# I'm tired of the liberal media giving any time to conservatives **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [August 27, 2009, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-tired-of-the-liberal-media-giving-any-time-to-conservatives/507904 "2009-08-27T14:18:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 9
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2009, 7:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-tired-of-the-liberal-media-giving-any-time-to-conservatives/507904/161 "2009-09-07T07:54:34Z")
> [@foolsguinea](#): > > Maybe because we love our country & want to see it governed well. No, you don’t want to see it governed well; you want to see it governed according to liberal ideology. There’s a _big_ difference. > [@foolsguinea](#): > > Imagine that.You really think we can’t afford both? Yeah, nothing’s unaffordable when it comes to the American taxpayer, is it? This is part of the trouble with having people like you in charge of governing the country. To you, the U.S. is a huge golden goose with an inexhaustible supply of golden eggs. Heath care? Keeping the free world free? No prob! We’ll just make the rich pay for it! > [@foolsguinea](#): > > Yeah. Sure. 'Cos you know, we private citizens don’t have any ability to defend our womenfolk from Canadians. > > If we need a huge military to keep the Canucks off our women, & a we have to sacrifice the general welfare to keep that huge military, WHY THE HOLY FUCK ARE WE IN SOUTHWEST ASIA!!! We need those boys to defend against Canada, eh? Not yet you don’t. That would come only after you’ve completely decimated the military so as to finance the endless number of nanny-state social programs you’d really like to implement. > [@foolsguinea](#): > > But yeah, I forgot that piece of European history: When France instituted socialized health insurance, they massively cut the military, & Spanish totally invaded & took all their wimmins. or There I Go Lying Again. No, once again…France doesn’t _need_ a huge military. Nor does Spain or Germany or Belgium or The Netherlands or Norway. They all sleep safe and snug in their beds at night because American military might protects them. They’d have all been goose-stepping or calling each other comrade decades ago if not for us, and it’s us who are keeping it from happening now. > [@foolsguinea](#): > > You also know nothing about Russia today. Sure, I do. I was merely engaging in a little throw-back communist rhetoric to make a point. Still, do you really think there’d be no Soviet or Chinese expansionism without U.S. military might holding them in check? **BrainGlutton** was convinced of this also. So convinced that [he started a thread about it](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=11494687&postcount=62). [It did not go the way he hoped.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=529815) ---
**Author:** ![Dick\_Dastardly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c4cdca/32.png) [@Dick\_Dastardly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dick_Dastardly)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2009, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-tired-of-the-liberal-media-giving-any-time-to-conservatives/507904/162 "2009-09-07T15:11:40Z")
> [@InvisibleWombat](#): > > Someday, perhaps, you’ll have a chance to spend some time and read what everyone else is writing. On that auspicious day, it will be worthwhile arguing with you. > > In the meantime, I’m sick of explaining over and over and over that you picked one statistic that is correct, and made a completely false extrapolation from it. You refuse to acknowledge that the top 1% of earners in the country make less than ten years ago, meaning the number that matters so much to you is **declining** in the current decade, even though it went up in the 1980s and most of the 90s. > > You don’t understand the numbers, you don’t understand investment, you don’t understand the difference between earnings and wealth, you don’t understand the difference between taxes on income and taxes on wealth, you don’t understand logic, and you can’t deal with math. > > But, yes, your 22%/1% number is by golly correct. You can cut and paste. I’m so glad you agree with me over the original point I was making in the thread. Delightful. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2009, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-tired-of-the-liberal-media-giving-any-time-to-conservatives/507904/163 "2009-09-23T04:09:02Z")
Resurrecting slightly old thread… Earlier in this thread, I pointed to data which showed that, while the income gap has been growing between the rich and poor, the difference in wealth between the rich and poor didn’t seem to be increasing, and in fact appeared to be decreasing lately. I had no explanation, but through out a couple of possible answers. Well, there’s a new study out from the [National Bureau of Economic Research](http://www.nber.org/papers/w15351) which sheds more light on this. According to the paper, while gross incomes have been increasing faster for the upper quintiles than for the lower, real wages have not increased nearly as fast. The reason for this is that the cost of living for the rich is going up at a much faster rate than the cost of living for the poor, primarily because the college educated people who are earning the biggest salaries are also living in the cities, where the cost of living is going up faster than elsewhere: > [@](#): > > The rise in American inequality has been exaggerated both in magnitude and timing. Commentators lament the large gap between the growth rates of real median household income and of private sector productivity. This paper shows that a conceptually consistent measure of this growth gap over 1979 to 2007 is only one-tenth of the conventional measure. Further, the timing of the rise of inequality is often misunderstood. By some measures inequality stopped growing after 2000 and by others inequality has not grown since 1993. This cessation of inequality’s secular rise in 2000 is evident from the growth of Census mean vs. median income, and in the income share of the top one percent of the income distribution. The income share of the 91st to 95th percentile has not increased since 1983, and the income ratio of the 90th to 10th percentile has barely increased since 1986. Further, despite a transient decline in labor’s income share in 2000-06, by mid-2009 labor’s share had returned virtually to the same value as in 1983, 1991, and 2001. > > Recent contributions in the inequality literature have raised questions about previous research on skill-biased technical change and the managerial power of CEOs. Directly supporting our theme of prior exaggeration of the rise of inequality is new research showing that price indexes for the poor rise more slowly than for the rich, causing most empirical measures of inequality to overstate the growth of real income of the rich vs. the poor. Further, as much as two-thirds of the post-1980 increase in the college wage premium disappears when allowance is made for the faster rise in the cost of living in cities where the college educated congregate and for the lower quality of housing in those cities. A continuing tendency for life expectancy to increase faster among the rich than among the poor reflects the joint impact of education on both economic and health outcomes, some of which are driven by the behavioral choices of the less educated. So, it turns out that if you look at real wages, the gap between rich and poor isn’t increasing nearly as much as the gross wage numbers would indicate. In fact, the gap is only widening at 1/10 the rate previously estimated. And I would guess that since the recession hit the rich extremely hard due to asset value collapse, their gains over the poor might be completely wiped out. ---
**Author:** ![BlinkingDuck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/eada6e/32.png) [@BlinkingDuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BlinkingDuck)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2009, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-tired-of-the-liberal-media-giving-any-time-to-conservatives/507904/164 "2009-09-23T14:07:19Z")
> [@freedumb2003](#): > > I hate to break it to you, but that is how Capitalism works. And I could not help but note there was no mention of the percentage of taxes payed by the wealthy. The top 1% pay 30% of all taxes. > > Your response should be “thank you.” Is this true? Are you including property taxes, social security taxes, gas/related taxes and sales taxes in your ‘all’ taxes? {this is not a snark…but just some skepticism of your fact - you may be right} ---
**Author:** ![lurking\_guest](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/2acd7d/32.png) [@lurking\_guest](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lurking_guest)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2009, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-tired-of-the-liberal-media-giving-any-time-to-conservatives/507904/165 "2009-09-24T18:18:50Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > Well, I say its disgust and revulsion, you say its envy. By what magic do you peer into another’s heart and take inventory? If you really could do that, your typing would be done for you by disciples. Ha! What makes these (comparatively) poor folks support the rich? I guess they just have no real idea of who runs the world.:rolleyes: Too bad that the really wealthy have these poor schulls proseletyzing for them. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2009, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-tired-of-the-liberal-media-giving-any-time-to-conservatives/507904/166 "2009-09-24T20:08:46Z")
If people believe the country is a meritocracy, then poor people can support the rich because they believe that one day they themselves may be rich. They’re not so much supporting the current rich people personally as they are supporting a system that allows people to become rich. Let me ask you: Why do poor people support the lottery? There is solid evidence that lotteries disproportionately damage poor people, with the proceeds mainly going to the middle class. So why don’t poor people advocate abolishing them? The answer is because while lotteries are a negative expectation game for poor people, they have positive utility because they give people hope and because to a poor person, the loss of a dollar for a lottery ticket isn’t as valuable as the remote possibility of being fabulously wealthy. Your average plumber dreams of owning his own plumbing business. A poor mother wants to see her kids go to college and become rich. If you tax away the rich, all you’ve done is lock the poor into permanent poverty. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2009, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-tired-of-the-liberal-media-giving-any-time-to-conservatives/507904/167 "2009-09-24T20:11:38Z")
America is not a meritocracy, and the rich are undertaxed. ---
**Author:** ![Shot\_From\_Guns](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ccd318/32.png) [@Shot\_From\_Guns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shot_From_Guns)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2009, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-tired-of-the-liberal-media-giving-any-time-to-conservatives/507904/168 "2009-09-24T21:25:09Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Your average plumber dreams of owning his own plumbing business. A poor mother wants to see her kids go to college and become rich. If you tax away the rich, all you’ve done is lock the poor into permanent poverty. Good think nobody remotely mainstream advocates taxing away the rich, then, isn’t it? ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2009, 1:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-tired-of-the-liberal-media-giving-any-time-to-conservatives/507904/169 "2009-09-25T13:16:03Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Let me ask you: Why do poor people support the lottery? There is solid evidence that lotteries disproportionately damage poor people, with the proceeds mainly going to the middle class. So why don’t poor people advocate abolishing them? Because poor people have done the math, and have concluded that it is more likely they will win the lottery than become wealthy through talent and hard work. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2009, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-tired-of-the-liberal-media-giving-any-time-to-conservatives/507904/170 "2009-09-25T14:11:05Z")
With that kind of math, no wonder they’re poor. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2009, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-tired-of-the-liberal-media-giving-any-time-to-conservatives/507904/171 "2009-09-25T14:17:11Z")
There are millions of talented people who work hard. Why are they poor? ---
**Author:** ![Shot\_From\_Guns](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ccd318/32.png) [@Shot\_From\_Guns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shot_From_Guns)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2009, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-tired-of-the-liberal-media-giving-any-time-to-conservatives/507904/172 "2009-09-25T17:59:17Z")
Because God has damned them to Hell. If they were part of the chosen who will join Him in Heaven, he would have done more to indicate His favor here on Earth, so that we could respect them for being righteous. Duh. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-tired-of-the-liberal-media-giving-any-time-to-conservatives/507904.md?page=8)