This pic of a Venezuelan street sums up Socialism perfectly.

[depotoo]

It's 18% of the budget, moron. The discretionary budget is irrelevant. The entire budget is discretionary. Douchbags like you try to make the number seem bigger by comparing it with the so-called discretionary budget. What makes you believe the defense budget is "discretionary?"

You are not making any sense at all.
First of all, you are not supposed to include non-discretionary things like Social Security because they not only mandated by law and not up for any vote, but they are self funding. It would make no sense to include something that actually generates a surplus, like Social Security did for half a century, into the budget.
There are lots of things that are not supposed to be included in the national budget, because they are mandatory and can not be voted on. The interest on the national debt is another. By law that is supposed to just be paid, without any debate.
That fact that the ENTIRE national debt has also always been for the military actually makes leaving the national debt out hide military spending.

But all military spending other than on the national debt interest payments ARE discretionary.
We could survive quite well without spending a cent on the military.
The founders wanted a volunteer, citizen soldier military, and that would have been best.
It also would have been totally funded by the states and not the federal government.

Who says they are not supposed to be included? No one but a bunch of leftist douchebags. The budget is the budget. The game of including some parts and not others is propaganda.

Everyone has always said that the annual budget only includes discretionary expenditures.
First you all the mandatory expenditures out, and what you have left is the discretionary money you have a choice about how can be spent.
You don't have any choice about mandatory spending, so there is no point in putting it into an annual budget to be debated.
Mandatory spending can't be debated because it is already mandated by law.
The fact the federal budget only includes discretionary spending is dictated by law.

"Everyone" says that? You mean your Marxist friends say that.,

Here it is from our gov.

{...
Annual Funding Areas
The annual budget covers three spending areas:

• Federal agency funding, called discretionary spending—the area Congress sets annually. Discretionary spending typically accounts for around a third of all funding.
  
  
• Interest on the debt, which usually uses less than 10 percent of all funding
  
  
• Funding for Social Security, Medicare, veterans benefits, and other spending required by law. This is called mandatory spending and typically uses over half of all funding.

...}

Budget of the U.S. Government | USAGov

There is no discretion on interest on the national debt or in mandatory spending.
So those are not what the president's proposal and congressional debate about.
They can only discuss and alter discretionary spending.

Eliminating Waste and Controlling Government Spending

 

[Rigby5]

Socialism is only as good as the people who run the country. It tends to preserve whatever corruption existed before it is imposed. The point here is that socialism is a reaction, perhaps an overreaction, to a greedy ruthless plutocracy. It is rarely any better and it never just comes out of nowhere.

Dead wrong. Socialism fails despite the quality of the people who suffer under it because it flies in the face of human nature. Socialism is a con that demagogues use to gain power. It comes out of the lust for power. No one ever said it came out of nowhere.

You clearly have no idea at all what socialism is or even what human nature it.
The success of early primates when they came down from the trees, was socialism.
They had no fangs, claws, speed, or armor.
The only reason they survived, is that like Meerkats, they were willing to die in the defense of each other.

While it is true demagogues have misused the word socialism in order to gain power, that does not at all condemn real socialism in any way.

Socialism is human nature, and the only way any human society can survive.
Just ask yourself how any family, tribe, or country could ever survive if the profit motive was the only motivation?

So socialism means living like a wild animal? I won't argue with that. Civilized humans prefer not to live like that.

Socialism is the opposite of human nature. Humans don't work without expecting something comparable in return.

What does it mean for the profit motive to be the only motivation? Do you mean a mother would only feed her child if she got something in return? She does. It's called love.

You have that backwards.
Humans are much more socialist than any other wild animal.
The more civilized they are, the more socialist they are.

Obviously wrong. Just look at Bees, Termites and Ants: perfect socialism. Would you want to be a worker in an ant colony? The minute you are no longer useful you are disposed of.

A whole lot of love there, eh?

What do you expect in return for working to feed, cloth, and raise children?
When you get love in return, that is not profit of capitalism, but the whole point of socialism.

Capitalism allows people to do what they want with what they have produced, like feeding their children. Under socialism the state decides, and your children may not be their priority.

However socialism also is better at building things because cooperative, collaborative, and communal ventures always succeed better than individual ventures.

Socialism is better at building things? You must be joking. Perhaps things like the great wall or they pyramids, but who built a moon rocket? Who invented the computer? Who invented the telephone, automobile, airplane, penicillin?

You live in a fantasy world.

Each organism has its own socialism.
But I disagree that in bee, termite, or ant colonies that there are abusive practices.

Capitalism does not at all allow average people do do what they want because they can't themselves produce anything.
They are dependent upon the capital investments of the elite to provide the means of being able to work, so then the workers are subservient slaves in effect.
Another word for it is feudalism.
Under capitalism, you not only do not get to decide to feed your children, but your children can just be taken away from you as well.

With socialism, there is no government control over individuals allowed, because the government has to be a collaborative, communal, and collective democracy. So only under socialism is slavery and feudalism illegal or preventable.

As for pyramids and moon rockets, think again.
Those were all successful because they were collective, collaborative, and communal government projects.
No individual project has ever been nearly as successful.
Most of the computer advancement was done by the government, from interests in military encryption and decryption.
The telephone came about for the same reason the telegraph wires were strung, mostly the government.
The Wright brothers would never be known if not for the Navy funding their work.
Etc.

 

[Rigby5]

They are taking a lot more money from you than you realize.
For example, the military spending when we illegally invaded Iraq cost us trillion that we have not yet paid off.
That means we not only do not even pay off the interest each year, but the military caused the housing collapse that caused millions of US citizens to lose their homes.
So the national debt grows and the US continually get more poor, paying countries like China who finance our military spending.

"but the military caused the housing collapse"

There is absolutely no doubt that the trillions Bush borrowed for his military ventures are what caused the housing market collapse.
In fact, it cause a world wide recession.

Holy cow, you are not exactly bothered by historical facts are you?

The housing that started to fail at the beginning of the housing crisis, like in 2007, had been paying their mortgage payments for years. So it was NOT from people over extending to buy homes they could not afford.

You can’t be serious? Really?
Subprime Mortgage Crisis | Federal Reserve History

Not totally accurate, but they are discussing how the banks got harmed, not what caused the fall in the first place.
The pooling of high risk mortgages into toxic derivatives allowed banks to get federal guarantees on bad loans.
That greatly amplified the effects of the crisis and caused the government to bail out the banks, but is not what stared it.
{...
In the early and mid-2000s, high-risk mortgages became available from lenders who funded mortgages by repackaging them into pools that were sold to investors. New financial products were used to apportion these risks, with private-label mortgage-backed securities (PMBS) providing most of the funding of subprime mortgages. The less vulnerable of these securities were viewed as having low risk either because they were insured with new financial instruments or because other securities would first absorb any losses on the underlying mortgages (DiMartino and Duca 2007). This enabled more first-time homebuyers to obtain mortgages (Duca, Muellbauer, and Murphy 2011), and homeownership rose.
...}

What started the crisis was the deception of the British LIBOR in ARMs.
Libor scandal - Wikipedia
{...
WSJ Libor study
On 16 April 2008, The Wall Street Journal released an article, and later study, suggesting that some banks might have understated borrowing costs they reported for the Libor during the 2008 credit crunch that may have misled others about the financial position of these banks.[27][28] In response, the BBA claimed that the Libor continued to be reliable even in times of financial crisis. Other authorities contradicted The Wall Street Journal article saying there was no evidence of manipulation. In its March 2008 Quarterly Review, the Bank for International Settlements stated that "available data do not support the hypothesis that contributor banks manipulated their quotes to profit from positions based on fixings."[29] Further, in October 2008, the International Monetary Fund published its regular Global Financial Stability Review which also found that "Although the integrity of the U.S. dollar Libor-fixing process has been questioned by some market participants and the financial press, it appears that U.S. dollar Libor remains an accurate measure of a typical creditworthy bank's marginal cost of unsecured U.S. dollar term funding."[30]

A study by economists Connan Snider and Thomas Youle, in April 2010 corroborated the results of the earlier Wall Street Journal study, concluding that the Libor submissions by some member banks were being understated.[31] Unlike the earlier study, Snider and Youle suggested that the reason for understatement by member banks was not that the banks were trying to appear strong, especially during the financial crisis period of 2007 to 2008, but rather that the banks sought to make substantial profits on their large Libor interest-linked portfolios.[32] For example, in the first quarter of 2009, Citigroup had interest rate swaps of notional value of $14.2 trillion, Bank of America had interest rate swaps of notional value of $49.7 trillion and JPMorgan Chase had interest rate swaps of notional value of $49.3 trillion.[33] Given the large notional values, a small unhedged exposure to the Libor could generate large incentives to alter the overall Libor. In the first quarter of 2009, Citigroup for example reported that it would make that quarter $936 million in net interest revenue if interest rates would fall by .25 percentage points a quarter, and $1,935 million if they were to fall by 1 percentage point instantaneously.[34]

Central banks aware of Libor flaws[edit]
In November 2008, the Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, told the UK Parliament that since the start of the financial crisis, "hardly anybody is willing to lend to any bank around the world for three months unsecured; they want to lend secured." As a result, he said that Libor had become "in many ways the rate at which banks do not lend to each other, ...it is not a rate at which anyone is actually borrowing."[35][36]

The New York Federal Reserve chose to take no action against them at that time.[37][38] Minutes by the Bank of England similarly indicated that the bank and its deputy governor Paul Tucker were also aware as early as November 2007 of industry concerns that the Libor rate was being under-reported.[39][40] In one 2008 document, a Barclays employee told a New York Fed analyst, "We know that we're not posting an honest Libor, and yet we are doing it, because if we didn't do it, it draws unwanted attention on ourselves."[38]

The documents show that in early 2008, a memo written by then New York Fed President Tim Geithner to Bank of England chief Mervyn King looked into ways to "fix" Libor.[41][42] While the released memos suggest that the New York Fed helped to identify problems related to Libor and press the relevant authorities in the UK to reform, there is no documentation that shows any evidence that Geithner's recommendations were acted upon or that the Fed tried to make sure that they were. In October 2008, several months after Geithner's memo to King, a Barclays employee told a New York Fed representative that Libor rates were still "absolute rubbish."[38]
...
Mortgage rates manipulated on reset date[edit]
Homeowners in the US filed a class action lawsuit in October 2012 against twelve of the largest banks which alleged that Libor manipulation made mortgage repayments more expensive than they should have been.

Statistical analysis indicated that the Libor rose consistently on the first day of each month between 2000 and 2009 on the day that most adjustable-rate mortgages had as a change date on which new repayment rates would "reset". An email referenced in the lawsuit from the Barclay's settlement, showed a trader asking for a higher Libor rate because "We're getting killed on our three-month resets."[61] During the analysed period, the Libor rate rose on average more than two basis points above the average on the first day of the month, and between 2007 and 2009, the Libor rate rose on average more than seven and one-half basis points above the average on the first day of the month.[62]

The five lead plaintiffs included a pensioner whose home was repossessed after her subprime mortgage was securitised into Libor-based collateralised debt obligations, sold by banks to investors, and foreclosed. The plaintiffs could number 100,000, each of whom has lost thousands of dollars.[63] The complaint estimates that the banks earned hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars, in wrongful profits as a result of artificially inflating Libor rates on the first day of each month during the complaint period.[62]
...}

It was the fact US ARM mortgages were based on the British LIBOR instead of US Prime that caused the disaster.
If the homes had adjustable rate mortgages based on the US prime, their payments would have gone down with economy going down, and they would not have defaulted.
It was their payments almost doubling that caused them to default.

 

[Rigby5]

You are not making any sense at all.
First of all, you are not supposed to include non-discretionary things like Social Security because they not only mandated by law and not up for any vote, but they are self funding. It would make no sense to include something that actually generates a surplus, like Social Security did for half a century, into the budget.
There are lots of things that are not supposed to be included in the national budget, because they are mandatory and can not be voted on. The interest on the national debt is another. By law that is supposed to just be paid, without any debate.
That fact that the ENTIRE national debt has also always been for the military actually makes leaving the national debt out hide military spending.

But all military spending other than on the national debt interest payments ARE discretionary.
We could survive quite well without spending a cent on the military.
The founders wanted a volunteer, citizen soldier military, and that would have been best.
It also would have been totally funded by the states and not the federal government.

Who says they are not supposed to be included? No one but a bunch of leftist douchebags. The budget is the budget. The game of including some parts and not others is propaganda.

Everyone has always said that the annual budget only includes discretionary expenditures.
First you all the mandatory expenditures out, and what you have left is the discretionary money you have a choice about how can be spent.
You don't have any choice about mandatory spending, so there is no point in putting it into an annual budget to be debated.
Mandatory spending can't be debated because it is already mandated by law.
The fact the federal budget only includes discretionary spending is dictated by law.

"Everyone" says that? You mean your Marxist friends say that.,

Here it is from our gov.

{...
Annual Funding Areas
The annual budget covers three spending areas:

• Federal agency funding, called discretionary spending—the area Congress sets annually. Discretionary spending typically accounts for around a third of all funding.
  
  
• Interest on the debt, which usually uses less than 10 percent of all funding
  
  
• Funding for Social Security, Medicare, veterans benefits, and other spending required by law. This is called mandatory spending and typically uses over half of all funding.

...}

Budget of the U.S. Government | USAGov

There is no discretion on interest on the national debt or in mandatory spending.
So those are not what the president's proposal and congressional debate about.
They can only discuss and alter discretionary spending.

Why should I care what some bureaucrat sucking on the government tit has to say about the matter?

Well then just use your own brain then.
You have no option about payments on things like national debt interest or social security.
Those are already set by laws that current presidents and congress critters can not touch.
So the only thing worth proposing and arguing about is the discretionary part.

 

[Rigby5]

Socialism rises from the failure of capitalism to serve the people. In Venezuela capitalism did not serve the people at all. Socialism, in their case, didn't do a good job either. It's not like anyone can say they have ever had it good. Their socialism looks a lot like their capitalism did. There's still rich people who own everything, nothing gets done in the name of the people and there are no institutions anyone can trust.

Bullshit! No experiment with socialism have ever succeed. Every damn last one of them ended in complete failure. Socialism has never worked and it can never work or suceed because it flies in the face of both mother nature and human nature. It's just that simple. The only lazy ass dumbshits and under achivers who are ever for it are the very reason it can never suceed.

Socialism is only as good as the people who run the country. It tends to preserve whatever corruption existed before it is imposed. The point here is that socialism is a reaction, perhaps an overreaction, to a greedy ruthless plutocracy. It is rarely any better and it never just comes out of nowhere.

I would say that socialism is only as good as the voters, because clearly voters seem to rarely hold their candidates to any particular policies.
But in WI, socialism has a long proven history.
Milwaukee Sewer Socialism | Wisconsin Historical Society

 

[depotoo]

Dead wrong. Socialism fails despite the quality of the people who suffer under it because it flies in the face of human nature. Socialism is a con that demagogues use to gain power. It comes out of the lust for power. No one ever said it came out of nowhere.

You clearly have no idea at all what socialism is or even what human nature it.
The success of early primates when they came down from the trees, was socialism.
They had no fangs, claws, speed, or armor.
The only reason they survived, is that like Meerkats, they were willing to die in the defense of each other.

While it is true demagogues have misused the word socialism in order to gain power, that does not at all condemn real socialism in any way.

Socialism is human nature, and the only way any human society can survive.
Just ask yourself how any family, tribe, or country could ever survive if the profit motive was the only motivation?

So socialism means living like a wild animal? I won't argue with that. Civilized humans prefer not to live like that.

Socialism is the opposite of human nature. Humans don't work without expecting something comparable in return.

What does it mean for the profit motive to be the only motivation? Do you mean a mother would only feed her child if she got something in return? She does. It's called love.

You have that backwards.
Humans are much more socialist than any other wild animal.
The more civilized they are, the more socialist they are.

Obviously wrong. Just look at Bees, Termites and Ants: perfect socialism. Would you want to be a worker in an ant colony? The minute you are no longer useful you are disposed of.

A whole lot of love there, eh?

What do you expect in return for working to feed, cloth, and raise children?
When you get love in return, that is not profit of capitalism, but the whole point of socialism.

Capitalism allows people to do what they want with what they have produced, like feeding their children. Under socialism the state decides, and your children may not be their priority.

However socialism also is better at building things because cooperative, collaborative, and communal ventures always succeed better than individual ventures.

Socialism is better at building things? You must be joking. Perhaps things like the great wall or they pyramids, but who built a moon rocket? Who invented the computer? Who invented the telephone, automobile, airplane, penicillin?

You live in a fantasy world.

Each organism has its own socialism.
But I disagree that in bee, termite, or ant colonies that there are abusive practices.

Capitalism does not at all allow average people do do what they want because they can't themselves produce anything.
They are dependent upon the capital investments of the elite to provide the means of being able to work, so then the workers are subservient slaves in effect.
Another word for it is feudalism.
Under capitalism, you not only do not get to decide to feed your children, but your children can just be taken away from you as well.

With socialism, there is no government control over individuals allowed, because the government has to be a collaborative, communal, and collective democracy. So only under socialism is slavery and feudalism illegal or preventable.

As for pyramids and moon rockets, think again.
Those were all successful because they were collective, collaborative, and communal government projects.
No individual project has ever been nearly as successful.
Most of the computer advancement was done by the government, from interests in military encryption and decryption.
The telephone came about for the same reason the telegraph wires were strung, mostly the government.
The Wright brothers would never be known if not for the Navy funding their work.
Etc.

I don’t know where you get your communist beliefs but..


Entrepreneurship Stats


1. 62% of US billionaires are self-made.
(Wealth-X)

According to data from a 2016 research done by Wealth-X, there are 585 billionaires in the US. Only 20% achieved this status through inheritance, while the huge majority are self-made. This is probably one of the biggest incentives for young entrepreneurs who are just starting up. The remaining 18% became billionaires through a combination of inheritance and hard work.

2. 15 million Americans are full-time self-employed.
(FreshBooks)

This number is according to the Fresh Books entrepreneurial statistics, which estimates that by 2020, America will have 27 million self-employed professionals. One in five workers plans to completely change her career once she gets into entrepreneurship.

3. 62% of adults believe entrepreneurship is a good career.

5. 26% of entrepreneurs say their biggest motivation for starting their own business was the idea of being their own boss.
(Guidant Financial)

What’s more, 23% wanted to pursue their passion and 19% just did it because the opportunity presented itself. For 12% of entrepreneurs, corporate America was the biggest problem, while 6% decided to start their own business after being laid off. According to entrepreneur data, another 6% did it because they weren’t ready to retire, and 3% were inspired by various life events.

6. 33% of entrepreneurs have only a high-school diploma.
(Guidant Financial)

It may seem surprising, but a third of all small business owners never got any further than high-school. This is an inspirational piece of information for the majority of young people who are worried they won’t accomplish anything without going to college. Altogether, 67% went to college, and 4% even managed to get a doctorate.

9. With a Global Entrepreneurship Index of 83.6, the US is the best country for entrepreneurs.
(GEDI)

The Global Entrepreneurship Index (GEI) is a numerical presentation of the climate a country creates for the development of small businesses. This index takes into account numerous factors to create one comprehensive overview of the situation. Switzerland takes an unexpected second place with 80.4, followed by three English-speaking countries – Canada, the UK, and Australia. Chad is bottom of the list with an index of just 9.

10. 59% of entrepreneurs who apply for a loan use it to expand their business.
(Federal Reserve Banks)

Entrepreneur demographics for 2018 show us 43% of owners use the funds to cover their operating expenses and 26% need them to refinance some other loans. It appears that loans play a huge part in the world of small businesses, as enterprises rely heavily on them both to keep afloat and make crucial steps towards the future.

11. 83.1% of US business owners started their companies.
(FactFinder)

In the true entrepreneurial spirit, 83.1% of owners built their companies from scratch. A significantly smaller percentage (11.3%) purchased their businesses, while 7.2% inherited them or received them as gifts.

12. Only 9% of entrepreneurs have a Bachelor’s Degree in business.

39 Entrepreneur Statistics You Need To Know In 2020
just a few stats for you to mull over.

 

[occupied]

Socialism rises from the failure of capitalism to serve the people. In Venezuela capitalism did not serve the people at all. Socialism, in their case, didn't do a good job either. It's not like anyone can say they have ever had it good. Their socialism looks a lot like their capitalism did. There's still rich people who own everything, nothing gets done in the name of the people and there are no institutions anyone can trust.

Bullshit! No experiment with socialism have ever succeed. Every damn last one of them ended in complete failure. Socialism has never worked and it can never work or suceed because it flies in the face of both mother nature and human nature. It's just that simple. The only lazy ass dumbshits and under achivers who are ever for it are the very reason it can never suceed.

Socialism is only as good as the people who run the country. It tends to preserve whatever corruption existed before it is imposed. The point here is that socialism is a reaction, perhaps an overreaction, to a greedy ruthless plutocracy. It is rarely any better and it never just comes out of nowhere.

I would say that socialism is only as good as the voters, because clearly voters seem to rarely hold their candidates to any particular policies.
But in WI, socialism has a long proven history.
Milwaukee Sewer Socialism | Wisconsin Historical Society

Humans have no idea how to live without hierarchies. All political systems need leaders and all too often they are ruthless opportunistic men. No one has yet come up with a simple solution to weak people blindly following tough-talking demagogues.

 

[MarathonMike]

"but the military caused the housing collapse"

There is absolutely no doubt that the trillions Bush borrowed for his military ventures are what caused the housing market collapse.
In fact, it cause a world wide recession.

Holy cow, you are not exactly bothered by historical facts are you?

The housing that started to fail at the beginning of the housing crisis, like in 2007, had been paying their mortgage payments for years. So it was NOT from people over extending to buy homes they could not afford.

You can’t be serious? Really?
Subprime Mortgage Crisis | Federal Reserve History

Not totally accurate, but they are discussing how the banks got harmed, not what caused the fall in the first place.
The pooling of high risk mortgages into toxic derivatives allowed banks to get federal guarantees on bad loans.
That greatly amplified the effects of the crisis and caused the government to bail out the banks, but is not what stared it.
{...
In the early and mid-2000s, high-risk mortgages became available from lenders who funded mortgages by repackaging them into pools that were sold to investors. New financial products were used to apportion these risks, with private-label mortgage-backed securities (PMBS) providing most of the funding of subprime mortgages. The less vulnerable of these securities were viewed as having low risk either because they were insured with new financial instruments or because other securities would first absorb any losses on the underlying mortgages (DiMartino and Duca 2007). This enabled more first-time homebuyers to obtain mortgages (Duca, Muellbauer, and Murphy 2011), and homeownership rose.
...}

What started the crisis was the deception of the British LIBOR in ARMs.
Libor scandal - Wikipedia
{...
WSJ Libor study
On 16 April 2008, The Wall Street Journal released an article, and later study, suggesting that some banks might have understated borrowing costs they reported for the Libor during the 2008 credit crunch that may have misled others about the financial position of these banks.[27][28] In response, the BBA claimed that the Libor continued to be reliable even in times of financial crisis. Other authorities contradicted The Wall Street Journal article saying there was no evidence of manipulation. In its March 2008 Quarterly Review, the Bank for International Settlements stated that "available data do not support the hypothesis that contributor banks manipulated their quotes to profit from positions based on fixings."[29] Further, in October 2008, the International Monetary Fund published its regular Global Financial Stability Review which also found that "Although the integrity of the U.S. dollar Libor-fixing process has been questioned by some market participants and the financial press, it appears that U.S. dollar Libor remains an accurate measure of a typical creditworthy bank's marginal cost of unsecured U.S. dollar term funding."[30]

A study by economists Connan Snider and Thomas Youle, in April 2010 corroborated the results of the earlier Wall Street Journal study, concluding that the Libor submissions by some member banks were being understated.[31] Unlike the earlier study, Snider and Youle suggested that the reason for understatement by member banks was not that the banks were trying to appear strong, especially during the financial crisis period of 2007 to 2008, but rather that the banks sought to make substantial profits on their large Libor interest-linked portfolios.[32] For example, in the first quarter of 2009, Citigroup had interest rate swaps of notional value of $14.2 trillion, Bank of America had interest rate swaps of notional value of $49.7 trillion and JPMorgan Chase had interest rate swaps of notional value of $49.3 trillion.[33] Given the large notional values, a small unhedged exposure to the Libor could generate large incentives to alter the overall Libor. In the first quarter of 2009, Citigroup for example reported that it would make that quarter $936 million in net interest revenue if interest rates would fall by .25 percentage points a quarter, and $1,935 million if they were to fall by 1 percentage point instantaneously.[34]

Central banks aware of Libor flaws[edit]
In November 2008, the Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, told the UK Parliament that since the start of the financial crisis, "hardly anybody is willing to lend to any bank around the world for three months unsecured; they want to lend secured." As a result, he said that Libor had become "in many ways the rate at which banks do not lend to each other, ...it is not a rate at which anyone is actually borrowing."[35][36]

The New York Federal Reserve chose to take no action against them at that time.[37][38] Minutes by the Bank of England similarly indicated that the bank and its deputy governor Paul Tucker were also aware as early as November 2007 of industry concerns that the Libor rate was being under-reported.[39][40] In one 2008 document, a Barclays employee told a New York Fed analyst, "We know that we're not posting an honest Libor, and yet we are doing it, because if we didn't do it, it draws unwanted attention on ourselves."[38]

The documents show that in early 2008, a memo written by then New York Fed President Tim Geithner to Bank of England chief Mervyn King looked into ways to "fix" Libor.[41][42] While the released memos suggest that the New York Fed helped to identify problems related to Libor and press the relevant authorities in the UK to reform, there is no documentation that shows any evidence that Geithner's recommendations were acted upon or that the Fed tried to make sure that they were. In October 2008, several months after Geithner's memo to King, a Barclays employee told a New York Fed representative that Libor rates were still "absolute rubbish."[38]
...
Mortgage rates manipulated on reset date[edit]
Homeowners in the US filed a class action lawsuit in October 2012 against twelve of the largest banks which alleged that Libor manipulation made mortgage repayments more expensive than they should have been.

Statistical analysis indicated that the Libor rose consistently on the first day of each month between 2000 and 2009 on the day that most adjustable-rate mortgages had as a change date on which new repayment rates would "reset". An email referenced in the lawsuit from the Barclay's settlement, showed a trader asking for a higher Libor rate because "We're getting killed on our three-month resets."[61] During the analysed period, the Libor rate rose on average more than two basis points above the average on the first day of the month, and between 2007 and 2009, the Libor rate rose on average more than seven and one-half basis points above the average on the first day of the month.[62]

The five lead plaintiffs included a pensioner whose home was repossessed after her subprime mortgage was securitised into Libor-based collateralised debt obligations, sold by banks to investors, and foreclosed. The plaintiffs could number 100,000, each of whom has lost thousands of dollars.[63] The complaint estimates that the banks earned hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars, in wrongful profits as a result of artificially inflating Libor rates on the first day of each month during the complaint period.[62]
...}

It was the fact US ARM mortgages were based on the British LIBOR instead of US Prime that caused the disaster.
If the homes had adjustable rate mortgages based on the US prime, their payments would have gone down with economy going down, and they would not have defaulted.
It was their payments almost doubling that caused them to default.

That is a fairly accurate summation of the chain of events that caused the mortgage crisis to blow up into a global contagion. But you have to start with Carter and especially Clinton who created 'feel good' but grossly misguided lending acts that literally forced banks to lend to burger flippers who had no business owning a home. ARMs were a big part of the defaults, but when you throw away your solid lending requirements to be nice to the underclass, you are playing with dynamite. And let's not forget Barney Frank who vehemently defended the collapsing Federal Mortgage programs until it was too late.

 

[Oldstyle]

That's horseshit. I go by how much money of mine they are taking from me.

They are taking a lot more money from you than you realize.
For example, the military spending when we illegally invaded Iraq cost us trillion that we have not yet paid off.
That means we not only do not even pay off the interest each year, but the military caused the housing collapse that caused millions of US citizens to lose their homes.
So the national debt grows and the US continually get more poor, paying countries like China who finance our military spending.

"but the military caused the housing collapse"

There is absolutely no doubt that the trillions Bush borrowed for his military ventures are what caused the housing market collapse.
In fact, it cause a world wide recession.

The housing market collapsed because house values were grossly overinflated...due in large part from people getting loans that never should have gotten them. It has nothing to do with the wars in the Middle East! Where would you even get an idea like that?

Wrong.
If that were true, then people would still have been able to keep up their payments, and they could not.
Then prices would have greatly dropped, and they did not.
There were 2 main reasons, both caused by military spending.
The defaults were because their adjustable rate mortgage was based on British LIBOR, and that caused payments to almost double, due to the world wide shortage of credit, after Bush borrowed trillions.
And the defaults were due to job losses due to people in other countries not being able to afford US goods as much, causing job layoffs.

Why would you keep paying a mortgage on a property that was worth less than half what you bought it for...when you got a no money down loan and have very little of your own capital invested in said property? Does the term "underwater" mean anything to you?

Who's adjustable rate mortgages doubled? Properties weren't being walked away from because rates increased...they were being walked away from because it didn't make sense to keep paying a huge mortgage on a property that wasn't worth much anymore and might not regain that value EVER! Banks were forced to foreclose and then were carrying so many bad loans that they were in danger of floundering themselves. None of that had ANYTHING to do with military spending!

 

[The Purge]

See that garbage littering the street? That is Venezuelan money! That's right it is worthless trash. Think of that picture as Stage 4 Socialism. Bernie Sanders is Stage 1.

View attachment 305465

socialism is thriving in the US 50 some percent of the government budget goes to the armed forces? President spends billions on his golf trips and his family vacations, and so much more. but I have to admit we need space force.

You forgot the bail out for farmers suffering due to Trump's tariffs on China.

Well DAMN SEEMS our GENIUS PRESIDENT has done what NO ONE has done before him with tariffs....of course we all know that deranged DemonRATS REFUSE to give him credit for such an accomplishment!

China rolls back tariffs on US goods as part of trade agreement. Beijing said Thursday that it would halve some tariffs on U.S. goods as part of its "phase one" trade deal with the United States, cutting some to 5% and others to 2.5%. ... China has tariffs of up to 25% on $185 billion worth of U.S. goods!

 

[The Purge]

 

[Yarddog]

See that garbage littering the street? That is Venezuelan money! That's right it is worthless trash. Think of that picture as Stage 4 Socialism. Bernie Sanders is Stage 1.

View attachment 305465

socialism is thriving in the US 50 some percent of the government budget goes to the armed forces? President spends billions on his golf trips and his family vacations, and so much more. but I have to admit we need space force.

Billions on Golf trips?.... and so much more? Something tells me you dont have a clue about anything. Maybe stick to making ham sandwiches.

 

[Issa]

Socialism rises from the failure of capitalism to serve the people. In Venezuela capitalism did not serve the people at all. Socialism, in their case, didn't do a good job either. It's not like anyone can say they have ever had it good. Their socialism looks a lot like their capitalism did. There's still rich people who own everything, nothing gets done in the name of the people and there are no institutions anyone can trust.

Bullshit! No experiment with socialism have ever succeed. Every damn last one of them ended in complete failure. Socialism has never worked and it can never work or suceed because it flies in the face of both mother nature and human nature. It's just that simple. The only lazy ass dumbshits and under achivers who are ever for it are the very reason it can never suceed.

Socialism is only as good as the people who run the country. It tends to preserve whatever corruption existed before it is imposed. The point here is that socialism is a reaction, perhaps an overreaction, to a greedy ruthless plutocracy. It is rarely any better and it never just comes out of nowhere.

Dead wrong. Socialism fails despite the quality of the people who suffer under it because it flies in the face of human nature. Socialism is a con that demagogues use to gain power. It comes out of the lust for power. No one ever said it came out of nowhere.

You clearly have no idea at all what socialism is or even what human nature it.
The success of early primates when they came down from the trees, was socialism.
They had no fangs, claws, speed, or armor.
The only reason they survived, is that like Meerkats, they were willing to die in the defense of each other.

While it is true demagogues have misused the word socialism in order to gain power, that does not at all condemn real socialism in any way.

Socialism is human nature, and the only way any human society can survive.
Just ask yourself how any family, tribe, or country could ever survive if the profit motive was the only motivation?

So socialism means living like a wild animal? I won't argue with that. Civilized humans prefer not to live like that.

Socialism is the opposite of human nature. Humans don't work without expecting something comparable in return.

What does it mean for the profit motive to be the only motivation? Do you mean a mother would only feed her child if she got something in return? She does. It's called love.

You can deviate as much as you want, the US is as socialist as many countries you call socialist.
You just have being brainwashed to think that a safety net is bad but giving trillions to the Military contractors is patriotic and necessary....I have lived and continue to see other countries....and you are been robbed and you defend the robbers....Americans deserve cheaper and good healthcare and Education systems. stop spreading the lies. you are already putting yourself in debt might as well let the ordinary Americans benefit from that....instead of them going bankrupt dead or staying uneducated and dumb.

 

[Issa]

Socialism is only as good as the people who run the country. It tends to preserve whatever corruption existed before it is imposed. The point here is that socialism is a reaction, perhaps an overreaction, to a greedy ruthless plutocracy. It is rarely any better and it never just comes out of nowhere.

Dead wrong. Socialism fails despite the quality of the people who suffer under it because it flies in the face of human nature. Socialism is a con that demagogues use to gain power. It comes out of the lust for power. No one ever said it came out of nowhere.

You clearly have no idea at all what socialism is or even what human nature it.
The success of early primates when they came down from the trees, was socialism.
They had no fangs, claws, speed, or armor.
The only reason they survived, is that like Meerkats, they were willing to die in the defense of each other.

While it is true demagogues have misused the word socialism in order to gain power, that does not at all condemn real socialism in any way.

Socialism is human nature, and the only way any human society can survive.
Just ask yourself how any family, tribe, or country could ever survive if the profit motive was the only motivation?

So socialism means living like a wild animal? I won't argue with that. Civilized humans prefer not to live like that.

Socialism is the opposite of human nature. Humans don't work without expecting something comparable in return.

What does it mean for the profit motive to be the only motivation? Do you mean a mother would only feed her child if she got something in return? She does. It's called love.

You have that backwards.
Humans are much more socialist than any other wild animal.
The more civilized they are, the more socialist they are.

Obviously wrong. Just look at Bees, Termites and Ants: perfect socialism. Would you want to be a worker in an ant colony? The minute you are no longer useful you are disposed of.

A whole lot of love there, eh?

What do you expect in return for working to feed, cloth, and raise children?
When you get love in return, that is not profit of capitalism, but the whole point of socialism.

Capitalism allows people to do what they want with what they have produced, like feeding their children. Under socialism the state decides, and your children may not be their priority.

However socialism also is better at building things because cooperative, collaborative, and communal ventures always succeed better than individual ventures.

Socialism is better at building things? You must be joking. Perhaps things like the great wall or they pyramids, but who built a moon rocket? Who invented the computer? Who invented the telephone, automobile, airplane, penicillin?

You live in a fantasy world.

Penicillin was discovered by Dr Fleming from Scotland a socialist country.
Telephone is debatable.
The first automobile was made by Benz.
That leaves with the airplane, which was American made but many laid the foundation for the wright brothers to succeed with their work starting from the first man to try and fly Abbas Ibno Farnass.
get off your high horse....if you or your loved ones become ill and unable to work, you'll understand what socialism is.

 

[Lewdog]

See that garbage littering the street? That is Venezuelan money! That's right it is worthless trash. Think of that picture as Stage 4 Socialism. Bernie Sanders is Stage 1.

View attachment 305465

socialism is thriving in the US 50 some percent of the government budget goes to the armed forces? President spends billions on his golf trips and his family vacations, and so much more. but I have to admit we need space force.

You forgot the bail out for farmers suffering due to Trump's tariffs on China.

Well DAMN SEEMS our GENIUS PRESIDENT has done what NO ONE has done before him with tariffs....of course we all know that deranged DemonRATS REFUSE to give him credit for such an accomplishment!

China rolls back tariffs on US goods as part of trade agreement. Beijing said Thursday that it would halve some tariffs on U.S. goods as part of its "phase one" trade deal with the United States, cutting some to 5% and others to 2.5%. ... China has tariffs of up to 25% on $185 billion worth of U.S. goods!

You've obviously not read very much on the subject rather than a simple cut and paste.

 

[bripat9643]

Who says they are not supposed to be included? No one but a bunch of leftist douchebags. The budget is the budget. The game of including some parts and not others is propaganda.

Everyone has always said that the annual budget only includes discretionary expenditures.
First you all the mandatory expenditures out, and what you have left is the discretionary money you have a choice about how can be spent.
You don't have any choice about mandatory spending, so there is no point in putting it into an annual budget to be debated.
Mandatory spending can't be debated because it is already mandated by law.
The fact the federal budget only includes discretionary spending is dictated by law.

"Everyone" says that? You mean your Marxist friends say that.,

Here it is from our gov.

{...
Annual Funding Areas
The annual budget covers three spending areas:

• Federal agency funding, called discretionary spending—the area Congress sets annually. Discretionary spending typically accounts for around a third of all funding.
  
  
• Interest on the debt, which usually uses less than 10 percent of all funding
  
  
• Funding for Social Security, Medicare, veterans benefits, and other spending required by law. This is called mandatory spending and typically uses over half of all funding.

...}

Budget of the U.S. Government | USAGov

There is no discretion on interest on the national debt or in mandatory spending.
So those are not what the president's proposal and congressional debate about.
They can only discuss and alter discretionary spending.

Why should I care what some bureaucrat sucking on the government tit has to say about the matter?

Well then just use your own brain then.
You have no option about payments on things like national debt interest or social security.
Those are already set by laws that current presidents and congress critters can not touch.
So the only thing worth proposing and arguing about is the discretionary part.

My brain tells me that defense spending is 18% of the budget

 

[bripat9643]

Dead wrong. Socialism fails despite the quality of the people who suffer under it because it flies in the face of human nature. Socialism is a con that demagogues use to gain power. It comes out of the lust for power. No one ever said it came out of nowhere.

You clearly have no idea at all what socialism is or even what human nature it.
The success of early primates when they came down from the trees, was socialism.
They had no fangs, claws, speed, or armor.
The only reason they survived, is that like Meerkats, they were willing to die in the defense of each other.

While it is true demagogues have misused the word socialism in order to gain power, that does not at all condemn real socialism in any way.

Socialism is human nature, and the only way any human society can survive.
Just ask yourself how any family, tribe, or country could ever survive if the profit motive was the only motivation?

So socialism means living like a wild animal? I won't argue with that. Civilized humans prefer not to live like that.

Socialism is the opposite of human nature. Humans don't work without expecting something comparable in return.

What does it mean for the profit motive to be the only motivation? Do you mean a mother would only feed her child if she got something in return? She does. It's called love.

You have that backwards.
Humans are much more socialist than any other wild animal.
The more civilized they are, the more socialist they are.

Obviously wrong. Just look at Bees, Termites and Ants: perfect socialism. Would you want to be a worker in an ant colony? The minute you are no longer useful you are disposed of.

A whole lot of love there, eh?

What do you expect in return for working to feed, cloth, and raise children?
When you get love in return, that is not profit of capitalism, but the whole point of socialism.

Capitalism allows people to do what they want with what they have produced, like feeding their children. Under socialism the state decides, and your children may not be their priority.

However socialism also is better at building things because cooperative, collaborative, and communal ventures always succeed better than individual ventures.

Socialism is better at building things? You must be joking. Perhaps things like the great wall or they pyramids, but who built a moon rocket? Who invented the computer? Who invented the telephone, automobile, airplane, penicillin?

You live in a fantasy world.

Penicillin was discovered by Dr Fleming from Scotland a socialist country.
Telephone is debatable.
The first automobile was made by Benz.
That leaves with the airplane, which was American made but many laid the foundation for the wright brothers to succeed with their work starting from the first man to try and fly Abbas Ibno Farnass.
get off your high horse....if you or your loved ones become ill and unable to work, you'll understand what socialism is.

Fleming was from a socialist country? That is the dumbest justification for socialism I have ever seen.

The telephone is not debatable.

The automobile was invented in Germany, a capitalist country at the time.

The Wright brothers invented the airplane in a capitalist country. Who "laid the foundation for it?" Answer, no one.

 

[bripat9643]

Bullshit! No experiment with socialism have ever succeed. Every damn last one of them ended in complete failure. Socialism has never worked and it can never work or suceed because it flies in the face of both mother nature and human nature. It's just that simple. The only lazy ass dumbshits and under achivers who are ever for it are the very reason it can never suceed.

Socialism is only as good as the people who run the country. It tends to preserve whatever corruption existed before it is imposed. The point here is that socialism is a reaction, perhaps an overreaction, to a greedy ruthless plutocracy. It is rarely any better and it never just comes out of nowhere.

Dead wrong. Socialism fails despite the quality of the people who suffer under it because it flies in the face of human nature. Socialism is a con that demagogues use to gain power. It comes out of the lust for power. No one ever said it came out of nowhere.

You clearly have no idea at all what socialism is or even what human nature it.
The success of early primates when they came down from the trees, was socialism.
They had no fangs, claws, speed, or armor.
The only reason they survived, is that like Meerkats, they were willing to die in the defense of each other.

While it is true demagogues have misused the word socialism in order to gain power, that does not at all condemn real socialism in any way.

Socialism is human nature, and the only way any human society can survive.
Just ask yourself how any family, tribe, or country could ever survive if the profit motive was the only motivation?

So socialism means living like a wild animal? I won't argue with that. Civilized humans prefer not to live like that.

Socialism is the opposite of human nature. Humans don't work without expecting something comparable in return.

What does it mean for the profit motive to be the only motivation? Do you mean a mother would only feed her child if she got something in return? She does. It's called love.

You can deviate as much as you want, the US is as socialist as many countries you call socialist.
You just have being brainwashed to think that a safety net is bad but giving trillions to the Military contractors is patriotic and necessary....I have lived and continue to see other countries....and you are been robbed and you defend the robbers....Americans deserve cheaper and good healthcare and Education systems. stop spreading the lies. you are already putting yourself in debt might as well let the ordinary Americans benefit from that....instead of them going bankrupt dead or staying uneducated and dumb.

I don't call them socialist. Dumbasses like you do.

The safety net is a huge swindle. Defense spending is necessary and one of the few budget items the Constitution actually authorizes.

American education is totally socialized.

 

[bripat9643]

Socialism rises from the failure of capitalism to serve the people. In Venezuela capitalism did not serve the people at all. Socialism, in their case, didn't do a good job either. It's not like anyone can say they have ever had it good. Their socialism looks a lot like their capitalism did. There's still rich people who own everything, nothing gets done in the name of the people and there are no institutions anyone can trust.

Bullshit! No experiment with socialism have ever succeed. Every damn last one of them ended in complete failure. Socialism has never worked and it can never work or suceed because it flies in the face of both mother nature and human nature. It's just that simple. The only lazy ass dumbshits and under achivers who are ever for it are the very reason it can never suceed.

Socialism is only as good as the people who run the country. It tends to preserve whatever corruption existed before it is imposed. The point here is that socialism is a reaction, perhaps an overreaction, to a greedy ruthless plutocracy. It is rarely any better and it never just comes out of nowhere.

I would say that socialism is only as good as the voters, because clearly voters seem to rarely hold their candidates to any particular policies.
But in WI, socialism has a long proven history.
Milwaukee Sewer Socialism | Wisconsin Historical Society

Humans have no idea how to live without hierarchies. All political systems need leaders and all too often they are ruthless opportunistic men. No one has yet come up with a simple solution to weak people blindly following tough-talking demagogues.

The solution is to abolish those "political systems."

 

[bripat9643]

Dead wrong. Socialism fails despite the quality of the people who suffer under it because it flies in the face of human nature. Socialism is a con that demagogues use to gain power. It comes out of the lust for power. No one ever said it came out of nowhere.

You clearly have no idea at all what socialism is or even what human nature it.
The success of early primates when they came down from the trees, was socialism.
They had no fangs, claws, speed, or armor.
The only reason they survived, is that like Meerkats, they were willing to die in the defense of each other.

While it is true demagogues have misused the word socialism in order to gain power, that does not at all condemn real socialism in any way.

Socialism is human nature, and the only way any human society can survive.
Just ask yourself how any family, tribe, or country could ever survive if the profit motive was the only motivation?

So socialism means living like a wild animal? I won't argue with that. Civilized humans prefer not to live like that.

Socialism is the opposite of human nature. Humans don't work without expecting something comparable in return.

What does it mean for the profit motive to be the only motivation? Do you mean a mother would only feed her child if she got something in return? She does. It's called love.

You have that backwards.
Humans are much more socialist than any other wild animal.
The more civilized they are, the more socialist they are.

Obviously wrong. Just look at Bees, Termites and Ants: perfect socialism. Would you want to be a worker in an ant colony? The minute you are no longer useful you are disposed of.

A whole lot of love there, eh?

What do you expect in return for working to feed, cloth, and raise children?
When you get love in return, that is not profit of capitalism, but the whole point of socialism.

Capitalism allows people to do what they want with what they have produced, like feeding their children. Under socialism the state decides, and your children may not be their priority.

However socialism also is better at building things because cooperative, collaborative, and communal ventures always succeed better than individual ventures.

Socialism is better at building things? You must be joking. Perhaps things like the great wall or they pyramids, but who built a moon rocket? Who invented the computer? Who invented the telephone, automobile, airplane, penicillin?

You live in a fantasy world.

Each organism has its own socialism.
But I disagree that in bee, termite, or ant colonies that there are abusive practices.

Capitalism does not at all allow average people do do what they want because they can't themselves produce anything.
They are dependent upon the capital investments of the elite to provide the means of being able to work, so then the workers are subservient slaves in effect.
Another word for it is feudalism.
Under capitalism, you not only do not get to decide to feed your children, but your children can just be taken away from you as well.

With socialism, there is no government control over individuals allowed, because the government has to be a collaborative, communal, and collective democracy. So only under socialism is slavery and feudalism illegal or preventable.

As for pyramids and moon rockets, think again.
Those were all successful because they were collective, collaborative, and communal government projects.
No individual project has ever been nearly as successful.
Most of the computer advancement was done by the government, from interests in military encryption and decryption.
The telephone came about for the same reason the telegraph wires were strung, mostly the government.
The Wright brothers would never be known if not for the Navy funding their work.
Etc.

"With socialism, there is no government control over individuals allowed"

When has this form of socialism ever been practiced?