Friday, May 30, 2014

Hey Jesse Ventura...WTF?

By Chris Rossini

Jesse on raising the minimum wage:
“Well, it can smell like socialism all you want,” he said, responding to a viewer’s comment, “but why should a guy pushing a pencil make more than a guy doing back-breaking work digging a ditch? I notice CEOs, they never sweat. They wear suits all day, ties, they go to lunch — and they get paid the big dough.”

“Anybody working 40 hours a week should not have to be subsidized in any way, shape, or form by the government,” Ventura added. “They should be able to earn a wage to live off of.”
Then this:


No Jesse...I do not agree with a single word.



Chris Rossini is on Twitter


46 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. Misguided? Ignorant of Austrian economics? Set is his beliefs? Yes.

      But he is no idiot, and better than Rand Paul on most issues.

      Delete
    2. Eh, Rick? Have you read any of his books? Dude's got a screw or two...or four loose.

      Delete
    3. yeah, he's really out of touch...maybe not!

      QE, Bailouts, And Families Struggling to Buy Food
      Monday, June 2, 2014 at 1:38AM

      It was a very basic question: “Have there been times in the past 12 months when you did not have enough money to buy the food that you or your family needed?” In wealthy countries, the percentage of those answering “yes” should be very small, and given all the money-printing, it should be zero, you’d think.

      But when Gallup surveyed families in the 34 member countries of the OECD, the richest countries in the world, it found a reality on the ground that turned out to be an indictment of the Fed, other central banks, their policies, and bailouts in general.

      Topping the list of the 10 countries with the highest incidence of families reporting difficulty in buying food over the past 12 months are, as you’d expect, the OECD’s poorest members. Turkey, with the second lowest per-capita GDP in the group, is number one: 50% of the families with children and 40% of the families without children reported difficulties buying food. It’s followed by Hungary, which has been hit by all sorts of economic and currency crises, self-inflicted or not, and multiple recessions over the past few years. So 47% of the families with children and 35% of those without had trouble buying food. Mexico is in third place, with 33% and 30% respectively.

      And then come two of the formerly wealthy countries in the Eurozone that were felled by the debt crisis. The solution was to bail out the holders of sovereign bonds and investors in the hopelessly hollowed-out banks. To make that work, incomes, social services, pensions, health care services, and a million other things were slashed, and taxes on the masses were raised, all under direction of the bailout Troika (IMF, ECB, and the EU). Unemployment shot into the sky. And that more and more families would have trouble buying food surprised no one. So number four and five on the list are Greece (28% and 26%) and Portugal (25% and 16%).

      You’d also expect Spain to be next in line. It has been wracked by the same problems, and has been prescribed the same medicine, leading to sky-high unemployment, reduced social services, pensions, health care services, etc. [read.... Wreckonomics: Troika Accelerates Demolition of Spain’s Economy].

      But no. The next country in line isn’t Spain. Nor another Eurozone debt-sinner country, nor some former East-Bloc country, but the country where the central-bank money printing binge since 2008 has been taken to new heights, from which benefitted a small number of people enormously, a country whose central bank defined the “wealth effect”: the USA.

      http://www.testosteronepit.com/home/2014/6/2/qe-bailouts-and-families-struggling-to-buy-food.html

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    4. This sucks and angers me. How can a country richer than ANY country in history have people unable to eat?!!?! Oh, yeah, the Federal Reserve.

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  2. Want to raise the minimum wage? Stop applying the 20% payroll tax to it!

    While the argument is often that poor people should be paid enough to not need welfare, I never see the argument that poor people should be taxed so little that they don't need welfare.

    Even people on welfare still pay taxes out the wazoo. But instead of so much as cutting their taxes, we often hear from the right wing of the bird of prey that half of people don't pay taxes, which is an absolute farce.

    It's too bad about Jesse Ventura. Nobody he hangs around seems to rub off on him. If nothing else, he should know by now that price fixing is no good, and socialism is just mass price fixing.

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    Replies
    1. THIS +1000!

      Cut the payroll tax to zero for everyone.

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  3. Maybe if someone disagrees with him he'll close his Twitter account in a fury, just as he quits interviews in a fuss when the interviewer disagrees with him. This guy

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  4. A couple months ago Jesse was on Adam Kokesh's podcast. About two minutes into the thing he was defending Obamacare because "we can't just let people die." Apparently this man has evolved into an unabashed socialist.

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    Replies
    1. " About two minutes into the thing he was defending Obamacare because "we can't just let people die.""

      With that kind of logic why doesn't he have the government distribute the food and water. After all, we "can't just let people die". What an idiot.

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  5. The comments to the story are even worse than Jesse V.'s comments. Atrocious.

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  6. The vast majority of humanity has always been slaves, serfs or indentured servants. And it will be again... thanks to stupidity like this.

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  7. Most people feel, they don't think. To be consistently libertarian means putting aside one's feelings and deriving a position from the NAP. It also means suspending what one feels other people should do or how other people should live. Most people can't do these things. Their own way is the right and only way.

    Most everyone is libertarian on something, they feel there way to it, on that one issue. It's usually something where they don't want someone else dictating their choice. But on others they feel their way to something else. Why Jesse Ventura gets so much play in libertarian circles I have no idea. He very clearly feels his way on every issue.

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  8. So in other words Jesse you believe in price controls. I tell ya, economic ignorance from morons like this is really going to kill us.

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  9. Why should Jesse make more money than the actual guy who writes his books for him?

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  10. “but why should a guy pushing a pencil make more than a guy doing back-breaking work digging a ditch?

    Because digging ditches can be done by anybody, Jesse, whereas making important financial and strategic decisions that can positively - or negatively - impact a whole company takes the kind of talent that does not grow on trees.

    Why not ask this question: Why should a rock star make more dough than a man digging ditches? The reason is because 100,000 screaming fans want to see and hear the rock star whereas 100,000 guys can perfectly dig a ditch for one potential client.

    I notice CEOs, they never sweat.

    Working does not mean toiling only.

    They wear suits all day, ties, they go to lunch — and they get paid the big dough.

    And they make much more dough for the company. That's called productivity.

    “Anybody working 40 hours a week should not have to be subsidized in any way, shape, or form by the government,” Ventura added. “They should be able to earn a wage to live off of.”

    So whose responsibility is it to obtain that wage? The employer's or the employee's? Because spending 40 hours performing low productivity work will only garner a worker a low pay. If the worker applies himself to learn better skills and more experience, then the 40 hour week should translate to much better pay as he becomes more productive.

    But there lies the problem for Ventura and other bleeding-heart libertarians - how can one judge work by how productive it is? That is immoral! Work should be a good and a right, they would say, and should be compensated regardless of how productive it is!

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    Replies
    1. So the Cantillon effect is an intellectual effort, not a crony one?

      I mean what was tarp, zirp, and qe other than a channeled wealth transference....?

      Very hard for avg joe to borrow without recourse and shove it in his pocket. Guess it's the type of pen? MontBlanc vs bic?

      without debt all your heroes would be zeroes and the worker would be king

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    2. Re: Anonymous,
      So the Cantillon effect is an intellectual effort, not a crony one? I mean what was tarp, zirp, and qe other than a channeled wealth transference....?

      What the frak does that have to do with the marginal value of labor?

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    3. Good job OM. "Anon" has no answers. Obviously those things he lists are things we oppose as well, very very misleading comment.

      Libertarians were the strongest TARP opponents.

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    4. Oh, and part of my job is digging ditches.

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    5. misleading how?...the min wage is being the focus to thwart a falling behind worker who has to work more to afford less to maintain standard of living. Management/shareholders benefit from issuing low cost debt to buy back stock/issue special dividends at subsidized rates.

      Key Metric Hits Same Level As Prior To The Great Depression

      By Ronald-Peter Stoferle, Incrementum AG Liechtenstein

      June 1 (King World News) - Key Metric Hits Same Level As Prior To The Great Depression


      Both Keynesians and Monetarists build their models on the assumption that money is neutral with regard to the economic outcome. In other words, the mainstream economists believe that monetary policy should be used to increase aggregate demand in the short run and by so doing will not in any way affect the economic structure over the long run.” -- Ludwig von Mises


      Cantillon Effect Describes Uneven Distribution of Newly Created Money


      The uneven distribution of incomes is currently escalating and leads to growing social tensions. In the US, between 1979 and 2011 the average household's income rose by 64%, while the income of the top 1% of households increased by 300% and the income of the lowest quintile increased by only 18%. This strongly rising increase in wealth concentration can be gleaned from the GINI coefficient, which has reached historic extremes in many countries. This means that extremes at the lower and the upper end of the scale of incomes become ever more pronounced, while the classical middle class loses importance. Thus the GINI coefficient in the US is, for example, currently at the same level as in the 1920s prior to the Great Depression.

      http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/KWN_DailyWeb/Entries/2014/6/1_Key_Metric_Hits_Same_Level_As_Prior_To_The_Great_Depression.html

      stay in Mexico.

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    6. CEO to emplyee pay ratio in the 1920s : 20 to 1
      CEO to employee pay in 2014? over 400 to 1

      Bad trends like this need to stop. Lest it end up at 5000 to 1.

      Delete
  11. I don't think the Iraqis and Afghanis defending their country wear helmets. The sellouts siding with the invaders do.

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  12. He's not a libertarian. Not sure why, but he's not. He needs to read Rothbard.

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  13. FWIW, Ventura sought the endorsement of the Minnesota Libertarian Party when he ran for and won the governorship. He was not endorsed by the party because he had little to say that sounded libertarian. Once elected, Jesse put in place the most liberal cabinet imaginable at that time.

    The only libertarians that I know that view Ventura favorably are the chemtrail crowd.

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    Replies
    1. You're right. I liked JV for a long time, but the bullshit he says has changed my mind. I'm glad he has exposed the evil machinations of our government but he has no guiding principle. So sad- I really like him.

      A day or two at the Mises institute would change his mind radically.

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    2. "A day or two at the Mises institute would change his mind radically. "

      As long as he did more studying and less talking.

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    3. Yes! He's a blowhard but a day or three with Lew and Laurence and Tom would change his mind.

      Well, I hope so IMHO.

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  14. It’s at times like this that I wish I was a member of that exclusive club I call the global financial elite. I could be sipping expense champagne among the Bilderbergers and laughing at the impotence of the deluded masses. But no, instead I’m stuck among the stupid cattle. Oh yes, and I’m stuck with “allies” like Ventura in the class war against the wealthy and powerful global elites... oh yeah, this is really going to go well. Hey, I want a debased fiat $10.10 and hour! Yep, this is when I start to get really dark and depressed.

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  15. Why should a professional wrestler get paid more than...than...well, more than a person in just about any other profession I can think of.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. i heard that it's not real wresting... surely that scam should be worth less than nothing

      Delete
    2. For most of his wrestling career, Jesse was a color commentator. I bet he made a lot more money than the wrestlers working high school gyms and carnivals. But according to his logic, they should make just as much money as he did.
      And as a side note, the NFL is a crony capitalist organization but there are players like Mike Webster with the Pittsburgh Steelers who died from too much head trauma. There are good reasons why NFL players get paid well.

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  16. Knowing very little about him, I use to think of Jesse Ventura as somebody who questioned the status quo, but thanks to Bob's interview with him a few months back, and complete nonsense like this... it is clear that he is a complete statist. It really is funny that he thinks of himself as some kind of "outside the box thinker" opposed to the Dems and Repubs.

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    Replies
    1. " It really is funny that he thinks of himself as some kind of "outside the box thinker" opposed to the Dems and Repubs."

      If he ever was he's not an outside the box thinker when it comes to THE most important subject: economics. And that's a fatal weakness.

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    2. Good point, in Mick Foley's book he specifically mentions that JV was making more than him for making jokes on camera and telling stories to the guys in the back about travelling with Vergne Gagne than Foley was for dropping elbows on the concrete.

      Someone should send him a copy.

      Delete
  17. Ricky Wolfgang where are you!

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  18. Jesse has dome quite a bit to expose government atrocities, so instead of bashing him, Tom, why don't we try to show him a better way. I don't agree with you on every issue, but i still buy your books and give em to my buddies.m

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  19. I'm from Minnesota and used to live near Ventura about six years ago. I did meet him once, but I don't know him personally. I do know other people who are more acquainted with him and he's not a phony or putting on an act. Jesse is the same person on TV as he is in person. However, he's at a Sarah Palin level with his knowledge of history and economics. He's correctly spoken out against the Bush administration's false claim that water boarding isn't torture, but at the same time, he's a huge fan of Che Guevara. Little does he know that Guevara was a bloodthirsty tyrant who was responsible for the brutal firing squad executions of thousands who opposed Castro's regime. He also says religion is the root of all evil and is to blame for almost all wars. I'd love to hear him explain how religion played a role in starting World War I and World War II. And has he ever heard of the atheist Joseph Stalin?

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    1. Joe Stalin may have been an atheist. However, his atheism didn't have anything to do with his opposition to capitalism.

      Atheism is a purely negative (in terms of epistemology) position. It is a single answer to a single question, "do you believe in god(s)?" If you answer "yes," you are a theist. If you answer "no" or "I don't know," you are an atheist. You can't derive any other philosophical position from that one non-belief. You can't justify any wars from it. You can't justify communism or capitalism from it.
      Religious belief, on the other hand, is a positive position capable of justifying all sorts of other beliefs. Southerners tried to justify slavery from their belief. Others have tried to justify their opposition to communism. Still others have tried to justify zionism.

      My point is that Stalin or Mao's atheism was irrelevant to any atrocity they many have committed. To justify those atrocities, they needed some positive belief (in communism or Maoism, for example).

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    2. I don't have a problem with atheism and I'm not blaming it for Stalin's atrocities the way you are trying to blame religion for past violent acts. There are people who misinterpret the Christian religion the same way there are people currently pretending to be libertarians. It happens in all movements. Christ himself believed his own religion had become corrupt. Did Christ, who said "Blessed are the peacemakers," justify war? Do you have any proof of this?

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    3. Nope. Here are some positions you can derive, with varying degrees of strength, from atheism: design is an illusion (strong), consciousness is an illusion (weak), the universe is eternal (strong), morality is purely negative and not positive (strong), man is the highest source of wisdom (weak), man has no soul (strong), the distinction between man and animal is of degree and not kind (strong), et cetera.

      For us libertarians, it is interesting to note that animals can be property and that atheism removes the most important distinctions between man and animal. And when people are left to define who counts as a "real" human, they tend to do it in a way that best serves their own personal interests. Don't want a baby? The fetus isn't human. Don't want to pay for your comatose wife's life support? She's not human. Want to steal people's stuff? They're not really human. It's hard to dispute that Christians have been on the cutting edge of defining more people as humans (thanks to divine revelation), while atheists have been on the cutting edge of defining people as non-human.

      I agree that atheism does not imply communism or capitalism or any other economic system, but what atheism does is remove most of the philosophical roadblocks that inoculate us against evil. Of course it then becomes clear that we are not really talking about atheism vs. theism, but atheism vs. classical Christianity, which makes several positive moral claims that laid the foundation for Western Civilization and the shackling of the State. When atheists have rejected Christianity (which of course is the main thing they reject), they have unfortunately tended to embrace some novel form of "moral" positivism to fill the void. Hence the 20th century.

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  20. Savage capitalism is back – and it will not tame itself Capitalists spread prosperity only when threatened by global rivalry, radical movements and the risk of uprisings at hom

    Piketty, in contrast, begins his book by denouncing “the lazy rhetoric of anti-capitalism”. He has nothing against capitalism itself – or even, for that matter, inequality. He just wishes to provide a check on capitalism’s tendency to create a useless class of parasitical rentiers. As a result, he argues that the left should focus on electing governments dedicated to creating international mechanisms to tax and regulate concentrated wealth. Some of his suggestions – an 80% income tax! – may seem radical, but we are still talking about a man who, having demonstrated capitalism is a gigantic vacuum cleaner sucking wealth into the hands of a tiny elite, insists that we do not simply unplug the machine, but try to build a slightly smaller vacuum cleaner sucking in the opposite direction.

    What’s more, he doesn’t seem to understand that it doesn’t matter how many books he sells, or summits he holds with financial luminaries or members of the policy elite, the sheer fact that in 2014 a left-leaning French intellectual can safely declare that he does not want to overthrow the capitalist system but only to save it from itself is the reason such reforms will never happen. The 1% are not about to expropriate themselves, even if asked nicely. And they have spent the past 30 years creating a lock on media and politics to ensure no one will do so through electoral means.

    Since no one in their right mind would wish to revive anything like the Soviet Union, we are not going to see anything like the mid-century social democracy created to combat it either. If we want an alternative to stagnation, impoverishment and ecological devastation, we’re just going to have to figure out a way to unplug the machine and start again

    http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/30/savage-capitalism-back-radical-challenge

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    Replies
    1. "Since no one in their right mind would wish to revive anything like the Soviet Union"

      Tell that to those idiots in Seattle who elected an out-of-closet socialist.

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    2. Rather than revamping capitalism, let's put more focus on educating the masses about entrepreneuring, venture capital, risk mgnt, competition, etc...

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