Socioeconomic Theories

The Barbarian

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That lie has done more harm to the United States than any other.

Read the Constitution. What "sovereign state" cannot conclude treaties, control it's own borders and commerce with other entities, or even make peace or war with other nations?

All that ended with the ratification of the Constitution.
 
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elohiym

Well-known member
For starters ...

  1. Abolish the Federal Reserve Bank system.
  2. Prohibit all deposit expansion by banks.
  3. Void all loans created through deposit expansion ("Jubilee year").
  4. Create (fiat) U.S. Notes and spend them into economy, replacing Federal Reserve Notes.
  5. Provide for the basic needs of the People: food, shelter, education and healthcare.
 

The Barbarian

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I still haven't heard from anyone about which nation, without a public school system, works better than ours.

I'm guessing there's a good reason that no one has stepped up.

And that's a pretty good clue in itself, isn't it?
 

elohiym

Well-known member
I home school my children but I attended public school as a youth; and even though I squandered my time and opportunities in my salad days, I don't blame the institution or the idea of public education. If I could not educate my children at home, I would be thankful for the opportunity a public education provides.
 

elohiym

Well-known member
creating deliquent youth who can't read or add?

The system wasn't perfect when I attended over forty years ago. The junior high school I studied had middle and upper middle class kids (mixed "races") sitting next to kids bused in from the projects (predominately African and Hispanic). I knew kids who were delinquent, and I was one of them at times. While I didn't personally know kids that could not read or write, I'm sure there were some. Frankly, I don't see how it was the schools fault.

:idunno:
 

rexlunae

New member
For starters ...

  1. Abolish the Federal Reserve Bank system.
  2. Prohibit all deposit expansion by banks.
  3. Void all loans created through deposit expansion ("Jubilee year").
  4. Create (fiat) U.S. Notes and spend them into economy, replacing Federal Reserve Notes.
  5. Provide for the basic needs of the People: food, shelter, education and healthcare.

As the entire money system is supported by leverage, and leveraged leverage to the nth degree, it seems like at the point where you say "void all loans created through deposit expansion", you're essentially abolishing the US currency, wiping out anyone and everyone who holds it, and trying to stand up a new currency at the same time. There's not a creditor in the world who would lend to us if we do that. It would be fiscal Armageddon, and it would certainly challenge our ability to provide for the basic needs of people.

I'm not saying we don't need to reform the Federal Reserve system. What we're doing certainly doesn't seem to be keeping the banks in check. But I don't think that doing what you've described would by called a jubilee year by anyone, in retrospect.
 

The Barbarian

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The TIMSS program gives 8th grade kids from about 40 nations, identical math and science tests. And our kids come up better than average. In many states, a lot better than average for the world.

Yes, some states are really bad, particularly from the deep south, or those with very large immigrant populations. But even with that, even lacking a national educational policy, we come out above most nations, including many from Europe and Asia.

I notice that there's still no one willing to step up and tell us about a nation without a public school system that does better than ours.

And now, it's obvious why.
 

elohiym

Well-known member
As the entire money system is supported by leverage, and leveraged leverage to the nth degree, it seems like at the point where you say "void all loans created through deposit expansion", you're essentially abolishing the US currency, wiping out anyone and everyone who holds it, and trying to stand up a new currency at the same time.

Should loan contracts be enforced if they are illegal? If not, is there an exception if it turns out the majority of loan contracts are illegal? What do you think about what Iceland did?

Icelandic Anger Brings Debt Forgiveness in Best Recovery Story
Icelanders who pelted parliament with rocks in 2009 demanding their leaders and bankers answer for the country’s economic and financial collapse are reaping the benefits of their anger.

Since the end of 2008, the island’s banks have forgiven loans equivalent to 13 percent of gross domestic product, easing the debt burdens of more than a quarter of the population, according to a report published this month by the Icelandic Financial Services Association.​
How is Iceland doing economically?
The island’s steps to resurrect itself since 2008, when its banks defaulted on $85 billion, are proving effective. Iceland’s economy will this year outgrow the euro area and the developed world on average, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development estimates. It costs about the same to insure against an Icelandic default as it does to guard against a credit event in Belgium. Most polls now show Icelanders don’t want to join the European Union, where the debt crisis is in its third year.​
Seems like the strategy is working for Iceland so far.

There's not a creditor in the world who would lend to us if we do that. It would be fiscal Armageddon, and it would certainly challenge our ability to provide for the basic needs of people.

I believe people were saying that about Iceland, too.

Where are those creditors getting the money to lend to others? I know where where my uncle would get the money to loan me if I asked for a loan; it's cash he has on hand or in the bank, money he has earned by his labor; he withdraws cash or writes a check and gives me the loan proceeds. The creditors of governments don't do it that way, and the way they do it is immoral and arguably illegal under U.S. law.

I'm not saying we don't need to reform the Federal Reserve system. What we're doing certainly doesn't seem to be keeping the banks in check.

Reform? We need Andrew Jackson not Samuel L. Jackson. The central bank should be abolished.

How would you reform the idea of deposit expansion?

But I don't think that doing what you've described would by called a jubilee year by anyone, in retrospect.

If you were an Icelander who suddenly had $500,000.00 less debt because it was forgiven, you certainly would feel the spirit of a Jubilee year, I'm sure.
 

rexlunae

New member
Should loan contracts be enforced if they are illegal? If not, is there an exception if it turns out the majority of loan contracts are illegal?

No. But deposit expansion is not presently illegal. It's even regulated.


What I think is that your proposal has none of the features of what Iceland did other than being bad for banks in a generalized sense. What Iceland did was moderate, and responsible, and comported with existing law. What you're proposing is punishment for a system that you don't like but that isn't illegal, and I'm reasonably certain that it would cause the immediate failure of all banks in the country even if they never did anything illegal. One is the rule of law. The other is its negation in favor of vengeance.

Icelanders who pelted parliament with rocks in 2009 demanding their leaders and bankers answer for the country’s economic and financial collapse are reaping the benefits of their anger.

Since the end of 2008, the island’s banks have forgiven loans equivalent to 13 percent of gross domestic product, easing the debt burdens of more than a quarter of the population, according to a report published this month by the Icelandic Financial Services Association.​

Deposit expansion is a basic part of banking, even in Iceland. In the US, the CFPB has taken actions resulting in refunds of billions of dollars that were deemed illegally taken from consumers, and that seems a lot closer, at least in spirit, to what Iceland has been doing.

How is Iceland doing economically?
The island’s steps to resurrect itself since 2008, when its banks defaulted on $85 billion, are proving effective. Iceland’s economy will this year outgrow the euro area and the developed world on average, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development estimates. It costs about the same to insure against an Icelandic default as it does to guard against a credit event in Belgium. Most polls now show Icelanders don’t want to join the European Union, where the debt crisis is in its third year.​
Seems like the strategy is working for Iceland so far.

I don't really see why you think what Iceland did is analogous to what you've proposed.

I believe people were saying that about Iceland, too.

The fundamental difference between how Iceland handled the financial crisis and how the US handled it was simply accountability. In Iceland, they actually prosecuted bankers who did wrong. In the US, we bailed out the banks, and we allowed "healthy" banks to acquire those that were in trouble. I actually would have liked to see a more Icelandic approach here. I think it sets a very bad precedent that we treated certain banks as too fundamental to our economy to even hold their people accountable to the law. But Iceland certainly didn't abolish the fractional reserve system, or the resulting deposit expansion. They set up a new bank, forgave debts that were deemed illegal, and demonstrated that bankers are accountable to the law.

Where are those creditors getting the money to lend to others?

From deposits and from cash on hand.

I know where where my uncle would get the money to loan me if I asked for a loan; it's cash he has on hand or in the bank, money he has earned by his labor; he withdraws cash or writes a check and gives me the loan proceeds. The creditors of governments don't do it that way, and the way they do it is immoral and arguably illegal under U.S. law.

A fiat currency is an abstraction. It exists because someone (the Fed in the US) at some point in time lent it. It isn't a commodity. And I don't see any particularly good reason to require it to be one. What good does it do to say that for every dollar that a bank holds in deposits, it must have a dollar to issue at any time to the account holder?

Reform? We need Andrew Jackson not Samuel L. Jackson. The central bank should be abolished.

I'd probably opt for Elizabeth Warren, myself.

How do you have a fiat currency without a central bank?

How would you reform the idea of deposit expansion?

I would make it an ironclad rule that banks accepting deposits backed by the FDIC couldn't use that money to invest in risky securities, such a credit default swaps. I would control the exposure to risk by specifying a list of valid investment types. And I would demand that the Federal Reserve be a real independent government agency subject to audits and oversight.

The financial crisis that we experienced in 2007-2008 was not the result of just deposit expansion, which can be done in a responsible and stable way, especially with FDIC insurance. It was a result of the fact that we started letting banks put money from deposits into securities that made bad loans profitable, which encouraged the sort of reckless lending that you get when investors don't have to pay their own losses. It gave us an economic spike, and then a huge wipeout, and I'm afraid that we're headed down the same path again.

If you were an Icelander who suddenly had $500,000.00 less debt because it was forgiven, you certainly would feel the spirit of a Jubilee year, I'm sure.

Unless at the same time, all money became worthless, and the economy collapsed. People do go into debt for good reasons, often.
 

genuineoriginal

New member
I still haven't heard from anyone about which nation, without a public school system, works better than ours.

I'm guessing there's a good reason that no one has stepped up.

And that's a pretty good clue in itself, isn't it?
We are still waiting for you to show that public school is better than private schools.
While you are at it, you can also show how people who are compelled to go to school do better than people who want to learn.
 

The Barbarian

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Barbarian chuckles:
I still haven't heard from anyone about which nation, without a public school system, works better than ours.

I'm guessing there's a good reason that no one has stepped up.

And that's a pretty good clue in itself, isn't it?

(G.O. isn't about to do it, for reasons we've already noted)

We are still waiting for you to show that public school is better than private schools.

I'm just showing you that no country lacking a strong public school system is better than third world in economy, income, and stability. As everyone sees, you aren't able to show even one example of your supposed better system.

While you are at it, you can also show how people who are compelled to go to school do better than people who want to learn.

Funny. They are, most of the time, the same people. The kids in my school are mostly compelled by their parents, but they seem to love learning. The few who don't are usually that way because they've been conditioned to fail. I can't fix all of that, but every year, I get a few of those kids to be successful, too.

We recently did a lab on the periodic table. They didn't realize it at first, but at the end, they could explain how Mendeleev figured it out, and even how he predicted elements not yet discovered.

You probably wouldn't like it. It was noisy, with lots of kids getting up and moving around and arguing about how the array would go. But in the end, they all got it.

And that's really all I care about. Meantime, you think hard and find us that country without a good public school system that does a better job of educating kids, hear?

(No one's holding their breath, though)
 

genuineoriginal

New member
And that's really all I care about. Meantime, you think hard and find us that country without a good public school system that does a better job of educating kids, hear?

(No one's holding their breath, though)

I am having a hard time finding any country with a "good public school system".
All the ones I can find are variations of the Prussian education system designed to brainwash the masses into an army that would follow orders and not be able to think for themselves.
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The Public School Nightmare:
Why fix a system designed to destroy individual thought?


The structure of American schooling, 20th century style, began in 1806 when Napoleon's amateur soldiers beat the professional soldiers of Prussia at the battle of Jena. When your business is selling soldiers, losing a battle like that is serious. Almost immediately afterwards a German philosopher named Fichte delivered his famous "Address to the German Nation" which became one of the most influential documents in modern history. In effect he told the Prussian people that the party was over, that the nation would have to shape up through a new Utopian institution of forced schooling in which everyone would learn to take orders.

So the world got compulsion schooling at the end of a state bayonet for the first time in human history; modern forced schooling started in Prussia in 1819 with a clear vision of what centralized schools could deliver:

Obedient soldiers to the army; Obedient workers to the mines; Well subordinated civil servants to government; Well subordinated clerks to industry Citizens who thought alike about major issues.

Schools should create an artificial national consensus on matters that had been worked out in advance by leading German families and the head of institutions. Schools should create unity among all the German states, eventually unifying them into Greater Prussia.

Prussian industry boomed from the beginning. She was successful in warfare and her reputation in international affairs was very high. Twenty-six years after this form of schooling began, the King of Prussia was invited to North America to determine the boundary between the United States and Canada. Thirty-three years after that fateful invention of the central school institution, as the behest of Horace Mann and many other leading citizens, we borrowed the style of Prussian schooling as our own.

You need to know this because over the first 50 years of our school institution Prussian purpose — which was to create a form of state socialism — gradually forced out traditional American purpose, which in most minds was to prepare the individual to be self-reliant.

Prussian industry boomed from the beginning. She was successful in warfare and her reputation in international affairs was very high. Twenty-six years after this form of schooling began, the King of Prussia was invited to North America to determine the boundary between the United States and Canada. Thirty-three years after that fateful invention of the central school institution, as the behest of Horace Mann and many other leading citizens, we borrowed the style of Prussian schooling as our own.

You need to know this because over the first 50 years of our school institution Prussian purpose — which was to create a form of state socialism — gradually forced out traditional American purpose, which in most minds was to prepare the individual to be self-reliant.

In Prussia the purpose of the Volksshule, which educated 92 percent of the children, was not intellectual development at all, but socialization in obedience and subordination. Thinking was left to the Real Schulen, in which 8 percent of the kids participated. But for the great mass, intellectual development was regarded with managerial horror, as something that caused armies to lose battles.

Prussia concocted a method based on complex fragmentations to ensure that its school products would fit the grand social design. Some of this method involved dividing whole ideas into school subjects, each further divisible, some of it involved short periods punctuated by a horn so that self-motivation in study would be muted by ceaseless interruptions.

There were many more techniques of training, but all were built around the premise that isolation from first-hand information, and fragmentation of the abstract information presented by teachers, would result in obedient and subordinate graduates, properly respectful of arbitrary orders. "Lesser" men would be unable to interfere with policy makers because, while they could still complain, they could not manage sustained or comprehensive thought. Well-schooled children cannot think critically, cannot argue effectively.
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If your goals for public education are to widen the gap between the elite and the masses and create a bunch of people that cannot think critically and cannot argue effectively, you are supporting a system that will do just those things.

Naturally, you can't think about any alternative since you are a product of the public school system you support.
 

The Barbarian

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Barbarian chuckles:
And that's really all I care about. Meantime, you think hard and find us that country without a good public school system that does a better job of educating kids, hear?

(No one's holding their breath, though)

I am having a hard time finding any country with a "good public school system".

More to the point, you can't find what you were supposed to show us, because it doesn't exist. You're peddling a fantasy world with rainbows and wonderful education without public schools, but no one has ever been able to make it work.

All the ones I can find are variations of the Prussian education system designed to brainwash the masses into an army that would follow orders and not be able to think for themselves.

A hundred years ago, education was aimed at making people capable of working in an agrarian/industrial society where you needed enough math and reading to manage farm business accounts, or read directions in an assembly plant.

Today, entirely different skills are needed, and this is why you see kids doing entirely different things in school. And it's happening. My district has a technical high school that prepares kids for computer animation and web design.

You're furious with the world for changing and you're blaming the schools for changing with it.

The structure of American schooling, 20th century style, began in 1806 when Napoleon's amateur soldiers beat the professional soldiers of Prussia at the battle of Jena.

Horsefeathers. For one thing, Prussia had a draft, and most of its soldiers were not professionals. The huge influx of German immigrants to the U.S. was partly due to various German pacifists avoiding the draft.

On the other hand:
The École Spéciale Militaire was created by order of Napoleon Bonaparte on May 1, 1802 (the Law of 11 Floréal an X according to the then-official revolutionary calendar), to replace the École Royale Militaire then located in Fontainebleau...The school trained a large number of young officers who served during the Napoleonic Wars.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecole_Spéciale_Militaire_de_Saint-Cyr

Prussia?
Until 1730 the common soldiers consisted largely of serfs recruited or impressed from Brandenburg, Pomerania and East Prussia, leading many to flee to neighboring countries. In order to halt this trend, Frederick William I divided Prussia into regimental cantons. Every youth was required to serve as a soldier in these recruitment districts for three months each year; this met agrarian needs and added extra troops to bolster the regular ranks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_Army

Your source doesn't know what he's talking about.

Unlike Prussia, which limited students to high school, the U.S. implemented universal free high school, with educated graduates quickly outnumbering those of European nations. Our prosperity relative to other nations, began there.

It also drove home the point by supplying far more capable troops needed for modern warfare, in WWII. Japan failed in large part because they couldn't replace so many pilots, mechanics, and technicians.

If your goals for public education are to widen the gap between the elite and the masses and create a bunch of people that cannot think critically and cannot argue effectively, you are supporting a system that will do just those things.

See above. It was public school that decreased the gap between the upper and middle classes.

Naturally, you can't accept these historical facts, because you've been thoroughly indoctrinated to believe otherwise. We understand. But if you could show us at least one nation where your wonderland actually works, it would help you.

We're waiting...
 

genuineoriginal

New member
More to the point, you can't find what you were supposed to show us, because it doesn't exist. You're peddling a fantasy world with rainbows and wonderful education without public schools, but no one has ever been able to make it work.
Your story above about how you bucked the system and used an unsanctioned teaching method proves my point, as does your stories of how successful the schools were that were managed by their local communities before the institution of the federal Department of Education.

But, it is understandable that you are unable to understand the difference between community run schools and a federally mandated public school system since you are a product of the latter.
 

The Barbarian

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Barbarian observes:
More to the point, you can't find what you were supposed to show us, because it doesn't exist. You're peddling a fantasy world with rainbows and wonderful education without public schools, but no one has ever been able to make it work.

Your story above about how you bucked the system and used an unsanctioned teaching method

Well, it is part of Common Core, which Texas has not adopted, but even in Texas, teachers are trained to do it that way. You're just about 30 years out of date on teaching methods, that's all.

proves my point, as does your stories of how successful the schools were that were managed by their local communities before the institution of the federal Department of Education.

My district is still run by the people of the district, who elect the board members who set policy and hire superintendents to implement them. But I'm pleased to hear you admit that public schools run by such districts are good ones. Your problem seems to be that you have to remove your trousers to get your "information."

But, it is understandable that you are unable to understand the difference between community run schools and a federally mandated public school system since you are a product of the latter.

I received my last college degree before the Department of Education was established. As usual, you have no idea what you're talking about.

Now, do you think you can stop stalling, and show us that rainbow land where there are no public schools, and kids get a good education?

(prediction: more stalling and excuses from G.O.)
 
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