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In the year 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted that, by century's end, technology would have advanced sufficiently that countries like Great Britain or the United States would have achieved a 15-hour work week. There's every reason to believe he was right. In technological terms, we are quite capable of this. And yet it didn't happen. Instead, technology has been marshaled, if anything, to figure out ways to make us all work more. In order to achieve this, jobs have had to be created that are, effectively, pointless. Huge swathes of people, in Europe and North America in particular, spend their entire working lives performing tasks they secretly believe do not really need to be performed. The moral and spiritual damage that comes from this situation is profound. It is a scar across our collective soul. Yet virtually no one talks about it.
Why did Keynes' promised utopia—still being eagerly awaited in the '60s—never materialise?
"It's as if someone were out there making up pointless jobs just for the sake of keeping us all working. And here, precisely, lies the mystery. In capitalism, this is precisely what is not supposed to happen"
Why would liberals who live in mostly rich coastal areas or prosperous cities, want to redistribute wealth away from their booming centers and into poor rural red area?? It makes us poorer and it makes you guys richer. Why would we want that?
Liberals, by and large, don't want everyone to have the same amount of stuff, that's a right-wing fantasy. Libs have more stuff now and will continue to have more stuff in the future, and they like it that way. The right-wing have less stuff and somehow convinced themselves that they have more. That arrangement is fine with many liberals.
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Why do you want to redistribute money to illegal immigrants then? Why do you want to prop up failing Democrat run cities like Chicago, Detroit, and Baltimore? Why do you try to redistribute America's wealth to the rest of the world through unfair trade agreements?
The result mirrored what Obama promised he would do on the campaign. Obama pledged tax cuts of $500 for each worker and $1,000 for working couples. That tax cut expired at the end of 2011. But Obama won another round of tax cuts for most workers in a December 2010 tax deal with Republicans in Congress. Those tax cuts -- a temporary reduction in worker’s payroll taxes, worth about 2 percent of total earnings -- expire in 2013. Again, the tax cut didn’t come as a check, but gives workers a little more in their paychecks than they would have otherwise.
Obama also has passed an array of tax cuts for small businesses. Eight of them were included in the stimulus, the Affordable Care Act (also known as the health care law), and the Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment Act (also known as the HIRE Act). Among the cuts were the exclusion of up to 75 percent of capital gains on key small business investments; a tax credit for the cost of health insurance for small business employees and new tax credits for hiring Americans out of work for at least two months.
I live in one of the most deep red states in the nation and the truth is, the most poverty-striken areas are still Democrat dominated. Here in Louisiana most of the middle class and upper class people vote Democrat. But if you go to the poorest, most crime-ridden and violent areas, they are all dominated by low income mostly black Democrats, for example certain inner city areas of New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and Shreveport and some of the rural majority black parishes. I personally live in an economically booming area with an excellent quality of life.
A lot of the poverty that exists with the black underclass is simply a residual effect of slavery and this community's refusal to now take responsibility for themselves now that things have changed and we no longer have slavery or Jim Crow. No amount of higher state taxes, welfare, etc will really improve their lot. This is what skews Louisiana's stats. Also, the stats that say Louisiana "takes" a lot from the federal government area also VERY heavily skewed by things like storm protection, hurricane recovery, etc. The same goes for many other states in the South that are prone to severe weather.
I have stated publicly, in my community, that I am willing to pay higher property taxes to fund social services, particularly, rehab facilities and resources for homeless people.
Why do you want to redistribute money to illegal immigrants then? Why do you want to prop up failing Democrat run cities like Chicago, Detroit, and Baltimore? Why do you try to redistribute America's wealth to the rest of the world through unfair trade agreements?
The question is why do blue states like California and New York (who remit more money to the feds than they take in) want to prop up states like Mississippi and Lousiana, your home state, whose unofficial motto is Thank God for Mississippi. While you run your state's fiscal budget into the ground and trash your education budget in the process (thank you, Bobby Jindal).
Why do you want to redistribute money to illegal immigrants then? Why do you want to prop up failing Democrat run cities like Chicago, Detroit, and Baltimore? Why do you try to redistribute America's wealth to the rest of the world through unfair trade agreements?
Ha ha ha ha. If Chicago, which has more big corporate headquarters and finance than some entire red state, is a failing city; then how'd you describe Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, etc?? There are red states who'd sell their souls to be as prosperous as Chicago.
U.S. is the #1 economy in the world, you think we could get to this spot with unfair trade agreement? If you can't make money in this country with our economic power, then you won't make money anywhere. End of story. Trade agreement has nothing to do with it.
What's that saying about taking personal responsibility? Maybe it's time the right-wingers take some?
Conservative red states are the ones who create the deadbeats. If anything, they should be the ones shouldering the cost. I'd be all for defunding welfare if we can find a way to keep the leeches where they originated - in red states.
The problem is that as soon as we defund it, the welfare kings and queens will move in droves to the coastal areas because that's where they can survive by panhandling or sleeping on the streets. We already have enough of the red states' homeless moving here, we don't want more.
With that said, I'm for restructuring the welfare program to include more public work programs, job training, etc. Basically, to stay on the program, one has to contribute in some ways.
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Oh sure, California, Oregon, Washington, Michigan, New York, etc.
The only restructuring is complete abolishment of welfare of all types.
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There are red states who'd sell their souls to be as prosperous as Chicago.
