illegal to buy light bulbs...

[Dunkopf]

We haven't had any tax rate increases. At least not at the Federal level. State and local taxes and fees aren't controlled at the Federal level.

As was pointed out the average consumer pays about 88.00 a year in taxes to support subsidies. That's about 1.5 dollars per week. I can live with that to save some lives in 3rd world countries. Without subsidies milk would be 5.00 a gallon again. My family consumes about 5 gallons per week at 1.95 a gallon. So right there I am saving 15.00 a week. Sounds like the subsidies are saving me money.

 

[Organics North]

The subsidies do save us money. Cut the subsidies and you'll have a bunch of farmers that won't have anybody that can afford to buy their food.

Nope,
I disagree. The lions share of subsidies go to the big corporate farms with lawyers and lobbyist... NOT to small producers involved in the local agriculture movement. The big boys have an interest in low energy prices, so they can ship their products around the country...

Lets take eggs for example. How do I compete with the $1 a dozen factory farm eggs. I am at $3 a dozen for my local eggs.. WELL... Lets say we stop subsidies to oil companies (our military)....No more stability in the middle east...walla $10 gas.. Now those factory farm eggs that were a dollar cost $3 a dozen... And EVERYONE will choose rich delicious locally produced eggs over those pale things any day of the week when the price is the same!!

Play with it in your head. High energy costs hurt the big boys more. It will level the playing field for small local producers...

Quote:
Know that all depends on what you call a subsidy does it not? How about the military? How about all the infrastructure for big multi national corporations to ship there products around? Are those costs included in that $88????????????????????

MILK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Your $1.95 milk has killed the small dairy farmer.............

Notice mostly only big giant corporate farms with their BGH laced milk in the store???? I wished you would keep more of your tax dollars and then go buy $4 a gallon milk from your local dairy... Oh no..wait...their are very few local dairies in this country.. they were put out of business by subsides and the corporate factory farmers............

Local-Local-Local

Everthing from produce to energy...

ON​

 

[rebelcowboysnb]

I can get local non subsidized milk for $2 so your math is off. An do you really think there has been no tax hikes sense subsidies started?

Also that's $88 per consumer average not family. If you go threw 5 gallons a week I bet you have a lot of consumers in your household.

 

[Q9]

Quote:
You just said exactly the same thing I did. I'm not quite sure how that's an indictment of the free market.

 

[Q9]

Quote:
Let me state AGAIN, I read plenty of material by opponents. I remain unimpressed. Chernobyl was run by the government of the USSR, and Three Mile Island killed no one, and even then, the energy sector was mostly controlled by the government.

As for the BP oil spill, again, it's not capitalism, it's CORPORATISM. There is a HUGE difference between the two. In capitalism, companies are forced to compete without any government favors, and those who do stupid things like take short cuts find themselves losing business and being sued for violations of property rights due to collateral damage, for instance the damaged marshes. As things stand right now, nobody owns those marshes and nobody owns those beaches, so BP can't be sued for damages. In corporatism, companies cuddle up to the Feds and pass regulations to kill competitors and enlarge their profits at the consumer's expense. BP is an example of corporatism, while the original Standard Oil was a beautiful example of capitalism. The two are as far apart as Hitler and Jefferson.

 

[cmjust0]

Quote:
Sorry, but that's just not correct. There was no "cash" pumped into the economy during the '20s, as we were still on the gold standard -- something many, many folks today claim is the cure for all that ails us as a nation. The fact of the matter is that we had more, and more, and more people, but the same amount of gold, and therefore the same amount of cash in circulation. What that led to was a boom in credit because if you're in business and you wanna stay alive...you kinda gotta sell stuff! Better to sell it on credit and collect a little bit here and there, than not sell it at all.

And that's what ultimately got us...credit!

One of many thing FDR did right -- though I'm sure you'll disagree

-- is revalued the dollar from about 1/20th of one ounce of gold to about 1/35th. That allowed the federal government to print more dollars. Yes, they were worth less than they were before, but when so few people have dollars to spend, the price of everything comes DOWN. The depression was, afterall, a *deflationary* period. Not much point in having a really valuable dollar if nobody has them to spend.

If it weren't for Hoover's and FDR's obsession with controlling the economy, there wouldn't have been a Depression.

In the words of "The Dude"...well, that's just, like, your opinion, man.

My own personal opinion is that if there were so few dollars in cirulcation today that a mere 20 of them would buy an ounce of gold, nobody would have very many of them to spend and we'd be up to year 81 of The Great Depression.

Examples of doing nothing and succeeding abound in US history, for instance, the Crash of 1920-21. Harding did nothing except cut spending and taxes. The economy was hopping within the year.

On credit...which led to the little snafu we mentioned earlier. It occurs to me that if Harding had actually done a little more and recognized the problem that was so obviously brewing, we could have *avoided* the Depression altogether.

Just a thought.

No recession ever approached the severity of the Depression, because presidents didn't attempt to micromanage the economy.

I belive this one is approaching it, and obviously you do as well. Where we differ is that I happen to believe much of this is the result of the government -- specifically, the one in power between early '01 and early '09 -- believing in corporate America's will and ability to "police themselves."

EPIC FAIL.

Interestingly, the most stable the US economy has ever been were the times when there was no central bank in any form - no Bank of the United States, no Second Bank of the United States, and no Federal Reserve.

It was also the smallest at that time. That's not a coincidence.

My own personal economy was never more stable than when I was putting money into a piggy bank and making very infrequent withdrawals to buy transformers and whatnot. As it happens, though, the more money I make, the more complicated -- and less stable -- things become. Assets get bigger, but so do liabilities.. The choices get more and more important, and more impactful.

I don't mean this to sound disrespectful or anything like that -- obviously, you're a sharp kid, and very well spoken -- but when you get out in the world and start *really* having to live by your own means to provide, you'll gain a better understanding of what I'm talking about.

Trying to save the economy through government spending is a little like trying to repair a machine by shooting it.

I'm not sure what to make of this analogy, frankly. Sounds very Ross Perot-ish.

Also, as for electricity, that probably would have been accomplished by the market absent any government intervention. I mean, come on, how could anyone resist that kind of cash? There were a LOT of country folks back then, which made a HUGE market. It probably would have happened in the same time span as well, but the government-caused Depression killed any chance of that.

Actually, the market was very, very small, which is why those people didn't yet have electricity. Would they have gotten it?...sure. Would it have happened in the same timeframe?...not a prayer.

What FDR did was buy land from farmers who, in many cases, were about to have their lands taken over by banks anyway. Then he put those farmers to work clearing their own land and building dams so it could be flooded. With those dams came hydroelectric power -- so much of it that they were able to use all they needed, plus sell the excess to other parts of the country. And, hey -- they got really, really nice lakes in the deal, too. To this very day, those lakes produces MASSIVE amounts of hydroelectric energy and bring millions upon millions of tourist dollars to the areas in which they were built.

Partial lyrics from "Song of the South," by the country group Alabama:

"Somebody told us Wall Street fell
but we were so poor that we couldn't tell
Cotton was short and the weeds were tall
but Mr. Roosevelt's a-gonna save us all."
Well mama got sick and daddy got down
county got the farm and they moved to town
Papa got a job with the TVA.
They bought a washing machine, and then a Chevrolet."

There's also some talk in that song about papa being a veteran and a southern Democrat and how they ought to get a rich man to vote like that...but I won't go there.

If you've never heard the song, though, give it a listen.

And if you've never been to Douglas, Cherokee, or Norris lakes in East Tn....you really should go. They're absolutely amazing. Norris was like a second home to me, as a kid. On Norris, you can even pick yourself out an island, pitch your tent, and camp for as long as you want. Don't gotta ask nobody. Don't gotta pay nobody.

Another interesting tidbit about FDR: In his New Deal, the vast majority of the funding went to states where the vote was not assured, even though those states were less impacted by the Depression. The South, which was quite secure, recieved the least funding, despite being the hardest-hit area. It's also a well-known fact that large numbers of people on government payroll in public works boondoggles were forced to vote Democrat, or they would lose their jobs.

The vote-or-else thing still happens to this day.. Some of my family works for the state, and when there was a Rep. governor elected, they all changed their registrations because everybody pretty much knew it was "for the best".. When he got tossed out on his ear, they switched back.

2008 would have been an ideal year for a president to do as little as possible - unfortunately, people nowadays look at the president as some sort of demigod, expected to solve the nation's problems. Look what intervention has gotten us - we're currently on the road to a second depression, which some economists suspect may be known as the Greater Depression.

Well, again, my personal view is that if nothing had been done -- if the rules and regs hadn't been changed BACK to be more protective -- then companies like AIG, Enron, etc would still be out there behind the scenes doing everything they could to make as much money as possible with no regard to how it may impact the overall economy.

That's my view, though..

Gerald Celente is predicting this. He's head of the Trends Research Institute, and he has never been wrong.

If he's married, he's been wrong -- trust me on this.

Peter Schiff believes this, and he was one of the few economists to see the housing bubble for what it really was. He was literally laughed at when he predicted this recession in 2006, but he was RIGHT! The entire Austrian school of economics saw this crash coming, and Ludwig van Mises was the founder of that school of thought. He was the only economist of the '20s to predict the Great Depression.

It didn't take an economist to see the housing bubble for what it was.. I bought my current farm from a plumber who was rehabbing houses, and even he said to me "This can't go on forever." Anybody with half a brain knew it was coming....the problem was that there was real, actual money to be made, and NOT making that money because it's ultimately going to lead to really, really bad things didn't make any sense.

People make money however and wherever they can, most times without any regard to how that will impact anyone else later...that's just a simple fact.

Wow, total rabbit trail right there.

Indeed.

 

[rebelcowboysnb]

Hate to tell ya but TVA didnt come in a buy failing farms. The came in an imminent domained whole thriving communitys out by gunpoint. Never heard anyone that lives around those community call them anything but bad names.

My grandmother remembers it. Our family was lucky to live on high ground so they were left alone but hundreds of towns were not. The also only helped power the bigger citys that were growing. Took years before they even thought about sharing with the small communitys. An much of that had to be done mostly by the private sector.


That song is badmouthing Roosevelt by the way. The talk about papa being a southern Democrat. Then say that wish that rich men would vote like him. Then say that But Roosevelt was going to save us all... Its a sarcastic remark. Roosevelt was a republican an they saw the republicans an him as a joke.

Then after that "county got the farm and they moved to town" They were imminent domained out.

But he was lucky enough to get one of the few TVA jobs.

So he lost everything so he could get a job that he didnt need at the start.

High Cotton is a song about the depression too an how its wasn't bad where they were an that they were getting by just fine before the farm was taken.

 

[Q9]

Quote:
Sorry, but that's just not correct. There was no "cash" pumped into the economy during the '20s, as we were still on the gold standard -- something many, many folks today claim is the cure for all that ails us as a nation. The fact of the matter is that we had more, and more, and more people, but the same amount of gold, and therefore the same amount of cash in circulation. What that led to was a boom in credit because if you're in business and you wanna stay alive...you kinda gotta sell stuff! Better to sell it on credit and collect a little bit here and there, than not sell it at all. Common mistake - the Fed had a very low interest rate during the time, providing cheap credit. There was the gold standard, but again, cheap credit and moral hazard courtesy of the Feds is the root of the problem.

And that's what ultimately got us...credit!

One of many thing FDR did right -- though I'm sure you'll disagree

-- is revalued the dollar from about 1/20th of one ounce of gold to about 1/35th. That allowed the federal government to print more dollars. Yes, they were worth less than they were before, but when so few people have dollars to spend, the price of everything comes DOWN. The depression was, afterall, a *deflationary* period. Not much point in having a really valuable dollar if nobody has them to spend.

If it weren't for Hoover's and FDR's obsession with controlling the economy, there wouldn't have been a Depression.

In the words of "The Dude"...well, that's just, like, your opinion, man.

My own personal opinion is that if there were so few dollars in cirulcation today that a mere 20 of them would buy an ounce of gold, nobody would have very many of them to spend and we'd be up to year 81 of The Great Depression. I'm not quite sure how a valuable dollar is a bad thing. Your view of it, meaning no offense, is a little simplistic. Everyone would still have the same value of money, if less of the physical object. It's not that hard to find stable commodities worth less for smaller-scale trading; copper, for instance.

Examples of doing nothing and succeeding abound in US history, for instance, the Crash of 1920-21. Harding did nothing except cut spending and taxes. The economy was hopping within the year.

On credit...which led to the little snafu we mentioned earlier. It occurs to me that if Harding had actually done a little more and recognized the problem that was so obviously brewing, we could have *avoided* the Depression altogether. You're ignoring the rest of the relevant history - there were multiple recessions in US history, and during them, the government did nothing. They ended quickly compared to the Depression, and with far less overall damage.

Just a thought.

No recession ever approached the severity of the Depression, because presidents didn't attempt to micromanage the economy.

I belive this one is approaching it, and obviously you do as well. Where we differ is that I happen to believe much of this is the result of the government -- specifically, the one in power between early '01 and early '09 -- believing in corporate America's will and ability to "police themselves." Common mistake there - Bush was just as bad with regulations as Obama. I have so far failed to find any meaningful "de-regulation" courtesy of W. His Fed policies led up to this, as did Clinton's.

EPIC FAIL.

Interestingly, the most stable the US economy has ever been were the times when there was no central bank in any form - no Bank of the United States, no Second Bank of the United States, and no Federal Reserve.

It was also the smallest at that time. That's not a coincidence.

My own personal economy was never more stable than when I was putting money into a piggy bank and making very infrequent withdrawals to buy transformers and whatnot. As it happens, though, the more money I make, the more complicated -- and less stable -- things become. Assets get bigger, but so do liabilities.. The choices get more and more important, and more impactful. Again, a little simplistic. Besides, the fact that when America's economy was "small" but with the BUS or BUS 2 it was far more unstable proves my point. Without any central bank, America's economy was vastly more stable than with one. That includes the era between BUS and BUS 2, and the era between BUS 2 and the Federal Reserve.

I don't mean this to sound disrespectful or anything like that -- obviously, you're a sharp kid, and very well spoken -- but when you get out in the world and start *really* having to live by your own means to provide, you'll gain a better understanding of what I'm talking about.

Trying to save the economy through government spending is a little like trying to repair a machine by shooting it.

I'm not sure what to make of this analogy, frankly. Sounds very Ross Perot-ish.

Also, as for electricity, that probably would have been accomplished by the market absent any government intervention. I mean, come on, how could anyone resist that kind of cash? There were a LOT of country folks back then, which made a HUGE market. It probably would have happened in the same time span as well, but the government-caused Depression killed any chance of that.

Actually, the market was very, very small, which is why those people didn't yet have electricity. Would they have gotten it?...sure. Would it have happened in the same timeframe?...not a prayer.

What FDR did was buy land from farmers who, in many cases, were about to have their lands taken over by banks anyway. Then he put those farmers to work clearing their own land and building dams so it could be flooded. With those dams came hydroelectric power -- so much of it that they were able to use all they needed, plus sell the excess to other parts of the country. And, hey -- they got really, really nice lakes in the deal, too. To this very day, those lakes produces MASSIVE amounts of hydroelectric energy and bring millions upon millions of tourist dollars to the areas in which they were built.

Partial lyrics from "Song of the South," by the country group Alabama:

"Somebody told us Wall Street fell
but we were so poor that we couldn't tell
Cotton was short and the weeds were tall
but Mr. Roosevelt's a-gonna save us all."
Well mama got sick and daddy got down
county got the farm and they moved to town
Papa got a job with the TVA.
They bought a washing machine, and then a Chevrolet."

There's also some talk in that song about papa being a veteran and a southern Democrat and how they ought to get a rich man to vote like that...but I won't go there.

If you've never heard the song, though, give it a listen.

And if you've never been to Douglas, Cherokee, or Norris lakes in East Tn....you really should go. They're absolutely amazing. Norris was like a second home to me, as a kid. On Norris, you can even pick yourself out an island, pitch your tent, and camp for as long as you want. Don't gotta ask nobody. Don't gotta pay nobody.

Another interesting tidbit about FDR: In his New Deal, the vast majority of the funding went to states where the vote was not assured, even though those states were less impacted by the Depression. The South, which was quite secure, recieved the least funding, despite being the hardest-hit area. It's also a well-known fact that large numbers of people on government payroll in public works boondoggles were forced to vote Democrat, or they would lose their jobs.

The vote-or-else thing still happens to this day.. Some of my family works for the state, and when there was a Rep. governor elected, they all changed their registrations because everybody pretty much knew it was "for the best".. When he got tossed out on his ear, they switched back.

2008 would have been an ideal year for a president to do as little as possible - unfortunately, people nowadays look at the president as some sort of demigod, expected to solve the nation's problems. Look what intervention has gotten us - we're currently on the road to a second depression, which some economists suspect may be known as the Greater Depression.

Well, again, my personal view is that if nothing had been done -- if the rules and regs hadn't been changed BACK to be more protective -- then companies like AIG, Enron, etc would still be out there behind the scenes doing everything they could to make as much money as possible with no regard to how it may impact the overall economy. Actually, any company that behaved as stupidly as AIG would go bankrupt. Wait, it did go bankrupt, despite the corporatism

Enron was a nice example of corporatism, as well. All these companies that behaved in such a stupid manner were encouraged to do so by the government in various ways - regulations, moral hazard, etc. If they had done so without government aid, they would have gone down the drain, and other companies would take over.

That's my view, though..

Gerald Celente is predicting this. He's head of the Trends Research Institute, and he has never been wrong.

If he's married, he's been wrong -- trust me on this. Allow me to elaborate - his economic predictions have never been wrong. I did not intend to say that it was possible for a human being to be 100% right.

Peter Schiff believes this, and he was one of the few economists to see the housing bubble for what it really was. He was literally laughed at when he predicted this recession in 2006, but he was RIGHT! The entire Austrian school of economics saw this crash coming, and Ludwig van Mises was the founder of that school of thought. He was the only economist of the '20s to predict the Great Depression.

It didn't take an economist to see the housing bubble for what it was.. I bought my current farm from a plumber who was rehabbing houses, and even he said to me "This can't go on forever." Anybody with half a brain knew it was coming....the problem was that there was real, actual money to be made, and NOT making that money because it's ultimately going to lead to really, really bad things didn't make any sense. The majority of the Keynesian economists didn't see it coming, which should indicate the size of their brains.

Unfortunately, the Keynesian school of thought is what our government goes by.

People make money however and wherever they can, most times without any regard to how that will impact anyone else later...that's just a simple fact.

Wow, total rabbit trail right there.

Indeed.

Sorry about that. I get easily drawn into the larger issues. Everything ends up tying together for me.

I find the subject fascinating, particularly other people's takes on it.​

 

[country freedom]

Quote:
Then why not go whole hog and have Congress step in and control our heating and cooling too? Get rid of Air Conditioners, put temperature controls on our heat. Heating and cooling count for 56% of our energy use compared to the piddly amount we use on lighting.

They should tell us how many square feet we should live in. How many pots of coffee we make. How big our tv should be. How many hours our computers can be on.

-The better off we'd all be right?-

Congress should probably ban backyard chickens too. After all, it takes more energy to have them than to not... incubators, brooders, heat lamps, heated waterers, electric fences... etc...

SHUSH! Now don't let them hear any of that nonsense talk! You might give them ideas! They've got marbles for brains, didn't you know that?

 

[rufus]

When the electricity goes off, we are all in the dark no matter the kind of light bulbs you have. In countries with state controlled power, you get the juice when some government official says you get it. When they think you have had enough, someone else gets it.

I have a coffee pot that turns itself off after two hours. It is a government mandated safety feature. Now we have to re heat the coffee on the stove top. I am looking in the second hand for an old stove top percolator.

I have a crock pot with such a government mandated short cord that I have to put it on an extension cord, even though the instructions say not to.

I have a lawn mower that won't start or run because it has so many safety features. The starter cord is way up near the handle. It takes forever to get it running.

It has a rubber primer bulb that dries out in the heat. I have to take the air filter off and prime it by hand.

It has a gizmo that will not allow it to be pulled backward. If I mow into a corner, how do I get it back out?

If I take my hand off of the lever, the machine stops and it takes me forever to get it started again. I have to tie it to the handle, otherwise it dies every time I go to pick up a piece of trash in the yard.

I have owned that mower over five years now, and I have never gotten the lawn completely mowed. It is an absolute piece of junk.

No one has been harmed or killed by this mower yet, so I guess the government achieved it's goal.

I left the back gate open hoping it would be stolen. They took, but three days later they brought it back,

I have a toaster that takes forever to toast bread. Breakfast is over by the time the toast is done.

The primary function of government should be to leave the people alone.

Please don't save me from myself.

Rufus