Simply amazing !!

dee1949

.... remember the good ole days in the 80's. Mortgage rates 16% , but money market funds returned the same. Was a good time to make your savings grow.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2015/03/16/should-the-fed-tell-the-truth/

afterburnt

If you remember the 80s you wernt there

cnh

That's an article in FORBES! WOW, somebody let one through the CORPORATE GATE KEEPER! lol

dee1949

afterburnt wrote: »

If you remember the 80s you wernt there

...Unfortunately I even remember the 60's. The 80's is just like yesterday !!! Being retired , and out of the market. No mortgage to worry about. My savings are going nowhere. Was a day trader in late 90's before the bubble burst. Didn't sleep well at night. Todays market is a roll of the dice from day to day. Big correction is due.

Moose68Bash

dee1949 wrote: »

.... remember the good ole days in the 80's. Mortgage rates 16% , but money market funds returned the same. Was a good time to make your savings grow.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2015/03/16/should-the-fed-tell-the-truth/

Well, I lived through the 1976-80 economic debacle created by Jimmy Carter, and the resurrection of the economy under Ronald Reagan.

If you long for the "good old days," pick another decade, would be my suggestion.

As for the article to which you provided the link: It is very interesting and accurate in many respects -- e.g., clearly the economic policies of the last decade and a half have not created and sustained a healthy economy, and those of the last six years are derived from the point of view that planned economies are best and that national wealth is a "zero-sum" game. The latter policies have created the expected, inevitable distortion of the free market, characterized by the data provided in the article.

How we will emerge from this situation is not something I am smart enough to prescribe. And I don't think any individuaI or small group of individuals -- no matter how brilliant they believe they are and claim to be -- can lay claim to that wisdom.

I place my faith, rather, in the collective wisdom of individuals in a free market and democratic society -- if only our federal government would get out of the way and let individuals make their own decisions about investments and purchases with only absolutely necessary government intervention and regulation.

Just my humble opinion.

cnh

The American economy has been in a funk since the mid seventies (there were irreversible forces at work in the global economy in play since then), with a few peaks here and there. I can't wax nostalgic about the '80s because I lived through them. And I'm not going to herald the '90s either. IMHO, the '60s were the peak which is why you could have all that unrest, people didn't have to worry about their economic security so anything flew! Remember, the U.S. had NO real competitors in the 50s and 60s and the rest of the world was recovering from the Great War.

tonyb

I had no problem with the 80's....none with the 60's either, but the 70's was a disaster. Even the 90's was somewhat good. World events aside. You could still make a buck and live a comfortable middle class lifestyle. Not so today....and from where I sit, it isn't going to get better anytime soon.

Wages have been stagnant since the mid 80's, however living costs way more today. This goes into my assertions about disposable income....or lack there of.

I love an occasional trip down memory lane, the throw back machine, but life is best left in the rear view mirror as long as we can learn from our mistakes....which obviously we have a hard time doing.

dee1949

Moose68Bash wrote: »

dee1949 wrote: »

.... remember the good ole days in the 80's. Mortgage rates 16% , but money market funds returned the same. Was a good time to make your savings grow.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2015/03/16/should-the-fed-tell-the-truth/

Well, I lived through the 1976-80 economic debacle created by Jimmy Carter, and the resurrection of the economy under Ronald Reagan.

If you long for the "good old days," pick another decade, would be my suggestion.

As for the article to which you provided the link: It is very interesting and accurate in many respects -- e.g., clearly the economic policies of the last decade and a half have not created and sustained a healthy economy, and those of the last six years are derived from the point of view that planned economies are best and that national wealth is a "zero-sum" game. The latter policies have created the expected, inevitable distortion of the free market, characterized by the data provided in the article.

How we will emerge from this situation is not something I am smart enough to prescribe. And I don't think any individuaI or small group of individuals -- no matter how brilliant they believe they are and claim to be -- can lay claim to that wisdom.

I place my faith, rather, in the collective wisdom of individuals in a free market and democratic society -- if only our federal government would get out of the way and let individuals make their own decisions about investments and purchases with only absolutely necessary government intervention and regulation.

Just my humble opinion.

...... very well spoken. I was speaking from the point of view of a retired person with no mortgage. All assets in reserve in no interest accounts. Little hope in near future for massive interest rate increases. Interesting time for new polices.

tonyb

Retired ?? lol

Actually that's a good point. All those darn baby boomers retiring. When your working, the flow of money goes from you, supports the economy in spending, and the government in taxes collected.

Retired....the flow goes the other way. You collect money from the government spend less, save more. Now consider that roughly 70% of our collective wealth rests in boomers hands.....do I have to draw a chart ? lol

afterburnt

Who the hell wants to retire and save more? I want to spend it all before I am dead!

tonyb

afterburnt wrote: »

Who the hell wants to retire and save more? I want to spend it all before I am dead!

You know better....that's what wives are for.

afterburnt

It is worse than that. I dont have a wife I have a financial planer that insist that I have to make my money last until I am 95! I could have chocker her when she told me that! 95 years old, I would only wish such a horror on my X wife!!!

Moose68Bash

tonyb wrote: »

Retired ?? lol

Actually that's a good point. All those darn baby boomers retiring. When your working, the flow of money goes from you, supports the economy in spending, and the government in taxes collected.

Retired....the flow goes the other way. You collect money from the government spend less, save more. Now consider that roughly 70% of our collective wealth rests in boomers hands.....do I have to draw a chart ? lol

@tonyb,

I suspect you are well aware that your comment is far too broad brushed.

As a retiree for some 18 years, I have collected very little from the government, and I have spent a great deal to do my share to stimulate the economy and promote product development choices by firms.

I have also paid my fair share (and then some) to support local, state, and federal government.

As for us boomers: We created the tremendous wealth this country has amassed since WW II, and we played a part in building the economy of the US and building or rebuilding the economies of the other countries of the world.

Unfortunately, we also amassed debt beyond our wildest dreams. When my father was in the US Congress (1940-1958, 1960-1964), he and the bulk of his colleagues in both political parties were devoted to characterizing the nations post-WW II problems and solving them. They were also devoted to maximizing opportunity in the US. They were also committed to rebuilding the world after WW II -- to wit, Japan and Western Europe.

Now, unfortunately, some of our baby-boomer politicians have discovered and exploited the flaw in our representative democracy that Alexis de Tocqueville pointed out a century and a half ago:

"The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money."

cnh

Boomers are not the problem, Tony. Hey aren't both you and I in that group and even younger boys and girls to 1964?

Nice quote from de Tocqueville above, a little literacy never hurt anyone (Democracy in America I and II-required reading for all us eggheads in the soft sciences)! But it does leave something out of the equation, i.e., corporate greed and lobbying, no?

Gov't and Big Business, the twin pillars of the military industrial complex (Eisenhower? a conservative no less!) If you go after one, you really have to go after the other if you want to be honest! Have to move past ideologies of Right and Left, I'm afraid. And, yes, that's not going to happen. There really isn't any debate here, both sides need some house cleaning before we have something fair and healthy. Now show me someone whose platform addresses that? What, no one, you say! I thought so!

afterburnt

Crony capitalism,the fox is guarding the hen house. Corporations. Are beholden to their share holders our dumbly elected representatives are supposed to be beholden tus. That is not what I see.

dee1949

... Another question for you youngsters, that have knowledge of economics. Is it better to pay down your mortgage, verses putting money into 0% savings??? How will this effect the economy?

Moose68Bash

cnh wrote: »

Boomers are not the problem, Tony. Hey aren't both you and I in that group?

Nice quote from de Tocqueville above, a little literacy never hurt anyone! But it does leave something out of the equation, i.e., corporate greed and lobbying, no?

Gov't and Big Business, the twin pillars of the military industrial complex (Eisenhower? a conservative no less!) If you go after one, you really have to go after the other if you want to be honest! Have to move past ideologies of Right and Left, I'm afraid. And, yes, that's not going to happen here.

@cnh,

Thank you. I have more than enough formal education to go around, and I always say that the best education I received was from three years of work in the limestone quarries and mills of Southern Indiana. I was an "off-bearer" on the breaker line (which means that with another guy I lifted heavy slabs off the machine and placed them on pallets), a "breaker" (which means that I swung a 16-pound sledge hammer in the quarries), and a cement mixer operator in the pre-cast concrete division of Indiana Limestone Company. But the censors would edit out my quotations from those days!

"Greed" -- or I prefer, "a vision of wealth" -- drives individuals to stake everything on products and firms they found or lead or both. This vision joins the human driver of greed with human self-confidence, energy, creativity, determination and persistence, leadership, etc. (and sometimes altruism) to create enterprises that build the wealth of nations and the world, as well as of individuals. To wit: Intel, HP, Microsoft, Apple, and myriad lesser examples.

These companies have been essential to the creation of jobs that pay well, to the improvement of productivity and the efficiency of wealth creation -- and the concomitant betterment of the lot of humanity -- than most of us will ever realize.

Government intervention has created an environment that cultivates the distortion in the market that channels the "vision of wealth" I cite above into the abuses we have seen in the our economy over the past two or three decades.

Because government regulations have caused corporate leaders to focus on quarterly results, the compensation programs for those leaders have also been disproportionately geared to quarterly or annual results. And, thus, we have situations where many, if not most, corporate leaders are not focused on building shareholder value, but in reaping the plentiful rewards of their largely self-designed compensation programs.

With respect to hedge funds and the like, these are enabled by government regulations which did not come into place to create them, but which were exploited as opportunities by those who saw how to use them to their advantage. In fact, one of my students when I was teaching at a university invented one of the derivatives that played a role in the 2008 collapse. I can't blame him for seeing the opportunity and running with it.

Unlike the vision of wealth driving entrepreneurs like Gates and Jobs, hedge fund leaders do not create something that produces wide ranging wealth for members of society and do not improve the productivity of society, but rather they create wealth for the already wealthy few who participate. Again, this phenomenon is, I believe, a distortion of a true free market that has arisen by, perhaps, well meant regulation of markets by the government. The problem is that government regulators and the economists on whom the rely are not smart enough to foresee the unintended consequences of their regulations and the extent to which smart individuals can exploit them to personal advantage. Hedging risk has a place, but clever people found ways to use hedging for the simple purpose of getting rich(er).

I'll now subside and stop my rant!

afterburnt

@Moose68Bash "The problem is that government regulators and the economists on whom the rely are not smart enough to foresee the unintended consequences of their regulations"

those terds know exactly what they are doing

cnh

No one is questioning your knowledge Moose. And I respect your background. My father was a steelworker and my mother worked in a sweatshop, thank you! I spent some time in that same factory with my father summers between college to help with my expenses. Not a stranger to hard labor I'm afraid. Have done almost every job you can in a steel factory. Why, because I was a college kid, not in the Union and the Foremen thought it would be fun to haze us and put us in "dangerous" situations with NOT enough knowledge/experience because of that! A couple of us were injured, not I.

And, I've heard all those "excuses" for the corporate world Ad nauseam. Why is it that I can meet your side halfway but you refuse to concede that there are ANY problems in the corporate world that are NOT Gov't related/created? Apple? Really? You want to go there? Good and bad, I work on China and have seen those factories. No entity is without some skeletons in their closet, no? You really want to sanctify the corporate world and blame gov't only! That's just too idealistic for me, sorry! I don't think we need rants anymore just discussion and that means "compromise" or is that not important?

Let's call it a day before we upset Polk. My apologies to the authorities!

afterburnt

"The details of my life are quite inconsequential. My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low-grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery. My mother was a 15-year-old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet. My father would womanize, he would drink, he would make outrageous claims, like he invented the question mark. Sometimes, he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy. The sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament. My childhood was typical, summers in Rangoon, luge lessons. In the spring, we'd make meat helmets. When I was insolent, I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds. Pretty standard, really."

cnh

afterburnt wrote: »

"The details of my life are quite inconsequential. My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low-grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery. My mother was a 15-year-old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet. My father would womanize, he would drink, he would make outrageous claims, like he invented the question mark. Sometimes, he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy. The sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament. My childhood was typical, summers in Rangoon, luge lessons. In the spring, we'd make meat helmets. When I was insolent, I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds. Pretty standard, really."

Brilliant! Hit the right note! Humor!

txcoastal1

cnh wrote: »

afterburnt wrote: »

"The details of my life are quite inconsequential. My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low-grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery. My mother was a 15-year-old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet. My father would womanize, he would drink, he would make outrageous claims, like he invented the question mark. Sometimes, he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy. The sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament. My childhood was typical, summers in Rangoon, luge lessons. In the spring, we'd make meat helmets. When I was insolent, I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds. Pretty standard, really."

Brilliant! Hit the right note! Humor!

But he didn't disclose what Vilma did with his junk

leftwinger57

You guys are getting way to serious. My little tale is leaving the Bronx when it was burning for S.F where the music scene was amazing. Now the 80's come and music becomes hair bands, electronic schlock, heavy heavy metal, punk and now for the worst of it all they banned Quaaludes. The nerve of them. Then comes the building boom of the mid/late 80s and condomania and all is ok w/ the world to extreme excesses. The banks who got together to initiate those fixed loans to people who never should or could afford a house in any one's dreams. I saw on 60 minutes 1 person robo signing off loans by the hundreds. Then it all crashed in 2008. Not to mention the Bernie Madoff's of the world. How much cash do you really need ??
One other fact not to many people know about. Eisenhower did start the Interstate highway system. First reason the same as the Autobahn to speed military convoys w/ ease, then for commercial trucking and lastly personal use and putting lots of people to work.

Moose68Bash

cnh wrote: »

No one is questioning your knowledge Moose. And I respect your background. My father was a steelworker and my mother worked in a sweatshop, thank you! I spent some time in that same factory with my father summers between college to help with my expenses. Not a strange to hard labor I'm afraid.

And, I've heard all those "excuses" for the corporate world Ad nauseam. Why is it that I can meet your side halfway but you refuse to concede that there are ANY problems in the corporate world. Apple? Really? You want to go there? Good and bad, I work on China and have seen those factories. No entity is without some skeletons in their closet, no? You really want to sanctify the corporate world and blame gov't only! That's just too idealistic for me, sorry!

I'm sorry, I misled you about my opinion.

I don't think anybody or any corporation is perfect.

My point is that the free market that cultivated an entrepreneurial "tsunami" after WW II had incredible benefits for the "wealth of nations" -- and I mean nations and society as a whole, including individuals within society. And, some individuals, who played large parts in this tsunami, benefited far more than others.

Tools of production created by American industry post-WW II have not only created immense wealth for founders and employees of the enterprises that developed them and brought them to market, they have enabled other enterprises all over the world to do much more, with much less, in shorter and shorter time periods.

Just think of the differences between the way people work today with Microsoft Office in hand compared with the way they worked before the person computer and MS Office software.

Think of the cost wrung out of all sorts of enterprises -- public and private -- by the use of database software and the applications that run on modern relational databases. Some of the effects of this technology are obviously beneficial; others (e.g., pop-up windows) are annoying at best. Others are downright diabolical (e.g., hackers stealing personal identities).

As good as some of these entrepreneurial "corporate citizens" were, none was perfect, nor would any presume to be.

HP was a leader in corporate responsibility, as was one of the companies for which I worked for a while -- Cummins Engine Company. But all had their "warts."

Apple has, indeed, been guilty of many excesses, but it has certainly changed the world, which was Steve Jobs's goal. Many of these changes in art, printing, and education are commendable. Others, maybe not so much!

I make no excuses for the corporate world.

In fact, I am as aware of and as critical as most reasonable people about the excesses of the corporate world. I might even confess to have contributed to some of them over my career.

My point is that "geniuses" who design regulations that are adopted to correct many corporate excesses create more problems than they solve. The good old American pragmatists Charles Saunders Pierce said that we never fully understand our ideas until we know their practical consequences, and too many designers of regulations think their concepts are far more important than their knowledge of practical consequences of these concepts.

Our economy is far to complex, and it changes far to rapidly, for mere mortals to believe they either understand it fully or can broadly regulate it effectively.

Some excesses are so severe that they have to be regulated -- unsafe and abysmal working conditions, water and air pollution, fraud in financial reporting, etc., etc. -- but regulations are frequently as excessive as abuses they are trying to remedy.

I'll go back to where I started: I believe the collective wisdom of individuals making purchasing and investment decisions -- over time -- is a far more reliable "regulator" than the academics and politicians who think they know how to choose best for everybody.

Yes, the effects of collective consumer choices may appear less efficient than a quick regulation promulgated by geniuses and academics -- e.g., in response to a financial crisis like that we suffered in 2008 -- but I suspect the longer-term remedy of letting the free market correct itself more freely would have put this country back on the right track far more permanently.

Just my humble opinion.

cnh

Moose68Bash wrote: »

cnh wrote: »

No one is questioning your knowledge Moose. And I respect your background. My father was a steelworker and my mother worked in a sweatshop, thank you! I spent some time in that same factory with my father summers between college to help with my expenses. Not a strange to hard labor I'm afraid.

And, I've heard all those "excuses" for the corporate world Ad nauseam. Why is it that I can meet your side halfway but you refuse to concede that there are ANY problems in the corporate world. Apple? Really? You want to go there? Good and bad, I work on China and have seen those factories. No entity is without some skeletons in their closet, no? You really want to sanctify the corporate world and blame gov't only! That's just too idealistic for me, sorry!

I'm sorry, I misled you about my opinion.

I don't think anybody or any corporation is perfect.

My point is that the free market that cultivated an entrepreneurial "tsunami" after WW II had incredible benefits for the "wealth of nations" -- and I mean nations and society as a whole, including individuals within society. And, some individuals, who played large parts in this tsunami, benefited far more than others.

Tools of production created by American industry post-WW II have not only created immense wealth for founders and employees of the enterprises that developed them and brought them to market, they have enabled other enterprises all over the world to do much more, with much less, in shorter and shorter time periods.

Just think of the differences between the way people work today with Microsoft Office in hand compared with the way they worked before the person computer and MS Office software.

Think of the cost wrung out of all sorts of enterprises -- public and private -- by the use of database software and the applications that run on modern relational databases. Some of the effects of this technology are obviously beneficial; others (e.g., pop-up windows) are annoying at best. Others are downright diabolical (e.g., hackers stealing personal identities).

As good as some of these entrepreneurial "corporate citizens" were, none was perfect, nor would any presume to be.

HP was a leader in corporate responsibility, as was one of the companies for which I worked for a while -- Cummins Engine Company. But all had their "warts."

Apple has, indeed, been guilty of many excesses, but it has certainly changed the world, which was Steve Jobs's goal. Many of these changes in art, printing, and education are commendable. Others, maybe not so much!

I make no excuses for the corporate world.

In fact, I am as aware of and as critical as most reasonable people about the excesses of the corporate world. I might even confess to have contributed to some of them over my career.

My point is that "geniuses" who design regulations that are adopted to correct many corporate excesses create more problems than they solve. The good old American pragmatists Charles Saunders Pierce said that we never fully understand our ideas until we know their practical consequences, and too many designers of regulations think their concepts are far more important than their knowledge of practical consequences of these concepts.

Our economy is far to complex, and it changes far to rapidly, for mere mortals to believe they either understand it fully or can broadly regulate it effectively.

Some excesses are so severe that they have to be regulated -- unsafe and abysmal working conditions, water and air pollution, fraud in financial reporting, etc., etc. -- but regulations are frequently as excessive as abuses they are trying to remedy.

I'll go back to where I started: I believe the collective wisdom of individuals making purchasing and investment decisions -- over time -- is a far more reliable "regulator" than the academics and politicians who think they know how to choose best for everybody.

Yes, the effects of collective consumer choices may appear less efficient than a quick regulation promulgated by geniuses and academics -- e.g., in response to a financial crisis like that we suffered in 2008 -- but I suspect the longer-term remedy of letting the free market correct itself more freely would have put this country back on the right track far more permanently.

Just my humble opinion.

Now we're actually conversing. There is a LOT I can agree with above, maybe not everything but most of it. And that's good!

And Academics? Even though I am one, I have to tell you the majority of my colleagues are "spineless"! They can't even stand up, consistently, for what they supposedly believe in faculty meetings even when they have tenure, God forbid! It disgusts me. It takes a person of substance to take a stand and unfortunately, many academics are inherently insecure individuals because of their training. In my field you can't even say WHAT you think anymore because someone "might" attack you, so you play a game of words of almost saying something (or what I call the, and don't take it as pejorative, the third world intellectual ploy). You're always on the edge of saying something PROFOUND, but never quite get it out as you misdirect and suggest and qualify. And you sound oh so deep, but the Emperor has no clothes. I find myself asking far too many questions at conferences and watching a lot of colleagues disapprove! lol

Moose68Bash

cnh wrote: »

And Academics? Even though I am one, I have to tell you the majority of my colleagues are "spineless"! They can't even stand up, consistently, for what they supposedly believe in faculty meetings even when they have tenure, God forbid! It disgusts me. It takes a person of substance to take a stand and unfortunately, many academics are inherently insecure individuals because of their training. In my field you can't even say WHAT you think anymore because someone "might" attack you, so you play a game of words of almost saying something (or what I call the, and don't take it as pejorative, the third world intellectual ploy). You're always on the edge of saying something PROFOUND, but never quite get it out as you misdirect and suggest and qualify. And you sound oh so deep, but the Emperor has no clothes. I find myself asking far too many questions at conferences and watching a lot of colleagues disapprove! lol

@cnh,

As the saying goes, I've been there and done that, albeit that I seldom pulled my punches, verbally speaking. I left academia to go into the business/corporate world over 30 years ago, when things were much better than they are today.

The so-called "liberal life of the mind" as found in today's academia is not truly liberal, and it is often mindless -- that is, unquestioned expression of and adherence to politically correct points of view.

Keep asking questions!

tonyb

Good points gents, and my comments about retired folks wasn't meant to be broad brushed, simply an added concern.

We all have different periods of what we'd consider our "Glory days" personally or country wise. I think most of us can agree though those glory days of the past are gone.

I simply have a hard time wrapping my head around at our inability to solve problems, even simply identifying the root causes. Maybe because we are too polarized these days ? Heck, we can't even learn from our own mistakes a few decades ago.

I often look back at earlier civilizations, Greece, Rome, Europe, and find we are repeating the same steps but expecting a different outcome......ignoring the red flags.

One would think if the country is to survive the next 1000 years, we'd have to break that cycle. Easier said than done huh.

afterburnt

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy."

D_M

Guys,

I have done a fairly decent job of staying out of these discussions, but here I go wading into the thick of it. The government is not the Boogeyman. Public policy rarely, if ever leads. It is a reactionary result of a particular industry malfeasance. Policy makers are not sitting around itching to write new regulations. Regulations are spurred by citizen engagement, whether it is individually, or collectively as part of an advocacy group. The Federal Administrative Procedure Act and its state level counterpart governs the process.

What does my little blurb mean? Information presented at public congressional hearings and public meetings held by the delegated authority results in our regulations. Evidence for action is provided by citizens. It isn't various government agencies or departments sitting around a table solely relaying on governmental collected data. We the citizens, give us the citizens, the regulations that we have, not some nebulous entity. Next time you find yourself saying government regulation this, or government regulation that, I encourage you to think a little deeper. Ask yourself why our fellow citizens felt a regulation was needed.

tonyb

If that's the case.....I want to know who thought regulating rain water was a good idea, which citizens in mass came forth ? Which farmers came forth and demanded their livestock be regulated, the water on their land, and the land use itself ?

Which citizens in mass came forth to regulate the internet ? Who was it that demanded smart meters....tracking devices, red light camera's ? I could go on but you get the point.

Regulations are rarely from public outcry and if they are it's a minority of people and some of that minority is paid protesters from others pushing agendas.

Let me ask you this.....ever seen a regulation go away ? Even when people cry about it ? Why not....if the citizens control the process ?

It's because they don't.....regulations to a certain degree is used for social engineering. What you can't accomplish by law with a consensus, you accomplish with regulations dictated to you.

You would have us believe that regulations, dictated by corrupt government agencies, sponsored by corporate interests, is citizen driven ? You might want to think on that one a tad bit longer.

cnh

tonyb wrote: »

If that's the case.....I want to know who thought regulating rain water was a good idea, which citizens in mass came forth ? Which farmers came forth and demanded their livestock be regulated, the water on their land, and the land use itself ?

Which citizens in mass came forth to regulate the internet ? Who was it that demanded smart meters....tracking devices, red light camera's ? I could go on but you get the point.

Regulations are rarely from public outcry and if they are it's a minority of people and some of that minority is paid protesters from others pushing agendas.

Let me ask you this.....ever seen a regulation go away ? Even when people cry about it ? Why not....if the citizens control the process ?

It's because they don't.....regulations to a certain degree is used for social engineering. What you can't accomplish by law with a consensus, you accomplish with regulations dictated to you.

You would have us believe that regulations, dictated by corrupt government agencies, sponsored by corporate interests, is citizen driven ? You might want to think on that one a tad bit longer.

Once again, it's probably necessary to look at the history of each case-but, to be fair, Tony does qualify his statements above. Certainly, some regulations are a response to violations of public health and well being (toxic water, oil spills, tainted agricultural products and so on) AND, some are exactly what Tony is stating above. Have to be careful about regulations and generalizing about them. Watchfulness and disclosure are important. The early history of the factory, labor, work, and numerous safety violations that occurred there are an example of the first. And there is abundant documentation of gov't waste, absurdity, and excess as well. So both points are fair comments to an extent. I don't care for Either/Or, that's an issue for religious existentialists, a leap of faith, if you will?