If Jefferson founded the Republican Party what place do Democrats have in America?

[code1211]

What is your liberty? Is it only the limitation of the powerful's actions or is it the equal and universal ability of all to most completely develop that which makes them individuals?

For everyone except the most powerful, the two are one.

You seem to be obsessed with class envy. I would hope that you are young. The two of these notions are definitely not one.

There can be various goals that individuals hold. Let's take Mother Teresa and Donald Trump as two examples of human beings and assume that both operate to achieve their own goals in ways that are not hurtful of others.

One is striving mightily to amass a fortune of worldly goods and rewards and by outward appearance gives little thought to the after life.

The other cares little, seemingly, for her worldly rewards and strives to do the Earthly work of god and thereby will gain rewards in the afterlife assuring her of the eternal reward that she seeks.

Both have made the free choice to satisfy their personal greed for the reward that they have identified as the one they seek. Free Choice to pursue happiness.

One of these in your world would be directed and restrained by government. Why?

 

[Dragon]

You seem to be obsessed with class envy.

Not envy. Resentment for manifest injustice, though, yes. Absolutely.

The remainder of your post is a fairy tale. Don't bother.

 

[code1211]

I do not understand how doing something for somebody is liberty for the benefitted person.

You really have an obsession with aid to the poor, don't you? Why do you think that's important or in any way defining?

Equality of wealth is the basis of Liberty?

It is indeed. And I'm not going to go into Thoreau, who had a wonderful heart and some great insights but who should not be taken as offering practical suggestions for anyone (nor as having followed them himself; look into how he was supported while he was at Walden sometime).

Not, as I said already, complete equality, but limited inequality. You cannot be free without the economic means to be free. You cannot be free, simply put, unless you can survive without holding a job working for someone else. As long as you are working for someone else, you are under that person's authority, you have a boss, and so you are not free. Now, there's a qualifier: If you don't NEED the job, if you can get by fine without it, and are therefore genuinely holding the job by your own voluntary choice, then yes, you are free. But for the overwhelming majority of people, that's not the case.

Excessive inequality of wealth reduces most people to servitude. When wages are very high, a person can go a long time between jobs and his freedom is thereby increased. When they are not, he is at the mercy of his employer and is thus not free. Moreover, huge inequality of wealth means a huge imbalance of political power, too, and the very wealthy suborn the government to act in service to their own ends -- which is the very definition of tyranny.

There is no liberty without property. (I forget who said that, but it's true.) This means that, if most people are denied property, then they are also denied liberty. And please, please, PLEASE don't go off on a tangent again about people being "given" property who haven't worked for it; the problem we have is people being denied the property they HAVE worked for, having it stolen by rich and powerful men who take their labor and keep the property it makes, too. While there are certainly people who cannot earn their way, the real problem we face is that too many people are not being allowed to earn their way, in order to maximize the wealth accruing to the richest.

Again, I hope you are young. Your vision of the world seems bereft of hope.

When I was much younger, I went to college. Three degrees, all under grad, completed in six years while working full time driving a truck. My FREE choice. I lived in a condemned house paying very low rent and sleeping whenever the opportunity presented itself. Again, my choice. I wanted to graduate college and did not see a different way to do it by the terms of life that I understand.

I graduated free of debt and free of wealth.

During my life, I've done many jobs and have been lucky, as are most, in avoiding serious injury but have had some illness and some pain. Through it all, I kept striving toward a vague idea of "success" which TO ME, was a home, some money and a path toward a comfy retirement.

My personal freedom has alway been enhanced, not diminished, by working and having an income. That you see this as an abridgment of freedom is interesting. I want certain things and these include all of the various hardware items like a house, cars, a little cash and the ability to do as I please. It is assumed in my belief system that nobody else cares if I'm happy or not and that is my responsibility to either be happy or not be happy.

Freedom does not imply that nobody within the society can tell me what to do, but that I can determine what I want to do and that I have a reasonable chance to do it if it's not illegal or hurtful to others. If I CHOOSE to abandon that path by making the real bad decisions, that's my fault.

It is appropriate to note here that the word "I" appears in this very often. "I" is what freedom is all about. As a person who writes many, many communications for business, it is my normal method to avoid altogether the word "I". On the topic of freedom, "I" is the ONLY word that is meaningful. If you are discussing freedom and liberty and ignoring the idea of the individual, you are missing the point entirely.

Anytime the liberty of the individual is dependent on the donation of anything from any source outside of the individual's right to have it, that liberty is reduced to a privilege which can be revoked at the whim of another.

 

[code1211]

Another WOW Moment.

The question here is not about labor unions or division of the country's wealth or any macro economic considerations. It is about the individual.

All of those are bound together. There is no liberty without property.

Is an individual free to enter into an agreement to exchange his labor for a compensation that agreed upon or not?

No one who HAS to take a job does so freely, or is capable of entering into a free agreement.

Here's an analogy. Suppose you and I and a third person are standing in my living room, which is a mess. I offer you a dollar to clean my room for me. You begin to decline, whereupon the third person whips a gun out, puts it to your head, and screams, "Clean Dragon's room NOW. And be thankful he's paying you ANYTHING!"

I don't say anything. I don't threaten, I don't make any hostile move. You clean my room, and I pay you a dollar.

I did not personally coerce you into doing anything, did I? Nevertheless, did you do it freely? Was the agreement to clean my room for a dollar freely made? Of course not. And that's a good analogy for the "free agreements" made by people to take jobs.

Don't bother with the cheap imitation spirituality, please. I don't consider that worthy of a response.

Assume that the same three people are in the same room, but all are not armed.

You declare that you want to have the room cleaned and that you are willing to pay for the job to be completed. The other person and I are both free to choose a course of action.

We both can offer to do so and quote you a price to complete the job. We can both decline to bid and leave you clean your own room. If we both bid, then you are free to choose to accept one of the bids or neither of them. Either of us can walk away leaving you with only one bid to consider.

The beauty of the situation is that you are free to ask for the bids, we are feee to provide them and we are free to walk away.

It is the same with any employment arrangement. There is nobody with a gun to anybody's head demanding labor be performed.

 

[code1211]

[
Equality of opportunity means that all are free to excel.

And that is exactly what you don't believe in.

Actually, it's impossible for everyone to excel, by definition. Only the best can. But if we maximize the freedom to excel, then we also minimize the freedom of most to do reasonably well.

Why ban private schools? (Note that I'm not suggesting any of this as a practical measure, just pointing out what "equality of opportunity" would really mean.) Because they give the children of the wealthy a superior education, and thus a superior opportunity. Why a 100% estate tax? Because anything else gives those with inheritances an advantage, and again we don't have "equality of opportunity."

Everyone DOES NOT have "an equal shot at whatever they choose to shoot at." In our society, that's arrant nonsense.

I'm not saying I really believe in absolute equality of opportunity, myself -- I don't really want to ban private schools or have a 100% estate tax. But what I do believe in is limited inequality -- and that's as true of outcome as it is of opportunity, necessarily. You can't have one without the other.

There can never be equality. That's just the way it is. There are always those who are smarter or prettier or faster or stronger and that's just the way it is.

Beyond that though, there are just different goals identified by different people. There was a guy in my High School who cried when he got a B on a test because he felt that jeopardized his shot at getting straight A's thoughout the public school ciriculum. Turns out he made it without that particular A with a little extra credit. Such is life.

I could run a faster mile than him but had no chance of straight A's. No equality.

What about those who want to enjoy the arts vs. those who really relish a good pro wrestling match? The simple truth is that there are different strokes for different folks. Maybe I want to spend 18 hours every day building a business and you want to work 8 hours a day and have a stay at home wife.

Do we both get the same house? Same car? Same country club? Of course not. Do we both get the same community awards, same adoration from the little leaguers or same awards from the church groups? Of course not.

The Frank Kapra type movies of "what could have been" represent the effect of choices made and those choices are the results of Liberty to choose. We are the result of our choices for better or for worse. The society is the result of the aggregate of all of us choosing and there will never be equality of outcomes because we all have varying and diverse ideas of what "the good life" is.

 

[code1211]

You seem to be obsessed with class envy.

Not envy. Resentment for manifest injustice, though, yes. Absolutely.

The remainder of your post is a fairy tale. Don't bother.

I was enjoying this to now. Do you disagree that the two examples are people who are pursuing paths to gain their own personal happiness?

Do you deny that enforcing an equality of outcome for both of these would make both manifestly and profoundly UNhappy?

 

[Dragon]

There can never be equality.

There are, however, numbers greater than zero and less than infinity, a fact that you seem to be ignoring. I've said repeatedly that I'm talking about, not perfect equality, but LIMITED INEQUALITY. That being something that we can achieve -- and in fact have achieved in the past, with tremendously good results. So it's not an on-off, binary, either-or situation of "equality" or "non-equality." It's a spectrum from maximum inequality to maximum achievable equality. Somewhere along that spectrum is a sweet spot where the economy performs best and overall happiness and liberty are maximized. I am uncertain exactly where that sweet spot is located, but I do know that it is way, way closer to equality than the situation we have at this time.

Here's where your entire belief-system about economics flies in the face of reality: you don't seem to understand, or perhaps to accept, that the economy is competitive, and that consequently my success is someone else's failure. Now, there's nothing wrong with that, as long as things are kept within reasonable limits, but as of now, that's not what's happening. The biggest winners have NO RIGHT to win SO big that everyone else loses as badly as they are losing today. And there is no way to restore the middle class that used to be the norm in America without cutting the very rich down to size.

By the way, I'm 55 years old. You are mistaken to characterize me as without hope. I don't believe I'm wrong, however, in characterizing you as living in a wishful-thinking, idealistic, out-of-touch-with-reality fairy tale. I would have no JUSTIFIED hope if I thought the way you do. As it is, I don't have any hope in pie in the sky, but I do have hope in the ability to restore justice. I believe that can be done.

 

[bodecea]

Really, it would seem they have little place in America given that their ideas about big government are the opposite of the basic Constitutional idea of limited central government formalized by our founders.

FDR was really the first liberal Democrat and his New Deal was mostly leftist inspired, not America inspired, as his choice of Henry Wallace, Alger Hiss and the others would indicate. Now they have Obama who had two communist parents and voted to the left of Bernie Sanders. How can we conclude that Democrats are anything but a genuine Trojan Horse on American soil? I have yet to hear an answer to this.

What place do Democrats have in America?

We could start with putting them all in privately own and run "for profit" prison camps. Then, after being properly re-educated on the benefits of limited government and taking personal responsibility for ones own life, they could be reintroduced into society.....

Spoken like a true Rightie.

 

[code1211]

There can never be equality.

There are, however, numbers greater than zero and less than infinity, a fact that you seem to be ignoring. I've said repeatedly that I'm talking about, not perfect equality, but LIMITED INEQUALITY. That being something that we can achieve -- and in fact have achieved in the past, with tremendously good results. So it's not an on-off, binary, either-or situation of "equality" or "non-equality." It's a spectrum from maximum inequality to maximum achievable equality. Somewhere along that spectrum is a sweet spot where the economy performs best and overall happiness and liberty are maximized. I am uncertain exactly where that sweet spot is located, but I do know that it is way, way closer to equality than the situation we have at this time.

Here's where your entire belief-system about economics flies in the face of reality: you don't seem to understand, or perhaps to accept, that the economy is competitive, and that consequently my success is someone else's failure. Now, there's nothing wrong with that, as long as things are kept within reasonable limits, but as of now, that's not what's happening. The biggest winners have NO RIGHT to win SO big that everyone else loses as badly as they are losing today. And there is no way to restore the middle class that used to be the norm in America without cutting the very rich down to size.

By the way, I'm 55 years old. You are mistaken to characterize me as without hope. I don't believe I'm wrong, however, in characterizing you as living in a wishful-thinking, idealistic, out-of-touch-with-reality fairy tale. I would have no JUSTIFIED hope if I thought the way you do. As it is, I don't have any hope in pie in the sky, but I do have hope in the ability to restore justice. I believe that can be done.

The two points you make most clearly are that one person can win only when another person loses. That is simply not true. In the year 1400, there were far fewer than a billion people on the planet, most were far below the level that we recognize as poverty today and most were also enslaved either by their condition or by law to the whims of another. Beyond this, there was rampant plague, famine and pestilence of every kind.

Today, our number is probably close to ten times that population and yet the folks around the world are generally much better off, better fed, more healthy, better housed and better connected to sources of help and justice.

Society is not a zero sum proposition. The actual experience of our race demonstrates pretty clearly that it is exactly the process that by some of us getting richer that all become richer. I'm pretty sure that in 1400, I'd have been one of the many doing back breaking labor and dying at the age of 45 from some plague induced disaster that hit my village and was fought by a holy man wielding beads.

No right to win? That is a great way to assure that nobody wins. Sadly for that philosophy, winners do win and losers do lose. It is the responsibility of the leaders of any country to assure that the winners who do win, win in our neighborhood. In that way, those of us who are just the average run of the mill hard working citizen types can share in the good that proceeds from winning.

What you propose is a system that punishes achievement and will in time drive the achievers to more friendly homes. Additionally, you propose rewarding the non achievers which will attract or create more here. What is the result when all of the achievers have left and only the non achievers and the run of the mill types like me remain?

I'll propose a picture of that world: Class warfare, huge deficits, failing industry, increasing imbalance of our trade and a population that finds suddenly that most of the tax paid is paid by barely half of the population. Also, champions of the underclasses who propose to save them by driving away those who could be their salvation.

If additional wealth is not created by the movers and the shakers, the rest of us will quibble about the shrinking and eroding pie that is prooving to be insufficient to feed us.

This is what is happening right now and our leaders are encouraging the quibbling.

 

[Dragon]

[
The two points you make most clearly are that one person can win only when another person loses. That is simply not true.

That's only one point, but of course it's true. For example, I am a freelance writer trying to land writing and editing jobs over the Internet. When I apply for a job, unless it's an established client of mine, I am competing with other writers who want the same work. If I get that work, no one else does -- my success is their failure. (And if I am the only person applying, that only means I've already beaten all others, so they don't even get a chance.)

Same is true down the line, no matter what your circumstances. If you're applying for a job at a company, and you get the job, that means no one else does. If you're selling a product, and a customer buys your product, that means he doesn't buy someone else's. If I win, you lose.

Now, does that mean that, having lost a particular contest to me, you can't conceivably win one somewhere else and still be all right? No -- at least not necessarily. But the more lopsided our income distribution becomes, the harder it becomes for anyone but the biggest winners to find opportunities of success. The opportunities for most people are inversely proportional to the rewards of the greatest success.

Oh, and none of this conflicts in any way with the advance of technology and rising living standards for most people that have resulted, so none of your arguments against it hold any water at all.

 

[code1211]

[
The two points you make most clearly are that one person can win only when another person loses. That is simply not true.

That's only one point, but of course it's true. For example, I am a freelance writer trying to land writing and editing jobs over the Internet. When I apply for a job, unless it's an established client of mine, I am competing with other writers who want the same work. If I get that work, no one else does -- my success is their failure. (And if I am the only person applying, that only means I've already beaten all others, so they don't even get a chance.)

Same is true down the line, no matter what your circumstances. If you're applying for a job at a company, and you get the job, that means no one else does. If you're selling a product, and a customer buys your product, that means he doesn't buy someone else's. If I win, you lose.

Now, does that mean that, having lost a particular contest to me, you can't conceivably win one somewhere else and still be all right? No -- at least not necessarily. But the more lopsided our income distribution becomes, the harder it becomes for anyone but the biggest winners to find opportunities of success. The opportunities for most people are inversely proportional to the rewards of the greatest success.

Oh, and none of this conflicts in any way with the advance of technology and rising living standards for most people that have resulted, so none of your arguments against it hold any water at all.

Let's assume that you are trying to land your editing job. Let's also assume that another is trying to do the same thing with your exact skill set and talents but was trying to land a similar position in 1400, the same year that I used above.

The 1400 version of you would have a pretty rough time doing so since the only books being written were literally being written by the illuminating monks in the monestaries.

However, after about 700 years and the various winners profiting with outladishly unfair incomes, you now have access to literally thousands of things to be editied for consumption by the vorascious appetites that are fed by the huge and expanding educational and entertainment industries operating in multi media and even making transitions from one medium to another requiring additional editing and more editors just to keep up with the demand.

As such, the very act of winning by many is what has created and grows the needs that allows you to prosper as an editor.

If the two of us were more famous and were having this little debate at a more public level, we would likely write, and and be paid to write, and find that our thoughts created other thoughts in others and thereby created others with the need to write and others with the need to read or listen to those thoughts.

The 24 hour news cycle is born and another industry is funded by the public and the need for even more.

This is not zero sum. Everything is constantly growing and even the growth is growing. It's humbling to be a leaf swept along in this stream.

 

[Dragon]

Let's assume that you are trying to land your editing job. Let's also assume that another is trying to do the same thing with your exact skill set and talents but was trying to land a similar position in 1400, the same year that I used above.

Why? For that matter, how? He's been dead for centuries.

It's telling that you can't find examples illustrating your points in the real world. Incidentally your claim that the gains since 1400 are due to maximizing the rewards to the biggest winners is completely without foundation. You seem to simply assume that it's true, probably for ideological reasons as a free-market purist, but the historical evidence points to the contrary. For example, the strongest period of the U.S. economy was in the period from 1940 to 1980, when the philosophy you are expressing was followed LEAST in our entire history.

 

[tooldtocare]

.,.,.,.,.,.,"isn't welfare a from of slavery"

I don’t see how welfare is a form of slavery. I receive welfare today and it has provided food and shelter when I had none.

Thank God for a helping hand

 

[code1211]

Let's assume that you are trying to land your editing job. Let's also assume that another is trying to do the same thing with your exact skill set and talents but was trying to land a similar position in 1400, the same year that I used above.

Why? For that matter, how? He's been dead for centuries.

It's telling that you can't find examples illustrating your points in the real world. Incidentally your claim that the gains since 1400 are due to maximizing the rewards to the biggest winners is completely without foundation. You seem to simply assume that it's true, probably for ideological reasons as a free-market purist, but the historical evidence points to the contrary. For example, the strongest period of the U.S. economy was in the period from 1940 to 1980, when the philosophy you are expressing was followed LEAST in our entire history.

Actually, during the 70's, our economy started to feel the pressure from the rebuilding of the countries that were bombed to rubble in WW2. The defacto colonization of the world by us after WW2 was relaxing necessarily and rise of OPEC was making its first impact on our economy.

History is what happened, not what supports your thinking.

By the by, you pretty much ignored my question on your assertion that the competitive abilities of the industrialized world outside of the USA was not destroyed during WW2.

As the world rebuilt after it was destroyed in WW2 and was able to compete evenly as the various industrialized powers we now find around us, we find that the business models employed in the period from 1946 to 1970 no longer work.

The question is not if that model worked then as it clearly did.

The question is why it won't work now and what model will work?

By yearning to resurrect a system that has died, we consign our future to the scrap heap. What's next? Feudalism?

All of that said, you talk about the real world, but do not understand it. Without competition, nothing improves. With competition, everything improves. You don't see that the sheer growth of the industry in which your example is set creates more opportunity.

Again, pessimism.

The real world is all around us. It is constantly evolving and changing and very likely, the role of editors as it currently exists will be different or superfluous in the future as the abilities of the PC's around us improves. Will there be a need to confine articles to 5 inches in column if the papers of the future exist only electronically?

Will writing be the same as it is today? Very likely, no.

R U KDN ME?

 

[Dragon]

Actually, during the 70's, our economy started to feel the pressure from the rebuilding of the countries that were bombed to rubble in WW2.

Wrong. First, as I pointed above, most of the world WASN'T "bombed to rubble," and the two countries that were (Germany and Japan) were fully recovered by the mid 1950s.

No, the cause of the postwar prosperity was completely different from that, and so was the cause of its failure in the late 1970s. That failure lasted ten years, from 1973 through 1982. Know what else happened in those same ten years?

Real Price of Oil and Major Disruptions in World Oil Supply, 1950-2008

It was all about oil.

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

Actually, during the 70's, our economy started to feel the pressure from the rebuilding of the countries that were bombed to rubble in WW2.

Wrong. First, as I pointed above, most of the world WASN'T "bombed to rubble," and the two countries that were (Germany and Japan) were fully recovered by the mid 1950s.

you are a shameful liar which explains why you present no data. In the 1950's made in Japan stood for cheap junk like toys in CrackerJack boxes, by the 1980's they had just begun to import high quality compact cars.

Japan achieved the most impressive growth record of the post World Wart II era. In 1950, the real per capita GNP of Japan was less than 1/5 that of the U.S. $1,060 compared to $6,330 for the US.

 

[regent]

So how many wars did Japan have after WWII? Is it possible that the Cold War, Vietnam, Kosovo, Iraq Afghanistan, SDI cost the US anything in money? Add on to those expenses, our trickle-down supply-side, tax cuts to the wealthy economics for flavor.

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

So how many wars did Japan have after WWII?

what?????????? They had all the years God gave them didn't they???

Is it possible that the Cold War, Vietnam, Kosovo, Iraq Afghanistan, SDI cost the US anything in money?

Im sure each and every person on the planet agrees it cost money

Add on to those expenses, our trickle-down supply-side, tax cuts to the wealthy economics for flavor.

it seems you're winning an argument in your head, against some strawman somewhere, about something only you know about but nothing that ever approaches gibberish is expresed in your writing here. Why not show your parents before you post?

 

[regent]

So how many wars did Japan have after WWII?

what?????????? They had all the years God gave them didn't they???

Is it possible that the Cold War, Vietnam, Kosovo, Iraq Afghanistan, SDI cost the US anything in money?

Im sure each and every person on the planet agrees it cost money

Add on to those expenses, our trickle-down supply-side, tax cuts to the wealthy economics for flavor.

it seems you're winning an argument in your head, against some strawman somewhere, about something only you know about but nothing that ever approaches gibberish is expresed in your writing here. Why not show your parents before you post?

I guess things have to be spelled out for you and that takes time.
The questions boil down to was your comparison correct, were all things equal between Japan and the United States at the end of the war?
Again the question, were the comparisons between Japan and the US following the war the same?
Or I don't accept your comparisons between the US and Japan following WWII, is it possible your comparisons are incorrect?

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

ok?

as long as you agree that Democrats have no place at America's founding and that the Republican philosophy is America's philosophy I'm happy. Thank you.