The Unemployed vs the Wealthiest Among us.

[shintao]

The Unemployed vs the Wealthiest Among us.

What is wrong with right wing conservatism when it fights for the 'rights' of corporations and the wealthiest among us, and not for the rights of the unemployed working class, the formerly great, American middle class?

The right is fighting for Corporate involvement in the political process and for their right to borrow another $700 Billion Dollars from China so we can give the wealthiest a tax break...that will be paid for by the children and grandchildren of the shrinking middle class.

The right wing will not fight for the unemployed because we might have to borrow how man millions vs $700 billion?

See Dante, We want people to have their own money and make their own choices. We want businesses to be around so people can be employed in an enterprise that actually generates wealth rather than a corrupt government bueaucracy.

We also want the government to stop spending money. Crazy concept I know. But do we really need 800K to help people wash their genitals?

A business enterprise can generate wealth and very few jobs, and it can generate wealth with jobs overseas. Neither option is good for the working and the unemployed in the USA.

Most American businesses suckle on the tit of government monies -- wake up.

The government spending money on infrastructure and services is what is making developing countries competitive. Countries that do not spend on infrastructure and services end up with the most corruption.

Businesses have lots of corruption and shit -- but no sane person wants to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Everything in life has a price -- including stupidity and shortsightedness.

Why don't these bums collectively chip in and start a business?

 

[Soggy in NOLA]

Your view is so fucked up its stupid to even debate.

Everyone should hate the conservatives, look how evil they are, class warfare.

Marxism hard at work.

Everything that oozes from Dante's twisted, bitter, pea-sized head is too fucked up and stupid to debate. Just keep walking.....

 

[Soggy in NOLA]

Never ending unemployment is part of the master plan... get the middle class used to welfare.

 

[Soggy in NOLA]

The Unemployed vs the Wealthiest Among us.

What is wrong with right wing conservatism when it fights for the 'rights' of corporations and the wealthiest among us, and not for the rights of the unemployed working class, the formerly great, American middle class?

The right is fighting for Corporate involvement in the political process and for their right to borrow another $700 Billion Dollars from China so we can give the wealthiest a tax break...that will be paid for by the children and grandchildren of the shrinking middle class.

The right wing will not fight for the unemployed because we might have to borrow how man millions vs $700 billion?

See Dante, We want people to have their own money and make their own choices. We want businesses to be around so people can be employed in an enterprise that actually generates wealth rather than a corrupt government bueaucracy.

We also want the government to stop spending money. Crazy concept I know. But do we really need 800K to help people wash their genitals?

A business enterprise can generate wealth and very few jobs, and it can generate wealth with jobs overseas. Neither option is good for the working and the unemployed in the USA.

Most American businesses suckle on the tit of government monies -- wake up.

The government spending money on infrastructure and services is what is making developing countries competitive. Countries that do not spend on infrastructure and services end up with the most corruption.

Businesses have lots of corruption and shit -- but no sane person wants to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Everything in life has a price -- including stupidity and shortsightedness.

Yes, and you have invested heavily in both, obviously.

Tell me there smart guy, where exactly does government get it's money?

 

[Contumacious]

The Unemployed vs the Wealthiest Among us.

What is wrong with right wing conservatism when it fights for the 'rights' of corporations and the wealthiest among us, and not for the rights of the unemployed working class, the formerly great, American middle class?

The right is fighting for Corporate involvement in the political process and for their right to borrow another $700 Billion Dollars from China so we can give the wealthiest a tax break...that will be paid for by the children and grandchildren of the shrinking middle class.

The right wing will not fight for the unemployed because we might have to borrow how man millions vs $700 billion?

Hello Comrade, how is the weather Petrograd?

FDR provoked the First Bolshevik Revolution in 1935.

Since then the proletariat has been using its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, and is in the process of centralizing all instruments of production in the hands of the state.

Is the pace to slow for ya'?

.

 

[MikeK]

Do people who collect unemployment benefits for 99 weeks ever intend to work?

While there is no question that a percentage of those collecting unemployment checks are not looking for jobs it's not fair to speculate on how great that percentage is without having proportional evidence to show that jobs are available to those who might want them.

Being unemployed for ninety-nine weeks would be highly unusual during periods of economic stability, which is not the present situation. The U.S. economy has been severely undermined by corporations which have exported jobs to foreign countries.

The unemployed workers are not to blame for this crisis. NAFTA is, along with the elimination of regulations that once protected American workers against abandonment by American corporations.

Call any credit card issuer to inquire about something and you'll talk with a representative in India who barely speaks English. Same situation with any of the credit reporting agencies. Same with most major corporations. This phenomenon is one small example of what has happened and is happening in this place that once was our America. What we are seeing is the manifestation of "The New World Order" H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan's corporatist assistant, was talking about in 1981 when those neo-Conservative bastards had just begun to disassemble the American middle class.

So don't focus critical attention on those who have been unemployed for 99 weeks. Except for a very small percentage those people would still be working were it not for Reaganomics and its extended effects.

 

[Political Junky]

I work for a rich conservative, its great, free coffee, free dinner if I work Sunday which is frequent, dinner at his house on the San Clemente beach, I get a rental car, I get paid for my food while I travel, my rich boss pays a hundred percent of my expenses. My rich boss also gives me the best health care coverage, dental coverage, even eyeglass coverage.

I am not working this week but my rich conservative boss has a contract with Tecnatom of Spain and I get to go to Spain to work. My rich conservative boss is giving my 85 bucks a day for food, tax free, I will spend about 20 bucks a day.

I do have a friend that is rich as well, conservative, he just paid my expenses plus a 100 bucks a day to do some work for him. So because I have a rich conservative friend I spent the weekend doing light work, staying in Monterey, eating at restaurants rubbing elbows with the rich.

Carmel California is 50/50, Liberal, Conservative. Pretty funny, the Liberals have formed a group to buy up all the land, secure the water rights, to prevent the poor from moving into the area, my rich conservative friend is working with some others to take over the privately owned water company because of the water problem, the Liberals are fighting my rich conservative friends group, the Liberals argue that the Liberal corporation should retain ownership, the conservatives want to make it a publicly owned utility.

Too many Liberals are bad apples, racist, mean, terrible people, imagine taking action to prevent the poor from being able to live in Carmel at the same time using the labor they provide, the Liberals have no problem underpaying the Mexicans, the Liberals give zero health care coverage to these Mexicans, the Liberals never invite them to dinner.

I will never be a Liberal, I give too much of my own money to the poor and go out of my way for those in need.

You sure love the rich, but you'll probably never be rich.

 

[georgephillip]

See Dante, We want people to have their own money and make their own choices. We want businesses to be around so people can be employed in an enterprise that actually generates wealth rather than a corrupt government bueaucracy.

We also want the government to stop spending money. Crazy concept I know. But do we really need 800K to help people wash their genitals?

A business enterprise can generate wealth and very few jobs, and it can generate wealth with jobs overseas. Neither option is good for the working and the unemployed in the USA.

Most American businesses suckle on the tit of government monies -- wake up.

The government spending money on infrastructure and services is what is making developing countries competitive. Countries that do not spend on infrastructure and services end up with the most corruption.

Businesses have lots of corruption and shit -- but no sane person wants to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Everything in life has a price -- including stupidity and shortsightedness.

Yes, and you have invested heavily in both, obviously.

Tell me there smart guy, where exactly does government get it's money?

How much of its value would money retain without government?

Who supplies the monopoly of violence in your perfect economy?

 

[georgephillip]

Do people who collect unemployment benefits for 99 weeks ever intend to work?

While there is no question that a percentage of those collecting unemployment checks are not looking for jobs it's not fair to speculate on how great that percentage is without having proportional evidence to show that jobs are available to those who might want them.

Being unemployed for ninety-nine weeks would be highly unusual during periods of economic stability, which is not the present situation. The U.S. economy has been severely undermined by corporations which have exported jobs to foreign countries.

The unemployed workers are not to blame for this crisis. NAFTA is, along with the elimination of regulations that once protected American workers against abandonment by American corporations.

Call any credit card issuer to inquire about something and you'll talk with a representative in India who barely speaks English. Same situation with any of the credit reporting agencies. Same with most major corporations. This phenomenon is one small example of what has happened and is happening in this place that once was our America. What we are seeing is the manifestation of "The New World Order" H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan's corporatist assistant, was talking about in 1981 when those neo-Conservative bastards had just begun to disassemble the American middle class.

So don't focus critical attention on those who have been unemployed for 99 weeks. Except for a very small percentage those people would still be working were it not for Reaganomics and its extended effects.

The Gipper and the Republicans have done their share to decimate the US middle class, but the attack is bipartisan as Obama's latest compromise proves once again that Democrats AND Republicans depend on the same 1% -2% of the population for their campaign contributions.

From Social Inequality in America:

"At a cost of $150 billion over the next two years, it maintains George W. Bush’s reduction in the high-end income tax rate―for those taking home over $250,000 for married couples and $200,000 for individuals―at 35 percent.

"According to the Center for Tax Justice, the wealthiest one percent of taxpayers will pocket almost $77,000 per year more as a result of the deal.

"The top 1 percent would take home over 25 percent of the total tax cut; the bottom 60 percent would share less than that, about 20 percent.

"Despite White House protestations to the contrary, there is no reason to believe that Democrats will reverse these tax cuts in two years’ time, when Republicans will control the House of Representatives. (In a Presidential election year)

"Over the next ten years, the perpetuation of the high-end income tax rate reduction will cost $700 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office, far more than was allocated for infrastructure improvements in Obama’s 2009 stimulus package, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act....

"According to an analysis by the Tax Policy Center, 51 million households―a third of the total―will be worse off as a result of the tax package.

"This is because for those with the greatest need--couples making less than $40,000 or individuals making less than $20,000―the Social Security tax break will not offset the tax break it is replacing, the Making Work Pay credit, resulting in an average household loss of $210 per year for 45 million households...

"The net effect of the law is an acceleration of the redistribution of wealth from the working class to a tiny layer of the financial elite.

"This takes the immediate form of tax cuts for the wealthy, but the resulting deficit spending will be paid for through unprecedented cuts to social spending."

Hard to see any political solution to this problem if we limit our votes to Republican OR Democrat.

Both major parties are wholly owned subsidiaries of Wall Street.

 

[Cecilie1200]

Open your eyes! Just WHY do you think it was the corporate wet dream to get unlimited monetary access to our election process? That's just one example. Come on!

In other words, you have no answer other than "They have more money! Waaahhh!"

 

[Cecilie1200]

If you truly believe this horse shit, you are more willfully dumb and ignorant than I ever imagined. I mean, seriously?

What rights does a wealthy individual have that an unemployed individual doesnt? Or vice versa?

If you're arguing that rich and poor alike have the right to sleep on newspaper over cold concrete, you're probably right.

If you're arguing the rich and poor have the same right to access their Senator, I think you're probably wrong.

They DO have the same right to access their Senator. You need to learn the definition of "right". A poor person is just as able to phone or write his Senator as anyone else, without any fear of being prevented from doing so. And he will probably be paid just as much attention to as 95% of that Senator's other constituents are.

Being personally acquainted with a Senator, however, is not a right.

Within the last generation, the richest 2% of Americans have nearly doubled their share of returns to wealth (rents, interest, dividends and capital gains.

What the fuck does that have to do with "rights"? Last I checked, there's no "right to be wealthy".

In effect 98% of us are in debt to this "happy two percent."

No, dumbfuck. 98% of us do not pay rent. Furthermore, their interest, dividends, and capital gains have nothing to do with the rest of us, let alone constituting any "debt" to them on our part. Try going and looking up the meanings of these words and phrases, so that you don't sound so fucking ignorant next time.

Historically those who are in debt in a capitalist system enjoy fewer "rights" than their creditors.

And yet, you cannot seem to manage to name even one specific right that rich people enjoy that others do not. All you can do is repeat, ad nauseam, that it is so. To me, being told "This is the way it is, I can't explain exactly HOW it's that way, but this is the way it is, don't know any specifics, but that's the way it is" pretty much convinces me that that definitely is NOT the way it is.

Michael Hudson

Having seen your "brilliant" links and the "incisive substantiation" they provide, I now have a policy of never, ever clicking on any link you ever provide, in much the same way I have a policy of never sticking my hand into the hole in a Port-a-Potty.

 

[Cecilie1200]

Why do you think unemployment insurance is a handout?

Isn't it something a worker has earned by her labor?

No.

 

[Cecilie1200]

Why do you think unemployment insurance is a handout?

Isn't it something a worker has earned by her labor?

Well, any government "insurance" isn't really insurance, but they get unemployment checks now. The post seemed to be referring to a lot more then that when it talked about fighting for the rights of the unemployed.

The unemployed versus the wealthy is a canard anyway because like it or not the wealthy provide jobs. Unemployed people don't. The unemployed's rights are best served by a healthy economy and considering the wealthy enemies while it may serve a political purpose doesn't serve an economic one and therefore doesn't help unemployed people.

There's a more general Economic principle involved when you argue "the rich create jobs." Namely, wealth and income inequality destroys job creation.

Professor Michael Hudson explains it better than I:

"The argument is made that 'The rich create jobs.' After all, somebody has to build the yachts.

"What is missing is the more general principle: Wealth and income inequality destroy job creation.

"This is because beyond the wealthy soon reach a limit on how much they can consume.

"They spend their money buying financial securities – mainly bonds, which end up indebting the economy. And the debt overhead is what is pushing today’s economy into deepening depression."

Hudson, who spent years working as a Wall Street Economist, also argues a political change is needed if our economy is to change course:

"Something has to give politically if the economy is to change course.

"More to the point, what has to give is favoritism for Wall Street at the expense of the economy at large.

"What has made the U.S. economy uncompetitive is primarily the degree to which debt service has been built into the cost of living and doing business."

Obama's Greatest Betrayal

Whoever the fuck Michael Hudson is, he's as dumb as you are. I'm impressed.

I especially liked his little strawman argument of "The rich create jobs, because someone has to buy yachts." By stating that at the outset, he gave himself something to argue against that prevented him from ever having to approach any of the REAL arguments against the liver-eating envy and class warfare of lower-class trolls like you and him.

The rich DO create jobs via their consumerism, just as the rest of us do. However, and more importantly, they create jobs by what they do with all that money they AREN'T out there shopping with, the money your precious Michael Hudson - whoever the fuck he is - seems to think they have stuffed in their mattresses or buried in Mason jars around their estates.

He is right about one thing (probably by accident, since he seems to uphold the tradition of anyone you admire being too pig-ignorant to chew gum and walk at the same time): rich people can't spend all their money, and wouldn't if they could. That's why they INVEST the bulk of it, that and the fact that it can then make them even MORE money. And investing money . . . wait for it . . . CREATES JOBS.

Moron.

 

[georgephillip]

Still putting the capital "B" into rhymes with rich?

Michael Hudson - Wiki:

"Michael Hudson (born in 1939, Chicago, Illinois, USA) is research professor of Economics at University of Missouri, Kansas City (UMKC). He is also a Wall Street analyst and consultant as well as president of The Institute for the Study of Long-term Economic Trends (ISLET) and a founding member of International Scholars Conference on Ancient Near Eastern Economies (ISCANEE)...

"Hudson is a former balance-of-payments economist for Chase Manhattan Bank and Arthur Andersen, and economic futurist for the Hudson Institute (no relation). For Scudder, Stevens & Clark in 1990, he established the world’s first Third World sovereign debt fund, which became the second best performing international fund in 1991[citation needed] (an Australian real estate fund was number one]"

Hudson is at least as well aware as you and I the rich don't bury their money in mason jars or mattresses. He points out their tendency to invest in financial instruments "...mainly bonds, which end up indebting the economy. And the debt overhead is what is pushing today’s economy into deepening depression."

Obama's Greatest Betrayal

Would you agree debt overhead is currently a big problem in the Land of the Free?

How about domestic US job creation?

How many of those ...still waiting...JOBS the greedy US rich create every year are in India or China?

Greed is not a virtue.
It is a disease.
You're afflicted.

 

[georgephillip]

What rights does a wealthy individual have that an unemployed individual doesnt? Or vice versa?

If you're arguing that rich and poor alike have the right to sleep on newspaper over cold concrete, you're probably right.

If you're arguing the rich and poor have the same right to access their Senator, I think you're probably wrong.

They DO have the same right to access their Senator. You need to learn the definition of "right". A poor person is just as able to phone or write his Senator as anyone else, without any fear of being prevented from doing so. And he will probably be paid just as much attention to as 95% of that Senator's other constituents are.

Being personally acquainted with a Senator, however, is not a right.



What the fuck does that have to do with "rights"? Last I checked, there's no "right to be wealthy".



No, dumbfuck. 98% of us do not pay rent. Furthermore, their interest, dividends, and capital gains have nothing to do with the rest of us, let alone constituting any "debt" to them on our part. Try going and looking up the meanings of these words and phrases, so that you don't sound so fucking ignorant next time.

Historically those who are in debt in a capitalist system enjoy fewer "rights" than their creditors.

And yet, you cannot seem to manage to name even one specific right that rich people enjoy that others do not. All you can do is repeat, ad nauseam, that it is so. To me, being told "This is the way it is, I can't explain exactly HOW it's that way, but this is the way it is, don't know any specifics, but that's the way it is" pretty much convinces me that that definitely is NOT the way it is.

Michael Hudson

Having seen your "brilliant" links and the "incisive substantiation" they provide, I now have a policy of never, ever clicking on any link you ever provide, in much the same way I have a policy of never sticking my hand into the hole in a Port-a-Potty.

You're Right.

Assuming the poor have a phone or money for stamps they have the same right to contact their Senator as Bill Gates does.

That much is still true.

Who's more likely to personally speak to their Senator on the phone?

Who would more reasonably expect a personal response to their written communication with their Senator?

How would that change if US Senators were apportioned by economic class instead of geography, i.e., if the richest 1% of Americans shared a single rich (probably white) Senator?

When Michael Hudson uses the term "rent" it applies not only to the monthly fees renters pay their landlords but also to income acquired from interest, dividends and capital gains which, I'm sure you're aware, are currently taxed at 15% instead of 35%.

The following paragraph from Hudson's article "Obama's Greatest Betrayal" summarizes government's tax bias in favor of the "happy two percent":

"The IRS permits mortgage interest to be tax-deductible on the pretense that it is a necessary cost of doing business. In reality it is a subsidy for debt leveraging.

"This tax bias for debt rather than equity investment (using one’s own money) is largely responsible for loading down the U.S. economy with debt. It encourages corporate raiding with junk bonds, thereby adding interest to the cost of doing business.

"This subsidy for debt leveraging also is the government’s largest giveaway to the banks, while causing the debt deflation that is locking the economy into depression – violating every precept of the classical drive for 'free markets' in the 19th-century.

"(A 'free market' meant freedom from extractive rentier income, leading toward what Keynes gently called 'euthanasia of the rentier.' The Obama Commission endows rentiers atop the economy with a tax system to bolster their power, not check it – while shrinking the economy below them.)"

 

[MitchMan]

The real problem right now is that there isn't enough money in the hands of the bottom 70% income earners to create enough demand to make investment in production capital feasible, logical or profitable. Lack of demand is the immediate problem. Now, we as a country can sit back and wait for the wheels of capitalism to turn and eventually self correct (that's an assumption if there ever was one), but that could mean things may get worse before they get better, and in the mean time people suffer, really suffer if you are in the bottom 40% of income earners or holders of almost no wealth (that's the bottom 40% for sure).

Or, we could do something proactively to stimulate demand. Hmmmm, what could that be? We could put more money in the hands of the wealthy (i.e., the people who make over $250,000 per household, and that brothers and sisters, is, in fact, wealthy, let there be no question about that) with more tax breaks, but that would add to the US deficit. Well, you might say that doing so would create jobs, but is it true that the wealthly would put every penny of the tax break into production and start hiring based on that investment? I don't think so. I do not think for one minute that even most of that money would go into investment in production. Actually, even Milton Friedman himself said that people's spending patterns don't change rapidly, especially with such a marginal increase in disposable income. Besides, the current problem is not supply...the problem is with a weak demand. Oh, maybe the money should go the bottom 60% because eveybody knows that they would spend every penny on consumer goods.

Hmmmm. What a paradox...for an informed republican, that is.

 

[georgephillip]

Maybe "Helicopter Ben" should call a "National Emergency" and throw his support behind high speed rail and Universal Internet construction?

Since that would put $trillions in the hands of workers who would almost immediately spend their pay, it isn't likely the banker's banker will resort to any WPA solution.

As bad as things are right now, some see them getting much worse very quickly:

"It gets worse.

"Obama’s 'Bush' tax cut is only Part I of a one-two punch to shift taxes onto wage earners.

"Congressional economists estimate that extending the tax cuts to the top 2 per cent will cost $700 to $750 billion over the next decade or so. “'How are we going to go out and borrow $700 billion?' Obama asked Steve Kroft in his Sixty Minutes interview on CBS last week.

"It was a rhetorical question.

"The President has appointed a bipartisan commission (right-wingers on both sides of the aisle) to 'cure' the federal budget deficit by cutting back social spending – to pay yet more bailouts to the economy’s financial wreckers.

"The National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform might better be called the New Class War Commission to Scale Back Social Security and Medicare Payments to Labor in Order to Leave more Tax Revenue Available to Give Away to the Super-Rich.

"A longer title than the Deficit-Reduction Commission used by media friendlies, but sometimes it takes more words to get to the heart of matters."

I don't enjoy sounding like a broken record, but it's hard for me to see a political solution if voters limit their "choice" to Republican OR Democrat.

Obama's Greatest Betrayal

 

[Procrustes Stretched]

Do people who collect unemployment benefits for 99 weeks ever intend to work?

While there is no question that a percentage of those collecting unemployment checks are not looking for jobs it's not fair to speculate on how great that percentage is without having proportional evidence to show that jobs are available to those who might want them.

Being unemployed for ninety-nine weeks would be highly unusual during periods of economic stability, which is not the present situation. The U.S. economy has been severely undermined by corporations which have exported jobs to foreign countries.

The unemployed workers are not to blame for this crisis. NAFTA is, along with the elimination of regulations that once protected American workers against abandonment by American corporations.

Call any credit card issuer to inquire about something and you'll talk with a representative in India who barely speaks English. Same situation with any of the credit reporting agencies. Same with most major corporations. This phenomenon is one small example of what has happened and is happening in this place that once was our America. What we are seeing is the manifestation of "The New World Order" H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan's corporatist assistant, was talking about in 1981 when those neo-Conservative bastards had just begun to disassemble the American middle class.

So don't focus critical attention on those who have been unemployed for 99 weeks. Except for a very small percentage those people would still be working were it not for Reaganomics and its extended effects.