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Politics : Actual left/right wing discussion -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: koan who wrote (8669)	11/25/2010 1:54:40 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10087

And that is the trick they are using to brainwash the electorate. That's getting their own opinion out. Its not brainwashing. Also its no one consistent voice, but a lot of different, even directly contradictory, opinions about a lot of different issues. Its free speech and participation in the political discussion and our country is much better off for it. Its also a fairly small amount of money, the amount spent on political campaigning in the US, on all levels, from all sources, is less than we spend on potato chips, and much of that is from non-corporate sources. In addition most of the corporate spending is through PACs which where already allowed before the supreme court decision invalidating parts of McCain-Finegold. The extent of political ads from businesses, both before McCain-Finegold, and after the court decision, has been fairly minimal. As for "the rich getting richer", generally in modern America that has been in most of the rest getting richer as well. The rich mostly get richer because they produce more wealth, not at the expense of others, but to their benefit. Some are rent-seekers, seeking government provided subsidy or advantage to make them even richer. That's a good argument for a less active government. If the government does less, there is less ability and incentive for such rent-seeking to occur. But the majority of the rich did not get so primarily through rent-seeking. As for unions they are a special interest, and one that often rent-seeks, or even outright corrupts the political process. They represent a smaller portion of private sector employment, and that's mostly a good thing as it allows for greater flexibility and efficiency. Unfortunately they are a growing problem in the public sector, where there demands have been less constrained by competition in the organization they live off of, since the government doesn't face competition. Almost the entire south's foreign car makers are non union and the south is the poorest and least educated part of the country. The south was much less educated and poorer than the rest of the country. That started changing before these car markers set up shop, and continued to change after the started operating. Their operations are part of what helped alleviate the difference in income. Now parts of the South (Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Alabama) are still poorer than the norm, but not nearly as much so as they used to be. Other states (North Carolina, Florida, Texas) are pretty normal in income and education and have generally been doing better in terms of improving those levels than the average in the country, while Virginia is well above average, ahead of, for example, California, in both gross production per capita, and median income.