phrodeau
Literotica Guru
- Joined
- Jan 2, 2002
- Posts
- 78,588
By all means, let's treat our fellow citizens like animals.
The 'Julia' Backlash: Because Americans Like to Pretend They Don't Need Government
- Thread starter KingOrfeo
- Start date
TexasWife25
Porn Buddy
- Joined
- Dec 6, 2011
- Posts
- 6,951
By all means, let's treat our fellow citizens like animals.
Clearly we should let them starve, that'll teach them not to become a burden on society.
Liar
now with 17% more class
- Joined
- Dec 4, 2003
- Posts
- 43,715
Be nice.
Ulaven_Demorte
Non-Prophet Organization
- Joined
- Apr 16, 2006
- Posts
- 30,016
Both of those statements are false. Tuition and health care costs have been going up steadily for decades.
Neither had anything to do with government, nor was it "sudden".
phrodeau
Literotica Guru
- Joined
- Jan 2, 2002
- Posts
- 78,588
We could start by cutting foreign aid.
NeverEndingMe
Literotica Guru
- Joined
- Jun 20, 2011
- Posts
- 15,925
Liar
now with 17% more class
- Joined
- Dec 4, 2003
- Posts
- 43,715
Be n... Oh, who am I kidding?
Peregrinator
Hooded On A Hill
- Joined
- May 27, 2004
- Posts
- 89,482
Why the hell does the "Middle Class" need so many benefits, and to what cost?
I've been told for decades that we needed our safety net for the weak, the disabled, the very elderly, etc.
Now, we need a safety net for everything.
In fact, we need it now, more than ever seeing how it is bankrupting the middle-class...
What the...
He DID quote you. And he asked a perfectly reasonable question.
TexasWife25
Porn Buddy
- Joined
- Dec 6, 2011
- Posts
- 6,951
Now you're just making sense, that's not acceptable.
richard_daily
Slut Whisperer
- Joined
- Sep 17, 2006
- Posts
- 36,898
Why the hell does the "Middle Class" need so many benefits, and to what cost?
I've been told for decades that we needed our safety net for the weak, the disabled, the very elderly, etc.
Now, we need a safety net for everything.
In fact, we need it now, more than ever seeing how it is bankrupting the middle-class...
The more pertinent question, is why do the wealthy need so many government benefits, preferential treatment, and bailouts?
Their drain on society is far more damaging than anything the middle-class and those in poverty use in terms of government resources.
richard_daily
Slut Whisperer
- Joined
- Sep 17, 2006
- Posts
- 36,898
"I never said that, even though it's quoted above. FUCK YOU YOU FUCKING LIAR".
Wow... just wow.
Talk about a disconnect from reality.
M
miles
Guest
Who among us would want their child to be like Julia?
phrodeau
Literotica Guru
- Joined
- Jan 2, 2002
- Posts
- 78,588
Not fundamentalist Muslims, to be sure.
Well, that's what I always say whenever anyone foolishly pokes/quotes busybody or any jen alt -- i.e., anybody even stupider and screamier than miles (who is always a borderline case). Anybody like that should be on permanent iggy by every not-insane Litster regardless of their politics. (I've got LJ/LT on iggy for the same reason and he ain't no right-winger.) You don't think gump deserves to be so categorized?
Last edited:
zipman
Literotica Guru
- Joined
- Jul 30, 2002
- Posts
- 38,552
Why the hell does the "Middle Class" need so many benefits, and to what cost?
I've been told for decades that we needed our safety net for the weak, the disabled, the very elderly, etc.
Now, we need a safety net for everything.
In fact, we need it now, more than ever seeing how it is bankrupting the middle-class...
Just wow.
richard_daily
Slut Whisperer
- Joined
- Sep 17, 2006
- Posts
- 36,898
RobDownSouth
No Kings
- Joined
- Apr 13, 2002
- Posts
- 77,659
Anyone seen AJ around these parts? He seems to have disappeared!
ottohauser1977
Literotica Guru
- Joined
- Oct 17, 2008
- Posts
- 636
If anything, Julia could use more government intervention into her life.
richard_daily
Slut Whisperer
- Joined
- Sep 17, 2006
- Posts
- 36,898
Anyone seen AJ around these parts? He seems to have disappeared!
I wonder why????
Being middle-class, for starters. We're all supposed to be back in the sweatshop, working for a pittance with no legal rights or protections. Preferably no vote or education. Didn't you know that? What kind of American are you, believing in a land of opportunity? How un-American of you? Communist, yes, that's what you are, a flaming pinko-Commie-liberal, for believing in that leftist garbage!
Of course..didn't you know that according to the Fox News watching "real americans' that the jobs that went to China and India are paying full middle class wages and the only reason jobs went there was because of 'govn'ment regulations and taxes', if we completely cut taxes for the big companies (love to see how you do that, considering some big companies not only don't pay taxes, but end up with rebates) and get rid of the EPA, them jobs will jist come back a runnin' back to the dear old US of A....*sigh*
The reason people are so anti government is complicated. Part of the problem is some of the people most dependent on the government, who often make their livings directly or indirectly off the government, don't see the subsidies, it isn't obvious like with let's say benefits like welfare and the like. For example, take a look at the so called Red States, where anti government furor is in full swing, and take a look at government payments and transfers and you see it directly. With things like road funding, schools, medicaid payments, transportation and a whole list of things, the red states get a larger percentage of their spending from federal dollars then many of the so called blue states (for example, states down south tend to fund anywhere from 15-30% of their ed spending from the feds, it is around 5% in places like the northeast, the national average is fed dollars accounting for about 9%. In things like mass transit people working in the NY region pay the largest percentage of operating costs for transit from their fares, whereas down south and in the western 'expansion' belt, it is almost reversed. A good part of our defense budget is quite frankly a jobs bill for certain parts of the country, a lot of the large scale weapons systems we build are for all out nuclear war we are not likely to fight, magnificent bomber systems and such that frankly for the kinds of wars we face are almost useless and so forth. We have many hundreds of bases in the US, many of which were built for the mobilization for WWII, and quite frankly given the size of our military and such, many of them according to GAO and other reports are basically there simply for political reasons, because in many areas these are major employers and drive the local economy. (And you can always tell where bases are in politically important districts, they can be a total waste and stay open). We have weapons systems like having several different advanced tactical fighters when no one is building anything approaching what we do today; we have the Osprey, that has probably killed more marines then IED's, whose prime contractor is in house whip Eric Cantor's district, and attempts to kill the program, which by military reckoning, has been a failure, keeps going. Not long ago the air force put in spending for 10 cargo aircraft, congress, led by congressmen from defense contractor rich states, bumped the number to 20, and that goes on all the time (so much for the military deciding what they need).
I read a piece not long ago that said in some ways the same people most living off the government feel badly about it, and basically the underlying motive is they feel ashamed so they want government to cut off the stuff so to speak, so they 'won't be tempted'.
And when they don't see it, what it does it make them think that what they do see is what is causing the problems. The same people who are receiving medicare and SS benefits (that are some of the most regressive taxes we have) will tell you that the federal budget can be cut by 'getting rid of welfare, student aid grants and student loans', yet they represent some of the largest spending in the fed budget. Lot of people who get a lot of aid from the government if you tell the the defense budget is bloated, that it contains a lot of things we don't need, suddenly start whining and yelling about how that would cost them their job, cause their house price to fall, etc....
The reason for those subsidies is that it used to be felt that having a large, strong middle class was important for stability and economic prosperity. Economic theory tends to bare that out, when you give a working or middle class guy an extra buck or two it generates a lot more economic activity then in any other level (it is roughly 4 or 5 to 1 in the middle class; when you go up the ladder it diminishes, to about 1.5 to 1 in the top class, the infamous 1%). The middle class owning houses means pride in ownership, and a lot of other things. Part of the answer about the middle class is it is a lot more then economics, it is identity. There are suburban homeowners whose family income is less then a so called inner city family where the parent(s) work for the city or something like that, and they will tell you they are working class, complain about not having enough, etc, while a family that sees itself as middle class, who make less, won't share the ills of the inner city family (and I have seen this up close and personal, I knew a couple that were making 130k a year in NYC with two city jobs, they had a subsidized Mitchell lama apartment, and claimed they were working class, when I moved to the burbs our family income was a lot less then that, and i had saved enough for a mortgage and bought a house, raised a kid on it.....). The middle class is important to the stability of things, what people forget or don't want to know about is what the country was like in the late 19th and 20th centuries, pre WWII, they don't realize how much the country was transformed by the post war period, and a lot of that was due to the government in many forms..VA mortgages, the GI Bill (that sent sizable numbers of people into college or into trade school, moving them upscale), the federal highway system, spending on schools (anyone ever read about what happened after Sputnik, where the government got scared and started pumping money into education), and the like.
Probably going to piss off some of the so called conservatives on here (I think of them more as the descendants of Williams Jenning Bryan and the like, with their infallible view of the wisdom of the 'common people' and this claim of how farmers and 'ordinary people' take the burden of others on), but the reality is that programs that keep people in the middle class, that stimulate spending there, are the job creators. The Economist magazine (not exactly a left wing journal) did an analysis of tax cuts that favor capital gains in terms of taxes, that proportionally give larger cuts to the upper class and what they concluded was that while it did increase the incomes of the upper percentiles, it did not spur all that much capital formation, that much of what that money got invested into were things like hedge funds and other high yield/quick return kinds of investments, that tend not to spur anything except profits to the hedge funds and those they trade with. Our economic is based on consumption (just ask the Japanese what having a savings based economy has done for them in terms of economic recovery; they are hitting basically 20 years of a country almost the entire time in recession or with flat growth). The upper tier have too few people to generate broad based consumption and they tend not to invest in capital formation. More important, even if they did, capital formation would ostensibly be for things like creating new markets or expanding existing ones, if there is no demand, what are they expanding into?
There is truth to the small businesses and creating jobs, the reality is most jobs are created by small business and the fetish tax cutters and the like have for mega corporations is ill targeted, big business doesn't create that many jobs, and given their trend of sending stuff to cheap labor markets overseas, aren't likely to. Big businesses in the decade before 2010 cut 2.6 million jobs and 1.9 million of them ended up in China and India alone....). We should be supporting small business, helping find ways to ease access to markets and stop the blind foolishness that mega corporations are efficient or job creators, about all they are good at is generating swarms of bean counters and keeping places like McKimsey and the like in business.
renard_ruse
Break up Amazon
- Joined
- Aug 30, 2007
- Posts
- 16,094
I remember when I first saw a copy of "The Nation." For some reason I assumed, based on the name I guess, that it would be a nationalist / national populist publication. Sadly its quite the opposite.
sigh
chant mistress
- Joined
- Sep 19, 2001
- Posts
- 10,248
laughing
oh my god, are you serious? you are, aren't you? that makes it even more funny
laughing some more
(please note that I did, in fact, quote you...oh, and so did Rob)
laughing even harder
sigh
chant mistress
- Joined
- Sep 19, 2001
- Posts
- 10,248
but it was the premise behind the question that was false. will you NEVER get it?
openminded76
Virgin
- Joined
- May 24, 2012
- Posts
- 1
Obama, the black stud, "taking care" of the white women
The "Julia" cartoon was an attempt to gain women's votes. It is pretty simple. Seperate out women from the rest of the population, tell them they are getting screwed by the Western thought, cracker power structure, and throw everything their way, including as many little freebees as possible and you have idiot women falling all overthemselves to vote for Obama. How about helping all the people no matter what color, gender, or sexual orientation? The most divisive president in history needs to be replaced. Real women are catching on that their men are getting screwed by Obama and his corrupt administration. Obama fashions himself as the black savior of white women, a very sexual implied communication. The black man is "handling" the white man's women, something that the white man will not tolerate. Lots of women are attracted to this theme.
The "Julia" cartoon was an attempt to gain women's votes. It is pretty simple. Seperate out women from the rest of the population, tell them they are getting screwed by the Western thought, cracker power structure, and throw everything their way, including as many little freebees as possible and you have idiot women falling all overthemselves to vote for Obama. How about helping all the people no matter what color, gender, or sexual orientation? The most divisive president in history needs to be replaced. Real women are catching on that their men are getting screwed by Obama and his corrupt administration. Obama fashions himself as the black savior of white women, a very sexual implied communication. The black man is "handling" the white man's women, something that the white man will not tolerate. Lots of women are attracted to this theme.
