"Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal'

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and where do banks get money, let me guess from people who work for a living and create the wealth by making something of value.

why blame wall street when 2 million deadbeats won't pay back the money they borrowed, nobody put a gun to their heads to borrow more than they couldn't afford to pay back. They would be in work camps if it was up to me, a cot, 2 sets of cloths and 2 meals a day and rented out to anyone who needed labor. They would pay for the room & board and the rest would go to the people they owed money to.
Bankruptcy would only exsist if somebody got ill or somebodies husband or wife died. Beyond that work camps for all the deadbeats.
The dems created subprime in about 1998 when the banks,stock brokers & insurance companies wanted to merge, the dems said ok but they have to lend money in low income neighborhoods if they do business in them.

hey have at it if it makes you happy

Be quiet, grownups are talking.

No.

We're middle-class. We're just very good at saving money and holding on to our belongings, and we don't just retire the instant we conceivably have enough money to do so.

Don't be ridiculous. I don't know about Vermont, but Connecticut's taxes are barely over the national average, taking into account both local and state taxation from income.

No.

So did my folks. They just didn't complain about it. They value their work. They're psycho on some levels, but I will say that of them.



www.gbpi.org/pubs/garevenue/20041207.pdf

McCain is also a moderate. Get used to it. Conservatism is dead.

Doctors work crazy shifts, too. That's why I'm drawn to it. I like stress. It makes me very happy.

The most evil right-wing lie is that people on welfare are lazy people who don't want to work. The "welfare queen in a Cadillac" meme is an invention of the Reagan Spin Machine to make people hate the poor.

Betcha most of the liberals who defend the welfare class and claim they aren't lazy has never worked or lived with the welfare class.

I agree with Johnnie to an extent, although not to the extremity of his position. I've got nothing against helping out people who are trying to move up in the world. But, y'know... my dad owns an apartment complex in the backwoods Appalachians. The employment rate of people in there is under 10%. Most of them are on welfare, get food stamps, and never, ever, ever try to find jobs. I've worked with them. I know it goes against the liberal feel-good fantasy of a downtrodden class, but most of the people under the poverty line are there because they're too lazy to work. You pay a dollar to the goverment in taxes, and maybe a dime of it doesn't go to waste.

you're honest about the poor but not about the government. way too generous.


it'd be more like a fraction of a penny. i mean there's the trillions that have been wasted in iraq which so far have only resulted in negative returns of increased terrorism in the area and increased animosity against the US in the area and increased recruiting for terrorist organizations. bad investments are bad investments no matter how noble the cause. the road to hell is paved with good intentions and we're coming up on the river styx now.

then there's also the faith based initiatves which the majority of that money ends up going to abstinence-only sex ed. programs that generally tend to have worse turnouts than the sex ed. programs that include education about contraceptives. and actually, a lot of the faith-based sex ed. programs propagate lies about condom efficiency to encourage their method as the only effective means.

then there's the rest of the welfare that's wasted on people who are just dependent on the money and don't actually work or even try to get work.

and then there's the pay raises that all of the politicians give themselves to keep up with inflation.

But when they increase minimum wage to adjust for inflation, they don't include gas and grocery inflation. I read somewhere that, adjusted for inflation as they should have done, minimum wage should be about $12/hour. Also that the top 0.2% wealthiest of the nation could afford to pay all that out of their own pockets.

Ok? An issue is whether or not substitution of labor for other methods would happen. If labor is a good like any other than we would expect less consumption of labor to happen if we raised the prices of it, and I think that most studies show labor to be inelastic but not perfectly inelastic as would be necessary for it to be a perfect measure of helping the poor. Frankly, (and I could do the research to support this) there are some studies that show that minimum wages don't help the poor, there is research by the CBO showing that most minimum wage earners are above poverty level. 80% are above, and 70% have a household income that is 1.5 times above. As well, there are arguments that the least desirable workers and thus the poorest would be first to lose their jobs from the inelastic nature of labor. As well, from the last poll of the AEA only 17% of economists would support a raise of the minimum wage of over a dollar over that current amount of 5.15 with 83% not agreeing with such a measure. In fact, economists of the left often attack the living wage argument as motivated by ideology more so than commitment to facts and the welfare of individuals. In fact, if we wanted to improve the welfare of the poor then the EITC would be a better measure according to most economists. So, really, I don't see the argument as that good.

yeah but how much social equity before we're just communists and no better than their system of failure?


that's always the hard question and no one's willing to answer it because the people who can make the money don't want such a figure found and most everyone else just accepts the system as is.


and i was just talking about the congress and house and all of them voting for their own pay raises...not the raise they proposed for everyone.


...and anyone else think it's messed up that they can vote for their own raises? i think we should stop voting for anyone who votes for a raise for themselves. eff that. the people should vote them a raise if they earn it.

the northeast has lots of people who think they are middle class, owning a hobby farm is wealthy, not middle class.




That's because your type are psychopaths, pretend to be liberal, but hog high paying easy jobs you don't need out of greed.I left the labor force so another man could have a job and signed up for volunteer work. Bought a fixer upper house two losers ran into the ground and create economic activity by buying building supplies and hiring people when needed to help fix it up.
Just paid a working man cash for two cords of wood so he don't have to pay taxes on the money and gave him an extra $40.
So I gave a man my job, volunteer to help other people and give people work while your psychopath family just can't get enough and even goes out of it's way to drive up the rural cost of living buying some hobby farm.

Before I left CT I had the hardwood floors refinished in my house by a little company, just the owner and his two helpers. Guy had like no work and was there the next day. I tipped all 3 of them including the owner because I knew by where he lived he wasn't a wealthy man. One of the workers said ain't this some s**t, truck driver out of work gives them a tip living in a modest subdivision and people living in fancy houses won't even offer them a glass of water.

Those guys have been in hundreds of houses an REAL middle class people don't hire them offen, it's mostly people with all sorts of disposable income and all the greedy psychopaths they work for beat them down to the cheapest prices and don't tip.

When I drove a truck, the only place some guy stuffed a $20 in my hand was a ghetto in Elizibeth NJ, small little company owner even asked me if i wanted to stay for lunch, he was buying lunch for his crew.All the Biff's of the world just come around to crack their whips on the help and spit on them. Than to feel good about themselves throw a can of beans in the basket for a holiday food drive.

Hobby farm, middle class

EIC is more social engineering because it pays one worker more than another one.
How would you like to work next to somebody making $2.00 an hour more than you tax free while doing the same job ? That is what EIC does.
It also gives the boss man an excuse to pay lower wages, like here slave is your $7.00 an hour and go ask the government for some EIC. section 8 housing, food stamps and the rest of it.
It's not surprising the young males at the bottom of society are like they are when they are played off against illegal immigrants and woman with children for wages. The single mother qualifies for all sorts of stuff that like doubles her income and the single guy can't even afford rent doing the same work and qualifies for nothing.

The dems helping one group create a problem for another group which in turns creates an even bigger problem in society.

Umm.... if the entire goal of something is social engineering then what is the problem? Really, I don't give a crap, I care about what I make.

A bit on the margin, but it is generally considered the least distortionary measure in terms of maximizing welfare. Frankly, your argument could be used against probably most welfare.

Well, young people are going to be at the bottom in most systems.

Perhaps so, but really, all solutions are going to create some problems. All I was arguing is that one solution is better than the other.

The problem is the employer doesn't have to pay a fair wage and the job only becomes attractive to people who qualify for EIC.

Say Joe middle class is married with two kids and his wife wants to get a job to suppliment the family income so they can save up some money for a house than swing the mortgage. She goes looking and nobody wants to pay more than minimum wage because they have a supply of workers on government aid called single mothers who have been forced into the labor force to qualify for all sorts of handouts.

It also affects the sterio type inner city kid, he/she goes looking for work and is competing for wages against the new class of welfare mom who qualifies for everything going so employers don't have to pay a living wage with a supply of people willing to work for next to nothing because the government provides so much to them.



what will it take for you to care, some gang banger type taking out somebody you know because he has no oppertunity as he tries to compete for wages against the EIC bunch and illegal immigrants ?

The single EIC chick with kids will be worse off marrying another low income worker because their combined income will remove all the government benefits she gets. So the social engineering of EIC keeps a daddy out of the picture who is needed to keep children in line.

so all it does is promote the jerry springer lifestyle when we reward being dysfunctional and punish being responsable.Nobody should be paid more because of government interferance via of EIC.
If single white guys got a check, people would go nuts, hey why does he get paid more than everyone else.
The EIC payments come down to is sorry you are married, you get paid $2.00 an hour less, sorry you are single with no kids, you get paid $2.00 an hour less.

Than as an added kicker the dems CLAIM all sorts of people are lving in poverty based on their w-2 income, but reality is when all the government benefits are added up they aren't living in poverty at all. They should be issued 1099's for all the handouts they get so their true income is evident.

A friend of mine just got rid of a trailer park, the bleeding hearts should go buy one and see the mentality of people.

The mentality some people have is unreal, one guy I know got $10,000 from a dead relatives estate, didn't go to work for months. He isn't a total loser, has a cheap house and supports himself, but won't work anymore than needed to get by.

When I owned my own truck and guy in his late 20's is asking me questions because he is thinking of buying one. Some old man asks him where is he going to come up with 10% down for a new truck, kid says he has it and is going to put more than that down, old guy says to him " you have over $10,000 and you are out here driving a truck" he was in total shock.
That is the mentality out there, guy was in his 60's and it was beyond his imagination somebody would work if they had a few dollars in the bank. The kid will probably join me in a few years and become semi retired and leave the work for somebody else.

Than on the other end are psychopaths that can never hog enough.
Woman in the town I used to live in married to a doctor was hogging a town job, she didn't need the money and wasted everything she made on cloths. It should be legal to shoot people like her to get her job. Prissy azz woman was whining the other night at the town budget hearing she needed an assistant on top of it. i gather working more than 35 hours to get her work done was out of the question, she just wanted a hobby job to keep her in nice cloths and working more hours would interfer with her trips to the health club and tanning salon. What she wanted was somebody to do her job so she could just act like she worked and be able to skip out early and come in late when she felt like it.