced it into law. By himself Clinton could have done nothing to the Glass-Stiegel act.
Ano
Bush inherited a balanced budget from Bill Clinton.
___________________________
Not quite. They took his check book away. (GOP)
Clinton and Gingrich worked together in an incredibly fiscally responsible way.
They balanced the budget, significantly reduced entitlement spending while massively transfering people from dependence to work.
I hate Clinton and Gingrich is not a particularly moral person. but in terms of domestic policy – they were great.
You did get this one correct. Gingrich dragged Bubba BJ across the budget line. Although, to cut expenditure Clinton cut funding for defense spending in Afghanistan and Osama Bin Laden Al Queda surveillance. Guess what the results were?!
I would love to blame Bush – and he does deserve some blame for the HOUSING BUBBLE, Not any of the nonsense you are talking about
Regardless in the 90’s Bush was Gov. Texas, there was never a TX Sen. Bush.
Please get your facts straignt – if you do nto get the facts right. none of your analysis is worth $hit
“$38T is partly due to this and their Quantitative Easing BS.”
I will agree that QE is a contributing factor to our debt.
QE has good and bad effects.
It makes it easier for the government to spend money it does not have – increasing debt and defiticts.
It also with near certainty softened the impact of the 2008 recession – but it did so by contributing greatly to making it last longer.
This is again a common statist problem
You can OFTEN reduce the depth of some crash by stretching the time – but the area under the curve gets larger.
The “Flatten the curve” approach to Covid did exactly the same thing.
While the 2020 rapid recession/recovery was exactly the opposite.
The difference between “ripping the bandaid off” and trying to peel it away slowly.
Those in government almost ALWAYS want the long drawn out pain rather than the quick over and done with.
I have no problems pi$$ing on Bush – but get your facts straight.
The Bush tax cuts actually did “pay for themselves” – federal revenue increased.
It is well known that top marginal tax rates above 33% LOSE revenue.
it is also logically obvious that there must be a revenue optimizing tax rate and that it MUST be significantly below 50%.
We may all like working class tax cuts – but tax cuts to the working class pretty much always reduce revenue and do not benefit the economy.
The Debt under Bush 43 increased by 1.3T That was ENTIRELY the cost of Iraq and Afghanistan.
In fact without them there would have been a surplus.
2008 was not a stock market collapse any more than the great depression was.
Stock prices are a measure of value. The stocks are the thing of value.
When the market “collapsed” – no stocks disappeared. There was the same total amount of actual stock.
What changed was the perceived value of that stock.
The Great recession like the great recession was a classic economic bubble in a durable asset.
In 1929 – it was a bubble primarily in factories – the US built 3 times the industrial capacity it could consume.
Though there was also a housing bubble at the same time.
An oversupply of factories cause the price of the stock in those companies to tank – the law of supply and demand
The value of stock is the value of the companies issuing that stock. Stocks are essentially money backed by the value of the company.
In 2006 home production and prices greatly exceeded demand. That triggered a collapse in home values.
Homes were secured by mortgages, so the collapse in the value of homes triggered a collapse in the value of mortgages.
And that triggered a collapse in the value of companies that owned those mortgages.
WE MOSTLY held this off until early 2008 when NEW Basell II Mark 2 Market accounting rules suddenly kicked in reqiring banks to mark down the value of their liquid assets which instantly reduced their ability to extend credit, and that caused the entire economy to SEIZE because short term lending is critical to the smooth operation of the economy.
The housing bubble was bad – and assets like housing are the very worst place to have an asset bubble – the economy lost MUCH MORE value with the collapse of the tech bubble in 2001 but that was barely a hiccup for the economy.
It is not how much value is lost – it is WHERE it is lost that matters.
Anyway M2M slowly through 2008 eroded the available credit in the banking system as the value of mortage backed securities slowly declined.
But the problem peaked in summber when two MBS offerings Failed to sell at 21 cents on the dollar and 70% of the banking industry instantly became regulatorily insolvent. They were not in the red, they were not losing money – in fact banks made alot of money in 2008 to everyon’s anger. But because the value of their liquid assets collapsed, they could not lend any more money, and the enitre economy lost the ability to borrow short term.
Did bush bear some culpability in this – yes, but not alot. Clinton also bor responsibility – like the 1929 crash this bubble grew slowly.
But the primary driver was the FED – which is always were recesions (an inflation) come from – interest rates too low for too long.
As little as a 1% increase in the interest rates for sub prime mortgages starting in 2001 would have stopped the housing bubble in its tracks.
I am not a Bush 43 fan – but lets not blame him for more than is his fault.
Obama was far worse economically. We have had far worse recessions and depressions.
Only TWO had weak strung out recoveries – those were the great depression and the great recession.
In 1921 we saw a far worse collapse and a rapid recovery in less than 9 months.
Trump saw the Worst single quarter economic collapse in US history in 2020, followed immediately by the greatest single term economic recovery in US history.
Selling blocks of mortgages filled with unsecured loans, a Clinton stroke of genius, caused the collapse.
Mortgages ARE secured. MBS’s are NOT the cause of this.
You can argue that banks should NOT have been allowed to use MBS’s as part of their regulatory reserves.
But there is nothing inherently wrong with an MBS,
MBS’s are created by pooling a block of mortgages – with a large enough block the risks are LOWERED.
Then shares of ownership of the block as opposed to individual mortgages are sold.
Again nothing wrong with this – and the sahares are SECURED by the mortgages.
There should be more security in an MBS than in a Dollar.
This BTW was a market idea. not a clinton idea, and it was inevitable.
Regardless MBS’s were never the problem, nor were CDOs and CDS’s
You can tell – because Dodd Frank did NOTHING with respect to ANY of the alleged causes.
At no point in the Clinton presidency were the government’s account actually balanced. The final budget was balanced, but actual spending and income were not. There was a significant deficit.
I beleive that is correct, and I am loath to say anything good about Clinton – he was absolutely abysmal in foreign policy,
But he and gingrich DID set the countries finances on a glide path to ending the debt,
And Bush’s “endless wars” ended that.
Socialism can’t work because the people voting for it are consistently believing in those advocating for it. Nancy Pelosi is the prime example.
Pelosi adamantly objected to George W Bush’s proposal to allow FICA taxes to be invested in the stock market. Meanwhile, she made hundreds of millions directing her personal income in the stocks of companies that she controlled the governing legislation over.
Greed governs personal decisions. Capitalism takes that greed and turns it to the greater good by resulting in the highest possible return. Something the Pelosi’s of the world vigorously oppose lest the people’s dependency wanes and her control (re:Illicit profits) is lost.
Our Framers sought tp create an enduring Republic based on individual rights. Socialism is completely incompatible with those goals because the election of single malevolent leader could destroy that republic forever. Just look at Europe. Their rights are being eviscerated. Especially, their right to speak freely. They now hate us because, after 80 years of freeloading off of the US we’ve asked them to pay for their own defense, the singular role of government. Typical of the spoiled brats that they have become.
Mises should be required course work in every school in our country.
Mises is good, but there is a small army of perfectly good works that everyone shoudl be exposed to
Smith. Bastiat, Ricardo, Mises, Hayek, Friedman, Coase just to name a few – there are far more.
Free Works like Reads I, Pencil are excellent and can be found on yourtube, or many many spinoffs, like I, toaster or I, Whiskey.
Hazletts “economics in one lesson”, Walter Blocks “defending the undefendable”is excellent and terrifying – demonstrating that free markets work best even in areas all people think absolutely require government.
Coases “How China became Capitalist” is not only an excellent history of China pre Xi, but also a really easy to understand primer on economics.
De Soto’s The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else is also an excellent demonstration of the criticality of property rights.
and these are just the tip of the iceberg. Few have the time to read all of this, but no one should escape High School without more exposured to these authors and works than to DEI or frankly history, sociology or psychology.
An understanding of basic economics will substantially improve the rest of your life more than most anything else.