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I'm not sure what you mean by this. Only 8 Southerners in the entire Congress (House + Senate) voted for the Civil Rights Act. On the Voting Rights Act, only 4 Southerners in the Senate voted yes (Gore, Bass, Smathers, Yarborough).
"You are welcome", all the liberals who fought to reduce lead in our environment over the strenuous objections of conservatives.
All valid points, but try to imagine what it might have been like to be one of the 36 million Chinese who starved to death between 1958 and 1962 alone, the result of deliberate government policies; or the countless millions of Chinese who were killed and imprisoned during the Cultural Revolution. And of course that's not even mentioning the fate of Eastern and much of Central Europe, most recently documented in Anne Applebaum's highly acclaimed recent book, The Iron Curtain.
None of that negates the horrors of colonialism, neo-colonialism, foreign domination of natural resources, U.S. sponsored military coups, U.S. military invasions, or anything else. But to close with the cliched but still true central point about the cold war: All the voluntary refugee traffic was in one direction, headed away from the Communist states and towards the non-Communist ones. Sometimes actions speak a lot louder than words.
1957 legislation
in caro's book 'master of the senate'
And so what do we try to do, given the above statement: Enact policies that try to enable everyone to reach his full genetic potential? Or sit around crowing about how stupid poor people are?
Children of neglectful drug addicts are regularly taken from their homes. If anything the problem is that CPS units around the country are a little too active, from what I hear. What you're describing sounds like an epidemic, but I just haven't read the stories I'd expect to be reading regularly if there indeed was an epidemic. What's the solution, in these cases? Is there a failure of reporting? Is it that you see CPS units around the country failing to act when crack moms are repeatedly arrested for drug offenses?
In any case, most states lean right at the state government level, so why is this a problem created by liberals? Why aren't our right leaning state legislatures, where they exist, addressing this problem?
This doesn't pass any sort of smell test, anywhere, ever.
In any case, it's not a safety net, it's social insurance.
Ray seems willfully oblivious to the simple fact that the rules of welfare and SSI allow recipients to actually earn additional income. Think about that for a minute! Instead of making a dollar for dollar deduction, we actually let those lazy, crippled pricks keep a percentage of earnings up to a point, past which they lost every additional dollar along with their health insurance. That's the money with which people purchase $299 big screen teevees, and used iPods, and such.
Sickening, I know, but I wanted to throw a fact or two Ray's way, just to watch him die. Don't know the exact figure for welfare, but for SSI you lose $1 for every $2 you earn over $84 per month.
It involves a curious phrase, "incentivizing work". Welfare recipient sees something shiny. Welfare receipient lays down crack pipe and seeks gainful employment in order to purchase shiny thing. You know, pretty much the same way Ray works for things he wants. Well, pads his bill in order to get the things he wants.
You know, I start each day vowing to be nicer to Ray, but then he just has to go and post...
1957 legislation
in caro's book 'master of the senate'
That's true, but as that 1957 act was pretty weak tea and is generally forgotten, it's understandable that mefisto would have thought the voting act under discussion was the one with actual teeth in it, the 1965 one signed into law by President LBJ.
That's for the SSI-Aged? For the SSI-DI there's the rule that working indicates you're not disabled by definition and can easily result in your benefits being terminated.
i wasn't trying to mislead anyone. and it was a big deal at the time.
i cannot help it that most everyone on this board is younger than my sportscoat collection
Fair enough.
If only the Chicken Littles here would take this same tack.
Incentive can't be unaffected. If I tell you I'll give you $100 for free, or $120 if you spend all day painting my house with me, you'll very likely take the free $100.
The effort to guarantee everyone at least a low middle class lifestyle through wealth redistribution strikes the familiar theme that runs through liberalism: reducing differences between people, striving to make everyone the same. Rich/poor, gay/straight, male/female, black/white, smart/dumb... And their insistence that there are no true differences between people is ironic, given that they claim to want to celebrate diversity.
Eh, that depends of what I can I do with the supposedly free time I have taking the $100 offer. If I have nothing else on hand, earning an extra $20 while showing you (a potential continuing client) that I do good work is valuable to me.
Teachers for instance supposedly have a lot of free time, but pick up coaching and club assignments for 'free', or a small stipend. According to Ray's theory, teachers should be the laziest bastards of them all since they only officially work for 8-3.
How about if I give you $120 for paint my house or a $100 free if you prove you need it, which will mean that you sign waivers and releases so I can investigate you, your bank accounts, properties, automobile ownership, members of your household, work history, tax returns, and so on?
i wasn't trying to mislead anyone. and it was a big deal at the time.
I realize both of those things, but I was just trying to cut young mefisto some slack.
i cannot help it that most everyone on this board is younger than my sportscoat collection
Love it, though in my case they're younger than my MacGregor GF-10 baseball glove.
Neither. Well, we can do some of the latter I suppose, but the sensible thing to do is recognize that most people who are impoverished long-term are in that boat because they lost the genetic lottery. There's no point in punishing them or blaming them, or trying to get them to pull themselves up by their bootstraps; it's largely not their fault and they don't really have the capacity to pull themselves up.
We can either restructure our society to create things for these people to do (expensive, requires thought), or just put them on the dole and try not to think about them too much (slightly less expensive, but creates unforeseen consequences). Or, I guess we could round em up and put them in work camps or something, but that seems to make people uncomfortable. So the dole it is. We just need to be careful to calibrate it such that we don't incentivize people who COULD make something of their lives choose to be on the dole.
Oh, and FWIW, the 1957 Act got 5 votes in the Senate from the former Confederate states (Smathers, Gore, Kefauver, Johnson, Yarborough).
I've never said teachers were lazy; I've said they work few hours relative to the benefits they get. And (hilariously, given the argument you were trying to make), the fact that they can pick up coaching and club assignments for free or for a small stipend proves it.
Proving once again that Ray really doesn't understand Liberal thought at all. Such is life.
get a haircut
What percentage? None of them have the capacity? 5%, 50%, 95% - I ask because your statement implies none of them have the capability and they should be essentially considered societal sunk cost.
So what percent are hopeless? What percent need to have the capability (their issue is something other than "bad genetics") such that it would be worth soceities time and effort to try to hep them get out of their situation? Are you so confident in your numbers you are willing to essentially give up on those people?
Some of them are still objecting. Fox News contributor and former Cato Institute "scholar" Steve Milloy:
While it may suggest that IQ (which as you must acknowledge not a particularly awesome metric) is capped biologically - it does not follow that it's capped DIFFERENTIALLY - that YOUR IQ is capped at 140 and MINE is capped at 170. Maybe we are both capped at 170, or 200.
Because you can't measure "IQ cap" or "potential IQ" you can only measure "current IQ", and associate genetic variants with that IQ statistically. And there are assuredly 1000s of potentially interacting _genetic_ factors, so there are an extremely large number of possible combinations.
...and punted back and forth between there and a dozen different foster homes, until they are so ###### up nobody will adopt them. Foster homes are great as temporary housing for kids from the time CPS has to intervene until adoption, but if CPS has to intervene more than once, that should be it.
Wouldn't you just take both? I mean, assuming you had nothing better to do and $220 was a meaningful sum.
But yes, you can manufacture numbers. I mean, why not say $100 for free or $10 and a kick in the ass to paint my house? Would you rather be rich, or dead? Or put them in context. Instead of $100/$120 it's 0.10 and 0.12. I'll won't even answer my email for 10 cents. There are certainly people who won't for $100 either.
Better Young Mefisto than Old Mefistofeles.
Taking both is not an option. Note the "or" there. If you had more wealth you'd have understood that.
No idea why the incentives aren't on a curve, though the rules on Medicaid aren't bad. If you recover and can go back to work, you keep your Medicaid eligibility until you make around 25k a year, at which point other things kick in that help low income people buy insurance.
I'm all for tax rates moving upward so that the wealthy finally start paying for what they're getting.
I'm also all for government getting out of the business of helping the wealthy steal from the poor. It's not wealth re-distribution, boys and girls, it's wealth re-re-distribution. Watch the tape of Scott Walker conniving with his billionaire backer to invent laws that suppress wages for an exhibit even Ray can understand.
Read more carefully; I specified in the post you quoted that my number was "most" not "all".
I'd argue that anybody who's been impoverished long term is probably hopeless. Anybody can be poor; there are any number of things that can cause it. But people who have the capacity to fix it usually do fix it given time. But long term poverty that persists for decades; that's usually the result of stupidity, mental illness, addiction, physical disability or some fun combination of the four.
But let's focus here, I'm not entirely sure of the point you're making. If you're arguing that their poverty is their fault and they CAN change their circumstances, then why shouldn't we blame them and expect them to pull themselves up by their bootstraps? You can't have it both ways here.
I'm saying that we should provide a safety net for these people. If they want to escape poverty, I'm certainly not going to stand in their way. But wouldn't we be better off directing our resources on the people who have recently fallen into the system rather than those who have been in it for decades?
I'm also all for government getting out of the business of helping the wealthy steal from the poor.
He's here all week, ladies and gentlemen! See him while you can! He changes his stage name occasionally.
And their insistence that there are no true differences between people is ironic, given that they claim to want to celebrate diversity.
Something Other/Jack Carter/TBA would like you to know that he celebrates a wide range of diversity along the spectrum from insanely-left liberal to crazy-left liberal.
Neither. Well, we can do some of the latter I suppose, but the sensible thing to do is recognize that most people who are impoverished long-term are in that boat because they lost the genetic lottery. There's no point in punishing them or blaming them, or trying to get them to pull themselves up by their bootstraps; it's largely not their fault and they don't really have the capacity to pull themselves up.
We can either restructure our society to create things for these people to do (expensive, requires thought), or just put them on the dole and try not to think about them too much (slightly less expensive, but creates unforeseen consequences). Or, I guess we could round em up and put them in work camps or something, but that seems to make people uncomfortable. So the dole it is. We just need to be careful to calibrate it such that we don't incentivize people who COULD make something of their lives choose to be on the dole.
That either ignores or dismisses without explanation the first mentioned alternative, of trying to bring everyone up to his full genetic potential, rather than just consigning potentially bright children to fester in the mind-numbing conditions of their home environments. This has nothing to do with "the dole", and everything to do with early childhood education and nutrition.
i am comfortable with my 4 percent
i tie this to the discussion about fracking and folks challenged me about whether i would be willing ot have my grandkids drink water with fracking in the area.
i am not callous toward human life but nor do i think we can everyone from everything. as societies stumble forward sometimes people die. it's sad. it's unfortunate. but it happens.
same with folks who may not live the life folks think is ok. it's sad to hear. wish they could have done better. but it is going to happen.
i know this reads as just a cold-hearted post but i am a pragmatic person who acknowledges the adage that if i am going to learn how to make great fried eggs i am going to break a few along the way.
helpp what you can help. save what you can handle saving. but this 100 percent goal all the way around is irrational and hence generates a cycle of permanent frustration.
Hey, any time you want to start making the case that my tax dollars that go to, for example, public airport construction, don't massively benefit the major stakeholders in FedEx, but benefit not at all the Staples clerk who's never going to ride an airplane, feel free.
But heckling's so much easier on the nerves, right?
***Cut by DJS because, presumably, it's inconvenient for him to acknowledge those darned facts.
He shoots, he scores.
Hey, any time you want to start making the case that my tax dollars that go to, for example, public airport construction, don't massively benefit the major stakeholders in FedEx but benefit the Staples clerk who's never going to ride an airplane, feel free.
Public funds used for airport construction ain't a libertarian thing. Government investment in every damn thing, well, that's a liberal thing. Will someone please save the poor liberals from the beliefs of liberals?
How exactly did all these poor people that don't use airports pay for airports anyway? There must be an epidemic of incredibly rich poor people.
The end of the moratorium takes Britain one step closer to tapping its domestic shale gas, which has the eco-left experiencing shaking fits of its own. But with the U.K. in danger of slipping into triple-dip recession, Prime Minister David Cameron doesn't appear to care anymore what the fear-mongers have to say.
"I think some in the green movement really want us to rule out gas," Mr. Cameron told parliamentarians earlier this week. "Zip. That's it." Yet forgoing domestic gas, he noted, risked "giving our economy much higher energy prices than would otherwise be necessary."
not trying to prove any point. just sharing
courtesy wsj
I'll see if I can get Fred Smith on the phone once he sobers up from Burning Man.
Given structural unemployment, those slightly more able will continually be pushing those who are by definition marginal into the ranks of the unemployed. Somebody's gonna be unemployed. There are those who will never work, those who will rarely work, and plenty who move in and out of the work force as their issues and difficulties ebb and flow.
I know you get off on sounding like a heartless prick, but it really only comes across as ignorant.
@2537: your confusion is both palpable and impenetrable.
Is that the chick with the sweet hat and all the makeup? Because her look was tight.
Except I've advocated making sure everybody is fed sufficiently, so nutrition is covered. Otherwise, the problem is bad parents, who will, go figure, disproportionately be stupid. Are you advocating state workers carefully monitoring every parent to make sure the home environments meet your standards? Taking children away when they don't? Keep in mind, stupid parents tend to have stupid children, so spending money here is just perpetuating the problem.
Really, your post here is incoherent because your thoughts on the subject are incoherent. You don't understand the issues so you're posting based on emotional preferences.
You don't say.
I am not trying to have it both ways. I am trying to understand what you are saying, so don't extrapolate what I might want from the questions I am asking. Anyway ...
What I want is simple. A safety net that provides enough for a reasonable standard of living (where the definition of reasonable does in fact change over time) and allows for the opporunity for folks to make their ways upwards into mainstream society. I don't want government in the business of deciding who is likely to be able to ascend and who isn't, governments tend to be terrible at that. Build the support system, make it available and structured to incent people to better themselves and then let the people do as they would.
Yes there is likely some waste there, but there is also strong economic benefits - just one example is the strong counter-cyclical spending built into the model. When the economy does well, there are jobs and wages are moving upwards gvoernment spending on the safety net drops. When the economy does poorly spending on the safety net rises. All automatically with less opportunity for politicians to screw it up in the moment.
Moral - because I think a safety net is a moral imperative in a civilized society.
Reasonably efficient - because you have incentives for workforce participation which is good.
Economically effective - because you have built in counter-cyclical spending.
Whether or not people stay "on the dole" or work there way upward or cycle depending on the ambient economy depends on many factors including their innate abilities (I have never claimed all people are the same) including their drive, intelligence and so on. SO long as their is a strong safety net and opportunity I am willing to let the individuals and free market take care of the rest - it is very good at that part of it.
And yes it ends up being somewhat redistributive for wealth. Oh darn. I somehow suspect the wealthy (and thus powerful) will manage to muddle through somehow very nicely.
Well Something Other, a sober man would realize that I'm not equating physical disability with addiction; only pointing out that both are common causes of long term poverty. I don't suppose you've fallen off the wagon again? Let me know, I'd be happy to send you a twenty, if you promise not to drink it all up.
This is particularly amusing considering I'm endorsing a safety net functionally identical to what you, BM, and numerous other liberal posters here have advocated for. I guess it's the rational thought process behind it that's confusing you.
when i cut and paste from publications i thought it was necessary to provide attribution
Remind me how this works, again?
Corporations are people too, my friend.
Harveys, have you read the whole set by Caro?
Reelection numbers for the "Traitorious 5" (previous):
Kefauver 72% (70%)
Gore 79% (74%)
Smathers 70% (unopposed)
Yarbrgh 75% (n/a [special election])
Johnson 58% (84%)
Not likely to happen, but it would change the tone of the discussion if we acknowledged that some chunk of the unemployed CAN'T be employed. It's like the conservative bromide that everyone can pick themselves up by their bootstraps and get ahead, when of course people who can't add well or read for comprehension or organize their thinking simply aren't capable of much more (in the current labor market) than pushing brooms, emptying garbage cans, and picking corn. Many of the people in the lowest wage tiers are there because they can't--ever, through no fault of their own--climb past them.
@2537 redux: I realize the possibility of penetrating your dense skull is zero, but that's one reason we have different tax rates: because of the very different returns people get on their tax dollars. If you were capable of giving the issue serious thought, you might be able to argue that top rates are already reasonably proportional to the return on investment. I'd then propose that they're not particularly close to reasonable, given the proportion of tax dollars that are spent essentially for the benefit of the already well off, and that a much higher top rate is justified.
I'd also argue that the laws as written suppress wages more than they increase them, therefore wealth has already--after work has been done but prior to paychecks being written is the simplest way to consider it--been redistributed upwards. Contracts in this country are far more often than not NOT freely arrived at. Hence my assertion that increasing top rates redistributes wealth that has already been redistributed from the less powerful to the more powerful through the suppression of wages, such as that practiced by Scott Walker and his pals in Wisconsin, and just practiced by Rick Snyder and the Republican legislators in Michigan.
The same way one steals from poor people who don't have anything to steal, I imagine.
FWIW - I am trying to find out where your belief's regarding the incapable lead you. Hopefully I laid out my vision and it makes sense why to a certain degree who is incapable of advancement and who isn't is to a degree irrelevent from a (my) policy perspective (though it clearly matters on an individual and societal level).
This is one of the roots of my problems with much of the "IQ discussion", it tends not to lead to any concrete policies (policy changes) except occasionally in the educational or retraining area.
Note: I avoid the IQ based discussions for other areas as well as I have stated in many previous threads.
Edit: Even the smallest midwestern airport gets subsidies from the Federal Government.
I think there are lots of them-aren't "executive airports" generally private?
Of course, you might want to argue that a guy paying 25% on $10m in income is already paying more than a guy paying 25% on $10k in income; I'd argue that even that comparatively higher total isn't enough to cover the disproportional benefits of airport construction (and road construction, and troops in Germany, and police who will appear and make sure striking workers stay within very narrowly defined areas, and who provide vastly better services in wealthy neighborhoods than they do in Bed-Stuy, and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on).
No idea if it is privately owned or the degree to which the government might subsidize the Plutarch's Airfield, but I always am amused by it when I drive past (have never scene an airplane though I do keep watching).
Harvey, you must remember Bringing Up Father, the comic strip.
Bringing Up Father was about an Irish guy, Jiggs, who came into a lot of money (the backstory changed over time) and still wanted to go down to the tavern and eat corned beef and cabbage. He had a social climbing wife, Maggie.
One of the other characters was Bimmy, evidently the brother of one of them. Bimmy's main function was to sleep on the couch of Maggie and Jiggs. He was a sponging relative.
I'm assuming this was a common trope of the time. Families that were doing well were likely to have a Bimmy or a maiden aunt or a grandparent in their house. If there is a safety net you have a better chance of keeping them out of your house. So it's not a choice between a safety net and nothing, it's more likely a choice between a safety net and Bimmy in your house.
Anyway, laziness is a positive human trait, that's why it's survived. I don't want an entire society of workaholics, warmongers, and cocaine addicts. In the right hands the desire to avoid work can lead people to invent labor saving inventions.
Yes.
Larger airports are managed by Airport Authorities, which are public or quasi/public/private consortiums comparable to Seaport Authorities. In fact in some places the same authority oversees both airport(s) and seaport(s).
In any case, someone who wasn't a crackhead might be able to construct a sentence that doesn't make him sound like the village idiot; you know, something that isn't on the order of, I enjoy apples, oranges, bananas, and wallets.
Oh, wait, you don't know.
And more of them.
Raising eveyrone to their "genetic potential" will still result in some people being way smarter than others and the smarter people will still tend strongly to make more money.
The only thing that might do is help some people become smart enough to handle 21st century jobs and at least stanch the mismatch between 21st century jobs and our citizens' intelligence, but that benefit can be replicated much more cheaply by re-industrialization and protectionism.
i helped support most of my in-laws as they were young couples. i didn't gripe. figured i married my wife i got the in-laws along with it
ok, i groused a bit when i thought some them were on the dole a bit toooooo long. but never to where my wife and i were clashing in a big way.
Sure it does -- reindusrialization and protectionism and bringing jobs that match the skills and intelligence of Americans back to America.
That's the only realistic hope.
boy did i get played
Hehe, nice try, but it's a bit late to play dumb(er). I suppose you managed to get yourself banned on the old account, which is why you're playing this silly game. And I suppose you'll be right back there soon enough.
Plus as you stated the rich are the ones paying for flights which means they will pay a tax that non-flyers do not.
Taxes tend to even out for the most part. Why should a person with no kids pay for public schools? It doesn't directly benefit them but it does indirectly benefit them. The rich will never use medicaid, the poor will not use airports as much, but indirectly they both benefit.
Does it, though? Countering our currently low higher marginal rates we have an impressive array of powerful forces aimed at suppressing wages and demanding unemployment in the form of reserve pools of cheap labor for when the next boom rolls around. One reason there has been a split in the GOP on immigration is that the business community wants cheap, immigrant labor. By manipulating and buying policy it drives down wages.
The actual number of people who simply cannot work and will never be able to work, AND who are being supported primarily by social insurance programs is small.
I'd argue that as currently structured, our tax rates and social insurance expenditures aren't redistributive in anything like the sense that is commonly meant by that phrase.
To claim that wealth is being redistributed downward by our tax code is to accept that there is something natural about this country's wage structure; that wealth, for the most part, isn't the result of legalized suppression of wages or outright theft in its various guises.
They've already demanded it and got it, much of it overseas. That's was the primary aim and function of the "free trade" movement.
How does the current era's increasing rate of income inequality make it better than at any other point in our history?
I think I meant OFFER both. Why is the offer to pay $120 to paint a fence contingent on them not getting $100 for free. If they take the $100, you still gotta find someone to paint your fence!
Is there a reason to obsess over "income inequality" when the fact is that technology has advanced to the point where even people without much wealth can live very rewarding lives?
The fetish over income inequality smacks of pure jealousy and class envy.
a) Mitt Romney
b) Leona Helmsley
or
c) Simon Cowell
???
#shitthatmyBTFpostersays.
Have you ever actually met a person who has less money than you? Because it doesn't sound like you have to me.
Not a real student of political history, there, are ya.
This is kind of funny, because I would wager that 9 of 10 people on this board have more money than me.
WTF do you guys think I have, anyway?
So you're admitting that 9 out of 10 people on BTF is smarter than you?
Now Ray, if we diagnosed you for free you'd only become dependent on BBTF for your mental health concerns.
Yep. As noted upthread, obsession over race and "privilege," and envy represent 90% of the animating thrust of modern liberalism.
The amount of money they'll wind up raising from raising income taxes on the "rich" (*) is less than a thimble in the ocean of the debt and deficit. Pure envy is driving it.
(*) Many of whom aren't remotely rich other than perhaps as compared to the terminally envious.
"Have" more money or more income? If it's the latter, Ray the Manhattanite probably does not make less than the unwashed masses who live elsewhere.
Probably possible that many of us have more wealth, due to lack of debt.
Is that the one just NE of Genoa City? I recall one right near the road, but there's also one (really small) on Grand Geneva's property, in fact the golf cart path on the Highlands course goes within 30 yards of the airstrip on a few different holes.
A residence on the Upper East Side and a lawyer job in one of the richest cities in the world?
I mean, you're no public teacher, but someday, Ray, someday.
That contradicts all history and pre-history, from the tribal to now. Tribal authority made you share part (if not all) of your kill with the other members of the tribe. Thus it has been; thus it is.
Better than at the point of a gun, as in France 1789 or Russia 1918.
Nah, he's just read Harrison Bergeron one time too many.
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