How real is class war?

[AlpsStranger]

The problem is a loss of societal morality which has penetrated all aspects of our society. Wake up.

Ah yes, the "Let me shove Jesus down your throat and everything will be fine" argument. I would sincerely rather die than have a preacher tell me what to think.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

Ah yes, the "Let me shove Jesus down your throat and everything will be fine"

"It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."

There ! Jesused

 

[AlpsStranger]

but when founding the next republic none of these people can be allowed to participate. They must be excluded.

Oh, so you want to kill them then? Cool. Glad we had this discussion.

Oh, but of course it isn't a death threat, right? I'm sure the 'next republic' will be on that *other* continent.

 

[AlpsStranger]

"It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."

There ! Jesused

The eye of the needle was like... um... a gate! Err... was it that the camel really meant rope, which could be interpreted as thread?! I forget. It's definitely not what it looks like though.

PS: The six days is totally literal though

 

[gangleri2001]

All class warfare is from the top down. The rich try to hurt the rest because they think they are entitled to do so.

This.

 

[Quackers]

Hm, well middle class has many levels, but i do not really see how you would call it otherwise. I am not part of the capitalist circle at any rate, and my income is barely able to sustain me, while i have few expenses now.

You sound like a Lumpenproletariat with bourgeiose aspirations.

/Marxist-Quackers

 

[Core Imposter]

You mean people like Scott Brown, who is a Republican Senator from Massachusetts and a professor at Harvard? Or Newt Gingrich who taught history and geography at the University of West Georgia?

The only think that can "save" this country is far more education instead of less.

Scott Brown is a pretty immoral man. I can't image ever voting for a person who posed nude for money and especially since he has never expressed shame or apologized for the bad example he set for American youth.

 

[Abegweit]

"It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."

There ! Jesused

Jesus lived at a time when the only way to get rich was to exploit and oppress the common people. The Robin Hood story comes from the same fundamental truth. Today, with the advent of industrialization and capitalism, this is no longer true.

 

[Traitorfish]

Hadn't he just commanded somebody to give all of his possessions to the poor?

 

[Abegweit]

The proper thing for a rich man to do at the time.

 

[Traitorfish]

But not today?

 

[Abegweit]

But not today?

Jesus lived at a time when the only way to get rich was to exploit and oppress the common people. The Robin Hood story comes from the same fundamental truth. Today, with the advent of industrialization and capitalism, this is no longer true.

Five char.

 

[Traitorfish]

Even though he doesn't say anything of that sort?

 

[Abegweit]

Why would he? The reality didn't exist.

 

[useless]

To be honest I consider teachers, civil servants etc, to be pretty important jobs. Not sure why there's any hate for them

 

[Arwon]

Well, you are just a lazy slug. If you have a complaint about not having a pathway to upwards mobility then you have a righteous issue. Otherwise you have nothing to say. It is supposed to be miserable working on the bottom. It takes real work to general real productivity. If you had a creampuff job there at the bottom their would be no productivity and the company would be broke unless subsidized by the state. So shutup about capitalism. There has never been anything wrong with capitalism. It is just a system that operates. The problems come from corrupt people and they exist in any system.

You need to swerve to common sense of which you seem to have had precious little experience.

The problem is a loss of societal morality which has penetrated all aspects of our society. Wake up.

You keep using that word.

I do not think it mean what you think it means.

 

[Abegweit]

To be honest I consider teachers, civil servants etc, to be pretty important jobs. Not sure why there's any hate for them

I love that term civil servant. Fascinating how politicians "serve" in Parliament, soldiers "serve" in the army and the police "serve and protect". This is all nonsense. They are our masters, not our servants.

As for teachers and bureaucrats, they are nothing but parasites living off theft from the general weal. In a free society teachers would exist but they would be nothing like the prison guards we have today.

 

[Pangur Bán]

If a man is swiming underwater and needs air he must surface or drown. If a man is running a business and going into the red, he must cut costs or go out of business. Its very simple. The credit crisis destroyed a lot of wealth, the housing bust put an end to having a strong consumer demand based on equity in rising asset prices. The economy is just smaller and no amount of borrowed government spending can fix it for a long long time.

So to be angry at capitalism is a product of a lack of knowledge. Capitalism didn't cause this. Markets simply operate.

You've managed to outline a case against "capitalism" without even being aware of it.

Capitalism didn't cause this. Markets simply operate. Garbage in, garbage out. Business operates in the system set up by the government. The system is the fault. Blame the Congress. Immoral, corrupt politicans are the author of all of this carnage. Period.

You can say business lobbys and corrupts Congress but all of us have special interests and their are lobbys for all of them. It is all just a great moral failure and one that is not being addressed.

Immoral politicians are a red herring. You don't get to become a politician without being devious, and being crooked helps more than it should. There it's the system to blame, because it guarantees favour for such characteristics. Maybe it's democracy generally in a society that doesn't value thoughtfulness any more, but very specifically in the US an anachronistic and cumbersome political system helps. It's imperfect, but it's something people can -- or used to be able to -- control. The line you are taking, one pushed by in mainstream US popular politics disturbingly often, was told anciently in the Aesopian fable of the wolf who persuades the sheep to expel the corrupt dogs. Yes, sheep of America, get rid of democracy and give over all power to your generous job-giving lords.

The economic pie is not fixed in size.

The economic pie cannot be decreased by concentrating wealth in a few percent of successful people who attain it by merit. This segment of the population is best able to invest it wisely and least likely to let it set around fallow.

Ergo, its good when people get rich.

This doesn't make any sense. The rich have the money by definition. They do not have the money by "merit", but by law; the "merit" follows as ideological support.

And that is never the intent of the rich, who do not want to be more rich relative to the poor, they want to be more rich than their peers.

But, on the other hand, the rich are a good target for the politicans, having screwed everything up with poor policies adopted as a side product of institutional corruption. And some of us are good dogs more than ready to be unleashed upon the villain of the moment.

I happen to endorse common sense. I think it just a matter of common sense for a man to act like a man rather than a dog.

Politicians are the people we elect. They are who we elect, and we can vote to remove them when they suck. Plutocrats don't get elected.

By definition the "rich" rely on their legal and social systems to control wealth at the expense of others (yes, synchronically, it is a zero sum game). Live by the sword, die by the sword. If they're happy to use ideology to legitimize their control of resources, they can't complain when it turns against them.

 

[Abegweit]

Immoral politicians are a red herring. You don't get to become a politician without being devious, crooked and as corrupt as the big capitalists they need to control.

Politicians are the people we elect. They are who we elect, and we can vote to remove them when they suck.

Why do you choose to elect someone who is "devious, crooked and corrupt"?

 

[Pangur Bán]

Why do you choose to elect someone who is "devious, crooked and corrupt"?

This is just what actually happens. The point is that it can be fixed; in most Western European countries democracy is much healthier and politicians aren't as corrupt. Americans are too distracted from their democratic obligations at the highest levels, don't understand what's going on sufficiently; this is both a product and cause of their corrupt media and the obsession with ideological nonsense rather than the uncharming detail a critical voter needs to look at.