The Poorhouse: Aunt Winnie, Glenn Beck, And The Politics Of The New Deal

[Hudsonvalley82]

oh yeah, and the rich don't create jobs anymore. demand does, and boardrooms do, so don't feed me that. The reason there are no jobs is because the baby boomers aren't retiring due to poor retirement planning, which means no promotions, which means no new jobs. It can't last forever though. Soon that entire generation will be on the social programs that grew up learning to hate as socialist, and unamerican. (if they aren't already). In the rare circumstance that they properly managed their money, then god bless you, and thank you for retiring and enjoy the rest of your life.

 

[beardo]

Instead of mandating a portion of their money from taxes, you actually expect the rich to give it to you?? Redistribution of wealth is a real consideration, especially if you see the income gap as a tremendous problem as I do. If you are really really really really rich, you can spare some more than I can in the middle class. 2% high tax rate won't keep them from buying a car, a house, or food. It does for me.

The rich do give away a lot of money to social programs of their own free will. And the argument could be made that they would give even more if not taxed so much. As for a 2% tax increase ...maybe that would make it so you had to buy less food but it wont prevent you from buying food...you will buy it at your local store no matter what...the rich may not. An increase in tax rates could lead to huge losses in revenue if you had millions or billions and employed hundreds or thousands and had been doing so for years or generations but felt they were now trying to tax and regulate it all away from you why wouldn't you close down your business or relocate it overseas and move to a country with regulations more favorable to business?

 

[NoDrama]

So lets say you have a huge demand all of a sudden for Plutonium for Nuclear Reactors, think the poor people with no money saved up will be able to build a mine to get said plutonium? Perhaps the banks will overlook the fact that you are poor and have little income but are willing to lend a few hundred million to get your plutonium mine going? Demand creates jobs eh? Im pretty sure that employers create jobs and demand creates opportunity for employers to make a profit, without a profit there is no incentive to do anything.

 

[NLXSK1]

oh yeah, and the rich don't create jobs anymore. demand does, and boardrooms do, so don't feed me that.

You are truly clueless...

There is almost 2 trillion dollars held on the sidelines right now by those boardrooms because of the uncertainty in the market.

People say markets and corporations are driven by 2 things. Fear and greed. And the government is generating so much fear right now with liberal policies (healthcare, financial reform, collective bargaining, etc) that it is far outweighing the greed.

Small businesses are not being created and corporate America is not hiring and it is all due to fear of what the government will do next.

 

[UncleBuck]

...corporate America is not hiring and it is all due to fear of what the government will do next.

i watch my fair share of fox news and all you seem to do is repeat their mantras. is that the only channel you get in your parents' basement?

uncertainty due to healthcare? sorry, not true. it passed a while back and all the provisions and when they take effect are known and have been for some time now. ditto financial reform. tax cuts passed, capital gains passed, estate tax passed and all are set for years to come.

perhaps YOU used government as a convenient excuse to not start all your shuper-aweshome busshnisshesh, but that is just you and your lame excuse. and it really makes me laugh every time i think of it because it is either lame as fuck or a flat out self aggrandizing internet embellishment.

go ask any credible, non partisan economist. they will tell you the problem in the economy right now is demand. hardly surprising considering that wages have remained stagnant over a very LONG period (despite increased productivity), yet prices have risen and corporate profits have soared. when less of the money goes to the middle class, they have less to spend. when they have less to spend, they buy less. when they buy less, demand drops and it makes no sense to hire more workers to meet demand.

 

[beardo]

[youtube]77IdKFqXbUY[/youtube][youtube]3P7sWRs6MaE[/youtube]
Is Nixon wearing a seat belt while he's sitting down?

 

[beardo]

So do you think if they taxed people more and created more social programs their would be more...?...or less people going to the 'poor farm" ?

 

[NoDrama]

They did a study in San Diego, spent $100,000 per year on some bums to try and get them to live great lives, got them apartments, clothes, cars and got them job searching, come back a year later and their all out living on the street again. Plus they ended up spending enormous amounts on medical expenses caused by inebriation. Let me see if i can find that study......

Emergency medical services can alone be enormously costly. A 1998 study by Dr. James Dunford of the University of California San Diego Medical Center followed 15 chronically homeless inebriates over a period of 18 months and found that those 15 people were treated in emergency rooms 417 times and ran up bills that averaged $100,000 each. All 15 were still homeless at the end of the period. And a 2005 study for the California Program on Access to Care found that over a four-year period in San Diego, 450 chronically homeless inebriates ran up $17.7 million in emergency medical charges. That works out to an annual average cost of more than $39,000 each.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20070815/news_lz1e15kaplan.html

 

[beardo]

Don't programs like those encourage lazyness and drunkeness? If your a drunk who works everyday and busts your ass just to pay bills buy alcohol for after work and maybe have enough left over for something to eat and you found out their was a shelter for you where you don't have to pay rent and they would feed you to and give you money to drink every month...would you be worried about losing your job? would you even bother working?

 

[UncleBuck]

Poor Winnie had a home and land and was able to support herself

want to know how i know you have poor reading comprehension? this was in the first few paragraphs...

...in winter she "suffered for food and fuel."...Her neighbors helped, providing money for the stove and cot, and a "colored friendly visitor was found to carry broth and other comforts to her."

still want to falsely assert that she was able to support herself? or would a copy of 'hooked on phonics' be more appropriate?

along comes some social worker thinking she is doing so much good for us all and coerces Winnie into giving up her possessions, home and property

again with the reading comprehension, man. she ALREADY sold her own children, her own kin, into slavery. so, besides her kids that she had to sell into slavery due to lack of a minimum social safety net, what was so great that she gave up?

At last the 8x10 cabin was reached. In it was a stove in many pieces held together with wire, a bedstead with rags for mattress and rags for covering. From the leaky roof the floor was wet through and through...Her children had all been sold away to slavery."

And why does this have to be a Republican vs Democrat problem as portrayed by the MSM?

man, you really DO need 'hooked on phonics'. this is NOT portrayed as a left vs. right problem. if you had adequate reading comprehension, you would see that this article attacks both beck-esque extremism and obama's current actions, rather than exalting one over the other. the thesis of the article is that the minimum social safety net of social security, unemployment, and temporary assistance for needy families is under more attack now than it has been in the last 75 years since its creation.

now, sorry to be harsh. you know i respect your intelligence. so unless you have a grudge against social security and the fact that it keeps 20 million of our elderly citizens out of poverty, i don't really care. if you want to spin this to fit your tilt, feel free.

but know that i will eventually get around to reading and analyzing responses and call you on your BS as i did here.

 

[UncleBuck]

I had never read the story of Aunt Winne but now that I have I long for A return to those days. It sounds like a better time.

about the level of intelligence that i expected from someone who is not allowed to operate an automobile and can't balance a checkbook.

how about you sell your children into slavery because you had no social safety net and then get back to me, eh?

 

[UncleBuck]

...yet another failed liberal policy to provide the poor with everything they need.

not what we are talking about.

we are talking about a minimum social safety net for the deserving poor as provided by social security, unemployment, and temporary assistance for needy families.

poverty level (or below poverty level) assistance is not definable as 'providing the poor with everything they need', as you so eloquently and falsely state.

it means grandma isn't forced to eat cat food.

it means when a company lays off 30,000 workers that the few thousand not lucky enough to get employment again are able to feed their families.

do you object to that?

 

[UncleBuck]

It we replaced our current system with the old we would be better off.....maybe she should've offered to become a slave along with them...I'm sure they would've feed her and kept her warm if she was a slave

nice troll job.

i highly doubt you would prefer slavery to unemployment insurance or social security.

but then again, the state does not allow you to operate an automobile due to your choices and actions in life....so you may not be the brightest bulb in the pack or especially adept at acting in your own rational self interest.

 

[UncleBuck]

How do you expect jobs to be created if government keeps stealing all the equity that the jobs are created with?

i expect them to create jobs the same way they did when top tax brackets were 90% or more.

you'd think it would be a lot easier now that the top rate is only 35% or so.

must be that dagnabbit government stealing all the equity!

is that the same reason you abandoned your plans to start your own business?

i am laughing at you right now. you are a hilarious joke, a gift that keeps giving.

 

[UncleBuck]

When was the last time raising taxes created jobs?

i have these vague recollections of a dude that people called 'slick willie'....he adjusted the top tax rate from 35% to 39.6% (or something like that).

23 million new jobs ensued.

23 million, as in 23 thousand times one thousand.

you must be an 18 year old living in your parents' basement if you don't remember that.

 

[UncleBuck]

The estate tax does not hit rich people

wow, you are on a roll.

the estate tax exempts anything below $5 million dollars.

if you own a $5 million dollar estate, i would colloquially call that 'rich'.

what is rich enough for you to call rich? $10 million? $1 billion? $30 billion?

you are such a joke, i just laugh at your posts. the fact that you are not even trolling like beardo makes it more laughable.

$5 million estate? that sounds pretty upper middle class to me...lol. not rich at all...roflmao

 

[UncleBuck]

The rich provide jobs... do you not understand that?

actually, plenty of jobs are provided by anyone but the rich. people who take out loans to start a small business, entrepreneurs who are not wealthy but maybe one day will be, small upstarts that start on a shoe string budget.

i don't have the numbers to back me up, but i would be willing to wager that a majority of jobs are provided by people that we would not colloquially define as rich.

what is 'rich' is your decision to not start your litany of businesses because of who was elected president. that is rich. so rich.

 

[UncleBuck]

They did a study in San Diego, spent $100,000 per year on some bums to try and get them to live great lives, got them apartments, clothes, cars and got them job searching, come back a year later and their all out living on the street again. Plus they ended up spending enormous amounts on medical expenses caused by inebriation. Let me see if i can find that study......


http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20070815/news_lz1e15kaplan.html

again, not what the article is about.

it is not about 'getting someone to live a great life', as you put it.

again, it is about making sure grandma is not eating cat food.

so if you have an argument as to why we should eliminate social security, unemployment insurance, or temporary assistance to needy families, i would love to hear it.

until then, take your canards and shove them.

 

[UncleBuck]

Don't programs like those encourage lazyness and drunkeness?

did the 20,000 workers laid off from boeing become lazy drunks once they got the pink slip?

fuck it, you are a troll and not even worth the time.

if you are not a troll, you have the most pathetic intellect of anyone i have ever encountered, in real life or on the interwebz.

 

[Hudsonvalley82]

completely wrong. The middle class donates just as much. You can rely on the kindness of strangers. Taxes and jobs are largely unrelated. There are times when they correlate, but not nearly as many as not. I can't really understand the rest of what you said honesty.

The rich do give away a lot of money to social programs of their own free will. And the argument could be made that they would give even more if not taxed so much. As for a 2% tax increase ...maybe that would make it so you ho for years or generaad to buy less food but it wont prevent you from buying food...you will buy it at your local store no matter what...the rich may not. An increase in tax rates could lead to huge losses in revenue if you had millions or billions and employed hundreds or thousands and had been doing stions but felt they were now trying to tax and regulate it all away from you why wouldn't you close down your business or relocate it overseas and move to a country with regulations more favorable to business?