Friday, June 28, 2019

Everything's Free In The Clown Show

Author Gary Doan at the Libertarian Republic watched the Democratic Clown Posse debates so that you don't have to.  Why?  To keep a running tally of all the things they're promising to give away.
The Democratic primary has become an election for High School President, where everyone is promising vending machines in the cafeteria and larger towels in the locker-rooms. There are so many proposed “free” programs that it may be difficult to keep track without someone compiling them.
And this was just for the first night - Wednesday!  One or more of them promised all of the following as free stuff. 
*College
*Childcare
*Healthcare
*Drugs
*Alternate Energy
*Debt
*Raises
*Subsidies
*Benefits
*Sick Days
*Pre-K
*Doubling the EIC
*Family Leave
*Certain Lending
*Abortions
*Foreign Aid
*Mental Health Counseling
*”Resiliency”[sic]
*Agriculture
*Seawalls
*Reparations
*Military Engagements
*Infrastructure
*Art
*Housing
*Increases To Current Entitlement Programs
*Money For Everyone, Monthly, Just Because [Note: I believe he's referring to Universal Basic Income (UBI) another form of welfare.  SiG]
This reminds me of the time I agreed with Obama.  I'll never forget that day.  It was back in 2009, in an interview with Steve Scully on CSPAN, Scully said, "at what point do we run out of money?" and Obama said, "well, we're out of money now".  It was remarkably honest for any politician.  The exact exchange (for those anal-retentive about misquotes) was:
SCULLY: You know the numbers, $1.7 trillion debt, a national deficit of $11 trillion. At what point do we run out of money?

OBAMA: Well, we are out of money now. We are operating in deep deficits, not caused by any decisions we’ve made on health care so far. This is a consequence of the crisis that we’ve seen and in fact our failure to make some good decisions on health care over the last several decades.
Note that Scully used the wrong words: $1.7 trillion was the annual deficit and $11 trillion the national debt. The situation is far worse now than it was then.  The annual deficit is probably going to be over $1 trillion again, which is better than '09's $1.7T, but the total debt is double what it was back then, $22.4 trillion. (Doubled in just 10 years...)

In a nation with that kind of debt, where does the money come from for all this stuff?  You know it means higher taxes and fees for everything because as RA Heinlein put it, "TANSTAAFL": There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch, or in this case a free college, free health care, free housing, free Universal Basic Income. Contrary to what the Modern Monetary Theory folks say, we can't just create whatever money we want out of thin air and spend it indefinitely. 

The clown show is just starting.  There are more debates and more pandering to the extreme ends of the socialist spectrum for over another year. 


Pure MMT.  Make up money out of nothing and pay for it.  Which is a good way to end up with money worth less than toilet paper, like Venezuela today.



7 comments:

  1. There was a recent "science" report about an asteroid....one with MASSIVE amounts of precious metals said to be worth some $700 Trillion or more....and how such an asteroid would make everyone on earth FABULOUSLY wealthy. The idiots who wrote about the asteroid are the same type of abject moronic twit too stupid to understand the basis of value. If EVERYBODY is worth millions than the word millionaire is pointless. And if we CREATE enough dollars to pay for everything the idiot demonrats promise then dollar bills will be WORTHLESS. But most of these idiots are too stupid to grasp this fundamental reality....and the handful who DO get it don't care. They believe they will be immune to the fallout from their economic insanity.

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    1. My wife saw that story about the gold asteroid and showed me. We both laughed about it. Nothing would crash the price of gold faster.

      The thing is that the concept of crashing the value is something that low-end prospectors in the bush in Africa understand. If they find a good deposit of some gem or mineral, they don't do a big announcement and flood the market, they mine and release the stuff slowly so that they don't crash the market.

      So low-education, low-IQ miners and prospectors understand supply and demand, but Ph.D. economists don't.

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  4. Hey! I made that AOC thingy (not mad, happy to see it)! Did it show up on a Google Image Search?

    Also, back from vacation, which explains my absence.

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    1. You made that? I didn't know. It showed up a while ago, and I think I used it back in a post on Modern Monetary Theory. I think it was the first time I linked to you.

      I shoulda known.


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