If Whoopi Goldberg is getting up in arms about tax increases then this movement is crossing all kinds of lines. And since we’re on the subject of taxes, let’s dispense with two untruths:
Untruth #1. The tax increase is just a raise in the income tax rate of 3.6% for the top two or three percent of earners.
Truth: The federal tax rate really increases by 16 percentage points under the President’s proposal! Lifting the cap on social security taxes adds another 12.4% to the marginal tax rate (the tax rate paid on the next dollar of income) at the upper end of the scale. The marginal tax rate on today’s highest earners is 38.9% (36% income tax plus 2.9% for the medicare portion of FICA). It will increase to 54.9% under the President’s plan (39.6% income tax, 2.9% medicare tax, and 12.4% social security tax). Today’s high earners get to keep, spend, and invest 61 cents of every additional dollar they earn; if the President’s plan take effect they will only get the benefit of 45 cents on the dollar. That extra 16 cents lost changes the calculus on a lot of investment decisions, the effect of which is that the earnings of high earners will be substantially less.
And it’s even worse than that. For people making more than $250,000 Obama’s plan reduces the deductions they can take on things like child care and charitable contributions, which effectively raises their taxes even more. That’s why some of the hardest-working professionals are considering going John Galt: working less and earning less, because the rewards for earnings beyond $250,000 just aren’t worth it after the government takes 60% of every extra dollar. Add sales tax and state income tax and there isn’t much left.
Charitable organizations are upset because Obama’s plan will reduce the incentives for their wealthiest benefactors to contribute.
LATER: Alec Baldwin becomes a supply-sider.
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Sounds great to me. Let them eat dirt, like the rest of us. Then we will eat them.
That John Galt thing is the first constructive idea I’ve heard from Republicans during this crisis. If they all start working less, it will open up jobs for others, and jobs with good pay too. Bring it on!
No, it won’t magically open up jobs for others. Do you even know what jobs most of the $250k wage earners do? are you qualified to do them? my bet would be, *no*.
Don’t worry.
My Family Doctor is playing that game, going all John Galt.
But it is going to backfire on him–I have been looking for a part time job since JiffyLube cut my hours. I’ll just put an ad in the penny-saver and pick up the patients that he drops.
Or maybe I’ll just start golfing on Wednesdays.
The thing that people aren’t getting is that when “the rich” decide to work less so they can squeeze under that $250k number, then the ones that are small business owners start looking for ways to cut their costs as well – so that full-time receptionist at the lawyer’s office just became part-time, and the small business owner just let three of his people go.
More taxes are bad, m’kay?
Caleb´s last blog post..More on the .410 AR
Does it hurt when you try to think?
The people that make $250,000+/yr are the kind of people who own businesses that employ other, less-skilled or -qualified, workers. When the doctor or lawyer cuts back, they lay people off. The cashier from Piggly-Wiggly is not going to step up and start performing cardiac catheterizations or doing patent attorney work to fill that “open job”.
Worse, if the Piggly-Wiggly cashier has been going to night school to become a medical receptionist or a paralegal, she’s screwed now, because there are fewer job openings and more unemployed paralegals and medical receptionists competing for them.
Tam´s last blog post..Today In History: Why wasn’t I told of this?
Have you guys lost it ? Ever heard of the laffer curve ? Do some research. The plan of making all the wealthy get poorer does not put success in the hands of the others. Its not a zero sum game. Plus, please understand that the wealthy do not stay wealthy. The amount of folks that move in and out of what is considered wealthy is huge. This is supposed to be the land of the American dream. You can get wealthy if you work hard enough at it. The American dream is being punished here. When the tide rises all the boats go up. Obama wants to drain the pond.
“If they all start working less, it will open up jobs for others, and jobs with good pay too.”
Spoken like a true Commie;
“I suck, ‘cuz I don’t have a job, and it’s ALL someone else’s fault!”
The “working less” thing is the red herring, here. This is about production, dolt. And, if the government is instituting policy that is prohibitive towards someone, or groups of people, from producing, they are deliberately attempting to punish someone, since revenue WILL go down.
This is historical FACT, here, and not mere conjecture.
This “John Galt thing,” you are referencing is VERY clearly covered in a book. It’s called Atlas Shrugged. But then again, it’s written by someone named Ayn Rand, so I wouldn’t expect you to, ya know, actually have read it, since you Reds do nothing but vilify the woman, and the freedom she was espousing for her entire life.
theirritablearchitect´s last blog post..What’s a fate worse than death for "The Most Dangerous Man In America"
Does it hurt when you try to think?
Actually it tickles. It’s hilarious to watch all you third-rate, conformist intellects circle the wagons around your mythical $275k earners whose every effort is irreplacably specialized. I’m sure there are lots of business owners right on that cusp who are willing to not just cut their own hours (they all pay themselves on an hourly basis, I’m sure), but erode their business with layoffs just to spite the feds.
And of course there are no doctors earning $175k who would happily pick up patients and hire a new employee to help handle the extra load. No, your scenario is not a placebo for ideological dullards, it’s a serious threat to our economy. Rich peepuls gonna b slackin, oh noes!
Ayn Rand was a Trotskyite, which was the genetic forebear to our lovely, modern neoconservaitves. Her father was a well-to-do pharmacist who lost everything to the Bolsheviks in the Russian revolution of 1917 and that experience colored her outlook for the rest of her life, including her writing and ideology. Her aspirations were to become a screenwriter, which led her to Hollywood, where she met an married an actor. he writing is insufferable and her ideas are not based in any functional reality, except as an irrational psychological response to her life experience.
If you saw a man struggling in an icy lake would you save him? An objectivist would not. Going Galt is all about childish self interest. She also rejected faith, mysticism and organized religions of any kind.
Rand believed that the only moral social system is laissez-faire capitalism. She was an anti-statist and anti-communist and she rejected libertarianism. Globalism didn’t even enter into her ideological schema. For her, existence was all about self interest, which falls apart quickly as soon as you need to call a cop or a fireman or a paramedic to help you.
“For her, existence was all about self interest, which falls apart quickly as soon as you need to call a cop or a fireman or a paramedic to help you.”
Do you think those people are doing what they do strictly out of love of their fellow man? They’re being paid to do those jobs. When I call a paramedic I’m not asking him to do me a favor out of the goodness of his heart. He’s paid to be a paramedic.
Ask yourself why all of your examples of people helping people are government employees. Why not mention Red Cross volunteers, Boy Scout groups, churches thrift stores to help the needy, and other civic associations? Those people are working to help the community without being paid by tax dollars, or in many cases without being paid at all.
Disclaimer: I’m not an Objectivist or a Randian and have never even read one of her books, though I’m broadly sympathetic to some of her views. I’ve noticed that a lot of Randians are childless just like Rand. I think it’s hard to square raising kids with her famous statement, “I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”
Also, I tend to think her ideas about achievement being the pinnacle of human existence were heavily influenced by her upbringing in the Soviet Union.
I think however that she’s quite right about people wanting to force peoples’ unwilling “sacrifice” to turn them into subjects under the control of the state.
A Trotskyite, neocon, anti-statist, anti-communist, anti-globalist?
Wow.
While you were throwing darts at the dictionary, you forgot to hit “Fascist’.
(P.S. Ayn Rand indeed was a crazy, bitter, misanthropic woman who said quite a few nutty things. This does not automatically invalidate her every utterance. While you’re flinging darts at the old Webster’s, lob one into “ad hominem” and read what it says…)
Tam´s last blog post..Unintended consequences…
“Rich peepuls gonna b slackin, oh noes!”
Laugh it up, moron. You’ll be one of the ones out of work. Wait, you probably don’t actually DO anything to begin with. nevermind.
“Laugh it up, moron.”
Og, no name-calling, please. Criticize the ideas, not the person.
“…childless just like Rand.”
That’s a critical understanding about Rand. She lacked that part of socialization. When you have kids, you begin to see things differently.
“Do you think those people are doing what they do strictly out of love of their fellow man?”
Yes, actually. The largest rescue squad in my county is one of the busiest, largest all-volunteer rescue squads in the United States. They don’t do it for money. They do it for their community. Lots of them have kids, too. So the premise of your argument that they are all government employees is moot. Anyway, more power to that idea: government exists to serve provide for our health and safety.
Rand was an idiot. I dismiss her idiocy en masse.
http://www.ginandtacos.com/?p=1305
There’s a reason people laugh at such ideas.
What’s wrong Tam, too many big words?
Yeah, Trotskyites —> Rand —> Neocons.
Connect the dots yersef, bubba:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2008/02/01/GR2008020102389.html
No name calling was perpetrated. “Moron” describes a person with a mental age between 8 and 16. it’s no different from saying “laugh it up, firefighter” or “laugh it up, Canadian”. The statement referred to the commenter in a non-judgemental and purely descriptive manner. Since I saw “idiot” “Trotskyite” et al being thrown around I assumed accurately descriptive terms were not verboten; however, for the less mature among us who may be offended by words they cannot understand, my apologies to our esteemed host.
As for Rand? Never cared for her. She said in twelve kabillion words what I can say in two: Statism sucks. And Tam? Tam’s on the short list of people I do Not Want To Piss Off. I DO like it, though, when other people piss her off. Please, folks, piss off Tam. I like to watch.
“Yes, actually. The largest rescue squad in my county is one of the busiest, largest all-volunteer rescue squads in the United States.”
True enough, though I think by throwing police into that list you certainly suggested government employees. Certainly the volunteer squads are outnumbered by the full time paid firefighters and paramedics.
“What’s wrong Tam, too many big words?”
That comment was unwise on your part. Heh.
No, too many mutually-contradictory ones. It’s okay; I understand that they’re all listed as synonyms for “bad” in your Roget’s.
Telling me to go research Ayn Rand, Trotskyism, and “neocon” (for whatever value of “neocon” we’re using this week) in a Washington Post article is like me telling a cardiologist to go look up this really keen article I read on lowering your cholesterol in Reader’s Digest.
Besides, I already read it.
Tam´s last blog post..The Obama administration hates your mother…
“And of course there are no doctors earning $175k who would happily pick up patients and hire a new employee to help handle the extra load.”
I won’t and I don’t make $175 a year. None of my primary care colleagues are interested, either. (You don’t know much about the practice of medicine, do you?) Hiring more staff so I can increase my schedule from 25 to 35 complex patients a day isn’t going to make me “happy” nor will it improve my provision of care. Hiring a nurse practitioner or a PA to assist with the simpler cases is fine, but that doesn’t help with patients requiring specialty referral. (For that, you need, ummmm… *specialists*.)
As to the “mythical $275k earners whose every effort is irreplacably [sic] specialized”, I know a mythical anesthesiologist married to a mythical emergency medicine physician whose combined mythical income exceeds $400k a year.
They’re cutting back to one week a month, respectively, and they’re not alone.
I already have problems getting my patients referred to specialists in a timely manner. Shortages and recruitment shortfalls in high-paying specialties including radiology, orthopedic surgery, anesthesiology, cardiology and child psychiatry are already manifest. You’re not going to train those folks up in an afternoon, Skippy, and I can assure you they’re not going to be lured by the prospect of an income tax hike waiting at the end of the tunnel.
But no worries, persimmon. You won’t miss any of those irreplaceable, well-reimbursed specialists. (They’re mythical, after all…) Should you need a hip replacement someday, just stop off at a Kragen for a u-joint, huff a can of starter fluid, grab a Sawzall, some dental floss and a needle and, as they say, “suture self.”
The plural of “anecdote” is not “data’, but here is some anecdotal “evidence” anyway.
My wife works as an ER Pharmacist in a large, urban, Tier 1 Trauma Center, which is attached to a teaching hospital. She’s involved in working with medical residents of all stripes as they work their way towards graduating as full-fledged MDs.
And she says she sees a significant number of them getting near the end of their programs and coming to the conclusion that they just don’t want to put up with the bullshit required of medical practitioners in this country.
Now, maybe I should be telling this story in response to a post on Obamacare, because that’s not likely to make being a doctor more pleasant, but I think it applies here too. Further decreasing the incentives for people is not a good way to encourage their numbers.
My point is just simple market logic. If a bunch of righties huddled just over the $250k threshold decide to voluntarily reduce the supply of their services in political protest, they will not affect the demand for said services, thus their protest represents opportunity for others to fill that void.
The reactionary Randian response, already displayed, is that these mythical protesters are way too special to be replaced. So apparently this will be a protest among people very special and inhabiting a narrow income range wherein the protest math adds up. It sounds like a protest of dozens to me. It should have a big impact.
It is indicative of just how imprisoned you are by the straitjacket of your ideology that you think this is a “protest”.
I’m pretty sure the “mythical” part has been covered sufficiently above for those in the audience capable of grasping the motives at hand.
Thank you for playing. Your lovely parting gifts should be arriving on your doorstep no later than FY ’10.
Tam´s last blog post..Bad choices.
“The reactionary Randian response, already displayed, is that these mythical protesters are way too special to be replaced.”
Not at all. In time, I can and will be replaced. As to your hip — that remains to be seen.
Regarding the market, at least as it involves medicine, it is not “simple” (being a highly-regulated industry), nor generally governed by “protest.” It is not prone to “reactionary Randian response” (or even absurdly ad hominem alliteration) and it is not a matter of “dozens” of individuals affected. It has, however, been undergoing a generalized “shrug” for many years secondary to liability, reimbursement and social factors, which is why we have shortages in critical specialties now.
So go right ahead… throw more taxes on cardiothoracic surgeons and see what happens to cardiac morbidity and mortality. Good luck getting new, qualified specialists to meet current demand through a pipeline over a decade long.
(Hint: First, do a bit of research on Canadian medicine and learn what happened to availability of specialty care and patient wait times when the government capped physician income.)
Persimmon,
Here it is in simple terms:
I am a network security professional making northward of 250K billable.
When I cut back my billable hours and take on less contracts, I will be paying less money into the King’s Coffers.
Sure, others will step in to take the contracts I refuse. But they will not be at my level of expertise, and not able to command the same rates.
All the demand is filled, but there is a lot less wealth created. Less tax is confiscated, the deficit deepens, and the economy as a whole suffers.
I still have to eat, but I can eat at home instead of going to restaurants 5 nights a week. I can put off buying a new car, deepening my local dealers distress.
I can defer remodeling the house, depriving the local craftsmen of income.
Hell, since I am working less I can stop paying a landscaping service to take care of my yard, I can do it myself and cancel my gym membership to boot.
It all trickles down, and yes, the $50K/year, newly certified Tech School Graduate may be able to pickup one or two of my castoff clients, but can he pick up the slack in my spending?
I thought not. He surely will not be making up the tax shortfall I created by deciding to stop working for the taxman.
Former Senator Bob Packwood, during a Dem. dominated cogress, asked the congressional budget staff to figure out what the increased income would be for the next decade if the tax rate for those earning over $1,000,000 / year was increased to 100%.
The CMB happily provided him with some large figure …
He then took these figures to the floor and lambasted the Democrat staffed CMB for being stupid enough to assume that there would be anyone with a such an income left in the US a year after such a tax increase was passed.
Persimmon’s assumption that prohibitive taxation at the quarter-million mark will have little effect is another example of exactly that kind of stupidity.
Tam, your head is boney and cockeyed to match your predisposition for
If you’d taken the time to browse the link with that massively engorged (alas, so dressed up with nowhere to go but to the blogs!) hermaphroditical cephaloid growth that resides upon your stump of a neck, you would apprehend, alas, that it was a diagram and not an article.
Pah-shaw, you poseur, you. Go skin a squirrel or smack you mother or molest something young, since you enjoy that kind of dominance thing.
Happy motoring, enigmatardicus.
I’m cut to the quick…
Does this mean we’re not friends anymore?
I just browsed your bloggies, Tam.
Try Ritalin. And knock off the Dew!
Beyond that, party on, wacky Aquarius.
Pauli, this time it’s your turn. Criticize the person’s ideas all you want. Leave the ad hominem horsecrap insults on your own blog.
Being a sound money, economic liberty, minimal government, small c consrevative, Hayek/Freidman follower, I have to speak up for Persimmon.
No, Persimmon won’t take up neurosurgery. But the $200,000 neurosurgeon (to fantasise an example) will expand his practice.
In the professions, there is a loooong line of people waiting to take up the slack of anyone who dies, quits, or just slows down.
Not necessarily even less skillful engineers, doctors, and lawyers either. As one gets nearer the top earning rank of any profession, the skill difference recedes in importance to explain the very greatest success. Other factors, including just plain random chance, become more important. The $300,000 professional and the $200,000 professional probably are separated by other things than ability, or even actual performance.
Same principle on which everyone in Nashville knows singers who are just as good as Keith Urban, yet can’t make a living. We ALL know of authors who write better stories than (Nora Roberts, John Grisham, etc.) yet are struggling.
I mean, are the “Left Behind” or “Mitford” series’ success explained by ANYONE, even the people who buy them, as qualitative?
I know that in the criminal bar in my town, the ordinary prosecutors and public defenders are more competent than the run of private lawyers, who generally earn about three times the pay. (I see regularly about 50 lawyers in action well enough to make a judgement.)
And I CERTAINLY can name four or five young lawyers whom I’d hire before I went to the most expensive- and definitely not “the best”, at any aspect of the profession- criminal lawyer in this town.
And hey- aren’t a few of the people scoffing at Persimmon the same ones who say that the war on some drugs is futile, because as long as there is a demand for something, someone will be willing to meet it, even at the risk of prison?
Studying and working really hard is way better than prison.
Going Galt is a personal solution, sure. And it does hurt the economy as a whole. But it’s not going to be noticed.
And, really, going Galt is what the anti liberty people want. They DESIRE an income maximum, remember? Much better if the greedy capitalist pig architects accept it voluntarily.
Our masters remember the cat and the pepper…
staghounds´s last blog post..Provocative Clothing…
Wow. Nothing like an ad hominem attack (Pauli Galtese) to prove your point. Or not.
The fact is that raising taxes on the rich was tried twice in the past, by FDR and by Carter. The result was that the rich quit tying to make money, moved assets offshore and otherwise reduced their tax exposure… with the result that those assets weren’t around to invest, make money, expand the economy and create jobs.
When you extend that punishment to the merely well-off, the successful small businessman and highly skilled specialists you REALLY will start to see an impact. Why should a doctor work to earn more than that $250k? A lawyer? Why should anybody? What happens to the people they employ or who are employed to support them? Nurses, secretaries, etc?
Taking things from those who have earned them and giving them to those who have not is counterproductive.
Even if it WOULD work it’s still an abomination.
“…the genetic forebear to our lovely, modern neoconservaitves.”
{Yawn} Shall I really start in with the name calling, Commie? Oooops!
“My point is just simple market logic. If a bunch of righties huddled just over the $250k threshold decide to voluntarily reduce the supply of their services in political protest, they will not affect the demand for said services, thus their protest represents opportunity for others to fill that void.”
…Except that your “model” hasn’t anything to do with being “voluntarily”. It is distinctly an artificially induced phenomenon (by taxation) you are describing in regards to competition. This is the classic leftist example of “leveling the playing field” scenario. It is the antithesis of true competition.
“I just browsed your bloggies, Tam.
Try Ritalin. And knock off the Dew!
Beyond that, party on, wacky Aquarius.”
Ah, yes. The stereotypical leftist using Ritalin as a means to drug up children. A favorite course of action for unruly kids, by NEA standards, no less. Seriously, if anyone ever actually said that to my face, I’d tear their head off.
Let’s face it guys, these folks we are nominally “arguing” with do nothing more than pray at the altar of the government, convinced of its benevolence and ability to right all wrongs, real or imagined. Even if it’s precisely that which screwed the system to begin with.
They’ll just never understand.
Since when is suggesting someone try Ritalin and stop the Mountain Dew an ad hom attack?
Perhaps you consider calling our lovely Tam a wacky Aquarius an ad hom attack? This is the bible belt, after all, and the application of an astrological term might seem threatening or vaguely insulting.
I’ve never encountered such obtusely skewed misunderstandings of the basic currency of human affairs as I have here in this twisted space.
Good riddance.
This is why blogs were invented, to give meaning to the mild wits who exceed the capacity of their communities to accept them. But that doesn’t justify your absurd presumtions about the way the world should be — at a larger scale, it will never conform to your understandings or your expectations. Mostly because reality doesn’t work that way, especially for people of your caliber.
Praise the Lawd and pass the Cheetos!
Tam would be hot if she wasn’t obviously, uh, special.
Oh. I’ve been “Going Galt” for quite a few years now.
Been watching this collapse from behind a bowl of popcorn.
Bwah-hahahahaw!
/totally self-sufficient
//hope you’ve got an oil rig in your back yard, suckers!
///read it and weep: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_depletion
Anyway, more power to that idea: government exists to serve provide for our health and safety.”
Someone is decidedly lacking in an education, here.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men,…”
Without health and safety ensured inside a community, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are difficult if not impossible.
Government — call it a friendly collectivist mob — protects the citizenry from external and internal threats (except when it does not, like on 9/11). That activity makes health and safety; and the ability to enjoy them and leverage them into Life, Liberty and the pursuit of etc., possible.
“Without health and safety ensured inside a community, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are difficult if not impossible.”
Not in my world, so don’t you dare speak for me.
theirritablearchitect´s last blog post..Classic No-Think
No, Persimmon won’t take up neurosurgery. But the $200,000 neurosurgeon (to fantasise an example) will expand his practice.
No. He won’t.
In the professions, there is a loooong line of people waiting to take up the slack of anyone who dies, quits, or just slows down.
(Sighs.)
There’s a good deal more at work here than elementary fee-for-service market forces, Staghounds. Your assumption that the supply of physicians operates according to predictable free market principles fails on the point that there is no free market in medicine and there hasn’t been for several decades.
The reason for current shortages in medical specialties is that “the best and brightest” have already shrugged by failing to fill high demand/high paying slots.
Now, crank up the taxes and add more State control to the professions and watch what happens.
Taking things from those who have earned them and giving them to those who have not is counterproductive
What is really counterproductive is pretending we don’t have to pay for the grossly expensive wars Bush never had the courage to fund. Much of the money Obama is trying to raise has already been given to defense contractors and wildly irresponsible financiers.
While I hate the idea of paying for the huge market failure in the big investment houses, that seems necessary since they were playing with the savings of a lot of innocent people. I would love to hear ideas for how to pay for derivatives catastrophe other than by raising taxes, which brings me back to my original point, that “going Galt” is the most constructive idea I’ve heard from the right in quite some time.
It may not be all that constructive. It might, in fact, be a pointless and pathetic gesture by a selfish fringe group, but even that is better than the vacant obstructionism that is now standard right-wing fare.
“Since when is suggesting someone try Ritalin and stop the Mountain Dew an ad hom attack?”
Don’t play stupid. You know what you wrote above. Don’t be disingenuous or assume that other people aren’t as smart as you, little lawyer. Consider this your second warning. My blog, my rules.
I would love to hear ideas for how to pay for derivatives catastrophe other than by raising taxes, which brings me back to my original point, that “going Galt” is the most constructive idea I’ve heard from the right in quite some time.
Pay attention, now. Carrying on the fine tradition of Bush, they’re going to borrow even more money and monetize the debt, that’s how. Can you explain how else we’re going to retire a $65 trillion Medicare deficit from any foreseeable tax base?
Try to get it straight: Obama has no more “courage” than Bush nor is he capable of “raising” money. He’s nothing more than the latest dealer in a monetary shell game that’s been ongoing for decades. Government funds come from the efforts of the productive (who are, frankly, getting a little tired of all this), are borrowed from other productive people (see prior) or is created out of nothing, (devaluing everyone’s investment in currency.)
Your thesis is nothing more than a warmed-over derivation of the Marxist labor theory of value and is equally wrong.
Without health and safety ensured inside a community, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are difficult if not impossible.
You’re placing the cart before the horse. The provision of health care and security are services provided by a market. You’re not going to have those until you stipulate to rights necessary to the formation of that market.
“Don’t play stupid. You know what you wrote above. Don’t be disingenuous or assume that other people aren’t as smart as you, little lawyer. Consider this your second warning. My blog, my rules.”
Define your own reality, then.
What I wrote has nothing to do with ad hom attacks and you know it, so you try to write your own rules.
Do that, but don’t expect rational people to take you seriously. In reading just a few posts and sets of comments here, I’ve seen a ferocious resistance to anything pertinent to non-fantasy social theory; that is, actual reality.
It’s good you and your crew of loons are able to have this outlet for your infantile flyover country blathering ho-downs. It’s bread and circuses, Golden Buffet flavored. Birds of a feather!
(And really, health care and security are provided by the market? The market? There are no inalienable rights to HAVE A MARKET. frikking idiot.)
Cheers, apes.
None of you actually knows anyone who makes $250K or more, so STFU about something you haven’t a clue about.
Going Galt is another talking point cooked up by the corporate media to get you arguing among yourselves because you’re more easily controlled when you’re divided. Idiot sheeple.
…I’ve seen a ferocious resistance to anything pertinent to non-fantasy social theory; that is, actual reality.
You don’t know what a theory is and you feel compelled to qualify reality as actual.
How utterly predictable.
None of you actually knows anyone who makes $250K or more, so STFU about something you haven’t a clue about.
Heh. Funny.
(And really, health care and security are provided by the market? The market?
Markets are where values are exchanged. Values include services. The provision of health care and security to a community are services.
Therefore:
a) It is healthy to care about valuable markets;
b) A healthy market is a secure market;
c) Health care and security are values that are exchanged in markets;
d) Health care and security are ferocious ad hom birds of a feather created by a crew of loons in actual reality.
Think hard and don’t forget to wipe the Crayola off the screen and the drool off your chin when you’ve circled your answer.
There are no inalienable rights to HAVE A MARKET. frikking idiot.)
Show me where I specified an inalienable right to a market. Then take your pathetic straw man and learn to accept that fact that you’ll never hit a three-digit IQ.
You’re not smart, you’re not honest and you’re not even entertaining.
Dismissed.
Moriarty, you must be friends with Ricky Santorum.
Keep pumping the nonsense if it makes you happy, because the pursuit of happiness is your right, even when you haven’t a clue about what you’re babbling.
Nurse Ratchet, time for our MEDS!
I illustrated a flaw in your argument and you respond with a non sequiter. Reread Paine and the Declaration and try to wrap your mind around the concepts of rights and services, particularly as they were derived during the Enlightenment.
… and here’s some more Latin for your edification this fine Sunday morn:
Et tu, lackwit.
The ferocity of your taunting has taken me completely by surprise.
We live in 2009. The answers don’t live in the past, puzzlewit.
Bwah-hahaw. (Or should it be “Hee-hahahaw!”)
Paul/YJefferson/Your Man at Langley has been banned for ignoring the no ad hominem rule and posting under multiple names. He was also Giant Arab Killer last week.
Not surprised, Les, and I’m embarrassed that I didn’t spot it sooner. When they’ve never learned how to think, they run out of arguments quickly. Sockpuppeting follows from there.
Thanks for running this place. You have a lot more patience than I.
How about the number of OBGYN physicians who Edwards’ has already driven Galt with the effect his personal wealth-building judgment-fees have had – despite known and proven bogosity. How many have left the practice in Eastern states where trial lawyer awards have ballooned insurance rates beyond the capacity to endure in that profession?
DirtCrashr´s last blog post..Obama Weirdness in Germany