Sprawl. It’s a gas.
If you have a 900-square-foot house, it’s less costly to heat, cool, maintain and easier to clean, secure and furnish than a 4000-sq.-ft. McMansion- especially if you are only one person. It also takes a lot less time from end to end, or top to bottom.
Same goes for a city. If you are on an island, like Manhattan- you build up more than out. You put a subway underneath- you save space by not expecting everyone to drive to work. Think about how many parking spaces a 100-story parking building would take- if everyone came in by car, alone? Now do you see the stupidity of requiring x number of parking spaces per square foot of finished space? If the Kettering Tower needed a surface parking lot using the equation of 1 spot for every 300 sq ft (a big cubicle) you’d cover all of downtown Dayton.
The same goes for our city- which is “our house.” The bigger it gets- the more it costs us- especially if it’s split up among fewer and fewer people. Every road, every foot of utilities, every school, police station, library, etc. costs all of us. The more we add, the more it costs. And we’re not even looking at the energy side of things- we’re just talking about providing the infrastructure.
Moving from here to there costs us in gas, lots of which comes from people we don’t particularly like. The more we have to drive- the more gas we consume, the whole thing gets ugly- and inefficient.
So even though they’ve never met a new interchange they didn’t like, the Dayton Daily News Editorial board just started to realize that our car-culture is very expensive:
So the car-centered lifestyle still looks relatively attractive, notwithstanding all the warnings we as a country have received about the unreliability of oil supplies and the unreliability of oil prices.
As a community — a region — that continues to play the car card, we should be among the leaders in pushing for ways to make it a better card: for cars that are more energy-efficient, for cars that run on alternative fuels, and for new supplemental forms of transportation — like trains and better transit systems.
It’s just a matter of hedging a big bet.
via Editorial: Growth along I-75 requires new focus on energy | A Matter of Opinion.
Of course they put their new print technology center in a cornfield in Warren County long ago.
However their thinking is so pedestrian (pun intended) that the best they can come up with is higher efficiency cars, new fuels or better public transit. Not exactly the answers we need. Not even interesting enough to start a good debate.
In order for the Dayton region to catch up with progressive places that passed anti-sprawl legislation long ago, or embraced public transit, or “complete streets” for bike commuting- we need to come up with much more powerful ideas:
Repopulate the core: Dayton has an abundance of cheap housing. It’s also a big HUBzone. The open H1B visas for investing and importing foreigners into these areas would be a bold way to strengthen both the core and the nation- letting industry pay the tab. I talked about it here first: crazy economic development idea.
Instead of building offices and plants far away from workforces- or forcing commutes, which cost social capital in terms of unproductive time, and add wear and tear on roads and burn up fuel- why not reward companies and employees with a walk to work tax credit? The less we drive the healthier and wealthier we will be.
Public transit is fine, but must it be limited to “light rail” or trains or even traditional transit systems? Is bike share a way to move people around in dense areas that saves us wear and tear on roads? Cuts gas consumption? For several million dollars we can have something that puts Dayton on the map- and cuts down the costs of moving around short distances.
Or maybe a folding electric bike- from YikeBike. It’s an amazing compact folding electric bicycle. Watch the video:
Is this an alternative?
Or a low-cost monorail system like the Urbanaut? Older versions like the ones at Disneyland capture the imagination of the city of the future- yet we just spent $77 million on just another highway interchange.
When cities first sprouted up they were typically near rivers, natural ports, easily defensible positions or beautiful vistas. All are natural features that can’t be replicated. Now, we’re locked into the idea of putting things next to off-ramps because, well, we take the car for granted. Once you start building things for people again, instead of cars, we’ll look back at these excesses and wonder why.
Today’s Dayton Grassroots Daily Show talks about the relationship between the cost of energy and the cost of sprawl. Watch it and put on your thinking cap- is there a better way to meet the challenges of having less people live in a bigger area who are totally dependent on cheap energy?
@jstult i go to Sinclair lol just got gone getting a A in economics. what did i say that is massively flawed. yes i know higher wage = surplus of labor.that doesn’t mean you should have to be poor even if your working your ass off.
but if you think for your self you would realize wages don’t increase with inflation or cost of living until a couple of years ago. do u see a problem with that?
clayton, congrats on the good grade, keep it up, Dayton needs more A students, this stuff
isn’t really defensible so I won’t bother addressing it, it’s just rants, which you’re more than welcome to do (we all do at some point), but don’t expect them to be convincing.
Review what ‘profit maximizing rate of production’ means, it’s not about rights or exploitation, it’s about costs and prices on the margin. Folks will find the profit maximizing rate no matter what minimum wage you legislate (this was one I remember getting wrong on my econ test a few years ago).
Got any data to back that up (Google Public data would be a good place to start looking)? How do you define ‘under paying’? Isn’t the wage whatever the market will bear?
Again, some data would bolster your argument. It probably matters what sectors and regions you look at too, no?
Ol’ Clayton might have received an “A” in his Sinclair econ class, but my guess is that he wouldn’t fare quite so well in an English class!! :)
Clayton, you are not worth the time. From what you said, we would lose millions of jobs if we HAD to pay $10.00. Geez, the poor would be waaaaaaaaaaaaay better off then… and we would pay $7 for a $3 hamburger. Great, just great!
DA
Man lived hundreds, no thousands of years without oil or cars. I think when the time comes we will make the appropriate adjustments. Why all this doom and gloom? We are not at our peak populations – hell, the likes of Springboro could be the center of CinDay City in 2040…. Dayton may be the suburb then. If the economy fails, who cares? Other economies have failed, people move, people die off. Such is life. I think right now we are in great shape to be a great country, where people live and eat and drink and dance…. like they have been doing for hundreds of years in this country, like they have been doing for thousands of years around the globe. It is not all that bad, is it? Why are native city dwellers in Dayton so jealous of suburbs and the success of the suburbs? For real, why worry about other people’s money, other people’s success. Seems to me liberals would be better off fighting for things that actually matter.
gene what you don’t get is people can’t live on minimum wage. thats why crime is so high. you can’t fix crime without fixing minimum wage. moving away so the poor can’t live near you doesn’t fix the problem. also prices wouldn’t increase, surplus labor would look up elastic demand. yea gene wanting to be able to afford a apt. and food is worrying about other peoples success. gene my only advice to you is go make only 7.25 a hour for couple months and see how its impossible to live and then maybe you might not wanna ignore the real problem.
@Bubba Jones owned. that said who proof reads a rant on the internet.
“people can’t live on minimum wage.”
Really? I don’t see these people dead. They seem to be alive to me. They have places to live. Food. Big screen TVs. Clothes. Smokes. Booze.
They might not have the world, I grant you that. And maybe poor people should not have kids. But they live just fine. Go to Africa and see what POOR is. BC it is not homes and tvs and food. It is the opposite of that. Let’s be clear what poor is.
So if you are poor you have to commit crime? You said it, I didn’t. My grandparents were poor but somehow managed not to be criminals. That is funny. Stop making excuse for criminals. We have rich criminals for cry really softly, so explain that…
I lived on min wage when it was around $4.25….. for over a year, with no savings. I ate a lot of noodles, but I lived. And I did not live off the govt. or tax payers.
BTW min wage is for people starting to work. If you are 30 and make min wage then that is your fault.
gene your the one that preaches that welfare to wrong and the the government is bad without help you can’t live on minimum wage. also the urban crime rate and the poverty rate is heavily related . why is it your fault that your employer won’t pay you more but your too scared to find another job . because of job security and you can’t afford to miss a pay check.
Clayton, you don’t “own” me and you’re obviously not even smart enough to “own” yourself. Here’s a hint for you – try writing in coherent sentences when you’re “ranting” and you’ll get in the habit of doing it all the time. That will become a valuable habit for you as you move forward in life. If you think it’s OK to be sloppy doing things like writing a “rant on the internet”, then sloppiness will become your dominant habit and you will find yourself in a series of $7.25 per hour jobs for the rest of your life. Gene is 100% correct that if “you are 30 and make min wage then that is your fault.”
Here’s a something that you obviously missed in your econ class… Minimum wage jobs are supposed to be ENTRY LEVEL jobs not jobs that you’re expected live on. If you think that every job should pay a minimum of $10 per hour then go start a business, hire some people and then you can pay them whatever you want to. In the meantime, if you want to EARN $10 per hour, then do the job at your current place of employment that a person making $10 would do. If you work and act like a $7.25 per hour employee, then that’s what you’ll be paid.
also alot of people buy smokes and drinks Booze. their called addicting products for a reason
@Bubba Jones reread what i said.try to think like you still in your 20’s, because you completely missed the point of what i said to. also jones i make more than $10 this isn’t rant about not being paid enough.
The point of my argument with gene is based around him calling the poor unproductive and acting like their scum. when in fact they are poor because minimum wage is too low.
“of what i said to you”*
A lot of poor people are unproductive. A lot of middle class and a lot if rich people are unproductive. In fact, I would say 40% of humans are somewhat unproductive, which is fine by me. But when you are poor and unproductive and then complain about being poor, well I suggest you get movin’. Minimum wage does not make a person poor. Minimum wage is for teenagers, people who need a second or part-time job, etc… If you show me a person on minimum wage right now I will point to you why they are earning that wage. Age is the number one reason. Lack of job skills is number two. Over time you will get paid more if you learn and work hard. Most of us started at the bottom. The problem is that TV and such make it so easy to see a guy shoot a hoop and get paid $5million a year and then baggin’ fries for $7.25 does not seem fair. Well that is life Clay. I have been poor. I was fine. And so are poor people in the United States (minus a few.) Most poor people are happy and eat well and have places to live. Life ain’t that bad. Making minimum wage $10.00 will just shrink the number of jobs. If there was no minimum wage then more people could work. But in our society it is not cool to work for less than $15 and hour. Pride….. Oh lord….
Clayton,
I own a small business. No one in my employ makes less than $10.00 / hour. They make their current wages because they were able to leverage their skills and experience for a higher wage. Some of them performed above and beyond what was expected and took on extra duties learning new skills and increased their value and hence their leverage. They received raises. Keep in mind, this process had absolutely nothing to do with minimum wage.
Take for example a hypothetical McDonalds. They run 3 shifts. Each employee earns them the following:
1st shift: $35 / hr per employee
2nd shift: $43 / hr per employee
3rd shift: $9.50 / hr per employee
What happens if we raise minimum wage to $10.00 / hour? Then 3rd shift is losing .50 / hr per employee. It makes business sense for McDonalds to fire all of 3rd shift and only stay open 2 shifts. Over time prices may have to increase and they could reopen 3rd shift, but since all prices have increased you have devalued the earnings of all other workers and the cycle starts again. Minimum wage is a false bottom. Free Economy will continue to employ people as long as they have marginal value. The higher you make the false bottom, the less work that can be done with marginal value increasing the # of people that cannot be employed.
Robert makes a good point:
This is something David addressed a little in What do the elevator attendants do in the information age? But looking back over that thread, I don’t think anyone pointed out that many folks might choose to employ elevator attendants if the price were right…
In DC last October I was in a hotel that had an elevator attendant. @ 6’5″ and 265~ish lbs that was a tight fit.
Most people can operate an elevator, like that one in DC. So really that job is not needed, even in the old elevators.
But why build up when you can build out!
All, The economic assumptions that Clayton just parroted are similar to those that Marx used. He developed an economic theory based on the idea that, the capitalists make money because they exploit employees. Perhaps some of you have heard of his theory. “Capitalists” are known as exploiters because of a lack of understanding as to the value of capital investment and the role that investment has in increasing the efficiency and productivity of employees. Let me propose to you a situation. You are driving down the road. On the left of the road is a construction crew with shovels and they are all digging. On the right side of the road is a construction crew with a backhoe. Which of the crews average wage is higher? Why? Some of you will say it is because of the additional skill necessary to use the backhoe, it is the right side. Let me ask you a question, if the backhoe were not more efficient than the shovels would it matter that the person using it had the ability to do so? No! The reason that real wages are higher and rose throughout the industrialized world, and are now rising in Asia is not just education, it is also capital investment. What provides higher wages for people is both the education and skill to provide value to an employer and the ability to use the resources provided by the boss (via capital investment). Example more fully explained. It is X valuable for me to get a hole dug. I will pay 10 people $10 an hour for 10 hours to dig the hole = $1,000. They supply their own shovels. They make $10 an hour. I could hire a person with a backhoe and pay them $900 to dig the hole in 9 hours. That employee makes $50 an hour, the owner of the backhoe makes $50 an hour. Please note that I also retain $100. This allows me to make further investment in the property, another company, a shirt, pants, etc. Of course the technocrats will argue that… Read more »
First, show me ten guys that can dig a hole as fast as a guy with a backhoe.
The CC’s ecomomics classes involve the street value of drugs, the supply and demand of drugs and those selling drugs, the cleaver marketing of Steele Reserve, the production costs of regular smokes compared to menthol, the understanding that paying for bus fares via pennies may or may not be a waste of time to the people that count the change, the cost/benefit analysis of a whopper compared to the big mac, and a crash course and field trip to see how much one person can steal from another while holding a bag of trash right before throwing said trash all around the city of Dayton. It is not you typical Econ 101 to 399 course. Knowing how much to pay a teacher off in order to secure an A and a $9.00 an hour job is most important. $35 usually does the trick, and said $35 is turned around and spent on a trick on Ludlow with $5 to $10 left (depending on if it is the weekend or not) and that $5 or $10 can go right back to the whoppers and big macs, the same place where “she” was once was employeed, but found out $25 to $30 and hour for pole smoking was more money. Ahhhh, Econ in Dayton…
Jesse:
True; sometimes people even choose US dollars.
Gene:
I think David should add that to his Web2.0 classes, sounds like it’s cutting edge.
oops…. i should have gone with a huge butcher’s knife….
In fact that same mistake was made on this site not too long ago.
Why $10.00 and hour…… Why not like $30.00 an hour, so ft workers can make 60k in a year…. Why not Clay?
The contention of the post was that OUR tax dollars should not be financing the digging of the holes as the TRUE cost of maintenance and replacement is NEVER considered by the elected officials as they are financed by the PROFITS from the OWNERS of say the PAVING companies or insert developer here. So direct voting for all roads by the populace would be the WAY to go, much like the 3rd Frontier.
Yes surplus of labor has been the issue for a great number of recessions. The easy credit fueled the DOT com bubble, which actually left useful residue, while the housing bubble left more sprawl, large houses that are operational nightmares and a great deal of surplus labor. Never fear it will require a great more labor in the future to dig holes as the ability to fuel the backhoe exceeds the ability to fuel the construction or operation of the backhoe.
Now as Gene admits its very few of the people provide what is considered value to society. Now how one defines value may be different to different people. Some people think it is valuable to have drug laws and put every one of the losers in jail and some do not. Some people think it is valuable to educate children as a public option, some do not. Some people think it is valuable to build new crappy stuff while others strive for quality. The government should be promoting what is in the common good and those appear to be defined in what is called Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. While some may argue that building sprawl to avoid the neighbors is a perfectly normal response I would argue that it is “kicking the can down the road” in regards to social stability.
The government should not be promoting anything. They should build roads from tax payers money so we can grow and get away from the criminal element. Common good? You mean tax productive people and give it to non-productive people. Real fair.
Social stability? What does that mean? Our society is fairly stable. Yes, we have a lot of prisoners. But that is because we catch them. Go to Rio for the Olympics – only about 50 murders a day happen there, maybe more. A DAY….
And Bernie should have just been shot in the head.
I’m willing to admit that I’m incapable of getting you to understand what social justice is, Bandito. But really, it ain’t that complicated. Either you care about more than just yourself, or you don’t. If your primary concern is making sure no one gets anything of yours to which they’re not entitled, then you probably will never understand social justice. (David Lauri)
Yeah, DL, you might be right. Perhaps the Old Bandito’s neurons are not firing at full capacity and sequence. Why, it was just the other day the Old Bandito discovered that Moby Dick and Peter Pan were literary works and not venereal diseases. But the genesis of this misunderstanding is how we perceive the concept of justice. The Old Bandito had long thought that Lady Justice had vision problems not too dissimilar to Stevie Wonder’s. And yet, the Social Justice cult insists we treat the successful differently than the poor, caucasians differently than minorities and citizens differently than illegals. Furthermore, the Social Justice cult makes excuses for the dysfunctions of the underclass while maintaining that the successful be handed the mop and broom for the inevitable clean up and the tab for the repairs. Libertarians who think that extending personal and fiscal freedom to that many are altruistic are merely selfish, according to your definition. Furthermore, the Social Justice advocates do not believe that people are the best judges of their own destinies, but are in need or an arbitrary and thuggish cult to keep them in line and extract whatever wealth and freedom the cult deems necessary. The Old Bandito’s favorite economist, Frederich Hayek, had a theory about social justice, saying it “belonged not to the category of error but of that of nonsense.” And Hayek has rarely been proven wrong…….
Meanwhile, back at the ranch…..the DBJ reports on goings on at Austin Road (or,Lets Push that Downtown Vacancy Rate past 50%):
http://dayton.bizjournals.com/dayton/stories/2010/04/12/story2.html
Unfortunately for downtown Dayton, which already is saddled with an office vacancy rate of more than 37 percent, Maas said Austin Landing is a draw for tenants currently in the city of Dayton. He said Austin Landing is in play for some downtown office users.
JofL:
Nothing really exciting happens until we get closer to 90%:
Sprawl Baby, Sprawl!
It’s already happening. The Dayton application for that Community Renewal money or whatever its called is proposing to demolish more houses than New Orleans. Yes, thats right, more than hurricane ravaged New Orleans. Thats just housing, though. Downtown is a tougher nut to crack since its quite expensive to tear down a skyscraper or two.
Lets break all the windows so that we can put more glass makers to work! I love Bastiat.
Build them up and tear them down…just don’t use your own money for any of it.
Greg,
You either never read the links that I post, you don’t understand them or you intentionally make funny posts to drive me crazy.
You have it turned on its head. The “surplus of labor” realized during a recession is the result of over-investment and mal-investment during the “boom” period. The Keynesian explanation, that you just parroted, makes no sense at all. Why would businesses choose to not employ productive people, whose contributions would be remunerated in their products? Answer, they would not choose that. They would choose to make the profit from those people. The issue is that the economy has over produced during the boom. This is, as you say, because of easy credit. It distorts the economic indicators to entrepreneurs and businesses and results in recession and depression.
I will again post the link to a concise explanation of this phenomena.
http://www.auburn.edu/~garriro/ppsus.htm
2006 Edition: Sustainable vs Unsustainable Growth
Jesse – was surfing channels and came across a PBS interview this AM with a British economist who just released a book. I didn’t catch his name or much of the discussion but heard him say this recovery will be different mostly because of just-in-time manufacturing. Labor surplus’s are not found as often in today’s production floors. No excess inventory to discount when times get slow, no overproduction when new orders begin to arrive. It sounded like he expects less deflation and a longer ramp up back to full employment.
Bruce,
That would be true if you assume that what was being produced (at every stage of production) was actually needed/wanted, given the true “cost” of the product (without monetary manipulation). If you would like to have a more in depth discussion then please review the power point and I will further discuss the implications with regard to the economist’s prediction.
It sounded like he expects less deflation and a longer ramp up back to full employment.
The Cleveland Fed has a pretty good article by one of their economists that predicts just that….the longer ramp to full employment. Their report says this has been a more dramatic acceleration of a trend that surfaced in the past two recessions, the so-called “jobless recovery”. Looking at employment stats maintained by the BLS the Dayton metro area employment numbers never recovered from the 9-11 recession. In other words we are locking-in higher and higher numbers of structural uemployment. Perhaps for the reasons Bruce K cited.
The March issue of Atlantic Monthly also has an interesting article about unemployment:
“How a New Jobless Era Will Transform America”
Well, unemployment is not helped when you keep taxing to death those who provide jobs. Liberals are killing the goose. But liberals just can’t get past that some people make a lot of money, and taxing it is so much fun. You want to help the poor? Then stop taxing those who provide jobs. Ohio is one of the worst state to do business in.
From David Lauri’s snippet:
Check out this graph. From mid 1973 until the end of 1997 the unemployment rate in this country stayed above 5% (though it did flirt with 5% in 1989). Was that a series of ‘lost decades’? The slope of the two recent recoveries, 1992 to 2000 and 2003 to 2006, do seem to be less steep than the ones in the ’70s and ’80s, but compare them to the little recovery from 1961 to 1966. Here’s one zoomed in on the recent data for some states (sorry they don’t have it broken all the way down to MSAs), looks like some have turned the corner, but Florida is still shooting for the heights.
Maybe some of our local dismal science practitioners can show us a picture that helps us understand the various reasons (I don’t think mine quite do that):
Look at the PowerPoint. Also, read Robert Vigh’s hurdle discussion with regard to minimum wage.
An interesting question would be…why do we assume than 5%, 10%, etc%. of people shouldn’t be learning new skills and finding better and more productive avenues for their effort?
One interesting thing about this discussion is that there are different ways that will work to build a lasting economic system. A one size fits all approach does not exist. If it did we would not need economists.
Finding the appropriate balance between loose reigns on capitalists and rules and regulations to protect the employees and public has been the modern goal. The arguments concerning resonable amounts of taxation will probably be around for millenia.
I’m proud that we are currently near the lowest federal taxation rates since the thirties. Hopefully our economic recovery will be more robust than predicted by the GAO and we will realize tax revenue growth without raising rates. (Yes that may sound optimistic but a little optimisim is healthy every once in awhile.)
Bruce,
What evidence have you for your statement about lasting economic systems? No fiat currency system has ever lasted more than 200 years. Most have failed after 30. A great number last less than 15 years.
http://www.dollardaze.org/blog/?post_id=00107&cat_id=17
Keep in mind that while we don’t “necessarily” know a perfect way, we do know what doesn’t work.
I realize there is no perfect economic system. Each has downfalls, some come quicker than others, some can weather downturns and emerge anew, others exacerbate and prolong the suffering.
To know what doesn’t work is not enough either because society will continue to find ways around the rules. I look at recessions as ways to cleanse the capitalists that have overborrowed or failed to improve their business models. New rules are not always the answer but they can go a long way to not repeat the same mistakes.
It is a little frustrating to me when the capitalists can force governemnt to have those rules removed later so they can repeat their mistakes.
1) From whom are “capitalists” borrowing?
2) Capitalists cant force the government to help them…those are fascists. Yeah, I know that I just said fascist. Look it up…we are all fascists now.
Jesse capitalists sure can get their way. A prime example is the late 1990’s when congress reversed the 1933 rules (implemented after the great depression) that allowed the CDO’s and credit default swaps which led to the housing boom/crash. Now the fed is talking about re-implementing those rules. I’m sure the capitalists will try to get in the way of that too.
Wow Bruce. You really oversimplified the boom, capitalist and capitalism to fit a convenient definition for yourself. Why to half ass it!
No fiat currency system has ever lasted more than 200 years. Most have failed after 30. A great number last less than 15 years.
We take a helluva lot of stuff for granted in 2010 that few people alive in 1810 even dreamt of.
According to “The Lifespan of Written Constitutions,” “national constitutions have lasted an average of only seventeen years since 1789.” Is that an argument against nations having written constitutions?
Back to the subject of money, there’s this guy who’s going to try living “his life (from rent, to food, to the clothes on his back) with just virtual currency for an entire year.” Dominic Canterbury’s going to be spending Dibits, each Dibit being worth a dollar but not convertible into actual dollars. So much for fiat currency, at least in the sense of state-issued currency, but I guess fiat money, in the sense of money that has no intrinsic value and isn’t convertible to something tangible, isn’t going away, even if no one 200 years ago ever predicted the Dibit.
David L,
Fiat currency has three definitions:
1) Money declared “legal tender” by a government
2) State issued money not legally convertible into anything tangible, nor fixed in value to any objective standard
3) money without intrinsic value
With regard to the written constitution. Yes; that statistic demonstrates the weakness of a system that relies on the promises of a government (i.e. a written constitution) for protection of the rights of the citizens. Hence our Second Amendment. To secure our rights.
The only issue I have with the current “fiat” system is that the government has a monopoly on the creation of legal tender. It is illegal for me to create a competing legal tender. I have no problem with people (or banks) making their own notes. And no object has necessary intrinsic value. All values are subject to the desires of people to have said object.http://mises.org/daily/3872
Bruce,
You didn’t say that they “got their way”, you said “they force government”. What army did they use to “force” the US Federal Government? They convinced the government to change rules. They were subsequently “bailed out” by the government to “socialize losses” while they were able to “retain profits.”
This is definitional economic fascism. Salvemini, Gaetano. Under the Axe of Fascism 1936
or
Alexander J. De Grand, Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, Routledge, 1995. pp. 57
or see this for more information about the US transformation
http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo85.html
My point is that we don’t live in a capitalist nation. Naming problems and blaming capitalism is a complete farce. We live in a state that is planned, regulated, controlled and subsidized by the government. What percentage of the US economy isn’t either planned, regulated, controlled or subsidized by government?
My point is that we don’t live in a capitalist nation. Naming problems and blaming capitalism is a complete farce. We live in a state that is planned, regulated, controlled and subsidized by the government. What percentage of the US economy isn’t either planned, regulated, controlled or subsidized by government?
Perhaps one who finds any taxation whatsoever to be morally wrong would thus have a difficult time to see any differences between fascism and the economic system of the United States. Granted, the United States does not have pure laissez-faire capitalism, but I don’t think the degree of regulation under which American businesses are forced to operate would qualify our system as fascism.
And bringing up Nazi Germany points out just how far from many aspects of fascism the United States is. We’re in no danger of becoming a single party state in which opposition to the state is is forbidden and suppressed. Despite the (sarcasm on) forcing of citizens to contribute against their will via taxation (sarcasm off), American society is not totalitarian.
As for your being unable to create legal tender, Jesse, yes, you are correct, you are unable to create currency that others are required to accept as payment for debts you owe them. However, you are free to enter into contracts with others in which goods or services are paid for not with legal tender currency but with something else the parties to the contract agree has value. That’s why Dominic Canterbury thinks he can live a year paying for things with Dibits.
And despite their not being legal tender, community currencies have sprung up across the United States.
And as for your reliance on the Second Amendment to secure your rights against the frailties of the promises of a written constitution, I hope you and other Libertarians don’t intend to take up arms against your neighbors because we’ve been complicit in our government’s taking money from you against your will in the form of taxation.
Jeese said “You didn’t say that they “got their way”, you said “they force government”. What army did they use to “force” the US Federal Government? They convinced the government to change rules. They were subsequently “bailed out” by the government to “socialize losses” while they were able to “retain profits.””
I was envisioning an army of lobbyists with deep pockets! :)
Sprawl vs. Anti-Sprawl:
http://media.libsyn.com/media/kunstlercast/KunstlerCast_107.mp3
I suggest if you hate sprawl, and you really don’t want to be a liberal about it, give up your cars. 8k for each parking space….
Put your money where your mouth is…..
That guy hardly said anything. He stated few facts and never really made a good argument for anti-sprawl. We have plenty of farm land. Three states can grow all of the wheat and corn for the world over.
Anti-sprawl should be about saving money for govt (or just lack of spending) and promote personal saving for an individual and promote the benefits of living in an Urban area. He offered little in promotion of Urban living. What is so great about living closer together? The farm thing is total bullshit. We have more the enough farm land. Now he did touch on the govt subsidy that exist with sprawl, and I happen to be anti-subsidy for most if not all things.
Touch on this – Dayton had 275k people in the 60’s, yet the “county” population was less thatn 400k. Now Dayton has 155K with a county population of 550K. So even if you put back the 120k plus people, we still would NEED sububs to support 275k people. We need some suburbian areas.
I like living in Dayton bc it is affordable. That is what you get with crime and “wonderful” schools.
Gotta agree with Gene, we live in the city because it’s cheap, we gots no chillun and we don’t mind returning fire.