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Old 01-22-2010, 10:50 PM
 
9,846 posts, read 22,677,486 times
Reputation: 7738

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Quote:
Originally Posted by odinloki1 View Post
Wonderful that you can come up with a few examples. I have plenty of anecdotal evidence too. Companies bailing/losing retirement funds and pensions of loyal hardworking employees (enron is a good one). Vets who come back with lost limbs or unable to find work and can't get into college. Anecdotal evidence is weak. Think about all those struggling with mortgage payments because they lost their jobs and the real estate market took a dive. Hard work, but screwed by the mistakes of a lot of other people.

Again, conservatives peddle this truth hard work=success and if you aren't successful, then you didn't work hard. I'm not saying a mansion or 3 cars, I'm just saying being able to provide for a family and some control and peace of mind.

Just admit its not always true and people get screwed its not that hard to admit to a lie and that the system needs to be fixed so that can be a truth.

The resources you speak of are obscured by beauracrats put in place by paranoid people who demand accountability, then understaff the programs. Its really just a pathetic lip service to garnish a couple votes.
Just because you work hard doesn't mean you can't be stupid with money.

Life happens and I don't know how government is supposed to protect you from every down moment in your life. Instead of wailing about it, I learned to use those down times in life to learn from and find ways to make myself better.

The system will never be perfect. Attempts to make it perfect have been tried in Rome, the Soviet Union, East Germany, etc. and those systems always collapse because people want a say in their own outcome, not what the government sets up for you.

Just in my anecdotal life experience, the people that I come across that are always wailing about how the world is out to get them and how they "the little guy" is always getting screwed are always the ones that are stupid with money. They are in the bar every night, going to Vegas, buying all sorts of stupid gear, etc. Basically they are living beyond their means and because they can't accept responsibility for their actions, someone else has to be blamed and a handout demanded.
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Old 01-22-2010, 11:23 PM
 
Location: Great State of Texas
86,052 posts, read 84,481,831 times
Reputation: 27720
I just finished reading this on capitalism vs anti-capitalism. Thought how ironic since this thread has turned in this direction.
Good editorial with some interesting points. But it is biased in favor of capitalists..just warning.
IMO it's something to read and ponder.

Past Global Analysis - J. R. Nyquist "Anti-Capitalists and Capitalists" 01/22/2010

Some snippets:
"In a financial crash, the excellent and the poor businessman perish together, but the unhampered entrepreneur finds his way and the economy quickly recovers . Only today, the government is pumping money into useless activities on every side.
..
Through its generous funding of education, through the elevation of bureaucrats in place of entrepreneurs, through the expansion of government services, the anti-capitalists have found their cause -- and a way to strike back. The evils of capitalism must be opposed. Thus, through incessant activism and whining, a system is built in support of failure (enabling the drug addict and the malingerer), offering management positions to those who would otherwise be running a small business into the ground."
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Old 01-22-2010, 11:52 PM
 
Location: in paradise...
147 posts, read 135,262 times
Reputation: 42
Quote:
Originally Posted by wanneroo View Post
And then have a look at how much in taxes those people pay and watch the leftists head explode.
.......

Having been someone that has worked for the mega rich, I know a lot personally about them. Most of them are older people that worked hard at a business, made it successful and their business grew. And guess what some of those people had tens of thousands of people working for them. Yes tens of thousands of people with....jobs.

I think leftists think that jobs just spout out of the ground. The reality is those jobs come from someone coming up with a business idea, getting a business off a ground and then working hard to make it grow. Companies like Apple Computer that started in a garage. Wonder how many people have made a living and profited from Apple over the past 30 years?
funny you used apple. He hardly appears to be a republican.

In fact the graph we need is the trust fund kid graph. IE the kings graph. You know the reason why We had a declaration of independence. All men are created equal by jefferson who was in France learning about stopping the trust fund kids (nobles and religious ) from controlling the society specially economically.

Hey lets look at a few trust fund kids. The walMart kids. lets look at it from the tax position. as we know dad started the company and made it worth billions. Now from the tax perspective dad never paid taxes on the stock he owned. It is only taxable if he sold it. thus he never sold it so it was never a taxable event. Obviously if he did it would be a long term capital gain which is much lower than ordinary income. But anyway he and most first generation entrepreneurs never paid taxes on that asset like the increased value of farm land. So now we have the right wing trust fund kids inherit it, and they as we know are trying to get laws changed where they would not have to pay a penny for this gift that taxes were never levied. As is they pay a very low rate.

As an example we can use a trust fund kid by the name of Olin. He was third generation right wing trust fund kid. His family made money in the civil war selling munitions to both sides. Well anyway he took his family's wealth and put it all into a trust to fund right wing media control, somewhere in the 1970s about 250 million dollars that in today's terms would be billions.

There are many trust fund kids dealing with media control, Ruppy murdoch, who brought the enquirer style of news that he made bank on in australia and europe. Scaife who owns some newspaper and funded the national review and funded the paula Jones legal team and nose job.

so what we need is a graph of trust fund kids and what part of america their old money is vs the new money by real thinkers and movers like the apple example. again the declartion of independence.

wiki
Quote:
Quote:
The quotation "All men are created equal" is arguably the best-known phrase in any of America's political documents.[1][2] Thomas Jefferson first used the phrase in the Declaration of Independence as a rebuttal to the going political theory of the day: the Divine Right of Kings. It was thereafter quoted or incorporated into speeches by a wide array of substantial figures in American political and social life.
Quote:
The Declaration opens by affirming "the natural and imprescriptible rights of man" to "liberty, property, security and resistance to oppression". It called for the destruction of aristocratic privileges by proclaiming an end to exemptions from taxation, freedom and equal rights for all men, and access to public office based on talent. The monarchy was restricted, and all citizens were to have the right to take part in the legislative process. Freedom of speech and press were declared, and arbitrary arrests outlawed.[9]

The Declaration also asserted the principles of popular sovereignty, in contrast to the divine right of kings that characterized the French monarchy, and social equality among citizens, "All the citizens, being equal in the eyes of the law, are equally admissible to all public dignities, places, and employments, according to their capacity and without distinction other than that of their virtues and of their talents," eliminating the special rights of the nobility and clergy.
remember
Quote:
Quote:
] Thomas Jefferson, primary author of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, was at the time in France as a U.S. diplomat[4], and was in correspondence with members of the French National Constituent Assembly.
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Old 01-23-2010, 12:11 AM
 
3,071 posts, read 9,140,046 times
Reputation: 1660
Quote:
Originally Posted by AnUnidentifiedMale View Post
A large division between rich and poor isn't good for any society, but I'm starting to accept that this is just the way it will always be in the U.S.
The rich are using their money to buy favors and cheat others. One man can not have almost all of the corn locked in a barn while many go hungry. Corn is to be eatin not locked up and horded. The ones doing the hard work shall eat.
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Old 01-23-2010, 12:22 AM
 
10,239 posts, read 19,608,184 times
Reputation: 5943
Something that had been (correctly) alluded to -- and needs repeating-- is that the whole "wealth distibution" schematic begs a certain fact of life.

That is, it (wealth) is not only not a finite sum game, but that the "poor" and "rich" are not a static class. Those "poor" now will likely enter the upper echelons in another decade or so.

Most of those who fit the criteria of poverty or some such are, today (operative term) young kids and couples just starting out in life. With some good sense and foresight and all, they will gradually move up the ladder.

I have always been curious as to where -- exactly -- is that point when the "poor" cross that line from being the cause celebre' among many liberals, into the selfish rich, of the same...

The "Working Poor" Scam by Thomas Sowell -- Capitalism Magazine

An absolute majority of the people who were in the bottom 20 percent in income in 1975 have since then also been in the top 20 percent. This inconvenient fact has been out there for years -- and has been ignored for years by those who want more government programs to relieve individuals from responsibility for making themselves more productive and therefore higher income earners.
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Old 01-23-2010, 12:35 AM
 
26,680 posts, read 28,670,280 times
Reputation: 7943
I did say that a large division between wealthy and poor isn't "good" for a society, but on the other hand, does anything really need to be done about it? At what point do we stop taking from the rich and giving to the poor? Considering that most of the "poor" in America live in heated homes with televisions and microwave ovens, are things really that bad for them? Compared to most of the world, the poor of America are actually quite wealthy.
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Old 01-23-2010, 02:28 AM
 
9,408 posts, read 11,932,122 times
Reputation: 12440
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dopo View Post
Anybody knows when the trickle down is gonna start.
I can't wait to start benefiting from it.
Oh there's trickle down, but that's not money you're feeling!

But yeah, the wealthy are getting greedier and greedier, with no end in sight. The middle class is slowly bleeding out.
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Old 01-23-2010, 03:28 AM
 
Location: A safe distance from San Francisco
12,350 posts, read 9,720,028 times
Reputation: 13892
Quote:
Originally Posted by TexasReb View Post
Something that had been (correctly) alluded to -- and needs repeating-- is that the whole "wealth distibution" schematic begs a certain fact of life.

That is, it (wealth) is not only not a finite sum game, but that the "poor" and "rich" are not a static class. Those "poor" now will likely enter the upper echelons in another decade or so.

Most of those who fit the criteria of poverty or some such are, today (operative term) young kids and couples just starting out in life. With some good sense and foresight and all, they will gradually move up the ladder.

I have always been curious as to where -- exactly -- is that point when the "poor" cross that line from being the cause celebre' among many liberals, into the selfish rich, of the same...

The "Working Poor" Scam by Thomas Sowell -- Capitalism Magazine

An absolute majority of the people who were in the bottom 20 percent in income in 1975 have since then also been in the top 20 percent. This inconvenient fact has been out there for years -- and has been ignored for years by those who want more government programs to relieve individuals from responsibility for making themselves more productive and therefore higher income earners.
This whole article is a scam. I'm trying to imagine what very strange corner of the world you live in that would cause you to deny that there is, in fact, a class of working poor. And this?

An absolute majority of the people who were in the bottom 20 percent in income in 1975 have since then also been in the top 20 percent

If you believe that, you'll believe anything. Further, the world today bears little resemblance to the world of 1975. Career and income expectations that seemed reasonable in 1975 are absolutely irrelevant today. Not that it matters, because the statement is nothing short of ridiculous.

I'm hoping you're going to tell me your post was tongue-in-cheek.
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Old 01-23-2010, 03:35 AM
 
654 posts, read 466,264 times
Reputation: 159
I could comment on it, but liberals would think I was being hateful.
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Old 01-23-2010, 08:22 AM
 
59,040 posts, read 27,306,837 times
Reputation: 14281
Quote:
Originally Posted by organick View Post
you think McD's pays enough for people to pay the bills and go to college? wrong
My brother did. Took him 6 years but he did it. Who says everyone is entitled to go to college.

What do you not understand that McD's is NOT a CAREER. It is an ENTRY
LEVEL job.
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