Presidential election, 2016

[Bob Butler 54]

(12-29-2016, 09:01 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: So basically you're saying you want to tear down everyone who does better than you.  Got it.

Me, I'd rather everyone do as well as possible.

No, you do not get it at all.  This is not unusual.  When someone tries to speak with an extreme partisan, the extreme partisan will replace plain speaking with a strawman position, a vile stereotype.  Taramarie has it right.  I'll go into more detail, though I don't know that you are capable of understanding stuff outside your personal values.

FDR proposed his Four Freedoms: of Speech, of Religion, from Fear and from Want.  I was talking about economics, which would fall under Freedom from Want.  While FDR spoke broadly of four freedoms before the US entered actively entered the war, Eleanor got more specific with her UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  To be free from Want, one should have certain basics...  notably food, shelter, health care, and a retirement plan.

Conservatives have a vile stereotype of Democrats wanting everyone to have a free ride.  Allegedly, Democrats want the government to pay everybody for doing nothing.  No.  This is a Big Lie, a vile stereotype, a strawman.  However, the economy should be set up so that everybody willing and able to work ought to be able to get the above bolded basics.  I am not at all interested in paying large amounts of tax money for lavish entitlements.  I am interested in a solid economy with jobs paying living wages that allow most everybody to get the basics without government involvement.  The better the economy, the less money need be spent on safety nets, and I would absolutely like to minimize the cost of safety nets.  Entitlements for entitlements sake is not the correct path.

But my desire to minimize spending on safety nets doesn't mean that folks past retirement age ought to be starving under overpasses while being unable to get health care.

I don't know that either of us doing significantly better than the other.  We're both software guys from the Boston area.  I'm comfortably retired.  We're both Free from Want.  We both have the bolded basics.  Neither of us have any real reason other than a sense of arrogant entitlement to be unhappy with where we are.  I don't want to do stuff to knock you down economically as I'd likely be knocking myself down in the process.  Sure, the rich could always get richer, but it seems unseeingly for them to complain about the degree of their richness while Freedom from Want is being systematically denied, when companies are striving to avoid health and retirement expense for the benefit of the investors.  In an ideal utopian dream world, perhaps companies would provide complete benefit packages, living wages and living hours.  In such a world perhaps the government need not mandate them, but this isn't such a world.

I don't have any particular emotional desire to limit how absurdly rich the rich get.  I do want to strive towards Freedom from Want.  When everyone can get access to health care, when there are available jobs paying living wages that allow saving for retirement, the rich can get as rich as they want.  

(Disclaimer:  I do have a concern that when the rich run out of good investments they will blow a bubble -- such as the dot com and housing bubbles -- and eventually collapse the economy.  If there is any sign at all that a bubble is being blown, I'd increase taxes to the investing class and start buying down the debt.  While I'm not against applying supply side under certain conditions, it can and has recently been way overdone.  The rich certainly can get too rich.  Limiting how absurdly large the division of wealth can get is to the benefit of those on both sides of the gap.  But that's economics more than class struggle.)

Aside from avoiding bubbles, there is nothing wrong with everyone doing as well as possible.  I perceive a problem when a few do very very very well, while others are denied basics.  Some seem unable to perceive this as a problem.  I'm more concerned with the denied basics than how absurdly rich the richest get.