Talk-Polywell.org

Posted: **Mon Dec 28, 2009 6:02 pm**

EVIL!!!!! It's EVIL!!!!! (until the conservatives need to get on food stamps

)

I couldn't resist making a counter-topic seeing that the "Liberal view" thread has exploded like crazy.

Posted: **Mon Dec 28, 2009 6:26 pm**

The foundation of what is called liberalism these days is theft.

Thank you for showing the liberals for what they are.

Thieves.

And out of theft will come morality?

Surely you are joking.

What we get is a competition to control the machinery of theft and its enforcers. What P.J. O'Rourke referred to as A Parliament of Whores.

And the theory is: if only we can get the right thieves in office all will be well. The fact that it has never worked is proof that the wrong thieves were chosen. Next time it will be different.

Posted: **Mon Dec 28, 2009 6:32 pm**

We need not go beyond our own recent history to find examples of the demoralizing effect of depriving people of the personal responsibility of being free. In response to the urging of our social engineers, many Americans are trying to avoid this responsibility by voting for men who promise to install a system of "government-guaranteed security", a partial return to the old slave laws of some of our Southern States that guaranteed to all slaves "the right to food and raiment, to kind attention when sick, to maintenance in old age." And the arguments used in defense of this present-day trend toward the bondage of a welfare state are essentially the same as those used formerly to defend the bondage of outright slavery.

For example, many of the slaveholders claimed to know what was "best for the slaves". After all, hadn't they "rescued" the slaves from a life of savagery? Our social reformers who advocate "government-guaranteed security" also claim that they know what is best for the people and they say, "After all, haven't the American people shown conclusively that they are incapable of handling the responsibility for their own welfare?"

Many of the slaveholders believed sincerely that the "dumb, ignorant slaves" would starve to death unless their welfare were guaranteed by the masters. And the social engineers say, "Are you in favor of letting people starve?"

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/12/ ... socia.html

H/T JCCarlton viewtopic.php?p=30965#30965

Posted: **Mon Dec 28, 2009 6:52 pm**

Ohh please, Conservatives are just as thieving too. Even more so with off-shore tax havens and the erosion of the American dream for the average worker.

Nice try-

Posted: **Mon Dec 28, 2009 7:11 pm**

JoeOh wrote:Ohh please, Conservatives are just as thieving too. Even more so with off-shore tax havens and the erosion of the American dream for the average worker.

Nice try-

The easy way to eliminate off shore tax havens is to lower taxes.

You are too easy.

==

Milton Friedman once estimated that if government eliminated all social programs that the economy would grow at a 10% rate vs our current anemic 3%.

Let us look at what that means.

At 3% the size of the economy in 10 years would be 1.344X In 50 years 4.384X.

At 10% the size of the economy in 10 years would be 2.594X In 50 years 117.391X.

==

So would the average worker be better off in an economy that was doubling every 7+ years or one that was doubling every 23 1/2 years?

Posted: **Mon Dec 28, 2009 7:20 pm**

No, you're to easy. If we eliminate all the income taxes, the ones that have the money will have even more money (and horde it) and those with far less will now have no social safety-nets to fall back on. Instead they'll just starve to death in the cold. The homelessness rate will skyrocket.

Conservative ideals fail becuase people are inherently imperfect. They lie, cheat and steal to get what they want. Only a few people are "truly" honest. The system is complicated because human nature is complicated. No way around it.

Conservatism only works for those who already have everything while liberalism protects those who have little or nothing to protect them from those who would otherwise run them over with impunity.

Posted: **Mon Dec 28, 2009 7:28 pm**

No, you're to easy. If we eliminate all the income taxes, the ones that have the money will have even more money (and horde it)

Ah. The zero sum theory of economics.

In fact the rich do not (a la Scrooge McDuck) swim in piles of gold coins and bank notes. They invest. Investment creates jobs. The more investment the greater the demand for labor.

I don't know if you remember the dot com era, but towards the end of that era you couldn't get people to work for minimum wage. Wages were rising faster than government mandates.

Think of how wages would grow if we could get a steady 10% growth (at the peak of the dot com era economic growth was 8% a year.

===

I assume you are not an engineer. Because engineers are required by the nature of their jobs to understand economics.

Posted: **Mon Dec 28, 2009 7:33 pm**

Yea, I remember the (dot)com boom.......and bust. After the bust, the jobs went bye-bye and the wages went down-down. Doesn't sound too stable an idea to me.

Posted: **Mon Dec 28, 2009 7:34 pm**

BTW I'm a conservative. Which means you are calling me a liar.

====

The liberal idea is that theft is a better way to run an economy than investment.

I have no problem with that. Get a gun and do your Robin Hood thing. That would be honest thievery. Most liberals do not have the courage of their convictions. They prefer others do their thieving for them.

So do you have the courage of your convictions?

Posted: **Mon Dec 28, 2009 7:42 pm**

In response to the urging of our social engineers, many Americans are trying to avoid this responsibility by voting for men who promise to install a system of "government-guaranteed security", a partial return to the old slave laws of some of our Southern States that guaranteed to all slaves "the right to food and raiment, to kind attention when sick, to maintenance in old age." And the arguments used in defense of this present-day trend toward the bondage of a welfare state are essentially the same as those used formerly to defend the bondage of outright slavery.

For example, many of the slaveholders claimed to know what was "best for the slaves". After all, hadn't they "rescued" the slaves from a life of savagery? Our social reformers who advocate "government-guaranteed security" also claim that they know what is best for the people and they say, "After all, haven't the American people shown conclusively that they are incapable of handling the responsibility for their own welfare?"

Many of the slaveholders believed sincerely that the "dumb, ignorant slaves" would starve to death unless their welfare were guaranteed by the masters. And the social engineers say, "Are you in favor of letting people starve?

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/12/ ... socia.html

So your theory is that if most of us were slaves we would be better off?

And who will avoid this slavery? The rich who can afford to buy government enforcers.

Posted: **Mon Dec 28, 2009 7:44 pm**

Yea, I remember the (dot)com boom.......and bust. After the bust, the jobs went bye-bye and the wages went down-down. Doesn't sound too stable an idea to me.

Yes, I do very much remember that too. My company was at the end of a long line of companies that were going down, because a big company had wrongly invested in the .com bubble.
We had a contract that we had fullfilled and for comparably littel money too, yet we never got our money. The big company went bankrupt, then the next in line, then the next. We were the last one standing (still standing today), but the result were years where we had to pay our debt from that contract with barely anything to live from. I would have never been able to pay a private health insurance from the US in that time, never. Anyway the rich bastard that was leading the company on the top that had collapsed somehow got out of all that richer than before. Dont ask me how, why everybody else went down.
I honestly dont think that this is just, or in any way desirable for a repeat.
Though the bank bubble comes close to that again (some super rich asses got richer again while the middle class is once again struggling with paying for their houses).
I would have let the banks die and given tax releaves or some small money injections to those that were struggling with paying their mordgages instead. If enough people were able to pay their mordgages then the banks might have survived that way as well. Those that dont, well that is the free market for you...

Posted: **Mon Dec 28, 2009 7:49 pm**

I didn't say all conservatives are liars, cheats, and thieves. I just said most. I hope you really are one of the honest ones.

Unlike most conservatives I don't deal in absolutes. And I don't need a gun to get my point across.

Posted: **Mon Dec 28, 2009 7:49 pm**

In fact the rich do not (a la Scrooge McDuck) swim in piles of gold coins and bank notes. They invest.

Actually the main reason why they invest is because they can write off their investments from taxes. If you take the taxes out of the equation, you might see a lot more money lying in savings accounts than you do these days.

Posted: **Mon Dec 28, 2009 7:53 pm**

JoeOh wrote:Yea, I remember the (dot)com boom.......and bust. After the bust, the jobs went bye-bye and the wages went down-down. Doesn't sound too stable an idea to me.

Note that it was one sector of the economy that provided most of the growth. Now think of what would happen if the economy was firing on all cylinders. Lower taxes can do that.

But let us look at it another way. What is a fair rate of taxation? 10%? 25%? 50%? 75%? 100%? 125%? 200%?

Or you could look at it another way. What states do best in the long run? High tax states? Or low tax states? Why are 1 million people a year leaving California? Why are 1/2 million a year moving to Texas?

http://www.city-journal.org/2009/19_4_california.html

Why is money leaving the USA for investment in China? (hint China is growing at around 10% a year) Money moves. Where would you like it to go?

The USSR was based on the principles you espouse. They are not much in the news these days. I wonder why.

Posted: **Mon Dec 28, 2009 8:03 pm**

Msimon, You mean our entire economy should be based on boom and bust cycles??

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