A Republican President who did something good for the people DESPITE the effect on the wealthy.
(Abraham Lincoln)
Picture by: Lauren. Caption by: dunno source via Our LOL Builder
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A Republican President who did something good
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At first I was like…
… but then …
… I fell asleep.
yeah….
Every president in history that had a beard was republican.
so only republicans have had truly holy presidents
Except at Lincoln’s time, republican views would be more today’s democratic views.
What was Lincoln’s republican party became today’s democratic party.
Actually, Lincoln’s views would most accurately be considered Socialism today. He would be considered considerably to the left of the 2009 Democratic party. More like the Democratic party of the 60s. Read his letters and see what he stood for during the 1860 election. Lincoln won that election of course because of his perceived view on slavery. (He actually downplayed his view during the election due to SC’s threat to secede if he won.) But his other “plank” was massive Federal intervention in the marketplace.
Does every compliment to a republican have to be so backhanded “dunno source” ? You can’t just say, “Here is a man who paved the way for a man like Obama to be President.” But no… you have to be snarky about it, don’t you?
Given the current environment, snarky might be the only way to go…
snark snark snark
In Swedish that means “snore snore snore”. Glad to see I was not the only one who found this such a sleeping pill.
Too bad the Southern states left (which was there right under the Constituition…go read it and actually learn something) the Republic and the North couldn’t live without them. Individual states have the right to leave whenever and for whatever reason to become their own soverign nation.
Articles of Confederation FAIL.
Selectively quoting from the Wikipedia articles on AofC and ACW. If I’m wrong, leave me alone and correct it.
“An important element of the Articles was that Article XIII stipulated that “their provisions shall be inviolably observed by every state” and “the Union shall be perpetual”.” “The Articles were replaced by the US Constitution on June 21, 1788.” “According to their own terms for modification (Article XIII), the Articles would still have been in effect until 1790, the year in which the last of the 13 states ratified the new Constitution.” “The American Civil War (1861–1865)”
So what do the Articles of Confederation have to do with a state’s right (or otherwise) to cede from the Union in the 1860s?
Will you believe anything I selectively quote from Wikipedia? How curiously incurious…
The Constitution has no mechanism for secession, as has been affirmed by the Supreme Court. The Articles, on the other hand, define a much looser federal government, and while there’s still no explicit escape clause, voluntary secession wasn’t necessarily out of the picture. (In other words, it may have been a “Perpetual Union”, but it could still be altered with a 2/3 vote of state legislatures, and presumably that includes the membership list.)
I don’t know how you got that I was claiming the Articles had any jurisdiction over the Constitution. That’s just ridiculous.
I fully accept your statement about the Constitution; that was always my understanding too (despite having heard Texans claim that they were Confederates because they believed in the Constitutional right of the states to cede from the Union). I was confused by your citation of a document that had been superceded and replaced as grounds for Robert’s Fail (which I’m agreeing was a fail, and clearly a big one since I’m not even American).
The understanding I have always had was that the only two states who could secede without a congressional vote approving it where Texas and Virginia. Texas because it was a sovereign nation before joining the union, and Virginia because it is actually a commonwealth and not a state……but I could be wrong
I don’t think being a commonwealth has any bearing — Kentucky, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania are commonwealths, too.
Check out Texas’ annexation agreement here; I think it’s where the right to secession is supposed to be defined, but I don’t see it.
I don’t see anything that would give Texas a right to secession there either.
There used to be, but when Texas became a part of the Union after the War of Northern Aggression (hehe), we gave up the right to secede.
Yeah? I never knew that.
I hereby give Texas the right to secede and to GTFO! I also recommend strong sanctions against them for not wanting to play with the other states when they don’t get their way. I would also like to propose an electrified razor wire fence be erected around the boarder to prevent any texans from crossing over and contaminating our gene pool with the Texas Stupidity Gene found in the fat, pick-up truck driving species.
I think you would be shocked at all the things that the other states would lack were Texas to either secede or be forced out of the United States. We have such a huge land mass that is pretty much all used for things shipped out to other states….not to mention our shipping ports, NASA, natural gas and oil, auto makers, Dell, and so many other things relied on by the country that are too numerous to mention. Texas is one of the few states that would do just fine if it did secede.
So I’ll thank you to take your condescending, obnoxious, stereotyping hillbilly ass and drop yourself down a well.
Can we still get rid of all the Mexicans?
I like what Ralphie May said about Mexicans:
(paraphrased)
“Friend of mine was upset that I called the hotel maid ‘Mexican’. ‘How do you know she’s not Honduran or Guatamalan or Columbian?’ he said, and I said ‘Yeah! MEXICAN!. If it’s south of Texas, it’s Mexico!’”
Can we do this with California, too….PLEASE!
What’s with the California hating? Really, do you dislike the Sierras, good weather, nice surfing, Avocados, Mandarins, Humboldt’s finest? Come join us!
Actually, I do kind of hate avocados.
Actually if Texas did actually manage to secede, all of those government funded institutions would not be part of Texas. they would either remain US soil or be moved somewhere else. Do you have any idea just how much of Texas is supported by federal funds just for military bases and the associated infrastructure that surrounds them?
Actually the “contract” that texas has with the USA allows it to break up into 5 states, but not to secede from the US
My bad; I definitely overreacted. Sorry.
Robert seems like the type who, when he went to “go read it and actually learn something”, picks up interesting facts like “the Constitution says states can secede” and “the Constitution says I don’t have to pay income tax”. (If you have a chance, I highly recommend looking up the latter; you don’t have to know much US law to understand them, and most of the arguments are hilarious.)
No problem, and no way you could know this without being told, but if I selectively quote like that I’m trying to pick out what I think are the salient relevant points to a factual argument like when a treaty document was in force, not random quotes to try and (dis)prove an interpretation.
This is for Froo; please remove “hillbilly” from your description of me, as you seem to be concerened with accuracy and I am not a hillbilly. The rest is accurate as it pertains to that particular comment of mine.
Nope, I think you’re pretty much a stereotyping, condescending, dumbass hillbilly. And you can kiss my ass. If you don’t want to be treated like an idiot or called names, then I’d suggest you don’t lead out by doing the same.
*sighs* Still waiting to get rid of all the mexicans…
right after we dipose of all the irish!
Aw, did I make him mad? Oh, poor dear. I shall have to rethink my life now.
Learn to spell, Tweedle Dee.
Don’t forget to find your sense of humor while you’re re-thinking. You must have dropped it somewhere, I remember you having it in the previous threads… hmm..
I’ll look in the couch.
Did you find any change in there? I could swear I used to have a pocket-full…….Now there’s only some lint and a sticky Tic Tac…..
No, not mad, just disappointed in you Tweedle Dum. My poor darling.
i second dhoti on this one.
hmm.. agreeing with dhoti.. who’d have thought that was coming. this feels weird
besides, correct me if i’m wrong (been a while since i took an american history course) – wasn’t most of the industry, finance and economic growth occuring in the north not the south – the north east in particular?
To a fair extent yes. Certainly that has a lot to do with why the North won; it had more of the industrial production, and the South had more cash crop agriculture.
Northern Population, 21 million
Southern, 9 million, 4 million of whom where slaves.
Robert…..yeah, no.
Actually, most Southern States are “debtor states,” meaning for each dollar they put into the fed, they get more than that dollar back in federal aid.
So please leave and let us keep our money and intelligence. You can have all the poverty and idiocy you can stomach. And you’ll be leaving any nuclear weapons with us.
they’ll just take their coca cola and beef away you know >.>
but seriously that’s unfair, northern states have plenty of poverty and idiocy.
I think New Jersey compensates in stupidity for NC, SC, GA, TX, MO, MS, and AL all in one go..
Yes, they probably did have a legal right to secede, but they did not have a legal right to fire on Ft Sumter. The South spent Nov to April preparing for war. Buchanan, who was President from the November election to the Inauguration of Lincoln in April, all the while watching the south prepare for war, including stealing arms from all Federal forts across the south. Again, the south spent all that time building an army. The north did nothing thanks to Buchanan.
It was obvious to all observers at the time that the south wanted war. Lincoln wanted Union, but he did not want war.
But Ft Sumter decided not to give up like all the other Federal forts. The state of SC attacked, this was an act of war that Lincoln responded to. I doubt Lincoln would have been able to motivate the north to fight until that attack happened. It’s quite possible that if saner heads prevailed in the state of SC, war could have been averted and the Confederacy maintained. But you don’t maintain the peace by firing on the USA. Remember the Maine, Pearl Harbor, 9/11. You just don’t do that. Not then, not now.
Yet another example of why I have to vote on these things more often….
Not to take anything away from Lincoln, but the Northern rich didn’t have so much to lose from the Civil War as Southern plantation owners.
Funny enough that the proliferation of discriminatory taxes and tarriffs levied against the South led to the Civil War. Let’s not forget that the good thing Lincoln did killed thousands upon thousands of Americans and led to such things as the razing of Atlanta and the Reconstruction, and to an entire segment of the United States being stigmatized ever since.
For all the heroism displayed in the Civil War, there was still a ton of rape and pillage, and Confederate soldiers lay dumped in mass unmarked graves at places like Shiloh, while everyone forgets that many Confederate states only seceded so as not to be forced into conflict with their neghbors. Slavery was not as big a part of the issue as it is made out to be nowadays.
Oh, but, that’s not the point:
LOL LOL LOL REPUBLICANS AM STUPID GO OBAMA TAKE MONEY FROM PEOPLE WHO MAKE MORE THAN ME AND GIVE ME STUFF!!!11!!!
Slavery was certainly not the only issue, but the Republican party was formed by abolitionists that had abandoned the Democratic and Federalist parties, and the southern states seceded because a Republican was elected president.
Sure, there were other issues that had been brewing for a while, but with the abolitionist movement gaining huge ground and the Dred Scott case basically forcing slavery on free states, slavery was by far the biggest issue causing tension between the north and south, and the only reason the north bothered to stay in the war.
I know that the emancipation proclamation didn’t happen until the middle of the war, but there was serious talk in the north of abandoning Lincoln and his war until he made the proclamation, and soon afterward the tide of the war turned in the north’s favor.
Oh yeah, and…
LOLOLOL DEMOCRATS IS STUPID OBAMA ARE KENYAN SOCIALIST WE SHOULD LET POOR PEOPLE DIE IN STREETS LIKE GOD INTENDED!!!11!!!
Yes, slavery was an issue. However, not all Southern states seceded for the same reason. Arkansas had 2 secession conventions. In the first, it was decided to stay in the Union, but not send soldiers to fight other Southern states. After the Union asked Arkansas for troops, a second convention decided to secede because of THAT. There were a negligible number of slave owners in Arkansas, making that point almost nil for the Arkansans. Robert E. Lee was personally against slavery but chose to fight with the Confederacy due to his loyalty to Virginia.
Realizing that your follow-up was dripping with as much sarcasm as my initial one was, what would you call it when someone wants to SOCIALIZE medicine? Is Socialism not about socializing?
Personally, I have no desire to see people starve. I’ve been approached on streets and parking lots numerous times for handouts and I usually give if I have something to give and I feel safe. I’ll probably never forget the old man with a sign that said “Diabetic and Hungry” in a Wal-Mart parking lot. I gave him a gift card that I’d been using for gas, which was all I had in my pocket of value and he teared up while thanking me.
What I disagree with is anyone being forced by the government to do that. First, I don’t trust anyone but myself to judge where my money should go. Second, it creates feelings of entitlement where there should be feelings of thankfulness. Third, it actually prevents people from giving help to loved ones. My parents make a significant amount of money, yet they cannot afford to help me when I’m having troubles because of, among other things, taxes.
The problem with the Robin Hood mentality is a misunderstanding of Robin Hood. Robin Hood robbed from the taxers and those who benefited from the tax system to give to the overtaxed. Robbing from the rich to give to the poor simply does not work, especially in a system in which a bloated bureaucracy does it so incapably.
There is also something I’ve noted in rich liberals — a tendency to think an increased tax burden makes them charitable. It seems to be a passing of the buck of a moral obligation, an assuaging of guilt. “I don’t need to give to the Red Cross or to the local soup kitchen, I pay taxes.”
Local, targeted charities are able to do a better job than government because of intimate familiarity with the problems faced by those communities. The United States is too large, probably at least twice the land mass of Europe (I’m not looking it up), with too many regional eccentricities and differences, for the federal government to apply itself equally in all areas.
The thought that a single entity strangled by regulation and the need to satisfy all parties, especially one that consistently overspends, should handle all of the responsibilities we allow the federal government to have is ridiculous. That’s why state and local governments exist and why private citizens should take initiative. If you think people need better health insurance, organize a charity in your community.
The thing about my thinking, though, is that it relies on everyone being responsible for their own actions and does not rely on a Christ figure such as Obama.
I mostly agree with what you said here. I just don’t feel that people’s lives are on par with having a nice house or a new car.
I also think we drastically underestimate the costs of our current health care system. So much money is lost to people who can’t afford to pay their hospital bills. How do you think that’s paid for?
Also, something many people forget is that very little is as destructive to the human body as prolonged stress, and lack of access to health care is one of the leading causes of chronic stress.
As for socialism, there is a gross misunderstanding in this country about what socialism really is. Socialized health care would be if the government owned and operated all the hospitals. A government health insurance option may not be pure capitalism, but it’s still closer to capitalism than it is to socialism.
I personally think government regulated and subsidized, but privately run, non-profit insurance companies would be the best way to go, but that certainly has it’s own pitfalls. I do think that health care fit better with emergency services like police and fire departments than it does with most private sector business. It’s hard to make that distinction though, because health care is also much more broad than police or fire protection. I do believe that we have a responsibility to keep people alive in a way that doesn’t depend on luck or status, and that no one is in a better position to do that than the government.
“As for socialism, there is a gross misunderstanding in this country about what socialism really is. Socialized health care would be if the government owned and operated all the hospitals. A government health insurance option may not be pure capitalism, but it’s still closer to capitalism than it is to socialism.”
The problem is that it won’t stop there. The President and several like-minded politicos have stated point-blank that the current “reform” is only the first step to ease us into fully socialized medicine. That’s why so many of us are against this first step down the slippery slope.
Arg. Why don’t people get that if you still want to pay for a privatized insurance company you still can?!?!?!? You don’t HAVE to have the Public system- England, France, etc. All those countries they use as examples on what is ‘horrible’ (even though the NHS is super popular in England) have private insurance?
Private insurance isn’t going to go away!
The United States is too large, probably at least twice the land mass of Europe (I’m not looking it up)
USA: 9,826,675 sq km
Europe: 10,180,000 sq km
Not that I think land mass is really vital to administration of health care. And not that Europe is one country, like the US. Just thought I’d rectify the area assessment error.
Further on this, and prompted by the above, population figures:-
USA 307m
Europe 731m.
*snort* “Area assessment error”? What a complete moron.
To further the error: “…with too many regional eccentricities and differences, for the federal government to apply itself equally in all areas.”
EUROPE does NOT have ONE federal government. Europe is a “Unified Mass” of Sovereign Nations that all have their own versions of a “Federal” Governing body. I’m sure every European would be sad to hear that you lump them all into the same non-diverse box. I bet you don’t even know of the vast differences in “East Europe” and “West Europe”, both of which have many countries in this “European Union”. Not all countries in the union share the currency of the Euro, but um, last I checked all states in the U.S. do.. In addition to having the same Federal Governing Body.
Dumbass.
Hrmpth. Let me correct that.. Europe HAS a “Unified Mass”, etc.
You need to read SC’s declaration of secession. They said themselves they seceded over slavery. I’m sure you can google it. The Civil War was pretty much EXCLUSIVELY about cheap labor. Any other conclusion is revisionism. Revisionism that started back in the 1870s.
Plus, you can go read a copy of the Confederate Constitution. It is almost a carbon copy of the US Constitution, except for 2 things. It codified slavery forever, and it STRENGTHENED the role of the Federal Government vis a vis the states. Jeff Davis ran the Confederacy with pretty much an iron hand. Lincoln could not do the same in the North. Any suggestion that the Confederacy was built on states rights defies the facts. I know it’s hard for some southerners to come to terms with this, but this is a fact.
i agree with TJ the most, there are some points in the civil war that people are too stubborn to consider or think about
Wow, I am surprised by all this intelligent sounding comments
I usually just hear stupid crap.
I was thinking the same thing. There was real debate, oh happy day!
@ TJ.
What exactly did the south have to lose or gain by leaving the union? Their primary market for cotton would be gone. England after the onset of the war found other countries to by from. If your answer has anything to do with slavery you are wrong. Prior to the war, Lincoln especially, made sure not touch the topic of slavery aside from saying it would not be allowed to spread. He, in fact, said that slavery is protected under the constitution where it is already in existence. It would have been to Lincoln’s disadvantage to claim he wanted to abolish slavery seeing as the border states ( Kentucky, Delaware, Massachusetts and Missouri) were of extreme strategic importance to both sides. Saying anything to turn them against you would have turned the tide of the way. Not to mention these border states encompassed Washington D.C (Union Capital) on three sides.
We did not enter into a civil war because the North was going to abolish slavery in the South. Many people believe this, and are wrong. The concern was what was to be done with the west. Should popular sovereignty reign supreme? Should we continue to allow slavery based on a arbitrary latitude longitude line? The civil war has its roots in the U.S-Mexican war and the acquisition, under Polk, of most of the west. The U.S increased ~2/3 in size and no body knew how to handle the issue of slavery in these new states.
As to say the North was more brutal than the South is based in nothing other than pure bias. Those who support the North would claim the same, that Southern generals were heartless and driven by nothing other than blood-lust and greed.
Another interesting point is that if the South had armed slaves and allowed them to fight at the beginning of the war, the North would not have had the numerical advantage that plagued the South throughout the entire war. The South had plenty of guns and ammo to go around, and plenty of bodies they could have put into combat if they were not so afraid of the people they had enslaved. (By being afraid of them they admit they have wronged them and fear repercussions)
In any war, no side is faultless. There is killing and injustice on both sides. Blaming it all on the North is a cop-out. It would be like the republicans losing the presidential election, and losing majority in the house and the senate, then choosing to secede because they did poorly. Basically, using the system when it works in their advantage and then crying foul when the tables turn and leaving the game. This does not even bring up the fact that the South opened fire on Fort Sumter. The fact is both sides are guilty of bad deeds in war time. For anyone to look back and completely blame either the South, or the North for the civil war is ludicrous, but all too often a stance of Neo-Confederates.
“As to say the North was more brutal than the South is based in nothing other than pure bias. Those who support the North would claim the same, that Southern generals were heartless and driven by nothing other than blood-lust and greed.”
The south launched very few offensives during this war, they were outnumbered by 2.5 to 1, and they never had the practice of burning down entire houses and cities. They were on defense for the majority of the war, and won more often than not in the early days.
The North was absolutley the aggressor, was absolutely more violent, and if they had never set foot in the south, and if they hadn’t occupied Fort Sumter, it’s highly likely there would have been no major scale bloodshed at all.
I love the meme that Republicans are always bad, especially in matter of race. So we have Lincoln, a Republican, you have the civil rights movement of that late 50s which was opposed by the Democrats, but finally passed by the Republicans, you have Chimpy Mc-Bush Hitler who had the first black commander of the joint chiefs of staff, and secretary of state, and the first black female secretary of state….yep, those darn republicans are nothing but white supremacists……FAIL
Not so much “Republicans” as “Conservatives.” The two main parties swapped liberal and conservative bases during the civil rights era. Regardless of party, Lincoln was a liberal.
Good point, n8. Most of the issues being debated today are, at face value, Dems vs. Repubs; howver, it is more based in liberalism vs. conservativism. Many Conservative Democrats don’t support (or don’t want to support) the Health Care Bill and much of the massive amount of spending that is going on.
That’s some fine, fine WHARGARRBL you’re spewing there. Say hi to the martians for me!
Hmm “No generalisation is true, not even this one”. OTOH voting one way means supporting people who tend to have one set of views, voting the other way means supporting people who have another. So maybe the “party bs” isn’t quite as much bs as you suggest?
Agreed. At the highest levels, all the Republicrats and the Demicans are going to the same parties anyway. It’s not really even about right or left anymore anyway, but that’s another topic. I agree about voting on individual issues after making your own decision.
n8 said the terms “republicans” and “democrats” changed meaning. You proceeded to vomit about conservative and liberal changing meaning. Check yo self before you reck yourself!
Well, I believe it’s *also* true that the terms liberal and conservative have somewhat different ideals today, versus 150 or 200 years ago. Not that the definition of the words has changed, just their application to political positions.
They have the same ideas.
Give money to the rich and super corporations, and in turn, stay in power.
Democrats and Republicans are the same party, just different branches and different ways of talking.
They use each other to keep the status quo the same, to have nothing change.
Although, I do still think people who believe in death panels are idiots.
the republican party in the nineteenth century was essentially what the democratic party is today…
True enough…I find it interesting that if you read the Federalist Papers you will find what is in essence a Republican today described as a Liberal…so I guess the language is always changing.
+900 points to both ashley and Jim.
There are a lot of thumbs up and thumbs down already, but so little that correctly touches on the problem of understanding Lincoln as a Republican like today’s Republicans.
Since slavery was brought up, I would like to make one point.
Confederate States General Robert E. Lee freed ALL of his slaves when he went to war, thoroughly peeving his wife who believed in slavery. Meanwhile, United States General Ulysses S. Grant kept his slaves throughout the war and only freed them after the Emancipation Proclamation. But the South is the only place you hear about the slavery. And Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation only freed Southern slaves, not their Northern counterparts.
No, but the Emancipation Proclamation committed the Union to ending slavery entirely, which happened by the end of 1865. While it may have all been a calculated political move, I can’t criticize Lincoln for the tactical move of not pissing off the border states.
Not that it matters, but can you back up your claim about Grant’s slaves? All I can find is that his wife (from Missouri) owned four slaves (or maybe her family owned them?), and that the one slave given to Grant by his father-in-law was freed in under a year.
Likewise. My sources say that Grant owned 1 slave, freed in 1859, and his wife owned 4. They do mention him being farm manager on a farm worked by his father-in-law’s slaves though.
Though knowing very little of his actual history, I find it hard to believe that Grant owned slaves in Galena, IL. That county is where all of my ancestors are from, and VERY Northern-sympathetic at that time. Been to Galena many times, but haven’t been through the Grant home there (Galena has some really neat old homes, BTW). Though I haven’t read it all, I found the website (link) above, about Grant’s home.
Blatent lift from Wikipedia – “At age 32, Grant struggled through seven lean years. From 1854 to 1858, he labored on a family farm near St. Louis, Missouri, using slaves owned by his father-in-law, but it did not prosper. Grant acquired one of his father-in-law’s slaves in 1858 (and set him free the next year, when the Grants returned to Illinois)”
Yes, that’s similar to what I read elsewhere, after I posted above. So, it sounds like he directed slaves owned by his father-in-law, for a few years after leaving the military (after 15 years), but when he and his wife went to Galena in the spring of ’60, he didn’t have any slaves, himself.
I don’t know much about Grant and slavery but he did live in St. Louis and later even owned land here, now owned by Anheuser-Busch, called Grant’s Farm. Fun place to visit. Gives out free samples of beer. Gotta love free beer.
too bad the republican party was what we currently call the democratic party.
The realignments in 1896 and 1928 changed the partys from what they used to be to what they are today.
And the realignment of 1964/5 as well – when the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act passed, the segregationist southern Democrats split off, were briefly a party unto themselves (the “Dixiecrats”), and then took over the Republicans.
glad someone else pointed this out.
Most of the comments in here are interesting and thought-out, so I just thought I would toss something else into the mix:
Most southerners were actually against secession. The only reason that it actually occurred was because of the power of the wealthy elite in the south that supported it.
Additionally, the proportion of southerners that actually owned slaves was smaller than is typically portrayed. And those landowners created a program of conscription to swell the ranks of the Confederate Army to have their battle fought for them. I could make the comparison of the very wealthy pulling the strings on the middle and lower class to make them dance with what’s going on today. It’s nothing new.
Thank you for pointing that out! Most Southerners, including the rural farmer, couldn’t afford a slave if his life depended on it.
BTW, that was intended to be past tense. Whoops.
Most conscription/buyouts went on in the North. Major Northern/northeast industrialists could pay to have someone else take their draft place. That’s what prompted the draft riots by the poor Irish in New York, which included the lynching of free blacks. Most of the Southern soldiers didn’t really give a shit whether blacks were slaves or free, and neither did the majority of Northern footsoldiers (though they REALLY didn’t want the freed slaves moving north.)
Citation please? I’m referring to the Confederate Conscription Act of 1862, which tied former volunteers to longer than their agreed upon term of service and allowed those with 20 or more slaves exemption. This brought up tensions along the lines of “rich man’s war, poor man’s fight”. I can also refer you to several works detailing the issues in the Southern mountains, where the split was easily 50/50 between Secessionist and Unionist.
None of which has anything to do with this LOL. But interesting, nonetheless.
Getting back to the point of the original caption…
What is wrong with being wealthy in a country that alows anyone to get wealthy? And, why should the wealthy have to pay for anyone elses way?
Nothing’s wrong with being wealthy. It’s awesome. What’s wrong with expecting wealthy people to give a little back to the community that gave them those opportunities?
Is that HUGE 35% tax burden making it so horribly difficult to be wealthy that nobody’s even bothering anymore? Should we jack up the tax rate on working class families that can barely afford to pay their rent to 30% so those poor rich folk can save that 5% of their income? Obviously anyone over 30 that isn’t in some kind of management position fails at life, right? We don’t need people actually doing work here in America, that’s what Mexicans are for, right?
Spoken like someone who is, or aspires to be, in the 50% that pays nothing. “Paying your fair share” is only for other people, right?
Oh yeah, I’ve always aspired to work for minimum wage. That would be so awesome.
Seriously, what kind of comment is that? I’m not rich, but I’ve never needed the government’s help, and I doubt I could get it even if I wanted it. Also, I do pay taxes. Shocking, I know.
But I guess I’m not allowed to care about those worthless poor people. I certainly can’t think that since the government is already funding public hospitals and not allowing them to refuse service to anyone it might be more practical to allow people to have proper care instead of letting everything turn into a major emergency before they see a doctor. That maybe something so intertwined with emergency services and people’s very lives should be important to everyone. That maybe I think everyone deserves a chance. Not to be rich, or even comfortable, but at least a chance, and that dead people don’t get chances. No, those are all clearly commie thoughts, and I obviously shouldn’t be allowed to vote.
That’s a fine sentiment, but how do you get from that to “soak the rich”? That’s the step I’m confused on. Enlighten me, please.
I don’t know, how do you get from a progressive tax schedule to “soak the rich”? That’s the step I’m confused on. Enlighten me, please.
You mean like the progressive tax schedule we already have? The one that takes 50+% of tax revenues from 5% of households? Or are you referring to something else?
I’m still waiting for an answer to my question.
You mean the 5% of households that (in 1998 according to the first link I found) had 59% of all wealth? How is that UNfair?
http://how-of-why.blogspot.com/2006/05/wealthiest-5-percent-vs-rest-of-us.html
You seem to be missing the point of income tax — the government takes it share of what you make, and the rest is yours to do with as you please. If you use it to make more money, guess what — you’re taxed on that, too.
Only on the new income. Guess what? It’s income tax!
So who are you to dictate what an “acceptable” level of wealth is? And why does it even matter, when we’ve been talking about income tax? You’re clear on the difference between the two, right?
Umm… there is no maximum acceptable level of wealth. I’m all in favor of people becoming obscenely rich, and I fully support people saving up enough money to retire.
I just think that if you really want to be immensely rich, you should have to work for it. Until the day you die. This crap about having money being the best way to earn money is seriously wrong, and blatantly anti-capitalist.
People with wealth NEED to be burdened to keep that money flowing. That’s the only way to have a healthy capitalist society. Otherwise it just accumulates, and you end up with aristocracy. That may be more of a pure laissez-faire system, but laissez-faire capitalism failed spectacularly. That’s why we have our current system.
The constitution makes direct taxes on wealth basically impossible, and people with high income tend to be the ones that accumulate wealth, so given the circumstances higher taxes on higher incomes are good for capitalism.
How is it anti-capitalist to…invest capital? I’m confused.
There’s already a barrier in place to accumulated wealth — reproduction. If you’re lazy and live off of your share of the fortune, there’s less for your descendants.
You do know that well off families tend to only have one or two kids, right? The population isn’t increasing that way. Same amount of money, same amount of people. How are they getting smaller amounts? Especially when they can just pay someone to make money with their money. And make a profit.
It’s not quite that bad yet in America today, but it has been before, and the general trend has been heading that way for a while. The income has been getting more unbalanced for decades. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. How is that healthy? Who will buy all the products that make capitalism run if most people don’t have money? We’re already starting to run into that problem.
you guys know that the top 1% in america pay more in taxes than the bottom 95%, right? This tax inequality doesn’t exist on this scale in most of europe, even in the socialist parts, the rich aren’t used as a crutch nearly as much.
Income inequality doesn’t exist in Europe on the scale it does in America either. Per dollar the tax burden is much flatter here than it is in most of the world.
(Reply to Zephr, nesting limits)
“This crap about having money being the best way to earn money is seriously wrong, and blatantly anti-capitalist.”
I’d argue that wealth creating wealth is at the very core of capitalism, and the reason it is so flawed. Capitalism is all about “capital” — it’s right in the name. Managing capital is the path to wealth. And wealth is the path to acquiring more capital. It all seems like a great system, and it is, for those who are already in it. There’s just no way for an individual to get into the system on their own merits. You have to have wealth or capital to get started, which means you have to find a benefactor willing to get you into the system. This places all the power in their hands, and it’s of great interest to them to take your labor, and give you back only enough wealth to keep you, without it being enough for you to actually acquire enough capital to be able to compete with them on a fair footing.
This was the fundamental drive behind Marxism: the idea that your labor should be the path to wealth. Virtually all attempts to implement such ideals have failed horribly and become something else entirely, but I’d still hold that it’s a far better ideal than ownership being the path to wealth.
Links take forever to show up, here’s the linkless version of my response to this post:
You mean the 5% of households that (in 1998 according to the first link I found) had 59% of all wealth? How is that UNfair?
“Not to be rich, or even comfortable, but at least a chance, and that dead people don’t get chances”
At least dead people get the chance to vote over and over and over. Of course they only vote for democrats…strange.
Except that whole thing was a blatant lie. None of those false registrations voted at all. The whole thing was just some bad management that got caught early on and then blown out of proportion.
They also get stimulus checks
) Somewhere between 8,000 and 10,000 checks went out to dead people. Knowing this, people still want the government to run healthcare.
Hey, are you against dead people getting healthcare? Meanie. At least they don’t complain about the long wait to see the doctor.
Good point lol
Many if not all of those checks are never cashed, meaning the money goes back to the treasury after the check date is nullified.
“Many” of the checks aren’t cashed? Are you not a little worried about the ones that are?????? LOL
Zombie cashes stimulus check, film at 11.
I’m not really worried. Social Security fraud is a VERY hard thing to pull off. Even if it’s a smart zombie.
Maybe it was a zombie that ate Stephen Hawking’s brain. Did you think about that? Huh?
Hey! He’s still using it!
This discussion reminds me of this news story.
You are allowed to be whatever you want, and feel however you want.
You are not allowed however, to do so on someone else’s dime.
35% wouldn’t/isn’t bad. I would gladly pay only 35%. The problem is that with all the things the current administration is doing and has done so far it will not stay at 35%. It can’t stay at 35% and pay for the programs that Obama has and wants to pass. And yes, I believe the bottom 50% should pay altleast something.
The bottom 50% DOES pay something. Social Security. Which, by the way, the rich DO NOT pay. At least not in any significant percentage. It’s capped at around $100,000 of income. Past that you don’t have to pay anything into Social Security. It’s a tax on the poor and middle class. How is that fair?
Yes, but in April, they receive a refund check. Withheld != paid.
You realize that lower-income households receive a higher proportion of Social Security benefits, right? So not only do high-income households get a government-mandated poor rate of return, but they’re penalized for the income they receive from their other investments.
Personally, I see it as an incentive — earn more than $106k and you can put that 6.2% into a retirement account that you might *actually* see again.
Nobody gets a Social Security refund. It doesn’t work that way. You only get a refund if you payed into regular income tax. Social Security is a flat tax on a set amount of income, and there’s no getting around it. You pay a higher percentage of your income if you make less money. Also, you get a higher amount when you qualify for Social Security if you payed more in. Lower income households don’t benefit more from it. Unless you have multi-million dollar retirement accounts, and really, you’re complaining that multi-millionaires don’t get a few hundred dollars a month? Really?
Absolutely not — Social Security taxes 6.2% of your earnings up to a maximum. (The SSA lays it out here.) And no, they don’t get their SS taxes back, but they do get a refund that covers the amount they put in.
6.2% up to the maximum, and then past that the relative percentage of your income that actually got payed into Social Security goes steadily down, because your income is still going up, but you aren’t paying any more. If you made more than the maximum, you payed less than 6.2% of your total income into Social Security. The actual percentage can get quite low if you make a lot of money.
The refund doesn’t have anything to do with Social Security. It’s only a refund of the Federal Income Tax, which is separate. You only get a refund if you payed into Federal Income Tax, and it can’t be any more than you payed into Federal Income Tax. If you made money, Uncle Sam kept some of it. Without exception. (Okay, except if you got payed under the table, but you know what I meant.)
Lower-income households benefit more because, at retirement, they receive a higher fraction of their pre-retirement income. (I was just playing around with an estimator; assuming I’m 50 and making $30,000 a year, I’d expect 80% of my pre-retirement income, but if I’m making $200,000 a year, I can only expect 25%. The same relationship applies under the cap, too, but I forget the numbers.)
Check out this link: at least 44% of households don’t pay any tax. So yeah, there’s a big exception.
If you make $30,000 a year, you pay in a higher percentage of your income than if you make $200,000. Sure, it’s not quite exactly the same return on investment, but it’s not as different as you make it out to be. And it’s a good deal compared to private investments either way. Especially if you had your retirement in the stock market last year.
That link isn’t counting Social Security. You don’t file Social Security on your tax form. (Unless somehow you didn’t pay it during the year. Then they want you to fess up. You get more forms, too. Yay.) They just take it, and you never see it again. Period.
No, that’s absolutely the kind of difference you see — go find an estimator and check it for yourself. (What really sucks is that the $30k household gets a higher percentage of their pre-retirement income back than, say, a $90k household, even though they both contributed the same percentage.)
Social Security’s return is absolutely terrible — about the same as a typical savings account. You’d make hundreds of thousands more with even a conservative mutual account. Assuming that Social Security will be around and solvent to pay you at all, which isn’t all that likely if you’re not a baby boomer…
In the upper right corner of your W-2, there are three income and tax boxes — FICA, Social Security, and Medicare. And yes, that refund covers Social Security (and Medicare too) — if you click through to the source document, it says “every dollar withheld”.
I’m not talking about percentage of previous income, I’m talking about the return you get on the money you paid in. Return on investment, not return on what I’m used to. Do you really want me to walk you through all the math?
Okay, I admit I didn’t check Social Security’s overall return rate. That does suck. They’re clearly screwing something up. It wasn’t always like that.
Social Security is on the W-2, but if you had ever done your own taxes you would know that you don’t ever transfer that line onto the 1040. Social Security isn’t on your tax return. You cannot get money back if it doesn’t go on your 1040. Social Security is non-refundable. They always keep all of it. (Unless you have more than one job and they over collect between them, then you get more forms. Fun.) Also, the boxes are FIT, Social Security and Medicare. FICA is Social Security and Medicare together. By the way, Medicare is also not transferred to the 1040, and is thus also non-refundable. All 1.45% of it.
I don’t think you’re clear on what “return on investment” means here — since Social Security benefits are essentially an annuity, ROI varies with age.
If you think that’s true, back it up. I don’t think I can make it any clearer than “every dollar withheld”.
But you blatantly AREN’T using every dollar withheld. That’s my point. You’re using income, but not everyone pays the same amount of their income. We’ve been over this.
No, I am; that’s why I said it.
Again, back it up.
Fine. Math it is. Your examples, $30,000 gets 80%, which is $24,000. $200,000 get 25%, which is $50,000.
$30,000 paid 6.2%, which is $1860 a year. $200,000 paid 6.2% of 106,000, which is 6572.
$30,000 gets 12.9 times their annual payment a year. $200,000 gets 7.6 times their annual payment a year.
It’s not the same, but it’s nowhere near the 25 to 80 ratio you were stating. It does peak out around $30,000 dollars a year, so I suppose if you think that it should be distributed absolutely evenly by dollar spent that’s a bit unfair. Nothing like what you made it out to be though. Throw in that it’s difficult to make serious retirement contributions at $30,000 a year and I really don’t have a problem with the small difference here.
It’s off because you’re using initial income, not final income.
I wasn’t aware that income was edited to be something different after the fact.
The person who made $30,000 a year paid $1,860 a year to Social Security and made $24,000 a year from Social Security after they retired. $24,000 divided by $1,860 is 12.9. They make 12.9 times their annual investment annually.
The person who made $200,000 a year paid $6,572 a year to Social Security and made $50,000 a year from Social Security after they retired. $50,000 divided by $6,572 is 7.6. They make 7.6 times their annual investment annually.
Please clearly explain where you believe I made a mistake.
When I said I played with an estimator, I also said “assuming I’m 50 and making $30,000 a year”. You were the one who made the simplifying assumption — not my problem.
If you want an accurate figure, either (a) go use a Social Security benefit estimator with the information I gave you or (b) develop a benefits model that takes into account real-world conditions.
(You can, however, assume the retirees are evenly distributed spheres, if that makes life easier.)
Wait, I used your examples, and now you’re complaining that they’re not accurate?
Duh. Nobody makes the exact same amount every year, the amount that Social Security is maxed at is an indexed number so it changes every year with inflation, and your percentages were obviously rounded.
So?
My whole point was that the large difference in percentages of income paid out was mostly due to the difference in income paid in. The fact that the numbers used weren’t exactly perfectly correct is irrelevant. I would get similar results with any set of numbers. That’s how math works.
You *incorrectly* used my examples — garbage in, garbage out. That’s also how math works.
If by incorrectly you mean not how you wanted, yes. If by incorrectly you mean in a manner that leads to a meaningless or misleading conclusion, then no. I am quite correct. You clearly either don’t understand the math or are trying to ignore the implications.
I could go through all the tedious work of coming up with painstakingly exact examples, but then you’d just come up with another lame excuse. It’s not worth the trouble, so I’m done here.
Sorry, but the world’s problems can’t be solved by long division.
You’re right, math doesn’t do anything. It just tells us what we need to do.
I hate to interupt this mathfest. But while you’ve all been arguing over percentages and witholding’s etc, none of you have bothered to ask whether or not ANYONE should be taxed for Social Security or if the program should exist at all.
My vote is NO
“You only get a refund if you payed into Federal Income Tax, and it can’t be any more than you payed into Federal Income Tax. ”
FAIL
Read up on the Earned Income Credit. If you worked but made between certain amounts, you CAN get back more than you paid in income tax. There are also Child Care Credits and a few others that will allow you to get back more than you had paid in. Play your cards right and you can actually get back an Income Tax refund that is more than all of the stuff taken out of your pay.
Don’t forget that your employer matches that 6.2%. I believe that it is around 14 or 15% if you are self employed as well.
the only way a lower income family could be benefiting from Social Security is if 1. there is an orphan in the household that can’t be supported. Say an orphan being raised by a retired grandparent. 2. there is a member of the household wholly unable to support themself, meaning retardation that keeps them from functioning in society.
that’s the only two ways i know of anyway.
1. isn’t entirely true. For the sake of example, if your father dies and you are under 18, you will get benefits until you turn 18. However, if you continue on to college you will get benefits until you turn 21.
Or your mother. Either one. Although I think they may cut them all off at 18 regardless of college now.
That may be.. it’s been a few years since I’ve known anyone who was getting support.
Wow, couldn’t be more wrong. Single mothers can get additional benefits if their income is low enough.
What you need to understand is that while there is no more welfare, if you make no money and have a kid under your care, the government will cut you a check till that kid turns 18. It doesn’t matter who the single parent/guardian is…male, female, uncle, grandparent, working, non working, receiving disability, etc etc.
I know of a girl that doesn’t work, has one child, and receives enough money from SS to take her, her kid, and a friend on a cruise to Cancun from LA.
Meanwhile I have to save for a month to make a $500 purchase.
Yeah, there’s equity.
Yeah, that’s wrong. Don’t you wonder if there are some circumstances you’re not aware of? Or, if you think she’s scamming the system, then don’t you want her investigated?
As far as I’m aware, the government doesn’t just “cut you a check till that kid turns 18″; they’ll put you on Medicaid for medical care, and food stamps if your income is pitifully low (I’ve seen the income guidelines–they’re ridiculous), and if it’s available in your town (it’s really not in my small town), help with rent-assisted housing.
I hear a lot of stories like these, and I always wonder: Are the observers making assumptions? Is there more to the story? Is this fraud? If it’s fraud, I think it should be dealt with, harshly (with jail time).
Any system is able to be corrupted and used, even our wonderful government of checks and balances. Look at our banking and securities industries. The key is making cheating more difficult, and punishing those who cheat and steal . . . getting rid of the system is never the answer.
No, not making assumptions. She, and many others, know how to manipulate the system. Those guidlelines you speak of, those are rules on how to life in order to receive government funds for life to some people.
The girl I speak of is the niece of a coworker that came to live with him for a time. Once she figured out how to work the system, she moved out and has more disposable income than he does.
If you create a system….any system….that does not have to do with cold hard real world stuff like physics and mechanical, there will be ways to manipulate it and there will be those that take advantage of it.
The solution to this is to have less systems to abuse.
It’s amazing how often this happens to me; someone quotes a story like this, and then it turns out the person they’re talking about is someone that someone they know knows. I’m not calling you a liar; just saying that these stories are always second or third hand heresay.
The rich do pay social security tax up to $110,000 or so. And they get under a 1% return on their money if they are a white male and even less if they are a black male due to the life expectancy of both. You could get a better return putting the 14% tax in a savings account. The “rich” don’t get to take a tax credit for their children.. How is that fair?
ehhhhhh, sorry, but you can’t buy into the black male vs white male life expectency deal when talking SS.
Those black males that die young don’t usually contribute to SS because the vast majority of the ones that die by violence and not accidents are not paying into the system. Same can be said for young white males falling into the same category. Where the numbers get off is that Black Americans account for less than 20% of the population, White Americans are over 40%, so it gets things all skewed.
Mortality rates don’t factor in; we’re not talking about the economics of the entire system, but rather the balance for a single individual.
The average life expectancy for an American black male is 69.5 years. Assuming a median income for his working life, he’ll be lucky to break even, and be underwater if his income is below median.
I was just adding the black/white male part to deflect any comments that would have come up regarding that. There is some differences in investment return due to the life expectancy of both being somewhat different. In short, the return social security gives you, under 1% to 2% is still very crappy and worst than what you would get in a regular saving account which is what my main point was.
Well why didn’t you just say so?
Pay with what? They’re the bottom 50% for a reason- they have nothing!
These people who should ‘pay something’ are the ones who clean gas station bathrooms, or serve your food at mcdonalds. They can barely afford their rent.
Rich people can live anywhere they want to in the world. If you’re rich, and you don’t want to be taxed to death, you move to a country that lets you keep more of your money. 5% of SOMETHING, is better for the USA than 10% of NOTHING!
That’s also why companies move their home bases to places that don’t tax them so much. We live in a global economy.
Lower taxes, and businesses and people with lots of money will come back – thereby creating jobs and stabilizing the economy. Though I fear, common sense doesn’t occur to our current president. *le sigh*
By being a citizen in a government, what do you think should be provided for you?
Do you think your government should defend your nation? $$
Do you think your government should should provide transportation systems? (If not subsidize them)? $$
Do you think your government should do what is within its power to minimize recessions? $$
Do you think your government should allow you civil liberties? $$
Do you think your government should allow you a say in what it does? $$
Do you think your government should help those sick that are in need? $$
Or do you think your government should stand on the sidelines and watch sick people, who can be easily treated, die?
Do you think your government should enforce the laws it passes? $$
Do you think your government should do all it can to ensure a prosperous nation? $$
How do you think your government comes up with all this $$? Taxes.
Are their nations that are prosperous with much higher taxes than ours? Yes!
Do they provide more services to their citizens? Yes!
Are all of their citizens living in the streets because they are taxed so heavily? (Sometimes upwards of 50%!) No, they actually have a higher standard of living.
Nothing is free. If you do not want to be a part of a government that ensures you have protection from your property simply being seized, by all means move to Russia or China where property laws are not as developed. Move to a nation that will not tax you as much, but be aware that you will receive far fewer protections.
Epic logic win
The government can take your property and give it to a private organization. The supreme court ruled it so twice.
As for “Are their nations that are prosperous with much higher taxes than ours? Yes!”
Which nations are those? I am just curious, not being an azzhole.
you could name a few in europe – europe, britian, canada (ok, not in europe but it might as well be if you ask me), sweden, new zealand….
(i meant, “germany, britain, canada…”)
I agree with you that those nations are prosperous. I think I was thinking more on the line of his comment about those nations taxed at 50% having a higher standard of living than us. I was curious what nations those were.
Sweden, Denmark are up in the 50% somewhere. I wouldn’t say higher standards, but there sure ain’t much of a difference. (Quite possibly it’s lower than in some states, higher than in some. I am now just wildly guessing.)
I found an interesting table on Wikipedia with European tax rates.
Since it’s Wikipedia it’s bound to have some errors, but is probably close enough.
I am also curious to see if there is any data out there regarding different countries standard of living and how it is measured. Who knows…I might be looking to move to one of them one day lol.
Yeah, now I’m interested to know how you measure it, too.
FWIW, the Danes are apparently the happiest people in the world.
“By being a citizen in a government, what do you think should be provided for you?
Do you think your government should defend your nation? $$”
General defense? Sure, no one argues this except anarchists.
“Do you think your government should should provide transportation systems? (If not subsidize them)? $$”
Nope. See AMTRAK. And they’ve done a bang up job maintaining the highways too. They don’t so anything but hand out money to the States to maintain the roads anyways, so let’s just remove that power from them all together.
“Do you think your government should do what is within its power to minimize recessions? $$”
Nope, in fact, the government, and the machinations of the federal reserve, have caused every major recession we’ve had since the early 1900′s.
“Do you think your government should allow you civil liberties? $$”
Ok, now you’re just an idiot. The government does not ALLOW me to have what I am BORN WITH. It is the role of government to keep us free, not safe. Regulations on the people cost money and remove liberty, therefore, anytime they spend money on powers not granted to them by the Constitution they are not acting in our interest
“Do you think your government should allow you a say in what it does? $$”
Wow, now you’ve crossed into lunacy. The government is supposed to be a tool of the people, not the other way around. If you refer to elections, the fed could spend not one dime and they would still happen as the states would absorb it. And that would be called the cost of doing business in a Republic.
Do you think your government should help those sick that are in need? $$”
Federal? Absolutely not. State? Possibly. Below that is up to the community affected.
“Or do you think your government should stand on the sidelines and watch sick people, who can be easily treated, die?” The federal government in Canada and the UK do this every day. It’s not up to this omniscient “government” that you speak so highly of. It’s the will of the people. If it is decided upon to do it, then they would use the government to implement their will, not the other way around.
“Do you think your government should enforce the laws it passes? $$” That’s what the executive branch is for according to the Constitution
“Do you think your government should do all it can to ensure a prosperous nation? $$” Nope. See unintended consequences. See Cash For Clunkers fallout. See Bailout. See Interstate Commerce Clause. It’s not up to the federal government, it’s up to the people whether or not they choose to succed or fail.
“How do you think your government comes up with all this $$? Taxes.”
No arguement there
“Are their nations that are prosperous with much higher taxes than ours? Yes!”
And NONE of them are nations like ours. Everytime I see a comparison to a country in the EU I’m reminded of the term “apples to oranges”. To put it into perspective, there are only about 12 million more Spainiards in Spain than there are Balck Americans in America…..and those Americans are considered a Minority. There is no place as large and as diverse as this nation that does not have a tyrannical one party rule.
Although we may well be on our way.
for Battle Cry -
Can I get an AMEN! for every single thing you said?
Progress requires RESPONSIBILITY, not REGULATION! For battlecry and dustie – AMEN!
How to you expect us to compete with a tropical island that gets 100% of it’s tax income from tourism? We can’t.
Fortunately most rich people aren’t the tax evaders that everyone likes to pretend they are. Most of the cries for lowering the taxes on the poor overburdened rich folk come from people who pay less under the current scheme.
As for business, well I have a whole rant on that, but lets just say for now that I think it’s not really the tax rates that are driving business away.
Do we really want to attract the kind of people who are only interested in money, whatever the ethical cost? People who are willing to lie, cheat, steal, and enslave for their own benefit? I’d rather have good, honest, hard-working people for neighbors, and I think we can be just as productive without investment from ill-gotten gains.
As opposed to the democrats who have done nothing for the country, including the current one who is hell bent on bankrupting it.
Oh? Who blew all that money on an unnecessary war? Was that a Demoncrat? I think that Dubya was bent as HELL on bankrupting it. Did a damn good job, too.
The Iraq War has cost, I think, somewhere between $600 and 700 billion since 2003. Curiously, not only is that less that $900 billion, but it’s much, much less than $900 billion per year. If I were cynical, I’d suggest that the war has stimulated the economy much more than the stimulus.
But now that the Democrats don’t need to whip up the electorate into a Bush-hating froth, the war is suddenly behind Lakotan independence in the national priority list, so none of this really matters.
So you want to claim the economic stimulus of the war, but duck responsibility for the concurrent housing bubble, and the banking crisis that the busting of the bubble market precipitated?
If I were cynical, yes.
But no, I’m not claiming that war spending had a significant impact on the economy, or that it had anything to do with the credit bubble.
I’m just pointing out that Obama’s deficit spending has so far been in a whole different league than Bush’s. (I won’t even get into the psychology that responds “BOOOOSH!” to any criticism of Obama.)
Seriously, my view is that it wasn’t the housing bubble itself, but the abysmal banking regulatory regime (USA and UK) that allowed the banking collapse.
What I object to is passing the buck to the guy who’s trying to do something to clean up a mess the guy before him made.
That’s more a criticism of TARP than of the stimulus. The stimulus was intended to lessen the pain, not clean up the mess.
Nope. Can’t have that. Need to tar Obama with the economic woes he inherited so that people can forget where true culpability lies: Phil Graham (R) and his brilliant idea to repeal Glass-Steagal.
Who would have thought that, after repealing a law put in place in response to the Great Depression, to prevent another one from occurring, we would experience another, very similar economic catastrophe?
And yes, Bill C was Pres. at the time, but the bill passed Congress with STL 92/8 votes: veto proof. And Yes, many Democrats voted for the bill as well, but 8 did not.
Well, thank you for reminding us all of that. Sometimes we get attacking with such a broad volley, we forget the true “culprits”.
Actually, waivers for Graham Hill went out as early as 1993 under Bush I.
There are no Democrats, there are no Republicans, there are only corrupt politicians. Learn that.
Already learned. Didn’t know about those waivers, though. thx!
Who wanted tighter regulations on the housing and lending industry? Who didn’t? You can blame Bush all you want but the fact remains that it is the congress that makes most of the decisions. The same holds for Obama. Obama can ask for whatever he wants but if the congress is not behind him it will not happen.
You’ve got a very good point, there. We should all keep that in mind.
Of course, the national debt increased almost $5 trillion during Bush’s two terms. Not quite $900 billion a year, but it really is in the same league.
Check out this graph. (Yes, I know the link is from the Heritage Foundation, but I couldn’t quickly find the same graph on a neutral site. The numbers, I believe, are all taken from the CBO and from the Obama administration.)
$5 trillion in eight years is $625 billion a year, which doesn’t match up with the graph at all. $2.5 trillion, or an average of $313 billion a year — looks like a better fit.
There’s a huge difference between $313 billion and $900 billion.
On September 30, 2000, the national debt was $5,674,178,209,886.86.
On September 30, 2008, the national debt was $10,024,724,896,912.49.
That’s a difference of $4,350,546,687,026.63. A little less than I thought. It’s still $543,818,335,878.33 a year. Of course, that’s biased in Bush’s favor, because he wasn’t responsible for the ’00-’01 budget. (He wasn’t responsible for any budgets, congress handles that, but we’re blaming budgets on presidents here, so I figure why not go with the flow.) The ’08-’09 budget was passed while Bush was president, and it has a much larger deficit than ’00-’01.
But even ignoring that, it was still $540+ billion a year. We’re talking about less than 2/3 increase. I significant increase, yes. A whole new league, not so much.
Cite that figure, please.
The exact numbers I used came from here: http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/histdebt/histdebt_histo5.htm
Here is the same graph from the Washington Post, lest you think the Heritage Foundation fudged the numbers.
Your numbers still don’t match up. I think the figure you’re using is total public debt, not the national debt. (See how it goes up from 2000 to 2001, despite the budget surplus? I think that’s because it’s including stuff like Social Security obligations that came due.)
Okay, but then you get into questions like how much of Obama’s debt is from Bush’s obligations. It’s a mess no matter how you look at it. My point is that no matter how you look at it, we’ve still got the same number of zeros. Massive deficit spending is really mostly Reagan’s legacy anyway. And I still blame Bush more than Obama. Clinton actually had the whole thing fixed before Bush re-broke it, and Obama is just taking advantage of large number numbness that previous administrations caused. It’s still irresponsible and I wish he had a better plan, but hey, with the economy the way it is irresponsibility is probably the only thing preventing deflation.
According to your source, Clinton didn’t do anything — if you click back and look at the yearly summaries, that bottom-line number has always been climbing. (Which makes sense: not only was Clinton’s “balanced budget” based on optimistic top-of-the-bubble budget projections, but it was only balanced if you excluded Social Security and some other time bomb obligations.)
That’s a very defeatist attitude. I don’t share your pessimism.
Okay, Clinton realistically only reduced deficit spending, he didn’t actually completely eliminate it. My point still stands though. People claiming to be conservatives have been the most irresponsible spenders, you can hardly be surprised that the party that’s SUPPOSED to be the big spenders finally decided to out do them, can you? Call it defeatist if you want. I call it inevitable.
I definitely hate Democrats less than I hate Republicans, but I’d really rather vote for Libertarians. I know they hate universal health care, but that’s really about the only thing I disagree with them on. I believe in Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. In that order.
Bill Clinton didn’t reduce deficit spending. Clinton got lucky with increased tax revenue and inflated the currency supply by selling debt instruments to other countries, mainly China.
Maybe you should take a few courses in Economics and then actually look at what the government has done over the last 20 years.
Uh huh. That’s nice. Clinton totally didn’t do anything at all. Everything’s just a coincidence. He just sat around getting BJs.
Even if that were true, Reagan still would be the one who started the out of control deficit spending. Maybe you should look at what the government has done over the last 30 years, and realize college economics is a ridiculous sham.
I believe the republicans were in charge of the senate while Clinton was in office. Maybe that had something to do with the prosperity
Such short memories
Clinton did not stem any spending. He cut 1/3 of the defense budget by laying off 1/3 of the armed forces and offer early outs to enlisted types with 15 plus years. That’s how he got a balanced budget.
However, other institutions (Fannie and Freddie) increased spending.
This debate, “WEL, UR PARTIE SPNT MOAR THEN MYNE!!!” is stupid. They fact is, they’ve ALL increased the spending and powers of the Fed exponentially since…well, since it’s inception. But drastically since Lincoln.
The true answer to the question “who sucks at spending more” is, “They both suck equally”.
Don’t fight their fight for them. Them, being politicians.
“This debate, “WEL, UR PARTIE SPNT MOAR THEN MYNE!!!” is stupid. They fact is, they’ve ALL increased the spending and powers of the Fed exponentially since…well, since it’s inception. But drastically since Lincoln.
The true answer to the question “who sucks at spending more” is, “They both suck equally”.”
You are soooo right. We need to throw out all of those money-grubbing monkeys from both parties and start over with new money-grubbing monkeys that we can still scare a little bit so they won’t do so many stupid things when they get to D.C.
Except Bush inherited a Budget Surplus, so Bush actually swung the budget a total of about $-625 billion.
And Bush’s second term ended before the recession really started heating up.
And the initial $725 million bail out, as well as the initial budget for fiscal ’09 were both approved by Bush.
And, the stimulus package is $700 billion over 2 years, with contingencies wherein a good portion of that money may not be spent (because wall st realized there were strings on Obama’s money, and decided not to take the bait, or give it back).
And IIRC, the only reason the economy ever recovered from the Great Depression was because the government spent enormous sums of money getting involved in WWII (and killed off a good portion of the labor pool on the field of battle).
Let’s do lunch.
absolutely
You’re confusing TARP and the stimulus. Try again, please.
Nope. There are no strings on TARP money.
The stimulus included additional TARP like money because the original fund was going to be depleted, but attached some strings that businesses didn’t like.
*chokes on tea*
Um, really? So, the restrictions on executive pay, dividends, and mortgage adjustment were because of what, a strongly worded White House memo? What have you been smoking?
If you think I’m wrong, cite me a source. I have stated what I understand to be the case, though I no longer bother to follow the situation daily.
Source.
Source.
Source.
And these are just the first three non-blog entries that popped up…
wow. did you read any of these? The 2nd paragraph of the 1st link explicitly states my point: Bush put no strings on TARP. They are, only now, trying to get some strings attached, like executive compensation limits.
And the first paragraph of your second link? “10 large financial firms were strong enough to return billions of dollars of emergency bailout funds to the government”.
People want to claim Obama is having a hedonistic spending orgy, but Obama is not the one responsible for the lack of accountability (aka “strings”) in the TARP money, and is now recuperating some of that TARP money from companies that received funds.
You said “There are no strings on TARP money.” That’s not true. Why are you whining?
Do you really not understand why strong firms would have accepted TARP funds in the first place?
This is what your article says about the restrictions Bush placed on TARP money.
“Tapping the TARP isn’t as easy as it was three months ago, when Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson basically forced major U.S. banks like Goldman Sachs … and Citigroup … to accept billions of dollars to flood the financial system with cash–with relatively minimal restrictions.”
“Take the money or we’ll make you” is not what I would call a restriction.
Strong companies would not accepted money with any sort of appreciable restrictions, but would have happily accepted “free money” to strengthen their position in this period of opportunity.
And, your article wasn’t talking about Citigroup and the other moochers giving back money they didn’t need once they found out there were going to be retroactive restrictions. It was talking about 10 borrowers who are now sufficiently stabilized to repay some/all of the money they borrowed.
Again, you said “There are no strings on TARP money”. You didn’t say “Bush put no string on TARP money”. (Yet again, why are you bringing Bush up? Should I assume that each of your sentences has a silent “Bush” somewhere in there?) There *are* strings on TARP money. Why are you whining?
> Strong companies would not accepted money with any
> sort of appreciable restrictions
Internal consistency FAIL. First, you acknowledge that Paulson forced firms to accept TARP money. (Don’t tell me that Goldman’s not a strong firm.) Now, you’re saying they’re not.
There are no strings on the TARP money. Congress, specifically Frank, is trying to put restrictions on the TARP money, and people are complaining about it. Your article specifically indicates that these “strings” you are trying to point out are in fact still proposals that Frank is trying to get passed. Until those proposals are passed, there are no strings on TARP money. And unless they manage to make the proposals retroactive as well, the $350 million that already went out the door, will continue to have “no strings attached”.
Do you have anything further to add?
The clearest quote is from link three: “Iberiabank executives said that tougher rules, including limiting dividends, made taking the aid untenable. “It really changed significantly from how it started,” said John R. Davis, a senior vice president at the bank. “All those changes made it very difficult for a bank like us to participate in the program.””
That’s pretty clear. So, are you a moron, or just stubborn?
Allow me to recap this thread:
Me: “Nope. There are no strings on TARP money.”
Dhoti: “Um, really? So, the restrictions on executive pay, dividends, and mortgage adjustment were because of what, a strongly worded White House memo?”
And after reading your third link, allow me to bring this discussion to a close. Your article says: “Originally, banks that accepted TARP money were required to raise private capital before they could repay the loan. But after Congress passed its economic stimulus bill in mid-February, the repayment policy was loosened as strict new compensation rules were put in place.”
So, yes, TARP (2008) had no “strings”, the stimulus package included additional TARP like money, but with strings. Please put on your diaper, and go back to whatever you were smoking, and leave the adult conversations to the adults. kthxbai.
Programmer, Dhoti was pointing out a flaw in your sentence, the fact that you made a statement that did not have qualifiers. You said very clearly, “There are (present tense) no strings on TARP money.” This is no longer true, as strings were added. You did not say “When TARP was implemented, there were no strings, but there are now.” You simply stated that there are (present tense) no strings.
Dhoti is right about what you said, and what you meant by that statement.
Well, Froo, you may be on to something. To my knowledge, the stimulus that was passed this year has money that is separate and distinct from the money that was made available through TARP, and the stimulus did not actually absorb or amend TARP, but provided additional funds with new conditions attached. If this is not actually the case, then I will have to correct myself. Thanks for pointing that out.
No, he didn’t.
That little math trick has been dis-proven several times. That “surplus” was calculated using 10 years of extremely optimistic assumptions, none of which came true.
Whole different league? You got that part right. To fix major problems, rather than open the public coffers for the sheer hedonistic joy of it!
(Don’t even bother with the psychobabble. Someone blathers about Obama’s “spending” . . . you’re damn right I’m going to point to the previous nitwit, who spent like a drunken sailor, and definitely was NO fiscal conservative.)
And how well has that been going? Unemployment’s still well above projections, foreclosures are through the roof, and the economy’s still shrinking. If I were cynical, I’d think that the stimulus was really just a victory lap, especially because it’s allocated 100:1 to blue states. But no, that can’t be true, because Obama and Sheriff Joe told us so!
You really have bought into this crap hook, line, and sinker, haven’t you?
yes, a little less than an eighth into his first term and he hasn’t magically solved all the complicated problems he has caused all by himself since he came into office, riding on all the prosperity and peace left to him by his successor. i can’t wait for the conservatives to get back into control so they can wave their free market magic wand over this country and make all our problems disappear overnight like real messiahs ought to be able to do…
oops. that should read predecessor. i hate moving through time into the past. it causes little mix ups like this all the time. btw, i can’t wait for you all to see how bad the next guy screws up. i won’t tell you who or when. that would spoil the surprise!
Nice dodge, but you missed the point, which I’ll repeat: the stimulus is exactly the sort of “open the public coffers for the sheer hedonistic joy of it” thing that Naoyusimi is against. It’s called irony, perhaps you’ve heard of it?
Thats funny, those guys repairing the freeway a couple miles from my house, the one with the big sign indicating that the repair project was funded by Obama, don’t appear to be indulging in anything hedonistic…
A union crew on what was likely a no-bid contract. Sounds good to me too.
That is a bold accusation, but the last time I checked Cheney and Bush were the guys handing out no bid contracts to their old corporate pals.
And don’t even start in with unions, because I like you. But I have very strong opinions about unions and especially about how the first union came to be formed.
Dude, saying “Bush” doesn’t automatically make you win.
There’s a big difference between unions at the turn of the century, when the workers who didn’t die horribly or get their heads caved in were shopping at the company store, than to what they’ve turned into. Fact is, they’ve become a voting bloc that needs to be bought off. (See also: GM.)
No it does not. I guess it is a good thing that pointed out which Administration gave the most lucrative no-bid contract in history, while simultaneously daring you to back your false accusations of corruption.
So are the Corporations, now drop the union nonsense before I lose what is left of my respect for you.
Here’s an example — the article focuses on military construction contracts, but they mention that it happens for civilian stimulus work as well. (And again you respond to something I say with “Bush”. Don’t make me repeat myself…)
Yeah, yeah, I’m sure it’s very upsetting to know someone on the Internet disagrees with you. But if it’ll make you feel better, I’ll be sure to apologize to the SEIU thugs astroturfing at my next town hall meeting, and I’ll support card check.
I’m sorry, perhaps my reading skills are not up to par. Exactly where does it say, in your article, that the civilian contracts are going out no bid? The closest thing I see is this: State governments are taking advantage, reporting millions in savings as road and construction contracts come in under budget after making companies bid for the work.
As well, this little snippit from your article seems to defeat the whole argument: “Speed is an important element of the Obama administration’s effort to jump-start the economy. Bidding and its delays can be avoided by federal rules that permit contract awards to small and disadvantaged businesses without competition…”
First sentence: “The Defense Department frequently awards no-bid work to small contractors for repairs at military bases under the new economic stimulus law….” Stimulus money, civilian contractor, no-bid.
Later: “Across the government, more than $543 million in federal contracts have been awarded so far without competition under Obama’s $787 billion stimulus program. \ Much of the spending is for common construction work….”
Since your reading skills may not be up to par, let me fill you in — the argument is not “no-bid contracts rock!”, it’s “stimulus money is going for no-bid contracts”, which is true. Don’t whine and try to change the argument again like you’re doing in that other thread.
Wow. So, basically, you’re tarring the state sponsored road construction project I mentioned, which was acclaimed by your article, and what I consider to be an incredibly brilliant use of money even if the economy weren’t in the toilet, as well as the entire stimulus bill as a hedonistic spending frenzy, by tarring it with the approved-for-no-bid military contracts because they average slightly above project estimates? With no consideration for the trade-off between timeliness and cost-effectiveness? Awesome.
You challenged me to prove my “false accusations of corruption”, which is exactly what I did. But you can’t put on your big-boy pants and accept that you were wrong, so you make up another argument that you think you can win. You really are a colossal idiot, aren’t you?
And don’t think I didn’t notice that “corruption” turned into “the trade-off between timeliness and cost-effectiveness” once you knew your team was involved. So not only are you an idiot, you’re also a weak-minded turncoat douchebag. Nice.
Do me a favor and email me when your code turns up on thedailywtf.com, okay? I can’t wait.
“You challenged me to prove my “false accusations of corruption”, which is exactly what I did.”
I challenged you to prove your false accusations against my state managed road crew that is making very necessary repairs and upgrades to a horribly over-crowded intersection in my area, and you provided an article which lauded the state managed road crews for being open bid contracts which consistently come in under the estimated cost.
The failure, sir, is yours alone. Good day.
“And don’t think I didn’t notice that “corruption” turned into “the trade-off between timeliness and cost-effectiveness” …”
What you didn’t notice, sir, was your article citing a DoD spokesperson that these no bid contractors are perfectly legal, “Bidding and its delays can be avoided by federal rules that permit contract awards to small and disadvantaged businesses without competition, said Navy Cmdr. Darryn James, a Pentagon spokesman”. Thus, these no-bids are prone to cost over-runs, but do not warrant your allegations of corruption.
The only turncoat douche, sir, is you. Good day.
Actually, Programmer, the thread started out with you saying that Cheney and Bush were the guys handing out no bid contracts to their old corporate pals. As Dhoti has pointed out time and time again, they’re not the only ones, and the Right isn’t the only “side” doing it.
I think perhaps you should rethink your argument style, as Dhoti clearly has this one.
Now, if you were arguing that no-bid contracts were good all the time, or that they were evil all the time, and stuck with that, then you would have something. But you immediately started defending them when it became clear that “your side” is handing them out too.
I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
Actually, Froo, I started out by challenging Dhoti’s assertion that “the stimulus is exactly the sort of “open the public coffers for the sheer hedonistic joy of it” thing that Naoyusimi is against” by positing one anecdotal but legitimate instance of spending which is neither tantamount to opening the public coffers nor hedonistic. And, Dhoti’s own article specifically lauds the state managed, open bid repair projects, as well as points out that the military is spending plenty of money on open-bid contracts, where available. The only thing Dhoti has on this one are Deez Nutz.
Everything beyond that is pure drivel, and I don’t really care. Perhaps another time we can discuss the true evils of no-bid contracts, but trying to figure out wtf Dhoti is trying to argue with his non-sensical ramblings all day has consumed by desire to engage in any further discourse, intelligent or otherwise, on this topic.
Darn it, Froo. My inner programmer has been tantalized by your preference for moral absolutism and I simply must begin this discourse before I can actually lay down and find sleep.
If you would be so kind as to explain your reasoning behind the following statement, i would be grateful.
“…if you were arguing that no-bid contracts were good all the time, or that they were evil all the time, and stuck with that, then you would have something.” Please bear in mind that I am attempting to approach this as a distinct discussion, separate from my previous point that the military’s stimulus no-bid contracts are legal and therefore IMNSHO do not qualify as “corruption”.
sorry to interject here but, what doest IMNSHO mean? i’ve seen IMHO and IMO but not with the NS added
in my not-so-humble opinion
Unfortunately, the housing bubble came from Clinton era rules.
Glass-Steagal FAIL. kthxbai
In a way, he’s kinda right ::cringe:: Clinton did sign the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999 (see my clicky), which repealed “the restrictions on banks affiliating with securities firms contained in sections 20 and 32 of the Glass-Steagall Act”, amongst other things.
He’s partly right.
The Graham bill was 1/3 of the problem.
If not for Frank Rains and the Fannie and Freddie board strong arming banks into giving out crap loans to people that couldn’t afford them, there would have been no bad loans for the security companies to by.
The 3rd fail was how lax AAA ratings were passed out.
1) Fannie and Freddie
2) False AAA Ratings
3) Graham bill
Take out any ONE of those and this would have never happened.
Naoyusimi, Gramm-Leach-Bliley passed Senate by a vote of 92/8. I’m not an expert on government rules and regulations, but I’m pretty sure that makes the bill veto-proof; which I’m pretty sure means that the bill was going to be enacted as law with or without his signature.
Yes, I realize this opens the door for the whole “who is president vs who is in charge” debate, with all that finger pointing about which party controlled congress and whose party did stupider things while in control of Congress, and whether or not the President is culpable for the stupid things Congress does or if Congress is innocent because they were lied to by the Executive Branch, ad nauseum; I just couldn’t let him effectively tar Clinton with Graham’s tar-baby as what sounded to me like a snide comment which brooked no debate or rebuttal.
forgot to include my to battlecry as well. Reply Fail.
BattleCry, you are correct about the subsequent events which paved the path to economic failure, but it seems to me that once G-L-B opened the door you’re really just debating semantics about how the lending institutions are going to become mired in bad investment decisions. The core problem is the level of risk involved when dealing with that portion of the economic, even under the most optimal circumstances. G-S addressed the issue by preventing an industry which relies on stability and guarantees, and itself is relied on heavily for stability and guarantees, from participating in a market that is more risk-oriented than a high-stakes poker table.
To put it another way, I don’t have my paychecks deposited into a high-risk investment portfolio for a reason, and I don’t want my banks doing so with my money either.
So the Republicans continue to say, but continually saying so doesn’t make it so. It serves them to continually say so, however, in order to distract from the facts that Naoyusimi so succinctly summarized below.
Or above. Below if you’re hanging from the ceiling.
So, increasing spending by $900 billion to $1 trillion a year while not raising taxes is going to do what again?
If you’re in the great depression, and you’re going to war, it’ll end the great depression…
We’ve had a lot of preachy lols lately, but this is epically bad. I think I might be sick to my stomach.
Yeah, what happened to the first “L” in “LOL”…
“Does anyone remember laughter?” – Robert Plant
Puts on Pink Floyd and plays “On the turning away” to get myself in the somber mood….
There, now I’m ready to not LoL.
On the other hand, that did make me lol.
On the turning away
From the dull and not funny
And the words they that just never make sense
Don’t expect that what we see
Is ever gonna be funny
Or you’ll find that you’re joining in
The turning away.
I’m curious as to why everyone says that democrats are people who want people wealthier than them to give them stuff. I’m a democrat, and I have plenty… not a lot, but enough for me. I don’t have a car or a college education, but that’s partially my own fault and lack of planning by my parents. I just bought a house with my boyfriend, a cheap small house, it’s bigger than my apartment though, and plenty to live on. I’m not on welfare, though I could certainly qualify, and I’m not on any other government programs. I work when I can, but I’ve been unemployed for the past year, and I would love to work again.
The only thing that I want that I can’t get on my own is health care. I have ridiculous crazy old hospital bills that I can’t and never will be able to afford and it’s dragging my credit down. That’s all. I just want to be able to afford things that happen to me just because I am human and my body needs help sometimes.
I’m also confused about the comments about this country allowing everyone to become wealthy. You have to be born into money to get wealthy. It’s so very, very hard to make due with nothing, on your own, without leaning on someone else. I have plenty of wealthy friends (plenty of poor friends too) who, believe it or not, are not self-made. They cut corners here and there in life because their parents could help them afford things. Bought a house? Parents helped. Wedding? parents helped. Parents bought you a car, your college education too.
If not, boy, I’d certainly like to know the secret on making something from nothing. maybe I *should* go on welfare.
I’m going to go out on a limb here, and say that while people with wealthy parents certainly have a “leg up” on the majority of us, it’s entirely possible in our country to come up dirt-poor and end up wealthy. It requires a combination of talent, motivation, diligence and plain old damn LUCK that most people aren’t going to have, but it happens. Occasionally.
My parents were wealthy and helped me out in my early “independence” when i truly needed it… but as far as paying for college, buying a car, buying a house, etc… my Brothers and I had to do it on our own. my parents were very serious about us becoming “INdependent” rather that “Dependent”.
None of us (my brothers and myself) are nearly as wealthy as our parents, but we’re all doing OK…
However, when it comes to throwing money at their grandkids…well.. that’s a whole other story.
“It requires a combination of talent, motivation, diligence and plain old damn LUCK that most people aren’t going to have . . . ”
Wow, somebody finally said it.
I think most people, particularly those who have “made it all on their own”, forget the L-word. Most don’t ever recognize it as a component.
I don’t know if luck is the best term to use. It’s more of the whim of the people who hire you into the career that you decide to make money in. Without your employers, you can’t climb the ladders of success by working up to the top. The employers have to scrutinize who has the better qualifications for the jobs, so they can decide whether or not you are worth paying. They don’t choose resumes by thowing darts at them like a dartboard (however, I would not be surprised if there was someone who did that).
The same can be said for getting into college, which is also essential to getting a money making career. Those who have wealthy families have access to more resources, therefore increasing their chances to get into better schools like Harvard. Even in primary school level, if your district has enough money from taxes, they can afford better equipment for public schools. Trust me when I say this, but living in a district where people mostly rent and don’t pay school taxes doesn’t do the public schools any service, while a neighboring district schools with nice suburban families have up-to-date technologies, libraries, and school programs. Teachers are more attracted to those kind of schools, while the low-end teachers are left with the worse-off schools. The only time “luck” comes into play is if you are lucky enough to be born in a wealthy/well-off family.
In any case, becoming rich (not wealthy, mind you) based on luck is to basically win the lottery, win a lot in a casino or playing the stock market (the latter which can actually be more predictable considering trends, but you have to admit it is still a gamble).
There’s always a luck factor of some kind in success, even if it’s only a matter of being in the right place at the right time. Hearing about that job opening. Overhearing the conversation that leads to the germination of the idea for your brilliant invention. Having the starting forward sprain his ankle the night the scout is there. There’s generally something.
Luck – also known as being in the right place at the right time. This applies in all kinds of areas. For example, in my entire working life I have only been out of work because of layoffs for two weeks. I did take 8 weeks off because of relocating, but otherwise, I just happened to be in the right place at the right time.
It’s funny, though, how people who bust their a$$es often have that kind of luck.
(I’m trying to avoid going into a “you may have to be lucky to get rich, but you don’t have to be lucky to get wealthy” spiel.)
And it’s the person who sits back and expects things to drop into their lap who says, “Man, that Ed sure has good luck.” Forget the fact that when I knew I was getting laid off I blasted my resume everywhere, and that I have taken jobs that paid substantially less than what I was used to so that I could remain productive. No, it was all just handed to me and blind luck.
Funny, I wound up in a similar scenario, and I tried that “blasted my resume everywhere” and got temp work, but I still ended up unemployed for 6 months, using up every penny of my unemployment, every penny of my (not very substantial) savings. It seems the job market for programmers was just awfully thin during those two quarters.
So yeah, luck plays a huge factor.
After talking to you here, I don’t think it was entirely because of a lack of openings.
Thanks for the assessment of my interpersonal skills; fortunately for me, I’m not here to interview for a job or even put forward a good face, especially towards you and your ilk.
But the real problem with your comment is that they would have to interview me first in order to make the assessment you have provided, and there simply weren’t many interviews to be had in all the country (I managed 4, nationwide). There weren’t even a lot of job postings, and the majority of the jobs that were posted screamed EOE, which means they already decided who would be promoted from within and they were just getting the paperwork together to avoid getting sued. You don’t even get a “No Thanks” letter from those people when you submit a resume. The remainder largely consisted of short-term contracts which more or less stipulated less than customary pay for someone with my skills and years of experience, 20-40 hrs of overtime each week, no benefits and no option to hire on full-time afterward.
Quite fortunate, I agree.
Actually, your response is an interesting bit of self-analysis, because I was referring to your weak logical and problem-solving skills, not your interpersonal skills. Curious that you would jump there — a defense mechanism, I’d guess. Very interesting.
Its all relative to your situation and location.
Here in my state its a right to work state. No unions, no hiring standards, and you can and WILL get fired if your boss doesn’t like the way you look at him, with no repercussions whatsoever.
I just get so sick when people say “often this specific personal experience of mine happens”.
It doesn’t. It really doesn’t. For every example that someone can give from their personal experience, there’s Joe Blow 4 states away who can give just as many contradictory personal experiences. It all stems from not everyone has the same life, you cant predict circumstances, and you can’t predict chance. Why is it so terrible for someone to want a blanket to cover most, if not ALL of those problems.
Thank you for this. I agree most wholeheartedly.
But then, that’s not what I said. In fact, I was trying to AVOID this misunderstanding. I was trying to agree with Dissimilitude’s post where he or she (?) asserted it was a COMBINATION of factors, including luck.
Oh, agreed; just that there are also those who bust their a$$es and never quite seem to make it. I’m hardly saying it’s the only factor, just that in combination with the other factors, it can mean the difference between making it bigtime and “coulda been a contender…”
Am I going crazy, or did rating buttons just show up?
Definitely — but it’s a much bigger part of just becoming comfortably wealthy.
Yes, they did, and they’re making the long pages take even longer to load. I’m not sure if I approve of this development.
HOLY SHIT THEY’RE LIKE EBIL BANDWIDTH-SUCKING SPIRITS!
GTFO EBIL THUMBS!
THE POWER OF CHRIST COMPELS YOU!!
It didn’t work. You need to get a young priest and an OLD priest, not a young priest and a younger alter boy. Dammit, DT, don’t you ever read the rules??
Well, I just approved of your comment, if that helps. (Which seemed to be relatively snappy.) It doesn’t help that they don’t seem to be reserving space for them when the page first renders, so there’s an ugly snap.
I’m not sure how they’d use them — Slashdot-style rankings wouldn’t seem to work here, nor would Consumerist-style gold stars — but I guess I’ll wait and see…
They have those on FML…if too many people give a comment a thumbs-down, it gets hidden. Not taken away completely, but you have to decide to look at it.
*has a sad*
I just can’t keep up with this connection.
DT, I’ll bet you could kill ‘em with Adblock…not that I know how…
I have Adblock. It’s not helping. I emailed the admins pleading for mercy.
Try this: click on “Open Blockable Items” under the Adblock icon or menu or whatever, then block anything from the polldaddy.com domain.
It worked! *tacklehugs Dhoti*
Thank you. So damn much.
Ow…
No problem — glad it worked! (Just remember that you might have to undo it in the future if the site starts acting randomly wonky.)
*tackle hugs Dhoti as well*
I just blocked those ratings too. Great idea, thumbs up from me. Uh…well not anymore actually. LOL
TY, dissimilitude….well said.
Also, perhaps “luck” is not the perfect word, but here’s something that occurs to me: I have read studies where the results show that tall people have more success in the workplace, more promotions, better salary in the same positions as others. The same has been found of more attractive people. Non-fat people. Charisma will often get one promoted more than hard work (I’ve been on the short end of that stick, before). Now, is it not the “luck” of genetics which often make one tall or attractive? Sometimes it applies to having a healthy weight, too. Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, you can’t make people like you. Some people just HAVE that ability, though. Hell, even in politics, I’ve noticed the winner is more often the more attractive, charismatic person, even when another is obviously more qualified. My father once said to me (in *high school*, no less), “Life is not a popularity contest.” Even though I thought at the time he was wrong (I was, like, 14–come on! Everything’s a popularity contest.), it took me many years to see just how *wrong* he was.
Do you see what I mean? “Success”, however one measures it, is less often about one’s hard work, and more about luck.
You have to be born wealthy to be wealthy? Not at all; there have been and are plenty of wealthy people who started out with very little. It takes a little hard work and a lot of luck, but it can be done.
Or a lack of scruples!
(No, I am not saying people who have managed unusually well are all crooked.)
Silly me, forgetting that saving 10-25% of one’s income showed a lack of scruples.
Boy, that was quite some trip you took, to get from A to B!
A) Saving one’s income isn’t usually going to generate great wealth.
B) Disclaimer was given above that not all who have “managed unusually well” are crooked. Yet, you went and ignored it, anyway.
Put the two together and you’ve got one WILD leap of (il)logic that was nowhere near what anyone was saying … congratulations!
You introduced “great wealth” all on your own. BAW said merely “wealthy”. At least make an effort…
Also: google “compound interest”.
Huh. Guess I’ll start now with my “effort”:
* Main Entry: wealthy
* Pronunciation: \ˈwel-thē also ˈwelt-thē\
* Function: adjective
* Inflected Form(s): wealth·i·er; wealth·i·est
* Date: 15th century
1 : having wealth : very affluent
2 : characterized by abundance : ample
synonyms see rich
That’s from Merriam-Webster. Very affluent = wealthy = rich.
Weeelll, that wasn’t toooo hard.
Don’t need to Google compound interest. I know what that is, TYVM.
By the by, I’d like to add to my earlier statement:
“Saving one’s income isn’t usually going to generate great wealth.” . . . particularly if one’s savings gets wiped out by ridiculously high-priced medical treatment.
Strange, isn’t it, how two very similar words can have very different connotations. But you seem to be having more fun snarking than answering me intelligently, so who am I to judge?
Compound interest didn’t do crap on making me wealthy when my savings got wiped out on a hospital bill for a hernia repair (non-larascopy) surgery I had.
I’m sorry.
I don’t know what me saying that is going to accomplish, but that situation just sucks…
I think the connotations are largely in your own mind, but if you think looking up the meaning of the words and posting them here is not making “an effort” or “answering you intelligently”, by all means stamp your feet like a toddler who has been corrected.
Now, where did I say that?
…did you perhaps misread my “or lack of scruples” as “and lack of scruples”?
Otherwise, I am just baffled.
It shouldn’t take a little hard work and a lot of luck. It should take a lot of hard work and a little luck. It used to be that way, but Republicans and Democrats both are taking us further away from that.
I’d like you to name some; and don’t try for Gates, Buffet, or Carnegie because they didn’t start from “nothing”, or even “little”.
Here, I’ll give you one to start…Obama: most of his current money was made off of his 2 books. He and his wife were lawyers, but most of their money went to pay off student loans.
Yes..poor the poor Obamas were only making $240,000 before the book deals. However did they survive and pay their student loans on such a low income. It wouldn’t have been so bad if they were not forced into taking those student loans..
I’d like you to name some; and don’t try for Gates, Buffet, or Carnegie because they didn’t start from “nothing”, or even “little”.
How about Oprah?
@n8: “Lincoln was a liberal” — wrong (in the modern sense, not the classical sense). Just look at his own writings and you’ll see that he’s not. Let’s take one example:
“Property is the fruit of labor…property is desirable…is a positive good in the world. That some should be rich shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another; but let him labor diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.” In other words — don’t try to create class warfare and take away from the “haves” to hand it to the “have nots”. Let the “have nots” work hard to become a “have” — by honest labor, not by using the government to take it away from the “haves”.
One quote taken out of context does not make Lincoln a conservative. Nobody with any real power in America, liberals included despite what the talking head on tv scream, thinks property is a bad thing, or that no one should be rich. That’s stupid, and you’re stupid for believing that Democrats think otherwise.
Lincoln was definitely a moderate, but the Republicans of Lincoln’s era started the whole progressive movement. To say they were conservative by today’s standards is simply ignorant.
I never mentioned the words Democrat or Republican. A lot of Republicans did participate in the progressive movement, but you can’t equate Republicans with Conservatives. Republicans are supposed to be more conservative, but unfortunately they aren’t. I’m referring here to Liberals and Conservatives, not Democrats and Republicans.
Liberals do think private property is a bad thing. If they didn’t they wouldn’t be so keen to take it away from some just to give it to others.
And the quote was not taken out of context. Lincoln’s meaning was clear. He was addressing the New York Workingmen’s Association, which was a socialist organization — a “worker’s” organization. Lincoln was essentially defending the rights of the wealthy to keep their property, and encouraging the “workers” to make their own wealth.
Yeah, umm… seriously, what planet do you live on? Nobody thinks property is a bad thing. NOBODY. Nobody is trying to take all your stuff. The big bad liberals aren’t out to put an end to rich people. The ones in power ARE rich people. Just like the conservatives. At least the liberals admit what they’re taking from us. Recent ‘conservatives’ have just racked up monsterous debt and made liberals deal with the fallout.
Do you think this is early 1900′s Russia or something? Workers don’t want to take stuff from the rich, we just want an opportunity to make a decent living by doing a decent days work, instead of having people who professionally shove money around so no one knows how much they’re taking get all the money AND get told how much more awesome than us they are for it. It’s disgusting, and it’s destroying America. We can’t even DO anything ourselves anymore, we’re pathetic and helpless. Except for killing people. We’re still pretty good at that. Yet we keep rewarding the same people that got us into this mess.
Wealth (aka Money) is part of property. Forcibly taking someone’s money to pay for someone else’s services is redistribution of wealth. I’m not talking about violent revolution a la “1900′s Russia” but my point should be clear to anyone.
So we shouldn’t have any taxes at all? No military or police? Fire departments are socialism?
Basically anything but pure anarchy is communism by that definition. That’s insane.
“Provide for the common defense.” Military, police, and fire departments provide public services for everyone. In those cases, taxes are acceptable. What we’re talking about is something that the government has no domain over.
“Provide for the common Defence and general Welfare”
“Promote the general welfare” – not provide. Perhaps you should read the debate between n8 and myself below. We have already gone over this. Besides, I must be going now – responsibilities call!
“The Congress shall have power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States”
I didn’t write it. There’s absolutely no distinction there. Congress can collect taxes to provide for the general welfare of the United States, i.e. it’s people.
“So we shouldn’t have any taxes at all? No military or police? Fire departments are socialism?”
Police, fire, and military are REALLY the first things you’d cut out? How about cutting out all of the “administrators” that are employed by the government (that’s right, I said employed by, not WORKING because there is a huge difference) and then see where we are before we start getting rid of police and fire fighters?
All that you have convinced me of is that you have no idea what liberalism actually entails. You are mistaking liberalism for communism, which only leads me to believe that you’ve been drinking too long from the Glenn Beck Kool-Aid Firehose.
Who said anything about Glenn Beck? He doesn’t have anything to do with this conversation.
But whatever distinctions you want to make, modern liberalism is the hippie love child of socialism.
Glenn Beck has much to do with this conversation, in that he and his ilk work their hardest every day to sell a perverted and distorted image of liberalism. They have been so successful in this effort that their followers use the word “liberal” as an epithet.
As a philosophy, liberalism and socialism are distinct. Liberalism is a philosophy that encourages government to look out for the welfare of all the citizens. If that means that the wealthy pay extra tax, so be it. It does not urge the elimination of personal property, it does not seek to nationalize business (GM not withstanding), it does not seek to collectivize industry.
These are the distinctions you seek to casually dismiss.
By the same token, Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow, and their ilk has just as much to do with the conversation, as they have worked tirelessly to sell a perverted and distorted image of conservatism, and have apparently been wildly successful in their target demographics.
Even were it so, which I do not concede, what would that have to do with the argument at hand?
To simplify, KD is making the argument that:
Liberal == Socialist
Lincoln != Socialist
therefore Lincoln != Liberal.
I attack the notion that Liberal == Socialist, and submit that KD’s definition of Liberal comes from a flawed source. You contend that my definition of Conservative comes from an equally flawed source. Well and good, (not really but…) but what of it?
Dhoti does have a valid point, though, in that you sought to dismiss me and my opinions by crying “Kool-Aid drinker!”
What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
Well, I don’t seek to dismiss -you-, that would just be rude. I do seek to dismiss your opinions, or at least expose them for opinions rather than solid fact, but I like to think that I’m providing evidence for my dismissal, rather than just sayind “kool-aid drinker” and moving on as if that were all it took.
Your assertion that “Liberal == Socialist” is coming from your stereotype of the evil, troglodyte conservative. (Besides, you started off with communism, then switched to socialism, so you can’t be that concerned with the particulars.)
Hmmm, I think the board ate my reply, but here’s the gist — you decided KD was confusing liberalism and communism out of hand. I suggest that was driven by a stereotypical portrayal of conservatives.
(Later, you switched to socialism, which makes me think you’re not all that interested in the specifics.)
The board keeps eating my comments — apparently they has a flavor — but I’ll try one more time: I think your assumption that KD didn’t understand communism (which later switched to socialism; what’s up with that?) stemmed from your own stereotype of conservatives.
They has a flavor?
*tastes Dhoti’s comments*
Wow, cinnamon! Wasn’t expecting that!
They taste like hurty and bitter beer backwash.
They have precisely as much to do with the argument as Glenn Beck does. I’m just pointing out that, rather than actually responding to KD’s argument, you’re just using ridiculous stereotypes to demonize him and elevate yourself.
Just for the record, I’m a woman
Oops, sorry.
(I keep trying to respond to n8 above, but the board isn’t letting me. Weird.)
Duly noted, ma’am. Or is it miss?
Miss. No worries
Not so. Glenn Beck pertains to the distorted vision of liberalism that KD was reasoning from. His bias is evident. QED.
Olbermann, in your view, pertains to a distorted vision of conservatism. Nobody was attempting to reason from any vision of conservatism at all. Therefore it isn’t germane to the discussion.
Nope — you are. You came in, guns blazing, based on your own stereotype of the paleolithic, Glenn Beck-loving conservative, who apparently doesn’t understand the difference between communism and liberalism.
Ah, but I’m not reasoning from the stereotype. KD has adequately demonstrated that she equates liberallism with socialism, and that is the crux of the matter.
Your stereotypes are obviously influencing your approach to this discussion. (See the “crackpot” line in the replies below)
I stand by it. Sometimes stereotypes are apt.
they’re stereotypes for reason. plus, much of dhoti’s argument is based around trying to get you to look the other way – it’s also trying say that both MSNBC and FOX are equally biased only to opposite poles, which I might agree that they both have very biased commentary shows, but FOX by and large have an overwhelming number of “news” shows that claim to be actual journalism that skews the facts. Now to mention, it was a discussion based on socialism / liberalism and the view pertaining to it, Glenn Beck is wholly appropriate to the discussion as a valid talking point and a manner in backing up a statement. By calling Olbermann into it for no more than to dislodge the conversation without adding any merit is childish – might as well have said, “Hey look what the Nazi’s!” (but more extreme example, but similar nonetheless).
So basically, wallfly, you have 20/20 vision in your right eye but 20/200 in your left. No surprises there.
actually i am left eye dominant
in a political sense, i try and vary my news sources, most of them are web based, given, but i try and flit through the tv to see what’s where and how different channels portray the same story. i really became disgusted by fox when some of their so called journalists would sling around unverified facts which lead to misinformed conclusions. at least when you’re watching olbermann or john stewart you know you’re watching “entertainment” not “news” although, i have to say, john stewart is a hell of an interviewer and it’s funny when you can get more information form an interview with him than you can from someone on either MSNBC, CNN or FOX (is it FOX or Fox?).
ya’ll get so defensive about fox news when anyone says anything negative about it and take it like people are insulting you directly. then blather on about how reality has a liberal slant, the media is liberal, the world is liberal.. if everything had a liberal slant to it, then that liberal slant would be the norm and the only biased thing then would be that which leans to the right or very, very far to the left (which, if the left is center, the very very far to the left would only be a bit). hmm.. something like that.
just saying, the conservatives might want to take an unbiased look at the world, and realise that they’re no longer the majority (nor, ever were, I don’t think, just they were just the loudest)
Read back carefully and you’ll notice that no one actually defended Fox — but as soon as MSNBC was brought up, and worse, lumped into the same sensationalistic category, *that’s* when the defensiveness kicked in.
Projection, thy name is wallfly.
fox news wasn’t named as a network until i said it, no, neither was msnbc but shows from both were:
n8: “Not so. Glenn Beck pertains to the distorted vision of liberalism that KD was reasoning from. His bias is evident. QED.
Olbermann, in your view, pertains to a distorted vision of conservatism. Nobody was attempting to reason from any vision of conservatism at all. Therefore it isn’t germane to the discussion”
i don’t see why it was such a stretch to mention the news organizations by name which makes your use of the “projection blah blah” is misused in this instance.
but, as usual, i make an argument about something, instead of coming up with a valid counter point you point fingers, call names, etc., etc.
I forgot — if you don’t agree, it’s not valid, even if it’s true.
You may think so, but I have yet to see you explain why. Sorry, but your own personal confidence isn’t sufficient.
Reference KD’s post, wherein she said:
Liberals do think private property is a bad thing. If they didn’t they wouldn’t be so keen to take it away from some just to give it to others.
This is the proof that she has mistaken liberalism for socialism. From this, my “simplification” post follows.
Confidence, while present, is unnecessary.
So, naturally, you took the most extreme interpretation — because no brain-damaged conservative is possibly capable of nuance, right?
Look, I understand that you fancy yourself intelligent and educated, but your veneer of civility does nothing to disguise the closed mind beneath. Your proven tactic of treating your own opinions as established fact proves that beyond a doubt.
Now Dhoti, do try to keep a civil tongue. It is not closed-mindedness to deny that 2+2=5.
That you feel it necessary to take this tone does not bode well for the rest of the discussion.
I understand encountering someone who does not share your opinions is unpleasant, but it’s considered civil. Necessary, even.
Please demonstrate how you can prove your argument with mathematical precision. I assume you’re not engaging in hyperbole — that would be relying on something other than evidence or logic, and I don’t believe you would stoop to such a level.
I think that my posts so far would support the assertion that I’m using logic and reasoning to support the things I say. Simply, my posts speak for themselves in this matter.
What I find uncivil is your assertion that I “fancy [my]self intelligent and educated”, implying that it is not so. Also, to call me closed-minded is a bit mean-spirited. My mind is open to evidence and proof, should any be presented.
Your posts do, in fact, speak for themselves, as strong evidence that you are closed-minded and dismissive of other viewpoints. If you’re offended by a conclusion drawn from your own words, perhaps you should be more introspective.
Dhoti: You make many assertions, but you provide no proof. I could join you in casting assertions (and aspersions), but I feel the dialog I’m enjoying with KD is a more productive use of keystrokes. Good day to you, sir.
I’m shocked — shocked! — that you would block out someone who disagrees with you. Have fun with KD; I have no idea why she indulges you, but she’s a far more patient soul than I.
Ok… so… from what I’m seeing here, KD said Liberalism is all about taking away personal property. Which isn’t true.
Regardless of what your political bias is, the argument stands that Liberalism isn’t about taking away personal property. I don’t see how some twisted perception of conservatism would even factor in to the argument that Liberalism isn’t about seizing personal property.
max, it isn’t, it’s just how Dhoti rolls. If he can’t win an argument he falls back to the tried and true method of name calling and distraction.
had a dig with him a few times, ends up degrading pretty much the same as what happened here. i mean, hell, you could give him a dictionary, define a word using it, and i’m sure if he didn’t want to believe it he’d use something like, “Look, I understand that you fancy yourself intelligent and educated, but your veneer of civility does nothing to disguise the closed mind beneath. Your proven tactic of treating your own opinions as established fact proves that beyond a doubt”
Are you STILL butthurt that I wouldn’t just blindly agree with you? And that I called you out on your childish sh!t? Geez, grow a pair, would you?
me? no, i just find it amusing you’ve done the same thing with not just me, nor rando but with at least 2, possible 3 other in the last few LOLs.
I have seen him throw in some wild tangential comment that begs to be addressed in all of its provocative glory, which starts a whole ‘nother argument, because the opponent is steered towards that oddity; THEN the argument becomes, “Wait, you said this, and then you said this. They don’t jibe; which is it?!”
My last comment is awaiting moderation because I linked to a YouTube video. In the interest of time I’m going to repost it without the link, so apologies if it posts twice.
Those are means to an end. Liberalism’s ultimate goal is to achieve the same utopia that socialism envisioned.
Case in point: [YouTube, "Proof Positive the Public Option Will Lead to Single Payer"]
The “public option” is just a stepping stone to full-fledged government control of healthcare, which ultimately leads to forcibly taking away property (wealth) from people to provide services for others. That is socialism in action.
That is nothing more than an assertion. You assert that the public option is a stepping stone, which is questionable. You assert that it leads to full gov’t control of health care, which is also questionable. You assert that this somehow leads to redistribution of wealth, which is -highly- questionable.
I’d really like to know how you got there from where you started, but on the other hand I don’t have all day to indulge crackpot fantasies.
In any case, you can’t expect to reason from assertions as if they were facts.
My point is that these “liberals” do want socialized medicine; their goals are socialist in nature.
And once again you’re trying to dismiss me by using terms like “crackpot”. That’s not helping your case.
In some cases, one must call a spade a spade. Trying to follow conservative “reasoning” on this topic is a headache-inducing exercise in masochism.
You fall back on hackneyed stereotypes and put your fingers in your ears, but somehow KD is the close-minded one? LOL!
See above. I have not relied on the stereotype, but only on the comments made in this thread.
If you’re not relying on stereotypes, maybe you should stop making statements that REALLY make it look like you believe the stereotypes. Then we wouldn’t have to worry about it, would we?
Oh, I do totally believe the stereotypes. I just don’t rely on them. Conservatives go out of their way every day to demonstrate their batshiat lunacy, and then they brag about it on FreeRepublic. The stereotype is if anything lacking in describing the full extent of the true madness in all its fury.
For forums like this, though, I prefer to rely on evidence and logic. Usually this is not challenging.
See above. You *act* as though you rely on evidence and logic, when this is clearly and obviously not true. Instead, you seem to prefer confirmation bias and bigotry. Pretending to be rational doesn’t make it so.
I’m not a FReeper. I’ve never associated with them because I don’t really like their tone, and don’t really agree with all of their positions.
What “evidence and logic” led you to believe I was?
KD: Your earlier comments led me to believe that you equated Liberalism with Socialism. Your later comments have not dissuaded me from that belief. I don’t assert that you post on Free Republic. I do assert that Free Republic is a microcosm of American Conservatism, and that it does much to confirm the stereotypes.
Dhoti: I act as though I rely on evidence and logic, because such is the case. That you wish it were not so does not alter anything in that regard. That I find certain stereotypes to be justified stems from my reliance on evidence and logic. There are rare cases of conservatives that defy the stereotypes, and it is always a joy to meet one.
Nice dodge. Anyway,
I don’t *equate* liberalism with socialism, but I do *associate* them, as I said before: one is the offspring of the other, and they share goals.
I am also concerned about people who can’t afford healthcare. I think it’s a real problem. My own mother, as a child, had to depend on the Shriners for a major surgery. I understand that there is a problem. But, oops — the Shriners provided my mom with a surgery — you mean there are other options besides government control? Yes, there are, and I believe that there are BETTER options than government control.
There are 2 primary reasons I oppose government-run healthcare:
1. It is not right to force others to pay for it — that’s not charity, it’s robbery.
2. The government will do a lousy job. Need examples? The VA and the Indian Health Service. There are better solutions, including tax-exempt health savings accounts, allowing insurance companies to compete across state lines, tort reform, etc.
Regarding point 1, why is it just to use my taxes to support wars I oppose, or to fund schools when I have no children, but not to fund health care for my fellow citizens (and possibly myself?)
Regarding point 2, if they do a lousy job, then at least it is better than no job at all, which is currently the situation for far too many of our fellow citizens.
Wait, did you just argue that reducing the quality of care for everyone to the horrible state that it is under the VA and IHS is worth it to cover a minority of the population? Besides, most people do get healthcare if they need it. Sadly, they may go broke, but they’re not dying in the streets.
You just went full circle to my original post: “Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another; but let him labor diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.”
In this case, let not those who do not have healthcare pull down the healthcare of others. Let them (and us, by providing more free market solutions and opportunities) labor diligently and provide it for themselves.
Even in Canada, the bastion of state-run healthcare programs is starting to investigate opening up to find free market solutions to its problems.
KD: Not at all. Earlier I stated that most American Liberals, of whom I count myself one, realize that a blend of Government and Industry is necessary. I support a single-payer plan that everyone CAN use, but which they don’t have to. As in the example of the US Postal Service vs. UPS vs. Fed Ex; the gov’t plan would be the USPS. People who could afford the UPS or Fed Ex plans would still have that option.
As Obama has stated time and again, if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. If you like your plan, you can keep your plan. The goal is just to add another plan to the mix, to which everyone has access regardless of income.
To my point earlier: “optional” single-payer will only be that way temporarily.
Besides, anyone who does keep their plan in the mean time will be paying for 2 sets of healthcare plans: their own private plan (as long as they can keep it) and the public option through their taxes. How is that fair?
Why should it only be temporarily optional? So long as the insurance companies can find a way to add value above that of the public plan, will they not thrive?
And again, our tax money is already diverted to many things that we may or may not individually use or desire, but that’s taxation for you. As long as health care is accomplished in a budget-neutral way (divert the money from other programs, preferably by drawing down overseas operations), there’s no harm in it.
When half the population of this country wants to debate whether their tax dollars should go to public education and/or the military, then I will gladly participate in a debate about that with you.
As for public option being deficit-neutral, it’s just not possible. There’s no way that will ever be accomplished. Look at the numbers. Not the rhetoric, but the actual numbers. As nice as it would be, it’s just not going to happen.
KD: I would leave that calculation to those better-versed in economics than you or I. Suffice to say, looking at the billions spent per day on Iraq operations (especially from 2003-2008), we could probably pinch some pennies from -somewhere-.
Bottom line, if there’s money enough for killing, then there should be ample money for healing.
That money shouldn’t be spent AT ALL. I agree that we need to get out of Iraq. Hopefully it will be done in a way that doesn’t lead to the country falling into chaos, but I do want to see that war end. It doesn’t mean I think we should just redirect those funds to some other government program that will create more problems than it solves.
You assert that the public health care would create more problems than it solved. How do you support this assertion?
Also: would the problems created be of greater importance than the suffering and death of our fellow citizens, who happen to be too impoverished to afford the current health care options?
“Also: would the problems created be of greater importance than the suffering and death of our fellow citizens, who happen to be too impoverished to afford the current health care options?”
Have to agree with n8 here. Heck..just the other day I tripped over two dead bodies of our fellow citizens.
I’ve also yet to see why Single Payer is a bad thing. (Just to throw gas on the fire.) It already exists in the form of Medicare, so why not extend coverage?
There are things that Medicare does not cover. If a person wanted better coverage, they could buy privately run insurance, which would be “kept honest” by the presence of the public option. Everyone wins, except the insurance fatcats who won’t get to gouge the public any longer.
And yet so many people who are on Medicare DO buy supplemental insurance. Why? Because Medicare ran out of money and can’t cover everything. If we can’t afford Medicare as it stands, how can we afford to expand it?
That’s like saying “Well, we have the Post Office, why not force UPS and FedEx out of business and make everyone use the Post Office and make all shipping free*!”
(*Free = paid for by taxes)
What about people who don’t mail stuff that much? They’d be paying for those who take advantage of “free” shipping and use it all the time. (This is just an analogy, and like all analogies it is imperfect, but surely you get my point.)
Well, it appears you’ve proven a point for me. Socialized medicine already exists, and yet commerce is still conducted above and beyond the baseline set by the government health care.
As for your post office example, it bears consideration that prices at UPS and FedEx are perhaps kept reasonable by the presence of the USPS alternative. Shockingly enough, commerce goes on amidst all this “socialism.”
Commerce commences because we haven’t arrived at pure socialism yet. I’m not trying to make the point that we are currently living in a socialist society, but that some are trying to push us toward a socialist society one step at a time, and that those people call themselves liberals.
I concede that not all self-labeled liberals think that way, but there are many that do. It is evident by their stated goals and intentions.
You assume that pure socialism is the goal, but I question that assumption. Most liberals (in my experience) who espouse single-payer only want to ensure that the most vulnerable of our society aren’t consigned to death for lack of coin. I count myself in that group. (The espousers, not the penniless.)
The true believers of Socialism seldom bother to disguise themselves. I’ve seen them post at DU, and they are unapologetic. They are also solidly in the minority. The American Liberal, for the most part, realizes that Government and Industry are both necessary components to a well-functioning society.
I agree that government has a role to play, but it is not our primary care giver. The intention of building this republic was to allow people to create their own futures, not depend on the government to provide it for them. I lived in a former Soviet country for a year, and I saw first-hand what happens to a society that is taught to depend on the government for everything. There is no ambition, no entrepreneurship, no innovation, no self-determination, and no charity.
I seem to recall some sort of document… it mentioned “providing for the common welfare.” Seemed to be a pretty important document, too…
Actually, it says “PROVIDE for the common defense (military?) and PROMOTE the general welfare”. Promote, not provide. That means create an environment for general welfare to thrive.
Would not providing a public plan as a baseline promote (thank you for the correction) the general welfare?
Not if it lowers the quality of care, causes private businesses to go bankrupt (which would cause people to lose jobs), and increases the tax burden (which takes money out of the economy).
A historical note on the nature of government programs, and why I project the “optional” part is only temporary: both Social Security and the Federal Income Tax were started out as extremely low taxes on only wealthier citizens. Now everyone with a full-time job is paying both of those taxes up to their waists.
My question is: why should it do so? So there’s a free plan out there provided by the government. It doesn’t cover a whole lot, just the bare necessities, and there are better plans out there if you just pay a reasonable premium. No big deal. Plus, the doctors, hospitals etc. are still being paid for their work, and they’ve got a whole new influx of patients who previously couldn’t pay. Sounds like more money would be coming into the system, not less.
For your other items, I’ll note that the public health plan is not a tax, though existing taxes would be used to pay for it. Those taxes are not optional to begin with. Whether you use the public plan -would be- optional, and to argue that it would become non-optional in the manner of a tax becoming permanent… seems like apples and oranges to me.
We are obviously at an impasse regarding the “temporary” nature of the public option. I don’t think we’re going to get anywhere with each other on that, since we both seem to be convinced of our respective arguments.
And since other duties are calling for my attention today, I will have to leave it at that while our other disagreements lay unresolved.
It has been fun debating you. Perhaps we will meet on the field of (non-violent) battle again. Until then, adieu.
A pleasure, dear lady. Enjoy the remainder of your day!
“As for your post office example, it bears consideration that prices at UPS and FedEx are perhaps kept reasonable by the presence of the USPS alternative. Shockingly enough, commerce goes on amidst all this “socialism.” ”
You might be right about the reasonalble pricing; however, unlike the proposed healthcare plan the USPS does not have the ablibilty to tell UPS and FedEx that they can not get new customers one year from now. Also, the USPS lost about 3 billion last year while UPS and FedEx made a profit.
aw guys, don’t quit now! I was enjoying the “n8 & KD show!
I’m just trying to figure out why somebody “thumbs-downed” my saying goodbye to KD. I guess someone was feeling vindictive. They sure showed me!
its ok, it was a good show, i threw you a thumbs up to even the score
Actually, it’s the socialists that label themselves as liberals that cause Beck and company call liberals socialists.
If the marxists would just come out and say “I’m a marxist, I don’t believe in capitalism” then things would be a lot easier.
Just as if NeoCons would come out and say, “Homosexuals are forbbiden by god, that’s why I’m against em”, then we wouldn’t have to sit here and go …”Ok, what kind of Dem/Rep is this candidate? Moderate? Neocon/marxist, econazi, bible pounder, etc.
In fact, if we just did away with the two parties, things would be a lot better.
Those are means to an end. Liberalism’s ultimate goal is to achieve the same utopia that socialism envisioned.
Case in point: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndStT6c93rc
The “public option” is just a stepping stone to full-fledged government control of healthcare, which ultimately leads to forcibly taking away property (wealth) from people to provide services for others. That is socialism.
What about the lack of government oversight of banks and corperations during the Bush era? They based their policy on the infamous “trickle-down” theory, which as we all know, does not work. People are greedy by nature, so the idea that the investments of the rich and businesses and spending of money would somehow indirectly benefit the lower classes is truly naive. And as we have learned, businesses like AIG and people like Bernie Madoff really set the bar of the lengths people will go to get money and not pay taxes. Not to mention companies like Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae really screwed us over with their unethical practices, forcing us to bail them out. I really dislike the gov’t doing that, but if we didn’t we would have lots more people losing their jobs or homes. It’s the lesser of two evils, as they say. I can go on and on, but I’d rather not bore everyone to tears.
I’m glad that the US Gov’t is going to request that the Swiss banks give a list of US citizens who owns accounts there because we seem to be living in a time where tax fraud and evasion is the hip new thing.
“Not to mention companies like Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae really screwed us over with their unethical practices, forcing us to bail them out”
People in the “Bush era” did ask for more oversite and regulation for both these government run entities but were rejected by those in congress who over saw them. These are the same people that many are relying on to fix the problems that they themselves created. Kind of like the fox guarding the hen house.
I have to ask, not to be a jerk, but because I keep seeing a similar argument: Just because Bush was bad, how does that automatically mean that Obama can’t be bad as well? They both have done a number of things I do not agree with (as President and beofre they were in office), so I state they are both wrong. I don’t believe either party really has it figured out. I would just like to know why the defense of one politician has to automatically be an attack on another politician.
And before you say it, I have seen the exact same thing the other way around, and that’s wrong, too.
Why is it that no one recalls that Lincoln was elected to the Presidency twice, the first time as a Republican – the second time not. One of his great strengths was his ability to learn from his mistakes.
lol despite the affect on the wealthy? Too bad the Emancipation Proclamation only freed the slaves of the North (Union) who were already free. gg.
Umh the names have changed…. what democrats were are republicans now, and vice versa
So fail.
@ the OP:
Maybe Republicans don’t just do things to help the wealthy and you are finally looking back in history and finding out your short-sighted, ignorant stereotype of the GOP doesn’t hold up?
Maybe you should look at the tax code and do a report why the top 1% of taxpayers in 2006 paid 40% of federal taxes. Yeah, those greedy b@stards, right? I’m an independent, by the way, so if you are judging me already that can stop. I can’t be the only one sick of these back-handed captions (as someone else put it).
People need to do their research before making captions.
Yeah, but the top 1% of taxpayers had 22% of the income, so don’t pretend they were paying 40 times as much per dollar, it’s actually about 82% more than average. Ooooh, scary.
And I’m sorry, a nearly 150 year old example says absolutely nothing about modern Republicans.
Another question:
How much of that ’40%’ was actually paid?
Super wealthy don’t stay super wealthy actually following the rules, do they?
Republicans and Democrats of 19th/early 20th century =/= Republicans and Democrats of late 20th/21st century, respectively. That being said, this LOL is not really relavent considering the difference in periods.
And now I am going to be a real cynic here. Sure, Lincoln was revered as a great Republican President (or rather, President in general), but I thought his priority was to reunite the North and South over freeing slaves, and did he not prohibit the use of Habeus Corpus during the times of war? That latter issue was not really what I think is worthy of calling “great”, as it uses the idea of the ends justifying the means. Even after the freedom of slaves, black people were still treated like dirt until the Civil Rights movement, and even today there are subtle (and not so subtle) acts of racism.
Well, at least we made some progress, having our first black president, right?
… against the vicious opposition of the Democrats.
Let’s have the full caption.
Not true. The reason the draft riots happened was because he gave the wealthy a way out of the draft, and not the poor people. A 300 dollar exemption for the sons of the senators, while the volunteer firefighters and dock workers and poor husbands were drafted with no way out.
Look, a Republican president who suspended habeas corpus, arrested civlians and held them without trial or tried them in front of military tribunals and got screamed at by Democrats about it and had jokes made about his physical appearance and presumed lack of intelligence and education.
Ignorance is bliss.
So what’s heaven like then?
DID HE DIE?
Nope. He’s alive and well and living in Pensacola, FL.
Did anyone know that originally Lincoln was a third party canidate? As Illinois legislator he was a member of the Whig Party. He didn’t join he Republican party until it was formed in 1856.
Yeah….600,000 total dead of gunshots, artillery, and disease. Yeah: that’s really something good. Waging an unconstitutional invasion of a foreign country. That’s really good. Issuing a proclaimation which did nothing. Yeah, that’s really good.
The Lincoln Christers make me sick.
“Foreign country”? You don’t mean the South . . . do you?
That’s because the Republican Party was liberal up until the Depression.
Lincoln was a republican before the republican/democrat switchover. Aka, he was not a republican. He was a republican in the time when republicans had democratic ideals. (In essence, his party is what the democratic party is today. Not what the republican party is today.) Read your history books, I’m not making this up. Lincoln was essentially a democrat.
well considering a republic is a strong central government, I think it’s now that democrats have republican ideals. Liberals believe in a strong central government. But no one has not idea nor cares about etymology anymore….
is that the penny guy?
Yes. Bitter Troll receives a cookie for correctly identifying him.
*gives cookie*
No, he’s on the five dollar bill.
Here’s a republican President.
Who did something bad no matter what the Supreme Court or Constitution said.
(Habeas Corpus)
Actually, he only issued a proclamation. A president can’t create laws, so only when congress ratified that all enslaved people should be free did it have the force of law. Not that we’d want to celebrate 500 men fervantly debating something that should and seems plain and obvious.
umm, Lincoln really didn’t give a damn about the welfare of black people. The only reason he gave a damn about anything is because of the Confederates’ Secession. He believed African Americans to be inferior, and that they should be separate from whites.
Lincoln was concerned about freeing the slaves, but he also stated, “My paramount objective in this struggle is to save the Union, and it is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slaves, I would do it, if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it.” This shows that Lincoln’s primary objective at that time was to save the Union, because he did not believe it should be split by an issue such as slavery. Even though he did not approve of slavery, it did not mean that he wanted to abolish slavery.
http://www.lib.niu.edu/1997/ihy970225.html
Another perversion of history brought to you by extremists. It had NOTHING to do with the “Evil Wealthy”… L signed the EP in order to try and destabilize the Confederacy, and thus end the war, NOT because of any “High,” “Noble,” or Good Intention.” Politicians are creatures of expediency; was Truman Evil because he dropped the bomb? Was JFK bad because of the Bay of Pigs? And Clinton? Oh, PLEASE. DC politicians get felatio ALL THE TIME. Get REAL. To perdition with all extremists, left and right. You too, picture maker.
That was a VERY different Republican party. It’s actually probably more comparable to the current Democratic party.
you, sir, are out of your teensy mind. Today’s Liberal Democrat is more akin to John Wilkes Booth – ready and willing to assasinate anything that doesn’t go his whiny way.
If you know not of what you speak, be silent, lest ye be thought foolish.
Your maturity is staggering.
As was the poster to which he was responding.
On a different topic
“Two of my favorite things are sitting on my front porch smoking a pipe of sweet hemp, and playing my Hohner harmonica.” – Abraham Lincoln
Lincoln Rocks!
…and almost completely destroyed American democracy in the process.
The closest we’ve ever had to a monarchy. Why praise tyrants?
Geez, doesn’t anyone have anything better than “Republicans are greedy and stupid”?
Nope. We go with what works.
Who said it works?
Er, Not quite right. While freeing the slaves was an extremely awesome thing of him to do, Lincoln did not do it out of kindness. He did it because he wanted to speed up the industrialisation of the South. The plantations in the south were extremely inefficient at getting materials to the rest of the country, and only removing the source of labour could get their methods of production to change.
Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe the emancipation proclamation did not in fact free ALL the slaves, but rather “within states currently in rebellion”, and that the primary purpose was to give the slaves in the south something to rally to, and cause more economic hardship. Simply put, it was in a way, a form of economic warfare. (The latter, after the quasi-quote, is more my interpretation than any actual fact).
Lincoln was not an altruist. He registered his opinion several times that blacks could and would not ever be equal to whites, was especially intolerant of ideas like interracial marriage, and showed little interest in actually enforcing fair treatment of freed slaves during Reconstruction. His suspension of civil liberties during the American Civil War made GW look like a model of peace and diplomacy. The Emancipation proclamation was about crippling the Confederate economy and putting more bodies in front of Confederate guns
Fuuny, I’m pretty sure he started the war because he was going to loose a LOT of property. So really, it was because of the weathly
An interesting fact from History, if Lincoln lived today, he would have been a democrat. At one point in history, the republicans flipped from being the liberals to being the conservatives. So, as neat as this is, it doesn’t necessarily compare to the modern day.
Lincoln was a republican when republicans were the left and democrats were the right. L2history, noob
Lincoln wasn’t a modern republican. He expanded the federal government. He was what today is called a liberal.
This isn’t funny just ignorant.
It should say, “The only time a liberal did anything decent while in power”
To Joe You wrote: “It should say, “The only time a liberal did anything decent while in power””
So winning WW2 wasn’t decent?
Building an interstate highway system from scratch wasn’t decent?
Curing poverty in the elderly wasn’t decent?
Assuring civil rights for AA wasn’t decent?
Landing on the moon wasn’t decent?
Electrification of every nook and cranny of the USA wasn’t decent?
Preventing Communism from spreading in Europe wasn’t decent? (I would cite both the Marshall plan and the Truman Doctrine for that one, each for different reasons.)
Assuring health care for our elders wasn’t decent?
Greatly expanding advanced education wasn’t decent? (Pell Grants and GI bills)
The USA had a major economic depression nearly every 25 years from 1800 to the 1930s. A liberal broke that streak for nearly 75 years, and the Republicans last summer almost restarted it. You don’t find that decent?
There are a thousand more examples.
And before you say Eisenhower and Nixon were Republicans, don’t forget that the top tax rate in 1959 for the rich was 92%, and it was Nixon that put wage and price controls in place to control inflation. Something that smacks of Socialism. And there was no way Nixon could have stopped the moon landing, conceived and initiated by liberals. Indeed, not only would Lincoln be appalled at how far to the right the Republican party has gone, so would Eisenhower and maybe even Nixon himself. And even the Democratic party has moved far to the right. FDR would be appalled and how Republican that party has become.
Liberalism had the predominant stamp on American policies, – not exclusively but predominantly — from the 1930s to about 1985. This time period coincided with the biggest explosion in prosperity and education and health in the history of the planet. That explosion in growth and prosperity, — at least for common Americans, ended about 1985. Now rather than parents assuming their kids would be better off then the parents were, parents have found they have underemployed kids still at home. This period of relative stagnation is a direct result of Conservativism again having the predominant stamp on American policy — from about 1985 to the debacle that ended last January. Even during the Clinton years, our policies were primarily conservative.
And wages and prosperity growth for common Americans came to a halt in about 1985. For the rich? Things have been wonderful. But for the rest of us, and for America’s future place in the world, not so much.
As that famous man once said, reality has a liberal bias. But the Ruling class party is so good at manipulating the message, what with them now having their own propaganda outlet with Faux News, it’s been hard for that reality to take root.
But with the internet, the truth is getting out there.
History fail
carpetbaggers…
Scallywag…
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