Who do I thank for all the free money?Follow

For some of the people, yes. I'm assuming your "cutoff point" is about income level? So if we tax less and provide more benefits as income decreases, then their must be a cutoff point at which some low enough amount of income will result in more benefits (in this case, we're just talking dollar value) than is being paid. As you say, this is a mathematical certainty.


The point I'm making is about what percentage of the total public is below that cutoff. As we increase the benefits (and the range of income which can receive them), and we shift the tax burden more to those making more money, aren't we also increasing the number of people who are under that cutoff? What happens when that number is the majority? Isn't that problematic for a sustainable Democracy where everyone has the same vote?


Examine what happens over the long term if you have a society where the bottom 75% of earners pay zero taxes. What happens to spending? What happens to benefits? While we should (hopefully) see that an endless increase in spending and benefits for that non-paying majority will result in disaster, will human nature allow for anything else? I don't think so. It's a red/green game scenario and will end up either with economic collapse *or* political turmoil/revolt. People are greedy by nature. Not just the rich, but all people. I honestly think that some people forget this truth.

We're not talking about "poor" though. Those who do want to use class warfare as a political tool absolutely *do* have super-pacs. And they absolutely do have a desire to increase that cutoff point so as to increase the number of people they can influence with the "vote for us and we'll give you a better deal" approach.

What part of me talking about the danger when those below the cutoff become a majority made you think I was talking about the poor?

Family of four making a median income in the US? I'm not aware of *any* definition in which that qualifies as poor. Do you? So can we stop playing word association games here? The issue I'm speaking of has nothing to do with disenfranchising "the poor" and everything to do with the dangers of government buying votes from people who are not poor, by convincing them that all the money its spending on goodies for them (the "not poor") wont cost them anything because they'll just make the rich pay for it.



Sure. But they usually think they're voting *for* their own interests. My point being that they become even easier to manipulate if they're not invested in the costs of the things they are voting for. How long does the line for something free become? The fact that it's bad for them down the line is not in question here.

But that's irrelevant if we accept your statement that money is used to influence people into doing things against their best interests. This is going to be true whether a majority of people pay zero or less taxes or not. Only the means by which that money is used to manipulate them and the ease to which the manipulation can occur has changed.

My counter is that when that population number reaches a majority they become more easily manipulated. Because their condition of benefit gained from the government requires that they vote in support of those who promise to keep it that way. So they must also support any social agenda that "side" has as well. And despite your attempt to make this like it's "rich versus poor", it's not. Those who want to raise that cutoff point and thus increase the percentage of the population in that condition absolutely *do* have super-pacs, right?

It's one rich group versus another, with different agendas and ideologies. So how about we stop pretending it's about rich versus poor and actually look at the agendas and ideologies themselves and make a decision that way instead of playing it off with cheap rhetoric?



Except you still don't seem to be able to wrap your head around the idea that the "side" you think is for the poor and against the rich, is just as rich and just as likely to be lying to the voters to get them to vote the way they want them to. You immediately leaped to a "rich versus poor" dynamic, even though it had nothing at all to do with the situation at hand.



I think you're still thinking this is about the "poor" (working class, lower middle class, whatever) empowering themselves by taking control of government spending and using it to siphon from the rich to provide for themselves a better life. My point is that this isn't the case at all. It's really telling that you just can't seem to shift your perception of this away from that though. Amazingly myopic in fact.


What's amazing is your blind assumption that liberal rich people have purely altruistic motivations, while conservative rich people don't. The biggest difference between them is that the conservatives actively try to limit government because they know that this gives "the rich" too much ability to control the population. The liberals sell the idea that by expanding government they're actually empowering the masses. But they're just using their money in a different way. It's still about control. Moreso IMO (but then I'm obviously biased).

Edited, Feb 6th 2012 6:40pm by gbaji

Delicious irony.

This... defies description. But... yeah. Wow.

What's amazing is your blind assumption that liberal rich people have purely altruistic motivations, while conservative rich people don't. The biggest difference between them is that the conservatives actively try to limit government because they know that this gives "the rich" too much ability to control the population.

Interesting take on conservatism. I mean, Batshit insane, obviously, but interesting.

Out of curiosity, what do you think of automatic cost of living adjustments for the federal minimum wage?

Hey now. The gigantic strawman argument in there deserves a mention too!

More or less Batshit insane than a group of people who'd just won a war of independence creating a system of government which limited their own power? Modern conservatives are those people who still believe that human nature is such that the only way to limit abuses of power is to limit power, and thus we can best serve the cause of a free society by limiting government as much as possible. Modern liberals are those who believe that they can use the power of government to make the lives of the citizens better, if only they could increase the governments power enough to do so.

Now, we can speculate as to their motivations regarding the intent to create a system in which abuse of that power will become easier and the people less free, but intent isn't really relevant here. The result of their actions *will* make abuse of power easier and *will* result in less liberty for the people within our society. At the risk of a cheesy reference: At best, we can view modern liberals as those who would use the Ring for good, and with the best of intentions, but ultimately through them, it would do evil. How many years now have I referred to the Democrats as the party of unintended consequences? It's like that.




On the fence really. We already have a federal minimum wages, so that horse is out the barn already. Automatic adjustments are problematic IMO because they leave open the possibility that manipulation of the indexes used to measure cost of living can result in manipulation of the wages. It also ties our hands too much. If we have to pass legislation to increase the wage, then this means that actual people have to look at the issue and make a decision. Doing so automatically takes the responsibility out of the hands of the individual representatives and thus makes a poor decision as likely as a good one.


At the end of the day I also happen to believe that minimum wage decisions should be based on more than just cost of living. That's a more complex argument though, and I have to get going, so I'll leave it at that.

Edited, Feb 6th 2012 7:21pm by gbaji

I don't know about the USA, but in Australia and European countries, you'll be paying State/Federal taxes every time you spend money on something. Sometimes it's as low as 10% of the retail price, usually it's higher, being a mix of GST/VAT, tariffs, payroll taxes etc that are all passed on to the end consumer. There are also local council fees on any owned property, including the family home.

This is often why Federal benefits/"taxes" will compensate lower income people rather than charging them. For instance, in Australia the Goods and Services tax is no more than 10% of the price of goods or services. (It does not accrue up the wholesale/manufacturing chain.) Personal income tax is about 30% for most Australians. And yet the GST manages to account for 30% of the Federal tax income.

If only it were less so today.

Finished preparing the returns last night for Ray and me. $3200 a federal refund and for the first time in 5 years, $1000 for a California refund.

Yeah. Take the blinders off sometime and actually read and you might see otherwise. ;)



I didn't say they were. I said that the Bourgeoisie (the rich, but that's what I was talking about) were not the true enemy of a Communist movement. Note, I said "movement", not a communist state already in existence. To achieve the communist victory, first must be destroyed the old middle class (or even the concept of the middle class).




Except the parts where he specifically mentions the middle class. First, he talks about the process of how the proletariat gain the power they need to take control. Part of which is this:



But this doesn't always happen:



But for the movement to succeed and the grand future to be realized, they must be taken into the proletariat. They must be shown that they are just cogs of the machine as well.



That paragraph directly follows the one before. He's talking about the middle class. And how some of them might not just become equally poor wage slaves like the rest, but instead cling to old ideas that they can achieve prosperity and rise above the proletariat. Of course, Marx sees this as those people taking greater money as bribes, but that's a subjective opinion.

In the modern context, the communist revolution as envisioned back then didn't happen. They were wrong. Opps! Wages did not flatten. The workers did not become extensions of the tools they wielded. There did not arise a massive and unified workforce, all equally oppressed. Instead, the middle class got bigger, wages for those not owners of the means of production became wider. And along the way, everyone's standard of living got better.


So instead of recognizing that they were wrong, the communists have instead embarked on a century long quest to force the conditions that Marx spoke of. Because before the glorious revolution can happen, they have to eliminate all the stuff in the way. And guess what? The modern middle class is in the way. The movement only works if they can easily divide the whole workforce into "rich and poor". But the sad reality (for them anyway) is that there's a whole range of folks in between. Thus, they become the enemy.





In Marx's vision of the world, I would become part of it, yes. But Marx's vision of the world didn't turn out to be true. Hence, the problem.



And this turned out to be 100 times better than anything Marx and Engel's could have dreamed possible. And that's a problem for modern communists (and to some degree socialists as well).




Yes. But Marx was wrong. Get it? The reason he defined class as something having nothing to do with wealth was because he assumed that over time everyone who wasn't Bourgeoisie would become equally low paid as part of the Proletariat. That's the point of the whole thing. It's a reaction to a condition which Marx assumes will occur. In his world there will be no wealth held by anyone who isn't in control of the means of production. Period. So division by wealth isn't possible.


Clearly, that didn't happen though. The middle class didn't just hang on as bribed turncoats, oppressing their fellow workers. The middle class grew and thrived. And that's why they are the enemy of the modern communist movement. They must be eliminated for the Proletariat to grow, and for them to be angry enough to create the revolution Marx envisioned.

You read the words, but don't seem to understand what they mean:



Here he's talking about the upper middle class, but still mentioning it. Well, actually, he's making a case for why elimination of private property is a good thing. Of course, it's good only in a circular fashion. If you eliminate it, then everyone becomes equally poor/rich/whatever, and the revolution can proceed. But you have to eliminate private ownership of property first. Remember that this is all a means to an end. A process by which some kind of utopian future will emerge.


Remember also that they were wrong. Not just a bit wrong, but completely horribly laughably wrong. Why anyone puts any stock in these nutty theories is beyond me. Honestly, there's no better proof of it than in this line:



Best intentions and all that. But what actually happened is that those societies which embraced the Free Market resulted in widened and enriched lives for the workers. Those which embraced communism resulted in oppression and poverty for the workers. Marx was wrong. Period. When will people realize this and stop repeating any of the theories he espoused?




Sure. But he was wrong. Let's not forget that. His "solution" to the problem of unequal wealth was worse. Much much worse. It doesn't work. It has never worked. Even doing just partial amounts does harm with no benefit. It's a failed philosophy and should be tossed on the dust heap of history.




I'm sure you congratulate yourself on convincing others to join up and fight for the cause of worker liberation, while you yourself are part of that middle class which benefits massively as a result of the free market. How oppressed do you feel Smash? Do you think you'd personally be better off if you were a member of a union working in a factory? So... it's equality for others, but not for you, right?




Edited, Feb 7th 2012 3:05pm by gbaji