Board index › Topical Discussion › Politics, Philosophy, and Religion

The Ant and the Grasshopper: Aesop fable updated.

Page 4 of 5 [ 65 posts ]  Go to page Previous  1, 2, 3, 4, 5  Next

Previous topic | Next topic

Master_Pedant
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 14 Mar 2009
Age: 35
Gender: Male
Posts: 4,903

14 Aug 2011, 11:31 pm

Inuyasha wrote:
I'm not the one blaming small business owners and retirees for the world's ills.


Please retract your shameless mischaracterization of Marshall.


_________________
http://www.voterocky.org/


Inuyasha
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 12 Jan 2009
Age: 43
Gender: Male
Posts: 9,745

14 Aug 2011, 11:43 pm

Master_Pedant wrote:
Inuyasha wrote:
I'm not the one blaming small business owners and retirees for the world's ills.


Please retract your shameless mischaracterization of Marshall.


Most millionaires are small business owners and retirees, whether or not Marshall realized that is immaterial, what I said is essentially accurate. Also you really have no room to berate people for mischaracterizing others in the first place, since you mischaracterize people on a regular basis.



marshall
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 14 Apr 2007
Gender: Male
Posts: 10,752
Location: Turkey

14 Aug 2011, 11:46 pm

Master_Pedant wrote:
Inuyasha wrote:
I'm not the one blaming small business owners and retirees for the world's ills.


Please retract your shameless mischaracterization of Marshall.


He is too brainwashed to feel shame.



Inuyasha
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 12 Jan 2009
Age: 43
Gender: Male
Posts: 9,745

14 Aug 2011, 11:48 pm

marshall wrote:
Master_Pedant wrote:
Inuyasha wrote:
I'm not the one blaming small business owners and retirees for the world's ills.


Please retract your shameless mischaracterization of Marshall.


He is too brainwashed to feel shame.


:roll:

Seriously you need to learn to stop projecting your faults onto others.



marshall
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 14 Apr 2007
Gender: Male
Posts: 10,752
Location: Turkey

14 Aug 2011, 11:59 pm

Inuyasha wrote:
Master_Pedant wrote:
Inuyasha wrote:
I'm not the one blaming small business owners and retirees for the world's ills.


Please retract your shameless mischaracterization of Marshall.


Most millionaires are small business owners and retirees, whether or not Marshall realized that is immaterial, what I said is essentially accurate. Also you really have no room to berate people for mischaracterizing others in the first place, since you mischaracterize people on a regular basis.


First of all, you are twisting definitions. People with a million dollars in assets or savings do not necessarily have an income that would classify them as ultra-wealthy. Very few small business owners make more than $250K in taxable personal income.

Second. I'm not one of the people demonizing all wealthy people, so buzz off and attack GoonSquad or ValentineWiggins. At least research what I've actually said before attributing opinions to me. Misquoting and misattributing the opinions of others seems to be an unhealthy habit of yours.



marshall
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 14 Apr 2007
Gender: Male
Posts: 10,752
Location: Turkey

15 Aug 2011, 12:01 am

Inuyasha wrote:
marshall wrote:
Master_Pedant wrote:
Inuyasha wrote:
I'm not the one blaming small business owners and retirees for the world's ills.


Please retract your shameless mischaracterization of Marshall.


He is too brainwashed to feel shame.


:roll:

Seriously you need to learn to stop projecting your faults onto others.


:roll:

Seriously, I'm rubber, you're glue.



Inuyasha
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 12 Jan 2009
Age: 43
Gender: Male
Posts: 9,745

15 Aug 2011, 12:03 am

marshall wrote:
Inuyasha wrote:
Master_Pedant wrote:
Inuyasha wrote:
I'm not the one blaming small business owners and retirees for the world's ills.


Please retract your shameless mischaracterization of Marshall.


Most millionaires are small business owners and retirees, whether or not Marshall realized that is immaterial, what I said is essentially accurate. Also you really have no room to berate people for mischaracterizing others in the first place, since you mischaracterize people on a regular basis.


First of all, you are twisting definitions. People with a million dollars in assets or savings do not necessarily have an income that would classify them as ultra-wealthy. Very few small business owners make more than $250K in taxable personal income.

Second. I'm not one of the people demonizing all wealthy people, so buzz off and attack GoonSquad or ValentineWiggins. At least research what I've actually said before attributing opinions to me. Misquoting and misattributing the opinions of others seems to be an unhealthy habit of yours.


Oh but they are making over $250k in income depending on how you define it and I'm not just referring to individual tax rates. Furthermore, hasn't Obama said that businesses need to sacrifice too?



Master_Pedant
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 14 Mar 2009
Age: 35
Gender: Male
Posts: 4,903

15 Aug 2011, 12:16 am

Inuyasha wrote:
Oh but they are making over $250k in income depending on how you define it and I'm not just referring to individual tax rates. Furthermore, hasn't Obama said that businesses need to sacrifice too?


Screw what he's said, what he's done is give a shoot-load of breaks for small businesses specifically.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... 87594.html

Deborah Solomon wrote:
The Obama administration has targeted small business with laser-like focus, pushing a $30 billion small-business lending fund in Congress and, later this week, rolling out a tax break allowing businesses to deduct 100% of qualified capital investments.

But the chief economist at the National Federation of Independent Businesses said today that small business doesn’t need more tax relief. Instead, he said, Washington should aim its firepower at consumers so they begin spending money and creating demand for the products and services small companies provide.


Given this true advice, its time to increase consumer demand through spending - specifically, creating a public works program and employing millions of Americans DIRECTLY. Supply-side attempts focused on stimulating the private job market have FAILED.


_________________
http://www.voterocky.org/


Obres
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 13 Jul 2007
Age: 45
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,423
Location: NYC

15 Aug 2011, 12:28 am

Master_Pedant wrote:
Given that the hero of these fables is the ant, does that suddenly mean that conservatives think hundreds of thousands of workers should risk their lives and health so one woman can make hundreds of babies? Viva the welfare queen, I guess ... :roll:


No, it means conservatives are people who believe in a much higher correlation between the utility value of someone's work and their actual financial success than is realistic.



Obres
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 13 Jul 2007
Age: 45
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,423
Location: NYC

15 Aug 2011, 12:41 am

Master_Pedant wrote:
Inuyasha wrote:
Oh but they are making over $250k in income depending on how you define it and I'm not just referring to individual tax rates. Furthermore, hasn't Obama said that businesses need to sacrifice too?


Screw what he's said, what he's done is give a shoot-load of breaks for small businesses specifically.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... 87594.html

Deborah Solomon wrote:
The Obama administration has targeted small business with laser-like focus, pushing a $30 billion small-business lending fund in Congress and, later this week, rolling out a tax break allowing businesses to deduct 100% of qualified capital investments.

But the chief economist at the National Federation of Independent Businesses said today that small business doesn’t need more tax relief. Instead, he said, Washington should aim its firepower at consumers so they begin spending money and creating demand for the products and services small companies provide.


Given this true advice, its time to increase consumer demand through spending - specifically, creating a public works program and employing millions of Americans DIRECTLY. Supply-side attempts focused on stimulating the private job market have FAILED.


Of course supply-side economics fails - it's a terrible idea. There's something fundamentally wrong with the idea that the right way to run an economy is to empower businesses to tell people what to buy. Ironically, we've somehow reached something similar to Soviet communism by going farther and farther to the right - under Soviet communism, the state produced what they felt was right, and that's what people had to buy. With us, it's big businesses with no real competitors who are basically too big to fail. And before I get the spiel about how market economics works, I know how they're supposed to work, I just don't see businesses legitimately responding to the market when they've already succeeded in manipulating it however they please.



Philologos
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 21 Jan 2010
Age: 83
Gender: Male
Posts: 6,987

15 Aug 2011, 1:21 am

Master_Pedant wrote:
Given that the hero of these fables is the ant, does that suddenly mean that conservatives think hundreds of thousands of workers should risk their lives and health so one woman can make hundreds of babies? Viva the welfare queen, I guess ... :roll:


The fable itself, passing appropriately lightly over ruveyn's twist, has nothing to say about politics or social structure, other than that it is a typical piece of Socializer "learn to be like me" instructional material. It applies equally to the Socializers who imprinted on "no work no food" and the others who imprinted on "there is no I in team".

The political discourse of today has long since passed beyond the gentle "so now, kiddies, don't you see why we ought to .... of the Kindergarten oriented Socializers to the slogans and berserker howls of the Powervolk. Limbaugh has replaced Buckley, and no doubt there has been a similar change on the other side - certainly the tone has adjusted, but I have so little contact with conservatives I do not get to hear who they are.

Which means fables - and there are plenty eitgher side MIGHT have used - are pointless except as something to twist into a straw figure to to taunt the enemy, as has been done here and as is normally done in most PPR scriptural references.



marshall
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 14 Apr 2007
Gender: Male
Posts: 10,752
Location: Turkey

15 Aug 2011, 1:45 am

Philologos wrote:
Master_Pedant wrote:
Given that the hero of these fables is the ant, does that suddenly mean that conservatives think hundreds of thousands of workers should risk their lives and health so one woman can make hundreds of babies? Viva the welfare queen, I guess ... :roll:


The fable itself, passing appropriately lightly over ruveyn's twist, has nothing to say about politics or social structure, other than that it is a typical piece of Socializer "learn to be like me" instructional material. It applies equally to the Socializers who imprinted on "no work no food" and the others who imprinted on "there is no I in team".

The political discourse of today has long since passed beyond the gentle "so now, kiddies, don't you see why we ought to .... of the Kindergarten oriented Socializers to the slogans and berserker howls of the Powervolk. Limbaugh has replaced Buckley, and no doubt there has been a similar change on the other side - certainly the tone has adjusted, but I have so little contact with conservatives I do not get to hear who they are.

Which means fables - and there are plenty eitgher side MIGHT have used - are pointless except as something to twist into a straw figure to to taunt the enemy, as has been done here and as is normally done in most PPR scriptural references.


Yea. Contrary to the current right-wing mythos, traditional capital 'S' Socialism is about work ethic. Contrary to the popular Ayn Rand pinko-mischaracterization, old school Socialism never tolerated freeloaders of any stripe (including those who make thier money by sitting on title deeds).

I don't endorse the ideology, but it's better to present it accurately than to accept the right-wing caricature that tries to draw a silly equivalency to modern European style social democracy and the welfare state. Communism was never an effete, permissive, hippie movement. I could see them using this particular fable for their own propaganda.



Master_Pedant
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 14 Mar 2009
Age: 35
Gender: Male
Posts: 4,903

15 Aug 2011, 2:18 am

marshall wrote:
Yea. Contrary to the current right-wing mythos, traditional capital 'S' Socialism is about work ethic. Contrary to the popular Ayn Rand pinko-mischaracterization, old school Socialism never tolerated freeloaders of any stripe (including those who make thier money by sitting on title deeds).

I don't endorse the ideology, but it's better to present it accurately than to accept the right-wing caricature that tries to draw a silly equivalency to modern European style social democracy and the welfare state. Communism was never an effete, permissive, hippie movement. I could see them using this particular fable for their own propaganda.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/He_who_doe ... viet_Union

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_army ... _Civil_War

Trotsky was quite the fan of a "labour army".


_________________
http://www.voterocky.org/


Philologos
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 21 Jan 2010
Age: 83
Gender: Male
Posts: 6,987

15 Aug 2011, 11:17 am

marshall wrote:


Yea. Contrary to the current right-wing mythos, traditional capital 'S' Socialism is about work ethic. Contrary to the popular Ayn Rand pinko-mischaracterization, old school Socialism never tolerated freeloaders of any stripe (including those who make thier money by sitting on title deeds).

I don't endorse the ideology, but it's better to present it accurately than to accept the right-wing caricature that tries to draw a silly equivalency to modern European style social democracy and the welfare state. Communism was never an effete, permissive, hippie movement. I could see them using this particular fable for their own propaganda.


A pleasure to be essentially in agreement for once. The rhetoric - oy - Angels of light facing off against powerful demons who see themselves and say OF themselves that THEY are saintly crusaders facing down polluted infidels. Fine for stirring up the populace, but the field officers need to know who the enemy REALLY is.



AceOfSpades
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 11 Feb 2006
Gender: Male
Posts: 3,754
Location: Sean Penn, Cambodia

15 Aug 2011, 11:46 am

marshall wrote:
Philologos wrote:
Master_Pedant wrote:
Given that the hero of these fables is the ant, does that suddenly mean that conservatives think hundreds of thousands of workers should risk their lives and health so one woman can make hundreds of babies? Viva the welfare queen, I guess ... :roll:


The fable itself, passing appropriately lightly over ruveyn's twist, has nothing to say about politics or social structure, other than that it is a typical piece of Socializer "learn to be like me" instructional material. It applies equally to the Socializers who imprinted on "no work no food" and the others who imprinted on "there is no I in team".

The political discourse of today has long since passed beyond the gentle "so now, kiddies, don't you see why we ought to .... of the Kindergarten oriented Socializers to the slogans and berserker howls of the Powervolk. Limbaugh has replaced Buckley, and no doubt there has been a similar change on the other side - certainly the tone has adjusted, but I have so little contact with conservatives I do not get to hear who they are.

Which means fables - and there are plenty eitgher side MIGHT have used - are pointless except as something to twist into a straw figure to to taunt the enemy, as has been done here and as is normally done in most PPR scriptural references.


Yea. Contrary to the current right-wing mythos, traditional capital 'S' Socialism is about work ethic. Contrary to the popular Ayn Rand pinko-mischaracterization, old school Socialism never tolerated freeloaders of any stripe (including those who make thier money by sitting on title deeds).
What? I've never heard this myth about socialism tolerating laziness. What I usually hear is that you can't motivate anyone under socialism so you give them two choices: Either work or face the blade. And this is exactly why socialism fails before it even starts.



marshall
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 14 Apr 2007
Gender: Male
Posts: 10,752
Location: Turkey

15 Aug 2011, 12:26 pm

AceOfSpades wrote:
marshall wrote:
Philologos wrote:
Master_Pedant wrote:
Given that the hero of these fables is the ant, does that suddenly mean that conservatives think hundreds of thousands of workers should risk their lives and health so one woman can make hundreds of babies? Viva the welfare queen, I guess ... :roll:


The fable itself, passing appropriately lightly over ruveyn's twist, has nothing to say about politics or social structure, other than that it is a typical piece of Socializer "learn to be like me" instructional material. It applies equally to the Socializers who imprinted on "no work no food" and the others who imprinted on "there is no I in team".

The political discourse of today has long since passed beyond the gentle "so now, kiddies, don't you see why we ought to .... of the Kindergarten oriented Socializers to the slogans and berserker howls of the Powervolk. Limbaugh has replaced Buckley, and no doubt there has been a similar change on the other side - certainly the tone has adjusted, but I have so little contact with conservatives I do not get to hear who they are.

Which means fables - and there are plenty eitgher side MIGHT have used - are pointless except as something to twist into a straw figure to to taunt the enemy, as has been done here and as is normally done in most PPR scriptural references.


Yea. Contrary to the current right-wing mythos, traditional capital 'S' Socialism is about work ethic. Contrary to the popular Ayn Rand pinko-mischaracterization, old school Socialism never tolerated freeloaders of any stripe (including those who make thier money by sitting on title deeds).
What? I've never heard this myth about socialism tolerating laziness. What I usually hear is that you can't motivate anyone under socialism so you give them two choices: Either work or face the blade. And this is exactly why socialism fails before it even starts.

Well, what I hear a lot coming from certain people that want to equate progressivism / social democracy with socialism is that both ideologies are about "redistributing the wealth" from the "producers" to the "freeloaders". In reality though, the socialist "work ethic" and disdain for "laziness" and the American-right version of the same are not that different. The only difference is that one ideology has a different definition of what makes a "freeloader". Also, socialism seems to only value manual labor as true "work" in their glorification of the proletariat. In the end, both have to glorify/romanticize the idea of work ethic as a means to control society.

Also, Horatio Alger aside, I don't think working indefinitely as a hired chump to help someone else profit is inherently more motivating than working for "the common good". In the end, the only intrinsic motivation is people have to work to eat and survive.