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Author Topic:   The Even More Awesome Presidential Election Thread
Theodoric
Member
Posts: 9076
From: Northwest, WI, USA
Joined: 08-15-2005
Member Rating: 3.7


(4)
Message 196 of 308 (673472)
09-19-2012 3:24 PM
Reply to: Message 186 by Coyote
09-19-2012 1:41 PM


The Fallacy of Right Wing myths
Thomas Sowell? Really?
In theory, confiscating the wealth of the more successful people ought to make the rest of the society more prosperous. But when the Soviet Union confiscated the wealth of successful farmers, food became scarce. As many people died of starvation under Stalin in the 1930s as died in Hitler's Holocaust in the 1940s.
Obviously you and this joker have no concept about Soviet history. There was no redistribution of the wealth of the kulaks. There were food shortages prior to the destruction of the kulaks and collectivism of farms was a response to these shortages. The wealthy peasants, kulaks, protested this and in turn were destroyed. Their wealth, I will get to that, was not redistributed. The totalitarian state appropriated it. To equate US tax policy to dekulakization is utterly wrong and offensive. It is a right wing myth that is offensive to anyone that believes in a free society.
Lets look at wealth in the USSR. There was little personal wealth. This was not completely due to "communism". You might want to research pre-soviet Russia. The vast majority of wealth was in the hands of the aristocracy. The vast majority of people, over 80%, were peasants. The redistribution of wealth was from all people to the state.
Farmers in the Soviet Union cut back on how much time and effort they invested in growing their crops, when they realized that the government was going to take a big part of the harvest. They slaughtered and ate young farm animals that they would normally keep tending and feeding while raising them to maturity.
This was not due to redistribution of wealth. This was due to collectivism, which was a soviet policy to control all facets of agriculture and the restless peasant class.
You want to compare that to US tax policy? Shame on you.

Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts
"God did it" is not an argument. It is an excuse for intellectual laziness.

This message is a reply to:
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crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1467 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 197 of 308 (673474)
09-19-2012 3:29 PM
Reply to: Message 193 by Coyote
09-19-2012 3:03 PM


Re: The Fallacy of Redistribution
To this extent?
Oh, don't get me wrong. The collective farm system was a disaster for Ukranian and Russian agriculture, and it happened almost just as Russian farmers had finally figured out the combination of practices necessary to get enough food from their land.
But it's not exactly something you can call "redistribution", and the failure of Ukranian farms wasn't from "farmers opting not to work any harder if the state was going to take their wealth", it was from the practice of collective farming where motivated, expert cultivators were murdered and replaced with unskilled labor from the cities.
Russia and the Ukraine were always on the verge of famine, and Communism pushed them over, no doubt. But that really has nothing to do with "redistribution" in any sense. The collective farm system wasn't about "redistribution", it was about a radical change in farm practices.

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ringo
Member (Idle past 412 days)
Posts: 20940
From: frozen wasteland
Joined: 03-23-2005


Message 198 of 308 (673475)
09-19-2012 3:30 PM
Reply to: Message 195 by dwise1
09-19-2012 3:11 PM


Re: Speaking of colour...
dwise1 writes:
As it's played out in every wargame, Blue Force is us, the Good Guys, while Red Force is the enemy intent on destroying America.
It's more complicated than that in Canada. Here the Red Force (Liberal Party) is intent on destroying Canada while the Blue Force (Conservative Party) accomplishes the same thing through sheer bumbling stupidity. We're left - pun semi-intended - with the New Democartic Party (Orange Force but not necessarily Dutch) who are idiots.

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Theodoric
Member
Posts: 9076
From: Northwest, WI, USA
Joined: 08-15-2005
Member Rating: 3.7


Message 199 of 308 (673477)
09-19-2012 3:38 PM
Reply to: Message 193 by Coyote
09-19-2012 3:03 PM


The Fallacy of Right Wing Myths redux
To this extent?
Yes.
Try some research.
Russian famine of 1601
Russian famine of 1921
1921-1922 famine in Tatarstan
That is without even trying. You might want to look at the famines in 1230, 1891-1892, 1916-1917, 1947 also.

Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts
"God did it" is not an argument. It is an excuse for intellectual laziness.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 193 by Coyote, posted 09-19-2012 3:03 PM Coyote has not replied

  
Theodoric
Member
Posts: 9076
From: Northwest, WI, USA
Joined: 08-15-2005
Member Rating: 3.7


(1)
Message 200 of 308 (673480)
09-19-2012 4:08 PM
Reply to: Message 193 by Coyote
09-19-2012 3:03 PM


Re: The Fallacy of Redistribution
Yet one of Stalin's lieutenants in Ukraine stated in 1933 that the famine was a great success. It showed the peasants "who is the master here. It cost millions of lives, but the collective farm system is here to stay."..
Thus had nothing to do with redistribution of wealth.

Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts
"God did it" is not an argument. It is an excuse for intellectual laziness.

This message is a reply to:
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New Cat's Eye
Inactive Member


Message 201 of 308 (673491)
09-19-2012 4:37 PM
Reply to: Message 190 by Dr Adequate
09-19-2012 2:08 PM


Re: Moochers
Well, you know, he expands on his point. It's not a single throwaway figure, it's a calculation on which he proposes to erect a political strategy.
You might be right. Its hard to tell. That 47% is a real figure. I wonder if the concept came first and then he dug up the number, or if the concept was derived from having found that number.

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Replies to this message:
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hooah212002
Member (Idle past 801 days)
Posts: 3193
Joined: 08-12-2009


(2)
Message 202 of 308 (673492)
09-19-2012 4:37 PM
Reply to: Message 186 by Coyote
09-19-2012 1:41 PM


Re: The Fallacy of Redistribution
This has what, exactly, to do with the presidential election? Leave it to you to bring in your completely baseless and irrelevant communist boogieman. Perhaps you'd like to add some data to back up your buddy Miittens' assertions? I know how you, too, hate poor people and see them as a burden on society.
Come on Bill Nye science guy, you do so well in science threads with all your knowledge and evidence. Why do you dump all that out the window when it comes to politics?

"Science is interesting, and if you don't agree you can fuck off." -Dawkins

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Replies to this message:
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ooh-child
Member (Idle past 344 days)
Posts: 242
Joined: 04-10-2009


(1)
Message 203 of 308 (673503)
09-19-2012 5:37 PM
Reply to: Message 201 by New Cat's Eye
09-19-2012 4:37 PM


Re: Moochers
Category: DC - TPM – Talking Points Memo
Some background on the 47% meme - the latest incarnation came about as a response to the 99% meme.

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NoNukes
Inactive Member


Message 204 of 308 (673508)
09-19-2012 6:46 PM
Reply to: Message 190 by Dr Adequate
09-19-2012 2:08 PM


Re: Moochers
It's not just something he said, it's something that he thinks, which is why he's analyzing the political landscape within this framework and making his plans to become President given that as a basis.
Perhaps I am way too cynical, but I think it was something he said that simply because it was appropriate in the circumstance. I don't believe that he intended to be stuck with what anyone can see is an extremely risky position.
Romney as demonstrated that he can say anything, anytime, anywhere. I'm sure that he would have denied saying those things about the 47 per cent. And he would have gotten away with it too if it had not been for those pesky kids with the video.
Edited by NoNukes, : "too" not "to" grrr!!!

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846)
The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal and hasten the resurrection of the dead. William Lloyd Garrison.
Choose silence of all virtues, for by it you hear other men's imperfections, and conceal your own. George Bernard Shaw

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Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 205 of 308 (673509)
09-19-2012 6:58 PM
Reply to: Message 202 by hooah212002
09-19-2012 4:37 PM


Re: The Fallacy of Redistribution
This has what, exactly, to do with the presidential election?
Don't you read the newspapers? Joseph Stalin's decaying corpse currently leads Obama by two points and Romney by six, and there's a very read danger that he'll win the White House for the Collective Farms And Mass Starvation ticket.
Of course, this is not true, but the ten seconds you spent thinking about this bizarre otherworldly proposition was ten seconds you weren't thinking about any issue that could possibly be relevant to the real state of America in the twenty-first century. And for those ten seconds, my friend, you were a conservative.
Coyote must have to do this sort of thing pretty much all the time. The strain on the poor chap must be almost unbearable.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 202 by hooah212002, posted 09-19-2012 4:37 PM hooah212002 has replied

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hooah212002
Member (Idle past 801 days)
Posts: 3193
Joined: 08-12-2009


Message 206 of 308 (673510)
09-19-2012 7:03 PM
Reply to: Message 205 by Dr Adequate
09-19-2012 6:58 PM


Re: The Fallacy of Redistribution
I heard Obama was trying to reanimate said corpse because, and I quote, "a zombie would make for a better VP than Biden". I'm not lying, I swear. It was even on Drudge Report.
Edited by hooah212002, : No reason given.
Edited by hooah212002, : running mate, VP, wtfever

"Science is interesting, and if you don't agree you can fuck off." -Dawkins

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dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 207 of 308 (673526)
09-20-2012 2:42 AM


A Remembrance and a Stupid Question
This is all as I remember the events unfolding. The financial situation was unraveling and the banks panicked and stopped making any loans at all.
As I understand it, one of every business' problems is liquidity, the amount of ready cash in order to do its daily and weekly business. Ready cash does not do you much good, but you need to have enough in order to pay for things that need to paid for, such as payroll checks. As you make sales, you incur accounts receivable, but those accounts receivable don't mean a thing for liquidity until your customers have made their payments. On a pay-check-by-pay-check basis, those payments can very well lag accounts receivable. One of a boss' foremost duties is to make the payroll, ensure enough liquidity that every single employee's paycheck will be honored and will not bounce.
One time-honored method for making the payroll is to take out short-term business loans. So what happens when the company can no longer get a short-term business loan? That company can then no longer pay its employees nor pay its daily bills. Regardless of how much it has in accounts receivable, without that liquidity it goes bust.
What I remember of the melt-down was banks refusing to make loans, which in turn strangled many companies, forcing them to close, which in turn left those companies' former employees unemployed. The basic reason we have so many unemployed is because the companies that they used to work for no longer exist. It doesn't matter that the companies that somehow survived can start to do better now, the new jobs they can offer are marginal at best. What is still missing are all those companies annihilated by the banks at the start and all the jobs that they used to offer.
So far, I have heard nothing from either Party about addressing this issue. It would appear that job growth depends on the re-establishment of many of those companies that were killed off by the banks. Who is addressing that?
And, of course, there is also the question of what the government could possibly do to address that issue.

  
caffeine
Member (Idle past 1024 days)
Posts: 1800
From: Prague, Czech Republic
Joined: 10-22-2008


Message 208 of 308 (673529)
09-20-2012 4:07 AM
Reply to: Message 204 by NoNukes
09-19-2012 6:46 PM


Re: Moochers
Perhaps I am way too cynical, but I think it was something he said that simply because it was appropriate in the circumstance. I don't believe that he intended to be stuck with what anyone can see is an extremely risky position.
Romney as demonstrated that he can say anything, anytime, anywhere. I'm sure that he would have denied saying those things about the 47 per cent. And he would have gotten away with it too if it had not been for those pesky kids with the video.
This is the first time I've seen the quote in full, and I'd agree wholeheartedly with your analysis.
This is clearly a speech made to rich potential donors, in which Romney is trying to explain why he has a good chance of winning despite high polling numbers for Obama. He does so by appealing to their prejudices about lazy goodfornothings leeching off the state, thus simultaneously reminding them why rich people should prefer Romney instead.
Successful politicians are almost all habitual liars, and always have been. They have always tailored what they say to their audience at the time - it's simply that this is getting harder to get away with now because so much of what public figures do is recorded and posted on the internet immediately. It used to be much simpler - I think it was in A People's History of the United States where two transcripts from Abraham Lincoln's 1860 election campaign are included. In one he condemns the evils of slavery to a meeting of abolitionists; in the other he expresses his continued support for the institution of slavery to a meeting of slaveholders.

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caffeine
Member (Idle past 1024 days)
Posts: 1800
From: Prague, Czech Republic
Joined: 10-22-2008


Message 209 of 308 (673530)
09-20-2012 4:09 AM
Reply to: Message 198 by ringo
09-19-2012 3:30 PM


Re: Speaking of colour...
It's more complicated than that in Canada. Here the Red Force (Liberal Party) is intent on destroying Canada while the Blue Force (Conservative Party) accomplishes the same thing through sheer bumbling stupidity. We're left - pun semi-intended - with the New Democartic Party (Orange Force but not necessarily Dutch) who are idiots.
Canadian colours are also wrong. Liberals use yellow - the NDP should be the ones in red. Orange is reserved for social democrats in countries where the Communist party has staked too big a claim to red already.

This message is a reply to:
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dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 210 of 308 (673532)
09-20-2012 4:23 AM
Reply to: Message 198 by ringo
09-19-2012 3:30 PM


Re: Speaking of colour...
Orange are Protestant "Irish", the Scots who were transplanted to Northern Ireland circa 1600. And we all know who the "Greens" are!
An older local woman remembers working for a Canadian company. Every St. Patrick's Day, everybody made sure to wear Orange.
Amazing the meaning that color can take on. And yet, the GOP had chosen red, the color of our traditional national enemy. Why?

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