Posted on 11/21/2006 12:14:53 PM PST by presidio9
Same. I thought this was a *conservative* forum. I'm now finding out it's a progressive forum.
So, just like in any other market, adapt or die.
That includes the hypothetical workers in the Midwest. If you can't get a job, move. Employment markets are cyclical on geographical and industry basis. The government can not create jobs in the long term, but it can destroy them.
I don't like welfare either, but what's your point?
I agree that they are slated to become taxes, but that is not what they are intended to be.
You mentioned it in relation to unemployment, and I stated why so many are on welfare. In other words, I started off on a tangent. Sorry.
Those workers seem to have decided not to change addresses, but representation.
It's sad, actually. The points you've brought up are excellent, but ignored.
Well, I need to get back to the collective Comrade.
Why do we have to skew the tax structure at all?
No problem. I thought you might have assumed I was defending welfare. Incidently, getting rid of welfare would also eliminate our illegal immigration problem, but that's for a different thread.
"Fairness" means nothing except what the speaker wants it to mean.
To me, social justice means the free enjoyment of one's legitimately acquired property.
When things get even worse because of higher taxes, they'll be back. FDR did not get us out of the Depression. WWII did.
Let me be more clear: Free markets work in practice in an economic sense -- generally speaking, though not as well as some purists insist. But in any case, they are often a political loser. Maybe it's possible to be free-market without sounding free-market.
>>How about agriculture? That too has been erased.
Sounds like you haven't been to the Midwest lately. I can assure you that agriculture is still ubiquitous.
>>Indiana, which is suffering
Indiana is suffering? That's news to me. Just the opposite would appear to be the case.
The GOP needs to win because of national security, and because it's the only chance that babies have of getting past the abortion nightmare.
What I have written is not liberal,. It's common sense.
Liberal is demanding massive wealth redistribution, penalizing "the rich", etc.
What I am talking about is preserving America's industrial base, which is also a national security matter. The long term social stability of the United States is also a national security matter.
Want amnesty for all those illegal aliens?
Well, we're probably going to GET IT because the Democrats took over Congress, and the President is inclined to give it (just don't call it "amnesty").
Holding onto Congress means keeping a coalition that amounts to a majority. Pro-lifers, pro-defense, pro-war-on-terror: those things matter greatly. The economy matters, but here it cuts various ways. The capital elite give heavily to Republicans and have gotten generous tax breaks in return. Most of the arguments here have been from the perspective of the capital elite. But the manufacturing worker, the Midwestern union guy, the Reagan Democarat who, in the past, voted for the GOP on national security and social issues, now his economic situation has gotten SO strained that he is voting for the party that will give him greater social protections, because he NEEDS them.
So, we Republicans have two choices: lost EVERYTHING, because we lose the Reagan Democrats and have constituency coming on board to fill that hole, or COMPROMISE on economic matters, accept some economic inefficiency, to give greater security to the Reagan Democrat workers, esp. in the Midwest.
UNLIKE war-and-peace issues, or abortion and gay marriage, economic policy is NOT primarily a moral issue. It's a matter of business, of money. It is possible to compromise on economic matters in a way that it is not on matters like abortion or defense or even gun rights.
Now, what James Webb wrote was dead-on-balls accurate as far as that Midwestern manufacturing sector is looking at it. Webb won. And folks like him are going to win more and more and more, because people are feeling desperate and are going to vote for the man who addresses them on their bread-and-butter issue. Calling him a "socialist" or some other damnfool epitthet is playing ostrcih. We are going to lose election after election unless we modify our economic policies to address the problem of insecurity in the fast-vanishing economic sector. The Midwest is turning into Appalachia, and that means that if the Democrats offer something, and the Republicans offer nothing, it becomes a blue region. And with that, the Republicans never win the White House again, and they never win Congress.
It's not a matter of becoming liberal. It's a matter of softening economic policies that have become too skewed in the service of a particular philosophy that is not actually right on some key issues.
And I don't want to see it "skewed" any worse than it already is.
Wall street is soaring because it's finance. Finance prospers from the international market and shifting of jobs to cheaper areas. Where you are is dying because it's manuifacturing and production and labor: the expensive part of the economy. Shays, in the finance sector of CT, won. The other Republicans, in the industrial part of CT, lost.
Trend.
Didn't Vicomte13 speak in FAVOR of the Kelo v. New London ruling back in 2005, or at least tell us all that people would simply accept the ruling and go on with their lives?
Wrong then, wrong now.
What you said.
DITTO!!!! Many freepers do not realize that the middle class does not want protectionism. They need a rest from all this change. Globalism will happen because the US needs to trade, but it needs to be managed so there is time for transition. Look what happened to the middle class blue collar and even white collar workers since the 1970's. We moved heavy industries overseas, so the blue collar well paid union workers lost jobs, then we started to move light industries to Mexico and accelerated the process with NAFTA, then we automated the offices so many middle class white collar workers were unemployed, then when they resettled into service jobs, or as independent contractors at 2/3 of original pay, companies outsourced to India and China, and in the tech field which was suppose to be the future jobs for Americans, lower cost IT workers are imported or the job is outsourced to lower pay engineers/IT workers in India and China. In the meantime the illegal immigrant population is allowed to grow and take jobs away at the low end. It has been shock treatment after shock treatment, and the GOP kept expousing that free trade, globalism and outsourcing is good for America. This is happening all in a space of 30 years. Hardly a generation and a half has passed with major social and economical dislocation for the middle class. If some of these freepers would just stop, step back and see the overall picture of what happened to the middle class and even the white collar working class in the last 30 years, common sense should set in. Pushing one of your natural constituents too hard and too fast with unbridled economic and trade policies may have political consequences. I think the election results in 2006 especially in the conservative midwest and southern GOP districts is an illustration of my point.
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