Thanks, Obama.

[Deacon923]

There's a huge socialist undertone in American political policy and has been for a century. And once again, I'm not a republican and not a fan of Bush so to continue to bring him up doesn't really accomplish anything. Bush spent way too much money and did not govern like a conservative at all.

You keep using that word. I do not think that it means what you think that it means.

Next time before you use the word "socialism", maybe you should educate yourself on what it means. Contrary to what Fox News tells you, "socialism" is not a synonym for "the Democratic party platform".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism#North_America

 

[RJKarl]

Even we went to a full single payer system medical system it wouldn't be pure socialism as the delivery systems would be owned by private companies. Many of these companies would exist for shareholder profit.

To the extreme right and seeping into what used to be moderate right, socialism is used to define anything they don't like or anything government does.

 

[Turd Ferguson]

You keep using that word. I do not think that it means what you think that it means.

Next time before you use the word "socialism", maybe you should educate yourself on what it means. Contrary to what Fox News tells you, "socialism" is not a synonym for "the Democratic party platform".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism#North_America

As your Wikipedia link shows there are lots of types of socialist philosophies. I really can't believe you linked to wikipedia, but here is another link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_socialism

"Other definitions fall between the first and second set, seeing democratic socialism as a specific political tradition closely related to and overlapping with social democracy. For example, Bogdan Denitch, in Democratic Socialism, defines it as proposing a radical reorganization of the socio-economic order through public ownership, workers' control of the labor process and redistributive tax policies."

You hear shit like this for dems all the time. Whatever, the fact that anyone who disagrees with your political ideas must be a Fox News watching neo-con is hilarious. Thank you for not calling me a racist, but I assume that's on its way. If you would like to educate me about anything else please send me a wiki link and I will read up.

 

[Turd Ferguson]

Even we went to a full single payer system medical system it wouldn't be pure socialism as the delivery systems would be owned by private companies. Many of these companies would exist for shareholder profit.

To the extreme right and seeping into what used to be moderate right, socialism is used to define anything they don't like or anything government does.

There's no such thing as pure socialism. Check out 923's wiki link. It's very informative.

 

[ImTheCaptain]

i mean, the OGBoards continues to exist because people pool resources

so there's that

 

[RJKarl]

There's no such thing as pure socialism. Check out 923's wiki link. It's very informative.

I've linked that page here in the past when RWers talk about socialism to show they don't know what they are talking about.

 

[Deacon923]

As your Wikipedia link shows there are lots of types of socialist philosophies. I really can't believe you linked to wikipedia, but here is another link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_socialism

"Other definitions fall between the first and second set, seeing democratic socialism as a specific political tradition closely related to and overlapping with social democracy. For example, Bogdan Denitch, in Democratic Socialism, defines it as proposing a radical reorganization of the socio-economic order through public ownership, workers' control of the labor process and redistributive tax policies."

You hear shit like this for dems all the time. Whatever, the fact that anyone who disagrees with your political ideas must be a Fox News watching neo-con is hilarious. Thank you for not calling me a racist, but I assume that's on its way. If you would like to educate me about anything else please send me a wiki link and I will read up.

Oh I see. Democrats are "all the time" "proposing a radical reorganization of the socio-economic order through public ownership, workers' control of the labor process and redistributive tax policies." Okay. You're right, we're only INCHES from becoming Venezuela. Thank God we have people like you to warn us of the danger.

Look, it's not my fault that you introduced yourself to the tunnels with a ridiculous diatribe about poor people and then proceeded to spew a round of well-trodden right wing opinion page talking points, free of any factual support for any of your assertions. If that's all you've got, don't be surprised when people call you on it.

 

[WakeandBake]

Turd you seem like a good guy. You just came in late.

It's funny, because back on the Rand Paul thread jhmd was going on and on about how the democratic party is run by the wealthy elites and that everyday democrats were meaningless when it came down to policy, especially the blacks in the party (we were discussing entitlements and dependence on government specific to the black community).

In this thread, apparently, the dem party is taking the nation to the brink of nanny-state eternal dependence, or socialism. It is apparently an out-of-control situation that must be addressed immediately by severely curbing these entitlements; which would conveniently give the poor back their 'dignity' that the socialist nanny-state democrats took away and cause them to start working harder.

So to sew all this up neatly, jhmd comes to the conclusion that the elites who run the party(s) want it this way. Why? It has to be profit-driven. These elites didn't become elite not knowing how to maximize returns. They are paying far less in the long run to throw some paltry Medicaid at these poor souls than to actually pay them a good wage and regular benefits.

right Mortimer?

If you think for a moment that the country is run by everyday Americans in political parties you are very naive. This country is run by a small elite group of wealthy interests. These are business people from the very best families and Ivy League schools, they are our best and brightest. They know exactly what they are doing.

So the Democratic elite want to keep them poor and on the dole so that they can maximize profits. So if the conservative freedom fighters can take away the ability for the elite Democrats to do this - eliminating the entitlements- then they will force not only the lazy poor to start working harder and get themselves rich, but we will also force the elite job creators to actually pay them a good wage. Holy shit jhmd is on to something

 

[DDA]

Haha! I got this email forward from my senile grandmother earlier this month.

 

[Deacon923]

Look, ONE lady with a nice cell phone and a gold tooth who is also on Medicaid is clear evidence that the whole program is corrupt and must be eliminated. But pumping untold billions into a fighter jet that still can't get off the ground and when it does, won't perform as advertised? Hell, you just got to expect a little waste when you're the biggest military power in history.

 

[OGBDeacon07]

 

[Turd Ferguson]

Wake, you seem like a good guy too. I totally agree that this country is being run by an elite group that transcends political parties. That is obviously a bad thing. I totally agree that people should be fairly compensated for work. How you define fair is difficult and how you ensure that happens is even more difficult. I took out loans for all my education and I'm paying them back. It doesn't seem fair that someone who comes from a less well-to-do background gets Pell grants or other subsidies for his education and doesn't have to pay anything back. That's just my opinion. I am not trying to argue that the democrats are pushing us to the brink of communism or whatever. I will say that as a country we have been steadily moving in a direction of larger government that collects more revenue and spends even more, and one that is more and more involved in our lives. Once again, that is not in my opinion a good thing, but we can disagree about that too.

I think you were being sarcastic about the dignity stuff. I have been in situations where things were tough and I needed help from family. I didn't feel very dignified being in that situation and was happy when I was able to get out of it. The fact that my help came from family isn't any better or different than if it came from the government. I would hope that anyone on some sort of assistance would someday be able to move to a more self-sufficient place. That is not some empty or half-hearted statement, it is just how I felt myself and how I think about things.

In this thread I did learn that I'm ill-informed, or don't understand words, or that I must be a neo-con. That's about like saying all poor people are lazy, or everyone on welfare is a fraud. Both sentiments are ridiculous and take us nowhere.

 

[Turd Ferguson]

Look, ONE lady with a nice cell phone and a gold tooth who is also on Medicaid is clear evidence that the whole program is corrupt and must be eliminated. But pumping untold billions into a fighter jet that still can't get off the ground and when it does, won't perform as advertised? Hell, you just got to expect a little waste when you're the biggest military power in history.

923, at least we can agree that wasting money on military projects is bad. Waste is waste, and for me that applies to the industrial military complex, too.

 

[WakeandBake]

Wake, you seem like a good guy too. I totally agree that this country is being run by an elite group that transcends political parties. That is obviously a bad thing. I totally agree that people should be fairly compensated for work. How you define fair is difficult and how you ensure that happens is even more difficult. I took out loans for all my education and I'm paying them back. It doesn't seem fair that someone who comes from a less well-to-do background gets Pell grants or other subsidies for his education and doesn't have to pay anything back. That's just my opinion. I am not trying to argue that the democrats are pushing us to the brink of communism or whatever. I will say that as a country we have been steadily moving in a direction of larger government that collects more revenue and spends even more, and one that is more and more involved in our lives. Once again, that is not in my opinion a good thing, but we can disagree about that too.

I think you were being sarcastic about the dignity stuff. I have been in situations where things were tough and I needed help from family. I didn't feel very dignified being in that situation and was happy when I was able to get out of it. The fact that my help came from family isn't any better or different than if it came from the government. I would hope that anyone on some sort of assistance would someday be able to move to a more self-sufficient place. That is not some empty or half-hearted statement, it is just how I felt myself and how I think about things.

In this thread I did learn that I'm ill-informed, or don't understand words, or that I must be a neo-con. That's about like saying all poor people are lazy, or everyone on welfare is a fraud. Both sentiments are ridiculous and take us nowhere.

well, welcome to the Tunnels.

To your one point - we are not taking more money from citizens now, we are taking less. You and I pay far less than our fathers and grandfathers. As a % of GDP we tax less than we did then, and far less than the majority of developed nations.

Of all the world's developed nations, we spend less as a % of GDP than almost all others on ourselves.

And government is effectively smaller, too. An unregulated and out-of-proportion financial industry drinks up more and more percentage of GDP, more than ever before in our history.

I invite you to dispute any of these facts, and again, welcome to the Tunnels.

 

[Deacon923]

Wake, you seem like a good guy too. I totally agree that this country is being run by an elite group that transcends political parties. That is obviously a bad thing. I totally agree that people should be fairly compensated for work. How you define fair is difficult and how you ensure that happens is even more difficult. I took out loans for all my education and I'm paying them back. It doesn't seem fair that someone who comes from a less well-to-do background gets Pell grants or other subsidies for his education and doesn't have to pay anything back. That's just my opinion. I am not trying to argue that the democrats are pushing us to the brink of communism or whatever. I will say that as a country we have been steadily moving in a direction of larger government that collects more revenue and spends even more, and one that is more and more involved in our lives. Once again, that is not in my opinion a good thing, but we can disagree about that too.

I think you were being sarcastic about the dignity stuff. I have been in situations where things were tough and I needed help from family. I didn't feel very dignified being in that situation and was happy when I was able to get out of it. The fact that my help came from family isn't any better or different than if it came from the government. I would hope that anyone on some sort of assistance would someday be able to move to a more self-sufficient place. That is not some empty or half-hearted statement, it is just how I felt myself and how I think about things.

In this thread I did learn that I'm ill-informed, or don't understand words, or that I must be a neo-con. That's about like saying all poor people are lazy, or everyone on welfare is a fraud. Both sentiments are ridiculous and take us nowhere.

That's a fair post and we should all be careful with ad hominem attacks. We probably agree on more than we disagree on.

The thing that will get you jumped in the tunnels is suspect facts. In that regard I want to bring to your attention some info that you may not know in regard to the bolded statement.

First, government receipts as a percentage of GDP are quite low right now. http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?DocID=612&Topic2id=20&Topic3id=21 By that measure government receipts were higher during parts of the 60s and 70s, and throughout the Reagan, Bush I, and Clinton presidencies.

Second, as to government involvement in our lives - I certainly think that there is too much red tape that holds back business, especially the complexity of the tax code and overreaching local regulation, and I hate the way that big business works the regulators to get anti-competitive regulations for smaller fish and special exceptions for bigger ones. I am also very troubled by the health care situation. However, in many very important ways, the US has been getting MORE free, not less, for many years now.

Until the 70s, government regulated the cost of every airline ticket. The feds also regulated fares for interstate truck shipping. There were price and wage controls in the 70s. Interest rates were regulated.

Republican President Nixon implemented price and wage controls! By Nixonian standards, Obama is a laissez faire capitalist. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_Shock Can you imagine Obama coming on TV and telling everyone he was putting a cap on prices and wages by executive fiat? Seriously, just try to imagine that for a minute. The entire right wing blogosphere would die of a stroke.

http://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/serials/files/cato-journal/1989/1/cj8n3-6.pdf http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deregulation#United_States

Gun rights just got the biggest win in history in the Heller case. Not that long ago laws were on the books prohibiting interracial marriage and gay sex (many are still on the books, just unenforceable), not to mention Jim Crow. In short, the US has been moving AWAY from socialism and toward greater economic and personal liberty.

That doesn't mean we don't have problems by any means, but there is lot of "sky is falling" rhetoric especially in conservative media that lacks any kind of historical perspective. The constant use of the word "socialism" is a symptom of this.

 

[WakeandBake]

but there is lot of "sky is falling" rhetoric especially in conservative media that lacks any kind of historical perspective. The constant use of the word "socialism" is a symptom of this.

This. This is at the heart of the matter.

As long as they pound those drums they keep moving the line more and more to the right. And they have done a great job of forgetting selective parts of the past to keep that line moving. I was being sarcastic about jhmd. The reason so many people are on the dole and can't get ahead is not because of the existence of the entitlement, it is the lack of real opportunity to build wealth as that line moves to the right and favors existing wealth over labor. That's where the dignity argument fails. You are right, people want dignity, so if there were real opportunities to build their wealth and get off the dole they would do just that. The entitlement exists because the opportunity doesn't, not the other way around.

 

[Turd Ferguson]

well, welcome to the Tunnels.

To your one point - we are not taking more money from citizens now, we are taking less. You and I pay far less than our fathers and grandfathers. As a % of GDP we tax less than we did then, and far less than the majority of developed nations.

Of all the world's developed nations, we spend less as a % of GDP than almost all others on ourselves.

And government is effectively smaller, too. An unregulated and out-of-proportion financial industry drinks up more and more percentage of GDP, more than ever before in our history.

I invite you to dispute any of these facts, and again, welcome to the Tunnels.

To your first point, we are collecting more revenue than ever. % of income was not what I was referring to. I am for low taxes and small government, so I am fine with that. What would you suggest is a fair overall tax burden? How much money should an income earner "keep?"

Second point, given the nature of most of the developed world's economies (from European-style "democracy" to China), I think we should spend the lowest % of GDP in the developed world. I am also fine with this.

I would need to hear more about your third point. Given the government regulations on just about everything, and given the amount of money the government spends (going into debt to do so), I don't see how this is "effectively" smaller. Please explain what you mean.

 

[Turd Ferguson]

This. This is at the heart of the matter.

As long as they pound those drums they keep moving the line more and more to the right. And they have done a great job of forgetting selective parts of the past to keep that line moving. I was being sarcastic about jhmd. The reason so many people are on the dole and can't get ahead is not because of the existence of the entitlement, it is the lack of real opportunity to build wealth as that line moves to the right and favors existing wealth over labor. That's where the dignity argument fails. You are right, people want dignity, so if there were real opportunities to build their wealth and get off the dole they would do just that. The entitlement exists because the opportunity doesn't, not the other way around.

I know what socialism, Marxism, communism all mean. I shy away from rhetoric, but the more government is involved in the distribution of goods and services the further left we move. I'm not a fan of fanatical right-wing talk shows, but arguing over narrow definitions of words is ridiculous. More government involvement is more government. What you choose to call it is up to you. From my wiki readings today I still feel confident using the word "socialism," not arguing we are on the brink of become Red China, but a movement to the left is a movement to the left. The healthcare law is not equivalent to the Bolshevik Revolution, but it is a major move to the left.

I would like to hear more about the opportunity part. Seems to me that high income taxes would stand in the way of wealth building.

 

[WakeandBake]

To your first point, we are collecting more revenue than ever. % of income was not what I was referring to. I am for low taxes and small government, so I am fine with that. What would you suggest is a fair overall tax burden? How much money should an income earner "keep?"

Second point, given the nature of most of the developed world's economies (from European-style "democracy" to China), I think we should spend the lowest % of GDP in the developed world. I am also fine with this.

I would need to hear more about your third point. Given the government regulations on just about everything, and given the amount of money the government spends (going into debt to do so), I don't see how this is "effectively" smaller. Please explain what you mean.

1) We are not collecting more revenue than ever before as a % of GDP.

2) Since we spend far and away more on defense than they all do, relatively speaking we spend even less on non-military domestic spending. The spending is out of control myth is just that, a myth. You are making my point for me.

3) I mean that, and as 923 pointed out, we are less regulated than we were some 40 years ago. The deregulation of the financial sector is evidenced by its explosion since, and the explosions of debt bubbles etc IMO. The point being that government is "off the backs" of Americans in terms of finance. So I used the term "effectively smaller."

The healthcare law is not equivalent to the Bolshevik Revolution, but it is a major move to the left.

Funny, it was conceived by the conservative Heritage Foundation and offered up as an alternative to HillaryCare. The Dems adopt it 10 years later and it is suddenly anathema. Looks like the line moving to the right to me

 

[RJKarl]

Turd, you should try to live or do business any of our major trading partners. If you think we have big brother, you ain't seen nothin'.

You think it's hard to fire someone in the US? An associate of mine was Managing Director of Dutch supermarket chain. A VP did a series of really stupid things and admitted to them. To be able to fire him, my associate had to pay the guy several years of full pay and the employer and employee contributions to the healthcare plan.

In Germany, if you don't pay your car registration on time, the government reaches into your bank account and takes it. Also in Germany DUI is .04.

In spite of spending as much on defense as the next TEN countries in the world combined, we still have lower personal tax rates than any of the G8 AND each of them have VATs that average about 19%.

You and other conservatives need to live in the real world.