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So what you're saying, basically, is it's my responsibility to pick up the check for people who refuse to overcome their challenges?
I assume you mean it doesn't make them lazy, and I would agree. It doesn't. They choose to be lazy.

My position is, was and will be for quite some time that we are too civilized for our own good. Not every person out there needs to be prolonged. People are meant to die.

Leave it to the pinko to bring race in to it.


Leave it to a fascist to not have anything to respond with :)

But what's your measure of "getting ahead"? Are they capable of feeing and clothing and housing themselves? I'm serious here. Anyone can do that if they put just an ounce of effort into it.

Lots of people find themselves in a "bad situation temporarily". Um... that's what we have unemployment for (which I have no problem with). That's why we have grants for education. And not to belabor the obvious, but that's why you maybe should put a tiny bit of effort during your life to make friends who'll help you out in those times of need.


No. We should not have programs to help them do things they should be able to do themselves. When we do that we encourage people to avoid making contacts during their lives with people who will be there with them when they have problems. We encourage them to take unecessary risks. We encourage all the bad decisions that people make when they know they've got a saftey net under them. We increase the likelyhood that someone will fail. We give them no reason to be reasonable with their expectations about life and work within that context to make their lives better.

Worse we do all of that at the very real cost of that better future. Not only do these programs discourage the kind of networking and thought that people should engage before making big decisions with their lives, but we make those who do the "right thing" have a harder time.

We are punishing those who don't ***** up so that those who do don't have to suffer any consequences for their mistakes. What kind of screwed up logic make anyone think that that will work?

I care Smash. How big of a segment are we talking about here? 5%? 10%? 50%? At what point will the ranks of the unproductive outweight the ability of everyone else to support them "for free"?


Please explain to me what magical social force will cause people to work if they don't have to? Some will. But most wont. Why can't you see this?

No what i'm saying is, you should be prepared to do more for society, as you have less disadvantages than them, they shoudn't have to work harder than you to be classed as a member of society.



I don't think they do, we can't agree on this subject, but don't try and tell me i'm wrong without backing up your'e statement, if you want an argument then i'm free for one, but don't just tell me i'm wrong.

Smash. If you tax the economy so heavily as to provide free housing, food, education, and medical care to *everyone*, such that their jobs provided pure "luxury money", you would either have an unemployment rate of like 50%, or your luxuries would cost so much as to still be unobtainable to anyone except the top 10% of the "rich" in the nation anyway.

Oddly, that's never happened to any country that's done so. Ever.



What you've effectively done is just make the middle class all "poor", but giving everyone the same thing.


No, you've effectively made the poor "middle class". That's a signifigant diffrence. Upward quiality of life movement is an absolute, not a relative thing. Everyone having their own Lear Jet doesn't make having a Lear Jet any worse.



You'd have just the small percentage of people who could earn luxuries (the rich) and everyone else getting their free allotment and very little else. Costs on all those luxuries would rise incredibly, to the point where if you work for a month, you might be able to afford to go to the theatre once. Maybe...


Oddly that's never happened to any country that's done so. Ever.



That's still a horrible idea. What you don't see is the impact that will have long term (how many times do I have to explain this).


What you need to do is provide one example, in the history of the world where it's happened, and there are many, and then the sky fell as you assume it would.

When you find ONE, let me know. On the other hand I can site you probably a dozen examples of where it hasn't had any sort of impact.

Here's what you're missing. Proving services to citizens is predicated on the capacity of the economy. Countries with lots of wealth can provide better social serives for their people. Countries with little wealth can't.

It's never been shown to be the case, before you make the same argument for the bazillionth time, that providing those services decreases the long term wealth of the country in question.

The reason you've seen full scale Socialism fail in the past is because it's normally attempted by countries with little wealth out of desperation. There's other reasons obviously, but that's the primary thing any failed Socialist state has in common. Lack of starting wealth.

We don't have that problem.


Sure. We could do this. But the cost would be a totally stagnant technology growth.


That hasn't ever been the case in any place it's been tried. Ever.



In 100 years, we'd all still be living in the same houses, with the same food, and the same education, and the same quality medical care. That's the most dreary future I can imagine Smash. I can't understand how you think that's a good idea.


That hasn't ever been the case in any place it's been tired. Ever.



Just look at the Damn Soviet Union Smash. Nothing new. Same cars. Same clothes. Same houses. For 80 years Smash. Nothing changed. The people were miserable. That's what you want for the American people Smash. Sheesh.


The Soviet Union suffered from a lack of natural resources. They were backwards befopre the revolution, during the Communist era, and still are today. There's a very good argument to be made that the average quality of life for a citizen of the USSR was better during Communism than it is today.

Don't mistake as that as an arguemnt in favor of tyrrany, because it isn't. Were I in their shoes I'd have traded quality of life for freedom as well. Capitalism hasn't improved their lot much though so far.

Huh? The Soviet Union had access to some of the greatest natural resources in the world. They simply chose a form of government that prevented those resources from being tapped.



Pardon me? Show me some evidence of that if you please.


I'd respond to the reast, but it's predicated on that ludicrous falsehood. Greates natural resources in the world. Funny.

I'm gonna disagree with ya smash, they did, siberia was oil, salt, gold and everyhting all rolled into one, the reason it seems like they didnt have that is because the USSR was HUGE, theu did havea lot fo the worlds resources, but it wasnt enough for the size of the state, so your'e both wrong, which leaves only me, i think you see where i'm going.


They had to import fuc[b][/b]king WHEAT to feed people. They had no signfigant warm water ports where they could ever ship anything. The reason that there was a revolution in the first place was that people were starving to death.

Hard to get at the oil if you don't have food.

I thought you wanted me to argue with you. Or was that someone else?

Hmmm... Well. Let's start with the marxists themselves:

http://www.marxists.org/history/ussr/government/1928/sufds/ch03.htm




Of course, they blame the Tsarist's for not ever utilizing those resources, but the fact is that the Communists never did either...


You can compare resources between the US and current day Russia (can't find data about the totall USSR, unless we just start adding up stuff from all the former states, but this is good enough):

http://www.studentsoftheworld.info/menu_infopays.html

You'll have to select the two countries, since they don't seem to allow direct links.


Oh. And it had *nothing* to do with population. Russia today has about 1/3rd the population of the US and still has roughly twice the land mass. Again. I'm just comparing Russia today with the US today. It would take more research to look at everything the entire USSR had back in the day.


Point is that they had *huge* resources. Easily the equal of the US. They simply never developed the ability to use those resources effectively. End of story.

Eh? Look. I'm not debating whether Stalin's USSR was the intended result of Lenin's revolution. That's not the issue. My point was that the USSR had access to some of the greatest natural resources of any nation in the world. They did not utilize them very well though.

I don't particularly care which Soviet leader was responsible. The fact is that their failures were not because of a lack of natural resources. They failed because of their government, and their leaders. They failed because they specifically did not allow private enterprise to invest in utilizing those resources.


At what point with socialists realize that the huge downside of socialism (to whatever degree you want) is that technological growth and entrepeneurship are reduced. The more socialist you are, the more those things are reduced. The more they are reduced, the slower your nation is at developing new goods and new manufacturing technniques.


One of the interesting factoids I ran into while doing some quick googling on the subject (heck if I can find the paper now), was a report that talked about Soviet production. It mentioned that it took the USSR 3 times as much metals to make the same number of products as the US. Why do you suppose that is? Could it possibly have to do with the US actually researching better and more efficient manufacturing techniques?


My point is that governments don't tend to ever come up with more efficient ways of doing anything. To a government, some good has X value, and Y number of people need it, so it simply allocates the resources needed to meet the requirements. To a businessman, for whom efficiency means profit, it's extremely important to be able to generate X value of goods, while expending less resources making it. That difference, multiplied by the Y people who need it, means more profit for him. If you take away the profit for the entrepeneur, no one bothers to come up with a more efficient method of doing anything. Technology stagnates, and you fall behind those nations who don't tax their most productive members the most heavily.


The relationshiop between taxing "wealth" and retarding technological growth is obvious to everyone except die-hard socialists. Imagine that...

Certain soviet leaders were communist, others were not, it worked under lenin, and under the communists, when you lets the despots take over THEN it goes crap. Private enterprise has nothing to do with it, when there was no private enterprise under the communists, it worked, when there was no private enterprise under the despots, it didn't work, the private enterprise is not the variable, the reason stalin and those after him did not use the resources is because they didnt want to, they wanted their own welfare before all else, and anyway i didnt come here to defend lenin, so if you want to tell me marxism or communism (make up your mind which one) failed in russia, then feel free, i will be happy to argue with you, but don't tell me that stalin and his minions messed it up and blame it on communism.