There’s always the Libertarian and Green Party candidates as an option though.
You are a perfect representative of someone who has been bamboozled and doesn’t yet realize it.
The 1% isn’t the group doing it to you, btw, or even the 0.1%…it’s the 0.01% and beyond.
It’s the bottom 90% who pay the highest percentage of their income in taxes (not just “income” taxes…all the regressive ones too, like sales tax). People like YOU, when you were in your 20s and now at 40 as well.
Study up on Warren Buffett if you’d like to understand how it is that the net worth of billionaires stems from all the “free stuff” working people pay for through their taxes. Yes, that Warren Buffett. He agrees with Elizabeth Warren, and in fact he said it first.
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Every AnCap believes themselves a “temporarily embarrassed millionaire”. They’re only unsuccessful because of all this gosh darned regulation, and if persons would only help the 1 percent more, surely such rugged individualists would be lord of all.
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I don’t necessarily disagree. I can see “audit style” drug testing airline pilots, for example (truly randomly applied to a representative sample). I don’t think that’s an effective means of protecting the rest of us though. In those fields, we really need people’s coworkers and supervisors to be the first step there. Audit style testing makes sure the social failsafes are working.
There are a lot of ways to be too effed up to fly and drugs and alcohol are the only ones that can sometimes be caught by drug testing. “Hey, I don’t think you should be flying today.”
Some of the reasons I’ve asked bosses to send colleagues home for the day: too little sleep, too sick to work (and contagious), deathly ill (not contagious), and death of a family member or other loved one. My colleagues and I don’t work with heavy equipment but none of those things would be caught by drug testing if we did. (My colleagues should have had our boss send me home a few times for migraines so it’s not like we’re working perfectly in a self-managing setup.)
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Just like the war on poverty and the war on terror, the war on drugs has provided very nourishing iron rice bowls for the “warriors”. As Clay Shirky concisely notes - “Institutions will try to preserve the problems to which they are the solution.”
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But you are equivocating between the two to make your argument. While there is a public sector that can be meaningfully seen as a whole, there is no private sector that can be seen in the same way - individuals make their own decisions. So when it is pointed out that a factory owner didn’t build the road to their factory, the point is that that individual didn’t build the road but is using the road, not that individuals didn’t build the road. Of course individuals built every road, whether they were working for the government or for private industry at the time, or whether they just made it their personal quest to build a road from here to there.
So it’s a little baffling to say that you don’t agree with “you didn’t build that” when you have already admitting that you do agree with it. You also agree with the implication of it: that private individuals owe their success to the commons and should pay for that through taxation. I honestly don’t see what you don’t agree with.
And this is probably why you got such a negative response, because saying you don’t agree with Warren’s argument appears to be saying that either you think that people owe nothing to the society they exist in that enabled their wealth creation, or that people literally did build the roads to their factories.
If you don’t agree with the point of view that what you own “legally” is what you own according to democratic laws and therefore is essentially gifted to you by a society that has collectively chosen to have that legal structure - but rather you think there is some kind of law beyond human law that governs ownership, then that is a difference in philosophy. Arguing with “you didn’t build that” seems like it requires hallucination or narcissism.
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Thanks for clarifying your thoughts. That helps me better clarify mine. I don’t believe that every man is an island unto himself totally isolated and disconnected. I believe in taxation, and a government that helps the people and can facilitate growth. Without that you end up near anarchy which I am not advocating (like some libertarians).
I think why people find statements like warrens (and obamas) “you didn’t build that” to be offensive is by looking at the context of the statement within their whole speech and also their philosophy in general. I have no problem with funding any of the programs like roads, police etc… But it’s the attitude of “you’re not paying your fair share” or “you’re not paying enough” that these arguments are couched in. Like Millie’s angry screed above that portrays the rich as Scrooge Mcduck caricatures diving into their piles of gold, it ends up offending people who do pay quite a lot in taxes while their money goes to all kinds of things that have nothing to do with the public good. Many of the things we consider part of that public good are given the least amount of money. Not because of lack of funds being taxed, but rather because they are put lowest on the scale of importance in how those taxes are allocated. So when Warren tries to throw a guilt complex on the issue by implying an unfairness of some sort, it turns people off.
Going back to the article it’s framed in that exact context, using class warfare rhetoric while claiming “fairness” as its goal.
Addressing your final point, what I legally own is my personal property as recognized by the government. Not given to me by that government. Personal property is one of the pillars of the founding of the US (in fact the basis of the creation of the US government) and I believe that personal property rights are not derived from society.
If we agree that we collectively owe each other something then I don’t understand what is offensive about haggling over the amount. I think that argument is directly at people who reject the idea that we collectively owe each other something.
Well it’s certainly true that there are huge problems with how public money is spent, not just with how much public money there is. I don’t think you’ll get any argument there. I still think that the US (and Canada, where I live) have revenue problems based on a philosophy of lowering taxes for the sake of lowering taxes despite a lack of evidence that it creates any benefit even for the people who are paying lower taxes.
But is that was this is about? Are you giving Warren tactical advice? I’m not sure that turning some people off is so much of a problem. The country isn’t governed by consensus.
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Oh, it’s you. You’re the one who refuses to call people by their name if you don’t want to.
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Smells like the shit “post-racial society” arguments to me, cowardly and excuse-bearing for the responses they’d proceed to give regardless of how they’re being spoken to.
“Non-PC” people are always particularly sensitive about their feelings, especially when their motives and works are questionable.
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Um, they pretty much are. What does define them to you then? Magic?
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Policia?
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Hell yeah.
I wonder if they are randomly tested. Like, anywhere.
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Australian police are subject to random drug tests.
Of course, those tests are administered by other police, so…
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Being charitable, the best I can do is that property rights could be seen as human rights. A lot of people think that human rights aren’t really granted to us, but are thought to be inherent in us, and are recognized by society rather than given by it. I don’t subscribe to that, but at the same time I don’t put up a lot of fight against the recognized-rights vs. granted-rights issue.
As for whether property rights are rights, while I think @johnnylloydrollins is wrong about the founders of the US (who avoided mentioning property in the declaration of independence and in the constitution and who avoided creating any rules for creating corporations since they distrusted them as non-democratic organizations that could take power from the democratic state), the Universal Declaration of Human Rights does include the right to own property and the right to not be arbitrarily deprived of property. That’s what some colonial capitalists thought ought to be rights in 1948, so I don’t put a huge amount of stock in it, but it can’t be seen as a ridiculous position.
Another option would have something to do with God giving certain rights. Certainly nothing to engage in a discussion with if that’s the case.
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Well, I’ll freely admit that they are using perfectly legal means to hang on to that wealth and income. (Such as not having to declare money received as something so plebeian as income. Income is for poor people, after all.)
Ever played a board game with a young kid? One that has grasped the idea they can make up the rules themselves? (Playing an RPG with a GM that just wants to be able to justify their overpowered uber-characters works just as well here.) I can’t help but notice a lot of similarities for some odd reason …
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Wealth for work I’m fine with. It’s tax-dodging corporations, financial matchstick men, kleptocrats and other assorted leeches that can take a long walk off a short pier. Anyone who believes the investor class are self-made is either deluded or naive.
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