January 13, 2012
"He would rather have the poor poorer, provided that the rich were less rich. That is the Liberal policy."
We were talking about income disparity and income mobility yesterday, and somebody remembered this memorable clip. I want you to have it in your memory bank too.
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77 comments:
Simple math...the easiest way to decrease disparity is to make everyone poorer.
Likewise, making everyone richer increases disparity. Which is why I don't give much of a fig about income disparity.
hear, hear.
Privileged people worried about the more rich, don't care about the poor, they hate the poor, because if they didn't they'd worry about the poor, instead of worrying about the rich.
I don't care how much money my neighbor has, but if my other neighbor is out of work or needs to eat, I should help.
That quote shows exactly why I'm conservative for liberal reasons. I've been poor. Poor people don't want to engage in class warfare, they want to eat, and work, and not be poor. Liberals want poor people to stay poor and dependent as a continued counter-example to those nasty rich folks.
Here's a question. Does anyone running for President really give a fuck about the people that Gingrich's ad pretends to care about in that silly Bain short?
Where does Paul Ryan's plan leave them? Where does the ultraglobalization that noone in either party really opposes, leave them? It is fine to whisper sweet bromides about "job creators." But tripling down on what we already have, no evidence supports that it will really lead to jobs with health insurance, for people in areas like upstate South Carolina.
I would love to see "Question Time" be adopted in America. Let the President take on all comers on the floor of the House once every two weeks for a couple of hours. In fact, let it be televised live. The ratings would rival anything else on TV.
Ms. Streep looks wonderful in that clip.
It was already burned into my memory. I love that woman.
The leadership actually debates ideas on that little island. They state their positions and watch them destroyed. I got parliamentary envy from that.
Can I vote for Thatcher?
Remember when the US had Reagan and Britain had Thatcher?
Wow, that hurts.
Brilliant. Its much the same with our national obsession with the "achievement gap" in academic performance between Asians and other racial groups.
You didn't pick a fight with the grocer's daughter and come away unscathed.
She hit the nail of Socialism on the head - especially in regard to lowered standards of living for everyone in the name of "fairness".
harrogate said...
Here's a question. Does anyone running for President really give a fuck about the people that Gingrich's ad pretends to care about in that silly Bain short?
Clearly, the Left doesn't or they'd quit demagoguing a company whose rate of turning around companies was 80%. And, in any kind of good economy, the people at the companies venture capital outfits like Bain couldn't save could go out and get new jobs.
But not after the mess the Lefties have made the last few years.
If the Left were concerned about jobs, they'd quit taxing the people who really provide them out of existence.
What the Lefties want is power, concentrated in their hands.
Where does Paul Ryan's plan leave them? Where does the ultraglobalization that noone in either party really opposes, leave them? It is fine to whisper sweet bromides about "job creators." But tripling down on what we already have, no evidence supports that it will really lead to jobs with health insurance, for people in areas like upstate South Carolina.
When was the issue "jobs with health insurance"?
It was supposed to be jobs. Which the Lefties have failed miserably at producing.
You make a good wage and you buy health insurance - until people like harrogate get their hands on the system and then no one can afford it and have to get it from the Feds' death panels.
Tank said...
Can I vote for Thatcher?
Remember when the US had Reagan and Britain had Thatcher?
Wow, that hurts.
As someone once told me, "The good old days really were".
Breathes there a US politician willing to make the same point now?
What garage, machine, harrogate and the the tilty-cap boy want is to piss on the dead bodies of American businesses.
Of course, what happens next is as unknown to them as it was to the Soviets, Cubans, and Chi-coms.
All they ever seem to come up with is beating people for not making shit into shinola, or starving them to death.
What the liberals count on is the simplicity of the disparity argument to sway the masses.
Thatcher took a sledgehammer to that with her concise reply.
Mitt, "this is your wake up call. Go to work."
The honorable gentlemen orates "How can she justify many people in a constituency such as mine being relatively much poorer, much less well housed, and much less well provided than it was in 1979." (my emphasis)
There's only so much abuse that word "relatively" can take before the litany of complaint becomes comic. I don't doubt the man's sincerity. But it takes astonishing historical myopia to turn "better housed" into "relatively ... much less well housed" and build a platform on it.
Between income disparity and income mobility, I care only about the mobility, the chances that someone born in the bottom can move up. According to the NYT last week, there is a nearly 1 in 10 chance that someone born in the bottom 20% will move into the top 20% tier. That, I think is pretty good. There is a 58% chance that someone born into the bottom tier will move out of that tier. I'd like that to be higher, but really, I'm not sure that can be achieved in a free society, and in fact a freer society would likely see that improve.
In addition, I think it is important to look at how those in the bottom tier are doing. The key questions: do they have decent housing, food and clothing? The bottom tier has improved in each of those areas. I consider the obesity "problem" among the poor to be a triumph of western civilization. Not perfect, but it beats starvation, and it's not close.
What garage, machine, harrogate and the the tilty-cap boy want is to piss on the dead bodies of American businesses.
Well at least in this fever dream you're not falsely accusing me of signing recall petitions multiple times. Give up on that one?
Another point that Thatcher hits in her first response, but doesn't repeat: You can't afford a social service infrastructure if your country isn't creating wealth. It's a different point, but no less damning to socialism.
I enjoy watching the relatively good spirits during that debate.
How can you not like that woman!! BRAVO Madame thatcher!
RonF, I wouldn't mind seeing a US equivalent of "question time," but I really doubt any of the current crop of politicians would handle it with the aplomb of Lady Thatcher.
"Well at least in this fever dream you're not falsely accusing me of signing recall petitions multiple times."
You said so yourself.
We'll see what the WI Government Accountability Boar says about you, if it's made public.
Although I admit it's possible you signed your name once, and other names multiple times, which is hard to prove.
But I'm willing to wait to see how many names are tossed to get a sense of how many lies the WI Democrats were comfortable telling.
The only way she could’ve made it simpler would have been to include a beer example. http://www.mrconservative.com/2012/01/tax-system-explained-beer/
BTW, garage, my reference to your wish to "piss on the dead bodies of American businesses" was meant as a metaphor, although I wouldn't put it past you.
Patrick said...
RonF, I wouldn't mind seeing a US equivalent of "question time," but I really doubt any of the current crop of politicians would handle it with the aplomb of Lady Thatcher.
GodZero would never have even gotten past IA in '08 if we had him on tape trying to engage in that kind of to and fro without his teleprompter.
PS May be wrong here, but I believe she is properly titled Dame Thatcher.
Romney would rather have working Americans become poorer so he and his cronies can be obscenely rich.
Romney is not about creating wealth but instead plunder.
We'll see what the WI Government Accountability Boar says about you, if it's made public.
You're off the hook dude. Really. Wrong, and paranoid is no way to go through life, Pogo.
"Romney is not about creating wealth but instead plunder."
So the socialists like Jay and garage should be in a state of ecstasy.
"You're off the hook dude. Really."
I predict a good chunk of the signatures are bullshit.
What's your guess, percentagewise?
America's Dairy Cow said...
"Well at least in this fever dream you're not falsely accusing me of signing recall petitions multiple times. Give up on that one?"
Funny, ADC isn't willing to defend against Thatcher's attack on Socialism, but is willing to work and vote for it.
I wonder why that is?
I suppose I should be angry that a dork like Mark Zuckerberg is worth billions because what did he do to deserve all that money? Create some stupid social media website?
But I'm not because I'm not a liberal consumed with the petty jealousy of a 13 year old girl who didn't win free tickets to see Justin Bieber. If anything I should kick myself that some geeky dork thought of it before I did which is why he is a billionaire and I'm not.
A good chunk of the 'rich' are so because they have foresight that others don't have and the ambition to take risks many won't. Hell I know a certain individual who just turned down a promotion and a $15k pay increase because the new position meant some longer hours and having to do presentations. She's perfectly fine with her current gig but that's as good as it will ever get for her either.
"Romney is not about creating wealth but instead plunder."
And the evidence of that is what, exactly?
Oh Margaret . . . How I miss her!
She has rightly taken her place among the great leaders of history.
Obama isn't up to shin . . oh, never mind.
I predict a good chunk of the signatures are bullshit.
You also thought, (falsely), that I had signed multiple times. No apology for that smear?
Jay Retread said...
Romney would rather have working Americans become poorer so he and his cronies can be obscenely rich.
Take a look at the Os lately?
Cause that's what they're doing.
Tim said...
"Romney is not about creating wealth but instead plunder."
And the evidence of that is what, exactly?
He made an executive decision that some companies couldn't be turned around and cut Bain's losses.
That's what executives do. It's called leadership.
As opposed to leading from behind.
But Retread and harro don't understand concepts like that. They're consumed with the "compassion" that wants to see everybody here live in little cubby holes the way the Euros do.
garage mahal said...
Well at least in this fever dream you're not falsely accusing me of signing recall petitions multiple times. Give up on that one?
Dude. Can't. Stay. On. Topic.
"No apology for that smear?"
Smeared with your own words?
I guess so.
Hoosier Daddy said...
I suppose I should be angry that a dork like Mark Zuckerberg is worth billions because what did he do to deserve all that money? Create some stupid social media website?
No, he created a product that millions and millions of people wanted to use. Nothing stupid about this. Hard work + luck. None of his money came from you.
As someone once said, the harder I work, the luckier I get. Usually true. Is for me.
Smeared with your own words?
I guess so.
If I falsely accused you for something, I would offer an apology. You won't, which says everything I need to know about you. Whatev.
Well at least in this fever dream you're not falsely accusing me of signing recall petitions multiple times. Give up on that one?
Of course you didn't.
You got other people to do it.
Hard work + luck.
Hard work = luck
FTFY
Thatcher was great. Another version is that the left would rather everyone made 50,000 per year than some people making 75,000 and a few others making 500,000.
edutcher wrote "(Romney) made an executive decision that some companies couldn't be turned around and cut Bain's losses."
Bullshit. He did not cut his losses but instead made hundreds of millions of dollars while thousands of working Americans lost their jobs.
Hoosier Daddy: "A good chunk of the 'rich' are so because they have foresight that others don't have and the ambition to take risks many won't."
I agree with a slight modification. Many people have the ideas and the foresight. Only a few have the guts and energy to try and execute them. Thus it is that all of us at one time or another look at a great idea and say to ourselves: I thought of that!!
How come no one in that clip has a truly white shirt?
Jay Retread: Perhaps thousands did lose jobs in some of the Bain transactions. But I would be surprised to know that they are still unemployed. Many, if not most, of those who were made to walk the plank during the years of dynamic change in corporate American went on to better jobs. Many had to resort to starting their own businesses and ended up hiring others. I have had to let a lot of people go during my career and I do not know a single one who did not end up on their feet and doing well. Sometimes very very well.
"You can't afford a social service infrastructure if your country isn't creating wealth."
THAT is the difference between Bubba Clinton and Barry Obama - Clinton understood that and Obama can't even comprehend it.
That quote shows exactly why I'm conservative for liberal reasons. I've been poor. Poor people don't want to engage in class warfare, they want to eat, and work, and not be poor. Liberals want poor people to stay poor and dependent as a continued counter-example to those nasty rich folks.
I have nothing to add to this but thought it needed repeating.
I agree, let's have question time in the US! It would work well in the Senate.
Maybe "the most transparent" administration in history would like to kick it off in time for the election?
while thousands of working Americans lost their jobs.
As opposed to the millions during Obama's administration.
Wow.
That was wonderful! What a great pick-me-up for a Friday.
An American Question Time? How many American politicians could produce even one unrehearsed coherent grammatical sentence? Very few can think and talk at the same time.
CNN.com has an opinion piece on Romney today. The point of the piece is to tear down Romney because he's beginning to look like a real threat to the Chosen One, but they have to say more than "Ugh, Romney bad."
They start off with a false dichotomy, "What Kind of Capitalist Is Romney?" 'The choice is between "stakeholder capitalism" and "shareholder capitalism."' Of course Romney is a shareholder capitalist because that is the bad kind.
As a worker, I've worked in both stakeholder and shareholder capitalist companies, if you want to make that distinction. As an employee, I can't say one is better than the other.
I currently work in an employee owned company (stakeholder) where we are given shares and bonuses annually based on longevity, rank and company profits. (Yep, those damn upper management types think they deserve more than use front line workers.)
The system for electing the board of directors is rigged so that no one except that chosen few have a chance of being elected.
Essentially, there's no significant difference from a publicly traded company like Proctor & Gamble where you get paid more, can buy stock (with that extra money) and a truck dock worker can retire a millionaire before the age of 50.
Romney's most likely a guy who perceives given tasks, performs those tasks according to the rules and situation at hand and performs quite competently. The NYT had a high opinion of he leadership of the Olympic committee. I thought this comment interesting: “He always has an objective in mind and a goal that he works toward,” said Randy L. Dryer, a lawyer and a former member of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee who worked closely with Mr. Romney and described himself as a Democrat, but also an admirer of Mr. Romney’s. “But he’s not unwilling to modify that objective if it’s an uphill battle and not worth the fight to get there — he is not bullheaded.”
The interesting truth is that the wealthy really don't want any more rich people joining them at the top than the Marxists want anymore rich people who are not them.
The two sides, the wealthy and the poor always join into a conspiracy to rob the middle-class: one for handouts and the other to keep the crowds down at the elite places they enjoy.
Now you can figure out why the Media owned by wealthy people helps the Marxists when they can.
edutcher wrote "(Romney) made an executive decision that some companies couldn't be turned around and cut Bain's losses."
Bullshit. He did not cut his losses but instead made hundreds of millions of dollars while thousands of working Americans lost their jobs
Jay, are you still bleeding for the buggy & whip makers?
"A good chunk of the 'rich' are so because they have foresight that others don't have and the ambition to take risks many won't."
The biggest part of being self employed, in business and hopefully becoming rich is taking that risk.
When I was deciding whether to leave my comfy and cushy bank officer position, where I had a salary, benefits and basically had reached the highest level of career that I could without moving to another location: my husband gave me the best advice and made an analogy.
"You are standing on the edge of the cliff, like the cliff divers in Acapulco looking down at the narrow inlet of the ocean watching the tide come in and out. You can either step back and huddle in your safe job or take a leap of faith and jump. You might crash into the rocks or you might hit the tide at its highest point. Either way.....make a decision!!"
I jumped and never regretted it. But the temptation to stay in my safe secure job was strong.
It is the jumpers who make the economy and society better.
Those who don't jump are the ones who are envious and resentful of the ones who do jump. They want to hold the bold entrepreneur down because they didn't have the balls or vision to take the leap of faith.
Jealousy is an ugly emotion.
Lady Thatcher was one-of-a-kind. And she was right. Liberalism promises only shared misery, not the opportunity for upward class mobility as does conservatism and free market economics.
Disagree? Fine. You too will end up with the millions of others that choose to ignore history, replete with examples of failure.
Liberalism is such an adolescent mind set!!!
dbq
Great analogy. Liberalism is cemented in covetousness and ultimately, theft of private property (see Tank's awesome avatar).
It is a most immoral ideology.
Conservatism on the other hand, is the mostt moral choice and offers the opportunity for an exchange of goods and services that benefit 2 or more parties (Walter Williams does a great job breaking this down and explaining it in simple terms).
Again, for those that understand, no explanation is necessary.
And for those that don't understand, no explanation is possible.
TraditionalGuy: I think you are right about the "old rich" but not about the new. The old rich in a city like Atlanta or Memphis or Montgomery would happily spend a dollar to prevent you making a dime. The new rich only care about being rich themselves and do not see anything lost to newcomers since their status is enhanced, not threatened, by newbies. I have trod a bit in both worlds and believe we are now at the happiest median in my lifetime. Fewer and fewer people believe, as once they did, that the Mayflower heaved up on the shores of the Chattahoochie or the Flint or the Mississippi or the Bayou Deview at which point their ancestors disembarked.
Lech Welsa, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, John Paul II.
We could as quad of people like that today.
Best Thatcher biography?
As I tell my liberal friends, who want socialized medicine: the government is not proposing to raise all those poor people to our level of care, but reduce our level of care to theirs.
We can only hope that Romney will just copy Thatcher and Reagan. You can't make it better.
PatCA said...
As I tell my liberal friends, who want socialized medicine: the government is not proposing to raise all those poor people to our level of care, but reduce our level of care to theirs.
1/13/12 3:16 PM
Very well put. I'm curious, what is their reply?
Those nasty evil rich people, they should give everyone a job and then die. Typical lefty idiocy.
Or as a commenter on this blog said"pay your fair share so I can get my free share". I think it was Dadvocate who made the comment.
Dust Bunny Queen said...
========
You're telling my story. 17 years ago I had a state job which quite frankly I could not get fired from unless I did something criminal on company time and which gave terrific benefits.
I was presented with opportunity to go into my own business, but it would take a lot of work with no obvious guarantee of success --- and I would be responsible for my own benefits. I also had 4 young children to raise.
I remember writing a 5 page note to myself weighing both sides of the issue and then I DID IT.
Best decision I ever made. I worked harder than I ever did, spend a lot of sleepless nights in home office, went without vacation time because "the work just has to get done", but I also make a lot more than I ever imagined I would.
And if anyone tells me that I'm not paying my fair share or that I owe people like Elizabeth Warren credit for my success, well I say: **** YOU!!!
Bitchin'
I would love to see "Question Time" be adopted in America. Let the President take on all comers on the floor of the House once every two weeks for a couple of hours. In fact, let it be televised live. The ratings would rival anything else on TV.
I'm for it as long as the listening Congressmen can boo and hiss like the British MPs do.
Or as a commenter on this blog said"pay your fair share so I can get my free share". I think it was Dadvocate who made the comment.
Yes. I hope you understand I was being satirical.
How many times does this have to be linked until you understand why it is that America doesn't believe Republicans really care about opportunity?
Probably until Sully regains his sanity and he's worth reading again?
Silly me, he was never worth reading. Scratch that second part.
So now you bury your head in the sand and shield your tender eyes and ears not only from what someone writes, but from what they quote. That's daft.
God forbid someone you don't like quotes Margaret Thatcher (as Sullivan does, as well), because then you'd have to attack what she says as well.
Let me know how this childish, "I won't eat broccoli!" strategy works out for you.
God forbid I regard my time as valuable and choose to use my ability to filter out the crackpots.
It's unsurprising that you don't.
My wife's boss is a VP. He works day and night. She says he is over several departments and he micro-manages and just works and works.
That is what these high paying executives do. The million dollar salaries go to those who make their lives their work.
But the liberals would kill that and thus kill all incentive to make anything. Jobs, industry, new products, inventions.... Just as long as everyone is poor and 'equal', except the politicians, then that's ok with liberals.
Ritmo,
You do realize that the income-mobility escalator runs both up and down, yes? Every time someone moves into the top quintile, someone else moves out of it. Every time someone moves out of the bottom quintile, someone else moves into it.
I think that income mobility is a good thing, but let's not pretend that there isn't a loser for every winner -- if all you care about is where you stand in the income hierarchy. If what you care about, OTOH, is the absolute standard of living of everyone, then you are likely to prefer a system that permits greater inequality as a means to growth all round. It all boils down to whether you think it's more important to keep up with the Joneses than to have what you need and want for yourself and your family.
Me, I don't care how Bill Gates or the Koch Brothers or George Soros or Beyonce and Jay-Z live (except when the last two appropriate a hospital wing and keep the little people from visiting their premature babies). I care how I live, how my friends live, how the worst-off among us live. If policies that help every one of us end up making the gap between rich and poor relatively larger, while at the same time improving everyone's lot, I'm fine with that. Absent a supervillain who goes all Dr. Evil with his One. Million. Dollars!!!, there isn't much to do with a Soros- or Gates- or Buffett- like pile of zeros but give it away. You can buy only so many mansions and Bentleys and helicopters and private jets before the thing starts to get a trifle old.
Pogo said...
"Breathes there a US politician willing to make the same point now?
What garage, machine, harrogate and the the tilty-cap boy want is to piss on the dead bodies of American businesses.
Of course, what happens next is as unknown to them as it was to the Soviets, Cubans, and Chi-coms.
All they ever seem to come up with is beating people for not making shit into shinola, or starving them to death."
And what they don't see is that they are nowhere near beingthe Elite who will control things...they will live under that control like the rest of us.
Want examples? Try the New York Times. How come their inept CEO is getting millions of dollars in a bonus while the regular workers are suffering? (Thanks, Mr. Instapundit & Forbes)
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kylesmith/2012/01/05/the-new-york-times-goes-all-in-with-the-1-percenters/
word ver: nosalati ...is that a cheese?
This one is in my youtube favorites and should be required viewing. Why does liberalism try to confuse and muddle such simple concepts. The wealth disparity issue is as elegantly simple as Mrs Thatcher describes
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