wonderwench

A small positive return is better than a negative one - as most of us will see on our SS donations. Snickering at the idea of a regular savings plan is rather sad. Even a small account can grow substantially with compounding of modest interest rates.

Perhaps the wages would be more liveable without the hidden taxes that drive up consmer prices, thus enabling those lower wage workers to save something.

But then, I have always been an optimist.

cthulu23

Sure, it's possible, but it's hardly the primary factor. Poverty has a pretty rich history in this coutry, and definitely predates the New Deal. That's why these programs were created in the first place.

I don't give s**t about SS...it's now doomed to failure because of longer lifespans. The bigger question is how we, as a society, are going to treat the least fortunate among us. How are we going to deal with the coming elderly crunch? Surely neglect is not a legitimate answer.

wonderwench

We have certainly gotten ourselves into a mess which will take quite a bit of restructuring to address.

I like the idea of phasing out SS as an entitlement and allowing workers to own the capital of their savings. (Individual ownership has an added benefit of not being available for government "borrowing".)

We are going to have to bridge those who have been promised benefits and have no hope of earning enough to replace them. There is a ungodly amount of waste in the federal government - if we salvaged that money, we should be able to cover the bridge payments out of the general fund.

cthulu23

Who expects the government to run their lives? Why the sudden jump to extremism?

This is drifting close to American liberatarian rhetoric. Not all societal problems are a direct result of taxation and government spending.

There is also a price to pay for living in a society. Does a man not owe something to the society that he lives in? Don't you use roads or occasionally visit parks?

What do you consider fair? A regressive flat tax? 0%?

wonderwench

I'd prefer to see a flat tax for incomes above a certain level with that level fully indexed for inflation. I am not agreeing with your characterization that such a tax is regressive. The Rich will pay far more in absolute dollars than will The Poor.

Best of all: no deductions, no loopholes, no gameplaying, no thousands of pages of tax code which only serve to ensure full employment for tax attorneys. I would also abolish withholding and have people write a check to the government once a year so that they can fully appreciate its cost.

Yes, there are certain essential services (military, courts, police...) which I fully support being funded by taxes. You and I most likely disagree as to what they are.

teph

<ahem> the fair tax . . . that's fairer . . .

[edit] They've changed the policy from what I heard years ago and are now calling for a poverty refund. Haven't thoroughly researched it yet to know how low it would be, but I doubt I'm in favor of it. Still better than what we've got now.

I'm aware that this was out of nowhere

roachboy

actually, wonderwench, that is not the problem. the problem is that the way in which it looks like you think is shaped by ways of framing problems that i think are indefensable---i am not in any way calling you or anyone else stupid--but instead i think that we cannot talk unless you open up the way in which your frame of reference is put together.

for example, when you say things like "government running our lives" and "the way in which people are naturally wired" i have no idea what you are talking about--both seem arbitrary to me...

i still do not understand what possible objection you have to the redistribution of wealth... seriously....i do not understand what your viewpoint rests on. it seems to me that if you think about it in system terms--the economy is not separable from the the social situation that it shapes, and that shapes it---opposing seriously transfers of wealth is self-defeating. were you to actually eliminate them, you would bring the system to its knees immediately. it would be chaos. or it would be total repression dressed up in the language of democracy. i cannot imagine that either would be desirable. i wonder if you think about what might happen were your position to be put into effect. and try to think about it without reverting to some horatio alger bullshit about people pulling themselves up arbitrarily by their bootstraps as if the context for that act was irrelevant.


btw--regarding something from earlier--you would not have indoor plumbing were it not for sewage system--sewage systems are public works--paid for via taxes--the links to indoor plumbing systems, public works, tax funded. sewage systems became feasible not because of mass production, but because of the development of portland cement. period. there really is no debating this. your preference for indoor plumbing presupposes an infrastructure that would not exist--would not exist--without the redistribution of wealth.

you could say the same about the american highway system.

you could say the same about the telecommunications infrastructure that lets us waste time on places like this. you know, the power grid, just as an example. state funded. never would have happened via private initiative.

you could say that were it not for state support of early computer research in silicon valley, that there would be no valley in anything like its present state--you dont believe me, read some history of the valley.....

the list could go on and on....

__________________
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spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

wonderwench

My objections to redistrubution of income:

It is a violation of the right of the individual. Personal liberty and property rights are inextricably linked. Once property rights are demolished, you can kiss off personal liberty.

BTW - sewage systems, highways, telecom etc. are all functions that can be privatized. There is no magic in having the government control them.

Definitions:

- Government running our lives. Have you noticed the number of laws to guide our private behavior? These seem to be growing exponentially, and include forcing people to wear seatbelts, forbidding smoking in front of one's residence, limiting the colors one can paint a house, and on and on and on. I do believe that we are all criminals in some aspect or another. What purpose does it serve a government when the average working person can be tripped up by innocuous behavior and charged as a criminal? Isn't this an effective method to keep the population cowed into submission?

- Naturally wired. Humans have instincts which are designed to enable us to survive. Valuing one's own life is one of these. We are also wired to value the continuity of our DNA, hence the desire to protect our families. Not everyone feels these to a heightened degree - and some feel them barely, if at all. But in the broad population, these are common values. Expecting people to value strangers above themselves is irrational and unnatural.

roachboy

ok let's talk about this stuff:

"It is a violation of the right of the individual. Personal liberty and property rights are inextricably linked. Once property rights are demolished, you can kiss off personal liberty."

==on the notion of the rights of the individual--these are legally defined. they do not exist as some Form out there in the universe. so that is wrong.

on the link private property/individual liberties: this is not demonstrable. this is a question of faith--it functions as logical within a particular political framework--the linkage is not inevitable because yours is not the only politics on earth. there is no reason to assume that it is true outside your political frame of reference. private property in the sense that we understand it now is relatively recent--and is a function of mutations of law--the particular form of private property you talk about, its legal inscription and the set of assumptions rooted in it--not a bit of it is older than capitalism. in fact, much of the law concerning private property developed along with tax law. think about the napoleonic code, for example......think of it wonderwench--the very definition of private property being a functino of the taxation you oppose--how about that, huh? ironic, the real world, aint it?

"BTW - sewage systems, highways, telecom etc. are all functions that can be privatized. There is no magic in having the government control them."

===that presupposes that the infrastructures already exist. your objection was to the redistribution of wealth in principle. without it no infrastructure. period. as for privatizing infrastructure, pretty much every place that has tried it has found it to be a disaster. but i am sure you do not look at information like that. if you are curious, check out what happened in chile, for example, when they privatized the water supply (the experience of santiago is interesting in particular).

"Government running our lives...."

=====you act as though the regulation of behaviour originated with the state---that is wrong--what the state in its modern form **did** do is make these controls (potentially) political rather than leaving them in the hands of organizations like a church, so at least you can bitch about them. privatization is depoliticization--it does not remove anything, it simply makes what was a public issue into a private one. i have a good story to illustrate the point..maybe later...

i assume you are a libertarian of some kind?

"naturally wired"--

the capacities that you claim are wired are empty--the content they are given is social--what is wired are capacities and dispositions. almost nothing that influences cognition is hardwired in any direct sense. want a sustained argument to this effect, read piaget. this is not to mention a shelf of more recent cogsci that demolishes this idea. why hold onto it? because it is politically expedient to be able to make gross generalizations on that basis, because similar ideological generalizations are built into the series of fictions that structure your economic theory.

rebut if you like. i am still awake for some reason, despite it being quite late on the east coast.

__________________
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spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

bodymassage3

I don't suppose anyone could reply to what I said? I'm just curious, as the radio I listen to a few hours a day makes it sound like the general idea of "take from everyone to make everything better" is the worst thing possible. I'm not saying this in terms of how our government manages/mismanages money, but in general - isn't that what taxes are for? I think we need taxes, and it makes perfect sense as to why; but for the people on the radio to be such against this statement, aren't they also against the idea of taxes in the first place? (I don't mean someone's grandfather saying "Meh, damn taxes," or some kid getting taxed on his pizza everyday, but genuinely opposed of the basic idea of taxes.

onetime2

This thread has grown considerably since the last time I checked it. Not sure how many other points have been made in the last couple of pages but I'll start here for now.

Not sure what you mean here smooth as far as staying true to earlier comments but....

cthulu23, you are absolutely right that the Bush tax cuts were not the sole factor in the economic growth we're seeing. As I've said too many other times to count, I do not believe the President has much power over the economy. There are exceptions like the declaration of war when that war is economically substantial (I do not consider the wars of late economically substantial enough to qualify but that's an entirely separate debate). The Bush tax cuts may have edged the economy along somewhat but, in the end, the contribution was negligible. The big driver of the economy is the consumer. Sure the consumer spent that tax cut and contributed to the economy but they would have spent more than that tax cut anyway based on their confidence and spending prior to the cuts. Consumers have been spending at unbelieveable rates and that is almost entirely due to increasing wealth (home prices and stock market investments), security (401k plans taking money directly out of paychecks to be put towards retirement), and low interest rates (relatively cheap home mortgages, car loans, credit card rates, etc).

I'm getting more than sick and tired of hearing about how horrible the economy is. The economy is not struggling and probably did not need the boost from the tax cuts as it was already recovered from its barely perceptible "recession". (Recession in quotes because it was among the most minor corrections in our nation's history).

Anyway, there are many very political reasons that Bush had to do something to prove he was taking on the economy. Those reasons were generated by the press and the President's opposition (and before the partisan crap starts flying, it's true for any President whether Republican or Democrat). There is a perception (or maybe it's just a misplaced hope, I don't know) that the President and the government can control or influence the economy. This belief is pervasive and will not change anytime soon. So, any President who doesn't take the economy seriously will be punished (as the first Bush was) any that doesn't take credit when the economy is good is an idiot and any opposition party that doesn't castigate the incumbent when the economy is bad is derelict in their job.

cthulu23, I could put together an economic analysis that shows how much better the lower economic classes are compared with previous years but it takes a ton of time and I've made the mistake of doing that before only for it to be completely ignored and "rebutted" by those who do their economic analysis by proxy using article quotes from others that don't address the points I make in my analysis.

In all truth it's not worth the time because most here prefer the sound bite economic analysis presented in magazine blurbs by pseudo economists with partisan agendas. This isn't meant as a criticism of you (or anyone else that's responded in this thread) just the facts as I see them.

__________________
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onetime2

Damn Kadath I forgot you were even involved in this thread as so much has happened since that page.

Anyway, I am talking in overall terms and the things I pointed out are far more representative of the overall condition than pointing to the limited areas that are below average (yet who are still benefitting from increased home prices, low interest rates, low inflation, and nearly full employment displayed by our current economy.)

__________________
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onetime2

Taxes are not supposed to be a redistribution of wealth. Taking from many to pay for the security or infrastructure needs of all is the basic reason for taxes to the government. You can not provide for the safety and infrastructure of only those paying taxes without also supplying the safety and infrastructure to those who don't pay taxes.

Now, as far as social programs go, there are few people who argue that our society should not help to provide for those who can't provide for themselves. The elderly, infirmed, children with no parents/guardians etc. The argument then splits on how those benefits should be distributed and to whom. Both private and public institutions take on this role but, for the most part, it's government who takes care of the majority of it.

I have yet to hear a significant number of people argue that there should be no taxes paid to the government so that's not even on the table. If you do believe the government is inefficient at allocating money they receive then how can you support that they should continue to receive more and more to feed this inefficiency?

Here's a summary of my beliefs:

The government needs taxes.
The government is inefficient at spending the money they currently bring in
The government should be forced to prioritize its spending and become more accountable for the expenditures it approves.
The best way to do this is to cut their income to weed out the bad or ineffective programs that we all know exist.

__________________
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cthulu23

Actually, Americans have been accruing monstrous amounts of debt in the last few decades. Credit, not newfound wealth, has driven the spending of many of our fellow citizens. Consumer spending is keeping the economy affloat, but this pace cannot be sustained forever.

I would be interested in knowing what range of years you would use in your analysis. I'm interested in the period form the late 70's to now, which is the period of declining income that I've referenced probably 3000 times in this thread.

I don't consider it an insult to myself as I've provided pages and pages of data and analyses that was gleaned from government sources.

wonderwench

The Founders believed that these rights are inalienable and fundamental - the natural rights of human beings. They are not granted by the state - the state exists to protect them. I agree with this. To suppose that liberty is a gift from the state is antithetical to the concept of liberty. It is not a gift.

Private property existed long before the Napoleonic Code, it was just held by very few people who enslaved others. See the connection between property and liberty?

Why is private property important to liberty and responsibility? It represents the tangible results of one's efforts - it is an outcome. For those results to belong to another is defacto slavery.

We can play dueling examples of good vs. bad privatization all day long. I am less concerned about investment in infrastructure, which does serve a productive purpose, than I am with entitlement and dependency programs. I can see a benefit in certain capital intensive projects being publicly supported, although I do doubt that they are managed in a financially prudent manner.

How about that Boston Loop, eh?

Religion is a voluntary association and in this modern age, churches (at least in America) are not allowed to execute unbelievers. The U.S. was established with the principle of separation of church and state. Matters that are purely personal should not be regulated. Why should it be anyone else's business what I do in the privacy of my home? It harms nobody but myself if there is harm involved.



Although humans are cognitive beings, we are still mammals with a biological imperative. To ignore that we have natural survival instincts is to deny nature.

roachboy

agreed with onetime for the most part.

the question of whether there has to be a redistribution of wealth in the shape of social programs aimed a poverty is a political question--people who work from a more social democratic position argue that the benefits of capitalism, such as they are, should be spread across the population in the interest of greater system stability as well as for ethical reasons---the social/political/economic order is most stable when it can be seen as most just---and here is one of the flashpoint issues between positions--people are arguing about radically opposed conceptions of justice.

btw social democracy is a mixed capitalist form---it is not centrally planned, it does not fit into the conservative polarized world in which cowboy capitalism monopolizes all freedom and its opposite is stalinism.

the same general conception of the realtion of the appearance of justice to system stability explains why there are national health systems--basic health care is seen as a fundamental human right--or at least a basic right of citizens----the failure to provide it means that health care is distributed on class lines--which is indefensable if you look at it that way--so the right tries to reframe the matter.

another thing that seems to be going on through here is about what the state does to a situation when it tries to administer problems---one way of looking at it is that the state makes the arenas it moves into political--that is that it makes it possible for the public to bring organized pressure to bear on a public institution in order to make changes etc---private concerns are not amenable to this, the stakes are different.

this is usually how i see arguments for privatization---that they are aimed a depoliticizing setors that are now more public
proponents argue for privatization on other grounds--usually efficiency and for choice: the efficiency argument only functions against an assumption that the state is necessarily irrational (it is not more or less irrational than any bureacratic institution, if you think about it--it depends on feedback loops and openness in evaluating those loops, etc....)--the choice argument is simply strange to me--

to repeat an argument from above: santiago chile decided, under pressure from neoliberal ideologies, to turn control over their water supply over to a private firm---the result was not greater efficiency and lower prices as have been claimed, but much higher prices, problems of water quality, problems of consistent supply---it was a fiasco---such examples can be multiplied....

to my mind the arguments about taxation work inside these larger questions---positions about taxes usually can be mapped onto at least this grid of broader assumptions.

one more split: the right seems to work from assumptions that hierarchy is natural in all things, that unequal distribution of wealth can be understood as a function of this natural hierarchy. therefore it is not necessary to address the distribution of wealth as if it was a problem. i think this position incoherent internally and repugnant as the basis for a politics--but i really think that is how the position works. there are many ways of opposing this, but my post is already too long i suspect.

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

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

wonderwench

That is not the best way, it is the only way. Politicians are congenitally unable to not spend a pot of money that is available.

roachboy

on more thing: on the relative irrationality of the state:

hayek, one of the fathers of neo-con economics, agured that the problem for a firm/organization was concentration or monopoly---and organization became irrational when its dominance over a situation eliminated feedback loops---now since the state is involved not in a market but in the administration of social problems (from infrastructure to military to welfare to parks and so on) the feedback loops required for minimum coherence could be seen as public pressure---therefore the more irrational elements of the state would probably be those more removed from feedback loops--so you would expect the mosty irrational sectors of the state to be the most secret--which would point toward probably the military or the cia--how about that--think of bushwar.
the right cannot follow its own argument this far, so resorts to a kind of crackhead pedantry when it comes to thinking about markets, and in this one case they restrict the meaning of markets to the literal level (in other cases, the same politicos like the idea of thinking about genetics on a market model, so go figure....)

on the other hand, monopoly in a market situation (following hayek still) creates chaos because (1) they **are** involved in markets, concentration makes price from an index of internal performance to an index of internal politics---whihc would mean tht monopolies are necessarily irrational, and for the same reason that you might argue that the cia or military would be, if you follow the above. so you would think that conservatives would oppose concentration of economic power, oppose monopolies---that they would say oppose concentration of media ownership, oppose microsoft.

but its not like that. that would require a critical posture toward captial accumulation. at best, you get bromides about how microsoft is a result of the hard work of a heroic individual and about how microsofts monopoly practices are being challenged as a symptom of the states resentment of success---all of which is completely insane.

if the right followed its own economic theory, you should see them arguing for a radical opening up of the military to public scrutiny, a dismantling or radical transofrmation of the cia, against monopoly, for regulative practices that prevent excess concentration....
curious, aint it?

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

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

wonderwench

Wow, that is quite a Gordian knot of logic there, roachboy.

Despite that, the right views government and private industry as serving distinct functions with different rules of engagement.

The tri-partite form of representative government is the design by which scrutiny occurs. That's good enough for most of us. But we always have the Fourth Estate to sensationalize the juicy bits.

roachboy

here is one level of the disagreement between us, wonderwench--when i think about the state, i do not at all seperate it from the social environments within which is works--it seems to me that your view does because you assume that the important interactions occur within/between bracnhes of the state itself. if you make that move, i can see how your views of the state would follow--but i do not see how you can make the move.

same kind of thing with privatization: i think about it mostly as an operation aimed at removing zones tht are now public from public scrutiny--depoliticization--and think that all the arguments about privatization that are floating about now are bullshit. because they are arguments that seems to me to function to obscure what the effects of the move are. frankly, i think the privatization drives are operations being carried out to reduce the political risks for the state in navigating the transition into a more globalizing capitalism--the social consequences of the shift are unpredictable---easier to create cul-de-sacs that would prevent folk from understanding errors in this regard as political than otherwise.

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

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

roachboy

the relation "human nature" as stable/transcendent--natural hierarchies as structuring the world, including the effects of capitalism---blaming the poor for social inequalities (for example) seems to me to follow in a straight line. i dont buy any of it. and i do not understand how anyone would, because it leads you into positions that are really appalling if you shift them from intellectual experiments carried out sitting in front of a computer in the comfort of your home to something that could possibly inform how policy works. it would lead to jusitifcations for a thoroughly barbaric social order. it would lead you to argue that for example shitty health care afforded to the children of the poor would be fine because the poor deserve their lot---something like this came up earlier in the thread, two pages or so back, and i agreed with smooth when he laid it out.

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

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

onetime2

Yes they have been increasing their debt levels but not beyond what is sustainable based on their levels of wealth accumulation. If it was not sustainable what do you think would be happening to bankruptcies and foreclosures?

The timing would depend on the specific indicators. Some have more history than others. I would typically go back beyond the period you describe.

The pages of analyses and data you have provided, while "gleaned" from government sources, ignore the very facts that I've pointed out in this thread. The articles and analyses so readily available are so full of holes in reasoning, analytic rigor, and economic theory that it's almost laughable. To point to one or two indicators to prop up broad economic phalacies is the worst possible "analysis".

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smooth

That's all I meant by my comment.

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

wonderwench

You make the mistake of believing that someone must be to blame for inequalities of life situation. The premise for such a belief is that life should be fair. I disagree with that concept. Life is chaotic and full of risks. Sometimes good things happen; other times bad. It is a waste of time and energy to try to assign blame for such randomness to another person or society.

onetime2

I suspected that but wasn't sure if there was a specific post you were talking about and I was afraid that I was going to fail to address it specifically. Thanks.

__________________
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cthulu23

The banruptcy rate has been ballooning. In fact, the Bankruptcy Reform Bill was passed due to the growing "abuse" (use) of the system.

Follow this link for some numbers. The link is from the Cato Institute, who I don't agree with on most everything, but you can't dispute hard numbers. Notice that the number one given reason for bankruptcy is credit card debt. Is this the healthy expression of growing wealth that you speak of?


Perhaps I find your reasoning "laughable." You talk in generalities about wealth growth without giving much backing evidence. Perhaps you are right, but given that you don't feel that it's worth your while to grace us with an analysis, we may never know.

cthulu23

You make the mistake of assuming that all inequalitites are the result of chaos and uncontrollable circumstances. Sometimes it is quite possible to justly assign blame for social problems. The reforms of the past were not jsut dreamed up by some socialist cabal, but were enacted to address real grievances suffered by real people. Should we repeal the child labor or anti-sweatshop laws because they are trying to enforce "fairness?" Life may not be fair, but that is no excuse to ignore the injustices that we can do something about.

onetime2

Bankruptcies are far from a huge problem at this point and the statistics you quote are from 1996. Is there growing abuse within the bankruptcy system? Absolutely and these "fake" bankruptcies need to be factored out of the "real" bankruptcies. But why bother with making them applicable to the argument at hand, right?

Thank you for proving my earlier point about real economic analysis being a waste of time given the audience. You have no desire to learn the truth, you only want to prop up the poorly thought out economic "truths" du jour.

I suspect we have nothing more to talk about as you scream for evidence before you will believe something which has been clearly laid out yet you were perfectly willing to go along with your own evidence which was proven to be inaccurate.

__________________
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cthulu23

Who said anything about valuing strangers over ourselves? Once more, you drift very close to objectivist dogma. The choices are not so simple as "give everything or nothing." What is needed is a fusion of both self-interest and social concern, or what is frequently referred to as "enlgihtened self-interest."

cthulu23

Is it more reasonable to believe that the rise in bankruptcies is wholly due to "abuses" of the system and have nothing to do with rising debt or the negative savings rate of many Americans?

The graph that you show is the percent change in bankruptcy filings from the previous year...here's a bar graph that's a little easier to understand at a glance. It shows the linear rate of growth for non-business bankruptcy filings from 1993-2001:




Wow, they've doubled. Your graph probably states the same thing, but it's form obfuscates the data.

You speak of "holes" in my "laughable" ideas, yet you have provided little more than anecdotal evidence and a graph that shows the increase in bankruptcy rates...who is ducking the "truth" here? Calling my evidence untrue is hardly proof. Maybe I'm from Missouri.....show me I'm wrong. Hell, show me the earlier posts that disprove what I say. I'm more than willing to confront my own stupidity. My wife does it to me all the time.

roachboy

interesting discussion.
i do wish that there was a way to be more explicit about the politics of the sources, but there we are.

wonderwench---you do understand that human beings make history, that they make their social world and the conceptions of it, and that ineuqities that result are a function of human beings and that therefore it is obviously not a problem to demand that those inequities be addressed.
and if there was a god behind this, or somenatural order, you would think that it would have to be a fucked up kind of god, or that the natural order should be something that a civlized country works to replace with something more humane. we are not, after all, creatures in some jungle unless we ourselves make that jungle and talk ourselves into reducing ourselves to a position inside it.

__________________
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spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

roachboy

o, i wanted to say thanks though for (humoring me?) trying to open this discussion out a bit. even if we still disagree about matters of substance, it is a much less exasperating state of affairs now, because at least--for me anyway--i can work under the assumption that there is a real (possible, tenuous) dialogue.

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

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

wonderwench

No - laws which protect people from being the victims of fraud, coercion and violence are right and just. They are consistent with protecting the rights of the individual as outlined in the Bill of Rights (which describes "negative" rights - or the right to be left alone). The addressing of inequalities of situation, however, are largely done through the assertion of "positive" rights - which are really just needs. To claim a "positive" right, be in health care, food, shelter etc., is to insist that someone else supply the productivity to fulfill one's need. That is not protection of one's liberty - it is the exploitation of another.

cthulu23

Although I do see the distinction that you are trying to make, I think that in reality the line between the two is blurred quite a bit. For example, when does treatment of a worker constitute harm? Almost everyone would agree that 10 cents an hour is an exploitative wage, but at what dollar amount does exploitation end and just payment begin? At what point does the government step in and protect the workers from unfair paractices? Do you see my point here?

Whatever the case, most Americans do favor some sort form of limited social safety net. This is why Beltway Republicans have only gingerly approached the topic of Social Security, advising reforms (privatization) rather than abolition. If a person is a willing participant in a program, they are hardly being exploited by it. Not that you feel the same, of course.

roachboy

wonderwench--that **only**obtains within your assumptions--that providing health care for all within an industrialized country is somehow exploitation of others---i reject the argument entirely---you could view health care as a basic human right--indeed the rest of the indutrialized world does so--and that could just as easily be written into legal assumptions as the contrary. personally, i think the american view of health care is totally barbaric. i do not see how it squares with any ethical principles whatsoever. the economic argument for private health care seems arbitrary--reserach funding for example-=-france has a better health care system than the states in almost every respect--except maybe for high tech, high capital care reserved to save the lives of the wealthy, whose lives are presumably worht more than those of the less privileged? do you really believe that?

taxation is not an end in itself.

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

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

onetime2

It only obfuscates it if you have no idea how to read it. Yep you're right cthulu23 it's me that's ducking the truth. I stand behind everything I've stated. Nowhere did I say rising bankruptcies weren't happening I said they weren't a problem for the economy because they are relatively small.

You ignore everything I've said because it doesn't fit your theories. Theories which are based on little to no knowledge of the facts as demonstrated by your single piece of evidence pointing to how much worse off the average worker is. It's truly a shame that piece of evidence was proved not to support your case.

If bankruptcies were a problem for the economy where do you think the cost of credit would be? After all, anytime banks lose money they have to make it up by charging more right?

Nah, nevermind. I forgot that facts are inconsequential. As far as showing you earlier posts that prove that you're wrong, you were right there all along so you know exactly where they are. You simply choose to ignore them. The simple "show me" fact is that the "real wages" you were clinging so closely to under estimate the earnings of the people you claim are being hurt the most.

Feel free to provide evidence that I am wrong. Point to increasing costs of credit, more difficulty in obtaining mortgages or loans of any sort. It isn't happening. And that's exactly what would be happening if bankruptcies were as widespread as you seem to think. 1.6 million bankruptcies out of what 180 or so million consumers? Yep quite the economic problem there.

__________________
Strive to be more curious than ignorant.

wonderwench

France has twice the rate of unemployment as the U.S.

The argument against government provided health care is not economic; it is Constitutional.
Anyone who asserts they have a right to it is insisting that someone else pay for it.

cthulu23

Nope you said

which was in response to my assertion that Americans are accruing unhealthy amounts of debt. I only brought up the increasing bankruptcy rate after you posted this because it seemed to run counter to your statement.

Stats on "wealth" growth are a little more difficult to find than stats on income. Here are a few:

http://www.faireconomy.org/research/wealth_charts.html

These are from 1998, the most recent year of wealth statistics that I could find. You were right in your assertions that wealth has grown for a significant portion of the population, but the losses for the bottom 40% are dramatic.

Quote:

If bankruptcies were a problem for the economy where do you think the cost of credit would be? After all, anytime banks lose money they have to make it up by charging more right?

This does sound reasonable, but I never said bankruptcies were going to shake our economy. See above. Anyway, our credit market has been driven by the lowest interest rates in recent memory. it cannot last forever.

To try to steer this debate back to a more polite footing, aren't you concerned with the record levels of consumer debt? I've heard voices from across the political/economic spectrum decry it.
This article from thestreet.com seems to predict that this mountain of debt will begin to bite back soon. Are they and other conventional economic voices nothing but Chicken Littles?

cthulu23

So you are against all government powers and programs that aren't explicitly enumerated in the Constitution?

wonderwench

I'm against those that violate the principles spelled out in the original Bill of Rights.

Seizing the productivity of an individual against his will is an abuse of state power, imo.