Elections 2012 -- Carrion My Wayward Son!

[Bob Gray]

Re: Elections 2012 -- Carrion My Wayward Son!

This is the great false narrative. It's always been the refuge of the strong. "You only want to destroy the aristocracy out of envy."

Don't you understand that for many (most) of us it has nothing to do with envy at all? It's an argument about the best way to promote a thriving economy and a healthy, optimistic citizenry?

Someone who has a strong argument puts forward the best case against them. Someone who has a weak argument resorts to strawmen and insinuating base motivations to their opponents. That sort of rhetoric just shows that the argument can't win on the merits.

There's a lot more envy floating around than you seem to realize.

Arguments often aren't won on the merits, unfortunately.

 

[Bob Gray]

Re: Elections 2012 -- Carrion My Wayward Son!

You got a 3% raise last year? rich basturd!

I envy Scooby's 3 percent raise!

 

[mookie1995]

Re: Elections 2012 -- Carrion My Wayward Son!

No, I don't think most of America does get it. Every time this argument comes up all we ever hear over and over again is the percentage of Federal Taxes the rich are paying is too high, and the percentage of people that are not paying Income Taxes is too low.

And I personally find both of those premises utter and complete BS.

good. because it is all in how you want to frame your position.

like pro-life gets to name their side for not having abortions, but pro-death gets to call themselves pro-choice instead.

it is a spending argument, not a revenue problem. or is it a revenue problem and not spending?

gov'ment wants to spend. they want to spend on you, and for themselves. they need money. money comes from you and me. that 'us' elects you. i want stuff, but i want you to pay for it. i got enough to worry about buying my own stuff and can't afford to pay for 'our' stuff. you feel the same way. so we both want 'them' to pay for it. unfortunately 'they' think the same way we do. as we try to make our money last longer to buy stuff for us, we don't want to pay a lot. so it's good for us if stuff is made elsewhere, outsourced, and we can buy more stuff. so what if somebody isn't making it here, it'll cost too much. so we got stuff.

how do we get though people to pay for all that other stuff? we can group together and try to get the other guy to pay more. pay his 'fair' share. why should he have that car when i got only this car? but what about the guy on the bus? he doesn't have to pay what i pay! why should i pay for my car AND his bus? i see he has a lot of the same stuff we both bought for cheap that was shipped here from there. maybe he paid for his own car instead of using 'my' bus.... i could get more stuff and that would be fair. but i like him, so let's find other people who either have more things and make them pay more for my other stuff... or find other people who are using stuff i paid for and see if they can start paying for their own stuff.

either way, i'm paying too much for my stuff and your stuff and all y'all ain't paying enough (for either your stuff or my stuff).

 

[Rover]

Re: Elections 2012 -- Carrion My Wayward Son!

How would you like us to examine your tax returns? I'm sure you never ever once did anything even remotely questionable, eh?

Gee, Romney followed they law, so let's excoriate him and give the lawmakers a free pass!

I may have overvalued the used underwear that I donated to charity by a couple of bucks but that's about it.

However, as has been said the whole % of this is a false argument. If I make a million dollars and pay a Romney tax rate of 10%, then the next year My income goes up 20%, so +$200,000 but my taxes go up 25%, an extra 2.5% or $30,000 (based on new income of 1.2M) stupid people may be convinced that I'm somehow getting screwed because my taxes went up by a greater % than my income (25% growth vs 20%).....while not realizing I'm 170K up at the end of the day because I'm increasing my income on a much greater base level than my taxes. 1981 called Fishy, and it wants it tax policy back.

did you walk in this morning and resign because the place you work outsources jobs to asia?

No but if I was running the place I wouldn't be engaging in that practice.

 

[Kepler]

Re: Elections 2012 -- Carrion My Wayward Son!

There's a lot more envy floating around than you seem to realize.

Arguments often aren't won on the merits, unfortunately.

There's idiocy on both sides. There are people on the other side who actually believe the primary explanation for poverty is laziness and inferiority. There are A LOT of them -- Ayn Rand's books fly off the shelves.

I'm talking about thinking people here. There are intelligent arguments for either side of the economics debate that defy easy BS explanations that are put out there to preclude real discussion. People who do that are showing they don't have any substance to their argument, they are simply arguing "my tribe good, your tribe bad."

And sure, easy talking points convince more people than clear thinking, but in the end the only thing that can support reality is truth. BS may always win with the crowd, but it can't defy gravity -- policy based on mass misconception will always crash in the end. So this isn't an academic argument -- it's about the real, not the popular.

 

[mookie1995]

Re: Elections 2012 -- Carrion My Wayward Son!

However, as has been said the whole % of this is a false argument. If I make a million dollars and pay a Romney tax rate of 10%, then the next year My income goes up 20%, so +$200,000 but my taxes go up 25%, an extra 2.5% or $30,000 (based on new income of 1.2M) stupid people may be convinced that I'm somehow getting screwed because my taxes went up by a greater % than my income (25% growth vs 20%).....while not realizing I'm 170K up at the end of the day because I'm increasing my income on a much greater base level than my taxes...

you just made my head asplode

 

[Bob Gray]

Re: Elections 2012 -- Carrion My Wayward Son!

There's idiocy on both sides. There are people on the other side who actually believe the primary explanation for poverty is laziness and inferiority. There are A LOT of them -- Ayn Rand's books fly off the shelves.

I'm talking about thinking people here. There are intelligent arguments for either side of the economics debate that defy easy BS explanations that are put out there to preclude real discussion. People who do that are showing they don't have any substance to their argument, they are simply arguing "my tribe good, your tribe bad."

And sure, easy talking points convince more people than clear thinking, but in the end the only thing that can support reality is truth. BS may always win with the crowd, but it can't defy gravity -- policy based on mass misconception will always crash in the end. So this isn't an academic argument -- it's about the real, not the popular.

You are more optimistic than I am. I wish that poor policies would always crash in the end, but we've got poor policies up the wazoo in this country and far too few of them have every crashed and come to an end. I saw an article the other day about someone who was retiring after 30 years in some sort of public office (don't have the link at the moment) and he basically said that during his 30 years in office the public has gotten stupider. He said he's only saying it now because he isn't running for office again.

 

[bigblue_dl]

Re: Elections 2012 -- Carrion My Wayward Son!

you just made my head asplode

Mine too. This guy sucks at understanding math.

 

[FreshFish]

Re: Elections 2012 -- Carrion My Wayward Son!

This is the great false narrative. It's always been the refuge of the strong. "You only want to destroy the aristocracy out of envy.

Maybe so, it wasn't my narrative, and so I'm not sure how your response relates to what I wrote?


You added the word "only" that wasn't there before. I guess by changing an inconvenient view by exaggerating it you can then ridicule the exaggeration and so avoid having to address what actually was said?

There is a huge difference between saying "the rich have a responsibility to give back to society" and saying "government must forcibly confiscate assets from 'the rich' merely because the rich have 'too much.'

I've clearly favored the former. the latter is for someone arbitrarily to declare, absent any rationale, that the rich must pay their "fair" share (conveniently undefined) to the government.


You are conflating two very different points of view into one. There are serious problems with saying "the rich should be subject to arbitrary government confiscation [because the government cannot live within a reasonable budget]." Sure, a jobs training program is a good idea, but 47 different jobs training programs?

The first sounds good; however, you conveniently omit the justification for the second, while it is the second that people object to, not the first. You cannot seriously maintain that there aren't already plenty of government programs in place now that are not working. Is it really unreasonable to ask that we merely make existing programs more effective before implementing more ineffective programs? somehow the practical nuts and bolts never seem to enter into your idealistic calculus, yet it is in the area of ineffectual results that has most people upset, not the intentions behind them.


Sure, we should feed the poor, but to give them steak every day? Sure, we should house the homeless, but in a five-star hotel? Every time a person raises a question about a matter of degree, you totally ignore that question and instead impugn the motives and integrity of the people asking realistic, reasonable questions.

i guess I should expect win at all costs, integrity be dammed in a thread about politics. silly me, how naive I am.

 

[Kepler]

Re: Elections 2012 -- Carrion My Wayward Son!

You are more optimistic than I am. I wish that poor policies would always crash in the end, but we've got poor policies up the wazoo in this country and far too few of them have every crashed and come to an end. I saw an article the other day about someone who was retiring after 30 years in some sort of public office (don't have the link at the moment) and he basically said that during his 30 years in office the public has gotten stupider. He said he's only saying it now because he isn't running for office again.

In my limited experience people do seem stupider as one gets older.

But on the other hand, they seem kinder, too. I used to think the population was roughly 10% good and 90% bad. I've decided over time that it's the exact opposite: 10% of the people are saints, 10% are creeps, and the 80% of us in the middle mean well, love our children, and are doing the best we can with what we have. Basically, 90% of people are good -- it's just most of us aren't very effective in our goodness.

They key to poor policies always crashing is timeframe. Some collapse pretty quickly -- it seems like flirtations with fascism usually only last about 15 years. Some take a lot longer -- plutocracies can last for generations. But they eventually fail because the people who try hard and still always lose eventually get tired of it. They move away if they can, they revolt if there is nowhere else to go. Unless we can open up a Mars frontier, the people are eventually going to get tired of the new American oligarchy, and at that point it won't matter how well-armed it is.

 

[FlagDUDE08]

Re: Elections 2012 -- Carrion My Wayward Son!

I envy Scooby's 3 percent raise!

Perhaps he should follow his idol and give the 3% to us!

 

[Old Pio]

Re: Elections 2012 -- Carrion My Wayward Son!

The race to the bottom continues: Romney vs. the economy.

Romney’s Popularity Stays Low, Obama’s is Better, but with Challenges

Mitt Romney is laboring under the lowest personal popularity ratings for a presumptive presidential nominee in midsummer election-year polls back to 1984. But Barack Obama has his own challenges in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, notably among registered voters, and with much weaker numbers among men than women.

Forty percent of Americans overall view Romney favorably, 49 percent unfavorably – leaving him underwater, at least numerically, in 10 straight http://www.langerresearch.com/uploads/1127a36FavorabilityNo36.pdf/Post polls this year. A new high of 30 percent now see him “strongly” unfavorably, nearly double his strongly favorable score.

OBAMA – Obama, for his part, is seen more positively than negatively among all adults, 53-43 percent favorable-unfavorable, but slips to nearly an even split, 49-47 percent, among registered voters. That’s still better than Romney’s 42-50 percent among registered voters, but less sharply so.

And here I was under the impression that the "race to the bottom" had something to do with His Shizaness sending out surrogates to accuse Romney of being a "felon," or "paying no taxes for a decade" or being responsible for killing a woman whose husband lost his job.

 

[Rover]

Re: Elections 2012 -- Carrion My Wayward Son!

And here I was under the impression that the "race to the bottom" had something to do with His Shizaness sending out surrogates to accuse Romney of being a "felon," or "paying no taxes for a decade" or being responsible for killing a woman whose husband lost his job.

Cry me a river Old PO'd. Righties are like the hockey player who starts a fight, gets punched in the head and then turtles up on the ice while saying "why are you hitting me"? The political version of Claude Lemieux! See, us libs are having fun kicking some conservative tail this election season, and its only gonna get worse for your side.

 

[FreshFish]

Re: Elections 2012 -- Carrion My Wayward Son!

No but if I was running the place I wouldn't be engaging in that practice.

How noble of you to go out of business and cost all your remaining employees their jobs too.


I still don't understand how raising taxes on the rich solves any of our problems?? no one has yet offered a credible explanation of why this issue is anything other than a distraction.

Go ahead, raise taxes on the rich, then what? every other economic problem we face still remains and has become even MORE acute than it was earlier!


so Obama demagogs his way into a second term with smoke mirrors and sleight of hand. now what? taxes are up, incomes are down, unemployment is still way too high....

Seriously, genius, how does raising taxes on the rich do anything to solve unemployment? how does it increase economic growth? how does it make the US more competitive? how does it upgrade the defensive capacity of the armed forces while cutting their budget? how does it improve energy exploration or delivery?

raising taxes on the rich will not even raise enough money to cover the increase in interest payable on the national debt once interest rates start to rise again.


I know, we'l raise taxes on the rich even more! oops, there aren't any rich left after 100% marginal income tax rates....now what?

 

[Bill]

Re: Elections 2012 -- Carrion My Wayward Son!

FDR saved capitalism, son. Them's the facts.

That's got to be one of the funniest things you've ever said.

 

[FreshFish]

Re: Elections 2012 -- Carrion My Wayward Son!

and its only gonna get worse for your side.

"Your" side? this is just a game for you? what is this, Monty Python?

 

[Old Pio]

Re: Elections 2012 -- Carrion My Wayward Son!

if all somebody has known their whole life is biased, how would they know? The N Korea gold medalist who says it is all because of their late leader firmly believes that is true and the olympic delegation keeps them in hotels to prevent any other thoughts from entering their heads.

In this day and age, virtually all news is biased by those who deliver it. Is there a network out there that can say none of its decisions are influenced by their corporation's interests, their aggregate political position, the bias of any individual reporter, editor or producer?

The funny thing is when a conservative says Fox is fair and balanced but the rest are liberal propagandists or a liberal states that only Fox distorts the message...they all do it, but for decades there was only 'the media'... nobody suspected that there was an opportunity for the news to be massaged. Maybe in 1940 it was unbiased but it hasn't been for quite a while.

That isn't to say 100% of everything is biased...I'm pretty sure the weather and the sports scores are not politically influenced.

How's that grasp of the obvious? Firm? Nobody I'm aware of disputes that Fox has a conservative point of view or the MSNBC is liberal. But they are cable channels. NBC is a legacy network. You know, Huntley/Brinkley, John Chancellor, etc. And NBC is completely in bed with His Oneness. You disagree? Fine. But in the example I cited, not even you can dispute that they maliciously, deliberately edited audio in a way calculated to make George Zimmerman look racist. That's not bias. It's fraud.

And comparing American journalists to North Koreans is just silly, at best. Every American has unfettered access to every concievable point of view, 24/7 and can express his opinion on any issue (unless he's the CEO of a chicken sandwich chain, but that's another story) without fear of government reprisals.

You disagree with my analysis? Fine. But please don't make the "they all do it argument." There are decades of evidence of the liberal inclinations of the elite media. And polling data show they consistently vote Democrat about 70% of the time. Deny it if you wish. Equivocate if you like. But please don't insult our intelligence.

 

[FreshFish]

Re: Elections 2012 -- Carrion My Wayward Son!

If I make a million dollars and pay a Romney tax rate of 10%, then the next year My income goes up 20%, so +$200,000 but my taxes go up 25%, an extra 2.5% or $30,000 (based on new income of 1.2M)

Another member of the non sequiter club? where in the historical record does Romney's 20% tax cut across the board appear??? and where does your flat 10% tax even come from??? Romney said he wanted to decrease all rates by 20% in return for eliminating deductions. last I looked, 35% * 80% = 28%. Is your calculator broken? or is lying now so endemic that you don't even notice when you engage in it?

 

[Old Pio]

Re: Elections 2012 -- Carrion My Wayward Son!

"Your" side? this is just a game for you? what is this, Monty Python?

Funny, I just flashed on John Cleese doing the village idiot sketch.

 

[walrus]

Re: Elections 2012 -- Carrion My Wayward Son!

being responsible for killing a woman whose husband lost his job.

Turns out she had insurance from her own job. Nice