If You're Poor, You Didn't Get There On Your Own. Government Helped You Get There...

Originally posted by CalebRight14

Originally posted by Apleness
Holy crap.. I'm not American but I can see what he means with his speech.

He basically means the big corporations didn't grow without any help, the startups were financed by the government.

OK? WTH.. Are you serious? Where the heck do you think the government got the money from? it appeared out of thin air? it was taxed... good grief.

edit on 31-7-2012 by CalebRight14 because: (no reason given)

Uh.. So you are saying when get a loan to buy a house its actually you giving money to your self for the loan..?

reply to post by CalebRight14


...only if you don't count in city construction bids, infrastructure, and that whole huge chunk of employment that, if I recall, is what, along with military production, got us out of the last great depression, and created skills that, when the government no longer needed, went on to produce some of the finest cities in the world in the post war period, which in turn provided countless service jobs that are our primary means of employment today.

reply to post by Gorman91


All of which does nothing at all to support your contention that people are successful because they got "tax breaks" from the government.

LOGIC is not meant to be painful or dangerous.

So this idea that you are debating Obama's speech that executives didn't make the bridge they used to drive them to work, and trying to reverse this while you misconstrue what it meant in the first place is really warped.

Just don't hurt yourself trying to juggle mental concepts like Infrastructure -- it's not like chain saws.

Originally posted by wwiilliiaamm
trickle down economics:
A little while back the heritage foundation published a report which stated in the 1980's 85% of americans paid taxes. Now we are down to about 50%.

www.heritage.org...

Conservatives tell us this is beacuse people are lazy.
I would say our middle class is gone. The tax breaks that started during the Reagan Administration and since have not trickled down.

The rich are richer and the poor... well the poor are being blamed for the economic mess.

There are very lazy poor people who could go work at McDonald's but love to sit at home in public housing all day without paying electricity while those who do work are out sweating and about to faint from heat exhaustion. Do I know any of those? Yes I do. Did the government make them think that way? No.

BTW, before there is any disagreement with me, I grew up in poverty. I was middle-class only a few short years before illness took my ability to work a regular job. Do I think I am poor? No. Would YOU think I am poor...yes you would if you knew my income. Would I work tomorrow if I did not have this illness? Absolutely.

If you don't believe me that there are lazy poor people, go visit any public housing in any town or city. Not all poor people are lazy, some are indeed trying to make a living working at menial jobs that pay little, but if you would like to know the ones I know, just go visit any public housing and ask the young men and women who live there why they don't work.

In the town I currently live in it amazes me how so many places are asking for help and nobody is applying. Why is that? These people think it is the government giving them a place to live but really it is on the backs of every taxpayer. Do they thank the taxpayer? Noooooooo. They don't even thank the government who has made it so easy for those to stay where they are. Who is to blame for their lack of work ethic? Their parents and role models who teach them to play the system. They play it well while the taxpayers are working to meet their needs. Yes, I do know who they are and what they do and it is not the government who did it. They did it themselves and will continue to do it as long as people in government do not require them to get off their lazy rear ends and go apply at McDonald's. Am I poor? Probably. Do I think I am poor? No. I refuse to play the system because I know what it means to work. I know the system players, they are out there sitting on their rear ends while coming up with excuses why they do not have to go get a job.

Don't believe me? Go to any public housing building and see for yourself.

reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux


I did not say that. I'm not taking sides. I'm just saying your life WOULD be more crappy if the government did nothing.

Originally posted by Gorman91
reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux

 

I did not say that. I'm not taking sides. I'm just saying your life WOULD be more crappy if the government did nothing.

There was a time in this country when the government did not help and people still seemed to live pretty happy and fulfilled. The government is useful for things like making laws to protect workers on the job and preventing child labor, but somewhere along the way people lost their focus on what is important and began to rely on the government to take care of them.

Originally posted by Gorman91
reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux

 

I did not say that. I'm not taking sides. I'm just saying your life WOULD be more crappy if the government did nothing.

My life would be better if government simply did what they are expressly mandated to do by Constitution instead of insisting that Constitution impliedly granted them the authority to invade into my personal life all too often. Nothing sounds a damn sight better than what they're doing now.

Originally posted by VitriolAndAngst
LOGIC is not meant to be painful or dangerous.

So this idea that you are debating Obama's speech that executives didn't make the bridge they used to drive them to work, and trying to reverse this while you misconstrue what it meant in the first place is really warped.

Just don't hurt yourself trying to juggle mental concepts like Infrastructure -- it's not like chain saws.

Since the top 1% pay for 94% of tax revenue and 50% of Americans pay nothing, then the rich have already paid for it prior to it being built.

Point of fact without the rich the government would have no money to build anything...so the rich built government and the 50% that use it need to pay up.

reply to post by nosacrificenofreedom


Umm, yeah, I think you missed my point. Natural Sources of Revenue, having nothing to do with raising taxes on natural resources. I was using that term to distinguish between taxes collected from citizens and money being printed or borrowed. What have I posted that would lead you to believe that I agree with printing money to service our debt?
Did you just use my statement, and poorly comprehended at that, to bring up your views that don't really relate to my post or the conversation it was included in? You might want to re-read my past posts if you'd like to understand my statement

reply to post by WarminIndy


A person can be happy without police, firefighters, hospitals, roads, highways, etc etc. He simply doesn't have access to those things. Who said anything about happiness? Your emotions are not an indication of civilization or not. I'm sure the very happy tribals in Afghanistan who are so proud when they pour acid in the face of young women are happy for keeping things their way.

reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux


Well that's the bad. If all you did was focus on the bad, then everyone should go burn in hell.

You are shifting it away from the original topic. And that is if you got somewhere without the government. Both figuratively and literally, you did not get someplace purely alone.

reply to post by Gorman91


happiness is the whole point of my life. I hope it is yours too. We can have all the technology, jobs, civilization, etc. we want but if we are all miserable what is the point?

reply to post by theroguelion


But that's the point isn't it. Some of us learn to be happy regardless of the situation. Some of us need to do things to be happy.

I'm an odd mix. Because the fact is that I am, for the most part, almost always happy. As a result, I seek suffering, because it motivates me to do things. Without suffering, I do not do anything. When I have a project due, I purposefully do not sleep for a day and stop eating for half a day in order to make me feel like crap. Then, when I do my work, I become tenfold productive. Because I know when that work is finished, the completion of that work will forcefully become a joyous feeling greater than the suffering. Thus I become even more happier than I was to begin with.

As a result, Happiness has absolutely no value for me. Happiness is where I do nothing and waste away. It is a thing to be avoided for me. I gain energy and joy by suffering.

Do not confuse happiness for joy.

Originally posted by Apleness

Originally posted by CalebRight14

Originally posted by Apleness
Holy crap.. I'm not American but I can see what he means with his speech.

He basically means the big corporations didn't grow without any help, the startups were financed by the government.

OK? WTH.. Are you serious? Where the heck do you think the government got the money from? it appeared out of thin air? it was taxed... good grief.

edit on 31-7-2012 by CalebRight14 because: (no reason given)

Uh.. So you are saying when get a loan to buy a house its actually you giving money to your self for the loan..?

What are you talking about? How did I say that? When we get a loan, we are paying for a service. I bought my first house last year. The price of the house was $125,000.00, if I take the 30 years to pay off the loan that I am alloted, by the time I pay the bank back, I will have paid over $220,000.00. Who do you think gets the extra $95,000? The bank does.
A loan is a paid service of someone that has the money, that will give it upfront, for me promising to pay it back, with a fee.

Originally posted by Gorman91
reply to post by CalebRight14

 

...only if you don't count in city construction bids, infrastructure, and that whole huge chunk of employment that, if I recall, is what, along with military production, got us out of the last great depression, and created skills that, when the government no longer needed, went on to produce some of the finest cities in the world in the post war period, which in turn provided countless service jobs that are our primary means of employment today.

I'm not trying to say the Goverment doesn't do anything right or well. The building of our interstate roads was a great advancement for our country. Everynow and then we get it right. I am saying it's gone too far.

I don't need the FDA to make it a crime for me to take anything, or make it legal to take a product that a company makes because said company paid off the right people.

I don't need the EPA to throw me in jail or tell me I cannot collect rain water that falls on my property, because water belongs to the state, county whatever.

I don't need Child protective services have SWAT show up at my door and throw me in jail, and take my 12 year old daughter away because I refuse to give her medication that I believe is hurting her.

It's too much and it needs to stop.

reply to post by CalebRight14


Sure, but those are cases that, mostly, involve one or two cases.

A law is only as valid as the government is willing to follow it. That goes for these new laws, and our old ones like the constitution.

That's why I don't exactly much care about all these laws that they are enacting. If they can't even follow the laws that they are breaking to pass them, I doubt much that they are willing to follow them once they are passed.

And that has interesting long term consequences. Namely the utter hypocrisy and invalidation of them once they actually go into execution.

Similar situations have existed in the past and they all end up the same. Self destructive.

So as long as the actual core laws are not undone, these new laws, for all intensive purposes, are all bark and no bite. Much like the Dotcom case and many others, they collapse into utter ruin and failure once actually tried in court. That is why your swat team for drugs case was won by the mother, for example.

To adopt a phrase of Lincoln, you can pay off all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot pay off all the people all the time. A judge will find it retarded, a lawyer will find it fun to make a career off it, etc etc. They never last long.

Think by the numbers:

About $59 billion is spent on traditional social welfare programs. $92 billion is spent on corporate subsidies. So, the government spent 50% more on corporate welfare than it did on food stamps and housing assistance in 2006.

thinkbynumbers.org...

Define poor for me again? Seems that US government is a bit confused as to who is poor and who isn't.

Global Issues:

In 1970, the world’s rich countries agreed to give 0.7% of their GNI (Gross National Income) as official international development aid, annually. Since that time, despite billions given each year, rich nations have rarely met their actual promised targets. For example, the US is often the largest donor in dollar terms, but ranks amongst the lowest in terms of meeting the stated 0.7% target.
Furthermore, aid has often come with a price of its own for the developing nations:
Aid is often wasted on conditions that the recipient must use overpriced goods and services from donor countries
Most aid does not actually go to the poorest who would need it the most
Aid amounts are dwarfed by rich country protectionism that denies market access for poor country products, while rich nations use aid as a lever to open poor country markets to their products
Large projects or massive grand strategies often fail to help the vulnerable as money can often be embezzled away.

www.globalissues.org...

Well at least the US government is consistent with their treatment of the poor. Poor all over the world are treated the same.

Global issues:

The global financial and economic crisis2 has resulted in many nations cutting back on all sorts of public spending (often against the criticism of targeting sectors that were not responsible for the crisis), and yet military spending seems to be increasing. How is that justified?

www.globalissues.org...

Because the war machine must be fed before the people.

reply to post by The Old American




It disgusts me how some people get rewarded with flags and stars for nothing, but well thought out replies go unresponded to.
There are so many varibles that you haven't mentioned here, and probably haven't even come to mind for you. But I won't bother trying to help feed your imagination because it would be a waste of my time.

I would never change your mind, and not that I want to, but a wider vision would be wise.

Originally posted by Gorman91
reply to post by WarminIndy

 

A person can be happy without police, firefighters, hospitals, roads, highways, etc etc. He simply doesn't have access to those things. Who said anything about happiness? Your emotions are not an indication of civilization or not. I'm sure the very happy tribals in Afghanistan who are so proud when they pour acid in the face of young women are happy for keeping things their way.

edit on 1-8-2012 by Gorman91 because: (no reason given)

Except Americans have the right to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. Might I just add this, if people lived right and treated each other right we would not need the police. The firefighters we still need as well as hospitals and roads. But roads are an indication of a prosperous society, roads are needed to transport goods in trade. Those tribals know that what they are doing is not right and many people are unhappy, especially the women who face fear of acid thrown in their faces. When your life is filled with peace and no fear, then you can enjoy happiness, which is something more than an emotion if we are guaranteed that right as a nation.