Comments on: Ohio plumber Joe Wurzelbacher talks about his dialogue with Obama and spreading the wealth

By: FAC

FAC — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 16:54:06 +0000

andrew mickel wrote:
“I consider myself somewhat of a socialist, but not hardcore. I think everyone making over $50 000 pa should not get a tax break, instead they should get a tax increase. if you make that much money, you already have all you need taken care of, which means the rest of the money is spent wastefully. why should some people live in a basement, while others have 5 houses?”
That is a simplistic view of the problem. What about if they are a family of 10 with 2 down syndrome kids? Wow, thats goes your 50K down the drain. Who do you think is better off, this family or a family of 2 making 30K? Who are you to decide what other people need or don’t need?
They live in a basement either because they are disable (in wich case they deserve help) or because they don’t want to work as hard as other people(that are the one I have a problem with).
If you guys admite you are all socialists including the leadership of the Democratic party, I’ll then agree that we disagree. But when you trying to convince me that black is white and red is blue, I have problems swallowing that.

By: FAC

FAC — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 16:36:42 +0000

Sorry I was away a little bit.
Phil from London, I think Evan answer you for me. Thank you Evan.
Now, Evan, I also lived in a socialist country. You are right in some points, but I don’t agree on others.
I will say anybody who impose a wealth re-distribution is talking socialism. You can call it whatever you want. I think it is simplistic to put all the ex-socialist countries in the same basket. There were a lot of differents “flavors” of socialism. From the mild socialism in Germany to the hard core criminal of Pol Pot.
Not all the socialism countries were real socialist and certainly not all that pursued the socialist ideal ended up implementing real socialism. There are that examples as Germany or Poland or Hungary where you could have some type of private ownership. That alone is not a real socialism because the goverment didn’t own all the means of production. Also, comunism was never reached by any of those countries, Communism is the last stage in the Socialism path, where even money will not be neccessary.
You said I’m in a stage of panic. You might be right, but if you are a trend following and a pattern recognition mind, you will find a lot of common grounds between Obama and the Democratic party and the principles of Socialism. I wish I’m wrong for the sake of all human kind. The fall of the USA under a Socialist rule will be the end of all liberties in the rest of the world.
Who do you think own AIG? their stockholders? Think again 79.9 percentage is own by the US goverment. What do you think is the Obama plan on Health Care, What about his education plan? Don’t you see a pattern and a trend?
American values are being transformed as we speak. Wait a little longer and the whites will be a minority. No that I’m against immigration or I’m a racist. The problem is that immigrants are not asimilating in the melting pot, on the contrary, America is disolving in the soup. This country is always more and more distant of what you call “Protestant values”. The media and Hollywood are acconplices on that matter. How many real conservatives are lefting? Very few. Obama and the Democratic party are using the “good old” class war and rellying in the low human feeling called envy. Just like recently Hugo Chavez did in Venezuela, people voted against the tradittional parties, and they got something worse.
“Progressive taxation” is progressive bankruptcy. The goverment will distributing the “fiscal burden” in the people who actualy pay taxes and will give money to their electoral base via earnest money to people who don’t pay a dime. I again ask you to search history of taxation in the US. and plot it in a graph % vs Time. You will be suprised how steep the line is growing and at what rate. The most amazing part is people are not aware of that.
I’m glad you have a flat tax system I wish we have something like that. I wish we adopt the fair tax system where politicians will get a lot more trouble getting away with their “personal projects”. Do you actually read the whole bail out document. Do you realize it cover environmental issues among other bribes nothing to do with the real problem of the banking and financial industries. About loosers and winners, you should read my opinion several post up. I’ll tell you again, looser is the one who is not trying. I know lot of people who have money but are a bunch of loosers. We have decades of trowing money to the “less favored” in the form of welfare. Yet the problem is still there, they going from generation after generation in the same hole, it doesn’t matter how much money you give to them. They have learned how to play the game very well. We have created a bunch of parasites who don’t have any aspirations in life other than going day after day with the less effort.
I think you are missing the point about people and their motivations. Who do you think were the leaders of the bolchevique revolution? The workers? the farmers? Who do you think Marx and Engels were? Blue collard workers? I don’t know what motivate people like for example George Soros to try to end the system who made himself what he is. Could be some kind of vendatta for the Budapest revolt the CIA didn’t help at the end? Could be anything from personal motives to more darker ones. I don’t know. I know that when somebody uses the power of the goverment to take from one to give to other, it is wrong and nobody will ever know where it will end. For God sake, have you guys forgetting what is the cause we are no longer British? TAXES!!!!!!

By: andrew mickel

andrew mickel — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 17:29:04 +0000

I consider myself somewhat of a socialist, but not hardcore. I think everyone making over $50 000 pa should not get a tax break, instead they should get a tax increase. if you make that much money, you already have all you need taken care of, which means the rest of the money is spent wastefully. why should some people live in a basement, while others have 5 houses?

By: jonathan avildsen

jonathan avildsen — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 17:21:37 +0000

obviously joe is a selfish guy. he doesnt want to start a business unless he is guaranteed to make more than $250g? what a joke. he wont even settle for 200. im going to guess he is religious too. isnt greed against christianity?

By: Evan

Evan — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 20:38:26 +0000

FAC,
You need to put some meat on those arguments that the Democratic candidate is a socialist or that he will lead USA to socialism, otherwise it all sounds like it’s panic time, whether interested or not.
First of all, any country that pursued the “socialist ideal” ended up implementing real socialism, which was communism = state ownership. I’ve never heard any of the candidates even hinting at this possibility, let alone seriously proposing anything to this effect (barring some necessary and temporary measures to fight the current crisis). It would be suicidal to their campaign, given America’s past and present as the brand of capitalism in the world. There’s no point in going backwards, when other countries which used to rely on state-controlled economies are now moving towards allowing more space for competition and private involvement. In my opinion, a socialist mentality is never going to thrive in the USA, which is a country primarily built on Protestant values (you should put Karl Marx to rest and read more Max Weber).
Progressive taxation, which is a social democrat type of policy in the modern sense (not a socialist policy), doesn’t mean that the state will increase its share of GDP or that it will control the market forces. It means that it will redistribute the fiscal burden on different shoulders and/or differently on the same shoulders. That’s not socialism. How could it be considering that public revenue in the US as a percentage of GDP is a lot smaller than in most developed capitalist countries (~27%, compared to most European countries, where the level of levied taxes goes beyond 35% of GDP)?
I live in a country with a flat tax system and I think it’s very good for public finances because it reduces operating costs to a great degree. I’m on equal footing with big companies on direct taxation basis, but are we really equal players? They can afford to operate offshore and save more money than most wage earners will ever make. Are they doing it because of the gross unfairness of the taxation system? Duh – not! More capital means more means to multiply it, more fancy lifestyles, more ambitions, more of what we know human nature to be when it gets more. I’m not a left-wing animal but I don’t like this way of looking at people only as losers and winners. The most striking attitude that you and a few other have shown here is considering people only from an economic point of view. I won’t criticise this attitude, because I think it’s part of the problem right now with the status quo and it will die by itself. Think about having shy kids and watching them compete against less hard-working or smart kids who are more outgoing. Your kids will be so anxious sometimes that they may underperform compared to the kids who use best their endowment without much hesitation. So this winners-losers equation is really missing the point about people’s potentials. You have to ask yourself what makes a loser a loser and a winner a winner before jumping to conclusions. Unless you think that they are born losers. People are not born the same, that’s for sure, but can we integrate more and more of them? I think that is far more important than just bickering over who should pay a bit more or get a bit more. The future is about increasing inclusion and interaction, and reducing self-centredness; you seem to focus on yourself in your arguments.
Secondly, both McCain and Obama are well-off enough to not be suspected of having a socialist mindset. I don’t see how Obama, who is making millions from selling his books right now, could really believe in state ownership and greater state intervention in the economy. You can call him aloof, unexperienced, elitist, but not socialist. Personally, if I were Joe the Plumber I would have insisted more on what his opinion is on the flat tax. He got away too easily on that question.