j_b

It's very difficult for union employees to make more than non-Union employees with the same skill-set unless they've managed to secure regulations that insulate themselves from competition, They forced regulations thanks to their collective power to fight off unfair competition from employers that practice social dumping. It is remarkable that you are here arguing against cost of living increases yet we have yet to read you arguing to cut fat at the top. Social dumping (not paying living wages, healthcare, pensions, taxes that go for education, infrastrusture, social services, research and development, etc ...) doesn't result in cheaper prices for the consumer but is an effective transfer of wealth to the top which has resulted in people not being able to make ends meet despite the generalization of 2 wage earner households let's start by rolling back the tax cuts for the wealthy, banning doing business with tax heavens and taxing transfer pricing. That should get us a long way toward where we need to be.

I'm not sure that we're talking about the same Hayek here. I've read a few hundred pages of his works, and have never encountered anything but impassioned, profound, and deep arguments for political and economic freedom. It'd certainly be strange if the same guy who spent several decades arguing on behalf of these causes from at least the early 1920's onwards, against the prevailing sentiments of his day, and who is best remembered for "The Road to Serfdom" was a closet authoritarian. What works of his have you actually read, and in what specific essays or passages in those works did he weigh in on the side of authoritarianism? My post made the difference between discourse and practice because libertarians/neo-liberals claim to be for 'freedom' whereas in fact they subjugate every domain of human activity to the logic of the market, which effectively results in a loss of freedom and power for those without sufficient economic power to intervene in the market. The end result of libertarian freedom is concentration of most wealth and power in the hands of economic elites. Hayek is well known for disliking representative democracy and he was openly against social justice; his model amounted to social darwinism: "Hayek visited Chile several times in the 1970s and 1980s during the reign of dictator Augusto Pinochet. Commenting on dictatorships to a Chilean interviewer, Hayek stated: "Personally I prefer a liberal dictator to democratic government lacking liberalism. My personal impression — and this is valid for South America - is that in Chile, for example, we will witness a transition from a dictatorial government to a liberal government."[34][35] Hayek's words and actions concerning Chile under the Pinochet regime have drawn criticism from historian of modern Latin America Greg Grandin, who claims that "Hayek glimpsed in Pinochet an avatar of true freedom, who would rule as a dictator only for a 'transitional period'", while also noting that "in a letter to the London Times he defended the junta, reporting that he had 'not been able to find a single person in much-maligned Chile who did not agree that personal freedom was much greater under Pinochet than it had been under Allende.' "of course," writes Grandin, "the thousands executed and tens of thousands tortured by Pinochet's regime weren't talking."[36] Hayek recommended reforms similar to Chile's under Pinochet for the Keynesian economy in the United Kingdom to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Thatcher said "the remarkable success of the Chilean economy [was] a striking example of economic reform from which we can learn many lessons, [but] in Britain with our democratic institutions and the need for a high degree of consent, some of the measures adopted in Chile are quite unacceptable."[37] [note that the chilean economy cratered shortly thereafter causing Pinochet to intervene massively in the economy] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Hayek Note that Hayek even held meetings of his Mt Pelerin Society (an association of neo-liberal thinkers, mostly economists) in Chile while Pinochet was in power.

SAYS THE NEOLIBERAL ECONOMIST!!!! Whew! Ha-Ha! That is a knee-slapper! Thanks for the funny, Jay. You are a riot. Irony quota filled for the day. Ha. Man, that was good. While the two have quite a bit in common, Hayek does not equal Friedman, and there are some subtle differences in their outlook and methodological assumptions that derive from Hayek's arguments concerning "scientism" that I find convincing. The fact that they disagree with one another on certain methodological points no more strengthen's the case for central planning than disagreements between Dawkins and Gould should embolden creationists. While that may be a good book on the abuses of science, in practice Hayek was even more blatant than Friedman in his support of the dictatorships that neo-liberal fundamentalism rode on, i.e. not only did he couch his unscientific approach to the economy as dogma (I assume the object of Prole’s laughter) but he condoned authoritarian rule to impose it on people. Friedman, at least, verbally denied condoning dictatorships even if in practice he didn’t mind the opportunity they represented to market his snake oil.

It is indeed testimony to the dimwitted economic reductionism of neoliberals that such blatant truism has to be repeated on a constant basis.

Non-union employees make less than unionized employees? Tell us something we don’t already know. It seems to argue the case for unions pretty well unless you are arguing that people shouldn’t get cost of living increases (especially since the CPI basket is fixed to minimize inflation). Budget deficits due to less sales tax revenues and capped property taxes? That’s what happens with regressive taxes. Aren’t you one of those who wanted to drown government in a bathtub? So, where is the news?

Seems like the problem for teachers is monopsony, which is the opposite of monopoly. Eg, monopsony = one and only one buyer, which distorts prices and suffocates competition just as effectively as having a single seller. Monopsony is a problem for centralized education but public education doesn’t have to be centralized to the extent it is, and education like healthcare cannot be run sustainably for profit if the goal is to provide the highest quality service to everyone (there is a lot more to education than prices and competition).

xxxxxxx

Just this photo of you: right, as shown previously, you guys debate like thugs would.

LOLZ as Porter would say

you guys have anything to add to this?

it looks like StevenSeagal has you pegged down to a T: We've got you pegged down to a T, you pinko racist cocksucker and on

this too, for posterity

What do you mean by "you people", you racetard? I think he's making threats. You up for a trip to lilly-white Bellingham KK? this should be recorded for posterity

it looks like StevenSeagal has you pegged down to a T:

right, after all the guy is only an academic constitutional lawyer and a politician, so why doesn't he play bball like in the NBA?

dude, you are so out of line. It's like you never made it past high school, which is a little above par for a right wing retard.

Don't move to Chicago. Detroit. NJ. NY. . . . . . . . .. I have lived in many of these places and the odds are 1) you'll never be faced with that kind of problem and 2) the robber doesn't want any kind of problem.

I don't know about making up but may be it has to do with their grand parents being hunted down because they were "uppity" nearly a 100 years after slavery was abolished, or because their parents are near the bottom of the socio-economic barrel like the immense majority of black folks, or may be they are looking at the 30+% unemployment among urban black males, or may be they are looking at having a 50-50 chance of making it past the age of 50? or may be they are looking at all of it and have decided that they have little future in this society.

Although bare ass (sorry, I don't wear pajamas), I wasn't exactly empty handed. Probably not enough for a gun fight but it's not part of the imaginable as far as I am concerned.

I wonder how popular he'd be if it cost something to radio stations to air his drivel.

I would think so since nobody chooses being a dumbfuck. BUT, not all morons have their radio show syndicated across America. Limbaugh's radio show, thanks to corporate America's generosity and unlike 99% of radio shows, is free to any station that wants to air it. What a deal, free airwaves (thanks taxpayer) and only corporate sponsorship to cash in, and the consequences for everyone else to worry about.

The great demagogue used the fact that some black kids beat up on a white kid in a school bus to call for segregation in transportation (note that Matt Drudge, scumbag extraordinaire, beat that dead horse to a pulp before Limbaugh got a hold of it). Limbaugh also offered: “If homosexuality being inborn is what makes it acceptable, why does racism being inborn not make racism acceptable?”

a "cordon bleu sandwich"? you aren't aiming very high. A coq au vin or chicken cacciatore at the very least. Although if you eat GMO corn, you'll be much less desirable (my lovely)

Hopefully just holler he was going to fuck him up to get the robber to run. It's what I did when it happened to me ~20 years ago. By the time I got downstairs, he was gone.

dude, beware of GMO corn.