Are any of his employees millionaires, as well? Did they share equally in the profits or did he grow disproportionately rich off their hard work?
This is just the American exceptionalism argument that Lemur866 already alluded to. What, are Americans just exceptionally crappy at delivering government services compared to European countries or Australia, or Canada or Japan? I don’t think so.
No, because as Lemur866 also pointed out (you did read his post, yes?), The system in the US costs a lot more, and delivers poorer results. So you are correct that the US in not a shithole, but is clearly not doing well in the healthcare area.
God almighty, this board is a riot. So, unless everyone in America has the same level of wealth, someone was exploited. Am I getting that right?
I have not been following this thread much, but I just found this, which seems very relevant to the original topic:
Democrats and Republicans Can Be Differentiated from Their Faces.
Basically, Republicans’ faces look “powerful,” Democrats’ faces look “warm.”
His partner is - was, actually - as wealthy as he. None of his employees are millionaires. The employees received bonuses but did not receive anything like an equal share in the profits (nor experienced a cut in their regular salaries during times when the business was not as successful as it later became).
I will echo Stratocaster’s question - is it cruel exploitation to fail to share equally in profits when risk is not equally shared? Or are you saying that the founders, owners, and principal revenue generators (indeed, very nearly the only revenue generators) of a business are entitled to keep what the business makes in profit (for the most part)?
Regards,
Shodan
I cannot believe it. I typed up a snotty from-the-liberal-point-of-view response to Shodan’s post yesterday that made this exact claim. I pointed out that he grew rich by exploiting the sweat and blood of his employees; that they didn’t get a share of the profits when he sold the business; they didn’t become millionaires; that etc., etc., ad nauseum.
I also pointed out the fact that this man had invested (i.e., risked) his own money in the business, worked long hard hours trying to keep up with increasing rules and regulations while at the same time trying to keep abreast of advancements in technology and keeping his business competitive, while his employees were parked on the couch at night watching TV and drinking beer, or making their nightly runs to the video rental store or shopping mall.
And I followed that with the likely liberal response, which was "Piffle. Mere excuses intended to justify allowing someone getting more than someone else.
Power to the people!"
I followed all that with one of these: :rolleyes:
Ultimately I decided not to post that sarcastic little post because I felt it would be needlessly insulting and inflammatory, and besides liberals aren’t quite that bad…at least not yet.
I should have known better.
Shodan likes to play Republican poker. That’s where he gets seven cards, you get five, he gets to draw twice and all your cards are face up.
He presents us a portrait without warts, we are told only positive things and challenged to point out the negative. Its like an ad for a drug without the contraindications that are so briskly and hurriedly recited at the end: “May cause warts, hemorrhoids, sudden reversal of sexual orientation, mange, grout, and beri-beri. Stop taking this medication and consult your physician if you cannot explain the presence of coins on your eyes…”
Here is this splendid fellow. The facts are these: he is, in every respect, a splendid fellow. Now, you tell me why he is a rotten bastard, and if you can’t, I win.
Republican poker.
Not all businesses can pass on all price increases to customers, especially if their market is elastic. I agree about automation, but automation increases efficiency and is a good thing, so one could argue that not increasing the minimum wage for so many years (true up until recently) which drives down the effective wage, reduces automation and thus reduces productivity. I’ve heard papers describing how manufacturing automation programs that would make sense in the US don’t make sense in Asia where the depreciation on the capital equipment is more than the labor it would replace.
A living wage would be more disruptive, of course, but it might shut up those fiscal conservatives who are now complaining that the lowest paid workers aren’t contributing to taxes. On topic, I don’t know if that demonstrates hate for poor people, but it surely demonstrates insensitivity and disdain. The “lucky duck” comment from the WSJ is a perfect example of this.
Or the job will be redefined to be more value added, or the delta between the productivity of the worker and his wages will be reduced. In a bad economy not everyone making minimum wage is unable to produce more than what a minimum wage job requires.
Here is the key to understanding what happened in the past 9 years. By tax cuts focused on the rich, keeping the minimum wage as it was, and other policies, Republicans encouraged businesses to keep a lid on wages, so despite productivity improvements that in the past partially went to workers, worker salaries stagnated. A healthy economy however required consumption, and in normal times this would reduce consumption and cause a recession. To counter this, Greenspan kept interest rates low. That was fine after the 2001 recession, but they never got adjusted. This encourage borrowing, and the housing bubble, which funded the consumption businesses needed. It was unsustainable, of course, and when it collapsed it collapsed big time.
If you want a vibrant US economy, you need consumption, and you must pay workers enough to let them buy things. The super rich can’t do it on their own. I suspect the root cause of the fact that the economy does better under Democrats is exactly this.
This is not a new claim. He has been saying it for a long time. Now you are dumb enough to think one case proves all. You friend has been a prince and a kind and generous man and became wealthy. Therefore all who became wealthy are kind and generous. Why do you do that? What do you think that apocryphal case proves about the rest of the wealthy?
Shodan, thanks for posting those quotes from me, which show the above post from Polycarp to be completely ludicrous.
Polycarp–any response? A simple retraction of the above post would suffice.
Who said this?
Why do I do what - post in such a manner that it confuses you? It isn’t possible to post in any other way.
Apparently whoever read you the thread went too fast.
Let’s briefly recap and see if we can cause any neurons to fire -
[ul][li]BrainGlutton made a claim. [/li][quote]
in very many very real ways – the upper classes really are exploiters who accumulate their wealth by taking unfair advantage of the less fortunate.
[/quote]
[li]So I described a person of my acquaintance, who is definitely upper class (economically speaking) and gave an account of his circumstances.[/li][li]The idea is now for BrainGlutton (or whoever might be inclined) to show how this person gained his wealth by taking unfair advantage of the less fortunate.[/li][li]So far, BG has not seen fit to back up what he says, even though he claimed that it was plain and obvious. [/li][li]In fact, the only responses to my challenge has been [list][]devilsknew apparently claiming that it is cruel exploitation not to give away the profits to those who did not share the risk nor generate the income, and []the usual substanceless drivel from those with nothing to add (not you, Voyager), []Stratocaster and Starving Artist showing that they get the point,[] your somewhat-more-clear-than-usual demonstration that you really don’t.[/ul][/list][/li]
So now, gonzo, could you do me a favor and either [list=a][li]actually cut and paste where I made the claim that I was saying anything about all rich people being kind and generous[] respond the points actually raised, or[]start a thread in the Pit where I can respond to you when you call me “dumb”.[/list][/li]
Thanks so much.
Regards,
Shodan
Shodan, you seriously expect people to address your personal anecdote as though it were data? Based, we must assume, on your personal reputation for spotless integrity and total honesty? We don’t know shit about this guy, your post is your cite. For all we know, he forces his employees children into lives of drug addiction and prostitution.
And on this basis alone, you expect us to throw ourselves at your feet and blubber retractions and apologies? Because you “know a guy”?
Whatever drugs you are taking, stop taking them. If you’re not taking any drugs, you might want to reconsider.
I dunno if there is any room left for debate on the topic, when the thread starts and continues with such acrimony, but I’ll try.
I agree that social classes exist, but disagree that the default should be to always, in general and adjustible etc., to side with the lower. There are really two goals:
a. the health of the economy as a whole; and
b. obtaining, as a matter of social justice, a livable minimum for “the poorest he” (or she).
In some ways, these goals are in conflict; in other ways they are not. A healthy economy may require, in some cases, measures that allow for the accumulation of capital in private hands. OTOH, a healthy economy requires a population able to afford to buy stuff. OTOH once again, a healthy economy allows for a greater measure of social justice than one that is impoverished.
What this points to is that, as in so much else, what is necessary is not a “default” favoring one class over another, but a balance; a recognition that this is not, a la Marx, a dichotomy of classes at war with one another, but a society in which the classes must co-exist to reach a mutual goal - prosperity.
I clearly do not agree with this. Certainly some wealthy people are “exploiters”, but I do not think it is structurally inherent in the system that they are.
I disagree with this as well. In any democracy there are going to be folks who exercise influence out of purportion to their numbers - whether this is based on wealth, or fame, or influence. Suppress one form of influence and you exaggerate other forms.
An example I’m familiar with is our Canadian healthcare system. It is public and so you can’t buy some forms of care (leaving out going to the US). However, if you are “in the know”, you can use your influence to get care better or sooner than others - not based on money but on connections.
All one can do is to prevent, to the best of one’s ability, corruption (whether based on money or favours or whatever).
Again, equality of opportunity is a bit of a pipe-dream. Remove money from the equation and you are still left with huge disparities based on education and influence. People will always want to give their kids a leg up in life, one way or the other.
And what drugs have you been taking (no, wait…don’t answer that) during those times when you regale us with this anecdote or that about someone you know who has been screwed out of coverage by some insurance company?
What’s good for the goose and all that…
~Starving Artist, providing conservative gadfly and liberal hypocrisy poking services since 2003.
tried to find the origional quote for this, but its apparantly been lost in the sands of time. heres one that says what i want, though 
“A nation’s greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members.” ~ Mahatma Ghandi
that sums up my view on helping people who are unable to help themselves… it raises us all up
That’s all well and good (and truly it is, I’ve said before that I support programs to assist the genuinely disabled, and, to a certain degree, the poor). But that isn’t what liberalism in my experience wants to do. Liberalism wants to take the view that the only reason some have more than others is because of some unfair advantage that the haves have which the have-nots do not, and therefore it is constantly seeking to redistribute the nation’s wealth so as to make things more ‘fair’.
I don’t believe that conservatives hate the poor at all. Many conservatives are poor themselves. What many conservatives do hate (or at least strongly dislike and oppose) are the self-appointed champions of the poor whose solution to almost everything is to take money from the people who’ve earned it (or otherwise legitimately obtained it) and spend it on other people in ways designed to “make things more fair”, when in reality all they are doing is creating a different kind of unfairness.
So in other words, conservatives don’t see liberal efforts to help the country’s weakest members, they see wholesale efforts constantly being made to redistribute the country’s wealth so everyone has a more or less equal share, and this of course is anathema to the conservative way of thinking. To us it flies in the face of what almost any rational person would consider fair, and it ignores the reality of human nature. People simply will not work as hard nor produce as much if the government takes the produce of it and gives it someone who hasn’t earned it, and people receiving such largess will not work to carry their own load if things are going to be given to them anyway by the government.
What conservatives would like to see with regard to the poor who are truly poor and want to better their lives are progams to help them through their current circumstances and then provide them with education and/or assistance that would allow them to increase their income and better their lot in life.
So you could say that conservatives want to help the weakest and poorest by providing the tools necessary to acheive a better life, whereas liberals just want to give them more of everyone else’s money – a solution that in my opinion leads to all sorts of fail on everyone’s part, the poor and everyone else as well.
i think a key issue we are having in this debate is that we are choosing to portray the opposites sides worst offenders. the 1% (WAG) of conservatives that want nothing to do with helping others, and the 1% (WAG) of liberals who want to help everyone at the expense of the more well off.
On an aside… I truly dislike that our laws are being created to cater to the lowest common denominator, rather than the highest (or at least middle? )
You quite miss the point. That I personally know someone who has been royally buggered is true enough, but my point is that most of us do. Its kind of like Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, few of us are farther than two from such a victim: our neighbor, our co-worker, wife’s hairdresser, etc. By this I mean to point out another variety of grass-roots movement, one born of growing personal awareness rather than awareness in the abstract, or awareness imposed from without.
Citations for screwing over by insurance companies abound, you can find them with perfect ease, they are thick upon the ground. If I had any faith whatever that such citations would change your mind, I would provide them. I do not.
As far as my personal chemical enthusiasms go, they are modest. Tried everything, don’t like much. My attitude is best expressed by the philosopher Willy Nelson who said: “I gave up whiskey for weed in 1975. May be the only truly smart thing I ever did.”
Then you also need to add the children and the next generation to your list of “weakest members.”
Children don’t vote and we are very good at creating entitlements that exceed all cost estimates and dumps the massive debt on them. When they become adults, a larger % of their future paycheck is siphoned off to pay interest on that debt – the debt we incurred today. They pay tomorrow for today’s mismanagement.
Why bother rounding up children for slave work in the coal mines when we can just exploit them surreptitiously? We can just dump our healthcare debt on them! Are we cruel, stupid, or both?