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Invisiblecarbonhoots
old hand

Registered: 09/11/01
Posts: 1,351
Loc: BC Canada
BC gets neoconservative "medicine"
    #523855 - 01/17/02 08:29 PM (22 years, 2 months ago)

Today Premier Campell anounced his first wave of destruction. Thousands of government workers chopped, thousands of people to be thrown off welfare, old age benifits, victim programs, job training, environmental protection, provincial parks, trashed.

All this follows a massive tax cut for the rich, and a reduction of the provincial minimum wage.

Plans are underway to privatize the incredibly efficient and profitable BC Hydro, raise tuition fees, increase class sizes, close hospitals, privatize ferry service...blah...blah...blah...
in the effort to further enrich the already rich.

What a fucker.


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  -I'd rather have a frontal lobotomy than a bottle in front of me

CANADIAN CENTER FOR POLICY ALTERNATIVES

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OfflinePhred
Fred's son
Male

Registered: 10/18/00
Posts: 12,949
Loc: Dominican Republic
Last seen: 9 years, 2 months
Re: BC gets neoconservative "medicine" [Re: carbonhoots]
    #524037 - 01/17/02 11:52 PM (22 years, 2 months ago)

Sounds like Campbell is taking a step back from the rampant socialism that has been the hallmark of B.C. provincial governments for far too long. Good for him sez I.

However, if BC Hydro has in fact been incredibly profitable, then privatizing it was probably not the best thing to do at this point. The more revenue it pours into the provincial coffers, the less taxes are required. Lower taxes are always good.

pinky


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Offlinenugsarenice
Carpal Tunnel
Registered: 06/04/00
Posts: 3,442
Loc: nowhere
Last seen: 18 years, 7 months
Re: BC gets neoconservative "medicine" [Re: Phred]
    #524454 - 01/18/02 11:11 AM (22 years, 2 months ago)

I would like to see them lower the minimum wage in the u.s. People would go apeshit. But i guess that in canada is to deal with all the damn foreign immigrants. Now native canadians can have their sweatshops right in the country.

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InvisibleInnvertigo
Vote Libertarian!!
Male

Registered: 02/08/01
Posts: 16,296
Loc: Crackerville, Michigan U...
Re: BC gets neoconservative "medicine" [Re: nugsarenice]
    #524509 - 01/18/02 12:11 PM (22 years, 2 months ago)

**I would like to see them lower the minimum wage in the u.s. **

i kind of agree..let the market decide what should be paid


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America....FUCK YEAH!!!

Words of Wisdom: Individual Rights BEFORE Collective Rights

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." -- Thomas Jefferson

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Offlinenugsarenice
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Registered: 06/04/00
Posts: 3,442
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Last seen: 18 years, 7 months
Re: BC gets neoconservative "medicine" [Re: Innvertigo]
    #524640 - 01/18/02 02:22 PM (22 years, 2 months ago)

Let the market decide? Is that really a good idea? My whole life i have been raised into the brilliance of minimum wage, and how i can look forward to the president of my liking rasing it that good dollar an hour. I don't know if my employers would respect the respect of paying a good wage.

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Invisiblecarbonhoots
old hand

Registered: 09/11/01
Posts: 1,351
Loc: BC Canada
Re: BC gets neoconservative "medicine" [Re: Innvertigo]
    #524871 - 01/18/02 06:20 PM (22 years, 2 months ago)

...language of the mad


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  -I'd rather have a frontal lobotomy than a bottle in front of me

CANADIAN CENTER FOR POLICY ALTERNATIVES

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InvisibleInnvertigo
Vote Libertarian!!
Male

Registered: 02/08/01
Posts: 16,296
Loc: Crackerville, Michigan U...
Re: BC gets neoconservative "medicine" [Re: nugsarenice]
    #525255 - 01/19/02 01:21 AM (22 years, 2 months ago)

***Let the market decide? Is that really a good idea?***

That's one of the reasons of inflation. Force a small mom and pop company to pay some shlub with one brain cell a set wage and stay competative with that of a larger company with the money. I say let the market decide and if bagging groceries is offered at 15.00 an hout then so be it.


--------------------

America....FUCK YEAH!!!

Words of Wisdom: Individual Rights BEFORE Collective Rights

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." -- Thomas Jefferson

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InvisibleInnvertigo
Vote Libertarian!!
Male

Registered: 02/08/01
Posts: 16,296
Loc: Crackerville, Michigan U...
Re: BC gets neoconservative "medicine" [Re: carbonhoots]
    #525256 - 01/19/02 01:21 AM (22 years, 2 months ago)

language of capitalism....


--------------------

America....FUCK YEAH!!!

Words of Wisdom: Individual Rights BEFORE Collective Rights

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." -- Thomas Jefferson

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Invisiblewingnutx

Registered: 09/24/00
Posts: 2,287
Re: BC gets neoconservative "medicine" [Re: carbonhoots]
    #529714 - 01/24/02 01:15 AM (22 years, 2 months ago)

Canadia gets a clue. I guess they think that staying competitive has some merit. Even Sweden is chopping its lavish welfare system in the past few years.

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Invisiblecarbonhoots
old hand

Registered: 09/11/01
Posts: 1,351
Loc: BC Canada
Re: BC gets neoconservative "medicine" [Re: wingnutx]
    #531578 - 01/26/02 12:16 AM (22 years, 2 months ago)

Is there anybody out there who isn't a full blown, Econ 101 touting free marketeer???

Staying "competitive" by having wage earners race to the bottom doesn't help anyone except the owners of capital, who make up a TINY portion of people.

I'd rather see people make as much as is possible, rather than as little as possible.


--------------------
  -I'd rather have a frontal lobotomy than a bottle in front of me

CANADIAN CENTER FOR POLICY ALTERNATIVES

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OfflinePhred
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Male

Registered: 10/18/00
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Loc: Dominican Republic
Last seen: 9 years, 2 months
Re: BC gets neoconservative "medicine" [Re: carbonhoots]
    #531783 - 01/26/02 08:24 AM (22 years, 2 months ago)

carbonhoots writes:

"Staying "competitive" by having wage earners race to the bottom doesn't help anyone except the owners of capital, who make up a TINY portion of people."

Tiny? Hardly. Anyone who owns a savings account, stocks, bonds, treasury bills, mutual funds, or an RRSP is an owner of capital.

As for wage earners racing to the bottom... anyone who has ever worked in a management position or even as a clerk in the accounting department will verify that the largest single operating expense of virtually ANY business is the payroll. Every time the minimum wage is raised, marginally profitable businesses must close.

This happens even in Third World countries where the wages are considered a pittance by those who view the government as "Nanny".

For example, I live in the Dominican Republic, where the new government raised the minimum wage a year ago. The immediate result was a sharp reduction in staff of virtually every hotel, bar and restaurant in the tourist areas. The tourist industry is the number one employer in this country by a long shot. MANY hotels (including one entire chain of thirteen big hotels) who had been hanging on through the dreaded Labor Day to Christmas stretch and keeping their entire staffs employed fulltime as a matter of good faith even though the hotels were virtually empty for four months in the expectation that the winter season would generate enough revenue to payoff accumulating debts, went bankrupt, leaving thousands unemployed. Over thirty hotels on the North Coast alone closed. Most employees were owed at least some back salary, almost all were owed severance pay, etc. These people now have no recourse. No job, no savings, no prospects of new jobs, no one left to sue. If the wage rate had stayed where it was, the majority of these hotels would have made it through the winter season. They might not have made any dividend payments to their shareholders, but they would still be open, employing otherwise unemployable workers.

"I'd rather see people make as much as is possible, rather than as little as possible."

As would I. But it is not true that every business owner with minimum wage employees rakes in millions while their employees starve: far from it. I know the intimate financial details of one tourist bar here where the owner has been faithfully paying all her employees (albeit not always on time), even giving them interest-free emergency loans which take months or years for them to repay from payroll deductions. She herself takes out just enough money to eat and pay the gas for the tiny car which is used to pick ups supplies. Her rent has not been paid for months, either on the business or on her apartment. The school her son attends has not been paid for almost a year. She works seven days a week, twelve to sixteen hours a day. All of her credit cards are maxed out (and credit cards here charge a lot more monthly ineterest than American ones do), and that money went to pay salaries, not to buy TVs or fancy clothes. She hasn't taken a vacation in over two years. I know for a fact that some months she takes less money home than the girl who washes dishes in the kitchen, and she certainly gets less than the bartenders and waiters do.

For her, the increase in the minimum wage was the death knell. Even though the high season is finally upon us, I doubt she will be able to make enough to be out of the red by Easter. She may be bankrupt even before then. What happens to her twenty employees then?

And that is just one example. I know of at least three others who are in similar positions, I just don't know the exact dollar amounts involved. I can pretty much guarantee that all four businesses will be gone by mid-summer.

When the minimum wage is out of line with reality, people who might otherwise have risked opening a business with minimum wage employees are better off taking their money and investing it in some FP 500 company who employs not a single minimum wage worker. The woman I described above would certainly have been much better off if she had done so.

That may seem unfair to you, but your opinion doesn't alter the immutable laws of economics. Those who don't have the resources or the temperament to open their own business must work for someone else. That someone else must be able to afford to hire employees. At a certain point, employees become too expensive to hire, and the job vanishes. This is not wicked, or immoral or greedy -- it is reality.

pinky


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Invisiblecarbonhoots
old hand

Registered: 09/11/01
Posts: 1,351
Loc: BC Canada
Re: BC gets neoconservative "medicine" [Re: Phred]
    #538260 - 02/02/02 12:37 AM (22 years, 1 month ago)

Pinksharkmark writes...

"Anyone who owns a savings account, stocks, bonds, treasury bills, mutual funds, or an RRSP is an owner of capital. "

How much money does the average Joe earn in investment income? Fuck all. On the other hand, if your stinking rich, you can make a billion dollars in a day, as George Soros did speculating currency. Nothing was produced by his actions, except inflation, while workers, who actually DO produce something, saw their wages fall because of the adjustment the economy had to make.

Shit dude, small business is in the same boat as labour basically in that the free market works against them.

On the east coast of Canada some grocery giant sold food at a loss untill all the mom and pop stores went bust, then they jacked the prices up. It happens all over, all the time. That's why we need regulation.

Small business should be a partner with labour in the effort to equitably share the output of the economy among citizens.

What's really sick is the big, rich rich,companies (NIKE, WALMART) who pay workers fuck all. They say "productivity" is increased when labour costs are low. So if all workers worked for free we'd have a super productive economy. How productive would that be for civilization?

Surely a good civilization is the goal I seek, but this "free-market-free-trade" stuff that's going on works against that. It's about a small few owning all resources and makes the majority into virtual slaves.




--------------------
  -I'd rather have a frontal lobotomy than a bottle in front of me

CANADIAN CENTER FOR POLICY ALTERNATIVES

Edited by carbonhoots (02/02/02 01:10 AM)

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OfflinePhred
Fred's son
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Registered: 10/18/00
Posts: 12,949
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Re: BC gets neoconservative "medicine" [Re: carbonhoots]
    #538347 - 02/02/02 03:04 AM (22 years, 1 month ago)

carbonhoots writes:

"How much money does the average Joe earn in investment income?"

About eight or nine per cent a year, if Joe is a conservative investor. A bit more in boom times (like the late Nineties), a bit less in recessionary times.

"On the other hand, if your stinking rich, you can make a billion dollars in a day..."

You can lose a billion dollars in a day, too.

"...small business is in the same boat as labour basically in that the free market works against them."

Not so. First of all, the economic model in place in the world today is far from being a free market, so any arguments regarding the effects of the free market on either labor or small business are perforce largely speculative. Secondly, the biggest factor working against small businesses is not the "free market", but the insane burden of government paperwork that every business must deal with. One of the most significant advantages large businesses have over small businesses is that they spend a much smaller percentage of their overhead costs on processing government-mandated paperwork than small businesses do. Don't blame the non-existent "free market", blame government interference.

"On the east coast of Canada some grocery giant sold food at a loss untill all the mom and pop stores went bust, then they jacked the prices up. It happens all over, all the time."

No it doesn't. It happens very rarely. And this tactic can easily backfire. There was a very large company that used to shave its profit margins to the bone all the time in the hopes of grabbing more market share. They went bankrupt. Maybe you heard of the company? K-Mart.

"What's really sick is the big, rich rich,companies (NIKE, WALMART) who pay workers fuck all."

Define "fuck all". Last time I checked, WalMart paid their employees more than minimum wage. This was in a store in Ottawa, so I don't know if it is true in B.C., but in a large corporation like WalMart the salary guidelines are usually determined by head office, so my guess is that it is probably the same deal in any of their Canadian stores.

"So if all workers worked for free we'd have a super productive economy. How productive would that be for civilization?"

Now you're being absurd. Put a bit of effort into your arguments, dude.

"It's about a small few owning all resources..."

This is just not true. What resources does WalMart own? Or Nike? Or, for that matter, Microsoft? WalMart doesn't own iron mines and wheatfields. WalMart is a reseller. Nike MAY own a few rubber plantations and some tanneries, but hardly a significant percentage of the world's supply. They pretty much buy their raw materials from others. Microsoft owns basically office buildings.

"...and makes the majority into virtual slaves."

Define "the majority", please. Define "virtual slaves", please.

It seems you consider anyone who either doesn't own a large business or have a government job as a slave. I'll bet "the majority" of wage-earners would take offense to being classified as slaves.

No one has yet explained how offering a job to someone is the equivalent of enslaving them. Neither have you.

pinky


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Edited by pinksharkmark (02/02/02 03:08 AM)

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Invisiblecarbonhoots
old hand

Registered: 09/11/01
Posts: 1,351
Loc: BC Canada
Re: BC gets neoconservative "medicine" [Re: Phred]
    #538376 - 02/02/02 04:11 AM (22 years, 1 month ago)

All these things you ask me to explain are self explanitory.
Don't you understand? Your not that dull.

Above minimum wage isn't fair if the corp. you work for profits billions. Work should be a team effort. Not some guys personal money machine.

Often, investors don't lose a billion a day because the government bails them out ie. mexican peso crisis 50 Billion bailout. Investors rarely object to this type of interference in the functioning of free markets, the type that pads their asses.

In this day and age, with our technology and power, their is no excuse for poverty. There is a badly designed economy, with roots in the aristocratic age that ensures poverty will continue.

In fact, central banks will raise the interest rate in order to preserve a level of unemployment. This ensures a a downward pressure on wages. (NAIRU)

I could go on but I value brevity. Good day, my right winged buddy. I hope you see the light about this. I really do. I was once like you...


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  -I'd rather have a frontal lobotomy than a bottle in front of me

CANADIAN CENTER FOR POLICY ALTERNATIVES

Edited by carbonhoots (02/02/02 04:39 AM)

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OfflinePhred
Fred's son
Male

Registered: 10/18/00
Posts: 12,949
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Re: BC gets neoconservative "medicine" [Re: carbonhoots]
    #538510 - 02/02/02 10:53 AM (22 years, 1 month ago)

carbonhoots writes:

"All these things you ask me to explain are self explanitory."

I didn't ask you to explain, I asked you to DEFINE. It appears that your personal definitions of "majority" and "slavery" differ from those commonly accepted by native English speakers. Certainly your definitions don't match the ones in any of my dictionaries. I take your arguments seriously, but I do want to make sure that I grasp them completely. It's hard to communicate effectively if I assume that your definition of "slaves" is the same as mine.

As for being "self-explanatory"... I have invariably found that when someone pulls this phrase out of the hat, it really means "I can't defend my position."

"Don't you understand? Your not that dull."

Oh, I UNDERSTAND what you are trying to say. But I don't AGREE with it. Your position is that all the evils you describe are caused corporate greedheads. My position is that these evils are due to government interference.

"Above minimum wage isn't fair if the corp. you work for profits billions."

Then what IS fair? Double the minimum wage? Triple? Ten times? Who decides? The government? So WalMart workers, for example, should get ten times the wages of K-Mart workers for doing precisely the same work because WalMart is profitable and K-Mart loses money?

What if the company posts a profit of a billion dollars in the first quarter of the year and a loss of half a billion the next quarter? Do the workers have to repay their salaries to erase the deficit?

"Often, investors don't lose a billion a day because the government bails them out ie. mexican peso crisis 50 Billion bailout."

My point exactly. These "bailouts" have nothing to do with the FREE MARKET and everything to do with government interference. If these corporations weren't confident that the government would cover their ass (in order to prevent unemployment) when one of their dodgey maneuvers goes sour there would be far fewer dodgey maneuvers.

"In this day and age, with our technology and power, their is no excuse for poverty."

Ummm... partially true. If you sit on your ass in front of the boob tube all day, you are pretty much guaranteed to be poor, regardless of the power and technology of the society you live in and the government handouts you will receive.

"There is a badly designed economy, with roots in the aristocratic age that ensures poverty will continue."

Agreed. The economy is badly designed, all right, but it is government that is doing the designing, not private individuals. And you are quite correct that the more government interference there is in an economy, the longer poverty will persist.

"I was once like you..."

And I was once like you. Until I entered the workforce and saw for myself what was going on.

pinky


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Edited by pinksharkmark (02/02/02 10:59 AM)

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Invisiblecarbonhoots
old hand

Registered: 09/11/01
Posts: 1,351
Loc: BC Canada
Re: BC gets neoconservative "medicine" [Re: Phred]
    #538665 - 02/02/02 02:54 PM (22 years, 1 month ago)

Have you ever read any Linda McQuaig, James Laxer or John Ralston Saul?

Since your in the Ottawa area (Canadian) these authors would be relevant. The Cult of Impotence by McQuaig is my fave.
It would help you.

As for "government interference", in the 1800's, in England, there was a true laisez faire economy on place for a while. The result, child labour, toxic working conditions, poor wages, pollution to the max. It really sucked.

Don't you believe our country can do better than we are now? With homelessness, working poor, child poverty, while we keep cutting back the welfare state and enriching the rich. There was less poverty in Canada in the 60's 70's than there is now. How can that be? Our GDP is way bigger now, we're way richer now than then. It's because laisez faire economics are taking over more and more, the more they do, the more the gap between the rich and poor grows.



--------------------
  -I'd rather have a frontal lobotomy than a bottle in front of me

CANADIAN CENTER FOR POLICY ALTERNATIVES

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OfflinePhred
Fred's son
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Registered: 10/18/00
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Re: BC gets neoconservative "medicine" [Re: carbonhoots]
    #538964 - 02/03/02 12:23 AM (22 years, 1 month ago)

carbonhoots writes:

"Have you ever read any Linda McQuaig, James Laxer or John Ralston Saul?"

I've read Saul.

"Since your in the Ottawa area..."

My parents live in Ottawa. I visit them from time to time. I left Canada fourteen years ago to live in the Dominican Republic because I got tired of having more than 55% of the money I earned stolen from me by the Canadian government and handed to jerks who knew how to manipulate the unemployment insurance system and welfare.

"As for "government interference", in the 1800's, in England, there was a true laisez faire economy on place for a while. The result, child labour, toxic working conditions, poor wages, pollution to the max."

England never had a true laissez-faire economy, though it was certainly a lot closer to it in the 1800s than what is in place today. As for the rest of the things you mentioned, they were due not to the economic system in place at the time, but to the Industrial Revolution. Every country in the world, from dictatorships to monarchies to republics to democracies, experienced the same things when they first switched from an agrarian base with cottage industries to full-on steam-powered factories in an urban setting. You will note that many countries today STILL have child labor, toxic working conditions, poor wages and pollution to the max. China is a prime example. India is another. Yet the government in China controls every aspect of the lives of its citizens, and India is notorious for its elephantine governmental bureaucracy. So much for government intervention being the answer.

"Don't you believe our country can do better than we are now?"

Yes, I do. But not through government action. Government programs are not the solution, they are the problem.

"With homelessness, working poor..."

If they don't work, they will certainly STAY poor.

"... while we keep cutting back the welfare state and enriching the rich."

We don't enrich the rich. The rich enrich themselves. All that is happening is that now the government is stealing slightly less money from "the rich" than they used to.

"There was less poverty in Canada in the 60's 70's than there is now. How can that be?"

Many reasons, all of them government-induced:

1) At that time the Canadian dollar was at par with the US dollar... at times it was even worth MORE than a US dollar. Now it is 62 cents because of government mismanagement of the economy.

2) The tax burden was HUGELY less in the 60s and 70s. I saw a statistic in MacLean's magazine last year. "Break-even Day" for the AVERAGE Canadian (not the rich, mind you, but the AVERAGE working Canadian) is now somewhere around May 22nd. This means that for just under five months of each year you are working for the government, not yourself.

3) Inflation (caused solely by government) has eroded the value of people's savings. Savings is capital. Capital is necessary to produce wealth.

4) The defining annual family income amount that marked the dividing line between "poor" and lower-middle-class was adjusted sharply upwards by the government in the 70s in order to justify Trudeau's increased expenditures in attempting to create "The Just Society". Overnight, a whole bunch of people who used to be considered "lower-middle-class" magically sank into poverty. Yet another government maneuver. Nothing to do with private industry.

There's more, but that will do for now.

None of these factors have anything to do with private industry. All are directly attributable to Canada's ever-increasing lean towards Welfare Statism. If that trend is now starting to be reversed, then GREAT! It's long overdue. I just hope it isn't too late.

"It's because laisez faire economics are taking over more and more..."

You can't be serious. Canada is the least laissez-faire free country outside of Europe. Hell, the Socialists (NDP and PQ) ran Ontario and Quebec into the ground in the Eighties and Nineties, while the rest of the free world was enjoying a boom economy. That's an opportunity that is gone forever.

"...the more they do, the more the gap between the rich and poor grows."

The gap between the richest and the poorest segments of ANY society, regardless of its political system, will always tend to increase. That's because the poorest group produces no wealth at all, or at best produces just enough to subsist on with none left over, while the wealthiest group reinvests excess capital not used in personal consumption (you can only use so many Mercedes and tuxedos, after all) in the production of more wealth. That is why the wealth gap increases in free or semi-free societies.

The gap widens in Statist countries as well (communist, fascist, socialist, dictatorships), but for a more sinister reason. In Statist countries the excess capital is not reinvested in production of new wealth, instead it finds its way into the pockets of those with political power, to be funneled into banks in Switzerland or the Cayman Islands.

The end result is the same... the poorest stay poor, the richest get richer. But at least in a free economy, the capital gets re-invested, creating jobs. This is not the case in Statist countries.

The key point to grasp is that governments PRODUCE NO WEALTH. All they can do is confiscate wealth. Some of it does get redistributed to people in need. Some of it is used in useful infrastructure, such as highways, or essential services such as police and military. But the vast majority of it is pissed away.

The more government you have, the more gets pissed away. The more you piss away, the poorer people are. Not a difficult concept to grasp.

pinky



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OfflineAMarxistGardener
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Registered: 02/06/02
Posts: 4
Loc: Canada
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Re: BC gets neoconservative "medicine" [Re: Phred]
    #543185 - 02/07/02 12:22 AM (22 years, 1 month ago)

Just thought i would jump in here, a couple of points.

1) the sterotype of the 'lazy' working-poor, that somehow they got what they deserve, is total bunk. the main reason people stay poor is that there are no opprotunities to improve their economic situation, unless they have more money. see the problem here?

2)as for the 'break-even day' , when the average taxpayer has apparently paid their taxes for the year, it is in march or april. the coporate 'tax day of freedom' is january 2nd. not exactly fair, now is it.

3) the argument that socialist/communist/etc countries increase the income gap between the rich and the poor because they 'funnel money into swiss bank accounts' is crap. The only really democratic socialist country was Chile, just before Pinochet (with u.s. backing) took over and instituted a fascistcapitalist system.

4) and just so you know, governments CAN create wealth in terms of public corporations, and create the necessary conditions for wealth to occur, such as an educated workforce, health care, roads, sanitation, etc. try to imagine a country with none of that, and a strong, healthy, local economy.

Anyways, just a couple points...

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OfflinePhred
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Re: BC gets neoconservative "medicine" [Re: AMarxistGardener]
    #543325 - 02/07/02 04:16 AM (22 years, 1 month ago)

AMarxistGardener writes:

"1) the sterotype of the 'lazy' working-poor, that somehow they got what they deserve, is total bunk."

I never implied that all the working poor "got what they deserve". But it is undeniable that many of the "working poor" grab the first job they can find and stick with it for the rest of their lives, doing the absolute minimum required of them, and some of them do less than that. That is why they stay poor. No one is ever going to get rich pumping gas.

Some people I went to high school with fit the above description exactly, as do some people I have had working for me. Not everyone wants to make the effort to better themselves. As long as they can pay the rent (or live with their parents) and feed themselves they are content, and don't give a damn that they are labelled "poor" by government statisticians.

"the main reason people stay poor is that there are no opprotunities to improve their economic situation, unless they have more money. see the problem here?"

And who will provide the opportunities? Private industry, not government. It is well known that the regions of any free country with the highest percentage of poor are those areas deficient in employers... i.e. private industry.

"2)as for the 'break-even day' , when the average taxpayer has apparently paid their taxes for the year, it is in march or april. the coporate 'tax day of freedom' is january 2nd."

It may be as early as March or April in the USA... sounds about right, but I don't know. I was referring to Canada, a significantly more Socialist country than the USA. And your January 2nd date is complete bullshit. Corporations pay a lot more than 0.27 % of their revenues in taxes.

"3) the argument that socialist/communist/etc countries increase the income gap between the rich and the poor because they 'funnel money into swiss bank accounts' is crap."

Not crap at all. The ONLY wealthy individuals in Statist countries are those with political pull, and they are wealthy indeed. Soviet Politburo members lived like kings while the peasants on the collectives starved. If you believe that none of these guys had offshore bank accounts than you are naive.

"The only really democratic socialist country was Chile..."

What about Sweden? or Canada? Or England?

"4) and just so you know, governments CAN create wealth in terms of public corporations..."

Maybe in theory they CAN, but in practice they don't. That is why they eventually get sold off to private industry... because they don't create wealth, they hemorrhage cash.

"...and create the necessary conditions for wealth to occur, such as an educated workforce..."

Education existed long before governments took it over.

"...health care..."

People have been using doctors since the dawn of time. Governments are not necessary in order for doctors to exist.

"...roads, sanitation, etc."

None of those things produce wealth. Are they desirable things? Yes. Do they produce wealth? No. Is it necessary to have government involved in any of these things in order to have them? No.

" try to imagine a country with none of that, and a strong, healthy, local economy."

Nineteenth century America. Nineteenth century England. Nineteenth and Twentieth century Hong Kong.

pinky









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OfflineAMarxistGardener
Stranger
Registered: 02/06/02
Posts: 4
Loc: Canada
Last seen: 22 years, 1 month
Re: BC gets neoconservative "medicine" [Re: Phred]
    #546233 - 02/09/02 11:31 PM (22 years, 1 month ago)

in reply...

1) why SHOULD they get a job? so they can aspire to be head burger flipper, instead of a grunt? not much room to aspire to.

2) in terms of canada, i know for a fact "break even day " its in januar, if not the 2nd. dont quote me on the states.

3)the USSR was a authoritarian centrally planned economy/political system. since it wasnt democratic, the power obviously navigated towards the top of the hierarchy, and power and wealth go together.
p.s. i never said i liked the soviet system, and canada is SO not a socialist country.

4) i would like to see a corporation get off the ground and survive without roads, an sanitation, etc. modern communities need such amenities to exist, and corporations need at least SOME workforce that isnt living in a squalid workcamp.

-AMarxistGardener

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