RE: Mitt Romney income calculator
January 26, 2012 at 4:48 pm
(This post was last modified: January 26, 2012 at 5:11 pm by Autumnlicious.)
(January 26, 2012 at 3:56 pm)Tiberius Wrote: By that definition Min, almost everyone is "greedy". What is the point of the word if you can apply it to almost everyone at the same time? Romney being greedy shouldn't be news if you can apply that word to 99% of the population, so I say that most people are using a different definition of "greedy"; one which applies only to people who make a large amount of money and keep 70% of it (which is a lot less than most other people).
I don't know what you're smoking, but I don't want it at all.
I'll repeat what DT has said but certain people fail to fucking recognize it:
"It's a hell of a lot easier for someone making $21 million a year to give away $3 million than it is for someone making $21,000 a year to give away $3,000."
That's the problem with Libertarians -- they never fucking recognize that accumulating resources en mass from others has taken resources from others.
It's like there is a double-think going on.
And they never seem to recognize there is a such a thing as having no resources being damaging while keeping the concept of having all the resources.
Both extremes are toxic, yet Libertarians can only seem to recognize the first (while advocating for "private charities" - e.g. people who actually feel bad about those less fortunate).
It never dawns on them that even-handed application on a large scale (e.g. government) of resources for the unemployed, vulnerable and sick is more efficient in that it doesn't depend on people feeling bad just to contribute a small sum.
But hey! We can always look at the calamities (e.g. Katrina) and roundly pat private charities on the back while ignoring the efficacy of our welfare programs in maintaining people who aren't important enough to garner sympathy for some natural disaster except the natural disaster of economics.
(January 26, 2012 at 4:22 pm)Perhaps Wrote: I can never understand why people want the rich to be forced to give away their money. It's a choice, just like getting an education or working hard. As was said earlier, much of his money is invested which provides jobs and upfront capital to growing businesses.
Wow, are you an idiot. To get that wealth, you have to accumulate it from others. How hard is that to understand?
Ergo, you can easily have situations where a set of people has accumulated wealth at the extreme detriment of others. Crony capitalism, for example, enriches the pockets of politically-connected people while preventing another, who by their own hand or merit, from getting it.
If we follow that resources on this planet are finite or the collecting of such resources is fundamentally limited, then it is also self-evident that everything that derives/consumes such resources are limited as well.
Taking into account losses and inefficiencies in the processes that use physical resources, we can note that, under the laws of supply and demand in an assumed equal marketplace, that it is a zero-sum game ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero%E2%80%93sum_game ) with a set number of resources that can, in some form or another (e.g. manufacturing), be traded.
There is no "magical wellspring" of wealth -- for example, let's take the case of the banker handling a monetary transaction and 'making money'. Where did that money come from? A source or pool of money that is allocated elsewhere within the institution.
The only "magic" that could be is simply an inaccurate attempt at changing, the distribution of resource acquisition -- for example, increasing the scarcity of physical dollars can help curb inflation, temporarily. That's what the Fed does -- many people don't think they do a great job at it. I, personally, think they are prone to and are corrupt.
(January 26, 2012 at 4:22 pm)Perhaps Wrote: The end goal of society should not be to live off each other, but rather to provide for one's self.
That is an even more idiotic assertion. Looking at our roots and our closest evolutionary cousins, it seems that society is nothing BUT living off each other.
Why the fuck else would a social species for groups, troops and dynasties, if not for the very purpose of living off, in some way, another?
Durrrrrr.
Slave to the Patriarchy no more
