Lurker > red sox 777

With that quote about forcing Catholicism on Protestants, Santorum might succeed in turning the "base" against him.

By the way, have you ever read Reminiscences of a Stock Operator?

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Great book, and a fascinating look back in time at what America was like in the early 1900s.

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You can tell that Santorum just wants Paul to quit already.

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Santorum says he was sickened by JFK's speech where he assured Baptist ministers he would not impose Catholicism on them. Uh........

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http://advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/Secular-Bull-and-Bear-Markets.php

Here's an interesting article I read today. It is striking how long long term bear markets last. 40 years out of 100. What gives the market its overall uptrend is the massive massive gains over periods lasting generally less than 20 years in long term bull markets.

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As the article points out, you can get a gallon of gas for a quarter, and get change back, provided it's a pre-65 silver quarter. If you could speak on the phone with someone from 1965 who was about to bury a time capsule in your backyard, which would YOU rather him bury, $1000 in 1965 dollar bills, or $500 in 1965 silver quarters? The dollars would be worth the same, the quarters would be worth over $12000. And remember, Silver is actually trading well UNDER it's historic ratio when compared to gold.

They didn't have index funds in 1965, but if I was looking for something safe I'd tell him to buy shares of a blue chip company and bury the stock certificates. If we got lucky, I'd end up with something like IBM or Coca-Cola, if unlucky something like GM. If it's between the bills and the silver, definitely the silver. Burying dollars is absolutely silly, and everyone should know it. Inflation isn't a new thing, and anyone who buries dollars in the ground for 50 years deserves to lose most of the value.

But that isn't relevant. It's much more important for a medium of exchange to be consistent on a short time interval like 5 or 10 years than a long time interval like 50 years. It's horrible to have a currency that loses 93% of its value in 5-ish years, or that gains 500% in 5-ish years.

And yes, the value of gold (in terms of its purchasing power towards items we want) would not fluctuate like that if our primary medium of exchange was gold instead of the dollar. This is not a criticism of the gold standard. But if we are measuring inflation, it is silly to measure it based on gold. Unless you want to say we had 1400% inflation under Reagan.

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Well surely SOME of it should be based on what has already happened, or is your position that the proper value of silver today should be the same as it was in 1965? PM prices should account for inflation that has already happened just the same as the price of ANY good will, the difference being that PMs, as a store of value and medium of exchange, will also attempt to anticipate future price moves.

Of course it accounts for what has already happened, the problem is that the possible future stuff is vastly bigger than what has already happened. You see the same with stocks. See price/earnings ratios. There are more years in the future to work with.

Look at gold in the 80s. We had massive inflation in the 70s, yet gold still fell 90%+ after the double-digit inflation stopped. We didn't get deflation either, just small single digit inflation. Why? Because the market was looking at the possibility of, say, 30 more years of 10% inflation (approx. 20x overall) , and pricing that into the price of gold.

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And the reason gold would be off by so much is actually pretty simple. Gold is an investment in future inflation. When we had double digit inflation under Carter and at the beginning of the Reagan administration, gold went way up because people were anticipating continued 10%+ a year inflation. When inflation fell down to the 3%/year level during the Reagan administration, gold lost 90% of its value in nominal dollars because the massive future inflation that was in the gold prices did not materialize.

So you should see the gold price now as the market's mostly as the market's belief/speculation on future inflation, not what has already happened.

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I'm not sure about the works of art, I could easily be wrong.

But as for a medium of exchange, the dollar has been a much better measure as a medium of exchange than gold in terms of consistency. The amount of dollars it takes to buy a loaf of bread has gone up fairly consistently by around 3% or so a year since the Reagan administration. Perhaps it has tripled overall in 30 years. The price of a loaf of bread in gold has fluctuated wildly, falling something like 93% (that is,14/15) from the early 80s to mid 90s. And now it has gone up 5x in the past 15 years.

And the price levels of things we actually use like food, housing, gas, etc. are relatively consistent with each other. And with the dollar, adding in an inflation rate. Gold is the outlier here.

Even something like XOM or BRK.A stock would be a better medium of exchange than gold as far as consistency goes. The inflation rate measured by those would be a lot higher of course, because those companies have done very well the past 30 years.

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And of course there is inflation, the question is how much. If you don't buy the statistics, what percentage do you think real inflation is? If you say anything over 10%, remember 10% means prices double every 7 years. Even gas has not doubled in 7 years, and that's probably the worst of them.

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No, gas prices are not falling. Gas is more expensive relative to food, housing, computers, ipods, phones, televisions, cars, instruments of music, works of art, and the vast majority of things you would want to buy. Merely because it is less expensive relative to gold does not mean gas is less expensive now.

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Almost all colleges require a deposit. It's so you don't tell multiple colleges that you are attending, and then choose one of them when the semester starts, resulting in the others not being able to fill their seats.

The money should be credited to your tuition when you attend. At least it works that way in the US.

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Name the ideal annual inflation (or deflation) rate for you.

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Force of habit

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But if they wanted inflation, they would announce it. Then you would see the dollar devalue very quickly, even with the same level of actual printing.

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As for competence, they're about as competent as you could expect a person or a small group of people to be. Which is short of the invisible hand of the free market, of course, but probably better than you or I.

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If they wanted inflation, it'd be easy enough. They would just announce, "we're turning on the printers."

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Nah, it's basically true. We're not going to see that kind of hyperinflation. The people at the Fed have an advantage of 90 years of economic research over Germany in 1923, as well as a much better idea of what they are trying to do and much more power to achieve their goals. 10% a year of inflation could happen, though it might also not if the Fed ends up deciding that it's not worth it to continue the stimulus. 10% a day inflation will not happen.

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And mortgage rates are so low right now that I have a hard time figuring out how banks expect to turn any profit at all. I suppose it's a lot like the rationale for buying treasuries- maybe I can't beat inflation, but at least it won't be as bad as sitting in cash.

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I dunno, we could see, what, a 2000%+ gain in the real value of gold/silver (as in the amount of gold it takes to buy a loaf of bread, an ipod, etc.) with hyperinflation. That's better than having your debts inflated away.

Of course we're not going to get that kind of inflation, the learned economists at the Fed are too skilled to let things get away from them like Germany in 1923. But I daresay with the controlled inflation we're getting, gold will probably advance by more per year than student loan interest. I mean, if it doesn't, you're probably better off buying an index fund instead. And if neither gold nor an index fund can beat student loan interest rates, and we have inflation, then we call that a recession.

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Also, you have gold Smuffin, so you have no need to fear inflation. Hyperinflation will make you rich.

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You know, I'm really starting to like this idea of inflation. Bernie Madoff's consistent 10% a year returns can now be available to everyone, courtesy of the Federal Reserve!

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A charge isn't a conviction. Most likely they'll end up convicted of manslaughter or something.

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Romney wouldn't pick Paul as his VP either. Unless that was the only way he could win the nomination.

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B

Romney is slightly better than Obama to me, mainly because he'll appoint more conservative judges.

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There's not much wrong with being Canada though. It has a lot of the best elements of the US and Europe, without a lot of the worst of both.

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This topic is reinforcing just how fundamentalist so many people on the left actually are.

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Uh, you are aware that gay marriage is not recognized at a federal level right? Congress's last word on it was the Defense of Marriage Act. It is individual states that have started to legalize it.

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A nice solution is the abolition of state marriage. Marriages could then be granted by any private organization that chose to do so. Anyone could recognize whatever marriages they wanted to. There would remain a state civil union system for all the benefits currently associates with marriage.

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Hrm. If civil unions and marriage were 100% equal in all but the name I personally wouldn't take issue with it, but I'm not gay, so I'm not really qualified to speak of such things.

The 9th Circuit panel actually used this as their justification for striking down the gay marriage ban. Their reasoning was that if there was no difference besides the name, then the law could have no purpose other than discrimination, since it couldn't achieve any other purpose. They didn't decide whether a law that also barred gay civil unions in addition to gay marriage was okay, but they said it might be and would have to be decided in a different case if it came up.

Strange reasoning......I suspect they are trying to avoid getting overturned by the US Supreme Court. Or at least avoid a general ruling from the US Supreme Court saying that it is okay for states to ban gay marriage. This approach gives them an out where they don't have to decide that question.

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A statement of definition is not the same as a statement of truth. if 99.9% of the population defines something in a certain way... Well, definition is solely the provence of the population, when not using definition in a scientific manner.

What does it mean to have a marriage but what marriage is defined as? Consider the situation in California right now- legally a civil union is identical to a marriage in every way, except for the name (or at least that's what the 9th Circuit Panel said in their opinion, I kind of doubt it is actually identical).

Let's say President Cheney (surprise entry into a divided Republican Convention) gets a new federal law passed requiring all the states to recognize gay marriage. Some churches in response begin offering a new form of marriage they call "heterosexual marriage." Could gay people then demand to be allowed to have "heterosexual marriages" based on equal rights?

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If I claim I'm able to fly, that doesn't mean I was discussing a fact that other people might disagree with. It means I was talking BS.

Well, if your claim to fly was at issue in court for some reason, and the jury decided you could indeed fly, the judge (with some caveats) would be powerless to overturn their decision. But if the jury decided your ability to fly meant you were guilty of tax evasion, even though there was zero evidence brought at trial other than your flying ability, the judge could overrule their decision because it was logically incorrect. Being able to fly does not show tax evasion in any way, so it is bad reasoning.

With gay marriage, many people do believe those 3 premises I listed. If you want to change their minds, attacking their reasoning on gay marriage will get you nowhere, you've got to convince them their premises are wrong.

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There is no factual premise to those arguments, that is the point. There are incorrect assumptions based on false reasoning or just reality denial (in the case of marriage always being heterosexual), which is an unreasonable basis for an argument aka AN UNREASONABLE ARGUMENT.

An unreasonable argument is where the premises do not support the conclusion. We do not question the truth of the premises in deciding whether an argument is reasonable or not.

It'd be fair for you to ask someone to justify why their premises are true. But then that would be a different argument. For those 3, I think you'll find it just about impossible to conclusively disprove those premises. Even if you would never accept them.

That's my point here: you don't have to. 2 reasonable people do not have to disagree. Maybe 2 omniscient people would have to agree or disagree on everything (there could still be value judgments that would probably prevent that even then). But for us, certainly not.

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If 99.9% of the population believes the sky is purple, does that make it true?

Actually........yes. Now if they insisted the sky and the pavement were the same color, you could say they were wrong.

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Anyway, the thing is those arguments were not intended to actually convince anyone that gay marriage should be banned. Your attacks on them have all been on issues other than the actual reasoning of the arguments themselves.

And guess what? People are free to disagree on the facts! If you don't agree with the factual premise of an argument, you don't have to agree with its conclusion. Even though the reasoning is perfectly valid. That way people can have a respectful discussion and try to convince each other. There is no need to jump to: your reasoning is logically wrong, you are stupid.

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1. God says gay marriage is wrong. Therefore it is wrong. Wrong things should be illegal. Therefore gay marriage should be illegal.

Separation of church and state.

Separation of church and state wasn't addressed in this quick argument, but I actually got around it. First we reasoned that gay marriage was wrong, then we used the fact that it was wrong to get to illegal. God only told us it was wrong.

2. The purpose of marriage is to produce children. Gay marriage does not produce children. Gay marriage does not achieve the purpose of marriage. Therefore gay marriage is not marriage. Therefore the state should not call gay marriage marriage.

Marriage does not have a fertility requirement. Otherwise the elderly could not marry.

Maybe we should ban elderly marriage then, to be consistent.

3. Marriage has always been understood to be heterosexual. Therefore the definition of the word marriage involves 2 people of different sexes. Therefore a gay marriage is not a marriage by definition. Therefore it is silly for the state to try to define gay marriage as something it is obviously not, just like defining red as blue by fiat.

Defined by whom?

By 99.99% of humans throughout history. Example: Ancient Sparta had common homosexual relationships, but they never thought of it as marriage. A man could have a wife and have sexual relations with men even and this was seen as normal. But never homosexual marriage.

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What? When did anyone agree to anything about God?

I never said those arguments would be convincing, or that you would agree with their factual premises. Many people in the country, of course, do agree with those facts, and if they reason based on those facts, their reasoning is fine. So you shouldn't make a claim like "there isn't a single good argument against gay marriage." You'd be better off telling people, "your facts are wrong."

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What facts? the first argument relies on no facts, the second argument relies on no facts, the third argument relies on no facts.

all of those arguments are based on opinions that have been formed based on incorrect reasoning, aka not reasonable.

The first sentence of each of them. Again, you probably think these facts are wrong. There was no incorrect reasoning as far as I can see in any of them. It's just that you don't accept the factual premise.

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You agree with opinions, not facts.

That's a common misconception. People can and do disagree on facts all the time. That's the function of juries actually, to decide what the facts are!

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Was this supposed to be a good argument? Using one religion's interpretation as the basis of a law is not a good argument.

In this argument we relied not on religious interpretation but fact. We assumed that God definitively said that gay marriage was wrong. You can disagree about facts of course. But the correctness of facts is usually not something that logical argument is going to solve.

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Sure they are, they just rely on facts you probably don't agree with.

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Because no one who has shown up in this topic as of yet wants to argue against allowing gay marriage. But here are some quick arguments I suppose:

1. God says gay marriage is wrong. Therefore it is wrong. Wrong things should be illegal. Therefore gay marriage should be illegal.

2. The purpose of marriage is to produce children. Gay marriage does not produce children. Gay marriage does not achieve the purpose of marriage. Therefore gay marriage is not marriage. Therefore the state should not call gay marriage marriage.

3. Marriage has always been understood to be heterosexual. Therefore the definition of the word marriage involves 2 people of different sexes. Therefore a gay marriage is not a marriage by definition. Therefore it is silly for the state to try to define gay marriage as something it is obviously not, just like defining red as blue by fiat.

You can disagree with any of these arguments, or any of the other arguments against gay marriage, of course. None of them offers conclusive proof.

Your biggest problem with these 3 arguments at least is the basic premise. Does God really think gay marriage is wrong? Well, whether he does or not, that's not an issue with the argument anymore, but with the underlying facts. The argument can be reasonable even if the underlying facts can't be shown to be correct, or even if they are wrong.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation

Not at all. The statement was not that gay marriage should be allowed, it was that there are no arguments against it. That a very different claim.

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Yeah, it's not hard to refute, but it's frankly insulting to make a statement like that. I guess SephG does the same thing, except that SephG is in the minority on this board so it's funny instead of insulting.

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red sox do you actually have feelings about anything or do you just like to play devils advocate about useless semantics arguments

I have strong feelings against the use of bad logic. And fundamentalism in all its forms.

My political views are basically libertarian, except that I understand that situations exist (even if relatively rare) where government action can be good.

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Is it fundamentalist to say all humans should have equal rights? I guess it's an opinion, but with matters as important as human rights I don't think it's a bad thing to expect everyone to agree.

It is fundamentalist if you don't explain why, and you demand everyone to agree. If you allow people to disagree without calling them stupid/evil/heathen/etc, then you are acknowledging that there is an argument for the other side, even if you don't agree with it. In that case you can respectfully disagree, and you are not being a fundamentalist.

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And moreover, that has absolutely nothing to do with the discussion. You are resorting to attacking my personal morality- well that is very fundamentalist, once again. Call other people evil instead of respectfully discussing an issue.

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Well, I obviously don't consider this a human rights issue if I'm not pro-gay marriage.

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Or you could come up with a single good argument against it and prove him wrong.

I wasn't the one who made the topic. I don't have strong feelings towards the issue in either direction.

Making a statement of the form there is no x is typically a strong statement and hard to prove. In this case you would have to show that every single argument against gay marriage is bad. Not an easy thing to do. So if you just assert it as a fact- well basically you're just being a fundamentalist. You believe there are certain things that are fundamentals, meaning that everyone should agree on them, and if you don't you're immoral/stupid/wrong.

You're right that it could probably be refuted, but why? If you make a very strong, counterintuitive, statement, you should probably back it up first. Also, I get the feeling that if someone did make a valid argument for banning gay marriage here, the TC would likely argue that that argument is bad. Well, anybody can always claim that, even when what they really mean is not that the argument is bad but that they disagree. Perhaps they only disagree on the facts, even, and not with the reasoning at all.

It's an insulting thing to say, because you are not leaving any room for anyone else to respectfully disagree with you. No, if there is not a single good argument for the other side, then if they disagree with you, they must be immoral/stupid/etc.

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