Rand Helps Us Out
And this just in:
"Republican U.S. Senate candidate Rand Paul on Friday urged Americans who have been unemployed for many months to consider returning to the workforce in less desirable jobs rather than continue relying on government unemployment assistance."
Or how about this as a viable alternative? Why don't they set up their own medical licensing organization, and just declare that they are doctors? It's worked before.
"Republican U.S. Senate candidate Rand Paul on Friday urged Americans who have been unemployed for many months to consider returning to the workforce in less desirable jobs rather than continue relying on government unemployment assistance."
Or how about this as a viable alternative? Why don't they set up their own medical licensing organization, and just declare that they are doctors? It's worked before.
Comments
Regulating medicine can be easily defended, but what type of light bulb I put in my house?
The answer, of course, is that he doesn't "think." He mouths Libertarian platitudes that don't work in the real world.
You go to school or learn a trade and you move up, like the vast majority of Americans do.
Like the vast majority of Americans DID.
Upward mobility is virtually nonexistent in the United States today. There are no jobs in the wasteland that we call "private enterprise" for people to move up into, no matter if they have seven Ph.D's.
Corporations, and their bought-and-paid-for economic theories have utterly failed our country. The free market as it exists today benefits no one but a tiny minority of hyper rich individuals.
Unfortunately, the rest of us have nowhere to turn to correct this monstrous injustice, but government.
What's your solution?
Far higher taxes for the rich, to end the phenomenon of a bubble economy.
Massive re-regulation to end the era of routine corporate criminality created by Reagan-era deregulation.
About 50,000 corporate executives and their lackeys in jail.
The prosecution of the Republican party under RICO statutes.
Trial and execution of Bush and Cheney for their war of aggression, in which they killed a million innocent civilians.
Public recognition of the obvious fact that it is greed and racism that motivate the teabaggers, and nothing else.
That's a start. Any further suggestions?
I admire the honesty of you lefties. At least you admit you want state-sponsored socialism with a strongman at the helm.
Venezuela? I thought you were describing Bush's America.
By the way, did someone in Venezuela invade an innocent country and kill a million civilians? Boy, I missed that one. It must have happened on some other planet, like the one where oil companies are your friend.
Your solution have worked... NOWHERE!
But anyway, keep agitating. If you guys get your way we'll be a turd world hellhole with a blathering caudillo. You can join the sweaty hordes clamoring "social justice" as anybody with a brain (and capital) run like hell.
I'd love to see the statistic about upward mobility being "nonexistent."
You lefties like to shoot off your mouths, but when pressed, your rhetoric dissolves into bullshit.
I'll say this though...My bet's on the Amnaerican Bald Eagle over the green eagle any day of the week.
Just another Hugo admirer I suppose.
Then you don't have a fucking economy. There has to be a bottom somewhere.
No-one works for the privilege of starving. No moral paradigm of any virtue whatsoever supports the worldview that any legal (and often necessary) job should be paid less than bread and water, because that's not work anymore, that's slavery.
That's North Korea actually. A few people dine with gold chopsticks while millions starve to maintain the structure of power that keeps the people with gold chopsticks getting fat, watching John Wayne movies and executing dissenters.
Furthermore if you can't feed your family then you've got a more urgent problem than your boss's quota and schedule - and whole industries and sectors of service will soon collapse.
When Green Eagle says "hyper-rich" he doesn't mean 200,000 dollars a year. He means rich beyond comprehension. Rich beyond any rationalization except that they have stolen the lives of millions of other people to keep 50 fucking Ferraris in their carport, mile-long lines of coke and hookers on tap.
It's not patriotism to suggest that the hyper-rich should be above the law, that the power to topple the economy should be in the hands of unelected shysters.
It's like being on the Titanic and saying "fuck the women and children - there's only enough room in the lifeboats for the rich AND their caviar. Oh and by the way there aren't enough lifeboats period - because no-one regulates how many there should be in case the fucking ship sinks".
Get a grip. Have one moment of ethical clarity and simple common sense and ditch this ideological dribble that says the social advances of the last hundred years aren't worth anything.
A decent start in life. A wage that let's you eat. Enforcement of basic worker safety laws. One law for all and all equal before it. And no slaves.
That's freedom sweetheart. Not the liberty to steal billions and encourage witless God-fearing rednecks to arm themselves to the teeth in case Obama wants to steal their TV, or Venezuela invades Texas, or whatever other braindead fantasy they can invent.
"http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0127/p21s01-coop.html"
A sample: "for most of the poor, the United States is no longer the land of opportunity. Economic research in the past decade has found that upward mobility has faded..."
This is from that notorious Commie rag, the Christian Science Monitor.
So give it a read, before we decide who is the bullshitter who is shooting his mouth off.
Now, I have to admit that I have never been to Venezuela, but I have been to other third world countries, and found some notorious horrible places, Tulkarm, in the West Bank, for example, that were not as bad as what I have seen in the Mississippi delta. I think a lot of Americans are in real denial about our supposedly vastly better lives than you can find elsewhere.
Now, as for you, Rational Nation: I think you are very wise not to bet on Green Eagle- a notoriously angry bird, but a very lazy one who is extremely unlikely to come through under pressure.
And Magpie and Gene, thanks once again for the support.
I have read the Brookings study, have you?
It is a point of departure, not a conclusion. Upward mobility does appear to have started slowing down since the 1980's. Why?
They don't know yet. We import more poverty than any other country in the world. The price of college has risen faster than prices in general (when will politicians go after Big Ed?)
You see, my pinko friends, I don't just look at some unfortunate statistic and scream "AHA, The United States sucks!" like you guys do. I go read the study, its methodology, and what conclusions, if any can be drawn from it.
Now, do you have something intelligent to say, or are you going to scream more Karl Marx propaganda?
Now, do you have something intelligent to say, or are you going to scream more Karl Marx propaganda?"
I provided you with some evidence to prove my point. You responded with childish petulance and predictable, unimaginative Republican party-line insults.
You really aren't much of a debater, Silverfiddle.
Others here advocate more labor laws, higher minimum wage, etc. Well, they have all that in Europe and their structural unemployment is chronic.
Looks like you're the one who stinks at debate.
Here's an example...
I'm in Australia. Our unemployment rate is half yours, none of our banks fell over duing the Global Financial Crisis, we did not go into recession by the technical measure during that crisis, we have the 4th highest life expectancy in the world (the USA is not in the top 15), and publicly-funded universal health care.
It's not communism, it's not a dictatorship. It's just capitalism with better regulation and less corruption. Most of all, we don't have the pitilessly self-serving myth that those who have more or less.... necessarily deserve it.
"You start at the bottom of the ladder and work your way up."
Brow-beating fairytale for the self-satisfied and self-serving.
Work your way up... until some multinational corporation headed by some shmuck - whose daddy also ran companies - destroys your enterprise by being bigger and more powerful - with absolute impunity, all the while quoting the same drivel.
It always amazes me how people with such rancid fear of "socialism" ever and always assume that everyone begins from an even field anyhow, has the same opportunities and .... hey... if they get sick? should lose everything and die in the street because somehow "poverty" is always something they deserve.
That is a cheap lie. I guess that's about the highest level you can reach, given the patent absurdity of your positions.
Sorry, Silverfiddle- I respond to each comment as it deserves, and yours in this thread have been pretty pathetic.
The big mouthed Teabagging Sharon Angle revived it in the Nevada Senate race.
The Poor in America are Poor because they want to be or because god hath ordained it or because they make inferior widgets or because leftist socialism...
You are correct that no one actually advocated a dictatorship, but I don't know how else Green Eagle's agenda could get implemented. Perhaps he was a little tongue in cheek??? It sounds more like the French Revolution...
Your example of Australia is an excellent one!
I am happy you brought it up. Australia is the gold standard of how a country should operate. It is ranked #3 in the world in The Heritage Foundation's Index of economic Freedom. (http://heritage.org/index/)
Only Singapore and Hong Kong are higher (but who wants to live where you can get sick breathing the air or get caned for chewing gum in public?).
Australia has a relatively small and efficient government, low corruption, and light but effectively enforced regulations on the economy and banking. It is an excellent business climate, and that translates into jobs!
They are successful because they do the opposite of what Green Eagle suggests.
We here in the States are being crushed by bloated, wasteful governments (federal, state, local) who couldn't regulate their way out of a wet paper bag. They incentivize banks to loan money to people who cannot pay it back, so we transfer billions to fannie and freddie.
They encourage reckless consumer spending, and we have laws in place that guarantee Wall Street that the taxpayer will bail them out (to the tune of trillions) when they shoot craps at the casino.
I wish to God we were like Australia! You pay much higher taxes than we do, but your government provides you a great return on your money.
The rest of your post is worn out claptrap, but at least you can recognize economic excellence brought about by free market capitalism.
Back to the Upward Mobility Study:
The study data shows that the upward mobility problem is mostly confined to those in the bottom quintile. Still, a person in the bottom quintile has only an 18% chance of falling below the level of her parents, and overall, 67% of children are economically better off than their parents.
Thus, your statement is verifiably false:
"Upward mobility is virtually nonexistent in the United States today"
If you are an adult able to read news articles, think about them and then debate others over the InnerWebz, you do have the essential building blocks for getting ahead in this country. The vast majority do.
If you would rather sit there and whine and cry making excuses why you can't succeed, go right ahead, but at least keep your defeatist crying to yourself.
You are dragging down others who might stumble upon your negativity and actually believe what you say.