10-06-2018, 09:34 PM
(10-06-2018, 05:19 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:(10-06-2018, 02:54 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote:(10-05-2018, 11:10 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:(10-05-2018, 09:37 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:(10-05-2018, 07:45 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: As revenues plummet, people become more concerned about the amount of taxes that they are legally obligated to pay. The best you can hope for is an amicable divorce/ split and a free ticket along with a guarantee of safe passage to where ever blue America end up.
Amicable divorce? In view of the sadistic tendencies in one part of American culture, I expect it to be as nasty as the dissolution of Yugoslavia. There are some very Red areas in some Blue states and very Blue areas in some Red states.
The obsession which you reds, Classic Xer, have, is entirely due to brainwashing. Taxes were not a big concern until Reagan, Prop 13, etc., the sleepening that happened near the end of the last Awakening 2T. That's ALL it is. It's neo-liberalism, libertarian economics, supply side, whatever you call it; it is nothing but BULLSHIT. YOu are brainwashed into thinking you should not have to pay taxes, because government is the problem, taxes are theft, taxes are coercion, job creaters create jobs, yadda yadda yadda, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit, and more bullshit. And it's is the main cause of all our problems today in the USA. And you Gen Xers grew up knowing nothing better than what the charming actor and his successors and followers have told you
Brainwashed? That's funny. A brainwashed left winger accusing me of being brainwashed is funny. First of all, I'm not a young Libertarian voter or a clueless anarchist of some sort that you became accustomed to tangling with on a regular basis. I'm a real life middle aged American who has paid lots of taxes. Right now, you are stupid for not being able to figure that out, stupid for not being able to accept that as being me and stupid for trying to convert me to socialism and for trying to convince me that socialism would be better for all of us than capitalism has been for most us. I'm telling you that the best you can hope for is a socialist system for blues and a capitalist system for reds with a national border existing between them and separate currencies.
I don't disagree that may be a good solution, as long as the reds continue to believe in the right wing trickle-down economics dogmas that you defend on a regular basis, and their other superstitions. I know, and have said, that you are not a full-blown libertarian anarchist; I am very familiar with your views. I spend way too much time on this site, and on facebook too.
When you say I am advocating socialism to you, that is probably further off the mark than if I called you an anarchist. If you call it a watered-down green democratic socialism in a mixed economy, then I might accept that label (that's a long label, I know). To you, moderate, reasonable levels of "social" spending, taxes and regulations is "socialism." But the fact that you call it that, shows that you are a trickle-down dogma believer, as if we didn't already know.
First, "job creator" is a poor description of people who may get a higher profit or income (through bonuses) by cutting 'head counts" in business. Much new business activity comes from replacing labor-intensive activity with technology. Profits can rise while employment falls. Example: Amazon.com effectively cannibalizes much of the role of small business in retailing. Think of Sam Goody/ Suncoast Video/Musicland: it is gone. It used to have a high profile in retailing in video and music. Amazon.com may be more efficient and give lower cost to shoppers while getting stuff more promptly, which is good for its customers, but that also implies the demise of jobs in Sam Goody/Suncoast Video/Musicland.
This is not to say that corporations are all skinflints intent on cutting wages to bare levels of subsistence for those who remain as under a Marxist sterotype that sees employers as unhinged exploiters intent on degrading workers into serfs. If a company raises pay from $6 for 20 workers to $10 for the 'surviving' ten whom it does not permanently lay off, then that company is better off, cutting $240 in compensation to twenty workers to $200 for ten workers, then that company is still doing better.
Second, income that elites get must trickle down somehow (whether through ultra-luxury spending or through high taxes) lest the economy contract to resolve the imbalance. Elites do not foster small business; they try to take advantage of economies of scale to squeeze small-business competition out of business. Consumer spending falters, and much wealth gets shunted into speculative bubbles. the last one being the silliest. Think of the last bubble to burst in the 2008 crash: the price of motor fuels. I saw gasoline at $5.49 a gallon in rural Michigan in the summer of 2008, which analysts noticed was out of line with supply (high) and low demand (tending to fall). Unlike the situation with real estate and the financial fraud associated with the predatory lending that underpinned it, there was no fraud in the run-up in oil prices. Speculation in petroleum was the last available bet, in essence, the only game left in town. Petroleum prices cratered just before the stock market went into a tailspin.
Third, Man does not live by bread alone, and if people are to be nothing more than their economic roles they had better have wonderful jobs that allow full expression of their humanity. Most people who are nothing more than their economic roles have horrible jobs that pay little, demand rigid conformity, and compel people to pretend that they love jobs that are objectively awful. Were I to be damned to work as a sales clerk in a dollar store and trapped in the community in which I now live I would have little reason to live. Maybe I would be doing a favor by making such resources as I now have and use to people who can better appreciate them.
Finally, much of the economic entity today is best described as economic rent -- people paying high prices for living in the midst of profiteers.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.