GoFuckYourself.com - Adult Webmaster Forum - View Single Post - Would the US economy be in better shape had Ron Paul won?

kane · 05-01-2009, 03:49 AM

That is a pretty cool video.
I strongly agree with a lot of what he said but I think is some spots it seems to be an oversimplification of the situation.

For example he talks about how a million people will use government stimulus to get their windows weatherized and this will cause problems because now some business owners doing regular jobs will be bidding against the government (who is paying companies to weatherize windows) for real free market jobs and that if a million people really needed their windows weatherized they would go out and find a company to do it. With the government stepping into this business it is causing too many resources to be spent on something that doesn't really produce a profit for the investment and hurts the current industry. Well, what if a person needed this work done and didn't have the money? They aren't then going to enter into the free market and hire someone because they can't afford it. The stimulus money gives them that money to hire the work done. So to say that these people would have done it on their own might not be correct. Also many of these companies were in existence before the stimulus, they were not just created to take care of stimulus based window weatherizing. If they were swamped with work beforehand they could just turn the jobs down, so maybe the stimulus is helping them get some income to pay their employees until the economy picks back up and they get other jobs. And in the end if a million people have newly weatherized windows they will probably use less energy to heat and cool their homes which isn't a bad thing.

Another thing he talks about is that a lot of this stimulus work is worthless because it doesn't produce anything that has an economic value. Well, that is the nature of some of the stuff in our society. The government pays a lot of money to pave the roads and to hire firemen and cops and paramedics. They pay a lot of money to maintain bridges and to hire people like public defenders, prosecutors, judges and so on. These things don't create products or profit, but they are things that a society needs to function and they are things (at least most of them) that are better off not done by the private sector. I understand that usually the government hires private companies to pave roads and do things like that, but you don't want private companies running police stations and DA's offices. So some of these things IE roads and bridges and stuff like that were in dire need of repair, putting money into them isn't going to create a profit, but if it puts people to work doing a job that needs to be done. I don't see what the big deal is.

He says that construction companies that are being hired to do these stimulus jobs and could not be operating on their own should be left to fold and those workers should be re-deployed into other jobs. It is easy to say that when those things are numbers on a spreadsheet. It is not so easy when those re-deployed workers are real people who will then be unemployed and may lose their homes, savings, retirement and who knows what else as they try to survive while looking for other work.

I'm not saying we should be a charity nation, my point is that if these companies had been in business for years and have good crews that do good work I don't see the harm in hiring them to fix some roads or bridges or buildings or any number of things that need to be fixed. We need this work done, why not hire them to do it and keep them working then as the economy turns around they can go back to doing what they were before instead of just having the company collapse then in a few years as things turn around the owner has to piece it all back together again.

Still, he says some great stuff. I strongly agree with a lot of what he says about fiscal responsibility. I know the stimulus is a big spending bill, but aside from that our government wastes a ton of money on things they don't need to waste it on and it has been doing this for years and years and years and I would love to see them get away from that. I would also like to see us stop handing money to companies like AIG without any kind of real idea what they are doing with it or how they are going to turn themselves around. If they fail it will be ugly, but if they are eventually going to fail they should do it now, not after they have spent hundreds of billions of our dollars.

05-01-2009, 03:49 AM
kane Too lazy to set a custom title Join Date: Aug 2001 Location: portland, OR Posts: 20,684	That is a pretty cool video. I strongly agree with a lot of what he said but I think is some spots it seems to be an oversimplification of the situation. For example he talks about how a million people will use government stimulus to get their windows weatherized and this will cause problems because now some business owners doing regular jobs will be bidding against the government (who is paying companies to weatherize windows) for real free market jobs and that if a million people really needed their windows weatherized they would go out and find a company to do it. With the government stepping into this business it is causing too many resources to be spent on something that doesn't really produce a profit for the investment and hurts the current industry. Well, what if a person needed this work done and didn't have the money? They aren't then going to enter into the free market and hire someone because they can't afford it. The stimulus money gives them that money to hire the work done. So to say that these people would have done it on their own might not be correct. Also many of these companies were in existence before the stimulus, they were not just created to take care of stimulus based window weatherizing. If they were swamped with work beforehand they could just turn the jobs down, so maybe the stimulus is helping them get some income to pay their employees until the economy picks back up and they get other jobs. And in the end if a million people have newly weatherized windows they will probably use less energy to heat and cool their homes which isn't a bad thing. Another thing he talks about is that a lot of this stimulus work is worthless because it doesn't produce anything that has an economic value. Well, that is the nature of some of the stuff in our society. The government pays a lot of money to pave the roads and to hire firemen and cops and paramedics. They pay a lot of money to maintain bridges and to hire people like public defenders, prosecutors, judges and so on. These things don't create products or profit, but they are things that a society needs to function and they are things (at least most of them) that are better off not done by the private sector. I understand that usually the government hires private companies to pave roads and do things like that, but you don't want private companies running police stations and DA's offices. So some of these things IE roads and bridges and stuff like that were in dire need of repair, putting money into them isn't going to create a profit, but if it puts people to work doing a job that needs to be done. I don't see what the big deal is. He says that construction companies that are being hired to do these stimulus jobs and could not be operating on their own should be left to fold and those workers should be re-deployed into other jobs. It is easy to say that when those things are numbers on a spreadsheet. It is not so easy when those re-deployed workers are real people who will then be unemployed and may lose their homes, savings, retirement and who knows what else as they try to survive while looking for other work. I'm not saying we should be a charity nation, my point is that if these companies had been in business for years and have good crews that do good work I don't see the harm in hiring them to fix some roads or bridges or buildings or any number of things that need to be fixed. We need this work done, why not hire them to do it and keep them working then as the economy turns around they can go back to doing what they were before instead of just having the company collapse then in a few years as things turn around the owner has to piece it all back together again. Still, he says some great stuff. I strongly agree with a lot of what he says about fiscal responsibility. I know the stimulus is a big spending bill, but aside from that our government wastes a ton of money on things they don't need to waste it on and it has been doing this for years and years and years and I would love to see them get away from that. I would also like to see us stop handing money to companies like AIG without any kind of real idea what they are doing with it or how they are going to turn themselves around. If they fail it will be ugly, but if they are eventually going to fail they should do it now, not after they have spent hundreds of billions of our dollars.