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Democracy be damned. Individual liberty trumps majority oppression. We need a government that protects the individual and allows and encourages the individual to sink or swim on his or her own merits.
You have gotten to the point where you forgot what is the end and what is a means to that end.
You have to ask yourself what should really be the goal here - the actual ability to pursue something, or the legal ability (but without the practical ability)?
If there is rampant poverty and desperate people have raided your house of electrical components, how does the fact that the government allows your new lighting project enable you to actually do it?
Lack of government interference is not sufficient to create real opportunity.
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Originally Posted by Marc Paolella
We need to lower taxes, get rid of welfare, get rid of public ownership of private assets,
So people who are bedridden due to a work injury should just starve to death?
Where is the humanity?
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Originally Posted by Marc Paolella
and encourage private schools and private schooling. Parents should get a 100% dollar-for-dollar tax credit if they send their kids to private schools.
I can go along with that.
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Originally Posted by Marc Paolella
Where they will get a real education and not a social engineering collectivist-leftist-altruist-statist indoctrination.
I think excessive standardized testing is actually a bigger problem right now at the K-12 level (and has been since at least 2001 when NCLB was passed).
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Originally Posted by Marc Paolella
We need better citizens. And that starts with individual achievement and protection of private property rights and the rediscovery of the only just economic system ever devised: Laissez-faire Capitalism. Which we botched the first time due to altruistic pollution and mixed premises that have led to the statist crony economy we see around us.
And you are basing this on what?
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Originally Posted by Marc Paolella
You should keep ALMOST ALL of what you earn. If you fail to earn, you should get NOTHING other than private charity. Welfare and redistribution need to be abolished. We cater too much to people's weakness and bad character, rewarding incompetence, laziness, and irresponsibility. We encourage failure, and apologizing for bad character, and poor work habits.
Income should be absolutely and magnificently UNEQUAL. Those that work the hardest and best should get most of the money. That would be just and rational and correct.
No. Do you need to go back to school and take history again? Do you know what happens when inequality gets out of control? What does society undergo?
(hint: it rhymes with "evolution")
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Originally Posted by Marc Paolella
And would lead to the best society in the world. A society of quality, merit, and pride, instead of a society of sniveling and whining about what others have and how it can be taken away from them.
Something lots of people don't understand is that, there can only be ONE quarterback per team in football. No matter how many hours the other players work, not matter how hard other players work, Only ONE guy will make it to QB and the rest still need to make a decent living, be able to raise a family and send their kids to work, go on vacation, ... etc.
Not everyone can become a CEO of a company, simply by working "harder" or "longer". 99.9% of us will never become CEO so that we can write our own Salaries, receive parachutes and benefit from subsidized pay.
Income inequality is more than just about the economics. It is a lot about the politics of greed. It is a lot more about the intentional destruction of the middle class by a subset of people with the active help of politicians.
CEOs in other countries such as Germany, Japan , India work just as hard as American CEOs. The companies they lead are for the most part more successful than American companies. And in these other countries, the compensation of their leaders is decent compare to their lowest paid (or average) workers. But America is the country with the highest gap between CEOs and average worker compensation. And this gap has been growing exponentially.
There needs to be a law in this country, which ties the highest compensation of CEOs to the average pay of their workers. I'm probably in the minority on this, but to me this is the only thing that will stop CEOs from destroying the middle class.
Marc,
Not everyone that spells out the truth is a "lowly worker". I can bet that I'm financially more successful than you are. But it is really irrelevant for this conversation. I'm not whining, I'm simply stating facts.
The vast majority of people who write the laws in Washington are the lobbyist for the biggest corporations and the wealthiest Americans.
A simple google search will prove my point.
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Originally Posted by Marc Paolella
If you don't like it, get good at something and overcome your lowly worker status. Or open a business and join the fun.
Whining and plotting redistribution and punishment of those who you envy and hate is NOT the way to a happy and successful life.
The system is rigged towards the rich, powerful and wealthy. They write the laws of the land, weakening the workers and giving more and more power to themselves. While American workers are forced to compete with the workers in countries like China, India, the CEOs and senior managers see themselves as people deserving massive subsidized pay (CEO salaries benefit from special low taxes). They pay themselves in stocks to avoid paying taxes. They get massive parachutes, when they lose their jobs, ... and so fort. They go unpunished, whenever they put all of us at risk (Financial meltdown of 2008).
They have paid the Republicans party and aligned with the Religious fundamentalists (who vote for them blindly and massively) to takeover the Government. They own the Congress of the USA, the Supreme court of the USA and the majority of the USA Media. The damage these people are doing to the country will probably never be fixed in our lifetime.
The Kochs and Waltons will only get wealthier (and let's be clear: there is nothing wrong with that). But they need to give us a fair chance. We just need a fair chance at upwards mobility. While John Doe continues to struggle to pay student loans on a $10/hour job without health insurance. Yes, there are examples of Janitors who made it. But .. how many are there? A handful ...
More Democrats on the Hill are rich compared to Republicans. Having said that don't fall into the Dem/Rep paradigm. They are both the different sides of the same coin. There is the powerful rich oligarch that will buy off Democrats and Republicans with the same check.
They have both done incredible damage to the country no matter which party is holding power.
Because your definition of being fixed means everyone is "tied" again, why do you want to start it off that way?
Fix to me means more people gets a chance to get on the investment ladder. Who care's who is ahead of you? If anything, you can watch who falls off the ladder and then not take that rung and go around them. The rich aren't making money by sitting on it, just watch what they do and learn/copy it and you'd get money too. You only have to compete with yourself, and in this case, are you better off than you were 10 years ago, 20 years?
This has nothing to do with education either, people have a mental attitude of spend first, gripe second about how they couldn't afford it and worry about the bill last.
Couple different things here I'd like to address because I disagree on some points and agree on others. The difference in levels of 'rich'.
Don't necessarily care who is ahead of me BUT I do care in the nature of reinforcing asymmetry of information. The extremely rich don't in general care to share how they 'made their wealth' until well after they've accumulated it. Who wants more competition cutting into their marginal unit profit? - Capitalism 101. Oft times the methods used, if legal, will be subsequently changed due to protective legislation (depending on the industry) they've likely set up (via lobbyists) to create greater barriers to entry depending on the scale of said industry.
Look at what they DO with corporate welfare such as the telecommunications act of 1996 allowing greater mergers and crossover ownership in industry? Or same in banking when deregulated and the lead up to 'casino' banking (Collateralized Mortgage Backed Securities, Credit Default Swaps, etc..). Historically, many who rose to the exorbitantly rich: Rockefeller, Carnegie etc... made their millions by creating monopolies before income taxes, then created foundations under the guise of being altruistic when in fact it enables them to retain command control over how accumulated monies are spent. These are same types who while selling everyone on Horatio Alger stories of how they could to be rich did everything they could in their power to prevent this from happening in their respective industries, masking their behavior with PR campaigns. Akin to climbing the ladder but knocking out every other rung behind them.
A lot of what these wealthy did to become top of the heap was subsequently ruled illegal such as "trusts" in early 20th century etc..
Most people have no problem with people who get wealthy from their efforts, skills, business acumen when delivering a service, product etc... The sole proprietorship and small and mid size business person who mostly work within the legal confines to provide some added value. What people have a problem with is those making exorbitant wealth by gaming the system or off others backs when they add little to nothing in way of benefit to commonwealth. Think electronic trading or selling war armaments to both sides in conflicts or to supposed friends who conveniently become enemies.
If too many 'copied' some of these wealthy then we'd all be snake oil salesman sort of like those guys who tell you how you too can be wealthy when they got wealthy by essentially selling fools books , tapes, CDs etc... because they thought there is a simple way to such wealth.
I agree with the last paragraph as to the 'spend first, gripe second and worry about bill last' mindset. Unfortunately, this is the game many are susceptible to since they are mostly conditioned to accept via mass media programming in the consumption based economy. Couple this with lack of personal responsibility and accountability for bad choices is a part of the equation. On the other hand if statistics show declining real household income for past 45 years you can see a systemic issue beyond irresponsibility.
I agree making everyone be 'tied' is a bad mindset since everyone has different levels of drive, skills, cognitive talents, and the ability to reward oneself for efforts should always be an incentive. I do think at some level, a reasonable multiplier to top executive and lowest worker would be beneficial, say 30 to 1. The fact it has grown exponentially to as much as 380 to 1 is untenable and leads to destabilization of underclass.
Democracy be damned. Individual liberty trumps majority oppression.
Liberty for who? Liberty for the few to enrich themselves at everyone else's expense? Just because it is *possible* for someone pull themselves up by their bootstraps and get rich, doesn't mean the game isn't rigged. An economy were nearly all the gains over a 40 year period are captured by less than 1/1000th of the population is seriously f'd up. Very few of them actually contributed to the gains in any way. Many are actually *destructive*. The wealth went into their accounts because they had the power and influence to make it happen.
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We need a government that protects the individual and allows and encourages the individual to sink or swim on his or her own merits.
Are corporations individuals? How about banks?
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We need to encourage private schools and private schooling.
Agreed.
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the only just economic system ever devised: Laissez-faire Capitalism.
It naturally concentrates wealth and power into a few hands, basically killing consumer capitalism, productivity and wealth. It is neither just nor sane.
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Which we botched the first time due to altruistic pollution and mixed premises that have led to the statist crony economy we see around us.
It wasn't altruism. There is a reason why every developed country has a large dose of public benefits and wage supports. If "pure" capitalism worked, we'd see some successful examples of it... but we haven't and we never will.
The crony part... well, if business interests manage to co-opt the government, that's what always happens. Doesn't have anything to public benefits and wages or income disparity.
Couple different things here I'd like to address because I disagree on some points and agree on others. The difference in levels of 'rich'.
Don't necessarily care who is ahead of me BUT I do care in the nature of reinforcing asymmetry of information. The extremely rich don't in general care to share how they 'made their wealth' until well after they've accumulated it. Who wants more competition cutting into their marginal unit profit? - Capitalism 101. Oft times the methods used, if legal, will be subsequently changed due to protective legislation (depending on the industry) they've likely set up (via lobbyists) to create greater barriers to entry depending on the scale of said industry.
Look at what they DO with corporate welfare such as the telecommunications act of 1996 allowing greater mergers and crossover ownership in industry? Or same in banking when deregulated and the lead up to 'casino' banking (Collateralized Mortgage Backed Securities, Credit Default Swaps, etc..). Historically, many who rose to the exorbitantly rich: Rockefeller, Carnegie etc... made their millions by creating monopolies before income taxes, then created foundations under the guise of being altruistic when in fact it enables them to retain command control over how accumulated monies are spent. These are same types who while selling everyone on Horatio Alger stories of how they could to be rich did everything they could in their power to prevent this from happening in their respective industries, masking their behavior with PR campaigns. Akin to climbing the ladder but knocking out every other rung behind them.
A lot of what these wealthy did to become top of the heap was subsequently ruled illegal such as "trusts" in early 20th century etc..
Most people have no problem with people who get wealthy from their efforts, skills, business acumen when delivering a service, product etc... The sole proprietorship and small and mid size business person who mostly work within the legal confines to provide some added value. What people have a problem with is those making exorbitant wealth by gaming the system or off others backs when they add little to nothing in way of benefit to commonwealth. Think electronic trading or selling war armaments to both sides in conflicts or to supposed friends who conveniently become enemies.
If too many 'copied' some of these wealthy then we'd all be snake oil salesman sort of like those guys who tell you how you too can be wealthy when they got wealthy by essentially selling fools books , tapes, CDs etc... because they thought there is a simple way to such wealth.
I agree with the last paragraph as to the 'spend first, gripe second and worry about bill last' mindset. Unfortunately, this is the game many are susceptible to since they are mostly conditioned to accept via mass media programming in the consumption based economy. Couple this with lack of personal responsibility and accountability for bad choices is a part of the equation. On the other hand if statistics show declining real household income for past 45 years you can see a systemic issue beyond irresponsibility.
I agree making everyone be 'tied' is a bad mindset since everyone has different levels of drive, skills, cognitive talents, and the ability to reward oneself for efforts should always be an incentive. I do think at some level, a reasonable multiplier to top executive and lowest worker would be beneficial, say 30 to 1. The fact it has grown exponentially to as much as 380 to 1 is untenable and leads to destabilization of underclass.
This completely misunderstands the wealthy. The vast majority of wealthy people simply do excellent things and the wealth comes to them, as it should. Things like starting businesses, creating things, improving things, developing systems, writing books, entertaining the masses, playing sports at the highest levels. They are not sitting around worrying about people who want to sleep in and tend to their gardens. They are just killing it with 100 hour weeks doing what they enjoy. The money just comes, because money tends to travel to excellence.
I think the vast majority of people fail to understand how correlated hard work is with attaining wealth.
Couple different things here I'd like to address because I disagree on some points and agree on others. The difference in levels of 'rich'.
Don't necessarily care who is ahead of me BUT I do care in the nature of reinforcing asymmetry of information. The extremely rich don't in general care to share how they 'made their wealth' until well after they've accumulated it. Who wants more competition cutting into their marginal unit profit? - Capitalism 101. Oft times the methods used, if legal, will be subsequently changed due to protective legislation (depending on the industry) they've likely set up (via lobbyists) to create greater barriers to entry depending on the scale of said industry.
Look at what they DO with corporate welfare such as the telecommunications act of 1996 allowing greater mergers and crossover ownership in industry? Or same in banking when deregulated and the lead up to 'casino' banking (Collateralized Mortgage Backed Securities, Credit Default Swaps, etc..). Historically, many who rose to the exorbitantly rich: Rockefeller, Carnegie etc... made their millions by creating monopolies before income taxes, then created foundations under the guise of being altruistic when in fact it enables them to retain command control over how accumulated monies are spent. These are same types who while selling everyone on Horatio Alger stories of how they could to be rich did everything they could in their power to prevent this from happening in their respective industries, masking their behavior with PR campaigns. Akin to climbing the ladder but knocking out every other rung behind them.
A lot of what these wealthy did to become top of the heap was subsequently ruled illegal such as "trusts" in early 20th century etc..
Most people have no problem with people who get wealthy from their efforts, skills, business acumen when delivering a service, product etc... The sole proprietorship and small and mid size business person who mostly work within the legal confines to provide some added value. What people have a problem with is those making exorbitant wealth by gaming the system or off others backs when they add little to nothing in way of benefit to commonwealth. Think electronic trading or selling war armaments to both sides in conflicts or to supposed friends who conveniently become enemies.
If too many 'copied' some of these wealthy then we'd all be snake oil salesman sort of like those guys who tell you how you too can be wealthy when they got wealthy by essentially selling fools books , tapes, CDs etc... because they thought there is a simple way to such wealth.
I agree with the last paragraph as to the 'spend first, gripe second and worry about bill last' mindset. Unfortunately, this is the game many are susceptible to since they are mostly conditioned to accept via mass media programming in the consumption based economy. Couple this with lack of personal responsibility and accountability for bad choices is a part of the equation. On the other hand if statistics show declining real household income for past 45 years you can see a systemic issue beyond irresponsibility.
I agree making everyone be 'tied' is a bad mindset since everyone has different levels of drive, skills, cognitive talents, and the ability to reward oneself for efforts should always be an incentive. I do think at some level, a reasonable multiplier to top executive and lowest worker would be beneficial, say 30 to 1. The fact it has grown exponentially to as much as 380 to 1 is untenable and leads to destabilization of underclass.
But the wealthy would argue that people were gaming the system when they were trying to get rich. They had to fight against the odds. The truth is that people have been taking the system since day one. It's been thousands of years of gaming the system. Some how many people today assume that they are the first to face these problems. But I don't believe that a world without gaming the system even exists. That's wishful thinking.
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Republicans????
