>> Another proud graduate of the AM Radio PhD Program.

He did undergrad work in "stupid people talking to stupid people" studies.

whidbey: I'll hunt you down if it's Hillary/Obama...

I'm all for Hillary and McCain getting into a bus, and that bus being sunk into the Potomac, myself...

Well hell, let's just stub our toe and get Mr. Edwards to sue everyone. What a gem of a candidate just on his ambulance chasing alone.

anyone but a republican. havent we had enough of their crap? lets let them democrats have a shot. they did pretty good the last time. lets get a constututional amendment allowing a 3rd term and let bill and W face off. clinton would mop his monkey ass right off the floor.

whidbey

I'll hunt you down if it's Hillary/Obama...

I'm just saying, from where i sit, the Hillary/Obama ticket for the Dems would be formidable.

/just a prediction

whidbey: Sloth_DC: For you always have the poor with you;

Not to mention that 4BC!=2006 where there really isn't much of an excuse for poverty in an age where supposedly everyone can have what they need...

A little utopian, don't you think? Funny thing about that word "need", it keeps growing and growing and never stops.

We will always have scarcity. There will never be enough resources, and we will always need a system (this system is called "economics") to dole out the resources in the most efficient manner possible. Even after we make our replicator, constraints like energy, time, and space will always be there.

/that is, until the robots enslave us...a Robotocracy may be more efficient

Can we at least get a moderate republican nominee?
Along the lines of Bill Clinton? (i.e centrist)

GW probably is a centrist in his heart, but his cabal are scary dinosaur ideologues

(Cheney: personal friend of the loch ness monster)

Mitt Romney: no relation to wavy gravy

Demos: not hillary, how about that iowa guy, maybe edwards-at least he's southern and worked his way up (no silver spoon)

Uncle Karl

The poor need quality education that teaches them about avoiding debt, and about learning a skill, rather than accepting a handout. But, these days we are just teaching esteem, teaching about using condoms, and putting kids on little league teams where no scores are kept and everyone gets a trophy.

The worst poor here have it very good compared to some of the 4th world hellholes I've been to.

John Edwards loves his wife, they are such a cute couple, and what nice hair!

Guiliani will never be the GOP front-runner...
He doesn't hate gays enough...how will he get out the Religious Whack job vote!

IXI Jim IXI


Kicks back, grabbing popcorn and a cold cider

Ok guys...game on!

I'm right there with ya!! So, who do you think has the edge right now between WalkingCarpet and veedeevadeevoodee? My money's on veedeevadeevoodee for now, but if WalkingCarpet ever gets to give veedeevadeevoodee that swift kick in the nuts he promised it could get ugly.

/hey, ya got a beer in that cooler?

Any of you people who want National health Care, I have a compromise solution:

1. Require all southbound Canadians who are fleeing their own National Health Care system to register at the border;

2. Keep a head count, and send all the Americans who want National Health Care up to Canada to wait in their places;

3. Require all Americans headed north and all Canadians headed south to stop and talk with one another, so the Canucks can explain to the Yanks why they are coming south to pay for something they can't get in their own country.

Problem solved.

>> clinton would mop his monkey ass right off the floor.

Clinton left office with a 67% approval rating (74% approval on the economy)

Shrub had been stuck in the mid 30's for 18 months.

In wingnut la la land that proves the Dems will never win.

Elvira: I'm right there with ya!! So, who do you think has the edge right now between WalkingCarpet and veedeevadeevoodee? My money's on veedeevadeevoodee for now, but if WalkingCarpet ever gets to give veedeevadeevoodee that swift kick in the nuts he promised it could get ugly.


Nobody fights dirtier than a pair of old photoshoppers ;)
And I don't know...I guess it depends if WC runs out of steam before Vee runs out of pictures ;)

/throws ya a beer

Cripes, it's not about the poor vs. the rich.

It's about the rich vs. everybody else.

"You think health care is expensive now, just wait till its free"

- P.J. O'Rourke

nerfball

You are thinking in terms of maximum output vs. leveling income (wealth).
It's again, binary. The issue is about opportunitty not distribution of money.
IMHO

I know a guy in his late 40s who has whined about being poor his entire life. He works odd jobs, just enough to collect unemployment, and still lives with his mom. He qualifies for state and federal aid to go to school to get a degree to better himself. He qualifies for the federal WIA program through unemployment to get the state to pay for job training so he can get a better job. For years I've collected information for him to better himself and stop whining. Every single time I've done that, he either "forgets" to fill out a form, or comes up with other crap like "Oh, I didn't want to take the morning off to go down to the unemployment office" or "Oh, I can't go to school, I don't have time", even though he spends his evenings alone in front of the TV.

Even with all these wonderful government programs, there are lots of people like him who refuse to do anything about their situation. Throwing more government programs at the poor isn't going to help.

Uncle Karl: So are you saying Germans are smarter? Or not as cheap as Americans?

They don't seem to be as scared of shiat as Americans are.

What is it that makes you think Americans would ban everything?

The fact that we are trying to ban lots of shiat as it is?

knobmaker: So your speculations about what might happen in this country with universal healthcare are more germane to the discussion than what actually happened in other countries?

I believe the US has already shown more of a growing tendency towards regulating lifestyle issues than many other nations.

If they are going to die they'd better do it, and decrease the surplus population.

LocalCynic: For the record, since Sloth_DC is being an asshat and promoting distortion of the gospel:

From John 12:3-8

3 Mary took a liter of costly perfumed oil made from genuine aromatic nard and anointed the feet of Jesus 2 and dried them with her hair; the house was filled with the fragrance of the oil.
4
Then Judas the Iscariot, one (of) his disciples, and the one who would betray him, said,
5
"Why was this oil not sold for three hundred days' wages 3 and given to the poor?"
6
He said this not because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief and held the money bag and used to steal the contributions.
7
So Jesus said, "Leave her alone. Let her keep this for the day of my burial. 4
8
You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me."

Sure, take John's word for it. John was just pissed that Judas actually expressed concern for the poor :)

Actually I never got my Ph.D. on AM radio.

I got it from the University of Hard Knox, having to watch the same things I have described.

\\\ been there.

\\\ done that.

\\\\ Still like Condi's titties.

AeAe: I'm just saying, from where i sit, the Hillary/Obama ticket for the Dems would be formidable.

There will be a foolish competition staged for the "Liberal" and "Conservative" voters. All of whom suffer from the naive idea that their opinion makes a difference.

Not to mention that 4BC!=2006 where there really isn't much of an excuse for poverty in an age where supposedly everyone can have what they need...

Rational Exuberance: A little utopian, don't you think?

Nothing utopian about it. It is a reality that for the first time in our civilization that we now have the possibility of obtaining any possible need. Think about it.

Funny thing about that word "need", it keeps growing and growing and never stops.

BASIC needs. Even luxuries. You're not going to tell me that there's still an economic formula today that would correlate to the conditions of Israel 4BC....

We will always have scarcity. There will never be enough resources, and we will always need a system (this system is called "economics") to dole out the resources in the most efficient manner possible. Even after we make our replicator, constraints like energy, time, and space will always be there.

I disagree, even now, in these environmentally-conscious times, there are plenty of resources. However, in order to make a hefty profit off those resources, one has to sell more of them than necessary.

Greed accounts for any scarcity.

AeAe: I'm just saying, from where i sit, the Hillary/Obama ticket for the Dems would be formidable.

Maybe if Obama were the Presidential candidate. Hillary is too much of a laughingstock to be taken seriously IMNSHO...

All Apologies: Creating opportunity. Whether that is achieved through the private sector sharing the wealth more evenly with employees, or whether it be by the government taxing the wealthy in order to provide for the majority of citizens. This isn't simply about the poor anymore, it's becoming a problem for the middle class to get ahead now as well.

Ok. You want to increase class mobility. I don't see how a disparity of wealth prevents this. The only universal factor that I can see that would stop this is lack of education. And I do know a few of my more wacky idealogues that don't believe the government should even fund this. However, I am completely in favor of creating the best education system possible. You can create opportunities for people, but if they aren't educated they won't be able to take advantage of them.

Redistribution of wealth does not create long term opportunities or success. Most lottery winners do not create long term financial dynasties, and most family business do not last past 3 or 4 generations. This is because the educational values and the knowledge of how to succeed is not instilled in these people.

I, for one, hope the Repubs counter the Dems race/sex card (Hillary/Obama, Obama/Hillary) ticket with their own: (Alan Keyes/Condi Rice).

altinos
That guy has classic undiagnosed depression and he prolly isn't even aware of it.

olddinosaur: 1. Require all southbound Canadians who are fleeing their own National Health Care system to register at the border;

2. Keep a head count, and send all the Americans who want National Health Care up to Canada to wait in their places;

3. Require all Americans headed north and all Canadians headed south to stop and talk with one another, so the Canucks can explain to the Yanks why they are coming south to pay for something they can't get in their own country.

3B: Let the Americans explains to the Canadians that they are going north to get something they can't pay for in their own country.

Canada won't be cool with your solution, because rich Canadians will go south and poor Americans will go north.

Problem.

Poor Thinking
The poverty of progressivism.

By Thomas Sowell

People in the media, in academia, and among the intelligentsia in general who are obsessed with "disparities" in income and wealth usually show not the slightest interest in how that income and wealth were produced in the first place.

They are hot to redistribute the existing income and wealth but seem wholly unaware that how you do that today can affect how much income and wealth will be produced tomorrow. Any number of schemes for redistributing wealth have ended up redistributing poverty in a number of countries.

"Progressives" in the media and among academics and intellectuals claim to be interested in ending poverty but the production of more output is the only way to end poverty for millions of people.

It not only can be done, it has already been done in many countries, for all countries were once very poor by today's standards. But most self-styled "progressives" show virtually zero interest in economic history or in economics in general.

Even in the United States, most people did not have a telephone or a refrigerator as late as 1930. Today, most Americans living below the official poverty level have not only these things but also color television, air-conditioning, a microwave oven, and a motor vehicle.

How did this happen? The progressive intelligentsia show no interest in that question.

Even such historically poverty-stricken countries as India and China, repeatedly struck by massive famines, have within the past two decades adopted changed economic policies that have raised vast numbers of people out of desperate poverty.

An estimated 20 million people in India rose out of destitution in just one decade and more than a million Chinese per month have risen out of poverty. But have you heard any progressive intellectuals explaining how such a dramatic change for the better came about?

Progressives are in the business of complaining and denouncing - as a prelude to seeking sweeping powers to control other people's lives, in the name of curing the ills of society.

The last thing they want is to discover and discuss how millions of people rose out of poverty by entirely different methods, often by freeing economies from the control of people with sweeping power over other people's lives.

Poverty and economic disparities are the raw materials from which the political left manufactures a sense of moral superiority, self-importance and political power.

Against that background, it is understandable how they strive to keep poverty alive as an issue, even as they claim to want to end poverty, by playing lady bountiful to the poor.

Even as they define deviancy downward, many of the progressive intelligentsia define poverty upward, so that people with amenities that even the middle class could only strive for, two generations ago, are still called "the poor" or the "have-nots."

Except for people who can't work or won't work, there is very little real poverty in the United States today, except among people who come from poverty-stricken countries and bring their poverty with them.

Talk about "the working poor" still resonates in politics, but most of the people in the bottom 20 percent of American households are not working full-time and year-round. There are more heads of household who work year-round and full-time among the top 5 percent of American heads of households than among the bottom 20 percent.

The Left has striven mightily to make working no longer necessary for having a claim to a share of what others have produced - whether a share of "the nation's" wealth or "the world's" wealth.

They have also striven mightily to inflate the number of people who look poor by counting young people with entry-level jobs, who are passing through lower income brackets at the beginning of their careers, among "the poor," even though most of these young people have incomes above the national average when they are older.

The real obsession of the Left is in gaining power or, at the very least, engaging in moral exhibitionism

"Altinos" wins the thread.

>> Actually I never got my Ph.D. on AM radio.

>> I got it from the University of Hard Knox

That explains your brain damage then.

IXI Jim IXI: Kicks back, grabbing popcorn and a cold cider

Pass me one, would ya?

altinos: I know a guy in his late 40s who has whined about being poor his entire life. He works odd jobs, just enough to collect unemployment, and still lives with his mom. He qualifies for state and federal aid to go to school to get a degree to better himself. He qualifies for the federal WIA program through unemployment to get the state to pay for job training so he can get a better job. For years I've collected information for him to better himself and stop whining. Every single time I've done that, he either "forgets" to fill out a form, or comes up with other crap like "Oh, I didn't want to take the morning off to go down to the unemployment office" or "Oh, I can't go to school, I don't have time", even though he spends his evenings alone in front of the TV.

Even with all these wonderful government programs, there are lots of people like him who refuse to do anything about their situation

His name?

shiat or get off the pot Whiney Mc WhineyAss

SaintBrook: I, for one, hope the Repubs counter the Dems race/sex card (Hillary/Obama, Obama/Hillary) ticket with their own: (Alan Keyes/Condi Rice).

They could always run on the wackjob platform...

>> By Thomas Sowell

Columnist who is widely read and praised by THE LOSERS.

2006-12-28 01:50:44 PM incrdbil


what stupidity. Poverty can never be eliminated without some moronic welath redistribution scheme that just makes everyone equally poor. the goalposts will just move, making a new class of 'the poor'. We cant stop people who overspend, live beyond their means, then lose their jobs through their own asshattery. Ensure equality of opportunity (mainly through reduced theft of personal resources by taxation), and let people make their own way. some get lucky, some are unlucky, others rise or fall on their merits. Thats as good as it will ever get.

I'm sick of the whining about 'poor Katrina victims'. wah, they had a disaster. Happens all the time, other people just dont make a carerr out of their victimization.
Poverty can be accidental, or the product of misfortune. But its undeniably populated by the stupid, the lazy, the shiftless, the scammers, the scum, who just wont work when they can leech off others. any scheme to take other peopes money and give it to 'the poor' is going to feed this element, who wil be first in line, and far more demanding, than thhose who have become poor through misfortune, lack of opportunity and are too proud or reluctant to take such aid.

Whenever you subsidize something, you get more of it. Undeniable. When you give out more welfare checks, you get more peopel trying to get them.

Poverty cannot, and will never, be defeated. At best, we can see to it that poverty is keps as low as we can, that charitable aid and resources to make up for basic neccessities is encouraged, and no artificial barriers to leaving poverty are allowed to continue.
===================================================


The U.S. LOST $9 Billion of your tax money in Iraq. $9 Billion cash evaporated. Where is your outrage?


/if you're a selfish prick, just say it.
//don't try to make it into an argument about taxes because YOU DON'T CARE IF THE GOV'T BUYS $1,000 HAMMERS.
///remember the 'Bridge to Nowhere'?

CommonSenseSurrenders: Pass me one, would ya?

/tosses a cider

Anyone else want anything before I get settled? :D

Hang On Voltaire

Can't we start thinking in terms of providing the means for more people to earn, as oppsoed to shuffling revenues around to band aid the problem?

Hang On Voltaire: The real obsession of the Left is in gaining power or, at the very least, engaging in moral exhibitionism

You cannot change things without gaining power, HOV.

Thanks for the Sowell guilt trip...:)

And my gripe isn't about "progress," it's about how despite that progress only a small percentage of this population actually cashes in on it.

You cannot deny that there is disparity in this country any longer, it's what to do about it.

AeAe: I'm just saying, from where i sit, the Hillary/Obama ticket for the Dems would be formidable.

Only if they don't want to win the election.

Think about this - do you really think that the voring public, collectively, will vote in a woman president before it votes in a woman vice-president? I could be wrong, but I doubt that it'll happen. I think the same thing will happen with a black candidate.

Combine the 2 "first shots" in a single ticket? i don't think there's a chance.

smeegle: Well guess if Mommy and Daddy can afford to put little Susie and Johnny into the best colleges then that's all that matters huh?

You really don't get it do you?

You don't seem to be listening - if Susie and Johnny have the grades and test scores to get into the best colleges, then there are an abundance of funding options. Funding is not the primary impediment to going to the best colleges - grades and SAT scores are.

DROxINxTHExWIND: The U.S. LOST $9 Billion of your tax money in Iraq. $9 Billion cash evaporated. Where is your outrage?

Well...to be honest, it was never ours to begin with... ;)

twilson2: By Thomas Sowell

Columnist who is widely read and praised by THE LOSERS.

Do you actually ever make coherent arguments?

Just wondering.

Honestly, doesn't it seem odd to be concerned about poverty - but focus that concern on eliminating poverty in America? Something about that doesn't seem right when so many folks in other countries are desparately poor.

I'd be happy to help. Steal from the rich, at this point that is allowed and should be encouraged. Burn their shiat too if you choose.

And the rich man in his summer home
Singin' just leave well enough alone
But his pants are down, his covers blown

give a man a fish and he will eat for a day.
teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime.

IXI Jim IXI: Anyone else want anything before I get settled? :D

Strippers and blow?

CommonSenseSurrenders: Combine the 2 "first shots" in a single ticket? i don't think there's a chance.

Hmm...the bukakke ticket?

Sloth_DC: Funding is not the primary impediment to going to the best colleges - grades and SAT scores are.

Come on man...!

Your idealism is getting the best of you.

Look at Dubya. You're telling me that his academic record got him into Yale?

Money does buy the best education...:)

whidbey: He's the liberal TGOT.

rodeofrog: Honestly, doesn't it seem odd to be concerned about poverty - but focus that concern on eliminating poverty in America? Something about that doesn't seem right when so many folks in other countries are desparately poor.

Everyone knows Americans are more important. Duh.