The problem is that if you just take money from all rich people, you will end up taking it from those who did earn it, as well as those who did not. That's really bad. And you are giving it to people who didn't earn it, which is also really bad, for reasons I've explained above.
Though some people who didn't earn their wealth got it dishonestly, most got it through inheritance or luck, which is a voluntary process. On the other hand, socialists take money by force. I would never endorse that.
I don't know how you can honestly claim to be a more moral person than me. I have been told I am not a particularly moral person, and to the standards I am judged by I am not. However, you advocate taking money you didn't earn through force. Even I think that's immoral.
The quote was "From each according to his ability and to each according to his need" defines a system that rewards need and punishes ability.
Only an idiot would think that Ayn Rand said From each according to his ability and to each according to his need, though I've been accused of being an idiot before.
In a communist system, what you get is almost completely unrelated to what you do. To me, that is the same as getting nothing. Believe me, I have read Marx. My stupid philosophy teacher was all about Marx when I was in college.
"How about because it's morally repugnant to ignore the suffering of another person?"
How about it doesn't matter. Here's how it is. If you were stranded on a desert island, and it was just you and another person, would you expect that other person to feed you while you sat on your ass? Would you have any right to complain if they chose not to?
Maybe if you could gather enough food for both of you, you would share it with the other person, but what if you couldn't? Would you split what you have with them and wait while you both slowly starve to death? Then you'd both die. That doesn't make any sense.
This is the situation you set up for your self when you adopt the philosophy that everyone should be fed regardless of their merit. It's true that some people are disabled, but unless everyone contributes everything they can, you won't be able to provide for everyone.
You don't have a right (or a particularly good reason) to expect people to give you something for nothing.
"Rich people don't invest in new capital unless they are sure they'll get more money to hoard out of that investment."
Yeah, that's why they're rich. Why should they do otherwise? After all, they still invest.
I don't give a damn who the fruits of my labor is going to if it's not going to me. I work for me, not for anyone else.
"The fact is, we could probably bring all the poor up to a middle-class standard with very little expenditure on our part."
How? You need to understand that value!=money!=resources these things merely approximate each other. If we took money from rich people and gave it to poor people it would do little to improve their situation because the resources and the value aren't really there. All you'd do is increase the price of housing and basic services. In the end, any benefit to the poor would come at the expense of the middle class (by raising their costs). In the long term, it would hurt everybody, because some of the money you took from the rich was going to be used for new capital investment (to increase available resources in the future and thereby further enrich the wealthy) and now it won't be.
But that's only one part of the practical problem, the other side is that you can't make a poor person wealthy simply by giving them money. It is really easy to spend money, and if you didn't earn it yourself you will have no appreciation of what it's worth. So if you give a beggar a dollar, they will probably waste it. However, if you earn a dollar, you are likely to spend it as efficiently as possible.
"They've conned us into thinking we all can be as successful as they are, if we just work hard enough."
That's stupid, a human is only capable of so much work. Why would you think you could get rich just by working hard? It takes more than that.
"The game is rigged."
Yes, but it's rigged primarily by government intervention.
"In a world with men who are so rich they can't possibly spend all their money, there should be nobody starving."
Why should someone who contributes nothing to society expect to be fed? And if they are fed, will they really appreciate the hard work that others had to do to feed them?
"The "state of communism" is described by Marx and Engels as the condition in which "the State" no longer exists and people live and work together in harmony in a society based on equality where the fruits of labor are shared with all members of society and no one is exploited."
That's exactly what I have a problem with. Why should I share the fruits of my labor if I do not wish to do so? And how am I exploiting people by refusing to share with them? This is wrong. I want to live by the fruits of my labor, not by the charity of others.
That sounds like an Ayn Rand quote to me (I'm pretty sure I read it in Atlas Shrugged), though I'm sure she wasn't the first to say it.
That's a good practical argument, but it's not an idealist's argument. The problem with Marxism is more fundamental than that. It demands that people be something they are not.
I like to work, because I get what I want from it. But a Marxist says that I should work even though I will get nothing. That's a self-loathing, life hating approach to life. It claims that my desire for material things is bad, and I should pretend not to want them. But I want what I want and there's not anything wrong with that. Even if it was bad, I'd rather be the bad person I am than pretend to be a good person I am not.
Marxism is not, by any stretch of the imagination, an ideal governmental model. It is human nature to want to work for your reward, and to appreciate only things that you've worked for.
Marxism takes this and turns it on it's head. It claims that you should hate work, but that you should do it for the "common good" and that people should have their needs met by society even if they are unable to work.
The only thing I can think of that's more degrading than working for nothing is being paid for nothing. In Marxism, you can only get something by needing it, and no matter how hard you work you can never earn anything. The whole thing is disgusting and degrading on a fundamental level.
They always put this kind of thing in legislation so that they don't have to consider the argument of practicality that the industries being regulated invariably make. They also add an agricultural exemption if there is any chance it could affect agriculture.
But the reality is that these kind of regulations cause industry to behave in a way that they wouldn't normally. In the case of banking, it means that they made loans they wouldn't normally have made.
I will never understand why legislators are so keen to say that their laws change people's behavior, but then are so quick to deny that they have negative consequences. You can't remove the negative consequences by simply writing "this law shall have no negative consequences".
I don't know what they think this is going to accomplish. The failure of the housing market is just the tip of the ice-berg. The fundamental problem is a looming lack of labor resources brought on be the desire of the baby-boomers to retire. Once someone retires, they began taking from the economy rather than giving to it. This was always fine since there were many more paying into it than taking out of it. However, the ratio of those producing to those consuming is shrinking and continuing to shrink.
We've been counting on the development of new technologies to make people more productive so as to make up this generational deficit, but public opinion has been against the development of new industry. There has been the "information revolution" which has helped, but when it's all said and done you still need to eat and to have a roof over your head.
We can spend this 700,000,000,000 shoring up these false promises of security for our future generations, but it will do nothing to solve the underlying problem. In ten years, when we will need 7 trillion to accomplish the same deception, it will not be able to convince our older generations that they are receiving health care that does not exist.
Once you start arguing with people you need a user name, otherwise how will they know it's you? How do you expect them to condescendingly use your user name when insulting you?
His views on balancing the budget have not changed, nor have his views on federal spending or taxes. It seems like these are the most important to you. Which views do you feel have changed, and why do you feel the change was inappropriate or unjustified?
The McCain running now is the same McCain. Few of his positions have changed significantly, and you can't expect all of someone's positions to stay the same over time. You also can't expect a politician not to play politics.
Clinton pushed universal healthcare, he did not get it. Just the same as Bush pushed social security reform and comprehensive immigration reform and did not get those. The fact is that if we do get universal health care it will massively and (almost) irreversibly increase government spending now and in the future the same way social security did. A president that is opposed to universal health care can block it, one who is not will not.
Just because the republican party is not the party of less spending doesn't mean that the democrat party is not the party of more spending. If you want smaller government, you're screwed, but if you don't want larger government don't vote for Obama.
"The researchers found that both of these responses correlated significantly with whether a person was liberal or conservative socially. Subjects who had expressed a high level of support for policies "protecting the social unit" showed a much larger change in skin conductance in response to alarming photos than those who didn't support such policies. Similarly, the mean blink amplitude for the socially protective subjects was significantly higher, the team reports in tomorrow's issue of Science. Co-author Kevin Smith says the results showed that automatic fear responses are better predictors of protective attitudes than sex or age (men and older people tend to be more conservative)."
But is a protective attitude liberal or conservative? It seems like it could go either way.
It is doubtful that any future president for the next several decades will be able to reduce spending, because of social security.
Anyone can balance the budget by raising taxes, but that doesn't solve the real problem - which is spending.
The debt doesn't bother me as much as federal spending in general does, but McCain did vote against the Bush tax cuts because he is opposed to deficit spending. McCain wants to eliminate earmarks and reform defense spending. He can accomplish this by vetoing bills, and he has a history of legislative success. If you want less federal spending, you want McCain. Obama will definitely increase spending because of his desire for universal health care.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem is that if you just take money from all rich people, you will end up taking it from those who did earn it, as well as those who did not. That's really bad. And you are giving it to people who didn't earn it, which is also really bad, for reasons I've explained above.
Though some people who didn't earn their wealth got it dishonestly, most got it through inheritance or luck, which is a voluntary process. On the other hand, socialists take money by force. I would never endorse that.
I don't know how you can honestly claim to be a more moral person than me. I have been told I am not a particularly moral person, and to the standards I am judged by I am not. However, you advocate taking money you didn't earn through force. Even I think that's immoral.
The quote was "From each according to his ability and to each according to his need" defines a system that rewards need and punishes ability.
Only an idiot would think that Ayn Rand said From each according to his ability and to each according to his need, though I've been accused of being an idiot before.
In a communist system, what you get is almost completely unrelated to what you do. To me, that is the same as getting nothing. Believe me, I have read Marx. My stupid philosophy teacher was all about Marx when I was in college.
"How about because it's morally repugnant to ignore the suffering of another person?"
How about it doesn't matter. Here's how it is. If you were stranded on a desert island, and it was just you and another person, would you expect that other person to feed you while you sat on your ass? Would you have any right to complain if they chose not to?
Maybe if you could gather enough food for both of you, you would share it with the other person, but what if you couldn't? Would you split what you have with them and wait while you both slowly starve to death? Then you'd both die. That doesn't make any sense.
This is the situation you set up for your self when you adopt the philosophy that everyone should be fed regardless of their merit. It's true that some people are disabled, but unless everyone contributes everything they can, you won't be able to provide for everyone.
You don't have a right (or a particularly good reason) to expect people to give you something for nothing.
"Rich people don't invest in new capital unless they are sure they'll get more money to hoard out of that investment."
Yeah, that's why they're rich. Why should they do otherwise? After all, they still invest.
I don't give a damn who the fruits of my labor is going to if it's not going to me. I work for me, not for anyone else.
"The fact is, we could probably bring all the poor up to a middle-class standard with very little expenditure on our part."
How? You need to understand that value!=money!=resources these things merely approximate each other. If we took money from rich people and gave it to poor people it would do little to improve their situation because the resources and the value aren't really there. All you'd do is increase the price of housing and basic services. In the end, any benefit to the poor would come at the expense of the middle class (by raising their costs). In the long term, it would hurt everybody, because some of the money you took from the rich was going to be used for new capital investment (to increase available resources in the future and thereby further enrich the wealthy) and now it won't be.
But that's only one part of the practical problem, the other side is that you can't make a poor person wealthy simply by giving them money. It is really easy to spend money, and if you didn't earn it yourself you will have no appreciation of what it's worth. So if you give a beggar a dollar, they will probably waste it. However, if you earn a dollar, you are likely to spend it as efficiently as possible.
"They've conned us into thinking we all can be as successful as they are, if we just work hard enough."
That's stupid, a human is only capable of so much work. Why would you think you could get rich just by working hard? It takes more than that.
"The game is rigged."
Yes, but it's rigged primarily by government intervention.
"In a world with men who are so rich they can't possibly spend all their money, there should be nobody starving."
Why should someone who contributes nothing to society expect to be fed? And if they are fed, will they really appreciate the hard work that others had to do to feed them?
"The "state of communism" is described by Marx and Engels as the condition in which "the State" no longer exists and people live and work together in harmony in a society based on equality where the fruits of labor are shared with all members of society and no one is exploited."
That's exactly what I have a problem with. Why should I share the fruits of my labor if I do not wish to do so? And how am I exploiting people by refusing to share with them? This is wrong. I want to live by the fruits of my labor, not by the charity of others.
That sounds like an Ayn Rand quote to me (I'm pretty sure I read it in Atlas Shrugged), though I'm sure she wasn't the first to say it.
That's a good practical argument, but it's not an idealist's argument. The problem with Marxism is more fundamental than that. It demands that people be something they are not.
I like to work, because I get what I want from it. But a Marxist says that I should work even though I will get nothing. That's a self-loathing, life hating approach to life. It claims that my desire for material things is bad, and I should pretend not to want them. But I want what I want and there's not anything wrong with that. Even if it was bad, I'd rather be the bad person I am than pretend to be a good person I am not.
Marxism is not, by any stretch of the imagination, an ideal governmental model. It is human nature to want to work for your reward, and to appreciate only things that you've worked for.
Marxism takes this and turns it on it's head. It claims that you should hate work, but that you should do it for the "common good" and that people should have their needs met by society even if they are unable to work.
The only thing I can think of that's more degrading than working for nothing is being paid for nothing. In Marxism, you can only get something by needing it, and no matter how hard you work you can never earn anything. The whole thing is disgusting and degrading on a fundamental level.
The preferred method of starving the beast is Tax Cuts.
They always put this kind of thing in legislation so that they don't have to consider the argument of practicality that the industries being regulated invariably make. They also add an agricultural exemption if there is any chance it could affect agriculture.
But the reality is that these kind of regulations cause industry to behave in a way that they wouldn't normally. In the case of banking, it means that they made loans they wouldn't normally have made.
I will never understand why legislators are so keen to say that their laws change people's behavior, but then are so quick to deny that they have negative consequences. You can't remove the negative consequences by simply writing "this law shall have no negative consequences".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Reinvestment_Act
I don't know what they think this is going to accomplish. The failure of the housing market is just the tip of the ice-berg. The fundamental problem is a looming lack of labor resources brought on be the desire of the baby-boomers to retire. Once someone retires, they began taking from the economy rather than giving to it. This was always fine since there were many more paying into it than taking out of it. However, the ratio of those producing to those consuming is shrinking and continuing to shrink.
We've been counting on the development of new technologies to make people more productive so as to make up this generational deficit, but public opinion has been against the development of new industry. There has been the "information revolution" which has helped, but when it's all said and done you still need to eat and to have a roof over your head.
We can spend this 700,000,000,000 shoring up these false promises of security for our future generations, but it will do nothing to solve the underlying problem. In ten years, when we will need 7 trillion to accomplish the same deception, it will not be able to convince our older generations that they are receiving health care that does not exist.
"it's very hard to properly exhale at 50-60 mph"
No it's not. Try it for yourself.
That's what she said.
Once you start arguing with people you need a user name, otherwise how will they know it's you? How do you expect them to condescendingly use your user name when insulting you?
His views on balancing the budget have not changed, nor have his views on federal spending or taxes. It seems like these are the most important to you. Which views do you feel have changed, and why do you feel the change was inappropriate or unjustified?
The McCain running now is the same McCain. Few of his positions have changed significantly, and you can't expect all of someone's positions to stay the same over time. You also can't expect a politician not to play politics.
Clinton pushed universal healthcare, he did not get it. Just the same as Bush pushed social security reform and comprehensive immigration reform and did not get those. The fact is that if we do get universal health care it will massively and (almost) irreversibly increase government spending now and in the future the same way social security did. A president that is opposed to universal health care can block it, one who is not will not.
Just because the republican party is not the party of less spending doesn't mean that the democrat party is not the party of more spending. If you want smaller government, you're screwed, but if you don't want larger government don't vote for Obama.
He's a troll, but he's right. Why won't these people just go fuck themselves already. Seriously, this is nonsense.
you should read the article
Republicans give more because they are more likely to be Christians, and charity is the the cornerstone of Christianity.
Here is an article on the subject.
Very insightful.
The article says:
"The researchers found that both of these responses correlated significantly with whether a person was liberal or conservative socially. Subjects who had expressed a high level of support for policies "protecting the social unit" showed a much larger change in skin conductance in response to alarming photos than those who didn't support such policies. Similarly, the mean blink amplitude for the socially protective subjects was significantly higher, the team reports in tomorrow's issue of Science. Co-author Kevin Smith says the results showed that automatic fear responses are better predictors of protective attitudes than sex or age (men and older people tend to be more conservative)."
But is a protective attitude liberal or conservative? It seems like it could go either way.
I don't see how that gives them an advantage.
It is doubtful that any future president for the next several decades will be able to reduce spending, because of social security.
Anyone can balance the budget by raising taxes, but that doesn't solve the real problem - which is spending.
The debt doesn't bother me as much as federal spending in general does, but McCain did vote against the Bush tax cuts because he is opposed to deficit spending. McCain wants to eliminate earmarks and reform defense spending. He can accomplish this by vetoing bills, and he has a history of legislative success. If you want less federal spending, you want McCain. Obama will definitely increase spending because of his desire for universal health care.
Clinton did not reduce the federal budget. He reduced the deficit.