Possum - 3/25/2010 6:24 PM
Sniperchoke - 3/25/2010 1:01 PM
Possum - 3/24/2010 10:19 PM
Sniperchoke - 3/24/2010 8:56 PM
So we just spent 940 billion through the gov't for so called better insurance so the gov't can be less involved? Dang you and Pelosi might be on the same page. That statement doesn't even begin to make sense.
We have not spent anything yet. My statement will not make any sinse to you because you think the private sector is perfect. They are profit driven. You are on the side of greed, and I am on the side of need. Enough said.
The private sector is not perfect but is far better than gov't involvement. Yes I am on the side of profit you call it greed but it is the best way to motivate someone to do a good job. Just think about it if you are doing something for free you might take short cuts or do a half way job because after all its free and people should be happy with anything for free. But if you are being paid then a thorough job is required because the consumer can hold you accountable.
Don't even go there, no greed is where you say you can only pay your hourly employees this much, because you have to compete. While giving million dollar bonases for the bull crap exects. Why! sold to labor, about how lucky they are to have a job. "be glad your making what you are making" In the end laugh at the dumb bastards. Trust me big business could care less about nothing but profits. When things dry out here they will move on to somewhere else. Profit incentive is what drives our economy, don't insult my intelligence. However there is this thing called circular flow of income and output. There has to be a certain amount of income at all levels of our classes. If all the income rest at the top we can all heard sheep like they do in parts of middle east. I am not advocating communism, but businesses using cable and internet technology to advance their cause gives me more to worry about than our government. Until middle class can afford to maintain an average standard of living the economy cannot move forward. There is simply to much income at the top. Oil companies making 25 billion in profits every three months a few years ago. While sucking peoples credit cards. Then banks raising interest rates because people used them under thier existing contracts. Homes people thought affordable, inflation hits, no longer to afford. Snip just keep up the good cause, and I will keep mine up. By the way you guys are doing a good job.
Walter says it much more eloquently than I do.
A MINORITY VIEW
BY WALTER WILLIAMS
RELEASE: WEDNESDAY, MARCH 3, 2010
Who Poses the Greater Threat?
Bill Gates is the world's richest person, but what kind of power does he have over you? Can he force your kid to go to a school you do not want him to attend? Can he deny you the right to braid hair in your home for a living? It turns out that a local politician, who might deny us the right to earn a living and dictates which school our kid attends, has far greater power over our lives than any rich person. Rich people can gain power over us, but to do so, they must get permission from our elected representatives at the federal, state or local levels. For example, I might wish to purchase sugar from a Caribbean producer, but America's sugar lobby pays congressmen hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions to impose sugar import tariffs and quotas, forcing me and every other American to purchase their more expensive sugar.
Politicians love pitting us against the rich. All by themselves, the rich have absolutely no power over us. To rip us off, they need the might of Congress to rig the economic game. It's a slick political sleight-of-hand where politicians and their allies amongst the intellectuals, talking heads and the news media get us caught up in the politics of envy as part of their agenda for greater control over our lives.
The sugar lobby is just one example among thousands. Just ask yourself: Who were the major recipients of the billions of taxpayer bailout dollars, the so-called Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP)? The top recipients of TARP handouts included companies such as Citibank, AIG, Goldman Sachs and General Motors. Their top management are paid tens of millions dollars to run companies that were on the verge of bankruptcy, were it not for billions of dollars in taxpayer money. Politicians preach the politics of envy whilst reaching into the ordinary man's pockets, through the IRS, and handing it over to their favorite rich people and others who make large contributions to their election efforts.
The bottom line is that it is politicians first and their supporters amongst intellectuals who pose the greatest threat to liberty. Dr. Thomas Sowell amply demonstrates this in his brand-new book, "Intellectuals and Society," in which he points out that: "Scarcely a mass-murdering dictator of the twentieth century was without his intellectual supporters, not simply in his own country, but also in foreign democracies ... Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Hitler all had their admirers, defenders and apologists among the intelligentsia in Western democratic nations, despite the fact that these dictators each ended up killing people of their own country on a scale unprecedented even by despotic regimes that preceded them."
While American politicians and intellectuals have not reached the depths of tyrants such as Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Hitler, they share a common vision. Tyrants denounce free markets and voluntary exchange. They are the chief supporters of reduced private property rights, reduced rights to profits, and they are anti-competition and pro-monopoly. They are pro-control and coercion, by the state. These Americans who run Washington, and their intellectual supporters, believe they have superior wisdom and greater intelligence than the masses. They believe they have been ordained to forcibly impose that wisdom on the rest of us. Like any other tyrant, they have what they consider good reasons for restricting the freedom of others. A tyrant's primary agenda calls for the elimination or attenuation of the market. Why? Markets imply voluntary exchange and tyrants do not trust that people behaving voluntarily will do what the tyrant thinks they should do. Therefore, they seek to replace the market with economic planning and regulation, which is little more than the forcible superseding of other people's plans by the powerful elite.
We Americans have forgotten founder Thomas Paine's warning that "Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one."
