CPUSA: Ryan, Rand, and the Objectivist Budget (Ayn Rand = L Ron Hubbard, and followers = cult)

[zoony]

http://www.coffeepartyusa.com/ryan-rand

From a GOP Writer

Four members of the Congressional House Republican Caucus voted against Congressman Paul Ryan's budgetary "Path to Prosperity." Had I been there and had the opportunity to do so, I would have proudly been among their number. There's a simple reason for this: Paul Ryan is an "[Ayn] Rand nut."[1] His proposal isn't a path to prosperity or fiscal sanity, it’s a projection of an Objectivist vision for our society, our nation, and its future. And that's a dark path we'd do well to avoid.

I'm not the only one who has recognized this. Jonathan Chait, for example, has noted that "when Republicans [like Ryan] invoke the horrors of the national debt, they don’t actually mean the national debt. They mean big government." This is why Ryan, and many like him, despite all the talk of the perils of deficits, refuse to deviate at all from the GOP's "anti-tax orthodoxy." In the end, "[t]hey are left arguing that the debt threatens to destroy American civilization, but they would rather leave it unaddressed than agree to even a dime of higher taxes."[2]

This seeming incongruity is inexplicable without reference to Ayn Rand and the Objectivist school of extreme Libertarian thought....

(rest at link)

Most relevant quote:

This is troubling. Ayn Rand is essentially the L. Ron Hubbard of American conservatism. And Objectivism is its closest approximation of a political/ideological cult.

and

Time and space do not permit an in-depth analysis of Rand's school of libertarian thought, Objectivism, and its various wrinkles and permutations. Thankfully, its essence has already been distilled for us by Charlie Sheen: "Winning!" It really all comes down to that. And from an Objectivist perspective, Winners have a special virtue, a superiority that differentiates them from everyone else. This gives Winners the right, no, more than that, the responsibility, to be selfish. The flip side of this is a tendency to see the poor as somehow lacking in virtue- they are poor because they are lazy, because they have defective or deficient characters, because they are just not quite smart enough to make the cut.

The only thing holding back the Winners from achieving even more is the rest of us, and especially the poor and the government that supports and protects them through social welfare programs. To an Objectivist, Winners are producers; the poor are a drain, an anchor holding society back… useless mouths. The greatest sin is to take from Winners and redistribute to the poor.

In the words on Jonathan Chait, "[t]he enduring heart of Rand’s totalistic philosophy was Marxism flipped upside down. Rand viewed the capitalists, not the workers, as the producers of all wealth, and the workers, not the capitalists, as useless parasites."

[SkinsHokieFan]

I often wonder how a nation such as Hong Kong pre China unification, didn't have people dying in the streets and starving since there weren't any social welfare nets in that nation.

Just to add: nobody is advocating an Albania 1990s, where there were NO institutions whatsoever to govern the market place, which is why many pyramid schemes developed. There is a happy medium, and I think Paul Ryan keeps us in that range of "happy medium"

If suddenly the regulatory state was completely dismantled and there was no IRS, SEC, FAA, FCC, etc, I think the argument would be much more sound

How Hong Kong Makes Everything From Nothing
by P.J. O'Rourke
"This essay is excerpted from his book Eat the Rich."
"Hong Kong is the best contemporary example of laissez-faire. The economic theory of "allow to do" holds that all sorts of doings ought, indeed, to be allowed, and that government should interfere only to keep the peace, ensure legal rights, and protect property. ...

Jesus, it's a rich city. Except where it's Christ-almighty poor. Hong Kong is full of that "poverty midst plenty" stuff beloved of foreign correspondents such as myself....

It's a modern place, deaf to charm, dumb in the language of aesthetics, caught up in a wild, romantic passion for the plain utilitarian. ...

Hong Kong was (and to be fair to its new commie rulers, remains for the moment) socialism's perfect opposite. Hong Kong does not have import or export duties, or restrictions on investments coming in, or limits on profits going out. There is no capital-gains tax, no interest tax, no sales tax, and no tax breaks for muddle-butt companies that can't make it on their own.

The corporate tax in Hong Kong is 16.5 percent of profits. The individual tax rate is 15 percent of gross income. Hong Kong's government runs a permanent budget surplus and consumes only 6.9 percent of gross domestic product (compared with the 20.8 percent of GDP spent just by the federal government in the U.S.) ...

Hong Kong has never had democracy, but its wallet-size liberties, its Rights-of-Man-in-a-purse, have been so important to individualism and self-governance that in 1995 an international group of libertarian think tanks was moved to perhaps overstate the case and claim, 'Hong Kong is the freest nation in the world.'

Free because there's been freedom to screw up, too. Hong Kong has no minimum wage, no unemployment benefits, no union-boosting legislation, no Social Security, no national health program, and hardly enough welfare to keep one U.S trailer park in satellite dishes and Marlboro Lights. Just 1.2 percent of GDP goes in transfers to the helplessly poor or subsidies to the hopelessly profitless.

Living without a safety net, people in Hong Kong have kept a grip on the trapeze. The unemployment rate is below 3 percent. In America, a shooting war is usually needed to get unemployment that low. The "natural rate" of unemployment is considered to be about 5 percent in the U.S., which rate would cause natural death from starvation in Hong Kong. ... Economic growth in Hong Kong has averaged 7.5 percent per year for the past twenty years, causing gross domestic product to quadruple since 1975. With barely one-tenth of 1 percent of the world's population, Hong Kong is the world's eighth-largest international trader and tenth-largest exporter of services. ...

Besides Americans, only the people of Luxembourg and Switzerland are richer than those of Hong Kong. And these are two other places where capital is allowed to move and earn freely. ...

Quite a bit of government effort is required to create a system in which government leaves people alone. Hong Kong's colonial administration provided courts, contract enforcement, laws that applied to everyone, some measure of national defense (although the Red Chinese People's Liberation Army probably could have lazed its way across the border anytime it wanted), an effective police force (Hong Kong's crime rate is lower than Tokyo's), and bureaucracy that was efficient and uncorrupt but not so hideously uncorrupt that it would not turn a blind eye on an occasional palm-greasing illegal refugee or unlicensed street vendor.

The Brits built schools and roads. And the kids went to school because they knew if they did not, they'd have to hit that road. And the U.K gave Hong Kong a stable currency, which it did totally by cheating -- first pegging the Hong Kong currency to the British pound and then, when everyone got done laughing at that, pegging to the U.S dollar at a rate of 7.8:1. ...

Hong Kong was also fortunate in having a colonial government which included some real British heroes, men who helped of these the place stay as good as it was for a s long as it did.

The most heroic of these was John Cowperthwaite, a young colonial officer sent to Hong Kong in 1945 to oversee the colony's economic recovery. ... while he was in charge, he strictly limited bureaucratic interference in the economy growth or the size of GDP. ...

During Cowperthwaite's "nothing doing" tenure, Hong Kong's exports grew by an average of 13.8 percent a year, industrial wages doubled, and the number of households in extreme poverty shrank from more than half to 16 percent."

[Thiebear]

Shouldn't this be the title:
Ryan, Rand, and the Objectivist budget

also this guy is who? His writing has been featured on national and local blogs such as FrumForum and TommyWonk.

So libertarians are Charlie Sheen now? Nice... could we keep this in that coffee blog where it belongs.

[zoony]

I often wonder how a nation such as Hong Kong pre China unification, didn't have people dying in the streets and starving since there weren't any social welfare nets in that nation.

I visited Hong Kong 8 times between 1983 and 1989. Blind beggars EVERYWHERE. People laying on towels in the middle of the sidewalk with no eyes, gurgling on their own spit and begging for change. Right in front of a gold-plated skyscraper. Anyone who was there during that time would confirm this.

There were tunnels in Hong Kong that were impassable because of the amount of beggars. It was the most disgusting thing I've ever seen. Worse than the Phillipines even. At least in the Phillipines everyone was poor, and you didn't have millionaires stepping over heaps of rotting human flesh on their way to work.

---------- Post added May-15th-2011 at 01:33 PM ----------

Shouldn't this be the title:
Ryan, Rand, and the Objectivist budget

It is dumbass

[Thiebear]

It is dumbass

CPUSA: Ryan, Rand, and the Objectivist Budget (Ayn Rand = L Ron Hubbard, and followers = cult)

That looks more like a troll title that in any other topic you would have shut down?
or at least wait for you to post so that it could be spelled out that way...

[SkinsHokieFan]

I visited Hong Kong 8 times between 1983 and 1989. Blind beggars EVERYWHERE. People laying on towels in the middle of the sidewalk with no eyes, gurgling on their own spit and begging for change. Right in front of a gold-plated skyscraper. Anyone who was there during that time would confirm this.

There were tunnels in Hong Kong that were impassable because of the amount of beggars. It was the most disgusting thing I've ever seen. Worse than the Phillipines even. At least in the Phillipines everyone was poor, and you didn't have millionaires stepping over heaps of rotting human flesh on their way to work.[COLOR="Gold"]

)

There are blind beggars and gypsy's all through out Europe as well, where there is apparently a robust social welfare system. People eating out of trash cans. The only place in Europe I didn't witness this was Switzerland.

No place is immune from awful poverty. We all know this nation isn't, nor has been. The question becomes how do you make the pie bigger, and more importantly how do you make the pie bigger for everyone, as opposed to taking multiple pieces of pie from one person and giving it out to 50 other people in far smaller bits that does nothing for them, which is essentially what our system and the European system does.

Do we continue to incentivize the government getting larger (because who in the hell would vote against the hand that feeds?) or do we ween ourselves off this to the point that we won't need to spend vasts amount of money taking pie and giving it out. Instead everyone will be working to make that pie bigger and keep their share.

[zoony]

There are blind beggars and gypsy's all through out Europe as well, where there is apparently a robust social welfare system. People eating out of trash cans. The only place in Europe I didn't witness this was Switzerland.
.

I've been to Europe, too. Several times. Did a semester there.

What you're talking about is the difference between shooting a bullet and throwing one. (Present Europe -vs- 1980s Hong Kong)

---------- Post added May-15th-2011 at 04:26 PM ----------

Well if using this account is like the company car, you should put the bottle down.
dumbass

Tell you what. If I find another article started by another member, where the title of the article exists followed by additional info about the article in parentheses, you agree to put "I am zoony's *****" in your signature for 1 year. And a year each for every article I find. Just reply and let me know whether you want to take me up on this.

Now if you don't accept this, just go ahead and post that you're acting like a sally.

Mods shouldn't do un-modlike behavior

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---------- Post added May-15th-2011 at 04:32 PM ----------

yeah, not a big fan of objectivism either. Its a great thing that most libertarians dont either, including the 2 GOP candidates who are running.

Doesnt that make you happier Zoony? See? nothing to worry about

Now I genuinely do not know, but I always assumed Ron Paul named his son for Ayn Rand.

I'm glad you're so excited to find an article that lines up with your thoughts so well, zoon.

I was excited too

[Thiebear]

Tell you what. If I find another article started by another member, where the title of the article exists followed by additional info about the article in parentheses, you agree to put "I am zoony's *****" in your signature for 1 year. And a year each for every article I find. Just reply and let me know whether you want to take me up on this.

Now if you don't accept this, just go ahead and post that you're acting like a sally.

Whatever it takes for you to burn the calories in doing your job.
I know you know troll vs. nuance. No need to pretend otherwise.

[techboy]

Now I genuinely do not know, but I always assumed Ron Paul named his son for Ayn Rand.

You and most everybody else, but no:

I was a little disappointed to hear that Rand Paul was not named after Ayn Rand. It would have made sense for his famously libertarian dad, Republican U.S. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, to name young Rand after the famous ultralibertarian author. It would also be ironic, now that victory in Kentucky's Republican Senate primary has transformed young Rand's Randian libertarianism from a guiding light into a stumbling block.

It turns out that the Bowling Green, Ky., eye doctor's real name is Randal Howard Paul. In a video that he posted on the Web, he explains that his wife dubbed him "Rand" for short and it stuck — although he has thoroughly enjoyed the myths and speculation about his name.

[Yusuf06]

I often wonder how a nation such as Hong Kong pre China unification, didn't have people dying in the streets and starving since there weren't any social welfare nets in that nation.

It seems HK wasn't exactly as objectivist or as heavenly as some would have you believe it was prior to the takeover.

In Rich Hong Kong, Cages as Homes for the Poor
A rusty, sour odor skewered the gloom that enveloped ranks of steel cages jammed into a third-floor chamber of a decaying tenement. Dimly, the silhouettes of men appeared, one by one uncoiling from the stack of cages like cicadas casting off their shells. Ma Kwai-han, a feather of a man clad in a skimpy white undershirt and baggy gray pants, padded into a dim circle of light.

"I've lived here 36 years," he said quietly, his hand resting on the chain link cage he calls home. "I have no family and can't afford to stay anywhere else."

Here, in one of the world's richest cities -- last week Forbes magazine declared that 2 of the 10 richest men in the world live here -- the growth and persistence of poverty is hidden away, tucked into mildewed tenements and under highway overpasses. But the poorest of the poor live in Hong Kong's cage homes -- steel mesh boxes barely large enough for a mattress and a recumbent occupant, stacked in twos and threes -- in the heart of the other Hong Kong.

...It is not clear how many people live in cages here. The Government puts the number at 2,800, while Kalina Tsang, a social worker for a private agency that works in the poor communities and with cage dwellers, says that the number actually approaches 10,000.

"About 70 percent are elderly, single people with no families," Ms. Tsang said. "These are the people whose voices are not heard."

...Ms. Tsang insisted that the persistence of cage homes in Hong Kong was intolerable. "This is one of the richest cities," she said. "We want the Government to resettle these people in affordable decent housing. But even if the Government resettles these people, new people will come in."

Already, slightly more than half of Hong Kong's population lives in subsidized Government housing, but the waiting time for an apartment now is nine years.

So let me get this straight, low unemployment that includes a redefinition of the term "working poor", half the population living in govt. subsidized housing and many of the elderly relegated to living in cages or on the street. Now THAT sounds like a future vision for this country that 99.99% of non-socialist, non-pinko Americans could get behind. Woo hoo! Cages for Grandmaw. You've got my vote!

[Hubbs]

So let me get this straight, low unemployment that includes a redefinition of the term "working poor", half the population living in govt. subsidized housing and many of the elderly relegated to living in cages or on the street. Now THAT sounds like a future vision for this country that 99.99% of non-socialist, non-pinko Americans could get behind. Woo hoo! Cages for Grandmaw. You've got my vote!

Really? "Many of the elderly"? I have to call time out on the Hong Kong discussion here. I've stayed on the sidelines thus far because I don't consider myself to be especially knowledgable when it comes to Hong Kong, but I am capable of a quick Google search, which reveals that the population of HK in 1996 was 6.412 million. Even if you completely throw out the official estimate of 2,800 and instead use the social worker's guess of 10,000, that means that roughly .0015% of the population suffered those conditions, and not all of them were elderly. If we're going to measure the success of any society by the bottom .0015%, then I suggest we all abandon the discussion, because I doubt any nation on Earth holds up.

Let's restrict the word "many" to situations in which "many" would actually seem to apply.

[Rdskns2000]

Paul Ryan will probably become an afterthought if he runs for the Wisconsin Senate seat. I think he will lose that race, even if 2012 becomes another big Republican year.

[Destino]

If suddenly the regulatory state was completely dismantled and there was no IRS, SEC, FAA, FCC, etc, I think the argument would be much more sound

If anyone seriously proposed that they'd be viewed as some loony third party, which is why republicans talk in code. Flat tax is entirely about destroying the IRS. The consumption tax even more so. Self regulation was an ideology that targetted government regulatory powers directly and until the recent meltdown caused by this little precious bit of insanity it was preached by every republican in the land. They repealed Glass–Steagall and allowed "too big to fail" to exist in the first place. Then they pushed deregulation so that these financial goliaths could plant obscure poison pills all over the worlds economies.

[Thiebear]

If anyone seriously proposed that they'd be viewed as some loony third party, which is why republicans talk in code. Flat tax is entirely about destroying the IRS. The consumption tax even more so. Self regulation was an ideology that targetted government regulatory powers directly and until the recent meltdown caused by this little precious bit of insanity it was preached by every republican in the land. They repealed Glass–Steagall and allowed "too big to fail" to exist in the first place. Then they pushed deregulation so that these financial goliaths could plant obscure poison pills all over the worlds economies.

Flat tax is more about fixing the insanity that is the IRS. 10 reviews of the same form gets 10 different answers from their own employees.
An outside agency has to be former agents just to help you fight the million pages of crap nobody could figure out.

25% Flat over 30k income for the win. The IRS is a self perpetuating entity that just makes it harder.
15% VAT on non-essentials to include oil/electric/food/etc.
30% VAT on anything over 25k.
sum up the entire code in 1 postcard back and forth.

[Destino]

Flat tax is more about fixing the insanity that is the IRS. 10 reviews of the same form gets 10 different answers from their own employees.
An outside agency has to be former agents just to help you fight the million pages of crap nobody could figure out.

Flat tax is about two major ideological goals:
1 - Destroy the IRS
2 - Making it politically impossible to increase taxes (particularly on the rich)