Trumpery - or how to be a Demagogue

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Walker
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Re: Trumpery - or how to be a Demagogue

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Belinda wrote:Walker wrote:
Since the writing, Constitutional rights have been liberally interpreted to mean free stuff: like free healthcare, free education, free food, free money in the pocket, free Obamaphones, you know the drill.
If a destitute woman in pain came to your door , would you not get her inside and help her to get medical care?

If a starved child came to your door and asked for something to eat, would you say no?

Do you imagine a democracy can work if the people are uneducated?
The point is, those things have been interpreted as human rights necessary for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

If you were Bill Gates and you diligently sold every possession you own, and you emptied all your bank accounts, and you used all that money to buy food for all the hungry people, leaving yourself broke and destitute, the next day the world would be at your door, knocking and again hungry, because you are a known source of food. And if you have nothing to give the world after you are a known source of food, the world will be angry and just may pick your bones, because now you are to blame for the hunger. That is the way of the world, judge it as you will.

Robin Hood does not take from the rich and give to the government.

That's socialism.

Neither does he empty his own little piggy bank, unless he gets drunk on mead and is feeling generous.

Robin Hood takes from the Government, and gives to the poor.

Downsizing the government is what Robin Hood, little John, and the band of merry men would do.
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Hobbes' Choice
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Re: Trumpery - or how to be a Demagogue

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Arising_uk wrote:
Hobbes' Choice wrote:Have a word with your self. You can't work somewhere without making it your home,
Sure you can make a home there but it doesn't make it your home it just makes it somewhere you live abroad as a foreign national. .
Have you even got a passport?
Belinda
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Re: Trumpery - or how to be a Demagogue

Post by Belinda »

Walker wrote:
If you were Bill Gates and you diligently sold every possession you own, and you emptied all your bank accounts, and you used all that money to buy food for all the hungry people, leaving yourself broke and destitute, the next day the world would be at your door, knocking and again hungry, because you are a known source of food. And if you have nothing to give the world after you are a known source of food, the world will be angry and just may pick your bones, because now you are to blame for the hunger. That is the way of the world, judge it as you will.
But the world's poor don't want to pick your impoverished bones. Some poor people are bandits without a doubt but the majority of the world's poor are stronger in many ways than affluent Americans or Europeans. The poor in undeveloped countries have learned to live with poverty and expect no better, and many have developed physical toughness too, despite infant and maternal death rates, and rates of early death from treatable diseases and malnutrition. Often, too, strict religious observance among the world's poor in underdeveloped countries helps them to make meanings of their hard circumstances. Those strictly religious peoples have strictly ethical codes of conduct towards others including foreigners ; that is the custom for obvious reasons of enlightened altruism in impoverished environments where sense of community is strong. What I say has ample empirical evidence to back it.

If affluent people fail to provide pride, food, medical care, and education to their own people the affluent people may indeed find themselves the objects of popular uprisings. The solution for the problem of poverty within a nation, for that reason alone, is not further to oppress their nation's poor but to provide at least realistic means for upward mobility.
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Hobbes' Choice
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Re: Trumpery - or how to be a Demagogue

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Demagoguery relies on presenting a sack of shit at the front door, whilst doing dodgy deals behind the scenes - deals which are now legal. yes folks corruption is now legal.


Today’s decision by the Republican-led U.S. Senate to overturn a rule designed to stop oil companies striking corrupt deals with foreign governments is a grave threat to U.S. national security and an astonishing gift to big oil.

https://www.globalwitness.org/en/
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Arising_uk
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Re: Trumpery - or how to be a Demagogue

Post by Arising_uk »

Hobbes' Choice wrote:Have you even got a passport?
Of course, I'm not a Yank, and I have one because I'm a citizen/subject of my nation. If I had an American one I'd not be refused right of entry to America but if I only have a green card they can refuse me visa entry I guess, at least from what I read about how their system works.
Walker
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Re: Trumpery - or how to be a Demagogue

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Belinda wrote:If affluent people fail to provide pride, food, medical care, and education to their own people the affluent people may indeed find themselves the objects of popular uprisings. The solution for the problem of poverty within a nation, for that reason alone, is not further to oppress their nation's poor but to provide at least realistic means for upward mobility.
The Declaration of Independence is the context for the US Constitution, so in that light, folks have the right to pursue happiness, and folks have the opportunities to acquire the things that you have listed, but the outcome of that pursuit and acquiring those things is not guaranteed, at least in theory.

Opportunity still exists despite crushing government regulations upon small businesses, which is the pathway to self-determination and changing the wage-slave habit.


For the past eight years opportunity has indeed been oppressed by stagnant job growth.

Unfortunate youngsters are graduating with no jobs available thanks to incompetence from those managing the system, starting at the top and trickling down.

This is why ours were guided to major in sciences, which they did, except for the genius who also developed God-given talent.
Opportunities and job security thus open up, which enable the pursuit of happiness.
Belinda
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Re: Trumpery - or how to be a Demagogue

Post by Belinda »

Walker wrote:
Opportunity still exists despite crushing government regulations upon small businesses, which is the pathway to self-determination and changing the wage-slave habit.


For the past eight years opportunity has indeed been oppressed by stagnant job growth.

Unfortunate youngsters are graduating with no jobs available thanks to incompetence from those managing the system, starting at the top and trickling down.

This is why ours were guided to major in sciences, which they did, except for the genius who also developed God-given talent.
Opportunities and job security thus open up, which enable the pursuit of happiness.
Small businesses are great, when you can have one. It's not possible for many to have a small business because many products are commercially viable only if the businesses are large enough to have to employ others. Having said that, I have noticed that there are opportunities that are not being taken up, and I imagine that they are not being taken up because people who are brainy enough to see such opportunities see what is or is not viable. And that people who are desperate for work are sometimes not brainy enough or healthy enough to grasp an opportunity to profit . I don't deny that there are people whose earning potential is so slight that they are better off on welfare payouts. The universal basic wage is being tried out in several areas in Europe.

You were very wise to steer your own youngsters to major in sciences, for the reason you give. I aplaud your hard-headedness in this regard.

Your paragraph about how those at the top are failing to supply jobs needs a lot of unpicking, for me anyway. My intuition is that if government forces job opportunities those will have to be in either welfare or in certain mainly engineering infrastructures such as transport and social housing.These jobs are paid for by taxation. As a socialist I favour taxation.
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Hobbes' Choice
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Re: Trumpery - or how to be a Demagogue

Post by Hobbes' Choice »

Arising_uk wrote:
Hobbes' Choice wrote:Have you even got a passport?
Of course, I'm not a Yank, and I have one because I'm a citizen/subject of my nation. If I had an American one I'd not be refused right of entry to America but if I only have a green card they can refuse me visa entry I guess, at least from what I read about how their system works.
Not relevant.
Have you ever spent anytime working in a foreign country, and for how long?
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Arising_uk
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Re: Trumpery - or how to be a Demagogue

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Hobbes' Choice wrote:...
Not relevant. ...
To what? If you're trying to say just because somewhere feels like your home then it is then I agree but still does not mean it is as you can be deported any time if you're not a citizen/subject of the place.
Have you ever spent anytime working in a foreign country, and for how long?
No.
Walker
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Re: Trumpery - or how to be a Demagogue

Post by Walker »

Belinda wrote:Your paragraph about how those at the top are failing to supply jobs needs a lot of unpicking, for me anyway. My intuition is that if government forces job opportunities those will have to be in either welfare or in certain mainly engineering infrastructures such as transport and social housing.These jobs are paid for by taxation. As a socialist I favour taxation.
Not to supply jobs, but to create a climate of economic growth and stability through loosening regulations and lowering taxes, which in turn creates a demand for jobs by encouraging companies to expand by hiring more folks. When taxes are lowered and the economy is functioning properly, tax revenues increase.
Belinda
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Re: Trumpery - or how to be a Demagogue

Post by Belinda »

Walker wrote:
Not to supply jobs, but to create a climate of economic growth and stability through loosening regulations and lowering taxes, which in turn creates a demand for jobs by encouraging companies to expand by hiring more folks. When taxes are lowered and the economy is functioning properly, tax revenues increase.
But if taxes are lowered does it not follow that poorer people of whom there are many don't get as much in benefits from the government? In which case the poorer sort of people don't have as much to spend, and growth is slowed as a result.

We need to balance increasing or maintaining incentive to work on the one side, and on the other side paying everyone a living wage or benefits when necessary so that they can spend money thus creating the market for businesses.

Another objection to your optimistic scenario is that unless employment conditions and wages are controlled by law, unscrupulous employers of whom there are many, will offer poor wages or worse, zero hours contracts.
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Hobbes' Choice
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Re: Trumpery - or how to be a Demagogue

Post by Hobbes' Choice »

Arising_uk wrote:
Hobbes' Choice wrote:...
Not relevant. ...
To what? If you're trying to say just because somewhere feels like your home then it is then I agree but still does not mean it is as you can be deported any time if you're not a citizen/subject of the place.
Have you ever spent anytime working in a foreign country, and for how long?
No.
Then you don't know what you are talking about.
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Arising_uk
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Re: Trumpery - or how to be a Demagogue

Post by Arising_uk »

Hobbes' Choice wrote:Then you don't know what you are talking about.
I think I do as I listen to my friends who live and work in America. That one thinks they have a home in a country when they are not a citizen of it is an emotional delusion that can easily be shattered if a country decides to. If one is a citizen/subject however it becomes much harder to deport someone as where do you send them to? Of course the Nazi et al disprove this but in that situation it's a choice to stay and fight for what you believe is your country or run or be deported. Those with green cards have the right to reside only as long as the govt decides to keep issuing their visas. They might consider it their home but it isn't, to make it more securely their home they have to become citizens/subjects. Just my opinion mind.
Walker
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Re: Trumpery - or how to be a Demagogue

Post by Walker »

Belinda wrote:Another objection to your optimistic scenario is that unless employment conditions and wages are controlled by law, unscrupulous employers of whom there are many, will offer poor wages or worse, zero hours contracts.
So powerful is the dynamic that the country has been riding the coattails and sorting out the details of the last time it was done.
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Hobbes' Choice
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Re: Trumpery - or how to be a Demagogue

Post by Hobbes' Choice »

Arising_uk wrote:
Hobbes' Choice wrote:Then you don't know what you are talking about.
I think I do as I listen to my friends who live and work in America. That one thinks they have a home in a country when they are not a citizen of it is an emotional delusion that can easily be shattered if a country decides to. If one is a citizen/subject however it becomes much harder to deport someone as where do you send them to? Of course the Nazi et al disprove this but in that situation it's a choice to stay and fight for what you believe is your country or run or be deported. Those with green cards have the right to reside only as long as the govt decides to keep issuing their visas. They might consider it their home but it isn't, to make it more securely their home they have to become citizens/subjects. Just my opinion mind.
As you will no doubt have tried to ignore, the Trump ban is now overthrown by the court and his appeal denied.
It seems the American justice system knows more about what it is like to have a green card than you do, thankfully.
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