Whoa, how the fuck did i get those two messed up.

I blame being a low sleep.

It was always rather clear that Paul Ryan took a liking to Rand for her ideals of ethics and politics, as opposed to her thoughts on religion and epistemology (he wears his Christianity on his sleeves).

Him pointing out he doesn't follow her epistemological philosophy doesn't address people's real concern: a want to significantly decrease the presence of government in our lives, at the cost of a great many public services and projects. How far would he be willing to go with that, if given the power to do so? The Randian extreme would include an end of antitrust laws, no more minimum wage, and so on, taking us right back the late 1800s.

Actually, a Randian extreme would be worse than what we had way back then.  At least then, the government was still building railroads and canals if Congress so chose.  I would presume Rand would be against any and all such government funded infrastructure projects, and Ryan doesn't seem like a fan himself.

It's a bit strange how fretful people are about this sort of far-fetched scenario when we're flying down the tracks at breakneck speed in the exact opposite direction. At this rate, if Social Security and Medicare do die, it won't be because some cabal of Ayn Rand enthusiasts yanked the rug out from under us. It will be because a spendthrift government blew all the money we have, and will ever have.

As Paul Ryan was a big TARP supporter, I can only wish he was half as extreme as he's made out to be.

Blew all our money?

I'll start by copying a portion of a response I made in another thread:

We can't "[blow] all the money we have".  What we can do is spend so much money that we eventually cause significant inflation, but that's not happening right now, and given our still relatively high unemployement, we shouldn't fear inflation as a result of deficit spending.  The axiom "too much money chasing too few goods" will not be an issue anytime in the near future, unless we start handing out $10000 checks to everybody or something.  When the economy really starts to hit its stride, that's when we should be worried about inflation, and it can then be prevented by a mix of tax hikes and decreased spending.

Also, I find it amusing that people worry about Medicare and Social Security going broke, as opposed to any other area of government, and it all falls back to the Congress' silly decision to tie SS to the payroll tax, instead of just increasing income taxes.  Even with the program's current design, elected officials could easily continue funding SS even if "the money has run out", either by deficit spending or taking the money from elsewhere.

And it seems Paul Ryan was on board TARP at first.  That's a side of him I hadn't known until now.

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Under Modern Monetary Theory, the general idea is that taxes aren't used to directly fund spending.  Taxes are destroying currency, while spending is creating currency.  A government determines what services and projects it wishes to fund (defense, social security, infrastructure projects, maybe healthcare, etc.), and it does so regardless of revenue.  Taxes are then used to control inflation/deflation (as well as related factors like income inequality), with tax cuts taking place in times of low aggregate demand to spur economic activity, and tax hikes when aggregate demand gets too high in order to prevent significant inflation.  The amount of money taken out of the economy through taxation never has to equal the amount put into the economy through spending.  It's a meaningless equivalency that doesn't actually effect anything.  All that matters is that we're removing enough currency from the economy via taxes to prevent too much inflation.

A fiat currency gives us an incredible ability to maximize economic growth, we just have to start utilizing it to its fullest potential and stop pretending like our currency is still tied to some other, limited metric.

Want to know who the first person in this thread to discuss Obama and the Democrats and bring them in here, to which (after a number of posts) I replied to?  It was you.  You wrote this:

So do the Dems, when it suits them (welfare, Obamacare, military adventurism, etc). Obama invokes Jesus more than Bush ever did.

Those are your words.  To get discussion off the GOP and so on, the SUBJECT OF THIS THREAD, you bring up the Democrats.  I had later on said that the GOP does it more, because I failed to call you on distracting from the subject of the thread.  You did this.  What the Democrats does is irrelevant to the topic at hand here.  it is about Paul Ryan and the GOP.  What I am guilty of is letting you get the topic derailed.

So, back to the point raised, and you can choose to not answer it, as I would predict: Is GOP budgetary policy reflective of the wishes of Jesus in any way or not?  Do you care to answer that?  I will tone the extremes and ask you that.  There are some who will say no:

I'm skeptical (to say the least) of MMT for the same reason that I am of all strains Keynesianism: it depends on Top Men doing the right thing at the right time and operating in a political vacuum, free from the pressures of special interests or an angry electorate.

But even MMT doesn't pretend that you can engage in absolute fiscal debauchery like the US has been (and probably will be until , since nobody seems particularly serious about getting our financial house in order) for very long without consequence. Ryan's super scary plan isn't going to cut it as is and will likely only get watered down if it's ever implemented, and the Democrats aren't even pretending to care at this point as they openly admit that their none of their proposals will make a dent in the deficit but argue that they're still important to do for the sake of demagoguery "fairness". Maybe things will change after the elections, but I seriously doubt it. It seems to be all campaigning, all the time, and elections two years away are always "right around the corner". No one ever seems to get around to governing.

(And yes, I do actually understand how fiat currency works. I was just making a crack about the fact that our unfunded liabilities dwarf the GDP of Planet Earth.)

You made a comment to which I responded. I didn't initially respond to the main topic of the thread because I honestly didn't find the OP all that interesting, and anyway, I've already said my piece on whether or not Paul Ryan is a flip flopper on Ayn Rand. Unless he has called himself an Objectivist in the past, I don't see how he is.

As to whether GOP budgetary policy is in accordance with what Jesus would want, I guess you'll have to first show where Jesus ever opined on what he thought the role of government (not the individual and not the church) should be in helping the poor before we can answer that question.

I asked you to show what the view of Jesus was.  Your reply here is that you are refusing to do this.  What Jesus would want here is important to this thread, because it connects directly to the Paul Ryan issue, the Republican party, and issues regarding conservative Christians.  It also is relevant to a reply of this thread because someone said the Republican budget has nothing to do with what Jesus would want.  I will take your lack of an answer to it, and dodging as you are now, as support for the statement that the Republican budget has nothing to do with the teachings of Jesus.

If you want a case for the role of government to help the poor, then you can see the Sermon on the Mall video for scriptures that would point to the answer to be yes.  Since I already posted one that could be seen as support, it is your job to show one that opposes it.  In other words, show evidence that Jesus is opposed to government helping the poor, because I can play Bible prooftexting with you and present this case (your job is to show opposite):

* Jesus said to Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar (and to God that which is God).  Jesus supported paying taxes for what the government did.

* In the government we have, which was voted in by the people, it had determined that it would help the poor.  The U.S Constitution also speaks to promote the general welfare, which means to improve the general welfare of society.

These two together, end up then showing, if the government decides to tax and use the money to help the poor, based on the way we have government, Jesus would support it.  

Now, do you care to get into the Bible, Christian tradition, or anyone associated with Christianity today who has a wise argument and show that government helping the poor with tax dollars is against the wishes of Jesus.  Of course, it is also ok for you to admit you have no clue what Jesus would want, nor are interested in it, and we can move on from there.  If what Jesus has an interest in is of no interest to you, just come out and say it.

It's of rather limited interest to me, especially since I have no desire to live in a theocracy. But while I do feel a bit odd telling Christians what to believe about their own religion, I have probably spent more time reading the Bible than most people who profess to believe in it, and my own interpretation of Christ's overall message is that he was not of this world nor particularly concerned with it. If that's your actual interpretation of "render unto Caesar", then I have to say, it seems a pretty facile one. Christ made a point of emphasizing that Caesar's name and image were on the coin, and the implication is that it is a tainted thing. The more pertinent point for Christians is to render unto God that which is God's.

Jesus had no wishes in regards to government one way or the other... only individual action.  Jesus didn't care if the government spent a bunch of money on the poor or no money on the poor.

All he cared about was an individuals willingness to help those who needed it... because individual willingness to help is what matters.