Strawman argument!
15 yard penalty and loss of down 
13 Likes
The speech came from my favorite person holding a Congressional seat right now, Elizabeth Warren (swoons).
Unfortunately and rightfully so, Warren believes she can accomplish more where she is right now than as a presidential candidate.
8 Likes
Some of us might. I would bet, though, that you could have a country struggling with all sorts of failing infrastructure and rising inequality, seeing other countries in comparable situations enjoy a much higher standard of living and demonstrably because of tax-funded programs, and there would still be dogmatists who refuse to consider that taxes are too low because of vapid platitudes like how âno one is entitled to anythingâ. You know, hypothetically. 
13 Likes
Strawman argument!
Er what? Itâs your argument. Do you object to the âyou didnât build thatâ as being an unfair summary?
Already there. We have one of the highest disparities of wealth in the developed world and piss poor government functionality. Those laws and agencies designed to protect the public from the abuses of those with wealth and political power are underfunded to the point of uselessness.
Has any privatization scheme EVER benefited the general public? Infrastructure is in the hands of government because profit motives have a nasty habit of creating exploitative incentives. Much like how our free market health insurance system creates a motive for high costs to provide little care.
Which one cannot actually say because when enforcement of laws and regulation is hobbled by deliberate lack of funding.
Regulation serves to act as a shield against âmight makes rightâ abuse by those wielding political and economic power.
18 Likes
Regulation serves to act as a shield against âmight makes rightâ abuse by those wielding political and economic power.
And yet in the present topic, the political and economic power lays in government that, according to yâall, hands out favours you disagree with. And its âmightâ is backed by a rather more forceful apparatus than a mere multinational corporation.
Itâs an unfair summary even of Obamaâs speech.
The line most often quoted is âIf youâve got a business â you didnât build that.â It sounds like itâs implying that those who created a business didnât build the business. However, the âthatâ isnât referring to âbusiness;â itâs referring to the list of things immediately preceding that statement.
If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges.
So, when you summarize an argument as âYou didnât build that,â youâre referencing a phrase that was disingenuously used against Pres. Obamaâs campaign to make it look like he was saying that people not having built their own business, as opposed to not having built everything necessary to the success of their own businesses.
I just donât get what youâre arguing. By conflating Obamaâs argument with Warrenâs, youâre acknowledging that their argument was that businesses are largely successful because the infrastructure was there to help them be successful, and that said infrastructure was paid for by taxpayers. However, by referencing that specific phrase, you seem to be trying to reduce both arguments down to how the Republicans were trying to present Obamaâs speech: that the founder of a business has no part in how successful a business is (which is the strawman that people are accusing you of, because no one actually believes that).
Perhaps if you expanded upon what you think is wrong with Warrenâs argument, instead of reducing it to one often misconstrued phrase (spoken by someone else) and then dismissing it, people would be more understanding of your contempt for it.
19 Likes
The solution to corruption in government is less corruption, not less government. Military might is a formidable but blunt and ugly cudgel. The machinations of multinationals are subtler, and can be dressed in âbuy the world a cokeâ bullshit. In the end, they have at least as powerful of effects on the flows of happiness and prosperity around the globe as military might.
11 Likes
You were the one who brought âyou didnât build thatâ into this thread.
I pointed out (with the linked Wikipedia article) that the phrase was widely understood to have been taken out of context, and therefore did not represent what you claimed it represented.
Your dismissive declaration that it was ââŚbeneath needing to respondâŚâ makes that a textbook example of a Strawman argument, with added style points for knocking it down by declining to knock it down.
14 Likes
So you call underfunded regulatory agencies, heavy lobbying attacking consumer protections, and tax breaks which only serve narrow interest wealth building as signs that political power is being wielded against corporate and privatizing interests?
That is truly laughable.
15 Likes
Taxes pay for civilization. How do YOU propose we pay for roads, an educated populace, police, firemen, national defence, etc? How do YOU propose we protect our natural resources and environment? If you want to say some ignorant shit like that, itâs on YOU to explain it.
16 Likes
In most cases corruption is because of âless governmentâ meaning either a lack of enforcement of regulations or regulations completely bereft of power to protect the public. The unwillingness to wield power in the interest of the public.
âSmall governmentâ, âlibertarianismâ in its present state is really to let the wealthy and politically powerful to use the infrastructure of government and the laws to its own benefit to the exclusion of notions of responsibility to the public which creates such infrastructure.
In many cases government action is the only thing which ensures liberties of the public. We have the 14th Amendment and its Equal Protection Clause precisely because lower levels of government could not be trusted to ensure that civil liberties of its citizens are protected.
11 Likes
Its confusing being pissed on with receiving âthe trickle downâ.
6 Likes
That would depend on WHOâS paying them. Iâm sure they would love to tax the working poor and middle class some more. The irony is, me and all my broke-barely getting by friends and family donât mind paying taxes, because we want to live in a world that is based on âusâ and not âI got mine so fuck youâ.
17 Likes
True. More often than not âless governmentâ really just means âmore privatization with less oversight.â Like when Donald Rumsfeld replaced big chunks of the military with private contractors who did the same work, only those contractors did it worse and charged several times as much.
11 Likes
As far as I can remember, Boeing is always having massive layoffs. (They caused a huge property bust in Long Beach in 1993.) I wonder if the executive members in Washington use helicopters for commuting like they did in the Long Beach-Seal Beach-Huntington Beach areas?
3 Likes
Hell, even just pay what they OWE so far. The externalization of pollution and environmental degradation, wages (full time employees STILL needing food stamps and social services), infrastructure development, etc, as you mentioned, will go down in history as one of the most heinous swindles of all time
8 Likes
Thatâs funny, I donât see that chapter in my MicrosoftŠ History⢠BookÂŽâŚ
6 Likes
Oh, do go on! And corporations/capitalists are? What does history show? Has government improved the average Americanâs life in the last two centuries?
15 Likes
26 Likes
