When all economics is political

[KeithE]

[Tim Bonney]

[KeithE]

[Tim Bonney]

Pipe dreams Keith. If Methodist preachers were allowed to bet I'd bet you good money that the nominee will be Mrs. Clinton.

[Sandy]

Sanders clearly articulates his thoughts about what a disaster a Trump presidency would be. I think he's sending a signal to his supporters, and ultimately, once everything shakes out and we see what kind of position they've been able to carve out in the Democratic party, she'll have a shot at picking up 95%, or more, of his supporters. The networks and cable news are always frothing about this or that new national poll. But we don't elect presidents, we elect electors who elect presidents. Her lead is still double digits in states that add up to over 250 electoral votes, she's able to rely on her hubby as a campaign surrogate who is probably more popular now than he was when he left office at 60+% job approval, and she'll have the endorsement and campaigning of President Obama and Vice President Biden who are more popular now than Reagan was when he was finishing his second term. Biden, BTW, would have had a pretty easy coast into the White House this time.

The email issue will come to nothing. There's a lot of high flown rhetoric about compromising national security, but, as the news releases keep stating, the FBI can't really seem to connect her server use to any actual laws that were broken. Gowdy, McCarthy & Co. shot holes in their Benghazi investigation, and that will now be more of an advantage for Clinton and a liability for Republicans. The victory fund issue appears to be dead in the water as well. And if voters are going to have to make a choice between a few words that she spoke to Wall Street bankers, as opposed to the complete and total commitment Trump has to wall street, there's not much of a choice there, either.

In the event that something did happen at the convention, I think it would be more likely that the Democrats would nominate Joe Biden than Bernie Sanders, especially if it comes down to who can beat Donald Trump by more.

[KeithE]

[Tim Bonney]

[KeithE]

I’d now take a 5:1 odds on someone other than Hillary winning the Democratic Nomination.

[William Thornton]

[KeithE]

[Neil Heath]

Now and then I like to remind people that both Colin Powell and Condi Rice have said they used private email servers while in office, too. I notice the GOP has no interest in probing what they might have done.

[Dave Roberts]

I've been interested by not one person commenting on the corporate tax rate in the Eisenhower years.

[KeithE]

[Dave Roberts]

I appreciate the clarifications and the reminders that growth and lowered tax rates do not equate in real events. We seem often sold a bill of goods of the trickle down theory.

[Tim Bonney]

[Sandy]

[Dave Roberts]

The one totally unanswered question from Trump's slogan, "Make America Great Again," is the question of which time he considers to be the ideal time. I keep looking at my 20th century history for that. Is it the early 1900's when children went to the cotton mills across the South around the age of 12? Is it the World War I decade when we first exercised our military power only to draw back from the world? Is the era the 1920's characterized by business without ethics that led to the 1929 crash? Is that great era the 1930's of the Great Depression wiping out the confidence of the common man and creating the westward migrations in hope of finding jobs? Oh, yes, that was also the peak of lawlessness? Maybe for Trump it was the 1940's when we shared in winning a major war when women like my mother had to wonder for weeks if my father was alive or dead since letters only came when his ship made port. Could that be it? Was it the 1950's when government lifted the economy by building the Interstate highway and when the evil of segregated schools was finally exposed for what it was? Maybe Trump sees it as the 1960's, the time of watching political leaders assassinated and the best of our young people sent to die in a war that ended up meaning nothing despite their sacrifices. Perhaps it was the 1970's when we had a crook in the White House, the first OPEC oil embargo, and inflation rates that helped make Trump richer. Could the golden era have been Reagan's years of squeezing the middle class, getting our Marines killed in Beirut (243 of them), Iran-Contra, and endangering American flyers by firing the air traffic controllers? Of course, since Bill Clinton was in the White House during the 1990's it couldn't be that time. Tell me, when was this golden era we are trying to recover?

[KeithE]

[ET]

[ET]

[ET]

[ET]

One last thought. Venezuela. Borrowing from a line by John Stossel: Only the ideas of folks who are sold on the idea of "government is good" and the belief that central planning of the economy is for the "common good" could "turn an oil-rich nation into one where people wait in line for hours for survival rations. Without the free market setting prices and allocating resources, all the cries of 'justice' in the world don’t help anyone. You can’t eat justice. You can’t use it as toilet paper....Calling [government planning and interference in the market] 'social justice' doesn’t make it work."

Nor does it make anybody rich. Not does it make the poor better off. Old Bernie S. was sly enough recently to avoid answering a question that aligned his policies with those in Venezuela. Guess they need a bigger "stimulus program" to help address that 500% inflation rate or whatever it is.

The irony is that the rhetoric you guys toss around here seems to be largely interchangeable with the rhetoric coming our of the socialist leaders of Venezuela as they blame all their economic woes primarily on greed and evil businessmen.

As Margaret Thatcher said, "Socialism is great until you run out of other people's money to spend."

[Sandy]

Actually, what happens far too often is that the government taxes its citizens to provide the wealth which, in turn, provides and protects the infrastructure and protection that allows for some people to become fabulously wealthy, because they use their wealth to stack the government system in their favor, and they make money because their employees and workers have provided an infrastructure in which they can do so, without actually having to pay for it. That's not wealth creation, that's stealing.

Wealth is created by the combination of labor, investment, currency value (or loss of value), and government-set interest rates which determine the value of the currency. All are part of the process. The expense of building and maintaining things like fire protection, education, and other government-paid infrastructure support is directly proportional to the amount of money that is made. If a government trade agreement opens avenues for new investment, or increases the value of its currency because it brings new capital from a new source into the system by opening up trade, then wealth is created by the government.