Bern, you need to be a more careful reader and even more careful writer. Reread very carefully what you have written in your previous posts concerning the ‘flaw’ issue. You have managed to change your message by narrowing it down, finally, but it took you several posts to do it with accuracy. You have to make sure that the context of your statements are accurately written to the limit of your actual meaning and not to reasonably include things that you don’t mean.
YOU need to be the more careful reader you condescending prick. As a 'lefty' you read what you wanted to read. My message has never changed. YOU told me that
I said people who aren't wealthy are flawed. I said no such thing. There is nothing morally righteous (or evil) about the pursuit of wealth, thus there can not be a 'flaw' in those that aren't.
Actions taken in the pursuit of wealth however CAN be flawed. It's simple objective fact that some actions are more likey to be beneficial in reaching that goal than others....if indeed it has been made a goal.
Statements viewed as criticisms of the poor, especially blanket criticisms made by those who are not among the poor, along with other things, contribute to the instigation of class warfare. Bern80 is doing it yet again saying “many of the poor are poor because of the choices they've made”. He said it twice in the same paragraph. Saying “many of the rich are wealthy because of their greed” or “many of the top 10% wealthy people are getting away with being greedy” and then leave it at that, would be viewed as a criticism of the rich. Naivite about what constitutes criticism in the real world is no defense. Again I challenge Bern80 to be forthright and honest and say what he really thinks and stand up and tell us just what proportion of the poor (there are over 43.6 million Americans living in poverty today) you think are poor because of their poor choices. Don’t wimp out again by being intellectually dishonest and evasive like you did on the question of what proportion of lopsided wealth would be bad in YOUR OPINION (not the ‘actual’ proportion in the real world, just your opinion). I would have given you the benefit of the doubt because of your lack of careful reading, but, I am beginning to see a pattern of spin that I view as becoming quite deliberate.
If you want to have a conversation with me, have a conversation with ME. Knock off the third person rudeness. First from a strictly income level, yes I would be considered poor and I live in the real world like everyone else. I have told what I really think. The 'problem' of wealth disparity in this country is not the result of some amorphous, unseen force holding people down. It is the result of the people not making improving their income a priority. You wouldn't know intellectual dishonesty if it bit you in the ass. Intelectual dishonesty is spitting out numbers just because someone demands it of you, without any evidence as to their basis in reality. I did already state the point at which lopsided would be bad. If your brain can only handle unsubstatiable numbers, that is not my problem.
Wow, “Tax breaks to wealthy people are arguably the most beneficial of tax breaks because that group has more money at their disposal to be used for a variety of things”. Bern, are you insane? “…used for a variety of things”, really? First of all, I would argue that “giving” (your term) money to the rich is the worst thing for the economy. That would just make the lopsidedness of the concentration of wealth and income at the top even worse. You already sheepishly admitted that too lopsided is probably bad. Then you went on to cowardly say that you have “no idea” what degree of lopsidedness would be bad. What a massive cop out. I’m pretty sure now that if I asked Bern80 “would it be bad for the economy if the top 1% owned 60% of the wealth and the top 10% owned 90% of the wealth and 91% of all the voting corporate stock?”, Bern80 would say “uh, I don’t know, I have no idea”. At best Bern might say, “it might or would ‘PROBABLY’ be bad for the economy”. He likes to use the word ‘probably’ because he’s afraid of being on record as being committal to a truth that weakens his arguments. Very, very common and ubiquitous language by righties when they are cornered.
Sheepishly admitted? Who's spinning now? It's observably obvious that too much of that would be a bad thing. I'm not 'sheepishly' admitting anything there. That would be the equivalent of 'sheepishly' admitting the sky is blue. Ridiculous. I have never contested there is disparity in where money is distributed, nor have I contested that too much disparity (more and more concentrated into fewer and fewer) is 'okay' or meaningless....All I have contested is that if we want this problem solved it would beneficial to figure out WHY it is happening in the first place and what the end goal is.
If the 'problem' is wealth is not evenly distributed then the goal must be to RE-distribute it more evenly. What would that actually look like? Forgetting how we would do that for a minute, somehow or other more money would be distributed to those with little, or money taken from those with more or a combination of both.
NOW we get into how to do that and how we do it depends on why it happened. If the way in which wealth is distributed was purely random, again some benevolent figurehead distributes random amounts of a finite pile of money to everyone, then you would have a moral argument for taking from some and giving to others if some semblance of even distribution is what is best for society. Well of course that is NOT how money is distributed. Money isn't 'distributed' from a finite pool. It is more accurate to say that people attain money through the resources they have and/or choose to avail themselves of. Very broadly, that could be being paid for their skill sets in some job, in few instances, inheriting money, running a business, or owning assets that generate income. The point is the individual has to actually DO one or a combination of those actions to generate income. The point is, if a person wants money, some action of some kind is required on the individuals part to obtain it. Our society has accepted that. Therefore if there is a disparity in who has how much and where it is concentrated, the logical thing to do, knowing that income is generated via action of some sort by the individual, would be to examine the actions of those individuals and find out what actions were or were not taken.
There are of course mitigating circumstances. Not everyone has access to the same resources, etc. The problem with 'you lefties' is your inefficiency in solving problems. There is an order to which one should rule out reasons why they are in the position they are in. Lefties look externally first. 'What thing or person can I blame for my problem?' What you
should do is objectively look at yourself and your actions FIRST. Lefties do that last, if ever. Consequently problems never get solved because they never even consider the possibility that their own actions are the reason they are where they are.
The righties will say glibly, “this tax break money in the hands of the wealthy will be invested in production that employs people”. Well, I ask, “How much of it will go directly and only into production that employs people, and how much per annum will that specific investment generate in increase in employees earnings in 2011 and/or 2012 and/or 2013?” Bern, you don’t have a damn clue. Even Milton Friedman said that spending patterns don’t change either predictably nor generally at all in the short term with increases to income. .
So we don't want businesses to be able to create jobs now? That sounds fucking brilliant.
I’m going to pull a right wing ploy and ask this admittedly ad hominem-like question, “If the tax break for the wealthy is so great for the economy, why is our unemployment rate so high today after 10 years of the tax break?” I enjoy myself by throwing the very common right wing illogic into the right wing face.
It isn't a right wing ploy. It's a faulty premise on your part and a strawman. I enjoy watching the left attribute positions to people they don't have in a pathetic attempt to win an argument.
By the way, Bern, can you give us some specifics on what “…providing care to those that need it” in the context of this discussion looks like? You kind of rambled on positing almost rhetorical questions like you usually do while being noncommittal. I know you’re trying to go somewhere with it, hopefully more definitive than, “Can’t we all just get along”.
I mean we continue to do as we do now. We accept that there will always be a certain number of people that simply can not pay for their health care. So we agree as a compassionate society that we will treat them anyway.
Boy, your anti-minimum wage argument is a tired old argument. When the cost of production goes up, be it labor or materials or overhead, it reduces profit in the short term. But, the significant thing to know is that labor is just an element in the cost, the price doesn’t change in the short term because prices are determined by the market generally and are slow to change. And, when profit is made both before or after an increase to cost of production, by using deductive reasoning, all the costs were indeed covered, and low and behold, there is still a profit, albeit smaller than before the cost increase. If the price were to increase, say by the exact amount of cost increase, then generally the profit would increase a bit but yield less profit than before the cost and price change. That is classical economics, neoclassical economics, and the more recent ‘fusion economics’. The point being that for profitable businesses, increase in the marginal unemployment rate to keep pace with the general price level makes sense on a variety of levels. Generally, for the breakeven or unprofitable enterprises, it is up to them to get more efficient, market better, manage better, innovate, or change the product, same for those that were profitable and became breakeven or unprofitable. After all, they are getting the market price, and if their competition can make a profit, they need to get back to the drawing board. That’s the American way.
To hide behind the argument that raising the minimum wage just hurts the very people it is intended to help is specious. While there may be a theoretical short term increase to the unemployed (would love to see the stats), the overall all income to them is increased, and in the short term hiring does attain and regain the previous equilibrium at the new wage. It is an overall benefit to the minimum wage earners and it is good for the country, and it is good for the minimum wage earners.
All of the above I would say is true.....and that's the point. Like it or not some businesses are not run well and in those businesses jobs will be lost when the cost of productin goes up via a min wage increase. I doubt the laid off worker gives a rats ass whether they lost their job because the min wage went up or they lost their job because the company was run poorly and the min wage increase was the straw that broke the camels back. Either way they're still out of a job. It may be a tired argument, but it's a true one. You think that laid off worker really cares whether his lost job is only 'theoretical'? Who's the uncompassioante prick now?
If the minimum wage is kept the same forever or if it is eliminated as the righties would love to do, you know and I know that would lead to an increase in the lopsided concentration of wealth and income at the top. Come on, a minimum wage of $7.25 only yields only $15,080/yr full time if you can get full time. A person can barely function if at all on that in this country, especially if that is supposed to take care of more than one person. $3,000 tax break for the household earning $350,000 per year juxtaposed to not raising the minimum wage by a few cents for the family on minimum wage, that’s just blatantly sick. Now that wreaks of greed! There are “many” rigties out there that should be ashamed of themselves, “probably”.
It should be elminiated because it's meaningless. It effects less than 10% of the population. That's the percentage of the labor force that makes min wage. Realistically it's even less than that because not all min wage workes are depenent solely on that source of income. Do you really want to open the can of warms and debate whether or not the minimum wage should be enough to live on?
Neither one of you knows any conservatives in real life, do you?
