You can call be a right wing scumbag if you like, I have been called worse.
I actually don't care much for Miltie, although apparently it is necessary to repeat that just because he liked some ideas I think are good (the negative income tax) and wasn't a total idiot about some things, like the possible link between unemployment and inflation, I am not thereby committed to defending his total life and works. I do not know why this idea is so hard to grasp, but having repeated it twice in a recent post and having it ignored here is annoying.
There are lots of right wingers I like a lot more than Miltie. Among other right wing thinkers I like, I am a big fan of Hayek and Schumpeter. I like Judge Posner as a legal theorist. I like Justice Holmes, who was a laissez faire libertarian and a racist to boot. I think the Nazi Heidegger was a great philosopher and think well of the Nazi Carl Schmitt as a political theorist. I like Madison and Tocqueville. I think the world of Machiavelli and Thucydides. I could make a long list of the right wingers I've admired and been profoundly influenced by.
I also don't have to defend my political creds to anybody. I remember Sept. 11, 1973, extremely vividly. It was a formative day in my life. I could tell you what I was doing when we learned that the Chilean Air Force was strafing the Presidential Palace. How old are you, Mike? Do you actually remember it?
This conversation is becoming unproductive and I end here. If you say something else you will have the last word.
--- Mike Ballard <swillsqueal at yahoo.com.au> wrote:
> >
> > On 9/26/07, andie nachgeborenen
> <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >> Well, I am a socialist as well as a liberal, so I
> >> agree that the best _social order_ involves a
> right to
> >> a job or income. You can call that a political
> right
> >> if you want, there are arguments to be made for
> doing
> >> so, although I don't call it political but social
> and
> >> economic myself; but whatever terms you use we
> agree
> >> that a right to a job or income is a real right.
> Btw,
> >> Milton Friedman thought it was, if not a right,
> then
>
>
> Yes but Milton also believed in the nonsensical
> concept of a natural
> rate of unemployment. That undermines the right to a
> job more than just
> a little.
> Keeping the unemployment rate high enough to drive
> down wages sounds
> crass so better we should disguise that idea with an
> scientifically
> objective sounding name. Who can object to the
> 'natural' rate of
> something except cranks, right?
>
> John Thornton
> ****************
>
> Uncle Milty co-designer with Pinochet of today's
> version of bourgeois democracy
> in Chile. I'm not painting anybody on this list
> with the conservative brush;
> but please do remember September 11, 1973.
> *****
> The Chicago School of Economics got that chance for
> 16 years in Chile, under
> near-laboratory conditions. Between 1973 and 1989, a
> government team of
> economists trained at the University of Chicago
> dismantled or decentralized the
> Chilean state as far as was humanly possible. Their
> program included
> privatizing welfare and social programs,
> deregulating the market, liberalizing
> trade, rolling back trade unions, and rewriting its
> constitution and laws. And
> they did all this in the absence of the far-right's
> most hated institution:
> democracy.
>
> The results were exactly what liberals predicted.
> Chile's economy became more
> unstable than any other in Latin America,
> alternately experiencing deep plunges
> and soaring growth. Once all this erratic behavior
> was averaged out, however,
> Chile's growth during this 16-year period was one of
> the slowest of any Latin
> American country. Worse, income inequality grew
> severe. The majority of workers
> actually earned less in 1989 than in 1973 (after
> adjusting for inflation),
> while the incomes of the rich skyrocketed. In the
> absence of market
> regulations, Chile also became one of the most
> polluted countries in Latin
> America. And Chile's lack of democracy was only
> possible by suppressing
> political opposition and labor unions under a reign
> of terror and widespread
> human rights abuses.
>
> Conservatives have developed an apologist literature
> defending Chile as a huge
> success story. In 1982, Milton Friedman
> enthusiastically praised General
> Pinochet (the Chilean dictator) because he "has
> supported a fully free-market
> economy as a matter of principle. Chile is an
> economic miracle." (1) However,
> the statistics below show this to be untrue. Chile
> is a tragic failure of
> right-wing economics, and its people are still
> paying the price for it today.
>
> http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-chichile.htm
>
> Mike B)
>
> Macht kaputt, was euch kaputt macht!
> http://www.iww.org/culture/official/preamble.shtml
>
>
> Sick of deleting your inbox? Yahoo!7 Mail has
> free unlimited storage.
> http://au.docs.yahoo.com/mail/unlimitedstorage.html
>
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