Quote: Originally Posted by Northside Storm Don't worry. The generation you are passing the torch to is the counter-punch to Generation X, and one prone to bouts of activism. http://www.americanprogress.org/issu...nion_0518.html The numbers are consoling if you assume a working democracy and that a strong majority will prevail. On health care and other isssues the strong majority is not prevailing. We might eventually have massive street demonstrations ala Egypt to move the Congress. 90% of the campaign money comes from the top 1-2% and the faceless corporations controlled by a top .1% or less. It is unforeseeable that the majority can outvote the corporations in campaign spending. In the mean time the best we can hope for is Obama, "tMr. Audacity of Hope" agreeing budget cuts are very immportant during a recession and claiming he is "forced" to bail out Wall Street and continue tax breaks for millionaires.
Where are the usual libertarians/conservatives defending reduced taxes on the rich and the super rich as the road to prosperity? Weslinder? Bigtexx, rtsy? etc. Have they given up? Realized they aren't going to win the lottery? Lost the faith in trickle down?
There is something distinctly American and ironic in that Arizona is proposing a special tax for the fat poor, while the fat cats in America continue to pay less and less.
America couldn't afford its government even if the rich were taxed at 100% <iframe title="YouTube video player" width="853" height="510" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/661pi6K-8WQ?hd=1" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> Is America really broke? Michael Moore (and others) tells us that there are oceans of cash being hoarded by the wealthy. But Iowahawk (iowahawk.typepad.com) did a little addition, and armed with these statistics Bill and the 'Hawk blow a hole in the "hoarding" lie big enough to fit a documentary filmmaker through
Well, what about THIS video? Spoiler <iframe title="YouTube video player" width="480" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/E8EZW7-NSNI" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
I'd put rtsy on ignore - really, he contributes nothing to any debate on any subject - but the humor value is too high. I'm still convinced he's a liberal plant - making the conservatives look so ridiculous that it just ends up bolstering the liberal agenda. It'd be pretty clever if that was the case.
Let's start with the fact that he starts talking about hard facts and statistics, then weaves a fictional "what if" tale that is as far from reality as you can get. Random YouTube videos don't prove anything. If you want to prove it with facts, find some facts. This video is sorely lacking in that department.
I find that most "libertarians" (I prefer to call them "free-marketeers" because it sounds funny to me) are usually middle-class (or higher) men in their early twenties who, after coming to terms with Adam Smith's theory (usually not by reading Smith directly, but by reading a summary of his argument), find the model of the economy he proposes so enchanting and understandable that they become convinced that it's the answer to all our problems. I had my time with it - the idea that we could just remove all market restrictions and, by so doing, get rid of most of the government, was very appealing - this notion that the economy would just run like clockwork if left alone, and the added benefit of removing potential tyrants in government. I understand why people tend to get so obsessive about the idea. There's a lot more to why people are so willing to accept this idea - mostly personal reasons for supporting it, like bolstering the notion that one truly "deserves" what one has, in comparison to other (poorer) people (people love any ideology that convinces them that they're smarter, more disciplined, and harder working than others), and such, but it's all relatively easy to debunk. The most obvious thing, really, is that it stopped being an accurate description of the world during the early years of the 19th century. It's woefully out of date, and wholly inadequate for describing the type of world we live in today - and, as such, its usefulness as a standard for modern-day conduct has completely evaporated. I had quite a few ideas that appealed to me like this when I was younger - there's very little that can compete with an ideology that, once it's understood, not only explains everything, but also provides a how-to guide for how we should live our lives. That's why people get so blinded to any criticisms of the idea and are willing to swallow tons and tons of utter bull**** just to keep that worldview. I mean seriously - if you were in possession of an ideology that told you exactly how the world worked and gave you the prescription for the right way for all of us to live our lives, wouldn't you be really reticent to give it up? I was, but I grew up.
I'm not sure if anyone noticed, but the author of this article, Joseph Stiglitz, won the Economic Nobel Prize in 2001. Not that it will make any difference to free-market fundamentalists.
I get rather tired of sounding like a broken record, but I find these lies so often repeated that too be honest, I'm getting rather tired of repeating myself. But here it goes once again. Over the past 30 years, 60% of American's poorest 30 years ago is no longer in that situation. On the other spectrum, 40% of the America's wealthiest 30 years ago is no longer there. Something fundamentally changed. Something happened. Who the **** was Sergey Brin 30 years ago? Larry Page? What about Steve Balmer? Michael Dell. Jefff Bezos. And of course, my favourite (sarcasm), John Paulson. The usual study in social mobility goes something like this. We start off with the all holy Gini coefficient. I've yet to see one income distribution study (from the liberal side) that hasn't included it, never mind that it is absolutely idiotic. Then we break income through some sort of social strata, conveniently sliced to make the point. So someone like Sergey Brin would be in the top 1/5/whatever strata. Then we say Sergey and his peers now earn x% of total income, which is y% higher than 30 years ago. Never mind the fact that Sergey and his pal Larry would be around 8 about 30 years ago, Americans 1/5/whatever % of richest just "increased its wealth." And of course, they are the super-rich, a group decidedly harder to crack, never mind the more mundane rich folks. Then we point at this and the Gini index and say, "aha, see, social mobility is dead." It's all rather convenient... Chuckles. Well, I just found out that Joe Stiglitz is the only economist who ever won an Economics Nobel Prize. LMAO. Forgive me for my memory may be a little hazy, but I happen to believe there were quite a few; and quite a few of those among them disagreed with Stiglitz. I also absolutely love how when you couldn't debate on merit, the standard fall back tactic is to portray someone with more free-market beliefs as some sort of nutcase when in reality, nobody who takes himself seriously does not believe that there exist (or that there even should exist) a completely free market. No self respecting conservative economist has ever said there should exist a completely free market, which just happened to be the reason why I view those far-right nutcases with almost as much disdain as I do you. But hey, I just found out that if you are not supportive of a welfare state, you're a "free-market fundamentalist." I think that's a very good question. One worthy of an answer. Now, if the DoL is to be believe, the median household income is roughly $50,000. I would classify that as "middle class." I mean c'mon. Middle class, middle income class. Just a matter of definition right? Nothing controversial there. But who else is middle class? Well, accordingly to any statistics course, it would be some band/standard deviation from that median. The idea of course, is where to slice the band. That's when it gets iffy, especially from the liberals. The most popular definition of an "upper class" I've heard is $250,000, corresponding with roughly 2% of the population; some go higher. OK, so that's $200,000 in household income above the median. So here's the problem, doesn't that mean we have to go the other way too? So you would have to have what, -$150,000 in income to qualify as being poor? Holy crap, obviously people have been cheating the food stamp/social welfare system. Chuckles. So there's about one logical conclusion you can draw. The definition of the "rich" is too high. Rich should be somewhere around, let's say, $80,000 in household income. So wanna tax the rich? Tax away. Let's be perfectly honest here, there's a perfect reason for using $250,000 (or higher) or whatever as the cut-off. It's close to the point where you could tax the heck out of them, siphoning off their wealth (and transfer them) but also have the segment being so small that you wouldn't take too much of a hit at the polls. So if you're a Democrat, the job is already more than half done for you.
not a panacea, just morally superior and better than any alternative Wrong, the notion is it's wrong to take from the "undeserving" by force. The immorality lies in those that would presume to use their proclamation of undeservedness as a justification for theft. The system that eschews theft is always morally superior. This is so patronizing and void of reason it's hardly worth responding to. "Oh those naive free-marketers, they're just so silly and behind the times." There's nothing to refute there. Theft and coercion are never justified, irrespective of the times and circumstances we live in. For some of us, philosophy is not an act of faith. Actions not guided by reason inevitably result in poor decisions. Of course our philosophy should be perpetually examined and tested and defended. Experience and reflection may indeed find our reasoning flawed, but that doesn't mean we should abandon reason altogether.
