Perspective: How It All Happened

[salem.hills]

Oops thanked wrong post first please ignore that lol.
Alexis de Tocqueville - "when the masses vote themselves largesse from the treasury democracy is dead." Well close to that lol good read

 

[candycorn]

You were the one who derailed the thread CC and you are continuing to attempt to do it. Take it to another thread please if you want to stay on that track. This train is devoted to a different track.

I'm still waiting for the requested response to Post #281. So far crickets.

Bullshit...HE Brought up the Bible as the basis for how the right wing feels about same sex marriage.

If you can't read that, step off bitch.

 

[numan]

Alexis de Tocqueville - "when the masses vote themselves largesse from the treasury, democracy is dead."

Historically, and today, it is far more common for the Rich and Powerful to vote themselves largesse from the public treasury, and from wherever else they can get it.

That is not only fatal to democracy, but it is fatal to any form of Good Government whatsoever.
.

 

[Redfish]

See my sig. Kind of summarizes everything that has been said on this thread.

 

[Foxfyre]

You were the one who derailed the thread CC and you are continuing to attempt to do it. Take it to another thread please if you want to stay on that track. This train is devoted to a different track.

I'm still waiting for the requested response to Post #281. So far crickets.

Bullshit...HE Brought up the Bible as the basis for how the right wing feels about same sex marriage.

If you can't read that, step off bitch.

I read that and it was a quick response to your question on same sex marriage that had no place in this discussion anywhere. If you hadn't thrown in that red herring, no derailment would have occurred. YOU derailed the thread.

 

[Foxfyre]

See my sig. Kind of summarizes everything that has been said on this thread.

Yeah, unfortunately that is what most are focusing on in this thread; i.e. who is the most racist, etc. But those who are able to separate a concept from their own prejudices re individual, political parties, and/or ideologies know that there is a much larger concept and principle that is the thesis of the OP. But alas, too few are able to get past those prejudices to see it.

 

[Bfgrn]

There was a post in one of the active environmental threads though that really does speak to the overall theme of this thread. PC hit on the long range motives of those who do everything they can to keep racism alive.

But there are other sinister concepts at work too on the environmental front. Gslack summarized the general gist of this in this post:

http://www.usmessageboard.com/envir...the-atmosphere-is-what-we-18.html#post7355538

If you set aside your political and socioeconomic prejudices long enough to look at the basic thesis objectively and with a willingness to accept what truths might be evident, it is something all freedom loving people should be aware of and be ready to fight, if necessary, for their freedoms.

Just a couple of the quotations you will find at that link:

"The only hope for the world is to make sure there is not another
United States. We can't let other countries have the same
number of cars, the amount of industrialization, we have in the US.
We have to stop these Third World countries right where they are."
- Michael Oppenheimer,
Environmental Defense Fund

"If we don't overthrow capitalism, we don't have a chance of
saving the world ecologically. I think it is possible to have
an ecologically sound society under socialism.
I don't think it is possible under capitalism"
- Judi Bari,
principal organiser of Earth First!

Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition

Intolerance of Ambiguity

Intolerance of doubt or ambiguity is another measured trait that has been found to strongly correlate with subsequent predictions of conservative thought and behavior. Dislike of uncertainty leads to dichotomous thinking styles (good and evil, black and white types of stereotyping of both people and issues, denial of complexity, and intolerance for any idea that there is no absolutes in terms of dealing with social issues).

Intolerance of ambiguity constituted a general personality variable that related positively to prejudice as well as to more general social and cognitive variables. Individuals who are intolerant of ambiguity are significantly more often given to dichotomous conceptions of the sex roles, of the parent-child relationship, and of interpersonal relationships in general. They are less permissive and lean toward rigid categorization of cultural norms. Power–weakness, cleanliness–dirtiness, morality–immorality, conformance–divergence are the dimensions through which people are seen. . . . There is sensitivity against qualified as contrasted with unqualified statements and against perceptual ambiguity; a disinclination to think in terms of probability.

Intolerance of ambiguity has been defined as:

"the tendency to perceive ambiguous situations as sources of threat" (p. 29).Intolerance of ambiguity, by increasing cognitive and motivational tendencies to seek certainty, is hypothesized to lead people to cling to the familiar, to arrive at premature conclusions, and to impose simplistic cliche´s and stereotypes.



The consequences of this tendency towards intolerance lead to dogmatically sticking with a single solution, disregarding all contrary evidence that might introduce ambiguity, or any of those troubling shades of grey, and a tendency to think in terms of ‘good and evil' (much as people are sorted into rigid catagories such as ‘saved and unsaved' or ‘saint or sinner' by the religious right), and a tendency to jump to conclusions before sufficient evidence has been accumulated and then rigidly stick with a half thought out solution through thick and thin, while remaining closed to new experience or ideas. The researchers describe the consequences of such rigidity in thinking as,

Resistance to reversal of apparent fluctuating stimuli, the early selection and maintenance of one solution in a perceptually ambiguous situation, inability to allow for the possibility of good and bad traits in the same person, acceptance of attitude statements representing a rigid, black-white view of life, seeking for certainty, a rigid dichotomizing into fixed categories, premature closure, and remaining closed to familiar characteristics of stimuli.

 

[TemplarKormac]

Keynes never advocated never paying back the money you might borrow in hard times for the purpose of stimulus.

Then how come we aren't paying them back, Carbine? I would like to see where he explicitly stated that. Keynesian economics relies on inflation. When there isn't any, well it falls flat on it's face.

Fiscal irresponsibility is no longer punished by the voters.

Funny. How is it the common middle class family conducts their monetary affairs better than our own government does?

 

[Bfgrn]

Then how come we aren't paying them back, Carbine? I would like to see where he explicitly stated that. Keynesian economics relies on inflation. When there isn't any, well it falls flat on it's face.

Fiscal irresponsibility is no longer punished by the voters.

Funny. How is it the common middle class family conducts their monetary affairs better than our own government does?

Government isn't run like a family budget. That is simpleton stuff 'mister'

 

[Redfish]

Fiscal irresponsibility is no longer punished by the voters.

Funny. How is it the common middle class family conducts their monetary affairs better than our own government does?

Government isn't run like a family budget. That is simpleton stuff 'mister'

Really? So its ok for a govt to spend more than it collects year after year? Its ok for the govt to print up money and degrade the value of our currency? its ok for the govt to borrow 46% of what it spends and then pay back only the interest while the debt grows by a trillion a year?

Sorry, bubba, but the govt should operate like a family budget. income should balance expenditures.

John Maynard Keynes was an idiot.

 

[Bfgrn]

Funny. How is it the common middle class family conducts their monetary affairs better than our own government does?

Government isn't run like a family budget. That is simpleton stuff 'mister'

Really? So its ok for a govt to spend more than it collects year after year? Its ok for the govt to print up money and degrade the value of our currency? its ok for the govt to borrow 46% of what it spends and then pay back only the interest while the debt grows by a trillion a year?

Sorry, bubba, but the govt should operate like a family budget. income should balance expenditures.

John Maynard Keynes was an idiot.

Mere parsimony is not economy. Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part in true economy.
Edmund Burke

YES you moron. The US government was in debt before John Maynard Keynes was born.

With one brief exception, the federal government has been in debt every year since 1776. In January 1835, for the first and only time in U.S. history, the public debt was retired, and a budget surplus was maintained for the next two years in order to accumulate what Treasury Secretary Levi Woodbury called “a fund to meet future deficits.” In 1837 the economy collapsed into a deep depression that drove the budget into deficit, and the federal government has been in debt ever since.

Whenever a demagogue wants to whip up hysteria about federal budget deficits, he or she invariably begins with an analogy to a household’s budget: “No household can continually spend more than its income, and neither can the federal government”. On the surface that, might appear sensible; dig deeper and it makes no sense at all. A sovereign government bears no obvious resemblance to a household. Let us enumerate some relevant differences.

1. The US federal government is 221 years old, if we date its birth to the adoption of the Constitution. Arguably, that is about as good a date as we can find, since the Constitution established a common market in the US, forbade states from interfering with interstate trade (for example, through taxation), gave to the federal government the power to levy and collect taxes, and reserved for the federal government the power to create money, to regulate its value, and to fix standards of weight and measurement-from whence our money of account, the dollar, comes. I don’t know any head of household with such an apparently indefinitely long lifespan. This might appear irrelevant, but it is not. When you die, your debts and assets need to be assumed and resolved. There is no “day of reckoning”, no final piper-paying date for the sovereign government. Nor do I know any household with the power to levy taxes, to give a name to — and issue — the currency we use, and to demand that those taxes are paid in the currency it issues.

The federal government is the issuer of our currency. Its IOUs are always accepted in payment. Government actually spends by crediting bank deposits (and credits the reserves of those banks); if you don’t want a bank deposit, government will give you cash; if you don’t want cash it will give you a treasury bond. People will work, sell, panhandle, lie, cheat, steal, and even kill to obtain the government’s dollars. I wish my IOUs were so desirable. I don’t know any household that is able to spend by crediting bank deposits and reserves, or by issuing currency. OK, some counterfeiters try, but they go to jail.

 

[TemplarKormac]

1. For a full century after the Civil War, the Democrat Party was correctly identified as the party of slavery and segregation. In fact.....they killed every anti-lynching bill that made its way to the Senate. Democrats.

Maybe if you hadn't failed U.S. History you would know that the two major political parties (DEMs and GOP) have switched poliical polarity TWICE in our history.

So, you've just revealed yourself to be very very stupid.

Well done.

Only in your imagination.

I don't want you to have to seek an education; I'll provide it:

1. Your post is an attempt to claim that the current Democratic Party isn't the party of slavery and segregation ?
100 or 50 years ago, or anytime in the past, the party is and continues to be the same racists and segregationists.

2. Now, "Democrats 100 years ago, or 50 years ago..." doesn't seem fair...it was so long ago....

Was it?

a. Dixiecrats lost in 1948 (65 years ago)....then went right back to being Democrats.






3. Let's take a look at the most popular Democrat today, and see how your post holds up...

a. Governor Clinton was among three state officials the NAACP sued in 1989 under the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965. “Plaintiffs offered plenty of proof of monolithic voting along racial lines, intimidation of black voters and candidates and other official acts that made voting harder for blacks,” the Arkansas Gazette reported December 6, 1989.

Gee....24 years ago....



b. Bill Clinton had a Confederate flag-like issue, every year he was governor: Arkansas Code Annotated, Section 1-5-107, provides as follows:

(a) The Saturday immediately preceding Easter Sunday of each year is designated as ‘Confederate Flag Day’ in this state.

(b) No person, firm, or corporation shall display an Confederate flag or replica thereof in connection with any advertisement of any commercial enterprise, or in any manner for any purpose except to honor the Confederate States of America. [Emphasis added.]

(c) Any person, firm, or corporation violating the provisions of this section shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and upon conviction shall be fined not less than one hundred dollars ($100) nor more than one thousand dollars ($1,000).

Bill Clinton took no steps during his twelve years as governor to repeal this law.
Hillary Clinton's Confederacy Hypocrisy | The Gateway Pundit
Hillary Clinton's Confederacy Hypocrisy | The Gateway Pundit


Gee....'til 1992,....21 years ago

(BTW...Orval Eugene Faubus, attended Bill Clinton’s 1979 gubernatorial inauguration, where the two pols hugged, as Arkansas Democrat-Gazette editorial page editor Paul Greenberg recalls.)
Know who Faubus was?
Yup...he used the National Guard to prevent blacks from going to school



c. Bill Clinton wrote his first letter, dated June 21, 1994, of congratulations to the UDC [Untied Daughters of the Confederacy] celebrating their 100th anniversary. Later Clinton wrote a letter September 8, 1994 letter of congratulation to the Georgia Division of the UDC celebrating their 100th anniversary, then August 9, 1995 welcoming to Washington, D.C. for their 1995 national convention. Each letter was given a full page with Clinton’s picture in the United Daughters of the Confederacy Magazine (UDC Magazine) giving legitimacy to the UDC.

For reference, the UDC magazine includes " a Ku Klux Klan praising book, not just the Klan of Reconstruction but the Klan of the 1920s, a book which recommends the racist books of Thomas Dixon, “The Clansman” ...
Anti-Neo-Confederate: Bill Clinton Enables Neo-Confederates & Betrays Carol Moseley-Braun: UPDATED

Gee....that's 18 years ago....



d. "Clinton praised Arkansas’ late Democratic senator J. William Fulbright, a notorious segregationist who opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. He also signed the Southern Manifesto, which denounced the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Brown vs. Board of Education school desegregation decision in 1954. Clinton called Fulbright “My mentor, a visionary, a humanitarian.”Dems Need to Houseclean - Deroy Murdock - National Review Online

and....

Fulbright was a full-bore segregationist, voting against the 1957, 1960, 1964, and 1965 civil rights bills.
But...in 1993, Bill Clinton gave the Medal of Freedom award to a lifelong segregationist, Democrat Wm. J. Fulbright. And another life-long segregationist, Democrat Albert Gore, Sr. was in attendance.

20 years ago.


Hey...didn't Bill Clinton just recently speak at the Democrat National Convention?

That wasn't "50 or 100" years ago....was it?
__________________
… President Bill Clinton
argued that Colin Powell, promoted
to brigadier general during Mr.
Alexander’s tenure, was the product
of an affirmative action program.
http://cdn.virtuallearningcourses.com/ivtcontent/images/edw12_ch05_e.pdf


'BILL CLINTON: IN PAST, OBAMA WOULD BE 'CARRYING OUR BAGS'
Bill Clinton: In Past, Obama Would Be 'Carrying Our Bags'


Hey....did you know that the rapist Bill Clinton is the most popular member of the DEMOCRAT PARTY???





Oh, man.....I just love smackin' the heck out of you!!!


Write as soon as you recover....y'hear?

It's not so much black people anymore. They are being racist against the white man now. They claim nowadays that the black man is the victim of white oppression. It strikes me ironic how they claim they are trying to atone for their past, but are still doing the same thing they did all those years ago.

Racism: Telling the world that the black man cannot succeed without the government.

Slavery: (See Racism)

Segregation: (See Racism)

See a pattern?

 

[Redfish]

Government isn't run like a family budget. That is simpleton stuff 'mister'

Really? So its ok for a govt to spend more than it collects year after year? Its ok for the govt to print up money and degrade the value of our currency? its ok for the govt to borrow 46% of what it spends and then pay back only the interest while the debt grows by a trillion a year?

Sorry, bubba, but the govt should operate like a family budget. income should balance expenditures.

John Maynard Keynes was an idiot.

Mere parsimony is not economy. Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part in true economy.
Edmund Burke

YES you moron. The US government was in debt before John Maynard Keynes was born.

With one brief exception, the federal government has been in debt every year since 1776. In January 1835, for the first and only time in U.S. history, the public debt was retired, and a budget surplus was maintained for the next two years in order to accumulate what Treasury Secretary Levi Woodbury called “a fund to meet future deficits.” In 1837 the economy collapsed into a deep depression that drove the budget into deficit, and the federal government has been in debt ever since.

Whenever a demagogue wants to whip up hysteria about federal budget deficits, he or she invariably begins with an analogy to a household’s budget: “No household can continually spend more than its income, and neither can the federal government”. On the surface that, might appear sensible; dig deeper and it makes no sense at all. A sovereign government bears no obvious resemblance to a household. Let us enumerate some relevant differences.

1. The US federal government is 221 years old, if we date its birth to the adoption of the Constitution. Arguably, that is about as good a date as we can find, since the Constitution established a common market in the US, forbade states from interfering with interstate trade (for example, through taxation), gave to the federal government the power to levy and collect taxes, and reserved for the federal government the power to create money, to regulate its value, and to fix standards of weight and measurement-from whence our money of account, the dollar, comes. I don’t know any head of household with such an apparently indefinitely long lifespan. This might appear irrelevant, but it is not. When you die, your debts and assets need to be assumed and resolved. There is no “day of reckoning”, no final piper-paying date for the sovereign government. Nor do I know any household with the power to levy taxes, to give a name to — and issue — the currency we use, and to demand that those taxes are paid in the currency it issues.

The federal government is the issuer of our currency. Its IOUs are always accepted in payment. Government actually spends by crediting bank deposits (and credits the reserves of those banks); if you don’t want a bank deposit, government will give you cash; if you don’t want cash it will give you a treasury bond. People will work, sell, panhandle, lie, cheat, steal, and even kill to obtain the government’s dollars. I wish my IOUs were so desirable. I don’t know any household that is able to spend by crediting bank deposits and reserves, or by issuing currency. OK, some counterfeiters try, but they go to jail.

continuing to do something wrong does not magically make it right.

as to your rant about how valuable US currency and IOUs are, seems like our credit rating was downgraded for the first time ever under your hero obama.

 

[Foxfyre]

Funny. How is it the common middle class family conducts their monetary affairs better than our own government does?

Government isn't run like a family budget. That is simpleton stuff 'mister'

Really? So its ok for a govt to spend more than it collects year after year? Its ok for the govt to print up money and degrade the value of our currency? its ok for the govt to borrow 46% of what it spends and then pay back only the interest while the debt grows by a trillion a year?

Sorry, bubba, but the govt should operate like a family budget. income should balance expenditures.

John Maynard Keynes was an idiot.

Actually he wasn't. Even on a family budget there are calculated reasons to go into debt. You have to have a car to get to your job or to do your job, and you don't have the cash to buy it outright, it can make sense to finance some of it on the theory it will allow you to earn enough to make the payments as well as meet your needs.

It is a rare family who can buy a home outright, and it makes sense to go into debt if it is done wisely and there is little chance you can lose money--what you are buying will gain in value sufficiently that you won't lose the down payment or the money you are putting into the property.

Most small businesses have to acquire some inventory or services or labor on credit in order to meet a contractual obligation when they are doing business. Many farmers after a crop failure need to borrow the seed money to get up and running again. But all these are smart calculated debt risks with a high probability that they will return far more income than the amount of the risk.

Keynes was of the opinion that it is okay for government to go into short term and temporary debt to finance necessary infrastructure in a way that would jump start a stalled economy. He always included the concept that the debt should never exceed what cannot be quickly returned to the treasury.

The idiots are those who bastardize Keynes theories to justify what our government does which bears absolutely no resemblance to pure Keynesian economics. Keynes knew that prosperity had to come from the private sector and it could not be created by government. Government could give the private sector a nudge but could not do what the private sector does. Our leftist friends operate under the illusion that government can spend us rich and there will be no negative consequences from that.

 

[Redfish]

Government isn't run like a family budget. That is simpleton stuff 'mister'

Really? So its ok for a govt to spend more than it collects year after year? Its ok for the govt to print up money and degrade the value of our currency? its ok for the govt to borrow 46% of what it spends and then pay back only the interest while the debt grows by a trillion a year?

Sorry, bubba, but the govt should operate like a family budget. income should balance expenditures.

John Maynard Keynes was an idiot.

Actually he wasn't. Even on a family budget there are calculated reasons to go into debt. You have to have a car to get to your job or to do your job, and you don't have the cash to buy it outright, it can make sense to finance some of it on the theory it will allow you to earn enough to make the payments as well as meet your needs.

It is a rare family who can buy a home outright, and it makes sense to go into debt if it is done wisely and there is little chance you can lose money--what you are buying will gain in value sufficiently that you won't lose the down payment or the money you are putting into the property.

Keynes was of the opinion that it is okay for government to go into short term and temporary debt to finance necessary infrastructure in a way that would jump start a stalled economy. He always included the concept that the debt should never exceed what cannot be quickly returned to the treasury.

The idiots are those who bastardize Keynes theories to justify what our government does which bear absolutely no resemblance to pure Keynesian economics. Keynes knew that prosperity had to come from the private sector and it could not be created by government. Our leftist friends operate under the illusion that government can spend us rich and there will be no negative consequences from that.

right, but what we are now doing is neither temporary or short term. But thats only one thing the Keynes advocated. His other stupid idea was that continuous inflation is good for an economy. Yes, we all have to use debt, and governments also have to use debt. But its a question of degree, currently we are paying only the interest on 16T in debt and increasing it by
1T every year. Do you think this can continue indefinitely?

 

[numan]

Making individuals the serfs and property of a Totalitarian State (which is the agenda of progressives, wittingly or not) is form of slavery.

Modern slavery functions by enslaving the minds of its victims.

This is done almost entirely by the rich and well-connected, since only they have the money and power to exhaustively study the techniques of branwashing and then to employ them to control people's thoughts and behavior -- principally through the monopolistically controlled media, mass entertainment and advertising. Those without money have very little power to control other people's thoughts.

A nit-picker would say that the government also has the resources and power to brainwash the populace; but that argument is specious, since those who are rich and well-connected also control the government.
.

 

[TemplarKormac]

Government isn't run like a family budget. That is simpleton stuff 'mister'

Really? So its ok for a govt to spend more than it collects year after year? Its ok for the govt to print up money and degrade the value of our currency? its ok for the govt to borrow 46% of what it spends and then pay back only the interest while the debt grows by a trillion a year?

Sorry, bubba, but the govt should operate like a family budget. income should balance expenditures.

John Maynard Keynes was an idiot.

Mere parsimony is not economy. Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part in true economy.
Edmund Burke

YES you moron. The US government was in debt before John Maynard Keynes was born.

With one brief exception, the federal government has been in debt every year since 1776. In January 1835, for the first and only time in U.S. history, the public debt was retired, and a budget surplus was maintained for the next two years in order to accumulate what Treasury Secretary Levi Woodbury called “a fund to meet future deficits.” In 1837 the economy collapsed into a deep depression that drove the budget into deficit, and the federal government has been in debt ever since.

Whenever a demagogue wants to whip up hysteria about federal budget deficits, he or she invariably begins with an analogy to a household’s budget: “No household can continually spend more than its income, and neither can the federal government”. On the surface that, might appear sensible; dig deeper and it makes no sense at all. A sovereign government bears no obvious resemblance to a household. Let us enumerate some relevant differences.

1. The US federal government is 221 years old, if we date its birth to the adoption of the Constitution. Arguably, that is about as good a date as we can find, since the Constitution established a common market in the US, forbade states from interfering with interstate trade (for example, through taxation), gave to the federal government the power to levy and collect taxes, and reserved for the federal government the power to create money, to regulate its value, and to fix standards of weight and measurement-from whence our money of account, the dollar, comes. I don’t know any head of household with such an apparently indefinitely long lifespan. This might appear irrelevant, but it is not. When you die, your debts and assets need to be assumed and resolved. There is no “day of reckoning”, no final piper-paying date for the sovereign government. Nor do I know any household with the power to levy taxes, to give a name to — and issue — the currency we use, and to demand that those taxes are paid in the currency it issues.

The federal government is the issuer of our currency. Its IOUs are always accepted in payment. Government actually spends by crediting bank deposits (and credits the reserves of those banks); if you don’t want a bank deposit, government will give you cash; if you don’t want cash it will give you a treasury bond. People will work, sell, panhandle, lie, cheat, steal, and even kill to obtain the government’s dollars. I wish my IOUs were so desirable. I don’t know any household that is able to spend by crediting bank deposits and reserves, or by issuing currency. OK, some counterfeiters try, but they go to jail.

Heh, you really don't know what you're talking about do you? Issuing random facts does not cover for your lack of an argument.

 

[Redfish]

Making individuals the serfs and property of a Totalitarian State (which is the agenda of progressives, wittingly or not) is form of slavery.

Modern slavery functions by enslaving the minds of its victims.

This is done almost entirely by the rich and well-connected, since only they have the money and power to exhaustively study the techniques of branwashing and then to employ them to control people's thoughts and behavior -- principally through the monopolistically controlled media, mass entertainment and advertising. Those without money have very little power to control other people's thoughts.

A nit-picker would say that the government also has the resources and power to brainwash the populace; but that argument is specious, since those who are rich and well-connected also control the government.
.

bullshit. the enslavers are a corrupt government and its cronies in the corrupt media.

 

[TemplarKormac]

Fiscal irresponsibility is no longer punished by the voters.

Funny. How is it the common middle class family conducts their monetary affairs better than our own government does?

Government isn't run like a family budget. That is simpleton stuff 'mister'

Sure, a family doesn't continually take out loans to feed their incessant spending habit. Both of them work on a fixed (or so they call it) budget. They both have bills to pay, dependents to feed.... more in common with a family than you realize, albeit a family would go bankrupt at the rate this government spends its own money.

 

[Foxfyre]

Really? So its ok for a govt to spend more than it collects year after year? Its ok for the govt to print up money and degrade the value of our currency? its ok for the govt to borrow 46% of what it spends and then pay back only the interest while the debt grows by a trillion a year?

Sorry, bubba, but the govt should operate like a family budget. income should balance expenditures.

John Maynard Keynes was an idiot.

Actually he wasn't. Even on a family budget there are calculated reasons to go into debt. You have to have a car to get to your job or to do your job, and you don't have the cash to buy it outright, it can make sense to finance some of it on the theory it will allow you to earn enough to make the payments as well as meet your needs.

It is a rare family who can buy a home outright, and it makes sense to go into debt if it is done wisely and there is little chance you can lose money--what you are buying will gain in value sufficiently that you won't lose the down payment or the money you are putting into the property.

Keynes was of the opinion that it is okay for government to go into short term and temporary debt to finance necessary infrastructure in a way that would jump start a stalled economy. He always included the concept that the debt should never exceed what cannot be quickly returned to the treasury.

The idiots are those who bastardize Keynes theories to justify what our government does which bear absolutely no resemblance to pure Keynesian economics. Keynes knew that prosperity had to come from the private sector and it could not be created by government. Our leftist friends operate under the illusion that government can spend us rich and there will be no negative consequences from that.

right, but what we are now doing is neither temporary or short term. But thats only one thing the Keynes advocated. His other stupid idea was that continuous inflation is good for an economy. Yes, we all have to use debt, and governments also have to use debt. But its a question of degree, currently we are paying only the interest on 16T in debt and increasing it by
1T every year. Do you think this can continue indefinitely?

That is another bastardization of Keynesian theories that simply is not true. Keynes was adamently opposed to inflationary policies and cautioned strongly against them.

I haven't read the whole essay, but here is at least one economist historian who agrees with that:
http://richmondfed.org/publications/research/economic_review/1981/pdf/er670101.pdf

There are dozens, maybe hundreds of internet sites that repeat the bastardized concepts of Keynesian economics, but what most of them describe as Keynesian are not even close to what Keynes himself proposed, theorized, or advocated.