Politics

[sestoppelman]

Correct

What an honor! A great mind.

 

[sgt_zim]

What an honor! A great mind.

I liked Friedman, but some of the things for which he advocated early in his career are still with us and biting us in the backside today - paycheck withholding of income tax, to name one example. In his later years, he confessed that was the worst mistake he ever made. I think he was also not correct on the money vs currency thing. He was a defender of the latter.

His life arc reminds me a lot of Friedrich Hayek. Hayek, as a young man, was an ardent socialist. Later in his career he wrote "If socialists understood economics, they wouldn't be socialists." And he became one of the most prolific apologists (along with von Mises, Hazlitt, Rothbard, et al) for free market economics of the 20th century.

 

[Red Leg]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1442948301217689602

Any number of us have wondered this.

When he admitted dialoguing with the authors of three different critical books of the Trump presidency, I could only wish that one of the members would have asked his reaction were his executive officer to give a similar uncleared interview to an author writing a critical review of his tenure as CJCS.

 

[Hogpatrol]

 

[Big5]

 

[sestoppelman]

I liked Friedman, but some of the things for which he advocated early in his career are still with us and biting us in the backside today - paycheck withholding of income tax, to name one example. In his later years, he confessed that was the worst mistake he ever made. I think he was also not correct on the money vs currency thing. He was a defender of the latter.

His life arc reminds me a lot of Friedrich Hayek. Hayek, as a young man, was an ardent socialist. Later in his career he wrote "If socialists understood economics, they wouldn't be socialists." And he became one of the most prolific apologists (along with von Mises, Hazlitt, Rothbard, et al) for free market economics of the 20th century.

No one is perfect, he learned though. One of his quotes always sticks with me.
He said, "if the Govt ran the Sahara desert they would soon be out of sand".

 

[sestoppelman]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1442948301217689602

Any number of us have wondered this.

When he admitted dialoguing with the authors of three different critical books of the Trump presidency, I could only wish that one of the members would have asked his reaction were his executive officer to give a similar uncleared interview to an author writing a critical review of his tenure as CJCS.

I have not yet seen or heard of anyone asking Milley if he did in fact tell his Chinese counterpart that he would in fact warn them if there was going to be an attack.
Perhaps someone did, but I have not seen it.
Seems like that would cut thru all the BS.

 

[Red Leg]

I have not yet seen or heard of anyone asking Milley if he did in fact tell his Chinese counterpart that he would in fact warn them if there was going to be an attack.
Perhaps someone did, but I have not seen it.
Seems like that would cut thru all the BS.

He responded to it this morning. With respect to that, his answer was logical. A better question would be to detail for the committee DOD guidance with respect to engaging the press.

 

[sestoppelman]

He responded to it this morning. With respect to that, his answer was logical. A better question would be to detail for the committee DOD guidance with respect to engaging the press.

I watched some of that but I didnt hear the direct question, nor a direct answer but just more dancing around it. There was no "yes, I did tell him that I would warn him". What I heard was obfuscation and deflection.

 

[sgt_zim]

No one is perfect, he learned though. One of his quotes always sticks with me.
He said, "if the Govt ran the Sahara desert they would soon be out of sand".

Nope, nobody is. I think more than anybody (except maybe Henry Hazlitt), Friedman made the understanding of free market economics accessible for everyone.

And he always had a smile and polite answer, even for obviously idiotic questions. I could never do that, no error.

 

[Ray B]

I liked Friedman, but

At the time I was going to college (72-77) there were three professors that were leaders of their particular school of thought, Milton Friedman, Paul Samuelson & John Galbraith. JKG had been an advisor to JFK and had a measure of reality regarding the effects of decreasing taxes and in retrospect his policies as would the policies of Keynes, be seen as ultra conservative by some of todays politicians, but The Chicago School was seen as the great bastion of monetary theory so that is where I chose to go and Friedman's Price Theory classes were the ones I attended. On returning to the West Coast to live and work I developed a test for the various HR interviewers at the places of employment that I was considering. One comment that would cause me to terminate the interview was "Why did you go all the way back to Chicago to go to school when Portland State has a good Econ dept?" Another was "I've heard of the Chicago School and their outdated ideas of how the economy works".

So just for the readers @sgt_zim , where did you study economics and whom were your instructors?

 

[sgt_zim]

no formal study, but von Mises, Hayek, Hazlitt, Rothbard, Friedman, and Bastiat, to name a few of them.

no man or men should ever be trusted with the kind of power Friedman thought appropriate for the central bank. I am as big an apologist for free markets in banking as I am for everything else. And the Federal Reserve is a monopoly.

 

[sgt_zim]

If one of my kids had wanted to study economics at U of C, I would have gladly sent them along. George Mason and Auburn have programs I like better.

 

[Ray B]

By merely reading someone's books as it appears @sgt_zim has done with the various names he has dropped there is a strong possibility of a misunderstanding related to the context of thought. With regard to the central bank Professor Friedman said, and I was in the classroom to hear him say it, the money supply (which is the function of the Federal Reserve) should be set by a computer that in short answer matched the money supply to the GNP. So Prof Friedman's comments should not be seen as support of the FED, rather a workable and Apolitical replacement for it.

As for present status of U of C, a few years back a guy that had obtained billions by running a hedgefund wanted to immortalized himself so he paid U of C a pile of his unearned wealth to establish a School of Economics and name it after him. In addition the Chicago School was to become more twenty-first century and hire losers such as Austin Goolsbey as professors. So the beacon on the hill that U of C once stood for is now fading. And so have my contributions to the alumni funds.

I received not one cent from my parents as support for my education since it was six years between my graduation from high school and my entry in college- six years spent defending the Constitution and working in various meat packing plants- so my parent didn't SEND me anywhere.

 

[WAB]

By merely reading someone's books as it appears @sgt_zim has done with the various names he has dropped there is a strong possibility of a misunderstanding related to the context of thought. With regard to the central bank Professor Friedman said, and I was in the classroom to hear him say it, the money supply (which is the function of the Federal Reserve) should be set by a computer that in short answer matched the money supply to the GNP. So Prof Friedman's comments should not be seen as support of the FED, rather a workable and Apolitical replacement for it.

As for present status of U of C, a few years back a guy that had obtained billions by running a hedgefund wanted to immortalized himself so he paid U of C a pile of his unearned wealth to establish a School of Economics and name it after him. In addition the Chicago School was to become more twenty-first century and hire losers such as Austin Goolsbey as professors. So the beacon on the hill that U of C once stood for is now fading. And so have my contributions to the alumni funds.

I received not one cent from my parents as support for my education since it was six years between my graduation from high school and my entry in college- six years spent defending the Constitution and working in various meat packing plants- so my parent didn't SEND me anywhere.

I studied the same books with direct instruction from Charles Koch. I suspect that he has a better grasp of economics than most professors. That said, I have always found Sgt-Zim to have a good grasp of the science.

 

[VertigoBE]

Perfect illustration of why we are in trouble. These dependent children are far more woke than educated.

this is tragic...
I wonder how those enlightened souls would have responded to the question "What specifically in the US Constitution are you not agreeing with, or would you like to see rewritten?"
I bet that apart from 2nd Amendment, they would not be able to specify one other thing.

 

[sestoppelman]

He responded to it this morning. With respect to that, his answer was logical. A better question would be to detail for the committee DOD guidance with respect to engaging the press.

Former DNI John Ratcliffe was just on FOX a moment ago and totally refuted just about everything Milley said today.
He was being polite and said Milley was disingenuous at best and should absolutely resign yesterday. Milley listed Ratcliffe as one in the loop about the calls over some intelligence report that doesnt exist, etc. He said no way, never happened.
Milley is a liar and a phony, guess he must be in training to run for political office.

 

[Ray B]

It is interesting how something that starts out as a good idea can be turned into something that is completely opposed to the original intent. For example, For decades public schools were funded by the property taxes paid by the owners of property that was within the area of the specific school or school district. Since some areas were more valuable than others a difference in the available funding to schools resulted. Schools in rich areas had more money than schools in poor neighborhoods. This was seen as causing a self-perpetuating cycle of the students in the rich areas becoming more educated and thus able to earn higher salaries than their counterparts from the poor areas and the cycle continuing of rich being rich and poor being poor. This was seen as unacceptable so various funding ideas were tried. The US department of education was started and one of the programs was to move students from the poor schools to the rich schools. Another was to provide funding from the US to the poor areas. Another was for states to take over the funding system and make the funding on a state level rather than a school district level. All of these ideas and plans were made with the good intentions of breaking the cycle of poverty and providing a good education to those students from the poor neighborhoods.

Unfortunately, those in position to distribute the funds had parallel agendas, such as building their own bureaucracies and promoting their own political viewpoints, so the percentage of revenue that went to the schools was decreased due to inefficiencies within the new system. And worse, the funds were tied to mandatory propaganda such as we now see- and the results are now manifest.

 

[Red Leg]

Former DNI John Ratcliffe was just on FOX a moment ago and totally refuted just about everything Milley said today.
He was being polite and said Milley was disingenuous at best and should absolutely resign yesterday. Milley listed Ratcliffe as one in the loop about the calls over some intelligence report that doesnt exist, etc. He said no way, never happened.
Milley is a liar and a phony, guess he must be in training to run for political office.

He should have resigned weeks ago. People suggested it to him. Whenever as a serving officer becomes a political story, his fault - their fault - the devil's fault, it is time to leave.

 

[jpr9954]