Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
As a so called "liberal," I can assure you that the last thing I want to do is to take rich people's money and give it "to the people who'd rather sell drugs for a living and live up the thug life because they were too weak-minded to resist pressure." What we, or at least I, want our collective tax dollars to go to is to ensure that every young person can receive a decent education and that every poor family has access to services that will help them help themselves out of poverty.
I agree 100% with that. The problem has been our politicians who keep expanding welfare programs to cover people who do not need assitance. They get into office and they think they function is to come up with some new way to spend money to further their chances for reelection.
Liberals and conservatives believe our government should take care of the poor and elderly, but our politicians spend our tax money like its an endless pot of gold.
Take S-CHIP for example. It was a well intentioned program to fill in the gap not covered by Medicaid, but the program is available to families making $80k a year. We had Cash for Clunkers and the new $7,500 rebate for the Chevy Volt, who the hell benefits from that? It sure as hell was not the poor. Green energy subsidies for wind, solar and corn ethanol don't help the poor either, they just jack up the prices for electricity and food.
College tuition is so high BECAUSE of government intervention.
Exactly. It seems that the more government programs for tuition assistance the higher they can raise tuition, because the kids with grants aren't paying it. You'd think if the federal government gives universities like Harvard $300,000,000 a year, and offer tuition assistance to students, that their tuition costs would drop, but they only increase each year, which is squeezing out the average family from sending their children to college.
Ah yes, this is a great argument. The middle class is dumb, and deserve to be crushed beneath the foot of the market. Do you realize how self-destructive this is for a society? Beyond that, do you understand how many levels of obfuscation went into the financial practices that allowed the collapse? The politically maneuvered deregulatory practices that made them possible?
Basically you're saying that the rich, with an enormous power advantage at every stage in the game, were able to cheat the middle classes successfully, so f*ck the middle class for being dumb? LOL. This is the most pitiful form of corporate apologism. There's a reason we have consumer protection programs.
You can't ignore the bottom rung of the ladder, too. The poor, with enormous "pity factor" were able to cheat as well. The middle class WAS dumb - we were played by both sides. As for consumer protection, we HAVE that. But they must be implemented. But they were ignored, in order to cater to the have-nots, AND the haves.
Exactly. It seems that the more government programs for tuition assistance the higher they can raise tuition, because the kids with grants aren't paying it. You'd think if the federal government gives universities like Harvard $300,000,000 a year, and offer tuition assistance to students, that their tuition costs would drop, but they only increase each year, which is squeezing out the average family from sending their children to college.
Please find a source to support this claim. I've worked in programs based on increasing access to higher education for the poor, and this absolutely flies in the face of reality.
It takes an enormous amount of ignorance to make this kind of argument during a period when our nation is facing historically high levels of income inequality, when the wealthiest people in society are steadily increasing their control over our political system, and when the middle class, which alphamale ignorantly claims is huge and is "doing great," is actually shrinking.
High disparities in wealth are ruinous for societies, and yet people want to complain about "robbing Peter to pay Paul", even as Peter is robbing the sh*t out of everyone. This isn't about "small business owners," the group of people trotted out by politicians and know-nothings as the victims of this kind of critique, this is about scions and magnates, just so we're clear. People whose wealth affords them political clout, who have the ability to basically become world citizens.
You're blind if you don't see that we are currently experiencing a period of rapid upward wealth redistribution. Both the Republicans and the Democrats are complicit in this process, but for some reason the right is more resistant to this idea than the left, which is why the Republicans are able to pursue their agenda of corporate cronyism more readily, and in larger proportions. You can reduce the argument as one about "fairness", and spit out mealy-mouthed impersonations of what you think the "left" thinks, or you can discuss things a bit more analytically.
As you are blind to see that we are also currently experiencing a period of rapid DOWNWARD wealth redistribution. For that, you can put the blame squarely on Democrats. Where else would they get their votes and power?
If you want to discuss things more analytically, you must see things as they are, not at media matters tells you to see them.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
