Kerry a liar? - Page 4

I have no such loans, luckily my tuition is only a small amount, since I have academic scholarships and parents that work for the University.

I'm not certain those are meaningful or even accurate distinctions...

They are accurate and meaningful, you just dont want them to be.

But it is not a fun world to live in where people dont believe the facts.

Just because things make sense to you doesn't make those things right.

Do you have any criteria for determining someones authority on a subject, or which facts to believe? Do you just pick the side that 'feels' right to you?

You seem to have contradicted yourself here.

They're your opinions, I'm just curious.

You and I are very similar to one another methinks, only, what makes sense to you, seems to be right leaning, and what makes sense to me, tends to be left leaning, that's not saying I wouldn't support either, but more often than not, What comes out of the left makes more sense to me, not necessarily case-by-case, but in general over the past few years I've actually raised an ear towards politics.

but more than anything the divide between right and left is what irks me the most, it seems that people get too caught up with disagree with the other side simply because they are the other side.

Ohhh. So THAT is equal opportunity...

Thanks for the reply. That's the most pragmatic I've ever seen you - no offense intended.

My issue was with the following comment: "I however refuse to accept things base on supposed or assumed authority by anyone on some issue."

Although I think you've somewhat explained that, I'm still interested in knowing if there are any sources that you will accept at face value without question? (Besides any currently elected President, that is. )

Yeah see, my parents worked their way up into positions where they could afford to be able to do this for their children. You see, my dad was born into a row house in Philadelphia, his father died before he graduated from high school, and his mother soon after. He was put through college from inheritence and eventually met my mother, gave up coaching football, and got a PhD. Now he is a top executive at a University and my mother is a lawyer for the same institution. How's that for the American dream? Oh, and we just built a brand new house. 5 kids, is a lot to support also...the system works. So now they are being compensated for their sacrifices and committment.

So what did YOU do to be born by that wonderful family?

I am the product of the system's success. Some people are born as products of the system's failures, but then they have the chance to become the success.

-deleted- must read entire post before replying

Please re-read.

You missed his point.

Equal opportunity exists if the playing field is level. It's not. If your father was a deadbeat dad and your divorced mother worked in the cafeteria at the school, you would not have equal opportunity to be attending the school or living in your 5 bedroom house.

No, the point is to keep compounding upon their successes. You make the most of your given situation, with what is presented to you.

The playing field is not always level, but that is what we need to strive to accomplish. Not equal outcome though, but equal opportunity.

That's the rub, though. The opportunities afforded to you are vastly greater than those who may live in the hypothetical situation I described.

Drop 100 people on a island with equal amounts of supplies and you have equal opportunity (discounting the fact that some people are more capable than others). Unfortunately, what you call equal opportunity only exists at the beginning. Opportunity changes as time passes and generations build upon the successes and failures of their progenitors.

I think there's a problem with semantics here.

I honestly don't think most Dems, or liberals, or whatever you want to call them, would say that the goal is equal outcome. What I think is the crux of the issue is the means by which the playing field is levelled.
Thoth.

But see, you should not be levelling the field by BRINGING PEOPLE DOWN TO BRING OTHERS UP.

So you really think the republicans are doing that right now?

Before you post please do a search for affirmative action and my username here. I don´t believe in that at all. It should be handled on primary and secondary level of education. BUT leveling the playing field at that age isn´t anything I have seen the republicans do at all. Actually I have seen a lot of the opposite.

Proive me wrong and please a bit more qualified than a few catch phrases.

I don't think that's what Dems are trying to do - if you refer to the tax system in particular, a flat tax has problems of "bringing people down" just like the graduated system. It just brings down different people than the current system. I think you have to ask which people can best bear the equities or inequities, as the case may be.

Thoth

That is exactly what they are trying to do. Kerry = more money taken from the top earners...ouch.

I guess I don't understand your point about more taxation = bringing people down. Is it more fair to give a break to the rich b/c of fortuity of birth (I do realize some of them work hard - I do) and increase the proportion of taxes to income paid by the middle class (they are working within the system to make the future brighter for their kids, too)? That's what a regressive ("flat") tax would do. I realize that the current tax cuts don't bring about a "flat tax" but that is where I think conservatives wish to go. Where's the tipping point of fairness?

Thoth

Wait, youre saying the middle class needs this money for sending kids to college? There are already prograaaams that do that, based on income and number of kids, and need.

Why not make college/university fully taxpayer funded and entry would be granted through a lottery system?

That's equal opportunity!

I had no idea you were such a socialist.

Socialist? I was making fun of the fact that you want yet more ways to do something that is already being handled through tax payer dollars.

I'm not Thoth2.

I'm still playing around with the semantics of 'equal opportunity'.

No, you're not, and even if you were he'd be wrong with what I am attempting to talk about.
I was talking about taxes in general - my recent posts have not said anything about educational programs.
So, what about it, M-tosh? What is fair in taxation?
Thoth2

I do not think the alternative minimum tax is fair.

So you're dad was put through college on his inheritence, allowing him to get a good education, allowing him to get a good job, allowing you to have choices of your own.

And as a 19 year old, you have decided that all of this is "the system working" and babble on about "equlity of opportunity" and your fantasies of "income redistribution". I'm sure all that sounds very grown up to you, and cooly hard nosed.

22% of America's young children live in households below the poverty line. Two thirds of these are working poor, meaning wage earners that can't get a job that pays enough to get out of poverty. These are people who couldn't go to college even if they had the money, because they have no savings, and certainly no inheritence.

What poverty means in America, the richest country in the world, is that millions of children go to bed hungry. Their parents would put more food on table if they could, but the money from a minimum wage job only goes so far. You know, jobs, the kind that wealthy business owners "down-size" and "off-shore" because, after all, maximizing profits is best for America.

All this contemptible, ignorant bullshit in this thread about welfare queens and bootstrapping and lazy poor folk living off the dole literally makes me ill. And coming from a bunch of white, privledged tech empowered kids it borders on the obscene. You people have no idea what your talking about, and apparently are perfectly happy to parrot the slogans that you've heard without doing any research into the actual faces and facts of poverty.

If it's such a fcking free ride I wish any one of you could trade places with a poor person, because I guarentee you could not handle it. Bootstrap my ass.

Again, what do you think of the alternative minimum tax?

They live in households below the poverty line because the government picks a line and calls everything above it "middle class" and everything below it "poverty."

You should also mention that the clear majority of these "households" are single women with children. They also choose to work part time disproportionately and refuse to take jobs with less flexible hours since their priority is children over money. Their income reflects this and it is not a product of some oppression.

The part about college is 100% pure bullshit. Their income would open up an array of grants and loans. They can take a minimum of two years at any community college or (GASP) get a loan to get a well paying trade that then allows them to pay for college in the field they truly wish to study.


100% unbackable bullshit. Most middle class and ALL impoverished children qualify for free lunch at public schools where they are served two meals a day for absolutely free. Study after study shows most children, even in impoverished homes eat out two to three times a week and have a growing obesity problem from ever earlier ages.

Minimum wage jobs are predominately held by students or very young people. They hold them in transitionary times when they are gaining the skill or trade to move on up the ladder. I earned minimum wage when I was 16 and some above it all the way through college. The second I was out of college I started earning real wages. I went from earning a maximum of $7000 a year (poverty) to earning a middle class wage and have every year since then. This is NORMAL. My brother earned minimum wage while going to trade school to become an auto and diesel mechanic. He earns a middle class wage and has every since he graduated. Again this is NORMAL.

Regardless of jobs being off-shored, the per capital income is still rising in America. The reason poverty advocates focus on household incomes is because households are getting smaller and thus it looks like their wages are shrinking when in reality they are rising per person. So a generation ago Dad, Mom and three children might have earned $50k a year with Dad working, mom at home and the three children at school. ($10k per person in the household) Now the single mother with her one child might be earning $25k per year. They are classified as a "household" and thus it looks like the household income has declined. In reality though the household income has gone up to $12.5k per person. The household is much smaller.

In an age of 50% divorce rates, we have more and smaller households. However per capita income is and has been rising.


Keep spreading your ignorance. I have worked and LIVED in the poorest neighborhoods. I have dealt with this population for over a decade. Go to any social worker and see how much remorse they have for 95% of the population receiving services. The people on the frontlines know them best and know the scams that occur. BTW assuming welfare recipients must be non-white is probably the most racist thing I have heard so enjoy not only your ignornace, but your racism as well.

This is from the Walter Williams link I posted earlier.


A bit more...


How many start at the bottom and never move from there? 5%. Of that 5%, how many were drop outs, drug users, lazy, dishonest, criminals, etc?

When you consider that the drop out rate is 25% and somehow only 5% of the population never left poverty, that really says something about the upward pull on income possible in our country if you do pretty much anything more than breath in and out.


Kiss my ass. I don't have to trade places with them. I WAS THEM retard. My father was a mechanic and my mom was a housewife. We had 4 kids in my household and my financial aide application showed over $10k of unmet need every year that the state college did absolutely nothing to meet. (I can't possible be poor, I'm WHITE) My biological father was a drug addict and my stepfather and biological mother are both alcoholics.

I'll be a millionaire before I'm 40 and a multimillionaire before I retire.

Take your wannbe shit sandwich that you portray and enjoy eating it. Being on the bottom doesn't do anything but motivate you to get moving and get better. If you ENJOY being on the bottom, then there isn't a single thing to government can buy you or give you that will change that.

Nick

All I know is that the poor aren't really poor- and even if they are poor, they're poor for a reason!

Ok, ShawnJ--does that J stand for Jimmy Carter? Now go be like him and get out there and DO something about it, since you are so right and passionate about the poor.

According to income, you are poor.

So you can feel free to show us how "poor" you really are.

Nick

And he's even posting from a Mac, the most expensive of all computers! haha

I plan on more travel abroad in future but simply from my trip to Paris I can say that indeed there are poor in many countries not just the US. Any large city will contain poor people and poor live also in rural areas (again in pretty much all countries)

I would hope comments of the like in the quoted materal above are given rest here in AO.

Fellows