Meet Barack Hussein Mugabe

[Arrian]

I wasn't scared. I'll ask you two questions.
What type of person has benefited from Bush through his tax breaks and other policies? The Well off maybe.

Do you think Kerry would have gotten rid of those tax cuts?

I'm well off and profited quite well. It is my belief that I wouldn't have done as well under Kerry.

Ok, I can follow that. I don't vote that way personally, but I get that you and many others do.

I happen to think that your argument is short-sighted b/c of the debt racked up under the "borrow and spend" regime. I see your response to that is basically "well, me and mine won't have to deal with that debt." That strikes me as naive.

When the bill has to be paid, the poor won't be able to pay it, and it will fall to people like us, who have money. How well will our 401(k)s and IRAs do in the future if the government continues this sort of mismanagement? Not very well, IMO. And that has a real impact on your contention that your daughter will be fine b/c you've arranged it that way.

We're the ones with things to lose, and thus we're the ones who should fear fiscal mismanagement the most, IMO.

I grant you that the Dems probably wouldn't have balanced the budget. I think they would've done a better job, though.

Further, I firmly believe that the electorate has a responsibility to punish bad leadership. Bush absolutely needed to be fired, but wasn't.

-Arrian

[rah]

People have always voted for what they percieve is best for them. Thinking that people should vote for what's good for the common good is quite naive.

Taxes is all about a redistribution of wealth and I've contributed more than my fair shair over the years. Is it any wonder that I'll vote which ever way I think will let me keep the most.

Heck my tax money has supported the poor, and I've been involved in many charity organization contributed a considerable amount of money and time so please don't automatically paint me as a "ME ME ME only" person.

[Arrian]

People have always voted for what they percieve is best for them. Thinking that people should vote for what's good for the common good is quite naive.

I didn't say anything about what people "should" do vis-a-vis voting, rah. edit: I mean on the issue of self-interest and its role on deciding between candidates.

You ignored the rest of my argument (apparently b/c you took umbrage at what you perceived as an attack). Note that the rest of my post is an appeal to self-interest.

I don't vote purely my checkbook, but neither do I vote purely on the common good. I try to err on that side of things, but I'm human and self-interest will always play its part.

-Arrian

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui

And yes, Adam Smith is a real economist, AFAIK (and not just someone who got their undergrad degree in economics - who can also be called economists on some level). And he's far more sane and well thought out in his posts than Aggie and has been since day 1.

Sez you, but then that doesn't count for much.

[Arrian]

Are you going to bother to argue Adam Smith's points or not?

-Arrian

[Imran Siddiqui]

Of course he won't, because he can't, because they make sense and are backed up with numbers. He can't continue to say Republicans who want a limited government don't actually have reasons for what they believe other than self-interest.

[Ramo]

All I'll say is that I've profited over the last 8 years. AND I HAVE benefited from the tax break according to my accountant(so you don't think it's must my own personal delusion).
And if I remember correctly democrats were against it, and probably would have tried to changed it. (as good a guess as anything else that we'll never know for sure)

Gore also supported middle class tax cuts, so it could be that you'd have benefited from his Presidency as well. I suppose it depends on a lot of variables.

But I was just talking about Kerry, who wouldn't hike your taxes unless you make above $200k (and probably $250k), and only if he made it to his second term.

[rah]

And No Arian, I didn't percieve your post as a personal attack. And I don't blame or praise the President too much on how good/bad the times are. The president doesn't have as much impact on that as people pretend.
In my opinion the president is there to keep the congress from giving away the store. His biggest impact comes from judge assignments.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by rah

Is this the best you got. Ok, let's look at reality. The tax cuts helped pay for my daughter's college education. Quite a worthy investment in my book. And all the other positives in my financial situation will mean that she won't have to worry about how screwed up SS is when she gets older because I will have taken care of it personally.

I don't see a down side there for me or my child.

You just don't get it. You are the one ignoring reality. Other people exist. In fact, most of them got jack **** from Bush's tax cuts, yet will end up paying the debt in one way or another. The tax cut that you got goes to you and your family. The debt incurred is incurred by every American. That's called privatizing the profit and socializing the debt.

Sooner or later, the US is going to have to pay up. I suspect that the people who shoulder the consequences of the debt will not be the people who benefited from it.

Here's an example. You say that your daughter won't have to worry about SS. Are you mad? Of course she won't have to worry about her own retirement payments, but she will be confronted with the consequences of the collapse of social security in the form of massive poverty among other elderly people.

Unless she lives in some glass castle, that will be a source of considerable disutility to her since it will make the society she lives in a much more horrible place to live in. People generally dislike the idea of old people freezing to death or having to live on pet food. Social Security is the best way of satisfying that preference (because charity is subject to market failure).

This is in fact what welfare in liberal democracies is for. It's a means of funding goods that the market will not provide, and as such is an efficiency promoting institution. Unfortunately, there is a lot of ignorant propaganda from the left and the right which obscures this fundamental fact. The difference is that the left wing people want to preserve such institutions and right wing people want to destroy them.

For most people, welfare is a good deal. It is a small price to pay to be able to walk the streets without tripping over drunken bums and to be able to wake up every morning knowing that none of your fellow citizens had to sleep outside in the rain.

For a minority of extremely wealthy people, this is a bad deal. That's why they spend so much time opposing welfare and arguing that we should have private armies instead of police. But their only argument in the end is that the other 90% of people should roll over and let society be organized for 10% of its members. Of course, nobody else finds that reasonable, so they have to resort to bribery and deceit, which is where we find ourselves today.

It's clear, simple and ineluctable reasoning, which explains how countries that are not as wealthy are able to spank the United States when it comes to the standard of living. This is why Canada always beats you: they are a more practical people, and don't have a deep seated objection to government involvement. Consequently, when it appears that the state can do something more efficiently, they are quite happy to let it do so.

I mean, what a humiliation when you are being whupped by the Canadians fer Chrissakes...

[Arrian]

Originally posted by rah
And No Arian, I didn't percieve your post as a personal attack. And I don't blame or praise the President too much on how good/bad the times are. The president doesn't have as much impact on that as people pretend.
In my opinion the president is there to keep the congress from giving away the store. His biggest impact comes from judge assignments.

Who proposes the budget? The President. I know that Congress has the ultimate say, but the President sets the table, and that's really important. The President is also the CiC, and is thus generally responsible for, say, invading Iraq (which, regardless of whether you think it was a good thing to do, cost and will continue to cost a ****load of money). The President, in this case, was also backed by a same-party congress to do his will (with the exception of immigration reform... one of the few things I agreed with Bush on), so IMO pointing to Congress is a cop-out. Bush proposed the tax cuts and his party rammed 'em through. Bush proposed his budgets and his party passed them. He gave away the store, man.

So I do think it's fair to blame much of the fiscal deterioration during his Presidency on him (and on his party in general). I don't blame him for the housing bubble and the subsequent burst - but that's not what I'm talking about when I rail against fiscal mismanagement by the gummint.

-Arrian

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Arrian
Are you going to bother to argue Adam Smith's points or not?

-Arrian

There's nothing to argue. It's a laundry list of the usual suspects. In fact, the only point that is relevant here is the one about externalities, which has already been covered (in slightly different terms, but the point is the same) by me in detail in almost all of my previous posts.

The studies he cites are pointless in the case of health care, since the actual statistics that cover all health spending are so overwhelmingly in favour of my argument that his point about government spending is rendered moot (what's the point of citing samples when you have the whole enchilada?). The US spends more than anyone else, and you yourself agreed that you get **** for it. The other developed countries spend much less and get much better results. Canada is particularly instructive, since the Canadian lifestyle is almost identical to the American one, yet Canadians are on the average healthier people. It isn't rocket science.

So what's there to argue, when AS has contributed diddly squat to the debate other than something anyone could have copied and pasted from something like Wikipedia.

[Arrian]

I suspect that the people who shoulder the consequences of the debt will not be the people who benefited from it.

Here I disagree with you. I think that in the end, the rich will have to pay up too. Sure, some will shirk the responsibility (flee, screaming about socialism). Many others - probably less rich but rich nonetheless - will stick around and be stuck with a huge bill.

And that's my "self-interest" argument (that rah continues to ignore). His daughter is likely to be one of those people who has to pay the bill.

edit: rather it's part of the argument. The other part is that if the economy suffers recessions/depressions b/c of the ridiculous debt load we continue to rack up, the rich are going to lose too. Even the most responsible people will go down with the ship.

-Arrian

[Agathon]

Originally posted by rah
People have always voted for what they percieve is best for them. Thinking that people should vote for what's good for the common good is quite naive.

I agree, which is why democracy is slowly failing (and it is, but everyone still pays lip service to it because they can't bear to admit it - I personally find these mental contortions highly amusing and akin to the contortions of the religious in defending their lunacies).

But it's important to note that if you support democracy, you absolutely must support the naive belief. The notion that a sufficient proportion of our vote is disinterested is necessary for a democracy to function. This is a cornerstone of democratic theory.

If you take the opposite case and argue that everyone should vote selfishly, then you have effectively created just another market, albeit one that only operates as a one shot game once every few years and which everyone has an equal amount of money. This just makes an election a giant collective action problem, and the results will of course be suboptimal. Everyone would be better off if they voted unselfishly for what they perceived as the good of society as a whole. Of course, you end up being a sucker if you do that, so people form interest groups and start trying to vote themselves favourable conditions.

IIRC some of your own founding fathers didn't like the idea of political parties, because they saw this very clearly.

It's been a stock of political theory since its inception, that well-functioning governments are supposed to govern for the good of the whole society. The whole idea of democratic theory is to create a separate institution through which we organize the things that are in the main public goods.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by Agathon
There's nothing to argue. It's a laundry list of the usual suspects. In fact, the only point that is relevant here is the one about externalities, which has already been covered (in slightly different terms, but the point is the same) by me in detail in almost all of my previous posts.

May I remind you that it was you who asked:

Nope. I'm asking you why you think it is a proper function of the Federal Government. There has to be some reason or it's just arbitrary.

And AS gave you reasons what he thinks is the proper function of the Federal Government with what benefits and negatives there is to federal action.

[Arrian]

How is "it pretty much sucks, but it's the least of the evils" constitute a mental contortion?

-Arrian