ot; romney’s 47% statement

[CA renter]

That was an excellent article, zk. Thanks for sharing it.

IMHO, the only reason the Republican Party is even on the radar these days is because the “traditional Republicans,” as defined in this article, haven’t noticed that their party has been hijacked. Whenever I talk to conservative friends and family members, they immediately bring up “lazy freeloaders” without understanding that a much bigger picture exists than what they’ve been fed by the MSM. They’re going along for the ride, but they don’t even know where the train is headed.

[CA renter]

[quote=SD Realtor]im wondering if we could all agree that it would be best for society if the wealth were generally spread around. I don’t mean that it should be taken from you personally but…just setting up our ideal society, from scratch, can we all agree it would be best if it tends to have wealth distributed about, and not concentrated intensely at the very top, and not with very few people in the middle, and lots and lot of very broke people?

**************************************************

Except that your idea of all being equal is incredibly hypocritical. Like CAR you define the ideal society within the context of your cushy lives in the USA. You don’t really want everyone to be equal because if you wanted to include everyone you would include all of the impoverished humans in the world. This means your standard would go down in a very drastic manner.

So really your utopia is build on a hypocritical foundation. If you took the however many billions of people on the planet and applied your principals then you would not live in a beautiful climate where you live… if you were lucky you may have an outhouse or a ditch to crap in. You may or may not have electricity. Your children would most likely be working a hell of alot harder then they do now.

I think that the equality statement that is bantered about is the biggest load of BS I see on this entire site.

Say it like it is… I love the idea of equality as long as I get my home in southern california, enjoy a pension, and get to enjoy freedoms and benefits that billions and billions will never ever see.

If the REAL EQUALITY you guys speak of were to be implemented over the entire planet, you would be quite sorry.

*********************************************

Scaredy I will say that yes, it is sad that the middle class is withering away and that our politicians have no will at all to reverse that trend. The disparity has only increased regardless of who is in power. I don’t have any answers, I wish I did… however history always has shown that having the govt make the decisions about who gets what always ends poorly because those in or aligned with govt always took advantage of the situation creating the very class based society that was supposed to be avoided.[/quote]

SDR,

You are 100% correct about the random luck that enables us to enjoy the lifestyle most Piggs enjoy. I think that’s one of the main reasons many of us believe that those who are most fortunate (pure luck, in most cases, though few are willing to admit it) owe something to others who are not as fortunate. It is precisely why we believe in “sharing the wealth.”

I don’t think anyone is advocating for totally equal wages/benefits for every single person on the planet, but can we agree that the incredible disparity seen today is more likely to cause serious problems than not?

One of the aspects that has distinguished the U.S. from undeveloped, poverty-stricken countries has been our relatively large middle class. The middle class existed largely because of concessions made to labor over many years. As a rule, we tried to prevent massive concentrations of wealth and the rule by a few over the many.

If you look at some of the poorest nations on earth, you will see that they tend to have the greatest wealth/income disparities. The most civilized/developed nations that offer the greatest opportunities to their citizens tend to have a more balanced wealth/income distribution.

A nifty color-coded map with Gini coefficients:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:GINIretouchedcolors.png

Here, you can see changes over time:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality

————————

More (there is so much excellent information at the following link, and I strongly encourage everyone who has an interest in economics and/or social sciences to check it out):

Here are some dramatic facts that sum up how the wealth distribution became even more concentrated between 1983 and 2004, in good part due to the tax cuts for the wealthy and the defeat of labor unions: Of all the new financial wealth created by the American economy in that 21-year-period, fully 42% of it went to the top 1%. A whopping 94% went to the top 20%, which of course means that the bottom 80% received only 6% of all the new financial wealth generated in the United States during the ’80s, ’90s, and early 2000s (Wolff, 2007).

The rest of the world
Thanks to a 2006 study by the World Institute for Development Economics Research — using statistics for the year 2000 — we now have information on the wealth distribution for the world as a whole, which can be compared to the United States and other well-off countries. The authors of the report admit that the quality of the information available on many countries is very spotty and probably off by several percentage points, but they compensate for this problem with very sophisticated statistical methods and the use of different sets of data. With those caveats in mind, we can still safely say that the top 10% of the world’s adults control about 85% of global household wealth — defined very broadly as all assets (not just financial assets), minus debts. That compares with a figure of 69.8% for the top 10% for the United States. The only industrialized democracy with a higher concentration of wealth in the top 10% than the United States is Switzerland at 71.3%. For the figures for several other Northern European countries and Canada, all of which are based on high-quality data, see Table 4.

Table 4: Percentage of wealth held in 2000 by the Top 10% of the adult population in various Western countries
wealth owned
by top 10%
Switzerland 71.3%
United States 69.8%
Denmark 65.0%
France 61.0%
Sweden 58.6%
UK 56.0%
Canada 53.0%
Norway 50.5%
Germany 44.4%
Finland 42.3%

…………..

Income inequality in other countries
The degree of income inequality in the United States can be compared to that in other countries on the basis of the Gini coefficient, a mathematical ratio that allows economists to put all countries on a scale with values that range (hypothetically) from zero (everyone in the country has the same income) to 100 (one person in the country has all the income). On this widely used measure, the United States ends up 95th out of the 134 countries that have been studied — that is, only 39 of the 134 countries have worse income inequality. The U.S. has a Gini index of 45.0; Sweden is the lowest with 23.0, and South Africa is near the top with 65.0.

The table that follows displays the scores for 22 major countries, along with their ranking in the longer list of 134 countries that were studied (most of the other countries are very small and/or very poor). In examining this table, remember that it does not measure the same thing as Table 4 earlier in this document, which was about the wealth distribution. Here we are looking at the income distribution, so the two tables won’t match up as far as rankings. That’s because a country can have a highly concentrated wealth distribution and still have a more equal distribution of income due to high taxes on top income earners and/or high minimum wages — both Switzerland and Sweden follow this pattern. So one thing that’s distinctive about the U.S. compared to other industrialized democracies is that both its wealth and income distributions are highly concentrated.

Table 7: Income equality in selected countries
Country/Overall Rank Gini Coefficient
1. Sweden 23.0
2. Norway 25.0
8. Austria 26.0
10. Germany 27.0
17. Denmark 29.0
25. Australia 30.5
34. Italy 32.0
35. Canada 32.1
37. France 32.7
42. Switzerland 33.7
43. United Kingdom 34.0
45. Egypt 34.4
56. India 36.8
61. Japan 38.1
68. Israel 39.2
81. China 41.5
82. Russia 42.3
90. Iran 44.5
93. United States 45.0
107. Mexico 48.2
125. Brazil 56.7
133. South Africa 65.0

Note: These figures reflect family/household income, not individual income.
Source: Central Intelligence Agency (2010).

The differences in income inequality between countries also can be illustrated by looking at the share of income earned by the now-familiar Top 1% versus the Bottom 99%. One of the most striking contrasts is between Sweden and the United States from 1950 to 2009, as seen in Figure 8; and note that the differences between the two countries narrowed in the 1950s and 1960s, but after that went their separate ways, in rather dramatic fashion.

http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

[zk]

[quote=Brutus]
Here’s what they can do about it:
Stop watching trash TV. Stop watching MOST TV.
Read a friggin’ book or two. Go to school.
Study.
Stop listening to rap “music.”
Stop believing that all Liberals want to do is help you.
Stop smoking pot.
Stop smoking crack.
Stop getting drunk.
Stop having babies you can’t afford.
Go to school.
Be a nerd.
Get a job, ANY job. Keep it until you can get the job you want.
Work harder.
Work better.
Think.
Read books of all types.
Read some more.
Stop watching TV.
Think.
Stop watching trash TV.
Stop blaming everyone else for your problems.
Stop waiting for the government to help you.
It ain’t 1955 anymore.
If you want to see how a poor person can get ahead, observe how a typical Asian immigrant handles America.
Do what they do.
It works.

[/quote]

Brutus, you’re a perfect example of what today’s right wing is selling and why it doesn’t work.

The above is the closest you’ve come to offering any solutions. But if one looks closely, there really isn’t a solution there, there’s just anger. There’s an assumption that the problem with poor people is that they’re just screw offs. That there’s nothing keeping them from not being poor except their own laziness and ineptitude.

You love to be angry and righteous. You love to spew venom. You don’t like to offer real solutions and, when your ideas are shot down, you ignore it and move on to something else that you’re angry about. And you probably don’t even notice that you’re doing it. Because you’re not thinking, you’re reacting.

The right wing is great at emotional manipulation, which is the only reason they get as many votes as they do. They’ve created buzzwords like “liberal” and “socialism.” You hate liberals and you hate socialism. But you don’t even know what they are. But you sure feel good using those words. And that’s what the right wing’s strategy is all about. Sell ideas that, while they have no practical value, make potential voters feel righteous and powerful and smart and good (better than those lazy, freeloading bastards their tax dollars support).

So they get elected by the angry, righteous voters, and then they do nothing but obstruct progress. Nothing but mock the left while they do nothing at all to actually govern or improve our country.

My desire is not that people vote for Democrats, necessarily. It’s that people think for themselves. Think instead of react. Think instead of follow. Not allow themselves to be emotionally manipulated. Listen to what they’re saying and see if they’re offering solutions or just being angry and righteous.

[ocrenter]

judgement, seems like such an innocent act… until you are judged.

and once you are judged, acts of unthinkable cruelty can be brought against you because the judgement now serve as evidence that you deserve the very worse.

–a group of people has been judging the US. We are too lax of a society. Our women are just whores. We are a society of decadence and greed. Our government is a bully and we throw our weight around where it isn’t wanted.

We were judged by these people, and they decided to take action. Yes thousands of innocent people were killed. Yes thousands of children are now fatherless or motherless. But that’s ok in their eyes. Because they judged, and they determined in their judgement that the punishment fits our crime.

So who is to say your judgement any better than theirs?

So let’s start a war to figure it out!

[svelte]

[quote=zk]
So they get elected by the angry, righteous voters, and then they do nothing but obstruct progress. Nothing but mock the left while they do nothing at all to actually govern or improve our country.

My desire is not that people vote for Democrats, necessarily. It’s that people think for themselves. Think instead of react. Think instead of follow. Not allow themselves to be emotionally manipulated. Listen to what they’re saying and see if they’re offering solutions or just being angry and righteous.[/quote]

+10

People lose all credibility with me when they follow the party line to a T – whether it be Rep or Dem. Most often, I see Reps do it.

I like people who think for themselves and make decisions on each issue individually – not following any party line. That’s what I loved about McCain (only to have him throw it away with his VP pick).

To my way of thinking, the older white base of the Rep party is going to make up a smaller and smaller part of the US population. They are going to have to make changes if they are to survive.

If the Republican party can ever get to the point where they attract a new type of voter by removing stances on social issues and focusing instead on only fiscal responsibility, I think they have a fighting chance of coming back. Unfortunately, that probably won’t even be an option for 20 more years or so.

[scaredyclassic]

i’m pretty sure im a hypocrite, even in those cases where i can’t see it.

but given that, i could still have a point. even hypocrites can be correct…occasionally.

i wasn’t saying everyone should be equal.

just that ideally, the system ought to be designed so that wealth eventually gets spread around. regardless of what the rest of the world is doing.

Like, for instance, it would be bad, right, if one dude had 99.9% of the wealth and the rest of us split the balance, unevenly of course, according to our particular merits and efforts? even if the one dude worked hard and legally got all the wealth and was way smarter and more meritorious than the rest of us slobs….and even if the .1 % crumb we were splitting up was a decent chunk? I think we can all agree on that?

And if so, if you’d agree that one dude having all the dough would be bad, then I think you’re with me. The guiding principle is not “the best and the brightest win all the nuts” but instead, society has some obligation to spread it around…nott for free, or for no effort, but to ensure that everyone can get a piece…

I think you’d agree that excessive concentration of wealth, even if it was gotten with skill and brains and good old fashioned hard work, is not a good way to set up a society that has any chance ofbeing a decent fair, longlasting, good place tolive…

You don’t want all 99.9% ofwealth with just one, or in a nation our size, two or ten or 50 or 1000 dudes.

You want society to oeprate in a way –not where everyone gets something for nothing–but where there is plenty of oportunity to get in on the action and for everyone to do well. the base operating principle is not “cleverest guy gets to win and keep everything” but something more like “we all get a real chance to get a decent share”.

or soemthing like that

i don’t think we are forming that kind of society. I think we ought to. I have no idea what it would look like…

it might very well involve a lot less government involvement.

it’s prettyclear to me that there should be no govt involvement in student loans, for instance, and that the program itself is manifestly horrific.

but should the govt instead be involved in providing free education? hell, I don’t know. it couldnt be worse than the current scam…

[UCGal]

[quote=Brutus][quote=zk][quote=Brutus]
Here’s what they can do about it:
Stop watching trash TV. Stop watching MOST TV.
Read a friggin’ book or two. Go to school.
Study.
Stop listening to rap “music.”
Stop believing that all Liberals want to do is help you.
Stop smoking pot.
Stop smoking crack.
Stop getting drunk.
Stop having babies you can’t afford.
Go to school.
Be a nerd.
Get a job, ANY job. Keep it until you can get the job you want.
Work harder.
Work better.
Think.
Read books of all types.
Read some more.
Stop watching TV.
Think.
Stop watching trash TV.
Stop blaming everyone else for your problems.
Stop waiting for the government to help you.
It ain’t 1955 anymore.
If you want to see how a poor person can get ahead, observe how a typical Asian immigrant handles America.
Do what they do.
It works.

We need to teach kids how to use capitalism to achieve their dreams. Schools should have classes in Stock Market Trading, Investing, how to handle Bank Accounts, how to accumulate capital for investing, why capitalism works and HOW it works, in short, schools should teach financial literacy.

Instead, they teach “diversity” and “social responsibility” and “gender issues” and socialist dogma of all kinds. No wonder Johnny can’t spell, read, or do basic math.

That’s what I propose.
Now you can tell me how wrong I am, how we should teach sex ed in school, teach sensitivity to “cultural issues” and “black history” and “environmental awareness” and the “tragedy of European Colonialism and American Imperialism.”[/quote]

I’m not going to tell you how wrong you are. I agree with most of that. The difference between you and me is that you think that millions of poor people are suddenly going to embrace these ideas and goals without any impetus other than what they already have, whereas I think that’s not realistic. I think that they need to be educated to study, stop doing crack, stop being gangbangers, to think, work, work hard, read, go to college, learn about money, not have babies they can’t afford, not blame others for their problems, to do what they can to break the cycle that they’re in. And I think that if you’re really concerned with the future of this country and not with opposing any government program besides the military, you’ll agree.

———————–

I don’t think teaching diversity is socialist dogma. I don’t think it has anything to do with socialism. I think you’re just using that buzzword without really even knowing what it means. That said, I agree that teaching diversity is bullshit. I think America worked better when it was a melting pot, and I think it should still be a melting pot.

I don’t think we should be teaching black history any more than we should be teaching Asian history or Hispanic history. Unless we include the part about how so many blacks got to where they are today. Which is stuck in a cycle of poverty and violence. I think we should teach that so that they know how there, which will help them understand how to get out of there.

Not sure what you mean by “gender issues,” but I’m pretty sure that’s not socialist dogma, either.

Neither is “environmental awareness” socialist dogma. I’m curious why you think we shouldn’t teach environmental awareness.[/quote]

We need to start being judgmental about “lifestyle choices,” such as gangsta life, out-of-wedlock babies, dropping out of high school, obesity, casual drug use, etc.
It’s NOT okay to dress and act like a thug. It’s not okay to have kids when you’re 17 and unmarried. It’s not okay to be fatter than hell. Tattoos usually aren’t cool if you want to get a good job.
When I see someone with a lot of tattoos or piercings, I immediately assume they are either 1. A rock star 2. An MMA fighter. 3. A loser.

Be judgmental. Be more open about it. It’s not “all good.”

And teaching “environmental awareness” to people who can barely read, write, or do basic math, is a waste of time. Teach the basics, first. Then the rest.[/quote]

Wow – I think Brutus is trying to be as judgmental as Brian.

As a fatty, I can take it. But, in defense of fat people, being fat doesn’t make me a drain on society. (Currently don’t have any health issues associated with my weight, thank goodness.)

The rules espoused are pretty mostly the same rules I impose on my kids. But they are minors. Teaching tolerance (as a parent, or in the classroom) is not mutually exclusive with teaching math/science/language arts.

And I’m not sure how well it would fly to tell folks (adults) no tv or rap music in a country that is supposed to be about personal liberties.

But… to each their own.

[livinincali]

[quote=squat250]
I think you’d agree that excessive concentration of wealth, even if it was gotten with skill and brains and good old fashioned hard work, is not a good way to set up a society that has any chance ofbeing a decent fair, longlasting, good place tolive…

You don’t want all 99.9% of wealth with just one, or in a nation our size, two or ten or 50 or 1000 dudes.
[/quote]

Think about what wealth really is and what you hope to do with it and you’d realize that most wealth is indeed somebody’s obligation to provide goods and services. A slave owner on a plantation would have 99.9% of the wealth on the plantation. A King would have 99.9% of the wealth inside the walls of his castle. What they really have is control over a group of people to provide all the goods and services he desires. The owner/King gets to keep it all while the people providing the service get to keep basically nothing other than sustenance to keep providing goods and service.

These type arrangement usually end up in revolt at some point because nobody wants to work for nothing in return. Fairness depends on who defines it, but a general definition that everybody is relatively equal is a pretty common definition. The problem is that this idea flies straight in the face of evolution, natural selection, or Darwinism. Mother earth or nature doesn’t reward fairness/equality it rewards evolution/innovation. It’s why a solution to solve the problem of fairness in many peoples definition of fairness just doesn’t exist. The best you can probably do is practice true capitalism and allow those that make bad bets fail.

Throughout history many companies have come and gone. Many individuals have been poor, wealthy, and poor again. The problem now is we don’t allow those wealthy to fail anymore, if we did the wealth gap would shrink. The biggest shrinking of the wealth gap that ever occurred happened during the great depression. It will likely happen again, but this time because of our reliance on 401Ks and self funded retirement more than just the top 5% are going to get hit. Everybody is going to take a hit and it’s why we’ve become so desperate to find a solution that doesn’t really exist. Your wealth and your retirement really depend on another person’s debt.

[poorgradstudent]

[quote=Brutus]
Here’s what they can do about it:
Stop watching trash TV. Stop watching MOST TV.
Read a friggin’ book or two. Go to school.
Study.
Stop listening to rap “music.”
Stop believing that all Liberals want to do is help you.
Stop smoking pot.
Stop smoking crack.
Stop getting drunk.
Stop having babies you can’t afford.
Go to school.
Be a nerd.
Get a job, ANY job. Keep it until you can get the job you want.
Work harder.
Work better.
Think.
Read books of all types.
Read some more.
Stop watching TV.
…
[/quote]
Y’know, I know plenty of nerds that are huge pot enthusiasts, yet make enough money to pay a higher percentage of their income to federal income tax than Mitt Romney. Some even like “rap music”! Cutting back on TV time is always good advice, as is avoiding having babies too early. In this state you’d actually be better off talking about Meth use than crack. Oh, but it’s mostly poor whites that use meth, so I suppose that doesn’t fit the narrative you’re trying to weave…

[ocrenter]

I do believe the Colorado shooter was a quiet nerd…

[Arraya]

[quote=livinincali] The problem is that this idea flies straight in the face of evolution, natural selection, or Darwinism. Mother earth or nature doesn’t reward fairness/equality it rewards evolution/innovation. .[/quote]

Complete and utter nonsense. The vast majority of human existence has been mostly egalitarian. Like 99%. Humans emerged as an egalitarian social species(dependent on others for survival with mostly equal distribution of resources) and nature rewarded this interdependent and egalitarian relationship. Like 3 million years as a hominid and 175000 years as homo sapien. The social relations that developed over the past 7000 years are an anomaly.

Biospheric interactions are inherently cooperative in nature, not supremely competitive… this is how a life manages to endure without snuffing everyone else out. Everything finds its unique niche in a functioning ecosystem, and the niches in their entirety are unique to the organisms that occupy them. And nature doesn’t have concentrated ownership of the means of production… EVERYTHING is the means of production for everything else, equally distributed. Output = input. No waste to speak of, contrary to our system.

The human social construct of private ownership of the means of production that is our current economic system, a man-made institution fully dependent on social support… (without the social organization of military, police, and courts [you don’t think these just magically appear, do you? And you don’t think they’ve been with us for our entire history as a species, do you?] to keep the land under private ownership and control, it would fall apart immediately) is not mirrored in the natural world.

Capitalism is not cooperative in a holistic sense as life is. It does not perpetuate life in a balanced and sustainable way. We are now seeing the central concepts of externalities at work(well those who wish to look), and what that means for eventual destruction of the framework in which our economic paradigm and institution operates.

[zk]

[quote=Arraya]Complete and utter nonsense. The vast majority of human existence has been mostly egalitarian. Like 99%. Humans emerged as an egalitarian social species(dependent on others for survival with mostly equal distribution of resources) and nature rewarded this interdependent and egalitarian relationship. [/quote]

Of course, it makes perfect sense that what we do now is not natural. But is it realistic to expect that we could operate the same way with 6 billion humans on earth as we did when there were a million or so? I don’t think so. So the fact that what we do isn’t natural doesn’t automatically mean it’s not optimal. Because “natural” isn’t really an option any more. Is what we have the best possible system? Not in my opinion. What is? I don’t know.

I understand that your point was that egalitarianism does not fly in the face of darwinism, and that what we do have is not natural. So I’m not contradicting you. I’m just saying that I don’t think egalitarinaism of the type we had 8,000 years ago is possible now, and therefore shouldn’t be strived for.

[Arraya]

To paraphrase buckminster fuller, the opposite of natural is impossible.

How we organize ourselves and socially relate today is an anomaly, historically speaking. A minor minor blip coming to an end. The spread of capitalist social relations was more imposed than organic, just ask the native americans. The question should not be what is natural, but what is healthy. Heck, genocide and slavery are “natural”.

What IS impossible is perpetual physical growth. Capitalist society can only survive by defying the laws of thermodynamics, through endlessly expanding growth, buying and using more of everything, every year and forever. Thus the cult of radical consumerism.

[Arraya]

[quote=zk]I’m just saying that I don’t think egalitarinaism of the type we had 8,000 years ago is possible now, and therefore shouldn’t be strived for.[/quote]

Not with capital accumulation as the main driver of social action

[SD Realtor]

Arraya what you said about capitalism may be true however in nature there is an abundance of classes within pretty much every single society from species that form them. From ants to bees, to more complex societies of mammals, there are niches within those societies. Please don’t try to blame capitalism for everything. Furthermore within nature when species become weak, old or sick they die. There are no safety nets for them to enjoy.

As much as you love to bag on capitalism, nature is not the utopia that you make it out to be. Nature is a place where the strongest survive and the weak die.

[Author]

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