God Bless The Onion

I never said anyone in my post was a certain color. You thought that, not me.
I, for one, have seen these types of people of both colors.

Do you think he (or any rich person for that matter) does? I never thought it was going on (and I am far from rich) until I witnessed it first hand.

I think you think a lot of smart people are really dumb. And you believe that you have some "ordinary Joe" insights that people who disagree with you probably don't have.

The idea that people who disagree with you are as clueless as you seem to think says more about you (to me) than it does about them.

I do have "ordinary joe" insights because thats who I am, the average guy.
As for rich people, I do believe they are clueless to a lot of things that go on that they do not see first hand. People are able to understand things that they see with their own two eyes - just like i have no clue as to how it would be to live in a $20 million dollar home and walk into a store and spend $40k without checking my balance.

Seriously. Fucking grow up already.

What you were saying was the people who make policy have no clue about the effects of their policy. You mentioned Kerry specifically. (Yes, he's rich, but he hasn't always been. Bush is rich too.)

I've been around policy makers all my adult life, pretty much. Politicians, public servants, advisers. These people often disagree with each other, but one thing is usually pretty sure -- they are rarely ignorant, and rarely stupid.

One thing that came clearly out of the debates during the campaign was Kerry is NOT dumb. Call him a flip-flopping friend of the French cheese eating surrender monkeys all you want (and I don't mean you necessarily), but he is not STUPID.

Most people involved in the world of policy know that policy making is complicated and that policies with good intentions can have bad effects, and that policies to benefit the genuinely needy can sometimes result in benefits to the not so needy or deserving. Do you really think Kerry and other folk don't KNOW this?

Jesus.

Do they know people sell their food stamps for 50 cents on the dollar? I doubt it.

Do they know people use friends piece of shit cars so the welfare officers do not see the real car they own? I doubt it.

Do they know people take other peoples kids with them when they apply for welfare so they can get more money? I doubt it.

They may know there are problems with this but it is just what they are told by others (evrything has problems, after all). They have no first hand knowledge of it. THAT is the point I was trying to get across by my postings.

If my posts make you throw up dont bother responding - you dont have to.

Having different beliefs than you doesnt make me a child.

Served.

mike/stockula, good job on trying to hijack the thread.

back to the thread's purpose:

THAT ONION STORY IS FUCKING HILARIOUS.

well, then stockula should check the accuracy of sowell's 'facts' before quoting them to support his position

Yes, fucking risible:

'the party of industrial mega-capitalists'

It's still classist, and prejudice towards certain class groups is just as bad.

I might as well just come out and say it. My family if fairly well off. We lucked into some property fifty years ago. My Russian immigrant grandparents started a grocery store, and now it's broken up into a popular Cuban restaurant and some shops on South Beach. But... We weren't so successful before the South Beach boom. Before I was born, my dad drove taxi cabs and worked as a stringer for a couple of magazines and papers. He still had trouble making ends meet. He had to go on welfare for income supplements. He continued looking for a more stable job and eventually got a stable job working for a PR firm and later on worked as a staff reporter for a magazine. And he went off welfare as soon as he could support himself, his wife, and his son.

So. It's not easy. Most people experience bouts of poverty. Furthermore, poverty is not monolithic. Do you really think the elderly, for example, are intentionally bilking the government? I mean... Do you know what social security checks look like? And do you know that not everyone has awesome pension plans? Your generalizations about the welfare-dependent are HURTING AMERICA. STOP HURTING AMERICA.

[Edited on Nov 11, 2004 by anonymouse4Kerry]

Yes, they do. They're called constituents, and most politicians know them well.

Here is a news flash. Rich people lie and steal money too. Any government is 100% aware of how much fraud is in their system, and here's the thing to wrap your head around...
They expect systems to have fraud. Any economic system does. They can work to mitigate it, but if they really want to help people they have to take the necessary actions DESPITE the fact that some people will abuse it.

The army has fraud, people cheat on their taxes, the DOI has fraud, the farming subsidies are rife with fraud, goverment contracting has fraud. Should we stop those?

Yeah why dont we just kill them.....Euthenize the lot of them or better yet let sterilize them all....if you are on Welfare you need to get fixed first. That way those dirty, lazy genes can't get passed on an infect the rest of the United States. We should be more like China and put limits on how many kids poor people can have.


Oh yeah lets not talk about education for "economically disadvantaged youth" in the inner cities....lets just put them all on a truck and send them out to Iraq. So all the kids of the rich can go party in Cancun.


"Oh brave new world that has such people in it... "

He's not saying they're bad people because they're poor. He's saying that based on his observations, food stamps/welfare/etc. attracts a large number of bad people seeking to exploit the system or that the system only perpetuates the lifestyle it's seeking to help people out of. If I read it right.

We should stop the fraud, yes.

Easy now! Not all race car drivers are incapable of making right turns.