A poster posted this statement in a thread in the 2010 Elections forum:
It was in response to a post of someone making an endorsement of Republican candidates pretty much across the board.
What I don’t understand is the comment about the “rich don’t have enough of your money yet.” What does that even mean? I have never heard someone use the argument of the rich taking poor peoples money in context of describing Republicans.
Sure I’ve heard Republicans described as selfish, greedy, hoarders, not wanting to share their wealth with those less fortunate, but that doesn’t sound like what the poster was trying to say.
The overwhelming silence, I assume, means that the comment is the sole opinion of one person and not necessarily a common view held by non-Republicans.
I think he’s suggesting that the Republicans are the party of the rich and in thrall to the rich and the rich man’s interest, and that putting Republicans in charge will make the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
Do you lead a sheltered life? In the context of Social Security Privatization, the argument pretty much falls into your lap:
Not that Republicans ever want to privatize SS
It’s just ‘on the table’ in the same sense that ‘invading Iraq’ was on the table; no real threat there at all. ;);)
Sure it is. Oh, the Republicans TALK about a lot of other things to get elected – reducing the size of government, stopping gays from getting “special rights”, getting tough with illegal aliens, making abortion illegal – but when they’re in power what they mostly do is cut taxes for the rich, give away lots of pork, and game the regulatory system to the advantage of their cronies. See, for example, The K Street Project.
Just so I’m clear…it is the common opinion of non-Republicans that money earned by rich people is rightly appropriated and redistributed to poor people, and any change in that policy is considered theft of poor people’s money? Interesting analysis of property and what belongs to who.
Garbage; it means that when they are too old to work, the majority of the populace will be utterly impoverished or dead of starvation. We know, because preventing that is why SS was created.
Nonsense again; the rich get rich be taking money from others. Taking money from them is a matter of forcing them to pay what they owe to the upkeep of society, and to keep them from hoarding all wealth to themselves. The natural trend of money is from everyone else to the rich; left unchecked the inevitable result is a few extremely wealthy people in a sea of extreme poverty. The Republicans look at this as desirable, which is why they keep trying to push society in that direction.
It is the duty of the rich to pay their fair share to the society that makes their wealth possible, instead of being parasites like they prefer. The Republicans would prefer a society built more along the lines of masters-and-serfs, with all wealth, power and rights belonging only to the wealthy (and white, and Christian) minority.
Is that how you characterize the income you earn? Taking it from others? Or is there some sort of threshold in your mental model of the world, where anything above is “taking” it, and anything below is “earning” it?
Privatizing is not ‘taking your own money back’, it’s forcing you to give your money into the care of Wall street fatcats.
You know, the ones that caused us to lose trillions in national wealth because of their financial shenanagins, the ones who wrecked our economy?
Those guys should be paying their fair share of taxes, not be given my money to gamble with, as the Republicans want.
I’ll believe it when I see that big check in my hand.
But what’s more likely to happen is all “my” money will be handed over to a private investment firm, who, given a monopoly by the government, will feel free to charge %1.5+ fees on their funds, and I still won’t be able to get my money when I need it.
“The necessaries of life occasion the great expense of the poor. They find it difficult to get food, and the greater part of their little revenue is spent in getting it. The luxuries and vanities of life occasion the principal expense of the rich, and a magnificent house embellishes and sets off to the best advantage all the other luxuries and vanities which they possess … It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.”
It was a throw-away line, but I can’t for the life of me understand why people can’t just dismiss it as such, instead of knee-jerkingly defending it just because it’s anti-Republican. Actually, I can for the life of me understand. We see this knee jerk all the time on this MB. On both sides.
Makes it difficult to call this a board dedicated to fighting ignorance when so much effort is put into defending ignorance.
As opposed to knee jerkingly dismissing it as an alien from another planet type worldview, as the OP does?
The perception is out there, it’s not even uncommon, regardless of its value or accuracy. Acknowledging that is not knee-jerking, nor is it defending the accuracy of the perception’s ultimate fine structure, as you seem to be implying is going on here. Perhaps Wilbo523 has lived such a sheltered existence that he’s never heard talk of Republicans giving our money to the rich before. Perhaps too, the internet has not yet come to his town, and he has to travel to the next county over in order to post here.
Here’s a couple nice cartoons relating to the subject, from this morning’s papers: http://wpcomics.washingtonpost.com/client/wpc/sc/ http://www.uclick.com/client/nyt/bs/
See, the concept of the GOP using government to enrich the wealthy further, at the expense of the rest of us, is pretty mainstream just now.
So, when you said “the argument pretty much falls into your lap”, you were not endorsing the argument? If you sincerely say you weren’t, I will believe you. But can you not see that some people, upon reading that, would think you were?
But aside from that, we have DT posting: “the rich get rich be taking money from others.”
So, no, I was not responding in a knee jerk way to people trying to explain it. I was responding to people defending it.
I’m confused. That chart pretty clearly shows the top-earner line increasing at a steeper rate than the bottom. Other data on income and wealth disparity backs this up. One could consider the GINI index (Gini coefficient - Wikipedia), lowest in 1968 and highest in 2006 (and also roughly 50% higher than it is in EU countries).
That is a common interpretation, yes. Ben Franklin certainly seemed to agree:
