MSM Hysteria Again: The 47% Episode

I was simply responding to your statement:

“There is no evidence whatsoever in your contention that there are people who pay no taxes whatsoever ~ that wasn’t true even in Communist Albania ~ everybody’s got a tax and they collect it one way or the other ~ it’s a fact of life on planet Earth.”

Nothing else.

My point is that statement is false. People who earn nothing pay nothing. There are a significant number of people who do absolutely nothing and are eating just fine and have shelter, etc provided entirely by others hard work, not their own.

The taxes collected from these people were not actually paid by by them. They never did anything to earn a dime of it and therefore “pay” nothing in any real sense of the word.

You're playing word games. This country has hundreds of thousands of coupon clippers who are living on the fortune laid up by their grandparents.

Get real ~ you get money ~ you pay taxes. You don't get money you still pay taxes one way or the other. Just because you're poor doesn't mean they cut the price for you.

You're playing word games. This country has hundreds of thousands of coupon clippers who are living on the fortune laid up by their grandparents.

Get real ~ you get money ~ you pay taxes. You don't get money you still pay taxes one way or the other. Just because you're poor doesn't mean they cut the price for you.

Mr. Romeny said the facts, die he not? Are facts said by the right now not allowed?

Just asking.

Please! You think big corporations put money into election fund coffers out of sheer altruism? Are all private donors bored philanthropists? All the biggest cheeses who put time or money into the system, or are lobbyists, are on the make or on the take.

The culture of entitlement isn’t restricted to scroungers, its a malaise that makes the entire system rotten to the core. And it stifled the very innovation and creativity the world needs.

Any fool can add a few cents on the share price of a large corporation by sacking workers, selling the silverware to sheikhs and moving production to a sweatshop in China, and Mittt Romney is that kind of fool. He’s not able to produce a coherent solution to the culture of entitlement because he’s a product of privilege and a creator of deprivation of whole communities. People like him put whole towns out of work, and no matter how strong the work ethic is, recovery from that kind of hit will take a while town a very long time.

I live in a part of Yorkshire which builds sports cars for worldwide export, built its own next gen broadband a year before any big corp had stopped procrastinating about it, has trained many of Oracle’s most experienced specialists in Europe, so we know entrepreneurship. But it took twenty years to get the likes of London to start to buy stuff from the industries round here, which have all been built without much help from them. Thatcher built a vibrant London banking sector and expected that alone to create jobs for millions of miners, steelworkers, builders and skilled engineers, but creative accounting doesn’t build anything for anyone but the money men. Trade builds more. Manufacturing does too.

The kind of people who’ll walk into markets everyone else sees no potential in with only the money in their pockets, take all the risks, create thousands of jobs, create products to export worldwide, create communities that have pride and prosperity and long term futures, and then talk about job and wealth creation from a position of having actually done it without state handouts or a rich daddy, are who we need in the White House.

You know me and you very well know my opinion of Romney. I do not like him and I am under no illusions as to his fiscal and social agendas. I gave as much as I could afford to give in the primary... and I dragged as many people to the primary polls as I could... and I voted for Newt. I will not say that I support mitt because I don't. I do know that I must try everything within my power to defeat obama regardless of who is on the ballot or whether I end up voting or not voting for him. For now I must fight obama and defend anyone attacking him with the truth. I did the same thing when people on FR were bashing Clint's skit at the Convention.

I can post the truth about obama and the truth about mitt. I agree with you that he is a corporate marxist. robert reich is one also. What I do know is that Israel may not survive obama. I know that Israel will be where my LORD and SAVIOR will appear... and I know why and I know how this all ends. In the meantime... I must fight against obama as hard as I can. There is plenty to dislike about mitt but when he has actually embraced the truth and it comes to light in a leftist attack... to be true to myself... I must point out when he is right. He was right about the 47% and he was right about the Palestinians not caring about a two state solution and peace with Israel. One cannot debate about mitt's progressive economic ideology and big government debt... the truth is that it is all the truth.

I am so angry over all of this foreign policy garbage of obama and his islamic/marxist plan. I am sick of our Military being killed because of obama’s social and policy experiments with the Military and the ME and Asia.

If mitt is kicking obama in the balls and telling him how the cow ate the cabbage... well I will just have to cheer him on. I didn't like sadam hussein either... but I cheered when he was kicking some persian booty. Beyond that... I am just as lost as I was after the Convention.

LLS

You’re wrong.... there is a large faction of people that DO NOT want to work... I know some.... the fake on the job injury to and find some worthless doctor to declare them disabled... we might have the largest workforce ever, but not productive....

i know a good number of people who investigate fraudulent workman's comps cases ~ that's still a very small number of people ~

If you know some of these folks just send me a brief on them via FREEPMAIL and I'll get the info over to the folks who can do something about it.

Nothing I like better than busting crooks

I think you are missing the point.... 46 million getting food stamps, out of control welfare, out of control Federal subsidized housing (remember what Jack Kemp said about that topic???), too large a portion not paying Federal income taxes and 23 million getting money redistribution thru the Earned Income Credit.... over-funded, bloated, wasteful city school districts getting more money from state and federal levels and their kids aren’t learning (ie. Chicago), college tuitions being federally subsidized thru grants and loan guarantees for College institutions holding billions in endowments and filling their greedy coffers by billions every year, all in the name of worthless education (generally speaking) so that our kids can graduate with a $200,000 debt to pay.

This notion that started out as taking care of the few that need help is out of control...we’ve thrown trillions at the social, medical and educationally deprived and its only gotten worse, with more and more depending on Government ... and where did it get us.... how much more do we have to slip in the world ranking before this country gets it? The answer is clear.... its just a matter of just how bad it will have to get before the vast majority of our citizens are willing to change direction.

When will we say ....ENOUGH.

I think you are missing the point.... 46 million getting food stamps, out of control welfare, out of control Federal subsidized housing (remember what Jack Kemp said about that topic???), too large a portion not paying Federal income taxes and 23 million getting money redistribution thru the Earned Income Credit.... over-funded, bloated, wasteful city school districts getting more money from state and federal levels and their kids aren’t learning (ie. Chicago), college tuitions being federally subsidized thru grants and loan guarantees for College institutions holding billions in endowments and filling their greedy coffers by billions every year, all in the name of worthless education (generally speaking) so that our kids can graduate with a $200,000 debt to pay.

This notion that started out as taking care of the few that need help is out of control...we’ve thrown trillions at the social, medical and educationally deprived and its only gotten worse, with more and more depending on Government ... and where did it get us.... how much more do we have to slip in the world ranking before this country gets it? The answer is clear.... its just a matter of just how bad it will have to get before the vast majority of our citizens are willing to change direction.

When will we say ....ENOUGH.

Of course there are freeloaders, and lots of them. But you have to have enough for them all to go to, long term prospects, jobs that reflect the skills people already have, and available training for those who need to learn new skills, and affordable housing...

Besides, not everyone who turns down work does it because they’re bone idle. I just turned down a six figure contract in Turban Land. My current job is much more difficult than the one I was offered, but there’s no sand involved, I’m less likely to be shot at here, and I get sunburnt very easily.

Bad example? Here’s a better one.

I’ve just moved out of a mining village where we have lots of jobs in the IT sector, precision engineering and so on - but there are 400 people in the village who were miners until the pit closed of whom 300 are still looking for permanent work.

While they were all looking for work, the Coal Board sold its entire local housing stock to a private landlord. This is a guy who’ll serve eviction notices if people don’t clear rent arrears within 8 weeks. Bit of a problem given ALL his tenants were already out of work when he phoned in the highest bid on the auction day...

The government were a bit worried about potentially seeing 400 families being turfed onto the street within 3 months but they had a solution: “we’ll cover your rent while you look for work”.

The landlord, being a savvy individual, trebled the rents overnight. Then he thought he wasn’t being anywhere near ambitious enough, so he doubled that figure.

So the state ended up paying 6x the original rent they used to charge, for the same tenant to stay in the same property. (Who said the private sector drives down costs?!) Fifteen years later, in many cases, they’re still paying it.

So imagine a married tenant with two children in this situation is offered a £1000/month job doing seasonal strawberry picking, 12 weeks guaranteed.

He’s taxed and pays insurance on that, so he actually takes home only £750. Out of which he now has to pay market rate - £600 per calendar month - in rent. He has to pay for all his own transport now, so call it £100 a month to buy a car he previously didn’t need. £50 a month for utility bills... Hang on. He now has £0.00 to feed his family for a month, with the average grocery bill being £75 a week. And no guarantee he can afford the rent in Month 2.

Then add to the equation the realisation that their entire family could be facing eviction due to rent arrears before the contract even finishes, but if another job cannot be found after the seasonal work ends then they’re all going to be starving as well as homeless within 3 months.

What kind of pride-obsessed idiot would you have to be to throw away the security blanket offered by the state in that situation, especially if you knew that there were 299 people with exactly the same qualifications, skills and experience as you, living in the same village as you, chasing the same fifty or so jobs as you?!

This is why we need to get back to creating industries that will employ lots of people (skilled and unskilled) for generations to come AND pay all a living wage, so entire communities can share the rewards of business success. That’s the only way to combat long term unemployment and break down the institutionalized dependency.

And, we must stop demonizing everyone who doesn’t work before asking ourselves what we’d do in their shoes, as opposed to making dumb assumptions like, they’re just bone idle / there are probably loads of good jobs falling out of trees where they live / they can borrow $1000s and retrain when they’ve got no income / they can afford to relocate even though they’re penniless / their families will be quite happy to live in the backseat of a second hand car while they keep their pride by doing a zero hours job which doesn’t bring home enough to pay the rent...

Let's get back to our origins. NO INCOME TAX ON INDIVIDUALS.

There, that solves your class envy.

You are making my point....the govt needs to do less and less.... the more they get involved, the worse it becomes.... the private sector was just responding to the market condition..., oh, someone else is paying the bill....triple the rents. If the govt didn’t step in, another course would have to be followed. Does he evict 300 families...would those families leave peacefully? Or would the private sector have to step up, along with the community to do what needs to be done to help these families.... we’ve become so dependent on the govt to fix things and we’ve stopped relying on ourselves.

Why do you think college tuitions cost as much as they do? Because the colleges all know that there’s billions in grants and federal loans.... ever look at the balance sheets of these universities? Holding billions of dollars in endowments. Do you really think it costs $50k to attend a university? Of course not...its a fraction, but the colleges over charge, and bankroll the profits thru very clever accounting. Its not as though college professors make big money.

Same in healthcare....govt gets involved and between the waste, fraud and corruption, costs have spiraled needlessly out of control. So to get prices under control, insurance companies and the federal govt started determining what they were willing to pay for various procedures. In the process, it creates so much red tape, bloat and bureaucratic process, its pushed costs even higher.

The govt needs to do far less, and we need to do more for each other.

Totally agree, but with the proviso that when the government just decides to pull out of something it’s already engaged in, hand it over to the private sector etc, the law of unintended consequences will inevitably apply if it’s not thought through properly.

Granted I’m seeing it from a UK perspective where privatisations and benefits changes which should’ve saved the taxpayer money have resulted in the exact opposite.

I’ve worked at a private hospital in Scotland (with a 5 star hotel onsite!) which was profitable but got handed back to the taxpayers on the basis it wasn’t profitable enough. NHS Scotland is now running it at a very modest profit and reinvesting that profit to upgrade a neighbouring Scottish hospital. Everyone’s a winner. Nobody there can fathom the logic of the healthcare company that was making money from it, walking away. A smaller company in the same situation looking at the same numbers would’ve been whooping for joy.

UK Railways get more subsidies now then they ever received when state owned, yet investment’s flatlined, fares have gone spiralling upward, it’s now cheaper for me to fly to Rome than take the train to London, and dealing with a simple train ticket from one end of the country to another is an unholy mess of dealing with different companies charging different prices at different times of the day.

One franchiser handed the East Coast railway line back to the government saying it wasn’t making enough money - after trousering billions in subsidies. That same franchise company has promised undeliverable returns for another line, and the government just awarded it that franchise! Without a doubt that company will pocket another huge slice of subsidy AGAIN, fail to meet is targets AGAIN and hand back this franchise complaining it couldn’t make any money AGAIN. Who smells a kickback? No sane person should’ve awarded them that contract after failing so spectacularly on the last attempt.

So even when the British conservative government wants shot of a responsibility, it quite often finds that responsibility keeps being handed back to it by the private sector (often with some lame excuse along the lines of, “yes we know it’s profitable, but the thing is, after pocketing all these subsidies we’ve decided it’s just not profitable enough!” or “Yes we know we’ll be in profit by Year 2 and be making £2bn net profit year on year by 2015, but our venture capitalist buddies now want to sell the company before Christmas so we need the money NOW!!!”) And any cynic will wonder if money in brown envelopes has anything to do with it.

And that kind of lunacy happens in the USA too. It’s no more evident than in banking bailouts, GM, universities, healthcare insurance and the like. The decisions being taken are often so bonkers you have to ask is it really more cock-up than conspiracy?

If big institutions (especially national/international ones) insist on taking the rewards of their successes in the good times, but lobby hard for special treatment from the federal government while expecting the rest of society to deal with the fallout of destructive short-term decisions and long term financial failures, how do you expect to get rid of big government?