wonderwench

I would argue that the most powerful forces on earth are governments - not corporations.

Compare the billions of fraud in the UN Oil for Food Program to Enron. The former dwarfs the latter.

Remember, government power is the power of the gun. It is force and coercion. Corporate power requires shareholders, employees and customers - these relationships are voluntary.

Certainly, corporations need to be held to standards of law. The recent fraud scandals are a lesson which we must take to heart. We do have laws against fraud - let's prosecute the guilty without hampering the efforts of honest people via over-correction.

cthulu23

Again, you assume much. Could my family afford to help my grandmother? You don't know, but you say that we should have. Thanks for the advice.

Social security was never meant to be borrowed against. Nixon helped pass the laws that allowed it, but it wasn't heavily used until several administrations later.

wonderwench

How much did your grandmother receive in monthly benefits vs. the collective SS contributions paid by her various descendents? I bet it was a pittance.

The lesson for the SS "lock box / trust fund" is an important one. Virtually all government programs morph into perpetuating the existence of the permanent bureaucracy. Of course SS should not have become a piggy bank - but our learned representatives just can't resist that much cash.

smooth

<g> What accusation?

jeez, dude, get a grip!

The only thing I'm questioning is why you are ditching your work duties to post on an internet forum. Dontcha wanna be rich like your uncle Bill? You better get back to work: $50 dollars per hour X 60 hours per week X 52 weeks per year X 50 years (calculating on 18-68) will give you a near cool 8 mil before taxes. Just think, your whole life in overtime and without vacation to make nearly what a Gates or Bush made in the last hour from dividends! I think they say in Chicago "Such a deal..."

Anyway, back on track. I figure you probably did see something like that. You should have run that search I told you about--because I didn't say the other person was lying, either. What I did say was that 1 person out of 300 million people doesn't really mean jack shit.

It also doesn't do much good to speculate: the car might have not been her boyfriends (who knows they were even together), might not have been owned, might have been purchased before a layoff, might be a result of illicit money making, could be a friend, could be anything is the point here.

Mostly, though, it doesn't matter to me at all because the stuff she bought was to support a baby who isn't worthless and deserves to be in diapers and have food just by virtue of being a US citizen. I get your drift, though. She was fat. I guess that means her children don't deserve a shot at the "good life" you all are purporting our nation to be full of. Guess what? I think I don't care if she went home and loaded a crack pipe and sat in front of a plasma televison (I have neither, btw), I'm happy my piddly 30% of earnings could only be used to purchase baby food, diapers, milk, vegetables, a few steaks or two (fuggit, I don't begrudge a fat, poor woman a bite at the good life. look at it this way, maybe she'll be tempted to work for a living if you get my drift) or maybe, just maybe, she's too busy raising her child to worry about taking a $6 dollar an hour job at McD's that won't even pay rent.

Oh, that's right, one of the many tangents we've hit in this thread--a sustainable wage (which at least one person seems to think is a silly proposition). Here's what I think: pay people a wage that will allow them to pay their rent and put food on the table and we might encourage people to not live on the public dole (cuz we all know how glamorous it is to stand in line with a "wad" of funny money while some *cough* is evaluating your personal worth over your shoulder--she must have felt so damn rich under your gaze. Job well done in castigating a fellow citizen for her laziness...bravo

__________________
"The theory of a free press is that truth will emerge from free discussion, not that it will be presented perfectly and instantly in any one account." -- Walter Lippmann

"You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists." -- Abbie Hoffman

cthulu23

Corporations leverage the powers of governments to achieve their ends. To them, controlling a population is an externality best suited to another agent. Thus, they do their best to dictate government policy for their own gains. It's not just fraud that we must be guarding against....we must defend against their attempts to influence every facet of our lives, from popular political thought to "branding" our children like consumer zombies.

smooth

It seems like your blame is misplaced. From your statement, the fault was with taking earmarked money and spending it elsewhere, not in the development of a social safety net.

__________________
"The theory of a free press is that truth will emerge from free discussion, not that it will be presented perfectly and instantly in any one account." -- Walter Lippmann

"You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists." -- Abbie Hoffman

wonderwench

cthulhu,

One more comment on what SS was never meant to be:

It was never intended to be The Retirement Plan for working Americans. It was never intended to result in a payroll tax that is at a higher rate than the original income tax. (The original income tax was only supposed to be assessed on The Rich).

As the old joke goes: "I was all for taxing the rich until I realized they were talking about me."

wonderwench

It is no longer a safety net - it is a broadbased entitlement program which has decimated the ability of working folks to save for their own retirments, thus making them government dependents.

Why is that good?

matthew330

"Both roachboy and myself sit around and read about wealth inequality all day long."

Thanks smooth, i always wondered where roachboy's name came from - it's all making sense now.

How long are your dreads?

wonderwench

Damn you Matthew. I laughed so hard I snorted Diet Coke up my nose.

You bad man.

cthulu23

So the program wasn't wrong, only the interference that helped to despoil it? I can agree with that. Some such program is necessarry. Not everyone has a family to support them in their twilight years. We can't just condemn some of our elders to complete destitution.

cthulu23

When you can't come up with a decent argument, resort to (ridiculous) personal attacks. That always works, right?

Have you ever heard of academics?

wonderwench

The biggest wholesale condemnation of people to destitution is done by destroying a value for productive work and replacing it with dependency upon the government.

smooth

WTF?

I don't have any dreads.

__________________
"The theory of a free press is that truth will emerge from free discussion, not that it will be presented perfectly and instantly in any one account." -- Walter Lippmann

"You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists." -- Abbie Hoffman

cthulu23

I guess your use of caps in "The Retirement Plan" is supposed to mean "the end all, be all." When SS was passed, retirement plans, benefits and other concessions to workers weren't quite so common. SS was passed as a retirement plan for those without the means to support themselves. That is what is taught as historical fact. What was it if not that?

matthew330

I went the route i expect poco to will be taking shortley Smooth. Learned real quick it's a waste of breath, the more effort you put in a post, the less it's paid attention too.

wonderwench

It was never meant as a retirement plan - it was meant to be a safety net for truly unfortunate people.

There is another form of retirement plan you did not mention: personal savings and investments. Allowing people to keep their money enables them to do this quite effectively.

cthulu23

So all charity is harmful to the recipient than? That is the logical conclusion of your statement. This has the familiar ring of Ayn Rand's objectivism, a fringe "philosophy" that few people adhere to.

matthew330

Of course i've heard of akademiks smooth (it explains much about your posts) and it took damn near 10 years to come to terms with real life. It's a long hard road and i wish you the best.

"What accusation?

jeez, dude, get a grip!

The only thing I'm questioning is why you are ditching your work duties to post on an internet forum. Dontcha wanna be rich like your uncle Bill?"

Poco had the exact same reaction to your post that i did, he is not the one that needs to get a grip. It's ironic that you took so much offense to my little post.

..but sense i'm not contributing to this topic, i'll let you get the last word. I'm my own moderator.

smooth

What are you referring to this time? When did I take offense at your "little post?"

__________________
"The theory of a free press is that truth will emerge from free discussion, not that it will be presented perfectly and instantly in any one account." -- Walter Lippmann

"You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists." -- Abbie Hoffman

cthulu23

Here's a quote from Social Security Online:
Sounds like a retirement plan to me.

Anyway, historical trivialities aside, it's nice to think that we could become a nation of entrepeneurs that invest our way to security. Unfortunately, not every citizen is in a position to become a savvy investor. There are 3.9 million people who suffer from daily hunger in this country...what's to happen to them? Are we supposed to allow people to become martyrs to a free-trade ideology that deems them irresponsible? What kind of society does that create?

matthew330

it doesn't matter but..."Have you ever heard of academics?"

you took offense

cthulu23

Actually, I posted the "academic" line. I was just making a guess as to what someone's profession might be if they study social trends for a living.

It's nice to see that our culture's respect for educators is as strong as ever.

matthew330

ahhh - a sociologist?

matthew330

\takes a bow

roachboy

i love this idiocy....the "academics vs. the real world" schitck---the final resort of people who cannot defend their positions---funny stuff.
and and and i even got slagged for my "name"...

i argued earlier in the thread that perhaps--just perhaps--the discussion could be made more interesting if folk tried to step a little bit back from the religious adherence to neoclassical economic theory and think, just for a minute, that the problem with that approach might--just might--be in how the variables are defined (for example)--and that just passes by the conservatives here, who feel much better about discussion when it is simply extending arguments that are indefensible on any grounds except their own---the same folk who talk about freedom and individual repsonsibility avoid any prompt to take responsibility as individuals for their own positions, either at the level of how the framework is put together or at the level of consequences of their own arguments---no wonder your politics are such a fucking disaster when they actually influence policy.

what you seem to want is less a conversation than a circle jerk.

the world is easier when there is no-one to call you on your assumptions. but you know, if you hold a position, it is beyond weak to not be able to even articulate them, much less defend them. no matter how much you talk about individual freedom and such, if you cant do that, you have none.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

matthew330

hehe....do you guys have pagers?

matthew330

and if you'll notice, i haven't taken a position - just making fun of yours. You said "folk" - you definately have dreads.

Step away from your textbook for a bit.

"the religious adherence to neoclassical economic theory and think, just for a minute, that the problem with that approach might--just might--be in how the variables are defined (for example)"

I'm no economist toker, but it's clear if you had any desire to make a point and not just win an argument you wouldn't resort to some neoclassical variables in religious economic thought schtick that your akademics taught you last week. No one's impressed.

I love tilted politics.

cthulu23

Congratulations! I think that you may have pulled the trigger on this long suffering thread. I would like to remind eveyone not to feed the trolls.

roachboy

gee, you are pretty presumptuous for someone who knows nothing about me. kinda make you feel all powerful, imagining that you have the faintest idea what i might do and how long i might have been doing it?

btw that part of the post wasnt directed at you in the first place--you werent involved in the debate.... try to remember....scroll back if you like...you didnt post anything...so it would make no sense to talk about your position....hmm.....do a little research if its still foggy....

you seem to want things posted in little tiny bites so that you dont have to think too much....was that a result of your therapeutic "adjustment" to this fiction called "the real world"?....
nasty experience with thinking you must have had...its good you took that 10 years to eliminate the tendency...didnt do you much good in "the real world" did it? and why might that be? couldnt be that the system is fucked...no, it has to be a function of the thinking part....bad bad bad people, asking you to think for yourself...they must be out of touch with the real world...asking you to read long sentences and consider why you might think as you do...good christ, why would anyone do that? where is the immediate benefit in it?

they dont do that on tv....
it must not be normal.....

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

matthew330

...i do it for Johnny, man. That's what they do on TV.

roachboy

ok then.

i feel like we just played a rockem sockem robots round.
that game was also tedious.

enough.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

matthew330

it was fun though.

"the final resort of people who cannot defend their positions---funny stuff."

I didn't really think you were laughing but i certainly was. Sorry to interupt. What ever happened to my moderating myself?

bodymassage3

To get this thread back on any track it might have previously had, I have a question/comment. I hear on the radio, about how the comment made (the title of this thread) is so blatantly socialistic and communist..but, isn't that what taxes are both for and *in theory* SHOULD be used for the "common good?" Or am I completely wrong?

I know how saying something like that (the title of the thread) could sound really, really bad - but aren't taxes and government in general to "take" resources from society and "redistribute" them for the "common good?" If thats NOT what its for, we've still got the taxes part (which isn't necessarily a bad thing, as we need money to pay for the betterment of the "common good"). Is it only okay to take taxes and squander/poorly manage the money, and not actually better society?

Again, I really have no stance on what you guys are talking about, but just in general..I was under the impression that taking different ranges of taxes from different people and using that money to help everyone was what it's all about.

roachboy

no, i was laughing.

everyone grows snippy from time to time. its easy.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

wonderwench

No, charity is not harmful when it is true charity - a voluntary donation to a worthy recipient.

SS is not charity. It is forced redistribution of income and wealth.

Kadath

Jesus, this thread blew the fuck up!

onetime, to answer your question from two pages ago, no, I don't believe that poor sections of Philly are representative of the nation. People were talking about how easy the poor have it using anecdotal evidence along the lines of "when I drive through a poor neighborhood everyone has a satellite dish, a cell phone, a tricked out car, and is a fat tub of shit." I was taking issue with that, and I think that if you rolled up to someone in that neighborhood and said "Man, you poor-ass fuckers sure have it good," you'd get the shit beat out of you and rightly so. I'm sure things look okay for the poor from the outside.

Hwed, as you can see from my location I live outside Philly, in KoP, a rich-ass suburb, though I myself am neither rich nor poor, but the last of the Middle Class. My sister goes to Temple, which is not the nicest section of town, so I've seen some bad parts. I refer you to the last sentence of the above paragraph.

__________________
it's quiet in here

wonderwench

Why are they hungry? What has happened to them that they are not in a position to lead productive, self-sufficient lives? Is it possible that the social engineering experiements have put them in this position?

One does not need to be a saavy investory to put money into a passbook savings account. The returns of doing so are far larger than the fraction on the dollar most will see on the SS donations in future.

smooth

1st: One needs to have more income than expenditure before even thinking about socking any of it away in any kind of savings account.

Back to living wages...

2nd: Passbook savings? Are you serious? What's the average return...it couldn't be more than 4%. What's the average rate of inflation?

Post that and let's figure out if it's worth more to spend one's money now rather than save it in a piddly account.

__________________
"The theory of a free press is that truth will emerge from free discussion, not that it will be presented perfectly and instantly in any one account." -- Walter Lippmann

"You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists." -- Abbie Hoffman

wonderwench

What is bothering you is that we do think. It is not a religion. The problem with expecting the government to run our lives and shield us from the risk of our decisions is that it runs contrary to the way people are naturally wired. Liberty is not a value because it is an abstract. The drive to be an independent individual is inherent in all of us.

This leads me to why we have so much apathy and disassociation in society today. The government expects us to act in a contrary fashion to our natural hierarchy of values. A rational person values first and foremost himself and those he loves - extending outward in concentric circles of friends, acquaintances etc. He would rather use his resources to further the well-being of those closest to him. What does the government do - takes from him first an enormous portion of his income to serve complete strangers, even when doing so harms him and his family. No wonder we have such cognitive dissonance infecting our culture.