[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
pwrlifter198 wrote:
<<< I’ll keep this post shorter, since you’ve given me a complex.
I didn’t mean that your post was too long. I simply truncated it to save room on the page. I am in no position to have anything to say to anyone else about long posts.
pwrlifter198 wrote:
<<< I spent much of my military career in the rural south of the US where there exists a level of poverty most northern and mid-western states don’t see. Union membership represents about 8 percent of the working population in these “right to work” states and wages hover around 20 percent below the national average. >>>
Welcome to the big bad world. The difference between us is that you believe it is both possible and the responsibility of EVERYBODY to assure that NOBODY goes without. I know that artificially engineered compassion in the form legislatively coerced resource redistribution serves only to penalize productivity. See how well 40 years of the war on poverty is working by your own declaration?
pwrlifter198 wrote:
<<< Most of the countries south of our border don’t have any of the poison pills you rail against and I’d be willing to bet you wouldn’t trade places with anyone there on your worst day. >>>
This can’t be a serious statement.
pwrlifter198 wrote:
As to, I haven’t seen shit, I am curious as to how many stamps are in your passport, sport. Your entire frame of reference seems crafted by your immediate surroundings.
You have been exposed to much more than you’ve actually seen with any clarity.
pwrlifter198 wrote:
Also, I love how you choose the villains in your stories. Detroit is a cautionary tale about top-heavy corporations with no fiscal discipline. It is also an example of American companies having to compete with foreign companies that don’t have similar nuts to crack. Japanese auto manufacturers don’t have to shoulder the costs of medical insurance or legacy costs, because their government picks up the tab. This is one reason some large corporations, pharma and for-profit hospitals excluded, have put their considerable political weight in the form of 527s behind health care reform. It is an enormous expense.
Please continue making my arguments for me. Thanks.
pwrlifter198 wrote:
Try imagining your city now with no safety net. You’d be tripping over the homeless if you aren’t already. Crime and suicide rates would skyrocket and public safety would be a pipedream. If you’d prefer that Mad Max world, then you can have it. >>>
ROFLMAO!!! Perfect description of present day Detroit Michigan. ROFLMAO!!!
The once mighty motor city. The former industrial nucleus of the globe that put the world on wheels and onetime economic engine of the United States. A haven for anybody with the will to work and at least as safe as any other big city in the nation… until the 60’s when people like you inflicted the rest of us with your deluded neo communist vision.
Today Detroit is a murderous third world shithole pickled in sickness and violence. Almost wholly dependent upon your precious compassionate social programs.
I do believe that you personally believe what you believe with honest motivations. You are simply very very tragically wrong.
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I am not sure which of my “neo communist visions” you were referring to, but unionisation of the automotive industry took place well before the 60’s (look up National Labor Relations Act). However, I am no longer certain which of my ideas you find the most repugnant. I posted first on this thread to simply state, albeit sarcastically, that the New Deal and the programs that grew out of it were in response to an implosion of a largely unchecked free-market, not the cause of it.
If you had a magic wand, which government programs would you end tomorrow? Perhaps the VA would be your first to go. After all there are about 250,000 homeless vets right now, those lazy, communist bastards. Nobody promised them a rosegarden. Perhaps you would squash Social Security pension payments and eliminate the $806 windfall that my grandmother receives every month. God knows all she did to deserve that hefty sum was work as a waitress for 50 years, 30 in the same place. Maybe we could get rid of disability payments for the blind and disabled. Slack-asses need to get a job making ballpoint pens. Of course when you create a net, any net, you are going to catch some unintended people in said net (too many uses of the word “net”). This happened in the “war on drugs” and the “war on poverty.” Incidentally, if you want to spend the most money possible on a fix, wage war on a problem.
Are you going to take down your poster of Ronald Reagan you have hanging up in your shower? He did double the social security tax taken out of everyone’s paycheck. The good news for the uber-affluent is that they don’t pay that tax for too long in any year. The CEO of Exxon, for example, is done paying Social Security taxes by lunchtime January 2nd each year. This is just one of the reasons ameteur capitalist Warren Buffet is on record stating that his secretary pays a higher percentage of her income in taxes than he does. Warren Buffet and Ronald Reagan, two flaming liberal communists.
Listen, I love capitalism. I agree that it encourages inovation and creativity and is the engine that drives our economy. I also love bench-pressing and am pretty good at it (T-rex like short arms mixed with a lifetime committement), but I don’t think it’s the only exercise in the gym. I also don’t believe that if one rep is good, then one-thousand reps done in succession must be great. The answers to life’s complicated problems never exist on any extreme, they are found at the intercection of ideas. Solutions come by a miriad of arduous compromises made by people with differing views. The founders did a good thing when they made the legislative process painfully slow and requiring debate. They had just freed themselves of a highly efficient monarchy and knew that efficiency doesn’t always equal better outcomes.