The painter
Ok so my place of occupation is being painted. One of the painters I know because he knows my boss and I have golfed with him. I started to ask him questions. He works only about 30 hours a week, plays handball and goes to the driving range all week and on weekends he golfs. He owns his own little house in Detroit and is pretty much his own boss. Not that much money made, but a comfortable life. I asked him who he voted for, and I was surprised when he replied "Bush". You know the guy isn't rich, he isn't scared of terrorists, he isn't a jesus-freaker, he just wants his own money and his own life. You don't have to be a millionaire to appreciate self-reliance.
posted by Clupbert @ 11:26 PM
11 comments
11 Comments:
No it is selfish to demand that others take care of you by law.
Who the fuck am I oppressing you retard?
Most people assume the free market means one has to be selfish, and analysts often point to Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations as a case in point. However, this book is part of a broader work on ethics, and Smith himself recognized that:
"How selfish soever a man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it".
I don't think it's a matter of being poor or rich. Wealth and its opposite 'illth' define a much broader term. One can be cash poor but have friends, family and a community to help them out. A person who has that isn't poor at all.
But laying the blame of your own condition on your environment, the tax structure or the income distribution, that's a cop-out. Once you find that determination to make a change, you initially need the help of others, but no poor person wants to accept hand-outs forever.
If you believe that more handouts and more money will solve poverty, just go live on a Canadian Aboriginal Reserve.
What are you talking about? Seriously, I'm as priveleged as 80% of the people in this country. I work 5 days a week to pay my tuition asshole. And the illusion of choice is a pretty good one, because when people choose to graduate high school, have children after 21, and be married when they do, they don't end up in "poverty" like 95% of the time. If we didn't have choices, then you couldn't see statistics like that one. People who choose to get educated don't end up in poverty. And anyone can get educated in this country. So when people don't prepare themselves, then they are choosing to be poor. If we didn't have choice, economics wouldn't work and it does.
"That is why in the United States (like no other developed country), the gap between the rich and the poor is growing at an incredible rate. "
This is just not true. You give no evidence. Median household income in the U.S. is $48,000, so what does that mean? It means half the households have more than that and half have less. I mean where is this "gap" if 50% of the households have more than $48,000?
"To take the illusion of choice and personal responsibility away from people would hardly be productive and would likely create a culture of dependency"
This is admitting that there is choice. Because you are basically saying that if you have the illusion, then you will work hard and if you don't, then you won't. So obviously you have the choice to work hard or not. Because even in either case, there are some who work hard and some who don't, the percentages change. There is such thing as free will, and you're a dumbass who does choose to lose all your arguments to me. You can say that I "don't understand" but the truth is that I have a genius IQ, so I don't "not understand" much.
Re: chase the clouds away.
The gap between the rich and poor is growing in other developed countries, and actually faster than in the United States in some cases.
The Gini index is a measure of income inequality. It is calculated from a Lorenz curve in which cumulative household income is ranked against the number of families arranged from poorest to richest. The index is the ratio of two things: the area between a country's Lorenz curve and a 45 degree line, and the entire traingle area under the 45 degree line. The more equal income distribution is, the closer the curve is to the 45 degree line (a theoretical land where all income is equal for every household, i.e.; a ridiculous liberal paradise).
The Gini coefficient is the accepted method for calculating income equality, and is used extensively by the United Nations Development Reports, governments, and economists.
That being said, the Gini coefficient is lowest in Japan and Denmark, and highest in Sub Saharan countries. Countries with strong histories of socialism, actually, rank very poorly on the Gini Index. The Central American countries, particularly.
The United States falls on the lower end of the Gini scale, and in fact, below China, which is arguably the largest communist haven in the world. The United States is only 6% lower on the Gini Index than France, and 9%lower than Canada.
Several developed countries' Gini growth rates are higher than the United States.
In closing, the statement about no other country's "gap" between rich and poor growing faster than the United States' is false.
Next time, try using some actual data or event to back up your statements. You come off as an idealistic, unrealistic poli sci/liberal arts major.
To strengthen your arguments against "the system", I would suggest taking some Marxism classes, and learning how to actually intellectually subvert capitalism in a technical way, instead of spouting postmodern gibberish that has no grounding in fact.
Also, read Kapital vol 1-3. It is Marx's deconstruction of the capitalist system, in a very technical and philosophical manner, something I am sure you would appreciate. I can appreciate most of what you write from a moral and ethical standpoint, but I am from a realist framework, and cannot accept a lot of it.
Some Political Economy or Int'l Relations would help your arguments. Dr Keating is excellent, as was Dr Soederberg.
If anyone is looking for a good economics book to read, I recommend Freakonomics. You could burn through it in 5 hours in the bookstore if you want to fight 'the man', or buy it, as it's probably on sale.
There is no constitutional right to be rich. You get that way by hard work, ingenuity and not being a whiney crybaby expecting everyone to take care of you just because they have more than you.
WAAAAAAAAAAAA!!! You have more money than I do, therefore, you should (be forced by law to) give me some of yours!!
WAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!! Fuck off, you loser. Get off your ass and make your own money.
The End. :) Although you guys said it much more eloquently.
"Chase," the reason you think you always win arguments is because of your non sequiturs and rhetoric.
To answer your question, nobody chooses to be poor in the sense of "I love poverty" in the same way nobody chooses to be stupid... not to the same extent, anyway. But laziness is a wonderful thing.
It's not to say that all poor are lazy, but almost every one of the poor / pandhandlers / street people I've met have, to say the least, one hell of a vaccuum where a work ethic should be.
I'll give you an example. I live in Trudeaupia, and on the West Coast, which is as close to Wester Europe as many a blue stater will ever get. At a time when the minimum wage in the province was about $6 or $7/hr, a guy I know went out to panhandlers and asked them to man a magazine stand. Just a normal street magazine stand. They'd get $10 an hour, plus a small commission (I think 3-5% on everything they sold). The guy was literally going out, asking people if they'd work for him. (For the record, I'm thriving on less than $10/hr right now.) The response this guy got was an unapologetic "no." Didn't want to work, didn't want to do it.
How can anyone possibly be an apologist for this?
How about a guy at a job I quit, where because he showed up, he thought he should make the same as the boss?
As for the "rich-poor gap widening," that argument is a load of horseshit.
Three points to that:
1) Says who? I keep hearing this, but nobody can ever seem to cite me a source... not even a forged UN report.
2) If the top 10% have a proportional increase in their real income of, say, 11%, while the bottom 10% have a proportional increase in real income of 9% or 10%, the gap is still widening, but the "poor" are still far better off.
Similarly, if the poor are made, say, $1000 better off a year, and the rich are made $1001 better off a year, though the proportional gap is decreasing, you can always argue that the gap is widening in a dollar amount.
Stop playing with bullshit statistics.
3) There will always be someone making $0 a year. Therefore, with an immobile base, the argument is a farce.
Might I also point out that in places with a more "equal" standard of living, the standard of living itself is actually far lower than it would be in the states. (I have a friend on exchange in Finland who told me just that.) The bottom line is that someone who is "poor" by American standards is quite well off by almost any other measure.
Finally, I suggest you read Fred's "Pitying the Poor." Fred is not a Republican (he calls President Bush "the Bushlet"), but he has a very particular perspective on the world which, even though you might not agree with him, you must consider nonetheless.
Jarrett's comments reminded me of this article:
How Everyone Can Get Richer as Per-Capita Income Falls
Suppose everyone made at least 100,000 dollars per year, and suppose those dollars commanded the same amount of resources (no inflation or higher prices).
If the top 1% made 1 trillion dollars per year, the income inequality would be staggering, yet people at the 'bottom' would still have plenty of resources to live.
This is called "Easterlin's hypothesis" that wealth is relative. They would still see themselves as poor if they compared themselves to the top 1%.
People wonder why poor hilbillies in the backwoods vote republican. They do it because:
1. They don't want to rely on the government. Ie, they have pride.
2. If they were in the situation of the Hitons, Trumps or DuPonts, they would not want people making huge demands.
3. They want to keep government out of their pocket book. Period.
Every time my dad is stopped by a Native, (or "Aboriginal Person" as we in Canada are compelled by our government's policy of political corectness to refer to them as - Indians in the US)and one of these guys asks him for money, he says "No, but I'll tell you what. If you want to earn a living, be here at 7 am and I will give you a job, 20 bucks an hour". (And believe me, he can do that).
Every time he does that he gets told to fuck off.
He's poor because he chooses to be. At least that particular person was. But it certainly shapes my Dad's image of street persons.
Oh, an I think I will add to Jarrett's statement that:
"Might I also point out that in places with a more "equal" standard of living, the standard of living itself is actually far lower than it would be in the states. (I have a friend on exchange in Finland who told me just that.) The bottom line is that someone who is "poor" by American standards is quite well off by almost any other measure."
If you are tempted to say "well, look at Scandinavia. Ha-ha". I would have to say that yes, Scandinavia does have a pretty high level of GDP.
But the resources you command with that high level of GDP seem smaller when you take into account that there's a 25% Value Added Tax hidden in everything you buy. From a consumer standpoint, you 'get' less, if that's what you value.
It depends on what you want in life I guess. Scandinavia's okay if you want the state to take care of you in old age. And it's not too hot. But the taxes are a pain.
John is speechless. Awesome comments everyone, except for you John, yours sucked.
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