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 Manchu wrote:
Perhaps unpacking how one wants to see oneself can clarify or bring consistency to one's political beliefs.

The problem, I think, is that very few people start with base principles or a real understanding of the values of their political position, and build from there up to preferred policies. Instead people start with identity, attach themselves to the candidate who champions their identity through a mostly emotional process, and then finds a way to agree with all (or enough) of their policies.

Democracy for Realists lays out a very good case for this unfortunate reality.

It's worth strongly considering. There are indications that are credited in professional electoral politics that a person with 5% of available information on candidate's positions and background will vote the same way as if they have 95% of that information.

It's very possible to influence someone's vote, but it's not a question of getting people to read more or a greater depth of news.

Nobody said elections were meant to be about sound policy making.

 Galas wrote:
I think thats the biggest problem. I'm sure that, with a more efficient goverment, people is more willing to pay higger taxes, because you see how they are used and the actual improvement in your life. Even if it doesn't affect directly to you.

Even with efficient government people still resent paying taxes, and don't realise the scope of services and facilities government provides. I mean, how would a person even know if their government was efficient? Do you know what the road you drove to work on cost to build? Do you know what the road should have cost, if it was handled with absolute efficiency?

I'm not saying the roads were done efficiently, I don't know. The problem is no-one else does either. People just take services and infrastructure for granted, but remain resentful about the taxes they pay.

 Just Tony wrote:
And it also depends on what lens you view it from. Living where I do, there are three large towns a half hour or so away from me or less that had large groups of illegals deported multiple times because of certain factories/processing plants that either turned a blind eye to such things, or didn't do their due diligence in that regard.


Take that, and take into consideration after a breeze through the last 6 months of Yahoo news stories there were at least a dozen stories about immigrants being deported and the heartbreaking family separation. Most, if not all, of the immigrants in this story had admitted to voting in elections. Hell, one lady from... Texas, I think? ...had been caught committing voter fraud over a decade ago and wound up getting pinched again, but deported this time.

Now, I'm no fan of government control, and consider myself very Libertarian as far as that goes. But you DO have an issue with a massive number of undocumented immigrants in the country who DO vote...

I definitely believe this is a thing that really happens: that illegal aliens commit totally provable fraud, which could have them jailed and then deported, for absolutely no tangible gain. Sure.

 skyth wrote:
I'm calling BS on this claim as it doesn't back all the other data that came out. It would be major front page news if this were true.

Thing is, never mind that there's no evidence for this, even as a piece of fiction it makes absolutely no sense. Can anyone even imagine a slightly plausible process in which people who just got caught working illegally would just start volunteering that they also committed electoral fraud? And if illegal immigrants started making such incredible admissions somehow the Trump administration does nothing to publicise this, despite being desperate to make any kind of case that illegal voting is common?

The whole thing is not just unproven, it's plainly absurd. But Just Tony will hear it and buy into it entirely, because he wants to believe. Because it lets him continue to think of himself as a libertarian while supporting voter ID laws that will make it harder for many people to lawfully vote.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Galas wrote:
Wait. Can people vote in USA without an identification document?

You can in Australia as well. You just go up to the ballot, say your name and address and they tick you off.

This is no problem because cheating through electoral fraud is a horrible idea. You would need a vast number of people with a very sophisticated operation to make the slightest dent in a handful of marginal seats. If some piece of law is that important to you it's cheaper and way safer to just donate money to both parties to make sure the law you want is written.


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pelicaniforce wrote:
It's worth strongly considering. There are indications that are credited in professional electoral politics that a person with 5% of available information on candidate's positions and background will vote the same way as if they have 95% of that information.

It's very possible to influence someone's vote, but it's not a question of getting people to read more or a greater depth of news.

Nobody said elections were meant to be about sound policy making.

Yep. I guess the idea though was the for the most part while the system was messy and full of lots of stupid but the stupid mostly cancelled out other stupid and left mostly sensible, if self-interested voters to decide an election. But a couple of high profile results in the last couple of years have shown that we can't even trust elections to fall in favour of people's own narrow interests. It turns out that appeals to emotion and (false) affinity are more important than platforms that lay out a coherent way to improve people's lives.

Democracy is essential, of course, but it's far more dependent on the goodwill of the political class than we realised.

I can't tell if you think democracy is doomed to produce dicatators or dicatatorship is ultimately preferable to deomcracy.


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Also I cannot figure out how supporting Voter ID laws makes anyone feel more libertarian and I say that as someone who leans toward libertariansism (that is, away from authoritarianism). As I have tried to lay out ITT, the Voter ID law agenda in the States is clearly, fundamentally authoritarian.

One way to look at it would be to ask: What is the negative impact?

Examining ID Laws under the assumption that the threat is not evident is a quick way to get the answer that the proponents are Authoritarian (or, at least, more Authoritarian that the oppositon).

 Selym wrote:
One way to look at it would be to ask: What is the negative impact?

Examining ID Laws under the assumption that the threat is not evident is a quick way to get the answer that the proponents are Authoritarian (or, at least, more Authoritarian that the oppositon).

Other than the fact that facts back up that assumption

Manchu wrote:

 Supertony51 wrote:
Once again, expansion or no, the government has a obligation to preserve the integrity of the election. That would be a basic obligation to ensure the proper function of the government on a most basic level.

But if there actually is no demonstrable threat to the integrity of elections then you are left with expanding government authority/appealing to government power for the purely theoretical sake of the authority itself. That would be prototypical authoritarianism. Your politics on this issue, at least, are not only not libertarian but also pretty explicitly contrary to libertarianism.

 Ouze wrote:
are US politics threads OK again now?

Not so far as I have heard.

Manchu wrote:But again we stipulated for the sake of argument that the integrity of the election is under no demonstrable threat.

No, it HAS happened. So even if someone is found ONCE by the Keystone Kops here in the US, can you definitely say that there are NO people who are getting away with it.? That is a pretty big leap of faith, one that I can't make given my own personal experiences.

Ouze wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:
And it also depends on what lens you view it from. Living where I do, there are three large towns a half hour or so away from me or less that had large groups of illegals deported multiple times because of certain factories/processing plants that either turned a blind eye to such things, or didn't do their due diligence in that regard.


Take that, and take into consideration after a breeze through the last 6 months of Yahoo news stories there were at least a dozen stories about immigrants being deported and the heartbreaking family separation. Most, if not all, of the immigrants in this story had admitted to voting in elections. Hell, one lady from... Texas, I think? ...had been caught committing voter fraud over a decade ago and wound up getting pinched again, but deported this time.

Now, I'm no fan of government control, and consider myself very Libertarian as far as that goes. But you DO have an issue with a massive number of undocumented immigrants in the country who DO vote...

I definitely believe this is a thing that really happens: that illegal aliens commit totally provable fraud, which could have them jailed and then deported, for absolutely no tangible gain. Sure.

No tangible gain? Any attempt to get people into office who have an amnesty viewpoint is tangible gain for ANY illegal in this country.

Oh, and three seconds of thinking of the best way to word the question and typing it into google:

https://www.google.com/#q=Deported+immigrants+voter+fraud&spf=1500640276679

Amazing. So sort through, I'm sure none of these sources will be "valid" in your eyes... (damn, can't find an eyeroll smiley. At least not one that's easily discernible...)

 Just Tony wrote:


Oh, and three seconds of thinking of the best way to word the question and typing it into google:

https://www.google.com/#q=Deported+immigrants+voter+fraud&spf=1500640276679

Amazing. So sort through, I'm sure none of these sources will be "valid" in your eyes... (damn, can't find an eyeroll smiley. At least not one that's easily discernible...)

First sentences of the first link;

Despite repeated statements by Republican political leaders that American elections are rife with illegal voting, credible reports of fraud have been hard to find and convictions rarer still.

In an article about a resident who can barely read and didn't realize she wasn't born here cause she arrived as an infant. What stellar example of the millions of illegals who must be doing it on purpose. If only you spent 3 seconds time actually reading.

Mr. Birdsall said Mr. Paxton’s office had been prepared to dismiss all charges against Ms. Ortega if she agreed to testify on voting procedures before the Texas Legislature.

Wow, that may well be the first actually sleazy thing that has come up in this thread. "Confirm what we want to believe or we'll slam you with the harshest penalties we can."

Lets see, second article on the list. Welp here's a Peruvian who voted twice illegally, and got caught. The next one is about the same woman in the first article, oh this is actually kind of funny;

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton – for whom Ortega voted in 2014 – assisted in the prosecution.

Like actually funny funny XD

Fourth link is the same Peruvian woman. Fifth link is just about general deportation's being down under Trump while arrests are up, doesn't even have the word "vote" in its text. Then its the Peruvian woman gain. I suspected I'd quickly find lots of bull in the next one but to humor you I read it anyway until I got to this part;

For example, in East Chicago, Indiana, a city with 30,000 residents, voting fraud was so systemic in 2003 that the State Supreme Court ordered a new election with heightened verification.

So I checked on it! Good news is that this is an accurate statement. Bad news is that it involves no illegals voting so evidence for voter fraud yes, but evidence for illegals voting in massive numbers no. It's a local election that was swung by 123 votes, a pretty narrow margin for a guy who cheated to get the win, and he got caught, and a new election was ordered. looks like the system is working just fine, why complicate it further? Besides its Chicago. Is anyone here really surprised? The police chief was running his own personal black site for pete's sake it's widely recognized as one of the most corruption ridden cities in one of the most corruption ridden states in the country. I think voter fraud is but one of many problems that needs cleaning up there. For anyone who wants a follow up on this harrowing tale, Pabey who demanded the initial recounts against fraudulent winner Robert Pastrick won the recount and then got removed from office for stealing government funds! Just nothing but winners in that scenario hot damn... But no evidence of illegals voting here. Looks like fradulant ballots were cast by city employees using dead names and addresses. Sure is a good thing we rolled up a whole bunch of checks for that stuff since 2003 eh?

Okay Tony back to you! Next link is about the Peruvian woman again. Then there's another article about the first woman. After that's its a CBS article I remember reading when it first came out. Hilarious story. Illegal guy's family, who can legally vote, vote for Donald Trump and are then shocked when the guy who had spent the last few years working with ICE to obtain legal status gets arrested and subsequently deported. Like seriously, did you think Trump was fething joking when he was talking about cracking down on illegal immigration?

Welp I'm at the end of page one and its been like, 30 minutes. The second page actually doesn't mention any new cases just looking at the search page itself. Do I have to keep going or can we just admit now that maybe there isn't anywhere near as much evidence of this as you seem to have convinced yourself? I'm pretty sure I've already managed to spend more time on this than you just today XD

Whether or not undocumented immigrants are actually illegally voting in US elections, much less at what frequency or why, is beyond the scope of this particular discussion.

Just Tony, what you missed is that we are making an assumption that (basically) this doesn't happen for the sake of argument, to determine whether posters support Voter ID laws regardless of whether elections are actually threatened.

Selym, a basic negative impact of passing Voter ID laws - from a libertarian POV - is that it's an expansion of government. From a libertarian POV, the crucial question is, do these laws address an actual problem effectively enough to overcome that? If we assume yes, then I could see libertarian-leaning people supporting Voter ID laws. But, again, if we assume no then it's very difficult to see how supporting these laws is anything but authoritarian.

 sebster wrote:

 Galas wrote:
I think thats the biggest problem. I'm sure that, with a more efficient goverment, people is more willing to pay higger taxes, because you see how they are used and the actual improvement in your life. Even if it doesn't affect directly to you.

Even with efficient government people still resent paying taxes, and don't realise the scope of services and facilities government provides. I mean, how would a person even know if their government was efficient? Do you know what the road you drove to work on cost to build? Do you know what the road should have cost, if it was handled with absolute efficiency?

I'm not saying the roads were done efficiently, I don't know. The problem is no-one else does either. People just take services and infrastructure for granted, but remain resentful about the taxes they pay.

The average person already knows that the govt is inefficient, that's why they resent paying taxes. The federal govt collects trillions of dollars in taxes every year and the states and municipalities levy their share of taxes too and yet we still have a grossly neglected infrastructure. We have neglected roads and bridges, an outdated archaic power grid, outmoded public education system, etc. so where does all the money go? We pay a whole slew of local taxes to cover the roads/bridges and the pay federal income tax to cover the federal roads/bridges but they're still underfunded so why isn't the govt prioritizing spending to fix them? Well, you know, politics, :shrug:. If the govt can't address basic needs in a common sense manner then yeah people are going to resent being forced to give them money to address the needs that they're ignoring.

In my state to finance construction of new school and increase education funding the state legislature decided to legalize a state lottery. We never had any legalized gambling before but the state gave itself an exception to have a lottery so they could raise money for a very necessary common good in an incredibly inefficient and unfair manner. The state spends millions of dollars to run and advertise the lottery so that 25% of money used to buy lottery tickets can be spent on education but 63% of that 25% is spent on "non instructional support personnel" which means a majority of the small amount of money that goes to fund education is being spent on people who don't actually educate anyone and all the money that goes into public education for the public good is raised only from people who choose to buy lottery tickets. That's just stupid. If we need more money for public school in our state then just take another $10 from every person who files state income tax returns and send it directly to education spending, eliminate the millions of dollars of overhead and stop having the state spend money on advertising to convince people to engage in an activity that has to have PSAs attached at the end about how to get help if you find yourself dangerously addicted to the dangerously addictive activity the state is trying to convince you to participate in.

In a similar vein every time there is a budget crunch the services that the govt chooses to cut are always the ones that seem rather important and are the most likely to convince people to agree to the higher taxes. Closing libraries, cutting arts programs at schools, reducing police services etc. because apparently every other cent spent in the budget is vitally important so there's literally no other way to reduce costs. Year after year, regardless of which party or politicians are in charge govt continually shows us that they do a terribly job of prioritizing spending tax revenue in a manner that does the most good for the public so why should people be eager to give them more money?


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Mario wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:

No it just requires a reliable means to constrain government within set limitations of its authority.

The government isn't run by experts, they don't come up with the best policies or smartest solutions, they're just the people that won elections. Would you want Mitch McConnell, Chuck Shumer, Ted Cruz, Maxine Waters or Jeff Sessions to baby sit your kids? Balance your checkbook? Run the company that employs you? It's fething scary the people we elect and appoint to be in charge of everything and the less power they have over our lives the better off we all would be.

Neither are all companies run by experts. You could turn this whole argument around with all the failures in the open market. Do you want to the people who were responsible for Deepwater Horizon to get even more opportunities to create environmental disasters or the bankers who caused the 2008 recession to balance your checkbook? Statistically you don't want the people who run companies to actually run companies (most companies end in bankruptcy)?

It's fething scary to see all these people free to do all the bad stuff and we can't even vote them out of office. The less power they have over our lives the better off we all would be.

It's great that there are failures in the free market, that's what generates innovation and better service. If you run your business badly you go out of business, if you govern badly you usually get to keep governing. Financial companies and car manufacturers mismanaged themselves into bankruptcy but instead of letting them fail the govt bailed them out. Congress had had a terrible approval rating for years and no matter what party is in power or what politicians are in office every election the majority of incumbents win re-election. What percentage of politicians get impeached or recalled? It's a much smaller percentage than the percentage of business that fail but we have no shortage of outrage inducing conduct and legislation done by politicians. I can pick and choose what companies I patronize with my business but I can't pick and choose what laws apply to me no matter how horrible and unjust I might think they are. At least the companies in the private sector have to follow the laws and regulations just like everybody else whereas the govt gets to make up whatever rules they feel necessary. The politicians didn't have to repeal regulations that helped create the financial crisis in 2008 but they chose to do so, businesses couldn't have done that on their own. The govt decided that my 4th amendment rights don't apply if I want to get on an airplane, not the airlines.




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 Selym wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:

Why are you so focused on the wealth gap? The wealth gap is a red herring, the difference between the highest and the lowest isn't important, what's important is the amount of wealth on the low end. If I waved a magic wand and doubled everyone's income instantly everyone would be better off, the lowest earners would see the most significant improvement in their lives, the wealthiest wouldn't see much change at all and the wealth gap would also double. If people on the low end can earn enough to achieve financial stability and help create opportunities to try to better themselves then that would be awesome and great for society regardless of the fact that people like Bill Gates and Lebron James would still be orders of magnitude wealthier than the people on the low end of the spectrum.

If you doubled everyone's income, you'd devalue the currency. A person's wealth is based on what proportion of the world's available money they have, not the hardcount. That's why in post WW1 Germany, with hyperinflation making everyone's pay skyrocket, people just continuously got worse off.

I can't think of a single instance in which wage increases triggered hyperinflation. The majority of instances of hyperinflation have resulted from govts running huge deficits financed by money creation. A govt running up a 10 trillion dollar deficit and then printing up 0 trillion dollars to pay it off is different from employers deciding that a job whose work was worth $8 is now worth $16 isn't going to going to require the national mint to print out billions of new notes every month. Increasing wages, especially on the lower end of the income spectrum to put more employed people closer to the current median average income isn't going to trigger hyperinflation but if I ever do come into possession of a magic wand that enables to me double everyone's income overnight I will devote more time to researching your concern before I make it happen.

Goverment is seen to be inefficient for two big reasons, both related to it being axiomatic that 'government is bad' to certain parties.

First, it keeps on being repeated that government is inefficient so that people believe it.

Second, the people for whom government being bad is axiomatic are part of the government and have an incentive to make government ineffivient.

Prestor Jon wrote:

 Selym wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:

Why are you so focused on the wealth gap? The wealth gap is a red herring, the difference between the highest and the lowest isn't important, what's important is the amount of wealth on the low end. If I waved a magic wand and doubled everyone's income instantly everyone would be better off, the lowest earners would see the most significant improvement in their lives, the wealthiest wouldn't see much change at all and the wealth gap would also double. If people on the low end can earn enough to achieve financial stability and help create opportunities to try to better themselves then that would be awesome and great for society regardless of the fact that people like Bill Gates and Lebron James would still be orders of magnitude wealthier than the people on the low end of the spectrum.

If you doubled everyone's income, you'd devalue the currency. A person's wealth is based on what proportion of the world's available money they have, not the hardcount. That's why in post WW1 Germany, with hyperinflation making everyone's pay skyrocket, people just continuously got worse off.

I can't think of a single instance in which wage increases triggered hyperinflation. The majority of instances of hyperinflation have resulted from govts running huge deficits financed by money creation. A govt running up a 10 trillion dollar deficit and then printing up 0 trillion dollars to pay it off is different from employers deciding that a job whose work was worth $8 is now worth $16 isn't going to going to require the national mint to print out billions of new notes every month. Increasing wages, especially on the lower end of the income spectrum to put more employed people closer to the current median average income isn't going to trigger hyperinflation but if I ever do come into possession of a magic wand that enables to me double everyone's income overnight I will devote more time to researching your concern before I make it happen.

That's interesting, but not a set of cause and effect that I was referring to. the Wiemar Republic was just an easy example of what happens when there is more money in the system. What it appeared you meant could be abstracted by the following:

Distribution of pay:

Persons 1: $1000
Persons 2: $500
Persons 3: $250
Persons 4: $125

Total money in the set: $1875

*waves wand to double pay*

Persons 1: $2000
Persons 2: $1000
Persons 3: $500
Persons 4: $250

Total money in the set: $3750

The effect would not actually increase the value given to a person's work, because the total money in the system went up. As money is as subject to supply and demand as any other commodity, the money would devalue. As you will note, nobody got an increased proportion of the money in the set, and thus nobody was made better off. Extend it forever, and you can end up with hyperinflation. Or other counries start asking where you got the money from...

The point is, whatever measures you take to improve the value given to someone, or to reduce the wealth inequality, you should be aiming to increase the proportion of available wealth that a person has. Rather than just focus on raw numbers.

 Manchu wrote:
I can't tell if you think democracy is doomed to produce dicatators or dicatatorship is ultimately preferable to deomcracy.

Neither. The point really is that working democracy is more than just the ballot, as the ballot is essential but flawed when it lacks safeguards. To this end we need strong parties built around clear values of public good, to prevent the party falling in behind demagogues, and when that fails we need strong institutions to stand against any demagogues who do come to power..

Also I cannot figure out how supporting Voter ID laws makes anyone feel more libertarian and I say that as someone who leans toward libertariansism (that is, away from authoritarianism). As I have tried to lay out ITT, the Voter ID law agenda in the
States is clearly, fundamentally authoritarian.

You made this case really well. But people who don't want to hear it don't hear it.


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Prestor Jon wrote:
The average person already knows that the govt is inefficient, that's why they resent paying taxes.

But that's the point. It isn't known. It is commonly believed. These are very different things. A majority of people stopped on the street get confused between a billion and a trillion. You want to tell me those same people spend a night every year going over state and federal budgets to assess the efficiency of government spending. Come on.

In a similar vein every time there is a budget crunch the services that the govt chooses to cut are always the ones that seem rather important and are the most likely to convince people to agree to the higher taxes. Closing libraries, cutting arts programs at schools, reducing police services etc. because apparently every other cent spent in the budget is vitally important so there's literally no other way to reduce costs. Year after year, regardless of which party or politicians are in charge govt continually shows us that they do a terribly job of prioritizing spending tax revenue in a manner that does the most good for the public so why should people be eager to give them more money?

Thing is, where tax dollars are spent is never going to exactly suit your own personal preferences. That's just life. So when tax cuts come in you might find they cut the things you like, and keep things you don't care about. That's also life.

But the plain reality is that the US is one of the lowest taxed countries in the world. You sometimes see claims to the opposite of that, but those people are lying to you, by using misleading stats like corporate tax rates, and so ignoring deductions, exemptions, discounted rates etc. But if you take the total tax base divided by total GDP, the US is at 26%. The OECD average is 34%.

When you tax less, you end up offering fewer services, maintaining less infrastructure etc. That's just the realities of maths. If you have a problem with the services offered, the only way to do that is to increase taxes. Now when those taxes are used o increased spending some of that spending will be on things you personally think are stupid, and yeah some of the money will be wasted. The question is whether the juice is worth the squeeze, whether you get enough good and worthwhile benefits.

That is the important question. Unfortunately almost no-one in the electorate is actually equipped to answer that question - hardly any of them even realise that's the question.

 Just Tony wrote:
And it also depends on what lens you view it from. Living where I do, there are three large towns a half hour or so away from me or less that had large groups of illegals deported multiple times because of certain factories/processing plants that either turned a blind eye to such things, or didn't do their due diligence in that regard.


Take that, and take into consideration after a breeze through the last 6 months of Yahoo news stories there were at least a dozen stories about immigrants being deported and the heartbreaking family separation. Most, if not all, of the immigrants in this story had admitted to voting in elections. Hell, one lady from... Texas, I think? ...had been caught committing voter fraud over a decade ago and wound up getting pinched again, but deported this time.

Now, I'm no fan of government control, and consider myself very Libertarian as far as that goes. But you DO have an issue with a massive number of undocumented immigrants in the country who DO vote, committing fraud, and tightening our border isn't going to solve the entire problem. Finding them all takes time, and one of those controls is indeed voter ID laws. Said immigrant presents fake ID to vote, quick sweep of database throws red flags, gets to answer questions and potentially get uncovered and deported.


I really wish it were more cut and dry, but until we get away from our immigration problem I see ID laws as a necessary evil. For now.

Your anecdotes contradict the data. You also make the assumption that immigration is a problem.

 Just Tony wrote:
No, it HAS happened. So even if someone is found ONCE by the Keystone Kops here in the US, can you definitely say that there are NO people who are getting away with it.?

First, now you're simultaneously moving the goalposts (to a new, different argument), and raising a strawman: well done. To wit, I didn't say no one has ever done it, and no one else in this thread did other then the argument you invented. I know at least one woman in Iowa voted twice - specifically, she voted twice for Trump.

The actual argument is that illegal aliens and in fact any in-person voting fraud statistically does not exist. There are a handful of cases now and then, but there are 130 million votes cast in this country. If you look at ever case of in-person voter fraud, and you multiply that by about 5, you get .001% of the vote.

Forcing people to get ID's will provably result in a few percentage points of actual lawful voters not being able to vote for a variety of reasons, so you're essentially creating an actual problem to solve a virtually non-existent one, and expanding the government at taxpayer cost to do so.

This is a pretty bizarre stance for a libertarian, but it does make sense for a social conservative, which in my experience is what most libertarians actually are.

 Selym wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:

 Selym wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:

Why are you so focused on the wealth gap? The wealth gap is a red herring, the difference between the highest and the lowest isn't important, what's important is the amount of wealth on the low end. If I waved a magic wand and doubled everyone's income instantly everyone would be better off, the lowest earners would see the most significant improvement in their lives, the wealthiest wouldn't see much change at all and the wealth gap would also double. If people on the low end can earn enough to achieve financial stability and help create opportunities to try to better themselves then that would be awesome and great for society regardless of the fact that people like Bill Gates and Lebron James would still be orders of magnitude wealthier than the people on the low end of the spectrum.

If you doubled everyone's income, you'd devalue the currency. A person's wealth is based on what proportion of the world's available money they have, not the hardcount. That's why in post WW1 Germany, with hyperinflation making everyone's pay skyrocket, people just continuously got worse off.

I can't think of a single instance in which wage increases triggered hyperinflation. The majority of instances of hyperinflation have resulted from govts running huge deficits financed by money creation. A govt running up a 10 trillion dollar deficit and then printing up 0 trillion dollars to pay it off is different from employers deciding that a job whose work was worth $8 is now worth $16 isn't going to going to require the national mint to print out billions of new notes every month. Increasing wages, especially on the lower end of the income spectrum to put more employed people closer to the current median average income isn't going to trigger hyperinflation but if I ever do come into possession of a magic wand that enables to me double everyone's income overnight I will devote more time to researching your concern before I make it happen.

That's interesting, but not a set of cause and effect that I was referring to. the Wiemar Republic was just an easy example of what happens when there is more money in the system. What it appeared you meant could be abstracted by the following:

Distribution of pay:

Persons 1: $1000
Persons 2: $500
Persons 3: $250
Persons 4: $125

Total money in the set: $1875

*waves wand to double pay*

Persons 1: $2000
Persons 2: $1000
Persons 3: $500
Persons 4: $250

Total money in the set: $3750

The effect would not actually increase the value given to a person's work, because the total money in the system went up. As money is as subject to supply and demand as any other commodity, the money would devalue. As you will note, nobody got an increased proportion of the money in the set, and thus nobody was made better off. Extend it forever, and you can end up with hyperinflation. Or other counries start asking where you got the money from...

The point is, whatever measures you take to improve the value given to someone, or to reduce the wealth inequality, you should be aiming to increase the proportion of available wealth that a person has. Rather than just focus on raw numbers.

Setting aside the magic wand wage doubling scenario, the point I wanted to make was that wealth is not a zero sum gain, having other people earn much more than you doesn't prevent you from earning more. You can improve your earning power without having to take earnings away from anyone else. You can always create more wealth or add more value we're not starting with a finite amount that we have to divvy up because they'll never be any more. You can increase your value as a worker and increase your earning power without having to take someone else's earning power away and wages away and redistribute them to you. The economy can grow, wages can grow every year without ever triggering hyperinflation or drastically shrinking the wealth gap. It doesn't matter if the super rich get even super richer if the workers at the low end see an earnings increase that boosts them from struggling to comfortable stability.

If the problem is that too many jobs in the private sector don't pay enough or the private sector in general isn't seeing enough wage growth then the answer to motivate the private sector to pay more and assist the workers in increasing the value of the labor. Having the govt redistribute wealth from the top end to the low end doesn't actually cause any changes to the wages of the low earning workers or make those workers more valuable and it removes any pressure on the private sector to increase wages because the govt is artificially increasing earnings for the workers through redistributive subsidies. If you have a crappy low paying job and are struggling to find a better one then yes getting additional money from the govt makes the situation better than not getting additional money from the govt but it still leaves you working a crappy low paying job and struggling to find a better one. Govt redistribution is never going to recreate the economy of the past wherein wages were higher and purchasing power was greater because that economy was built on a majority of the workforce having good paying jobs and govt subsidizing low paying private sector jobs isn't going to lead to increased wages.

Prestor Jon wrote:

Setting aside the magic wand wage doubling scenario, the point I wanted to make was that wealth is not a zero sum gain, having other people earn much more than you doesn't prevent you from earning more. You can improve your earning power without having to take earnings away from anyone else. You can always create more wealth or add more value we're not starting with a finite amount that we have to divvy up because they'll never be any more. You can increase your value as a worker and increase your earning power without having to take someone else's earning power away and wages away and redistribute them to you. The economy can grow, wages can grow every year without ever triggering hyperinflation or drastically shrinking the wealth gap. It doesn't matter if the super rich get even super richer if the workers at the low end see an earnings increase that boosts them from struggling to comfortable stability.

If the problem is that too many jobs in the private sector don't pay enough or the private sector in general isn't seeing enough wage growth then the answer to motivate the private sector to pay more and assist the workers in increasing the value of the labor. Having the govt redistribute wealth from the top end to the low end doesn't actually cause any changes to the wages of the low earning workers or make those workers more valuable and it removes any pressure on the private sector to increase wages because the govt is artificially increasing earnings for the workers through redistributive subsidies. If you have a crappy low paying job and are struggling to find a better one then yes getting additional money from the govt makes the situation better than not getting additional money from the govt but it still leaves you working a crappy low paying job and struggling to find a better one. Govt redistribution is never going to recreate the economy of the past wherein wages were higher and purchasing power was greater because that economy was built on a majority of the workforce having good paying jobs and govt subsidizing low paying private sector jobs isn't going to lead to increased wages.

I had a counter argument, but I realised that the "finite earth" argument is not actually what we're discussing. Capitalist economies do have a tendency to grow, but we will eventually reach an upper limit. That limit, however, is not actually something I can quantify, so I cannot use the argument.

I have no problem with doing things like upping the minimum wage, and using sensible regulations to stop prices from going out of control, but increasing *everyone's* pay will also mean the pay of the people at the top. That will require either the extraction of wealthy person's stored funds, a sudden increase in the economy,, or printing more money. The latter of which will most likely do as I predicted, the former is both authoritarian and unlikely, and the economy is not a reliable factor.

I love the bringing up the myth that if you somehow (magically) become more productive, you somehow earn significantly more money. That doesn't bear fruit in the real world where worker productivity has skyrocketed but wages have remained flat.

The economic system where a person gains more money as it becomes more productive or his work has more value is called comunism.

In capitalism, you gain what your boss offers you. Of course you can be your own boss, or you can work in a job where you are paid X money for the thing you do, like being an agricultor. But the mass of employers are proletarians and as that they earn what they boss whant them to earn.
You can be fired if you are inproductive, thats true. But your production isn't, generally, directly related to your payment.

 skyth wrote:
Goverment is seen to be inefficient for two big reasons, both related to it being axiomatic that 'government is bad' to certain parties.

First, it keeps on being repeated that government is inefficient so that people believe it.

Second, the people for whom government being bad is axiomatic are part of the government and have an incentive to make government ineffivient.

Government has always been inefficient because government is constantly seeking to grow bigger, do more and spend more in ways and for purposes for which it is ill designed. As government grows to be bigger to implement more programs to try to help more people it becomes more inefficient because helping people on an individual level is always going to be an extremely inefficient use of government. The amount of overhead involved in the government just collecting the revenue then determining where it will be spent, then having the designated program spend the funds is inefficient without even getting into the myriad issues involved with each separate phase of the process. This has always been the case, regardless of what party was in control of what branch of government or which politicians were members of congress. We spend a large portion of the federal budget on defense and defense spending has never been an efficient process because defense spending has been directed by what congress wants not by strict military necessity or pragmatism. Government isn't inefficient because Republicans are sabotaging it to be inefficient just to lend credence to a Party talking point. There is no pressure on government to increase efficiency only pressure for spending and policy to be done in a politically advantageous manner, the government is never going to run out of money or lose its customer base or bought out or driven out of the market by a competitor and I don't mean that I want the government replaced by the free market, I just want to government to be limited to the large scale national responsibilities for which it is suited and for which it's inefficiency in micromanaging individuals isn't a significant negative. The national government is designed to deal with the population in the aggregate and should craft and enact policy that produces pragmatic solutions for the national interest and not try to drill down and deal with people on the micro level because that is best done by local and state governments that create more specific and targeted programs to help address individual needs and problems. The more people you try to help with a one size fits all legislative solution the more people in disparate situations you are forcing to fit under the same parameters and the more inefficient the solution becomes.


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 skyth wrote:
I love the bringing up the myth that if you somehow (magically) become more productive, you somehow earn significantly more money. That doesn't bear fruit in the real world where worker productivity has skyrocketed but wages have remained flat.

That's because the productivity gains haven't been caused by increasingly valuable worker skillsets but they've been primarily caused by technological innovation. Automation and technological improvements create machines and tools that allow a smaller number of workers to do the same a amount of work that used to require a larger amount of workers. If the population is increasing but technological innovation is decreasing the amount of people needed to get work done then you're going to have an excess amount of labor in the market and that's going to push down wages. If automation lets a factory produce the same amount of product with half as many workers the value of the labor of those workers hasn't increased. If a worker who used to do manual work on an assembly line develops additional skills that make the worker qualified to make a more valuable work, designing new products or improving the machinery or writing better code or developing more efficient systems etc. then that worker has a more valuable skillset and can earn higher wages.


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 Selym wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:

Setting aside the magic wand wage doubling scenario, the point I wanted to make was that wealth is not a zero sum gain, having other people earn much more than you doesn't prevent you from earning more. You can improve your earning power without having to take earnings away from anyone else. You can always create more wealth or add more value we're not starting with a finite amount that we have to divvy up because they'll never be any more. You can increase your value as a worker and increase your earning power without having to take someone else's earning power away and wages away and redistribute them to you. The economy can grow, wages can grow every year without ever triggering hyperinflation or drastically shrinking the wealth gap. It doesn't matter if the super rich get even super richer if the workers at the low end see an earnings increase that boosts them from struggling to comfortable stability.

If the problem is that too many jobs in the private sector don't pay enough or the private sector in general isn't seeing enough wage growth then the answer to motivate the private sector to pay more and assist the workers in increasing the value of the labor. Having the govt redistribute wealth from the top end to the low end doesn't actually cause any changes to the wages of the low earning workers or make those workers more valuable and it removes any pressure on the private sector to increase wages because the govt is artificially increasing earnings for the workers through redistributive subsidies. If you have a crappy low paying job and are struggling to find a better one then yes getting additional money from the govt makes the situation better than not getting additional money from the govt but it still leaves you working a crappy low paying job and struggling to find a better one. Govt redistribution is never going to recreate the economy of the past wherein wages were higher and purchasing power was greater because that economy was built on a majority of the workforce having good paying jobs and govt subsidizing low paying private sector jobs isn't going to lead to increased wages.

I had a counter argument, but I realised that the "finite earth" argument is not actually what we're discussing. Capitalist economies do have a tendency to grow, but we will eventually reach an upper limit. That limit, however, is not actually something I can quantify, so I cannot use the argument.

I have no problem with doing things like upping the minimum wage, and using sensible regulations to stop prices from going out of control, but increasing *everyone's* pay will also mean the pay of the people at the top. That will require either the extraction of wealthy person's stored funds, a sudden increase in the economy,, or printing more money. The latter of which will most likely do as I predicted, the former is both authoritarian and unlikely, and the economy is not a reliable factor.

I think we're mostly in agreement. The only point you just made that I would dispute is that increasing wages on the lower end of the wealth spectrum is going to lead to greater earnings for people on the high end as well because the people on the low end that are making the more drastic improvement are going to be spending more money and the people at the high end of the spectrum are typically in a position to profit from increased consumer spending and growing economic activity. The gains at the top will be much smaller percentage wise than the ones at the bottom but they'll still be gains, they'll still be a wealth gap but those developments aren't necessarily going to be bad for the economy.


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 Galas wrote:
The economic system where a person gains more money as it becomes more productive or his work has more value is called comunism.

In capitalism, you gain what your boss offers you. Of course you can be your own boss, or you can work in a job where you are paid X money for the thing you do, like being an agricultor. But the mass of employers are proletarians and as that they earn what they boss whant them to earn.
You can be fired if you are inproductive, thats true. But your production isn't, generally, directly related to your payment.

Employers can't just set wages however they want, there are market forces that require employers to pay salaries that are commensurate with the quality of work they want. Could I find somebody to paint my entire house for $500? Maybe, but if I could would I be likely to be happy with the results? No. The labor that you provide to your employer has a certain amount of value that is based on various factors and that value is a big factor in the amount of compensation you are paid by your employer. It's a symbiotic relationship.

Employers do not pay based on the value of the work you produce. That's really a load of bull. That 'might' have been true in the past, but is not true now.

Right now, companies give huge raises to the executives and then 'don't have money' to give raises to the workers.
It has nothing to do with your performance. Getting more money is more of a matter of luck than skill.

Also, by default, government is more efficient than private enterprise as government doesn't need to have the waste that is profit.

 sebster wrote:

 Galas wrote:
I think thats the biggest problem. I'm sure that, with a more efficient goverment, people is more willing to pay higger taxes, because you see how they are used and the actual improvement in your life. Even if it doesn't affect directly to you.

Even with efficient government people still resent paying taxes, and don't realise the scope of services and facilities government provides. I mean, how would a person even know if their government was efficient? Do you know what the road you drove to work on cost to build? Do you know what the road should have cost, if it was handled with absolute efficiency?

I'm not saying the roads were done efficiently, I don't know. The problem is no-one else does either. People just take services and infrastructure for granted, but remain resentful about the taxes they pay.

Well, I believe the key here is transparency. People should be able to find out, in a easy manner, how much money is being spent and on what.

Hell, I'm not resentful about the taxes that are spent on common services like Defense, police, roads, even schools, although I feel like property taxes are bs.

What many people seem to be upset about, myself included are taxes being spent frivolously, or redistributed as handouts with no accountability.

Here's an example. My wife and I make over 150k a year. We both work hard, waiting to have kids, don't use drugs or abuse alcohol, and make sound financial decisions. At tax time, we are ineligible for the EITC (earned income tax credit) for our two young children.

Fine whatever, I make enough.

Now take my sister in law.....5 Kids, no job, brother in law can barely hold a job, maybe had a combined income of 10k last year.

They got damn near 7k in EITC, ON TOP OF Medicaid, SNAP, and a plethora of other benefits. So literally money went from my pocket to their hand because they can't get their life straight.

I get it, the kids need to eat, but can anyone explain to me why or how they earned that 7k? Could we at least subtract the monetary amount that they get from their other benefits from that number (4k worth of food stamps over a year gets taken from that 7k).

Now multiply this situation by a few million across the U.S. and we have a real problem.


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 skyth wrote:
Employers do not pay based on the value of the work you produce. That's really a load of bull. That 'might' have been true in the past, but is not true now.

Right now, companies give huge raises to the executives and then 'don't have money' to give raises to the workers.
It has nothing to do with your performance. Getting more money is more of a matter of luck than skill.

Also, by default, government is more efficient than private enterprise as government doesn't need to have the waste that is profit.

no government isn't more efficient, ever.

I can't think of one government program that runs in budget and effectively. There is no incentive for government programs to run efficiently. If they get 10$ one year and only need 9, they will spend the 10 on bull just to make sure that they still get 10 next year. I used to work for the government and I can tell you that, that is exactly how it works.

Additionally, Profit isn't "waste" it is used by a company to expand, which provides new jobs. It is used to develop new methods and technologies that enhance productivity or enrich quality of life.

Lastly, if you don't like a company and think they engage in shady business practices or mistreat workers, vote with your dollar, don't buy their products. Don't work for them, and encourage your family and friends to do the same.

 Supertony51 wrote:

 sebster wrote:

 Galas wrote:
I think thats the biggest problem. I'm sure that, with a more efficient goverment, people is more willing to pay higger taxes, because you see how they are used and the actual improvement in your life. Even if it doesn't affect directly to you.

Even with efficient government people still resent paying taxes, and don't realise the scope of services and facilities government provides. I mean, how would a person even know if their government was efficient? Do you know what the road you drove to work on cost to build? Do you know what the road should have cost, if it was handled with absolute efficiency?

I'm not saying the roads were done efficiently, I don't know. The problem is no-one else does either. People just take services and infrastructure for granted, but remain resentful about the taxes they pay.

Well, I believe the key here is transparency. People should be able to find out, in a easy manner, how much money is being spent and on what.

Hell, I'm not resentful about the taxes that are spent on common services like Defense, police, roads, even schools, although I feel like property taxes are bs.

What many people seem to be upset about, myself included are taxes being spent frivolously, or redistributed as handouts with no accountability.

Here's an example. My wife and I make over 150k a year. We both work hard, waiting to have kids, don't use drugs or abuse alcohol, and make sound financial decisions. At tax time, we are ineligible for the EITC (earned income tax credit) for our two young children.

Nice dig, implying that people who are receiving assistance are lazy drug users. Not any where close to true, but hey...the myth perpetuates. And guess what, the people that make a lot less work a lot harder than you do. Only reason you got so far ahead is you got lucky.

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 skyth wrote:
Employers do not pay based on the value of the work you produce. That's really a load of bull. That 'might' have been true in the past, but is not true now.

Right now, companies give huge raises to the executives and then 'don't have money' to give raises to the workers.
It has nothing to do with your performance. Getting more money is more of a matter of luck than skill.

Also, by default, government is more efficient than private enterprise as government doesn't need to have the waste that is profit.

no government isn't more efficient, ever.

I can't think of one government program that runs in budget and effectively.

Medicare does a lot better and more efficient than private insurance companies.

Additionally, Profit isn't "waste" it is used by a company to expand, which provides new jobs. It is used to develop new methods and technologies that enhance productivity or enrich quality of life..

Profit is 100% waste. It is the extra money that the company charges for its product after all expenses are paid. And btw, expenses include all those things that you mention. The company charges more for stuff than it costs to make it plus R&D, plus inflated executive salaries.

Prestor Jon wrote:
I can pick and choose what companies I patronize with my business but I can't pick and choose what laws apply to me no matter how horrible and unjust I might think they are.

I heard different things about, for example, trying to get telephone/internet service in the US. That's literary companies influencing government to their benefit. How would less government avoid that? The US government might have fethed up how it handled the high speed internet expansion and it 100% needs better regulation but without regulation things would be even worse (and that probably goes for most government missteps of that kind). Overall companies already got more money than most of us and you think that for some reason they'll just back off instead of trying to wring people out even more? History has shows us that power is something people don't want to give away (things usually just get worse until the idea of violence and a revolution sound better than the status quo and then you get to try things again). Governments you can vote for/against (and it may not go your way) but an entrenched company fething you over is even harder to displace. Governments, as bad as they are sometimes, are sadly our best defence against companies just doing whatever they want.

At least the companies in the private sector have to follow the laws and regulations just like everybody else whereas the govt gets to make up whatever rules they feel necessary. The politicians didn't have to repeal regulations that helped create the financial crisis in 2008 but they chose to do so, businesses couldn't have done that on their own. The govt decided that my 4th amendment rights don't apply if I want to get on an airplane, not the airlines.

Companies with enough money don't really have to follow the law. They'll follow it as long as it's the profitable thing to do. As soon as they see a way to make more they'll find excuses to bend the rules (be it lobbying or circumventing laws or just projecting possible fines against expected profits). Lobbying by private companies influences government and if you blame that on government alone then you are missing the bigger part of the problem and petitioning for less government will lead to an even worse situation for you, the individual. Here's a video about how lobbying affects your laws: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tu32CCA_Ig (don't blame government, change government and blame the rich who are literary influencing the government for their own benefit). We have literary more than four decades of technological advancements, privatisation, and deregulation yet wages for the average worker are stagnant and the middle class is shrinking (and the 2008 recession was the cherry on top). The government is just the middle man for the people with the influence and not the originator of the ideas that got made into laws.

And are you seriously using government deregulation as a point against government instead against the companies that lobbied for that? Just think about this for a moment. Without government "interference" there wouldn't have been the initial regulation that protected us in the first place and banks would have burned down out economy much quicker. Why would they not? Private companies literary lobbying for deregulation is the culprit here and you find a way to blame the government. They affected and manipulated the government for their own profit. Like mentioned above, they can change the government (because they have the money to lobby for their own interests). There may be a flaw in how the government was implemented in this case but without it you would have been worse off much earlier.

And I don't know exactly what you mean with 4th amendment rights in regard to airplanes but if it's something about the increased "security" after 9/11, body scanners, and added regulation (take of your shoes, no liquids,…) then you can blame companies lobbying for that too (because they make money off the machines and supplying the TSA). Security experts have said the only thing that actually work after 9/11 are reinforced cockpit doors (buy a lot of time) and that passengers now know that terrorists would actually do such a thing so for the passengers there's no reason to not attack them before they cause more harm. The rest is just security theatre for contractors (meaning: private companies who did the lobbying) to extract money from the government (meaning higher taxes for you). They might not be airlines but the people financially benefiting from this are still private companies.

Businesses could have done all of this on their own and with less government they would have done it much quicker and with less protection for you. What's next? Complaining about how the government is destroying the economy by not allowing clild labour or because companies are not allowed to just dispose of their waste in the town river? When companies lobby to abolish those laws will you blame the government again or actually aim your displeasure at the people who are actually effecting those changes?

 skyth wrote:

 Supertony51 wrote:

 sebster wrote:

 Galas wrote:
I think thats the biggest problem. I'm sure that, with a more efficient goverment, people is more willing to pay higger taxes, because you see how they are used and the actual improvement in your life. Even if it doesn't affect directly to you.

Even with efficient government people still resent paying taxes, and don't realise the scope of services and facilities government provides. I mean, how would a person even know if their government was efficient? Do you know what the road you drove to work on cost to build? Do you know what the road should have cost, if it was handled with absolute efficiency?

I'm not saying the roads were done efficiently, I don't know. The problem is no-one else does either. People just take services and infrastructure for granted, but remain resentful about the taxes they pay.

Well, I believe the key here is transparency. People should be able to find out, in a easy manner, how much money is being spent and on what.

Hell, I'm not resentful about the taxes that are spent on common services like Defense, police, roads, even schools, although I feel like property taxes are bs.

What many people seem to be upset about, myself included are taxes being spent frivolously, or redistributed as handouts with no accountability.

Here's an example. My wife and I make over 150k a year. We both work hard, waiting to have kids, don't use drugs or abuse alcohol, and make sound financial decisions. At tax time, we are ineligible for the EITC (earned income tax credit) for our two young children.

Nice dig, implying that people who are receiving assistance are lazy drug users. Not any where close to true, but hey...the myth perpetuates. And guess what, the people that make a lot less work a lot harder than you do. Only reason you got so far ahead is you got lucky.

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 skyth wrote:
Employers do not pay based on the value of the work you produce. That's really a load of bull. That 'might' have been true in the past, but is not true now.

Right now, companies give huge raises to the executives and then 'don't have money' to give raises to the workers.
It has nothing to do with your performance. Getting more money is more of a matter of luck than skill.

Also, by default, government is more efficient than private enterprise as government doesn't need to have the waste that is profit.

no government isn't more efficient, ever.

I can't think of one government program that runs in budget and effectively.

Medicare does a lot better and more efficient than private insurance companies.

Additionally, Profit isn't "waste" it is used by a company to expand, which provides new jobs. It is used to develop new methods and technologies that enhance productivity or enrich quality of life..

Profit is 100% waste. It is the extra money that the company charges for its product after all expenses are paid. And btw, expenses include all those things that you mention. The company charges more for stuff than it costs to make it plus R&D, plus inflated executive salaries.

OH boy where to start.

1. I never said anyone was on drugs.

2. You don't know what I do for a living, I'll just say I work in the finance industry.

Not all "work" has to be hard manual labor. Work includes completing jobs that require education, or expertise. I could say a DR. works harder than a construction worker, their occupation requires far higher amounts of education and training. Those CEO's you seem to be jealous of, many of them spent a decade or more In school, they make decisions which effect the lives of thousands of employees. That "work" is harder than what you do im sure.

3. I got where I am through good decisions.

Graduating highschool

Not having kids before I was able to support them

Joining the military to gain job experience, and GI BILL

Going to college and getting 3 degrees

Finding and holding a job. When I exited the military I got a job in my industry making 12$ an hour, through my own pursuit of continued education and ambition I've moved up and make much more.

Luck has nothing to do with it.

You know the kind of people who say luck has more to do with success than hard work or education? People who don't have the intestinal fortitude necessary to identify their own failures and improve themselves. They blame everyone else for their problems and bitch and moan about how hard they have it.

Grow up.

4. Medicare is garbage and is bankrupting the government, it is wasteful and provides gak care.

5. No...profit is what's used to expand, improve, or grow a company. expenses are things like electric bills, taxes, and payroll.

As far as CEO salaries, at the end of the day, it really isn't your business how much someone makes. Once again, if you feel that a company isn't being socially responsible, refuse to do business with them.

I think the biggest problem is that we don't really have a free market (Because the biggest business are the ones that really control the goverment) nor we have a strong independent goverment that works for the citizens.

Obviously, this is very different from country to country. I live in the second most corrupt country of western europe after Italy*, so I'm sorry if I'm cynical agains't my own goverment (But at the same time I'm not agains't the idea of a strong goverment. Quite the opposite) so I can asure without a doubt that at least in the case of Spain, the goverment controlled by politicians that work more like a mafia and the big monopoly business is true.
To put an example, one of our last presidents, José Maria Aznar, did a privatization of all of our electric system. After steping from the office, he did enter as a directive of the same electric business that did gained a monopoly on the electric industry in spain after his policies.

Is like... being a capitalist in easy mode. I'm totally of the idea that a business should work based in how good it is. But that really only applies to the mid and low scale business. The real bigger ones, they don't really have that kind of problem. Even if a really big business goes bankrupt, you can be sure that the guys responsible for that aren't gonna pay for doing that.

 skyth wrote:


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 skyth wrote:
Employers do not pay based on the value of the work you produce. That's really a load of bull. That 'might' have been true in the past, but is not true now.

Right now, companies give huge raises to the executives and then 'don't have money' to give raises to the workers.
It has nothing to do with your performance. Getting more money is more of a matter of luck than skill.

Also, by default, government is more efficient than private enterprise as government doesn't need to have the waste that is profit.

no government isn't more efficient, ever.

I can't think of one government program that runs in budget and effectively.

Medicare does a lot better and more efficient than private insurance companies.

 Supertony51 wrote:
Here's an example. My wife and I make over 150k a year. We both work hard, waiting to have kids, don't use drugs or abuse alcohol, and make sound financial decisions. At tax time, we are ineligible for the EITC (earned income tax credit) for our two young children.

Fine whatever, I make enough.

Now take my sister in law.....5 Kids, no job, brother in law can barely hold a job, maybe had a combined income of 10k last year.

They got damn near 7k in EITC, ON TOP OF Medicaid, SNAP, and a plethora of other benefits. So literally money went from my pocket to their hand because they can't get their life straight.

I get it, the kids need to eat, but can anyone explain to me why or how they earned that 7k? Could we at least subtract the monetary amount that they get from their other benefits from that number (4k worth of food stamps over a year gets taken from that 7k).

Here's an example. I have no kids. I am responsible, and don't require any educational expenses for my nonexistent children. As a result I have money left to pay for other things.

Now take Supertony51. Two kids, a job that doesn't pay all that much, and getting the benefit of government-funded schools. So literally money went from my pocket to his hand because he can't get his life straight enough to pay for his own schools/roads/etc.

Why should the concept of "I should only have to pay taxes for people that I approve of" stop at providing certain welfare benefits? Why should I have to pay for your kids to go to school?

Additionally, Profit isn't "waste" it is used by a company to expand, which provides new jobs. It is used to develop new methods and technologies that enhance productivity or enrich quality of life.

No, that's not what profit is. Money spent on expansion, R&D, etc, is classified as expenses. Profit is the money left over after expenses, including growth expenses, have been paid. It goes out to the shareholders or is saved for the future, or is given as bonus payments to the CEO, but it certainly is not improving the lives of anyone who isn't a shareholder or in upper management.