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Hall of Fame Legend |
Yes, I was. Perhaps "generations" was a poor choice of term. And I knew that welfare payments were finite. (Even still, the image shown during a special on MTV however long ago of Old Dirty Bastard riding to collect a welfare check in a limo is powerful one. Definitely hard to scrub from the brain.) I was talking about how long do we keep helpign the disaster areas? Say cabrini is partially revived, do we stop when a new Watts springs up b/c cabrini isn't as bad anymore? Conversely, what do we do if the attrition just wont go away? Help & training & education yielding nothing? I would posit that this attrition currently exists in "healthy" or more affluent areas of cities. |
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Numbers Retired and hangs in the rafters |
The image of Bastard abusing the system is less horrifying to me than the story of the hard working student who gradually descends to F's because of poverty, poor nutrition, and the stress of her violent neighborhood. Then the under-funded and overworked school just isn't equipped to do much more than send home notes that are never read. Breaks my heart.
Girl really needs to pull herself up by her bootstraps, right? Same as a kid from an upper-middle class suburb. Even-steven. Good stuff, though, Leg. There's no doubt that we are ALL responsible for those who have it hardest, or we're a failure as a culture. History has taught us that. We can't get locked up by dogma about fascists and socialists, or tied to ideologies. We just have to open our eyes and then do what's right. |
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Hall of Fame Legend |
Thanks.
But my question - what I have the hardest time with - is when do you say when? Can you say when? I know my pockets aren't bottomless (if they were, we'd be balling our faces off in an executive box at CBS on Sundays in the fall), and my free time is limited, etc. When do you have to finally say, "we've done what we can, it's not working." Have we reached that point in some areas (I'd say yes, but those areas are faaaaaaaaaar outweighed by areas that could benefit from the help)? |
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Hall of Fame Legend |
Who in America has managed to completely avoid benefitting from our economy in the last 100 years? It isnt that the government cant do good things - it is that they cant use American dollars as well as private enterprise can. This election boasts a Dem candidate that proposes tax-based wealth redistibution as the best way to enrich Americans. Sound good to you? |
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Numbers Retired and hangs in the rafters |
I can't really do this today, at least until later this afternoon.
But quickly: "Who in America has managed to completely avoid benefitting from our economy in the last 100 years? I don't know who is saying that, or what it proves, or why it's relevant. "It isnt that the government cant do good things - it is that they cant use American dollars as well as private enterprise can." This is sort of 101-ish, isn't it, Toop? We're not debating whether the government or the private market allocates resources more efficiently. (We don't have to.) We're talking about how you address the regions that have less of an opportunity -- or very little opportunity -- to develop the skills needed to participate in the market. Stating that the government doesn't allocate dollars as efficiently as the market does fails to address that point, or even rub up against it. And yes, I want government to focus on ways to increase those opportunities. For instance, did you see what the CEO of AT&T said yesterday? We've talked about this in the past. Big problem going forward. Needs to be fixed. Government has a role in that. So does everyone else. |
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Hall of Fame Legend |
What doesnt government have a role in? What is government's scope in your eyes? On the AT&T thing, you're voting for the guy that said, "This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is...that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit." I dont think that sounds like a guy that knows how to fix the problem. What did you mean by "the market doesnt serve everyone"? Everyone benefits from it but it doesnt serve them? It exactly IS the point, and 101 is where we need to start, apparently. Republicans want to see the economy grow robustly because they actually believe economists who tell them that a growing economy is good for everyone who participates in it. Republicans want everyone to participate in it - thus attaching work to welfare, etc. Democrats dont mind slowing the economy down as long as it means leveling out income. Somehow this means that Republicans dont care about poor people and Dems do. 101 says that Republicans think a growing economy is a better long term solution to poverty than welfare programs. That is precisely the point we are at, no? This was a discussion of Dem vs. Republican solutions. Let's not pretend that the Dem solution is confined to "address the regions that have less of an opportunity to develop skills needed...". If it's education you're talking about, you know I agree, and you know that the Dems dont have the market cornered on wanting to address that issue. But Dems go FAR beyond making education and job training available. Obama want to raise taxes on the rich to give rebates to the middle class, give health care to the middle class, create more government jobs, etc. He isnt proposing just equal opportunity, he is proposing more equal income. Let's watch the Dem solution at work, I cant wait: increase the cost of doing business so that businesses will send more work out of the country, then raise taxes to punish the businesses that have done so, then spend more money to make sure that Americans all get the same piece of the shrinking pie. It should work out great, because Obama will appoint only the smartest people to replace the function of the market in allocating resources, so things will improve constantly, right? |
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Numbers Retired and hangs in the rafters |
You're going off on a tangent here. You don't need to. We're talking about the same thing: "that a growing economy is good for everyone who participates in it."
We're talking about giving more people an opportunity to participate in it. We're talking about education and training programs mostly. And then we'd have to get into the practicality of easing the burden on middle class workers in the short term, but that's for later. What I don't get is why you don't see some balance between economic growth and quality of life. It's all about growth for you. It's the only value. You don't seem to live in the real world, where the market creates externalities to go along with the benefits. For instance, it's more economically efficient to not treat factory effluent. Why not just allow firms to dump it in the river like we used to? Why "create more government jobs" and "slow down the economy" in order to impose regulations on business?? Stop giving me this "Holy Grail of growth" lecture. It's not our only goal. |
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Hall of Fame Legend |
If it is education and training we are talking about, why pretend that Republicans dont have proposals, solutions, opinions? Why pretend that their answer to the problem of how to address it is "not at all"?
Both parties want to improve education. Both parties want to make it more available and affordable. The differences come elsewhere. The differences show up between a candidate that is considering making capital gains tax progressive and one that realizes that a new cost of capital is a new cost to the entire economy. The differences show up between one candidate that references companies persuing profit as "the problem" and the candidate that realizes our economy runs on profit (you're the one that called "corporations are benevolent" nonsense, but you're voting for the candidate that apparently wants them to make decisions based on things other than "nothing more than a profit"). The differences show up when one candidate wants to increase beauracracy to improve quality/lower cost and the other wants increased competition to tackle the job. and so on and so on. When Obama shows me that he took 101 and retained the knowledge that corporations arent the source of America's ills, I'll move past 101. But his solutions are higher corporate taxes, higher capital gains taxes, higher income taxes and more wealth redistribution. That isnt increasing opportunity, it's buying votes or acting out of ignorance. I wont pretend to know which, or that the difference changes my view of the proposals. |
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Numbers Retired and hangs in the rafters |
Where am I pretending that Republicans don't have proposals on education? We've been discussing them for weeks. Where did you come up with that?
It's clear that many Republicans couldn't give a damn what happens to education in places where they don't live. Just ask the ones in here. But I don't know when I've ever thought that elite Republican opinion makers don't delve into issues of education policy. |
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Numbers Retired and hangs in the rafters |
Why can't we argue if the programs are worth the cost rather than always raising the specter of reduced growth?
After all, I don't remember you citing the reduced growth involved with war expenditures, which dwarf types of spending we're talking about here. |
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Skipper of the Lake Erie Booze Patrol Numbers Retired and hangs in the rafters  |
Well the MIC does pay off..... WSS |
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Numbers Retired and hangs in the rafters |
Yep, some government spending has a multiplier effect on the our economy.
However, most of what is spent over there has very little in the way of ROI. It doesn't come back here. See: the new Stiglitz book. |
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Hall of Fame Legend |
My point was precisely that you must be talking about something OTHER than mere education because your post (way back when) was: If the solution to the problem is education, then you agree that "elite Republicans" (including good ol' Peggy) have more of a solution than "not at all". If your chief concern is just "giving more people an opportunity to participate", then there the discussion is merely which party's policies are better, not which has them. If your position is that Republicans dont care about the troubles to the same extent that Dems do, then your in the position of defending Obama's positions on taxes, wealth redistribution, and spending. From where I'm sitting, that looks like a tough spot to be in. Maybe it is because of the long delay between the beginning and present of our discussion, but this has become a relative mess. I vote for new threads. A few things: 1) We did discuss the cost/benefit of the war. I'm sure we got into the high spending. 2) These policies are almost purely economics ones. The alternative to looking to government to solve economic problems is to look to the market to do it. Growth is one of the primary costs or benefits of the policies. 3) The economics of the war are exponentially more difficult to discuss, and extremely different for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that almost all of the spending is either wages or payment to American corporations. I've got to go. |
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Numbers Retired and hangs in the rafters |
That's not really true. We spend billions in Iraq that doesn't go to wages or to American corporations.
You are aware that we've got 70,000 Sunni miliatmen on the payoll now, right? That's just the beginning of it. Gotta go too. |
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AFC North Player of the Month |
I like to fart.
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