Thursday, October 16, 2008
A Plumber is what he's fighting for!
So, now Barak is making fun of the people who work. I guess we should be getting used to this. Of course, I guess I am one of the people that Barak is fighting for, a government employee. It's just that I am doing Public Defender work because I think it's important, and I think that I am making a difference. Now, if I was back in private practice, I am sure that I would not rate The One's attention in this matter.
But the original YouTube posting had Barak taking the stance that he wants to "Spread the Wealth Around."
Now, I keep coming back to the same basic question. What moral theory says that it is okay to take from the sweat of the workers to pass on to those who either don't work, or are not as successful? If you want the rich to pay their fair share, don't you mean that they should get a tax cut to the same as everyone else? Others have written very well that this is nothing more than the politics of envy.
We have succumbed to the idea that progressive taxation is acceptable. The question is: Why?
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7 comments:
You fundamentally misunderstand economics. The flow of wealth is upward. When you say "it is okay to take from the sweat of the workers to pass on to those who either don't work" you unknowingly say something that is true. Congratulations.
Oh please, spare me the exploitation of the masses crap. That may have been appropriate in 1848 Germany while your hero wrote his Manifesto, but people can subsist doing nothing in present day America.
Steve - you simply don't understand the nature of wealth production. It's a requirement for your side, otherwise the wealthy could not tool you up the way they do. All wealth flows upward. Workers produce, investors harvest.
You'd do yourself well to read a little of Marx (don't insult my intelligence - don't say you have). He understood capitalism well. He just didn't have anything to replace it with. He said that even he wasn't a Marxist.
Your capitalism has much in common with Communism. It only works in theory. And if you don't have a baseline understanding of how economies work, what good are you.
And you're running for office?
Mark, you pompous ass. I suppose I'm late enough to the party that you won't read this but I have to respond.
I have read Marx and, it seems, that if you've read him you don't really understand him. It's true that Marx didn't deny what Adam Smith wrote about adding value to commodities to create "wealth" - no economist in the world would make such a silly claim. In fact, Smith was one of Marx's biggest influences. What Marx said was that capitalism was simply a part of the organic evolution that, through an eventual crises between classes, would lead to an egalitarian society. So I wonder why you even bring the matter into question vis a vis Marx understanding of capital in an economy. It's a complete non-sequitur to Steve's point.
The question is, and Marx has never been proven at all correct that it can be, is whether or not the allocation of capital can be utilized most efficiently without the profit motive. It would seem that it can't by any historical measure.
Now, let me scold you for "name dropping." Until you've really studied economics you're nothing but a fucking parrot of Chomsky. You've admitted to me that you don't know much about economic theory - in fact you have said that its use is nothing but an excuse or rationalization for explaining chaos. So when you lecture anyone about not understanding the "baseline" of economics you show what a fraud you are.
Marx missed the boat on the real creators of wealth which are invention and innovation. He said that they were brought on by necessity and largely avoids the nature of competition while completely dismissing the profit motive in economic expansion. He was wrong then and he's wrong now. Go read Adam Smith.
Just by conicidence I was reading the Montana Code Annotated last night and there's a provision in there that says that pompous asses and parrots are not allowed to do psychological projection. Jesus. It's comedy, I tell you, comedy.
Here's what you don't get - economics is a "political" science in more than one sense. You want it to be mere science, but it comes embedded with your world view. You see wealth flowing from the top down. You're simply wrong about that, but have taken time to read economists who reinforce that view, and preach to the rest of us as if you have a grasp of truth that we simply cannot fathom. You are so awesome.
Proof is in the pudding. Every time we implement your philosophy, we have disaster, and every time we have a disaster, you say it wasn't your philosophy, but something else, usually us lefties or government or both. You're deluded, insulated, wrong, condescending and arrogant, all in one package. I just cannot tell you how much pleasure these encounters with you give me.
Tell your student, Little Lord Steve, to speak for himself. STFU.
Mark, you're simply a priggish runt when it comes to economics debate. I didn't propose any "truth" at any time. I simply stated that you don't have any grounding to make prognostications on "the truth" as you see it inasmuch as you don't know enough to make such statements.
You can't show me where I have ever said that supply-side v Keynesian economics is better. You can't show me where I have ever said that any one economic construct it "the truth." You refuse to debate the issue further than your simplistic nonsense that was inspired by Trotskyist groupthink.
You also can't show me where I've ever said that markets don't fail. I fact I say they do and we're in one right now. But you have little to no proof that government intervention causes less pain in the long.
I also don;t see wealth "flowing from the top" as you assert. Show me where I have. Did you disregard my comments about invention and innovation? Wealth is created by increases in the efficiency of capital. Look to Microsoft if you want a case study. But I suppose that concept is beyond you. Go buy a clue
You're mind is fettered by beliefs rather than facts. Now, either you make a substantive debate about my critcism of your Marx comments or you STFU; *.
Chomsky! That's it! I recognized the screwy logic, but I just couldn't place it until now. Thanks Dave, it explains Mark to a "T."
Just because Chomsky was a brilliant linguist doesn't mean that he is brilliant at anything else, especially in economic analysis. And his off the wall paranoid theories are expounded by the Truthers is further proof that he doesn't know what he is talking about.
As to Mark's assertion that capitalism only works in theory, once again, he gets it backwards. Experience and observation of the two imperfect examples (East Germany and the US) shows that his claim is entirely wrong.
I gave up on reading Chomsky a long time ago, but the idea that workers suddenly appear and produce goods, the value of which is stolen by evil capitalists is seriously delusional. Mark finds it easier to ignore reality in order to remain safely ensconced in his fantasy.
As to his claim that capitalism has failed, I guess the counter to that is that we haven't tried it yet. The idea that the current economic fiasco is to be blamed on deregulation is to ignore the use of legal coercion to overcome sound judgment.
But I guess that is his solution to everything anyway.
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