Kristoff gave us a starting point to talk, but you just want to keep perpetuating tired old canards. I tried.Quote:
Originally Posted by excon
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Kristoff gave us a starting point to talk, but you just want to keep perpetuating tired old canards. I tried.Quote:
Originally Posted by excon
It's not an old canard, Romney a recent candidate said it, of course he is now irrelevant, 47% are irrelevant to Republicans, that's the other 47%
Um, this is the canard:Quote:
Originally Posted by paraclete
My name is not Romney and that's not what most of us believe.The discussion was about Kristof acknowledging something we've been saying for years. Are liberals willing to reach a solution together or do they just want to continue with myths, class warfare and perpetuating the problem?Quote:
The way to bring people out of dependency is NOT to cut 'em loose and make 'em fend for themselves... That would by YOUR solution... You believe they're NOT hungry - they're MOOCHERS. You believe they're NOT homeless - they're MOOCHERS.
The problem is you can't let people starve just because they are disadvantaged. They may carry some of the blame for their condition and they may not. They are not moochers because they need help. I don't believe a person is homeless by choice even though their actions may have led them to that point. A homeless person is often someone who has a form of mental illness, in the same way the disadvantaged don't cope for a number of reasons but they are not moochers. Look we all know someone who can't get their shlt together, most families have them, mine has one and I know another. We want these people to be different, to get a job, to live differently, but sometimes you do have to cut them loose
All the homeless who hung out at the public libraries where I worked were mentally ill and were not medicated. The root of this is back in US history when the mental institutions were emptied and patients were deinstitutionalized. There weren't enough controls to "force" footloose and fancy-free mental patients to take their meds. My uncle would have ended up homeless, but my family (mostly me) rode herd on him and got him back into a VA hospital every few years when he stopped taking his meds and then started sliding back downhill mentally. Not everyone has dedicated and loving family members and/or the resources to seek hospitalization.
not everyone needs hospitalisation but they do need to be part of a family, we as a society and I speak of societies in many places have lost our values and we are interested only in what is good for us personally. We saw the worst of that with Romney's comment, he clearly had no interest in connecting with those who couldn't or wouldn't get him elected
Profiting From a Child?s Illiteracy - NYTimes.com
So everybody thinks like apalachian hillbilly's? So because one backward family was scamming the system then the system doesn't work so throw it out? That's always the flaw in right wing thinking. Find one example and blame everybody. But the author also goes on to cite,
At leasts he seems to acknowledge that some can be helped so help them, and some need a lot more help, so try to help them too. But you righties don't acknowledge at all the long term lack of opportunity, or the right help. But you are quick to point out it's a waste of time and money.Quote:
There's a danger in drawing too firm conclusions about an issue — fighting poverty — that is as complex as human beings themselves. I'm no expert on domestic poverty. But for me, a tentative lesson from the field is that while we need safety nets, the focus should be instead on creating opportunity — and, still more difficult, on creating an environment that leads people to seize opportunities.
And you are also somehow under the impression I want to let the moochers starve? That's the same canard as ex. Seriously dude, I'm talking about people gaming the system and policies that perpetuate the problem. You give people incentives not to work and too many won't. You give them incentives to be a single parent on welfare and what do you expect?Quote:
Originally Posted by paraclete
Funny how you have libs have this inexplicable need to turn an example we present into us blaming everyone. No wonder we can't work together for solutions. Read the article, Tal, he gave more than just that example.Quote:
Originally Posted by talaniman
This small window of facts pales in the face that most poor people work. It's a small example against a bigger picture. You don't talk solutions just symptoms of a bigger problem that needs to be addressed and hillybilly's don't bankrupt America.
Tal, you think only Appalachian hill folk are the only ones gaming the system this way? Bwa ha ha ha!! DUDE, you're missing the bigger picture here not me.Quote:
Originally Posted by talaniman
Example 1 of the bigger picture:
Example 2: of the bigger picture:Quote:
Antipoverty programs also discourage marriage: In a means-tested program like S.S.I. a woman raising a child may receive a bigger check if she refrains from marrying that hard-working guy she likes. Yet marriage is one of the best forces to blunt poverty. In married couple households only one child in 10 grows up in poverty, while almost half do in single-mother households.
Example 3 of the bigger picture:Quote:
Most wrenching of all are the parents who think it’s best if a child stays illiterate, because then the family may be able to claim a disability check each month.
Example 4 of the bigger picture:Quote:
About four decades ago, most of the children S.S.I. covered had severe physical handicaps or mental retardation that made it difficult for parents to hold jobs — about 1 percent of all poor children. But now 55 percent of the disabilities it covers are fuzzier intellectual disabilities short of mental retardation, where the diagnosis is less clear-cut. More than 1.2 million children across America — a full 8 percent of all low-income children — are now enrolled in S.S.I. as disabled, at an annual cost of more than $9 billion.
That is a burden on taxpayers, of course, but it can be even worse for children whose families have a huge stake in their failing in school. Those kids may never recover: a 2009 study found that nearly two-thirds of these children make the transition at age 18 into S.S.I. for the adult disabled. They may never hold a job in their entire lives and are condemned to a life of poverty on the dole — and that’s the outcome of a program intended to fight poverty.
Personally I don't give a rat's a$$ how many people game the system, one is too many and your solution is to make excuses. We need to stop using our children as pawns in this game and change the culture so they have that hope and can succeed and break the cycle of government dependence.Quote:
Our political system has created a particularly robust safety net for the elderly, focused on Social Security and Medicare — because the elderly vote. This safety net has brought down the poverty rate among the elderly from about 35 percent in 1959 to under 9 percent today.
BECAUSE kids don’t have a political voice, they have been neglected — and have replaced the elderly as the most impoverished age group in our country. Today, 22 percent of children live below the poverty line.
Of American families living in poverty today, 8 out of 10 have air-conditioning, and a majority have a washing machine and dryer. Nearly all have microwave ovens. What they don’t have is hope. You see it here in the town of Jackson, in the teenage girls hanging out by the bridge over the north fork of the Kentucky River, seeking to trade their bodies for prescription painkillers or methamphetamines.
So what program is the solution to this issue?
And your solution is to eliminate all the programs? To make people get married? Can't you see that the dependence you speak of and cite is the lack of hope, guidance, support, and it's the lack of money that drives most of today's problems. NOT well intentioned programs that could stand to be more efficient.
Good grief Tal, could you drop this worn out straw man that we want end all programs and just cut everyone off? I am not believing I referenced a well-known liberal as a starting point to talk and you and ex just can't keep your knees from jerking.Quote:
Originally Posted by talaniman
My solution is the same as Kristof's and what another liberal columnist Leonard Pitts used to say, do "what works." Kristof used what Save the Children does as an example:
It's not a matter of efficiency, it's an attitude problem and a system that ENCOURAGES government dependence. There is no hope when parents intentionally use their children as pawns for a government handout. I was willing to talk about it, but you're hellbent on making excuses, promoting that victimhood mentality and spreading myths.Quote:
Save the Children trains community members to make home visits to at-risk moms like Ms. Hurley, and help nurture the skills they need in the world’s toughest job: parenting. These visits begin in pregnancy and continue until the child is 3 years old.
Then let's stop the young teen girls (or even younger ones) from getting pregnant and ending up as single moms on some government program.Quote:
Originally Posted by speechlesstx
Well that's really no solution, just pithy words.Quote:
My solution is the same as Kristof's and what another liberal columnist Leonard Pitts used to say, do "what works."
Remember those dependent people are a mix of conservatives and liberals so it really isn't on political issue on their side. Perhaps the issue resides in why people's attitudes towards parenting has gone downhill so much. I for one do not believe it's the world's toughest job at all when you 're committed to it.
What part of love, support, and guidance do you have a problem with? If cheating and stealing is the only way to feed yourself, or family, that's what you will do, if you don't know better.
Its like when YOU said Obama was eliminating work requirements for public assistance and it was actually the states request to allow for more flexible help before the requirements could be implemented.
Now you say its government that encourages this desperate behavior by some that leads to dependence. I say it doesn't. If there is no intervention in this way of thinking, it will not change. Charity can only do so much as they are limited, and government is the option of last resort, but if you make it the problem then you destroy the ONLY option for some.
Adam Smith 'The Wealth of Nations, Book II, Chapter III, para 30 'Quote:
Great nations are never impoverished by private, though they sometimes are by public prodigality and misconduct. The whole, or almost the whole public revenue, is in most countries employed in maintaining unproductive hands…Such people, as they themselves produce nothing, are all maintained by the produce of other men's labour. When multiplied, therefore, to an unnecessary number, they may in a particular year consume so great a share of this produce, as not to leave a sufficiency for maintaining the productive labourers, who should reproduce it next year… Those unproductive hands, who should be maintained by a part only of the spare revenue of the people, may consume so great a share of their whole revenue, and thereby oblige so great a number to encroach upon their capitals, upon the funds destined for the maintenance of productive labour, that all the frugality and good conduct of individuals may not be able to compensate the waste and degradation of produce occasioned by this violent and forced encroachment.
Blah, blah, blah. You are a broken record.Quote:
Originally Posted by talaniman
The problem has been pointed out and defined ad nauseum but possible solutions aren't very forthcoming.Quote:
Adam Smith 'The Wealth of Nations, Book II, Chapter III, para 30
It's not as if any of my fellow American libs here were willing to engage in an honest discussion anyway other than to say reduce teen pregnancies. Wow.Quote:
Originally Posted by NeedKarma
It is one suggestion. One. What is your solution?Quote:
Originally Posted by speechlesstx
I have no answers to the problems caused by our move to a socialist state It would appear that the majority of people everywhere are attracted to the idea of getting something for nothing, at someone else's expense.
And you know this how?Quote:
Originally Posted by tomder55
I don't think he knows what socialism is other than trying to turn the word into a pejorative.
Yes how's that going for you? If as you say this is the majority opinion, in a democracy the majority rules and so there isn't a problem unless you let it get out of hand, such as in Greece. Let's face it, Tom, business gets something at someoneelse's expense through government subsidy, you have a whole lobbying industry working hard to achieve just such an objective, as well as your representatives and senators and you think this is socialism. No, you are bleating because the poor and underpriviliged might get part of the pieQuote:
Originally Posted by tomder55
I want everyone to have part of the pie. Making a pie takes work, eating one someone else made requires little effort.Quote:
Originally Posted by paraclete
Speaking of lobbying, raising taxes leads to more of it.
But hey, at least Obama can fulfill a campaign promise.Quote:
As important, many politicians support tax breaks for favored groups (the elderly, the poor, small business) and causes (homeownership, attending college, “green” industries). This enhances their power. The man who really pronounced the death sentence for the Tax Reform Act of 1986 was Bill Clinton, who increased the top rate to 39.6 percent rather than broadening the base.As the top rate rose, so did the value of generating new tax breaks. Ironically, many of the people who complain the loudest about Washington influence-peddling and lobbying are the same people who support higher tax rates, which stimulate more influence-peddling and lobbying.
P.S. Again France leads the way in teaching us about high tax rates...
I can't imagine him not wanting to stick around while his country taxes him at 75 percent, can you? The Socialist mayor of Paris just doesn't think he's being generous any more.Quote:
French actor Depardieu seeks Belgian residency: mayor
Senesael said Depardieu would join some 2,800 French living in the same area a few minutes drive from the border, including the Mulliez family, owners of French hypermarket chain Auchan and Decathlon sports stores, who have lived there for years.
Belgian residents do not pay wealth tax, which in France is now slapped on individuals with assets over 1.3 million euros, nor do they pay capital gains tax on the sale of shares.
Damn greedy people. What are you going to do?Quote:
“It is sad because he is a great actor and someone I know and like,” said Bertrand Delanoe, the Socialist mayor of Paris. “He is a generous man but in this instance he is not showing that.”
You know my position on that ;so it is not a valid counter-argument and does not at all address the fact that the biggest breakdown in society has coincided with dependency on the leviathian state... socialist or otherwise . Call it progressive if you're more comfortable with that. .Quote:
let's face it, Tom, business gets something at someoneelse's expense through government subsidy, you have a whole lobbying industry working hard to achieve just such an objective, as well as your representatives and senators and you think this is socialism. No, you are bleating because the poor and underpriviliged might get part of the pie
Quote:
Originally Posted by paraclete
Exactly.
Let's talk about Steve's bigger picture and Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. Smith says, "The authority of riches...is perhaps in the rudest age of society which admits of any considerable inequality of fortune"
Smith is talking about the unproductive labour. The managers, technocrats, and other specialists that make living off productive labour. The rudeness here is the belief that one unproductive part of society is dragging the country down. It is the rent-seeks that will turn us into a third world country. The Leviathan state serves the wealthy just as much as it serves the poor.
That's a more complete picture.
Tut
Hi speechQuote:
Originally Posted by speechlesstx
Let's avoid the issue of who made the pie for a moment, this is really about paying for benefits of various Kinds (the pie you have already eaten) which have been bought with borrowed money. A large part of the pie goes to paying the interest and no part of the pie goes to repaying the debt. What we hear are arguments as to why we should bake a bigger pie.
The greedy people, ie; those in higher income brackets and with big assets, think the pie belongs to them. What you have to do is reform, and as you can see in Europe having taxation systems which aren't uniform in neighbouring states is an incentive to decamp and avoid reform. So what you need is a uniform taxation system. Everyone pays the same no matter where they live.
There is a cure for this and I'm sure you have heard of it. It is called inflation. That is where you get a bigger pie full of hot air
If those job creators would create some jobs and stop sending them overseas to countries that I now have to call to get computer or cell phone problems fixed, that dependency would fade away.Quote:
Originally Posted by tomder55
But its called trade and it is part of foreign policy to make other dependent upon your business. Do you want to reverse the foreign policy gains of all those years? I mean it is only fair that those who make the product should have a part in solving the problems. If only. The thing is you have to realise that the innovation that makes those products cheap and available didn't necessarily come from your nation. You want to create jobs, do something no one has done before, use raw materials you have to mine and process yourselves or just focus on yourselves, put some of that brain power you have invested in colleges to work. You see you were great when the innovation was home grown, the car industry, the aircraft industry, the oil industry, skyscrapers but the nation building has been done, you don't need as much innovation and the lowly paid jobs, they have leftQuote:
Originally Posted by Wondergirl
Quote:
Originally Posted by tomder55
I'm glad you said, "socialist or otherwise". It is the otherwise bit that seems to be ignored when looking at the bigger picture.
The bigget crisis in society is when greedy rich guys tank the economy.Quote:
Originally Posted by tomder55
You know my position on that ;so it is not a valid counter-argument and does not at all address the fact that the biggest breakdown in society has coincided with dependency on the leviathian state... socialist or otherwise . Call it progressive if you're more comfortable with that. .
Yes it isn't just the socialist state that spends itsself into bankruptcy, republican states have a history of doing the same thing. I think it has something to do with concentration of power in the hands of one person
One of Obama's green energy successes just went to... China.Quote:
Originally Posted by Wondergirl
Chinese company buys battery maker that got recovery funds
And yet you reelected them.Quote:
Originally Posted by talaniman
FYI...
Dem Senators Ask Delay in Medical Device Tax
Why? Raising taxes costs jobs? Really?
Rich guys aren't elected or re elected, and the right is as corrupt as the left when it comes to being greedy, or helping the greedy rip us off.
Quote:
Originally Posted by talaniman
7 of the top 10 are Democrats, imagine that. How many times combined have they been elected I wonder? Or are these guys not rich enough to qualify as rich and greedy?Quote:
The 50 Richest Members of Congress (2011)
1. Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) $294.21 Million
2. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) $220.40 Million
3. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) $193.07 Million
4. Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) $81.63 Million
5. Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) $76.30 Million
6. Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.) $65.91 Million
7. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) $55.07 Million
8. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) $52.93* Million
9. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) $45.39 Million
10. Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.) $44.21 Million
11. Rep. Jim Renacci (R-Ohio) $35.87* Million
12. Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) $35.20 Million
13. Rep. Rick Berg (R-N.D.) $21.60* Million
14. Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) $21.18 Million
15. Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-N.J.) $20.35 Million
16. Sen. James Risch (R-Idaho) $19.78 Million
17. Rep. Gary Miller (R-Calif.) $17.45 Million
18. Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) $17.00 Million
19. Rep. Kenny Marchant (R-Texas) $16.45 Million
20. Rep. Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.) $15.46 Million
21. Rep. Richard Hanna (R-N.Y.) $13.73** Million
22. Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) $11.90* Million
23. Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) $11.60 Million
24. Rep. Scott Rigell (R-Va.) $10.69* Million
25. Rep. Diane Black (R-Tenn.) $10.63* Million
26. Rep. Tom Petri (R-Wis.) $10.60 Million
27. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) $10.38 Million
28. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) $10.35 Million
29. Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) $10.28 Million
30. Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) $10.14 Million
31. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) $10.14***Million
32. Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) $9.88 Million
33. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) $9.84 Million
34. Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.) $9.43 Million
35. Rep. Nan Hayworth (R-N.Y.) $9.35* Million
36. Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-Nev.) $9.29 Million
37. Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) $9.23 Million
38. Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) $8.53 Million
39. Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-Texas) $8.51* Million
40. Rep. John Campbell (R-Calif.) $8.44 Million
41. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) $8.18* Million
42. Rep. Steve Pearce (R-N.M.) $8.03* Million
43. Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) $7.94* Million
44. Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) $7.93 Million
45. Rep. Bill Flores (R-Texas) $7.71* Million
46. Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) $7.41 Million
47. Sen. Kay Hagan (D-N.C.) $7.06 Million
48. Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) $6.56 Million
49. Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) $6.47 Million
50. Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R-Texas) $6.21 Million
Just looking after their interests
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