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Obama to call for middle class tax cut extension

that is what the founders thought when they penned the constitution and its what the courts noted when they said those rights do not depend on the constitution for their existence
The courts can note what they want but the bottom line is those rights are recognized and enforced because they are in the Constitution. Their current day recognition and enforcement has nothing to do with mythical celestial friends, commons that no longer exist, or any other philosophical crap from 3+ centuries ago.
 
It was a false premise and thus has no relevance here.

If a child believes that Santa Claus brought the shiny new bicycle under the tree and then later discovers that there is no Santa and the parents purchased the bike and placed it under the tree, the bicycle is till there even though what they believed in and thought provided for it is proven to be a lie.

All the Founders lined up around the globe can believe anything they want to believe. And those beliefs translate into nothing by themselves. Those beliefs conferred no rights to any behaviors that they believed were important. It was only through the action of the people in forcing the government to recognize those behaviors and granting them in official recognition as rights that they became rights we had.

YOu cannot have a right to exercise if the government says you don't have it. Pure and simple and all the dilettantes lined up end to end writing fancy essays on parchment cannot change that reality. All the beliefs of all the philosophers and dilettantes cannot change that reality.

a false premise

LOL idiotic
 
a false premise

LOL idiotic

This will help educate you on the huge fallacy you continue to commit

False premise - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

here is your statement

The constitution is based on the premise that people have certain inalienable rights.

False premise.

You will note that when the Constitution was drafted 1787 , it dealt solely with the structure and construction of a government. There is precious little in it about the rights of the people - inalienable spiritual, supernatural or any other mystical properties attributed to them.

Like many people who profess a knowledge of history, you make the often made error of confusing the Declaration of Independence with the Constitution. Its okay - if I had a dollar for every person who confuses the two I could buy a tri-cornered hat.
 
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The courts can note what they want but the bottom line is those rights are recognized and enforced because they are in the Constitution. Their current day recognition and enforcement has nothing to do with mythical celestial friends, commons that no longer exist, or any other philosophical crap from 3+ centuries ago.

Unless, of course, you wish to assert that SSM (but not polygamy) and abortion on demand are protected rights, then it is OK to allow the nine robed umpires to make that "correct" call with no need to point out just what in the constitution actually makes it so. Just as allowing taxation of income from all soucres (16th amendment) somehow makes it just peachy to tax you based on how that income was later spent (or NOT spent) resulting in different (UNEQUAL) taxation on the same income from the same source. Hmm...
 
Unless, of course, you wish to assert that SSM (but not polygamy) and abortion on demand are protected rights, then it is OK to allow the nine robed umpires to make that "correct" call with no need to point out just what in the constitution actually makes it so. Just as allowing taxation of income from all soucres (16th amendment) somehow makes it just peachy to tax you based on how that income was later spent (or NOT spent) resulting in different (UNEQUAL) taxation on the same income from the same source. Hmm...
I'm not arguing that rights are not man-made. In fact, I've been arguing the exact opposite - that all rights ARE man-made, except those I noted in post #619.

Perhaps you have the sides confused in this discussion? Or maybe you need to explain your position better. You seem to be saying rights are man-made and I couldn't agree more. :)
 
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All you have done is offer an explanation as some of the motivations of the Founders. Motivations - by themselves - do not create anything. They simply help impel one to do things. Faith or a belief creates nothing if it is based on something which does not exist or can be proven to exist.
You asked a question. I answered it. That you dont like it or cant grasp it really isnt my problem.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights...That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men."

Like it or not; agree with it or not; understand it or not, the above quote answers your question. Nothing could be more clear. If you are still in the dark, someone else will have to help you. As to whether or not innate rights exist, I believe that they do. And an argument, independent of God, can be made for their existence, but it is not something that lends itself to forums and isnt something you would likely be able to get your mind around even if it were.
 
You asked a question. I answered it. That you dont like it or cant grasp it really isnt my problem.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights...That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men."

Like it or not; agree with it or not; understand it or not, the above quote answers your question. Nothing could be more clear. If you are still in the dark, someone else will have to help you. As to whether or not innate rights exist, I believe that they do. And an argument, independent of God, can be made for their existence, but it is not something that lends itself to forums and isnt something you would likely be able to get your mind around even if it were.
I suspect when someone worships government, lobbies for government to have more and more of our wealth, it is only normal for them to see government as the source of all rights and all that is good
 
I suspect when someone worships government, lobbies for government to have more and more of our wealth, it is only normal for them to see government as the source of all rights and all that is good
But if government is the source of rights, then it is perfectly legitimate for government to trample them at will. There is no moral difference, then, between the US and say the Taliban, or the North Koreans, the Nazis, the Soviets, or the Khmer Rouge; no moral argument to be made against slavery, theft or even murder. Recognizing the existence of the innate rights of man is literally the difference between life and death. The human moral code is not determined by the state or the majority, but by reality.
 
You asked a question. I answered it. That you dont like it or cant grasp it really isnt my problem.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights...That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men."

Like it or not; agree with it or not; understand it or not, the above quote answers your question. Nothing could be more clear. If you are still in the dark, someone else will have to help you. As to whether or not innate rights exist, I believe that they do. And an argument, independent of God, can be made for their existence, but it is not something that lends itself to forums and isnt something you would likely be able to get your mind around even if it were.

And you too have made the fundamental error of confusing belief with fact. Nothing could be more clear. Belief creates nothing in an of itself. It is divorced from action and simply a commitment of the will. The Founders could believe in anything they wanted to believe in including God, inalienable rights or fifty foot dancing easter bunnies in April. But their belief created none of those things.

It took action by men - regardless of what each of them believed - to take a behavior that people wanted and change that into a right.

If the government says you DO NOT HAVE A RIGHT - then you do not have it. All the belief in the world does not change that. All the faith in the world does not change that. All the dilettantes sitting before parchment and vellum writing down their thoughts and musings does not change that. None of them creates of bestows or gives or grants rights.

You seem to ignore the central issue here. Turtle saw fit to criticize both my knowledge of government and my professional skills because I did not accept his belief system as it pertains to where rights come from. Many people have already pointed out that this is not a matter of fact that is decided and put to bed. It is open for argument and open for discussion. And your side cannot prove that natural rights exist at the end of the day no matter who believed in them.

The bottom line here is this: Turtle saw fit to take a cheap shot - one of the worst - at me personally and issue a vitriolic attack upon me for me simply being on a side different than his in the matter of BELIEF.

Anything else is simply moving he goal posts.
 
I suspect when someone worships government, lobbies for government to have more and more of our wealth, it is only normal for them to see government as the source of all rights and all that is good

I suspect when someone only looks to polish their own ass that the whole rest of the world looks like a cheap towel. It is only normal for them to ignore the contributions of government to the nation and to our people and the rights we enjoy in reality and not simply the musings of idle dilettantes.
 
But if government is the source of rights, then it is perfectly legitimate for government to trample them at will. There is no moral difference, then, between the US and say the Taliban, or the North Koreans, the Nazis, the Soviets, or the Khmer Rouge; no moral argument to be made against slavery, theft or even murder. Recognizing the existence of the innate rights of man is literally the difference between life and death. The human moral code is not determined by the state or the majority, but by reality.

Legitimate has nothing to do with it. We are simply talking reality here. People have to live in reality - not in the musings of some 17th century dilettante who wanted a new diversion from the angels on the head of a pin discussion.
 
But if government is the source of rights, then it is perfectly legitimate for government to trample them at will. There is no moral difference, then, between the US and say the Taliban, or the North Koreans, the Nazis, the Soviets, or the Khmer Rouge; no moral argument to be made against slavery, theft or even murder. Recognizing the existence of the innate rights of man is literally the difference between life and death. The human moral code is not determined by the state or the majority, but by reality.

some of them sound like the Roman Admiral in BEN HUR

people exist to serve the state. serve the state well and you will live. do not and you will die

Their anthem is Pink Floyd's Brick in the Wall

its like a couple of them telling us the wealth of the successful is held by them only to the extent that the "people" allow them to do so and that the rich ought to crawl on their knees and grovel at the boots of big brother to keep what they earn
 
some of them sound like the Roman Admiral in BEN HUR

people exist to serve the state. serve the state well and you will live. do not and you will die

Their anthem is Pink Floyd's Brick in the Wall

its like a couple of them telling us the wealth of the successful is held by them only to the extent that the "people" allow them to do so and that the rich ought to crawl on their knees and grovel at the boots of big brother to keep what they earn

Then you should have no trouble producing the views of people here who believe as you claim.

Of course, you cannot because you simply make up this nonsense as you go along stuffing a new strawman as needed and producing a frankenstein monster version of reality.
 
Then you should have no trouble producing the views of people here who believe as you claim.

Of course, you cannot because you simply make up this nonsense as you go along stuffing a new strawman as needed and producing a frankenstein monster version of reality.

so you never claimed the rich should be on their knees thanking the masses



and catawba does not constantly squawk about tax cuts should be ended because they don't help the masses
and the wealth of the rich is subordinate to creating jobs for the multitudes?
 
so you never claimed the rich should be on their knees thanking the masses



and catawba does not constantly squawk about tax cuts should be ended because they don't help the masses
and the wealth of the rich is subordinate to creating jobs for the multitudes?

In keeping with a long historical tradition of kneeling to give thanks to a power higher than ones self, I told you that the rich should indeed drop to their knees and be thankful that they live in a time when they are allowed to benefit greatly from their situation and they live in an nation which permits them to keep so much of their wealth.

Giving thanks is a very very good thing - for the body and for the soul. It reminds us that we are not God.
 
In keeping with a long historical tradition of kneeling to give thanks to a power higher than ones self, I told you that the rich should indeed drop to their knees and be thankful that they live in a time when they are allowed to benefit greatly from their situation and they live in an nation which permits them to keep so much of their wealth.

Giving thanks is a very very good thing - for the body and for the soul. It reminds us that we are not God.

That is an interesting change of position from you given how much time you spent denying the existence of natural rights and dismissing the premises upon which our Constitution was based and now you talk about this

the fact is Haymarket-your posts are that of a hard core statist-someone who elevates the state to the position of God and demands that the masses bow down and worship that Lord and Master
 
some of them sound like the Roman Admiral in BEN HUR

people exist to serve the state. serve the state well and you will live. do not and you will die

Their anthem is Pink Floyd's Brick in the Wall

its like a couple of them telling us the wealth of the successful is held by them only to the extent that the "people" allow them to do so and that the rich ought to crawl on their knees and grovel at the boots of big brother to keep what they earn

http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/feds/2006/200613/200613pap.pdf
Currents and Undercurrents: Changes in the Distribution of Wealth, 1989–2004 (a new triennial, SCF, Fed Reserve "Study of Consumer Finances...will be released shortly after the election...sure to document, even further wealth concentration into the hands of the top ten percent.)

January 30, 2006
Abstract

This paper considers changes in the distribution of the wealth of U.S. families over the 1989–2004 period using data from the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF)...
page 27

...Ownership shares. For some assets, the distributions of the amounts held are far more disproportionate than the differences in ownership rates. MOST STRIKING is the 62.3 percent share of business assets OWNED BY THE WEALTHIEST 1 percent of the wealth distribution in 2004 (table 11a); the NEXT-WEALTHIEST 4 percent OWNED ANOTHER 22.4 percent of the total. Other key items subject to capital gains also show strong disproportions: THE WEALTHIEST 5 PERCENT OF FAMILIES OWNED 61.9 percent of residential real estate other than principal residences, 71.7 percent of nonresidential real estate, and 65.9 PERCENT OF DIRECTLY- AND INDIRECTLY HELD STOCKS. For bonds, 93.7 PERCENT OF THE TOTAL WERE HELD BY THIS GROUP...."

http://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/wp_589.pdf
(bottom of page 32)

"..it is possible to provide a partial update of the wealth figures to July 1, 2009 based on two notable developments....

...Trends in inequality are also interesting.... The share of the top 1 percent advanced from 34.6 to 37.1 percent, that of the top 5 percent from 61.8 to 65 percent, and that of the top quintile from 85 to 87.7 percent, while that of the second quintile fell from 10.9 to 10 percent, that of the middle quintile from 4 to 3.1 percent, and that of the bottom two quintiles from 0.2 to -0.8 percent. ..the share of households with zero or negative net worth, from 18.6 to 24.1 percent."

Hmmmm. 240 million with even less to lose than when the figures above were gathered and tallied more than three years ago. Do the math and wonder how much of that shrinking 12 percent of three years ago will have to transfer to the top fraction of one percent wealthiest before their own guards are not to be relied on to keep them from being murdered in the night in their own beds.

I pity the man whose political belief system makes so little allowance or concern for the historical knowledge of how badly these wealth imbalances usually end for everyone involved. It won't be pretty when the pushback comes, but events will conform to historical models. Ballots or bullets, you stay your course too long, and it will surely be be the latter.
 
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feel free to revolt if you don't like things. My advice is that you'd be better off working harder rather than pissing and moaning what someone else has and claiming their success impedes your ability to succeed. of course the rich get richer as long as investments yield dividends

but as I said, if you all want to revolt be my guest, It will be a cathartic removal of the non producers I suspect
 
feel free to revolt if you don't like things. My advice is that you'd be better off working harder rather than pissing and moaning what someone else has and claiming their success impedes your ability to succeed. of course the rich get richer as long as investments yield dividends

but as I said, if you all want to revolt be my guest, It will be a cathartic removal of the non producers I suspect

In your tiny universe, can you point to the date that everybody else suddenly was less hard working, compared to the wealthiest, so as to no longer merit the benefit of a system of taxation at a level high enough to avoid the long term handicap of massive student loan debt, or a dramatic rise in the wealth and compensation ratios of the wealthiest in the U.S. vs. in competing post industrialized nations?

Could it have happened because Americans bought into this political deception / propaganda, while residents in other countries continued to align politically with themes more suited to their best interests?

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=DBM...
Eugene Register-Guard - Google News Archive - Feb 9, 1976

"by John Fialka of the Washington Ster

Few people realize it, but Linda Taylor, a 47-year old, Chicago welfare recipient, has become a major campaign issue in the New Hampshire presidential primary. Former California governor Ronald Reagan has referred to her at nearly every stop, using her as part of his "Citizens Press Conference" format. "There's a woman in Chicago," Reagan said last week to an audience in at Gilford. as part of his free-swinging attack on welfare abuses...."



http://en.wikipedia....dices_over_time
US income Gini indices over time

Gini indices for the United States at various times, according to the US Census Bureau:[13][14][15]

1929: 45.0 (estimated)
1947: 37.6 (estimated)
1967: 39.7 (first year reported)
1968: 38.6 (lowest index reported)
1970: 39.4
1980: 40.3
1990: 42.8
2000: 46.2
2005: 46.9
2006: 47.0 (highest index reported)
2007: 46.3
2008: 46.69
2009: 46.8

The Gini index was 0.469 in 2010.
.....The nation's official poverty rate in 2010 was 15.1 percent, up from 14.3 percent in 2009 ─ the third consecutive annual increase in the poverty rate. There were 46.2 million people in poverty in 2010, up from 43.6 million in 2009 ─ the fourth consecutive annual increase and the largest number in the 52 years for which poverty estimates have been published......
Poverty

The poverty rate in 2010 was the highest since 1993 but was 7.3 percentage points lower than the poverty rate in 1959, the first year for which poverty estimates are available. Since 2007, the poverty rate has increased by 2.6 percentage points.....


http://www.nytimes.c....4.6900205.html
The strains of Danish commitment

Dec 27th 2007, 18:46 by Free Exchange | Washington, DC

HOW do you keep 'em down on the egalitarian welfare state after they've seen low taxes? Well, according to this New York Times piece on the flight of talent from Denmark, increasingly you don't.


The Confederation of Danish Industries estimated in August that the Danish labor force had shrunk by about 19,000 people through the end of 2005, because Danes and others had moved elsewhere. Other studies suggest that about 1,000 people leave the country each year, a figure that masks an outflow of qualified Danes and an inflow of less skilled foreign workers who help, at least partially, to offset the losses.
The problem, employers and economists believe, has a lot to do with the 63 percent marginal tax rate paid by top earners in Denmark — a level that hits anyone making more than 360,000 Danish kroner, or about $70,000. That same tax rate underpins such effective income redistribution that Denmark is the most nearly equal society in the world, in that wealth is more evenly spread than anywhere else.
Denmark is such an interesting case because it so closely resembles the kind of society I think the political philosopher John Rawls had in mind in his magnum opus, "A Theory of Justice": economically dynamic egalitarianism. But Mr Rawls ruled out emigration, as a simplifying stipulation. The Times article does an excellent job of showing how supra-national mobility rights in a not-so-simple world limit the feasibility of egalitarian welfare states that rely on punishingly high tax rates.
Mr Rawls argued that a just society must be "well-ordered". And a well-ordered society must be stable, meaning that its members must willingly comply with its terms. When the "strains of commitment" of a social system are too great, we should expect non-compliance and a not-so-well-ordered system. Rawls' pragmatic argument against utilitarianism was precisely that it requires too much of us, overstrains our ability to prioritise the welfare of others over that of our families and ourselves. But Rawls' own version of egalitarian liberalism may ultimately fall to the same objection.
The latter third of "A Theory of Justice" is supposed to show how a society implementing Mr Rawls' system of "justice as fairness" can generate allegiance from its citizens and thereby pass the stability test. In a nutshell, citizens will learn to see that such a system is just, which will inspire their native sense of moral rectitude, causing them to voluntarily adhere to its rules, even when it requires some sacrifice of them......

https://www.cia.gov/...ields/2172.html
Field Listing - Distribution of family income - Gini index
............. Gini
Denmark .........23.2 (2002) 24.8 (2011 est.)
Norway ...... 25.8 (2000) 25 (2008)
Sweden ...... 25 (2000) 23 (2005)
France ....... 26.7 (2002) 32.7 (2008)
Finland ...... 26.9 (2000) 26.8 (2008)
Czech Republic . 27.3 (2003) 31 (2009)
Germany ...... 28.3 (2000) 27 (2006)
Netherlands .... 30.9 (2005) 30.9 (2007)
Austria ........ 31 (2002) 26 (2007)
European Union .31.6 (2003 est.) 30.4 (2010 est.)
Canada ...... 32.6 (2000) 32.1 (2005)
Belgium .......33 (2000) 28 (2005)
Switzerland .....33.7 (2000) 33.7 (2008)
Ireland ...... 34.3 (2000) 33.9 (2010)
Spain ...... 34.7 (2000) 32 (2005)
Australia ......35.2 (1994) 30.5 (2006)
Korea, South ....35.8 (2000) 31 (2010)
United Kingdom ..36 (1999) 34 (2005)
Italy ...... 36 (2000) 32 (2006)
New Zealand .....36.2 (1997)
Japan ...... 38.1 (2002) 37.6 (2008)
Israel ...... 38.6 (2005) 39.2 (2008)
Ecuador 42 note: data are for urban households (2003) 47.3 (June 2011)
Burundi ........ 42.4 (1998)
Iran ........ 43 (1998) 44.5 (2006)
Uganda ........ 43 (1999) 44.3 (2009)
Nicaragua ...... 43.1 (2001) 40.5 (2010)
Turkey ........ 43.6 (2003) 40.2 (2010)
Nigeria ........ 43.7 (2003)
Kenya ......... 44.5 (1997) 42.5 (2008 est.)
Philippines .....44.5 (2003) 45.8 (2006)
Cameroon ........44.6 (2001) 44.6 (2001)
Uruguay ........ 44.6 (2000) 45.3 (2010)
Cote d'Ivoire ...44.6 (2002) 41.5 (2008)
United States ...45 (2004) 45 (2007)
Jamaica ........ 45.5 (2004)
Rwanda ........ 46.8 (2000)
Malaysia ........46.1 (2002) 46.2 (2009)
Mexico ........ 46.1 (2004) 51.7 (2008)
China ........ 46.9 (2004) 48 (2009)
Nepal .......... 47.2 (2004) 47.2 (2008)
Mozambique ......47.3 (2002) 45.6 (2008)
Madagascar ......47.5 (2001)
Venezuela .......49.1 (1998) 39 (2011)
Argentina .......48.3 (June 2006) 45.8 (2009)
Costa Rica.......49.8 (2003) 50.3 (2009)
Sri Lanka .......50 (FY03/04) 49 (2009)
Niger ...........50.5 (1995) 34 (2007)
Papua New Guinea 50.9 (1996)
Thailand ........51.1 (2002) 53.6 (2009)
Dominican Republic 51.6 (2004) 48.4 (2007)
Peru ............52 (2003) 46 (2010)
Zambia ........ 52.6 (1998) 50.8 (2004)
Hong Kong........52.3 (2001) 53.3 (2007)
El Salvador......52.4 (2002) 46.9 (2007)
Honduras ........53.8 (2003) 57.7 (2007)
Colombia ....... 53.8 (2005) 56 (2010)
Chile .......... 54.9 (2003) 52.1 (2009)
Panama ........ 56.1 (2003) 51.9 (2010 est.)
Brazil ......... 56.7 (2005) 51.9 (2012)
Zimbabwe ........56.8 (2003) 50.1 (2006)
Paraguay ........58.4 (2003) 53.2 (2009)
South Africa ....59.3 (1995) 65 (2005)
Guatemala 59.9 (2005) 55.1 (2007)
Bolivia ........ 60.1 (2002) 58.2 (2009)
Central African Republic 61.3 (1993)
Sierra Leone ....62.9 (1989)
Botswana........ 63 (1993) 63 (1993)
Lesotho 63.2 (1995)
Namibia .........70.7 (2003)

http://www.detroitne...ext|FRONTPAGE|s
The Detroit News - 23 hours ago
Including federal loans, Americans owe more than $1 trillion in student loan debt, the CFPB said. It has surpassed credit card debt as the

http://news.google.c...st states&hl=en
The Free Lance-Star - Nov 14, 1966
....College is Getting More Expensive
...Members of the two higher education groups enroll about one half of all students in the nation's colleges and universities....
....The median yearly cost of tu- ition, room and board for in- state student living at the public institutions
was about $1000....

http://www.dollartim.../inflation.htm/

$1,000.00 in 1966 had the same buying power as $7,096.60 in 2012.
Annual inflation over this period was 4.35%.

http://seattletimes....tuition24m.html
$20K in-state tuition may not be far off in Washington
Originally published Monday, July 23, 2012

.....The total cost of attending the UW and Washington State University as an in-state undergraduate can actually be about $25,000 a year when factoring in the cost of books, transportation, living expenses and other student needs.[/QUOTE]

Your politics allow for a result of only more acute wealth concentration, wealth imbalance. Demand has evaporated in this economy, the average private vehicle is more than ten years old. The 2005 bankruptcy "reform" was the beginning of an acceleration downward of demand potential. The evaporation of home equity and employment opportunity destroyed the wealth effect perception of the have nots, and their ability to borrow to help extend the wealth effect perception.

Now, there is nothing on the horizon except the old Reagan saw of demonizing the least powerful and attacking any political approach intended to reduce the wealth imbalance as "socialist" or "marxist". The income and inheritance taxes introduced one hundred years ago were the result of intimidation of the holders of concentrated wealth by the have nots. Examples such as this, come to mind.:

Battle of Blair Mountain - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Battle of Blair Mountain was one of the largest civil uprisings in United States history and the largest armed rebellion since the American Civil War.[1] For five days in late August and early September 1921, in Logan County, West Virginia, some 10,000 armed coal miners confronted 3,000 lawmen and strikebreakers, called the Logan Defenders,[2]who were backed by coal mine operators during an attempt by the miners to unionize the southwestern West Virginia coalfields. The battle ended after approximately one million rounds were fired,[3] and the United States Army intervened by presidential order.....
 
I love the "we will revolt" nonsense

maybe its time to rephrase an old British line dealing with uprisings by "the natives"

No matter what happens, what we've got
are most of these shooters and you do not
 
I presented an informed, well documented "picture" of the erosion of U.S. economy / society. You cannot even consider the trend is the result of politically driven actions financed by a determined and increasingly brazen, economic elite. The trends of wealth concentration here can easily be compared to more equitable and stable trends in other post industrial countries.

Wealth concentration trend is the problem, not welfare queens or "tax and spend liberals." A wiser man than I observed about you and your ilk:
the problem that runs through your statements is basically a refusal to think in either historical or social-system terms. instead, the arguments are moralistic, erasing anything analytic (at all if you read your posts carefully) and replacing analysis with a series of adjectives attached to the noun "big brother"--the definition of which i have never been sure that many of you actually knows--what is clear is that "big brother" means functionally "empty space onto which i project whatever i want."

the adjective pile-up starts with the first sentence of the post:

x is defined by the predicate "they have no idea where wealth comes from."
and proceeds to heap other such attribute up one after the other.

by the third paragraph, it is clear that we are not talking about socialist at all, but we are in fact talking about who you imagine those on the other side of your POV to be--first negatively---"I'm sure I"m part of posts little hit group" then by way of inversion--"president for life post..."

and so on.

so a cynical fellow might say that given there is no content to the category
big brother in TurtleDude's post above, that it is negative space he fills with projections, and that most of those projections one way or another are about projections concerning anyone of a more progressive POV, whom he apparently sees as some kind of inflatable stalin doll (even that seems to grant too much content to the term "big brother" as it functions above) that the "analysis" is mostly a hysterical ad hominem--ad hominem in that it is a personal attack on progressives, hysterical in that the post manages to collapse make-believe progressive into a bigger make-believe category "big brother".

hedging this nonsense round, you have a very simple and simplistic claim repeated lots of times: a "big brother" is someone who wants to take TurtleDude's money. because TurtleDude defines himself as the embodiment of all things virtuous and holy--the last term because it is pretty obvious that money is sacred---then it follows that a "big brother"--as an abstraction the only content of which that is not based in ad hominem is "someone who wants to take my money"--is simply Evil.

on what planet is this coherent?
on what planet does it address the question of redistribution of wealth, its political functions, and the problems that might be raised by an ideology that---myopically so far as i am concerned--refuses to even acknowledge that there are political functions to the resdistribution of wealth----that is in ameliorating the social consequences of tendencies to concentration in actually existing capitalism--tendencies that are self-evident if you actually bother to look at the actual history of actual capitalist systems over the past 200 years and don't replace them with empty nonsense based entirely on a simple state of affairs:

i benefit materially from the existing order--i am the embodiment of virtue--therefore an order that enables an embodiment of virtue such as myself to benefit must be in itself virtuous.

so it seems that we are not even talking about capitalism--we are not talking about an empirical system at all---we are talking the private language of conservatives for whom capitalism is a sum of projections--no different in kind from "socialists" except with the signs reversed.


try again.

most neoliberal "remedies" for problems political and ethical generated by the *radically* uneven distribution of wealth are of three types:

a. arguments for the reduction of the political effects of these consequences by rolling the state out of wealth redistribution functions. this one makes a certain degree of sense, given that "globalizing capitalism" has posed and continues to pose signficant political problems for nation-states---it reduces their purview in terms of making the rules of the game, greatly increases uncertainty as a result, and so opens the state up for deep and potentially unresolvable political crisis IF the state is exposed in the wrong way at the wrong time---the wrong way means here that the state is involved in attempting to manage social inequities in a situation that it cannot control or even make accurate predictions about; but the fact that the state is involved means that these management efforts are POLITICAL and so the consequences of failure are POLITICAL.

seen from this viewpoint, neoliberalism can be taken to acknowledge that the radically uneven distribution of wealth is, in fact, a problem--but neoliberals see a choice: either reduce political risk for the state, or continue trying to buy political consent for capitalism through redistribution of wealth--and they opt for the former.

so they deal with the problem of a *radically* uneven distribution of wealth by running away.

the argument for doing so is utilitarian--the greatest good for neoliberals is in the continuation of the existing order--the way to continue the existing order is to reduce the risk to its main institutions.

b. the problem is that this will not sell.
so there's a second mode of activity: marketing.
here there is a distinction between neoliberalism and the populist conservatism that you find in the states--the former can be seen as understanding something about the actual, empirical situation generated by globalizing capitalism and making a choice--a bad choice, but an expedient one from a certain viewpoint---while the latter is a kind of test market for the flip of neoliberalism--the ideology that collapses capitalism into a natural phenomenon.
......you cant oppose a natural phenomenon.
populist conservatives and libertarians share an affection for this general viewpoint, and so share another feature as well, that of being chumps.

c. when political crisis ensues, deal with it with violence/repression.
if you believe (b) then you will have no problem with (c).
to take
TurtleDude 's post above as an index, because it is worth nothing else, the language in it reminds me, paradoxically, of that you find in the short course of the history of the soviet communist party on the topic of the "hitlero-trotskyite wrecker, the saboteur, the Insect.." the Enemy Which Must Be Exterminated so that the otherwise Perfect Order can resume its Perfection.

so neoliberalism does not pretend that the radically uneven distribution of wealth is not a problem. neoliberals see it. they just dont know what to do about it in the present context. they apply a political calculation to the matter and decide that reducing the risk to which the state is exposed will enable them to survive as holders of some degree of political power longer, so they go that way.

to sell this choice, they market a different ideology, which we all know and love because we get to see it trotted out in all its simple-minded grandeur here every effing day.

this makes populist conservatives the simple lackies of an ideology they do not understand.
they will function to legitimate state violence as a response political crisis CREATED BY the neoliberal gamble with respect to state functions.

there is more, there is always more, but i'm stopping now.
 
you seem to think we need to pull the rich down to end this--I think the solution is to stop addicting the lower classes to dependency and make failure so painless
 
you seem to think we need to pull the rich down to end this--I think the solution is to stop addicting the lower classes to dependency and make failure so painless

Turtle, take your head out of your shell. Pull the rich down? Are you serious? The just keep getting richer and I wouldn't refer to people who are out of work and can't find a job as the lower class. Bad choice of words don't you think? Sort of condesending to those who are suffering.
 
Turtle, take your head out of your shell. Pull the rich down? Are you serious? The just keep getting richer and I wouldn't refer to people who are out of work and can't find a job as the lower class. Bad choice of words don't you think? Sort of condesending to those who are suffering.
If the Rich cry long enough and hard enough that they're poor, their lapdogs and servants will start to believe them.
 
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