What is your reaction to this Republican parable?

Well like whatever is what I say

Negative. It implies that all poor people are undeserving, lazy, and/or are not trying. It's a negative stereotype of needy people.

I think it's a poor analogy. Grades and income are not the same thing; they aren't used the same way. It's also not like taxpayers don't get something back in services. People who don't want to pay taxes very rarely also want to give up the considerable benefits they derive from the taxes they pay.

although one would like to take this parable and say "aaaaaahhhh, yes, now i understand" and all was right with the world but i don't agree that one = the other and that this can be used to demonstrate distribution of money in society................................

I find it funny. So, I guess I have a positive reaction.

This parable doesn't begin to cover the real world situation. Wealth is not directly proportional to effort. Third grade kids in Oakland were counting to 20 while students in neighboring Moraga three years older were discussing SAT's and choice of colleges.

Just yesterday an invention I've invested two years into and have nearly gone bankrupt over has just become a top ten iPhone application, though I had a working prototype a year ago. Undoubtedly the people who succeeded first had money to start with, could afford test equipment, employees, licensing, and such.

The other way this parable fails is that US socialisation isn't nearly about creating equality. No one I know of making $100k after years of effort and losing another $100k to taxes would want to trade places with someone on social security living on $10k.

While there was always some aristocracy here on earth, the reason we've lasted so long is that the rest of the tribe was socialised. The witch-doctor treated everyone. In European culture we had church tithings taking care of the poor. The government has data to fulfill that role more equitably, on both the part of the poor and the wealthy.

Another flaw in this parable is that grades are generally an open system. Your getting a 4.0 does not prevent someone else from getting a 4.0 too. Economics though is more like a game of Monopoly. People getting wealthier than others is the cause of relative poverty. Why should only the charitable amongst the wealthy bear the burden of maintaining a survival floor to the relative poverty they create?

At least in the old days when only the nobility had higher wealth, it was easier to collectively revolt against injustice. If not for taxes, the poor might be sieging the strongholds of CEOs with torches.

CEOs make 400 times more than lowly employees these days. Are they more generous? Do they work harder than people flipping burgers? 400 times harder?

This parable would make sense if wealth were directly proportional to effort, but that isn't the case at all. Look at banks. Each years they devise devious new tricks to increase earnings.

I have flipped burgers. It was hard work. I see no reason why computer programming, auto mechanicing, or designing synthesizers (my other occupations) should pay more or have better health/retirment benefits. They are all more enjoyable. They may require higher intelligence, but putting an income tag on the IQ people are born with hardly seems moral either.

~

I'd probably rather have Audrey as my neighbor too. The other gal would be more likely to have my car towed to increase her chances of finding a parking spot. It seems America should have enough abundance to do without everyone competing against each other.

That's obviously like saying all poor people are being lazy and having fun. Lots of rich people get rich by doing nothing. Ahem, Paris Hilton. Ahem.

Sounds like a pretty well thought out argument, and at least an honest take on what the conservative philosophy is all about--- unlike that psydo-populist, small-town glorification crap that Palin spews.

btw -- you can probabbly make a good counter-argument too; but then at least you would be arguing opposite philosophies instead of identity politics, which is the kind of crap that Obama and Palin was spewing.

Funneee!! LOL

> This parable doesn't begin to cover the real world situation. Wealth
> is not directly proportional to effort. Third grade kids in Oakland
> were counting to 20 while students in neighboring Moraga three years
> older were discussing SAT's and choice of colleges.
>

True, but its hard to argue that there isn't a positive correlation with income and work effort. Yes, there will always be your Paris Hiltons and your poor ghetto kid busting his ass, but those are the outliners.



> The other way this parable fails is that US socialisation isn't nearly
> about creating equality. No one I know of making $100k after years
> of effort and losing another $100k to taxes would want to trade places
> with someone on social security living on $10k.
>

The US is already a mixed economy, mixing the free market with some socialism (as it should be). You simply want more socialism than there currently is already.



> While there was always some aristocracy here on earth, the reason
> we've lasted so long is that the rest of the tribe was socialised.
> The witch-doctor treated everyone. In European culture we had church
> tithings taking care of the poor. The government has data to fulfill
> that role more equitably, on both the part of the poor and the wealthy.
>

We STILL have private charities (in addition to welfare). Actually, the standard of living has improved dramatically for everyone. The witch-doctor might have treated everyone equally, but she/he was also a quack who didn't really do that much good. So everyone got a crapty service.


> I have flipped burgers. It was hard work. I see no reason why computer
> programming, auto mechanicing, or designing synthesizers (my other
> occupations) should pay more or have better health/retirment benefits.

If you hate flipping burgers, quit. Go be a truck driver. Or go work on an oil rig. Those pay quite well, and you don't need much education to get them. On the flip side, those jobs are more unpleasant and/or more dangerous.


> They are all more enjoyable. They may require higher intelligence,
> but putting an income tag on the IQ people are born with hardly seems
> moral either.
>

Why not? People who are born prettier get unfair advantages too. What about people who happen to have better social skills. What about a host of other talents.

It's a classic example of basic misunderstanding of how certain things work. That's like the people who say "well if we evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?"

> I think it's a poor analogy. Grades and income
> are not the same thing; they aren't used the same
> way. It's also not like taxpayers don't get something
> back in services. People who don't want to pay
> taxes very rarely also want to give up the considerable
> benefits they derive from the taxes they pay.

Much better than what I had.

I wasn't able to articulate how it is that they're different, though. I tried to think of how I would explain it and couldn't really come up with a good explanation. Oh well. I think your analogy is good, too.

After reading all of the comments, I have to add that we don't get good value for the taxes that we pay. As Americans, we have to pay tax on worldwide income which sucks. I believe that all (or else it's a huge majority) of other nationalities pay no tax to their home country on worldwide earnings. We (like all other foreigners in Hong Kong) pay Hong Kong tax (which is very reasonable---the max. amount of tax is a flat 15%). Then we get to pay US tax in addition. (The HK tax is subtracted from the US tax so we're not paying that twice). It totally sucks, though, because we're not reaping any direct benefits. And it could get much worse if Obama wins---the foreign earned income exclusion most likely will be revoked. In 2008, the first $87,600 of income is tax free. This may sound like a lot but housing costs are taxable if your company provides them and it's very expensive here. It is not uncommon for expats to have housing that costs in excess of US$ 10,000 per month. (We're not in that category---we own our company and are not on a big expat contract.)

My reaction to this parable is positive. Most people who have a lot of money worked very hard to get where they are in life. It wouldn't be fair to take money away from those people and re-distribute it to others who didn't earn it. I'm all for helping people out (and do so regularly) who are less fortunate due to circumstances beyond their control, but I also don't believe in giving money to people who are plain lazy and don't want work or do anything to help themselves out.

There will always be poor people. We are to be compassionate. But charity should be voluntary.

I think there should be a flat tax for everyone. No write offs. Actually, I don't think there should be an income tax. We don't get the services we deserve from our taxes. I hate to say this but most government jobs are welfare jobs. Our government was not meant to be an employment agency.

Welfare jobs?
Who would run the government if no one were getting paid to do it?

There is a positive correlation between effort 'and talent' and income within any tightly specific context, like between lawyers or chefs working at the same site for the same people. Beyond that though, there are florists working for the rich making 100 times more than those working in slums, though working no harder, and all these florists may be working harder than your average radiologist or gold trader making much more, and probably with an equivalent sized knowledge base. We can't all be radiologists or work in Beverly Hills. Someone has to do the grunt work of cooking hamburgers.

"> The other way this parable fails is that US socialisation isn't nearly
> about creating equality. No one I know of making $100k after years
> of effort and losing another $100k to taxes would want to trade places
> with someone on social security living on $10k.
>

The US is already a mixed economy, mixing the free market with some socialism (as it should be). You simply want more socialism than there currently is already. "

Are you forgetting the context here? I'm arguing against the survey premise, that democrats are about creating 3.0 GPA for everyone, and that no adjustment of economic disparity is called for. Yeah, I might call for even more adjustment generally, but here I'm just pointing out that even with taxation adjustments, people would prefer what they've worked hard relatively to what those on welfare endure. Their relative position of wealth while maintaining a poverty floor is nothing to complain about.

"The witch-doctor might have treated everyone equally, but she/he was also a quack who didn't really do that much good. So everyone got a crapty service."
Yeah, so? What's that have to do with socialisation?

"If you hate flipping burgers, quit."
So all burger flippers should become radiologists to make more money? We only need so many radiologists. We need more burger flippers. We can't all do whatever pays most and keep society functioning. The job distribution that exists now is roughly what society requires to maintain itself. We could however pay everyone the same. All told, education and such, the disparity of effort required between professions isn't great, five-fold at very most between surgeons and air-traffic controllers, and grocery clerks, with sanitation workers inbetween.

Now suppose there were a lottery assigning you to the position of janitor, submarine inspector, tv camera engineer, or librarian. If you got assigned janitor, I'm guessing you would at least have preferred the pay had been equalized first, rather than having the suckiest job and getting to grumble that the tv engineer makes 10x more.

I don't think people with better looks or social skills should be making more money either, though they're the ones I'd prefer to see on TV. I don't see that Paris Hilton is any more deserving of wealth than someone cheerful bringing my dinner to my restaurant table.

With artists, writers, and musicians, beyond a minimum threshold of having reasonable talent at all, income is entirely a matter of promotion. It's almost pure chance which artists make $400k and which starve, or at least a mere matter of who you know, what associated prestige you can round up, and your marketing budget. Popularity plays a part when artists have equal exposure, but they never do.

I tuned out after the part where the professor actively encouraged the student to think her father was evil.

Grades and money are not equivalent. Giving someone a share of your GPA will not benefit the way that giving someone money might.

I think this is an oversimplified, stupid analogy. Tax policy is not wealth distribution. What is not mentioned is that richer people rely more heavily on society and public services, and may not work hard at all. There is no wealth without a market to sell to. And I doubt that a CEO works harder than a Mexican day laborer.

However, having said that, the belief that Deomcrats will actually give breaks and services back to the working man is a bunch of bullcrap , too. These "programs" will be run by friends of the politicians who will chew up about 65% of the funding in "administrative costs" and pork. Much of what is left will be "lost" to poor auditing, or in other words, thievery. The money that is finally given to the people for which it was intended will only reach a fraction of whom it was intended for, and the program will become ineffective.

Oh, come on now, Matty, you're just a cynic...Perhaps, but I am also a manager in a Federal entitlement program. I have personally seen everything I have just described.

Negative.

Just because you are rich, doesn't mean you are a harder worker. In fact, I think the opposite is true in a lot of cases.

> Negative. It implies that
> all poor people are undeserving,
> lazy, and/or are not trying.
> It's a negative stereotype
> of needy people.

A republican stereotype.

> I'd probably rather have Audrey
> as my neighbor too.

That could be a really interesting spin off of this survey.... Which girl would you prefer for a neighbor?

Confusion. How is this a republican parable?

I think it's an inaccurate depiction of democrats.

Government should be kept small, have specific duties. It has grown massive, special interests....and we the people are paying for it. We could cut the size of government tremendously, but too many people earn a living off the taxpayers. Government was not to be meant to be an employment agency. We used to be a producing nation, now we're not....just paperwork. We'd all have more private money for private individual enterprise....LESS TAXES, if there were less government. We are now enslaved to taxes.

I heard a Congressman, and woman say government jobs are welfare jobs, and I agree absolutely.

These taxes have only been in effect since the early 1900's.

Accounts Receivable Tax
Building Permit Tax
CDL License Tax
Cigarette Tax
Capital Gain Tax
Corporate Income Tax
Dog License Tax
Federal Excise Tax
Federal Income Tax
Federal Unemployment Tax (FUTA)
Fishing License Tax
Food License Tax
Fuel Perm it Tax
Gasoline Tax
Hunting License Tax
Inheritance Tax
Inventory Tax
IRS Interest Charges (tax on top of tax)
IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax)
Liquor Tax
Luxury Tax
Marriage License Tax
Medicare Tax
Property Tax
Real Estate Tax
Sales Tax
Service charge taxes
Social Security Tax
Road Usage Tax (Truckers)
Sales Taxes
Recreational Vehicle Tax
School Tax
State Income Tax
State Unemployment Tax ( SUTA)
Telephone Federal Excise Tax
Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Tax
Telephone Federal, State and Local Surcharge Tax
Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Tax
Telephone Recurring and Non-recurring Charges Taxes
Telephone State and Local Tax
Telephone Usage Charge Tax
Utility Tax
Vehicle License Registration Tax
Vehicle Sales Tax
Watercraft Registration Tax
Well Permit Tax
Workers Compensation Tax

I don't think there's any such thing as a "welfare job". That sounds like a job given to someone just to keep them from being needy.

But, they are welfare jobs. Using some ingenuity, like people used to have. Have a work ethic and produce to the good.

How do you define 'welfare jobs'? Do you think anyone can get those jobs? A computer tech for a state agency? Would that be a 'welfare job'?

Sounds good to me.

I've heard worse bullcrap.

That's only the partial truth. Unfortunately, the only difference between McCain and Obama is the percentages. They have similar plans that vary only by degrees. They're both Communists!

If he's working for the government...yes. Why is he/she not working in the private sector?

It would be difficult to make into a survey. I don't know any Republicans (or at least not ones who admit to it). The founding ideology of the Republican platform and al its asociated psychology strikes me as qualities one wouldn't want in a friend.

The huge difference between grades is that everyone who works hard can get good grades. If a country had two people and ten dollars, and one person manages to work a bit harder and earn eight dollars, the other person can only get two dollars. Printing more money doesn't change things; If it were $10,000, you'd end up with an $8k person and a $2k person with the same buying power as before, and chances are the $8k person did not work four times harder.

It strikes you that way. Just like nice people like you prefer to live near other nice people... I wonder if dickheads would want to live by other dickheads (and would they even realize they lived by dickheads since they are dickheads too?).

Interesting comparison but I think it's flawed. Money is not wealth though it's easy to think of it as such in our society. If a country had two people and they both work really hard accumulating real wealth, that is things they've made or grown or gathered, then they both have wealth. If there are only ten dollars that they're using for the purposes of exchange, then those ten dollars are spread over all the wealth the two people have. If one person decides to collect all the money, trading for it all the wealth they have, then the other person eats well and the person with the money goes hungry.

> There is a positive correlation between effort 'and talent' and income
> within any tightly specific context, like between lawyers or chefs
> working at the same site for the same people. Beyond that though,
> there are florists working for the rich making 100 times more than
> those working in slums, though working no harder, and all these florists
> may be working harder than your average radiologist or gold trader
> making much more, and probably with an equivalent sized knowledge
> base.

Yes, but if you're really good at what you do, that might be your ticket out of the slums. Beats the old fuedualism system by 100 fold. And communism about 2 fold.



>We can't all be radiologists or work in Beverly Hills. Someone
> has to do the grunt work of cooking hamburgers.
>

Orrr working oil rigs, or driving trucks. Hey, thats grunt work too, alebeit highly paid, and there surely is a huge shortage there. Yes, we can't all be truck drivers, but there certainly is room for much more.

(Actually, come to think of it, we don't really need anybody flipping burgers either. We can probably design robots that can do the flipping for us, albeit that would currently be more expensive, but I am getting ahead of myself).


> "> The other way this parable fails is that US socialisation isn't
> nearly
> > about creating equality. No one I know of making $100k after
> years
> > of effort and losing another $100k to taxes would want to trade
> places
> > with someone on social security living on $10k.
> >

Thats still not a good enough arguement for equal pay. If I work my ass of in college and/or am really smart to get that higher paying job, I think I deserve BOTH the higher pay and the extra lesuire time.



> "The witch-doctor might have treated everyone equally, but she/he
> was also a quack who didn't really do that much good. So everyone
> got a crapty service."
> Yeah, so? What's that have to do with socialisation?
>

That a system where everyone gets crappy but equal service is not better than a system where only a few get really good service and everyone else gets the crappy.


> "If you hate flipping burgers, quit."
> So all burger flippers should become radiologists to make more money?

No, but at least work on oil rigs or be truck drivers. Theres plenty of shortage in those fields.



> We only need so many radiologists. We need more burger flippers. We
> can't all do whatever pays most and keep society functioning. The
> job distribution that exists now is roughly what society requires
> to maintain itself. We could however pay everyone the same. All told,
> education and such, the disparity of effort required between professions
> isn't great, five-fold at very most between surgeons and air-traffic
> controllers, and grocery clerks, with sanitation workers inbetween.
>

We can (eventually at least) replace the sanitation workers and the grocery clerks with machines. You can't do that with professors and surgeons. So yeah, thats a pretty good argument against paying everyone equally. If we pay eveyone equally, then you would be overpaying the sanitation worker hence companies would rush to replace them with machines.


> Now suppose there were a lottery assigning you to the position of
> janitor, submarine inspector, tv camera engineer, or librarian. If
> you got assigned janitor, I'm guessing you would at least have preferred
> the pay had been equalized first, rather than having the suckiest
> job and getting to grumble that the tv engineer makes 10x more.
>

Well, that would be the retarded way of running a society, but I will indulge that scenario for a second. Ok, supposedly I was in that system, and the lotto told me to be a janitor for the rest of my life, yeah, I would demand some compensation. Equal pay at the very least. However, living in such a fuedalistic system would piss me off greatly, make me wish to be a rebel, and eventually I would overthrow your system. History is written by the people who break the rules, not follow them.

However, in our current system, fortuantly there is no lotto randomly assigning people jobs. You can't rebel against the free market. The most you can do is work your way up.



> I don't think people with better looks or social skills should be
> making more money either, though they're the ones I'd prefer to see
> on TV. I don't see that Paris Hilton is any more deserving of wealth
> than someone cheerful bringing my dinner to my restaurant table.
>

Perhaps I misstated myself. People with better looks and/or social skills will get more dates, have more friends, and generally be happier. Why not have some compensation there as well. Why make people who earn more money be forced to give it up, but people who earn more happieness get to still be more happy. Shouldn't there be a happniness tax, to maybe take away some happiness from person A to person B?

I once applied for a database programming job. The test was to create a tree trimming maintenance schedule database.

Private employers don't trim peoples sidewalks trees or run metro systems, though they might run taxis and private gardeners. Private employers strive to have as few employees as posible, and pay them as little as possible. For your (LJD) idea to work, to have people earn an income by creating new products and services, you would have to buy ten times as many products and services with the tax money you saved. To any extent you bought fewer services than you now pay in taxes, the rest of the economy would go that much further downhill. Taxes are logarithmic. That's because people making ten times as much don't need ten times as much bread and bicycles.

If industrialisation were taken to it's ultimate detination, the only sensible plan would be to print and distribute money for everyone to buy the factory goods with. If you insisted instead that everyone work for a living, you could put them to work creating $20M movies and video games, and having kids spend $100/week on new video games, which seems to be pretty much where we are headed now. Frankly I think putting people to work trimming trees or creating wind farms makes much more sense.

BTW, money is relative. The world would look no different today if the poor made $12k/yr and the rich made $700k/yr, or if the poor made $12M and the rich made $700M. Buying power would automatically adjust to however much expendable cash was floating around. What this means is that there is no difference between making $240k tax free, or making $240k but only bringing home $120k after taxes. If everyone were taxed a flat 50%, taxes almost may as well not exist, as regards peoples relative buying power. The taxes are proportional though. The wealthier one is, the easier it is to make money. Proportional taxation makes it such that those working twice as hard or smart make five times as much as the others, not 20 times as much as the others.

If there were no taxes, no gov't jobs, and government did not regulate business, business wouldn't hire more people, people wouldn't find new products and services to mak, and the others wouldn't buy them all. Instead, 60 million americans who were perfectly willing to work hard for a living if the opportunity existed would literally go homeless and starve to death. At the minimum they would stop buying video games & cell phones, and take to darning clothes. The rich might still make 20 times more, but 20 times more nothing is nothing. Making five times more than those living of welfare or gov't jobs is a much better deal for those currently paying taxes that what they'd they have if there were no taxes.

The recent bail-out are an outrage: Privatise the profits of high-stakes gamblers, but socialise their risks. I can't see how either republican or democrat things that's a good idea. It's going to cost the average taxpayer $6000 to cover their inevitable muck. I was saying for years this would happen, that you can't base an economy on eternal conquest as they did. Eventually you run out of prey you can collect from. In case you don't understand how they failed in the first place, I'll simplify things. They are bill collectors who bought debt titles from other bill collectors who bought debt titles from other bill collectors... five times over. ..and now the public can't pay the debt (mortgage foreclosures and such), and so the taxpayers will cover the debt to keep million dollar CEOs thriving and protect all the fools who invested their retirment funds with these gamblers. (They gamble in myriad ways like playing exchange rates, interest rates, ad such, in all cases, scraping money off the public). For quite some time I have thought of them (and industries like defense) as the true public tax collectors. We pay to support them though their profiteering, an whenthat falls apart, we pay them directly through taxes.

If you want to know who truly taxes this country, follow the money. Your taxes may go to poor people on welfare, but they don't save that money, it passes on to the hands of others. Take Bill Gates for instance, $60 billion. That's one person your taxes ultimately paid. We spent 4 trillion on the war, $24k per american adult. Who ultimately kept that money? Not a welfare mom or a guy working for the city trimming trees.

Good question, but how does one phrase it?

[ ] I 'm a Republican, a dickhead, and live amidst dickheads.

To answer your question with my own surmising, I believe it's true, that they only meet and can only befriend others like themselves, feel the world is full of jerks, and use that to back up their philosphy of closing their blinds and fighting off the other jerks.

Generally speaking, I agree. I know very little about economics, but I know you can't spend more than you take in. I think the people that caused what is happening now ought to be tried and executed.

I don't feel taxpayers should be paying for the bailout. The same people that caused the 30's depression are going to put us into another. They're greedy and evil.

I resent that the public employee unions that have the government welfare jobs, are bleeding the taxpayers also....and there is no accountability to the taxpayer.

Remember IN POLITICS, NOTHING HAPPENS BY ACCIDENT. All of this has been a long range plan to destroy this Christian nation.

True, it's not so simple. I was just trying to explain relative wealth, which has some similarities.
The easiest model I have for explaining macroeconomics is by using a distinction between street money which buys and bread and bicycles, and power token money which determines who officially works for whom or owns public resources. The economy would fall apart if Gates or Turner spent their billions on personal bread and bicycles. The money gets printed from nowhere, only has relative circulation value, and must be taken off the street by folks like Gates for new street circulated money to have meaning.

If we did want to restrain the meaning of wealth to physical commodities, oil would be much a more representative token, taking the forms of power, industrialised production, agriculture, distribution, office and media employment, distribution. It too though is more of a closed system. We can't all own GM foods or GM motors. We couldn't even all heat swimming pools. We could conceivably all have all the video games we wanted, but I'd hardly call that the domain of relative wealth.

Money is terribly abstract. When someone asks 'Where would the money come from?' to build solar powered trains or send everyone to college, I have to ask them to forget money exists, and ask if a Martian commander through his telescope could see a way to reallocating our physical and human resources towards such ends.

All american money is issued by the Federal Reserve with interest. If $1000 is printed, another $1000 on top of that is owed back in four years. All money is therefore actually debt. The trick of the wealthy is to play musical chairs, keep the tangible debt free part, and pass the debt part on to someone else. The way our economy is structured, it's impossible to even gain wealth without driving someone else closer to bankruptcy. If not consumers, then taxpayers facing a federal debt.

Curiously the reverse is true too. Not only does money actully mean debt, debt actually means wealth. Our four trillion deficit is a rough indication of how much commodity value we created out of thin air.

So yeah, it's not so simple. The wallet-cash-commodity mercantile-exchange model most people are physically thinking in is far from the total truth of how money works.

Why should he necessarily be working for the private sector? The government needs people to run it. They need people to sweep their floors, fix their computers. They aren't all policemen, politicians, military people, etc. The government can't do it's necessary jobs without people to update their computers, fix broken things, provide security for public officials, etc.
How do you think people get government jobs? Do you think needy people march into offices and are offered jobs the way they are offered welfare checks? I don't think you have any idea how it works.

> If he's working for the government...yes. Why is he/she not working
> in the private sector?

So what will you say the next time your house catches on fire and there aren't any welfare firefigthers around to save your house. Have fun drving on deteriating roads full of potholes.

> Why should he necessarily be working for the private
> sector? The government needs people to run it.
> They need people to sweep their floors, fix their
> computers. They aren't all policemen, politicians,
> military people, etc. The government can't do
> it's necessary jobs without people to update their
> computers, fix broken things, provide security
> for public officials, etc.
> How do you think people get government jobs? Do
> you think needy people march into offices and
> are offered jobs the way they are offered welfare
> checks? I don't think you have any idea how it
> works.

Problem: You're trying to use logic on her. This woman is convinced that everything that every politican has ever done in the past 70+ years is all part of a huge conpsiracy to destory "this chrsitian antion" which was never a Chrisitan nation to begin with. She is ignorant of history, ignorant of reality, and ignorant of the fact that while there are conspiracies out there, hers is beyond all reasonable amount of probability. It's more likely that Belgum was behind 9-11 than the tin-foil hat lunacy she spews.

I really have no idea where she's coming from with "welfare jobs". It sounds as if she thinks they are handing 'do nothing' jobs out to poor people.

Public employees are taxpayers too. They are robbing them to pay them?

A logistical argument isnt going to work here, because you aren't arguing that my ideological goals are logistically possible, you are arguing on behalf of your own ideology, relative wealth.

" > >The other way this parable fails is that US socialisation isn't nearly about creating equality. No one I know of making $100k after years of effort and losing another $100k to taxes would want to trade places with someone on social security living on $10k.

Thats still not a good enough arguement for equal pay. If I work my ass of in college and/or am really smart to get that higher paying job, I think I deserve BOTH the higher pay and the extra lesuire time."

I'm not saying to make pay identical, but more along the lines of 'some people are more equal than others' (workplace perks). If I had a choice at equal pay of studying in college and designing synthesizers, or crawling in grease with charlie-horses keeping me up at night (or day, actually), I'd glady take the pro career option. Heck, I might even let the hamburger chef make more than me to avoid that hell again. Given a world where both jobs need doing, I feel the only reason you feel as you do is because you don't believe you'll be the one cooking hamburgers, and thus care less about the plight of burger chefs. Of course if they made $60/hr your hamburger and fries would cost an extra $6.

"If we pay eveyone equally, then you would be overpaying the sanitation worker hence companies would rush to replace them with machines. "
I have no problem with replacing everyone with machines, so long as production is socialised and distributed equally.

" The other way this parable fails is that US socialisation isn't nearly about creating equality. No one I know of making $100k after years of effort and losing another $100k to taxes would want to trade places with someone on social security living on $10k.
>> Thats still not a good enough arguement for equal pay. "

It wasn't an agument for equal pay, it was an agument that the current proportional taxation scale works just fine.

"However, in our current system, fortuantly there is no lotto randomly assigning people jobs. You can't rebel against the free market. The most you can do is work your way up."
Ah, well here's probably a critical difference in the source of our positions. I look at american life as if it were pretty much all assigned what economic level one will be living at. I figure only one in two hundred has the rare talent to shack up in Beverly Hills, get a college grant, get under the wing of a Senator, or in any other way rise above their socio-economic circumstances without taking 20 years to prove themselves working up the ladder. Having parents with a spare $10k or $400k for makes a huge difference. Their having friends who can give you a position in a company makes a huge difference. Their living in a slum or wealthy estate makes quite a difference. Having to flip burgers for years while working your way through community college makes quite a difference. Whethar or not you can live at home while going to college makes a difference. Knowing someone who can co-sign a loan makes a difference. - Parents position, not personal ambition, is the singlemost critical factor in what income range most people will end up in.

People who are happier (or miserable) generally do spread their happiness or misery.

I bet the proportion of Christian stock-brokers and gov't employees is the same as in other fields.

Our system of accountability is through our Reps. The system could certainly use improvement.

I doubt this was a plan. Rather it was greedy stupid people in power who couldn't even see as far as I could that their plan was doomed to fail soon. Those in charge are driven by one motive and one motive only 'Get more money!'. If one way fails, they find another. They have no plans to destroy any nation, christian or otherwise. They simply do so by default from not behaving Christian or similarly compassionate morals.

Perhaps, we NEED LESS GOVERNMENT from the top to the bottom

We NEED LESS GOVERNMENT. Why can't these people start their own businesses, put these jobs into the private sector?

True, but I believe in private ingenuity, creativity. Why don't people start building businesses, start producing again, instead of depending on government?

What happens when people get endebted to government is it takes away creativity, a lack of real work ethic, for survival. I was reading an article about Sweden. It explained that at one time, the people had a great work ethic, independence, creativity, but they then took up socialism...and they're having problems now. And changing it back, will be difficult, if at all. God likes a good work ethic.

I disagree, I think this was a well orchestrated plan to gain control....the one world order. Yes, there is greed, lots of it, a love of money. I feel an evil force is involved.

I just explained a moment ago what would happen if there were less government, everyone would be poorer because the lower class and some of the middle class would would stop buying commodities. It's happening to us already. The $300 stimulus hardly had any effect. That's a factor in why I said the big dogs would crumble. Not only have they maxed out the bad debt people can handle, they've maxed out the commodities people can buy. Our government has been necessary to hold society together while ever increasing in debt, the mechanism of our economy. Without it, people will revert to buying what they can actually afford with cash, which, without production jobs, is nothing. Look at the average standard of living in countries which have neither taxes nor a defecit. Bleak. The rich may be doing far better than the poor there (which is the part which attracts Republicans, I imagine) but overall no one does well. The countries with income taxes below 20% are russian republics, indonesia, mexico, and other places where no one can afford to buy anything or produce anything. The highest taxes are in European countries where most everyone is doing quite well compared to the average american, considering they live like us but have things like maternity/daycare, college, and doctors socialised. The digital toys German musicians play with look made for royalty compared to what americans can afford. When america switched to CD's the Japanese switched to mini-CD's, a technology we could never afford to switch to.

With lesses taxes, and less government, we'd look like Mexico on average (with more poverty and more similar gated communities, corrupt private police too), except for the huge corporations running everyone's life. Clinton invested $16B/year in nanotechnology, and now of course all that scientific research has been handed to our corporations, likewise with medical research. These are the sorts of things which keep us floating in world economics. We already rely too much on foreign agriculture to revert to becoming frontier towns again.

For the last 40 years now, whenever a new product or service is created, there will be about a two year window of opportunity, after which three companies will emerge as victors. For instance, for operating systems it was Microsoft. I could go on and on about cable, cell phones, synthesizers, flourescent light bulbs. Unless you are talking about people selling hand crafted artwork, we are living in an age of industrialisation. The greatest profit lies in monopolies and mass production. Even the arts are industrialised today. My daughter would like to make it as a comic artist, and is quite gifted, but today she competes with 7 billion people who have instantaneous distribution. There's only room for a couple hundred comic artists on the whole planet these days.

I had bad news recently. That theremin music instrument I've just spent two years and a years income working on has just been produced almost identically as a top-ten application for iPhones. I would have sold a couple thousand at $600 each. This competitor will sell half a million for $2 each as downloads, ingeniously using the existing capabilities of iPhones. He doesn't even have to build anything or employ anyone. In another few years he will undoubtedly be bought out by a company like Adobe (who owns most all of the graphics software), specialising in owning all downloadable music device software, after which no one could think of competing in that market.

There's a chance that's true. Not something outright satanic but something akin to a Bush 9/11 coup.

> The huge difference between grades is that everyone who works hard
> can get good grades.

That's it exactly. Grades are not a finite resource.

Neither is wealth a finite resource.

She probably does. This is not a person who does their homework.

I didn't have much of a reaction. It has nothing to do with school or politics. The daughter is a young adult finding herself in in that journey of discovering who she is and what the world is all about. In that, she is finding fault with all those that have raised her. In her anger, and resentment that she doesn't have something that someone else has, she is blaming her father who's party he is affiliated with, is the mirror image of what she is right now. She has quite a bit going for her, but she is mad because she doesn't have the rest of everything. You think it's easy being popular and partying all the time? No, it is not. They are both doing what they are good at.
'Why don't you go to the Dean's office and ask him t o deduct 1.0 off your GPA and give it to your friend who only has a 2.0. That way you will both have a 3.0 GPA and certainly that would be a fair and equal distribution of GPA.'
This does not make any sense. The issue in the parable is not about grades. It is about the friend gets to party because she can, and about the daughter who is not taking any kind of responsibility about the choice that she has made. What does it matter to her that Audrey is not doing well? How selfish is that, to want it all. If Audry wanted to do better, and gave it her best effort, why wouldn't her friend want to help? But Audrey isn't asking for help, is she?

Dad was being a typical Republican, and twisting a situation to make it seem reprehensible. He is using an argument that goes straight to the emotional body and than jerking the rope tight making the daughter think the way he does rather than seeing the situation for what it really is.

The little parable makes me not want to vote Republican, that's for sure. They argue with illusion and rape the emotions.

> We NEED LESS GOVERNMENT. Why can't these people
> start their own businesses, put these jobs into
> the private sector?

Why do you people always try to make it sound as if getting a job is as easy as blinking? Are you really that unaware of the world outside your house and your church? In 2001 I found myself unemployed for nine months. Now I'm sure you'll lie and say I was lazy, but I was out looking for jobs every weekday. The best job I could get was as a petition circulator, getting paid $0.25 per signature, and the most I ever got for a week's work was $60, until my Dad managed to get me hired at his Pizza Hut. It is not as easy as Right Wing morons who love to just shout "get a job!" at people begging on the street or going on food stamps seem to think it is.

True, but that still doesn't mean all/most government jobs are unnecessary.

People who work for the government aren't "dependent" on it the same way welfare recipients are. They are also not "indebted." You seem to think the government hands out jobs like candy, that it's easier to get a government job than a private sector job. I believe in private ingenuity too. People are building businesses and being creative.

Within the context of individual income it often is. Typically, your employer only has so much they can pay you. Even if you can get a raise, there's only so high it can go. There are various resources involved, and there are limits on those resources, however high they might be. And as KR pointed out, there's a give and take, so that for one person to earn more, very often another person has to earn less. Unless you're being graded on a true bell curve, which is rare, the same is not true of grades. You getting an A doesn't mean that someone else can only get a B, even if they work just as hard and deserve as high a grade as you do. And as romkey pointed out, money buys things. Grades don't. Grades have a value, but it's an entirely different kind of value. I know how you feel about taxes, and we are just never, ever, ever, ever, ever going to agree on this.

Less government yes, but we still need some government. Would you really be comfortable with a privately run police?

Also, less government and leave everything up to the private sector would mean your ideal of bringing back decency laws would never come back. Think about it, all that sex and violence in movies comes from the private sector, and its the private sector who consumes it. So basically you want more government there, right. If we had less government, we would have even more sex in movies, so either way you will complain. At least be consistant.

"A logistical argument isnt going to work here, because you aren't arguing that my ideological goals are logistically possible, you are arguing on behalf of your own ideology, relative wealth."

Fair enough, however I am arguing against both. I am making a moral, as well as a logistical argument against too much socialism.



"I'm not saying to make pay identical, but more along the lines of 'some people are more equal than others' (workplace perks)."

We already have something like that. Some people have/make more money, but everyone has to obey traffic signs, not steal, or else follow some set of consequences.



"If I had a choice at equal pay of studying in college and designing synthesizers, or crawling in grease with charlie-horses keeping me up at night (or day, actually), I'd glady take the pro career option. Heck, I might even let the hamburger chef make more than me to avoid that hell again."

Which is why truck drivers, cab drivers, prostitutes make more money than some jobs that require a college degrees even.


"Given a world where both jobs need doing, I feel the only reason you feel as you do is because you don't believe you'll be the one cooking hamburgers, and thus care less about the plight of burger chefs."

Prety much. Yep, that sounds about right. (though I don't mind giving them modest tax breaks or opportunties to work their way out, even if that goes against my own benefit).



"Of course if they made $60/hr your hamburger and fries would cost an extra $6."

Then I just wouldn't eat fries, so their jobs might disappear. Or eat them relucantly if I needed them for survival however be pissed off about it.



"I have no problem with replacing everyone with machines, so long as production is socialised and distributed equally."

And what if the machines use more fuel, which is worth more than the workers time, who now no longer utilize it. What if building and maintainging such machines is more unpleasant than doing the work of a burger flipper.



"Ah, well here's probably a critical difference in the source of our positions. I look at american life as if it were pretty much all assigned what economic level one will be living at. I figure only one in two hundred has the rare talent to shack up in Beverly Hills, get a college grant, get under the wing of a Senator, or in any other way rise above their socio-economic circumstances without taking 20 years to prove themselves working up the ladder."

Preciely why I don't think that pure capitalism is a good idea either. The government will step in after a while when it gets out of control. For instance, the GI Bill makes it easier for the poor to get into college, at the cost of taking on the risk of dying in a war verses the middle class that doesn't. If you survive, you get a shot at getting out of the ghetto or your trailer. The government will subsidize your education if you're poor too, even without any required service. Even private charities exist that will do this. What about low cost government loans to help poor people start their own business?

Also the reason why I support school vouchers, unlike the current system of the rich getting better schools because they live in a better district.

"Neither is wealth a finite resource."

- No, but it may just as well be, because it is always relative, and it is finite within any snapshop of time. People's buying power is relative. To any extent that greater wealth increases one's leverage, the rich will get richer at a greater rate than the poor no matter how many hard assets they've acquired, and this accumulation of assets will be met with equal inflation. If people acquire more liquid assets, new goods will cost more.

Even if we each own five cars, it wil be the people who own 20 cars who will be able to afford college or wireless DSL.

In the 60's we had brightly lit cities, christmas decorated boulevards, public water fountains and pools. People owned homes, ski-boats, and eight-foot oak stereos. We can't afford these things so much these days, and unless we build alternative energy and restructure freetime/man-hours so labor has relative value again, we wont compete again with the standards of the 60's.

The worlds physical resources are finite. When Katrina hit, relief arganisations were faced with the problem that the US now operated on a tight resource shoe-string, and couldn't liquidate plywood and tar production for emergency housing needs, no matter how much abstract money was thrown at the problem.

We can't afford a bedroom per person with today's population either.

"Which is why truck drivers, cab drivers, prostitutes make more money than some jobs that require a college degrees even. "
- Well, that's sincerely a comfort to me. I do recall finding a decade ago that mid 1990's $60/hr programming skills had become $15/hr entry-level work by the late 90's. That seemed natural enough.

""Given a world where both jobs need doing, I feel the only reason you feel as you do is because you don't believe you'll be the one cooking hamburgers, and thus care less about the plight of burger chefs."
- Prety much. Yep, that sounds about right. (though I don't mind giving them modest tax breaks or opportunties to work their way out, even if that goes against my own benefit). "

Well ok then. End of argument. Pretty much another place we were never arguing alternative plans towards the same idealism in the first place.

"What about low cost government loans to help poor people start their own business?"
I could use one of those about now. Back in my earlier community college days I was spending six hours per week dealing with bureaucracy trying to get a college grant. Eventually I got exhausted and determined working my way up would be easier. I was stuck in Santa Cruz though and my only option was converting my boss to computer accounting I could admin, until I later moved in with my folks to find official programming work in SF.

For myself, I'm not even sure higher education would serve much purpose now. I've been doing community college for free for 27 years now, where I mostly hang out with instructors writing new curricula. If I actually needed fresh educational knowledge, I could attend MIT clases for free online. For someone starting out though, I imagine that official degree makes quite a difference.

Without those caveats I came up with for vouchers, I feel such a plan would have the opposite effect and disequalize opportunity.

~

Did you hear that someone else came up with my digital theremin product? It's now a top-ten iPhone application, costing $2/download (plus $300 for the iPhone with 3-axis accelerometers) vs. my $300-2500 dollar hardware product. If I'm lucky, the iPhone will serve as advertising for my Rolls-Royce version rather than killing my sales and bankrupting me over all I've invested in tools and production inventory. The verdicts still out on whethar I can benefit from capitalism. I would have been happy to make a meager engineers income.

I have to spend the next two months rearranging my space and selling much of my personal stuff to have some work space here. It's not easy fitting a full multi-material factory and inventory in a 0-bedroom apartment when my wardrobe and vinyl LP collection already takes up 1/3 my storage space. Someone with money would have just spent $800/mo. more on rent.

Fortunately the iPhone app developer appears not have patented the core concepts, otherwise I'd have to fight that (hopefully a free fight, if I were going up against Apple), claiming my earlier college lectures demonstrating my prototype put the idea in public domain already, or even gave me prior art.
The product is almost identical to mine except that it uses accelerometers, not photo-diodes. I considered accelerometers myself, but they were too costly and less accurate.

I have a positive reaction to this, although I am a Democrat.

Oh, I just thought of something. Much more people would begin to build more businesses if you didn't need to go through all sorts of paperwork and licensing to do it. you could sell stuff off your back porch. So, in that sense, the government prevents people from opening businesses.

While I may fail to comprehend people's blindspot where it comes to the immorality of taxes, I wasn't talking about taxes. The whole zero-sum economy thing is a pervasive myth. It's somewhat understandable, as you say it often seems like one person has to earn less for another to earn more, but on the whole it is not true.

Although, now that you bring up taxes, *that* is a zero-sum game. Taxing people and redistributing money creates no new wealth.

Part of what you're talking about is just inflation, if we print more money people have larger numbers of dollars but have no more wealth, but the psychological aspect of relative wealth is something else. Normally at this point I'd go on about how fantastically wealthy we are compared to, say, the 60's and yet how people don't feel so wealthy because they compare themselves to others. However, the whole rest of your comment was about how you think we're less wealthy than were people in the 60's.

I don't believe in socialism. I believe in free enterprise. Socialism takes away the drive of creativity, individual responsibility. I don't like what is going on in this country, and brace yourself for a serious depression. The filthy "b-----d's that caused the last one are doing it again.

I hear you Kristal Rose!

Frostbrand, believe me, I do understand. My daughter has been hunting for a job for months, one she can sustain herself.

We're in trouble because of some greedy S.O.B. traitors.

I hope you're doing okay now.

A few are necessary, true, but many are not.

Maybe with competitive police, we may get better police? In our town, the police won't answer some calls.

We once had a good decency law, but was repealed by the likes of ACLU.

I agree there are some petty paper work that government puts on business. There has to be a balance.

I prefer taxing people and using the money to provide services, personally.

I understand that there's not really a limit on the amount of money that exists, since the government prints it, and the value that's actually assigned to any given item is arbitrary and could be different if someone decided to make it different. (Although as I've said before, economics is really not my strong suit and I don't pretend to understand how it all really works.) The problem is that the idea of limitless wealth is theoretical, not practical. The practical truth is that, given how human society works, there are going to be jobs that people won't pay as much for and people who are willing to work for less and less money. There are also going to be greedy people who want more and more money. It's a pipe-dream to imagine that we're going to attain a utopia in which everyone earns as much as they need and deserve, or that if there were no taxes, people would voluntarily provide the necessary services for those people who couldn't care for themselves. I see nothing immoral in the government taking some money in exchange for the services they provide. What's immoral in my view is taxing people who can afford it less while giving tax breaks to those who can afford more.

It's more likely that Belgum was behind 9-11 than
> the tin-foil hat lunacy she spews.

"takes out tin foil hat and sits in closet again!"

I suppose we could have the whole tax discussion if you really want, but I was trying to just explain how wealth and money are two separate things. Yes, governments could just print more money but that has nothing whatsoever to do with wealth or the creation of wealth. We tend to connect the two because we say that a person who has a lot of money is wealthy. But fundamentally, wealth has to do with the creation of things of value. Money is just used to simplify trading; it's easier to carry around than things.

No, I really don't want to have the whole tax discussion! I'm sorry for bringing it up.

> Frostbrand, believe me, I do understand. My
> daughter has been hunting for a job for months,
> one she can sustain herself.
>
> We're in trouble because of some greedy S.O.B.
> traitors.
>
> I hope you're doing okay now.

I agree about the greedy S.O.B. traitors sentiment, we just seem to have a very, VERY diferent view of who the traitors are.

> Maybe with competitive police, we may get better
> police? In our town, the police won't answer
> some calls.
>

What's more likely is that the police will be a monopoly that gets to price gouge, and only the upper class can afford to have crimes investigated. If your daughter gets murdered in a mall, and you're in the wrong tax bracket, well then too bad, because after all, murder investigations cost money. What was that? You think we should catch your daughter;s killer for free? Commie.

I think we both know who the traitors are....the world elitists.

Perhaps the police should be only run by government. I just believe in free enterprise. But you know what, our police now won't answer calls except for specific reasons...they started that about two years ago. I think we need to hire a private police company WITH A CONSCIENCE, which in this world today, might be difficult...they'd have to go through some real moral training, audits. Either they keep crime down, or they're fired. With government's choice, they have no accountability to the people, just their higher ups, and their unions. Just ideas, to keep government down, and less taxes.

Well I don't greatly know the comparative wealth of the 60's, but I do know that I was a showcar customization mechanic in the 80's, and my dad was one in the 60's. I could barely afford rent, and friday videos and pizza. He owned a home, skiboat, camper, and even had his kegs of beer imported directly from Germany. He had the polaroid camera, tiki lamps, the remote knob for the tv, fishing gear, lush christmas decor. I think he even managed to do most of that without credit. My uncle managed to have a swimming pool in spite of equally heavy drinking as my dad, and odd jobs as a radio DJ or manager of a WhiteFront (like today's Targets). The cars, furniture, hames, and appliances had a ton of wood & metal, and hand craftsmanship was found more in everything. The toys I had as a kid were unaffordable when I became a parent.

Perhaps not so many early in the century may have had the classic Victorian homes we still see standing, but every hand crafted part of those homes, the trim, the brick-laying, the window-glazing, the parquetry floor-setting, would break the bank for a homeowner today.

What we have today is the ability to print or download industrially meta-distributed technical arts.

How is writing a database for city tree trimming any different than writing a database for monitoring advertisement revenues. Socialism doesn't change the quantity and diversity of enterprises. Most everyone today is an employee, not an entrepreneur, and whethar it's big business running things, or gov't jobs, that's not going to change. What will change is what the jobs accomplish, like making sure future generations will have salmon in the rivers. Socialism makes sure jobs are available. The days of cottage industries ended in WWII. The types of jobs people can invent and actually do on their own are things like sewing shoes, things no one can afford when a factory can do it for 1/1000 of the price.

Most stuff these days like new LEDs or genetic medications gets invented in research labs which are often government funded. Whethar they are or not hardly makes a dfference to individual creativity and responsibilty.

Technology and economics mandate business efficiency. The most substantial difference between socialism and private enterprise is what the motives behind the productive choices are. In capitalism the motive is profit for a select few, in socialism the motive is sustaining society for everyone. Sometimes capitalism makes it's money by doing the latter, or at least offereng something like wireless communicatins, but there's no guarantee of that. All those companies we are bailing out serve no purpose but their own profits. I'd much rather see $700B spent on ecology, schools, alternative energy, street repairs, al more creative work than finance.

I once looked for think-tank work. To my dismay, the only jobs offered like that were all about how to invent new ways of profiting more from existing product/service distribution. If such jobs were socialised, they would be about how to create more and better products and services of service to society instead.


Besides all the corruption you'd find in private police who didn't work for the general public, just those who paid them, you'd also find that their primary goal was to attract clients yet cut costs. In other words, their goal would be to answer as few calls as posible and still claim the right to bill you monthly. The only incentive/goal in capitalism is to make money. Offering something in return for that money like products or services is only done when necessary. On the other hand, in socialism, money is explicitly put to the task of creating goods and services, and public representation and oversight see's to it that these goods and services meet public needs. It may not be as efficient, but at least the foremost goal is serving society.

Undoubtedly in public service some corruption and inefficiency exists. Some people carve their niches and employ staff just serve their own ends, but for the most part, if you had a heart to heart talk with people working for Fish & Game, the library system, the FDA, firemen, weather monitoring, daycare, or a million other services, you'd find that they were hard at work in an effort to provide vital services to this nation, and that you'd be inclined to put a halt to very little of it at all, if you know what they were doing.

I was just watching a show on Fish and Game. In one project, they use sniffing-dogs to prevent recreational boats from importing quag-muscles. A single muscle the size of a pin head can bring down a hydro-electric dam in a years time if allowed to spread in a lake. In another project they had torn down obsolete dams and restored an annual population of 6000 salmon. To do so, they had to preserve a mini surface creek, and build an underground siphon waterway for agriculture irrigation. I'm guessing that was at least a $10M dollar project. $1700 per fish saved. Over a century just $17 per fish. Jobs were created though, and it's not like the planet was lacking expendable men or concrete for the task. If it hadn't been done, if it were solely in the hands of big business, we'd simply let salmon become extinct. We'd probably be dead ourselves within a century if not for the huge amount of government projects and regulation work making sure we aren't all poisoned by industry, getting in wrecks, getting electrocuted, etc etc. These are problems other nations like India do in fact face, when we send our battery factorys, dams, and reactors to their turf instead, and poison and starve 100's of 1000's of farmers living there. It would happen here too if we weren't so socialised and regulated. Less government would be good for elitists, but the rest of would literally die. Small children would still be working 16 hour days crawling though factory equipment instead of attendiing school if industry had it's way.

How about if this was what Audrey was like...

Her father listened and then asked, 'How is your friend Audrey doing?'
She replied, 'Audrey is barely getting by. All she takes are easy classes, she studies her butt off, yet she barely has a 2.0 GPA. She wants to have a little fun on campus; college for her is confusing and difficult. She gets invited to parties and never goes because she's too busy studying.'

I wonder what the dad would say then?

I have an idea, why don't they give that 700 million dollars to the people. Give each person $2,000,000 dollars?

To some socialism may be practical, but it is corrupt. As I've mentioned before, socialism sucks the life out of people, their creativity, their will to survive alone without the help of government. I read recently what happened to Sweden. Sweden is in a trap, and doubt can make a comeback, however they're trying. They went into socialism, the people lost it, became dependent. The Swedes at one time had a great work ethic, but no longer. The article was great, and explained it right.

Look at today. People have become dependent. Look at the abuse of the system. I heard over the radio, and they named the union that did it. All the retirees, that were retired, also claimed disability. Look at all the programs, being paid out, because people are dependent. Bottom line the elitists want power over people, to enslave them.

I'll give you another for instance about dependence. My husband's niece collects $1400 a month from state disability for having carpal tunnel. She quit the job, but now owns her own business, making good money. It is absurd, another flaw in the system. ..and the taxpayer is paying for it.

Playing "Spot the Elitist" is one of my favourite games!

Exactly!

the list of the world elitists is too long to list. Well, the Democrats have had the control of the House for quite a while...a vote for a Democrat is a vote for socialism. The true Democrat party has been infiltrated by the socialists. Then we have some Republicans have what you call RINOS....Republicans in name only. In my opinion, they have been infiltrated by the socialists.

I hope you don't actually believe Obama is not an elitist. Elitist, doesn't necessarily mean those with more cars, or houses. I personally don't like either Obama or McCain.

> the list of the world elitists is too long
> to list. Well, the Democrats have had the control
> of the House for quite a while...a vote for a
> Democrat is a vote for socialism. The true Democrat
> party has been infiltrated by the socialists.
> Then we have some Republicans have what you
> call RINOS....Republicans in name only. In my
> opinion, they have been infiltrated by the socialists.
>
>
> I hope you don't actually believe Obama is not
> an elitist. Elitist, doesn't necessarily mean
> those with more cars, or houses. I personally
> don't like either Obama or McCain.

In fact, elite means "Someone who is among the best at certain task." One of the worst mistakes Liberals have made over the years is letting Right Wingers turn elite into a dity word. At least Microsoft understands it (the highest difficulty setting in the Halo games is called Elite).

What is a right winger to you?

I know what a liberal is.....people that want things at others expense.

An elitist to me does not mean necessarily a good thing....

> What is a right winger to you?
>
> I know what a liberal is.....people that want
> things at others expense.
>

Well, you know what the stereotype is anyway. I've actually explained to you more than once what the actual definition of an American liberal is. I guess like every other time I've proven you wrong you just "forgot" about it.

> An elitist to me does not mean necessarily a good
> thing....
>

Because Right Wingers have twisted and perverted the English language to make it something almost unrecognizable over the past 28 years. For example, "family values" no longer means the values of one's family. It now means anti-gay.

Another thing about Right Wingers that pisses me off (though IIRC you've not engaged in this tactic personally which I appreciate) is to use someone's hometown as a bludgeon against them. I saw it during 2006 when they used San Fransisco, and I'm seeing this year in some of the attack ads in Colorado's senate race where the GOP seems to think that saying Mark Udall is from Boulder will work. The commercials say things like "Boulder Liberal," and "Boulder values," and "Boulder elite," as if somehow being from Boulder, CO, or San Fransisco CA, or whatever city they choose to pick on next election cycle automatically makes you a bad person. I've often wondered how Conservatives who livce in this cities feel about having their hometowns impugned by their own party.

"I have an idea, why don't they give that 700 million dollars to the people. Give each person $2,000,000 dollars?"

Several versions of that have been discussed. There are six entities we are possibly bailing out, the corporations who own the debts, the individuals who incurred them in the first place and possibly went bankrupt or hmeless, the CEO's of those corporations, the stockholders of those corporations, those whose 401k/pension plans were invested in those corporations, future people buying on credit relying on the services of these corporations.

The latter two are our primary excuse.

If the government doesn't spread the wealth to the public and take care of the earth, the largest corporations will control everything, own everything, and destroy everything. Few people will have jobs. The only thing large enough to stand against the wealthy and the corporations is a democratic government as powerful as all the wealthy and corporations combined. Without such a government, the only hope for the general public to become independent as you desire would be to outlaw corporations, outlaw excessive wealth, and arm the public to ensure this remains the case. With corporations, but without a huge powerful democratic government, we would look something inbetween one of the communist superpowers and the land barons of the dark ages, but with corporations instead of kings. The corporations would quickly own all land, own the police, control all communications, control all available employment, create all laws, and there's nothing anyone could do about it except leave the country. Even then you'd have to trespass on their streets and steal their transportation to escape. If we managed to dissassmble both the government and corporations, we would operate too inefficiently to feed or clothe ourselves.

Our population is so large that it now requires industrialisation for us to live. A few centuries ago the land had to belong to everyone for us to live. Each person had what it took to farm or raise animals. Today it s the industries from which all our sustenace comes from, and therefore which must belong to everyone if we are to all survive. At least in the days of land barons people were required to farm the land. The main things corporations need from people today is whatever consumer wealth they have. They will tax us themselves to the greatest degree possible. The only reason they don't ask more for phone, natural gas, or electricity, is because the government regulates how much they can charge.

I gather you imagine we can all revert to some sort of self-employment like farming or making cuckoo-clocks at home. We physically can't anymore. Our only choice is large industry. The only question is who owns and controls that industry. There are only three choices there, or some balance between them, dictators, private capitalists seeking only their self-interest, or an elected representative body. You say the government is corrupt, but at least it is run by people we vote for. We don't vote for CEO's. I don't see folks like Turner or Gates saving salmon from extinction, installing street lights, or creating shelters for the homeless, nor do I expet my neighbor fred would do those things if he weren't being taxed.

As crazy as $1700 per salmon count for the next century sounds (building underwater rivers to supply agriculture isn't cheap), saving california salmon from extinction cost californians about 15¢ each. One of those private nature charities would ask the the more generous of us for $50 each and still get nothing even close done.

It just occurs to me, I don't ever recall any specifics of your vision. What do you want this tax free less government world to look like? Do you have suggestions for what even one of those millions of people on disability, retirement, or in a government job should do next? It's not like we need them to drive a tractor, send cell phone bills, or sew blue-jeans, and if they did, the gross money of those working now would only be worth as much what they make now net after taxes.

The only thing possible which would fit your socio-political desires is for you to go back in time five centuries.