> On Aug 28, 7:31 pm, "Tom"
comcast.net> wrote:>>> On Aug 28, 12:49 pm, "Tom"
comcast.net> wrote:>>>> "Erwin Hessle"
erwinhessle.com> wrote in message>>
>>
>>>>> What do you think happens to these "obscenely swollen profits"?
>>>>> They're not kept under the executives' beds, you know.
>>
>>>> No, they're kept in off-shore accounts where they won't get taxed.
>>
>>> Good for them. Keeps them out of the grubby hands of the thieving
>>> government highway robbers,
>>
>> By keeping them in the grubby hands of the thieving oil company highway
>> robbers.
>
> Ah yes, those "thieving oil company highway robbers" that these poor
> people of yours keep willing giving their money to.
Do they have a viable alternative? That's the point of a monopoly, to
control a vital resource and make everyone pay to get it. They have no
choice but to buy it from you, unless they depose you and force you to
relinquish control. That's what the alternative energy movement is up to.
It is *not* necessary to let those thieves keep robbing you in order to get
the energy you need to keep you from being at the mercy of the dark and the
cold. Their profits will evaporate when you no longer need what they own.
>> Besides, just because they don't pay any taxes doesn;t mean they don't
>> want
>> the government to spend a lot of money. That's why the $200 billion
>> budget
>> surplus each year that America enjoyed when Clinton was president have
>> become the $410 billion deficit we have now. It's not the the neocons
>> didn't spend money; it's just that they didn't collect it from their
>> friends. And spent most of it on projects that they handed to their
>> friends' corporations via no-bid contracts.
>
> Did you have a point to make that is in any way relevant to what I
> said?
That would depend on whether or not anything you said had anything to do
with my point. My point stands. Is anything you said relevant to it?
>>> Boo fucking hoo.
>>
>> I don;'t propose crying about it. I propose we don't let them steal any
>> more. You apparently *like* being ripped off.
>
> What are you smoking?
A very good cigar. My wife bought it for me for my birthday.
> You're the socialist, here,
Your imagination is running away with you. You apparently think that
anybody who objects to being ripped off by oil companies must be a
socialist. I'd have thought you knew me better than that, after all this
time.
> you're the one who
> admits wanting the government to steal your money and waste it.
*You* assume it's all stolen and wasted. Not me. I pay my taxes willingly,
so it's not stolen, and while I think it's often spend inefficiently, it's
not all wasted. If the government is competent, it spends the money it
collects in a more responsible way. The trick is to devise a competent
government.
The current US government is especially incompetent. So I mean to change
it. If enough of my compatriots agree, change will be implemented. If the
next batch doesn't get it right, we'll change it again. That's how democracy
is supposed to work.
>> And now America is the only industrialized country that doesn't have it.
>> It's time to grow up and join the modern human race.
>
> Yeah, you might want to get out of America once in a while and see how
> it works in these foreign utopias you've imagined.
I don't imagine any "foreign utopias". As we have both noted in other
threads, one doesn't have to get everything right in order to get some
things right. The US health care system is the most inequitable of any
industrialized nation. In that regard, we are not doing as well as others.
We can do better.
> Try the free health
> "care" in the UK, for instance, and wait eighteen months for your
> first appointment with a specialist to examine your cancerous tumour.
Better than waiting forever because you can't afford any at all. You don't
have to be perfect to be better than nothing. We can do better.
>>> And don't forget, all those jobs going to India, China and Mexico
>>> result in a hell of a lot more poor people over there getting better
>>> healthcare,
>>
>> Not yet.
>
> Ah, I see, so it's the possibility of Indians, Chinese and Mexicans
> getting better healthcare in the future that upsets you so much?
Not a bit. However, the only reason the robber barons are investing there
is that they haven't organized their labor yet and demanded it. They will.
It's an inevitable phase of economic evolution. Eventually, the robber
barons are going to run out of people who will be complaisant about being
ripped off. However, until then, they will keep moving on to the next
victim. We can stop them here or we can stop them there. It's merely a
matter of where we choose to draw the line.
>>> and if you want to get all moral on me then you'll have to
>>> explain why those people are less deserving of it,
>>
>> That's just plain stupid to try to say that A has to lose a job if B gets
>> one. There's plenty of work to go around. There's no shortage of demand
>> for products and therefore no reason why people everywhere can't work at
>> a
>> job that pays a decent wage.
>
> Of course there is a reason, otherwise nobody would be unemployed.
> What kind of nonsense is this?
The "nonsense" is in the way you are conceiving of the situation. People
want stuff. The more stuff they can get, the better. Thus. if we had an
equitable way to get stuff to everybody. we'd all have jobs doing so.
Nobody would be unemployed and everybody would have stuff. The problem is
that "free markets" are based on the idea that you keep stuff from people in
order to get them to pay more for it. There's no cooperation. It's all
competition. On the other hand, if everybody gets and nobody pays, nobody
ever has any reason to get anything to anybody else. The balance is
precarious. Regulation must occur to keep competition and cooperation from
overwhelming one another. This is beyond capitalism or socialism. The
global economy has not yet emerged. We're still in the nascent stages of
it. I don't expect things to settle down for another hundred years or so.
Until then, arguments like yours and mine are going to continue.
>> It's merely a question of where the robber
>> barons can rip people off the most.
>
> Ah yes, reverting to the language of feudalism never fails to drum up
> some support for socialist propaganda.
If you act like a feudal lord, you get called one.
>> They are big parasites.
>
> No, parasites steal things -
You say "no" then you agree with me. They steal things. Government
subsidies one doesn't deserve or need is theft. Grabbing up a natural
resource of the people and then making them pay to get it back is theft.
>>>> In addition, these record profits were accompanied by more that $8
>>>> billion dollars in *government subsidies*.
>>
>>> What kind of argument is this? It's you socialists who want the
>>> government to tax us to death,
>>
>> Nobody's taxing you to death.
>
> No thanks to folks like you.
Exactly thanks to people like me, who demand accountability from their
government.
>> Quit whining. Asking the rich to pull their
>> fair share isn't socialism.
>
> Yes it is, because you have a socialistic view of "fair", which
> involves the "rich" subsidising the poor.
No it's not because I have the view that doesn't allow the rich to rip off
the poor merely because the rich have the power to do so. You, on the other
hand, feel that anyone has the right to shit on anybody else simply because
they can. You might as well argue that murder and burglary should be legal
if your mean enough to get away with it. That way lies the distant,
animalistic past, Erwin. Human beings in the main have realized that we can
do better.
