Karl Marx and Hillary Clinton Statements

Great Debates
61

Well, obviously first of all, cite?

Then, if you like, you can explain how shopping in a co-op is a specifically liberal solution. I would say that the free market is a conservative response to problems.

I would bet a dollar that a lot of Hollywood big wigs are liberals. Does this mean the movie industry is a liberal solution to some economic problem?

Maybe I don’t understand your example. If you mean that co-ops are a liberal response to income inequity, or poverty, could you explain how that works? ISTM that those who work at the co-op are selling their labor for reduced prices. Another free-market idea.

And then you could cite some instances where a Democrat or a Green candidate suggested co-ops instead of government spending in response to poverty, or whatever the economic problem is.

I am not trying to refute your point so much as to understand it.

Regards,
Shodan

62

You may not have noticed but the size and cost of government has been going up at a very dandy rate under the current administration. The major differences between this and the previous administration are:

(1) The rate is going up faster.

(2) It is being spent on somewhat different things. I.e., a lot of it is going to the military and to the extent it is going to new social programs, like the Medicare prescription drug benefit, it is doing so in a way that is more “welfare for the drug companies” than a useful benefit for seniors. (Of course, given the amount of money the drug companies have given Bush and the other Republicans, I suppose that such welfare is, in some law-of-the-jungle-way “deserved”.)

(3) We are no longer paying the full cost but are rather transferring it to future generations and to the states and local municipalities (through, for example, unfunded/underfunded mandates and increases in homeland security costs) who then have to raise their taxes or cut services. Fortunately for the rich, however, these taxes tend to fall much more heavily on the lower and middle classes than the federal income taxes that Bush cut.

These three paragraphs are full of the sort of over-the-top rhetoric one hears from conservatives on this subject. Let’s see, there are two references to liberals believing that wealth just happening to people or the rich getting rich purely out of luck. In fact, if we really believed that then we wouldn’t be arguing merely for a modestly progressive taxation system. Rather, we would be arguing for essentially complete confiscation beyond a certain point. Surely, in fact, a system that allows Bill Gates to keep anything approximating the wealth that he has is a system that is way, way, way far away from being based on the idea that the rich got rich purely out of luck. It is so far away from being based on this idea that it isn’t even funny. Rather, it seems much closer to being based on a culture that worships rich people and believes that without them we would all be living in squalor and poverty, and that asking that they make a decent contribution back to the society within which they have prospered so amounts to theft.

It boggles my mind to think that there are some people who actually believe that some poor person on welfare is getting a better deal out of our society than Bill Gates is!

As for all this “envy” crap…It fails to account for the fact that many of us are proposing that we ourselves are at the income levels that were not in need of the Bush tax cuts. Are we guilty of self-envy? And, of course, the whole quote that started this thread was Hillary Clinton getting in front of a bunch of wealthy people and suggesting to them that they might have to give up their tax cuts for the common good. And, apparently she was not booed off of the stage for saying this so perhaps there are many more rich folks out there who believe as we do…or at least don’t have extreme animosity to the idea.

63

Does Sealab coutn? :slight_smile:

64

Ok, which problem that liberals talk about is this intended to solve. This has a good chance of qualifying. I shop at coops sometimes. Does that change the assumptions any?

65

Have any of the contracts Cheney negotiated been shown to have been paid while the promised goods or services were not delivered? If not, then this is simply spin. And shamefully irresponsible spin. I’m sorry, really I am. I don’t like to get heated with you over things like this. But your implication was that Cheny benifited in some way from government largess while opposing such largess for others. In fact, your cites show that he helped a private company provide services to the government while opposing government largess to others. They are not at all the same thing.

Now, if you want to show that Cheny’s oppostion to large government spending includes spending on the sorts of services that Haliburton provides, you’d have a good case. Otherwise you are shamefully propagating ignorance.

Finally, it is not “the way the world” has to work. As you have pointed out many times, there are things we can do to adjust the way our society does business so that things are more equitable. Reducing the size of government is one of them. The laughable part of your objection to Cheny’s fotune is that your solution is to make the government bigger so that “cheats” like Cheny can be caught.

66

Ok, but why then are you so unwilling to admit to a limit to such taxes on principle? If you are not even willing to believe that absent proof of crime or fraud a person’s wealth should be his own at least at a 50% level, how am I to conclude anything except exactly what Shodan posted?

Are you not? Below what point would you not advocate confiscation?

Right the system we have is not based on excessive confiscation. Liberals want to change the system. To what?

Ah, but now we begin to get to the crux of the situation. How is the governments confiscation of something like 40% of the GDP a “decent contribution”? Why in these discussions is only the contribution made in taxes considered “giving back”?

You have said this before in this accusatory tone. Can you please substantiate a single instance of a single person ever saying anything which even resembles this?

No, it does not. Remember that we are also asking why so many rich liberals are not simply giving more to the government. Why not propose a program as Jackmannii suggested which would collect voluntary funds and distribute them to specific causes? Why not simply give your money (above some minimum level) to such causes. I understand your argument that it would not do as much as taking said money from everyone, but we could consider it a temporary measure. Untill you can convince enough of the electorate to take the money from others. The point being, that without this voluntary giving, there is still the stench of a possibility that liberal whining about taking money for this or that purpose is not really about said purposes. It is more about taking the money.
<OK, I’ve done my rant for the week. I have to go have a lie down. >

67

Ok, I have one more point to make. I need to draw a line between liberal thinkers and liberal politicians. Many liberal thinkers do in fact believe in the ethic of giving to those who need. I believe, however, that most liberal politicians are much closer aligned to the ehtic of taking from those who have. They use the language of the first ethic to justify the actions taken for the second.

The situation is similar with conservative politicians. Many economicly conservative thinkers truly believe that smaller government is better for the society. Many conservative politicians, however, simply use the rhetoric of this belief to gain power.

I don’t want my earlier rant to be misconstrued as uncritical support of the current administration.

68

And, they want to do this why? Do they have some perverse desire to alienate those who control the purse-strings that allow them to get money for their campaigns, as well as those who control many of the institutions such as the media that they are also highly dependent upon for communicated their message to the people?

Does this not sound a little silly to you?

69

It seems like you are just obfuscating the basic facts here:

Cheney lied (or deceived himself) when he said that the government had nothing to do with his good fortune in the 1990s. He likely obtained his job precisely because his contacts to people in high places that he had made while in government (both with people directly in government and others, such as people in foreign governments) would be very helpful to Halliburton in obtaining various contracts with our government and other governments. I’m not claiming that what Cheney did was in any way illegal, or even unethical at least within ethics laws as currently written, but for him to be oblivious to the extent to which he is a poster-child for how one can benefit handsomely from one’s previous association with government is mind-boggling. The fact is that government has, in various ways, done more financially for Dick Cheney than it has done for hundreds of welfare-receivers combined.

Well, this isn’t an issue of the size of government as much as it is an issue of how government is run and for the benefit of whom. I am not committed in principle to either smaller or bigger government as much as I am committed to “good government” and government that tries to create a more level playing field and to help those who are less well-off rather than one that just exacerbates the inequities that already exist.

In fact, I think there are opportunities to shrink some aspects of government spending…and some of them would involve the sort of things that seem to be most dear to our beloved V.P.

70

re: Food co-ops are designed to solve the problems of high food prices, the control a few corporations have over food supplies, the declining quality of food in supermarkets, and the environmental damage caused by modern agricultural methods. They’re not always successful at solving (or even reducing) all these problems, but as near as I know, these are the problems that the noncoercive phenomenon of food co-ops are designed to solve.

Uh, maybe that’s because they’re politicians? The state’s very essence is coercive: if you’re trying to do something entirely voluntary, the state is a piss-poor tool for doing it. Even Volunteer America is funded through tax dollars. People acting as agents of the state are going to tend to advocate state solutions to problems, when they’re talking about how they can help solve the problems.

(I’m ignoring the “cite?” request for something that I prefaced with “I betcha”: I can only guess you’ve not been in a food co-op recently if you are seriously questioning this idea)

Remember that I was responding to pervert’s challenge:

If we say that the free market is conservative, then we’re just dicking around: by definition, any noncoercive economic activity is going to be defined as conservative, and therefore his challenge is by definition unmeetable. I was assuming he wasn’t being disingenuous; given his response, I continue to think that he at least is not being disingenuous.

Daniel

71

You seem to try to get a lot of mileage out of the fact that I can see of no way to come up with some general principle that leads to some maximum allowable taxation level. I believe any such principle would be arbitrary and therefore not a useful general principle.

However, this does not mean that I necessarily support a taxation level above a certain amount that you might specify. When it comes down to policy details, one is forced to make lots of arbitrary decisions. However, I think it is counter-productive and self-deceiving to elevate these to hard-and-fast general principles. Actually, Al Franken has analysis along these lines in his book concerning Bush’s statement that noone should pay more than 1/3 of their income in taxes that makes appropriate fun out of Bush’s attempt to elevate some arbitrary number into some profound principle.

I’ve never advocated any sort of completely confiscatory tax above any income level. In fact, there was a thread a year or two ago where I specifically came out against such an idea on the basis that it would tend to be too destructive to incentives (and would be too arbitrary in where you set the limit).

Actually, for the most part what liberals want to do is to rescind the attempts by the current Administration to make the tax system less progressive (and also less able to meet our current obligations). It is conservatives, not liberals, who have been proposing dramatic changes in our tax system.

First, I have to question this number. I think the number for the federal government spending is running more like 19-20% of GDP. And for revenue, it is running more like 16% after the Bush tax cut spree. (These numbers are from memory…You can look up the actuals in the federal budget historical tables.) I guess state and local taxes will push it up somewhat but I doubt it would get up to 40%.

Well, that seems to be the implication of proposed policies to reduce spending on “welfare” and other such things while decreasing taxes on the wealthy. I could probably also find instances of it being said more directly, and certainly all the rhetoric about how we are soaking the rich seems to be along these lines.

I’ll try to get to your last paragraph later. Gotta go now.

72

Of course it does not sound silly. Is there some part of this premise you do not understand? Liberal politicians who promote the idea that we as a society must or should “soak the rich” are pandering to the envy which is prevelant in the electorate. Yes, they alienate some of the wealthy. But not all. Many of the wealthy in America know that they will have enough pul to get exemptions for themselves. Others are liberal thinkers, who actually believe that government confiscation of large wealth is for the common good. As for the media, they are (in general and most certainly not entirely) pandering to the same sorts of emotions in order to sell papers. There is nothing silly about it.

I should add, that I really do not think that most liberals fall into the class of people who want to make government larger for the sake of making government larger. Just as most conservatives do not fall into the class of people who want to cut taxes for the sake of benifiting the rich.

However, it is difficult which liberals are only in favor of larger governments when liberal who bother to discuss the issue are not willing to consider other options.

He he.

So what you are saying is that Cheney had skills or contacts which allowed him to be influencial with Haliburton’s biggest customer. This is, in your view, equivilant to the sorts of social welfare or government giveaways that liberals are so fond of. I’m obfuscating? Hee Hee.

Whenever we do this you continue to confuse the issue of smaller government in principle and support of a particular political party or candidate. I agree that all corporate welfare (although you have not shown that Halliburton is a recipient of it I don’t doubt it very much) must end. I’ll even comprimise with you. If you will agree in principle that some percentage of income, absent proof of fraud or criminal activity, is absolute personal property and thus untouchable by taxes, I’ll agree, in principle, that handouts or help by the federal government are inappropriate. In fact, I tell you what. Even if you don’t agree that some property should not be taxed, I’ll stand against corporate welfare anyway.

Finally, I regret the callous anger which may have come across in my previous couple of posts. I was really pissed, and should have refrained from posting. I hope I have not offended anyone too badly. Also, I hope that we can return to a calm discussion of the difference between the ethic of giving to the needy and taking from the rich. I really do want to understand better how those two join together in the liberal philosophy.

73

My challenge was sincere. I would not think of polluting it by defining noncoercive in such a circular way. Your example of food coops is a good one. I appreciate it very much. I’m not sure it proves the point enough to justify the sarcasm from elucidator (not that he ever needed justification), but it is appreciated very much. By me. I did not consider that as a “liberal solution”. But I see the argument you are making. Thanks.

74

I’m sorry you think such a principle is silly. But it is at the heart of the debate concerning how much of a person’s wealth is due to his position in society and how much is due to his own effort. From our other threads (and I’ll not belabor the point here) it seems to me that you are unwilling to discuss any principle which limits the right of the government to take any amount of wealth unless it could be shown to disrupt the incentive to make money. I suppose that is support of the principle of private property of a sort, but it does not meet my criteria.

I don’t want to beat a dead horse. I merely want to explain why I think this is such an important issue.

Ok, but this is disengenuous. This is the shape of the current political debate. But it is not the core philosophy of the liberal portion of the country. Can you say with a straight face that a liberal democratic congress and president would not enact large new social spending programs? Would they really limit their actions to recinding the tax cuts and maybe raising taxes a little to offset the deficit?

That’s right, you have to include states to get the number up that high. I don’t have a cite, but I am willing to reduce it considerably. I’ll even say that for the federal government to be spending 20% of the GDP is far too high.

Ok, but this is disengenuous again. I understand that total tax burdens were not lowered evenly with the Bush tax cuts. But they were not even when he started. And the particular tax he cut included cuts at the bottom of the scale.

However, lets not rehash that. For the sake of this one miniscule point, I’ll grant that the Bush tax cuts lowered taxes on the wealthy. I still fail to see how this translates into any sort of statement that poor people are better off than rich people.

This rhetoric is not along these lines either. When you talk about who is paying taxes, you have to acknowledge that rich people pay far more taxes than poor people do. But again, for this one point, I’ll grant that rich people can better afford to pay the taxes they pay than poor people.

I’ll tell you what. If you stop saying that support for lowering taxes is the same thing as saying screw the poor, I’ll stop saying (or implying) that support for eliminating the Bush tax cuts is basically class warfare.

How about we come to an agreement on reducing the withholding rates? Perhaps even extending them to higher levels of income? What about means testing social security payments? Certainly there are issues of tax cuts and spending cuts we can agree on.

75

I have several points to add to this train-wreck of a thread.

First of all, with respect to “non-coercive” liberal solutions to problems, here are a few:
-Liberals want to legalize pot
-Liberals want to legalize gay marriage

Granted, these are not solutions to economic problems, per se. But I think there’s some disingenuousness going on here. Just about everyone short of communists or extreme libertarians believe that there are plenty of problems that are well-addressed by the government, and just about anything the government does is going to cost money, and that requires taxes, which are here being referred to as “coercion”.

There’s also a question as to what represents a “problem”. I think it’s a problem that poor people don’t have access to good health care. Some people might not think that’s a problem.

Only if you find two people, one liberal and one conservative, who both agree that that’s a problem that they actively to solve, and the liberal proposes government-subsidized health care, and the conservative proposes that that problem will actually be solved by cutting taxes on the wealthy, thus stimulating the economy, thus providing more jobs for hard working poor people, thus getting little Billy his crutches, do you have a point of any sort.

Anyhow, to sum up my philosophy on the subject, I’ll steal a philosophical device from The West Wing (who stole it from somewhere else, but I forget where). To be fair about this, let’s imagine someone who we care about, and assume we don’t know what their economic status will be. So, imagine that you have a child, but then you die, and your child is given up for adoption, and you have no idea what the economic status of the adoptive parents will be. Would you rather that child be raised in a society where:

(a) If that child ends up with your good genes for intelligence and talent, and works hard, and catches some breaks, he or she will pay very few taxes, and end up with a personal fortune of $8 milion. However, if that child misses out on some or all of the aforementioned characteristics, and ends up unemployed at the age of 35, and needs an expensive medical operation to stay alive, he or she will be S.O.L.
or
(b) If that child ends up with your good genes for intelligence and talent, and works hard, and catches some breaks, he or she will pay more taxes, and end up with a personal fortune of $6 milion. However, if that child misses out on some or all of the aforementioned characteristics, and ends up unemployed at the age of 35, and needs an expensive medical operation to stay alive, the government will pay for it.

Personally, I would choose (b) in a heartbeat.

(And, while I’m not capital-R-rich, I’m certainly middle- or upper-middle- class, and would happily pay more in taxes.)

76

I agree. Although, I think many economic conservative agree with these proposals. That is the main reason I limited my query to economic issues. That and the OP had to do with taxes.

This, sir, is a blatent attempt to identify the central issue concerning American politics. Stop it! :wink:

Well, I think you might be surprised how cutting taxes for the rich is not the only thing conservatives are in favor of. For instance, reducing the overhead involved with performing medical procedures is a smaller government solution that I personally like. Some conservatives would argue that reducing the way lawsuits are handled is a good idea. Others argue that governmental restrictions on the insurance industry prevent cheaper insurance plans from appearing.

Personally, I would choose (a). I strongly disagree with the characterization of the choices. Limiting the final payout is not the problem with high taxes. When intelligent, talented, hard working people begin projects, no gurantee is given that they will recieve any money, much less 6 million or 8 million. They take emense risks and overcome great odds to get to that point.

Since I answered your question, however, let me add another option. Would you rather that your child live in a world where his intelligence, talent, and hard work were sufficient to provid him with a livelyhood of whatever means, or would you prefer that he need some sort of political talent in order to have sufficient pull with government to get what he needed?

If I may trouble you, why don’t you? I don’t know if the government accepts donations. But I’m sure that public hospitals do. I’m certain that any of the causes for which you would like the government to pay have charities doing the same sorts of things. Why not simply calculate what you think is the best percentage of your income to pay for such things, pay that yourself, and then argue that everyone should do so.

Short of that, can you at least see the argument that not doing so leaves you open to charges of a hypocrisy of sorts?

77

No, I think it has crossed that border. :rolleyes:

There isn’t a Politician in Offcie that doesn’t believ in “taking things awy from you for the common good”. We call that “Taxation”- and even the most fiscally conservative “let’s cut taxes” poltico’s agree there must be some taxation.

78

No coercion? What about that time Captain Murphy forced the crew to stay at battle stations until they found his Happy Cake Oven?

79

I understand Hillary Clinton drinks a lot of lemonade.
You know who else liked lemonade? HITLER!

80

I certainly have no objection to anything of that sort, in principle. Although saying that you’re for “reducing overhead” is kind of like saying that you’re "against murder’.

Then I suppose we just disagree. I certainly don’t look at the US right now and think “wow, among the gravest problems facing the US today is the fact that rich people just aren’t rich enough”. However, I would definitely (if I were in charge) structure taxes of this sort so that things like stock dividends and particularly inheritance taxes, things that apply to people who are already very wealthy, would be hit harder than income tax, taxes on businesses that are just starting up, etc. I don’t see the benefit of extremely wealthy people being able to sit around and just own things. I do see the benefit of there being an incentive to work hard, create jobs, build the economy, and (in the process) become rich. Which, of course, there certainly still is. Taxes have to get pretty ridiculously much higher than they are now before there completely ceases to be any incentive to work hard. Also, if the highest rate only applies to income above a pretty preposterously high cutoff, then the vast majority of small-business-building-people will still have plenty of incentive. The guy who’s building a small roofing business and employing 20 people is not going to have a personal income over $2.5 million per year. Or if he does, he’s already built the roofing business.

(Note: I’m not a trained economist, and none of what I just typed is meant to be analyzable-with-rigor. But the ideas behind it are sound.)

On the flip side, I do think that one of the most serious problems facing the US today is the lack of a properly-set-up social safety net, which ensures that people who are unemployed will have the ability to survive, raise healthy children, and (most importantly!) receive job-training and -placement education.
One final point on this topic: Let’s not forget that this is all a matter of scale. It’s not like (unless you’re a closet absolutist) what you would propose and what I would propose are night and day different. And I’m certainly not calling for confiscation, 85% income tax rates, etc.

I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about, but… I would obviously choose the first option.

The quick answer is that I do give money to charity, some of it to social programs of the sort I wish the government was funding. I don’t tend to give as much as I think I should, but that’s more due to laziness and general non-perfection-of-character than hypocrisy, as I see it.