So, I guess the response to your original question “I need help from an Economic Genius”, was “Become an Economic Genius.”
My dad used to tell me, in the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king. If people spout this stuff off even a rudimentary sound understanding of economics would allow you to pick apart significant fallacies in his assumptions and assertions.
I think it would be helpful to understand how wealth is created, if you get that first, then the rest of this falls into place. Wealth is created by converting natural resources through the application of labor into goods and services that men then consume to satisfy their needs and wants. These needs and wants are referred to as ends economically.
Much of what he said is true. They would be the biggest cuts the world has ever seen, barring those from a total collapse of government. They would have eventually included not just the EPA, Food stampls, welfare, medicaid, social security, Departments of Educaion, Energy, Agriculture, etc., but many others. Eventually. $1trillion in cuts would be more than we’ve ever seen a country do. It would in fact be austerity.
The only part that is misunderstood is the last one, that Ron Paul would create a depression which would fall on the backs of the poor and middle class.
The depression is already happening. Economics tells us that regardless of how the depression occurs it’s going to cause the highest level of fear, starvation, austerity, etc. on the poor in our society and on the middle class. No amount of welfare can fix that. The fix is increases in production and efficiency such that goods and services become cheaper and work opportunities grow.
Currently fear and uncertainty are causing those who have wealth to stock up and hold on. They won’t invest in production for a variety of reasons, including uncertainty, ridiculously low interest rates, sovereign debt crises, political instability, whimsical interference in the market by government regulation, etc. The solution is to get government out of the regulation business and put it back in the hands of civil courts.
Production will increase the wealth, and increases in wealth mean cheaper goods and services and higher labor wages (relative to the cost of living). Increased production requires capital investment, these are necessarily longterm investments (factories, roads, equipment, construction, etc.) and the more unstable and uncertain the political and economic environment the more conservative those who have amassed wealth will be. Not only is the US currently scary, but around the globe it’s becoming difficult to find a stable safe place to invest and produce wealth.
So, yes it’s going to fall on the backs of the poor and the middle class, in that they will suffer the most. That’s the price of not having a lot of saved wealth. Forcibly transferring that wealth simply destroys more wealth. Investing it and producing more goods and services will expand the opportunities for the poorer members of society.
So the proper response is, do you want 20-30 years of depression, or a sharp severe recession and rapid recovery? Removing the roadblocks to investment, production and profit is the rapid recovery route. It’s the equivalent of having a tooth pulled instead in one sitting instead of taking advil for months until the tooth completely dies and falls out. It’s simple and obvious, if you become your own economic genius.
We’re still the same stubborn self-directed strong-willed badasses we thought we were when we went in, we’ve just seen the man behind the curtain. I find it refreshing that in the corps though there is an esprit de corps, a social/collectivist style “band of brothers” mentality, it’s built off of a core individualist concept. “Every Marine is a rifleman first.” You have a personal obligation to be highly skilled, highly motivated, highly trained in basic combat skills and in your specific profession. Not only don’t you leave a man behind, you get your ass kicked if you’re a buddy fucker! Leadership training focused on the dual responsibility of leadership, both to the missions before you and to the men upon which that missions success depended.