Equality of opportunity..?

[OldGoat]

So you agree with Democrats on the social safety net?

And btw the entire post gets submitted at once, so typing slower won't do anything. :icon_chee I thought you've been a Sherdog user long enough to know that. If you're going to be a dick, be accurate at least.

I have been in agreement with a social safety net forever. I just don't believe in an unconditional safety net. There should be performance/behavior requirements. Including work, continuing education, and parenting classes. It's not an entitlement it's conditional charity for the good of society and needs to be treated as such.

 

[kpt018]

I have been in agreement with a social safety net forever. I just don't believe in an unconditional safety net. There should be performance/behavior requirements. Including work, continuing education, and parenting classes. It's not an entitlement it's conditional charity for the good of society and needs to be treated as such.

Care to elaborate on why there should be a work requirement and parenting classes (this should be good). And what type of continuing education?

 

[Denter]

Vote buying isn't a new concept. Heck the communists promised utopia.
Oldest trick in the book.

Politicians know what people want to hear. It's kinda their thing. Tapping into peoples desires in order to manipulate them. Promise what they want.

Not that they actual have any intention of delivering.. But it's not about delivering.

Hey, Lenin and co actually tried full communism...they delivered, it just didn't turn out like they wanted it to.

 

[Bay Area]

There is no economic model where 100% are in the top 10%. This isn't Lake Wobegone.

I dont think anyone expects that.

But how about a model where this isnt taking place?

Production of the wage workers rising over the years (green), but their wages stay basically the same (blue)? Meanwhile the rich get exponentially richer (red)?

Maybe a model where workers get liveable wages from billion dollar a year coporations, and don't have to work 5 jobs just to pay the bills?

 

[FIMN]

Subhuman scum? That's impolite. Funny how liberals resort to ad hom attacks and other fallacies because they can't win an argument on facts or rationality. This is the reason liberals like underperforming public schools. It gives them a lock on a large portion of the populace kept deliberately ignorant. Thankfully we have Fox News to counteract the indoctrination from the liberal orthodoxy. However, if you guys get your way with illegal immigration amnesty the fight against statism and multigenerational dependency as policy will get harder.

I'm not American. But you obviously can't read, and have a childish understanding of history and politics.

 

[Jack V Savage]

I have been in agreement with a social safety net forever. I just don't believe in an unconditional safety net. There should be performance/behavior requirements. Including work, continuing education, and parenting classes. It's not an entitlement it's conditional charity for the good of society and needs to be treated as such.

So the state should design "parenting classes" and we shouldn't provide food to poor kids if their parents don't take those classes? And you wonder why people think you're an authoritarian?

 

[OldGoat]

Care to elaborate on why there should be a work requirement and parenting classes (this should be good). And what type of continuing education?

If people are choosing to donate money to others they can set conditions. Why shouldn't there be a condition for charity? Do you have a right to someone else's time and wealth?

 

[DiegoDiegerson]

If government benefits create a dependent underclass, why are there indicators that social mobility is more possible in countries with more government benefits?

It is true that there is a perverse incentive created by means-tested social programs, which is why I support universal social programs (eg universal health care > Medicaid, guaranteed annual income or negative income tax > welfare, food stamps, etc). They don't require means-testing, there's no possible perverse incentive, and they don't piss off people who are paying for programs they can't use.

However, I think the perverse incentive is vastly overstated. I think most people would choose a decent job over living off of government benefits. The perverse incentive is, of course, compounded by a lack of decent jobs.

 

[OldGoat]

So the state should design "parenting classes" and we shouldn't provide food to poor kids if their parents don't take those classes? And you wonder why people think you're an authoritarian?

Twisted use of the word authoritarian. I think it's more authoritarian to seize the wealth of productive individuals to buy votes from unproductive and ungrateful individuals.

 

[Jack V Savage]

Twisted use of the word authoritarian. I think it's more authoritarian to seize the wealth of productive individuals to buy votes from unproductive and ungrateful individuals.

I think you put a period where you meant to put a colon.

 

[James Keith]

The poor currently are being shackled the way he was. Liberalism is about removing those shackles.

Don't be absurd.

Modern liberalism is defined as trying to impose those shackles to create the equality of outcome mocked in the story, rather than equality of opportunity. You just convince yourself that there's no such thing as an inherint right to property (despite it being ingrained in every human's psychology...) and that your selective taxes are therefore not punitive. But even so it would still be a "positive" rather than negative handicapping system you advocate.

 

[Bay Area]

I have been in agreement with a social safety net forever. I just don't believe in an unconditional safety net. There should be performance/behavior requirements. Including work, continuing education, and parenting classes. It's not an entitlement it's conditional charity for the good of society and needs to be treated as such.

You think the current saftey net is a hammock in other words...like Paul Ryan?

 

[Jack V Savage]

Don't be absurd.

I'm not at all. That's the whole point. A poor kid has to overcome massive obstacles to be successful in American society, which is why social mobility is so low here.

Vonnegut himself responded to someone else making the same idiotic misinterpretation of his story being made by Kansas politicians:

It's about intelligence and talent, and wealth is not a demonstration of either one. Kansas is apparently handicapping schoolchildren, no matter how gifted and talented, with lousy educations if their parents are poor.

Modern liberalism is defined as trying to impose those shackles to create the equality of outcome mocked in the story, rather than equality of opportunity.

It's defined that way by hacks trying to oppose equality of opportunity.

Seriously, do you actually support any policy to bring us closer to equality of opportunity?

 

[Denter]

If government benefits create a dependent underclass, why are there indicators that social mobility is more possible in countries with more government benefits?

It is true that there is a perverse incentive created by means-tested social programs, which is why I support universal social programs (eg universal health care > Medicaid, guaranteed annual income or negative income tax > welfare, food stamps, etc). They don't require means-testing, there's no possible perverse incentive, and they don't piss off people who are paying for programs they can't use.

However, I think the perverse incentive is vastly overstated. I think most people would choose a decent job over living off of government benefits. The perverse incentive is, of course, compounded by a lack of decent jobs.

Social mobility has stayed the same since the 1960s, as the country has gotten progressively more right wing. Make of that what you will.

 

[OldGoat]

You think the current saftey net is a hammock in other words...like Paul Ryan?

Hammock? No. Because with poor schools, poor culture, and shitty parenting many have no choice.

 

[panamaican]

Of course an inheritance tax counteracts inequality of opportunity. If I inherit $10 million, and you inherit debt, do you really think we have an equal opportunity to succeed?

How did the government prevent me from inheriting $10 million?

In fact, who actually prevented me from receiving said inheritance?

 

[James Keith]

I'm not at all. That's the whole point. A poor kid has to overcome massive obstacles to be successful in American society, which is why social mobility is so low here.

No he doesn't. He simply needs to acquire valuable skills. A large list of illegal immigrants can demonstrate to you how easy this can be accomplished with some committment. I know more than a few of them.

Our country's problem (vs others you want to compare it to) is the presense of large disenfranchised groups the others lack, that live within their own separate cultures and refuse to participate in the economic system. Our culture and system works just fine as history has demonstrated.

idiotic

f u too. ahole.

 

[panamaican]

This sounds well and good on paper. But the reality is the free market is rigged to benefit the few, core differences aside. This "rigging" is what needs to be fought. Its the extreme Free Market that has brought us to this current 1% / 99% paradigm

Rigged? By whom. Who does the rigging? Any "rigging" currently in the system can only occur and be enforced through government action.

Outside of that, the free market benefits those who best take advantage of the system. Is that the "few"? Yes, if you only think in the short term. In the long term, the system benefits the majority.

 

[panamaican]

The point is that Man, through ingenuity and action, can alter that which "naturally" exists. Man can improve Man's environmental lot.

The idea that human engineering is an absolute necessity for the advancement of the race - in every sphere of human undertaking except economics - is a preposterous and convenient fiction preached as gospel by capitalists.

While a fascinating side bar...it has nothing to do with anything I'd said.

 

[panamaican]

Lebron James does quite well but I wouldn't listen to anything he has to say outside of basketball.

Which might prove to be a huge mistake. As a result of doing well, he might have access to knowledge that wouldn't be readily available to the less successful (for example he be exposed to financial strategies that you wouldn't otherwise hear about). Of course, he might not know anything about anything except basketball but my opinion is that very rarely do "dumb" athletes make it to the top of their profession.

Ignoring the advice of successful people because of your opinion on their industry is a habit more people should break. At the minimum, all you might learn about is hard work but even that has value.