What Do We Owe to Others?

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
161

I have always thought it was highly unfair for the 1% of the supremely rich to have all this money, while millions of others are barely making enough to survive. YOu have pro athletes making millions per year, all because they are a certain height and can dunk a basket ball, that entitles them to make all this money.

The money needs to be more evenly distributed among its people. Nothing wrong with having alot of money, but its not right for them to have all this money while so many others are homeless or making minimum wage.

163

[quote]pushharder wrote:

[quote]roguevampire wrote:
I have always thought it was highly unfair for the 1% of the supremely rich to have all this money, while millions of others are barely making enough to survive. YOu have pro athletes making millions per year, all because they are a certain height and can dunk a basket ball, that entitles them to make all this money.

The money needs to be more evenly distributed among its people. Nothing wrong with having alot of money, but its not right for them to have all this money while so many others are homeless or making minimum wage. [/quote]

What mechanism do you propose to rectify this injustice?[/quote]

I say we shorten everyone above 5.10 to just that, pour acid into beautiful girls faces and force feed anyone under 25% body fat.

It is all just so terribly unfair.

164

[quote]pushharder wrote:

[quote]roguevampire wrote:
I have always thought it was highly unfair for the 1% of the supremely rich to have all this money, while millions of others are barely making enough to survive. YOu have pro athletes making millions per year, all because they are a certain height and can dunk a basket ball, that entitles them to make all this money.

The money needs to be more evenly distributed among its people. Nothing wrong with having alot of money, but its not right for them to have all this money while so many others are homeless or making minimum wage. [/quote]

What mechanism do you propose to rectify this injustice?[/quote]

Higher capital gains tax. State minimum wage rather than national. Progressive taxes.

166

[quote]roguevampire wrote:
I have always thought it was highly unfair for the 1% of the supremely rich to have all this money, while millions of others are barely making enough to survive. YOu have pro athletes making millions per year, all because they are a certain height and can dunk a basket ball, that entitles them to make all this money.

The money needs to be more evenly distributed among its people. Nothing wrong with having alot of money, but its not right for them to have all this money while so many others are homeless or making minimum wage. [/quote]

Oh, yeah all those lazy pro athletes born into those contracts. They never worked hard or risked anything for all that money they get. I mean look at top pro BBers, I can’t help it that I was born with less muscle than them. Them getting supplement contracts isn’t fair.

167

Outlaw unemployment. Forced labor for those who refuse job opportunities and who doesn’t want to work.
Use all the people in your jails to rebuild a strong industrial sector at home, not abroad.
Open your southern borders, let all this good hispanic and catholic blood resplenish your population and redynamize your demography.
Buy the parts of Africa the Chinese didn’t already bought.

Problems solved.

168

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:

[quote]CappedAndPlanIt wrote:

Sincere question: why don’t those who oppose taxation for, say, socialized healthcare, seem to feel the way about other services that are socialized (such as law enforcement, emergency medical care, firefighters, etc)?[/quote]

Well, because you misstate it from the outset - you conflate “socialized” with “provided by the government”. They are not the same.

It’s a rheotrical trick used (not saying you are doing this) by socialist-minded types.

Whether or not a public service is an example of a “socialized” service or not depends on its policy aim. Is the aim of the government-provided service to redistribute wealth or otherwise make a transfer payment? Police protection, for example, is not “socialist”.

I’m not being semantic just to be ornery - but not every service is a “socialized” one.[/quote]

Government spending on anything is socialism even if not rightly understood as such.

It is the idea that government can give anyone anything – including roads, security or emergency services.

169

TB: in your opinion, what is wrong with socialism, and what is your idea re how to rebuild the American middle class.

Sorry if my wording was kinda dick, it was early!

170

Agreed. You are all filthy rich compared to the poor people in Sub-Saharan Africa. I mandate a 99% income tax on you all. What’s more, since we all know that poverty breeds crime, we should invade these countries and take them over for their own good. Shame on you for your narrow-minded attitude – you are obviously too Eurocentric to even think about the real grinding poverty elsewhere. You are all probably all racist too if you don’t agree with me.

Man have I had a shitty day. Passing it on

– jj

171

[quote]jj-dude wrote:
Agreed. You are all filthy rich compared to the poor people in Sub-Saharan Africa. I mandate a 99% income tax on you all. What’s more, since we all know that poverty breeds crime, we should invade these countries and take them over for their own good. Shame on you for your narrow-minded attitude – you are obviously too Eurocentric to even think about the real grinding poverty elsewhere. You are all probably all racist too if you don’t agree with me.

Man have I had a shitty day. Passing it on

– jj[/quote]

Why, thank you!

172

[quote]hlss09 wrote:
TB: in your opinion, what is wrong with socialism, and what is your idea re how to rebuild the American middle class.

Sorry if my wording was kinda dick, it was early! [/quote]

dude, what is wrong with socialism? are you serious right now?

173

No, I don’t dislike socialism, I just wanted to see what TB has against it. I like to get opposing views, a) b/c I can learn something from opposing views, b) so I can see what others think, c) so I can kjeep this thread going!

174

[quote]hlss09 wrote:

TB: in your opinion, what is wrong with socialism, and what is your idea re how to rebuild the American middle class. [/quote]

It’s hard to know where to begin, and it’s even harder to be brief, but in a nutshell - it’s completely (1) incompatible with human nature and (2) completely unsustainable. And, (2) results because of (1), basically.

Socialism is based on a false premise, namely that economics is a zero-sum game where “shares” of an economic pie are finite and one person’s increase of the pie results (unfairly) in the decrease of another person’s portion. It doesn’t work that way.

Moreover, socialism has an inherent flaw in that it cannot resolve the free-rider problem.

There’s plenty of other criticisms of socialism, but that’s a start. At its worst, socialism simply the gospel of envy, a gullible ideology that leads to a worse set of problems down the road because, as they say, “you always run out of other people’s money.”

As for the middle class, first make huge cuts to the entitlement state. If we don’t do something about this now, the middle class will see huge tax increases to pay for the Baby Boom effect. You think the middle class is squeezed now? If we don’t drastically rearrange our entitlements scheme, the middle class will be asked to help pay for it. The biggest thing we can do for the middle class is to get it out of the tornado-like path of the entitlement state, which will crush the middle class in twenty years.

Next, gut the ossified regulatory state that does nothing but kill small businesses. An strong, independent middle class needs an equally strong, independent small business sector. The bloated regulatory state - which imposes enormous costs (with no concomitant revenue raising for the government) and provides a smorgasbord of rent-seeking from big businesses - is strangling this crucial component of the middle class.

Next, stop artificially holding interest rates down. The middle class has been hard-hit by asset bubbles in both real estate and student loans.

Next, reconsider free trade agreements with countries that don’t share our values.

Next, reform education. Many people in the middle class hold next to worthless degrees/diplomas, not simply because they can’t get a job with the degree/diploma they have, but they aren’t educated worth a damn by the education they do get. A smart middle class generates more dividends than simply “good jobs”.

These would be a start. We need real reform - not a doubling down on the policies that got us in this predicament in the first place.

175

Oh, two more things: reform health care to actually lower costs and make it portable, and take away the Fed’s mandate to seek “full employment” through monetary policy. The Fed needs to be stout in protecting the dollar so that the middle class can once again become a class of “savers” and not be punished for saving by galloping inflation.

177

It would be ridiculous to take money away from hard working people who have specific skill sets that they learned and put in the time to master over the years just because theres some unmotivated people living off the state. It would be beneficial to some and I don’t disagree that there are people who just drew the short straw in life but who’s going to be the one to go around deciding who is and isn’t worthy of taking money from the better off.

And also has anyone ever heard of a savings? If people who are living comfortably just give away a chunk of their extra income they lose that in their savings. What if there is a need in the family for the money? Say for example someone develops a medical condition and now the family has nothing left in savings because the extra cash they EARNED working was just given away. Also, looking at the economic downturn we are still recovering from, many people lost huge amounts of their savings. What if someone loses their job and need that money they had to give away for food and shelter? Sure someone might be up currently but when something goes wrong in their life will they get it all back? They don’t want to work forever and would probably like to retire at some point and live off of their savings.

This destroys motivation for progress. People who are motivated to get jobs to support their family will just throw in the towel and say “fuck it! I get paid whether I work or not.”

And the extra income people don’t have to spend because they’re giving it away doesn’t get recycled back into local businesses. Everyone has the bare minimum so no one is buying anything expensive putting all the elitist companies out of business.

Even as a mere theoretical idea this is majorly flawed. There is no way it could ever work out properly and correctly. The only people I have a moral obligation to help out are family, friends, and myself. I don’t owe no one nothing beyond that.

178

[quote]pushharder wrote:

[quote]roguevampire wrote:
I have always thought it was highly unfair for the 1% of the supremely rich to have all this money, while millions of others are barely making enough to survive. YOu have pro athletes making millions per year, all because they are a certain height and can dunk a basket ball, that entitles them to make all this money.

The money needs to be more evenly distributed among its people. Nothing wrong with having alot of money, but its not right for them to have all this money while so many others are homeless or making minimum wage. [/quote]

As much as I appreciate the insight of the very valuable posters who’ve responded thus far I was sincerely hoping for a response from Monsieur Vampire.[/quote]

But Mr. Push, he is right. I mean it is totally unfair that the biggest strongest lion gets all the power, and all the lion p-tang. I mean he should be fair and distribute this. That way we can promote bad genetics and create furture generations of loser lions who can create even further generations of these inferior lions.

Redistribution of wealth breeds laziness, de-motivates the masses and is ridiculous. Compassion and charity are a different story. But this whole socialist utopia bullshit you all are trying to pedal is assinine.

RV go back in your hole you animal killing, peta supporting hypocrit POS.

179

You dont think people, even if they have basic necessities, will work to get things they want?

180

TB: I understand the free rider problem. Can you talk more about the entitlement thing. I’m not sure what that is, or maybe I know it by a different name?

What “system” do you think works best - capitalism, etc…Again, this is the point of these threads. Discussion, not ad hominem attacks! Not geared at anyone in particular, just saying let’s keep the spirit of the dialectic going!