Spread the wealth.....








I want a new boat......

Consider the first paragraph. Sam seems to question the reason for conservatives to "pretend to feel a harrowing sense of nostalgia for the 50's", in spite of having higher income tax rates than we currently pay. Do conservatives 'pretend' to be nostalgic for the 50's? Could the reason for the hope and happiness that the populace may have been feeling be simple relief to be out of war? Do liberals also 'pretend' to feel a sense of nostalgia for the 50's, or are liberals above such feelings and or pretensions?

Sam ended his second paragraph with this gem, "In conservative circles, expressing any doubt on this point has long been synonymous with Marxism." Salmo, I'm sure that you recognize his statement as hyperbole.

In a latter paragraph Sam speaks of the possible ruination of the United States and the woeful state of our education system. I might just surprise you here because I believe that the state of our educational system is poor and that our country is in fact headed in the wrong direction, however our cures would surely be different.
I believe that changes in our education system should be result driven. We have been constantly increasing funds spent on education but the results have been negative. Perhaps the answer is not as simple as just throw more money at the problem. And the simple thought that more money can cure all, is, well simple and untrue, and belief in such fallacies is why our country is headed in the wrong direction.

Sam's essay never does improve, it is a simple appeal to emotion using false cause, and straw men, liberally sprinkled with loaded words, phrases and yes hyperbole. I found very little logical order or reasoning in it, and little that I could relate to, let alone agree with.

You guys need to be nice to Salmo. He has told you for years he is the smartest guy in the room. Exposing him to be a non critical thinker acting on emotion with little logic puts him in the same class as most women. Harsh toke for such an ego.

Btw the new term being floated by the left is " genetic lottery" no one earns anything they just won the genetic lottery.

Hi Andy ... are you gettin' your little wieners from Stinky Steve, the Preimere Purveyour of Pure Pork Prefection here in Lewis County or are you getiing largers critters to start ? I'm no expert on pork chops but Stinky's are the real deal. It's been said in these parts that he cuts a real nice hog.

I guess if you can deal with the general disgusting nature of these beasts on a daily basis untill they are ready for the bullet to the head, and are able to just see the ribs, chops, and snausages, then hey, why not ?

Are you going to name them ? If so .... How about ....

Super Bowl
Presidents Day
MLK Day
Easter
Memorial Day
Independence Day
Veterans Day
Thanksgiving
Christmas

.... Oink ...

Hit that one out of the park....

Keith

Yup, Steve is our source for Ryan's FFA project pigs. We're getting two. I helped Steve out on one butcher session last year, taking the finishing shots on a few, and doing the throat slit. Dropped them at the shot and they were bleeding like "a stuck pig" after I hit them with the knife. Blood isn't an issue. Neither is killing.

Same with forcing people to pay for others' retirement via forced social security deductions.

Damn right. In fact all taxes should be voluntary. If we really need anything the free market will step in and make sure we get it. Hoo ray for us!

All those old farts on Social Security should just send back that money. It's God damn shame they ever took free gubmint money from us taxpayers.

Or you could just calculate how many hours a day you spend on the computer at work, and then reimburse your employer.

Rev. B,

In my reading, yes, conservatives consistently extoll the virtues of the 1950s with more than nostalgia, and as a value and lifestyle set we ought to seek to restore, with never a mention that it immediately followed WWII. And similarly, any questioning of free market capitalism - as fixed to favor the super-rich - is consistently associated by conservatives with socialism at best, Marxism a bit worse, and outright theft as repeatedly asserted by our own FP. Just read some of the posts in this thread, and you'll find statements that appear consistent with that view. Therefore I didn't regard Harris' statement as hyperbole at all. I assume you read some conservative literature, so I'm surprised at your conclusion, and I find that interesting and worth the discussion. I'll read his stuff again because I didn't find his reasoning so lacking in logic or things I could relate to. We appear to have considerable agreement about public education, however. It's interesting that we can be so close on some things and so far apart on others.

FP,

Your question about why the disparity in wealth distribution is a problem is a valid one. The reason I think it's a problem is because the super-rich are using their gains, both legitimate and ill-gotten, to continuously reduce their tax burden. Meanwhile, as they outsource and otherwise eliminate middle class jobs, the American middle class shrinks. I don't think Harris engages straw men and hyperbole when he states that someone's gotta' fund the national infrastructure. How is that supposed to happen with a shrinking middle class and a continuously declining tax burden on the rich?

I think the middle class has supported the development of the massive American infrastructure due to its size and collective affluence. As that affluence declines, and there's plenty of studies indicating that outcome, then who is going to pay taxes if not the rich and super-rich? The gov't. can't get tax revenue from people who have little or no money. The only alternative becomes one of taxing the rich. And they would have to be taxed to support the infrastructure used by all, not just by the rich. They don't like it now; they sure aren't gonna' like it then.

So part of what I find interesting in this subject is whether the current trend is sustainable. Is it feasible for 1% of the population to own 99% of the wealth? How about 99.9%? Or 99.99%? As the somewhat technocrat that you label me as, I'm somewhat interested in numbers and math. I'm not certain that this trend works or sustains itself. Hence, it might be a problem. It might result in nothing less than "storming the Bastille."

BTW, I didn't post this because I agree with everything or find it all convincing, but I find it persuasive enough to be worthy of serious discussion. I like to see information from both sides of the street; well not too much of the extremist crap, I don't have that much time to waste.

TJ,

Just remember that I'm not the smartest guy in the room because I say that I am, but because that you keep saying I am. Of course, coming from you, that's not much of an endorsement. In the past you've exhibited the ability to engage in intelligent discourse; it's unfortunate that you choose to fling sh!t instead.

Sg

Hank,

Your better idea of the gov't. giving us back our SS dollars to invest privately may be appealing, but we both know that our gov't. already raided that treasure chest and left it full of IOUs. So it isn't there to give back. I've been paying in since 1965, and it would be scary to see what that could have grown to by now.

Sg

You talk like a fly fisherman SG , above everyone else , you may better suited for a wine bar. The dark side is for gut slingers and hardware apes and apes sling [Bleeeeep!].

TJ,

Thank you since it's well established by several statistics that fly fishermen, on average, are considerably more literate and articulate than gut slingers. Sadly perhaps, for some fly fishermen, gut slingers come somewhat closer to holding their own in several critical thinking and analytical skills. That, no doubt, explains why they catch more fish. As a pragmatist and one interested in human nature, not to mention a salmon snob, I enjoy walking both sides of the street.

2Many,

Could be, but as KK points out, their are other makers of high quality, high end gear besides Sage. However, I did recently purchase a Sage rod blank, a discontinued model that gets very high reviews and on sale, of course. Now I gotta' scrape up the cash for a decent reel seat and components. I remember when corks were a dime each. Now the really good stuff is $2.95 per cork! And it takes 38 of 'em for a Spey rod. And then there's the wood burl insert reel seat that's another $88. Crikey, that elitist fly fishing game can get spendy!

FP,

I don't have any standard by which to judge wealth distribution. The little video describing where the distribution is now, and how it has shifted so significantly in relatively few years grabbed my interest. National wealth distribution is different than your examples of the distribution of a few physical attributes because it is likely to have a greater and more profound affect on the standard of living and quality of life for a majority of the country's population. That's why.

Re: your comments on science, I pretty much agree. I'm not so much advocating here as looking for interesting and intelligent conversation about a topic that might be important - or not. Seems like it is, so I'm checking it out.

If the current distribution is unsustainable, then I agree it will change, but that isn't necessarily the same as self-correction. You say that we need to quit using the government to promote class warfare . . . However, I think it's equally reasonable to suggest that the super-rich, who own most of the gov'ts'. financial functions, have been using gov't. and law to promote their own economic class warfare against the lower and middle classes. If power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, then a self-correction of an unsustainable wealth distribution may be stalled, prevented, or otherwise put off, thereby instigating something like storming the Bastille. It seems like avoiding that would be in the mutual interest of all economic classes, but maybe not.

Let me tell you something. We may or may not perceive reality the same. I don't know. However, I can say with certainty that you routinely err when you purport to know what I think. I haven't said that I think the wealth needs to be redistributed. I find the subject of distribution interesting and think the trend might not be sustainable, and could cause a major social upheaval, so I threw the topic on here. I don't know that the gov't. has to be involved in the redistribution process, but the thought occurs to me that the gov'ts' doing so might result in a more peaceful process than full on class warfare. The reason I don't trust the market and society to necessarily do a better job is because the super-rich and the gov't they own already control key aspects of the market. The free market that you frequently allude to does not exist, and since such a market is not in the direct interest of the controlling movers and shakers, I think a bonafide free market is out of the question. The best we can hope for is a regulated market that rewards productivity and opportunity and penalizes monopoly, oligopoly, cheating, and other negative attributes.

Your Bill Gates example, while noteworthy, is unique in that his friend Warren Buffet recently revealed that he contacted a large number of other billionaires and a lot of them don't have the same feelings about sharing their massive wealth. Consequently the Gate's style of redistribution most likely can't be counted on to result in a strong American middle class.

And another reason I know this subject is worth discussing is that it brought you out of your self-imposed exile. I'm fairly sure you didn't return just so you could talk about snagging chum salmon.

Sg

I realize that this is but another view of Salmo's post, but I found it interesting that this author attaches some causation and possibly implied blame for the topic of our discussion. I found his claimed cause of "Technology and competition from abroad whittling away at blue collar jobs and pay" to be believable and of particular interest, especially in light of the time frame that is shown in the graph.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
60 Years of American Economic History, Told in 1 Graph
Jordan Weissmann Aug 23 2012, 3:17 PM ET


In the 60 years after World War II, the United States built the world's greatest middle class economy, then unbuilt it. And if you want a single snapshot that captures the broad sweep of that transformation, you could do much worse than this graph from a new Pew report, which tracks how average family incomes have changed at each rung of the economic ladder from 1950 through 2010.

Here's the arc it captures: In the immediate postwar period, America's rapid growth favored the middle and lower classes. The poorest fifth of all households, in fact, fared best. Then, in the 1970s, amid two oil crises and awful inflation, things ground to a halt. The country backed off the postwar, center-left consensus -- captured by Richard Nixon's comment that "we're all Keynesians now" -- and tried Reaganism instead. We cut taxes. Technology and competition from abroad started whittling away at blue collar jobs and pay. The financial markets took off. And so when growth returned, it favored the investment class -- the top 20 percent, and especially the top 5 percent (and, though it's not on this chart, the top 1 percent more than anybody).



And then it all fell apart. The aughts were a lost decade for families, and it's not clear how much better they'll fare in the next.

None of this is new history.But it's helpful to have a crisp layout of what's changed.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Please note that the big drop in mean family income starts in the 1970 to 1980 segment of the graph. Now have you ever heard of Malcom McLean? He invented the shipping container in 1956 and by the end of the 1960s, Sea-Land Industries had 27,000 trailer-type containers, 36 trailer ships and access to over 30 port cities. The ability to securely and cheaply move products anywhere in the world most certainly gave the technology and competition from abroad a chance to start whittling away at blue collar jobs and was surely a nail in the coffin of the blue collar worker.

I realize that the adaptation of containerized shipping is but one part of a complex situation, however it is an important part. And we should all realize that all change brings displacement and opportunity.

And further, the reconstruction of the Panama Canal with assuredly damage the trucking industry, of which Washington plays (perhaps in the near future the term will change to "played") a huge part of import movement.
Boeing leaves, Shipping leaves, and our main industry becomes what? Microsoft? and?

This damn fool State is about to go "government only" jobs, and the shoe-shiners for those jobs.

Good Luck.

Good addition Rev. B.

Not as good as the rat chasing cat vid.

The irony of this whole thing is.....take away the rich's money and give it to the poor....it's thievery, but do it. Guess who will regain the wealth?..........That's right.....same o, same o. And meanwhile the poor will regain their status as well because they don't know and/or don't have the ambition to learn how to make significant amounts of money.

Another case of "poor me".

Instead, maybe try doing it the old fashioned way........EARN IT!

(stolen slogan.....but appropriate)

The redistribution of wealth has recently taken another step. Our congress recently repealed many of the safeguards that were put in place after the economic meltdown. At that time laws were passed that forbid the government from bailing out TOO-BIG-TO-FAIL financial institutions that invested in risky derivative investments. ( Like many, I have no clue as to how these work). Now after considerable lobbying by these institutions, these laws have been repealed. So how long until the taxpayer is once again asked to line the pockets of the 1%?
--JP

It's OK JPbarbless. Anything less would be revulsive socialism.