Re: OT: Finesse contest finalists - thanks to all!

On Tue, 24 Apr 2007 22:47:48 -0500, "Carl" <cengman7@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:


"Josh Hill" <usereplyto@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:dmsq23tca6f4havp3aj8ekqn6motcpoeo1@xxxxxxxxxx
On Mon, 23 Apr 2007 20:03:48 -0500, "Carl" <cengman7@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:



***** Note, my newsreader isn't adding '>'s this time. ******

I tend to think that the percentage of @$$holes in the world is
probably constant throughout history. These days countries have
a stronger legal infrastructure than ever before to restrict the @$$holes.

**************************************
[my text snipped to avoid quoting confusion]

I'm not sure if that's true. Historically, there have been kindly
cultures and warlike, predatory ones. I don't know that the latter
would consider themselves less moral, but I think most of us would
characterize them that way. So I think the statistical baseline can
vary by society. And if that's the case, it can also potentially vary
with time. I believe that Republican government, with all its flaws,
and its cousin, modern welfare-state capitalism, with all /its/ flaws,
lead to a society that becomes increasingly caring, if for no other
reason than that some degree of enfranchisement is granted to those
who would be powerless in an autocratic society.

[Me:]


I'm not sure that's true. If given the choice to pay taxes for social
programs or not, how many people would choose not to? I'm not one of them
(contrary to what you might think), but I believe more than a few that
would. It would be an interesting exercise if there was a national
questrionaire in which everyone indicated the percentage of taxes that
should be given for social programs, courts, prisons, the mail, defense,
foreign aid, etc.

On the basis of opinion surveys, I don't think most people know enough
to offer an even vaguely informed opinion. They get their information
from political propagandists instead. People say that taxes are too
high, but when you ask them whether they think we should spend enough
money to provide the benefits and services that take the lion's share
of the taxes, they say we should. So it's not that people don't care,
it's that they've been misled.

Consider the inner cities... areas with increased difficulties in life also
have increased violence, murder, theft, etc. If your theory was corret,
wouldn't people that can vote, receive public assistance, etc... also feel
this increased moral awakening?

I don't think that happens because the lives of the underclass are too
harsh, and because there's a correlation between emotional instability
and lability on one hand and poverty on the other.

But don't those conditions influence our morality? We become what
circumstance allows, and I believe that the prosperity of the middle
class has led in the advanced countries to a significant change in
outlook, one that emphasizes opportunity and reward rather than
punishment.

Only for the duration of the prosperity, which to me implies it's not a real
increased morality. People aren't better, they can just afford not to risk
being bad.

That's not what my experience suggests. People who grow up in comfort
tend on average to be nicer and more concerned. It's not a matter of
wealth, but whether one grew up with it.

Important caveat: I'm talking statistics here. The variations between
individuals trump the variations between groups.

Also, studies show that children who are raised to make moral
decisions on their own tend to end up being more moral than those who
have a moral code imposed on them by their parents -- and there's a
strong socioeconomic correlation with that strategy. Then too, people
who are punished physically as children tend to be more violent as
adults and there's also a strong socioeconomic correlation there. As
Maragaret Mead pointed out many years ago, the discipline of children
has shifted from physical punishment to a system of rewards or the
withholding of rewards. That I think represents a middle-class sense
of opportunity and entitlement.

Of course some people, even when they're wealthy will take the risk anyway.


[You:]

That would imply that with diminished conditions, a diminshed morality
is acceptable.

Not necessarily acceptable, just more likely to be the case. Also,
having a different morality -- less moral from our perspective,
perhaps, but no less moral by the perspectives of at least some of the
people who lived in that society.

^^^^^^^^^^
So we're back to complete subjective morality... which leads to
the position that we are only "better" in our own eyes, and that's
not exactly an unbiased perspective.

Then again, there is a fairly large number of people that think that
peope were better during the 40s and 50s (consider Brokaw's
"The Greatest Generation" ... I think that's the title).

I think that in some important ways they were. A higher sense of duty,
for example. Greater honesty, more principled behavior, more civility.
In other ways, I think we're better: less prejudiced, for example.

^^^^^^^^^^^


<skip>


'But income at the 99th percentile rose 87 percent; income at the
99.9th percentile rose 181 percent; and income at the 99.99th
percentile rose 497 percent. No, that's not a misprint.

****
One presumes much of that increase in wealth comes from investing
in new companies and ideas, which creates jobs, provides health care, etc.

Such investment is a good thing. If it's rewarded, all the better.

That doesn't mean anything if the new wealth doesn't go to most of the
people in our society, but rather to the tiny fraction who don't need
it. And that, in essence, has been what's been happening. Compare the
period of the liberal ascendancy from Roosevelt through Johnson or so,
in which not only did our national income grow much faster than it has
during the conservative years, but the benefits went to everybody,
from the rich to the poor.

^^^^^
I'm sorry... did I miss utopia? My parents never told me there was heaven
on Earth! I never realized that the poor didn't exist and suddenly
spontaneously generated after LBJ left office. The poverty rate was zero
back then (instead of the same rate it is now)? Wow, who would have thought
all those statistics were just completely wrong?

[Removing a lot of my own response since I'm not trying to bait you into a
heated conversation.
We could argue stats all week, but let's not.]

Carl, LBJ's Great Society programs resulted in a massive and
/permanent/ reduction in poverty. Things got better for /everyone/
during the liberal years. And then the progress stopped during the
conservative years for everyone except the wealthy. And that's not a
matter of opinion, personal or otherwise: it's dry, documented fact.
I've posted some of the figures here in the past and if necessary I
can do so again.

^^^^^
As to living in cars, etc, let's look at the statistics of how those that
are defined as poor actually live:

a.. Forty-six percent of all poor households actually own their own homes.
The average home owned by persons classified as poor by the Census Bureau
is
a three-bedroom house with one-and-a-half baths, a garage, and a porch or
patio.
a.. Seventy-six percent of poor households have air conditioning. By
contrast, 30 years ago, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population
enjoyed air conditioning.
a.. Only 6 percent of poor households are overcrowded. More than
two-thirds
have more than two rooms per person.
a.. The average poor American has more living space than the average
individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens, and other cities
throughout Europe. (These comparisons are to the average citizens in
foreign
countries, not to those classified as poor.)
a.. Nearly three-quarters of poor households own a car; 30 percent own two
or more cars.
a.. Ninety-seven percent of poor households have a color television; over
half own two or more color televisions.
a.. Seventy-eight percent have a VCR or DVD player; 62 percent have cable
or satellite TV reception.
a.. Seventy-three percent own microwave ovens, more than half have a
stereo, and a third have an automatic dishwasher.

The average consumption of protein, vitamins, and minerals is virtually
the
same for poor and middle-class children and, in most cases, is well above
recommended norms. Poor children actually consume more meat than do
higher-income children and have average protein intakes 100 percent above
recommended levels.

Overall, the typical American defined as poor by the government has a car,
air conditioning, a refrigerator, a stove, a clothes washer and dryer, and
a
microwave. He has two color televisions, cable or satellite TV reception,
a
VCR or DVD player, and a stereo. He is able to obtain medical care. His
home is in good repair and is not overcrowded. By his own report, his
family is
not hungry and he had sufficient funds in the past year to meet his
family's essential needs. While this individual's life is not opulent, it
is equally
far from the popular images of dire poverty conveyed by the press, liberal
activists, and politicians.

In good economic times or bad, the typical poor family with children is
supported by only 800 hours of work during a year: That amounts to 16
hours
of work per week. If work in each family were raised to 2,000 hours per
year--the equivalent of one adult working 40 hours per week throughout the
year--nearly 75 percent of poor children would be lifted out of official
poverty.
Father absence is another major cause of child poverty. Nearly two-thirds
of
poor children reside in single-parent homes; each year, an additional 1.3
million children are born out of wedlock. If poor mothers married the
fathers of their children, almost three-quarters would immediately be
lifted
out of poverty.

There are very few cases of people living out of cars, and with 81 federal
social programs and most states having equivalent programs, the need for
one
to actually live in a car is suspect.

Also, even in terms of health insurance, the figure given out most often
is
that there are 45 million uninsured people in the US, however if you break
that down, 15 million of those are eligable for some form of health care
under a federal program right now but do not take advantage of it, and
another 13 million make over 50K a year (MN classifies someone making 67K
wealthy and in the top tax bracket) but choose not to buy it. If one
considered the illegal alien/undocumented worker population as being the
12
million that are usually reported, that leaves a *much* smaller portion of
the population that are actually about 5 million.

Wow, I have to run off and get poor.

***
Let's not get silly

Precisely my point. I mean, I don't have half the things those typical
poor Americans are supposed to have.

^^^^
These statistics suggest that the *typical* poor person or family in this
country are not starving in a car. You seem to want to paint a picture
equivalent to the starving third world children on commercials that are
being helped by organizations like the Christian Chiuldren's Fund and other
such organizations.

I don't think you can accuse me of being one-sided here, Carl: I was
specifically responding to some outrageously misleading right-wing
propaganda. I never want to paint any picture other than a true one,
and as you've probably noticed, I get fairly upset when I think that
propagandists try to do otherwise. If you search Google, you'll find
that I've spent plenty of time arguing with people, generally
Europeans, who try to exaggerate the prevalence of American poverty or
compare it to the poverty in third world countries.

^^^^


Seriously, this Marie Antoinette stuff makes my blood boil.

FYI, Marie Antoinette apparently never said the "Let them eat cake." line.\

And look at all the good it did her . . .

It's not just that transparent spin like "81 federal social programs" is
an
insult to my intelligence.-- do they really think the American public
is so dumb that we can't tell the difference between 81 pennies and 81
dollars? -- but that it's an intentional attack by some unknown
prosperous people on the weakest and most unfortunate members of our
society.

***********
Exactly where is the attack? There are many federal social programs
and many state programs. Between the two, there are a lot of resources out
there to prevent people from living in cars and starving to death. There
are programs that let entire generations of people to live off of them.

Please point out exactly where there was any attack on the poor?

My problem here is that the attack was so multi-faceted that I don't
know where to start. They imply that the poor are living in luxury,
swamped in color TV's and houses and cars.

^^^^^
No one said they lived in luxury (I certainly didn't), just that
statistically
they aren't as you portrayed them.

Ever been in a slum tenement? They're quite as I portrayed them,
because yeah, you can get a junker car for nothing, and pick up a
color TV -- been years since they made anything else, and they cost
less than $100 new -- at the local dump. But that does you little good
if the landlord doesn't send up heat in the middle of the winter or
your children are bitten by rats or you run out of food money at the
end of the month. It's a crassly and intentionally misleading
representation of the lives of the poor -- and that, IMO, makes it an
ugly one.

^^^^^

Then, they say that the typical poor family is supported by 16 hours
of work a week, and conveniently neglect to mention that in many
poor communities /people are unemployed and can't get jobs/.

^^^^^^^^^
It said that the typical poor family is poor because it only has the
income of a 16 hour work week, and goes on to say that 75%
of the poor children would be raised out of poverty with a
40 hr/week job.

You take issue with this?

Of course. because it's a truism that if the poor had full employment,
there would be less poor. And the people who came up with this spin
know that damn well. So why mention it unless they -- let's be frank
here -- are implying that the "niggers" are lazy?

Please note that there are jobs to be had. Education is key and I continue
to understand why we allow kids to drop out of high school.

If the kids are functionally illiterate, what difference does it make
whether they stay in high school or not?

There are also those 12 million jobs that Americans "Refuse to do" in order
to make room for illegal aliens/undocumented workers. If I was unemployed
and needed to support my family I would not consider picking oranges or
shoveling manure beneath me.

Another demonstration of evil intent. They know damn well that the
fact that there are available jobs in this country doesn't mean that
poor people know about them or can get to them: there are serious
practical impediments, such as the fact that the jobs are frequently
in the wrong area. For example, low level jobs often go begging in
suburban areas that the urban poor can't afford to live in and don't
have cars to get to. They furthermore neglect the fact that some of
those "undesirable" jobs wouldn't be considered acceptable for
barnyard animal, e.g., the stoop labor performed by migrant workers
for less than minimum wage. People from third world countries take
them because it's better than starvation, but I like to think that the
world's richest country has slightly higher criteria than that.

Providing tax incentives for companies to move to some poor communities has
worked in the past, but such incentives are often called corporate welfare.

I've never heard them referred to as such.

^^^^^^^^^

Then they have the unmitigated gall not only to minimize
the plight of homelessness, but to imply that it is somehow a crock,

^^^^^^^^^
No, they take issue with the perception that everyone classified as poor is
homeless, assetless, and starving. That's not the case. They present
statistics, you provided an anecdote. That's fine, I don't question your
sincerity, but your anecdote doesn't mean the statistics are a lie.

They provide no meaningful statistics, just statistics chosen to seem
meaningful to the untutored. And that makes me angry, because they
couldn't have done that without knowing /exactly/ what they were
doing, which means they had malign intent.

I'm not aware of anyone who has the impression that everyone
classified as poor is homeless, assetless, and starving.

^^^^^^^^^

while presenting intentionally misleading and meaningless statistics
about 81 Federal programs

^^^^^^^^^
The statistic is that there are 81 federal social programs. How is that
statistic meaningless? If, after 81 federal social programs and countless
state programs conditions are still so bad that all the poor are starving in
their cars, then the social programs are meaningless, not the statistics.

No, because those 81 programs could be large or small or medium. They
could be effective or ineffective. That there happen to be 81 of them
means nothing, because you can have forex 81 /underfunded/ programs to
house the homeless and they won't house most of the homeless, or 8
/well-funded/ programs to house the homeless that will house all of
them. Eight-one is just a number that they think will impress people
who can't figure that out. It sounds kind of high to someone who
doesn't understand the size and complexity of the Federal Government
or the magnitude of a country with a third of a billion residents. I's
classic spin, and as such it's a perfect example of the malign intent
to which I'm referring.

By way of contrast, there are lots of statistics with real meaning.
The massive drop in the percentage of elderly people living in poverty
thanks to Social Security, for example, or the significant and
permanent drop in poverty that occurred with the introduction of
Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs. That they chose to overlook
these figures, which are readily available and known to any economist,
is equally a sign of malign intent.

^^^^^^^^^

Here in New London, the working poor earn minimum wage, and that isn't
enough to support a family and pay for an apartment.

^^^^
And statistics have shown that every time you raise the minimum wage the
costs are passed on to the consumer, rendering the raise meaningless and the
cost of American goods higher compared to those overseas.

Misleading. The minimum wage is passed through, yes, but the cost is
born by /all/ consumers, which means that the working poor bare only a
/fraction/ of it and experience a significant net gain.

In addition,
statistics have shown that when you raise the minimum wage you also raise
the high school and college drop out rates.

I'm all in favor of keeping kids in school, but I'm not going to
advocate starving workers to do so.

Trying to compensate... no matter how well intentioned, can make things
worse.

"Can" doesn't mean "doesn't." And the reality -- writ big because the
effect isn't subtle -- is that the liberal 20th century efforts to
raise people out of poverty made things better, infinitely better, and
that when the conservatives put the brakes on those efforts, things
stopped getting better.

^^^^

So they work two shifts and can't supervise their children. And something
comes along -- they get laid off or they cath pneumonia and lose a month's
income, say -- and they get evicted, and then if they're lucky and
have local friends they crash in somebody's attic and if not they end
up living out of the family car, and trying to hide it, because
they're ashamed. Very different from the rosy picture above. Very
different.

^^^^^^^^^
The people that work two jobs and bust their rear-ends to provide for their
families deserve as much help as possible.
The people that commit fraud in the system or don't work because they don't
want to... or are willing to stop trying... I feel differently about them.

If we go after the cheaters we can give more to those that don't without
confiscating more from others.

It isn't a matter of "can," because welfare is a small percentage of
the budget. We'd do far better to focus on those who are committing
large-scale theft.

Consider, too, that a certain amount of welfare fraud is simply a
matter of people who can't survive on the government-stipulated income
doing what they have to to survive, e.g., working part time off the
books:

'It is impossible to live well on welfare alone, and most recipients
go hungry near the end of the month. In 1992, the poverty level for a
mother with two children was $11,186.6 In that year, the average
yearly AFDC family payment was $4,572; Food Stamps for a family of
three averaged $2,469, for a total of $7,041. That was only 63 percent
of the poverty line, and 74 percent of a minimum wage job.'

http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/7Welfare.htm

Which isn't to say that welfare fraud is a good thing. But its
significance has been exaggerated by callous or greedy conservative
leaders who hate the fact that some of their money goes to helping the
needy.

When a father decides he's going to leave his family (and if the majority of
broken homes were because of drugs and crime we'd have to have 20 times as
many prisons) it's a failure of his morals to think that it is acceptable to
do so. In an age when it's always someone else's fault and there's always
someone with big pockets to sue, personal responsibility should be rewarded,
and the lack of it should not be accepted casually.

There IS a failure of personal responsibility with so many broken homes and
deadbeat dads. They are not all explained away by crime and drugs.

To be sure, but? There are lots of bad and inadequate people in the
world. That doesn't change the fact that we should do something to
help the children whom they effectively victimize. If it's a matter of
enforcing child support laws, fine, and ditto for discouraging single
motherhood. But when those things aren't possible, it seems to me both
our moral duty and in our self-interest to make sure that the children
have what they need to become productive citizens.

^^^^^^^^^

<snip>

On top of that, a *lot* of money is lost to fraud and redundancy with state
programs.

While they do have a role in some cases, I don't much believe in
social programs and long-term welfare. I do believe in education,
jobs, and help for the disabled and mentally ill. And on the whole I
think our efforts in those directions are shamefully lacking given our
society's wealth.

^^^^^^^^^
But the way we have been going about it for decades have had
marginal results at best. This doesn't (in my mind) justify treating these
programs as sacrosanct and a good model moving forward.

But -- it just isn't true that the results have been marginal!

'The decline of welfare benefits helped poverty grow in the 80s:

'During the 50s, poverty hovered around 20 percent. Michael Harrington
had to write a bestseller entitled The Other America to remind the
middle class that not all Americans were living like Ward and June
Cleaver. In 1964, Johnson declared war on poverty with his "Great
Society" program. The increased welfare payments reduced poverty to 12
percent by the end of the 60s.

'Poverty Level, 1960-19927

1960 22.2% Recession year
1966 14.7 Johnson's "Great Society" in progress
1969 12.1
1970 12.6 Recession year
1975 12.3 Recession year
1976 11.8
1977 11.6
1978 11.4
1979 11.7
1980 13.0 Recession year
1981 14.0 Recession year
1982 15.0 Recession year
1983 15.2
1984 14.4
1985 14.0
1986 13.6
1987 13.4
1988 13.0
1989 12.8
1990 13.5 Recession year
1991 14.2 Recession year
1992 14.5'

http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/7Welfare.htm

Note that the Johnson (and some would say Nixon) Administrations are
just the tail end of the great liberal era that began with FDR, and
that this represents only a small fraction of the gains.

These are /real/ statistics, and as such they're a good illustration
of why those intentionally misleading right-wing statistics make my
blood boil. There are some very evil people out there. Why else would
they seek to convey an inaccurate impression about the least fortunate
members of our society, and the effectiveness of the government
programs that have helped them?

^^^^^^^^^


************

Wealth is a poor standard for judging good and evil.

I consider discrepancies in wealth /wrong/ to the extent that I can
find no social purpose or social harm in them. In that, they're no
different than the likes of killing, in that right (a just war) or
wrong (a murder) depends on context.

You assume that there has to be a social purpose for such things; there
doesn't. If you're proposing that all aspects of life must be classified
in
terms of a social purpose and controlled to obtain that outcome (which I
would consider a lack of freedom), then we completely disagree on the
purpose of government (which is fine).

I don't see it as a matter of something that I want or not. Rather, I
see it as a matter of what is, because cultures compete, and those
which are less successful either change with time or are dominated or
destroyed by others. A social evolutionary process, in other words.

******
Perhaps. Sweden is moving away from the nanny state mentality that it had,
and
France is in for tough times.
******

Read an op ed article on France yesterday, which essentially said that
it isn't:

But is the French situation really so dire? From every quarter one
hears calls for "reform" to bring France more in line with
Anglo-American practices and policies. The dysfunctional French social
model, we are frequently assured, has failed.

In that case there is much to be said for failure. French infants have
a better chance of survival than American ones. The French live longer
than Americans and they live healthier (at far lower cost). They are
better educated and have first-rate public transportation. The gap
between rich and poor is narrower than in the United States or
Britain, and there are fewer poor people.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/opinion/22judt.html?_r=1&oref=slogin


^^^^^^^^^^^
The French don't eat fast food (good for them!).

Hmmm -- when I was in Paris, I saw lots of kids at McDonalds . . .

I *really* don't want to start a discussion on educational systems. That
would be opening another can of ... opinions.

Even many French understand their problem. They have high unemplyment (I
think it's still over 10%), an aging populace, benefits that can't be
supported by their taxes that are already too high and stifling their
economy (which has an anemic growth rate), but they've become so dependent
and accustomed to social benefits they're unwilling to give them up. Their
unemployment rate among the young (<24) is about 25% if the news reports
that covered the riots are correct.

Their first inclination was to try a quick fix by reducing the work week
(and therefor productivity) to 35 hours. That hurt their economy noticably.

Somewhere along the line, all of the promises and benefits have to be paid
for. I read not long ago that there was a substantial amount of wealth
leaving France. That drain is going to make it worse.

Sure. But this has to be put into perspective: France has a per capita
income of $34,810 in 2005, which made it the 17th richest country in
the world. Not equal to our $43,740, but not bad, considering that
they lack some of our economic advantages, e.g., a huge monolingual
population and vast natural resources. And they get
cradle-to-the-grave security, universal medical care, and much longer
vacations and shorter work weeks than we do -- a tradeoff which seems
to me reasonable.

^^^^^^^^^^^

In any case, I'm not a socialist any more than I'm a capitalist. The
most successful economies, including ours, are mixed, and our
challenge is to fine tune the mix.

^^^^^^^^^^^
Sometimes significant change is a good thing.
If that weren't the case we'd be living in amonarchy.

Sure.

^^^^^^^^^^^

Some people inherit money...that's called luck. Some people make more
money
than others through hard work, investing in themselves (an education), and
taking risks (starting a business). That's called earning their money.
Some people aren't willing to work that hard because they have other
priorities in their lives, don't have the talent, aren't willing to go to
college, risk their savings, etc. That's fine and *no* judgment should be
made in either case.

I see them as radically different. Setting aside for the moment my
bourgeois values, I believe that the societies in which merit and
initiative predominate over hereditary privilege are the most
prosperous, the most powerful, the happiest. Which is why capitalism
has proven so much more successful than the old aristocratic system.

******
I'd much rather see the government focus on providing incentives to
the wealthy to invest in new businesses and technologies rather than
a feel-good attempt to drag the wealthy down as much as possible.

Incentives for the wealthy to spend work much better than something
like the absurd luxury tax on yachts that almost destroyed the iundustry
and didn't gnerate any money.

Also, money spent by the government tends to be spent on a much
narrower portion of the economy.

You appear to have contradicted yourself, calling first for
encouraging the wealthy to invest and then to encouraging the wealthy
spend.

^^^^^^
The wealthy invest in companies, technologies, etc. that provide some
benefit or return, and that investment IS spending. It's putting their
money into the economy that gets spent by the various businesses that they
invest in.

Granted, sometimes it gets spent on some stupid things too, like the two
owners of Google that were looking to buy a private Airbus 380 and spend 77
million more to turn it into a kind of private condo... but even that would
employ a number of people both directly and indirectly.

Even conspicuous consumerism is good for the economy.

Sure, but the money would do more good if spent by someone who needed
it.


^^^^^^

In fact, the wealthy /have/ to do one or the other, unless they
keep their fortunes under their beds. The yacht tax was stupid because
it singled out a specific industry, not because it taxed the wealthy.

^^^^^^
It was stupid because it almost killed an industry in this country. Tax
more things rather than just one and you risk other markets too. People have
called for higher gas taxes to discourage gas consumption. The same works
for any other good or service...particularly if it's not a necessary
expense.

Higher gas taxes would be economically beneficial in that we import
most of our oil and we will have to pay for the costs of global
warming. But for the most part, I'm not advocating specific excise
taxes. Rolling back the income and inheritance tax cuts for the rich
would have strong economic benefits.

^^^^^^

And government spending is better for the economy than leaving the
money to the wealthy, precisely because the wealthy are less likely to
spend and more likely to invest, and the economy is generally demand
limited. That being said, from a macroeconomic perspective, a dollar
spent is a dollar spent. From a social perspective, it is better to
spend it on those who need it rather than on those who don't, as long
as doing so doesn't decrease incentive.

^^^^^^^^^^
Investment is spending.
It's better to spend on something that will create jobs rather than spending
to compensate for not having them.

No, capital investment isn't the same as consumption from an economic
perspective. When the ratio of capital investment to spending is too
high, one ends up with slow growth or a recession. When the ratio of
spending to capital investment is too high, one ends up with an
overheated economy and inflation. When both are too high, one gets
stagflation.

Private spending is better because it spreads out across the whole economy
more. Government spending for the needy, for instance, is most likely to go
for more immediate necessities. That's an initial focus that requires
subsequent cycles to spread through the economy.

No, some fairly arcane circumstances aside it makes no difference to
the economy whether we spend $10 on beans or on diamonds.

Private investment is spent along a much wider base. Employees spend on a
wider variety of goods and allow for the creation of jobs (even yacht
makers).

Again, no difference to the economy: $10 spent on a yacht creates no
more jobs than $10 spent on soup -- and the soup is something people
need, whereas the yacht isn't.

^^^^^^^^^^


******

At some point, if the wealthy are paying their taxes, giving to charity,
living their lives without trying to harm others... what they make is none
of our business. If it's more than I make, good for them...I don't hold
it
against them for a second. I don't envy them, resent them, want to take
anything away from them in the slightest. It's simply none of my
business.

I grew up in fairly privileged circumstances, so I've seldom if ever
had cause to envy or hate the wealthy.

******
You seem to express a healthy resentment

Because, I think, you're reading your own assumption into it: my
concern is for the poor and working people who are struggling to make
ends meet, as well as for the well being of the country as a whole. In
fact, I would likely lose out personally if inherited wealth were
taxed.

^^^^^^^^^^
The difference isn't intent, it's methodology.
Some think the government should be the first place to look to fix things.
Others think it should be the last.
Old debate.

And a nonsensical one, from my perspective, to the extent that it's
based on ideological preconceptions rather than fact. Forex, the Bush
Administration and Congressional Republicans have, as a matter of
ideology and perhaps political and personal benefit, privatized part
of Medicare coverage /even though it costs more to have private
insurers provide the coverage than it costs to have the government do
it./ And that's the sort of nonsense up with which I will not put.

The point of social programs should be to help people get off of them, use
them as an excuse for income redistribution.

I think the point of social programs should be both. Which is to say
that people should be helped to become productive, but that a certain
amount of income redistribution is going to be necessary whatever you
do, both on humanitarian grounds and as a matter of national interest:
societies in which the gulf between rich and poor is too great tend to
unstable and, in the modern era, poor and weak overall.

^^^^^^^^^^

*******

But, as I said, I don't much believe in hereditary wealth (I've no time
to go into some minor exceptions to that statement).

It is not as you seem to be implying innocent: hereditary wealth is
in some measure a tax on the productive members of society,
a tax that is not repaid by the small percentage of income that
goes to the government or charitable causes.

**********
The initial creation of the wealth was taxed. Once the wealth was aquired
and taxed, whatever is left should be considered the property of the person
that made it. He or she should be free to give it to a son or daughter,
the
next door neighbor, the local charity, or bury it in the back yard. You or
I
don't have an inherent claim to it simply because it would otherwise go to
someone as a happy accident of birth. So what? I don't care if someone
else is wealthy. That doesn't change how hard I work, or what I expect as
a
reward for my efforts. I have a job. I do my best at it and I make a
reasonable living. The quality of my life is not diminished if someone
else
is wealthy. Someone else's luck is none of my business.

You seem to see wealth as something that should be lent by the government
to
people as an incentive, but only short term and only for as short a period
as possible (taking it back as much as possible in any tax possible).

If wealth were something you kept under your pillow, that would make
sense. But it isn't. It's the right to some of your land and mine, to
some of your work and mine. And I'm all in favor of that if that right
proceeds from obligation and necessary incentive -- if it goes to
someone because they work hard or take risks or invent things. But a
hereditary aristocracy that has no real obligations? No thanks. I
believe in markets and competition and incentive. I believe in reward
for hard work.

^^^^^
I believe in hard work too, but my work ethic applies to me (and hopefully
to my children...so far so good). I don't presume to inflict my work ethic
as an excuse to take something from someone else.

But you don't seem to have any compunction about suggesting work for
the poor. And that, I think, is a double standard, because it's the
hereditary rich who are taking something from someone else, not the
other way around: the coupons they clip give them the right to /other
people's labor/ and /other people's land./

Why should someone have the right to make someone serve him tea and
crumpets because of something his great granddaddy did? You can't
fairly chastise welfare recipients without chastising coupon clippers.
^^^^^

But inherited wealth is just welfare on a grand scale.

^^^^^
No, it's money that was earned once and has probably grown through
additional investments.

So is the money that goes to pay for welfare. It's exactly the same.

In any case, you're talking as if money were intrinsically valuable.
It isn't. It's just a medium of exchange, an abstraction that gives
one the right to some of what others have or produce. Give me $100,
and you've given me the right to take goods and materials from
everyone else.

Democrats tend to believe in collecting the wealth at the federal level
because it can do more at a larger scale. The same is true at a private
scale.

Republicans take more money from the Federal government than Dems do
-- $2000 per capita more per red state, according to the Harvard study
-- so I'm not quite sure I see your point. In any case, I don't see
the significance of this. For the most part, it makes no difference
whether a company is capitalized by many $10 investments or a few
million dollar ones. The money is pooled by the bank or banks. Of
course, a venture capitalist might be an exception, but he's providing
a service.

^^^^^

It destroys incentive just as welfare does, and it taxes us just as
welfare does, because those who inherit wealth inherit the right to
some of our labor and some of our land and some of our raw materials
and infrastructure.

^^^^^
As you said before, the wealthy don't hide their wealth under their pillows.
Also, they don't inherit our labor, they pay wages for it. Usually I let
some of your symantic choices go, but not that one. Considering workers as
serfs is more than a little hyperbole.

You're missing the point. Yes, the rich /do/ inherit the right to our
labor. People work for them merely because they inherited money.
That's economics 101. And that's a tax on all of us, because that
percentage of the national labor that goes to building them yachts
could, if spread around, be building stuff for everyone. Ditto for
ownership of the means of production: it's no different than the local
lord's ownership of the manor.

^^^^^

As to the gummint, it's just a stand-in for the group. And there are
times when resources have to go to the group, because we have to work
together. We expect that the members of our society -- not
infrequently the poorest members of our society -- will give their
lives to Uncle Sam if the need arises. Compared to that, what's the
harm in a bit of cash?

We don't expect the poor to give their lives, we expect and honor (or
should) those that volunteer to join the military and live up to the
commitment despite the personal risk.

And I think I owe a lot more to someone for being willing to put his
life on the line for me -- whether because he volunteers or is forced
to for economic reasons or is drafted in time of national emergency --
than I do to some aristocrat who throws balls with a percentage of our
wages. Enough so that yes, if he isn't doing well, I think we have an
obligation to help him and his, and to share some of our mutual
bounty.

That's very different from one group of people deciding to seize however
much of someone else's wealth they choose to.

Taxes are not theft: they're a necessary contribution to the public
good. And I see no reason why an heir shouldn't be taxed on the goods
and services he appropriates from everyone else while the fellow who
takes away the trash has to pay taxes on his hard-earned pittance. The
only one who's "stealing" here is the wealthy welfare recipient, who
receives goods and services in return for doing nothing.

--
Josh

"Wagner has wonderful moments, and dreadful quarters of an hour." - Rossini

.