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Post by chris on Nov 16, 2005 18:42:30 GMT -5
Those cursed Lucky Duckies: www.salon.com/comics/boll/2002/12/19/boll/story.gifDemocrats think that they know how to spend your money better than you do. Republicans think that they know how to spend your kids' money better than they will. Democrats wanna be your mommy. Republicans want to be your daddy. And other clichés...
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Post by Thanin on Nov 16, 2005 19:01:35 GMT -5
First off, I don't want Justin and Tylers posts to get overlooked since they make good points that need to be responded to, but I would like to clear some things up. Thanin, that seems like you think that all rich people are crooked, that none of them took their education seriously, and that none of them had the drive to succeed at something. I guess that is much easier than saying that most of the people living in boxes ARE NOT crooked, DID NOT take their education seriously, or DID NOT have the drive to succeed at something. First off, you're very wrong. There are rich people out there who openly acknowledge and embrace their personal responsibility to America and gladly pay taxes. They even go so far as to suggest the rich don't pay enough taxes. As for the people living in boxes, most of them have mental illnesses. So I guess technically they've made bad choices which lead them to their current state, but only an asshole would count that against them. I understand what you're saying about needing money to support this country. Why is the Dem solution to tax the rich and give the middle and lower class the tax breaks? Is it really because the rich OWE this to society? I think not. I think it is becomes Dems know that there are far more middle and lower class voters than upper-upper class. As long as the majority of the economic population is happy, the Dems can keep milking the rich to pay for everyones government. Shit, you might as well take away those annoying votes that the rich get and keep taking their money at the same time. I think a few more Dems could get elected with a platform like that. I don't know what the exact talking points for Dems is here, but I personally am against tax cuts for the middle class. That's where most of the tax money comes from. I'll gladly admit that I want tax cuts for the poor, and welcome any criticism for that since doing so would just makes the person attacking that position look like a dick. One thing I can give my father credit for when I was younger is breaking down politics to a basic level that I, in my early teens, could understand. He said that Democrats think that they know how to spend your money better than you do. Give you one guess what party my dad supports. Thanin, when you talked about Seinfeld, that reminded me of that saying. If rich people want to spend there money an overabundence of useless shit, fine, it is their money. Why should the government get to tell them what to spend it on. I hope you give a real reply to Justin's quoted scripture.
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Post by kyle on Nov 16, 2005 22:00:15 GMT -5
I'll try and keep my answers seperate.
Justin:
I guess I would have to agree that Dems do a better job and have been more steadfast in telling people how to spend their money. I've said this time and time again, I just think Republicans have a better way of helping. I also think another gift we can give to needing people is the opportunity to better themselves. A simple redistribution of wealth does not seems to accomplish that gift.
Tyler:
I do believe that some rich people have never worked at all, and that some poor people work very hard. If that is an easy sentence to take, that still means that the rest of the rich people do work hard and that many poor people don't work hard.
I do believe that the amount of effort someone puts out SHOULD be the deciding factor. I think that we could agree that that is not always the case. I think that this could be a case against affirmative action (that might be a whole other can of worms).
I do believe that if a student CHOOSES to misbehave in school they might have some learning setbacks. I also feel that if a student CHOOSES to pay attention and follow school rules they stand a much better chance of succeeding than the 1st student.
I would have to guess about 95% stay in the same category. I don't think I'd get any arguement if I said I wish the bottom category had 0% of the population.
I'm not sure about the different world?
Chris:
With the exception of the cartoon (lucky ducky was a lazy bastard) I think I can agree with you on the cliche's. I honestly think that both sides have good AND bad views. I just happen to think that the Republican views make more sense to me.
Thanin:
I need to make sure that everyone understands that I am talking about able-bodied, mentally healthy people. These people do deserve all the help anyone could give. That being said...
Good for those people who made a deliberate CHOICE to help people. I wonder what those people would do with that extra 30% of their money that the govt took. Would they spend it on Porches or would they commit more of their funds to good causes? We won't know.
I have been looking for weeks for more statistics like this: "The top 50% of taxpayers pay 96% of the taxes" I found this on Neal Boortz's website, I know, probably not the most reliable ut I'm working on it. This is also the guy who is talking about the Fairtax. I think it is an incredibly interesting idea.
I hope that in this post I did not sound like a dick or an asshole. I hope my answer to Justin's scripture was not too fake for you Thanin, if it was let me know and I'll take another swing at it.
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Post by Tyler on Nov 17, 2005 8:59:54 GMT -5
The statistic is actually 80% of people die in the same financial strata into which they were born. That means 20% move either up or down. That means that for each senator that pulls himself up from the slums, as you have intimated that anyone can do with hard work, that means that, using Justin's post from last page, 9 people have, during the same time, slipped into a lower bracket. If that one person works really hard, because that's all that's apparently needed for success due to the utter lack of prejudice against race and social standing in this country, and becomes President, that means that a busload of 33 people would have to become poorer, regardless of the amount of work they do during their lifetimes. That's 33 lifetimes of endless toil resulting in failure just to support one guy.
Where's that American dream? How does somebody pull themselves up by their bootstraps when they don't have boots?
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Post by Jeff on Nov 17, 2005 10:18:00 GMT -5
The Myth of American Meritocracy In a meritocracy one would be assured that hard work was always rewarded, that the homeless were lazy, the mentally ill hospitalized, the criminals imprisoned and those among them who could be were being rehabilitated. In a meritocracy we wouldn’t have to worry too much about sorting souls into proper categories. Our economic system would present endless opportunity for the brave among us and the sorting would take care of itself. The communists were wrong to think they could accomplish the sorting with tests and measures, but we have the right of it: Capitalism is the Sorting Hat. Contrary to such fairy tales, simple observation allows that in America, as in the rest of the world, the rich and powerful are frequently those whose fathers and mothers held a similar economic station. And the poor and outcast frequently had parents who were the same. To believe the myth one must believe Providence chooses our stations for us. Well, I suppose if you can believe one impossible thing, two is just as easy. To believe the myth we must believe that hard work always pays off. But it doesn’t. We comfort ourselves with the thought that the world eventually discovered and loved William Blake, Soren Kierkegaard, John Harrison, etc… But how many toil diligently for naught? Do you think every book worthy of publication is on the shelf, every song worth a voice is sung? Perhaps the single greatest lost potential is that of the vast creative genius of man which no economic system has ever found a way to harness. Turn on the internet and what do you get? A mere recapitulation of old ideas? Hardly. You get cultural change. Why? Because there were ideas that had no viable means of expressing themselves before. But does the internet, of itself, tell you what ideas are worthy of thinking? No, and who would ever want it to, that is not its job—and neither is it the job of an economic system to tell us anything about the moral worth of people. Do all the good ideas rise to the top on the net? No. In fact, on the top you’ve got porn and gambling. The really worthy ideas on the net are skulking around the dark alleys looking for a home. That’s why blogs are cool. To believe the myth we must believe that we can shirk our responsibility for the kind of society we have. “There, but for the grace of God…” becomes “There and in the place God put him.” Natural place is a very old idea; it gave us the divine right of kings and serfdom in one fell swoop. But when we moved beyond it, we had to abandon the notion that who we are is ever fully determinable. As early as the Renaissance folks like Pico della Mirandola ( www.wsu.edu:8080/~dee/REN/PICO.HTM ) were experimenting with the idea that we could make of ourselves whatever we want. Americans love this; it connects to their fantastical view that this work can be done in isolation. But it never is. The most basic tool for thinking about the self is some kind of language, and that is necessarily social. So when we give ourselves the freedom of self-determination, the first fact that informs our self-construction is always the fact of society, commonality, similarity. We begin with other people, at least when we begin in a way that might lead to something like us. And human freedom is generally conceived as freedom to live among others as one pleases, isolation being regarded as punitive. Those who fail in their projects of self-construction speak to a common failure of social organization. Those who thrive speak to a common success. But first is the social world, which is a very messy place. The outcast may have a good idea, as may the poor, the meek, the mournful… And this idea may occur at any time. Conversely, a powerful person may have a bad idea. How do we ensure that all ideas are heard? A fortiori, how do we ensure that the best ideas are heard? Given the messiness, the complication, the multifariousness of the world, shouldn’t we expect this to take quite a lot of work? How simple the faith of him who believes this terrible responsibility can be vouched safe by an economic system that leaves more than 3 million men, women, and children homeless ( www.nlchp.org/FA_HAPIA/ ). What does society allow us and what does it provide us, and what does it tell us if these same things are not allowed and provided to all? Society provided primary and secondary school for most of us, and probably helped pay for our higher education, too. (If you went to a public university, it certainly did.) And those of us who are fortunate enough to go to private schools nevertheless profit from an educated workforce. Yet many people work hard and still can't make ends meet, even educated people who made all the right choices. Death, disease, and divorce wreck lives. Who can work so hard as to ensure that disease will not affect him? Where is the labor that staves off death? We are both the more and the less fortunate. I am. You are. They are. For wisdom and poverty are strangely connected, if history is any guide. Ex nihilo nihil fit. No one questions the fact that good ideas should be rewarded. The issue concerns the nature of the reward, given the common social soil on which the seed bore its fruit. This ground is mysterious and complicated, shot through with interconnections that are, in unknown ways, required for the sustainability of any social activity, including profit-making. The interconnections are at least as fundamental as creative genius. We should respect them. Jeff
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Post by Jeff on Nov 17, 2005 11:40:49 GMT -5
"I do believe that the amount of effort someone puts out SHOULD be the deciding factor. I think that we could agree that that is not always the case."
Kyle,
You brought up affirmative action, which I think is an excellent topic, but might need to be moved to another thread. I agree with the Republican ideal: If things were as they should be, race should not ever enter into the equation used for determining who gets hired or admitted into prestigious universities. But the fact is, we live in a world where race is a constant factor. Our country is perhaps fairer for minorities than it was 50 or 60 years ago, but we are not even close to parity. If I were estimating conservatively, I’d say parity might be possible in 300 to 400 years, i.e. by multiplying our recent progress toward parity by 6 or 8 (or our progress since the civil war by 3 or 4) we will (hopefully) start getting close. I mean that in all sincerity. I think we will be engaging in interstellar space-flight before we start to live in a society where race isn’t hugely determinative of one’s life trajectory. (Well, if we don’t blow ourselves up before we get there, anyway.)
So the question is what do we do in the meantime while we make this transition? Affirmative action at least has its heart in the right place, but I am open to new ideas for protecting and growing opportunities for our minorites. I am not open to doing nothing or pretending that we’ve achieved parity. I want to actually live in the real world and not fairy land, even if I get to keep a few thousand extra dollars in my pocket every April.
Jeff
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