Progressives (Liberals)

I like Hartmann. I don't disagree with his account. But I still don't see why quasi-austerity can't be turned back around and used against the Republicans. I think this would have been pressed earlier had we not gotten ourselves into the endless war mentality after 9/11. As soon as it's politically viable the Dems should start to demand cuts in defense spending. But first we need to see if Trump is really going to cut the number of forces overseas.

In short, everyone has to cut back their economic footprint in order to reduce their environmental footprint. And what's more, as everyone's spending goes down, prices come down and that makes everyone's savings hold its value more for longer.

If that's not the definition of peace and prosperity, I don't know what is.

I like Hartmann. I don't disagree with his account. But I still don't see why quasi-austerity can't be turned back around and used against the Republicans. I think this would have been pressed earlier had we not gotten ourselves into the endless war mentality after 9/11. As soon as it's politically viable the Dems should start to demand cuts in defense spending. But first we need to see if Trump is really going to cut the number of forces overseas.

Speaker Pelosi on Black Lives Matter:
"I support the recognition that black lives matter, for sure, and I have incorporated that in many of my statements. All lives matter... we really have to redress past grievances in terms of how we addressed the African-American community."

livinglava wrote:

In short, everyone has to cut back their economic footprint in order to reduce their environmental footprint. And what's more, as everyone's spending goes down, prices come down and that makes everyone's savings hold its value more for longer.

If that's not the definition of peace and prosperity, I don't know what is.

Wrong on both counts. Austerity and prosperity are very different things, just as widespread popular opposition to government is different from peace. Government action to force (or tax) people into austerity yields only, sometimes violent, popular opposition (as President Macron of France has discovered.)

Very hard to describe the result as peace and prosperity.

I just described it. Let me give a more concrete example. When you're young, you like eating sweets and junk food. Maybe you eat a lot of them and it doesn't harm your health and you feel it's good because it makes you happy. Then, as you grow older and wiser, you eat less sweets because you see it's unnecessary …..

Now, consider that so many people don't understand this principle works for almost everything in life. Why? Because they are not really focused on fine-tuning their lifestyle to reduce excesses and stress. They are just mindlessly buying stuff thinking that the next purchase will end their boredom and unhappiness, and it does for a little while before they fall back into the want part of the cycle again. This is like switching to caramel when you discover that eating more chocolate isn't making you feel better.

For people who haven't yet realized it, austerity actually makes you feel more satisfied and happy with what you have, because you wait longer to get it and thus appreciate it more once you do. This is timeless wisdom. It is the reason children who get whatever they want get more spoiled and ill-tempered and those that that don't end up happier and more well-adjusted.

Consumerism just doesn't like people not spoiling themselves and their children because businesses make more money the more you buy. If you know you feel happiest and healthiest when you save yourself for one small bar of chocolate on the weekend each week, you only buy that one bar. If, however, you eat more and more chocolate trying to recapture the great feeling of the first one; and then you eventually give up and switch to caramel and repeat the process, you buy a lot more candy, gain a lot more weight, lose a lot more health, and generally end up spending a lot more money correcting the problems you caused by ignoring the simple truth of traditional austerity.

So, yes, peace and prosperity come from austerity for all the reasons I mention here as well as those in the previous post you rejected, and there are still more reasons that I haven't even noted here.

Fine, but how do you propose to persuade people to seek your peaceful austerity? This is hardly a new dilemma. History is full of contests between Stoicism and indulgence: religions of all stripes have been advocating this (with only marginal success) for millennia.

Those people who seek to impose their concepts of what is good for everyone else on others are usually just as flawed and full of contradictions as the supposedly unwitting masses whom they believe need their guidance. Such "progressive" measures in governance usually lead to tyrannies of the worst sort. Lenin set out to make a new "socialist man" and later found out that not everyone wanted to go along with his program. Lenin then entered a new phase which he termed as "the elimination of the irreconcilables" - a process which led to the extermination of millions. The long term result of his socialist paradise was poverty and tyranny and a regime that collapsed of its own internal contradictions. Its passing was welcomed by all, especially its former subjects.

On an individual basis people can indeed choose to take up your prescription. However efforts to impose it on others immediately bring out the many contradictions in human nature, particularly among those who are in charge of a political process to achieve it.

When you have millions living together, you have a society that needs a government that works in a way to keep it stable. You can't live like Hugh Glass and fit in such a society. You can't enslave most of the population economically. You can't unjustly imprison, kill and exclude huge chunks of humanity. Without social programs you lose infrastructure, health care, income - Everything that makes life livable. You can't spend most of your income invading nations. Only a controlled economy can allow for the necessities that act as glue to hold a nation together. The U S doesn't have to be another collapsed empire, but it gets harder each year to find cause for optimism.

You're reversing things. Austerity is the default in a free market where government doesn't induce artificial growth, subsidize unnecessary things, and redistribute the money so it circulates more, which sacrifices people's savings to inflation to keep them in the rat race until they die or are exempted by decree.

livinglava wrote:

You're reversing things. Austerity is the default in a free market where government doesn't induce artificial growth, subsidize unnecessary things, and redistribute the money so it circulates more, which sacrifices people's savings to inflation to keep them in the rat race until they die or are exempted by decree.

You frequently indulge in these non factual and illogical sweeping superficial absurdities. However this is one of your worst. Just a lot of meaningless babble.

By your reasoning, your participation in any discussion is not rational. The market is based on supply and demand. That’s Econ 101.

Make no mistake, though. If the market was really free to engage in austerity and people could profit and benefit from such 'races to the bottom,' we would end up with a much more resource-conservative and thus sustainable economy. The challenge would be to ensure that no one suffered harm due to no fault of their own, and to do so without stimulating the entire economy to grow more liberal and wasteful.

There are examples today