Coolidge was cool...

[moralist]

An interesting take on Calvin Cooledge...

[Francisco Ferrer]

Coolidge and his Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon bear some responsibility for the artificial boom of the 1920's and the bust that followed by their policy of suppressed interest rates and easy money:

In a campaign speech in October 1924, Calvin Coolidge reassured "business" that, "It has been the policy of this administration to reduce discount rates." In March 1927 as a mild recession was in process, Treasury Secretary Mellon proclaimed, "There is an abundant supply of easy money which should take care of any contingencies that might arise."

http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2014/04/04/monetary_policy_was_born_out_of_a_mistake_100991.html

I find it interesting that you posted a video celebrating Calvin Coolidge. Coolidge was a critic of high taxes. In a speech after taking office he said, "A government which lays taxes on the people not required by urgent public necessity and sound public policy is not a protector of liberty, but an instrument of tyranny, It condemns the citizen to servitude.”

In his first inaugural speech he said, "The collection of any taxes which are not absolutely required, which do not beyond reasonable doubt contribute to the public welfare, is only a species of legalized larceny."

High taxes as larceny?

Well, I guess makes Coolidge an unproductive lout who was always blaming government for his own failures. The fact that he called taxation larceny must mean that he was committing larceny himself.

[Brant Gaede]

It would actually be more interesting and productive to discuss Coolidge than waste time giving Greg logical slaps. As for Greg, he's trapped in his contradictions but he's happy there and not to be rooted out. You are productively destructive and he is productively constructive except he uses that as an excuse to attempt to be destructively destructive to anyone disagreeing with any of his axiomatic morally positive views of himself by hitting them with his axiomatic views of them.

--Brant

[moralist]

Coolidge was a critic of high taxes.

Coolidge did not entertain the fantasy of abolishing taxes like you do, because he wasn't an unproductive failure like you are.

(...and the hits just keep coming. )

Greg

[Brant Gaede]

Coolidge was a critic of high taxes.

Coolidge did not entertain the fantasy of abolishing taxes like you do, because he wasn't an unproductive failure like you are.

(...and the hits just keep coming. )

Greg

"Are you still hitting your wife?" turned into a statement by someone you've never met.

--Brant

take that!

[Brant Gaede]

If you engage with Greg you get Greg. If you don't you won't. I can deal with it. For anyone else, from now on, you deal with it.

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Amity Shlaes!

Dayaamm!

So cool to see her doing a Prager University video. I have her book, The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression.

I haven't read it, yet, but lots of people I respect speak well of it. I've also seen Amity in several interviews. She always impressed me. She is not a soap-box intellectual--at least not in the interviews. I saw her more than once correct an overextended conservative with facts.

(Dayaamm, again! I may trademark that phrase, Overextended Conservative. )

Michael

[Selene]

Amity Shlaes!

Dayaamm!

So cool to see her doing a Prager University video. I have her book, The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression.

I haven't read it, yet, but lots of people I respect speak well of it. I've also seen Amity in several interviews. She always impressed me. She is not a soap-box intellectual--at least not in the interviews. I saw her more than once correct an overextended conservative with facts.

(Dayaamm, again! I may trademark that phrase, Overextended Conservative. )

Michael

She is brilliant and kinda reminds me of Jamie Lee Curtis who is extremely erotic.

Her C-Span talks are phenomenal...

http://www.c-span.org/video/?317613-1/roaring-twenties-crash-1929

Shlaes

[moralist]

"Are you still hitting your wife?" turned into a statement by someone you've never met.

--Brant

take that!

I know the bleating sound of failure when I hear it, and have no respect for whining victims.

Greg

[Francisco Ferrer]

Coolidge was a critic of high taxes.

Coolidge did not entertain the fantasy of abolishing taxes like you do, because he wasn't an unproductive failure like you are.

(...and the hits just keep coming. )

Greg

On April 28 you wrote, "I refuse to do business with people who complain the government is robbing them...because that means that they are robbing someone else."

By that logic you would have no dealings with Coolidge, if he were alive, because he complained that the government was committing larceny and that would mean that he was committing larceny against someone else.

Curious it is that you should post a video praising a man you would not associate with if given a chance.

And if abolishing taxes is the "fantasy" of "unproductive failures," why would you frequent a website devoted to a woman who explicitly called for abolishing taxes in a free society?

[moralist]

Coolidge was a critic of high taxes.

Coolidge did not entertain the fantasy of abolishing taxes like you do, because he wasn't an unproductive failure like you are.

(...and the hits just keep coming. )

Greg

On April 28 you wrote, "I refuse to do business with people who complain the government is robbing them...because that means that they are robbing someone else."

By that logic you would have no dealings with Coolidge, if he were alive, because he complained that the government was committing larceny and that would mean that he was committing larceny against someone else.

There's a difference, Frank.

Coolidege wasn't complaining that it was being done to him... and you are.

He did something about it... and you can't.

Greg

[Francisco Ferrer]

Wrong on both counts.

1. My criticism of taxation, like Rand's and that of every other philosophical tax critic, has never focused on my own needs but on the moral principle that taxation is a violation of rights. You might recognize the prohibition of theft as one of the Ten Commandments: "The seventh commandment forbids unjustly taking or keeping the goods of one's neighbor and wronging him in any way with respect to his goods."

In this regard, I should point out that your idea of shifting taxes forward is a form of acquiescence with evil. Even if it were possible to shift all taxes forward (it isn't), the legalized theft would not disappear; it would merely fall on someone else.

Furthermore, when Coolidge said, "The collection of any taxes which are not absolutely required, which do not beyond reasonable doubt contribute to the public welfare, is only a species of legalized larceny," why should one suppose that Coolidge was not himself forced to pay higher taxes (unnecessarily)? Why should one suppose that Coolidge did not himself hope to benefit from a lower tax rate?

2. Calvin Coolidge did not elect himself president. Through persuasion he was able to convince millions to cast their ballots for him. His platform emphasized "reducing taxes, collecting foreign debts, passing the protective tariff, opposing farm subsidies for crop prices, enacting the eight-hour workday, banning child labor, and passing a federal anti-lynching law." The public preferred their agenda over the Democrats' "reduction in the tariff, a graduated income tax, farm relief with easier credit and farm subsidies for crop prices, independence for the Philippines, a national referendum on the League of Nations, strict enforcement of antitrust laws, and public works projects to reduce unemployment." Coolidge won 54% of the vote.

Like Coolidge, I believe in fighting for the hearts and minds of a majority of Americans. Government has become destructive of liberty and the will of the majority is needed to alter or abolish it.

Americans have known how to erect a superlative material achievement in the midst of an untouched wilderness, against the resistance of savage tribes. What we need today is to erect a corresponding philosophical structure, without which the material greatness cannot survive. A skyscraper cannot stand on crackerbarrels, nor on wall mottoes, nor on full-page ads, nor on prayers, nor on meta-language. The new wilderness to reclaim is philosophy, now all but deserted, with the weeds of prehistoric doctrines rising again to swallow the ruins. To support a culture, nothing less than a new philosophical foundation will do. --Ayn Rand, For the New Intellectual

[Brant Gaede]

So the Republicans were already the party of high tariffs in 1924? It wasn't just stupid Hoover signing that crappy Smoot-Hawley bill into law (and his other proto-New Deal policies) that had so much to do with the great depression, the rise of the Nazis to power in Germany and WWII--plus, of course, handing over the government to the Democrats for decades? The rest of this Coolidge discussion is comparatively trite. Looking for moral purity through right ideology in government is like looking for virginity in a whore house. You can't get rid of the whorehouse, but you can keep most of the whores inside it and the building very small for Americans, qua Americans, only need whores for their inexperienced teenage sons (join the army?) or old men who need help getting it--uh--on. I suppose we could call that Social Security? (We have to keep OL fit for family viewing.)

--Brant

[Selene]

Furthermore, when Coolidge said, "The collection of any taxes which are not absolutely required, which do not beyond reasonable doubt contribute to the public welfare, is only a species of legalized larceny," why should one suppose that Coolidge was not himself forced to pay higher taxes (unnecessarily)? Why should one suppose that Coolidge did not himself hope to benefit from a lower tax rate?

Probably because it has nothing to do with proving your argument without some additional facts.

I guess a lot.

However, when you throw a poor fastball high in the zone it is easy.

[moralist]

I should point out that your idea of shifting taxes forward is a form of acquiescence with evil. Even if it were possible to shift all taxes forward (it isn't), the legalized theft would not disappear; it would merely fall on someone else.

It is possible to include all taxes as a cost of doing business in the price charged for goods and services. This is standard business practice, and only someone like you who produces nothing would be ignorant of it.

And the taxes fall exactly where they should on every end user. If you can't afford to pay them it's your own fault for failing to become a Capitalist producer.

All you can do is to victim/whine about something you have no power to change.

Greg

[Brant Gaede]

Uniform taxes mean all your competitors have the same burden. So prices must rise a certain amount across the board. Higher prices depress sales' volume. They make everyone somewhat poorer. Prices are infinitely elastic. I will sell you my home for ten million dollars. Ability and desire to pay is not. No one not an insane, rich, idiot would pay me that money for my house.

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

Victimhood is one of the human races greatest scourges. It re-enforces helplessness, manufactures envy and hate and magnifies any real damage. It creates the wrong entitlements in the head that can never be satiated for victimhood is unending if contrived and if real should be dealt with and be done with. It's for people who have decided to live in a bad past when they don't have to. It may not even be their personal past, but of race, creed or tribe.

--Brant

[Francisco Ferrer]

Furthermore, when Coolidge said, "The collection of any taxes which are not absolutely required, which do not beyond reasonable doubt contribute to the public welfare, is only a species of legalized larceny," why should one suppose that Coolidge was not himself forced to pay higher taxes (unnecessarily)? Why should one suppose that Coolidge did not himself hope to benefit from a lower tax rate?

Probably because it has nothing to do with proving your argument without some additional facts.

I guess a lot.

However, when you throw a poor fastball high in the zone it is easy.

The Moralist has asserted that "people who complain the government is robbing them. . .means that they are robbing someone else."

Since the Moralist did not list exceptions, it would appear that this is a general rule. I submitted the example of Coolidge who regarded high taxes as a form of theft and asked if that meant that the Moralist would not have done business with Coolidge, the subject of an admiring video that the Moralist posted at the top of this thread. He countered that "Coolidege [sic] wasn't complaining that it was being done to him... and you are."

Coolidge, a successful lawyer, mayor, governor, and president would certainly have been in an income bracket to qualify to pay taxes. Why then should we suppose that Coolidge's comparison of high taxes to larceny meant that he was happy with the level of taxation he himself paid but just wanted it reduced for everyone else? Why should we suppose that his complaint did not apply to his own taxes?

Now, perhaps you could do a little research and help the Moralist show that Coolidge, a perfect altruist, only wanted taxes cut for the the rest of the population, not on his own income.

But now I remember that the Moralist reaches his conclusions without reference to facts.

[william.scherk]

Victimhood [...] is unending if contrived and if real should be dealt with and be done with.

All we need is a judge for the contrivance court. And a department of Done With. And a history that shows we do right by victims of 'real' things unspecified.

This may be were your one-liners stumble, at the for example part.

If we knew which claimed contrived victims you had in mind, it would add some glitter to your generality at least.

It's for people who have decided to live in a bad past when they don't have to. It may not even be their personal past, but of race, creed or tribe.

Okay, so we don't have a date for the Holocaust museum. Fair enough. Any other whining we need to head off before it gets up your nose?

[Francisco Ferrer]

I should point out that your idea of shifting taxes forward is a form of acquiescence with evil. Even if it were possible to shift all taxes forward (it isn't), the legalized theft would not disappear; it would merely fall on someone else.

It is possible to include all taxes as a cost of doing business in the price charged for goods and services. This is standard business practice, and only someone like you who produces nothing would be ignorant of it.

And the taxes fall exactly where they should on every end user. If you can't afford to pay them it's your own fault for failing to become a Capitalist producer.

All you can do is to victim/whine about something you have no power to change.

Greg

No one has said that businesses do not include the cost of taxes in pricing. But, as I have pointed out repeatedly, taxes cannot always be shifted forward without negative costs to the manufacturer or merchant raising prices to cover costs imposed by the government. I have already cited the depression suffered throughout the U.S. yacht building industry in the 1990's as a result of a 10% federal luxury tax. You may have missed this the previous two times I mentioned it.

You say, "Taxes fall exactly where they should on every end user." Why should taxes fall on the end user or any one else for that matter? This makes no more sense than saying that the costs of counterfeit money, credit card fraud or shoplifting should fall on the end user. The nature of property rights is that no one is entitled to money they did not earn or obtain through gift. The goal of justice is to act against property rights violations, not treat them as something a particular class deserves.

In fact, the only difference between a tax collector and a common thief is that the tax collector gets a government pension.

If Harding and Coolidge were able to reduce taxation in their administrations, the same feat can be performed by future governments. The idea that it cannot be changed is patently false.

[Selene]

Now, perhaps you could do a little research and help the Moralist show that Coolidge, a perfect altruist, only wanted taxes cut for the the rest of the population, not on his own income.

But now I remember that the Moralist reaches his conclusions without reference to facts.

There is zero chance of that happening dear!

[Brant Gaede]

Victimhood [...] is unending if contrived and if real should be dealt with and be done with.

All we need is a judge for the contrivance court. And a department of Done With. And a history that shows we do right by victims of 'real' things unspecified.

This may be were your one-liners stumble, at the for example part.

If we knew which claimed contrived victims you had in mind, it would add some glitter to your generality at least.

It's for people who have decided to live in a bad past when they don't have to. It may not even be their personal past, but of race, creed or tribe.

Okay, so we don't have a date for the Holocaust museum. Fair enough. Any other whining we need to head off before it gets up your nose?

What the hell? I made a post to build on but you just dump on it. With something like the horror of the Holocaust we have a separate discussion and see if it can fit or not--should or not--into what I'm talking about, in whole or part. Hard for me; I'm not Jewish. Mostly I'm referring to optionality. Some things are hard or impossible to transcend. Some transcendable are embraced instead, like victimhood--almost a cult. You write as if you are in charge of Victimhoodland and I pissed you off for entering without a visa.

--Brant

[william.scherk]

Brant, there is room to build a-plenty. I suggest you give examples that make your claims come alive ... it will make your argument stronger and more interesting. Sometimes the conclusions that we know in fact are built on substantial evidence are presented raw, without the constitutive warrants. The conclusions are automatically revealed as true, no? The reaction to bald assertions I think should always be measured out as 'how do you know?'

If you want to make an argument that Victimhood as a badge, rather than as a fact -- is both psychologically and socially destructive, if you want to highlight people or groups, race and ethnicities who might have been 'victims' of tragedy/crime/injustice but yet emerged strong and resilient, 'survivors,' these would make good gambits. If you want to tie historical injustices to present-day poses of victimhood long past their sell-by date, that would make a good argument, especially when buttressed by relating real-world events,

What might annoy you is that I ask to see the intervening data, the actual examples that illustrate or support your conclusions. I don't do that out of malign motives, but in light of the things that we share, a devotion to reason, rational argument and thorough-going critical thinking.

[moralist]

The Moralist has asserted that "people who complain the government is robbing them. . .means that they are robbing someone else."

I'll make that even clearer, Frank.

Your whining that the government is taking from you means that you're taking from someone else. That's how moral law works. I understand you fantasize yourself as an innocent victim of government oppression, but the reality is that you're the only one who can screw yourself over by your own lack of values...

...and you're getting exactly what you deserve.

Greg

[moralist]

Uniform taxes mean all your competitors have the same burden. So prices must rise a certain amount across the board. Higher prices depress sales' volume. They make everyone somewhat poorer. Prices are infinitely elastic. I will sell you my home for ten million dollars. Ability and desire to pay is not. No one not an insane, rich, idiot would pay me that money for my house.

--Brant

The only way to reverse economic entropy is through useful production which creates wealth.

The widening gap between rich and poor in America today only means that everyone is free to rise to the level of their talents abilities and ambitions.

There are two kinds of people... fliers and fallers.

And each of us has freely chosen which one we are today.

Greg