Quote from: niemivh on June 10, 2011, 12:24:17 AM

Quote from: Montpelerin on June 07, 2011, 10:30:37 PM

Quote from: niemivh on June 07, 2011, 09:49:47 PM

Quote from: Montpelerin on June 07, 2011, 08:48:20 PM

I like to refer to these articles whenever this topic is raised:

http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/53544.html

http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2009/Hummeltbills.html

More Austrian politics wrapped in the language of economics.

Problems with blaming "entitlements" for national bankruptcy in this article:

1) Doesn't include Missing Trillions from the Pentagon: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/01/29/eveningnews/main325985.shtml
2) Doesn't take into account Trillions of dollars spent on pointless wars over the past 20 years.
3) Endless subsidy of nearly 0% interest loans to Wall St. banks.
4) Loves CDS (Credit Default Swaps) which are effectively insurance without any capital to back them up which used to be legal and still should be which had a huge role in the collapse and bailout.
5) Never considers any tax changes or increases to shore up whatever deficit these programs have.

But of course that's not a problem for him, because Austrian economics are often used in our modern time for the justification of the looting of what remains of our government. The reason they preach that the sky is falling with regards to Medicaid and Social Security is that they don't want to pay for Medicaid (the rich) and they want to loot Social Security and privatize it.

I really don't know where to begin with your reply, but I would initially like to point out that your assertions are quite disingenuous.

If you would like to reply to the articles in my post, please do - but if you choose to ignore them and place your own accusations and political agenda upon a false reply, it only reflects poorly upon yourself and your positions.

First, your opening accusation "More Austrian politics wrapped in the language of economics" is incorrect in more than one way.
1. The correct phrasing would be "More libertarian politics wrapped in the language of Austrian economics".
2. While Hummel does incorporate some Austrian positions in economics, he is not an Austrian economist, his personal economics (from his own explanation) incorporates neo-classical positions as well as others.

Regarding your "entitlements" rundown:

1. There may be trillions of dollars missing from the Pentagon and I am sure the Author shares your dislike.
2. The Author does not support state-sponsored wars (why do you phrase the question in an accusatory way?)
3. Again, you phrase your question in an accusatory way, as if the Author supports this action.
4. In which article does the Author support CDS?
5. I'm sure a $.02 National sales tax will take care of that... - /sarcasm

Regarding 1, 2 and 3 its really all the same: where you plan on closing the budget shortfalls. My position is to go after the crooks, looters, plutocrats and the author of this article clearly (from this article) thinks that it is easier to squeeze the public that has little or no representation to ensure that his savings and holdings aren't devalued through inflation. It's simply a matter of values. With economics all the policies around employment, interest rates, infrastruture investment, bank withholdings, etc are all questions to which people will arrive at totally different conclusions based on what they want out of the system. I'm no different, but neither are you and neither is this author. If you can show me other articles where he goes after 1, 2 and 3 with as much force I'll be pleasantly surprised but that still won't mean that he wrote this piece, choosing to go after the little guy than the big crooks.

4. "Surely the purchasers of the U.S. Treasury CDS have not overlooked this risk, which would be reflected in a lower annual premium for less-valuable insurance."
Here he gives CDS (credit default swaps) an air of legitimacy by calling them insurance. CDS claim to be insurance without meeting requirements that insurance companies must: capital withholding. Giving them the title of "insurance" is an endorsement. Imagine your car insurance company didn't have any capital to insure you? That's what a CDS is essentially: deregulated insurance. More of a bet actually, a bet with borrowed money or savings deposits that shouldn't even be on the market to begin with.

5. Cute. I'm sure we could both come up with a bunch of made up taxes that won't work to solve our problems. But what does that solve? While a sales tax is what way to raise revenue there are many others and people need to start considering them.

You should probably attempt to discard of whatever pre-determined assumptions you had when first approaching the articles and re-read both, while setting your personal bias aside as far as possible.