The Politics Thread (PLAY NICELY!)

You can. Good luck with that.

Well it could be more productive than internet discussions.

Not really. Not with your attitude anyways.

A lot of inequality is an age thing btw . Ofcourse if you are older you will earn more, because you have worked harder for more years. More experience working and manipulating capital instead of having to rely on youthful strength.

Wealth creation is more of a mutual contract instead of a fixed sum pie. e.g. Some guy makes a restaurant, which allows others to work productively within in. Taxing the restaurant maker is also an indirect wealth negative for potential employees.

People also shift in and out of the top bracket on a constant basis. There's a surprising amount of migration due to large one off lump sum gains. Most of what holds minorities like blacks down is really the drug war and heavy welfare policies.

Trickle down economics doesn't work. We thought it did.

What holds black people back is that it's a lot harder to make something from nothing.

Trickle down is a loaded political phrase and means different things to different people. It's a pretty complicated bundle of topics all in one. Did reagan cut taxes, end double digit inflation, and greatly reduce the impact of cronyism from the unions? yea. Did he also expand the deficit and government spending? yea. Did he reform welfare? not really

I prefer the cleaner economic discussion in terms of supply, demand, and taxes/regulation. Both parties have tried focusing on one or the other as government policy where the real solution i think is more libertarian in perspective. You can't have demand without supply and vice versa - let the people balance it themselves. Don't have policy bias towards the rich, the poor, supply, or demand.

As for blacks, i like the research of good ol Tom Sowell

Poverty, crime and other unfortunate outcomes can be traced back to skyrocketing illegitimacy rates. I think you guys have like what 50% single parent households now adays up from 10-15% in the 60's?

I like this one also

Elodea I'm writing you on my ballot paper. When I eventually get to vote in the States that is.

There are now a whole two libertarians on these forums. This makes me happy.

I'm usually left all by myself

woo!

hahaha i love that graph you posted. Same deal down here in Australia!

A real shame American libertarians seem too caught up fighting each other when they have at their fingertips one of the most powerful moral philosophies ever thought up.

The thing about right libertarianism is that it's a nice concept, but it just doesn't work. There's a reason there's not a single country on earth that follows a right libertarian ideology.

Economic Left/Right: -5.88
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.72

do i have to feel bad now?

No need! The government gets to feel bad on your behalf

That's left-libertarianism. That's good.

The thing is that I am doubtful it works out like that if you have a many very poor people looking for work: Then the restaurant owner can go "I'll employ whoever works the most for the smallest wage" which gets pretty nasty.

It's the more natural combination, right-libtertarian is something I can't wrap my head around.

Hi I just wanted to say that I like @cwarner7264 's graph but it needs some explanation.

Economic Left end: Communism, socialism, first christians... -A man owns no fruits of his labor. When people work together they don't have to decide how much each gets because everybody always get the same. Some people act as "peace keepers" making sure that no one keeps things for himself.

Economic Right end: A man owns all the fruits of his labor. When people work together they decide how much each gets signing a contract in a free market fashion. Everyone has to get a weapon to defend his property and contracts.

Economic middle: ?? We can travel all the way from the right end to the left end but where is the middle?

Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: This axis is more difficult for me to understand. Why would anyone want an authority controlling their private lives?
I guess I'm "ultralibertian". In any case, I think we could vote for any social dilemma and do what the majority says no need to mix it in the same package as the economy stuff. I'd like a political party that presented an economic program and no social program, just polls for social stuff.

Anyway purple is my color!

everyone can agree on that except in this debate "Do nothing about" = "want"


why are Americans so anal about wanting everyone to let the gov control every last aspect of their life?

well technically they don't but do so little about it it's safe to assume they do.

"Many people do not want to live in a democracy, but in a dictatorship that supports their views"

I guess that if you have no notion of justice and good is only what benefits you, then you may think like that. But I want to think that there aren't that many people like that in "civilized"countries.

Dictatorships are very different from one another, some have polls and are fairer than some democracies. Dictators are just governors you can't remove in any pacific way. And don't get me wrong, I don't like dictatorships, my words mean what they mean not what anyone else thinks I might have wanted to imply... (just in case).

name ONE

A good dictatorship is a bad dictatorship in it's puberty

question .... what about tito?