Political compass test

[Ryft]

How many of those marvelous scientific advances were also due to the largely public funding done by congress - such as through NASA? Human ingenuity is a human trait - not a result of an economic system.

First, where do you think "public funding" comes from? The public, taxpayers who in a capitalist system have enough wealth to tax for incredibly expensive ventures like NASA (to which we owe much gratitude). Second, it is a capitalist economic system that empowers human ingenuity to tremendous achievement, via revenue generation and robust competition.

[TheDarkestOfAngels]

First, where do you think "public funding" comes from? The public, taxpayers who in a capitalist system have enough wealth to tax for incredibly expensive ventures like NASA (to which we owe much gratitude). Second, it is a capitalist economic system that empowers human ingenuity to tremendous achievement, via revenue generation and robust competition.

First of all, that public funding comes from the government. All governments have money by one method or another. The government can be either democratically elected or not or have one economic system or another.
Second of all, NASA is getting less and less funding with each passing administration thanks the results of this capitalist system and the people who nearly destroyed it with stupid investments and wastes of money.
Third of all, your second point has no basis. People like you deride the Europeans for being socialist but they're the ones that built the Large Hadron Collider, putting them at the forefront of physics research. China is catching up to us economically and have their own scientific advancements despite having a truely socialist government.

Not to mention that our educational system is so inefficient and terrible at producing the inteded results that some third world countries with education funding a fraction of ours is educating children better than us. I'm not even going to touch on the abuses of health insurance to this country's overall health.

[Ashendant]

I have no problems with normal capitalism, it makes a nice partner of socialism, the problem with america is that it wants to go 100% capitalism which is a terrible self destructive idea, like going 100/ Communism is
About 50/50 % is about right and fits with the concepts of european socialism

[Autumnlicious]

"Betterment of life" doesn't pay the bills, which these advances require. You need to generate revenue to meet expenses. And those who participate in a capitalist economy can amass wealth that enables them to work toward betterment of life (e.g., Sean Penn).

Yeah... about that... how many of those marvelous scientific advances were also due to the largely public funding done by congress - such as through NASA?
Human ingenuity is a human trait - not a result of an economic system.

Don't waste your breath DoA. Anti-government assclowns will always natter on about how great the unhindered market does. They haven't a clue that either extreme isn't good, only the belief that their extreme is good.

[Minimalist]

Unregulated capitalism in the banking industry came damn close to putting the entire world in the shitter. The answer is not to give the same assclowns free reign to do it again as the republicans ( a wholly-owned subsidiary of big business) and their Tea Bagging/Libertarian hangers on demand.

A shitload of them sitting in jail like Bernie Madoff is a much better idea.

[theVOID]

Unregulated capitalism in the banking industry came damn close to putting the entire world in the shitter. The answer is not to give the same assclowns free reign to do it again as the republicans ( a wholly-owned subsidiary of big business) and their Tea Bagging/Libertarian hangers on demand.

A shitload of them sitting in jail like Bernie Madoff is a much better idea.

Unregulated my ass Min, you're clueless if you think the free market would take such idiotic risks. The real problem is completely different and it was caused by the government regulating and financing investment banks...

The US govt guaranteed the loans of their subsidies Fannie and Freddy (Not private companies in any sense of the word) making it possible for them to take enormous risks that any private investment firm would never have done with it's own capital - "Too big to fail" ring any bells? Add to that the stupidly low interest rates and you've got a system where the taxpayer has offered to back up bad investments making people take way more risky investments than ever before.

Because the govt guaranteed their loans they were able to do all sorts of risky shit, like buying loans from other investment firms - This created a trend where the brokers didn't have to worry about giving loans to people who could afford to repay them because as soon as they had secured the loan they went hopping along to Fanny and Freddy with their loan agreements and sold them on taking their cut and then going out to find more property buyers and investors who couldn't afford to pay their loans after the teaser rates expired. Fannie and Freddy didn't give a shit that the loans they were buying sucked ass because the taxpayer was holding them up.

The easy availability of houses created a massive bubble - Demand for houses went through the roof and as demand increases so does supply and prices - Little to no money down, teaser interest rates of 2-3% and an imaginary rate of appreciation of 10-12% PER YEAR caused by the bubble being further inflated causing even more demand... The more the demand went up the more the prices went up, the more highly contingent jobs were created in home depo and building firms, furniture designers etc all because the supply had to catch up with the government induced demand.

People started buying and renting houses below cost because they were convinced that the appreciation would still turn them a profit, lower rents and higher prices meant even more contingent spending emerged creating another bubble in the home-ware and building trade seeing tens of thousands of people dedicating their time to a trade never actually had the demand they were told it had.

The government blew up the bubble and bubbles ALWAYS burst, it was only a matter of time before the Keynesian shit-storm picked up momentum and the bubble burst.

If the market was truly free there would have been no gamblers with safety nets, no quick profits, no cheap and easy money, no deposit free housing, no housing bubble, no stupid risk taking, no sub prime loans and no stimulus package to keep good on the governments promise.

And if you're comparing the bush era big government republican methodologies with the libertarian ideologies you're completely confused - Bush and Obama have pretty much the same fucking economic strategy, borrow and spend, completely the opposite of the libertarian cut and save strategy - The only difference between Obama and Bush at this point is Obama dug a four fold bigger debt-hole.

And lets not forget that the US public sector debt is currently at some 14 trillion dollars, about 300 billion away from the debt ceiling - To repay the debt they're 'quantitative easing' (printing money) to increase the money supply which decreases the purchasing power of the savings savings of every American (and everyone who owns US currency) who worked hard for their income and saved it.

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If you want social, scientific, and technological advance, you have to go with capitalism. Although I'm sure America wouldn't mind if European socialism stuck to its political and economic ideologies, abandoning the capitalist experiment and leaving America to dominate.

Before you go any further you might want to consider where America is right now and where they're heading - Step by step they get closer and closer to losing the social and economic liberties that made them so prosperous in the first place and heading for the same center-left sociocapitalism as practiced by the Europeans.

It will be China who dominates, they're heading towards economic liberty, the US is heading away from it.

All us fiscally prudent folk better pray for Ron Paul 2012

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I have no problems with normal capitalism, it makes a nice partner of socialism, the problem with america is that it wants to go 100% capitalism which is a terrible self destructive idea, like going 100/ Communism is
About 50/50 % is about right and fits with the concepts of european socialism

You mean those countries who have to keep borrowing cash to survive because their expenditure is far lower than production and savings? It's a great system if you want to owe your livelihood to China and the IMF.

And 50% socialism? That's a fucking absurd amount. You want the average tax rate at 50%? Wait, lemme guess, it's 20% for the poor and 70% for the rich right?

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Here's mine:

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Don't waste your breath DoA. Anti-government assclowns will always natter on about how great the unhindered market does. They haven't a clue that either extreme isn't good, only the belief that their extreme is good.

It does better than government guaranteed markets, you don't end up trillions in debt either.

And I wouldn't be so anti-government if they weren't so completely inefficient at spending. Just transferring funds between government departments costs money, it's like transferring a handful of sand from one pocket to the other, you end up dropping a significant amount of it on the way.

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Thank goodness almost none of you with disastrous left-leaning economic ideologies are anywhere near the authoritarian end of the spectrum, meaning you wouldn't want any of them implemented and enforced at the federal level.

{stands beside Adrian, looking nervously at these folk}

I wouldn't be so sure about that, they aren't exactly Chomsky style lefties.

[TheDarkestOfAngels]

If the market was truly free there would have been no gamblers with safety nets, no quick profits, no cheap and easy money, no deposit free housing, no housing bubble, no stupid risk taking, no sub prime loans and no stimulus package to keep good on the governments promise.

Oh please. This libertarian dream land you speak of is just as dangerous as its opposite.
Just replace government dictator with "CEO" and you get the same damn thing.

And lets not forget that the US public sector debt is currently at some 14 trillion dollars, about 300 billion away from the debt ceiling - To repay the debt they're 'quantitative easing' (printing money) to increase the money supply which decreases the purchasing power of the savings savings of every American (and everyone who owns US currency) who worked hard for their income and saved it.

To be fair, that's because Americans elect people who promise free money. Republicans cut taxes and spend. Democrats do whatever hte republicans tell them to because they're too damn spineless to do have their own ideas. When they do, they're just inefficient.

Before you go any further you might want to consider where America is right now and where they're heading - Step by step they get closer and closer to losing the social and economic liberties that made them so prosperous in the first place and heading for the same center-left sociocapitalism as practiced by the Europeans.

China is a socialist nation with total government control over their economy.

And I wouldn't be so anti-government if they weren't so completely inefficient at spending. Just transferring funds between government departments costs money, it's like transferring a handful of sand from one pocket to the other, you end up dropping a significant amount of it on the way.

Government would be 10x better if it weren't so damn corrupt - thanks to those with money and power buying politicians who are elected on fantastic fantasy voodoo economics where republicans think cutting taxes and deregulations mean more freedom and more money and democrats are too spineless to have their own ideas.

I just keep amusing myself seeing how some of you will argue for low/minimum/no government and expect to have a freer and more prosperous nation on the inane notion that government and government alone causes evil and stupidity and totalitarianism.

[Ryft]

First of all, that public funding comes from the government.

You have got to be kidding me. Where the hell do you think the government gets its revenue? From the public through extensive taxation. Although there are countless fans of Big Government who seem to think otherwise, money actually does not grow on trees on Capitol Hill. Public funding comes from, uh, the public. Article 3 of the Constitution is pretty clear about where Congress appropriates revenue from. You are the one who invoked Congress (Msg. 49); the fact that your argument went to shit within one post cannot be hidden by suddenly patronizing me about how different governments have money in different ways and may be democratically elected or not, etc. You are simply flat out wrong.

People like you deride the Europeans for being socialist but they're the ones that built the Large Hadron Collider ...

First, people like me do not deride Europeans for being socialist. We deride the American government for trying to be. People like me don't really give a rats ass what Europe does to itself. Second, you are practically making my argument for me. You point proudly to the LHC which cost approximately nine billion dollars shouldered by a coalition of some twenty nations, in contrast to the technological achievements and scientific contributions of NASA (from the Apollo missions to space probes and telescopes) which have cost hundreds of billions of dollars shouldered mostly by the capitalist United States itself. So thanks for that.

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Unregulated my ass, Min. You're clueless if you think the free market would take such idiotic risks ...

Major kudos to that whole post, mate. Well said. And you saved me a lot of typing, since you said exactly what I was intending to.

Before you go any further you might want to consider where America is right now and where they're heading. Step by step they get closer and closer to losing the social and economic liberties that made them so prosperous in the first place and heading for the same center-left sociocapitalism as practiced by the Europeans.

It will be China who dominates, they're heading towards economic liberty, the US is heading away from it.

Exactly.

Thank goodness almost none of you with disastrous left-leaning economic ideologies are anywhere near the authoritarian end of the spectrum, meaning you wouldn't want any of them implemented and enforced at the federal level.

{stands beside Adrian, looking nervously at these folk}

I wouldn't be so sure about that, they aren't exactly Chomsky style lefties.

{takes a second look, a little more nervously}

[TheDarkestOfAngels]

You have got to be kidding me. Where the hell do you think the government gets its revenue? From the public through extensive taxation. Although there are countless fans of Big Government who seem to think otherwise, money actually does not grow on trees on Capitol Hill. Public funding comes from, uh, the public. Article 3 of the Constitution is pretty clear about where Congress appropriates revenue from. You are the one who invoked Congress (Msg. 49); the fact that your argument went to shit within one post cannot be hidden by suddenly patronizing me about how different governments have money in different ways and may be democratically elected or not, etc. You are simply flat out wrong.

No. What you're not getting is that there are government's that don't use capitalism now, in the past, and in the future.
They can, have, and will still earn fucking money.
NASA and programs like it get money from the government.
NASA and programs like it can exist without a capitalist society because it does not get its money primarily from private enterprise. What connection are you not making here?

First, people like me do not deride Europeans for being socialist. We deride the American government for trying to be. People like me don't really give a rats ass what Europe does to itself. Second, you are practically making my argument for me. You point proudly to the LHC which cost approximately nine billion dollars shouldered by a coalition of some twenty nations, in contrast to the technological achievements and scientific contributions of NASA (from the Apollo missions to space probes and telescopes) which have cost hundreds of billions of dollars shouldered mostly by the capitalist United States itself. So thanks for that.

First of all, NASA's equipment is decades old and crumbling to the point to where we have to depend on these socialist nations for rides to the ISS station and NASA is still scaling back program after program because the government keeps cutting their paycheck because we're in a recession caused by the idiots on wall street.
Second of all, yes, I pointed to the LHC as one example of many recent scientific discoveries done by the Europeans, the Japanese, and other countries are having successes in this regard as well. Also: all of their education systems beat the pants off the successes of our education system, overall.
Yes, we have more money to thorw around for these projects, which are all wasted for nothing because of incompetance, greed, corruption, and inefficiency.
Your thanks is completely unwarrented.

[Ashendant]

First, people like me do not deride Europeans for being socialist. We deride the American government for trying to be. People like me don't really give a rats ass what Europe does to itself. Second, you are practically making my argument for me. You point proudly to the LHC which cost approximately nine billion dollars shouldered by a coalition of some twenty nations, in contrast to the technological achievements and scientific contributions of NASA (from the Apollo missions to space probes and telescopes) which have cost hundreds of billions of dollars shouldered mostly by the capitalist United States itself. So thanks for that.

Because pooling resources is cheating right

And the Chinese rely mostly on their undervalued-on-purpose coin for their own survival, they even admit it and their entire success depends on how they control the coin.