Comments on: Class(less) Warfare

By: scott

scott — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 00:55:11 +0000

Interesting post but I’m afraid you have approached this in too much of a black-and-white fashion thinking that there is either complete free market, or complete dependency of the lower class on the upper class. The issue at hand is far more complex than that and nobody is suggesting that the poor should be living off the rich, which is how it seems you have interpreted it.

By: coastcontact

coastcontact — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 18:55:26 +0000

In the United States 1% of the population owns 50% of the wealth. In Mexico a few families own most of the nation. Carlos Slim and his family are reported to own or control 20% of Mexico. Mr. Tate’s arguments are almost correct except that greed has become the hallmark of America. This is not the middle ages. We may not be able to put a janitor into a Lexus but the American ideal is a land where everyone shares. Or are the words “middle class” just a way to placate the peasants? My blog is http://coastcontact.wordpress.com

By: Dan

Dan — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 18:50:02 +0000

Life is not fair. And when Barack Obama is elected president with a Democratic Congress, and they vote to let the Bush tax cuts expire and re-set the highest marginal tax rate from 35% back up to 39.6%, it won’t be fair. And who’s going to be whining about “injustice” and violations of principles of freedom and capitalism and what have you then?

I don’t want to hear anybody who says “life is not fair” pinning their arguments to principles, justice, or whatever. If it’s been not fair to the bottom 99% of income-earners in America for the past three decades, the coming policy changes via democratic procedure that raise tax rates for the rich may be “unfair” to them for the next three decades. But such ideologues like yourself, sir, should then take the “life is not fair” advice to hear that you’ve been handing out to the poor and middle class since Milton Friedman came along and suck it up, no whining. Because after all, “life is not fair”, and if it can be so for poor people, then it can also be so for those poor, pitiable people who make millions of dollars a year and may be forced surrender more of it to the government for investment in public goods like police, schools, order, national defense, etc.

But then for people who think paying to support our national interests is unpatriotic, maybe we should have some pity.

By: Rev. C. Solomon

Rev. C. Solomon — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 18:13:42 +0000

Most Americans define socialism in their own way. Your arguments are based on failed socialist systems. Socialism is not the problem, it is those individuals in socialism, just as in capitalism, who cause the system not work!

Socialism, with taxpayer money, just gave the American system an extended life-line! All systems work, even autocracies; what matters is whether or not different individuals or groups exploit the system, particularly its leaders!

The problem with capitalism is that it likes the controls that will benefit some, and limit others!

By: BlueSkyBoris

BlueSkyBoris — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 04:25:38 +0000

Sorry, your argument is false. The red tide came in because of poverty, not envy. If envy was the primary for “experiments in socialism”, the entire system would have collapsed a long time ago. The Lifestyles of the Rich and the Famous aired from 1984 to 1995 and the system did not collapse because of it. People were paid a fair wage that allowed them to have the basics and a bit more. THIS is what allowed capitalism to innovate and produce, and now that it is disappearing, the system has effectively moved into a potentially revolutionary period.