[Jongpil Yun]

Originally Posted by Vegetta

I said I was a moderate not a conservative - I realize that mismanagement and unions have done more to ruin manufacturing in the US than the government. You think business subsidies are bs That is your right. I think a lot of the social programs funded by the government are BS - they don't really help anyone (enough) and like many charitable organizations use much too large a percentage of their capital on operating costs instead of getting the money to where it will and can do the most good.

Mismanagement, maybe, but the fact of the matter is, with our dollar climbing, wages increasing, and the industrialization of other countries, the US steel & auto industries were poised on the brink of failure anyways.

I'm not sure where your hatred of unions comes from -- they're a legitimate free-market tactic to give the labor force as a whole bargaining power. Obviously their old mafia ties and the like are bullshit, but those came about as a response to all the violence against them.

Are a lot of the social programs funded by the government inefficient? Probably. Free market pressures lead to the highest efficiency, and government programs are usually not subject to free market pressures. But I have to profess ignorance on the topic, because quite frankly, I have no idea what the hell to do about the problem, and I don't want to speak about something I know very little about.

I guess you didn't get that I am not really pro Bush

IMO considering Bush to be better than Carter as a president counts as being pro-Bush in the face of his monumental failures.

I don't think global warming is a result of mans impact on the planet. Weather is cyclical there are many periods of prolonged hot and cold.

I don't know shit about climatology. I'm willing to bet you don't know shit about it either. I think the appropriate response in the face of personal ignorance is to accept scientific consensus. I personally have no right to have an opinion on climate change. My "opinion" is simply the tacit acceptance of the peer-reviewed literature cited by the leading climatologists evidencing human involvement in global warming.

He didnt do much to stop it from happening - actually with all of the fucked up things he had to deal with it is a miracle he accomplished anything...

The problem with Carter is that he was simply inept. He was elected on populist, ethos, I'm-an-everyman rhetoric just like Bush was, and in both cases, it led to the wrong person being chosen for the job.

Again, I point the finger more at unions and company mismanagement more than Carter but he certainly did nothing to help the situation.

Once again, I have the same opinion on the collapse of those industries in the 70s as I have on today's sub prime mortgage crisis. The government should not subsidize bad practice. It's their duty to provide welfare and education so that the affected people can move on, but they should not be propping up agriculture and industry the way they are.

The area i live in had 2 major industries Steel and Coal. Basically in the 70s it died - The town I grew up in has less than half the population it did when I was a kid. Most towns are just urban blight... victems of the rust belt now and are populated by people to old to move.

Maybe that's where your reluctance about global warming comes from. The people you're talking about are victims of a paradigm shift, not Carter. The same sort of thing happened in the Industrial Revolution.

Should the government bail out these industries? It is welfare of a sorts but if the companies can manage to turn things around and grow they are actually of more benefit than simple welfare. Should every company be bailed out at Your (and mine) expense? No, I don't think so either but there are other ways to help - tax breaks for example.

And once again I have to respectfully disagree. It's up to market forces to allocate resources and capital -- financial, natural, and human.

Pass - I would honestly have no interest in living in any of those countries.

I practically live in Canada anyways (Seattle is close enough) but I'm referring to objective measures of quality of life, like life expectancy.

I don't know you but I am going to say this - your tone is a little condescending, you jump to conclusions and think I am just another neo-con asshat that doesn't know shit from shine-ola. (I think it was pretty clear I am a moderate but oh well)

Well, to be fair, you came in and tried to push a discussion about Bush's legacy into one about Carter's, which annoys the hell out of me because it's something I see all the time. I'll be talking about Bush and the true believer Republicans will always move the discussion to Clinton. I could give a damn about Clinton, I didn't vote for him, I'm talking about Bush.

I not going to argue with you. I can see the points you are trying to make - just don't be so shocked and angry when someone doesn't see things the way that you do.

I'm neither shocked nor angry -- most people probably disagree with me on most things. The only things that provoked any emotion in me other than the Three Mile Island thing (which made me smile) is the above and your quip about global warming. To be honest, this is why I generally prefer arguing in a completely anonymous *chan like setting, because otherwise, people always seem to think I'm attacking them personally. I'm not. Except for the thread starter. I am attacking him personally. He's ignoring everything said to him, which is intellectually lazy.