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"Asking" the "Fortunate" to Pay More

Posted by VetteGuy 10 years, 2 months ago to Economics
28 comments | Share | Flag

Originally saw this on AMAC's site. One of the comments was "Who is John Galt?"

Wondered if that was someone here ...

All Comments

  • Posted by LaMuse 10 years, 2 months ago
    The company that my husband works for was started by a young couple out of their apartment with one van for transport. They imported indoor suntan equipment for gyms and salons back in the 80's, and after much hard work and many long hours managed to grow it into a multimillion dollar corporation. It used to irk me to no end when the warehouse and clerical workers complained about the owners' "new cars" or "new home" or new anything else they bought. They were always griping about the fact that they didn't have such "fine" things, as they took their 10 smoke breaks a day and clocked in late after picking up breakfast at the local fast food joint. I got so mad and told them, "Why don't you go out and start your own business? Work long hours and sacrifice to have a better life? Why gripe about the folks that allow you to put food on your table?" Oh, this whole "Life's Lottery" thing royally ticks me off!
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  • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 10 years, 2 months ago
    the fortunate are paying more and they are getting a $15 an hour minimum boost to help out. To be fortunate you have to live and work in Seattle or Boston. It cost Seattle 3 billion $ to do 27 miles of Light rail for 36,000 riders per day. At $6.00 per day. About $200,000 a day, less on weekends. One million a week 52 million a year. About 38 years. That's maintenance money if the politicians don't treat it as a cash cow for other things. Don't hold your breath. Especially in Washington.

    They were pikers compared to Boston. Go look up those figures it will make you puke.

    Chief culprit? Davis Bacon obscenely inflated prevailing local wages which translate into a lot of tax dollars laundered into union campaign donations and PACs. Still want to NOT control soft money? The only people fortunate are the Congressionals who haven't figured out what blind trust means - and their bosses in the new aristocracy. The rest of you yokels out in fly over land must be content to pay as told and help the plumbers keep the flushing mechanisms working.

    3,000 ties per mile at 7”x 9” x 7.6” feet. About 250 pound once treated is 3.3 cubic feet 6,000 or so spikes per mile. That's standard gauge of 4'6” between rails. In a nation that produces 15 million a year and much of that with imported lumber. Enough for two cross country lines minus those used for maintenance of the existing track and plus the extra of the high impact high speed rail lines.That's whole forests - I think we're clear cutting Siberia these days. The other planets come later.

    A lot of jobs and a lot of bacon. but it does nothing to repair the existing infrastructure.

    But whose counting there is always inflation, devaluation, debt repudiation and $30 an hour minimum wage waiting in the wings.
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  • Posted by teri-amborn 10 years, 2 months ago
    How coincidental.
    I am re-reading AN UNTITLED LETTER in PHILOSOPHY:WHO NEEDS IT and Ayn is succinctly dealing with this very subject.
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  • Posted by $ Thoritsu 10 years, 2 months ago in reply to this comment.
    ... = Lotteries are more like Government than business.

    Who is a bigger lottery winner, Steve Jobs or Barack Obama?
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  • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 10 years, 2 months ago
    When the government pays what it owes and what it promised and what it contracted for it can ask stupid questions like that. Until they complete their part of the deal KMRWBA,
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  • Posted by ObjectiveAnalyst 10 years, 2 months ago
    Hello VetteGuy,
    Rhetoric and sophistry are the tools of Marxists. With this guy around it almost makes one long for the days of McCarthy... After all the Venona project/papers proved McCarthy right. If you ask me O is one of the most fortunate and he certainly didn't build anything... Let him pay. And the Professor is right, the last thing government does is "ask."
    Respectfully,
    O.A.
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  • Posted by Flootus5 10 years, 2 months ago
    This is a great article by a great thinker. I was just about on the verge of posting the same article to the Gulch. Good job, it is great to see others recognize the same value. There is hope, despite how much I wonder at times.
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  • Posted by Stormi 10 years, 2 months ago
    Let's face it, O never had an original thought. He has been brainwashed by Marxists and communists since he was a mere child. When his step-father tried to open his mind, his mom sent him to grandpa and Charles Marshall Davis to wipe out any reasoning he might have acquired. He has always been given or had doors opened for him. The complete opposite of Thomas Sowell, who transformed himself, sought real education, and understands economics. A real black man vs the O man who is half and half, and understand and is loyal to no race. I love Thomas Sowell and read and keep all his books. A real man.
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  • Posted by $ jlc 10 years, 2 months ago
    This is wonderful! We now have another paving stone on the Path to Hell for the socialists: To, "you really did not make that" we can now add, "society's lottery winners".

    What the former phrase did was to disenchant a lot of small business people who had previously been pro-Obama. Let us encourage rational conservatives to further point out to small business that the gov now considers them to be just "lottery winners" and not hard workers.

    This phrase is worth good gold. We need to run with it.

    Jan
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  • Posted by Herb7734 10 years, 2 months ago
    One of the hallmarks of a free society is the right to say, "NO." When the government "asks" as pointed out in the article, it really means demands. No one in our current society has the right to say no to the government, and increasingly the right to say no to corporations, or even private citizens. We may be freer than some Middle East country, but only by degrees. By any measure, the USA is not a free country.
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  • Posted by tragicview 10 years, 2 months ago
    I know this may sound blasphemous on here, but Thomas Sowell could well be an Ayn Rand of today. I've tried to read every word the man writes, particularly his pieces of economics and government.
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  • Posted by scojohnson 10 years, 2 months ago in reply to this comment.
    The notion is offensive... I've run my own business for 15 years, and there were many times when I "put in" a lot more than I took out of it, and times when my average work week was 80 hours, at least. Success is rarely by chance, unless you are an idiot that happens to come up with a good idea for a product or something and get yourself to a casting call of Shark Tank or whatever. For the vast majority of entrepreneurs, success and income is a product of a hell of a lot of blood, sweat, tears, and taxes already paid many times over.
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  • Posted by CircuitGuy 10 years, 2 months ago in reply to this comment.
    I find this successful = lottery winner rhetoric offensive too. People try something, and fail, try something, think it's working, something changes, and they fail. They start again. They do it a hundred times. When it finally works, they're "overnight successes", "lottery winners", people in the "right place at the right time". Those statements have the appearance of truth. They really were lucky to be going into the right thing at the right time. They really did go from struggling to success in a short period. The thing is they went out and tried, which allowed them to fail some and win some. It completely disregards, though, all the struggling and failures when they weren't lucky.
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  • Posted by xthinker88 10 years, 2 months ago
    Well to be fair. He hasn't actually earned the money that he has. So he is unlikely to think that others have earned theirs.
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  • Posted by $ blarman 10 years, 2 months ago
    What I love is how Obama impugns the productive with so many false associations. Here's just the start of my list of these:

    1. Lotteries produce no value and prey upon the mathematically challenged and hopeless. Businesses actually produce products and services valued by their consumers.
    2. Lotteries are all about chance. Businesses are all about hard work and ingenuity.
    3. Lotteries involve huge windfalls. Businesses are usually a more incremental revenue stream.
    4. Lotteries are one-time deals. Businesses are the products of steady (and usually small) returns on investment.
    5. Lotteries are usually run by government bureaucrats who could care less about their customers. Businesses HAVE to care about their customers' needs or they go out of business.
    6. Lotteries have to hide their true intentions (making money off the stupid) through false advertising ("The proceeds benefit our schools"). Businesses get sued for false advertising.
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  • Posted by SaltyDog 10 years, 2 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Haven't you heard? Climate change is settled science. Emperor Obama has decreed it so. So it is written, so it shall be.

    Long live His Majesty.
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  • Posted by khalling 10 years, 2 months ago
    yes, "society's lottery winners" that's how the President of the United States sees productive people-now crony bankers and CEOs-well they can "give back."
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