Why, bless your heart, you are not obliged to! If you find the task daunting, you can simply pick up your little basket and skip along, skip along.
If you don’t want to clarify your posts, then are you engaged in debate or just trolling this thread?
Sometimes talking to an idiot can be daunting in that you know it is going to be a pain in the ass because you’ll have to weed through all kinds of crap to figure out what the other person is trying to say. Which is much like your posts in this thread (note, I am not calling you an idiot. I do believe, however, that you are being delibrately obtuse).
I have two very simple questions for you.
How do you think most rich people become rich?
What is your definition of rich?
Slee
Well, since they won’t talk, I’ll put words in their mouths. When Luci and Fear talk about rich pepople, they are referring only to those people that inherited more than any 10 people could spend in their lifetimes and who never worked any job whatsoever or put forth any effort to build or even maintain that wealth. I contend that there are probably only 100 people in the US who meet this description.
Why is that my obligation? Others are arguing from every point on the compass, are any of them offering such a definition? So how come it falls to me? No one has explained to me yet why the “work ethic” exempts those who don’t need the money, am I empowered to shut down the debate until my question is answered?
True, such awesome power could not find a more worthy agent, but until my Thread Police badge shows up, I’m going to pretty much assume you don’t have one, either.
According to this, the number of billionaires in the US is 359. Offered without comment.
People are asking you because you write stuff like:
and
So it seems, from your posts, that rich people A) don’t do anything (it is all the stockholders ya know), B) Paris Hilton is a typical rich person and C) the rich are all worthy being fed into a wood chipper. On point C) it might be nice to find out who you are referring to when you say ‘rich’ so we can warn them.
Another reason is that from reading your posts it appears that you believe Snidely Whiplashis the typical rich person.
On preview you just proved my point. You post a link to a list of the worlds billionaires as an example of ‘people that inherited more than any 10 people could spend in their lifetimes and who never worked any job whatsoever’.
I picked 5 off that list at random.
#1. John Abele. Co-founder of Boston Scientific.
#2. Marvin Davis. Started an oil company with his father.
#3. Phil Knight. Co-founder of Nike.
#4. Thomas H. Lee. Founded a private equity firm.
#5. James Jannard. Founder Oakley Inc.
Note, all these guys got rich by creating companies. It wasn’t handed to them. Also, those guys created a ton of wealth for their employees.
It seems pretty clear that you have no idea how rich people get rich or how they benefit society.
Also, you might find this linkinteresting reading. It turns out that most rich people earn their wealth.
Slee
How many decades more do you want to do that before you decide that isn’t working? Many of those poor by upbringing end up being poor by choice because they just won’t listen to the idea that education and working your way up is a good thing. Selling drugs and making thousands in a week is far more appealing (well, then they usually end up dead by choice or jailed by choice).
Agreed, but the problem is - what is poor by calamity? How many people only needed a tiny calamity to be poor, because they couldn’t be bothered to get (car/home/health) insurance, or because they had run up thousands in credit card debt and have no savings, or because they keep rebuilding in the same places that tornados/hurricanes/floods love to go? And you want to give all of these people food, shelter, medical care and an education? Where is the money going to come from? Poor by calamity happens in several places every year in this country.
Most of the people in the Pit think I should because I dare to take my SSDI when I am not “poor enough” to “deserve” it. So… :dubious:
Or, it could be a post from someone that doesn’t want to become “working poor” because he was forced to support so many people.
Unfortunately, almost everyone seems to want to do it, until it actually happens and then they either grow up or end up being lousy parents. Perhaps if society would quit glorifying the “miracle that is childbirth” and how “you don’t know love until you have a child”, fewer teenagers and other unfit folks would be having children. Fercrissakes, they just came out with a doll that breastfeeds. For little girls! Who shouldn’t be brainwashed that young!
They already do. Maybe if you quit giving these poor mommies so much stuff just for having a baby, they would quit doing it and we would have fewer of those kids suffering in poverty that you say you care about.
You do know that cite supports the idea that we should be giving less, not more, to anyone who gets pregnant and decides to keep the kid whether they can afford it or not, right? Did you notice this part? –>
“Children of teenage parents are more likely to have problems and to eventually become teenage parents themselves, thus perpetuating the cycle of poverty begun by a teenage birth”
Where is my violin? Oh wait, Tao wants more children to suffer for having been born to the wrong woman, guess he should be the one playing the fiddle…
You don’t have insurance?
Well, it is cheaper for me to eat lower calorie food than it is for me to go to McDonalds, or buy donuts, and it is much cheaper for me to eat less of any food in order to end up with less calories. If poor people are fat because they are eating foods that are high in calories (for whatever reason) then they need to learn to eat less of it, which will also help them save money! Back when I was extremely poor, one box of Kraft Mac & Cheese lasted me two-three days, which is much cheaper than two-three boxes a day, or whatever is going on.
As for less time to spend cooking - huh? How do poor people have less time than anyone else? Particularly if they aren’t working and so have time to hang out at home, since they are, you know, poor & can’t afford to go out?
Apparently, many do. While that cite is a hand wringer about what to do with all the poor when crumbling, decades old public housing is torn down, there was also this - “Decades of cultural and policy shifts transformed that safety net into a permanent home for generations of families surrounded by disproportionately high crime.”
Yes, that’s the point, but unfortunately far too many people use it as a hammock.
No, bri1600bv said “Why should the people who work hard suffer for the partiers and slackers?” You are the one assuming that means anyone that is poor.
Husband and I are middle class. We do not in any way want a UHC, and we have made our own safety net. As for “siding with rich”, that has nothing to do with it - we are perfectly capable of making our own decisions.
That’s the bottom line right there. Why do these people think they have the right to be supported by people who are trying to support themselves? If we chose to not have children, why are we being forced to raise children that other people chose to have? If I waited until I was in my 30’s to approach middle class, why should I be forced to pay for all the people who cannot be arsed to wait and work for it themselves?
Ok Rand, fair enough then.
Check out post 11.
First of all, the poor is ‘they’. There is us, and then there is this other group, the poor. How can you identify them? Well, for starters there is something wrong with their brains, because 1. The bottom of the heap is the last place anyone would want to end up and 2. It is all their fault that they wound up there. Therefore these sorry prognosticators, blindly groping toward the future with their third eyes wide shut, are obviously disproportionately prone to all kinds of life-damaging pratfalls which normal people possessing a normal sense of prescience just. simply. naturally. avoid. Some of them are actually quite amusing if you think about it. I mean, I can see the future, can’t you see the future? How the fuck do people think we got rich?
Point is, obviously we’re just smarter than they are. They aren’t forethinking. You can tell because they’re poor.
The OP cites you:
We’re back to us and them. ‘People like us’- maybe rich people, or maybe the middle class is included. You’re in there, aren’t you Rand? ‘People like you’, as in, ‘you motherfuckers’. If you aren’t pitting the poor, I’ll listen to what you think you’re doing. If ‘you motherfuckers’ isn’t condescending and contemptuous, I’ll consider what you say it is.
And a recent one from Curlcoat in 348
I’m not a doctor, but I’d recommend treatment for deafness, and I’m going to refer them to a therapist to work out their stubbornness. They just. won’t. listen. As a result they are anti-education, and fundamentally opposed to ‘working your way up.’ See, we think those are good things, but these reprobates maintain the reverse moral code. To them, these are bad things! Selling drugs is a good thing to the poor! Those bastards :eek: And this has been going on for DECADES. Ye gods, if only someone would finally come up with a solution :smack:
Curlcoat then ruminates over various methods that might reduce the number of poor in the future. I guess she can see it already!
Let me know what is wrong with my answer, Rand. I’ll get back to you, but please understand that I’m pretty busy and can’t be on the 'dope all day. I can check in once most days though.
For fun, we can compare some of these claims against my experiences. Hmm, I was poor, now I’m not. So either I changed and somehow learned to see the future, hear better, quit being stubborn and increased in moral virtue, and then became rich (or at least well-off, how’s that?), or by some fluky accident I managed to get rich first, a change which precipitated a later increase in powers. If I ask you, will you say which it is?
Hmmm let’s see. In a few years I won’t fit into the definition of ‘middle class’ presented on this board: $45k-$92k. I’ll top out. What is the next category even called? Is it ‘rich’? Hmmm, we’d need separate categories for ‘rich’ and ‘wealthy’ then at least. Probably even more convenient to call it ‘upper middle class’, except that sounds so goddamned snooty! In any case that’s where I’ll be, enjoying the fruits of my labor.
Hmmm, the rich start businesses, and the poor don’t eh? I was never poorer than when I was an entrepreneur. Giving that up is probably one of my better moves. It freed me up to try really hard to do a bunch of different things, which led me to a nice place and job. Funny thing is, now I have a new idea for a business, and I just might launch it 
Now it will be small-potatoes, a little hobby to get me some beer money, that’s pretty much it. Nothing I say about myself on the 'dope is a lie, and neither is this: my business research library consists of ‘small business for dummies’. I probably won’t even need to use it. Anyway, there’s always the 1% chance that the venture will blow up and reap a windfall, it has been known to happen…
Anyway, if it doesn’t work out it costs practically nothing, and I still have my job. And I still have my ironclad insurance plan. It is really quite good- only Eliot Spitzer has better coverage!
Point is, I don’t stand to gain from a national health care reform. I already have as good of insurance as you could want, and I’m unusually healthy anyway. And I will make too much money to qualify for a bunch of handouts. I’m the kind of poor person this thread seems to approve of.
But get this: I’m still in favor of government health care for the working poor. Please file it in your memory that there is a guy like me out there who holds this position.
Alternatives? Well, there is the conservative approach. Let me post this again. It is a video clip from the Young Turk presenting an Oberman clip in which it is revealed how much money Republican senators are receiving from health interests. The point is that the Republicans- to a man- are bought and paid for by the health industry. Democrats aren’t immune, the Blue Dogs stand out as staunch Democrats except for the difference of taking a lot of money from the health industry. But they aren’t 100% sold out.
Your passion for the free market makes you sound like a Libertarian, though I’m not sure. If I ask though, will you tell me if you think the free market should extend to senators to the highest bidder?
I’d also ask msmith if the idea of ambition extends to senators taking money from health interests and representing them instead of their constituencies. Is ‘ambition’ the absolute, or even only valuable quality, or should it maybe be tempered with something more?
Because let’s face it, the reds lost the election, and the American people in majority want the same thing I do: government health care. The reds don’t want it, but since they have the losing argument, they’re resorting to other things, like buying senators. I don’t like it. Do you?
Apparently all the senators cannot be bought, and the ‘free’ ones still need to be dealt with. Check this out. Another Young Turk clip, this time discussing the people bussed in to town hall meetings to shout down senators and disrupt things.
Hmmm, buying senators, disrupting the meetings of congress critters and their constituencies? Could it be that the reds are trying to do an end-around the democratic process because they have a vested interest in hanging on to their wealth in the form of the gravy train that is the current health system? Are these motherfuckers taking our tax money and pocketing it?!?!?!?
Wah…the government is stealing my money! I can’t send wittle Smashlie to Name Brand University or have an enourmous McMansion, or have a hot tub installed in my private jet!
I guess we’re just going to have to be MIDDLE CLASS…gasp and not live so flamboyantly!
So, in other words, you see nothing wrong with continuing to spend piles of money on something that isn’t working? Yet you have a problem with me pointing out that it isn’t working?
Fine with me! Just, you pay for it OK?
BTW, for someone who doesn’t have time to check in to the board all that often, you certainly found time to go on and on about nothing…
$100,000 annually isn’t going to even get close to paying for any of that, at least not here. And since it’s so far away from making it here, I’d be willing to bet that it wouldn’t cover any of that anyplace in the US.
If you all wouldn’t jump to such wild exaggerations, maybe you would be taken seriously.
Which doesn’t even touch the gall of saying that simply because someone is rich, they should be forced to give all their money to someone else(s) until they are not longer rich…
:rolleyes:
So your answer to children living in poverty is to cut their benefits, deepening the privation in which they’re living, as a deterrent or a cautionary tale of some sort?
You do understand that these are actual, living people you’re talking about, not some abstract idea?
You do understand that these actual, living people you say you are so concerned about have been living like that for generations already? Do you not see *any *connection between making life easier for a woman simply because she has a baby, and her decision to have one she cannot otherwise afford?
And that baby! Picking a loser for a mother! Clearly, the first bad choice of a lifetime of bad decisions, followed by mewling for a handout.
What you are suggesting boils down to starving out single moms, apparently as a warning to other young women.
What I’m suggesting is health care for all Americans. Young, stupid single moms are one group of people who are the very most in need of help. Whether you like it or not, their kids will grow up to become a part of our society. Are the kids guilty too? If you get your way, these kids will grow up sick and practically starving- not exactly a foundation for success. If I get my way, they’ll still be poor but at least they can visit a doctor. They aren’t automatically ruined from the start.
Maybe you should describe better what is and isn’t working in your view.
And- this is a debate. Describing my post as ‘nothing’ isn’t the same as negating it. If that’s the best you can do, you lose the point.
Read my post again. I clearly state that I am willing to pay for it.