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

[Omar Rahman]

> 
> Date: Sun, 20 Oct 2013 10:43:24 -0600
> From: Kelly Anderson <kellycoinguy at gmail.com>
> 
> On Sat, Oct 19, 2013 at 11:52 AM, John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> 
>> On Sat, Oct 19, 2013 at 12:34 PM, Kelly Anderson <kellycoinguy at gmail.com>wrote:
>> 
>>> I am a Tea Party member.
>>> 
>> 
>> And I too have a confession to make, although I'm embarrassed to admit it
>> I'm still a registered Republican. In fact, I actually agree with about
>> half of what the Tea Party says, the problem is that in the other half
>> they're not just wrong they're BAT SHIT CRAZY WRONG.
>> 
> 
> Again, the stuff that makes the Tea Party wrong is not officially part of
> the Tea Party, but rather positions that members of the Tea Party often
> take. It's a matter of being highly correlated, but not causal.
> 
> For example, the Tea Party itself says nothing about creationism that I am
> aware of. Yet, a high number of Tea Party advocates believe in creationism.
> The question though is can you hold your nose and be in the room with that
> level of craziness in order to bring fiscal responsibility to Washington?
> 
> The Republicans and Democrats have both shown a disregard for spending
> money and love growing government. We have to have a real alternative.
> Personally, I'm a Libertarian, which reflects my thoughts that the Tea
> Party has it right on fiscal issues, (even though defaulting on the debt is
> clearly not something anyone is really going to let happen) and that the
> social liberals have it right on the social and science side of the ledger.
> 
> 

Kelly and others have tried to disassociate the Tea Party from the commonly expressed views of it's members/leaders. Ok, whatever; whoever believes that won't believe evidence to the contrary.

I would like to comment on the whole 'premise' of the T.axed E.nough A.lready P.arty: quite simply we aren't. If we were taxed at a level that would fund our expenditures you would actually see real broad based bi(tri?)partisan support for military entitlements reform. We might even see progress on increasing helpful things like education, food stamps, and the minimum wage.

I put to you list members that: the crazed billionaires backing the Brethren of the Koolaid are in fact far more extropian than us here on this list. Sitting on top of their mountains of money they can see further, just as those who stand on the shoulders of giants can see. They can see the wave robotisation that will drive many jobs out of the hands of humans. They are the primary beneficiaries of this. It isn't an academic discussion for them it's a business plan. Anders and others recently posted information about jobs that will/could be soon computerised or robotised; egotistical crazed billionaire was not on any list that I saw. They are in practical terms (far?) closer to the singularity than us.

Elsewhere I've said on his list that corporations and countries are like huge mostly analogy AIs. A billionaire or dictator  who respectively controls one of these corporations  or countries is the closest facsimile to a post singularity entity that we can see. Of course to them taxation, national governments, and international agreements are usually just impediments to their free action. Even the 'good' egotistical crazed billionaires, think Elon Musk (to be fair Elon doesn't come off as egotistical even when he makes some sweeping statement that some past approach or program is doomed to fail) , have a perspective that might not always line up with the 'little guy'.

> 
>>> you are conflating right wing religious zealots with the people who just
>>> want lower taxes and smaller government. They are NOT always the same. I
>>> give myself as a prime example.
>>> 
>> 
>> I want lower taxes and smaller government too, but the way to do that is
>> to vote to buy less stuff, not to vote to refuse to pay for stuff you've
>> already voted to buy. And if I don't get my way I'm not going to try my
>> very best to set off a economic H bomb that would destroy the world as the
>> hillbilly Tea Party did.
>> 
> 
> But with the juggernaut that is Washington, how else do you slow it down
> other than throwing bodies under it? This is a serious question. How the
> hell do we slow it down?
> 
> 
>> 
>>> It's the level at which we're doing it now that is of concern.
>>> This chart shows the situation really clearly.
>>> http://bit.ly/19TizJy
>>> 
>> 
>> That chart is really not a very good argument that debt is bad, according
>> to it the largest percentage of debt to GDP happen in 1946, just before the
>> 1950's boon times and the largest increase in economic activity in history.
>> And the second largest economic boon happened during the Clinton years, a
>> time of increasing debt.
>> 
>> 
> And yet it shows a trend towards levels of debt that we haven't experienced
> since the TRUE emergency of WWII. Does anyone other then Eugen think we are
> currently facing a crisis that rises to the level of WWII?

We are a nation addicted to war and war spending. If we can't have a big one we'll take as many little ones as we can get. We'll create never ending wars on concepts; "Drugs', 'Terror', 'Cuteness' (ok I made the last one up....but why not....there is no way we could clean up the internet of cat pictures...let's go for it!) Let's not forget our openly 'covert' wars, wars which suspiciously resemble terrorism if you happen to have family at the wedding/funeral that gets 'bug splatted'.

If, and I'll admit it's a big IF, you accept the notion that countries are 'mostly analog AIs', how would you rate the US on the 'friendly' scale? Psychotic? Delusional?

About debt Kelly, the graph you presented shows pretty clearly that in recent times Reagan and Bush the 2nd are right at the elbows where the debt to gdp ratio turned for the worse. Almost every president has raised spending in dollar amounts, but when you couple that with tax cuts you get exactly the debt explosion that you would expect rather than the 'golden shower' of the trickle down economics we were promised. Why? The billionaires are buying more industrial plant and marching forward to the singularity alone.

Here's a graph for you:

http://www.cbc.ca/news2/interactives/canada-deficit/

Guess what, in Canada the fiscally conservative 'Conservatives'...aren't. The Liberals, at least since Chrétien, are. The final irony is that the Conservatives have outlined in their platform a legislative goal to have a 'balanced budget amendment', something they haven't been able to do after squandering the surplus handed to them by their Liberal predecessors. Reminiscent of the Clinton to Bush transition, yes?

The Military-Industrial complex wants more wars and money, and the banking system wants a perpetually indebted client. They want a 'functional alcoholic', someone who can keep paying the bills but is completely incapable of 'getting off the bottle'. Guess what they've got?

The Tea Party is clearly not opposed to the Military-Industrial complex, it's priority lately has and continues to be to oppose a health care system that, while it is flawed, is a step in the right direction towards reducing the costs of health care to people and to the economy.

Just try to get the Tea Party to stand up and propose cuts just to the defence department and the spies. The American public in a vast majority would approve of that. Instead of going after that mountain of pork-barrel spending they go after the handful of beans that is 'Obamacare'.

Conclusion: either the Tea Party isn't sincere about wanting to reduce spending or they are motivated by idealogical concerns more strongly than fiscal concerns.

Regards,

Omar Rahman
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