| Author | Message | ||
     Acgwolfe |
I so agree Court, most peoples hatered is so focused they can not see the big picture. At this point it is not about Republicans or Demicrats, or even unions, there is a bigger problem, its called socialism. That is where our country is headed unless we stop bickering and blameing each other and finally stick together. Pro or anti union, Rep. or Dem. we are all Americans first. | ||
| Doug_s |
acgwolfe, i agree w/everything you say, except when you say that the problem is socialism. it's not, it's plutocracy. you know it's serious when even the conservative, pro-big business wall street journal starts talking about it: http://finance.yahoo.com/family-home/article/11025 8/us-economy-is-increasingly-tied-to-the-rich\ it cracks me up hearing otherwise intelligent folks shooting themselves in the foot, supporting economic and social policies that hurt them because they are so hung up on the idea of "freedom". you all may think we are all americans first, but big business, which is what's running our government, couldn't give a rat's a** about america or americans. it only cares about its balance sheet & its stockholders. (and yust so there is no misunderstanding, when folks here say that we need to wote out the boards of directors if we stockholders don't like the way the companies are being run, 83 percent of all u.s. stocks are in the hands of 1 percent of the people.) those of you who think that "free capitalism" will help all you middle-class americans, (what's left of you), are truly and sorely mistaken. yes, chaos is yust around the corner, but the problem is not "socialism". what we have been experiencing the past two years is the culmination of 30 years of "borrow and spend" economics, corporate welfare, and plain simple greed. (and yes, those of you who disagree with this can all make yourselves feel better, patting yourselves on the back, asking such inciteful questions such as "what is greed?) doug s. | ||
| Ft_bstrd |
So a plutocracy is bad but a judicial oligarchy is good? The way wealth is "spread around" doesn't include flowing through the hands of the Federal Government. Ever wonder why folks in Congress end up VASTLY more wealthy than when they went in? Grift. I guess Kagan and Sotomayor are just hunky doory, right? The Federal Government's budget is $3.55T. The GDP is $14.5T. This has been allowed by a cabal of socialist (Republican and Democratic) Congressional leaders and the Judiciary. Article 1, Section 8 | ||
| Bads1 |
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| Ft_bstrd |
Exactly the problem. For over 100 years. | ||
| Doug_s |
"...This has been allowed by a cabal of socialist (Republican and Democratic) Congressional leaders and the Judiciary..." replace "socialist" with "plutocratic" and i am with ya... doug s. | ||
| Xl1200r |
This has all gotten very interesting because of a conversation I was having with my girfriend the other night. She grew up VERY poor - as in, mom had to decide if she was going to pay the heating bill or fill the fridge. She thinks many filthy rich people don't deserve to be rich and should be taxed more to help those at the very bottom end pick themselves up. She only say to tax them because she believes many should be donating more of what they make, but instead decide on where to buy their 7th house. I didn't grow up poor but not rich either, and the past two generations in my family are rather 'self-made'. I assert that rich people have the right to be rich and you can't legislate what people deserve. Reading recent posts shows me that while we both have opinions, neither really address to root cause to the wealth distribution in this country. I think the rich should be poorer and the poor should be richer, but voluntarily, not legislatively. Unfortunately, aside from a few shining examples, I know this will never happen. | ||
| Ft_bstrd |
Unfortunately, the effort to kill off the one has given us the other. 100 years of "redistributive justice" has given us the same 1% high income folks but has crowded out the lower and middle class. It hasn't worked in California, or New York, or New Jersey, or Michigan, or Wisconsin. Confiscation of wealth and the redistribution of that wealth has killed the economies of these states. Exporting these same policies to the rest of the states via the Federal Government will result in the same outcome. Do you guys not see the association of the movement of capital off shore? First the company assets are transferred. Next the company. Lastly the ownership of that company. Once the capital is gone, there is nothing more to redistribute. There is also no capital to allow low and middle class folks to create and build a company of their own. This capital comes from that top 1%. Who do you think lends the funds to start companies? Who do you think supplies the capital for start-up and investment in new companies? Where do you think venture capital comes from? If you could create the year of jubilee and confiscate 100% of the wealth of the top 1% and redistribute it ONLY to the lowest 10%, it would be back in the hands of the 1% in less than a generation. The names of the 1% would change, but it would still be held by top 1%. All socialism does is to chase the capital of those who are mobile out of the country and to concentrate the wealth out of the hands of the private sector and into the hands of the governmental elite. We saw this in Russia. We see it in N. Korea, China, Cuba. We are seeing it now in the US. 18% unemployment with $375,000 vacations? | ||
| Doug_s |
"...Confiscation of wealth and the redistribution of that wealth has killed the economies of these states. Exporting these same policies to the rest of the states via the Federal Government will result in the same outcome..." except the only wealth that has been "confiscated" has been that of the poor and middle class, and it has been redistributed to the wealthy. in dramatic fashion over the past 30 years. moving stuff off-shore has yust allowed the rich to get even richer, by having folks make stuff for a lot less money. not that it's costing us that much less to buy it here. bigger profits are going to the rich... doug s. | ||
| Ft_bstrd |
except the only wealth that has been "confiscated" has been that of the poor and middle class, and it has been redistributed to the wealthy. in dramatic fashion over the past 30 years. How exactly are the wealthy confiscating wealth from the poor and middle class? Only government has the ability to forcibly separate a person from their property. | ||
| Jb2 |
Doug_s, Not sure where you get your information but the only thing that has added to the lower income brackets is the expansion of entitlements. The more programs that are added the more people who line up to take from those who work. When you meet and know these people they expound how they can't make enough in wages to offset what the gubmint is giving them, then your argument holds only the dust of lies by the Democrats. We are at an all time high number of people receiving food stamps. I'll bet if those food stamps weren't available those folks would be out working hard to get a job. Give a man a fish and you've fed him one meal. Teach a man to fish and he'll feed himself for life. JB2 | ||
| Reindog |
Doug_s, What is your occupation and who do you work for? If you are employed and not self-employed, I presume you are educating your employer about greedy profits and theft by the rich. Anything else would be short of hypocrisy. | ||
| Sifo |
Doug_s, You sound a lot like my brother-in-law. He too suffers from the delusion that the rich stole their wealth from the poor and middle class. There are a couple of huge flaws in that logic though. First off the amount of wealth available isn't static. Wealth can be created and lost. This is clearly demonstrated by the fact that the world currently has more wealth available than at any other time in history. No rational person could possibly argue otherwise. So then who is it that is creating this wealth? It certainly isn't the poor. Middle class? Sure some wealth is created in the middle class. Plenty of small businesses are owned by the middle class. Most small businesses spend most of their created wealth on employees though. This actually distributes wealth to the middle class and the poor. It's the wealth people that really create wealth though. They do this by investing in businesses that wind up providing jobs to all economic classes. Creating wealth is a high risk activity where your losses can be huge. Without the incentive of possible huge gains there is not reason to make the investment in the first place. At that point the working class has no jobs and the poor have no hope of ever improving their situation. So Doug, I have no doubt you will hold the belief that I'm incorrect in all of this, but please have the balls to explain where all the wealth came from that was stolen from the poor and middle class. Does anyone else find it appalling that the "poor" in this country are among the most obese people in the world. Our poor have become overfed with zero need to struggle for their existence. With direct deposit of government handouts they don't even have to leave the couch to cash a check anymore. I you really want to keep a class of people down just pay them to be poor. This has been the Progressives solution for many decades now. It creates a class of people with no hope of a better life and totally dependent on the very people that have leveraged them into that situation. Their only real hope is education, but even that is under the control of those very politicians that know they can depend on the votes of the poor simply because they are terrified that they may have to learn to actually earn their keep, but they have never been taught that they can do that for themselves. | ||
| Ft_bstrd |
I just wonder when DaveS's Double Lung Archery becomes a huge financial success and he is making $500,000-$1M a year if the calls for his head will be as strong. I wonder who's wealth of the low and middle class he would have stolen in order to become "rich". | ||
| Reepicheep |
The current problem with "freedom" is a lack of transparency and accountability. The irony is "more regulation" can lower transparency. I don't have to tell you what I do, just tell you that you cant prove that I am not meeting all applicable regulations, and people get the illusion that "it's fine" because "it's legal and following all the rules". It also lowers accountability. Sure I tanked all your money, but I met all the regulations when I did it, you can't sue me for incompetence, or prosecute me for fraud. I did everything the regulation on me requires. When I tell my kids "use good judgement, and if you have any questions or concerns if something is OK tell me and we will talk it though" I get good behavior. When I try and give them a very prescriptive set of "rules" they follow them well, and inevitably get into some kind of trouble I failed to address. Both they and I have a false sense of security. Thus my current "I am a conservative fed up with Republicans" personal beliefs. Regulations and big government are a poor solution to a transparency and accountability problem. AIG should never have been allowed to insure more then they could pay out without (a) everybody knowing and / or (b) lots of people going to jail for fraud in claiming that they *were* insuring something that they *could not* cover. So either the insured company's should not have been able to claim they were insured, or AIG should not have been able to claim they are insuring them. Somebody (both likely) lied, and somebody (both likely) ought to have known they were looking at hard jail time when they were doing it. | ||
| Doug_s |
man oh man. squawk all you want; numbers do not lie. which is why even the wall street journal is starting to get scared now. Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975. what cannot you understand about this? for the past 35 years, everyone except the top 5% is not as well off financially today as they were in 1975. the government that you all are railing about is owned lock stock and barrel by the big corporations. (sorry, reindog, most small biz is getting screwed as well, so your statement about what i should or should not say to those i may or may not work for is really quite inane.) what part of this do you not understand? yust keep burying your heads deeper & deeper... doug s. | ||
| Reindog |
Doug_s: So what is your occupation and who do you work for? Pretty simple question. Your histrionics make you seem like the guy who stands on a soapbox in the park railing to an imagined audience. I would like to think you are more intelligent than that and knowing what kind of work you do would help your readers listen to you more attentively. Heck, I'll go first. I design 40nm wireless modem chips for Broadcom. We are a 4.5BB dollar company that steals from everyone who knowingly purchase Apple product, most TVs, virtually anything Bluetooth. We are real bandits. What about you? Is your keyboard missing the letter "j" or do you have a strange sense of spelling? Yust wondering. | ||
| Ft_bstrd |
That is a comment on the rise in costs not in the rise in income. You are concentrating on only one part of the statement because it proves YOUR point. BUYING POWER has been diminished. Wages are only part of that equation. Corporations back the horse likely to win (see GE, BP, GM, et. al.). When the government picks winners and losers, we all lose. In 1929, the top 0.1% had incomes that were equal to the bottom 42%. The wealth distribution is better now than it was in 1929. | ||
| Sifo |
Doug_s, You don't read to well from what I can tell. The stat's you are throwing around aren't exactly what you claim. As an example, your housing stat wasn't from the WSJ from what I can tell. You fail to provide a link but a search provides some clues. It also doesn't deal with the past 35 years, it's from 1975-2001. There's some other factors involved in that statistic that aren't being dealt with openly. During that time period you went from a typical housing loan requiring 20% down payment to as much as 107% financing so that you didn't need a down payment. This was pushed by the government to get more people into housing. What happened was that more people got into more expensive housing that they couldn't afford. Have you ever compared the typical 3 bedroom house from 1975 to the typical 3 bedroom house from 2001? They don't really provide an apples to apples comparison. These programs that were pushed by the government are the same programs that lead to the current meltdown in the housing market that has us in the current recession. Who could have ever imagined that loaning someone 107% of the value of a house might just be a bad idea? Apparently not Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae that purchases these loans. Oddly the community organizer in chief failed to address either of these agencies in his reform. I hear now that they are going right back to making these same sort of loans to people that just can't afford the housing they are looking to purchase. You really should consider providing the source for the quotes you are spewing. Of course then someone will take a look and find out what is really behind the claim. It just isn't as much fun that way though, is it? | ||
| Ft_bstrd |
He only has two sources. He's posted them. | ||
| Sifo |
OK I found one link near the top of this page. I'm not sure where the other one is. Bottom line is the data being quoted isn't compiled by the WSJ, even if it was printed in a WSJ opinion piece. He should also provide the source where he is making the quote. It's just good practice, not to mention keeps BadWeb close to legal on the copyright thing. | ||
| Slaughter |
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| Reindog |
Pictures of more porno? Yust wondering. | ||
| Sifo |
So I would have to wonder what that bit about affording housing would look like brought up to 2010 data after the housing bubble burst. Then you would need to adjust for the square footage of the average houses, and the average buyer just won't settle for things like Formica counter tops any more. A single car garage... fergitaboutit! I think it was an intentional apples to oranges comparison. | ||
| Gwb |
If you really want to level the playing field: Great amounts of wealth should NOT be allowed to be inherited. I have no problem with someone making himself rich. Let him do what he wants with his riches, try to buy a political office, whatever. But it bothers me no end that some undeserving offspring can _INHERIT_ great wealth and use it to buy political power. It is so common that we just had a PRESIDENT that was the great-grandson of an oil tycoon, the grandson of a U.S. senator and the son of a former president. Now that's inherited wealth. We are NOT supposed to have royal families in our democratic republic. But we do just as surely as we did when we were a colony of England. Inherited wealth owns the real power in our republic, because they buy it. | ||
| Ft_bstrd |
When the government steps in and promotes what it believes to be a "right" the system becomes skewed and proper market pricing is undermined. The government decided that there needed to be more people in houses. The government subsidized the number of buyers in the market. These artificial buyers inflated the demand vs. the supply. The price of housing rose artificially. Even thought the intent is good, the outcome of government intervention is bad. Right now, the government has been on a 100 year track of subsidizing poor people. Interesting that the percentage of people in the poverty level is dropping but the number of people chronically in "poverty" remains the same:   | ||
| Ft_bstrd |
We already take over HALF of every inherited dollar. How much more should we confiscate? At some point in time, people will stop working toward building because the government will just end up confiscating it. Where in the Constitution is the Federal Government given the right to confiscate the wealth of one person in order to give it to another? | ||
| Dbird29 |
I didn't see Wandell in Sturgis today. I had my Buell shirt ready for him to autograph. | ||
| Sifo |
I have no problem with someone making himself rich. Let him do what he wants with his riches Unless you want to give it to your family apparently. Family farm, business, etc. will just have to be broken up and sold. Beyond that you have just taken away the incentive to build a business beyond just meeting your immediate needs. No need to build a business that has to hire 50-100 people, they will all get laid off when you croak anyway. Think the employment opportunities will be better or worse under your scenario? How about the current President. They really down play that he is a grandchild of a bank VP. But we are supposed to buy into the whole underprivileged thing about BO. | ||
| Sifo |
Poverty isn't what it used to be either. Now welfare recipients can get government paid cell phones with government paid minutes.  |
