A healthy economy requires that all pockets have holes in 'em.
Here’s a little analogy
Think of your body and heart and blood.
A healthy body require that blood get pumped throughout the entire body - not just to your pecker or your fists, or your fat ass, or you’ll run into problems real fast.
You say such silly things -- CCOneguy does say silly things. Although this time, I think he was making a joke about bad spelling. Whether or not he is aware of world population statistics, well, the jury is still out on that.
CC’s Germanic lack of humor is comical.
A healthy body require that blood get pumped throughout the entire body – not just to your pecker or your fists, or your fat ass, or you’ll run into problems real fast.True. A perfect analogy of how society must run. The reason why no human society has been able to mimic the operation of a healthy human body is that we don't have the know-how. It's good that you see the problem only if you don't look for someone to bear the blame.
I use to play instrumental guitar music in a restaurant for several years and had a tip jar near the door. I soon came to see who would offer even a modest one dollar tip as they were leaving. The pattern was so striking I made it a point to see who tipped and who didn’t. Without any visual or verbal cues from me so I could be as objective as possible. I could literally guarantee that well-dressed businessmen almost never tipped. Ninety-five percent of all tips came from working-class people. This was something of a surprise until I heard of a study claiming that those who can be described as “rich” have brains that are hard-wired to accumulate more and more. The notion of giving to a stranger never enters their thoughts. They’ve trained their minds to get, to acquire, to obtain, to add to what they already have and things like charity, compassion, sharing, and magnanimity have no place in their view of the world. These people are firm believers in the top-down, winner takes all approach to the American economy. I understand their greed. It’s a base human drive that’s been in our world since the beginning. What I don’t understand is how the poor working class with their MAGA hats flock to support Trump and the Republican party year after year after year. Is human ignorance this deep?
Great story Genus. I think it’s in the book of Freaknomics where someone did this with their bagel delivery business. A guy quit his office job and just went to regular bagel stores, then set up agreements with people who worked in offices to deliver them, and left a jar for people to pay by the honor system. He had the data, his accounting, that showed that the higher the floor (where the executives usually are), the less he collected. Pretty cool.
What I don’t understand is how the poor working class with their MAGA hats flock to support Trump and the Republican party year after year after year. Is human ignorance this deep?That's more complicated. My parents and teachers tried to indoctrinate me that if I play by the rules I'll get rewards of the system. My dad called it, "writing your own ticket". A few things worked against them, first, I preferred getting high to working, 2, I admired the hippie generation including civil rights activist who were just 10 years ahead of me, 3, my liberal professors, 4, I didn't want the boat and cars and fancy dinners if it meant compromising my values. To your question, just reverse those things, they prefer cheap beer, they admire guys with guns who beat up gays and others, they didn't go to college or to a conservative one or took business classes, they think they will get the luxury items if they vote for the "trickle down" guy and that is their values. Huh, I never quite put it that way before. I'm just that could be critiqued, but it makes sense in my head.
You guys do realize that the country is right now a 1/3 majority rule, right? And that’s if things are going GREAT! If not, just 2 people run everything.
I’ve railed on this before, but let me explain again because it’s one of my biggest problem with Trumpublicans. Trump does an executive order that is a blatant overstep of his authority. How is that stopped? In the courts…maybe…eventually. But normally it’s in Congress. How it is SUPPOSED to work is that Congress passes a thing and the president either signs or vetos it. Then, if Congress really wants it to get done, they can override the president with a 2/3 majority.
But what happens when the PRESIDENT really wants to get something done and just does it on his own, whether he has the power to do it or not? Congress powers, activate! And if he feels like it, and he doesn’t want to hear any presidential whining, and he really, really doesn’t like what the president did, and it won’t make Republicans look a little bad for putting the country over the party, McConnell will “allow” the Senate to take the issue up. If he doesn’t, if McConnell decides he likes whatever illegal thing Trump did today, then the Senate won’t take it up and we have a government of 2. But IF they do AND Congress passes the act to undo whatever illegal thing the president did, then that bill goes to Trump’s desk, where he will promptly veto it. Then it goes back to Congress where they need a 2/3 majority, not to MAKE something happen, they need a 2/3 majority to STOP it from happening.
I think people vastly underestimate how big a deal this is. Our government is designed to make it very difficult for a lot of people to get things done, but very easy for a few people to stop things from being done. That way the laws don’t change wildly with each administration. Trump’s illegal executive orders where he appropriates powers designated to Congress have flipped that. Now it’s very easy for a few people to get something done and very difficult for a lot of people to stop something. It takes as few as just 2 people now to do very drastic things and the entirety of the rest of the government is absolutely powerless to stop these 2 people from doing something.
A nation in the hands of the toxic t rump, with an occasional assist from turtle head Moscow Mitch.
How could we go wrong with our nation being victimized by those 2 icons of personal self interest?
Oh yeah… just look around.
You guys do realize that the country is right now a 1/3 majority rule, right? -- WI do realize that. And we have too many traditions and precedents and not enough regulation of our President or the top party leaders. This has been going on since, I don't Kennedy? Forever? But it's getting worse. The problem is, they don't want to take the power from the other guy, because they have to take it from themselves.
I use to play instrumental guitar music in a restaurant for several years and had a tip jar near the door. I soon came to see who would offer even a modest one dollar tip as they were leaving. The pattern was so striking I made it a point to see who tipped and who didn’t. Without any visual or verbal cues from me so I could be as objective as possible. I could literally guarantee that well-dressed businessmen almost never tipped. Ninety-five percent of all tips came from working-class people. This was something of a surprise until I heard of a study claiming that those who can be described as “rich” have brains that are hard-wired to accumulate more and more. The notion of giving to a stranger never enters their thoughts. They’ve trained their minds to get, to acquire, to obtain, to add to what they already have and things like charity, compassion, sharing, and magnanimity have no place in their view of the world.That might have more to do with the fact that not everybody sees musicians as people who are “working” and simply ignore them. Those rich people might tip the waiters quite well if they did a good job.
And we have too many traditions and precedents and not enough regulation of our President or the top party leaders.This is exactly the problem. Everybody assumes that the people in charge are just going to play fair. But then they break one norm, then another, then another. And then Trump loses the election by enough to win and he breaks them all. We absolutely need a set of hard rules to follow. Not having them only hurts liberals, because they follow the norms to the letter as if they are rules. Hell, even when they gerrymander they make sure not to go too far. The other side has no such conscience.
Which, by the way, is interesting. What is it about the connection to a sense of ACTUAL honor (not just hugging a flag), fair play, empathy, etc. that those traits always seem to resonate with liberals while conservatives will use the military for personal gain (Remember the bumper sticker: “A vote for Kerry is a vote for Al Quada”?), keep moving the line on when it is and is not the Senate’s job to confirm presidential nominees and respond to the request for social safety nets with, “Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?”