George Zimmerman, race and the NAACP

[Sander]

DarkCorp, what you're suggesting isn't actually practical in a general sense. You can't just tell one group of the population that they have to, effectively, start acting white. More importantly, even if you could, few would listen.

And yes, there are plenty of black leaders who say similar things. As there are many, many black people who do exactly what you say. Some of whom, essentially, say that black people have to be the same as white people if they want to be accepted. But that doesn't do anything -- you can't change a massive culture quickly, especially not when those people all (rightly) perceive their oppression and view it as one of the ways to rebel against that oppression.

There are some ethical issues with those viewpoints, I would say. Why should dress matter? Why should an accent matter? But perhaps as a practical matter you are right. Perhaps things would be better if every black man was educated, spoke with a generic accent and shunned rap music.

Then again, that's not really the issue, either. How many white kids listen to rap music? How many white kids wear baggy pants? The issue isn't that the culture is that different. The issue is that that group is treated differently regardless of their own behavior.

Which is why in a time when we have an educated, well-spoken black president, there are still people calling him dumb, or a nigger, or a Muslim (now there's a nice mix of prejudices), or a Nigerian, or a communist, or whatever they want. Because people will invent reasons


Moreover, what does your proposal require, at its core? It requires better education. It requires that poor (black) people can actually afford to act white. That they can participate in society without being treated differently. Getting everyone to act white isn't going to change a thing about those issues.

 

[DarkCorp]

You can't just tell one group of the population that they have to, effectively, start acting white. More importantly, even if you could, few would listen.

It requires that poor (black) people can actually afford to act white.

Its not acting white, its acting NORMAL. We do not need a weird version of BASPS or something. Dressing normal doesn't require lots of money as who wears name brands all the time anyways. If anything, the pervasive concept that blacks need to wear bling and expensive shoes and brand name urban clothing only serves to hinder their advancement. Saving that money for investments or for a rainy day is much more logical.

And yes, there are plenty of black leaders who say similar things. As there are many, many black people who do exactly what you say. Some of whom, essentially, say that black people have to be the same as white people if they want to be accepted. But that doesn't do anything

Has it? We have intergration, blacks in all levels of government. Blacks in all levels of the military and social services. Blacks in schools and colleges. We have blacks in the entertainment industry. Blacks on the police force.

those people all (rightly) perceive their oppression and view it as one of the ways to rebel against that oppression.

I am saying it won't make things better. Essentially, 'If they view us all as criminals, might as well prove them right'.

How many white kids listen to rap music? How many white kids wear baggy pants?

And those kids look down upon and snap judged by teachers, other authority figures, and people who generally do not know them. They get called wiggers. Those same folks then spread this bias. Again, perception.

Because people will invent reasons

you can't change a massive culture quickly

Sad and true. But thats the essence of human nature. That is why we must chip away at the perception by attacking things we can affect, not pie in the sky concepts that won't change in the near future.

Why should dress matter? Why should an accent matter?

Its perception. During the civil rights, you had a peaceful, people who all spoke and dressed normally. Folks who wanted only equality, in essence, you and me but with a different color of skin. All over the globe, news and televisions broadcasted these same folks getting beaten, firehosed, and attacked by dogs. It wasn't much of a challenge to sympathise with these folks.

The average American realises that the presence of an accent doesn't mean the person with one is 'fresh off the boat'. Its merely a part of being multi-cultural and how immigrants are striving to adapt to the dominant language.

Negative rap music on the other hand, encourages divisiveness. It says change only comes through some kind of revolution where ebonics is considered a true language and thug dress is accepted as part of the norm. It does the complete opposite of most immigrants.

It requires better education

And what is better education exactly? I and others have brought up our educational system is a horrific mess, but throwing money at it isn't going to make it better. It needs to be REFORMED. Educators and people who produce these federal mandates need to realise everyone is different, that everyone learns differently. The public school system needs to incorporate important skills like those offered by trade schools. Not everyone was meant to be book smart or to graduate college. Just because one isn't cut out to be a doctor, engineer or lawyer does not mean that person cannot be successful. Plenty of folks dread having to call for repairs on HVAC or Plumbing or havign the cars fixed because these are expensive problems.

Propaganda is effective because it molds perception to its needs. The truth has been a slave to perception much more often than the other way around.

 

[Sander]

Its not acting white, its acting NORMAL.

What you are saying is that black people need to act like everyone else, where everyone else is actually the white people who dominate the culture. It would be acting white.

That doesn't mean you're wrong to think that's what they should do. But just call a spade a spade.

We do not need a weird version of BASPS or something. Dressing normal doesn't require lots of money as who wears name brands all the time anyways. If anything, the pervasive concept that blacks need to wear bling and expensive shoes and brand name urban clothing only serves to hinder their advancement. Saving that money for investments or for a rainy day is much more logical.

Is it? Is the problem that blacks spend their money more trivially than whites? That seems like an awful big assumption, to be honest, and I'm not sure you can support it through anything other than casual observation. Which, as I've noted over and over again, is prone to lots of cognitive biases.

So, let's turn to some scholarly work on the subject. Does your hypothesis hold up? Here's an interesting article on the subject:
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=1963

The division isn't by race -- it's by economic situation relative to your surroundings. It's present among both poor whites and poor blacks.

So what you thought was a racial division, is actually simply a division by class. Race doesn't play into it. And it's statements (and research) like this that makes me very suspicions of these surface judgments of black culture and how it works.

Which also goes back to my point that the poverty trap is a core part of this problem.

Has it? We have intergration, blacks in all levels of government. Blacks in all levels of the military and social services. Blacks in schools and colleges. We have blacks in the entertainment industry. Blacks on the police force.

We had those people in the 1920s too. We had them in the 1930s. We've had them throughout recorded history. But things didn't start changing until black people stopped trying to appease white people. It changed when they organized and stood up for their rights. To state that the difference was that they started acting more white does a great disservice to history.

Sad and true. But thats the essence of human nature. That is why we must chip away at the perception by attacking things we can affect, not pie in the sky concepts that won't change in the near future.

No, it's about the people you're addressing. You are addressing black people, and telling them that they're making their own situation worse. Something that is very debatable anyway, but okay. But your plea is as futile as mine. But you are putting the onus on them to change, on them to somehow adopt to a system that is actively oppressing them. It's what is called, effectively, victim blaming.

I'm putting the onus on policymakers. The system is broken because it's poorly designed.

Its perception.

I know why it matters. My question is why should it matter?

During the civil rights, you had a peaceful, people who all spoke and dressed normally. Folks who wanted only equality, in essence, you and me but with a different color of skin. All over the globe, news and televisions broadcasted these same folks getting beaten, firehosed, and attacked by dogs. It wasn't much of a challenge to sympathise with these folks.

Yes, that was part of it. Part of it was getting people to realize these were human beings, that they were being treated horribly, part of it was getting that message out globally. MLK did that very deliberately -- he designed his protests so people couldn't blame them, so they couldn't be seen as the bad guys.

Those people very deliberately designed their media message for the greatest impact. But we're not talking about activists trying to change the world. We're talking about normal people trying to live their lives, with their own background, with their own history, with their own education. And that is a very, very different thing.

Negative rap music on the other hand, encourages divisiveness. It says change only comes through some kind of revolution where ebonics is considered a true language and thug dress is accepted as part of the norm. It does the complete opposite of most immigrants.

Most of what you say here is historically not true. Many immigrants could not speak English. Most of them did not integrate. Most of them spent their days with their fellow immigrants, in their own lingual community, doing the same jobs as their fellow immigrants -- and hence continuing to speak the same language.


You also should realize that we are not talking about immigrants. We are talking about people who are American citizens. Who are, effectively, speaking English with an accent. But so are people from Texas. Or Wisconsin. Or Boston. An accent and a local linguistic community and local slang is perfectly normal and occurs in every community. But people complain about it with black people. Why? Well, the answer isn't that hard, really.

And what is better education exactly? I and others have brought up our educational system is a horrific mess, but throwing money at it isn't going to make it better. It needs to be REFORMED. Educators and people who produce these federal mandates need to realise everyone is different, that everyone learns differently. The public school system needs to incorporate important skills like those offered by trade schools. Not everyone was meant to be book smart or to graduate college. Just because one isn't cut out to be a doctor, engineer or lawyer does not mean that person cannot be successful. Plenty of folks dread having to call for repairs on HVAC or Plumbing or havign the cars fixed because these are expensive problems.

Yes, reforming education is required. I don't disagree with any of that. But the goal of reform is better education.

 

[DarkCorp]

What you are saying is that black people need to act like everyone else, where everyone else is actually the white people who dominate the culture

speaking English with an accent. But so are people from Texas. Or Wisconsin. Or Boston. An accent and a local linguistic community and local slang is perfectly normal and occurs in every community.

The asians for the most part speak english, some with an accent. When an asian says "Oh yah, I have ploblems with my blakes too. They are very squeaky", you can figure out what hes trying to say. Same thing with regional accents becase thats what they are, a slightly different way of saying the same word. You say tomatoes I say tomahtoes.

It is agreed that most folks who are minorities and english proficient will use the word cars. The sentence strucure between people of different accents or even slang are stilll relatively similar. Another good example would be: Are you crazy? Are you insane? Are you out of your mind? This is much different than, "You trippin?' Or "Dats Whack". Ebonics instead attempts to create a brand new word for things like cars are called 'whips'. Most folks say shoes, ebonics would rather say 'kicks'. I know what soda and pop and cola means. Unless I am a avid rap listener,I have no clue what the hell Grillz are.

Asians, Indians, Pakistanis, Indonesians, etc. These people are not white yet they adapt. They not only bring with them their own customs, but also make room for the dominant customs in place. I go to interviews for a job and important functions with a suit and tie. Is that white? Yeah. But everyone else does too.

We had those people in the 1920s too. We had them in the 1930s.

Are you trying to equate the black situation of the 20s and 30s is somehow equal to today? Things were a multitudes times harder for blacks than today.

But you are putting the onus on them to change, on them to somehow adopt to a system that is actively oppressing them. It's what is called, effectively, victim blaming.

Again, are asians being oppressed when they are expected to speak english, or Pakistanis, or Indians? Your average steretypical chinese resteraunt owner or indian quickstop mart owner is more likely to speak with thich accented english than ebonics. Why is it so much more acceptable for other minorities to adopt the dominant dress and speech while its almost an anathema for rap culture to do the same?

should it matter?

You have heard the saying actions speak louder than words right? Should it matter, no. But racism isn't logical. Your average racist believes the shit he sees in the media about rap culture and blacks. When he sees successful blacks, he believes them to be 'the good ones', yet the bad ones are still out there in the multitudes. Thing is, shunning negative black culture takes away the medias power to exploit it. Poverty doesn't equate to dressing like a piece of shit. One can be poor and still dress reasonably.

We're talking about normal people trying to live their lives, with their own background, with their own history, with their own education. And that is a very, very different thing.

I would like to believe that the older black generation had tried to pass on their principles to the younger black generation. It doesn't take rocket science to prove that your treated better if you look more professional than if you looked like a thug. Their history IS black history which MLK had LOTS to do with. How were the backgrounds of poor blacks during the civil rights era and before that different from today unless you include horrible thug culture? Same with education. If anything, blacks back then were overall, less, educated than the blacks of today ( I am focusing on your average black marcher and not the leaders). Overall, I would think things were much, much harder for blacks back then than now.

How can you fix a steretypical classroom in a highschool in the 'ghettos'. I say steretypical because I truly do ot believe its as bad as some of those inspirational teacher movies where a tough as nails and charismatic teacher turns a classroom full of degenerates into winners. In the movies, the class, indeed the school itself, seems to be filled with nothing but troublemakers. If that is true in real life, than the entire school needs to be reformed.

 

[Mad Max RW]

The black family has almost completely collapsed following the civil rights era. That is the current issue and nobody wants to address it. You can trace the beginning of welfare culture to Jimmy Carter's Great Society. Progressives destroyed their future by rewarding bad behavior and lowering standards year after year. White people aren't forcing black kids to drop out of highschool, join gangs, have babies out of wedlock, then end up in prison while their children grow up raised by the state and repeat the cycle. Without responsible parents around telling them what's right and wrong they look at thug culture glorified by celebrities and want to emulate it. White kids love rap music, too. Most have parents who steer them in the right direction.

The education problem is while standards keep getting lower kids don't want to be there because they aren't learning. Typically parents step in and demand a change. This isn't happening at inner city schools because of the reasons I explained above.

What they need to do is gradually raise standards and abolish the teachers union. Publish a teacher's resume and background online. Private and public schools record everything about a teacher's performance in computer databases (one of my jobs is inputting this data by hand). We are not afraid to fire someone who receives consistently bad reports. There's several literally pointless classes we would drop from the curriculum if the government didn't force us to offer them. Then tuition can drop.
Get the federal government out of the student loan business and let states handle regulations. When they fuck up students leave. Connecticut has the same views as the current progressive administration. As a result students are leaving for states that allow them to go to the school of their choice. Our state is dying while others are thriving. But it's not going to change if we are forced to follow the status quo until filing for bankruptcy or selling off assets to stay alive a few more years.

 

[Sander]

The asians for the most part speak english, some with an accent. When an asian says "Oh yah, I have ploblems with my blakes too. They are very squeaky", you can figure out what hes trying to say. Same thing with regional accents becase thats what they are, a slightly different way of saying the same word. You say tomatoes I say tomahtoes.

It is agreed that most folks who are minorities and english proficient will use the word cars. The sentence strucure between people of different accents or even slang are stilll relatively similar. Another good example would be: Are you crazy? Are you insane? Are you out of your mind? This is much different than, "You trippin?' Or "Dats Whack". Ebonics instead attempts to create a brand new word for things like cars are called 'whips'. Most folks say shoes, ebonics would rather say 'kicks'. I know what soda and pop and cola means. Unless I am a avid rap listener,I have no clue what the hell Grillz are.

Asians, Indians, Pakistanis, Indonesians, etc. These people are not white yet they adapt. They not only bring with them their own customs, but also make room for the dominant customs in place. I go to interviews for a job and important functions with a suit and tie. Is that white? Yeah. But everyone else does too.

You have some seriously arbitrary distinctions between regional dialect and ebonics there. There are plenty of words that are used only regionally and not elsewhere. Ever hear teenagers speak? That happens.

And you don't think black people go to job interviews in suit and tie where it's necessary? That's some nonsense, there. There are some black people who don't, just as there are some white people who don't. A lot of what you're talking about is not tied to race, it is tied to poverty.

Are you trying to equate the black situation of the 20s and 30s is somehow equal to today? Things were a multitudes times harder for blacks than today.

No. I am demonstrating that it wasn't a few blacks acting white that changed things.

Again, are asians being oppressed when they are expected to speak english, or Pakistanis, or Indians? Your average steretypical chinese resteraunt owner or indian quickstop mart owner is more likely to speak with thich accented english than ebonics. Why is it so much more acceptable for other minorities to adopt the dominant dress and speech while its almost an anathema for rap culture to do the same?

Okay, let's go through this a couple of times:

A) Blacks are not immigrants. Equating the two doesn't make sense, because it leads to a lot of selection bias. The people who come to the USA as immigrants have been selected as wanting to be a part of the USA.

B) You have a lot of double standards in your definitions.

C) There are lots and lots and lots of blacks who do exactly what you say. They are still discriminated against.

D) You are ignoring the poverty trap. The same poverty trap that affects everyone.

You have heard the saying actions speak louder than words right? Should it matter, no. But racism isn't logical. Your average racist believes the shit he sees in the media about rap culture and blacks. When he sees successful blacks, he believes them to be 'the good ones', yet the bad ones are still out there in the multitudes. Thing is, shunning negative black culture takes away the medias power to exploit it. Poverty doesn't equate to dressing like a piece of shit. One can be poor and still dress reasonably.

On the one hand, you say that the amount of blacks who behave the way you think they should doesn't matter, because it won't change anyone's opinion. And then you say they should do so anyway. You don't see the problem with that reasoning?

I would like to believe that the older black generation had tried to pass on their principles to the younger black generation.

My point was that MLK wasn't representative of the older black generation. You're pointing to an activist group, by definition exceptional, and saying that everyone needs to be them. That's silly. It's not going to happen -- and it wasn't like that back then, either.

The black family has almost completely collapsed following the civil rights era. That is the current issue and nobody wants to address it. You can trace the beginning of welfare culture to Jimmy Carter's Great Society. Progressives destroyed their future by rewarding bad behavior and lowering standards year after year. White people aren't forcing black kids to drop out of highschool, join gangs, have babies out of wedlock, then end up in prison while their children grow up raised by the state and repeat the cycle. Without responsible parents around telling them what's right and wrong they look at thug culture glorified by celebrities and want to emulate it. White kids love rap music, too. Most have parents who steer them in the right direction.

I can agree with you that this is probably part of the problem, though I'd say a large part of that is just part of the poverty trap.

The thing I take issue with, and it's something you really haven't been able to support in any way, is your statement that somehow, welfare has caused this. I know that's a big conservative narrative, but it's not a narrative that can be easily supported with facts. And I'm not sure how, exactly, welfare is going to somehow destroy a family anyway. Poverty tends to do that, to an extent. Oppression, too. Welfare? Not so much.

 

[cronicler]

Has any of you had the opportunity to read Thomas Sowell's "Black Rednecks and White Liberals" by any chance?

If you can find a copy, I would recommend it Sander.



Moving on, I would argue that in addition to the collapse of familial structure in below-middle class black population in US (Similar to the dole youth in UK or the "mafia-wannabe (for the lack of a good translation without writing an explanatory paragraph on local nuances)" youth in Turkiye, Haredi youth in Israel) there has been a cultural break/disconnect between the middle class and the poor; which has led to the fastest growing segment of the population stopping looking up and wandering to hedonistic day to day existence.

This unfortunately has created a very docile (as far as political activism and enlightenment; heck forget enlightenment or opinions, average member of these groups doesn't even know the name of his/her chosen representative; is concerned) sheep population that can be farmed for votes and certain factions in each of the countries mentioned use these votes to steal political power, which in turn is used to feed the sheep to keep the votes, resulting in a vicious self destructive (for the nation in question) cycle

 

[Sander]

Thomas Sowell? Is that a joke? For fuck's sake, guys, stop recommending extremist libertarian/conservative claptrap. Come up with some serious work to support your positions -- I know there's some out there. Sowell wrote a column comparing Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler, for fuck's sake. That same book argues a bunch of other nonsense, too. Most notably his ridiculous assertion that antisemitism wasn't a big part of German interwar society.

But fine. I'll read it.

EDIT: Done.

Well, Thomas Sowell's book was about what I expected. Extremely selective in citing his sources, very poorly supports his argument.

He essentially argues that inner-city black culture is a copy of old, Southern "Cracker Culture", which is supposed to consist of "aversion to work, proneness to
violence, neglect of education, sexual promiscuity, improvidence, drunkenness, lack of entrepreneurship, reckless
searches for excitement, lively music and dance, and a style of
religious oratory marked by strident rhetoric, unbridled emotions,
and flamboyant imagery". That culture was then supposedly largely eradicated before the 1960s, but apparently welfare caused it to rise back up again!

Unfortunately, he largely cites outdated and discredited books to support that characterization of Cracker culture. Most of his support consists of citing second-hand reports of Northerners writing about Southerners during the pre-Civil War era.

So, his characterization of Cracker Culture in the first place is poorly supported, but his connecting it to current inner-city black culture is a lot more ridiculous. He has to assume a one-way exchange of culture, be extremely selective in his citations, ignore any other recent scholarly work on the subject, and then make some ridiculous generalizations to support his point. And he contradicts himself along the way a bunch of times.

He never engages in actual scholarly debate -- the only critiques he strikes down are straw men erected for that very purpose. He never cites works that disagree with him, even though they are plentiful. No serious scholar would commit those errors, and at this point the scholarly community has largely stopped reviewing his books because of it -- he isn't seen as a scholar, but as a columnist. Which is what he is. Those that do review him universally skewer his books.

Effectively, Sowell's just showing what selectively applying your evidence does for you: it allows you to make lots of arguments without looking at the full picture. It's probably not a coincidence that this is a common complaint of reviewers of all of his works, not just that book. Sowell is not a serious scholar, he's a polemicist whose interest is promoting his conservative, small-government views.

The crucial part of his essay, that connecting that Cracker Culture to modern, black inner-city culture and tying that to liberal policies of the 1960s suffers from the same faults, but is also almost entirely unsupported. It consists of two pages of stating that liberalism caused this culture dominant, without any supporting evidence. All he can do is produce a really, really weak correlation of the like we've seen before in this thread: there are now more single-parent black families. But this is true across the board, across all races, and that trend is growing more quickly for other races. And that is certainly no evidence of the "cracker culture" he thinks has somehow taken hold. And he brushes aside the idea that maybe centuries of oppression played a role.

It is really a ridiculously poorly supported essay on all fronts.




Now, if you can find me solid, convincing scholarly work that the welfare state is indeed the reason for black problems, and that removing it would improve the matter, I would get behind that. But I just haven't seen that evidence, and the work of people like Sowell is quickly debunked with just a minute amount of research.

I could even help you, there. There's certainly some evidence that the American welfare state is poorly designed: there are incentives to not work at certain points. Of course, the solution there would not be to remove the welfare state, but to engineer it in such a way that you mitigate or remove disincentives. And we know that can be done: look at any Western European welfare state.


Reading the essay and then some of the critiques did give me some more intriguing research, though. Like a scientific investigation (and debunking) of the idea that blacks view academic achievement differently from whites: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/12/magazine/12ACTING.html?_r=0

Which makes intuitive sense. After all, "nerd" isn't exactly a term of love and affection for those white people who do well in school, now is it?

Again, this goes back to points I've made over, and over, and over again: blacks are treated differently from whites, and a lot of these problems are common to both poor blacks and poor whites. But when it's poor blacks, it is somehow tied to race as a problem. Whereas when it's poor whites, it isn't.

This is a case of confirmation bias: we 'know' that poor black kids don't like school and we 'know' that they disrupt school, and we 'know' that they do this more than poor white kids -- and every data point we find to confirm it reinforces that belief, while every data point that doesn't agree with it is discarded. That's the same way many stereotypes come into existence in the first place. That's the way prejudices work. And the fact that you guys keep repeating them even when scientific work largely contradicts them is part of the problem.

And that, incidentally, is exactly why I don't think personal observations hold much value compared to good, data-driven scholarly work.

 

[Syphon]

Expanding welfare isn't what I would call a reasonable solution. The middle class is already being crushed under the weight of the poor/lazy. The system is broken beyond belief (see: welfare cliff), and further expanding it discourages people from actually working. Why slave away at a 9-5 job when you can sit at home all day, eating free food, watching free tv, doing drugs paid for by bartering with your EBT, and fucking and plopping out more kids to neglect and abuse to receive more benefits?

Thoroughly agreed. Reminded me of Florida. If we socialized more healthcare, housing, education, there would be no way we could consolidate that bill. I might add though there has been some reform to child benefits, as far as the tax code goes. I believe that children #3-6 there is a higher bracket.

I've known about seven people who've abused EBT for cash/dope. But then there are some people who work and that foodstamp enables them not just pay bills but spend extra money. Its helpful for poor people but 131$ per person per month could be lowered.

Fact is, we need to move farther away from HUD housing in a sense. Like someone said, housing a "ghetto" just creates hopeless situations and perpetuates stereotypes about "whitey" bussing them together.

Darkcorp, don't boast about embezzlers in China, our whole medicare, HUD, foodstamps have widespread fraud and hustlers. Only difference is China shoots them in the face with no trial while we house and feed them.

 

[TheWesDude]

i have seen several of Sowells videos on youtube, and in some of them he is great...

in others his bias shows through. his bias is that government regulation and any attempt to impose anything other than pure capitalism will lead to failure.

we know this to be false. pure capitalism will lead to a nullified economy where big business is the only thing with any kind of power.

we saw the results of repealing glass-stegal in the 2008 crash.

regulation is needed, and possibly far more than what we have. much of what we have is flawed due to encroaching power of lobbyists and big business.

while he does have some solid research/study, too much of it is invalidated by his bias and views.

 

[Syphon]

You talking economically? Yes proper regulation into the housing market would of been nice. More regulation is the proper answer morally, but it usually just pissed "big business" lobbyists and their checkbooks off. Lobbyist should be illegal in my book.

 

[TheWesDude]

yes, the problem is the whole idea of trickle-down-economics and the theory behind it that it works.

it doesnt. we know this.

the issue is not that taxes are not high enough. the issue is that there are too many loopholes or tax cuts or breaks that allows them to not pay what they are supposed to and are in fact not "paying their fair share".

i saw some numbers a while ago saying that based on the economic numbers, when greece collapsed they were at 30% tax collection and that the US was sitting at 40% in 2009. in other words, our total tax revenue was only 40% of what it was supposed to be.

then you look at companies like lehman brothers and bank of america and such who since even before 2005 have paid no federal taxes.

that is a problem.

the richest 10% who make millions of dollars a year who pay less than 15% income taxes when they are in the 40% tax bracket.

how is it equitable for Mitt Romney to pay 14.4% income taxes on over 2 million dollars income whereas i make between 40-60k and i pay like 16%?

it is all because of tax cuts or tax breaks or loopholes that allow them to pay drastically less if any at all.

thats what happens when regulations fail. mostly due to the power of lobbyists and corporations.

if all of that was fixed or at minimum drastically changed to allow a better than 40% collection rate for taxes, then we would not have massive debt and based on those predictions we would have a positive balance sheet if we even only got it as high as 85%.

we could afford better welfare/health care/opportunity programs.

if you want to blame people for the current economic or socio-economic situation, then make sure you are blaming the correct causes.

too many people are blaming the wrong causes.

stop it.

 

[Syphon]

Hell yeah Tax revision sounds nice. But its political suicide. If they truly revamped the book, they'd step on their own master's feet.

I still do not believe expanding coverage in healthcare, education, housing is credible based on findings that all three of these programs are broken. We pay top dollar for students, but get poor results for a lot of reasons, results are posted on the global index. Healthcare, huge fraud going down, atleast a compromised 180m in cali alone. the FBI has been slacking in my book, because by bleeding money we're only reinforcing the leechs to suck harder. Throwing money is nice, but when you get poor results isn't that credit in vain?

 

[Sander]

You spend 12% of your GDP on social transfers compared to 25-30% in most of Western Europe, and you think poor people are getting *too much* money.

Yeesh.

 

[TheWesDude]

it is all about wealth creation and wealth distribution.

capitalism in and of itself allows for wealth concentration. if you do not know why wealth concentration is bad, here is why.

say you have an economy worth 1 million dollars. the system starts off with all 50 people having an equal share. now the people who are "successful" in their endeavors will gain more and more of that money creating un-equal wealth distribution. some inequity is ok, the problem is when when you have a situation where say 5 of those 50 people who own say 800k of that 1 million. that means that the other 45 people have to share and circulate that 200k between themselves and even then it will create a situation where due to the wealth supply versus demand drives down prices because those 45 people have very small shares of that 200k where the 5 people have massive amounts which means they can still purchase those same resources spending less allowing for easier wealth concentration upwards as prices go down.

so the government has a few options. the most effective means of wealth re-distribution is by taking money from those 5 people and giving it to the worst off of that 45 people, effectively creating a wealth transfer.

that is what social programs like health care and welfare and other such services provide an equalizing force in taking money from those 5 people and attempting to re-distribute it to some of those 45 people.

another option is to create more money and give it to the poorest of those 45, but all that really does is devalue current money by an equal amount, resulting in prices staying the same or maybe going up/down.

or the government can create more jobs as a means of creating wealth and distributing it.

a flat tax system taxes everyone the same which hurts the "systems" ability to remove wealth from the 5 people and distribute it to the poorest of the 45. a graduated tax system allows you to remove more money from the upper 5 people allowing for easier and faster wealth re-distribution.

tax evasion and loopholes allows those 5 people to pay less taxes and defeats the purpose of a graduated tax system impeding the systems ability to redistribute the wealth.

if you dont have effective wealth re-distribution then you will run into the problem mentioned above where wealth will concentrate more and more removing money for those without a remotely equal amount of wealth, like those 45 people circulating 200k, and continuing the wealth concentration cycle eventually shrinking that 200k to less and less as time goes on.

eventually the system will collapse as there is not enough wealth circulating to sustain the economy. increasing the wealth supply is extremely short-term and is not sustainable without constant wealth creation and forms of wealth distribution of the newly created wealth. and if you have an inequal system all that will happen is the newly created wealth will continue to concentrate requiring more and more wealth creation and devaluation.

the issue is not that welfare, medicare, medicaid, and social security do not work, the issue is that with our tax system failing to do its job of removing money from the most successful people, it necessitates the government to practice an endless stream of wealth creation, which is seen in the forms of inflation and increasing national debt.

the root of the problem is our failing tax system. and a flat tax system is not the answer, it would just exacerbate the problem if not make it spiral out of control even more.

 

[Mad Max RW]

You're forgetting an important thing: human nature. You can't redistribute work ethic, laziness, or people wanting to get ahead. You can't redistribute intelligence. A few years after spreading all of the wealth evenly you'll be right back to where you started.

Anyway, this discussion has reached the point where it's putting me to sleep. I've had it so many times before with countless others all saying the same thing. In a few weeks or months this discussion will be forgotten and people will still believe whatever they believe and that's that. Maybe in ten years we can get together and see if there's anything new to say.

 

[DarkCorp]

Ok, I am going to acknowledge that I don't completely understand what you are getting at besides the basic concepts of wealth distribution.

Is the problem, as Sander puts it, because everyone starts off with an equal amount of money but some invest thieir money into risky ventures with the possibility of a multiplied payout? What happens when those same people lose their money through these risky ventures? It seems that those who are willing to go into highly stressful and pain in the ass jobs deserve to get paid more than those who choose to work at a lower pay but less stressful job.

Now it seems we have a situation where the poor do not or choose not to enter these high paying, stressful jobs, so its understandable that they make less money, and accordingly, have less to spend on extra things like investment opportunities or the acquisition of assets.

Now it seems inflation is the big bad bogey man here since the rich seem to either, increase inflation with their purchasing power, and at the same time, keep up with inflation. Yes economists also say government action can along with many other factors can increase inflation.

Thing is, how is giving money to the poor going to fix this situation? One might say that increased government support for the poor to gain access to 'superior', educational institutions, will allow more of the poor to get 'in the know', in regards to money making strategies.

The only problem I see with this is, as stated above, not all people are equipped to handle the stressful jobs, even if they have knoweledge that those jobs are the ones with an increased payout. For Example, Bob WIlliams is poor, he is very resourceful and adaptive (to a limit which I will further explain). He is tired of his poverty so he uses government assistance to go to school to better his plight. He takes classes which will help him gain entry into, whats considered by many, the highest paying sectrors, which is usually finance, engineering, lawyers, doctors, etc. The thing is, these classes are not cheap and even government assistance can only cover so much. In the advent of failure, Bob now has debt, the governments loan to him has essentially been fruitless as Bob has not decided to go into a job field he has already spent lots of his and the governments money exploring.

 

[Syphon]

I don't think it does. Well besides Tax times, because we all know the market looks at that like a holiday.

25-30% Sander? Idk CNN just did a piece and said Finland spent half as much as America and was worlds ahead.

 

[Sander]

It seems that those who are willing to go into highly stressful and pain in the ass jobs deserve to get paid more than those who choose to work at a lower pay but less stressful job.

Now it seems we have a situation where the poor do not or choose not to enter these high paying, stressful jobs, so its understandable that they make less money, and accordingly, have less to spend on extra things like investment opportunities or the acquisition of assets.

That's not really what's happening. The riskiest jobs, those with risk for life and limb, are not generally the highest-paying jobs. There's very little risk in being a hedge fund manager, or a banker, and it rewards very well. But getting into that business is the problem. It's not a meritocracy. The riskiest jobs economically are those that don't pay well, which should be fairly obvious. If you earn a lot of money, you automatically have less risk, because you can afford to lose more.

Moreover, the gaps in rewards between rich and poor are obscene. Sure, you want market incentives and you want to reward effort and education and investment. But the income inequality in the United States (after taxes and social transfers) is incredibly high. Among all OECD countries, only Turkey, Mexico and Chile are less equal. And if you look at wealth distribution, only four countries in the entire world are more unequal: Switzerland, Denmark (interesting), Zimbabwe and Namibia.

Now, either that's because you have a whole load of lazy people and a small group of extraordinarily hard-working and hypercompetent people. Or, the US has structural issues that limit social mobility in a variety of ways. Every bit of research I've ever seen points to the latter, not the former.

And there are a lot of reasons for that. Education. Social capital. The value of wealth to get a start in life. Health. Discrimination. Location. It's complicated subject matter.

But welfare isn't just giving money to poor people. It's ensuring that people have a fallback plan. It's allowing them to build a life for their children, even if things go bad. It's allowing them to take risks. And disincentivizing work a little bit isn't as disastrous people tend to think. If someone's going to stay at home rather than work for, say, 1.5 times his welfare check -- how productive do you think that person would have been had he worked? Most research suggests that the people you most often lose to welfare disincentives are the least productive members of society, anyway -- elderly, sick and, yes, lazy people. You're not losing much -- but you are allowing a human being and more importantly his children to live a halfway decent life. That's valuable. Meanwhile, you're opening up a job for people who are more productive.

Remember, you are not taking away incentives to work with welfare. A well-designed welfare system does not create situations where it's more profitable to sit on your ass. Single people in my country get 50% of minimum wage -- they have a pretty big work incentive, but they can also live on a strict budget if they can't find work.

After all, the problem right now isn't that we have too few people willing to work. It's that there are too few jobs for the people who do want to work.

25-30% Sander? Idk CNN just did a piece and said Finland spent half as much as America and was worlds ahead.

On what? Note: Social transfers do not include education.

You're forgetting an important thing: human nature. You can't redistribute work ethic, laziness, or people wanting to get ahead. You can't redistribute intelligence. A few years after spreading all of the wealth evenly you'll be right back to where you started.

That's simply not true. Again, we can look at other societies for a comparison, and we see that social transfers promote social mobility. We have plenty of nations that are structurally much more equal than the US in income distribution. In fact, the vast majority of the world is more equal than the US.



All of this "but what if people don't work" attitude is very middle class, too. Social transfers tend to go up as the percentage of people in a country vote (not have the right to vote, but actually vote). But what we've seen historically is one exception: once you give the vote to the middle class, they start cracking down on poor relief. The lowest amount of poor relief comes in at around 60% of the vote, and it rises as more or fewer people vote, interestingly enough. People who work tend to really hate poor people and think of them as lazy buggers.

 

[TheWesDude]

Mad & Dark

the issue is not to prevent all wealth from concentrating, the goal is to prevent wealth concentration to the part where it impedes the economy or requires a cash influx of some kind to keep the economy circulating.

wealth will concentrate in a capitalist system. the issue is to find methods to prevent excessive wealth concentration to the point where it becomes a hindrance.

normally this is regulated through taxes, social transfers, government jobs, government programs, etc. the problem is if you have an ineffectual tax system, you stop re-distributing wealth based on value.

when you stop re-distributing wealth based on value, then you are either in a constant system of artificial wealth creation, or inequal value taxation which represses values of those getting taxed not in comparison of values, but rather who can afford the least representation.

the poor/unemployed have more time and energy to spend to get their voices heard, the rich have more money to purchase attention, and those in the middle are too busy working. that is the heart of the problem as to why those in the middle are largely unheard. they do not have the value of the wealthy to pay for their voice to be heard, nor do they have the time to spend complaining or demonstrating how much help they need in their appeals to emotion.


a pure capitalistic approach will always lead to the very few having much, and the vast majority having nothing.

that is the failure of pure capitalism.

socialism if taken too far will prevent people from becoming exceptional as their work will have no more value than anyone else.

communism cannot function in a system that incorporates personal wealth, fails to reward for exceptional value production.

pure capitalism and pure communism cannot work, pure socialism may be able to work, but it would lead to a disaffected intellectual elite which is what you need for invention and creation and discovery.

you need a system that prevents harmful wealth concentration, which can only be effectively accomplished with an effective tax system to remove wealth focused on the main concentrations, and methods and means of re-distribution.

if your tax system is failing to accomplish the goal of value based wealth removal to prevent harmful wealth concentration, then any attempt to re-distribute wealth by definition must fail as well.