merkelstan
Member

Both of you are just lying now. Nowhere have I rejected tax relief, I have consistently called for it throughout this conversation, and nowhere have I called for maintaining a rigidly enforced hegemony. You know what industrial independence does? it makes you not need to care about access to foreign markets for your needs so you can refrain from vying for hegenmony. Free Trade causes you to need to compete for hegemony and entangling alliances so you can ensure access to what you need. Mine is the Noninterventionist position, yours is the position that leads to interventionism by necessity.

He's lying. Early on he said he would not be Trump's VP and Trump said he did not want him. He's also delusional if he thinks he can beat Trump, but it does look like RFK is getting ready to step into the role of the selected replacement when they finally have Brandon drop out.

I can't stand what's going on. How is it possible to make shit up to prosecute someone on? This is Stalin's show trials. How were the very charges themselves not appealed and thrown out?

Mine is absolutely possible, difficult, but possible, like all liberty ideas. And my definitions are accurate as applied to the real world, if you promote free trade you get what we have and everyone calls it free trade and many free trade advocates advocate for it. I suppose you are now going to claim that what the USSR and Mao's China and all the others had really isn't "real" communism? If you are going to dive that deep into the deep end of stale philosophy then no Platonic Ideals exist in the world at all, nothing is "REAL ". But that still leaves Free Trade an impossibility and "Real" Free Trade would stil destroy liberty and prosperity if it could be conjured.

You and the communists both pedal theoretical ideals, absolutes that don't, can't, and never will exist. You deny the realities of human nature and say "if EVERYONE would just..." while ignoring the fact that it is impossible because human nature will not change. You will never get people to just unilaterally eliminate all trade barriers without making agreements and enforcement mechanisms to ensure it isn't unilateral. You will never get all trade partners to each unilaterally drop all barriers. And even if you did the globalists would start to meddle and use it to create world government. What we have is what REAL Free Trade is in the REAL world, just like every failed communist despotism that killed millions IS REAL communism. You wouldn't know logic if it punched you in the gut, you have taken refuge in fantasy worlds populated by pure theoretical ideas.

Just like your communist cousins: THAT ISN'T REAL FREE TRADE! You know what it IS? It is real human nature. You will NEVER get your "New Anarchist/Libertarian Man/Society" or your "Real Free Trade" any more than the Marxists will get their "New Soviet Man" and achieve "Real Communist Utopia".

They are like the leftists who praise "diversity" while ignoring the fact that their policies create one gray lump of monoculture mixed race global citizens. They either actually want the results that are happening, only really care about their wallets in the short term, or are so indoctrinated that they cling to the dogma in spite of all logic and real world results.

That's why you don't tariff things we can't make. And why you only put high enough tariffs to encourage domestic production of things we don't make but can until we have an industry that makes them up and running. And why do you assume that the tariffs are the problem when the problem is clearly that domestic taxes (higher because we don't have enough tariffs and are losing our tax base as industries offshore) and regulations are so high? The answer is clearly that we need to lower taxes and shift more taxation to tariffs and lower regulations so that somebody sees that opportunity to produce that special wool fabric at a lower price and starts a new factory to produce it here. You can cherry pick all the edge cases that you want, but the problem with them is never actually tariffs in principle, maybe bad tariffs, but not tariffs, and most often the problem is something entirely different like taxes and regulations. And you don't get to blithely disregard the far more destructive effects of Free Trade that has cratered our manufacturing capacity, increased our foreign entanglement, and reduced thousands of once thriving American towns to Rust Belt hellholes.

None of the inflation is caused by tariffs, but Free Trade has been responsible for the wage suppression that causes as much or more pain the the inflation does. We can get rid of the inflation by addressing its actual causes, and we can restore the middle and lower classes wages by ceasing to allow foreign slave labor to be imported through open borders (the labor market twin of Free Trade) and offshoring to places like China.

You don't understand basic economics or arithmetic. If China is selling $5 widgets while American companies are selling $7 widgets and we put a 100% tariff on China then China must lower their price $3 so the post tariff price is $6 if they want to keep undercutting American companies. Some of them may be able to afford to do so and will do it, the others will lose market share in our country. Meanwhile the taxpayer gets tax relief by the tariff amount using a tax he can avoid by paying only $1 more for an American widget and the American workers don't lose so much work to China and can afford to pay for American widgets. If the Chinese do not lower their prices then they leave our market and we create opportunity for more domestic competition to arise selling $6 or $7 widgets competing on price or quality where a startup business would have been completely prevented from having a chance to start against Chinese slave labor and government subsidized dumping at a loss. Utter nonsense. We should not be concerned about the economies of foreign countries, if they are export dependent in their trade with us they will either lower their prices (which they failed to do, that's their problem) or adjust their economy to properly allocate resources for their own independence. (good for everyone as it reverses globalization and the NAFTA/NAU centralized government trend that starts with regions and leads to world government.

You are the one listening to the Shirky people. And what we want is to entrench DEcentralized control, The Texican wants it even more decentralized than I do but we are both pulling in the same direction for now. You are pulling in the direction of globalized trade and centralized globalized government. You will NEVER get rid of all control, life and people just don't work that way, so you have to work for decentralization and against universalization. And you are the one demanding we trust people like the CCP and the international corporations with our economy and liberty.

You get rid of the bad taxes at the same time, DUH! But I suppose you like income taxes, property taxes, inventory taxes, and sales taxes, all of which are more burdensome to liberty and market competition than tariffs at the state or federal level. Sales taxes are the least bad of the above, being not much worse than excise taxes on the first sale by the manufacturer of specific products. Ideally we would eliminate all other taxes and replace them with tariffs and excise taxes on the first sale.

I don't doubt but would like to see where those figures came from. I'd add mothers with Munchausen's by proxy, too. That's not in the cluster B group but should be.

Press Bureau of the SVR of Russia, April 9 04/09/2024 The Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation reports that the United States is resorting to increasingly desperate methods in its attempts to turn the tide on the Ukrainian theater of operations, replenishing the ranks of the demoralized soldiers of the Armed Forces with a multi-national rabble, prone to armed violence. According to data received by the SVR of Russia, to this end, US PMCs led by the Drug Enforcement Administration and the US FBI have begun recruiting Mexican and Colombian drug cartels serving sentences in American prisons to participate in the Ukrainian conflict on the side of the degrading Kiev regime. The first batch of thugs is planned to be thrown into the war zone in the summer of this year. Gangging will consist of several hundred Mexicans and Colombians. In case of consent to a “commandment”, they are promised a complete amnesty in the expectation that they will never return. If a pilot project to replenish the ranks of the Armed Forces by Latin American coal miners succeeds, then the program for recruiting flayer will be continued and even expanded at the expense of criminals from other countries in which a difficult criminal situation is noted. At the same time, the recruitment of foreign criminal elements into the ranks of the Ukrainian army is not without problems. Negotiations with drug lords are difficult, without the blessing of which no gangster will dare to cooperate with the American authorities, fearing for his life and loved ones. The gang leaders tend to sell their scumbags more expensively, jeopardizing the fulfillment of the American plan. Of course, the prospect of another influx of foreign "soldiers of good luck" from among the serial killers, drug addicts and rapists to the long-suffering lands of the Russian world is alarming. However, the plans of the Americans in this way to get a tactical advantage on the battlefield are doomed to failure. Administration J. Biden actually signs his powerlessness and once again demonstrates the failure of the Kiev regime she feeds on.

I'm sorry to hear that you have reverse intelligence and unlearned. I had given you credit for simply falling for the globalibertarian dogma to begin with and then sticking to it. And you are the foolish one who made assumptions about me so it's not so foolish of me to return the favor because you have a tendency to project.

Bunk. Foreign companies do lower their prices and absorb the taxes, Americans keep their high paying jobs instead of being reduced to the lowest common denominator of slave labor, and tariffs are the best kind of tax with the least detrimental aspects and a few beneficial aspects, and if you buy domestic you don't pay them so they are the easiest taxes to avoid. Your stale old arguments created by simpletons or liars fail.

Much better off with more competition and less centralized mega corporations, and also with state tariffs instead of income taxes that force everyone to let the government know everything about their finances and property taxes that make government the landlord and everyone else peasant tenants who pay rents and own nothing. You have no idea how to secure as much liberty as possible.

Physician, heal thyself. I'm the one whose position has radically changed due to studying the issue.

Domestic interstate trade is not relevant. All the states share the Constitution and similar bodies of law along with shared culture and not too drastically different economic levels. And it still would be preferable to have more domestic competition by having interstate tariffs at some fraction of federal tariffs on international trade, it would help to eliminate other taxes that are much more destructive to liberty as well, such as income and property taxes. We do not control other countries and most of them (especially those best able to undermine our industries) are hostile to us and to liberty to one degree or another. This is one of those topics where Ron drank the Kool-aid and is flat wrong. Appeal to authority will do nothing for you when all logic and history prove you wrong.

Obvious TDS delusion is obvious.

Obvious TDS delusion is obvious.

What that also illustrates is that juveniles (I'd start at 14) who commit violent crime always need to be tried as adults. Except for white females, 15-24 is the most violent age range. Every time I see some violent crime report where there's any debate about whether some teenager should be tried as and adult it pisses me off because the sooner they're locked up, the better.

I was not aware that John Roberts is a "conservative". Amy Coney Barrett either.