Why Does Atheism and Left-Wing Politics Usually Go Together?

[CapnAwesome]

Well, no, once you get past the basic necessities, money doesn't really buy happiness. However, those basic necessities have been being threatened lately. Remember all those people being evicted from their homes when the housing bubble burst? Medical costs are headed in the same direction; I have a friend, Amy, whose family didn't make enough for medical insurance and her husband died because he had throat cancer that he couldn't get treated. Nobody is going to be very happy if they're sitting there on their death bed because they can't get throat cancer treated.

But there's another level to it. See, I want to see wealth tied to a persons productivity simply because I think we can accomplish more that way. Yeah, those rich kids are pretty well off and they're never going to have to lift a finger to keep on top. What if they didn't? What if they had to work hard and produce and put new ideas into the marketplace in order to maintain their privileged position? I want to see more production from the top levels of industry and new innovations from them and I think they can do it if they had the right incentive.

However, this conversation seems to be the key difference I notice between most Libertarians and Republicans. Libertarians preach the good of a free market while the Republicans try to keep pushing trickle down economics. I can respect the views of the Libertarians, even if I don't agree with them. Republican economic policy that relies on supply side economics has not worked. There's a very important difference between the two.

Personally, I'd like to institute more libertarian policies, but first we have to reduce the power and influence of corporations. I fear that if we simply reduce the size and scope of the government without doing that, corporations will become the defacto government and they'll be a fuck of a lot harder to control than our government is now.

Hey, I agree with much of what you wrote in this post, including trickle down economics not really accomplishing what it claims to and also with there being a big difference between Libertarian economics and those of the Republican party.

I still disagree that Americans are really suffering, the people who lost their houses didn't end up starving in the streets, they just ended up living in smaller apartments. That's fine with me. Many of our problems come from the idea that we are entitled to have all these things we don't really need. It's presented that the American dream is living in a big house with lots of kids that we don't need, and space that we don't use. That's part of the reason that people lost their houses. They bought houses they thought they needed, but didn't really. I think that is the dream that's been sold to us, but I think there is a difference between productivity and happiness.

I guess that's the other thing I take issue with, I don't think that 'being on top' in an economic sense is really all that important in ones life. Or at least it shouldn't be. I guess I'm not really concerned about us 'accomplishing more' in an economic sense. There are just so many more important things than money. I think that you are right that the rich would be more productive if they had to work for it, but I don't really concern myself with what rich people do, I don't think it's that important.