Hong Kong has the freest economy in the world–as close to laissez-faire capitalism as there is today. The government policy is generally to keep hands off the economy, unless the externalities of the market are worse than the externalities of government intervention–just as Milton Friedman had suggested. And that doesn’t happen often.

And Hong Kong has done very well economically. In 30 years, its GDP grew by 8,000%.

But it’s got social problems. There are extremes of inequality between rich and poor, comparable to China’s. And Hong Kong still lacks universal suffrage; businesses oppose it because they fear that universal suffrage would lead to populism–and then to socialism.

Gold is just as specious as money. Neither have any intrinsic value.

Rubio: 22% of $341,724 = $75,179

Crist: 13% of $591,119 = $76,845

In other words, using the figures you provide, Rubio and Crist have raised almost exactly THE SAME amount of money from DC sources. If anything, Crist has raised a little more. There is no way you can honestly write that “Rubio has been the clear winner of the Washington money primary”.

It’s technically ok, I guess, to write that Rubio has “relied more heavily” on DC money, since his percentage is higher. But this is a misleading argument. You shouldn’t stoop so low.

At best, this is an embarrassing error. I hope you fix it ASAP.

Its not a bloodbath like NY23.
You are being hyperbolic.
THIS IS A PRIMARY! NY23 never had one.
Obama got elected over Hillery with a “bloodbath” as you would describe.

Let democracy take its course and get behind whoever wins the Florida primary.
That includes you David. Peter Worthington would agree, I am sure.
Richmond Hill ON

Back in the days when I was a Republican, and some socialist wuld wax rhapsodic about how “if we only had socialism, so and so would not happen…”
and I would always bring them up short with, “but where in the world has this abstract theory been put into practice, and found to work? I would like to study it.’

Of course, the answer was always a mixture of “well, it hasn’t yet, but a study by esteemed economist so and so indicates….”

So today we have people invoking Hayek, and Friedman, all postulating that “if we only had truly free market capitalism, there would be no recessions…”

Where? Where is this unfettered, truly laissez-faire capitalism so that we may study it in person? Where has it been tried and found to produce liberty and prosperity? Aside from Somalia, I mean.

So far as I know, there is not a single First World industrialized nation that does not have a market system balanced by a social welfare system to assist during the recurring crashes.

Didn’t conservatives used to be the champions of cold empirical evidence, rather than dreamy philosophy? Didn’t we used to mock and ridicule those whose answer to the practical problems of governance always seemed to be a quotation of abstract philosophy?

This, in a nutshell, typifies the transformation of conservative thought from a well-reasoned skepticism of government overreach to a blind cultish faith in the utopian perfection of The Marketplace (pause and genuflect).

http://americaspeaksink.com/2009/11/bring-back-george-bush-karl-rove/

Charlie Crist has been outed in a movie called “outrage” on HBO

http://americaspeaksink.com/2009/10/charlie-crist-and-the-film-outrage/

I can’t say you’re wrong about fiat money being used to fund wars. A relevant question would be: do you think America should always be on “war footing?” I don’t.

Hmm, why did we experience boom after one war and bust after the other? Could it be that a civil war, you know, involves domestic destruction? What do you think happens when you run around with cannons and guns, torching everything in sight? You certainly don’t have an economic boom.

After WWII meanwhile, most of our international competition had been reduced to rubble. And the return the male workforce was also, unsurprisingly, a reason for growth.

Money serves as a medium of exchange, and nothing else. Gold works well because it cannot be “printed.” (False) economic boom is caused by credit inflation because price information is distorted, leading to a consumption in capital.

hormelmeatco: Yes, I do. See Fractional Reserve Banking.

When I said, “Read a history book,” I was NOT referring to the Depression of the 1930s.

I was referring to the Depression of the 1870s.
Back then, there was no Federal Reserve, no welfare state, no income tax. America should have been an economic powerhouse according to men like Hayek. But instead, we got a major depression.

That depression was caused by the drastic cuts in the money supply, needed to put America back on the gold standard after the Civil War ended. Going back on the gold standard was something Hayek would have approved of. So would Ron Paul. So would you, probably.

But the supply of fiat money had expanded enormously during the Civil War to enable the North to buy the things needed to beat the South. Now all that money had to be taken out of circulation to get back on the gold standard. And the result was a major depression that lasted an entire decade.

In your world, there shouldn’t be any major government interventions in the economy. But that means there can’t be any wars–since putting a nation’s economy on a war footing represents a major government intervention.

Well, sorry. We had the Civil War. And then we did exactly the wrong thing by drastically decreasing the money supply to chase the chimera of the gold standard. We didn’t do that after World War II, and America had an economic boom instead of a depression.