Is A Revolution Possible In America?

[rah]

maybe having no children is a bit extreme but having fewer children makes sense.

My wife and I waited till we were more financially secure before having our daughter.

Well spoken Plato. And I do appreciate hard work and effort. At my last job, I used to choose my entry level programmers and computer support people from the pool of telemarketers. Many where from disadvantaged backgrounds but showed that had a good work ethic.
Almost all of them are quite successful today and have their hard work to thank for it.

[Deity Dude]

Originally posted by Arrian


Enacting "fair trade" tarrifs would probably do the trick.

The resulting trade war would cause a huge depression. People, who had been told that the law would benifit them, would be very, very angry. Nothing is worse than raising expectations and then dashing them.

-Arrian

Arbitrary tarriffs which have in the past been referred to as "fair trade" sure aren't the answer. Protecting an otherwise non-competitive industry makes no sense.
Adjusting imports for wage discrepencies makes total sense and would help stave off a local depression but if it were worldwide it wouldn't matter. Nor would it impact the price of gas much, other than the dollar would probably get stronger which would lower the price of gas for those who use dollars..

[rah]

One problem with you method is for products that are assembled from parts from different locations. Japanese auto makers that assemble cars in the us from parts make in many different countries used to charge themselves a lot for the parts so the profits in the US were low and they'd pay less taxes here. They would declare the profit elsewhere to save money on taxes.

Would 10% of a product be based on one charge, 20% at another rate, etc. It could get really complex and would still be gamed by savy companies.

[rmsharpe]

Originally posted by MikeH
You don't think it's much more likely that you'll end up poor if you are born poor, go to **** schools, have terrible nutrition, no healthcare, bad parental examples (if any), live in a high crime, high drug neighbourhood than if you start off in a nice middle class neighbourhood, with a decent school, health insurance, couple of well meaning parents and a small college fund? I'm in the second camp, and because of that I never really had to work hard for anything in my life. I'm doing pretty well despite being lazy.

Shouldn't you address the question of why the schools are poor and why their parents don't monitor their children's nutrition?

It is the responsibility of the parent to raise their children right, not to surrender them to the state which has so far failed in many areas of trying to reduce the number of people suffering from such ailments.

Plus, what is the intent of the do-gooders that wish to implement these kind of welfare programs? The public was told initially that these "supplemental income" programs were to make it so that poor families had the resources available to them to lift themselves out of poverty. Instead, what resulted is that people are on these programs for an indefinite time, creating a government budget crisis and a dependency cycle.

How do government do-gooders justify these programs today? They measure their success on the polar opposite; populists from both parties point to these programs and tell us how many new people are going to be covered under those programs when their original intent was to get them off welfare.

Granted, there's been slight improvements in some of the programs since the Gingrich uprising in the mid-1990s. Although, with the Medicare expansions, etc. it seems like it's all but been lost.

[Jon Miller]

How much of our budget goes to welfare? I dont' think it is the main cause of our budget crisis.

JM

[rmsharpe]

Do you have a clear definition of welfare?

Here's a pie chart of federal spending from FY 2007.



Now, someone might post a similar chart that shows the defense budget eating up nearly half of the federal budget; that's a deception. Those charts only display federal discretionary spending, not overall spending on the part of the federal government.

[Arrian]

Shouldn't you address the question of why the schools are poor and why their parents don't monitor their children's nutrition?

MikeH's post specifically mentioned bad parenting as a problem. We know the state can't fix that. But blaming the kids for their ****ty parents doesn't strike me as a good idea either.

-Arrian

[rmsharpe]

Well, why not? We just have to fundamentally accept that some parents are simply going to be lousy and that the children will be disadvantaged because of it.

No amount of state intervention, no matter how well-meaning, is going to fix that.

[Space05us]

Originally posted by PLATO


Well said.

Additionally, poor people tend to allocate their time incorrectly. Is it really a benefit to them to work that second job just so their kid can have a playstation? Would they not be better served by getting some training or education with that time and living a little closer to the vest for a year or two so they could get a better job?

Of course, it is much easier to whine about your neighborhood, or poor upbringing and keep that after hours janitorial job, isn't it?

I have sympathy for poor people, but not when they don't take advantage of the plethora of programs designed to help them change their plight.

Who teaches them how to allocate their time? Their poor, or non-existent parents. As far as many of them can tell they are doing things the right way, nobody is stopping them and teaching them a better way.

People learn to do something one way and continue to do it that one way because it's how they learned it. It's the easiest way to do it for them, it becomes habit. They honestly do not realize what they are doing wrong.

Add to it all that most poor people attend poor public schools where learning disabilities and psychological/behavioral problems are never caught and never addressed. Many of them are unable to get an education through a standard college, they never become book smart.

Of course there are a group of poor people who are poor because they lack any semblance of motivation.

[Jon Miller]

Social Security and Medicare are not welfare. They are programs implemented to keep our society from collapsing (and aimed at the elderly).

They aren't given to people who can possibly work. That means that <23% (much less than) is welfare.

JM

[GePap]

Well, if by revolution we mean a complete overthrow of the governing system, then I don;t forsee it happening ina foreseeable era, because everyone in the country still worships the Constitution.

[Imran Siddiqui]

To answer the question, btw, of why are our schools poor, because *******s would rather fund schools by local property taxes than to fund it statewide. Rich folk don't want to pay for poor folk education, and thus, naturally, kids in rich neighborhoods will have far better schools beause those schools have far more money due to local property taxes.

Have a state wide funding for schools and you'll see the poor schools get elevated. Yeah, the rich schools will have to do with a bit less than now (instead of new computers every year, they may have to a wait 3 or 4), but they'll be ok.

[GePap]

Another problem is locally produced curriculums. While I don;t think our schools should all be based around regular standardized testing, there does need to be a uniform, standard curriculum nationwide, to make comparisons useful and improve innovation.

[DaShi]

Originally posted by GePap
Well, if by revolution we mean a complete overthrow of the governing system, then I don;t forsee it happening ina foreseeable era, because everyone in the country still worships the Constitution.

Not the Bush administration.

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by GePap
Another problem is locally produced curriculums. While I don;t think our schools should all be based around regular standardized testing, there does need to be a uniform, standard curriculum nationwide, to make comparisons useful and improve innovation.

Meh, who the **** cares about comparisons; and how does this improve innovation? Innovation is improved by someone on a local level taking a chance, and then proving it right, and then it being adopted by others. Federalizing education would kill innovation (further than it is now, which is not exactly strong).

I wouldn't mind a very high-level federal minimum curriculum, except that it would be used as an excuse for some schools to have minimum standards (ie, to lower their standards to the minimum).

In general, education to me is a local thing that should be monitored on the local level. Funding can be applied at all levels to ensure adequate education is given to all; there's no reason to require substantial federalization.