The problem with a government-supplied safety net is when it serves as well as a safety nest, subsidizing the birth of a new generation of hatchlings highly likely to need, in turn, the safety net/nest, ad infinitum (or at least until the money runs out).
I like it. GOP needs to adopt it: Take a look at what happens when a safety net becomes a permanent nest--you get California and Greece.
ReplyDeleteI think you forgot to work safety vest in there as well.
ReplyDeletePithy and true, but the political problem now is that so many Americans are dependent on government assistance that they're wary of cuts, even if they understand the status quo is ultimately unsustainable.
ReplyDeleteI think what Reagan grokked that many of today's Republicans miss is that if you want the working class to vote for smaller government, they need to have some economic security in the private sector. That was the case with the Reagan Democrats, who had good wages, health, and retirement benefits from their unionized manufacturing employers. It's harder to get a $10 per hour Wal-Mart worker to vote for smaller government.
Maybe Romney gets it though. He has taken a tough line on our trade deficit with China during the campaign.
The left would say that's a Social Darwinist argument. So be it. I think it is also true.
ReplyDeleteThe problem also resides with that vast army of government workers whose cushy jobs depend on the continued existence of a dependent underclass.
ReplyDeleteThis situation brings enormous costs to the public at large but hey, a (mostly) girl's gotta make a living, no ? Plus, they will very rarely live right by their charges, so after a day's work, they can simply forget about it.
An even bigger problem is that the new generation of hatchlings aren't even descended from the birds who built the nest in the first place.
ReplyDeleteI think it is working by design for some government officials. They get more money and power the more people that they make dependent on them. It also has the result of increasing the non-white population which the Obama-ites very much want to see.
ReplyDeleteSo when the money will run out, Steve? Some things just keep on going.
ReplyDeleteThe safety net works if everyone has a job.
ReplyDeleteThe fundamental right is also the fundamental duty: the right to a job/the duty to work for your keep. That is socialism.
Not exactly your clearest article...
ReplyDeleteSorry, a bit drunk- I re-read it- its clear...
ReplyDeleteIdeally, conservatives think: work hard, save, and see what we, as a people, can afford.
ReplyDeleteThey began with real work, real production, real wealth; they seek to understand their limits, and see what we can do with what they have.
But liberals think differently. Even before thinking of what is possible given what they have, liberals think in terms of 'what do people deserve as rights?'
Now, if there's a whole lot of money to spend, a society might be able to afford liberalism. But what if there isn't any money? Liberals have no concept of limits. If it's a 'right', it must be provided for. If there's no money, borrow the money, print the money, and etc.
Also, by teaching young people that they are OWED all these things as rights, liberals essentially teach them to gripe than work. Why should people work for stuff when they should be given all these stuffs for free as rights?
The conservative ideal encourages people to work, produce, and save and live within means.
The liberal ideal encourages people to demand and expect stuff out of the blue for having done nothing themselves.
Now, a lot of liberals are hard workers, and in communities where hardworking liberals work and produce as well as take and enjoy, the account books may balance out. But not all cultures and peoples are the same. Some cultures don't know the meaning of work ethic, and some peoples don't have much talent to produce much wealth. And in such a community, liberalism fails big time.
But, we are not supposed to notice that because all races and cultures are said to be of equal value.
So, when communities fail, liberals say 'not enough money was spent', and conservatives say, 'there was too much socialism'. But something like Detroit is really just a case of too many blacks.
Memorable.
ReplyDeleteThe money is about to run out, and those hatchlings are going to be quite nasty when they don't get what they think they're owed just for existing.
ReplyDeleteThat's why paying the poor not to have kids (or at least to have fewer) is such a sensible idea. But that's "playing God," cry conservatives, proving they can be just as delusional and obstinate as hbd-denying liberals.
ReplyDeleteAlso, public healthcare doesn't lead to "lifestyle" safety nesting. No one thinks "Oh cool, I'm going to go and break my arm so I can take advantage of all that free money."
Quanteisha, Diego and Cletus never write me..and after all I've given them.
ReplyDeleteNow, a lot of liberals are hard workers, and in communities where hardworking liberals work and produce as well as take and enjoy, the account books may balance out
ReplyDeleteSweden?
"I think what Reagan grokked that many of today's Republicans miss is that if you want the working class to vote for smaller government, they need to have some economic security in the private sector. That was the case with the Reagan Democrats, who had good wages, health, and retirement benefits from their unionized manufacturing employers. It's harder to get a $10 per hour Wal-Mart worker to vote for smaller government."
ReplyDeleteI'll bet those auto plant employees in the right-to-work South are just fine voting for smaller government.
That's why paying the poor not to have kids (or at least to have fewer) is such a sensible idea. But that's "playing God," cry conservatives, proving they can be just as delusional and obstinate as hbd-denying liberals.
ReplyDeleteSome anti-family-planning conservatives also have a fetish for high birthrates and large families, and somehow see that as a moral good, even if these children never have enough basic resources. These type of conservatives even go so far as to think such poverty is also spiritually ennobling.
Why should people work for stuff when they should be given all these stuffs for free as rights?
ReplyDeleteTo get even more stuff.
Some cultures don't know the meaning of work ethic, and some peoples don't have much talent to produce much wealth. And in such a community, liberalism fails big time.
ReplyDeleteExamples: Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova etc
In general the Slavic communities. Right?
the safety net concept seems to work fine in the nations of western europe. At least it did until the elite starting cramming in nonwhite third worlders.
ReplyDeleteAnd it still works fine in those european nations where the nonwhite population is fairly low.
This seems obvious to me.
Why is it you and other paleocons/new-righters never seem to see these seemingly obvious things?
Oh, wait. Your role is to point out these things and pull into the GOP net the white males who are being pushed away from american pseudoleftism by the anti-white, anti-male pseudoleftist subculture (created by grants from plutocrats decades ago....).
I wonder which countries are the best to look at for examples of what happens when a welfare state implodes?
ReplyDelete"Also, public healthcare doesn't lead to 'lifestyle' safety nesting. No one thinks 'Oh cool, I'm going to go and break my arm so I can take advantage of all that free money.'"
ReplyDeleteNo, but I've known plenty of people (women, mostly) who've said that the only reason they work is for the health coverage, as though the doctors and nurses and researchers and god-knows-who-else didn't, ya know, work to provide it for them.
Unemployment has been a serious problem ever since the mechanization of agriculture.
ReplyDeletePre-mechanization: zero unemployment.
Post-mechanization: persistent bouts of unemployment, sometimes severe.
In recent years we have also had the robotization of manufacturing which has also destroyed millions of jobs.
Voters have demanded that governments provide them with a safety net to protect them from starvation and homelessness if they become unemployed. Governments have responded not only with a safety net, but with millions of unnecessary government jobs, extended schooling, and retirement programs (so as to get the old folks out of the job market).
It's not working. The problem is that about 10% of the workforce could provide all the food, shelter, clothing, medical care, and entertainment that people need. The other 90% of workers are superfluous.
The Western nations are bankrupting themselves trying to solve this problem in a way that cannot work.
The solution is to let families and community groups perform the welfare function. When the welfare function is monopolized by a corrupt and greedy welfare state, it is a recipe for the disaster you see around you.
This is why Steve, Libertarian politics are merely stealth White identity politics. No one likes subsidizing the birth of a hostile family. The Federal, state, and local governments all do that now, so the "burn it down" attitude of the Libertarians and the Tea Party is both inevitable and expected. And likely overdue -- as you note the dependency cannot last forever, as the White Middle class gets squeezed out of existence the money will stop one way or another.
ReplyDeleteWelfare effectively excludes Whites. All one has to do is look at the birth rate differential. I assure everyone Mexican girls do not have magic wombs. They're not all Octomoms, popping out 8 kids at one whack. Rather, they have kids mid-teens on the White Middle Class dime. White working and middle class girls like babies by bad boys too. They just know there is no one to pay for it, unless Mommy is really, really rich.
So when the money will run out, Steve? Some things just keep on going.
ReplyDeleteIt's not so much that the money runs out, it's the patience of the people who ultimately authorize its provision. TPTB are past masters at circumventing the people's will, but if the money is to one day "run out" it'll be people who make it so.
It isn't working fine in any country, whitopian or not. Once welfare is faceless, nobody wants to work hard. Absenteeism is rampant in the Scandinavian nations, but they can coast on their natural resources and slow the decline somewhat.
ReplyDeleteActually it is white americans who get the most money from the Government:
ReplyDeleteFarmer subsidies
Medicare
Veterans benefits
Social Security checks
Unemployment compensation
Rural infrastructure
Etc
The Red Republican states get more back from the government than they pay in taxes.
For an example of a Welfare State imploding, I nominate ... France. As Brenda Walker on VDARE noted, it is seeing more "youth" riots (by Muslims and Africans) demanding more money, stuff, less police, etc. Even in Normandy now -- they're everywhere.
ReplyDeleteFrance is basically broke. Not even a 75% tax rate on the rich will work budget wonders, for now Italy and Spain are the obvious market targets for bonds, but France will soon need to issue more debt to just meet government payrolls. And major employers are now firing people, figuring Hollande is what he appeared, a non-entity who is so bland and wimpy he's simply giving in to the rioters.
I personally don't mind a safety net. I like things like lots of highly paid, well trained, uber-competent police, fire, lots of parks, libraries, etc. However that just pulls in half of Michoacan and enables Detroit to fall apart in the rational expectation of a payout. I think it was Angel Adams who expressed it best, asking who's going to pay, someone's got to pay for her 15 kids.
I think Angel Adams ought to be on a Republican Commercial every night. Someone's got to pay for my 15 kids is a pure winner -- for Republicans.
Anon 8:50:
ReplyDeleteThis isn't a statement of not knowing where medical care comes from, it's a statement of knowing how the health care market works. If you pay for medical care on your own you get routinely, consistently screwed over, charged a price two or three times as high as anyone important pays. Medical bills can easily wipe out your savings. Knowing this, and adapting to it by getting a job that lets you buy marginally affordable insurance, is the opposite of relying on a safety net paid for by someone else.
" I'll bet those auto plant employees in the right-to-work South are just fine voting for smaller government.or smaller government."
ReplyDeleteWiden your gaze, there's a reason foreign automakers started building those plants during the Reagan Administration.
"the automobile industry in the United States was threatened by the popularity of cheaper more fuel efficient Japanese cars, a 1981 voluntary restraint agreement limited the Japanese to exporting 1.68 million cars to the U.S. annually as stipulated by U.S Government. The Japanese automobile industry responded by establishing assembly plants or "transplants" in the United States to produce mass market vehicles."
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voluntary_export_restraints#section_1
No, but I've known plenty of people (women, mostly) who've said that the only reason they work is for the health coverage, as though the doctors and nurses and researchers and god-knows-who-else didn't, ya know, work to provide it for them.
ReplyDeleteBut they can only say that because life in the safety nest would otherwise be good enough for them. If the safety nest wasn't available they'd have to work. I favor paring back the safety nest -- to the point it resembles a net more than nest. The beauty of paying the poor to forgo childbirth is that they end up doing the paring back themselves. The supreme stupidity/cosmic ignorance of the average street conservative who believes the major problem with the welfare state is that it's "unaffordable" (or will "crash the economy") is a considerable obstacle here.
The point of the post is fine as far as it goes, but visit Africa and you will see that extreme poverty does not seem to halt proliferation.
ReplyDeleteEconomic rationality is for the rational.
Gilbert P.
O/T: Steve, have you seen the new reality TV shows about pawn shops on cable? There is one set in Detroit that is HBD gold in every way.
ReplyDeleteGilbert P.
It isn't working fine in any country, whitopian or not. Once welfare is faceless, nobody wants to work hard. Absenteeism is rampant in the Scandinavian nations, but they can coast on their natural resources and slow the decline somewhat.
ReplyDeleteSure, dude, "nobody" works hard anymore, riiiight.
Absenteeism isn't particularly related to welfare.
As for Scandinavians coasting on natural resources, lol. And what (economic) "decline"? Give me numbers, if you can. (You won't be able, but attempt could prove edifying for you.)
O/T: Steve, have you seen the new reality TV shows about pawn shops on cable? There is one set in Detroit that is HBD gold in every way.
ReplyDeleteYou can say that again. I have friends in Australia asking me "Are they [blacks] really like that?"
You mean "Red Republican" states like Mississippi and South Carolina that are nearly half black?
South Carolina is 28% black, which is much nearer a quarter than it is half. Perhaps there's a case for "anti-racist mathematics" after all.
When Goldman Sachs, AIG, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, Bank of America, GE,... got hundreds of billions from the treasury and trillions in loans from the Fed at below market rates, were the helpless babies among the executives, traders, shareholders, and bondholders being coddled in the safety net or the safety nest?
ReplyDeleteSo when the money will run out, Steve? Some things just keep on going.
ReplyDelete"If something cannot go on forever, it will stop."
--Herbert Stein
Imagine there's no welfare
ReplyDeleteIt's easy if you try.
No net below us,
no more pie in the sky.
Imagine all the people working for their pay!
Imagine our great country.
It isn't hard to do.
So much to sacrifice for;
Private religion too.
Imagine all the aliens keeping off our soil
You may say I'm a dreamer,
but I'm not the only one
I hope some day you'll join me
And the world leave us alone
Imagine your possessions.
I wonder if you can.
No need for theft or plunder,
everyone a Minute Man.
Imagine all the people abiding by the law
You, you may say I'm a dreamer,
what I say you'll find you like.
I hope some day you'll join me,
Tell the bums: go take a hike!
Didn't Pres. Reagan already beat you to it by about 30 years? i.e. "A safety net, not a hammock"
ReplyDeleteWhile he oversaw an explosion of public debt, which the best-brightest of the successor political class compete to outdo, and which inexorably requires more subsidized hammocks for more pressure groups & lawyered-up industries
Anonymous 9:24 PM, don't you love how the juiceboxer progressive legions have abandoned the pretense that SS is something workers pay into throughout their productive lives, and is in fact just another unfunded entitlement for "redneck slobs"... But actually I'm old enough to remember the Congressional Democrats of the '90s & their media waterboys indignantly insisting to the contrary
ReplyDelete"It's not working. The problem is that about 10% of the workforce could provide all the food, shelter, clothing, medical care, and entertainment that people need. The other 90% of workers are superfluous.
ReplyDeleteThe Western nations are bankrupting themselves trying to solve this problem in a way that cannot work.
The solution is to let families and community groups perform the welfare function."
If 90% of workers stop working, how do family networks provide enough support, especially when family size is shrinking (and for good reason, finite planet and all).
I prefer a basic income guarantee like Murray's In Our Hands. Any thoughts?
"Actually it is white americans who get the most money from the Government...The Red Republican states get more back from the government than they pay in taxes."
ReplyDeleteAll those bennies you decsribe are pay for services rendered, which is completely unlike Blue voter welfare which is either money for doing nothing (e.g., food stamps) or for stupid, failed governemtn programs.
Social security is for people who paid into the system. Veterans benefits are for men and women who served in the military. To get ag subdisides you at least have to grow food. Rural infrastructure is the price we pay for being a continental nation. If you want to turn this nation into an island of city states with the rest impoverished and undeveloped, then go ahead and try it.
Funny: 150 years ago many of those Red states tried to free you of the burden of their support, but the Blue states would have none of it, bleeding the country white to keep them from leaving.
What would happen if we simply replaced all taxes and government functions with a monthly citizen’s dividend paid out evenly to all adults, financed by a use fee for property rights? To make assessment easy we could use only liquidation value of said property rights (ie: mark to market).
ReplyDeleteThe so-called “libertarians” would scream bloody murder at this even though it privatizes everything.
The so-called “progressives” would scream bloody murder at this even though it redistributes wealth.
Bankers and rentiers wouldn’t scream, they’d just hire mercenaries to kill anyone who led such a movement.
So I guess it must be a good idea.
Oops!
ReplyDeleteDear i-Steve readers: In my earlier verse comment, in the line "Imagine your possessions," please substitute "earned" for "your," so that the line now reads:
"Imagine earned possessions."
Thank you very LARGE! Have Fun!
Anon 11:47, Milton Friedman once posited something like that during the Nixon Admin but there are 535 reasons it wouldn't happen
ReplyDeleteSocial security is for people who paid into the system. Veterans benefits are for men and women who served in the military.
ReplyDeleteThe beneficiaries of social security are getting back far more than they paid into it. Especially now that lifespans have increased.
You get paid when you serve in the volunteer military, so does it make economic sense for you to get paid for decades after you have finished working and have moved on?
To get ag subdisides you at least have to grow food. Rural infrastructure is the price we pay for being a continental nation.
Funny how free market principles are thrown out the window when white farmers and rural denizens are concerned.
"Social security is for people who paid into the system. Veterans benefits are for men and women who served in the military."
ReplyDelete--------------------------------
"The beneficiaries of social security are getting back far more than they paid into it. Especially now that lifespans have increased.
"You get paid when you serve in the volunteer military, so does it make economic sense for you to get paid for decades after you have finished working and have moved on?"
His/Her point is still well-taken: Most people paid into SS for years (it's not their fault lawmakers kept adding more "stuff" to more people, like minors), not their fault Congress hasn't raised the retirement age for benefits.
As for vets....they too were promised health care (big deal, most have to go a day's journey or so to a Vet hospital and they get lousy docs), and the promise for their risking of their lives and their acceptance of rotten pay.
All this, of course, contrasts with people who simply exist...and collect welfare.
Thanks for replying Whiskey. France is probably a good example.
ReplyDeleteI've been reading about Greece thanks for your tip to read Brenda Walker. Rounding up illegal immigrants and deporting them is what they are doing. Eventually France may man up and do the same. In my experience Greeks are certainly one of the most ethnocentric peoples of Europe, I'm not surprised they are one of the first to take a hard line and buck PC. Good luck to them.
Funny: 150 years ago many of those Red states tried to free you of the burden of their support
ReplyDeleteNothing funny about enslaving your fellow man. Nothing free market or libertarian about it either. The South had to be crushed.
Nothing funny about enslaving your fellow man. Nothing free market or libertarian about it either. The South had to be crushed.
ReplyDeleteTrotskyite libertarian.
As for Scandinavians coasting on natural resources, lol. And what (economic) "decline"? Give me numbers, if you can. (You won't be able, but attempt could prove edifying for you.)
ReplyDeleteSweden trimmed its welfare state back substantially in the 1990's. Their public pension system is toast, which they delude themselves will be bailed out by Africans and Middle Easterners.
Under socialism, either everybody pulls the wagon or everybody gets on the wagon. It is hard to imagine any scenario involving a group larger than a monastery where this might be sustainable.
Sweden in 1990s also made "free schools" reforms, probably to keep their children away from "immigrants".
ReplyDelete"This is why Steve, Libertarian politics are merely stealth White identity politics."
ReplyDeleteNo it's F-ing not, Whiskey! It's a set of principles. Yes, I know that well over 90% of libertarians are melanin deficient, but you're just seconding what the MSM has tried to do to libertarian thought, which is to paint it with a race brush so that nobody will touch it for fear of being tainted by the "R" word. It's about ethics, not ethnics.
"Under socialism, either everybody pulls the wagon or everybody gets on the wagon."
ReplyDeletePerfect analogy. Or at least, that's what it's like with a welfare state. At some point, the stigma of being the lazy ass on the wagon wears off, and then it's only the rubes who remain pulling the wagon. But even they wise up, and as they join the welfare class the welfare class says "but... but... you can't do that! You've... you've... got ability!". "Oh yes I can! I've got just as much need as you do, make some room!"
At or before the 50% mark, the cart grinds to a halt. The wagon pullers drop their yokes, and yell to the wagon riders "Get out and walk, you f***ers."
Anti-Gnostic:
ReplyDeleteOkay, but Sweden isn't socialist, it's a welfare state with a capitalist economy. Like pretty much all other first world countries, with variations that work better or worse depending. Some of the variation is culture, some is differences in population (a lot of stuff that probably won't work in Haiti will work well enough when your population is Scandinavian or Japanese), most is just path dependency--they started doing it one way, so that's how they do it. (For example, I suspect we could easily have ended up with single-payer health care and public schools based on vouchers, had the politics worked out that way, and I suspect we'd be better off on both counts as a result.)
Pretty much every federal or state program has people counting on it, who have taken its existence as a given and built their lives around it. Anything you cancel will hurt real people, even if (as is often the case) the program as a whole does more harm than good. That's no more true of social security or veterans' benefits than of farm subsidies or food stamps or medicaid or cross subsidies for rural utilities or special tax breaks for oil companies or foreign aid or free school lunch programs or AMTRAK or our incredibly outsized military spending.
People in the US my age and older will remember the huge pain caused by the end of the cold war--a whole bunch of smart, dilligent, hard-working guys who had built good careers at defense contractors found themselves looking for a new job in their 40s, with a mortgage and kids in college and a wife who hadn't worked for a couple decades. Now, this was an unambiguous win--the evil empire we were facing down collapsed and set its oppressed, beaten down people free. We no longer had to spend vast sums preparing for a war that might flatten western civilization and kill a couple billion people. And yet, it really screwed a whole lot of good people over, people who had (to use the politicians' phrase) had worked hard and played by the rules, and just got clobbered by forces beyond their control.
People start counting on all federal programs, and they will fight to keep them. Nobody really *deserves* any of these programs, all of which are being paid for by taxes and by borrowed money drawn on future taxes. Some of these programs make sense to maintain for various reasons, many don't but are almost impossible to shut down, some make sense and were promised to people but will be shut down for political reasons. (Lots of local governments in or near bankruptcy promised their retirees very generous pensions, and will almost certainly not be able to meet those promises, despite the fact that the promised generous retirement plan was explicitly part of the employment contract.)
"Nothing funny about enslaving your fellow man. Nothing free market or libertarian about it either. The South had to be crushed."
ReplyDeleteWell, ok, but with whose blood? The blood of 300-400 thousand young Yankees? What a waste.
You assume my disagreement with the Civil War is due to support of slavery and the South. Perhaps it's based on my opposition to the massive, unneccessary loss of life on both sides.
"The beneficiaries of social security are getting back far more than they paid into it...You get paid when you serve in the volunteer military, so does it make economic sense for you to get paid for decades after you have finished working and have moved on?...Funny how free market principles are thrown out the window when white farmers and rural denizens are concerned."
I never said all these programs make sense, but at least people don't get them just by virtue of sitting on their asses.
One major reason Red states get more from the government than Blue states is because they're disproportionately rural. You're not going to keep a 3 million square mile nation by maintaining just a few rich "city states" while the rest is economically undeveloped.
Whiskey is as full of shit as usual. From this table, in 2009 about 4.4% of whites were on public assistance, along with about twice that fraction of hispanics and a little over three times that fraction of blacks. That excludes stuff like farm subsidies and medicare, where whites probably get more. But there are plenty of whites on public assistance in the usual help-fhe-poor sense.
ReplyDeleteFurther, these fractions don't reflect some kind of reparations or affirmative action, but rather the actual level of poverty in those groups. Whites get less assistance because we're not generally as poor. Blacks get more assistance because they're much more often poor.
Public assistance of this kind (like farm subsidies, AMTRAK, foreign aid, and many other things that ought not to exist) is not actually a very big part of the budget, either. Medicaid is the biggest part, since our medical costs are in an unsustainable upward spiral. This article has a nice chart, showing that in the 2011 budget, something like 80% of the budget is covered by mandatory spending (stuff specified by statute), SS, medicare, medicaid, interest on the debt, and defense. (Defense is about a fifth of the budget, though I think that understates things a bit.)
The result of all that: you can massively cut assistance to poor people, and probably not actually see much tax benefit. There's just not all that much money there, other than maybe in medicaid. For all the political rhetoric about deficits and a budget crisis, very few budget debates or proposals actually would cut much. Almost nobody wants to talk about cutting defense, which is a huge expenditure of wealth that's mostly only useful when we need to terrorize some illiterate peasants by blowing up their mud huts.
US politicians who want to cut the deficit but won't hear of cutting defense spending have zero credibility, to my mind. (Similarly, almost none of them will talk about eliminating foreign aid, at least not to Israel--that costs votes and donations.)
"DaveinHackensack said...
ReplyDeleteMaybe Romney gets it though. He has taken a tough line on our trade deficit with China during the campaign."
He took a tough line on illegal immigration too. Until he didn't.
Welfare only works if there is shame attached to taking it. That limits the numbers who seek it, and the amount of time they stay on it. When taking welfare is shameful, then it is seen only as a last resort.
ReplyDeleteWe removed the shame from welfare. Remove the shame from it, and it attracts the shameless.
"The Anti-Gnostic said...
ReplyDelete""Nothing funny about enslaving your fellow man. Nothing free market or libertarian about it either. The South had to be crushed.""
Trotskyite libertarian."
Well said. I've always noted a deep-seated strain of tyranny in many libertarians:
You shall live as free men. Or else.
"I think it is working by design for some government officials. They get more money and power the more people that they make dependent on them. It also has the result of increasing the non-white population which the Obama-ites very much want to see."
ReplyDeleteMost government officials are not who you think they are. Pretty sure teachers, firefighters, cops, IRS agents, commissioners, and the departments like the DMV, National Parks service or VA would exist even in a healthy economy with few underclass dependents. There are some bogus diversity oriented jobs but they represent a minority of government workers.
"Conservatives" who whine more about government workers than the dysgenic birth trends among the underclass always amuse me. It's the mainstream GOP platform....
What would happen if we simply replaced all taxes and government functions with a monthly citizen’s dividend paid out evenly to all adults, financed by a use fee for property rights? To make assessment easy we could use only liquidation value of said property rights (ie: mark to market).
ReplyDeleteThis sounds positively Wilsonian.
""Nothing funny about enslaving your fellow man. Nothing free market or libertarian about it either. The South had to be crushed.""
ReplyDeleteTrotskyite libertarian."
Well said. I've always noted a deep-seated strain of tyranny in many libertarians:
You shall live as free men. Or else.
As a libertarian, it pains me to hear that, but I must agree. Too many so-called "libertarians" have that crusader attitude. It's one thing to say the Confederate States of America was an evil slave pit. It was. But "had to be crushed?" By whom, and at the expense of whom? Most slave empires fall under their own weight anyway. And using the armed might of a relatively morally good state to overthrow and reform a (relatively) bad one rarely works. The overthrow part is easy; the reforming part is not, as seen in Afghanistan and Iraq. Even World War 2 was mostly a victory for communism; for half of Europe a replacement of Hitler by Stalin.
Can I ask a few questions about the following post:
ReplyDeleteI'll bet those auto plant employees in the right-to-work South are just fine voting for smaller government.
I haven't interacted with the type of people that work in those Southern auto plants, but my understanding is that in the same County that the auto plant is located in you have a Wal Mart.
Some young men wind up working in the Wal Mart for $10 an hour and other young men wind up working in the auto plants for $25 an hour.
What is it that distinguishes the ones in the auto plants from the ones at Wal Mart? Is there a genetic IQ difference? Is there a diligence difference, ie the ones that work at the plants have the self discipline to not make mistakes while the ones at Wal Mart do make mistakes?
Is it that the ones that work at Wal Mart show up late to work, show up hung over?
I really want to understand the labor market in those areas, because the wage differential is so large
One of the virtues of the much-maligned Mayor Curley-style pre-New Deal urban machine politics/"Spoils system" was that it made it possible for politicians to provide aid an assistance to constituents, but also to cut those constituents off from aid if they were obviously trying to sponge off of the system. Because the aid to constituents was almost all either off-the-books (think of Huey Long's famous "deduct box") or came in the form of appointments to city jobs, there was no legal requirement to continue the aid simply because someone met a certain income formula dreamed up in welfare office.
ReplyDeleteElderly widow needs money to pay the heating bill this winter? Give her some cash, or call up your buddy at the oil company and remind him of the way you helped him through those regulatory hurdles last year. Notorious town drunk has been claiming he's "disabled" for the past 18 months and has no intention of ever looking for a job (and makes no useful contribution to the party at election time)? Cut him off- nobody's going to complain, since he wasn't officially receiving that money anyway.
Now, though, everything is done at the Federal level, and the 14th Amendment basically means that anyone who qualifies under the income requirements is eligible, regardless of whether he is known as a person of low character.
No it's F-ing not, Whiskey! It's a set of principles. Yes, I know that well over 90% of libertarians are melanin deficient, but you're just seconding what the MSM has tried to do to libertarian thought, which is to paint it with a race brush so that nobody will touch it for fear of being tainted by the "R" word. It's about ethics, not ethnics.
ReplyDeleteWhiskey is right. It is stealth identity politics. The rise of libertarianism and libertarian-ish rhetoric and politics has a lot to do with the end of Jim Crow and increasing diversity. Once Jim Crow ended and white Southerners had to share the commons with blacks, white Southerners retreated from the commons and libertarianism and libertarian rhetoric rose. Before that the South was all about explicit pork barreling, crony politics, using Federal money, etc.
"Anon 11:47, Milton Friedman once posited something like that during the Nixon Admin but there are 535 reasons it wouldn't happen"
ReplyDeleteRight, the negative income tax. It isn't that bad idea, it'd actually cost less to pay for the shiftless to sit on their couch than to pay for them to sit in jail. What's more, it's far more cost efficient to subsidize the working poor through a single tax credit system than through a slew of means-tested programs (each with its own eligibility requirements and large bureaucracy to administer said requirements).
Since the public doesn't like welfare recipients getting something for nothing, the most practical iteration of the negative income tax was proposed by, of all people, Jimmy Carter. His administration's PBJI plan (peanut, butter and JellI, presumably) was a negative income tax for those worked and for those who didn't work, a requirement they work at a minimum wage community service job in order to get paid.
Whiskey is as full of shit as usual. From this table, in 2009 about 4.4% of whites were on public assistance, along with about twice that fraction of hispanics and a little over three times that fraction of blacks.
ReplyDeleteWhites do tend to transition off public assistance and into the workforce much better than blacks and Hispanics, though.
We removed the shame from welfare. Remove the shame from it, and it attracts the shameless.
ReplyDeleteBy definition, welfare will attract the shameless irrespective of whether it is viewed by the majority as shameful to be on welfare. It's only when the shame is removed that it attracts those who would ordinarily be shamed. When welfare is seen for the scam it ends up being (as it turns into a safety nest), it becomes a question of "Do I enable and subsidize this scam by working, or do I choose to hop on the welfare gravy train and contribute to the destruction of the system as a form of protest?"
It is morally wrong to allow a system to continue to exist whereby your tax dollars are sucked out to fund an exponentially growing class of indolent, stupid and often criminal people. Realistically, often the only way to ensure its destruction is refuse to enable it.
The Red Republican states get more back from the government than they pay in taxes.
ReplyDeleteThis is one of the biggest of the Left's Big Lies.
Welfare only works if there is shame attached to taking it.
ReplyDeleteI'd go even farther, and say that welfare works best when it's not even there.
Face it, 90% of people are more motivated by the stick than the carrot. For every person who drags himself out of bed on a dark, cold morning to face another grinding 12-hour day in order to get rich, there are 9 people who do so in order not to be poor.
3rd World immigrants work so insanely hard because they've been socialized by a culture where if you don't work, you starve. As soon as you start promising citizens that they'll never starve to death or be denied the basics, they lose their edge.
"Nothing funny about enslaving your fellow man. Nothing free market or libertarian about it either. The South had to be crushed." - No it did not, there were only 2 bloodbaths regarding slavery, the black jacobins in haiti, and the north stomping the south. In every other case in the Americas slavery was ended peacefully without bloodshed.
ReplyDeleteOf course the real reason that the south had to be crushed was to retain the eighty plus percent export tax revenue she generated at the time.
Meanwhile, Mittens and PX Ryan agree to raise the military budget to fight enemies that don't exist...
ReplyDeleteAyn Rand excepted social security when she passed 65, and had her lung cancer surgery paid for by medicare...
ReplyDelete"“She was coming to a point in her life where she was going to receive the very thing she didn’t like, which was Medicare and Social Security,” Pryor told McConnell. “I remember telling her that this was going to be difficult. For me to do my job she had to recognize that there were exceptions to her theory. So that started our political discussions. From there on – with gusto – we argued all the time. "
http://www.alternet.org/story/149721/ayn_rand_railed_against_government_benefits%2C_but_grabbed_social_security_and_medicare_when_she_needed_them/
Mittens accepted various subsidies with Bain Company and Steel Dynamics, and PX Ryan went to school on his father's Social Security death benefits.
Well, in most of the USA the average job provides a higher real standard of living to a single person than it has at any point in history
ReplyDeletePutting it another way - We are already living in the time period in which the average person has a higher standard of living than at any other point in human history.
There are 300 million people in the USA. The average employed person in the USA (the person who has an equal number of people making more than him as making less than him) makes more than $40 thousand dollars a year. That means hot and cold running water, electricity, TV, a computer, heat in the winter, air conditioning in the summer. Big variety of fresh fruit and vegetables and other healthy food available at Costco for very little money.
Never before in the history of the human race has the average person lived that kind of lifestyle. Technology has made the average person better and better off, consistently, for at least 400 years now.
Now, from a spiritual standpoint you could argue with lack of morals, or you could say that today it is harder to be a parent because the public schools are today filled with peers that tell your children to take drugs etc.
But the data doesn't lie - The standard of living provided by the median wage in the median city in the west is dramatically higher than it was 100 years ago, 200 years ago, 300 years ago, 400 years ago
Some young men wind up working in the Wal Mart for $10 an hour and other young men wind up working in the auto plants for $25 an hour.
ReplyDeleteWhat is it that distinguishes the ones in the auto plants from the ones at Wal Mart?
When the Kia plant opened here in rural Georgia southwest of Atlanta (near the AL Border) you had something like 10,000 applications for 400 jobs.
But one thing you've got to understand about rural Southerners - they are perfectly happy right where they live so most of them will not move residences to get closer to a Kia or BMW plant. If those rural Southerners wanted a better paying job that bad they would have moved to Charlotte or Birmingham or Atlanta long ago to live in some outer ring suburban county that still has rural flavor.
Also, the more enterprising White Southerners don't have to pack up en masse and flood the cities like Brazilian peasants clustering in some muddy Rio slum - those more ambitious and business-minded amongst their lot are already running businesses for themselves (such as car dealerships, garages, landscaping companies, etc.) They won't get filthy rich but they'll make a good living considering the low business costs, rock bottom taxes and low cost of living.
For instance, at my business we had a 25 year-old middle Georgia country girl working as our office manager/receptionist here in Atlanta for 2 years. Typical small-town GA girl with a business degree from a directional Georgia college. Her elderly father recently bequeathed a few thousand forested acres in central GA to her, and now she set up a little property mgmt company that rents that land to hunting groups and she clears more than 75K+ per year off that alone.
What is it that distinguishes the ones in the auto plants from the ones at Wal Mart? Is there a genetic IQ difference? Is there a diligence difference, ie the ones that work at the plants have the self discipline to not make mistakes while the ones at Wal Mart do make mistakes?
ReplyDeleteTo my observation, most Walmart employees in local stores are women and/or blacks. Whether my individual observations would stand up to an empirical study I don't know.
Where are these $10 Walmart wages?
ReplyDeleteFor non-supervisor positions it's minimum wage starting off. And a minor improvement after working there 1 year.
(Worked at Walmart before)
"Funny: 150 years ago many of those Red states tried to free you of the burden of their support, but the Blue states would have none of it, bleeding the country white to keep them from leaving."
ReplyDeleteyeah, this is what i don't get. the liberals spend most of their time telling conservatives that they're dumb, stupid, backwards, drains on society, preventers of progress, barriers to entering a new utopian future.
yet any time conservatives say, ok, you got us. how about we both just go our seperate ways, so neither of us have to worry about this conflict of interest again? the liberals respond: you're not going anywhere.
liberals are serious morons. the red southern states will VOLUNTARILY take almost all the problematic africans away. just let those states secede. then you never have to worry about "supporting" dumb redneck racist idiots ever again. in fact, you can stand back and laugh as their states fall apart.
which actually won't happen. they'll do fine on their own. but at least you would think the liberals would want to get their hopes up to see that happen so they could do a hardy "I told you so!" in 20 years.
year 2012 liberals: "We hate dumb red state redneck morons and their bible and guns agenda. Ron Paul libertarians, Pat Buchanan paleocons, Tea Party teabaggers, these people are so dumb and stupid and extremist it makes our blood boil."
same year 2012 liberals: "Red state redneck morons, Ron Paul libertarians, Pat Buchanan paleocons, Tea Party teabaggers, these people better never DARE try to leave the union."
WTF. it just makes no sense.
"Actually it is white americans who get the most money from the Government"
ReplyDeleteas another poster explained, this is mostly for stuff they did. it's not a wealth transfer. the democrat version is just simple transfer of money from people who earned to people who do nothing all day, often never have done anything, and many people who probably will never do anything. permanent government handouts is their political science model.
Fiscal conservatism is a great big fat loser with the American public, and rightly so.
ReplyDeleteAnd, those who push it (Armey, Norquist, Koch, etc.) are the "enemy".
Instead of enabling the "enemy" like Koch, manage the Big Gubmint 90% of the U.S. wants (whether they know it or not) better.
ReplyDeletePerfect analogy. Or at least, that's what it's like with a welfare state. At some point, the stigma of being the lazy ass on the wagon wears off, and then it's only the rubes who remain pulling the wagon. But even they wise up, and as they join the welfare class the welfare class says "but... but... you can't do that! You've... you've... got ability!". "Oh yes I can! I've got just as much need as you do, make some room!"
At or before the 50% mark, the cart grinds to a halt. The wagon pullers drop their yokes, and yell to the wagon riders "Get out and walk, you f***ers."
Fantastic theory.
Now, where's the evidence?
As soon as you start promising citizens that they'll never starve to death or be denied the basics, they lose their edge.
Evidence?
ReplyDeleteFantastic theory.
Now, where's the evidence?
Greece? France? A welfare state with a safety nest is a modern experiment. It has not even had more than a few generations for the exponential growth to take effect, but already we are seeing them scaled back or eliminated as they lead to economic collapses.
"Actually it is white americans who get the most money from the Government"
ReplyDeleteThis is one of those true but meaningless and misleading statements.
The gov't steals most of its income from Whites, too. And what it steals from Whites far exceeds what it "gives" back. People who say stuff like that quote are off in some way cognitively IMO.
This is why Steve, Libertarian politics are merely stealth White identity politics.
ReplyDeleteMore like pied-piper stealth oligarch/Jewish politics heading off the stealth White identity politics at the pass. Which is why libertardians welcome demographic invasion and pretend "civil rights" (the "right" to abrogate actual rights) are a-okay.
"The Red Republican states get more back from the government than they pay in taxes."
You mean "Red Republican" states like Mississippi and South Carolina that are nearly half black?
You notice how he tried to switch the topic from "blacks cost whites money" to "reds cost blues money"? It was pretty cute.
Meanwhile, this red-stater is fine with the idea of red-state secession. Don't worry blues, we'll send you our blacks.
Nothing funny about enslaving your fellow man. Nothing free market or libertarian about it either. The South had to be crushed.
Nothing "fellow" about blacks. But of course, the south did have to be crushed, to preserve Yankee authoritarian hegemony. They're running out of gas though, thank God.
Reconstruction put the lie to all that "moral" north crapola. That was evil.
ReplyDeleteWTF. it just makes no sense.
ReplyDeleteMakes perfect sense; they're sociopathic authoritarians.
Ayn Rand excepted social security when she passed 65, and had her lung cancer surgery paid for by medicare...
ReplyDelete"“She was coming to a point in her life where she was going to receive the very thing she didn’t like, which was Medicare and Social Security,” Pryor told McConnell. “I remember telling her that this was going to be difficult. For me to do my job she had to recognize that there were exceptions to her theory. So that started our political discussions. From there on – with gusto – we argued all the time. "
http://www.alternet.org/story/149721/ayn_rand_railed_against_government_benefits%2C_but_grabbed_social_security_and_medicare_when_she_needed_them/
Mittens accepted various subsidies with Bain Company and Steel Dynamics, and PX Ryan went to school on his father's Social Security death benefits.
Arumentum ad hominem.
E.g:
"There once was a man named Bob who said that stealing was wrong. Then he stole. Along came a moron named Joe who thought stealing wasn't wrong. He was so stupid, he thought Bob's hypocrisy proved it."
As soon as you start promising citizens that they'll never starve to death or be denied the basics, they lose their edge.
ReplyDeleteEvidence?
2nd generation Mexican immigrants are the evidence.
Their parents sneak across the border and will work any job to make a living. Their 2nd generation babies, not so much.
I agree with you there. Conservatives complain about California. But the Center for immigration studies shown that let's say Orange County Ca had much less native born on welfare than Houston Tx. In Orange County those on the dole were immigration about 56 percent versus only 19 percent. North Virginia had the lowest at 9 percent for native and 30 for immigrant. So, Republicans say we will not the welfare state like the South, well the south has a lot of low income native born mainly black except for Texas mainly Hispanic.
ReplyDeleteWhat interesting is Arizona has a slightly higher home ownership than Texas, of course it bubbled-Arizona. Maricopia County where Phoenix is has higher home ownership than any of the major Texas metro areas and a little less poverty. Maricopia has a smaller black population and similar or less Hispanic population. Maricopa County home ownership was 66.3 and Harris in Texas 57.8. Before the Great Bubble people from California were heading to MAricopia still a lot of Mexicans but Maricopia was trying to do something about it, less blacks and asians in Maricopia. For Republican Conservatives Arizona is small and some of its smaller rural areas not grat but Maricopia has the best home owernship among counties 3 million or more. Also, property taxes lower than Texas, granted Texas doesn't have a state income tax.
ReplyDeleteYou want a low welfare state then you look like San Diego County did in 1970. Only 10 percent Hispanic and 5 percent black and 2 percent Asian. And a lot of good paying jobs because of the industrial military complex. That's why Republicans like aerospace contracts since they created more middle class than other factory jobs like garment work that illegal immigrants do or are shipped overseas. This is the reason why Republicans support bigger defense budgets Reagan won high on the industrial-military complex.
ReplyDeleteWell, a lot of small states like Vermont or New Hempshire send money to California or New York because of the free and reduce lunch program or title one. The model of large state sending like California and small state receiving doesn't consider these things. Both New YOrk and California have school districts that get a lot of title one money and free and reduce lunch programs. California, Texas and so forth have more people that get back money on the earned income as a percent than Iowa since they have heavily Hispanic populations. A lot of states have to send money to heavily Hispanic states that don't pay their way compared to states that don't like Vermont or Maine were fewer use the earned income credit..
ReplyDeleteWell, trying to get Hispanics to have less kids is the key. Only Catholics and a handful of Evangelicals are against birth control. Liberals are fools on this since let's say a Santa Ana Ca which is 80 percent Hispanic has over 9 percent of the population is under 10 years old. The Orange County Ca for less Hispanic towns is 6.3 percent under 10 years old. The whiter towns usually vote Republican Santa Ana votes Democratic and is where Loretta Sanchez got her start.
ReplyDeleteWell, with Greeks you are also Greek if you are Eastern Orthodox, the people they are rounding up are not. Eastern Christianity is far less universal than western Christianity like Roman Catholics or some protestant groups its more ethnic.
ReplyDeleteConservative that were opposed to the stimulus were right on some of the military spending. If Obama had use that money to built new planes, or ships he would have came out better than windmills in China or Cars in Finland.
ReplyDeleteThe gov't steals most of its income from Whites, too. And what it steals from Whites far exceeds what it "gives" back.
ReplyDeleteThe whites who whine the most about taxes, the teabaggers, look like they are the biggest beneficiaries of government largesse. Small town and rural America which is overwhelmingly whites of northern euro extraction are being subsidized by metropolitan americans who are predominantly white ethnics (jews etc), non-whites, mixed race etc
We debated how long Texas is going to stay Republican. For now the hardcore right in the wealthy white suburbs will keep it Republican but its home ownership according to the US Census is dropping another factor along with a growing Hispanic population which will make it swing state in maybe 10 to 15 years. Ok next down home ownership is 69.6 percent and has a smaller minority population. New Mexico is 68.2 which is the highest among the Hispanic states and is a swing state. Colorado seems to be going slightly blue home ownership is 67.6 and Arizona is 67.4 a Red State and Texas is down to 64.8. Wages in Texas seem to be not keeping up since I doubt that the cost of housing has risen that much more than the other states.
ReplyDeleteWell, there is a book from the early 2000's a book called Suburban warriors which mentions that back in the 1960's it was Orange County Ca and San Diego Ca that lead to the libertarian revolution not the South. Prop 13 in the 1970's had a lot of backers in those counties. The bad thing was that OC and San Diego got into keeping their labor cost low by hiring a lot of illegal immigrants during in the late 1970's but so was Los Angeles. The demographics of the places changed because of legal and illegal immigration so Texas and the Southern States are the ones that pushed the libertarian agenda now.
ReplyDelete""There once was a man named Bob who said that stealing was wrong. Then he stole. Along came a moron named Joe who thought stealing wasn't wrong. He was so stupid, he thought Bob's hypocrisy proved it."
ReplyDeleteStart drinking a little early this morning, did we?
Evidence?
ReplyDeleteIt's common sense. Marginals who aren't motivated to do more for themselves than the basics see "you'll never lack for the basics" as a pass.
Arumentum ad hominem.
ReplyDeleteE.g:
"There once was a man named Bob who said that stealing was wrong. Then he stole. Along came a moron named Joe who thought stealing wasn't wrong. He was so stupid, he thought Bob's hypocrisy proved it."
I heard a another story about Bob:
Bob invents a magic medicine he claims will cure a particular illness. One day he gets very sick with this malady. Only he decides to use some "evil" traditional medicine instead of his own.
Joe discovers this and concludes Bob secretly found traditional medicine useful. Furthermore he suspects Bob's magic medicinal claim is off the mark, if not fraudulent. Bob's friends on the other hand expand the original claim to include every damn medical problem they can think of.
There is an equal entitlement complex in play here, the idea that they are entitled to public safety , moral behavior and order without paying for it.
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't really work that way.
Every single thing must be paid for and if the social fabric doesn't create good stable jobs or if you lack the stones to pay people to not breed than well...
you either have a massive police state that steps on you as well (rather like we have now though it can get much worse) or unsafe cities.
Fail to pay you way and you can very easily get Tijuana and tribal warfare.
Also technology makes some kind of social democracy socialism inevitable, people don't have land or jobs and must have the basics.
And yeah sure you can hope they starve, better also hope all of them are dumb and cowardly too less they pull and Arab Spring and replace you or worse pull a Pol Pot ...
Well, Rick Perry by study the home ownership stats has lost his state's advantage by southern standards his state only now has 64 percent home ownership while Florida with a lot of hispanics but more educational levels has 69 percent. Rick Perry copied the advise of Chuck Devore from Orange Ca make it business friendly but allow any immigrant to get a job, now Texas in his major metro areas has prices being driven up by immigrants having several people buying a house. It affordable compared to California but Texas now has less affordable housing than New Mexico or Ok or Louisiana. Is Rick Perry the stupidest Republican governor next to George W Bush.
ReplyDeletePersonality, I'm not a big fan of farm subsidies but states like Iowa which are over 90 percent white with the exceptions of some farm workers or meat packing places have a lower poverty rate than a blue state like New York or a Red state like Georgia, so why complain about subsiding Iowa which employs less foreign born than either New York or Florida.
ReplyDelete"P[aul] Ryan went to school on his father's Social Security death benefits."
ReplyDeletePaul Ryan used the benefits which were provided by the government when his father died, and so would every other person, Democrat, Republican, independent, libertarian, communist, or fascist. Ryan only received these benefits until his 18th birthday, as is the law.
"Paul Ryan used the benefits which were provided by the government when his father died, and so would every other person, Democrat, Republican, independent, libertarian, communist, or fascist."
ReplyDeleteNot a true libertarian. What's the difference between Social Security you never worked for, and food stamps?
What's the difference between Social Security you never worked for, and food stamps?
ReplyDeletePaul Ryan's dad worked for it, just like you work for the premiums you pay on your life insurance policy. The payouts are for the benefit of your dependents, not for you.
There is an equal entitlement complex in play here, the idea that they are entitled to public safety , moral behavior and order without paying for it.
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't really work that way.
Every single thing must be paid for and if the social fabric doesn't create good stable jobs or if you lack the stones to pay people to not breed than well...
you either have a massive police state that steps on you as well (rather like we have now though it can get much worse) or unsafe cities.
Fail to pay you way and you can very easily get Tijuana and tribal warfare.
Also technology makes some kind of social democracy socialism inevitable, people don't have land or jobs and must have the basics.
But the gov't creates the anarcho in anarcho-tyranny. If it just got out of the way, citizens would see to their own safety. More of a private police state. Or lots of them, rather.
And you don't get Tijuana without a massive police state. You need mestizos for that.
Truth, you can play "torture the analogy" by yourself. I'm not a libertardian so I'll leave my foray at a simple respect for logic.
ReplyDeleteThe whites who whine the most about taxes, the teabaggers, look like they are the biggest beneficiaries of government largesse.
ReplyDeleteArgumentum ad hominem. Taxes suck even if Hitler's doing the most whining about them.
But no, since tea-partiers are taxpayers, they aren't the biggest beneficiaries. Taxpayers are the biggest victims. Tax parasites like the libtards' pets (blacks and browns) are the biggest beneficiaries.
But yes, angling urban minorities like Jews are all for advocating (then dodging) high taxes. Why shouldn't they be? The gov't is doing everything they want.
ReplyDeleteNot a true libertarian.
ReplyDeleteWell, duh. That's a given.
But it's really not hard to understand. Just like it isn't a businessman advocating a strict immigration policy and deporting alien infiltrators and scabs but acknowledging the fact that to stay competitive in his business under the current regime means hiring those same infiltrators and scabs.
An ideological position is not a suicide pact or oath to go out of business. Some of you guys sound like children. The "you must cut your own throat to convince us you mean what you say" thing is pretty tired.
I mean, it's been long established that none of you guys wants to live anywhere near the NAMs you champion.
ReplyDeletejody:
ReplyDeleteThe folks who fought the civil war honestly had little resemblance to any large political movement today, neither liberal nor conservative. And seccession didn't just get the abolitionists (who you can think of as liberals, sorta) upset, it got a whole lot of people who didn't want the country broken in two upset, including those who didn't care much one way or another what happened to a bunch of slaves.
We've actually seen a bunch of seccession in Eastern Europe after the collapse of the Soviet Union. That's probably a good model to use to see how well it can work--Estonia and Latvia and the Czech Republic and Serbia are all examples of more-or-less functional states who seceded from a larger state. In the case of the ex-Soviet states, that was mostly done without bloodshed, but the breakup of Yugoslavia was bloody and horrible. I'm not sure how much of that was inevitable (the split was driven by ethnic hatred and there were lots of Serbs living in Croat areas and vice versa, ripe for the ethnic cleansing). I can't imagine secession working in the US now--both because we're so tied together with federal programs and highways and such, and because we're very mobile so there aren't all that many people who think of themselves as more Texans than Americans or more Marylanders than Americans or whatever.
Similarly, a bunch of countries got rid of slavery without having a civil war. I don't know whether that would really have been possible in the US (the slave/free state split mirrored a bigger split between the north and south that made seccession seem like a good idea, and a really staggering fraction of the total accumulated capital in the country was in the form of slaves), but it's hard to look at the awful bloody US civil war, and *not* think that it could somehow have been handled better.
Truth:
ReplyDeleteThat line of argument makes it impossible to ever argue for a fundamental change in your society without being called a hypocrite. Like, if you grow up in the USSR, work in a collective farm, are educated by the state all the way through your PhD, work as a researcher in a state-run institute, but then come to believe Communism on the Soviet model is a bad way to run a society, can't we tell you to shut up and call you a hypocrite in exactly the same way as is being done here wrt Ryan? Or when a bunch of Occupy protesters are saying corporations have too much power, but then using products of companies who do a lot of lobbying and have too much power, does that let us tell them to shut up?
What's interesting is whether the argument is right or not (this is why ad hominem attacks are bad--not that they make the target of the attack unhappy, but because they dodge the question of whether your argument is sound in favor of the question of whether you're a bad person or a hypocrite or should have any right to speak.
Is there any reason to think that France is in a more fundamentally unsustainable place wrt their social programs and government budgets than we are?
ReplyDeleteGreece is a better example, though it seems to me there are bigger reasons for its failure (like inability to collect taxes, massive corruption all through the government, and active intentional lying in their public budget numbers for years and years). I don't know that their welfare state is as big a problem as those other things, and I don't think it's enormously more generous than that of many other European states that seem to be working out fine. Belgium, Germany, and Denmark are all European countries with modern welfare states, who seem to be doing okay, and have been for some time.
There are failure modes of generous welfare states, and it is important to know that they can happen--that you can get a permanent dependent population with multiple generations on the dole, for example. But lots of countries have had generous welfare states for several generations, including the US, and most such countries don't seem to be collapsing under their weight. Instead, from time to time there are adjustments to the terms of the welfare scheme to try to make it easier to get off or harder to stay on.
I gather that in the US, one thing that keeps a lot of people on public assistance is the way having any savings or income tends to cut those programs off abruptly. I've read some analysis that says that at the bottom, it's possible to have a really stunningly high marginal tax rate, where (for example) you get a raise, which bumps you above medicaid eligibility and childcare eligibility, and thus you end up much poorer than you were before the raise. This isn't so much a safety nest as a safety trap. I'm not sure what should be done to fix that--something like Murray's idea of a fixed per-citizen payout and no other welfare, or Friedman's negative income tax (but that also has problems with its marginal tax rate) might work, especially if paired with some kind of universal medical insurance for all citizens.
"Paul Ryan's dad worked for it,"
ReplyDeletePaul Ryan is not his daddy, and he did not put in one day at the mill, the warehouse, the PX 90 gym or wherever for that money. If his daddy died in prison, would PX Ryan have finished his sentence?
" It was the right thing to do. "
ReplyDeleteIt has nothing to do with that; seceding from the union was unconstitutional and illegal, and breaking the law carries consequences.
"Just like it isn't a businessman advocating a strict immigration policy and deporting alien infiltrators and scabs but acknowledging the fact that to stay competitive in his business under the current regime means hiring those same infiltrators and scabs."
ReplyDeleteOh, now I get it! It took a while, but through the magic of analogy I finally understand; like hating blacks and living in a 50% black city, for instance.
Why didn't you just say so?
"I mean, it's been long established that none of you guys wants to live anywhere near the NAMs you champion."
ReplyDeleteIt's all good, you do.
"That line of argument makes it impossible to ever argue for a fundamental change in your society without being called a hypocrite."
ReplyDeleteNo NOTA, it's actually pretty simple; If you do not believe in entitlements, don't take any. Precise, to the point.
What do you think about Strom Thurmond speaking on the horrors of race mixing and having interracial children?
Like, if you grow up in the USSR, work in a collective farm, are educated by the state all the way through your PhD, work as a researcher in a state-run institute, but then come to believe Communism on the Soviet model is a bad way to run a society, can't we tell you to shut up and call you a hypocrite in exactly the same way as is being done here wrt Ryan?"
We do not live in the USSR, so that question is moot. The point is, he was not coerced in any fashion to accept his daddy's welfare payment. He did not work one day for that money so, if a man of principle, why accept it?
I'm not so severe that I do not realize that men are different at 42 than they were at 18, but per my research, he has yet to say one word about taking that money, as if he feels it was fine.
It is not just Ryan, a "government is too big" lifetime government employee with a large staff, it is Mittens as well. During the Vietnam war, he campaigned vociferously PRO Vietnam...the accepted religious deferments.
Two of the great axioms on this subject:
ReplyDelete"A liberal is a conservative who got fired."
"The rich insist on socialism for themselves, and capitalism for you."
An ideological position is not a suicide pact or oath to go out of business. Some of you guys sound like children. The "you must cut your own throat to convince us you mean what you say" thing is pretty tired.
ReplyDelete"Our lives will improve if we all jump off this sheer cliff together!"
"You first..."
I mean, it's been long established that none of you guys wants to live anywhere near the NAMs you champion.
ReplyDelete*Facepalm* libtards are the grand masters of the kind of Alinskyite behavior I'm referring to; what am I doing dignifying T's selective concern?
An ideological position is not a suicide pact or oath to go out of business. Some of you guys sound like children. The "you must cut your own throat to convince us you mean what you say" thing is pretty tired.
ReplyDelete"Our lives will improve if we all jump off this sheer cliff together!"
"You first..."
What do these three paragraphs have to do with one another? That is, why have you strung them together into a comment? The second and third seem to be a non-sequitur.
"Our lives will improve if we all jump off this sheer cliff together!"
ReplyDelete"You first..."
I mean, I could see:
"My life would be better if you stopped robbing me to pay for that safety net that everyone else is using."
"No." *pulls out gun* "You 'need' a safety net. And you're going to pay for the safety net whether you use it or not."
Now, that's a relevant analogy. I don't give a shit whether you jump off a cliff or not. Unless I'm at the bottom.
It has nothing to do with that; seceding from the union was unconstitutional and illegal, and breaking the law carries consequences.
ReplyDeleteHow was it unconstitutional? Which laws did it break?
The Republic was founded by secessionists, for secessionists, via secession. The idea that southern secession was illegal or unconstitutional has a pretty high bar to clear, IMO.
ReplyDeleteSvigor said...
ReplyDeleteThe Republic was founded by secessionists, for secessionists, via secession. The idea that southern secession was illegal or unconstitutional has a pretty high bar to clear, IMO.
And it's hypocritical. to boot.
"How was it unconstitutional? Which laws did it break?"
ReplyDelete"Southern secession was illegal for the simple reason that it was unconstitutional. States that seceded during 1860 and 1861 each passed an “Ordinance of Secession” essentially declaring that they no longer considered themselves subject to the authority of the Federal Constitution. Those ordinances were illegal because the Article VI, Clause 2 (which all Southern states agreed to when they ratified it) says:
“This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land…”
In other words, no laws passed by any state can be considered as superseding the Constitution of the United States. Even more specific than the foregoing “Supremacy Clause,” we have the Article I, Section 10, Paragraph 1 of the Constitution that says, “No state shall enter into any treaty, alliance, or confederation,” which is precisely what the eleven seceding states did when they formed the southern confederacy. Then there is paragraph Article I, Section 10, paragraph 3 that says, “No state shall…keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State…” The South raised both an army and a navy."
http://www.helium.com/items/1769918-was-southern-secession-legal
“This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land…”
ReplyDeleteThe supreme law of...the Union. When the southern States seceded from the Union, they were no longer a part of it and thus, no longer subject to its laws. The Constitution may be as supreme as it wishes where enumerated, but it cannot assume unto itself vague powers simply because the powers it does enumerate include the word, "supreme." The supremacy of Constitutional law does not translate into the supremacy of any Yankee whim attributed to it.
People are too important to enslave with bondage, even by voluntary contract, but nations aren't, apparently. People are too important to be bound to a marriage they want to leave, but nations aren't; people may divorce, but nations, entire populations and their posterity, may not. Hmm, makes perfect sense.
There is no such thing as a contract or agreement that may not be ended (which is not to say that contracts are not binding, but rather to say that agreements to perpetual servitude are non-binding; and more, that contracts pretending to bind one's posterity in perpetuity are even further afield into tyranny). It defies the very meaning of the concepts.
In other words, no laws passed by any state can be considered as superseding the Constitution of the United States.
Let's agree to this for the purposes of argument; even if true, a law of secession does not supersede any part of the Constitution, because the Constitution does not prohibit secession, or empower the federal gov't to prevent secession. "Laws made in pursuance thereof" bring tyrants no solace, either; there is nothing enumerated within the Constitution to prevent secession, and therefore, no power, law, or mandate to make any laws in pursuance of regarding secession. Many would argue that a Constitutional law that crosses the line into tyranny is void, in any event. Would you acknowledge as legitimate a law that made you, your son, or your whole race into slaves, simply because it was written in the Constitution and ratified by the States? I submit that Union in Perpetuity crosses the same line. It's of the same cloth as slave-marriage or child bondage.
There is no such law in the Constitution because it never would have been ratified if there had been. The Anti-Federalists raised fears of the tyranny of perpetual, insoluble Union, and the Federalists assured them they were misplaced. (At least, that's what I've read second-hand; unfortunately, simple and manifest logic and respect for human rights aren't going to be enough to convince the chowder-heads, so I suppose I'll have to dig into this bit eventually)
Even more specific than the foregoing “Supremacy Clause,” we have the Article I, Section 10, Paragraph 1 of the Constitution that says, “No state shall enter into any treaty, alliance, or confederation,” which is precisely what the eleven seceding states did when they formed the southern confederacy. Then there is paragraph Article I, Section 10, paragraph 3 that says, “No state shall…keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State…” The South raised both an army and a navy."
ReplyDeleteWhen they seceded from the Union, they were no longer part of the US and thus no longer subject to its laws. They were no longer States for the purposes of Constitutional law. So they could make any treaties, alliances, or confederations they wished, and were free to keep troops and ships, and raise an army and a navy.
The Union was the one trampling the South's Constitutional rights (they were the ones who thought the Confederacy still part of the Union and subject to its Constitution, remember), violating several clear, supreme laws: infringing on the right to bear arms, the free press, to be free in their persons and effects from unwarranted search and seizure, etc.
The Union got its way by force of arms, and after waging America's bloodiest war against their own former countrymen and roughly a century of needless misery, the matter is for now a sleeping dog. Let that be enough for the Yankees; don't expect me to say they were in the right under color of law.
Is there any documentary evidence that secession was forbidden?
"The supreme law of...the Union. When the southern States seceded from the Union, they were no longer a part of it and thus, no longer subject to its laws."
ReplyDeleteI am a United States citizen. What would happen if I declared myself, by fiat, an "independent citizen without national affiliation" and then shot you on my front yard?
"People are too important to enslave with bondage, even by voluntary contract, but nations aren't, apparently. People are too important to be bound to a marriage they want to leave, but nations aren't; people may divorce, but nations, entire populations and their posterity, may not. Hmm, makes perfect sense."
ReplyDeleteI would say it does, Mittens; people are born, living organic organisms, nations (and regions of nations which you are describing here) are arbitrary lines on a map, decided upon, by fiat, by people. You want to secede from the union, you don't do it from within, you do it from without, by starting a war, which is basically what they did, and take your chances on the consequences.
I am a United States citizen. What would happen if I declared myself, by fiat, an "independent citizen without national affiliation" and then shot you on my front yard?
ReplyDeleteBe careful with the reductio ad absurdum there, son. The position that states cannot secede is much closer to reductio ad absurdum in pursuit of tyranny than the position that they can is to reductio ad absurdum in pursuit of individual sovereignty.
As for shooting people in their front yards, well, we don't let Mexicans or Canadians shoot us from theirs, so, I think you can answer that question on your own.
I would say it does, Mittens; people are born, living organic organisms, nations (and regions of nations which you are describing here) are arbitrary lines on a map, decided upon, by fiat, by people.
Nations are composed of people, not lines on a map.
You want to secede from the union, you don't do it from within, you do it from without, by starting a war,
You're hostile to the notion of secession; you don't get to define it.
which is basically what they did
Nonsense. The Yankees invaded the south. That's what happened, basically and every other which way.
I just noticed it was your yard, not mine. Well, States intervene in lawless areas all the time, so no biggie.
ReplyDelete"Be careful with the reductio ad absurdum there, son."
ReplyDeleteI don't know Latin but I'm taking it you're saying that one person cannot break established laws, in defiance of authority, but x-number can?
What's the number, 10?, 100?, 1,000?, 10,000?, where's the cutoff point?
"Nations are composed of people, not lines on a map."
No, nations are entities DEFINED by lines on a map that CONTAIN people. If you don't believe it, drive your car as fast as you can over the Mexican line, without showing someone your ID that establishes that you are from the American side.
I don't know Latin but I'm taking it you're saying that one person cannot break established laws, in defiance of authority, but x-number can?
ReplyDeleteTake whatever you want. While you're out there in left field, will you cut the grass?
What's the number, 10?, 100?, 1,000?, 10,000?, where's the cutoff point?
Just go look up the Latin, you lazy ass.
Voters have demanded that governments provide them with a safety net to protect them from starvation and homelessness if they become unemployed.
ReplyDeleteI don't think so. Centralizing "charity" is the central government's idea.
The solution is to let families and community groups perform the welfare function.
Absolutely. That is the right way to do it.
Absolutely. That is the right way to do it.
ReplyDeleteI once made that point to a forum full of libtards. Almost to a man, their response was "you stingy bastard." There was no acknowledgement whatsoever of any of the actual issues I was raising. I especially liked the part where several suggested that people are scum and won't help one another without gov't intervention. I don't know where conservatives got the idea that libtards think warmly of human nature but it's bunk. Several were quite comfortable suggesting that man is barbarous without the state.