What do the poor people that get those dollars do with them? Most likely, they will spend 100% of it back in the economy.

mycowardice on November 1, 2008 at 10:29 PM

So the poor should get to spend my redistributed money because they’ll just put it all back into the economy? And that makes it all better?

I’ve got a better idea. The poor can do what I’ve done and start where they are and work themselves to where they want to be.

This is America and I am living proof anybody can start from nothing and achieve their dreams here. But the only ‘help’ you should reasonably and realistically expect is simply the opportunity to fill a need. That’s it. Everything thing else is platitudes and wishful (and wrong-headed) thinking.

Doesn’t it make more sense, and isn’t it more personally responsible for me to save and invest that money (that I WORKED FOR and EARNED, damnit!) to provide for my and my Beloved’s retirement so we won’t be a burden on society in our old age?

Increasing dependence is not the answer. Individual ambition, initiative, persistence, and just plain old hard work is the way to success. If you have everything given to you without having earned it, you do not and cannot appreciate it. That’s the major flaw in socialism/communism. Once people figure out they don’t have to produce, they cease to do so.

Ideologues like you are parasites on society. You selfishly consume the efforts of others, and feel entitled to do so.

You and your ilk disgust me.

Given that doing anything worth doing is possible only after accumulating capital, why do you assume that an individual who is amassing capital is amassing it for ignoble ends? How can you judge a-priori? You can’t, but your solution is to forestall the possibility of the accumulation of capital for selfish ends by making it very difficult to accumulate private capital period. Fine. This is because you don’t trust your fellow citizen to be unselfish. Again, fine. But these same carbon based organisms whom you deem to be so selfish they can’t be trusted with sums of money are the same creeps who staff the bureaucracies of our government. Why would they not be susceptible to the same vices as the private citizen, i.e. greed? Why would it not be worse since these greedy humans have access to not only more capital than the private citizen, generally, but also have access to the monopoly of force of the State? For instance, Kim Jong Il lived a life of decadence that would make Donald Trump blanche. On a lesser scale, Obama funneled State money to the tune of literally hundreds of millions of dollars to Rezko, Ayers, his wife and other cronys, for very vague deliverables. How do you know that any of this was high minded? If Joe-the-Plumber can’t be trusted with a million dollars that he earned with long hours on the job with his own blood, sweat, and tears, why should Barry-the-Ward-Heeler be trusted with spending in high minded fashion a public purse of $150,000,000 that he did nothing whatsoever to earn except talk a good game?

You assume that private vices magically disappear when the private citizen becomes a public citizen. It is a fanciful idea, and would that it were true, but experience would dictate that rather the opposite happens.

shazbat on November 1, 2008 at 8:34 PM

Outstanding post! Well done!

Uhm, uh, “I just want to spread the wealth”. – Barak Obama.

Also, for the debt, it’s true that neither candidate seem to be willing to tackle it, but it doesn’t mean it’s not a problem and that we shouldn’t address it.

mycowardice on November 1, 2008 at 10:29 PM

That’s not true. McCain is talking about a spending freeze on discretionary domestic spending and will ride herd over a spendthrift Congress. Of that, no one really doubts. The MSM has studiously ignored this, even going so far as to claim that “neither candidate can pay for his plans”, when a big part of McCain’s plans are spending freezes and cuts. BHO just wants to spend more on everything – notwithstanding his laughable “I’ll go through every line and cut out the …”. Just look at his record on spending and voting on spending. It’s near insane.

More important than the debt is the growth of the US economy. Mostly, because growth of the economy shrinks the debt, in relative terms, and makes it much more serviceable, aside from all the other benefits derived from a growing economy.

BHO is planning on taxing productive money, burning it up in the red tape and friction of government, and spitting it out to the unproductive to buy doodads. That will kill us. The debt won’t matter, because we will be nationally insolvent. Normally, this sort of view would be extreme, but we are still in the throes of a major monetary crisis, that was turned into a major crisis of confidence – which is the most dangerous thing that can happen to any monetary system, let alone the governmental institutions. With BHO and his cronies pushing all the idiotic social engineering programs on our economy and financial system, along with the growth-killing tax policies, what we were all scared of a month ago, and what Warren Buffet said “G-d help us” in case it happened, will happen. This is all irrespective of servicing the debt, which BHO has just pretended doesn’t exist.

What do the poor people that get those dollars do with them? Most likely, they will spend 100% of it back in the economy.

Also, for the debt, it’s true that neither candidate seem to be willing to tackle it, but it doesn’t mean it’s not a problem and that we shouldn’t address it.

I have to say, and I need to put that on my blog, that I am really disappointed with Obama pushing this 95% tax cut number like it’s a fait accompli. He sounds like zealot Republicans that say they will never raise taxes no matter what the situation. I really hope Obama will be fiscally disciplined. I hope he goes back to a model that is sustainable. Even if that means less tax cuts for the middle class.

We are at this weak point for many reasons. I’m sure in part it’s people getting loans that they shouldn’t have, but it’s also an excess of greed in the whole system (including those 5 percenters at the top of the chain) that should have known better.

mycowardice on November 1, 2008 at 9:43 PM

Confiscating productive capital to give to the unproductive (and there is no paying down of the debt that is going to be done with it, so stop it) is idiotic and is what puts this entire system at risk. We are at this weak point only because of idiots like you who forced a misvaluing of the risk in subprime loans and hid it all under an “implicit” government guarantee. You fools will destroy everything if you go even further with your idiotic ideas of “economic justice”.

And stop with the debt talk. Until the unbelievably unconstitutional and wasteful entitlements get stripped down to a reasonable size, if not pulling the federal government totally out of areas it was never supposed to be in, your yapping about the debt is just silly.

Capital will leave the US, and it will leave quickly.

The problem is that the dollar exists only in relation to the other folks that gave you the dollar or that you are going to give the dollar to.

My point is that we, as a country, have a 10 trillion dollar debt. We need to eventually pay that back. The dollar in your hand isn’t very helpful if the whole country goes down the drain. So I understand that the dollar has been received for hard work, but we have to ensure that the system as a whole doesn’t crumble. Which means that the government comes in a takes a portion of that dollar to ensure that we have roads, or that we repay our debt.

How about if I put it this way. If, to get that dollar, the national debt goes up by 10%, how much is that dollar really worth? I would argue, not 100%.

I have no problem with claiming ownership, but we have to recognize what we really own, and what in reality we don’t. THere are also limits to ownership. If tomorrow morning, the major petroleum companies wanted to burn all the gas in the work, even if they own the resource we wouldn’t allow them to do so. Ownership only goes so far. There are other cases (like the tort of nuisance) where you can see limits to what ownership really allows you to do.

I wish I could take the time to try to express myself better, and I am sure I am not doing justice to my argument. Anyways, the point is that it doesn’t make much sense to be fixated on the dollar coming in if the system around you collapses.

mycowardice

No one succeeds on this earth without having someone else help him out. To claim that you own the dollar you brought in today from work is not right. To get that dollar, you need dozens and dozens of other people to also do their jobs.

Your argument makes no sense. Because somebody had to bring the pipe over to the house, therefore it’s not right for you to “own” the dollar that you earned for welding the pipe? What? Care to provide a specific moral argument for that specific point? Some dude had a dollar. He gave it to you willingly for welding the pipe. The guy who brought the pipe over got his dollar, too. Guy in the house can flush his toilet now. Everybody wins. So what’s the moral problem? If it’s “not right” for the plumber to say he owns that dollar, then who does? Or is he “right” to claim only a percentage of that dollar to be determined by you? If that dollar is commonly owned, why have dollars at all? Why not just have plumbers weld pipe out of the goodness of their hearts? You know why? Because no plumbing would ever get done and you would be crapping in the woods.

Yes, it’s true that we’re all in this together, but how you leap from that to the idea that it is “not right” for someone to claim ownership for his paycheck but it is right for someone else to, but you fail to provide an explanation for how exactly the “right” proportion of control of that dollar in practical terms is to be established. Guess what? Exchanging currency is the system by which we arbitrate ownership of work. And it’s a good system, too, because it makes men weld pipe for you, something they would not otherwise do on a Friday afternoon. You apparently have a better system in mind, but you think so little of us you won’t tell us what it is. Well, thanks.

You’ve escaped the stratosphere of idealism and are now orbiting in the geostationary ring of crazy. Usually, when idealists denigrate capitalism, I have some idea of the ideal society they are envisioning.

See, I solved the riddle.

mycowardice

I think you’re right, but the problem I have from the right is that they make it sound as if they just want to cling to what they have without any regards for the American next to them.

No, they don’t make it sound that way. You choose to interpret it that way. You are attributing selfishness to people you don’t even know. How do you know they have no regard for their neighbors? Sure, some people make a ton of money and blow it on hookers and cocaine. These people are known as liberal hollywood movie stars. Other well-to-do people try to leave something of lasting significance, like build Carnegie Hall, or build a new wing of a hospital or fund cancer research or privately build a rocket that can reach outer space. When a man says, “I want to keep more of my money,” why do you think yachts and country clubs rather than Carnegie Hall or the X Prize or something more ennobling? How do you know he isn’t earning that money to give his daughter very expensive treatment for Multiple Sclerosis or allowing his wife dying of cancer to fulfill her dream of seeing Paris before she dies? Paying for a son to go to med school? Build a business that employs a thousand people? And even if the capital is accumulated to buy a yacht, well that employs yacht-builders.

Given that doing anything worth doing is possible only after accumulating capital, why do you assume that an individual who is amassing capital is amassing it for ignoble ends? How can you judge a-priori? You can’t, but your solution is to forestall the possibility of the accumulation of capital for selfish ends by making it very difficult to accumulate private capital period. Fine. This is because you don’t trust your fellow citizen to be unselfish. Again, fine. But these same carbon based organisms whom you deem to be so selfish they can’t be trusted with sums of money are the same creeps who staff the bureaucracies of our government. Why would they not be susceptible to the same vices as the private citizen, i.e. greed? Why would it not be worse since these greedy humans have access to not only more capital than the private citizen, generally, but also have access to the monopoly of force of the State? For instance, Kim Jong Il lived a life of decadence that would make Donald Trump blanche. On a lesser scale, Obama funneled State money to the tune of literally hundreds of millions of dollars to Rezko, Ayers, his wife and other cronys, for very vague deliverables. How do you know that any of this was high minded? If Joe-the-Plumber can’t be trusted with a million dollars that he earned with long hours on the job with his own blood, sweat, and tears, why should Barry-the-Ward-Heeler be trusted with spending in high minded fashion a public purse of $150,000,000 that he did nothing whatsoever to earn except talk a good game?

You assume that private vices magically disappear when the private citizen becomes a public citizen. It is a fanciful idea, and would that it were true, but experience would dictate that rather the opposite happens.

But you are right, coercing generosity is nearly as good as coercing religious conversions

What the heck does that mean? I don’t even know what you’re talking about. At least you own up to the fact that what’s going on is coercion.

Communism was tried in Plymouth Colony between 1620 and 1623, with all land held in common and worked by everybody “according to his ability”. The result was that the colony almost starved to death. Communism had failed.

They changed course, divided up the land, and had each family grow its own food…and suddenly there was more than enough food for everybody. Capitalism worked!!!

Lesson: Communism results in universal misery. Capitalism results in universal prosperity.

And this was a good 100 years before the Declaration of Independence was signed!!!

mycowardice on November 1, 2008 at 7:21 PM

Marxist Troll/Obama Seminar Blogger alert!!!

I think you’re right, but the problem I have from the right is that they make it sound as if they just want to cling to what they have without any regards for the American next to them.

mycowardice on November 1, 2008 at 7:21 PM

It’s called private property, genius, and it’s one of the very foundations of this nation. Are you for real?

If “selfishness” is the problem, coercing a “selfish” man into behaving as a simulacrum of an “unselfish” man does not eliminate the vice of “selfishness.” He is just as “selfish” as he ever was, you just can’t see it anymore

I think you’re right, but the problem I have from the right is that they make it sound as if they just want to cling to what they have without any regards for the American next to them. They make it sound like they are the sole reason why they earned whatever it is they earned. As if the rest of society had nothing to do with it. As if they could achieve the same on some desert island.

No one succeeds on this earth without having someone else help him out. To claim that you own the dollar you brought in today from work is not right. To get that dollar, you need dozens and dozens of other people to also do their jobs. So if you are a plumber, you need the construction guy out there to put in the pipes. That person needs the auto worker to build his van. Etc.

But you are right, coercing generosity is nearly as good as coercing religious conversions.

Government effects its ends through violence or the threat of violence. Actual violence is not necessary in most cases, just the threat of violence is usually enough. If you stop paying your taxes, it may take a while, but men with guns will eventually show up. No, really, they will. They’ll have a little piece of paper called a “warrant” which is basically an authorization to commit violence if they deem it necessary to coerce you. Look at what happened to Wesley Snipes after he stopped paying his taxes. Somehow this to you is exactly like throwing a buck in a basket at a museum you voluntarily visit. You haven’t thought very deeply about the nature of government and how it differs from civil society.

This raises a philosophical point. The movie A Clockwork Orange raises the question of whether there is any utility in coercing an evil man into behaving in the manner of a good man while he is still evil at his core. Without getting into the movie’s take on these issues, the movie’s essential question is useful for deconstructing Obama’s argument. Let’s take Obama’s argument at face value. It’s a BS argument, but let’s humor him. If “selfishness” is the problem, coercing a “selfish” man into behaving as a simulacrum of an “unselfish” man does not eliminate the vice of “selfishness.” He is just as “selfish” as he ever was, you just can’t see it anymore. If Obama was truly concerned about eliminating “selfishness” in men’s hearts, his project is doomed to fail, obviously, in the same way as would “The beatings will continue until morale improves.” Now, Obama can make a utilitarian argument for his tax policy if he wishes, but that is not what he is doing. He is trying to make a moral argument for it, but it’s a phony one. I believe Obama is smart enough to know that he is playing a philosophical shell game here.