Cheesy pork? That sounds wonderful. How about a chop, potato, herbed succotash and squash? I hope rolls doesn't see this And I'm really not as radical as it probably comes across the screen, just your basic libertarian socialist.
VP Biden has given, on average, only a fraction of what I have to charitable donations for the last several years. And I am nowhere near rich - he, on the other hand, makes significantly more. I know that my donations absolutely go to help those in need. So that is why I feel that this idea of taking my money to help the poor by the government is ridiculous. And as to the ultra-wealthy, well, consider, for example, exactly how much more good Bill Gates' wealth is doing for the poor and distressed around the globe than had he simply given it all to the government to dispense. Or Howard Hughes. Both of their vast fortunes have funded insane amounts of scientific research that has, and still is, helping us understand and combat numerous diseases around the world. And Hughes started his foundation as a way to keep the government away from his money when he died. Seems like that was a smart move.
Who gets to decide how much is too much? That is the start down a very slippery slope. The govt is already trying to push the envelope on this though. They want to regulate the earnings of CEO of companies who received money from the bailout, I have no problem with this part. Where I run into issues is they are not stopping there, there is talk about regulating the earnings of executives of every company in the US. Where in the constitution does the govt have the authority to regulate earnings of the citizens?:mad::mad: So now are we going to have minimum wage and maximum wage? Why don't they come out with the true agenda they are pushing, Democracy is not good enough for them, they want pure socialism so they can have even more power. As a nation we do not have a very large percentage of truly poor people, what we have is a large percentage of people who do not have what they feel they are entitled to. I am not saying that there are not some people out there who have some very unfortunate circumstances, but I am saying that our "poor" have luxuries that the truly poor in other nations can only dream of. How many people on welfare in this country have cell phones, big screen tv's, smoke, can afford beer and alcohol, etc. I used to work in a grocery store, I would see people every week come through and buy groceries with WIC, and food stamps; then buy cartons of cigarettes and top shelf liquor with cash. They are not poor, they prioritize poorly, and it has become the rest of the nations problem to support them I have a serious issue with it. Our system is broken and nobody seems interested in fixing it, only expanding it...
The problem I see with punitive taxation to equalize the income of all is that is only half the equation. If we are going to tell one group they cannot make more than a certain amount, then we also need to tell those who previously were not in that wealthy group that they are going to have to work just as much as that formerly rich person to justify getting the same pay. Furthermore, we will also need to equalize spending of that money. If we truly need to take money from one person to spend it on a second person, then we also need to make sure that both are spending their money in an equal way, thus justifying giving more money to one person. If you have one person making, say (only for simplicity sake) $10,000/year, and another person making $1 million per year, and you only look at the numbers, then yes, it does seem unfair. But if you want to somehow equalize those numbers - again, for simplicity sake, we'll just split the difference - and have them both now making only $505,000, then you cannot expect the former millionaire to work as hard as he once was, and you also will have to demand more work from the person that previously made $10,000/year. Furthermore, if you are going to take money from a rich person because, say, you needed to pay for health insurance for someone who currently has none, then you would first have to, in my mind, prove to me that the person who doesn't have it is only in such a state because they truly cannot afford it. This would demand a detailed analysis of that person's income and expenditures, and potentially some kind of management of their spending. If somebody I know comes to me and asks for money for something critical, because they can't afford it, I'm going to have a really hard time saying yes if I see them sitting in front of their new plasma TV, texting their buddy on a new fancy cell phone, rocking out with their iPod. You see, there are some people who don't have certain necessities because they genuinely cannot afford it, and there are others who don't because they feel entitled to those things, and it is the job of somebody else to provide it to them. Who exactly? Well, that guy who has "too much" money, of course. They are rich, so obviously they must have come by that money in some fraudulent way. All rich people are either a Madoff or a Ken Lay. That is one of the great fairy tales that has survived the Great Depression and the New Deal - all rich people are fat cats who profit off of others sweat and toil, and thus they are not deserving of their money, rather it should be distributed to those less fortunate.
The great thing about WIC though, is it is specific items you can get. Nutritional items. As it is meant for pregnant and nursing women, and small children to get important nutrition they need. Government aid should be specific, too, IMO.
How about since it is our money that pays for everything the government decides we should be able to vote on their ideas before they happen. We pay them to do their job. That makes them our employees. With that logic it appears we run an extremely bad company. We are free to vote but the Electoral College can make decisions over us as well as a single judge can over turn the people's votes.
That negates the form of government we have. It really isn't a true democracy - the founders viewed true democracy as mob rule. This form of representative government was supposed to be better. They felt that people of good character would be elected, and would be careful and respectful of the power entrusted in them. Clearly that seems to have gone awry.
Would it be better if we term limited everyone like the president is. No long term folks to make deals and keep things strung out? Fuzzy
You are going to think I am crazy here, but the problem isn't the politicians. Why? Well, there already is a procedure in place to limit the terms of our elected officials - it is called an election. The reality is, if we have politicians in office that should have been removed from office, the voters should be grown up enough to vote them out. But the wonderful thing about our form of government is that we get just the elected officials we deserve. People get comfortable with their elected officials bringing home the "bacon" to them, and like the power they have that delivers extra perks to their constituents, so they keep electing them. Or they are so apathetic that they don't bother doing anything at all. Nothing will be solved by term limits. We term limit presidents - and yet people of both parties will still tell you that we have had some real stinkers in office. You don't even need to serve more than one term to still screw things up. Perhaps it is more important at the presidential level, so that no one person gains too much power for too long. No, as long as people think that the government owes them something, or that somebody else owes them something and the government should get it for them, they will elect the person to office who promises to get it for them. That is the biggest problem.
Yeah, I am also a big fan of gridlock. It would have been nice if there were a little more gridlock right now, or back when they were passing the TARP legislation. In general, I have found that the less that politicians have been able to accomplish, the cheaper the bill is for me. In light of GOP actions since 1999, I am not limiting this criticism to just one party. If they really want to stimulate the economy, they should slash tax rates wherever they can, and let people keep more of their money so they can spend it.
That is exactly what they need to do if the legitimately want to stimulate the economy, the problem is that they do not what to stimulate the economy; they want to pay back the special interest groups that financed their campaigns, and promote their social agenda.
Then that should stimulate the sectors of the economy which wisely contributed to the winning campaigns! Ah, capitalism
Capitalism has faced some heavy criticism as of late - the problem is, capitalism isn't the cause of where we are now, because we haven't had good capitalism at work, rather government-influenced capitalism, particularly in the housing market. Think of it like this - if you put a 6-foot chain on your guard dog, and your house gets robbed, do you really blame the guard dog for not doing its job and conclude that guard dogs just don't work? No, because the dog wasn't given full opportunity to do its job.
Good capitalism, bad capitalism? The root of this "crisis" was and is greed. The bubble was large, seen by many and took advantage of by even more. http://economicmeltdownfunnies.org/
Yes, it was greed, spread quite broadly. Greed by people to buy more than they could afford. Greed from lenders who saw a good thing, and hoped to ride the crest, then get off just before it came crashing down. Greed from politicians who saw new ways of buying votes by forcing bad ideas on the financial world. Everybody had their hand in this pot. I still fail to see, though, how a bailout is the solution. Why exactly did the financial industry loan so recklessly and do such ill-advised things? Many people knew this day would come, and I doubt that the combined financial industry ignored those warnings. I think it came down to two reasons - 1) they thought they could successfully predict exactly when to get off the bus before it went over the cliff (they didn't anticipate the road collapsing under them before they reached the edge of the cliff); 2) they predicted (correctly, as it seems) that the government would come in and bail them out should they end up in their current situation. After all, that was the precedent set with the New Deal. Sure, they'd have to swallow some more regulation, but they'd not face collapse. Here is an idea - let bad businesses that make bad business decisions fall. That way, next time, they might not be so reckless. Do you think the tightrope walker is going to move quite as fast if there is no safety net under them? Probably not. Unless they are very experienced and have had years of experience, they will probably proceed a little more cautiously. In that cartoon, it also includes the little snippet about how, even in this great economic boom that had been proceeding until recently, wealth was not increasing for the lower end of the income spectrum. I wonder, though, how much that is a result of reckless borrowing? Interest rates were low, people were buying more house than they needed, etc. My grandparents, who went through the Great Depression, were absolutely scared to death of debt. They avoided it like the plague. They knew what happened to people who borrowed too much - eventually it could kill you. So they paid for almost everything with cash. Even later on. They drove their cars until they wouldn't drive anymore, and then they bought a nice car that was not top of the line, but worked, and paid cash. My grandfather was a truck driver - my grandmother was a stay-at-home mom. They were nowhere near wealthy. My grandfather had a few side-businesses to bring in extra money - he had a small grain processing operation, and he and my uncles kept bees and sold honey while they were in high school. And it all worked. Today, everybody wants a new car every couple of years, they want a new house with more rooms than they need, and filled with top of the line appliances - and they mortgage their life away to get it all. This makes them highly vulnerable to situations like the current crisis. You can call it greed by those rich few at the top, but if they didn't have people buying their bad loans, or government encouraging them to make bad loans, we wouldn't be where we are.
You Dr Mike, I agree with you. The problem however is that you are asking people to take personal responsiblity for the decisions they have made in their lives. In todays entitlement society that is not going to happen, we have millions of people who "NEED" a big screen TV, a new car, the latest cell phone, a big house, a new laptop, an XBOX, a PS3, you name it... The "NEED" these things whether they can afford them or not, they "NEED" these things whether they are already on government assistance or not. Now there are some out there that are working for a better life for themseles and their family, so I am not streotyping everybody on govt assistance. But I am here to tell you that I have seen more of the former than the latter in my life.
I was wrong. Very wrong, completely wrong. With this money they could pay off 85% of all mortgages currently held in the United States. What would you do without a mortgage payment? I guess the banks would hate it since it would cost them money.
