The important thing is not to stop questioning.
Albert Einstein
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The Flying Car Is Here....
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(Cato Institute). "The United States should embrace the reality of China’s economic transition, and bring U.S. trade policy into compliance with WTO rules while reducing the distorting effect of antidumping measures on the U.S. economy."
It's time for the US to abandon its neomercantilist Hamiltonian trade policies, period along with its own subsidies of agricultural products, marketing orders, etc. Under the Obama regime, we have slipped down every major economic liberty index. Trade impediments between the US and China is a lose-lose proposition.
Says no one. Free trade ruined the middle class and if TPP occurs its nail in the coffin.
Economically illiterate troll! What "ruined" the middle class was political whores and fascist ("liberal") policies. You are such a freaking idiot, you don't even realize that international trade is hardly free but mercantilist; if countries really wanted free trade, they would simply get out of the way. What all these greedy bastards want is political credit for opening markets for their countries' goods and policies; the truth is that we gain from increased market competition for consumers. TPP is hardly "free trade" but it's at least a long-overdue step in the right direction.
Harmful! They can keep their crap!! And it IS all crap!! Maybe American can start manufacturing widgets again!!
Anti-consumer protectionist troll... As if American-made crap is "more equal"...
(IPI). The average state retiree contributed only 6% of what they will receive in pension payouts.
For instance, average career teachers will contribute only about $100,000 to their pensions, yet will receive $1.5 million to $2.5 million over the course of their retirement, depending on the age at which they retire
Yea, don't forget that the employer will match that and the accrued value plus interest should be over 1.5 million, and then the interest alone should make the pension payments.
OP "progressive" troll must be teaching math in an Illinois public school. Assuming state matching, it's 12%. At 50,000, that's 6000. Let's say you work 30 years. That's 180,000. (We'll ignore you and your employer weren't paying 6000 when you were a young teacher.) Now you retire and expect 80% of your final salary of $50K, or $40K per year over the next 30 years of retirement. Let's assume an investment return of, say, 4%. You know by the rule of 72 it takes 18 years for your money to double. The fact is you would quickly burn through your accumulated savings very quickly withdrawing $40K/year, even with good investment returns. Note even if you're in social security, the max payout is less than $30K/year, even if you've been earning $100K and paying a combined 12+% into social security.
(Cato Institute). See above image of the day.
Let's hear some practicable suggestions. Where are the jobs and the available resources? Are you aware that the human capital to be independent in a modern society has drastically changed over the past 50 years? The poverty problem is structural not psychological or ethical. It cannot be solved by making private property absolute.
To the "progressive" troll: the answer is NOT centralized authority. When I put myself through college for 4 degrees, I knowingly sacrificed the opportunity costs of full-time employment in those years. I have a sister who just earned her first Master's after raising 6 kids. The private sector does a much better job at stop gap measures at a more economical cost without creating a permanent underclass. An economically liberal economy will grow more rapidly, allowing more opportunities for those willing to invest in their future. Don't ask for guarantees, because there are none under any system, but poverty in America is a much different thing than poverty in the rest of the world.
Busting Liberal Myths: Upton Sinclair's The Jungle and Subsequent Meatpacking "Reforms" Saved Consumers From Rat Feces, Etc.
From FEE:
In this connection, historians with an ideological axe to grind against the market usually ignore an authoritative 1906 report of the Department of Agriculture’s Bureau of Animal Husbandry. Its investigators provided a point-by-point refutation of the worst of Sinclair’s allegations, some of which they labeled as “willful and deliberate misrepresentations of fact,” “atrocious exaggeration,” and “not at all characteristic.”
According to the popular myth, there were no government inspectors before Congress acted in response toThe Jungle, and the greedy meat packers fought federal inspection all the way. The truth is that not only did government inspection exist, but meat packers themselves supported it and were in the forefront of the effort to extend it so as to ensnare their smaller, unregulated competitors.
In the end, Americans got a new federal meat inspection law, the big packers got the taxpayers to pick up the entire $3 million price tag for its implementation, as well as new regulations on the competition, and another myth entered the annals of anti-market dogma.Political Cartoon
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| Courtesy of Gary Varvel via Townhall |
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| Courtesy of Scott Stantis via IPI |
Linda Ronstadt, "I Knew You When"
