[ExI] The Republican Party Isn't Really the Anti-Science Party

[spike]

From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org
[mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of John Clark
Sent: Wednesday, November 13, 2013 8:12 AM
To: ExI chat list
Subject: Re: [ExI] The Republican Party Isn't Really the Anti-Science Party

 

 

 

On Tue, Nov 12, 2013 at 2:06 PM, Max More <max at maxmore.com> wrote:

> A bit of balance:

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/11/the-republican-party-isn
t-really-the-anti-science-party/281219/


>.They're not just anti-science, after learning that the majority of
Republicans in the House and Senate voted to default on the national debt I
concluded that Republicans were anti-logic. I could no longer stand the
humiliation of being a member of such a hillbilly organization.

Now that is an egregiously elevationist comment.  They prefer the more
respectful "Mountain Williams" if you don't mind, and believe in the
fundamental equality of all mankind regardless of distance from sea level.

>.therefore last week I resigned from the Republican party ending my long
association with the party of Lincoln.   John K Clark

How will they ever cope without you, John?  Utter collapse is imminent!  

Or not.  Be kind to Republicans John, they may soon run your government.

John you were aware that the state of California has defaulted twice that I
can remember, once in 2009 where they sent out IOUs.  I didn't have any but
I saw one.  People treated them as real money for a while, and even when
they weren't immediately redeemed, the discount on them wasn't much.  Note
that the state of California went Chapter 11 (not 13) with a balanced budget
requirement and the option of its citizens to move away, taking their money
with them.  So if that wasn't a big catastrophe, you can see why the
citizens of California (and pretty much everyone else) didn't get too
panicky over the threat of a US default.  A US default would raise our price
of borrowing, but our borrowing should be more expensive than it is: it is
riskier than it appears.  

 

The Fed has a bunch of options the states don't have, such as their
arbitrary calculation on inflation.  They could just find a way to declare
inflation negative and give COLA decreases on all Social Security pensioners
(that is coming) or just keep raises for all federal employees and
pensioners to zero for a year or three.  They could take the money in
Medicare, dump it into some other plan (whose name escapes me at the moment,
perhaps named after that guy in the Whitehouse) then declare that program
delayed indefinitely because of technical issues of some kind, such as a
faulty website.  Yes this is a form of default and yes you and I are holding
the bag.  We knew it was coming (didn't we?) for a long time.  Yes it will
be painful.  But do let us move on to the acceptance stage, shall we?  Our
government set up a huge Ponzi scheme; eventually it has to collapse.  It is
doing that now.  Anger and denial are so yesterday.

 

spike 

 

 

 


 

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