The worst thing that can happen to a good cause is, not to be skillfully attacked, but to be ineptly defended. - Frédéric Bastiat
I try to deny myself any illusions or delusions, and I think that this perhaps entitles me to try and deny the same to others, at least as long as they refuse to keep their fantasies to themselves. - Christopher Hitchens
Formerly known as BLUELINE976
The worst thing that can happen to a good cause is, not to be skillfully attacked, but to be ineptly defended. - Frédéric Bastiat
I try to deny myself any illusions or delusions, and I think that this perhaps entitles me to try and deny the same to others, at least as long as they refuse to keep their fantasies to themselves. - Christopher Hitchens
Formerly known as BLUELINE976
That is not a full explanation. If you have a problem with two "wrongs," it makes more sense to criticize the instigator and not the retaliator. My "wrong" was a satirical response to an asinine comment. Good job on ignoring that one. |
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How do you know you are not dreaming right now?
You tend to be on "my side" of the issues more so I would hope that you wouldn't use the same tactics as he did. Plus I didn't read the part you were replying to lol. |
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The worst thing that can happen to a good cause is, not to be skillfully attacked, but to be ineptly defended. - Frédéric Bastiat
I try to deny myself any illusions or delusions, and I think that this perhaps entitles me to try and deny the same to others, at least as long as they refuse to keep their fantasies to themselves. - Christopher Hitchens
Formerly known as BLUELINE976
Not wanting GE to pay 0 dollars in taxes does not make me a socialist. Try again. |
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Everything works out in the end, sometimes even badly.
I think the underlying problem here isn't that the rich are paying too little tax, I would say it is more that not enough is being spent to motivate people to get jobs or an education. Trickle down economics really isn't the right solution though. Instead of stimulating people to try improve themselves and guarantee themselves a future position in an industry money is being spent motivating businesses to stay in the country and keep the jobs of the people who are already there. |
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It's also true that education needs to be subsidized. But Universal Mind is ignoring the fact that that super wealthy pay less taxes than teachers, and he's stuck on the fact that the general wealthy pay more taxes. He's acting like I'm targeting the top 10% who pay a 35% tax margin when in reality I'm targeting the top .01-.05% that pay a 0-14% tax margin. |
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Everything works out in the end, sometimes even badly.
The problem is that the government is spending too much and the super rich are paying very little to nothing in taxes because of Bush's tax cuts. It's not that people aren't motivated to get jobs, most of the people that I know who don't have jobs are looking for one and they can't pay for an education because they don't have money because they don't have a job because they don't have an education because they don't have money... |
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I didn't say it does. Try again. |
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How do you know you are not dreaming right now?
How do you expect to lower taxes? What programs would need to go? Republicans love to advocate lower taxes but never explain how the budget would be balanced with lower taxes, hence the massive deficit and resulting inflation (which hurts the middle class). If you intended to lower taxes with a plan such as, I don't know, removing the parasitic military and prison industrial complexes, then you'd be off to a good start. But Republicans also seem to consider those two aspects of the budget to be sacrosanct. If you planned to balance the budget by cutting food stamps, college grants, etc, then you're throwing the middle class under the bus and destroying some of the most important aspects of our social infrastructure. |
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Everything works out in the end, sometimes even badly.
Yes, that would be a really good start. Ending the war on drugs, getting our military out of other countries, and cutting the vast majority of entitlement spending would be excellent. We could cut out most of this insanity... |
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How do you know you are not dreaming right now?
Yeah but you're a capitalist idealist, and much like socialism or communism, capitalism looks good on paper until you realize that too many fuckwads exist to screw it up. History has shown what happens when you completely depend on charity to handle food subsidies. What you call entitlement programs, I call safety nets. Shit happens, that's why social infrastructure exists. GE spent 0 dollars in taxes last year, and so far I haven't seen a dime of that go to space exploration. Your logic is flawed because we actually do have a trickle-down economy. Obama is basically Reagan II. And we're not seeing any good come out of giving these investors all their ridiculous tax breaks. They haven't helped anything with it, so your claim is flawed that lower taxes will fix everything. I would like to see taxes lowered for the 99% though, but I think it should be evened out by removing the tax loopholes for the 1%. |
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Everything works out in the end, sometimes even badly.
Just a slight interjection: socialism and communism don't actually look good on paper. They have fundamental flaws that make them impossible to successfully operate. |
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The worst thing that can happen to a good cause is, not to be skillfully attacked, but to be ineptly defended. - Frédéric Bastiat
I try to deny myself any illusions or delusions, and I think that this perhaps entitles me to try and deny the same to others, at least as long as they refuse to keep their fantasies to themselves. - Christopher Hitchens
Formerly known as BLUELINE976
What a wonderfully irrelevant and biased interjection. Capitalism also has "fundamental flaws" when you examine it, the idealization simply makes sense on paper for any popular economic philosophy. From each according to their ability, to each according to their need sounds nice on paper, just like individual empowerment sounds nice on paper. The idealization still comes down to principle over reality. |
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Everything works out in the end, sometimes even badly.
Whatever fundamental flaws capitalism possesses still don't inhibit its ability to immensely benefit the human race as a whole. The fundamental flaws socialism possesses actually prohibit it from working at all, nevermind with an appreciable degree of benefit or efficiency. |
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The worst thing that can happen to a good cause is, not to be skillfully attacked, but to be ineptly defended. - Frédéric Bastiat
I try to deny myself any illusions or delusions, and I think that this perhaps entitles me to try and deny the same to others, at least as long as they refuse to keep their fantasies to themselves. - Christopher Hitchens
Formerly known as BLUELINE976
Guys, lets face it, any system involving money is unsustainable. Some just take longer to die than others. |
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Infinitly greater than you are... Damn that missing E.
Not when the system/medium through which they are traded requires constant expansion to succeed. That's a different story though. One I conveniently created a thread about. |
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Infinitly greater than you are... Damn that missing E.
You can't make people owe you more money than exists without requiring constant growth. So now you have to argue there's nothing inherently unstable about constant growth. |
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Everything works out in the end, sometimes even badly.
I haven't read through the thread, I just read the question. And the answer is, the people in power now are looking for personal gain. By destroying the lower classes, the upper classes gain. They know that, definitely. As a nation we actually do have the resource and means to have a flourishing economy, but that involves sharing equally, and people aren't into that. The state of the economy is a result of power and profit mongering, lead by parties such as the government and the central banking systems. People have been warned countless times throughout history not to form governments under these ideals, but it's gone unheeded within the last century. Us Americans are now slaves, that don't realize we're slaves. Slaves to the work force, to poverty, and to deep... deep disregard of what goes on below our common radar. America sucks. And I can't wait to leave. |
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We may guess that in dreams life, matter, and vitality, as the earth knows such things, are not necessarily constant; and that time and space do not exist as our waking selves comprehend them. Sometimes I believe that this less material life is our truer life, and that our vain presence on the terraqueous globe is itself the secondary or merely virtual phenomenon." H.P. Lovecraft
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