Republicans running (down!) government sorta like a business


Ben Sargent, the retired genius cartoonist for the Austin American-Statesman got  it just about right, I figure:

Ben Sargent, running government like a business

Ben Sargent, in the Austin American-Statesman, Sunday April 3, 2011

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 28th, 2011 at 10:43 am and is filed under Business, Government, Political cartoons, Politics, Republican Party. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

14 Responses to Republicans running (down!) government sorta like a business

  1. James Kessler says:
    July 28, 2011 at 7:55 pm

    Morgan writes:
    Morgan_ What is the backing of a Federal Reserve Note? Faith.

    What? You’d have us go back on the gold standard? Are you seriously that out of your mind crazy? Seriously, Morgan, if you think we should go back on the gold standard you are a lunatic worthy of being locked up in an insane asylum. Here I’ll give you an example of what going back on the gold standard would mean for you personally. Take all the money from your wallet and burn/shred all but a dollar of it.

    Why? Because there isn’t enough gold on the planet to cover the amount of US Currency in circulation worldwide.

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  2. James Kessler says:
    July 28, 2011 at 7:52 pm

    Morgan writes:
    Progs don’t seem to have fully thought out where money comes from because they obsess to the point of lunacy about where it goes.

    Well Cons delusionally think that if you give all the money to the richest 10% of the population that the rest of the 90% will somehow magically have sufficient money to live on. Then there is the delusion that if you give more money in the form of tax cuts to the richest 10% they will create jobs and economic prosperity for everyone despite the fact that has never worked yet and never will work.

    Then there is the Cons obsession to the point of lunacy that you can cut taxes to nothing and still have a functioning country of over 300 million people.

    Not once in 40 years, Morgan, has the right wings economic theories ever worked. Not once. What has to happen for you and Lower and the rest of your fellow delusional right to realize that?

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  3. Ed Darrell says:
    July 28, 2011 at 7:46 pm

    Where do liberals think money comes from?

    Money comes from labor applied to resources. Haven’t you read even one of the classic conservative economists?

    Klavan’s piece is so . . . so far out, it isn’t even wrong.

    My fear is that conservatives actually fail to understand how value is created, and think that money grows when it is transferred around in large chunks. No one seriously believes money comes from desire. Unless, of course, they’ve been struck by a streetcar named “Desire,” and it scrambled their brains.

    Did you intend that for comic relief, Morgan? Surely you don’t give credence to anything Klavan said. Do you?

    Here, read some Adam Smith, and quit letting your virtual tongue wobble around in your virtual head without purpose like that:

    Book I, Chapter IV
    Of the Origin and Use of Money

    I.4.1
    When the division of labour has been once thoroughly established, it is but a very small part of a man’s wants which the produce of his own labour can supply. He supplies the far greater part of them by exchanging that surplus part of the produce of his own labour, which is over and above his own consumption, for such parts of the produce of other men’s labour as he has occasion for. Every man thus lives by exchanging, or becomes in some measure a merchant, and the society itself grows to be what is properly a commercial society.

    I.4.2
    But when the division of labour first began to take place, this power of exchanging must frequently have been very much clogged and embarrassed in its operations. One man, we shall suppose, has more of a certain commodity than he himself has occasion for, while another has less. The former consequently would be glad to dispose of, and the latter to purchase, a part of this superfluity. But if this latter should chance to have nothing that the former stands in need of, no exchange can be made between them. The butcher has more meat in his shop than he himself can consume, and the brewer and the baker would each of them be willing to purchase a part of it. But they have nothing to offer in exchange, except the different productions of their respective trades, and the butcher is already provided with all the bread and beer which he has immediate occasion for. No exchange can, in this case, be made between them. He cannot be their merchant, nor they his customers; and they are all of them thus mutually less serviceable to one another. In order to avoid the inconveniency of such situations, every prudent man in every period of society, after the first establishment of the division of labour, must naturally have endeavoured to manage his affairs in such a manner, as to have at all times by him, besides the peculiar produce of his own industry, a certain quantity of some one commodity or other, such as he imagined few people would be likely to refuse in exchange for the produce of their industry.*60

    I.4.3
    Many different commodities, it is probable, were successively both thought of and employed for this purpose. In the rude ages of society, cattle are said to have been the common instrument of commerce; and, though they must have been a most inconvenient one, yet in old times we find things were frequently valued according to the number of cattle which had been given in exchange for them. The armour of Diomede, says Homer, cost only nine oxen; but that of Glaucus cost an hundred oxen.*61 Salt is said to be the common instrument of commerce and exchanges in Abyssinia;*62 a species of shells in some parts of the coast of India; dried cod at Newfoundland; tobacco in Virginia;*63 sugar in some of our West India colonies; hides or dressed leather in some other countries; and there is at this day a village in Scotland where it is not uncommon, I am told, for a workman to carry nails instead of money to the baker’s shop or the ale-house.*64

    I.4.4
    In all countries, however, men seem at last to have been determined by irresistible reasons to give the preference, for this employment, to metals above every other commodity.*65 Metals can not only be kept with as little loss as any other commodity, scarce any thing being less perishable than they are, but they can likewise, without any loss, be divided into any number of parts, as by fusion those parts can easily be reunited again; a quality which no other equally durable commodities possess, and which more than any other quality renders them fit to be the instruments of commerce and circulation. The man who wanted to buy salt, for example, and had nothing but cattle to give in exchange for it, must have been obliged to buy salt to the value of a whole ox, or a whole sheep, at a time. He could seldom buy less than this, because what he was to give for it could seldom be divided without loss; and if he had a mind to buy more, he must, for the same reasons, have been obliged to buy double or triple the quantity, the value, to wit, of two or three oxen, or of two or three sheep. If, on the contrary, instead of sheep or oxen, he had metals to give in exchange for it, he could easily proportion the quantity of the metal to the precise quantity of the commodity which he had immediate occasion for.

    Liberals agree with the economists that money comes from labor working on resources, often magnified with an infusion of capital.

    You seem to think money comes from a magical incantation of “No taxes” and “screw the workers.” Not so, nor would any economist agree.

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  4. Morgan K Freeberg says:
    July 28, 2011 at 5:03 pm

    So what’s that tax rate?

    Anyway, I didn’t say I could prove you wrong about “printing” money…just as you can’t prove me wrong when I say there are people out there producing real goods and services, which are valuable, and some of the dollars we exchange represent this value.

    But your opinion, as you’ve represented here, fully justifies the generalization made by Andrew Klavan: Progs don’t seem to have fully thought out where money comes from because they obsess to the point of lunacy about where it goes. Funny thing is, the real problem you’ve identified — money representing nothing, intermingling with the rest of the money and causing nightmarish inflation — is exacerbated by the lefty vision in which all an increasing share of the transactions, ultimately all of them are conducted according to government fiat, and a diminishing share of the transactions, ultimately none of them, are conducted freely by the parties taking part in them. So even when libs correctly identify the problem (caused by them) their proposed solution is the polar opposite of what would be needed to constructively address it.

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  5. Pangolin says:
    July 28, 2011 at 4:54 pm

    Morgan_ What is the backing of a Federal Reserve Note? Faith.

    The chairman of the Federal Reserve has to produce no goods, control no extra assets or secure no indentures of labor in order to increase the monetary supply.

    They don’t even PRINT the money anymore.

    They have a number generator that creates unique numbers for each denominated debt on a computer. Not even thin air. Electron bubbles on a hard drive

    Prove me wrong. You can’t.

    Like

  6. Morgan K Freeberg says:
    July 28, 2011 at 4:32 pm

    Off topic comment Morgan but the facts are…

    ++snort++

    When liberals say “the facts are” what they mean is “my simmering resentments which I pretty much pulled out of my ass, are…”

    Hey, what’s the highest marginal tax rate upon these poor debt slaves? On average?

    Like

  7. Pangolin says:
    July 28, 2011 at 4:13 pm

    The problem, Mr. lowerleavell, is that the price that the GOP is lowering is the price of YOUR labor. It’s called a “race-to-the-bottom” and is a race that no country has ever won.

    Off topic comment Morgan but the facts are that Federal Reserve Notes are created out of thin air and lent preferentially to very wealthy people. People who actually make goods and services are forever in debt slavery because more money is demanded from them than was originally borrowed from the wealthy.

    It’s a system that’s bound to crash since you cannot repay exponentially growing world debt on a finite planet.

    Like

  8. Morgan K Freeberg says:
    July 28, 2011 at 3:32 pm

    Where do liberals think money comes from?

    Like

  9. lowerleavell says:
    July 28, 2011 at 3:29 pm

    Two opposing ways to drum up sales – drive prices sky high so anyone who shops there will pay a fortune for the privilege…though you drive away a ton of business to your competitors in the process, or two, keep prices as low as possible so that the consumer will be confident that they are getting the best bang for their buck?

    I like that latter better. Apparently liberals disagree.

    Like

  10. Morgan K Freeberg says:
    July 28, 2011 at 1:59 pm

    So two weeks ago it was “We know what Reagan would say” and this week it’s run government like a business. Heheh. I don’t know if this running political campaigns around Twitter is going to work out for you. But it’s hard not to look at a wreck, so I’ll keep watching.

    Like

  11. James Kessler says:
    July 28, 2011 at 1:36 pm

    Oh you forgot “fire workers and ship their jobs overseas while paying themselves ever larger salaries and bonuses.” while the Republicans protect the tax breaks you get for shipping jobs overseas.

    Or “Fire employees because of supposed strained finances while paying yourselves ever larger salaries and bonsues.”

    Like

  12. Paul Sunstone says:
    July 28, 2011 at 11:38 am

    That cartoon is so spot on. Thanks for sharing that, Ed.

    Like

  13. Ed Darrell says:
    July 28, 2011 at 10:54 am

    You should write for Harry Reid.

    Like

  14. Pangolin says:
    July 28, 2011 at 10:50 am

    They ARE running government like a business.

    That business is ENRON.

    Loot the till, loot the employees pension funds, loot your customers and don’t provide any services.

    Like

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