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December 29th 04, 06:23 PM

Mike Coslo wrote:
N2EY wrote:

In article ,
(Steve
Robeson K4YZ) writes:

snip

Yeah...fixed by Mr. 15% Inflation Carter. Uh huh...I remember. He
enacted
a 17.5% one time parity raise for the Armed Forces, then taxed the
bee-jeebers out of us.

WHOA!

Let's look at exactly what happened in that time period!

First off, the govt. started deficit spending in the '60s to pay
for LBJ's
"Great Society", the Vietnam war, and the "space race". This
deficit spending
and other fiscal changes resulted in rising inflation and interest
rates.

Nixon and Ford tried to fight inflation with price and wage
controls. (Remember
"WIN buttons"?). Didn't work - all that it did was delay the
problem and make
it worse.

Isn't it amusing that the most left-wing socialist utterly failed
fiscal policy was implemented by *which party*?

Think about *why*. Then as now, raising taxes was political suicide.

In 1973 we got the OPEC boycott, and when it ended gasoline prices
were
doubled. Which affected *all* energy costs, and all businesses that
use energy,
and fed inflation like - throwing gasoline on a fire.

Carter inherited that mess from his Republican predecessors - who
had inherited
the elements that started the mess from their Democrat
predecessors.

All of whom were too busy fighting Commies and going to the moon to
notice that the Japanese and Europeans were quietly but steadily
getting ahead in their industrial capabilities.

Taxes were raised to keep the deficit from going even higher. At a
time of high
interest rates, a high deficit can cause a runaway situation
because you need
more and more money just to pay the interest on the loans.

You don't necessarily need high interest rates, Jim. They can
suppress
the inflation for a little bit, but only a year or two.

What I meant was that if interest rates are high, much of the money
coming in as taxes goes right back out again to pay the interest on the
debt. Those taxes don't fund any government programs at all, they
simply make the loanholders richer and the taxpayers poorer.

I'm noticing inflation nipping at the edges of my purchases. Where I

get Breakfast at McD's they have raised the prices by 10 percent

I gave up the Golden Arches years ago.

this
week. My XYL's flooring suppliers have announced a 20 percent hike
effective 1/1/2005.

Part of that is due to Florida, of all things. The destruction caused
by the hurricanes has caused prices of most building materials to rise.
I'm in the process of buying a new garden shed and some fencing, and
the supplier has had to tack on a surcharge because of the increased
prices of lumber.

People that think that we can support a virtually unlimited deficit
coupled with tax cuts *without* inflation are the same people that
thought that there was a new paradigm afoot in the stock market
during
the late 90's.

Sort of. The old boom-bust cycle isn't a law of nature. But the fact
that you eventually have to live within your means *is*.

If you continue to spend more than you make, you eventually go
bankrupt. It's that simple. Despite all we do, all the adjustments,
all
all of it, we can not ignore a fundamental rule.

It's as true as gravity.

One way that it comes out is inflation. Money becomes worth less over
time, because it is being created without anything to back it. Or to
put it another way, money production exceeds real production.

Oddly enough, inflation is ultimately the enemy of the rich and the
would-be rich. That's because it eats up investment.

I remember a time when you could have a very nice middleclass life on
$10,000/yr. Which meant that if someone could get about $200,000 in
investments yielding 5%, they'd be set. Today you need five to ten
times that amount for a comparable lifestyle. In many cases, people's
ability to save and invest is outstripped by inflation.

So they get into the mindset of borrow, enjoy and spend *now*, rather
than save for later.

And in 1979 we got another OPEC boycott and another doubling of
gasoline
prices.

So don't blame Jimmy Carter without also blaming those who came
before him.

Blaming Carter for high inflation is simply so incorrect. Here is
another case of words and actions differing. Here you have an honest
and
honorable man who was president at a difficult time in American
history,
when we struggled to pay back those Moonshot and War expenses, and
yet
he is ridiculed as a weak and ineffective president.

Absolutely true. Don't forget the "Great Society" funding, too.

So much for "Character counts" !!!

History will probably be much kinder to JC than so many of us are
now.

Consider the Middle East. Carter was able to get Israel and Egypt to
sign the Camp David accords, which have held for more than a quarter
century. An agreement between longtime enemies in a part of the world
where an agreement that lasts a week is a big deal. And even though the
agreement cost the Egyptian president his life, and cost Israel a lot
of territory, it has held up. Nobody before or since was able to get a
Middle East agreement like that.

But Carter is remembered by many for the Shah of Iran fiasco rather
than for the Camp David accords. btw, the main reason Carter allowed
the Shah to enter the USA (which event so angered the Iranians that
they took over the embassy in Tehran) was that Henry Kissinger advised
him to do it.

And the fact remains that married couples who both work pay *more*
federal
income taxes than if they weren't married. That "marriage penalty"
was partly
fixed by Carter and then unfixed by Reagan. If the Republicans are
truly for
"family values", why is the penalty still there? It amounts to
serious money,
not just a few dollars.

When actions and words differ, I rely on actions. Unfortunately, it
seems too many people rely on the words these days. Makes 'em very
easy
to manipulate.

Yep.

Didja see my stuff about which states have the highest and lowest
divorce rates, and how that correlates to red vs. blue?

snip

Of course it's usually narcotics...You can always tell the real
abusers...They eat the narcs like M&M's, then wind up stopping the
intestinal
tract. Then they develop a bowel obstrcution for which they ahve
to go to
surgery. And of course surgery means more meds...See where this
goes...???

Round and round....

I think that maybe it is Darwinism in action. Too bad we have to
foot
the bill.

We foot it in more ways than money, too.

snip

Personally, I am all for "all of the above". I would add a
whole
section
of the Sunday paper with a full color mug shots of those convicted
of bilking
assistance programs because that's stealing from you and I. Peer
pressure
and
a bit of humiliation go a long way towards modifying undesired
behaviour.

That's a bit hazardous. If someone was convicted of fraud but then
later won on
appeal, they'd go after the paper and the agencies in a big way for
"distress"
and "defamation".

Steve, does your mug shots include people who steal money from the
Social security program?

And someone willing to play the game might not be that humiliated.

It won't work. In this day and age, there are people willing to
humiliate themselves to get on programs such as Jackass, The Swan,
Survivor, (pick a theme) Jerry Springer, or any of the other
television
shows that allow idiots to get their visage on TV. There might be
people
lined up to do this.

I disagree about "The Swan" but agree about all the rest.

I recall that in some places there were anti-prostitution efforts
that focused
on the *customers* rather than the *workers*, so to speak. Pictures
and names
in the paper and all. I dunno how well those programs fared.

This usually fails. Some of the people who frequent those
prostitutes
have deeep pockets, and aren't in a position to be affected by public
shame.

You mean like that actor who used to "date" Elizabeth Hurley? (btw,
when did the word "date" become a euphemism for "have sex with"?)

There was a so-called Christian group semi-locally who were taking
pictures of license plates of people parked at adult book stores (do
they actually sell any books?) That usually goes on until they get
sued,
and of course invariably someone is caught that ends up being an
embarrassment to the fundies.

Like that TV preacher?

See also my post about divorce rates. Also where certain shows like the
much-criticized "Desperate Housewives" have the highest ratings).

This all relates to amateur radio in a very basic way:

The abuses mentioned by Steve and I are all the result of a mindset
that
focuses on "rights" to the exclusion of *responsibilites*. Many of
us see
proposed reductions in the standards of the ARS as a form of that
mindset.

Jim, that is a *major* stretch, almost as if I were to say that
*any*
message here is on topic, as well as any reply I make because my
primary
mode is PSK31, which involves typing, and all these messages are
typed! 8^)

I don't see it as a stretch at all.

You and Steve will never change each others minds about this
political
stuff.

Maybe not, but neither will we allow mistakes by the other to go
uncorrected.

If nothing else, you two have brought out that neither party has
a lock on fiscal responsibility, ethics, honesty, big picture
thinking
or any of the other qualities we (should) look for in our leaders.

Agreed! But in some ways it's even simpler than that.

Consider the presidential elections since 1979...

In each case, did the candidate who demonstrated the most intelligence
win?

I say no - not in *any* case.

73 de Jim, N2EY