[ExI] Warren Buffett is worried too and thinks Republicans are "asinine"

[John Clark]

On Fri, Oct 18, 2013 at 9:00 PM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:

> Etc.  John, it is much easier to paint your political adversaries as
> crazy and stupid than it is to deal with their contentions.
>

Yes indeed. When you have hard evidence that your adversary is crazy it's
easy to paint him as crazy.

> Economics and biology are two completely different disciplines.  Many
> biologists are clued in on economics either.
>

The primary problem is that Tea Party members are so ignorant that they
don't even know they're ignorant. And even though it's not their field I
believe most biologists know that the earth goes around the sun and not the
other way round, and a expert on genetics won't start pontificating on the
nature of Dark Energy. But the Tea Party thinks it is a expert on
everything. And it's not just biology and economics, Tea Party politicians
have demonstrated that they are ignoramuses about the physical sciences too
(the Big Bang theory is lies straight from the pit of Hell) and they know
even less about economics or even basic human behavior (government default
would calm the markets) than they do about science.

> My contention is that we cannot tell for instance which wing is Ted Cruz.
>  He could be far left as well as far right.
>

I don't care if he's right or left, I care that Ted Cruz is not rational.

>  Recall that the two farthest left members of congress in 2004 and 2006
> were the strongest voices against raising the debt limit, Charlie Rangel
> and Barack Obama.
>

I'm not here to defend Obama, and all politicians engage in political
theater, but this time it was a pointless 24 billion dollar production that
came within 90 minutes of global catastrophe.

 > Printing money and borrowing wealth are the same thing.
>

I know.

> The debt limit is all about how much money the government can issue.
>

I know.

> The government needs to borrow real wealth and stay within its borrowing
> limit in order to print money.
>

I know.

 > Of course they could theoretically print money without borrowing wealth.
>  This has been tried, in Weimar Germany and more recently Zimbabwe.
>

And there we have it, fears about inflation, the GOP has been predicting
it's going to show up any second now for almost 10 years, but there is
still nothing. I'm not saying such a thing is not theoretically possible,
but inflation is not the only disaster that can infect a economy, deflation
can be just as bad or worse. Starting in 1929 and throughout the 1930's
just like now there was not even a hint of inflation, but everybody was
still miserable. It would be simplistic to say that printing money is
always good or always bad, it depends on circumstances and right now the
danger of deflation is greater than that of inflation.

> why not sell that new aircraft carrier, the John F. Kennedy?  That one is
> said to have cost about 12 billion, so we can assume it would sell for
> about the same.
>

Great idea, we could sell the aircraft carrier to Al Qaeda and the 12
billion dollars would be enough to keep the government running for almost 8
hours.


> >The fact that there is a Tea Party is what keeps the world having some
> faith in the dollar.
>

THAT IS RIDICULOUS! Tea Party hillbillies have turned the USA into a
laughing stock in the eyes of the world, or at least they would be laughing
if they weren't screaming in terror as if they just saw an infant holding a
loaded handgun.


> > You are saying the Tea Party is made up of crazy fools
>

Yes.

> therefore their arguments can be safely dismissed.


Yes.

> The Tea Party is gently suggesting that we cannot sustain the endless
> borrowing and overspending the way we have been doing for at least 14 years.
>

Yes, among other even stupider things that is what the Tea Party is saying.

> Does that mean you believe we can sustain the borrow and spend
> indefinitely?
>

Probably. The government of the USA has been in debt every year since 1835,
and every single president since Herbert Hoover has increased the amount of
debt. And except for 4 years the government has spent more money than it
took in every year since 1970. And yet the country is still here, and as
long as some intelligence is used, that is to say as long as the Tea Party
is not involved, I see no reason this can't continue.

  John K Clark
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20131019/f81d449a/attachment.html>