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Greed Is Not Good, and It’s Not Capitalism
The American ^ | 15 Oct 2009 | Jay W. Richards

Posted on 10/27/2009 11:46:41 AM PDT by AreaMan

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To: parsifal; Pan_Yan
First, social security and medicare: Now, here comes the GOP, in the latter part of the second millenia past Christ, and think that this is a bad thing.

A society has choices in how it does this.

Exactly correct. The society can rely on the biblical conservative way and let people (the church) do so or they can force people to do so by stealing the results of their labor at the point of a gun.

People have always taken care of others. People. Not the government. It is not government's job it is the people's job as individuals

Charging what amounts to a 16% tax on current labor to provide for post labor survival is not that bad an idea.
...
You, and everybody who believes like you, should be utterly ashamed of yourselves for your lack of humanity.

Social security is a recent idea. It has always been each person's responsibility to provide for themselves. No where in the bible does it talk about retirement. We are to work until we can't anymore and then we are to live off what we have set aside for ourselves and our children's children. I don't see doing it God's way as being inhumane.

You should also be ashamed of yourselves as alleged conservatives. Conservatism is at heart, COMMON SENSE.

Exactly. Common sense tells me that if I subsidize people sitting on their butts and doing nothing I will get more people sitting on their butts and doing nothing. And what do you know, History proves it. We've been fighting the "war on poverty" for decades now by giving them free money and we have MORE poor now than we did back then. The democrat's social programs have destroyed the black family and robbed us of three generations of what could have been productive citizens. It is almost as big a crime as abortion (and it could be argued it's destroyed far more people)

It is doing the things that help make your nation safe and strong and stable.

Like instilling a work ethic in people.

Having people fall off the food chart and housing chart at a certain age don’t do none of that. Common sense is preparing for the inevitable.

I just realized you are arguing against a position that I have never taken. I am not proposing taking anyone off of SS. They signed up to that contract and we owe it to them. I do propose privatizing all future SS payments (starting with those 30 years old and less as they have plenty of time to provide for themselves) to get us out of people's retirement planning since we should not have been doing that in the first place.

Common sense is planning for the inevitable. Yet we prevent people from doing that by enslaving them to social security.

We create a system whereby when a person reaches a certain age,, their income dryeth not up. We look at it as a cost of doing business. We lay something up for the future. Now the fact that gov’t has done spent it is pretty lousy, but the laying up is not wrong or unconstitutional.

It is right for people to lay something up for the future for themselves.

It is wrong for the government to steal our money to provide for someone who we do not know. Someone who may not deserve our help. God entrusts our money to us to be good stewards of. Having that money stolen by the government prevents us from performing our God given duty.

Wage and hour-minwage laws: OMG! What a stretch. First Amendment? The Constitution provides for regulation of interstate commerce. what if one state was civilized, and conservative, and had a high standard of living and the neighboring state was a wahoo “libertarian” state that permitted one dollar an hour wages and no worker’s comp, etc.

Then the workers would exercise their right to freely assemble with the employers in the better paying state and move there. Just like the system is supposed to work. (We already see it happening now with welfare systems. Raise your welfare payments and the welfare junkies will come from states away just to get more free money)

Lets just call the civilized state, Arkansas, for example, and the wahoo idiot state,let’s call Texas, for example. Products from Texas would undercut the price of products made in Arkansas. This would not be good,

Why not? Does Arkansas need subsidies to compete? Are the workers there unable to out produce the Texas workers. After all they are being paid more they should produce more.

so Congress would have the right to set wage floors to prevent this from happening. That way the states could compete on a fairly even basis. Not unconstitutional.

US Constitution, Article I, Section 9 Paragraph 5 "No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State"

Wage laws are a tax on the products produced in that state. UNconstitutional

Minwages: No, the cost of labor is not 100% of a product. If minwages workers get a dollar an hour more, their cost of living does not go up $1.00 per hour. Think about it. Have you ever turned down a raise because your cost of living would go up that much????

You are comparing apples and oranges. My cost of living doesn't go up as I am now making $1.00 more than I made before but everyone else is still making what they were. No reason for everyone to raise prices. Raise the minimum wage by $1.00 and everyone will raise prices. Many union contracts are indexed to minimum wage so they get an automatic raise also and many non-union wages are also indexed via cost of living. Min wage goes up, everyone goes up. Net effect, the min wagers end exactly where they started but we are at a greater disadvantage vs the rest of the world

(For more see your post 75 and Pan_Yan's post 76)

Now as to the $100 per hour wage, there is a very simple answer to that. ... If the answer don’t come to you, I will tell you.

Go ahead, tell me.

“Minimum wage jobs are not WORTHY of being paid “livable” wages as they do not produce enough to be worth that much.” BASED ON WHAT? You mean some poor schmuck ought to work 40 hours a week and not be able to survive? This is not “conservative” This is aristocratic thought. Peasants should just be content to stay peasants.

NO. People with entry level minimum wage jobs should grow their skillset and move to better paying jobs. Flipping burgers at McDonalds was neevr meant to be a career.

Sorry, but regardless of our skills, we all have 168 hours in our week. If you work, you should be able to feed yourself, house yourself, and clothe yourself.

Not if you refuse to learn a skill that produces enough to make your time worth that much.

“Far better would be to stop forcing banks to lend money to those who cannot repay it.” -—Revisionist history. Poor widdle bankers were not forced to make loans which caused the meltdown.

Hmmm, Seems that before clinton had his "Everyone should own their own home" push and started forcing banks to loan to non-credit worthy people we didn't have a real estate problem (nor a real estate bubble to speak of).

Well, looky here. From your guardian link:

"Bill Clinton, former US president

Clinton shares at least some of the blame for the current financial chaos. He beefed up the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act to force mortgage lenders to relax their rules to allow more socially disadvantaged borrowers to qualify for home loans. "

(The other link was worthless. I don't have time to sort through page after page of leftist drivel)

The answer is, real life don’t work that way. When you are job hunting, you are over a barrel most of the time.

You develop skills that are marketable. You then market those skills to the best place you can find. It is not MY business to enforce someone hiring YOU. It is not anyone else's business to come between you and your employer. Don't like what he pays? You always have the freedom to look for better work. You are not a slave to the company. If your skills are up to snuff you will be paid for them. Germany I read is the biggest exporter in world and their standard of living is high. Somehow, unions and management are getting the job done there. I wish I knew more about it.

Move there.

When you have huge inequality of wealth, your nation suffers and splinters into class struggles.

There is ALWAYS a huge inequality of wealth in any system. Those who know how to gain wealth will always end up with it. The smart people win. Even in Communism some have plenty and some have none. But Capitalism is the only system where everyone has a shot at it. There has already been a “redistribution” of wealth in this country from the poor and middle classes to the rich.

Wealth was earned, not distributed. If the poor (for example) don't work, then they will not move up. The main problem we have is punitive tax rates that steal capital from the system and prevent the rich from creating jobs that pay well.

Higher wages are a way to redistribute wealth away from corporate profits and the rich to wage earners. This means demand is paid for with cash not increases in credit which is what has happened over the last three decades.

Exactly. And as people become worth more to their employers they will be paid more.

81 posted on 10/29/2009 5:26:57 AM PDT by John O (God Save America (Please))
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To: Pan_Yan

I do the “There, read that” sometimes because if I didn’t it would take tons of typing. Usually the links I send are fair, balanced, and relevant, at least IMHO. Plus I figure I save some bandwidth for FR.

parsy, who will certainly read your link


82 posted on 10/29/2009 3:59:26 PM PDT by parsifal (Abatis: Rubbish in front of a fort, to prevent the rubbish outside from molesting the rubbish inside)
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To: safeasthebanks

I’m rubber.
You’re glue.
Everything you say
Bounces off me
And sticks on you.

parsy, the adult


83 posted on 10/29/2009 4:06:46 PM PDT by parsifal (Abatis: Rubbish in front of a fort, to prevent the rubbish outside from molesting the rubbish inside)
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To: parsifal
It would appear that your views are not shared by everyone. Not only that, but from what I've read you seem to have many serious personal problems.

Of course I've also read that Michelle Obama is a fashion icon, so I'm beginning to doubt my sources.

84 posted on 10/29/2009 4:54:49 PM PDT by Pan_Yan (All gray areas are fabrications.)
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To: Pan_Yan

Serious personal problems? Yes. Dissociative disorder. General lunacy. And PTSD (Post traumatic skillet disorder)

parsy, who is ate up with issues


85 posted on 10/29/2009 5:07:14 PM PDT by parsifal (Abatis: Rubbish in front of a fort, to prevent the rubbish outside from molesting the rubbish inside)
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To: AdmSmith; AnonymousConservative; Berosus; bigheadfred; Bockscar; ColdOne; Convert from ECUSA; ...

Thanks AreaMan.
After months of hearing the media and pundits pronounce the untimely death of capitalism, it did my heart good to see a recent Newsweek cover story challenge the familiar trope. The author, Fareed Zakaria, noted that this pessimistic pronouncement gets air time in the wake of every financial downturn. But in reality, capitalism, over the long haul, has succeeded far beyond any other economic arrangement in human history. If worldwide communism couldn't destroy capitalism, why are we so quick to believe that some bad fiscal and government policies in real estate will do it? Unfortunately, some copy editor entitled the otherwise reasonable article, "The Capitalist Manifesto: Greed Is Good (To a point)." This is one of the worst myths about capitalism... More unfortunately, this "greed myth" (as I have called it) is often perpetuated, as it was on the cover of Newsweek, by the putative defenders of capitalism.

86 posted on 10/26/2011 6:14:37 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (It's never a bad time to FReep this link -- https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
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