Posted on 02/27/2006 2:46:40 PM PST by Diana in Wisconsin
Oh, please, we've try this EVERY time a democrat wins an election.
Clinton put a LUXURY tax on the rich. Yachts and expensive boats were highly taxed, for example. Well, the rich aren't stupid, so they bought fewer boats. Result? Several yacht manufacturers driven out of business, and the craftsmen who worked for them, blue collar stalwarts who built ships and yachts generation after generation, passing down skills from father to son, unemployed.
It's so easy to be compassionate and concerned with other peoples money, but often extremely simplistic and the results are not intuitive toward the solution desired. Actions have consequences. Generally, people have to strive and work for things they want. Anything else is pampering.
LOL! :)
Jesus was right. Poor is a relative term. But it should be noted that in the United States the living standard of the poor keeps rising.
I tried to be obedient and get all the guffaws and harrumphs out of my system; but as I read, new ones kept emerging with accelerating frequency. Sorry!
If we had a per capita income of a million bucks a year, we'd still have people who sleep in cardboard boxes under freeway overpasses. Sometimes poverty is a lifestyle choice.
Thats true too. The homeless are not always people who just had terrible luck. A lot are schizophrenics that actually come from middle and upper class families and backgrounds but are just disturbed. A lot are drug addicts and alcoholics. And there are some who just had a string of terrible luck, however they are not anywhere near the majority. Those who are truly down on there luck could easily be helped by private charities except that bureaucrats keep taking more and more in taxes that people otherwise probably would have donated to charity.
Many homeless people are mentally ill or addicted to drugs and/or alcohol. Relatively few are people who just hit hard financial times for whatever reason.
Some are just people who aren't blessed with a decent IQ and are unliked by their families or anyone else.
Some I feel sorry for and some I don't. But nearly all of them have opted out of the social safety net that exists. If they're not staying at a shelter, it's almost always because they don't want to live by the rules in effect there.
LOL, another "Ingrate Society" program from the rats?
How much this time? $500 trillion?
Your friend is a windbag with poor grasp of reality, economically speaking ... basically a bunch of verbosity in order to praise, without being forced to actually cite anything specific:
"the accomplishments of the European models"
LOL! Tell us another good one!
The United States since 1980 has outperformed the major European nations economically and continues to grow faster with higher productivity gains, vastly higher employment gains, and lower unemplyoment rates.
Those few nations that have grown faster than the US (such as Ireland) did so using the supply-side model of lower taxes and lower Government spending to fuel their economic success.
I believe it was Nixon who said we are all Keynesians now. And proceeded to act like it, ultimately culminating in Wage/Price controls, WIN buttons and other nonsense. None of it worked. Which is why we got to 21% inflation under Carter, and $800 an oz. gold.
So no, I don't think Keynesian economics are good, or work. In fact, basically he supported Government and big banks working together to manipulate the money supply to stimulate growth. Greenspan is the biggest Keynesian ever, and the bitter fruit of what he has sown will not be long in being harvested, in my opinion.
A little bit of socialism is a like a little bit of the clap...
-ccm
Norway also owns billions of barrels of oil that it can pump out of the North Sea for $10 a barrel and sell for $60.
-ccm
Capital = ability to generate new wealth/resources. Every time a new production facility, mine, or any other wealth-producing entity is created, capital increases.
There is no fundamental limit to capital. Even the resources of the planet are not.
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
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