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I think this is one of the biggest differences between the left and the right. The left feels we have all this income inequality and wants to rob from the rich and give it to the poor. Most of the right is not against bringing up and helping the poor but not at the expense of the rich. What's wrong with giving the poor (not necessarily money) the tools to lift themselves up out of their holes and cycles of poverty but not by just taking it from the rich and redistributing it? What's wrong with a strategy of letting the rich be rich but helping the poor climb up from where they are?
I think this is one of the biggest differences between the left and the right. The left feels we have all this income inequality and wants to rob from the rich and give it to the poor. Most of the right is not against bringing up and helping the poor but not at the expense of the rich. What's wrong with giving the poor (not necessarily money) the tools to lift themselves up out of their holes and cycles of poverty but not by just taking it from the rich and redistributing it? What's wrong with a strategy of letting the rich be rich but helping the poor climb up from where they are?
The ultra-rich are staggeringly wealthy. A recent Oxfam report revealed that the richest 85 people in the world are as wealthy as the poorest half of the world—that is, their $1.8 trillion is equal to the net worth of 3.5 billion people. Further, the wealthiest 1% own $110 trillion, or 65 times as much as the poorest half of the world.
I think this is one of the biggest differences between the left and the right. The left feels we have all this income inequality and wants to rob from the rich and give it to the poor. Most of the right is not against bringing up and helping the poor but not at the expense of the rich. What's wrong with giving the poor (not necessarily money) the tools to lift themselves up out of their holes and cycles of poverty but not by just taking it from the rich and redistributing it? What's wrong with a strategy of letting the rich be rich but helping the poor climb up from where they are?
The gulf between the poor and the rich is vast, and there are very few oppertunity for advancement for those with lower income.
It does not matter if the poor are given the tools to dig themselves out of their holes when the holes are as deep as the Mariana Trench.
I think this is one of the biggest differences between the left and the right. The left feels we have all this income inequality and wants to rob from the rich and give it to the poor. Most of the right is not against bringing up and helping the poor but not at the expense of the rich. What's wrong with giving the poor (not necessarily money) the tools to lift themselves up out of their holes and cycles of poverty but not by just taking it from the rich and redistributing it? What's wrong with a strategy of letting the rich be rich but helping the poor climb up from where they are?
And exactly what are these magical "free" tools that you speak of. As right wing nuts are fond of stating you cannot give someone something for free without taking it from someone else. So please enlighten us on how you plan to pull these awesome tools out of your magical freedom hat....
Robbing" denotes something that is a crime. If the law states that congress has the right to lay and collect taxes there is no crime whatsoever being committed. Taxes are the dues you pay for membership in a society. They are the HOA fees of the Gated community known as America. The wealthy have clearly benefited exponentially more from the institution that is the United States of America. It would then only seem logical that they contribute exponentially more for it's up keep.
The reality is that about 90% of what the government does is defend rich people from poor people.
Some of the defense is provided for using guns, soldiers and police. The rest is done simply by making sure their is a safety net to keep people from becoming desperate in the first place, and by investing in things like public education to insure the poor have the exact tools you're claiming to want to give them.
Just the other day I saw a post from the Libertarian Party to Bernie Sanders supporters trying to get them to vote for Gary Johnson. Their moronic argument was that rather than make college free they should eliminate government subsided education entirely. In order to make it cheaper. While it is true that would likely make education cheaper for the people who could still manage to afford it(those who are already rich). It would accomplish this by eliminating a ton of demand for education coming from those who can no longer afford it(the poor).
So please do not give us this bull**** absurdity about how you want to give the poor the tools they need to succeed, it is people like yourself that are trying to take those tools away to consolidate more power for yourself.
As an aside, I saw a guy at the pool this weekend wearing a Reagan/Bush '84 shirt. The pool was packed and him and is girlfriend were struggling to find a chair. I told him if he found a chair he should give it to me and my friends since we had plenty of chairs we'd make sure some trickled down to him. He didn't like that idea for some reason.
I think this is one of the biggest differences between the left and the right. The left feels we have all this income inequality and wants to rob from the rich and give it to the poor. Most of the right is not against bringing up and helping the poor but not at the expense of the rich. What's wrong with giving the poor (not necessarily money) the tools to lift themselves up out of their holes and cycles of poverty but not by just taking it from the rich and redistributing it? What's wrong with a strategy of letting the rich be rich but helping the poor climb up from where they are?
Liberals tend to think in terms of zero-sum games. That means that in order to build up one sector of society, you have to bring down another. There are places where this works and places where it doesn't work. Income inequality is one of those places where it doesn't work. The solution is to bring everyone up, not push some down and build others up, but to build everyone up. Put resources to work and create jobs, create a more competitive job market by creating a more competitive business environment. Those are the kinds of solutions that work, the whole "take from the rich and give to the poor until there are no rich any more" mentality only leads to everyone being poor.
Please. Conservative morality is a sick joke. There is a reason they need religion in order to enforce it. Brainwashing people and convincing them to accept what is told to them on blind faith is the only way to make something so idiotic and irrational seem perfectly acceptable.
All of which some how oddly involve giving themselves more money and asking you to trust them to let it trickle down to you. If you want someone to have something just give it to them directly to begin with.This, of course, is partisan bull. The right is chock-a-block with ideas and proposals on how to help the poor.
So you're an asshole to people you disagree with. How astonishing.
Please. Conservative morality is a sick joke.
There is a reason they need religion in order to enforce it. Brainwashing people and convincing them to accept what is told to them on blind faith is the only way to make something so idiotic and irrational seem perfectly acceptable.
All of which some how oddly involve giving themselves more money and asking you to trust them to let it trickle down to you.
If you want someone to have something just give it to them directly to begin with.
No, only the idiots who walk around brandishing their stupidity in full view of the world confidently believing themselves wise.
Participation and diversification. Wealth is created by the diverse exchange of it. The more we trade wealth in diverse ways amongst different economic actors, the more wealth we create.What's wrong with a strategy of letting the rich be rich but helping the poor climb up from where they are?
Rhetorical bs, since 79 we started on the road back to the Gilded Age, we have surpassed it. What has resulted is that when wages have been depressed for these near 40 years is the level of personal debt climbs just to maintain your present living standard. When your investment that was paid for by debt collapses, you end up with the new normal of slow growth/low investment because demand is depressed. These are all the result of inequalities in the ability to capture the wealth produced, where the gains are realized by your beloved wealthy. The conservative mindset of licking the boot of authority (the wealthy) extends to all sorts of self defeating ideas, not looking out for your own interests.....instead obsessing over the interests of the overlord. Conservatives are the true lackey, the real serf.What's wrong with a strategy of letting the rich be rich but helping the poor climb up from where they are?
The gulf is indeed wide between the poor and the rich, however, the poor have a multitude of opportunities for advancement. The problem is more that the government often punishes and discourages them from doing so.
:roll: If you make $32,000 a year, you are in the global 1%. Our "poor" lead lives that most humanity would envy.
Liberals tend to think in terms of zero-sum games. That means that in order to build up one sector of society, you have to bring down another. There are places where this works and places where it doesn't work. Income inequality is one of those places where it doesn't work. The solution is to bring everyone up, not push some down and build others up, but to build everyone up. Put resources to work and create jobs, create a more competitive job market by creating a more competitive business environment. Those are the kinds of solutions that work, the whole "take from the rich and give to the poor until there are no rich any more" mentality only leads to everyone being poor.
By "our poor," I assume you mean poor Americans, and that includes homeless people just like in other less fortunate areas of humanity. Pointing out a class of humanity which is less economically successful doesn't make your position any better. It's a basic appeal to emotion when you put it like that.
Wait, let me just make sure I'm getting this correctly. Conservatives justify poor people by saying that everyone would be poor if some people weren't poor?
Our "poor" lead lives that most humanity would envy.
No, it is an appeal to reality. Our homeless are generally so because of mental health issues more than lack of economic opportunity (there are agreeably plenty of exceptions). That being said, man's natural state is brutish, impoverished, and short. Our poor benefit from the fact that our society is fabulously wealthy, and so we are able to lift their standard of living to that that would be the envy of their ancestors or their counterparts overseas. We shouldn't romanticize or exaggerate their position - instead we should shape reality with a sober awareness of reality, and our ability (and likely unintended consequences) to impact it.
This is an appeal to emotion. Putting it directly after a statistic (you did not cite) does not make it any less so, or evidence your premise that poor people are poor because those poor, poor people are so poor. No matter how you try to understand why poor people got to where they are, or romanticize the wealthy, you will not fix it by pointing fingers. You're welcome to say that all homeless people are crazy to be poor, but making a broad sweeping generalization about the ultra poor doesn't seem to have any implication for your claim about poor people in general. In fact, it would be quite rude to say that all poor people are crazy, but you're not doing that, are you? You're saying poverty can be fixed and you've got the tools to do it.Our "poor" lead lives that most humanity would envy.
Sort of. We point out that, when you try to make poor people richer explicitly by tearing down those who are wealthier, you don't actually help the system, you tend to make it poorer. It isn't a zero sum game, but leftists often treat it like it is.
For example, I am happily fat. I spent about a decade or so having to exercise for an hour or two (or three, or four, or sometimes more) a day as part of my job, and now that I am passed that part of my life, I haven't run a mile flat out for two years. It's wonderful.
That being said, I'm fat. For a conservatives, blaming rich people for those in poverty is like blaming skinny people for me being fat. The answer isn't to force fit people to eat more twinkies and exercise less, that just makes society fatter. The answer is to get me back into the gym, and maybe get me to lay off the deserts for a bit.
Nice to see that your bigotry stays so consistent. It provides a kind of baseline for minimum civilized behavior that we all compare ourselves to. So if I'm at a -4.6 Wonkas of bigotry, I'm doing pretty good. Thanks for setting such a consistent (and low) bar to compare ourselves to. I know that it probably takes a lot of work to maintain that level of consistent bigotry, so I'd just like to thank you for the effort.
I really don't think it is about giving to the poor as much as limiting the wealth gap by keeping the net worth of the 1% from continuing to explode at current unsustainable rates. It is the increasingly huge wealth gap that is a danger to democratic capitalism.
Taxes are not robbery, kthx.I think this is one of the biggest differences between the left and the right. The left feels we have all this income inequality and wants to rob from the rich and give it to the poor.
Sorry, but I call shenanigans.Most of the right is not against bringing up and helping the poor but not at the expense of the rich.
Wrong? There's nothing wrong with that.What's wrong with giving the poor (not necessarily money) the tools to lift themselves up out of their holes and cycles of poverty but not by just taking it from the rich and redistributing it?
Uh, yeah, "helping the poor climb up" is exactly what leftists want to do. The problem is that someone has to pay for it. We ask the rich to pay, because a great deal of their surplus capital relies on all these other people, and a broad array of public goods.What's wrong with a strategy of letting the rich be rich but helping the poor climb up from where they are?
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