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Those of the OPs ilk are continually trying to imply that their liberal opponents are promoting and practicing some sort of socialist/communist policy or ideology. This is not true at all. Compassion for others and a willingness to share essentials, with those who are in need, is not at all of that type of social or economic system. But making that false connection, makes a handy means for the rightists, for insulting and disparaging those who don't embrace their policies of greed and lack of concern for their fellow humans.
Exactly.... These self centered hoarders have been and continue to be the force that damages societies....
I grew up in a town where "people helped people"... it became to change when the promotion of Hoarder types who haves no interest to help anyone but themselves. They promoted the greed by any means mentality and then came the decline.
The evil isn't "unfettered" capitalism. The evil is crony capitalism that diverts our monetary freedoms.
Pretty much the same thing(s) - changing a word or two doesn't change history.
Ben Franklin, before he was a Founder, was a loyal Kings subject who petitioned (with some friends) for a large part of Ohio to be given to them. They had the plans all drawn up as to how they were going to profit vastly from it.
The King turned that particular request down (but had approved many similar requests). If the King would have Oked it, the American Revolution may never have happened. Ben would have been happy as a Pig in Chit with that 1/4 million acres.
The entire Western Development of the world was based on the gun, sword and corporations. The Dutch became the richest in the world by use of the Corporation. The English followed suit, although they tended to share stuff much less (Brits had a strict caste system)...
There was never a date when it suddenly switched to "only by work will one prosper". This is not to say that - within the system - a person cannot flourish by hard and smart work. BUT, the entire system and history is about the Corporations and what you call cronyism - who you knew and where you happened to sit when OPP (other peoples property) was divided up.
There never was a time when things were the "good old days" and the world was a meritocracy. Or, if there was, I don't know about it. Please inform.
Exactly.... These self centered hoarders have been and continue to be the force that damages societies....
I grew up in a town where "people helped people"... it became to change when the promotion of Hoarder types who haves no interest to help anyone but themselves. They promoted the greed by any means mentality and then came the decline.
Tell us about this town, the county and the state and the history of how people obtained land and stuff to share. I think the thread is discussing a more big picture of history.
If I start a little business which is a perfect meritocracy but it is within a system that is 10,000X as large and is a different type (Cronyism, Capitalism), I'm not moving the needle. It's just an anecdote like thinking back to a time when my back didn't hurt. "There was a time once when....".
But that's not the History of the World nor the Present Day. I say, as Trump has showed with the Saudis, that Money talks and BS walks. How many of you that "they" have to relocate, kill or poison doesn't show up on the balance sheet. People do NOT matter.
We could say on a smaller scale that some wants and needs of people are cared for. But the system, all in all, is about quests for money and resources and that shapes the Great Game.
What's so surprising that some people want to takeother people's money (otherwise known as envy, greed, and theft)?
In the US, here's what the following income groups earn vs. how much of the federal income tax they pay:
Top 1% earns 19.72% of the income, but pays 37.32% of the federal income tax.
Top 5-10% earns 11.37% of the income, but pays 11.24% of the federal income tax.
Top 10-25% earns 21.86% of the income, but pays 16.50% of the federal income tax.
(Source: IRS Statistics of Income, Individual Income Rates and Tax Shares, revised in 2018)
That's already grossly unfair. Everyone should be paying the same rate. Look at how the 2 groups, the top 5-10% and the top 10-25% are paying income tax shares MUCH more in line with their share of the income.
Institute a flat tax rate. It still ensures that the rich pay more.
Utopia doesn't work, nor does the HUMAN SPIRIT, and condition want a Utopia. Yet, liberal/progressive keep wanting GOVERNMENT to force the issue. Usually at the barrel of a gun. That's why they want private citizens disarmed. Not going to happen.
The IRONY of this thread and extremist posters ..... placing the Pilgrims a if a failed experiment ...... on this day they actually are remembered as settlers that began the mass migration of Europeans especially to North America .... that we call Thanksgiving that isn't about SOCIALSM or COMMUNES or FAILURE.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pilot1
Utopia doesn't work, nor does the HUMAN SPIRIT, and condition want a Utopia. Yet, liberal/progressive keep wanting GOVERNMENT to force the issue. Usually at the barrel of a gun. That's why they want private citizens disarmed. Not going to happen.
The irony of a era ..... anyone can get plentiful guns. Legally or not. Human Spirit works in all endeavors. Whether early highly religions folk who saw each okayed a roll in each others survival in a new land of little knowledge of what they would find and .... did they think of bringing all the seeds of their known food sources with them? That alone might have been what prevented their aspects looses and already probably in degrees of poor health in the distance they traveled.
Time if year of arrival .... also played a roll in crops needs to sustain them thru a winter they were accustomed to. Major hunters they were not to be much more meat eaters they needed to become thru hunting also. But enough survived to maintain the beginnings of more of ther types to come.
Including the Quakers to your Philly region. Also similar religions folk and Puritans to New England. Extremism is always going places that distort everything.....
The YUGE lie about the People's Republic of Plymouth Plantation is that is was actually a corporation responsible for turning a profit for their financial backers in England. The Pilgrims didn't work in a socialist commune but in a corporate plantation.
Thank you for posting that, I'm amazed that the folks here are trying to turn the experience of the Pilgrims into some kind of argument about free trade vs evil socialism, it was resistance against corporate greed. From your source:
Quote:
There was no local baron in Plymouth, but it was a commercial project as much as a religious one, and the colonists still had to answer to their investors back in England. It was this, not socialist ideals, that accounted for the common course. Bunker writes, “Far from being a commune, the Mayflower was a common stock: the very words employed in the contract. All the land in the Plymouth Colony, its houses, its tools, and its trading profits (if they appeared) were to belong to a joint-stock company owned by the shareholders as a whole.”
He continues: “Under the terms of the contract … for the first seven years no individual settler could own a plot of land. To ensure that each farmer received his fair share of good or bad land, the slices were rotated each year, but this was counterproductive. Nobody had any reason to put in extra hours and effort to improve a plot if next season another family received the benefit.”
The pilgrims’ transition—which, again, happened after the first Thanksgiving—can indeed be used to illustrate the benefits of individualism or the tragedy of the commons. But the Rush Limbaugh crowd should note that the settlers at Plymouth were rebelling against the rules set by a corporation, not against the strictures of some Stalinist collective farm or a hippie commune.
“I mean, is Halliburton a socialist scheme?” New York University historian Karen Kupperman said in Zernike’s story. Yeah, this is also a bit of a stretch—Halliburton oil engineers aren’t rotated around to different drilling sites and compensated based on the last group’s productivity. In the end, no matter which side of the political spectrum you fall on, it’s a questionable enterprise to draw lessons about contemporary politics from early-17th-century agricultural practices. But hey, it’s a free country. Everyone has a right to a Thanksgiving parable of their very own.
With so many left- and right-winged distortions of history, I honestly don't know what's true and exaggerated for some historical events. This is where .gov articles can help.
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