Yeah, I agree we mix different theories & approaches in a problematic way. But I don’t know that any philosophically pure idea will get through a diverse democracy.
I take that back. It could, with a Pericles. Ideal approaches just tend to get derailed.
Huh? Charities are part of the private sector too, ya know.
What? I’ve never seen anyone but a liberal say “sheeple.”
Please explain to me how I have misunderstood it. Thanks
This is the post I was remembering. I don’t know what form of “Just World Phenomenon” you’re accusing liberals of, but it seemed like you just dismissed the whole thing to go back to claiming we persecute you for some reason.
I’m a former Reaganite, former anarchist, former Religious Right Pubbie. I scold people like you because I know better.
And they don’t have the resources to do what a government can.
No it isn’t. The private sector wants to make immediate profits. Is that bad? No. However immediate profit does not work in solving ‘everything’. Many problems are too big, take too long to solve, the people who have them are too poor, or the problems are too decentralized to make a profit on solving them. So we have the public sector do it.
Profitable to a company in the short term and profitable to humanity in the long term aren’t always the same thing. Sometimes they are at odds. The role of government is to regulate private companies to force them to act in ways profitable to humanity as a whole in the long term, as much as reasonably possible.
Not only that but short term profits can cause long term problems. Dumping toxins in a river increases short term profits by increasing long term expenses and lost productivity on other people. Paying people scab wages increases short term profits but causes long term problems since nobody can afford what is being produced anymore.
There is a reason no functioning, human rights friendly wealthy democracy adopts libertarian economics. Market economics has its benefits but it is very short sighted.
In the war of rhetoric, Conservatives “hate the poor” just in the same way that Liberals are “soft on defense”. I don’t think Consertavites *hate *the poor. Their policies tend to not favor the poor, but that doesn’t automatically mean the poor are hated. Liberals don’t want the country to be overrun by Mexican troops or anything crazy like that either. They tend to think there’s too much emphasis shifted towards defense.
Nor the will.
Excluded middle. Plus the question is phrased dishonestly.
If I were dishonest, I’d flip the question: do you think that chance has an effect on your outcomes, or do you just believe that it is all a matter of your actions?
Clearly both your actions and chance has an effect on outcomes. You, however, dismiss chance as insignificant, and put a high value on your actions.
Think about your own past: One bout of cancer at the age of 20 and the subsequent removal of your insurance and … would your life be the same? Would you enjoy the same success?
You don’t hate the poor RR. You merely try to pretend that you are more successful than the poor due to your own work, and that chance played no role. Because if you acknowledge that chance plays a role in your life… well that’s scary isn’t it?
AMEN!!! Actually, I don’t think that librals think that all social ills can be cured by giant social programs. Just that they’ll be amereiorated somewhat.
And I hear you about the conservatives who think that everyone has the great good luck to go to Name Brand University. A LOT of rich people are just SO OUT of touch with how life is even for middle class folks.
I will readliy admit that there are poor people who are just… well its obvious why they are poor. They do things like buy a purebred dog even thou they may not have a place to live, (true story from my mom who works at an inner city health center) Or they can’t pay they bills but they have enough money for ciggerettes and a blackberry,
But a lot of people are poor b/c of circumstances beyond their control. I mean its not THEIR fault that they got sent to an inner city school (with really crappy resources) or lost their job or whatever.
Yes, we need to help break the cycle of people who are eternally on welfare. But its a fact that most people are on it to help them through the rough spots.
Heck, there are just as many middle class or upper class folks who feel entitled to stuff.
I know a middle class mom whose deaf son was doing awesome by ANY interepretation in school. But she wanted him to get straight As so that he could go to Name Brand College. So she went to arbitration so that her wittle boy could get the best of the best. (and it does seem like a lot of the deaf ed disagreement stories out there are from families who feel entitled to best of the best edcuation)
Um, no…that’s not what I said at all. Since you quoted me, I advise you to read the WHOLE paragraph. Doing so would point to this part here:
Read the first sentence above. There are some fine liberal economic experts who certainly do understand this stuff as well as any one else. Then there are the less knowledgeable types who don’t bother trying to actually understand the subject before projecting their wishes and world view and what they think is ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ onto the subject.
That’s nice, and probably accounts for why I voted for him. I don’t recall mentioning Obama in this thread, however…
Um no, actually, I’m not. You are not reading what I’m writing, basically.
Depends on the ‘conservative’…and on the ‘liberal’ as well. And also depends on whether or not straw is on sale. 
And yet, in the 70’s the top 1% were only paying something like 16-20% of the taxes. That’s kind of the crux…the top loaded rate was 70% (assuming your figure there is correct) yet over all that top 1% accounted for a much smaller total. Why do you suppose that is? Why were total tax revenues so much lower, in adjusted dollars, then as opposed to today, when everything is so geared to the rich? Why do the top 1% pay over 40% of the total tax now…and which bracket is paying less (as a percentage) today than was paying less in the 70’s?
And yet, as a percentage of total tax revenue they are paying more, both in terms of percentage and in terms of gross revenue. Why, despite the fact that they are making more of those dread profits (:eek:)?
-XT
Some remarks:
A political divide perhaps more important than “left vs. right” is those who believe in the power of rational thought vs. those who don’t. Let’s not argue against thoughtless strawmen, but against the best intellectual offering of a political view.
We all know it’s better to give a man a fishing-pole than to give him a fish. Yet conservatives often argue against funding education, not just food! Let’s not divert the debate to “Welfare Mamas.” Let’s talk about why right-wingers want Welfare Mama’s children to be uneducated.
Dick Cheney was one of many who voted to defund Head Start, despite that it pays for itself just with reduced cost of juvenile crime prosecution. It’s facts like this that lead some of us to conclude that some “conservatives” are not just interested in saving tax dollars: their goals require a society with an uneducated underclass. (I’m sure many “conservatives” read this and think “No, no, that’s not me!” Precisely! Your political choice is being twisted by cynics like Cheney.)
Public input is mandatory for desireable market operation. It’s amazing that so many “conservatives” don’t understand this. Wouldn’t gas companies be happy to sell cheaper leaded gasoline if they could? A cost-conscious consumer would be delighted to buy it; after all his children would breathe only a billionth of the fumes; it’s fumes from the billion other drivers that’s a problem. (When Cheney announced that, in effect, pollution control should be a matter of “individual morality”, I wasn’t sure if he was being extremely stupid or extremely cynical. Does anyone in this thread believe that Cheneyism?)
(Some conservatives (and liberals) will reject the preceding paragraph, preferring the Golden Rule. That might be an interesting separate thread, but the bottom-line is that societies cannot rely on the Golden Rule.)
I wish “libertarians” would grasp that absolute “liberty” is impossible. My liberty to walk streets unafraid counters your liberty to carry a gun. My liberty to enjoy beautiful parks counters your liberty to litter. My liberty not to pay taxes counters your liberty to feel secure with police and military protection. My liberty to build substandardly counters your liberty to live in a fire-proof building. And so on.
Let’s get down to specifics. Would gasoline companies have switched to unleaded without government intervention? Would charities be able to fund universal education without taxpayer help?
No you are not. You oppose a public health system, even though it is the economically rational choice. As a consequence it is a proper task for government within the limited role ascribed to it by fiscal conservatism.
Instead, your argument is ideological opposition regardless of the fiscal merit. That is radicalism.
I suppose I should try to get in while the getting is good.
For what it’s worth, I don’t really care much how you feel about the poor. I’m not exactly Jesus, myself. I don’t love most things or most people, but I do love rationality, efficiency, and accuracy. That’s why I pretty much have to tell you that you have the below quite wrong.
The charity that stops aliens from eating peoples’ brains is a great example of why you are wrong. There is a huge collective action problem here. Keeping our brains safe is a public good: once provided, there is no way to limit anyone else’s use of it. Either the aliens invade or they don’t. So it may be in everyone’s interest to want this charity, but it is equally in everyone’s interest to take a free ride and reap the benefits while someone else pays. If your neighbor pays and our brains stay in our boxes, good times, you just got something for nothing.
Let’s pretend that the private sector is full of maximizing actors and there is some sort of problem that faces everyone, or at least everyone in some industry. What we tend to see is that if you have an industry with a few very dominant players, all of the weaker players just do nothing and let the big ones take care of the problem. Since the major players are the ones who tend to benefit the most from solving the problem at cost, sure enough, they pay up. But in large, competitive industries without dominant players, the problem does not get fixed because the maximizing actors fail to take action collectively. It’s not that the private sector doesn’t want the problem to be solved, it’s that individual actors don’t want to pay for a public good if they cannot be excluded from it after it has been provided. Free riding is the rational response to problems of collective action. And so people tend to have to tolerate second- or third-best outcomes because they can’t get their shit together to take collective action.
And so we have a government that provides national defense. If it were left up to individuals to kick in individually for national defense, we would either have none or have a suboptimal amount of the good provided.
My sense of your political beliefs is that you think the government should only be in the business of providing public goods that no one can practically be excluded from. Is this a fair interpretation?
That is far from a settled matter. I’m not suggesting there’s no argument for economic viability (though I don’t buy it at all), but reasonable people must concede that there is a basis for skepticism over how “budget neutral” the proposed changes will be, or that tens of millions of currently uninsured people will be covered without an unfavorable economic impact, or that any seismic change in the system has no risk of disastrous unintended consequences and enormous economic problems.
Whereas the argument against is that the US is singularly unable to do what every other 1st world country does.
There is no complexity to it. The maths is rigorous: Every other case delivers more, better at less cost.
Not when the ‘reasonable concession’ is being asked for by anti-government folk who simply want to use it as a crack through which to pump poison into the machinery of the state. The proper response under those conditions is to point out that a spade is indeed a spade, cut them off from conversation, and enter discourse with other reasonable people.
No, the arguments against are more specific. For example, the CBO determined the Senate bill has sufficient offsets for the $871B in additional expenses. Fiscal conservatives can reasonably point out that, for example, $465B in offsets are Medicare reductions, and that similar offsets that prior legislation “committed to” have been voted down for each of the past 7 years. I don’t buy the “permanency” of these cuts for a second. I simply do NOT believe that this is the time they mean it.
I mention that as one example. There is a reasonable skepticism over what is on the table (which is all I can react to), even if you have arrived at a different conclusion. I have zero faith in the Federal government’s ability to install and execute a large, efficient program. There’s very little precedent for it, however great it works elsewhere. If someone can show a real proposal, with real numbers, that I can react to, I will. But until then, I reject the notion that we must do something without regard to the costs. Everything looks great if we examine it only in terms of the benefits.
What does that even mean? I’m not sure how to react to it. For the record, I oppose people pumping poison into the machinery of the state. I think.
It means that the nation is currently beset with people who want to make sure that government is perceived as a failure, and always part of the problem, never part of the solution.
There’s no point trying to engage people who are inherently hostile to government in a discussion of how government should be involved in a particular issue. They’ve already made up their minds that it shouldn’t be involved.
This isn’t rocket science, Stratocaster. No one in their right mind would ask a prohibitionist what brand of whiskey they should purchase. The same holds for asking anti-government folk about healthcare reform.