BoatBanter.com - View Single Post

On 10 Nov 2004 18:18:21 GMT, (Gould 0738) wrote:

I'd like you to attempt to explain this, if you can. Which government
services are in more demand from "rich" people? The rich tend to use
their own paid-for services rather than rely on the often inferior
services provided by government subsidies.

If the United States of America did not exist, and we had some other country
here instead, the lives of the poorest people in the country would be very
little different than they are today. They would work crap jobs for wages that
provide inadequate sustenance.

The fault for which is due to their own inability to rise above it.
Get a viable skill, and this won't be a problem.

The government would be keeping them off the
street by providing artificially cheap housing and some free or
artificially cheap food- thereby enabling the
capitalists in the society (or the government itself) to exploit the poor by
paying wages well below anything one could begin to live on.

Wages are determined by the free market. You earn what your fellow
citizen is willing to take. If someone advertises a job for $5.00 an
hour and a hundred people apply, then where is the incentive to pay
any more? You want the cheap wages to go away, stop people from
"settling" for them.

As the skill level rises and the pool of qualified people shrinks, the
demand grows and so do the salaries. If the majority of this country
was qualified to be a software programmer or I.T. professional, the
salaries for those people would also be $5.00/hr. It's all about
supply and demand.

(They would
probably have access to better health care). LIfe would be routinely
disappointing, and while those with greater privilege in such a society might
say "All you need to do is to decide to rise up to my level", the lower middle
class and the poor would discover there are practical barriers to doing so.

Most of which reside inside their heads.

For example: How does one sign up for a night class, to improve education, when
their employer puts them on an unpredictable schedule? This week you'll work 25
hours, mostly between 0900 and 1300 every day. Next week, you'll work 55 hours-
between 1400 and 2300 every day- (but we'll pay you for 40, the other 15 are
off the clock). The following week we're closing for inventory, so you won't
work at all........

Making someone work "off the clock" violates the federal wage and hour
standards. If you want to attend a night class, then you have to take
a job with more stable working hours. Don't make it sound like these
rotating hours are the norm.

If the United States didn't exist, the poor would hardly know it. Their lives
would be little different in most European, South American, or even some Asian
countries.
The well off? They'd see a difference right away.

Most of the wealthy people in the United States achieved that wealth as a
direct result of a social, economic, and physical infrastructure established,
maintained, and defended by the government.

Gee, you give little credit to their ability to achieve. You make it
sound like there's some sort of "private club", where "selected"
people pay their dues, and the path to easy street is paved with
government provided taxpayer money, and it's just a walk in the park.

Certainly those who made money,
rather than merely inherited it, took some risks, invested some capital,
and made good decisions-

Gee, thanks for the vote of confidence.

but the fact that the captial was invested, the risks
assumed, and the decisions made in the United States made success a far more
likely outcome.

Well, yea, this government doesn't tax the hell out of achievers to
prop up the slackers the way socialist countries do.

Our industries extract resources from public lands. Timber companies, mining
companies, oil companies, cattle grazing operations, etc are all subsidized by
the taxpayers via artificially cheap access to natural resources in national
forests and other public areas.

How does the government provide "cheap access"? What exactly is "cheap
access" anyway? You access the land by going to it and "doing your
thing". If the government is making that path easier, it's by lifting
their own government imposed barriers, to what should be a straight up
simple process. So you want to thank the government for selectively
lifting their own barriers?

We provide an interstate highway system,

Which benefits everyone.

dredge waterways, subsidize airports
and operate an interstate air traffic control system to faciltate the
transportation of goods and services.

And people. This benefits everyone. It's not the exclusive benefit of
the "wealthy".

The government sponsors SBA loans and other start-up assistance to business
people, and writes off billions of dollars in losses from these loans each year
as some of the businesses fail.

And these loans enable the little guy to make his life better. It's
the stepping stone that a poor guy can use to rise up out of the
poverty pit. This is not a benefit to those already wealthy.

The government tax structure in the United States is very favorable to the
wealthy. Our top tax bracket for federal income tax is much less than in most
industrialized countries

But higher than the tax rate for lower earning brackets in THIS
country.

, and we have tens of thousands of pages in the tax
code defining "tax shelters" that are used primarily by the well off and almost
never by the poor.

A good case for throwing out the current tax code and replacing it
with something simpler.

Above all else, we spend hundreds of billions of dollars each year "defending"
this country.

Which again, benefits ALL of us.

If we were overwhelmed by 21st Century Visigoths next week, whose
lives would be most impacted and disrupted? When the mongol hordes come across
the Rio Grande to rape and pillage
throughout the US, do you suppose they will head straight to the public housing
projects to avail themselves of all the abundance there?

Seems like the terrorists like to target the government, (Pentagon), and high
profile capitalism (WTC), when they attack the US. We all benefit from
government funded defense, but those most likely to be targeted can be said to
benefit the most.

So you base this "benefit" to be more for the rich based on the notion
that they have farther to fall? You are really grasping at
straws.......

It's disgusting to listen to people who have done well in the US, but who
wouldn't have amounted to a hill of frijoles elsewhere, sitting atop a sack of
gold and proclaim, with a blank stare, "The US Government hasn't done anything
for me, all the money and effort expended by the government goes directly to
the poor.....(that built my business for me by providing cheap labor)..

That's plainly untrue. The government does not "provide" any labor.
The market determines the labor rate. The government only set the rate
floor.

...and
those ignorant, immoral, lazy folks from diverse ethnic backgrounds just sit
around making babies in return."

It's a shame that there is a lot of truth in that. Otherwise we
wouldn't need so many public assistance programs.

Those of us with an extra buck or two, and owing a boat puts you in that
category almost automatically- no matter how humble the craft, have a lot to be
thankful for.

For that we agree. I certainly have a lot to be thankful for.

We wouldn't have what we have accumulated and wouldn't have had
the opportunities to do so in many countries around the world.

Which is why this is the greatest country on the planet, despite all
those liberal whiners who insist there are so many "better" places to
live (yet they, for some unknown reason, aren't in any great hurry to
move there).

Thanksgiving is
just a couple of weeks away; how many of us will
forget to be thankful for our special privileges in the US and simply be
thankful that we aren't "poor" like some other folks?

I am thankful to God for what I have and for the ability I have to
achieve it. We have no "special privileges". I am no more special
than anyone else. I just work hard and enjoy what I have.

Never let it be said the the US government doesn't enable the accumulation and
preservation of riches better than any other on the planet. That's the main
reason why
so many millions of people across the globe are (sometimes literally) dieing to
come here.

This is the land of opportunity. It is not the land of guarantee.

Dave