Candidates for President (mostly Ron Paul)

Originally Posted by Arainach

Also, like it or not, Obama is black. Much as people may like to deny it, there is a statistically significant portion of the population that will not vote for him because of that fact.

Democrats can't get electoral votes in states where that is a significant fact.

If the Republicans put a Mormon up, that will be just as heavy on some people's minds.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

I think most New Yorkers would have said on September 10 that Guiliani was nothing but bullshit.

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Originally Posted by Bradylama

On the other hand, if Paul was elected president it would reflect a significant shift in public opinion.

I suppose that's true, but if people felt similarly, they could have made that change in 2006 when a change was absolutely needed.

I just don't see the point in a Libertarian president. If Libertarians want their ideals met, they need Congress, not the presidency.

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Just for a personal flavor:

Three of the five biggest employers in southern Arizona (Tucson) are Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Raytheon Missile Systems, and Fort Huachuca.

If you cut the defense budget and these two go under, you have the breadwinners for 10% of a fairly significant sector instantly out of work. A sector that has no training outside of building missiles and shooting guns and flying dogfighting jets. I'm not sure how that would cause a "temporary disruption". All of a sudden, 30,000 people and their families stop buying goods from Tucson small business, people move to other places and the real estate market depresses, basically, everything falls apart. You can't open enough new businesses to support that sort of situation and you can't sustain them "temporarily".

Now, of course, that is a bit dramatic, the businesses/bases wouldn't fully close. But DMAFB has been on the chopping block here before, and what people say would happen to our economy almost borders on the comical.

I'm not worldly enough to know how defense cuts would hurt other places, but I know it would almost destroy Tucson. And I know that a Libertarian would say "well, maybe that means that Tucson deserves to be destroyed if it can't hold itself up in a free market" but that just isn't good enough.

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Hmm. I said New Orleans was a ridiculous place to live because it was in a natural disaster hot spot that found itself in ruins every 100 years or so.

No, I don't think I said that New Orleans shouldn't have to worry about the government purposefully destroying its economy.


How would you propose anyone to prepare for massive defense cuts?

It's not like the US is an economy that has a need for 200,000 (or however many) more workers. Underemployment is the problem in the US, not unemployment, and you're talking about forcing a sizable portion of the population into unemployment. People with little to no expendable wealth (read: no capital to start a business), people without skills outside the defensive complex. Industrial line work (a huge part of defense work) is being moved out of the US by corporations (defense has national security implications and less competition than for a T-shirt), so it's not like these people can just turn to another factory.

I was speaking idiomatically.

I get that you have this Libertarian ideal economy here, but it is fucking insane to implement if it is at the expense of entire cities. Tucson is just an example and certainly not as dependent on defense as some places. Do all the cities that you don't give a fuck that you are basically turning into ghost towns need to be named?

You say that it looks good on a resume, but who are these people submitting resumes to? Unemployment is low. So some military town's base folds. And, yes, I know you don't give a fuck if that city dies. But what about the people in the city. Where do you think they're going to be able to find jobs? We can't expect that your administration will be giving them any assistance, so their lives will only get harder while they look for work that doesn't exist. In the mean time, people can't buy houses and default on their loans. The price of housing drops, meaning that people who don't even have anything to do with defense or small business start losing money. The stock market dives because no one has money to buy any stock and because no one believes any company will be able to make any headway.

There is a reason why the best way to get out of a recession is to start a war.

Basically, you want to ruin the economy of the United States and you don't even care. As usual, your libertarian views lack any sort of realism and we are talking about more pointless bullshit in here because of it.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

The money for defense comes from the government. If you were a Democrat, you would move it into other sectors. Instead, you just want to remove taxes.

Well, not taxing the unemployed helps no one. The people who have jobs outside defense would likely store their extra take-home pay (due to the failing economy) or buy goods which still would be made in China, since the CEO's of major corporations don't give a fuck if GI Joe has a job or not.

People consented for the taxpayer use of defense spending through elections. If you were right, then Libertarians would run the show.

I do believe that the economy is held hostage through the military complex and I don't want to get out of it because I fear the collapse of the entire US economy. I do think we should start getting something more for it, I'm tired of us being defenders for half of Europe, who amass tiny little armies because they know we're right around the corner with our huge defense spending if they need us. Start charging countries for the privilege of doing business with us, just like any other transaction.

But, while getting rid of defense spending may be ideal, it is also lunacy.

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Originally Posted by Bradylama

When a tank blows up you've lost all of the money and labour put into that tank.

That's not entirely true.

All the money that was paid to the workers who worked on the tank goes back into the economy. If those people don't have good jobs, then they don't have good money to spend.

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Which is wrong. People do not consent to what their tax dollars are used for by virtue of taxation. Taxation is a forced extraction, and one through which no consent is offered.

It's not wrong. If people didn't want to be taxed, they could vote for people who would stop taxing them. If they wanted their taxes to go to different programs, they could elect different people to handle the budget. It's a fairly simple concept.

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You can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs. The economic impact will be serious, but on the whole (in the long run) this country and its economy would be better for it.

You're talking about making an omelet by burning the house down.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Originally Posted by Bradylama

And what then when the people they vote for don't win? Or if the people they've elected to represent them are out-voted in a legislature and can't enact the agenda of their constituencies?

So, are all these threads you make just sour grapes because you're in the minority?

I mean, now what are you saying, that we shouldn't use a Democratic parliamentary system because the guys you like aren't agreed with by enough people to be involved?

Jam it back in, in the dark.