OT: re US - rathole of dictatorship

Miso's no dummie, and he's funny. But he's all for the causes (big government, concentrated power) behind the effects (spying, inequality, poverty) he says he's against, and he's wrong about Jefferson.

Cheers, James Arthur

Jim-out-of-touch-with-reality-Thompson is no dummy either, but he does let his preconceptions persuade him to say some remarkably silly things.

James Arthur is in the same boat. I don't think that miso is any more enthu siastic about big government and concentrated power than I am, but he is in favour of the government collecting enough in taxes to do a decent job of feeding the poor, looking after their health care, and making sure that the ir kids get educated.

James Arthur sees this as socialism, which he equates with communism and ce ntral control of the economy. I see it as common sense long term investment in the lower paid end of the work force. Central government does have a ro le in collecting the taxes and doling them out, but even right wing nitwits like James Arthur have no objection when the same mechanism is applied to financing and running national defense forces, police forces and road maker s and road menders.

The spying comes from the defense end of big government, and the inequality and poverty from the horrible defects of the US constitution - which was d esigned by the founding tax evaders to let them look after their interests while offering the illusion of population-wide representation.

Not all that wide a population to start with - women didn't get the vote in the US until 1920 ....

I don't know if you're an Alex Jones listener, Jim, but Obama's astonishing and oft-repeated remark about the self-employed and small business owners made my blood run cold. He said (generalizing), "YOU didn't build up that business, someone ELSE made that happen." WTH is THAT sort of outlook going to lead to?? Sounds scarily close to Communism to me! No wonder so many Americans are renouncing their citizenship.

doesn't it get tiresome to see demons around every corner?

I've worked every day as an engineer since the day I graduated, I've paid plenty of tax and since I don't have any kids I'm not likely to get any free rides

I just pointed out that the "quote", which is valid in that democracy requires a balance of power between givers and takers, can be twisted both ways

the right wing nutters will say those on well fare is all lazy and out for a free ride from those who work, some of them are

the left wing nutters will say the super rich take the money from those who work while paying little if any taxes, some of them are

and the guy who works his butt off to employ others doesn't even register on %1 radar

-Lasse

Obama is a Marxist, why shouldn't he sound like one?

Lefties are demons, so you got that much right. No, it doesn't get tiring defending liberty. When it does, we'll have the tyranny that you so desperately want.

r:

Left-wingers aren't demons. they are human, and don't have supernatural pow ers. Krw's "defense of liberty" is a little misdirected, but he's too dim to kno w better.

For most of the "lefties" that post here, Scandinavia and Germany about as left-wing as you need to get to have an equitable society - with Gini indic es of about 0.25 and 0.283 respectively - and none of them look anything li ke a tyranny. The US isn't a tyranny either, but it does look rather like a plutocracy, with the top 1% of the income distribution doing much better t han the 99%, in a society organised to give them the power to keep on doing that.

r:

who are

ich or

king from the working people giving it to the 1% super rich

if that is what you got out of what I wrote your brain must really be overloaded with fear of "lefties"

-Lasse

That is *precisely* what you're wishing for with your leftist, class-envy, drivel. Like all lefties, you're too damned dumb to realize it, though.

I'd say that goes a bit beyond "generalizing", to the point of "quoting out of context".

Obama's actual statement:

"There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree me with because they want to give something back. They know they didn't -- look, if you've been successful, you didn't get there on your own... If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business -- you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen."

Obama was echo "I hear all this, you know, 'Well, this is class warfare, this is whatever.' No. There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own -- nobody. You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police-forces and fire-forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory -- and hire someone to protect this against this -- because of the work the rest of us did. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea. God bless -- keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is, you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along."

That's very different than the way Obama's political opponents have sound-bited one sentence out of his speech, no?

IMO, Warren said it more clearly, more completely, and in a way which is much less subject to misunderstanding and/or deliberate distortion. On the other hand, she probably took twice as long to say it :-)

could have said 'try doing it in Somalia, they no government or taxes to speak of

-Lasse

en

Baer:

Iron meter just pegged. Krw is definitely the dumbest poster we've got, and that must be the dumbest post we've seen for some time - perhaps not the s illiest, since we've also got Greegor - but definitely the dumbest.

Amongst other things, Lasse hasn't said a word that could be interpreted as any kind of "class envy". Like me, he wants the rich in America to get to be even richer - in the long term - on the basis of a better educated, heal thier and better fed working class than they have at the moment.

It's working that way in Germany and Scandinavia right now, and it could ha ve been working that way in the US right now, if the top 1% of the income d istribution had had a better idea of their long-term interest a few years a go. A low Gini-index in an advanced industrial country isn't about money be ing taken away from the rich and given to the poor, but a bigger slice of a much bigger pie being invested in making the working classes more producti ve.

All this is much too complicated for krw to follow. He does seem to be able to parse complex sentences, but utterly fails to comprehend even moderatel y complex ideas. "Four legs good, two legs better" is roughly his comfort l evel.

seing as you're so familiar with that quote, I curious to hear what business are you in that has no reliance on "roads and bridges".

Yet somehow, even the poor, have the same "roads and bridges" as everyone else but can't even feed themselves without stealing from those who create things.

It's worse in context than in the one-liner.

The worst of it is that she's an incorrigible liar. Nobody's against roads -- that's a pretext.

She's using roads, a relatively trivial expense, as a pretext to justify the federal government collecting tax and giving 2/3rds of yours directly to someone else.

And 2/3rds is in fact the actual number:

She's for collecting 20x the amount she needs for roads in the name of roads, then using the money for other purposes, another lie. If we did that in private life it'd be a crime.

She (and Obama) rationalize it's fair to charge mandatory rent, food, housing, clothing, required insurance, etc., for working on the plantation, after all, they didn't build that.

Thing is, neither Obama nor Warren built a damn thing, ever.

Cheers, James Arthur

James Arthur is now parrotting krw - anybody who says anything he disagrees with is a liar.

But you are on record as being against the principle of taking somebody els e's money to pay for them and similar services used by everybody.

Actually, roads were one of the four distinguishable examples in her speech . The others were education, defense and the police force. Defense isn't tr ivial - less of all in the US, where it also serves as a form of corporate welfare.

This makes you a liar. And a dumb one.

st11z1.xls

Since she also listed education, the police force and defense, the lie is a ll yours.

So you are a criminal.

Correct. Of course "mandatory" isn't how we do things in the free market we st - even in Germany and Scandinavia there's an element of negotiation, and you can move to some other plantation if you don't like the way the one yo u are currently involved in is evolving. Or devolving if you are stuck in t he US.

Neither did you. You may have helped other people get things built by desig ning the stuff they built and managing the building process. Obama and Warr en are just further up the managerial tree, and even further away from the roots where the real work is done.

The poor may have the same roads and bridges, but somebody stole their jobs and shipped them off to China, where the Communist Party gets rich on the cut they take of the US money paid to the even poorer workers there.

So says Sloman, who no doubt fancies himself as some sort of Commissar in a future dystopia where everyone is "equal" he'll be chauffered around the countryside in a fancy car making arbitrary decisions about how much grain to steal from the farmers and peasants to send to his shiny-arsed cronies in the cities. Just like Russia in the 1930s. What a wonderful future we've all got to look forward to under Obamaism - Communism.

Actually, that's a past dystopia. AlwaysWrong is exhibiting the usual Ameri can mistake of confusing Socialism with Communism. The Socialists threw out the proto-Communist in 1870, correctly - and remarkably accurately - proph esying that the "leading role of the party" would lead to a worse dictators hip than any around in 1870.

Modern socialist have noticed that the free market does a better job of get ting grain out of farmers and distributing it to the cities than any centra lly planned economy can manage. There are aspects of life where the untramm elled free market doesn't work as well - remember Enron?