What do you mean, “how is it going to get done”? You act as if “it” is something that absolutely must be done. That is not the case. “It” is just something that YOU think must be done.
We are talking about the proper role of government. If “it” is not within the proper role of government, then the government shouldn’t do “it.” At that point, anybody that wants “it” done can do “it.” If not enought people want “it” done to do “it,” then “it” doesn’t get done. And the fact that “it” doesn’t get done is not an indictment of the idea that “it” is not within the proper role of government.
I haven’t read through the whole thread, but I think that one answer to this question (though not the only one) is the fallacy of the converse (a.k.a. Affirming the consequent).
If a person were apathetic or worse toward the poor, he sure as heck wouldn’t want the government taking his money away from him and giving it to the poor. (If P, then Q.)
So, the fallacious reasoning goes, a person who doesn’t want the government giving money to the poor must be apathetic or worse toward them. (Q, therefore P.)
Of course, there are other reasons why a person might not want the government spending their money on the poor in that particular way, such as that they’d prefer to spend it in a way that they believe would be more beneficial to the poor.
Some statements in this thread remind me that lots of people, especially self-styled “practical” or “real world” people, have very funny ideas about what theory is and how it is related to reality. People often mock “theoretical” ideas in favor of “real world” ideas as though theories are just ideas people pull out of their asses.
Scientists - including social scientists - are constantly modifying their theories to fit real-world data. Theories that are obviously contradicted by real-world data are modified or nixed.
I realize that I may be just venting some annoyance here, but I wish people would stop knocking “theory” as though the word referred to nothing more than a collection of ideas a group of stuffy ivory tower intellectuals baked up one day.
Right. And before government got involved charities were responsible for the care of the poor, and lots of them died. Any you guys say tsktsk and start threads about how odd it is that anyone thinks conservatives hate the poor. In fantasy land people will give enough, in the real world they don’t.
It’s not only the poor. In conservative fantasy land you cut taxes first and then magically spending will get cut. In the real world you get a deficit. If conservatives really cared about this stuff, they would cut spending first, and only then cut taxes. It will never happen, of course, because conservatives don’t give a crap about fiscal responsibility, only some combination of starving the beast and more for the rich.
If you were a politician, you’d realize that your constituents in fact want stuff from government for them. Don’t give it, and you won’t be in office long. They also want to pay less, of course. A leader talks about the hard choices. A craven pretends to give the people what they want and dump the expense on the future.
The leader also knows when a deficit is required, just to be clear.
This is very true. But the law needs to differentiate the generous man who simply funds a private charity from the man who simply accumulates wealth to himself, if it is to encourage the private sector to accomplish these things. That’s why even many fiscal conservatives favor tax credits & deductions for charitable donations.
I am SO sick of the assumption that private stuff is automaticly better then public stuff.
Is there ANY evidence at ALL that privately run things are more fiscally responsible then teh EVIL gubmit stuff?
I also hate the assumption that EVERYONE has the abilty to draw on private resources.
You know the severely mentally ill (not druggies or drinkers, but more like schiezophernics) homeless? Most of them are out on the streets b/c they had NO WHERE else to go after the government closed their insistutions.
If the " get rid of stuff helping the poor" people were in charge, I’d be out on the street like those deaf beggers of old.
Fiscally responsible? That’s not the only issue here; efficiency is an issue. Free-marketers often claim that competition tends to breed efficiency. I find it hard to disagree.
I find it easy. We are talking about competition for profit, not efficiency; which means if doing a worse job is more profitable, then competition will select against a more efficient enterprise. Insurance being a prime example; where the best way to make money is to weasel out of paying off on your policy.
And this gets us right back to why liberals think the fiscal conservatives are selfish. You think it is OK to use violence as long as you benefit. You are selfish, not me.
There is some truth to that. Automobiles and personal electronics are cheaper and more reliable than they were in the past. Anyone who tried to sell a car with the same level of comfort and reliability as the ones in 1920 would go out of business fast.
However a problem with the free market is that a great way to increase profit is to engage in destructive behaviors. Enslave your workforce. Capture your customers so they have no alternatives. Monopolize the market. Dump all expenses onto anyone but yourself (the government, other companies, etc). Pollute rather than clean up your waste. Block research about the negative health effects of your products.
As a result you need tons and tons of regulations on private enterprise. You need labor laws, anti-trust laws, environmental laws, consumer protection laws, etc.
There are no truly unregulated markets in the developed world, and there is a reason for it. Unregulated markets lead to oligarchy, inefficiency and plutocracy. It is more a question of how much regulation is needed to force markets to work in the best interests of consumers.
Weaseling out of paying off on a policy is a good way for insurance companies to make money, but laws that try to seal up loopholes that allow such weaseling are not fundamentally anti-free-market. A game kept under tighter refereeing is still competitive, because players are still pit against each other in a way that encourages excellence. If Maradona’s Hand of God goal had been caught the game would have still been competitive.
Which gets to the most important point: if you think that competition usually works against efficiency, you really have a huge case to make.
Ah, and now we have the libertarian attempt to pretend that taxation is the equivalent of armed robbery. A convenient attitude for people like libertarians, who believe they have the right to take everything they can get from society, but owe nothing in return.
It’s your kind of philosophy that encourages and justifies violence. If we don’t owe anything to other people, if we have no moral obligation to care about them then there’s no moral reason to not just pick up a gun and take what you like. If it’s OK to starve a million people for profit, it’s certainly moral to kill one person to feed yourself. Libertarians of course contradict their basic philosophy and say they oppose violence, but that’s because violence is the last resort of the downtrodden. They want to forbid the poor all legal recourse, reduce them to serfs, and then convince them that all that will be left, violence, is wrong.
You are conflating “society” with “the government.” They are not equivalent. Society is based on voluntary exchanges. The government has the power to take what it wants.
Society is NOT based on voluntary exchanges; there’s plenty of coercion besides that of the government. And, one reason the government can force you to give it things, is to make you pay what you owe. Which is what you and your fellow libertarians want to avoid.
Society is based on pressure. There are a variety of social tools of control (anger, shame, remorse, guilt) designed to control our behavior.
At the same time, government is the people. The people go out and vote for politicians. You make it sound like the government is some foreign entity that occupies this land. They are actually a reflection of the beliefs, values and agenda of the people who live here.
The government takes what it wants because the public have consistently voted in politicians and told them to take and redistribute the wealth.
If you don’t believe me, run as a politician who wants to dismantle medicare, social security, public education, public transit, etc. and see how many votes you get when people truly understand your agenda.
The government can’t take 40% of your income and use it to build a mile tall statue of Johnny Depp, because the public don’t want it to. However the public do want the government to take some of our money and spend it on universal pensions for the elderly, universal education and health care. As a result we have these programs. And anyone who tries to dismantle them is committing political suicide.
Even the GOP tries to portray itself as defenders of medicare in the recent health care debates. Its democracy, people vote for what they want. And we want redistribution of wealth.
This isn’t even wrong–it’s just looking at everything from a very odd perspective. It is not the case that a person owes the government whatever the government tells the person to give.
I saw the movie Avatar today (for the second time, woo-hoo), and for a movie with such allegedly leftie sentiments, it contained a very telling line which in my opinion goes a long way toward explaining why liberals love to call conservatives selfish (or greedy or evil or that we want to see sick people dying in the streets or any of the myriad other condemnations liberals so love to hurl at conservatives). To wit:
“You see someone who has something you want and you make them your enemy in order to justify the taking.”
Der Trihs, of course, has elevated this tactic to an art form.
If the government gave a damn about making people pay what they owed, the progressive tax structure would be a forgotten memory. Unless, of course, you actually believe that you become exponentially more reliant on the government as your own income (and subsequently, your assets) increase?
Not to mention that this explicitly goes against your own statements in the past, where you expressed a willingness to rob or even murder people who had had no dealings with you and owed you nothing, in order to sustain your own life.
Can you imagine the horrors of govt administered health insurance? You might end up with layers of bureaucracy and offices talking to each other, without actually delivering health outcomes!