You didn't take another stab at this, I have a few minutes to spare right now, so I'll address your post.
Phat writes:
Disclaimer:
Though I was on a great Lo-Carb Diet for close to all of November, I relapsed and had some bad carbs with high sugar the past 2 days...
You are hopeless. You remind me of the emphysema patients you sometimes see with an oxygen tube in one hand and a cigarette in the other.
1)Jar claims that the US *should* have helped rebuild Viet Nam and other places.
Vietnam is one word.
So to you installing a fiat government and tearing the country apart with years of war and death is okay, but helping them rebuild is not.
Does he not realize that by lifting up the trading partners there would be direct competition for the American worker?
You're confusing two completely different time periods. Jar was talking about helping rebuild Vietnam after the end of the war. It was a couple decades later before we began trading with Vietnam.
And the sad fact is, we cannot compete.
That their labor and material costs are lower than ours has nothing to do with whether it was right to a) interfere in their internal politics; b) force years of war upon them; and c) leave them to pick up the pieces after we admitted defeat having discovered that their desire for self-determination exceeded the ability of our military might to thwart it.
Jar's points in
Message 367 were in two separate paragraphs and were about two completely different time periods. The first paragraph was about the Vietnam war where we destroyed the country and then provided no help in rebuilding it. The second paragraph noted that some of the products on your grocery store shelves come from the countries with lower costs that you're complaining about. Since you're hyper-worried about inflation, note that producing those products domestically would cause the prices in your grocery store to inflate.
Their work ethic and willingness to work harder for less would have beaten our own native populists and uneducated workers domestically. It is not mainly the altruism that I am opposed to. It is the lack of similar concern for our own first.
Nothing Jar said reflected a lack of concern for domestic workers. He didn't even comment on the topic in that message. When he has commented he has said the opposite.
You're opposed to the government doing good? Do you really favor a government that does no good? No public transportation? No highways? No public education? No farm bureau? No FDA to mandate iodine in our salt and vitamin D in our milk? No public health to make sure children are vaccinated and to handle epidemics and pandemics? The list of the good that government does is endless. That's one of the important reasons government exists, to provide for the public good.
Of course I'm not opposed to the FDA, the CDP, and other agencies that regulate public health and safety.
You're hopelessly unaware of your own contradictions, inconsistencies, confusions and lack of comprehension.
I'm opposed to mandatory control and implementation of taxes beyond domestic needs.
Since federal income taxes are mandatory, isn't everything you pay taxes for mandatory, whether or not it's altruistic? Aren't you mandated to pay your share of every single item in the federal budget? If you object to anything mandatory then isn't everything in the federal budget objectionable to you?
This point has been made by different people in different ways, but you're not getting it. For the most part you're not even acknowledging that people are finding fatal flaws in your position. You just continue merrily on repeating the same errors. We must all be crazy to keep explaining the same stuff to you while you repeatedly don't get it.
Jar himself mentions that *we* should have helped Viet Nam...and no doubt Iraq and Afghanistan, though the governments in place there are still hostile to American foreign policy.
Again, Vietnam, one word.
Vietnam and the US normalized relationships a quarter century ago. Looking it up, Vietnam is currently our 10th largest trading partner at $90 billion per year. Vietnam is not "still hostile to American foreign policy." So you're wrong.
According to the State Department, "The United States maintains vigorous and broad engagement with Iraq on diplomatic, political, economic, and security issues..." Iraq is not "still hostile to American foreign policy." So you're wrong again, unless perhaps you meant to say Iran.
The US/Afghanistan relationship is still in flux - what the Taliban will do and whether they'll abide by any agreements is anyone's guess.
China is taking over. Does anyone want the CCP running the planet? (The anti-Christian CCP, I might add)
Where is this coming from? Why did you say this? Do even you know?
A country's influence is a function of its economic and military power. China will have the world's largest economy by the early 2030's. China's military is the world's largest in terms of personnel, and one of the world's top three most powerful at least. We don't have any say in China's growing economic and military power. They're going to pass us whether we like it or not.
Wiki writes:
Collectivism is a value that is characterized by an emphasis on cohesiveness among individuals and prioritization of the group over the self. Individuals or groups that subscribe to a collectivist worldview tend to find common values and goals as particularly salient[1] and demonstrate greater orientation toward in-group than toward out-group.[2] The term "in-group" is thought to be more diffusely defined for collectivist individuals to include societal units ranging from the nuclear family to a religious or racial/ethnic group.
Nothing in your Wikipedia description of collectivism describes liberalism. The word "liberal" does not appear in the article, nor does any related word. Collectivism and liberalism are not synonyms: they have different meanings and refer to different things.
You've been told this many times, yet your answer is always to just say it again. What is wrong with you?
One example of collectivism in action is selectively only giving stimulus checks to "each according to their need." This is a blatant example of in-group thinking and mandatory under a government of, by, and for the in-group.
Unbelievable! You can't even remember last year. Both the first and second round of stimulus checks started going out under Trump - he signed both bills. Now Trump and the Republicans are collectivists, too? Who's left that's not a collectivist? (The third round was Biden's.)
The stimulus checks were not tailored to "each according to their need," which is communisim, by the way, not collectivism, as you would have been reminded had you read further in the Wikipedia article (
Collectivism: Anarcho-collectivism). The stimulus payments had income limits, for example $99,000 ($198,000 married) for the first round with a gradual phase out. How is this collectivism?
Our progressive income tax rates are based on income, too. If you have an adjusted gross income of $10,000 then you're in the 10% bracket, while if $150,000 you're in the 24% tax bracket. Is the income tax collectivism to you?
And if you make too much money in retirement then your Medicare payments go up. This year most people on Medicare pay $148.50 per month, but married couples earning more than $182,000 per year pay $238 per month. If they earn more than $750,000 per year they pay $578 per month. Do these graduated income adjusted Medicare payments seem like collectivism to you?
If you want examples of government payments based on need then look to unemployment insurance, welfare, Medicaid and student aid. Do these seem like collectivism to you?
The questions I keep asking you are rhetorical, of course. They're an expression of my incredulity that you could be such a lunkhead, and an ostentatiously voluble one at that, on all this stuff. You have no apparent fear that what you're about to say might be incredibly ignorant, despite a host of people telling you that you've been saying incredibly ignorant things for a while now.
The only part of collectivism that I favor is the collective bargaining of a labor union.
I hope you're joking. A labor union is not collectivism.
As our wages go up in line with inflation, we will be accused of causing inflation by insisting on parity rather than biting the bullet and accepting less. Which is another reason I abhor anarchy. They steal theirs.
Yet another off-the-wall comment. I'll pass on this one.
Please try to understand this before replying.
--Percy
Edited by Percy, : Typos; improve clarity of short clause.
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