I'd like you to attempt to explain this, if you can. Which government
services are in more demand from "rich" people?

How about the Park Service? The gov't owns huge tracts of land which are
very nice to visit... poor people can't afford to retire & tour the
countryside in motor homes.

Just one example...

Gould 0738 wrote:
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.

And they'd probably clamor for the oppression of some minority lower
than themselves, so as to feel "superior."

Chuck, you've got a lot more patience than I have. These guys are just
repeating the old racist mantra "I ain't payin' no mo' taxes when them
lazy big-city ******s are all collectin' that welfare." We should be
grateful that they try to say it in a more polite way, I guess.

DSK




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. (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.

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........

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

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.

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

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.

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, 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.

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

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

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

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.