I love the people who say Ron Paul would bring all of this fantastic change, yet probably don't understand that lack of government intervention is what's allowed the wealth gap in this country to widen astronomically. We're now on par with wonderfully democratic, free and classless societies such as Mexico and Russia. $$@% yeah Libertarianism! +#!! yeah invisible hand! +#!! yeah completely unregulated free market capitalism! +#!! yeah dying middle class!...wait.. what?
I love the people who say Ron Paul would bring all of this fantastic change, yet probably don't understand that lack of government intervention is what's allowed the wealth gap in this country to widen astronomically. We're now on par with wonderfully democratic, free and classless societies such as Mexico and Russia.
what is so funny is that these oeople watch and listen to the same thing that everyone else does and then they think they are beacons of originality and profundity.
I would question the whole "less government intrevention= larger wealth gap"
I am assuming by what he means by wealth is the Keynesian type of wealth where wealth is highly influenced on the amount of money one has. But anyway, I would ask for an example of this. If his example deals with corporations that were helped by the government then this whole premise fails then because government intrevened...
My Blog: http://www.anarchico.net/
Production is 'anarchistic' - Ludwig von Mises
All corporations are helped by the government... it's called a corporate charter
In States a fresh law is looked upon as a remedy for evil. Instead of themselves altering what is bad, people begin by demanding a law to alter it. ... In short, a law everywhere and for everything!
~Peter Kropotkin
Corporate welfare?
Freedom has always been the only route to progress.
Looks like less intervention to me!
More seriously, two points:
1. There is no set sum of wealth; it is the sum of production. So, a wealth gap is pretty meaningless. Everyone can be richer with a widening wealth gap, and everyone can be poorer with a shrinking wealth gap.
2. Barring crimes (fraud, theft, etc.) or intervention by the government, you can only acquire wealth that others voluntarily give to you. To complain about a widening wealth gap is to complain that other people are buying some guy's stuff more than you think they should, and you want the government to step in to stop it.
QFT
Per Capita Income of Mexico
$13,800
Per Capita Income of America
$47,400
.... Idiot.
Source CIA World Factbook
Just find a list of government regulations, its something like ten thousand pages and regulations have been growing yearly forever now. Look up government spending and then use his own claims against him. Show how neither Russia or Mexico are free markets. I think that reason TV on youtube would be a good start, look around on this site for stuff. I can also provide you with an old but still effective packet which talks about wages in America and what really raises wage rates. I think an awesome place to attack would be the great depression where high wages were promoted and even rose during the first years of the depression. Site Rothbard's Great depression
Also as for the middle class part of it you can talk about how the government has totally botched the educational system (A great documentary on this is "stupid in America" just youtube it) at a time when a wide variety of new skills are necessary in the modern economy.
An a somewhat corny but interesting and relevant short documentary about how the state has kept the blacks in poverty
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1r-r6iLBEI
The thing that he really omits of course, is the drug war, which has probably had a more adverse impact on poor (usually black) city dwellers than anything else.
Gipper: I love the people who say Ron Paul would bring all of this fantastic change, yet probably don't understand that lack of government intervention is what's allowed the wealth gap in this country to widen astronomically. We're now on par with wonderfully democratic, free and classless societies such as Mexico and Russia. Where should I start first?
I would say that he is trying to make an ethical objection to past income distribution. What is else, he is implying that income differencies between individuals is per se ethically wrong and ought to be corrected through equalization done by coercion. Two individuals, one of which has got income larger than that of the other individual, does not mean that the part of the income which amounts for the difference is inherently wrong (that is, wrong by the means of its mere presence as such). The difference in income simply as such is not ethically wrong, because if it was like that, then it would not matter how actually the income was acquired (and if such ethics was followed then someone with higher productivity would have to stop working the moment he reached the DMVP* of the guy with the lower productivity and then all individuals would become less prosperous). What matters is not only how the amount which stands for the difference is acquired, but how any part of the income is acquired (any marginal addition to the income or the whole income as a marginal addition itself to the previously zero revenue) . If it is acquired through the initiation of aggression - it is then ethically wrong.
*note: DMVP stands for discounted marginal value product (by Rothbard)