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Obama might be the best President in 100 years.

But while we're on the subject, here's this thing from the Washington Post:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/07/23/dont-think-obama-has-reduced-inequality-these-numbers-prove-that-he-has/



Imagine the AC6000CW diesel electric train coming at you at 60 mph. That's kinda what's happening here... you're not going to stop it all at once. But you can slow it.

The big question that comes to my mind in these types of discussions is what exactly is the goal? So we slow the freight train...to a stop? Is the goal that the richest and poorest are dead even? Should the rich be allowed 50X as much? 20? 5?
 
The big question that comes to my mind in these types of discussions is what exactly is the goal? So we slow the freight train...to a stop? Is the goal that the richest and poorest are dead even? Should the rich be allowed 50X as much? 20? 5?

That is a question I'm afraid to ponder. So much so that I don't think I've thought to think about it. There are articles on Google scholar that point to income inequality contributing heavily to the collapse of 2008... but how much is too much? Is it fair to see a percentage increase across the board? I'm not really sure. I don't think anyone's studied what an adequate income distribution should be. Even if they did, do we really have enough data?

It makes sense that those with more experience, education, and capability make more in the varied fields. It just does, and I totally understand that. But how much more? How much is too much?

I'm not even sure the income inequality graphs are anything more than illustrating a symptom. You know something's wrong when one group gains 800% in 30 years, while another gains 12%.

I did find this list:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality

Which has several units of measure:

R/P 10%: The ratio of the average income of the richest 10% to the poorest 10%
R/P 20%: The ratio of average income of the richest 20% to the poorest 20%
Gini: Gini index, a quantified representation of a nation's Lorenz curve

UN: Data from the United Nations Development Programme.
CIA: Data from the Central Intelligence Agency's The World Factbook.
GPI: Data from the Global Peace Index.

The Lorenz curve shows perfect equality as a perfect line. Best I can tell, the lower the GINI number the better. We, in the US, are at 41.1. Ten years ago, the best country in the world for equality was Sweden, with 23.

So what it seems to indicate is that no country out there is equal, but there's gotta be a sweet spot somewhere between the worst(65.8, country named Seychelles) and Sweden(who has Jumped to 25 now). The bell curve on this is substantial. Most countries seem to live in the low 30/high 20 range. Especially the big ones that host the happiest people(Middle europe and scandanavian countries)

But I'm far from an expert on this.
 
We have not actually re-worked the budgets, or addressed any problem with our spending in years.

I'd suggest you remove the handicapped, the jail inmates, the people who for any reason are not working, from the comparison. Then group the remaining, allegedly productive folks into groups or cohorts according to education and property and equity and financial aspects,condensed into a "net worth" stat.

It would be useful to show collectivist ideologues the good sense involved in making sound personal and financial decisions.

I'd be glad to address a seminar on how a totally disabled person with no college degree, disowned or abandoned by family, can develop a path forward by first of all concluding that the well-meaning socialists are a waste of good time.

Well, I guess good sense is an essential thing.
 
My way was to find a house I could buy on contract nothing down with a payment less than rent on my basement apt., get friends to move me. I did get better quite rapidly, and i did have a wife who got a job. I did get some help with tuition from a government program to help the disabled, and I got work-study grants that meant profs would hire me to do anything I could.

But I lived beneath my means, saved money, and made that money work. And did what I could. I'm in better shape today than any time since I was 18.

I think the idea associated with charities or government programs should be inclined towards teaching people to prosper not expect to be dependent forever. There is joy in using what you have to make things get better in your life.
 
Of couuurse, how could we leave out Obama having killed Osama single handed, then deciding to throw his body in the ocean because you know, who would want actual graphic proof that he was killed! Not to mention that I don't believe for a single moment that Al-Qaeda is the organization that was behind 9/11. The thread title is quite a stretch imo, maybe the only thing I might have liked from him was his decision to lift the embargo from Cuba. I was pleasantly surprised about this.

JFK says hello. Yeah the guy that actually fought back against the FED and got erased from the picture because of it, same with Jefferson. The 1st President to eradicate the Federal Reserve will be on my top 5 for years to come.

So I had a ride from a very talkative Arabic taxi driver here in Manchester (here for the week on business). He started out with saying that he loves Hillary Clinton because she is the only truthful American politician ever. He said she went on the news and admitted that we created the Taliban. And since she told the truth about this it totally expunged anything bad connected to his religion and it proved that ISIS and Osama bin Laden are all just US agents with the goal to defame Islam and destabilize the middle east.

He talked about how 9/11 was not just a conspiracy but actually completely faked, with fake planes edited into news footage to hide the explosives used to bring the twin towers down. He said that all terrorists are inventions of the US and were created by our politicians due to our anti Islam agenda.

Interesting discussion.

I would call the guy a total nut job but he believed all of this and felt that Hillary has to be our next president because she is the only honest politician by admitting that the US did all of this when she said that we created the Taliban.
 
So I had a ride from a very talkative Arabic taxi driver here in Manchester (here for the week on business). He started out with saying that he loves Hillary Clinton because she is the only truthful American politician ever. He said she went on the news and admitted that we created the Taliban. And since she told the truth about this it totally expunged anything bad connected to his religion and it proved that ISIS and Osama bin Laden are all just US agents with the goal to defame Islam and destabilize the middle east.

He talked about how 9/11 was not just a conspiracy but actually completely faked, with fake planes edited into news footage to hide the explosives used to bring the twin towers down. He said that all terrorists are inventions of the US and were created by our politicians due to our anti Islam agenda.

Interesting discussion.

I would call the guy a total nut job but he believed all of this and felt that Hillary has to be our next president because she is the only honest politician by admitting that the US did all of this when she said that we created the Taliban.

Then turns around and gets involved in the Middle East by intervening in and endorsing Gaddafi's assassination, who is no saint, but had the population in place. 'We came, we saw, he died' + hysterical laugh, she's a psycho.
 
We have not actually re-worked the budgets, or addressed any problem with our spending in years.



Not for lack of trying. That's a house/senate issue. Obama tried to step in to assist, and he couldn't do anything either. That's poor leadership, and pig headedness on both sides of the aisle. Has little to do with the executive branch at all.

I'd suggest you remove the handicapped, the jail inmates, the people who for any reason are not working, from the comparison. Then group the remaining, allegedly productive folks into groups or cohorts according to education and property and equity and financial aspects,condensed into a "net worth" stat.

It would be useful to show collectivist ideologues the good sense involved in making sound personal and financial decisions.

I'd be glad to address a seminar on how a totally disabled person with no college degree, disowned or abandoned by family, can develop a path forward by first of all concluding that the well-meaning socialists are a waste of good time.

Well, I guess good sense is an essential thing.

Isolating those labeled with "no chance" is a terrible idea. But what did you have in mind, exactly, by isolating these individuals into their own collective?
 
Not for lack of trying. That's a house/senate issue. Obama tried to step in to assist, and he couldn't do anything either. That's poor leadership, and pig headedness on both sides of the aisle. Has little to do with the executive branch at all.



Isolating those labeled with "no chance" is a terrible idea. But what did you have in mind, exactly, by isolating these individuals into their own collective?

I was thinking that the 99-1 split doesn't give us enough information about opportunities and outcomes to make even broad policy decisions. If you study the various cohorts with significant commonalities you might be able to make some plans beneficial to each.

There are the "no chance" folks who really have to be helped somehow, but most of us can be helped in some meaningful way, with a positive cost/benefit analysis and even a positive impact on our budget. If you can lift the upper middle class somehow, you could collect a lot more taxes. If you can move 10% of the marginal folks who get more help than they give in taxes into the all-plus bracket, you could possibly balance the budget already.

It makes no sense to give kids college loans with horrible repayment rules and edge them into college if you're going to "downsize" their work opportunities out to India, or bring in too many competitors from the third world who will work for half the wages the kids were told they could expect to earn if they got a degree. MD's, for example. . . .

There are so many negative-impact policies in place affecting us adversely, surely there is some way to make things work better. . . . .

And, by the way, it's those Union-busting 1%-ers who have worked so hard to flood this country with virtual slave labor. . . . supplying their corporates like meatpackers, ag cartels, motel/hotel corps, Las Vegas casinos and other large cap service enterprises with the unskilled labor they need at bargain rates. Yes, and those newbie workers are a significant part of the whole picture. I'm pretty sure the top !%-ers realize that there is a net global gain in productivity in letting workers cross borders, and maybe that's part of the plan, but they are sure in the position to benefit themselves from the process.

A long time ago, when I was in the Philippines and saw the everyday realities, I figured that there would have to be an evening-out of the disparities, and people having "freedom" to move is one good thing. It just needs to be done. I decided then the better thing to do would be to export the foundational principles of prosperity. . . . the ideas that created a higher and more general prosperity in the United States. . . . that's a great challenge. I just think we are doing it in the worst of all possible ways, with all the wrong ideas. . . .
 
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So I had a ride from a very talkative Arabic taxi driver here in Manchester (here for the week on business). He started out with saying that he loves Hillary Clinton because she is the only truthful American politician ever. He said she went on the news and admitted that we created the Taliban. And since she told the truth about this it totally expunged anything bad connected to his religion and it proved that ISIS and Osama bin Laden are all just US agents with the goal to defame Islam and destabilize the middle east.

He talked about how 9/11 was not just a conspiracy but actually completely faked, with fake planes edited into news footage to hide the explosives used to bring the twin towers down. He said that all terrorists are inventions of the US and were created by our politicians due to our anti Islam agenda.

Interesting discussion.

I would call the guy a total nut job but he believed all of this and felt that Hillary has to be our next president because she is the only honest politician by admitting that the US did all of this when she said that we created the Taliban.

This is actually a widespread take on American interventionism in the Mid-east. Folks talk about Al-CIA duh and the Taliban being our tools all the time. It probably doesn't help our image when we use drone warfare and high-altitude bombing runs on villagers, either. But if Hillary can win an election in an Arabic nation, I say she should go all-out for it. Bon Voyage, all the way.
 
While context is everything that was a funny video to watch.

Wait, what? Who said I decided to pull the troops out?
 
C

But I have no respect for Obama because he is ideologically a Marxist, . . .

Holy Crap Babe, just when I'm beginning to think you're all right after all, you spout this kind of crap.

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you're just using hyperbole. You can't be serious right?

I'm curious what specifically Obama has done to demonstrate that he's an ideological Marxist.
 
treasonous ******** need to absorb a bullet with their brain.

Obama is the most treasonous politician in like forever

It's probably best for idiots to stay out of politics altogether, so I suggest maybe you get a hobby. Perhaps there's an abortion clinic somewhere you should be bombing?
 
Stock market doubled, jobs record, health care, no major new conflicts, 2 year free college proposal, no terror groups hitting us, Cuba, Iran, World relations. Has he been perfect? no. But IMO better for this country than Reagan, Bill Clinton, Bush or Hillary (if elected). The fear and hatred by the far right has been mild altering. Thankfully there are some great moderate republicans on this site who keep hope alive for the right.
 
Holy Crap Babe, just when I'm beginning to think you're all right after all, you spout this kind of crap.

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you're just using hyperbole. You can't be serious right?

I'm curious what specifically Obama has done to demonstrate that he's an ideological Marxist.

I have read Marx, and can correctly identify an adherent to Marx.

Two of Obama's "mentors" were Marxists with strong Cuban ties. Cuba ranks as a "State Capitalist" sort of deranged or misguided "Marxist" variant, it is true.

Since "communist" is a name to avoid, and isn't a correct term anyway, and since Marx is a BS philosopher promoting an fairyland reality anyway, it is useless to argue about the ideological "purity" of anyone influenced by any of the themes promoted by Marx, which were not original with him anyway. We had a variant of "communists" or "communalists" from the outset of the English colonization of America. The Puritans believed in communal property so much they didn't allow, at first, private gardens and expected everyone to work together for the common good. Some early Christians had this notion in a variant of idealizing sharing this world's goods with the poor, voluntarily, sort of. But if you didn't you weren't a real Christian.

I had a good friend who was a devout "Marxist" in his view, an adherent of the principles Marx taught. He didn't believe in private property. He was a union organizer, and invited me to join a union that he believed had the right "principles" in advocating for workers. I met with his friends, and I stood around while he argued with Cuban "State Capitalists'.

In his view, a "State Capitalist" can be a Republican or a Fascist or a phony Marxist. He would consider Obama a phony Marxist. Obama's parents were communists, as well, though today they would claim to be "progressives" and scramble to claim the high ground as the most extreme advocates of the philosophically "pure" Marxism, in their view.

The problem with Marxism from the beginning was that it was a tool promoted by some particularly influential political manipulators, I think to counter the ideas of the American political system of our founders, where people had rights, including the right to "own" their government outright and select their representatives. The right to believe, speak, and act in their own judgment in life, according to their interests, inherent in the "right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness".

Marx taught that society must evolve or transform according to dialectic principles which at first stood in opposition but which would produce a ynthesis of higher organization. One of those stages would be a government, run by some ideologically-correct elites, that would in some manner "represent" the interests of the people while property rights dissolved away into a communal order, where everyone was essentially "equal". After that stage, the "State was supposed to "wither away" because it wouldn't be needed because people were all equal. Obama sees his mission as working in this way to "change" America. The "hope" he spoke of was that equality.

However, he is just another tool of fascist elites per the UN New World Order, which however idealized, will actually dissolve property rights world wide, and impose a totalitarian regime over the world where it will not matter what people "want" anymore.

The problem with that government is it will not "wither away", ever. Another problem is that it does not solve the problems of ambition, greed, fear, and lust for power, which will mean that such a monolithic government will break apart over differences of opinion and over competition for power. No one can "cure" human nature and make it "ideal".

Well, who knows, maybe there is something out in the Universe somewhere with a solution to those problems, but it's not David Rockefeller, or Karl Marx.
 
Stock market doubled, jobs record, health care, no major new conflicts, 2 year free college proposal, no terror groups hitting us, Cuba, Iran, World relations. Has he been perfect? no. But IMO better for this country than Reagan, Bill Clinton, Bush or Hillary (if elected). The fear and hatred by the far right has been mild altering. Thankfully there are some great moderate republicans on this site who keep hope alive for the right.

Bubble economy. Keynesian toolchest exhausted, not much leverage left in lowering interest rates or printing money, or spending it. Recoveries are supposed to be where we balance the system and replenish the toolchest, we haven't done that yet. The Squeeze in on health care. Costs have actually skyrocketed, and the minimums and taxes are drying up consumer spending on other stuff. Doctors and hospital profits are being squeezed as well, until we all can be told "Single Payer" is the way to go. Then it will be care rationing and home dentistry kits, kids.

I can only hope that some reasonably intelligent discussion can reach you so you want to alter your thinking to conform to a more fundamental reality: your own interest and self-preservation. Hope, to me, is that people will see that reality and remove the ideological blinders of a hundred years of state propaganda.
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhy68u32i2c

it is cut up. but is only censored version i could find.

soooooooo maybe find the right one in a you tube search uncut and uncensored. i truly recommend it
 
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