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Mr Gascon,
Your platform is much too socialist (or Marxist?) for me. By the way, the bankers were not alone in the housing crisis. The socialist government which forced the banks to make loans to people who normally wouldn't qualify, are the first on the list of guilty and much more responsible for the trouble we find America in. It appears you would like even more government meddling, so more calamities can befall us.

Here we go with the labels.... Marxist? I have accused of worse, Crazy, libertarian hippie.... someone actually called me a closet Republican. I am sure that I have been contaminated by Marx, but it's been 30 years since I read that stuff. My positions are more predicated on 50 plus years of living in the usa. Where you got blaming the bankers from I'm not sure Guilty conscious perhaps?

The question many minds have been pondering for quite awhile now is just what happened to our great economy? While quite easy to explain, it will be much harder to get back on track. There are several factors, which alone would never sink the economy alone, but together they become a different story. What I believe happened is...
Short version? Greed and stupidity. Our Major companies are run by computer programs that play monopoly with our houses.

#1 Military spending. The old adage that War is good for the economy is simply not true. The section of the economy that produces weapons is small and doesn't interact much with the rest of the economy. Therefore it draws money away from other sectors. The Bush administration spent half of our gross national product on wars, a nasty habit that the Obama administration has chosen to continue...

#2 Over inflated housing market. Big investors blinded by greed and run by computers poured billions of dollars, into over inflated housing markets. You need not be a rocket scientist to figure out that in a market like southern California when housing prices rise 400% in a few short years that the bottom will dropout, but a computer doesn't understand the concept of something that is too good to be true. So of course when did drop out, the computers didn't see it coming, and those holding the paper took the beating.

#3 Credit card economy. Sometime late in the twentieth century, it occurred to some economists that you could spur economic growth by selling things on credit. So somehow it got to the point in the 1990's where you could get credit cards for your kids, your dog, companies that don't really exist. In the end, at 25% interest is like paying double for everything you charge, and at some point in debt far enough that it will take forever to pay it back.

#4 International investment drain. Dubai Launched a huge growth in the luxury housing market, one that could only be afforded by millionaires. This adventure attracted a large portion of the international investment funds and in the long run will be doomed because there isn't enough Millionaires world wide to buy up all this property. Even so the greed factor has sent billions of dollars off to Dubai where no one lives, pulling that money from real projects that would help promote the global economy.

#5 Which leaves just one more little problem, Gas and Oil companies. Exxon Mobile has posted record profits of over 8 billion dollars a quarter every quarter since the beginning of the recession. How did the oil companies make so much money while the economy falls apart?
Easy they caused it, while peoples paychecks were shrinking they raised prices of gas to record levels blaming foreign oil suppliers. Near half of the oil used in this country is produced in this country, they gave no raises, had no production cost increases, yet raised the price of gas 200%. Notwithstanding, billions of gallons of gas held in reserve, which was purchased and produced at lower rates. Their excuse a perversion of supply and demand, if you use more we must charge more and oil costs abroad. Transportation of goods is a major cost factor, by raising gas prices, so high they pushed the cost of all consumer goods and products, at every single point in the supply chain. Thereby creating the largest driving force in the collapse of our economy and made a trillion dollars in doing so. A small fuss was raised, yet in the end nothing was done about this gross rip off of the American peoples. Why?
Because the oil companies own Congress.

You there is plenty of blame to go around and so what if there is a little socialism mixed in, you don't really believe that we have the capitalist dream world? We are a social democracy probably since Abraham Lincoln abolished slavery, The truth is slavery is still Here and Lincoln started it, it's now called Income taxes and almost everybody has been enslaved by it...

I read about the bankers on your website and I am not about to sift thru the entire site, but here is a real gem, where even you admit people will call you a communist, and then try to defend it by saying that if the communists had only done this, they would have been better off...but still communists.

This is what you wrote: Long term stability can be established with ISA (Individual Security Accounts) Individual Security Account would be established with a credit union account beginning with $50,000 on each citizen's first birthday. When a person starts making money, 10% of every dollar they make will be added to this account. The monies will accumulate at 5% interest. Meaning they double about every 15 years. So a person who never added or took from their fund would have $1,000,000 if they retired at 75, plus 10% of everything they ever earned and the interest on that money.

First off, are you going to manipulate the amount of interest banks will pay? No free market there.......... but I forgot, you seem to not be in favor of free markets exactly. You seem to have a mishmash of a utopia according to Ron Gaston.. err, or is that John Galt?? Trust me, John Galt would not be in favor of depositing money into people's accounts and dictating how much interest money it will earn.

You also are very big on government being a part of our lives, from birth to death, while making judgments on what group deserves how much and how little.

You also think we should all ride bicycles, work 32 hours per week only, replace transformer towers with windmills, and be more involved in mandating minimum wage (more social engineering), and said "Health care, everybody is pretty much in favor of it"...WRONG!!! That is why I called you a socialist, and with your own admission, verging on communism.

What is wrong is my mother has been saving all her life and currently is getting .4% that's 4 tenths of a percent interest per year...
at the same time banks have completely ignored usury laws and charge 20% 30% up to 79.99% Give me a Damn break.
That's why I put that 5% figure in my plan. Because anything less is criminal and it has nothing to do with socialism, it has to do with basic fairness and common sense. Of course you prefer the Federal Reserve manipulating the interest rate? and you probably think you live in a capitalist society too. Communist is just a label that greedy people use when backed into a corner by common sense or humanitarian needs. I see you now have labeled me communist, marxist, and socialist.
I dream of utopia, but fact is Capitalism is not and never can be Utopian. forgive me for wanting a peaceful world, without starvation hunger and homelessness. John Lennon said it best Imagine

Sorry...social engineering and war is what has gotten into us into trillions of dollars of deficits. And like most communists, Marxists or socialists, you are sure that you have the answer, if everyone will just live their life according to your Utopian formula. Communism is the redistribution of wealth in order to level a playing field, a field that will never be fair, and never be level, no matter how much meddling people like you do. What bothers me is how dangerous people like you are, because you lack the basic understanding that having central planners like yourself, opens the door to corruption and abuse of the system and abuse of those "forced" to be in the system you have designed. Those forced into your utopia are not free, they are slaves to your vision. It is not justice to say people should ride bikes and depend on windmills because your 'vision' deems it to be so. You are as bad as 0bama...

By the way, in case you can't tell.......I don't like anyone manipulating anything....not you...not the government, and not the Fed. Capitalism can work if allowed to do so, but our central planners won't allow that, and all that cash that flows to the politicians thru the crony capitalism we now operate under is too good to let go of.

John Lennon's "Imagine" was a Marxist love song. He asks the listener to imagine "a world with no possessions", where there is "no need for greed or hunger," a veritable "brotherhood of man," with "all the people sharing all the world." This is clearly Marxism, yet you seem offended when I say your ramblings have shades of Marxism, Communism, and Socialism sprinkled throughout. Your hero John likes sings it proud....but like typical Marxists, you prefer to be called something else. Because we all know how those forays into Communism and Marxism ultimately end up....millions dead.>

Millions Dead? I think you've now confused socialists with Nazi's and Republicans

True Capitalism died when FDR was elected, you can't blame me or John Lennon for that The aforementioned work you referenced is basically a list of things, that could, would help the economy jump start. You seem to miss that the Saving plan is to replace Social Security and take our savings out of the hands of Congress and that the money would be deposited in America's Credit Unions so greedy banks can't get at it. Banks can do what the hell they want just like always, and credit Unions will finance peoples needs. The reason I mention bicycles is that 60% of Americans are too fat. They need the exercise and saving fossil fuel is a bonus. There are 15 million medically obese in the United States, is too say 15 million people over 500 pounds...
and I really love how you grouped "social engineering and war " to explain trillions of dollars of deficits.

To someone like me, who is totally against war, to explain how it's my fault that The Democrats and Republicans, of which I am neither, has taken this country as close to the edge, without falling off, to economic and social disaster. and you think 1/3 of America is Republican closer to 1/4... and as I have reread the thread, look past the name calling and finger pointing, I don't see a single idea presented as to what we can do to help anything? Ah A REPUBLICAN
Well if I give you your third of the vote, that still leaves 2/3 WE don't need you...

That is what I just said; we now operate under crony capitalism.......and I wasn't blaming you or John Lennon, because you two hitched your wagon to Marxism, so it would be a false comparison. By the way, you say you don't want to comment too much on abortion, because it is a topic that is sure to lose you votes in your run for president, but then you go out of your way to group Nazi's and Republicans together. You certainly know how to F up a campaign, right out of the gate, and to basically call 1/3 of Americans Nazis is abhorrent.
But, I guess when someone confronts you on your nonsensical, infantile view of the world according to you, you feel the need to lash out. Ahhhhhh...
perhaps your mother has a nice cup of hot chocolate to soothe your nerves.
P.S. You should try reading Ayn Rand and understanding the characters in Atlas shrugged. Seriously, John Galt left the establishment over the type of nonsense you are advocating.

I Grouped the Republican and Democrats together, if you want the nazi's too you can have them...
as for my years as role of activist John Galt jr, I LEFT THE ESTABLISHMENT BECAUSE OF THE 1980'S
I never claimed to be John Galt or used his ideas John Galt was about the years leading up to the great depression and written in the 1950's which is where Republicans belong...
I read about John Galt and decided to be his grandson...
John Galt jr was a role play, about a real life adventure of an activist in the 1990's recorded as it unfolded my journey

Is the general reader supposed to understand that you think of yourself as a modern day John Galt (Jr.)??

I understand your basic premise of the $50K, but it is more social engineering....and it just doesn't work. The problem is, when plans like this fail, it is impossible to to fail without causing great political and personal strife because so many depend on it. And still, where does the 50K from? You have to take it from people.
What about the people who are drug addicts and can't or won't work? Do I have to fund theirs because they won't?
What about the single mother who keeps having babies? Do I have to fund the 50K for each one of hers, with a chance of them going on to repeat the cycle their mother set up, and then I will fund their 50K too? The only way American society, or any society for that matter, can work is when the safety net is so limited, people will work and save because that is their only means of survival. The fear of being cold and hungry is a great motivating factor. Take it away, and you foster a country of slackers... which we have now.

Most people have no Idea who John Galt was, I am but me. no labels needed because I have never met anyone who agrees with everything i say and think and I don't expect to. How can you say plans like this fail, when it's never been tried?
Where the money comes from is the key to it working.
We constantly create wealth from thin air, every time a business is sold "goodwill" appears on the balance sheet as an asset..
Every time a company goes public, people are buying nothing but a piece of paper that says you own a part of... every Internet start up starts as blank space in a different dimension, in our reality it's nothing. Eventually they all become worthless when the company dies. So is saying that people are worth something at a base level really any different? Consider this, The game of Monopoly is a simplistic version of what it's like to live in a capitalist world... How long would the game last if you started with no money? How long if you doubled the money? Why do people "cheat" and put money on free parking? The purpose of money is to allow exchange of goods. It's a game...

The economy, Capitalism, the stock market, the lotteries and all that follow are merely games. Sometimes in order to keep the game going you need to change the rules. Yes the money comes out of thin air and everybody gets the same amount. Does it really matter the amount, GW Bush jr gave us each $300 dollars to stimulate the economy, which by your scale makes him a socialist, right?

Where do you think the economy would be today, if that give away had been $3000 to every man woman and child?
It's not socialism, Marxism, communism, capitalism or any other ism. It's just changing the rules so everybody has an equal chance to start and finish this game we call life.

The truth is I started with $10,000 per person but inflation gobbled it away. The goodwill bill as it stands now is perhaps a way to start over when the economy finally collapses and the First thing I would do if elected is call for a Constitutional convention so that being born broke and naked will never stop anyone from trying to succeed...

You finish with "The fear of being cold and hungry is a great motivating factor. Take it away, and you foster a country of slackers... which we have now..." that exactly is my point whose system is the blame for that?
In 2009 I was forced to move in to my van, because I could no longer afford housing.
I busted my butt for 30 years living the Capitalist Dreams, only to have Lawyers, Big corporations or government constantly snatch away everything again and again.
But the One thing I've never been called is a slacker.