How Does Republican Platform Help Middle Class?

Translated from Obfuscation into Reality, it's no surprise that you, being a conservative, need a European to school you in American history.It is perfectly plain from ZenMonkey's posts that he didn't need me to explain to him the significance of his own reference to Hamilton.It was you, marc, who seemed not to understand his point --- and, indeed, who Hamilton was. No. I do not; my admiration for the Founding Fathers stops short of necrophilia.But in this particular case, as I have shown, there's no point in appealing to the intent of the Founders and Framers because they did not have a single collective intent.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

And if the Republicans are helping prevent the middle class from being attacked by venomous wombats, then that would also be an example of Republicans doing something for the middle class.But I don't think you can credit Republicans for actively preventing all the imaginary things that don't happen.

Did a business school run over your dog or something?

This is, of course, not true.But however much I believe in personal liberty --- and however much you do --- it is simply a fact that free markets don't and can't prevent environmental disasters.If a man owns a factory on the banks of a river, and discharges waste into it, where is the economic downside? I'll tell you where. It's all downstream of him.As a result (to take one example) the Cuyahoga River in Ohio caught fire in 1868, 1883, 1887, 1912, 1922, 1936, 1941, 1948, 1952 and 1969. What did the free market do about it? Damn all. The particular fire in the photograph cost what would be upward of $12 million in today's money --- and not one cent to the people who dumped the waste in the water, because they were upstream of the fire.Then the government passed the Clean Water Act of 1972, since which time the Cuyahoga River has not caught fire.If "belief in U.S. foundings, or the concept of personal liberty" really entailed believing that the free market will prevent such instances of environmental meltdown, then history shows this belief to be a pipe dream, because it didn't.But that is surely not what such a belief entails. The Founding Fathers knew perfectly well that left to themselves some people will enrich themselves unjustly at the expense of others; and they knew that laws were needed to prevent this. They did not (for example) leave it up to the free market to prevent the counterfeiting of US money. How could it? As with pollution, the profit is all to the counterfeiter, the loss is (economically speaking) all "downstream" of him. There can be no economic disincentive to the counterfeiting of money. So what did the Founders do? They passed a law saying that counterfeiters should be hanged, that's what. They did not possess a mystical faith in the ability of the free market and "personal liberty" to sort it all out for them, because they weren't all as crazy as a cement mixer full of weasels.I think that they knew what they were doing. How about you?

I based my assertion on the proposition that the Founding Fathers were neither retarded nor gibbering mad.Obviously some people enrich themselves unjustly at the expense of others. For example, muggers. Burglars. Pickpockets. Swindlers. Forgers. I do not need to quote the Federalist Papers or the Constitution to demonstrate that the Founding Fathers knew this, any more than I need to quote the Federalist Papers or the Constitution to prove that they knew that grass is green and water is wet. These are facts universally conceded.

Yes, I am. Though I doubt whether you are capable of profiting from it.It is obvious that they did not have a common intent as to what the General Welfare Clause should mean, since as a matter of well-established historical fact they disagreed about what it did in fact mean. Since the War of Independence was not to any degree fought over the meaning of the General Welfare Clause, which had not at that time been written, this hardly seems to apply.Perhaps this explains why the Founding Fathers had different interpretations of the General Welfare Clause, rather than a single collective interpretation. And obviously King George III and his government had no opinion as to the interpretation of the General Welfare Clause, due to their lamentable inability to travel through time and visit the future.Whereas the Founding Fathers had more than one interpretation of the General Welfare Clause.

What a liar you are, to be sure. Did you know that Alexander Hamilton agreed with the Hamiltonian interpretation of the General Welfare Clause?The clue's in the name.

You are, of course, lying. You are, of course, lying. What is this gibberish? I said that the Founding Fathers knew that some people, left to themselves, would enrich themselves unjustly at the expense of others.This has nothing to do with the economic concept of a free market, in which transactions are voluntary. I did not, and if you think that this nonsense will fool anyone into thinking that I did, then you are a bigger fool then I took you for.What I said, as anyone can see, is that thievery is an example of one person unjustly enriching himself at the expense of another, and that the Founding Fathers were aware of the existence of such examples. You appear to have got so wrapped up in the stupid lies you yourself have told about what I wrote that you've gone way over the border between reality and la-la land.Back in reality, the Founding Fathers knew perfectly well that it was one of the most important functions of government to prevent one person from unjustly enriching himself at the expense of another. This is why they raised no objection to laws against burglary. Or counterfeiting. Or assassination for hire.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

You are, of course, lying.

You are, of course, lying. You are, of course, lying. You are, of course, lying. I am unfamiliar with your argot, but if "getting a smoking" means "being amused at the antics of a pathetic liar", and if the badness of the smoking correlates with the egregiousness of the lies, then you may not even be in the top ten. Remember that creationists post here. You are inadvertently telling the truth, since I am not engaging in historical revisionism. This is why you can't point to a single thing that I actually said that was false.

... but I repeat myself.Yes, marc. Voluntary, free market transactions.These words actually have a meaning.If Alice pays Bob to put arsenic in Charlie's drinking water, this is not a voluntary free market transaction. It was voluntary on the part of Alice and Bob, but there is a third party involved, namely Charlie, who did not agree to his part in the transaction. Therefore, this is not an example of the free market. The fact that Bob made money out of it does not magically make it an example of the free market. Profit, greed, self-interest --- these alone do not make a free market; the element of freedom must also be present. This is why they're called free markets.When Bob poisons Charlie for profit, he is unjustly enriching himself at Charlie's expense, and the reason why it is unjust is precisely the reason why it is not an example of the free market --- Charlie did not consent.Note that this analysis applies equally if Alice actively wants Charlie dead or if she just thinks that his drinking water is a convenient place to put her arsenic and merely has a callous disregard for his life. Charlie's lack of control over and consent to what goes in his water is the same in both cases.Clearly market forces alone cannot prevent such unfree transactions, since there is no economic disincentive to deter Bob from poisoning Charlie. It is therefore the legitimate concern of the government to ensure the freedom of the economic relations between its citizens by providing a legal disincentive.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

For a company that's gone out of business, Exelon's shares are way overvalued at ~$42 apiece. Maybe you should start shorting their stock before anyone else notices that they've gone out of business. Other investors are unlikely to catch on while Exelon continues to make annual profits of two-and-a-half billion dollars.In our next installment of "Economics For Idiots And Conservatives", we'll be learning what a company is.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.