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Are liberals dumb?

ChrisL68 said:
My parents have owned rental properties for decades that have alot of unrealized appreciation. He also built their house (he was a builder and real estate guy) so they had appreciation there as well.
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So they inherited the properties? You need either money or land or inheritance to start with before you could acquire more houses to rent them out, don't you?

ChrisL68 said:
My father grew up in the aftermath of the great depression and his father was an alcoholic. He had to work a variety of jobs as a 10 and 11 year old to help feed the family. He worked and sacrificed his entire life so that he and his kids wouldn't have to make those kinds of decisions. The whole american dream thing.
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what I'm advocating for would have helped your father when he was doing child labor to help feed the family. That's a tough decision they/he made while (apparently) impoverished. What you had said was just because you have a net worth of a million or more, doesn't mean you don't have to make tough choices in the elderly years. So I'm talking about from the point they accumulated that million, can you give an example of a tough choice? the example you gave actually supports my point - the struggles of the wealthy usually pale in comparison to the struggles of the poor.

Then there is also numbers' argument that it's kind of narrow to think the structure of our government and markets have had nothing to do with how much wealth your parents were able to accumulate. The same feedback loops that keep people in poverty are the same that keep others in plenty.

Your mother and father undoubtedly made sacrifices to get where they're at, and nobody is trying to put them into the poor house--in fact my plan is to help people out of poverty--but the fairest and quickest way is to redistribute some of that wealth from those who have plenty, to people who don't. It's not fair, but it's about as fair as it can be, it will reduce human suffering in the aggregate, it will make society function more efficiently (which will ultimately benefit everyone) and it's been shown that humans can deal with losses in material pretty easy down to a certain minimum. it isn't very fair to them to change the rules of the game, but they're also old enough to know that's life, and something like this is going to have to be done, and sooner rather than later, in order to preserve the larger status quo.

But if it really bothers you that much, change the ~ top 2% i wrote and change it to the ~ top 1%, just know that both groups of people are by definition, rich, and the social sciences across the board point to wealth disparity as an overwhelmingly bad thing.

ChrisL68 said:
Maybe its just in the way you present your viewpoint because I find myself agreeing with 923 often. Being taxed to provide a social safety net is a noble goal for a society. But taxing until everybody is equal will never work. Why would I bust my ass just to end up in the same place as somebody who doesn't work?
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Well 923 also said he's more in favor of taxing the top 1% of wealthy Americans at an even higher rate as opposed to taxing the top 3 percent at a somewhat lower rate (really it seems like semantics to me but I suppose if you're in that range exactly where the line is drawn matters a lot). 923 is talking abstractly, whereas i'm advocating forcing your parents to sell one of their houses, on a board of WFU alums, no less, so i do not expect many of the things i ever say to be popular here :)

oh also i'm not in favor of making everyone equal. that would be just as bad as the hyper-stratification we have today. I am in favor of a minimum standard of living for all humans, though. If we could agree on what that is and achieve it, then I wouldn't care about some CEO making 30 million annually (although for now the wealth of the world compared to the number of people cannot support such a reality).
 
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2&2 Slider To Leyritz said:
Dude, holy shit, can you fucking read? Look at post #55 and the related posts, from which this entire discussion came about. The point is that if I am paying $100,000 anyway, I can see it doing a lot more good going to charity than going to taxes.
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I sincerely apologize for trying to make a logical extension to real world application from the bullshit hypothetical you were engaging in. All apologies.
 
We swing this cat every few months around here, and its always the same:

jhmd does his thing where he gripes about all the freeloaders from broken homes milking him out of his money with no incentive to work, and how he wants to pull their funds "to help them help themselves" and anyone who wants to give them anything is, consciously or not, part of a vast conspiracy to keep them dumb and poor. When asked for some solid numbers on who the freeloaders are and who the legit recipients of said funds are, he cannot and does not produce any hard data. He and wrangor went through all this just a few months back and refused to put up any numbers.

then 2and2 comes on and grumbles about taxes, as if there is a place in this universe from the beginning of time until now for him to operate his business with a better combination of business climate/tax rates, as if there is a tax-free utopia awaiting us if just drop all this government nonsense
 
Shorty said:
That should be the subtitle to this board.

The Tunnels
And it's always the same - Same people, same arguments. Over and over and over.
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Shorty is on to something here. We should have a week where posters have to argue against their beliefs from the paradigm of their usual opponents.

jhmd quoting msnbc, rjkarl citing foxnews, ELC and BKF having to argue for rationality, 89 watching Maddow, me attempting to find redeeming qualities in Eric Cantor...could be fun.
 
ONW said:
Shorty is on to something here. We should have a week where posters have to argue against their beliefs from the paradigm of their usual opponents.

jhmd quoting msnbc, rjkarl citing foxnews, ELC and BKF having to argue for rationality, 89 watching Maddow, me attempting to find redeeming qualities in Eric Cantor...could be fun.
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in. tunnels debate club.
 
actually a very good way to think in general is to start with "why am i wrong?" or "why won't this work?" than normal human psychology which always looks to affirm a notion.
 
ONW said:
Shorty is on to something here. We should have a week where posters have to argue against their beliefs from the paradigm of their usual opponents.

jhmd quoting msnbc, rjkarl citing foxnews, ELC and BKF having to argue for rationality, 89 watching Maddow, me attempting to find redeeming qualities in Eric Cantor...could be fun.
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Who?
 
If you can't argue against your position then you don't understand what's going on and you shouldn't "argue" to begin with.
 
Baconwfu said:
If you can't argue against your position then you don't understand what's going on and you shouldn't "argue" to begin with.
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I wanna see BeachBum vs Elkman in Gun Control.
 
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