Republican Primaries

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Youtube commenters are not the general public. Paul has extreme stances- for one, he wants to completely dismantle the social safety net, including Social Security and Medicare. Those two stances alone make him unacceptable to 80+% of Americans who want those programs preserved. Of the remaining tiny minority of social Darwinists who might accept destroying social welfare programs, a large portion are foreign policy hawks who will not accept his push toward demilitarization. Already we are probably at less than 5% of the broader US population that would be willing to support Paul, and that's without getting into his economic positions, which are also fringe. He has no chance in hell.

I know YouTube does not represent the general population on the whole, but it is still an interesting source of information, and the consensus on the internet at the moment is that most people support Ron Paul.

Here's another video full of Ron Paul comments, this time Mitt Romney: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAcxwfkAdDY

Isn't that what all Republicans want, in their heart-of-hearts?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_exclusive ... gop-debate



Our news reporters can't process words like "Keynesian bubble" and "monetary policy"

Dumb questions, like "do you like Conan O"Brian or Dancing with the stars?' our reporters can handle. But, when a candidate brings up the subject of monetary policy, it is too "obscure" for them.

All any of that demonstrates is that Paul supporters spam comment threads everywhere they find them.

Panda: Paul is much more brazen, and more extreme, in his desire to destroy the safety net.

I probably should read over the debate, but WTF is a "Keynesian bubble"? Is it an economic bubble described by Keyne's framework or a New Keynesian framework or is it the "bubble" policy analysts versed in (New) Keynesian economics are in? If it's the later, that hardly inspires confidence in Ron Paul's "wonk" credentials - all it proves is that he's a typical vulgar Austrian who'll blame everything on "Keynesianism" without even really understanding what it is.

Well, the news reporters really should be calling him out on this. But, they won't.



Well, is that better than George Bush last time, who immediately upon being re-elected, went about trying to destroy Social Security? He never mentioned a word of this during the campaign, and would certainly have lost the election had he made his intentions clear.

Well, I suppose that it could be argued that President Bush at least gave up on his cockamamie scheme, whereas a President Paul really wouldn't give up, which makes President Bush less evil.

Still, I would prefer candidates to be clear, rather than just blaming President Obama for everything and then equivocating about what they would do differently.

Transcript of the debate:

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/ ... se.02.html

Thanks for that. Now, we have the opportunity to pick apart specific points and promises on the part of the various candidates.

It is true that ours is the world's reserve currency, and that our politicians have taken full advantage of that situation. However, he has it backwards. A weak currency would invite capital and create jobs. A strong currency encourages imports.


Of course, other countries are using our currency, especially for international trade. Various countries may tax the transactions as they wish. Using the dollars for transactions within the USA may also result in taxes.


This makes no sense at all.


Deliberately weakening our currency would discourage jobs from going overseas. In fact, the Chinese have been accused of deliberately weakening their currency, in order to attract capital and build jobs.

Okay, Ron Paul is nuts.

Why doesn't this wench just dye her hair blonde?

Here is the CBO explanation for the reduction in jobs:

http://dailycaller.com/2011/02/10/cbo-o ... 0000-jobs/


...which is actually a good thing.

And, suddenly, the Republicans are crying for Senior Citizens, when they really want to eliminate social security and medicare in the first place.

AARP is generally in favour of President Obama's health care reform laws.

Right. And it's not literal jobs, it's an abstracted estimate of a reduction in man hours. One element of that is the very sick reducing their workload to seek treatment. Another is people not having to work x hours to get health insurance access.

She's a politician saying stupid things for the sheep.

Name-calling, stereotypes, and bigotry. You'd think we could get past these things on an aspie board.

It's very easy to pick two issues out for any politician then use those as examples that the politician is out of touch with the public. Lets try it. Most Americans support a late term abortion ban, Obama does not. A majority of Americans support the repeal of Obamacare, Obama does not. Those two stances alone make him unacceptable to 80+% of Americans ... He has no chance in hell .... But wait, the logic does not fit, Obama does have a good chance to win.

Cherry picking is a logical fallacy

You are incorrect. Social Security and Medicare routinely rate as among the highest priorities of the American voters in polls. Opposition to cuts in those programs is much more unanimous, and much more intense, than support for late-term abortion bans or repealing PPACA. Proposing to eliminate the two most popular government programs in American history is a recipe for destroying your chances at election. Americans have no interest in cutting Social Security, not even to balance the budget.

Additionally, you clipped out the middle portion of my post listing other factors that make Paul unpalatable to the general electorate. And further, my figure of 80+% was not made up. Yours was.

Abortion didn't come up in the last debate, did it?


This is false.

You have to admit, she does fit the stereotype of the dumb blonde. All she needs is blonde hair.

While a strong currency encourages imports, a weak currency does not necessarily invite capital and create jobs. A currency that is weak because of high inflation relative to nominal growth rates discourages capital. What attracts capital is after tax real returns - nominal growth minus taxes minus inflation. A weak currency only plays into it if the currency is also expected to get stronger, contributing to nominal growth of the asset; if the currency is stable, weakness or strength makes no difference.


You don't understand what he's getting at here. He's not talking about taxes on transactions. He's talking about taxes on corporate income - which is to say, on return on capital.

Corporate income that is earned overseas - for example in much of Europe - is typically taxed at a lower rate than corporate income earned in the U.S. In addition, taxes on dividends and capital gains are often lower than in the U.S. That means the investor gets to keep more of the return on his investment. That's an incentive to invest overseas rather than in the U.S., and keeps the capital that's needed for development of new manufacturing jobs outside the U.S.

Ron Paul is absolutely correct in what he says here. I don't necessarily agree with the policy he advocates - I don't place the same importance on manufacturing as he does, and I worry more about the lost revenue if you get rid of corporate income taxes - but his logic is correct.

Granted if he was unable to explain it in a way you could understand, probably not a lot of the audience understood it either. To me, Gingrich was the guy who truly had economics knowledge at his fingertips. Pity he doesn't know how to run a campaign.