Obama's Agenda (political, of course)

[Katyusha]

The problem with this kind of thing is that people will not be rewarded sufficiently for excellence or diligence or hard work. Why should people sweat through four or five or eight years of higher education when they and their families will not be materially better off than high school dropouts?

Because everyone who graduated college and works hard, is diligent, and is excellent at what they do is sufficiently rewarded for it, yes?

Would that it actually were that way.

 

[john-the-author]

I think what you meant to say was "Work will set you free."

It rings better as "Arbeit macht frei" oder "Werke bevrijdt" depending on where you were.

 

[john-the-author]

What do you mean by that? I am just citing the man you and many others seem to idolize.

Actually, I think he's great for many reasons. We need a dynamic, intelligent, and inspirational leader. One who can actually speak English and not sound like he's drooling is a strong plus, too: someone doesn't say "Soeshh' s'curitih" or "nookyelar" would be a blessed change.

Why people have this rampant hard-on about socialism in any form, anywhere, any time, continues to mystify me. I tend to chalk it up as a personal problem on their part: yet another irrational fear that could probably be dealt with using talk therapy, education, and (for extreme cases) prescribed psychotropic drugs.

 

[epiphany65]

It rings better as "Arbeit macht frei" oder "Werke bevrijdt" depending on where you were.

I didn't expect him to know the German.
http://fountainhead.smugmug.com/photos/11358190_3RPaD-M.jpg

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

JOHN THE AUTHOR

The fatal flaw of socialism is managers have no incentives to serve the public, and commerce/industry is run like a bureaucracy, which has no competition.

You need to read how things were in the old socialist regimes like Albania, for example. The elites were treated like perfumed princes, and the ordinary citizens wore jelly shoes, ate gray produce packed in leaking cans, and drank ONE brand of beer. Castro sends his MDs out of country to generate cash, the people at home wait in line.

Its the same story everywhere that socialism is tried.

One of my sons-in-law is Rumanian. When Rumania was socialist ordinary folks couldnt buy new cars. The elites got new cars. Ordinary people bought the old cars after they won a lottery to get a chance to buy the car. Then they rebuilt the car on their kitchen table. He's one helluva mechanic.

 

[epiphany65]

Actually, I think he's great for many reasons. We need a dynamic, intelligent, and inspirational leader. One who can actually speak English and not sound like he's drooling is a strong plus, too: someone doesn't say "Soeshh' s'curitih" or "nookyelar" would be a blessed change.

Why people have this rampant hard-on about socialism in any form, anywhere, any time, continues to mystify me. I tend to chalk it up as a personal problem on their part: yet another irrational fear that could probably be dealt with using talk therapy, education, and (for extreme cases) prescribed psychotropic drugs.

I think you nailed it with the words "irrational fear".

 

[xssve]

JOHN THE AUTHOR

The fatal flaw of socialism is managers have no incentives to serve the public, and commerce/industry is run like a bureaucracy, which has no competition.

Much like Congress and the the White House.

 

[Boxlicker101]

Because everyone who graduated college and works hard, is diligent, and is excellent at what they do is sufficiently rewarded for it, yes?

Would that it actually were that way.

Well, not everyone, but they are usually better off than those who have loafed all their lives, as they should be. I am referring to those who have no physical or mental problems, but seem to think the world owes them a living.

 

[sr71plt]

The problem with this kind of thing is that people will not be rewarded sufficiently for excellence or diligence or hard work. Why should people sweat through four or five or eight years of higher education when they and their families will not be materially better off than high school dropouts?

Because they will, by the law of averages, still be materially better off than high school dropouts--and they'll have nice, broadening educations to enjoy to boot.

I swear that you folks who grouse at people making more than $250,000 a year getting hit a little harder in taxes by the Obama plan--and this includes a whole passel of McCain supporters who just aren't looking into their own self-interest--have no concept of what it means to be making that much (or of what percentage of the population this encompasses). Folks making $250,000 a year are so outstripping anyone making $80,000 a year in financial power and discretionary funds on the margin that paying a higher percentage in taxes means practically nothing to them in relative spending power.

It's just that you guys scraping by on $60,000 a year haven't the vaguest notion of how those making $250,000 a year live--and possibly are also being really, really dumb in wishful thinking in how soon you will reach anything close to that level yourselves.

If voters thought with their minds and pocketbooks, Obama would win with 95% of the vote on this tax plan issue alone. (Now, whether they believe he'll carry through with any such plan is another matter--but having gotten the mandate to stick it to the rich who have been permitted to stick it to the middle class for nearly a decade, I see no reason why he wouldn't carry it forward if Congress let him.)

 

[john-the-author]

And sales taxes are extremely inefficient. To paraphrase my favorite writer, "Financing trillion and billion dollar projects by gathering a few cents on every sale is rather silly."

Not necessarily. One of the ideas that's been done before and SHOULD have been done with the bail-out package is this: apply a 1/10th of 1% tax to each and every stock transaction and send that money to the Fed to pay for the bailout. With maybe $700T of US stock sales every year, we'd pay off the bail-out in one year.

We could've done it, too: Wall Street was bargaining from a position of being spreadeagled over a barrel with its ass bare. We could've made it happen. FDR did this and (IIRC) Truman did. It would've worked.

John

 

[john-the-author]

I didn't expect him to know the German.
http://fountainhead.smugmug.com/photos/11358190_3RPaD-M.jpg

 

[john-the-author]

Because they will, by the law of averages, still be materially better off than high school dropouts--and they'll have nice, broadening educations to enjoy to boot.

I swear that you folks who grouse at people making more than $250,000 a year getting hit a little harder in taxes by the Obama plan--and this includes a whole passel of McCain supporters who just aren't looking into their own self-interest--have no concept of what it means to be making that much (or of what percentage of the population this encompasses). Folks making $250,000 a year are so outstripping anyone making $80,000 a year in financial power and discretionary funds on the margin that paying a higher percentage in taxes means practically nothing to them in relative spending power.

It's just that you guys scraping by on $60,000 a year haven't the vaguest notion of how those making $250,000 a year live--and possibly are also being really, really dumb in wishful thinking in how soon you will reach anything close to that level yourselves.

If voters thought with their minds and pocketbooks, Obama would win with 95% of the vote on this tax plan issue alone. (Now, whether they believe he'll carry through with any such plan is another matter--but having gotten the mandate to stick it to the rich who have been permitted to stick it to the middle class for nearly a decade, I see no reason why he wouldn't carry it forward if Congress let him.)

True in my experience.

I figured out that the probable reason that you have so many people who vote Republican who are mired in poverty and will never rise out of the financial slums they're in (without making ANY judgements on their personal happiness, moral worth, or general health and parenting abilities) is that they believe that they can and will become millionaires themselves. The tax plans that they approve are onerous, the fact that theyare getting screwed out of health and social benefits is undeniable, and yet they keep voting for the people who so clearly don't care about them.

There's a group in Berkeley that has been looking into this for a few decades and they've discovered the underlying cause. (I don't recall their name but I heard a speaker at the Unitarian Universalist church in Mission Viejo, CA, about a year ago when I happened to be down there.) The Left is generally viewed as indifferent/unconcerned/hostile to the spiritual needs of the people who are in that social & financial bracket. So when the Christian fascists move in and say "Hey, we can do things for you, we worship the same God you do, and we want to see more of that in gov't," it strikes a chord with them and they get let around by their noses. The solution for the Left is to address spiritual concerns more. This is harder to do because of the combination of fundamentalist and morally repressed attitudes that are anathema to the Left as a rule, but that's the issue.

 

[john-the-author]

It's just that you guys scraping by on $60,000 a year haven't the vaguest notion of how those making $250,000 a year live--and possibly are also being really, really dumb in wishful thinking in how soon you will reach anything close to that level yourselves.

Making a pile of money is nice. It's wonderful. And it's a ton of work, very probably far more than people making $60K. My wife and I both work about 10 hours a day and we frequently are travelling for our jobs. I work three or four jobs at the moment, which is WAAAAAY too many. There are times that only working one job has a real charm, but even that's not necessarily the case: the Babe works only one job and it's huge.

What's different for us than if we were making $60K? We wouldn't have as nice a house. We would have a lot more health problems because we could afford the health care we both require, even with insurance. We probably wouldn't have anything to look forward to in retirement save for Social Security. And the kids wouldn't be getting the college education they are. I know we wouldn't be taking as many vacations and they wouldn't be very fancy.

Life is better for making more money. There are plenty of bennies to all of this, without a doubt, but it's still a lot of work. And I want to be the first to say that this doesn't make us any better than anyone else. There's no 'entitlement' to this; in fact, if anything we're clear on how lucky we are to be able to do all of this. (In fact, one of the things that matters very much to me is helping people get a better job. It's my part of the Great Work and I know it.) I would love for more people to be able to make more money and save more money. I'd recommend along those lines that everyone check out a copy of "The Richest Man in Babylon" by George F. Clason and read it and do it. Everytime you find yourself saying "Yeah, but...." pause and tell yourself you're full of shit and that the author's right and you're wrong and keep reading.

 

[SEVERUSMAX]

Actually, the income tax, except during and soon after the Civil War, didn't exist until the passage of the 16th Amendment, as it had been declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court. Before then, the main source of Federal revenue was the tariff, along with excise taxes. Personally, I think it telling that we had less of a national debt back then, not to mention that we still had a manufacturing base back then. You know, even in the Information Age, people still have to make things.

Where's Ross Perot when you need him?

It's true that we have had the income tax for a long time, but it's still less than a century. And both Hamilton and Jefferson would have been horrified at such a tax. Hamilton was for the merchant, after all, and Jefferson was for the smallholder. I think that they could have accepted a tax on wealthy landowners better or a tariff easier (yes, Jefferson came around to economic nationalism in time) than a tax on personal income.

Personally, I think that a surcharge of 10% on agribusiness, given its heavy reliance on corporate welfare in the form of ethanol subsidies, is only just as a way to help balance the budget and pay back the favors that their lobbyists have gotten. Not that I hate agribusinesses, but I think that they have gotten too much power at taxpayers' expense. Not to mention the smallholders', the family farm that is vanishing today. They are a lot like the latifundia graziers who gobbled smallholdings back in the late Roman Republic. But I digress.

 

[sr71plt]

Actually, the income tax, except during and soon after the Civil War, didn't exist until the passage of the 16th Amendment, as it had been declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court. Before then, the main source of Federal revenue was the tariff, along with excise taxes. Personally, I think it telling that we had less of a national debt back then, not to mention that we still had a manufacturing base back then. You know, even in the Information Age, people still have to make things.

Where's Ross Perot when you need him?

It's true that we have had the income tax for a long time, but it's still less than a century. And both Hamilton and Jefferson would have been horrified at such a tax. Hamilton was for the merchant, after all, and Jefferson was for the smallholder. I think that they could have accepted a tax on wealthy landowners better or a tariff easier (yes, Jefferson came around to economic nationalism in time) than a tax on personal income.

Personally, I think that a surcharge of 10% on agribusiness, given its heavy reliance on corporate welfare in the form of ethanol subsidies, is only just as a way to help balance the budget and pay back the favors that their lobbyists have gotten. Not that I hate agribusinesses, but I think that they have gotten too much power at taxpayers' expense. Not to mention the smallholders', the family farm that is vanishing today. They are a lot like the latifundia graziers who gobbled smallholdings back in the late Roman Republic. But I digress.

You need to lower your stress and get over this pining for the past. That's how we pay for things now that we can't efficiently and cost-effectively manage as individuals--through taxes of one sort or the other. We have so much more that needs to be covered now than in that past you can't get over. Republican, Democrat, or Libertarian even (Jefferson didn't pay for the Louisiana Purchase in money we actually had on hand, you know), we are now in a taxed structure and you are pissing into the wind to dream that's going to change. It's still a whole hell of a lot cheaper and less of a personal hassle to let governments cover a whole range of our service needs on an efficiency of scale basis (and all of crap about inefficiencies and corruption are on a thin margin when considering the whole).

I do think I'm going to live a lot longer than you are, Sev, because you are going to pop a gasket over stuff that is beyond your control and scope of understanding and acceptance of the complexities of life--and acceptance of paying your full share rather than, as the Libertarians do, trying to find someone else to carry you.

 

[SEVERUSMAX]

You need to lower your stress and get over this pining for the past. That's how we pay for things now that we can't efficiently and cost-effectively manage as individuals--through taxes of one sort or the other. We have so much more that needs to be covered now than in that past you can't get over. Republican, Democrat, or Libertarian even (Jefferson didn't pay for the Louisiana Purchase in money we actually had on hand, you know), we are now in a taxed structure and you are pissing into the wind to dream that's going to change. It's still a whole hell of a lot cheaper and less of a personal hassle to let governments cover a whole range of our service needs on an efficiency of scale basis (and all of crap about inefficiencies and corruption are on a thin margin when considering the whole).

I do think I'm going to live a lot longer than you are, Sev, because you are going to pop a gasket over stuff that is beyond your control and scope of understanding and acceptance of the complexities of life--and acceptance of paying your full share rather than, as the Libertarians do, trying to find someone else to carry you.

Again, you insist on assuming that Libertarians are leeches. Quite the opposite. They seek to stop the leeching of taxpayers. How it's leeching, to want to keep more of what you earn. As Jefferson said, "A wise and frugal government will not take from the mouths of men that they have earned."

And I don't think that it's beyond my understanding. Or impossible to restore a sensible tax regime that doesn't penalize innocent taxpayers or successful and honest merchants (as opposed to crooks and corporate welfare recipients).

Where gains are ill-gotten gains, then we can talk fines, taxes, and penalties.

 

[sr71plt]

Again, you insist on assuming that Libertarians are leeches. Quite the opposite. They seek to stop the leeching of taxpayers. How it's leeching, to want to keep more of what you earn. As Jefferson said, "A wise and frugal government will not take from the mouths of men that they have earned."

And I don't think that it's beyond my understanding. Or impossible to restore a sensible tax regime that doesn't penalize innocent taxpayers or successful and honest merchants (as opposed to crooks and corporate welfare recipients).

Where gains are ill-gotten gains, then we can talk fines, taxes, and penalties.

Sorry, I don't buy that. Libertarians know that the system couldn't possibly sustain itself on Libertarian principles. (We are now experiencing what happens in just a partial stab at it in limited sectors--it just doesn't work; it just doesn't cover the necessary common service bills). So, yes, I think Libertarians are the epitomy of selfishness (that's what Any Rand was all about)--they know it won't work for everyone; they are just after getting enough of a slice of it for themselves to, yes, leech off the rest of us.

(Thought you had me on ignore until at least the election. At least that's what you said. )

 

[SEVERUSMAX]

Post deleted. And you were on ignore, but I foolishly removed you. My first instinct was right, since you can't see reason.

 

[sr71plt]

OK, I'm convinced. All you have to do is repeat it enough times, and you've won me over. Yes, indeedy.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

XSSVE

I've always argued that our government is the best money can buy.

 

[DesertPirate]

Obamas agenda: If you don't love me I won't allow you to be around.

Washington Times, New York Post, and Dallas Morning New reporter booted from Obamas plane after the papers endorse McCain.

Just what we need, childish stupidity in the Whitehouse, oh wait, that was the way Clinton did it.

Has this guy ever made a "good" decision?

 

[epiphany65]

http://d.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/uc/20081030/ltmsho081031.gif

 

[Shwenn]

JOHN THE AUTHOR

The fatal flaw of socialism is managers have no incentives to serve the public...

Didn't we all just learn that this also happens to be the fatal flaw with the free market?

They somehow manage to have no incentive to serve the stockholders to whom they are supposed to be directly answerable?

Didn't even Alan Greenspan admit that Ayn Rand was a moron?

Your self-interest, objectivist model, as it turns out, is no more than a spherical horse in a void.

 

[DesertPirate]

Didn't we all just learn that this also happens to be the fatal flaw with the free market?

They somehow manage to have no incentive to serve the stockholders to whom they are supposed to be directly answerable?

Didn't even Alan Greenspan admit that Ayn Rand was a moron?

Your self-interest, objectivist model, as it turns out, is no more than a spherical horse in a void.

Actually this problem is a combination of greed and ego (can't get caught).
That is really the root cause of what happened.

As Republican as I am, I hope they string em up by the balls!
Has anyone noticed that the Bush Justice Dept. has prosecuted more CEO's than the last 3 put together?

 

[Shwenn]

Actually this problem is a combination of greed and ego (can't get caught).
That is really the root cause of what happened.

Those are the qualities that the self-interest, objectivist model is meant to capitalize on.

If we play to our innate greed and ego, we're all supposed to be better off.