Would the US economy be in better shape had Ron Paul won?
 

Okay, let's assume the IMPOSSIBLE happened and Ron Paul won the Republican primary and won the general election. Do you think the economy would be in better shape if he had won? How?

Here's an interesting video on what happened in 1920 when the government didn't do anything to intervene in the economy (even cut taxes, actually)

Honestly it would not be.
The majority of what he wants to do, he can not do as the president.
Then everything he wanted to do that requires congress or the senate - very little chance as neither side would be that interested in helping him out since he would want to make damn sure they got nothing at all for their districts.

Ron paul would install himself dictator, make the the changes necessary to institute his policies, declare every thing he did unconstitutional, veto himself and then slip in some good ol pork barrel spending into his own impeachment proceedings.

Ron Paul is pretty retarded.

So reducing the size of government, going back to the gold standard, reducing taxes, etc is now impossible?

Can the president do those things by himself?

PS what is the hoopla about the gold standard, I mean honestly. Sure it sounds neat cause well there is gold, but well nobody uses that standard do they?

Well reality is what it is so the answer to all three is yes.

No, not by himself obviously (legislation is the Constitutional domain of the Legislature with delegation to some executive branch rules/regulation making agencies) but he can spearhead the effort. I see your point regarding Congressional institutional self-interest blocking such changes.

As much as I am opposed to a lot of his unrealistic policies, considered the rapid march towards state run corporatist socialism that Obama has put us on, Ron Paul certainly would not have been this bad. Basically any choice would have been better than the current unmitigated disaster.

Because it forces central banks to some modicum of discipline. There's none now with 100% fiat money. Helicopter presses cranking out cash causing inflation down the road.

That was my biggest misgiving about Ron Paul--he lets the Perfect become the enemy of the good.

He certainly does seem to have more of a clue than Obama and McCain do... he seems to really understand what is happening, without the need for advisors or teleprompters.

But could he do better? I doubt it, not in such a short period of time anyway. Probably not worse either.

I think that 100 days is too short to really judge unless the person could work miracles or cause disasters. Any solutions worth a grain of salt are longer term solutions and therefore can't be judged immediately.

Probably worse off now, better in 10 years, and way better in 50.

trying to argue "what might be" is pretty fruitless since the primary driving force that determines success or failure of government policy is the degree unintended consequences play a role.

No, Ron Paul is actually one of the smartest men you have there, and called many of these things a long time ago.

He is vastly more educated than most you have in power too, and while what he wanted to do would be impossible because your system wouldn't allow it, what he wanted to do makes perfect sense.

And thus he should spend his time educating people (voters) and getting behind small town politics creating his own movement instead of being highly unrealistic in attempting to become president when it would of ended up with him being a lame duck. If someone wants the system to really change, they need to start with local politics - mayors, city council, etc. These people eventually move up the chains.

it depends really in every individual

Hindsight is 20/20.

Would the economy be in better shape if the election would have been different and we had a different president the last 100 days? I seriously doubt it.

Obama has been in office three fucking months. I don't care who you are... shit doesn't happen that fast.

That was a really excellent video, I watched the whole thing. Very enlightening... Thank you.

Brad

Don't know.. interesting video.. watched a little of it..

I can't even pretend to care about making an objective answer, but Malicious Biz made me laugh.

The new presidency is what, a few months old? it makes difference who was voted in, there was no stopping the recession by this point...

somebody said ru paul?

http://www.rem.ufpr.br/REMv7/Brett_Wood/RuPaul.jpg

need some more tin-foil for your hat?

In theory, I support a lot of what true libertarianism is all about.

But:
1. Too many libertarians take their theories to lengths which would never be workable in today's world (e.g. a return to the gold standard). Attempts to create Utopia have never succeeded, and they're more unlikely to succeed now than ever. The reason the Greens have been semi-successful in parts of Europe is that they've learned that they have to work incrementally and compromise; "rabid" libertarians would never agree to that approach.
2. When the US and the world are in the midst of a crisis like the one we're in, there's no way that *this* is the time to experiment with libertarianism - it would be too much of a shock to the system and things would come crashing down. A prolonged period of peace and prosperity (if such a thing is possible in the 21st century) would be the ideal time to try libertarian ideas.
3. As previously stated, with a Congress that is primarily concerned with its own agenda and re-election prospects, there would be no way that any libertarian president could push through much of anything. It would have to be a build from the bottom-up in order to be successful.
4. With the Republican party in a shambles and on a self-prescribed path toward irrelevancy, now would be the ideal time to start to build a "realistic" version of a Libertarian party, from the bottom up.
What Obama's election (in a time of crisis and fresh off a disasterous presidency) really proved is that America is open to electing a rational, intelligent politician even if his policies aren't completely to a majority of the voters' liking - as long as the voters don't think that their *own lives* will be turned upside down by the result.
Ron Paul may be rational and intelligent, and viewed as such within the narrow framework of his believers - but his strict libertarian agenda comes across as radical and frightening to many Americans.
The many disaffected Republicans who don't march to the drumbeat of Rush, Cheney and Rove would be an ideal starting base for a new, "realistic" libertarian-style party, dedicated to incremental change within the existing system.
But if there's an unstated litmus test for Libertarians, as there is now for Republicans, it'll never happen.

This former political scientist and journalist will now return to the business of pedding porn. :1orglaugh

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.

Shit, I'm just relieved someone around this motherfucker knows enough about Ron Paul in order to get the joke I made in the first place. Kudos to you.