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First social security is neither a savings account nor a retirement system. It is an insurance system designed to support the elderly after the private sector retirement accounts disappear through business failure. Like the one we are having. Social security will be there after the banks have failed.
I think the current Social Security system needs to be reformed by increasing the tax base to all income from all sources and the payments limited to recipients with less total income than the local mean.
As far as the folks that despise redistribution of income are concerned I object to private profit. Why should I pay more for something than it cost to provide. I should, in a fully functional market, be able to go next door and buy the product at cost instead of a price that includes profit. A government owned store could do this.
Now for being a liberal:
I believe that individuals should all have the same (like equal) opportunity to develop their talents to as high a level as they desire regardless of their existing circumstance including race, religion or family wealth and connections.
I believe that natural monopolies should be owned and operated at cost without, other than low and stable prices, any benefit to the private sector. The nation should have one electric supply, transmission and distribution system free of any tendency to local monopoly.
I believe the private business sector should be carefully monitored to prevent monopoly at any economic level. The establishment of a free and open market for anything that is not a natural monopoly should be the goal of government economic regulation.
I believe that individuals have the absolute right to control their own bodies (women selecting abortion for the dimmer conservatives) and the right to do whatever they want with other consenting adults (homosexual marriage).
I believe that individuals have a right to keep and bear arms for what ever reason they want. If an individual uses these arms to harm another they had better have a very good reason like defense of themselves and others.
I also believe that workers have a right to form unions to collectively bargain for wages and working conditions.
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I believe our domestic producers do have a right to protection from price competition from offshore sources that do not meet our prevailing wage (union) and environmental requirements.
I believe we must maintain a military sufficient to protect us from attack on our country. I do not believe we should allow the formation of a military industrial complex that created private profit centers providing materials and services to our military. I do not believe this military should be used for any form of “preemptive war”. We can prevent attack by responding with overwhelming, to the point of extermination, reaction to an attack. We can respond to terrorism by a stateless force by helping to create an international police force to deal with these murderous criminals.
To summarize: as I liberal I believe in individual liberty, market capitalism and only making war if attacked. I like being a liberal.
If you want to plant a tree...that's great!
If you want to help the poor...that's great!
If you want to buy American...good for you!
If you want me to pay for what you want...shame on you!
Well said. And one could also argue that you most help the poor by providing economic opportunity and social mobility; handouts just exasperate the problem of poverty!
^^
Very few liberals support extended welfare that makes people dependent on handouts - but they also see the hyprocrisy in big business hiring massive lobbying armies to secure as many handouts as they can from the government. I've worked in that environment and I can assure you there is no ideological free market vision running big business. If they can get billions from a government, it's just as good to them as getting billions from customers.
It's a situation where the reaction to that situation is to use collective bargaining to ensure the poor get their handout as well. It's a system diseased on both ends. Just be aware of that.
Some things just got institutionalized and haven't shaken out of the system yet. Don't throw the baby out with the welfare check.
GregW, you would trade a thousand local monopolies for one government-controlled monopoly? How is that an improvement? You do realize what you described in your first few paragraphs is socialism. If no matter how hard I work the government is going to dictate the price of my goods and dictate how much I make from the work I do, what is my motivation to try harder? Everyone having jobs is pointless if no one is working. I personally think maybe we should let the banks fail. Start over. There is natural turmoil that is necessary for businesses to function. Tell me, what do you think banks would look like if all money invested in social security were invested in the stock market? I can't say for sure, but I don't think we would be in as bad of a mess as we are today. Your ideal government is very far from anything the Constitution has stated. In your ideal government, what keeps the government in check? What keeps it from becoming bloated and inefficient? My electricity bill stays low because if it gets too high, a new company will form and offer the service for a lower price. If there was one government controlled utility service that option disappears.
Government controlled business is a legal monopoly which cannot disappear. I do not understand how you are comfortable with handing the government this much power.
and by the way, you pay more than it costs to provide a service because people need to have money to eat.
Why do liberals always like talking about progress. What they seek is Sodom and Gomorrah.... or a European life style. Neither of which is progress but regress.
Yes ... Europe with all its culture and enlightenment is so .... horrible?
Progress is the push toward "a more perfect union". Liberating people to experience fully the life they choose to experience (actually living freedom rather than just chanting it and suppressing it to any who look and think differently) is most certainly progress.
It goes overboard, of course, but that's why we have conservatism to hold the reigns back and slow the horse down.
Yes ... Europe with all its culture and enlightenment is so .... horrible?
See that's what's wrong with liberals. They forget all about why America was even started. What those founding fathers had in mind. It was not to make another Europe...
See that's what's wrong with liberals. They forget all about why America was even started. What those founding fathers had in mind. It was not to make another Europe...
I always thought it had something to do with being able to have religious and other individual freedoms. I.E. no government trying to dictate morality and religious dogma down your throat.
Ironic that Europe has now passed us by in that regard.
^^
Precisely. Europeans - no matter what was happening 300 years ago - now understand that there is a greater good in sharing their own wealth to better the commons (be they intellectual or physical or spiritual).
The oppressive religious culture has left Europe and taken root in the U.S.
One can't argue that, despite their many flaws and their history, have reached a point where overall quality of life has surpassed our own.
I always thought it had something to do with being able to have religious and other individual freedoms. I.E. no government trying to dictate morality and religious dogma down your throat.
Ironic that Europe has now passed us by in that regard.
You mean those Europeans that would all be Germans now. There is a reason we grew faster than they did. Taxes and big government hinders the people and the growth of the economy. Religious freedoms are wonderful for the people and liberating people from oppressive regimes is also good. But you folks don't really believe any of that... You would of course if Iraq had been freed from Clinton though..... or any other democrat. But a republican does it and it's evil...
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