2013
I was just listening to an interview with Warren Buffett. They were talking about his philanthropic projects around the world. Buffett made a comment I found most interesting for a liberal supporter of the Obama agenda, including higher taxes.
He said it was much more difficult to give money away than to earn it. He said once you give people money they want more and they will do many different things to get it.
Imaging that, and all the while he supports government programs that do just that… provides incentives for people to want more.
QUINNSCOMMENTARY 
Richard, may I recommend a quote by Mark Twain??
“Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.”
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Your problem, Michele, is that you don’t know what you don’t know.
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You certainly will not deny that the Tea Party racists and most other Republican congress members are bought and paid for by the super rich. These political puppets either support their wealthy benefactors or lose their jobs and they live in fear of their sponsors abandoning them if they do not legislate to make their supporters even more wealthy.
The Tea Party racists and the “moderate” Republicans who live in fear of them are dedicated to destroying Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Affordable Health Care, veterans’ benefits, head start programs, meals on wheels, food stamps, farmers’ subsidies, school lunch programs, et al. They are also fighting to eliminate the minimum wage, opposing job-creating immigration reform and opposing job-creating infra-structure rebuilding jobs programs. They also voted to raise college student loan interest rates. “Keep them dumb, keep them poor and keep them from voting Democratic”.
So you tell me if there is a conspiracy to intentionally keep people poor? You are clever enough to know the answer, but you won’t say it.
Certainly businesses must sell products and services to the middle class to make money, but “middle class” consumers (if they still exist) have no choice. They must buy food and clothing to enable themselves to eke out an existence, working one or two menial jobs, regardless of their level of income.
Millionaires and billionaires take away opportunities for people of lesser means by financing the campaigns of Tea Party racists and the moderate Republican congress members who fear them. They write letters to their puppet congress members telling them how to vote. (Maybe you missed the letter to congress members from the Koch brothers) Their puppet congress members are then instructed to vote to maintain big oil company subsidies, huge Bush tax breaks for the very rich, off-shore tax shelters for the very wealthy and the largest corporations , privatizing Social Security (for their profits), repealing “big bank” regulations to allow a repeat of the pre-Obama recession, et al. You know the rest of the list, Quinn.
Their lifestyle attitude is, “I’ve got mine (mostly inherited) and the rest of you slovenly bastards are on your own”.
Your next paragraphs only serve to confirm your belief that the poor deserve to be poor because they are lazy and are not motivated to succeed in life. I think we are the same age and I cannot believe that you lived through and do not comprehend the destruction of the middle class in this country by the super rich during the last 50 years?
As for Jack B – “It’s not what he doesn’t know; it’s what he knows that ain’t so”
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I think you have been drinking the cool aid. Most wealth today has not been inherited, but earned. The Tea Party has been around four what four years, what about the last fifty years when Democrats controlled Congress and the White House much of the time; heck what about the four years Democrats controlled Congress during the last two years of the Bush admin and first two of Obama. And as far as the wealthy in control, what about Soros or Buffett? Many of the wealthy on Wall Street are Democrats and certainly not Tea Party.
The fact is that no matter who is in charge now or in the past, the problems you perceive cannot be solved by government. If they could, they would have been solved. The billions if not trillions we have spent on hundreds of programs would have produced results.
Even the last Great Recession is an example. The root cause was government policy aimed at increasing home ownership among the lower economic levels who in reality could not afford it. Government pressured lenders to make loans, including subprime loans and money flowed and for a while demand helped raise housing prices; then the mortgage and investing abuses followed. Government flawed policy even with nice sounding intent after which human nature from the person being talked into buying what they new they couldn’t afford to the banker packaging flawed mortgages takes over. It’s the same old story.
The Tea Party gets a lot of press, but in the end they will be inconsequential because they are out of sync with the majority of Americans.
Dick
Richard D Quinn
Blog http://www.quinnscommentary.com Twitter @quinnscomments
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Haven’t had any Kool-Aid – just reading Lyan Ryan’s proposed budget and the bills passed by the Republican majority House this year.
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Read this example from today’s paper. So who is responsible, the lender, the moron homeowner or the bank that sold the loan as an investment? The liberal says the lender and the bank and the conservative says the homeowner who applied for loans they had no hope of paying. Extend that logic to any number of government “solutions” (like the women with six children by three men and none present in the home who needs food stamps, child care, welfare and training benefits) and you have the issue with government versus individual responsibility. And yes, these scenarios to one degree or another are quite common; too common.
“The funds allege that one couple whose mortgage was in J.P. Morgan’s NC1 pool had income in 2005 of only $826 a month to support monthly debts of $6,478, including payments on a $588,000 mortgage granted by New Century that year. That couple declared bankruptcy in 2006, according to the lawsuit.”
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I believe that many more of our citizens who are struggling to survive, with the odds severely stacked against them by the right wing super rich, have more self respect and dignity than you think they have. Just before retirement, I worked shoulder to shoulder with African Americans and Hispanics for 6-1/2 years in a Home Depot. Nearly all of them had two jobs and were still struggling to make ends meet. They are not lazy by any means.
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Never said they were, but human nature is what it is and that means exactly what Buffett says. I remember in the 1960s the beginning of the war on poverty, what happened in the last 50 years? Are we saying there is a conspiracy by some people today to intentionally keep people poor? If business wants to make money it has to sell products and services to the middle class. How is it in anyone’s interest to cause or encourage poverty? How does a millionaire or billionaire take away opportunity from anyone?
I firmly believe that the majority, not all, of the people in poor circumstances are there of their own doing one way or the other; dropping out of school, take no special initiative , accumulating debt, spending frivolously,
entering into damaging relationships, having children without a family life or spouse, drugs, etc. The so called poor and struggling are well off and have more opportunity than many of the people in countries I have visited in the last few years and yet they fail to make the most of what they have. You will get out of life what you put into it. If you are happy moving along with the crowd, don’t complain about being average or below. If you were lower middle class all your life don’t be surprised when you are no better off at age 70.
Last week I was watching a football game where there were 82,000 people who paid well over $100 each to attend. We’re they all wealthy, we’re they all able to afford to spend money like that? I doubt it. In the last five years I have been on scores of trips where the travelers were an average age of 70 more. These people traveled several times a year. These are not high end trips by any means and yet these people who complain about the SS COLA spend $25,000 a year or more traveling. And still we lump them under the heading of seniors with the implication seniors are poor. These people are retired school teachers, office workers, plumbers, etc.
I am all for helping anyone who truly needs help, the problem is we make no distinction nor can we between those folks and the takers. Do you really think the millions who have gone from unemployment benefits immediately to SS disability in the last four years are unable to work? Do you realize the poor spend more on lottery tickets than any other group averaging around $700 a year? How can that be if you are in poverty?
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Dick… please stop clouding the issue with facts. Wilson is already having trouble seeing through is ideologue goggles.
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