Is Gun Control The Answer to the One Percent's Prayers?

[BrainGlutton]

@Evil_Captor

As we all* know, the one percent is currently looting the middle class and controlling more and more of the wealth in the US.

<snip>

*I understand that there are people on the Dope who will argue this point, or any point you can think of, but I think they are tiny minority. So that’s what the asterisk is all about.

@Human_Action

It’sbegging the question, the fallacy in which “a proposition relies on an implicit premise within itself to establish the truth of that same proposition.”

How?

1. What is the “implicit premise”?

2. And where, for that matter, is the attempt to establish the truth of the proposition?

[Bryan_Ekers]

@BrainGlutton

Imagine if we were, though . . .

We’d die out. Too many of us are gay.

[HurricaneDitka]

@2sense

You make choices based upon the alternatives available. Just because you are free to work at this shitty job or that shitty job doesn’t mean that the system which shapes your choices is not biased against you. It doesn’t mean that it is either. But your reasoning here is flawed.

The world doesn’t owe me a well-paying job. Bill Gates isn’t under some moral obligation to create some minimum quota of well-paying jobs either. If he wanted to keep all his money in a giant warehouse and swim around in it like Scrooge McDuck, that’s his choice. It’s his money, not mine or yours. You’ve got no more claim to a portion of it than a thief in the night.

[HurricaneDitka]

@artemis

What the very rich are doing is taking advantage of the fact that capital is inherently more mobile than labor to exploit labor on a global scale. There are fewer and fewer barriers to moving money around the globe these days (a few stroke of a keyboard can transfer millions of dollars), and money doesn’t care what bank it sits in. Tractors don’t care whether they turn over US or Chinese soil, and a factory has no preference as to whether it is sited in the Philippines or Canada. But laborers aren’t so free to move around: even if you discount immigration laws (which you most definitely can’t), there are barriers of language and culture as well as family/community ties which are hard to surmount. (Would you REALLY permanently move to China if a terrific job offer came up for you there? Somehow I doubt it. Something around 50% of expats return to their country of origin within 5 years of leaving home.)

Prior to the 1970s, capital was much less mobile, so investors were more likely to keep their investments in one place for a longer time. So they had to reach agreement with the local labor pool (which in the Western world had legal protections in the form of unions, the right to a 40-hour work week, occupational safety regulations, etc.) Now they can more easily pull up stakes and relocate to places where the local labor force is more desperate, and where those important legal protections are missing. That means the investors can make more money in the short term, because they save on wages, but it also means the quality of the average job is continually declining. Basically, we’ve inadvertently re-legalized sweatshops: they’re just located in rural China or Bangladesh instead of here. But the problems of legal sweatshop labor don’t stay confined to those places; we’re seeing them here in the form of stagnant or declining wages, longer working hours, etc. Instead of concentrated pockets of wealth in some places and concentrated pockets of poverty in others, the world’s looking more like Calcutta, with great wealth and desperate poverty living side-by-side. And high levels of wealth inequality like that make for very unstable societies, so it’s a problem we need to figure out how to fix.

Doesn’t seem at all unfair to me. The wealthy are free to invest their money any (legal) way they see fit, as am I. I wouldn’t want that changed, either.

[Jackmannii]

Something else confuses me.

@Evil_Captor

As we all* know, the one percent is currently looting the middle class and controlling more and more of the wealth in the US. This is the A Number One Most Important issue to the wealthy plutocrats (the Koch Brothers, Sheldon Adelson, etc.) who really run the conservative movement in general, and the Republican Party, in particular, in America.

Wouldn’t the Plutocracy want to suppress awareness of this instead of making it their A Number One Most Important issue?

In some ways it is heartening that we have the OP’s “gun control is the opiate of the masses” argument, to go along with the loony far right belief that Government stages mass shootings in order to popularize gun control and seize Americans’ weapons.

[2sense]

@HurricaneDitka

The world doesn’t owe me a well-paying job. Bill Gates isn’t under some moral obligation to create some minimum quota of well-paying jobs either. If he wanted to keep all his money in a giant warehouse and swim around in it like Scrooge McDuck, that’s his choice. It’s his money, not mine or yours. You’ve got no more claim to a portion of it than a thief in the night.

It’s not what is done with wealth but how the wealth was gained. Many of us, including Evil Captor and myself, believe that the system is being gamed to ensure that more and more ends up in the pockets of the 1%. Returning to the parable of the pie, your brother has his piece and you have yours. Both you and he are free to eat your piece or do whatever with it. But that doesn’t change the fact that his piece is now seven times larger than yours.

Or to put it another way, when you talk about “his money” you are assuming that he deserved all that wealth. Since that is the very point that is in dispute you have a piss poor argument.

[BrainGlutton]

@Jackmannii

Something else confuses me.Wouldn’t the Plutocracy want to suppress awareness of this instead of making it their A Number One Most Important issue?

They can do both. Just because it’s the A Number One Most Imporant Issue to them doesn’t mean they need to discuss it publicly; quite the reverse, in fact.

[Dissonance]

@Evil_Captor

I wrote about Dopers, I meant Dopers. They are hardly a typical sample of the American public.

Okay, hopefully you can understand my misunderstanding of what you meant as you only mentioned Dopers in your footnote that some Dopers will argue anything. But back to the question, you honestly believe this is what the great majority of [del]Americans[/del] Dopers know as the revealed truth? It seems to me the asterisk is all about trying to pass this dodgy opinion off as fact without having to defend it.

[Evil_Captor]

@HurricaneDitka

Doesn’t seem at all unfair to me. The wealthy are free to invest their money any (legal) way they see fit, as am I. I wouldn’t want that changed, either.

So you like being tied over a barrel and reamed economically, as long as it’s done by rules you approve of. Well, it takes all kinds, enjoy yourself!

[Evil_Captor]

@Jackmannii

Something else confuses me.Wouldn’t the Plutocracy want to suppress awareness of this instead of making it their A Number One Most Important issue?

In some ways it is heartening that we have the OP’s “gun control is the opiate of the masses” argument, to go along with the loony far right belief that Government stages mass shootings in order to popularize gun control and seize Americans’ weapons.

It is the A Number One item on their agenda, but of course they never admit to it. They speak of being “job creators” who want to build a better economy.

[Evil_Captor]

@Dissonance

Okay, hopefully you can understand my misunderstanding of what you meant as you only mentioned Dopers in your footnote that some Dopers will argue anything. But back to the question, you honestly believe this is what the great majority of [del]Americans[/del] Dopers know as the revealed truth? It seems to me the asterisk is all about trying to pass this dodgy opinion off as fact without having to defend it.

Well, yes, I do. It’s a side argument you are making, though, getting off the rails of the main topics of the thread. If you want to argue that the one percent is not looting the middle class, please start a new thread or revisit any of the threads in which this topic has already been thoroughly debated. I do not know how I can make progress on this particular argument if I have to go back and reprise that argument.

[2sense]

Back to the OP, I was apprehensive about this as well. Having grown up country I’m used to being around guns and people who take their ownership very seriously. Not surprisingly I think it’s a mistake for candidates in swing states and districts to become associated with gun control. It’s not a question of if the GOP will make an issue of this but of how effective it will be. I think even effective methods to keep guns out of the hands of those who are a danger to others are very risky politically. And nonesuch is going to be passed in any case so ignore the red meat, progressives. If the majority of congressional Democrats and POTUS avoid supporting gun control bills the issue won’t have a lot of traction in 2 years. Even the Democrats have to be able to see that.

So no, this helps the plutocrats some but won’t be a major factor unless the Dems bungle it.