Free Countries don't Trap Rich People like Rats and Make them Stay

I don't think the "poor" have it that bad either here.

Do you think a person who gets some $40,000 a year in welfare entitlements is poor? Section 8 housing, Medicaide with $3 co-pays, unless they are young, then it's free,---2 free meals a day for the school kids, along with food stamps (SNAP), then there is WIC, welfare payments and the hundreds of other freebies like cell phones, etc. etc.

Any one of the hardworking poor that lived before the Great Depression would have thought they were living like kings with all those handouts.

No wonder so many women drop out of school, stay unmarried and get more benefits from welfare than from getting an honest job after graduating.

Liberals like you are directly responisble for this broken, unfair program. Like Lenin, you believe that more you make, the more the government should take.

What is fair for the government to tax for those who make $250K a year and above?

 

And why are our poor the fattest poor in the world?! Even obese in many cases.

 

I kind of agree, although there will always be rich and poor. Sports celebrities are only one of many examples of rich people.

And I don't think amassing wealth is a problem per se. It's just that there will always be conflicts between the wealthy and the working class. It's always been that way and always will be.

 

...as if this response wasn't uppity.

By the way, I'm kind of liberal on economics, but I'm not a liberal on social policy. Even plenty of libertarians and conservatives recognize the privilege of wealth, and the abuse of power often associated with it.

Governments are generally reflective of what the elite rich desire. It works in their best interests to have the semi-rich (6 figures) blame the poor for all their ills. The people they should really be looking at are the elites in control of the system.

Politicians don't work for us. They work for the elite rich. They merely pay some lip service to the working class occasionally to prevent things like revolts from occurring.

 

I didn't say it was ethical. I'm saying it's somewhat inevitable.

I don't worry about the plight of the successful. They can take care of themselves. If Phil wants to move to Fiji, more power to him. Whatever he does is his business, and all the mockery in the world isn't going to bankrupt him.

I'm more concerned about the plight of the common man.

 

You're making a lot of assumptions here.

And apparently, I'm Lenin if I don't toe the conservative line.

Anyway, yes, you're correct that the poor don't have it so bad compared to the Great Depression. In fact, that's kind of the reason why so many social programs were set up as a result of the repercussions from the Stock Market Crash. When so much misery spread across this society as a result of the crash, society was no longer able to shrug off the struggles of the destitute.

When people not used to such dire living conditions faced poverty, they demanded a societal response to it. Every major industrialized nation has done this, and it's generally considered a vital part of modern civilization.

Plenty of reforms are necessary in our social system. I think we can at least agree on that.

As for your question about taxes, I think we can keep nominal rates the same as they currently are. I'm more interested in raising the AMT and capping deductions.

 

What I find mind boggling is how rich folks have figured out how to get middle and lower middle class Republicans to fight their battles.

 

It's called lack of envy. It's something you have when you are not threatened by somebody else's success.

 

There seems to be a disconnect between distrust of the government and realizing that the people running government are the very wealthy.

There also seems to be some confusion as to what really constitutes wealth.

When I say wealthy, I'm mostly referring to people who make the upper end of 8 figures or more. People who make at least 9 figures are the real power players in government.

So, it logically follows that a distrust of government should entail a distrust of the elite rich.

As for the people that make 6 and 7 figures that are referred to as wealthy -- they tend to be the ones that get hit most with taxes, because they can't deduct as much and have fewer ways to hide income. So, I understand their angst, but they mostly have the elite to blame for their taxation issues rather than the poor.

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Distrusting the elite rich isn't a matter of envy. It's a matter of realizing who's pulling the strings.

The folks at Goldman Sachs aren't exactly poor.

 

It's more a matter of envy than most people want to admit. The human ego is quite brilliant at backward rationalizing shortcomings into virtues.

 

No, it's called being so stupid you'll let greedy, evil parasites bend you over and fist you with a catcher's mitt, and worship them while they do it.

Right: when you are so stupid, you are not threatened by somebody else's success at bending you over and fisting you with a catcher's mitt.

 

For some people, I guess you could say it is envy.

For me though, it's just part of looking at how power consolidates.

Every society has its elite. Even Communism -- a system supposedly aimed at fighting elitism -- created its own wealthy class. Power was held by the few with the most connections in the party.

There's just something about human nature that causes this sort of thing to happen in every system. Even when we were living in caves or were roaming nomads, class systems developed.

Some of the earliest ones were tied to religion rather than wealth, and institutions like the Catholic Church show us how religion and class can unite to form elitism as well.

 

And this is why you're poor. Because you think like a loser. All you know how to do is hate on people with more than you. You operate in such a mindset of scarcity that to you, someone else's success must mean your own failure. You operate in a very sad win/lose paradigm. You do not understand win/win.

 

So many of the most progressive industrialzed countries are now going bankrupt. Countries like Greece, Spain, Ireland and so forth have very large underclasses that take more than the IC and tax revenues can sustain. The US is going down the same road with our large underclass, and Obama and the secular progressive democrats won't endanger the 47% voting base by making needed cuts. Places like Norway do so well because of large oil revenues, and the fact they don't have half their population sucking off them. The US is doomed to financial collapse. Obama can't keep taking in 2 dollars and spending 3.

What entitlement programs do you think should be scaled back or eliminated? What federal agencies should be abolished?

Here is my list:
Section 8 Housing
School Lunch Program
All education funding K-12
Head Start
Food Stamps---replaced with commodities
Welfare entitlements for ALL that can work---even Lenin said, "No work, no eat."

HUD
EPA
Dept of Education
Health and Human Services
EEOC
This is just a start....

 

It's actually more a matter of servants of evil trying to dismiss opposition to evil as being motivated by envy for those who profit by evil than most people want to admit. Of course, such despicably dishonest rhetoric is just the pure, distilled essence of evil. To make such statements in order to disarm those who oppose evil is one of the most evil things a human being can possibly do. It's just viciously, satanically evil.

The human emotion of greed -- unfortunately mistranslated as "love of money" -- has correctly been identified as the root of all manner of evil. Some people -- call them, "evil, lying sacks of $#!+" -- find themselves unable to satisfy their own greed, and take solace in serving and worshipping those who have been most successful at satisfying their greed by taking from society and giving nothing back.

 

Greece and Ireland have smaller social safety nets than a lot of their neighbors. Portugal also is like that. Spain is more progressive than these countries, but even they actually aren't that progressive compared to the Scandinavian countries or to Germany.

It's not really progressivism that's the problem.

A luck of budgeting sense and a lack of effective tax collection typically are.

The shadow economies in the hardest hit European countries are rather large. Greece's shadow economy was notorious for being huge, and yet, nothing was really done to fix this during EU integration. As a result, these countries have endemic debt problems.

Cutting social spending could help, but more importantly, they need to reform their tax collection methods.

While oil revenue certainly helps Norway, it also helps that they reinvest in their people a lot. Education is highly socialized, for example.

Granted, Norway also has the advantage of being very culturally homogeneous.

I wouldn't go that far.

I'd focus more on ending corporate welfare.

For starters, a law needs to be passed that prevents any future bailouts of banks or any other industries. Let the market clear big business.

End all farm subsidies.

End the War on Drugs.

Cut military spending by a third, and close the less useful bases overseas.

Enter fewer foreign conflicts.

Raise the retirement age by a year every 2 years, with the rises ending at 70.

Bring back the Clinton-era welfare limits.

End the child tax credit.

That's most of what I would change.

 

Don't you see what you're doing here? You're unwittingly proving exactly what I just said about the human ego backward rationalizing shortcomings into virtues. Look at your post. You're rationalizing your own lack as superiority. Trying to explain why the fact that you have less makes you better than someone who has more.

 

LOL! But in fact, I'm not. So you continue to find new ways to be wrong.

<yawn>

<yawn> All you know how to do is accuse your moral and intellectual superiors of envy for those who profit by evil. Virtually every message you post seems to be devoted to accusing those who oppose injustice of envy for those who profit by it. Such slanders are utterly despicable.

No, only when it's their success at getting something for nothing.

No, I am merely willing to know the fact that the greedy, evil parasites you serve and worship do.

Of course I do. You just do not understand that win/win requires that both parties make contributions commensurate with the benefits they receive.

 

Yep. And more to the point, I see what you are doing.

LOL! Nope. Such class-based psychologizing is pure Marxism. What YOU are doing is the same thing Marx did: claim that all arguments are merely expressions of class interest. But that is just a fallacious attempt to dismiss in advance all facts that disprove your views, with no consideration needed.

What lack?

Look at your post: you're rationalizing your own servitude to greed, injustice and evil as moral superiority.

But in fact, I have done no such thing. That's just a bald fabrication on your part. You probably "have less" than I do, but that does not stop you from being a lickspittle sycophant of greed, privilege, injustice and evil. By contrast, what YOU are doing is claiming the fact that someone has more invariably makes them morally and even epistemologically superior to someone who has less.

 

That of which you intimate does not exist outwith your imagination..

 

You do not understand the fear the left has of folk simply voting with their feet. They need every penny in our society and every penny thy can borrow to keep the vote buying in operation and the bribes flowing. If it fails their entire political empire crashes. Few vote for the left out of love or conviction. They vote left because the left gives them stuff.

 

And, of course, the receivers of that share, the far left, gets to define what that 'fair' share is.

 

I don't envy anyone because they have money, or are successful, or both...and as you know, you can be broke, and adequately successful at your job, and still be quite happy, and unthreatened by wealthy people. I've had it both ways. I traveled in wealthy circles in Seattle during the 90's, but I came from meager upbringings with depression era parents, who rattled on about wasting food and electricity throughout my childhood...of course now I get it.

The "so called conservative" media and the GOP right now are trying to get voters to believe people who voted for Obama are all lower middle class or poor people, who are closet Stalinists.

It's just not true.

 

The disconnect you refer to is the result of some top o' the line political strategery.

The brilliant and immortal Lee Atwater, the brains behind contemporary "scorched Earth" electioneering...emphasized how strategists need to anticipate their weaknesses in advance, and compensate for them before they happen. This can be accomplished many ways.

In this case...I'd bet that the GOP anticipated if they cultivated distrust of the government, that would lead to the notion that the people running government are the very wealthy. So they had to figure out a way to distract voters. Apparently what they came up with was basically flattery.

They convinced righties they are hard working patriotic "real" Americans that are so exceptional, that they should be wealthy!...and the Stalinist Democrats are not patriotic, hard working, or exceptional enough to become wealthy. And of course if Democrats are elected, they would soon come to confiscate their freedom, and liberty, right after they imprison the rich, and take everybody's guns.

Anytime you find yourself fighting someone else's battles, and you've never met that person, it should be cause for further reflection on just who is "really" benefiting from your efforts

 

Who exactly is the "hater" here?