Welfare states are against development

[ZEE]

i totally agree with you. here in the US the Social Security system is such a joke its almost scary. People on disability who cant function at all are COMPLETELY dependant on the government. Politicians use scare tactics, bullying, and cheap mind control tricks to sway the lower class into thinking the big government is on THEIR side! its such a cycle of bologna that i feel like vomiting. ive BEEN THERE! i KNOW how hard it is to come up and make a name. and the truly sad thing is once you MAKE that name, its even more of a challenge... to KEEP it.

[Straybow]

Ummm, you've just now figured this out???

Politicians love a dependent class of people out there to mine for support. If they were successful and dependent they'd have to be successful themselves in making government work well. Can't have that, can we?

[ZEE]

its mind control... plain and simple.

[Pekka]

Right, right, but AAHZ has a good point on a subject that is close to my heart, which is power and using power. It's the rhetorics, where you scare people, that if you support someone who isn't with me, well, you're all going to be screwed.

Now, then the opponent says the same, I mean how would you know what is true and what is not true? You are creating some kind of virtual reality there, pick your ideology and that will become the truth of everything. Political ideologies have an answer to any problem and situation. Too many toes? Here's the answer. Inflation? Here's the answer. And it all follows the ideology of the group, it doesn't even matter if the answer is stupid and doesn't make any sense, it has to follow the ideology. And that ideology is derived from the core values of that group.

You see, this is where my path and the path of most people separates. I don't vote people because of their values. We all have the same basic values, excluding very few people. We all like family, we all like safety, equality, respect for other people.. we all like environment. Yes, we all do. Who hates it? I don't know anyone who hates it.

So, then groups claim ownership to these values. If we own this value, you can't. If we own the family values, you can't own them. So we can always battle you with our family values, by just saying the word. We don't have to make sense, we just need to pull that ace out of the sleave.

So it becomes a battle of values, and the whole idea of working issues one at a time, by the principle of let the best idea win, no matter who comes up with it.. well it just flies out of the window.

So for example, I don't care if a politician says we have concerns about low income people and unemployment. That's not something that we don't already know. Tell us what you will do. Explain how you will start, what is your plan. That's what matters.

Because if you don't, you just promise everything to everyone, and no one gets anything. Keep the list of promises and you'll have the same list of broken promises later on.

I'm not going to vote for a value leader. I can decide my own values. I don't need a priest, if I want one, there's church for that. Give me facts. Give me figures, and measures.

But that's not how it works. That's the way it should work, but that's not the way it works. How are you going to obtain power by being boring person or group, playing with facts only? What if you say to a question in a debate or to media that, "No, I don't care about that. That's a non-issue. We can debate about a million things that has no influence on the economy, the laws or policy making, but that's a waste of time".

I think it is disrespectful to keep this status, where we elect leaders to basically tell us what to think, what our values should be. I have my own already, I don't need someone to teach me new values. Because at the end of the day, everyone agrees, how do you debate values anyway? You might have some intercultural debates about values, but that's a different thing. That shouldn't be political debate. An important dicussion, so people get along and respect each other and the ways of other people, but not really a political discussion now is it?

"We care about the old people". No. You just want the votes of the old people. Unless you give me some facts and statistics about what you're going to do to help the old people, and follow it up, it's nothing but hot air, and therefor ultimately deceptive and manipulative vote whoring.

[Pekka]

And lately, in here, and I've noticed around the world, all elections have become all about electing a person. We talk literally about 'person elections'. So you're voting for a person.

In my mind, that's just wrong on all levels. First of all, OF COURSE I'm voting for a person. I'm not voting for a machine, I'm not voting for an animal or an object. Yes I'm voting for a person.

But what it really means is that we're voting an individual who we like, and not the issues. We're voting for a person, not the issues. How stupid is that? I don't care who is up there, doing the job, all I care about is that they do the best job possible. That's the only thing that matters. I don't care if they're ugly, weird, whatever. I want them to be the best possible person to do the job, period. So no, I'm not voting for a person in that sense. It's like accepting that well, the person might nto be the best possible or most qualified, it's just that we like the person we're going to vote for. That's a great way to .. not have the best candidate possible to win. Have someone charismatic... someone who tells funny jokes... yeah, right.