California....what happened?

[Darshan]

Liberals

Quote from Stosh:

How could a place with such beautiful weather, huge coastline, great farmland, innovative entrepreneurs, huge tourism industry, huge energy resources, forests, etc. etc. be such a financial basketcase?? What is the root cause of such a screwup?

 

[Humpy]

Too many crooks, grafters etc.

The State can't support them ALL

Get tough on criminals imho - flog the small fry and

Fry the big ones

end of problem

 

[Stosh]

Funny how the liberal left seemed to stay away from this thread. Seems like they should be able to blame it on somebody.......maybe it was Bush's fault. Stosh

 

[gnome]

Quote from Stosh:

Okay, why won't they??? Most of the responses in this thread blame results as being the CAUSE. Is the real cause just flawed human nature, poor gov't framework, what? It may be inevitable...just cycles....you get too fat to get around, so you go on a diet.....you spend all your money, so you cut back....drive too fast, have a wreck, so then you slow down......same tendencies in large groups......shame but that may be the way it is and will always be. Sort of like good traders say trade the market you've got, not what you want. Stosh

I think you're basically correct, but that doesn't apply to government. It's like a cancer... ever growing, ever consuming more... won't scale back prudently... just take, take, take until it all collapses... and takes all the innocents down with it.

Same true at the Federal level... just takes longer and is more covert because they can print money.

 

[trader_arb]

Quote from Stosh:

Funny how the liberal left seemed to stay away from this thread. Seems like they should be able to blame it on somebody.......maybe it was Bush's fault. Stosh

I was actually looking forward to someone posting here...I want to know the counterargument, although it will probably be extremely lame like you say.

 

[Stosh]

Quote from gnome:

I think you're basically correct, but that doesn't apply to government. It's like a cancer... ever growing, ever consuming more... won't scale back prudently... just take, take, take until it all collapses... and takes all the innocents down with it.

Same true at the Federal level... just takes longer and is more covert because they can print money.

Sad, but probably true. I guess that is one of the main reasons for the rise and fall of so many governments throughout history.......and why the brief history of our system should only be referred to as an experiment. Probably the best we can hope for is that when things get bad enough, reason may prevail.....but we could just as easily say free markets don't work and kill the goose that briefly laid golden eggs.

 

[Mike805]

Quote from Stosh:

Funny how the liberal left seemed to stay away from this thread. Seems like they should be able to blame it on somebody.......maybe it was Bush's fault. Stosh

I'll say it again and I am not a liberal:

Nobody seems to have mentioned that Enron fucked this state out of about 30 billion (some estimates are higher) during those fabricated "rolling" blackouts.

That's what put us into debt in the first place and got Davis essentially thrown out of office.

How does a state recover from a hit like that?" As another poster said, we can't exactly print money.

Who exactly decided that deregulating energy was the way to go per Enron?

Mike

 

[tradersboredom]

gov't needs to get back to basics.

debt must be paid either by taxes or inflation.

money doesn't grow in trees
there is no free lunch.
income taxes are from working slaves.

taxes are not a right.

Quote from Stosh:

Sad, but probably true. I guess that is one of the main reasons for the rise and fall of so many governments throughout history.......and why the brief history of our system should only be referred to as an experiment. Probably the best we can hope for is that when things get bad enough, reason may prevail.....but we could just as easily say free markets don't work and kill the goose that briefly laid golden eggs.

 

[slacker]

Quote from tradersboredom:

debt must be paid either by taxes or inflation.

True

When Mayor Ed Koch was voted out of office he replied, "Well the people of New York have spoken; and now they must be punished".

With Obama the American people have spoken and we all will be punished.

"The trouble with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money" –Margaret Thatcher.

How long will it take for the U.S. Government to run out of credit?

 

[gnome]

Quote from Stosh:

Sad, but probably true. I guess that is one of the main reasons for the rise and fall of so many governments throughout history.......and why the brief history of our system should only be referred to as an experiment. Probably the best we can hope for is that when things get bad enough, reason may prevail.....but we could just as easily say free markets don't work and kill the goose that briefly laid golden eggs.

If you read some about world economic history, it's ALWAYS government that brings destruction upon its people.

The Founding Fathers knew that. They had a wealth of knowledge about European history.

They were VEHEMTLY against (1) a large and powerful Federal Government, (2) a Central Bank, and (3) paper money... DEMANDED that "money" be only "gold and silver coin"... for the obvious reasons.

Look where we are today...