Bush Jr, the result of several generations of inherited wealth, benefited from fourteen years of Public Housing. To be fair, his military service involved minimal use of government facilities.
Bush’s pension of $196,700 a year is scheduled to go up.
Because it was given to them by people who owned it.
I’m already aware that you fail to see it.
In the first place, what percentage of these people are lazy layabouts? You have not idea. You are just talking out of jealousy and envy. But even if they are, so what? They are morally entitled to it because it is theirs, not yours. It appears that you think the default mode for wealth is that it rightfully belongs to the government unless a person can provide a justifiable reason why they should be allowed to keep it.
There’s no maybe about it, we should not have an equivalent of “workfare” for inheritors of wealth. It’s none of your or anyone else’s business. It is their property because it was the property of their parents. At least so far in this country people are free to do with their property what they wish. And that’s the way it should be. The money they get wasn’t taken from you, and you haven’t been harmed in any way by the fact that they inherited it or by the fact that they haven’t earned it. You are merely seeking justification for the fact that you want the government to take as much money as they can from other people in order to give it to you, and you are using an argument based on envy and jealousy (class warfare, in other words) to try to acheive it.
But all this is just a diversion anyway. The main point is that everyone in this country has the opportunity to “get ahead”, to be “successful”, to earn or acheive wealth. No one with money is sucking up all the wealth so that you can’t acquire any. You are the reason you don’t have more, not the rich. So why don’t you just be honest and admit that you simply don’t like the idea that some people have more than you do and that you think the government should force “fairness” (which is actually grossly unfair) by taking away money that has been earned at some point by someone else and giving it to you?
Now, having said that I have a busy day ahead, so you are now free to scheme about ways the government ought to take other peoples’ property and give it to you without further interference from me.
Well I am pretty well off and have a pretty sizable inheritance coming so I guess I will be scheming about ways the government ought to take my property and give it to you. I may be well off but at least I am aware that it had as much to do with serendipity as my hard work. I know for a fact that I do not work as long or as hard as the woman who cleans my house or the guy who takes care of my lawn or even the kid who comes to my office once a week to wash my car. I don’t work as hard as the teacher who will teach my kid or the cop who keeps my neighborhood safe as a matter of fact I think it is a safe bet that many many people are smarter than me and work harder than I do and deserve more than I do. This does not mean that I think I should just give away what I have but I am certainly willing to consider a more just distribution of resources. And I am not stupid enough to think hard work is enough.
The people you are talking about are earning the amount they make because of decisions they made about how they wanted to live their lives. The teacher who teaches your kid chose to be a teacher and accept the pay that comes with it. Same with the neighborhood cop and the woman who cleans your house.
All of them, if they had wanted, could be pursuing wealth and no one with money would be stopping them. That is my point. It is specious to think that because a small percentage of the population holds a disproportionate amount of the wealth that somebody is getting screwed.
BWAHAHAHA! There’s a mantra for the left if I ever heard one.
Still, you should recognize that physical labor alone is not what I’m referring to when I talk about hard work. I’m talking about study, about looking for and recognizing opportunity, taking risk, working 80 to 100 hours a week in the beginning…you know, the types of things that people who earn wealth often do. And of course mental work is harder than physical work, so that gets taken into account too.
That is simply not true. People born into abject poverty or born with severe learning disabilities are simply 2 types of people that do not have the same opportunity as someone born into a stable environment.
Please do not respond with your exceptions that you stated 4 pages ago. You just made an absolute statement that has no basis in reality.
You’ve said this twice now as if it’s gospel. Well, it isn’t. Best I’ll give you is that it’s highly debatable – take an MD for instance (in general, one of the professions I most admire), their work is, for the most part, equally challenging both physically and mentally.
As for the rest of your dribble, I called you on it prior to you even bringing it up – it’s simply too predictable in these types of discussions. There’s no “envy” involved, for as askeptic, I too have done quite well for myself. Of course, it just might have something to do with the fact that I was born with the proverbial silver tray…as proved by the copious cites you continue to ignore.
I see. So, when the labor movement was struggling for higher wages and benefits, and the rich guys hired goons to break their heads, that doesn’t count?
And if we took the money that has been siphoned off to fatten the fat, and spent it on health care or education, the people who might have benefited weren’t “screwed”? Even if they might have used such an education in pursuit of wealth, but that opportunity was denied, they haven’t lost anything because they never had it in the first place?
And yes, we all quite recognize that the right to private property is an important right. Its simply not the only one, nor is it the most important one, no matter how shrilly you insist.
A nation is a collective, this land is your land, and it is mine. We are enmeshed in a web of mutual obligations, the rich simply have more opportunity to make sacrifices on behalf of their fellow Americans. All the wealth of the nation is still ours, it is only in their custody, and if they fail to responsible wardens of that wealth, they fail in their duty, and may be judged accordingly.
America is something a bit more than a gigantic game of Monopoly.
Don’t forget the “company stores” too. Their purpose was to grossly overcharge, in order to keep the workers in debt and to keep pushing them further in debt. It was a popular tactic in the coal mining regions. Workers could not leave because they owed money to the company. The longer they stayed, the further in debt they got. The deeper the debt was, the longer they had to stay to pay it off.
This sounds a lot like an old feudal tradition, where the nobles, those with wealth and power, were expected to have certain duties and responsibilities.
In French, “noblesse oblige” means, literally, “nobility obligates”.
According to the French Wiktionary, the Dictionnaire de l’Académie française defines it thus:
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Whoever claims to be noble must conduct himself nobly.
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(Figuratively) One must act in a fashion that conforms with one’s position, and with the reputation that one has earned.
The Oxford English Dictionary says that the term “suggests noble ancestry constrains to honourable behavior; privilege entails to responsibility.” Being a noble meant that you had responsibilities to lead, manage, etc. You were not to simply spend your time in idle pursuits.*
Whether one became a noble by birth, or by his own victories and deeds, he was still held resposible… both to his superiors and to those under him. The implication was, that if they didn’t honor this, they could be removed - quickly and ruthlessly. People today don’t accept that. They want to have the privilege but not the duty. That includes spoiled brats who inherited it from daddy - and then piss it away.
Being born with money is a GOOD thing. It gives you an advantage. You have a head start. But then you have to do something with it. Otherwise you are nothing more than a rich bum.
So your point is that, unquestionably, gangster rap is keeping those that are exposed to it in a state of social turmoil, violence, and in turn, due to prison time and/or the resulting loss of parental figure(s), poverty?
Obviously, the most public face of hiphop has become the gangster image, but that is not the only face, it is merely the most marketed.
Who then do you think it is doing that marketing? Particularly who is it that is making the decisions to give such mass amounts of airtime to artists such as 50 Cent or Lil Wayne, because they can hype up the fact that they have been shot? Who decides to run fake glamor shows such as Cribs, and who decides who they will put on such shows, what their scripts will be, and which producer added decorations(generally Scarface related) will be highlighted in the house rented by the record lable and/or MTV?
When there is no shortage of positive, socially conscious, up lifting hiphop out there (which is imho generally much more musically inspired as well), and there is no shortage of a market for it, why is it that that gets buried, if not out right turned away, in favor of the gangster rap you claim is responsible for killing black youths?
Why is it that if something is positive in hiphop is automatically deemed “old school” or “underground”? Who controls what is mainstream? Where does the buck stop?
Who do you think the A & R’s of the major record labels are? Of Viacom and Clear Channel who there ultimately makes the decisions on which music should get the most airtime?
Generally speaking, the people who ultimately make the decision on what music to mass market have no connection to who they are marketing to. Rich, old, white guys, who likely feel the same as you do about rap, are the ones deciding exactly what kind of rap should be readily available to a poor black kid looking for something to listen to on the radio or tv.
If it is so obvious that the promotion of gangster rap is such a primary source of problems, then consider who ultimately is doing the promoting of such music, knowing full well of these problems; how then, do you reconcile that with this…
?
Not physical labor, recognizing opportunity, and taking risk? I know, I’ll become a rapper. Some of them have done very well for themselves.
(I am somewhat in sympathy with SA. My grandfather was a sheet-metal worker, my dad became a pilot and his brother owned a contracting company. It’s not always rags-to-riches, but it’s possible for each generation to do better than the one before. I also think it has become harder to do so since my dad’s generation; no one is offshoring executives and middle-class standard of living has been relatively unchanged while the rich have gotten much richer. I’d like to see that change.)
Your kneejerk wealthy-asslicking response is somewhat blinding you to the actual content of my post (not surprisingly; it must be kind of difficult to read with your face wedged in there). I never said that every inheritor of unearned wealth is a lazy layabout, nor did I venture a guess as to what percentage of them fall into that category. I just pointed out that a lazy layabout who inherits unearned wealth is no more morally deserving than a lazy layabout who receives government assistance.
I doubt that my opinion “appears” that way to anybody but you, owing to your peculiar reading-comprehension handicap that I mentioned above. My actual opinion, which is merely a recognition of an obvious fact, is that revenue from legally enacted taxes DOES belong to the government. Anything that you’ve earned, after taxes, is all yours.
People who legally qualify for and receive government assistance are morally entitled to it because it is theirs, not yours. If we disagree about how much tax revenue should go to assistance for the poor and how much income redistribution the tax code should produce, then we can battle that out through our elected representatives. But people who receive government assistance that they legally qualify for are just as much entitled to it as the children of the wealthy are entitled to their unearned inheritance.
After taxes, absolutely. But only after taxes. People who imagine that all the money they nominally earn before taxes belongs totally to themselves, and that the government isn’t entitled to any of it, are delusional, or else merely selfish to the point of outright cognitive dissonance.
Your somewhat blinkered posture appears to be interfering with your guessing ability too. In fact, you’re dead wrong about my opinions concerning my personal financial situation. I don’t want anybody’s money given to me to supplement my own comfortable earnings, and in fact, I think that my own taxes ought to be somewhat higher (not too much, but somewhat) in order to widen the social safety net for the less fortunate.
Moreover, I’m not bothered at all by the fact that other people have more (in many cases, much more) than I do. In fact, I frequently enjoy looking at pictures of their gardens and their clothes, and the fact that I couldn’t afford such things myself even if I wanted them doesn’t diminish my enjoyment.
Sorry to destroy your illusions and all, but the bottom line is that some of us favor a moderate amount of wealth redistribution and social welfare spending not because we’re racked with greedy envy and jealousy, but simply because we’re decent people whose social consciences have managed to develop beyond the toddler level of “MINE MINE MINE MINE IT ALL MINE YOU CAN’T HAVE ANY OF IT CAUSE IT MIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNE!!!”
When did that happen? Talk about a strawman…
Gotta admit his WTF section is good, from the inaugural one savaging Prejean to last night’s with Limbaugh. Nobody does a long spiel of insulting adjectives like Olbermann.
- You load sixteen tons, and what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt.
Saint Peter, don’t you call me, 'cause I can’t go;
I owe my soul to the company store… *
Slightly off-topic, but does anyone know what a “Compassionate Conservative” is supposed to stand for?
You seem a little obsessed with Olberman. Sure you’re not gay for him?
A guy who will kick you in the nuts for your own good, not just because he hates you…
You get extra points for that 
I just can’t believe I was the first one to think of it. 
The best part about this thread is still the phrase “epic cock.”
The fact that the user who started this is the same user who started the pregnant bald eagle thread is a close second.