Kurt Vonnegut on "Equality"
- Thread starter PoliticalChic
- Start date
If you actually believe that tax rates in th 90% range had any positive impact on creating the strongest nation in global history, then you don't know a damn thing about taxes or economics.
The first thing that you need to realize is that government, although necessary to some degree, is a drag on economic activity. It is akin to rent, a necessary cost of doing business. If the rent is too high, the business suffers. When government gets too big and too expensive, the business suffers.
This year, the US government is taking in more tax revenue than anytime in history, yet this economy is still near the bottom and sputtering. None of Obama's tax increases have kicked in yet, so how is that explainable by those who claim that tax cuts lead to lower tax collections? It means their economic theories are garbage.
Uncensored2008
Libertarian Radical
There was a reason that the American people overwhelmingly supported the New Deal. The suffering during the depression was intense and even before it, boom and bust cycles were frequent and turbulent. Life during the busts sucked big time for most people.
One thing most people did have back then however was a little patch of land they could subsist on. That's increasingly rare these days. What would most people do in a depression without assistance?
I find it humorous that modern day libertarians think they could somehow survive that scenario. What special skills or talents do you think you have that you could use to stand on your own two feet if society weren't there to provide most of what you need?
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- #85
Abbie....outside of the "I felt I had to do it" argument for violating the United States Constitution, article I, section 8, and obviating the principles on which this nation was built, what is the excuse for not using the amendment process if the following were essential, and if "the American people overwhelmingly supported" same?
The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;
The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;
The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
The right of the people to free, unimpeded travel.
The right of every family to a decent home;
The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
The right to a good education.
Agit8r
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Alrighty! Another steaming pile of bullshit!
"The great object should be to combat the evil: 1. By establishing a political equality among all; 2. By witholding unnecessary opportunities from a few to increase the inequality of property by an immoderate, and especially an unmerited, accumulation of riches; 3. By the silent operation of laws which, without violating the rights of property, reduce extreme wealth towards a state of mediocrity and raise extreme indigence towards a state of comfort; 4. By abstaining from measures which operate differently on different interests, and particularly such as favor one interest at the expense of another; 5. By making one party a check on the other so far as the existence of parties cannot be prevented nor their views accommodated. If this is not the language of reason, it is that of republicanism."
-- James Madison; from 'Parties' (1792)
"legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property, only taking care to let their subdivisions go hand in hand with the natural affections of the human mind. The descent of property of every kind therefore to all the children, or to all the brothers and sisters, or other relations in equal degree is a politic measure, and a practicable one. Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise."
-- Thomas Jefferson; from letter to James Madison, (Oct. 28, 1785)
"Admitting that any annual sum, say, for instance, one thousand pounds, is necessary or sufficient for the support of a family, consequently the second thousand is of the nature of a luxury, the third still more so, and by proceeding on, we shall at last arrive at a sum that may not improperly be called a prohibitable luxury. It would be impolitic to set bounds to property acquired by industry, and therefore it is right to place the prohibition beyond the probable acquisition to which industry can extend; but there ought to be a limit to property or the accumulation of it by bequest."
-- Thomas Paine; from 'Rights of Man, Part the Second' (1792)
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chikenwing
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Dugdale_Jukes
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Actually, I do believe that because it is true and proved by actual, real, history that happened and was recorded - and stopped reading your screed at that point because it was clear your understanding of markets and economics stopped developing at the marbles-trading level.
When you can explain the RELATIVE effects tax rate policy on on national economies and the relative effects of 32:1 and 400:1 ratios in pay rates from CEO to janitor on corporate health, please get back with me. At that point you will know enough to BEGIN to discuss the cause-and-effect issues that you bury yourself under pitilessly above. One feels sad that you humiliate yourself like that in public.
Until then please keep paying your doctor with chickens and trading marbles on the playgrounds of your life. Clearly you understand the nano-micro aspects of neighborhood economics.
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- Thread starter
- #89
Got some more for ya,' Ab.....
" The suffering during the depression was intense and even before it, boom and bust cycles were frequent and turbulent. Life during the busts sucked big time for most people."
1. The attempt to mitigate 'boom or bust' cycles goes back to 1913...not 1932.
"Congress created the Federal Reserve System in 1913 to tame the business cycle ..."
http://www.independent.org/store/book.asp?id=100
2. "America's greatest depression fighter was Warren Gamaliel Harding. An Ohio senator when he was elected president in 1920, he followed the much praised Woodrow Wilson— who had brought America into World War I, built up huge federal bureaucracies, imprisoned dissenters, and incurred $25 billion of debt."
Not-So-Great Depression - Jim Powell - National Review Online
a. "Instead of bailing out failing businesses, expanding government, and redistributing taxpayer money with a "stimulus" plan, Harding responded by cutting spending and removing burdensome regulations and taxes. During his campaign, he argued, "We need vastly more freedom than we do regulation." In stark contrast with the Bush-Obama response of ever-more government spending and debt, Harding had federal spending cut in half between 1920 and 1922 and ultimately ran a surplus.
As a result, the recession that started in 1920 ended before 1923. Lower taxes and reduced regulation helped America's economy quickly adjust after the war as entrepreneurs and capital were freed to create jobs and push the economy to recover. Harding's free market policies lead to the Roaring Twenties, known for technological advances, women's rights, the explosion of the middle class, and some of the most rapid economic growth in American history. Still, he is ranked as one of the worst presidents by many in academia's ivory tower
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/02/obama_should_channel_harding_n.htm
And this:
FDR extended a recession and made it into "The Great Recession"
Don't believe me?
3.In 1935, the Brookings Institution (left-leaning) delivered a 900-page report on the New Deal and the National Recovery Administration, concluding that “ on the whole it retarded recovery.” The Real Deal - Society and Culture - AEI
Now...aren't you glad to have come here for an education?
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I think article 1, section 8 pretty much spells it out. What would your proposed amendment say instead? Maybe use this as an exercise in constitutional law.
chikenwing
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Most conservatives support the right of states to segregate based on race don't they?
What??? someone told you that in a dream??
Where do they get this shit?? i'ts ether just plan making crap up to suit the moment,or they wll believe anything told them.
What??? someone told you that in a dream??
Where do they get this shit?? i'ts ether just plan making crap up to suit the moment,or they wll believe anything told them.
- Thread starter
- #92
Alrighty! Another steaming pile of bullshit!
"The great object should be to combat the evil: 1. By establishing a political equality among all; 2. By witholding unnecessary opportunities from a few to increase the inequality of property by an immoderate, and especially an unmerited, accumulation of riches; 3. By the silent operation of laws which, without violating the rights of property, reduce extreme wealth towards a state of mediocrity and raise extreme indigence towards a state of comfort; 4. By abstaining from measures which operate differently on different interests, and particularly such as favor one interest at the expense of another; 5. By making one party a check on the other so far as the existence of parties cannot be prevented nor their views accommodated. If this is not the language of reason, it is that of republicanism."
-- James Madison; from 'Parties' (1792)
"legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property, only taking care to let their subdivisions go hand in hand with the natural affections of the human mind. The descent of property of every kind therefore to all the children, or to all the brothers and sisters, or other relations in equal degree is a politic measure, and a practicable one. Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise."
-- Thomas Jefferson; from letter to James Madison, (Oct. 28, 1785)
"Admitting that any annual sum, say, for instance, one thousand pounds, is necessary or sufficient for the support of a family, consequently the second thousand is of the nature of a luxury, the third still more so, and by proceeding on, we shall at last arrive at a sum that may not improperly be called a prohibitable luxury. It would be impolitic to set bounds to property acquired by industry, and therefore it is right to place the prohibition beyond the probable acquisition to which industry can extend; but there ought to be a limit to property or the accumulation of it by bequest."
-- Thomas Paine; from 'Rights of Man, Part the Second' (1792)
Try to use more civil language.
Not only are you stupid....but uncouth.
Ok...here's your remedial, boor.
From Glenn Greenwald's “With Liberty and Justice for Some; How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful”
1. The central principle of AmericaÂ’s founding was that the rule of law would be the prime equalizing force; the founders considered vast inequality in every other realm to be inevitable and even desirableÂ…. A small number would of individuals would be naturally endowed with unique and extraordinary talents while most people, by definition, would be ordinary. So the American concept of liberty would be premised on the inevitability of outcome inequality- success of some, failure of others.
a. Law was the one exception; no inequality was tolerable. It was the sine qua non ensuring fairness.
2. The concept has made its way into our clichés: equal before the law, justice is blind, no man is above the law, a nation of laws, not men.
3. What the founders feared most was that a centralized federal government would erode liberty, forcibly override local rule, obliterate self-governance, and transgress every limit. The Constitution was the attempt to prevent that.
4. The founders recognized that, unless the law was applied equally, the Constitution would become merely a suggestion, compliance being optional.
5. The central dispute in Marbury v. Madison was whether the courts had the authority to subject officials in the executive branch to their rulings.
6. None of the founders believed in equality as a general proposition. The opposite is true: they considered inequality on every level, other than law, to be the natural, inevitable, and just state of affairs. Even Jefferson, one of the most egalitarian of the founders, held that there was “a natural aristocracy” among men, based on “virtue and talents.” This was not only natural, but desirable: “The natural aristocracy I consider as the most precious gift of nature for the instruction, the trusts, and the government of society.”(10)
a. Adams the same. “It already appears, that there must be in every society of men superiors an inferiors, because God has laid in the constitution and course of nature the foundations of the distinction.”
b. Thomas Paine loathed inherited titles and assigned status as a legally enforced inequality: “Nature is often giving to the world some extraordinary men who arrive at fame by merit and universal consent, such as Aristotle, Socrates, Plato, etc. They were truly great or noble. But when government sets up a manufactory of nobles, it is as absurd as if she undertook to manufacture wise men. Her nobles are all counterfeits.” http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/paine_dissertations_on_first_prin.html
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- #93
....as long as a judicial decision is connected to the language of the Constitution.
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- #95
Are you saying that the above are part of the enumerated powers?
So the Fed and Warren Gamaliel Harding weren't able to stop the boom and bust cycles by indirect means apparently. That's where the New Deal came in.
Agit8r
Gold Member
- Dec 4, 2010
- 12,141
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- 245
Alrighty! Another steaming pile of bullshit!
"The great object should be to combat the evil: 1. By establishing a political equality among all; 2. By witholding unnecessary opportunities from a few to increase the inequality of property by an immoderate, and especially an unmerited, accumulation of riches; 3. By the silent operation of laws which, without violating the rights of property, reduce extreme wealth towards a state of mediocrity and raise extreme indigence towards a state of comfort; 4. By abstaining from measures which operate differently on different interests, and particularly such as favor one interest at the expense of another; 5. By making one party a check on the other so far as the existence of parties cannot be prevented nor their views accommodated. If this is not the language of reason, it is that of republicanism."
-- James Madison; from 'Parties' (1792)
"legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property, only taking care to let their subdivisions go hand in hand with the natural affections of the human mind. The descent of property of every kind therefore to all the children, or to all the brothers and sisters, or other relations in equal degree is a politic measure, and a practicable one. Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise."
-- Thomas Jefferson; from letter to James Madison, (Oct. 28, 1785)
"Admitting that any annual sum, say, for instance, one thousand pounds, is necessary or sufficient for the support of a family, consequently the second thousand is of the nature of a luxury, the third still more so, and by proceeding on, we shall at last arrive at a sum that may not improperly be called a prohibitable luxury. It would be impolitic to set bounds to property acquired by industry, and therefore it is right to place the prohibition beyond the probable acquisition to which industry can extend; but there ought to be a limit to property or the accumulation of it by bequest."
-- Thomas Paine; from 'Rights of Man, Part the Second' (1792)
Try to use more civil language.
Not only are you stupid....but uncouth.
Ok...here's your remedial, boor.
From Glenn Greenwald's “With Liberty and Justice for Some; How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful”
1. The central principle of AmericaÂ’s founding was that the rule of law would be the prime equalizing force; the founders considered vast inequality in every other realm to be inevitable and even desirableÂ…. A small number would of individuals would be naturally endowed with unique and extraordinary talents while most people, by definition, would be ordinary. So the American concept of liberty would be premised on the inevitability of outcome inequality- success of some, failure of others.
a. Law was the one exception; no inequality was tolerable. It was the sine qua non ensuring fairness.
2. The concept has made its way into our clichés: equal before the law, justice is blind, no man is above the law, a nation of laws, not men.
3. What the founders feared most was that a centralized federal government would erode liberty, forcibly override local rule, obliterate self-governance, and transgress every limit. The Constitution was the attempt to prevent that.
4. The founders recognized that, unless the law was applied equally, the Constitution would become merely a suggestion, compliance being optional.
5. The central dispute in Marbury v. Madison was whether the courts had the authority to subject officials in the executive branch to their rulings.
6. None of the founders believed in equality as a general proposition. The opposite is true: they considered inequality on every level, other than law, to be the natural, inevitable, and just state of affairs. Even Jefferson, one of the most egalitarian of the founders, held that there was “a natural aristocracy” among men, based on “virtue and talents.” This was not only natural, but desirable: “The natural aristocracy I consider as the most precious gift of nature for the instruction, the trusts, and the government of society.”(10)
a. Adams the same. “It already appears, that there must be in every society of men superiors an inferiors, because God has laid in the constitution and course of nature the foundations of the distinction.”
b. Thomas Paine loathed inherited titles and assigned status as a legally enforced inequality: “Nature is often giving to the world some extraordinary men who arrive at fame by merit and universal consent, such as Aristotle, Socrates, Plato, etc. They were truly great or noble. But when government sets up a manufactory of nobles, it is as absurd as if she undertook to manufacture wise men. Her nobles are all counterfeits.” http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/paine_dissertations_on_first_prin.html
And, as noted above, LIMITING the disparity of wealth, was an essential part of assuring equality before the law. But people being free to have limitless wealth and to buy politicians was what our revolutionary struggle was fought against.
"there are various ways in which the rich may oppress the poor; in which property may oppress liberty; and that the world is filled with examples. It is necessary that the poor should have a defence against the danger."
-- James Madison; Note to Speech on the Right of Suffrage (1821)
Uncensored2008
Libertarian Radical
And effectively stopped all speculation bubbles, inflationary cycles, and recessions.
We have not had a single recession since the "New Deal" was imposed....
One of the few college level law courses I've ever taken clarified the notion that there are two types of laws that we live by - de jure and de facto. Enumerated powers are de jure law. The social contract is de facto.
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