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Politics : Mainstream Politics and Economics -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: koan who wrote (26517)9/6/2012 9:42:39 AM
From: TimF  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 85487
 
Productive and unproductive people is a myth

No its fact. Its not a black and white fact, most people are productive to a certain extent, but there are some who are unproductive through choice or disability, and there are others who are extremely productive. The extremely productive often do well for themselves, but they usually generate more money for others than themselves (and that's before considering taxes, or charitable contributions, the actions of their job, their investments, or their business produce more benefit for others than the benefit they themselves see. In other words a majority of the wealthy create a positive externality in the process of gaining their wealth.

That only a few people at the top can do the job

Recognizing that some people are more productive than others, with a few being either very productive, or very unproductive, isn't saying anything about "a few people at the top". To the extent the productive people get to the top they often don't start out that way, nothing elitist about that. Allowing opportunity to "get to the top", is the opposite of protecting an entrenched elite.

so we must all support them with special tax breaks

In terms of taxes they provide most of the support for the government, and still would even with lower, more reasonable rates. As for special targeted tax breaks, supporters of free markets oppose them, preferring lower rates and less distortion through the tax code. Statists are much more likely to support such breaks (they may attack specific breaks that they oppose, even whole categories of breaks, but they usually support other categories, while also supporting special targeted extra taxes on those they don't like.)

Studies show for every dollar we spend on head start we get back between $60 and $300 in lower crime

I wasn't making any statement about head start. Your changing the subject, imposing your non-sequitur. But studies mostly show that head start is mostly a waste of money.

"The report sums up the findings as follows: “Head Start has benefits for both 3-year-olds and 4-year-olds in the cognitive, health, and parenting domains, and for 3-year-olds in the social-emotional domain. However, the benefits of access to Head Start at age four are largely absent by 1st grade for the program population as a whole."

journalistsresource.org

While these results are uninspiring, they become even less impressive when more closely examined. Heritage’s David Muhlhausen calls into question the less-than-rigorous statistical methods employed by HHS:

In some cases, HHS reports statistically significant impacts based on a standard of statistical significance is p<0.10 which is not the norm for most social scientists. The 0.05 level is the norm. With a sample of 4,667 children, there is no reason to use the easier 0.10 level. The larger your sample size the easier it is to find statistically significant findings, so using 0.10 as the standard for statistical significance is unwarranted with such a large sample size… For example, if they used the standard level of significance for the 1st grade year language and literacy measures, then the study would report no statistically measurable impact on all eleven measures. Instead, the lower standard used by HHS allows for them to report that Head Start had at least one positive impact on raised language and literacy.

In essence, had HHS not used a less-rigorous method of evaluating Head Start, the report would have shown no impact on the language and literacy outcomes for the four-year-old cohort.

blog.heritage.org

What we need to do now is spend a ton of money on public edcuation and then you will see a surge in productivity.

We already spend a ton of money on public education, with spending growing at a rapid rate decade after decade. What we need instead of just spending more money, is more productivity within education. The best way to get that would be to make our education system less monopolistic and more open to competition and choice.



To: koan who wrote (26517)9/6/2012 10:06:59 AM
From: Brumar892 Recommendations  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 85487
 
I use to work all night (graveyard shift) at factories and hamburger joints and went straight to class.

I worked my way through 6 years of university. We were poor and I paid for every cent of my education by working


So you lived your life according to conservative principles and they worked. But you want other people to not do what was successful for you.

It's funny you brag about NOT acting like a dependent liberal parasite that needs to be saved by Mommy Government.



To: koan who wrote (26517)9/6/2012 10:10:39 AM
From: longnshort1 Recommendation  Respond to of 85487
 
"The elevation of Slick Willie to some sort of political savior status in just 12 short years is a prime example of how far the left has fallen."

h/t Sed. Nod



To: koan who wrote (26517)9/6/2012 10:20:21 AM
From: longnshort2 Recommendations  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 85487
 
BOOM! Democrat Kirsten Powers slams Sandra Fluke speech: “I find this speech so offensive as a woman”Wow! Kirsten Powers was definitely not a fan last night of Sandra Fluke’s speech at the DNC, calling it offensive and saying after it was over “I hope that any young girl who saw that Fluke speech has someone to tell her it’s a lie: women are powerful and have freedom of speech.” BAM!

Here are Kirsten’s tweets about the speech:




kirsten powers ? @kirstenpowers10 [iframe class="twt-follow-button" allowtransparency="true" src="http://platform.twitter.com/widgets/follow_button.html#align=right&button=grey&screen_name=kirstenpowers10&show_count=false&show_screen_name=false&lang=en" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"][/iframe]
Is Sandra Fluke talking about Saudi Arabia or the United States? Women are "silenced"? Please.


5 Sep 12
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  • kirsten powers ? @kirstenpowers10 [iframe class="twt-follow-button" allowtransparency="true" src="http://platform.twitter.com/widgets/follow_button.html#align=right&button=grey&screen_name=kirstenpowers10&show_count=false&show_screen_name=false&lang=en" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"][/iframe]
    When a person insults you they aren't trying to silence you.....they are trying to insult you.




    To: koan who wrote (26517)9/6/2012 10:24:00 AM
    From: longnshort2 Recommendations  Respond to of 85487
     
    ’94 Tape Shows Obama Hatred Of Middle Class
    From BuzzFeed:

    Exclusive Audio: In 1994, Obama Criticized Clinton’s "Values" Pitch Zeke Miller | Wednesday Sept 5, 2012

    CHARLOTTE, N.C. — A previously unheard 1994 lecture by a young Barack Obama offers a new glimpse of his days as a up-and-coming, liberal Illinois politician.

    The recording, given to BuzzFeed by a Republican source, comes from a lecture on the nature of community values he delivered at Nebraska Wesleyan University on September 9, 1994.

    Notice that it was not uncovered by any investigative journalist. They do not investigate Obama.

    Obama told the students in Lincoln, Neb. that "values are dynamic,"and he dismissed appeals from everyone from Bill Clinton to Dan Quayle to "static" or "Ozzie and Harriet" values. Obama suggested those values — "The wife is at home, she’s not working, Dad’s got his 9 to 5, there are no African-Americans in these family values." — were woefully out of date.

    So Obama believes that blacks have a completely different set of values from whites?

    But notice that even during the "last century," Obama was mocking these values as being out of date and from the days of ‘black and white TV.’

    For the record, Obama had joined Reverend Wright’s church six years earlier, in in 1988. And he said he did so because of their pledge to the radical ‘Black Value System,’ which attacked middle class values as a trap for African-Americans. (See below.)

    But in reality, Obama’s hatred of the middle class is lifelong.

    Obama argued that the talk of values was empty without social action, and without a vigorous government role: "It’s not easy to live up to your ideals, it requires sacrifice. It may require taxes on the part of the society. It may require that you go without certain luxuries that you become accustomed to."

    In other words, Obama was obsessed with redistribution even then. And naturally he wanted to do that through taxes and punishing ‘the rich.’ Which is still what he wants to do 18 years later.

    "There’s no discussion of poverty in these values," Obama said. "There’s not much talk about a nuclear arms race that was taking place on the television programs," he said. "So the notion is that we can somehow return to that time and recapture those values without acknowledging all the things that were left out. Well, that’s not the case." …

    No poverty or arms race discussions in sitcoms? How shocking. But which TV shows did Obama believe we should base our values on?

    In the 1994 recording, Obama speaks derisively of the "values" articulated by leading Democratic figures like Bill Clinton and Jesse Jackson.

    Just think, Obama was (is) not only to the left of Bill Clinton, but Jesse Jackson as well.

    "Values have made a comeback," Obama is heard saying. "Dan Quayle talks about values. He talks about Murphy Brown and her lack of values. Bill Clinton talks about values. Jesse Jackson talks about values. So we have values all over the place. Politicians really like values now. Part of the reason for that is values are cheap, at least the way they talk about them. You don’t have to pay any money or tax anybody to talk about values. Family values, American values, values.”

    “First as I said I think values are dynamic. Part of the reason I don’t trust Dan Quayle talking about values and I often don’t trust Bill Clinton talking about values is they tend to have a static notion of values. Dan Quayle talks about values in terms of Ozzie and Harriet values…



    I’m always struck by values that are embodied in these television shows which I think are the values that people have in mind when they talk about return to American values. The wife is at home, she’s not working, Dad’s got his 9 to 5, there are no African-Americans in these family values. There’s no discussion of poverty in these values. There’s not much talk about a nuclear arms race that was taking place on the television programs. So the notion is that we can somehow return to that time and recapture those values without acknowledging all the things that were left out. Well, that’s not the case.”

    The audio recording is one of several moments in the 1990s in which Obama made clear that he didn’t consider himself a Clinton Democrat…

    No, Bill Clinton was far too conservative for Obama. In fact, he still is.

    For the record, here is an excerpt from the mission statement of Reverend Wright’s church, which embraced the racist, separatist, ‘Black Value System’ (which has since been expunged from their website):

    THE BLACK VALUE SYSTEM Statement of Purpose

    We have prayerfully called the wisdom of all past generations of suffering Blacks for guidance in fashioning an instrument of Black self-determination, the Black Value System

    Disavowal of the Pursuit of “Middleclassness”

    Classic methodology on control of captives teaches that captors must keep the captive ignorant educationally, but trained sufficiently well to serve the system. Also, the captors must be able to identify the “talented tenth” of those subjugated, especially those who show promise of providing the kind of leadership that might threaten the captor’s control.

    Those so identified as separated from the rest of the people by:

    Killing them off directly, and/or fostering a social system that encourages them to kill off one another.

    Placing them in concentration camps, and/or structuring an economic environment that induces captive youth to fill the jails and prisons.

    Seducing them into a socioeconomic class system which while training them to earn more dollars, hypnotizes them into believing they are better than others and teaches them to think in terms of “we” and “they” instead of “us”.

    So, while it is permissible to chase “middle-incomeness” with all our might, we must avoid the third separation method-the psychological entrapment of Black “middleclassness”: If we avoid the snare, we will also diminish our “voluntary” contributions to methods A and B. And more importantly, Black people no longer will be deprived of their birthright, the leadership, resourcefulness, and example of their own talented persons

    Remember this whenever you hear Mr. Obama talk about how much he wants to help to preserve the middle class.




    To: koan who wrote (26517)9/6/2012 12:14:00 PM
    From: TimF  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 85487
     
    As a societal decision-making norm, the economic freedom to pursue wealth does more than just expand the economic pie. A legal system that pursues wealth maximization necessarily must allow individuals freedom to pursue the accumulation of wealth. Economic liberty, in turn, is a necessary concomitant of personal liberty—the two have almost always marched hand in hand. The pursuit of wealth has been a major factor in destroying arbitrary class distinctions, moreover, by enhancing personal and social mobility. At the same time, the manifest failure of socialist systems to deliver reasonable standards of living has undermined their viability as an alternative to democratic capitalist societies in which wealth maximization is a paramount societal goal. Accordingly, it seems fair to argue that the economic liberty to pursue wealth is an effective means for achieving a variety of moral ends.

    In turn, the modern public corporation has turned out to be a powerful engine for focusing the efforts of individuals to maintain the requisite sphere of economic liberty. Those whose livelihood depends on corporate enterprise cannot be neutral about political systems. Only democratic capitalist societies permit voluntary formation of private corporations and allot them a sphere of economic liberty within which to function, which gives those who value such enterprises a powerful incentive to resist both statism and socialism. Because tyranny is far more likely to come from the public sector than the private, those who for selfish reasons strive to maintain both a democratic capitalist society and, of particular relevance to the present argument, a substantial sphere of economic liberty therein serve the public interest. As Michael Novak observes, private property and freedom of contract were “indispensable if private business corporations were to come into existence.” In turn, the corporation gives “liberty economic substance over and against the state.”

    ssrn.com