Scott F
09-04-2011, 02:10 PM
OK after getting to page 48 on the thread, I couldn't resist anymore and jumped in. It seems a lot of the members don't like Ron Paul because he wants to end welfare. They try to attack and say that he wants to let people starve and die on the streets, when in-fact I think Ron Paul wants to help these people succeed more than any other politicians. But he wants to do it the right way by helping them help themselves, and get off the welfare state. Unfortunately the right way isn't always the easiest way. But just like you have to ween a baby off the bottle, even when they are fussing and screaming, they are happy in the end when they get to enjoy the good foods of life. Anyways, I normally wouldn't post this response here, but I thought I had some good points here that people may be able to use when discussing Ron Paul to people who are misinformed of his policies, and maybe some people could throw in some more points on what the point I was trying to make was.
Both to a certain extent. I would rephrase this to say I think it's more trouble than it should be or has to be, and it's harming our ability to compete as a country on the global stage. I empathize with people who have trouble getting ahead, because I am on the back-half of that process myself. Clawing my way out of the absurd position my parents left me in, putting myself through college without hardly a dime of help from them, etc. However, for me this is not really about empathy and emotion.
I long ago reshaped the political question of "what's fair?" into "what works best?" A common theme I've noticed in conservative ideology is a complete inability to escape their almost juvenile notions of fairness. They yearn for a country that can never exist because the world simply is not fair. All of their political wishes could come true and the only result would be the lower classes rising up and burning their dystopia to the ground. Fair? No. Reality? Yes. Europe is by and large mature enough to have gotten over this retarded notion that taxes are tantamount to theft and that social programs are unfair. It's a lesson we need to learn, and soon.
In the land of opportunity I get to go into tens of thousands of dollars of debt for a college education, living in constant fear of the next trip to the ER, or the next car problem. Meanwhile my friends across the pond are being paid to attend school and get to enjoy such luxuries as:
The ability to actually focus on learning rather than on not going bankrupt
The ability to eat more than one meal a day
The ability to visit a doctor
Etc.
But yeah, lets defund education and then complain about how stupid the average American is. Lets defund healthcare and then complain about how obese and unhealthy people are in the U.S. Lets deregulate the financial industry and then complain about the greed and corruption of Wallstreet. Lets drop investment in alternative energy and then complain about foreign wars for oil. Lets allow our media to blatantly and knowingly lie and then complain about our citizens being brainwashed sheeple. Lets devise a system that makes it extremely hard for someone to succeed and then mock and degrade all the people who don't succeed. It's the American way.
TLDR Alert:
Actually, if you learned more about Ron Paul you would see your views are similar to his on a lot of things, and some of his ideas would actually help you immensely. He understands our *real* problems, he just has different views on fixing them than most of the mainstream media informed society. I think we both agree, GREED is ruining America. I don't think he really cares a whole lot about shit like evolution and whatnot. It's just talking points. People ask him these questions and he has to answer them. Regardless of his views on evolution, he understands that it's irrelevant at this point in time, and unless we fix our country and fast, that shit wont even matter.
Ron Paul understands that colleges in America are running a huge monopoly on everyone. You either pay ridiculous amounts to go there, or you amount to nothing (so says society). The reason colleges can charge so damn much is because of the easy access to government student loans. Sure they may be easier to get than a private loan, but you still have to pay it back like a regular loan. Ron Paul put himself through med school, by working over the summers. This was back when there were no federal loans for college. The money he made over summer, was enough to pay his tuition each year. This was because colleges couldn't charge 20 grand for a year of college, because if they did, no one would go to college. They would be out of business. Now even someone who is dirt poor with no credit, can put their lives 100k+ into debt by just signing a few signatures, and now days you would be stupid not to. The colleges are the ones gaming the system. The supply is the same, the demand is the same. They increase the price because they can.
Same thing for health-care. You worry about going to the ER, because it is so damn expensive, and would just set you back that much further. I totally understand and empathize with you, as probably do most Americans. You worry about not having health-care because you could end up so far in debt you would never be able to pay it off. The answer isn't "well give everyone free health-care". That will just hide the real problem. 80k debt for a weeks hospital stay if you should become really ill? Ridiculous! But what are you supposed to do, boycott the hospitals? They have us by the balls. But most people, rather than examining the reasons behind the high price to try to solve it, deflect their attention to "free health-care for all". Rather than fix WHY it costs so much, they just try to fix meeting the DEMAND of costing so much.
The same thing could be said for the pharmaceutical industry, especially the elderly, which we will all be someday too. "If you don't pay us $600 a month for your meds you will die. Oh wait we need to raise it to $800 now. We are really hurting as a business, and cannot have our 7 games of golf a week if we don't charge more!" They know people will pay whatever they want to charge, by whatever means they have to do to pay it, because hell, if they don't, they will croak. Its basically extortion.
Same thing with oil industries, and raising gas prices constantly. Because they can. People will still pay $4 at the pump, hell, even $7 or $8 or more. People will still buy it, why? Because they have to. No ethics, just profits.
Same thing with the military industrial complex. Now they just use our own congress, through lobbyists, to wage their endless wars, by using the media to fear-monger people, to push public cry for war. (Weapons of Mass Destruction anyone? Red Scare? Cold War?) All in the name of special interests for oil companies and the Military Industrial Complex.
Notice a pattern here? Corporations are ruining our country and then you have the mainstream media, which is corporate owned, with 2 sides, the left, blaming the right, for all the problems of the world, and the right, blaming the left, for all the problems of the world. People are too worried about hating the other side, that they don't even realize that America has become an Oligarchy, and that we are slowly becoming enslaved as a society, indebted for life, to the banks and corporations of the Divided Oligarchy of America.
And it all started in 1870 when Standard Oil was allowed to become a corporation. Even as soon as the first year, corporations were taking advantage of consumers, by sharply increasing the shipping fees for their oil and kerosene. Why? Because they could! There is a reason why many of the first half of the presidents all the way up through Teddy Roosevelt, and beyond, were strongly anti-corporation. Before 75% of their election donations came from corporations.
The corporations push things like tax breaks for the rich, because they know it benefits them. But they put reasoning behind it so that the little man cares about it. Such as, we need tax breaks so that we can make jobs for the little people. They don't care if only one of the sides embraces it, because as long as the other side decries it, the other will then embrace it, its either for or against, no shades of gray anymore, or else your not cool enough to be allowed into either party. It's either all or none. Same things with like Rockefeller advocating mass population control. It only benefits the rich, because they want less people here so they can have more control, and own more land to live an even more plush life. But they pander it on the masses, and the left embraces it.
If you take people's tax money, and throw more at these monopolies and corporations, it's not going to make them lower their prices. In fact the exact opposite will occur. The corporations raise their prices, because the government will pay them even more. The collateral damage is that people who aren't getting government assistance, get their prices jacked up too. Which is why you have the middle-class, so damn butt-hurt and afraid, that they have no choice but to support the republican puppets. They finally made enough money in life that they can afford to be gouged by the corporations and still make it by, and they are afraid of giving more of it up, because that might bump them to low-class, where they will not be able to afford the gouged prices. So they vote for things like tax breaks for the rich, because the longer they can hang on to their money, the longer they can prevent taking it up the ass from the corporations.
And then, the biggest misconception in America is that money comes out of thin air. Too many people in America have this childish notion just like when you first see a parent's checkbook. You got a checkbook? You can just write unlimited checks! You say Europe is so good, but there is a reason they are having to cut people's social programs there. They are broke. Sure its nice to give every single person in your country everything you need, but in reality you will go broke doing so. And now Europe is going up in flames, literally, because people are revolting. But MSM makes Europe seem so good, because they WANT us to be like that. "Don't worry, they will take care of all the money, and give us our rations of food and a roof over our head and free education so we can be good little workers and work the rest of our lives paying our loans with interest back." Sound like something else to you? Be a good boy naw and get back to work.
And then you top this off with the Federal Reserve printing 16 trillion dollars on a whim, etc etc, driving the value of our dollar into the ground, with zero oversight. It took how many years for one of our 3 legislative branches, to audit the Fed, a privately owned company, on American soil, running our national currency. One of our own supposedly top 3 branches of power in America, couldn't even audit them because of so much power in the international banking scene. And then the truth comes out, but of course the corporate owned media suppresses it. Things like a muslim church being built in New York got weeks of coverage. Tiger Woods, and Arnold's affairs, weeks too. 16 trillion dollars printed up and 1/3 of it given to foreign banks? Not a peep on the news. And to top it all off, most people don't really grasp inflation. Notice how things that used to cost you $5 at the grocery store, now cost $8 or $9? There is tons more money in the system. If you had $100k saved up as a safety net back in 2000, it will now only go as far now days as if you had $50k back then. And it is only getting worse.
If there was no new money coming into the system, the people would buy what they need, and keep the rest of their money. Which means they would spend no more giving it to the corporations. But the corporations cant have this, so they need to print more money, so people have the "illusion" of having more, so they will spend more. When in reality with the dollar being worth less and less, we actually spend more, when we have less actual "worth" than what we had before the inflation. They want to suck out every last penny they can, and in-debt everyone, to have to make payments to them the rest of their lives. Which is why there are things like penalties for paying off loans early. They don't want their money back, they have more money than Uncle Scrooge. They want your interest. This is why Quantitative Easing is a scam and destroying our economy even worse. People get the "illusion" they are making more, but the cost of goods increases more, and people are actually paying more out.
This is why Ron Paul wants to end the scam that is the Federal Reserve and go back to a gold standard of money. Gold standard worked from 1880's to 1973. Almost 100 years, through the Great Depression even. There was nothing wrong with it. It worked great. We still used bills. Our money was just "backed" by gold. Which meant there was enough gold in our reserves, equal to the amount of bills floating around. I think the most common misconception is that he would form a new form of currency, or that we would start buying everything with gold coins or gold nuggets. When the gold standard was ended in 1973 most people didn't even notice the difference overnight. It would be the same if we went back, it would just make things better over time. The main thing this accomplishes is ending inflation. So your $50 bucks now will still be "worth" $50 bucks 20 years from now. You aren't constantly struggling to make ends meat. It would be like America in the 50's when the American Dream lived. You could work and get a decent wage, to build a nest egg, that you could retire on. and know that it would be worth what it was actually worth.
But honestly the media panders the fear of going back to it, because they want inflation to exist. It slowly makes the poor poorer, and puts more money in the pool for them to vacuum up, making them richer. And in reality, the Federal Reserve has sold out and shipped most of our gold reserves out east in exchange for our massive loans from China and the likes. So they use fear tactics like telling people that their houses wont increase in value and whatnot. When in reality, even if the numbers "value" of your house increased, it didn't really increase in overall value, in fact it is probably worth less. Or because most people don't even understand economics, they just tell us "we have to inflate, to create more jobs". Or, "We have to raise the debt ceiling, or our country will burst into flames." Etc.
I guarantee you almost American, even the hardcore republicans, wouldn't want to watch people dieing in the streets. Especially the Christians people like to condemn. There is a reason some of them donate huge amounts to humanitarian causes through the church, or go on missions to other countries to help their poor. That's what makes us great as Americans, we help each other out. It's just we have to go about the right way to fixing the system. Throwing more government money at it is not fixing the problem, in fact it only makes it worse, while appeasing the individual, but damaging the whole. Laying the smack down on the corporations, and not giving in to their monopolies would cause them to rethink how they do things. Allowing corporations to fail instead of bailing them out. Encouraging more "Mom and Pop" businesses. Competition is a GOOD thing. It may take a long time and would be a gradual process, but we could reverse the course with the right leadership. And competition would create a demand for increased excellence, stopping the stagnation of technology and advancement. Which would create more jobs as companies would want to be competitive to be bigger and better than each other. Otherwise you get problems like Detroit's auto industry, stagnating and doing the same thing, and not needing new R&D, and firing people, and eventually collapsing in on itself. But instead of letting a new company emerge from the ashes to do right what they did wrong, we bailed them out allowing them to continue the same sloppy practices that got them in this mess.
Now think of if, instead of having to throw all this money at corporations just to keep us fed, and have health-care, we didn't have income tax, and people were allowed to keep their wages. (You might argue here that only half of Americans pay in income tax). But hear me out. We don't pay these income taxes, but rather we get our tax money through import and exports, state level taxes, special interest and corporate taxes etc. We change the way corporations are allowed to do their shady business, and take back control of our economy, outlaw corporate lobbyists, etc. People start earning decent wages again, more jobs are created, and people can afford their necessity's in life without having to pay astronomically gouged amounts. And the people who legitimately cannot work, by being disabled or whatnot, we can take care of them, and not put our entire society eyeballs deep in debt.
Yes I know, I probably sound, anti-the man, but that's a nice label the media (corporate America) likes to label anyone who is against the status-quo (them owning everything). And as we all know, the media exceeds quite well at brainwashing the people telling them to think in the corporate interest. The problem is though, that anti-the man used to be a Liberal thing, but now days, both parties are owned by the corporations through campaign funds, lobbyists, etc. And if you are a Democrat who thinks your party isn't corrupted too, you are lying to yourself.
And don't even get me started on the bought-out congress. Who asks for raises because they say they cannot make end's meat with their extravagant salaries, including pension plans that pay them for life once they leave congress, and free health-care, and immunity to their own laws etc. Ron Paul is one of the only congressmen who has on numerous occasions proposed term-limits, and opted out of the congressional pension, and voted down congressional raises.
Which is why, I endorse Ron Paul, who is the only one, who realizes the real problems with our country, and wants to fix the ROOT of them, not throw political bandaids on them. He is the only politician that I know of, in my lifetime, who truly wants to stop the corporatist cancer on America. Contrary to what the media wants us to believe, he doesn't want to deregulate corporations to allow them to gouge even more, he wants to remove the regulations that don't even do anything to corporations, that they just loophole around, and that merely exist to prevent the little man from starting their own businesses to compete with the corporations fairly. This is why the media hates Ron Paul, and wont cover him, or tries to dismiss him as a meth loving crackpot. Because he is a legitimate threat to their ability to maintain their shady practices and monopolies.
And because, deep down inside, whether we want to act ignorant or not, we all know that the road America is on, is only going to get worse, and corporations will eventually destroy our economy and country. Then we will have no freedom, police state, food rations, loss of freedom of speech, and all the shit we fear. People need to get out of apathy and wake up, because united we stand, divided we fall, and we are definitely divided right now.
TLDR: Corporations are the cause of most of our societal and economical problems, and until we as a society stop and realize it and do something about it, instead of throwing more and more tax money through welfare at them, there will be no change. Ron Paul is the only man since before I was even born, who truly speaks the truth about this.
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