Without a doubt November is going to bring us the single most important election in the United States since 1860. At that time too the country was on the verge of an irreparable breach, and by the time Lincoln was inaugurated in March of 1861 seven of the eleven eventual confederate states had seceded, with the remaining four gone two months later.
I’m certainly not suggesting that the United States is going break apart if Barack Obama defeats Mitt Romney. When citizens go into the voting booth in November they are certainly not being asked to choose between Stars and Bars or the Stars and Stripes. If the choice were that stark, if the choice were that clear, even the most brain dead Americans could figure out who to vote for.
The fissure today is far more subtle. Fully half the population doesn’t pay any income taxes and many of those people are on the government dole. Government debt is 100% of GDP and at the current rate will reach 200% in a little over a decade while inefficient government spending takes up a quarter of GDP annually. Government regulation at all levels threatens not only to strangle the struggling private sector, but more and more individual freedom itself.
While far less stark than what the country faced in 1860, the consequences for the American people are no less as great. Although there is nothing the government does today that is the equivalent of the viscous and inhumane institution of slavery, in the long run an unfettered government is no less dangerous. Indeed, egalitarianism was a staple of Soviet propaganda for decades but the Kremlin’s statist policies cost tens of millions their lives and hundreds of millions their freedom.
Given the explicit choice between slavery and freedom Americans are smart enough to choose freedom. The question is, with such an explicit distinction absent from the ballot, can they make the right choice?
How many Americans want to spend over half of every workday toiling just to pay for government? How many Americans want to pay taxes so that 50% of their fellow citizens don’t have to? How many Americans are satisfied postponing vacations, clipping coupons, working overtime and choosing shank or chicken over tenderloin just so the government can take money out of their checks to give people with cell phones, multiple TVs, air conditioners and satellite dishes? How many people want government deciding what companies can make, who they can hire or telling them how to run their businesses?
But of course none of those choices will be written on any ballot. They will be there nonetheless, and that is the challenge. Are Americans willing and able to look beyond the glittery Hollywood produced commercials, the endlessly fawning media coverage and the unceasing appeals to “fairness”, and of course the ubiquitous “Hope and Change”, to understand that the real choice is simply between freedom and slavery. Not slavery in the sense that blacks are going to be fitted for shackles while whites enjoy mint juleps as they sit on their porches, but rather all of us are on the road to slavery where the overseers are government bureaucrats who tell you what you can eat, where you can live and what you must buy. At the same time the government masters will confiscate ever increasing amounts of your money to pay for things you would never pay for yourself. And of course don’t forget about your guns too.
In the ultimate irony, it is under the banners of “rights” and “fairness” the government is simultaneously turning the American population into a nation of sharecroppers. Sharecropping was of course the tactic of usurious rents and loans that indebted the newly freed slaves to the land they worked and made it almost impossible to exercise their newly granted freedom. The more money the overseers spend the deeper is the crushing debt the not so free American citizens must toil to service.
In the United States the whole concept of slavery has a racial connotation rightly imbued with violence and oppression and heartbreak. The slavery that lays ahead with Barack Obama’s progressive America doesn’t have that racial component, nor does it bring to mind the heart wrenching images that most of us associate with the word. The reality is however that statism has a long history of equally barbaric images, from the Soviet Union’s gulags to Communist China’s slave labor system to the Khmer Rouge’s killing fields. In those cases, the slavery was imposed at the tip of a bayonet. Here it is being welcomed in via the ballot box by people who are caught up in the anti-capitalist propaganda disguised as “hope and change”.
The assertion that the progressive policies of Barack Obama and the Democrats are nothing but Communism Lite invariably brings charges of hate speech and racism. So be it. That doesn’t make the assertion any less true. The simple question is, are enough Americans able to see through the thinly veiled pleas to “worker’s rights” and “fairness” to recognize the hammer and sickle below and the slavery that comes with it?
See author page
Slowly, since Reaganomics and the practice of off-shoring jobs to foreign countries, American wages a have stagnated to the point where we now have Republicans serfdom in this country where most people can’t even afford to pay taxes without throwing them into dire poverty.
Bring it BACK?
Hell, it’s been in effect for decades. For certain people that is.
http://i979.photobucket.com/albums/ae277/RAPH6969/59.jpg
@Liberal1 (objectivity):
How ironic that you mention Reagan yet seem to constantly ignore how the policies of the Clinton administration destroyed some of the most vibrant industries in the U.S., the garment industry and the textile industry.
When Clinton took office, almost all of the clothing you purchased were made in America (remember the “Look for the union label” ditty?) out of textiles made in America. Then came Clinton’s agreement with China. First the garment plants shut down, then the textile mills. Clinton’s actions nearly bankrupted North and South Carolina where the textile mills were. It was so bad that the United Garment Workers, for lack of members (workers) combined with another union.
In 1992, I had a thriving business creating private label ladies sportwear (casual clothing for those not used to industry speak) made of American fabrics by [legal] American workers. By 2000, I could no longer buy cotton textiles made in the U.S., they all came from nations I had never heard of before, linens were no longer available except for the Chinese linens, unless I wanted to buy the cost prohibitive Irish linen which my customers could not afford.
Since I was a small mom-pop operation, and worked 60 hours a week myself, I was able to keep my cost down in order to compete with the existing market in 1992. By 2000, foreign made goods had virtually put me out of business, so I sold out and my former company went totally broke three years later.
Take a look at the labels on your clothing, Liberal1. And realize that you are the problem, not the workers in nations we never heard of. You wanted those cheap shirts and were more than willing to buy them. Clinton understood this. And he, more than Reagan, put the entire textile industry, and all supporting industries, out of business. I suggest you Google the history of the American textile industry and see how you contributed to loss of jobs, lower wages and offshoring along with Bill Clinton.
And who was it that gave all the technology to Japan to allow them to destroy the American electronics industry? Who do you think gave Japan the technology to put out of business American radio manufacturers, American TV manufacturers? When did the first Japanese cars/trucks start showing up on dealers lots in the U.S.? What was the party of the President when those things started happening?
Americans are smart (or were until 2008). We can create and therein lies our greatness. But when government punishes those that create, like Obama wants to do, we will rapidly become the third world country he wants us to be. It’s part of his Communist DNA.
You say people can’t afford to pay taxes without throwing them into dire poverty. Did it ever occur to you (certainly it did not) that taxes then are too high? Low income families don’t pay taxes that worm their way into the federal coffers, Liberal1. A family of four on welfare is better off than a family of four that makes $36K/yr.
And make no mistake; many Americans have been reduced back to slavery. Slavery is owning someone; telling them where they can live, controlling their income. And Obama has managed to place 1/2 of us on the plantation.
The ultimate manifestation of slavery is allowing someone else (the collective) a financial interest in your body. This is the insult of Obamacare and its predictable evolution into single payer government-provided healthcare. We give the government the right to use force to compel our obedience to law. We complete the circle of slavery by allowing the use of force against us to protect the collective’s interest in our person.
Our freedom was challenged with motorcycle helmet laws and eroded further with seat belt laws and we surrendered with only feeble grumbling. Now America is on the cusp of giving up ownership of our selves to a too powerful government.
The silly socialists will scoff at the concept. The silliest of the silly socialists are the ones who advocate for tyranny and claim to love freedom.
When I saw Vince’s title I immediately thought of ObamaCare and how it will attempt to enslave doctors.
Maybe it will succeed with NEW doctors who know what they are getting into.
But the stats showed that, early on in the ObamaCare debate, a little over 50% of working doctors were considering leaving that field IF ObamaCare took effect.
Now that the Supreme Court has ruled in favor of ObamaCare moving forward toward taking full effect, that stat is 82% of working doctors planning to quit and do something else.
On a personal note, I know four doctors.
My personal MD is retiring ”early.”
The ER doctor who used to live in our condos is going to move to Asia.
The new doctor whose parents live here is planning on not practicing at all and hopes to teach college in a science field.
The other doctor I see in church is already limiting his practice to non-medicaid/medicare patients and giving a discount to folks who pay upfront!
When your insurance finally does send him his check he passes it all on to you!
You end up money ahead IF you can afford to deal with medical care this way.
The desent into economic slavey to the state and to other nations began with President Wislon, picked up speed with FDR and his social programs like social security, and LBJ kicked it into overdrive with his war on poverty and Medicare and Medicade. Obummer injected NO2 into the system with Obummer care and massive spending.
The only way to fix this is to get the people back to taking care themselves and being responsible for thier own actions and decisions. Where they reap the reward or consequenses of their decisions.
If not then this could be the future.
The “slaves” have never left.. they have just been switched with others, and then RENAMED…
Nowadays they are called “Taxpayers and Workers”!!
Vince,
An excellent analysis. With your permission, I would like to print it off and give it to an interested party who doesn’t have computer/internet skills. There are indeed stark similarities between now and Antebellum America.
We should have expected Lib1 to post on this topic with a lame comment about how it is ALL the fault of some Republican.
Retire05 is on the right track with all the jobs being moved overseas. Lib1 is nominally correct by stating that American wages have stagnated, however, his given reason falls flat when looked into further. In order for American companies that continue to operate almost, or entirely, within the US, the wages they offer have to remain low in order to compete with those companies who are either foreign owned, or American companies that have moved much of their operations off-shore. Why? Because workers’ wages and benefits are one of the highest outlays that a company will have.
So then, what are the reasons for those jobs moving overseas?
-Oppressive government regulation making it cost-prohibitive for companies to continue certain, or all, of their operations within the US.
-Disadvantageous agreements with foreign countries on tariffs, which influences companies to make the products overseas and ship it to the US to avoid this form of taxation.
-High corporate tax-rates where if you aren’t one of the “favored” companies you end up paying higher taxes than if your business was based in a foreign country.
-Escalating public-sector wages and benefits, beyond what a company can afford to pay to lure the skilled workers to jobs, thus influencing a company to send those jobs overseas where the wages they offer there can allow the companies’ products to remain competitively priced.
And I’m sure there are many, many more reasons for jobs moving out of the States.
Lib1 doesn’t have the slightest clue when it comes to economics and running a business, and he shows it with comments like the one above.
As to the topic of this posting by Vince, his comments only touch the surface of what we Americans can expect if Obama and the rest of the liberal/progressives have their way.
Why such a large percentage of the population would choose to place their own shackles upon themselves, willingly, and many with a smile while they are fainting at the sight of Obama, is beyond me. Do they think that by supporting such tyranny that it will innoculate them from it’s effects? Or is the fantasy land they live in so “upside-down”, as CJ stated in another topic, that they believe slavery to the system actually frees them?
@johngalt:
Perfect Poster for your comment:
http://obamadidthisonhisown.com/index.html
Slavery under Obama is extremely unlikely, but there’s a real and present danger that a republican win in November could eventually reduce 90 percent of the population to corporate serfdom. We’ve been headed that way for a while now, in case anyone has missed it.
@another vet: Thanks. Please feel free.
@Greg:
90% greg?
Really?
The USA has over 330,000,000 people.
There are only 155,000,000 employed (self or otherwise) total.
For decades we kept about a 35 to 40 million difference between our total population and those who work.
Not anymore!
Today there are 175 million NOT working (some are children, as always.)
There is getting to be a real problem with too many in the wagon for those pulling the wagon.
But as to being stuck as a corporate serf, people who want to reach out to own their own business have to SCRIMP and SAVE.
You need at least 3 months income saved up over and above the costs of opening your doors.
It is wise to have 1 years worth of income saved before starting your business.
Anyone can do it.
But, like Phelps and the use of the pools, so many are just working to spend it all instead of really making the sacrifices.
@Nan G, #14:
And once they’ve done so, they’ll have to compete with the Big Boys who have claimed the entire playground their own. Lots of luck trying to open a small hardware store, a clothing store, an art supply store, an independent movie theater, a bookshop, a corner office supply store, a hobby shop, a neighborhood grocery, a small appliance store–basically, lots of luck with any small business that you could once find thriving in any small to medium size town across middle America. And lots of luck trying to open a factory to manufacture any of the myriad consumer goods that were once sold in such stores. You can’t even escape from the megacorporations by retreating to a farm. They’re getting a firm hold out there, too.
One billionaire removes the opportunity for 1,000 people to become millionaires. As of 2010, according to Forbes, there were 403 billionaires in the US. Shall we do the simple arithmetic?
But it’s more than a distribution of wealth issue–which, of course, the GOP totally discredits. What’s far more important is the matter of the equitable distribution of opportunity–or the lack thereof.
Basically, the little guy–the truly small businessman–cannot get a foothold to compete with the megacorporations in any area that they’ve taken for their own. And soon the average American worker will be in much the same situation. He or she is increasingly in direct competition with workers in the 2nd and 3rd world to produce the goods that can only be afforded if they’re purchased from Wal-Mart. Even services are being offshored.
Unless I’m missing something, if you let those trends continue, corporate serfdom is the likely outcome.
@Rides A Pale Horse:
Note the “Southern Cotton Company” in the first frame was owned by Democrats.
The Democrat party was the Party of Slavery at its founding 200 years ago; it remains the Party of Slavery today.
@DW, #16:
And to what party did all of those southern, pro-segregation democrats go, when LBJ took up the cause of civil rights and threw the full power of the federal government behind them?
Greg, are you really talking to me?
We started a 4 color printing operation when there was a big chain called ”Kinkos” and there was a couple other big box printers.
We’ve made it work.
Obama’s been the one making it difficult.
I love a good price war!
PS: Kinkos is gone!
Greg writes
Keep in mind that Obama considers himself a citizen of the world were anyone making more than $34,000 per year is part of the world’s wealthiest 1%. Wealth re-distribution is a sure ticket to poverty.
@Greg:
Every time I think that you can’t come up with a more asinine comment related to economics, you show how wrong I am about you.
Your comment might, and I said MIGHT, have merit IF there was a finite pool of wealth for everyone to take out of. Since that isn’t the case, your statement is absolutely false, on top of being idiotic.
As GDP grows, or shrinks, the pool of wealth grows and shrinks, Greg. Economics 101. Try learning it. You might just be surprised at how little you actually do know.
When an entrepreneur opens a business, whether making a product, selling products, or selling a service, they CREATE their own wealth. They do not TAKE from others.
The only entities that TAKES from others without creating any on their own is government. Big surprise, then, that the entity you most support is government over all else.
@Greg:
“And to what party did all those southern, pro-segregation democrats go, when LBJ took up the cause of civil rights?”
Why don’t you explain to us why “southern, pro-segregation” Democrats jumped the aisle to join the party that they had been so vehemently opposed to?
@retire05:
Greg’s narrative doesn’t work, timeline wise. If all of those southern, pro-segregation Democrats jumped to the Republican party when LBJ “took up the cause of civil rights”, then the voting for the civil rights bills wouldn’t have had majority Republican support in their passage, would they?
When your lies start to fall apart almost immediately after the point you issue them, it’s time to stop. Somehow, though, I doubt Greg will stop anytime soon. He seems to have too much invested in wanting, hoping, wishing, that Obama wins re-election.
@Greg:
Bull crap Greg.
I could take you on a walking tour of this small American town and show you how wrong you are with one business example after another. We have not one, but two independently owned hardware stores. I shop one of them very regularly because they are less than a mile from my front door and they have very competitive prices. Could I drive thirty miles and save a few dollars? Perhaps sometimes but not on a regular basis. Besides, my savings would be rapidly eaten up by the gas money I would use coming and going.
The other reason that I choose to use the local hardware store is that I know Tommy and the guys there by name. And they know me. Their selection is superb and over the course of the 15 years we have lived here I can think of only three occasions that they didn’t carry what I was looking for.
I could drive you over to a local machine shop that directly competes with the “big boys” in industrial manufacturing. They run high volume precision parts by the tens of thousands and they do it all domestically with… wait for it… domestic steel. A huge advantage that they have is that they are small enough, yet sophisticated enough, to pivot on a dime and react quickly when product development opportunities present themselves.
While other manufacturers are farming out their production to China or elsewhere, these people have kept everything in their manufacturing operation domestic and now export their finished products to foreign countries at least four days per week.
If you want to look at a market which has big box retail competition, I could drive you thirty miles to the west of us and show you a town with a Wal-Mart, a K-Mart, a Lowe’s, and myriad other “big boy” chain retailers.
All of those big box stores exist yet the small business community thrives anyway.
Your idea of mutual exclusivity is woefully incorrect in real life. If it were correct, there would be nothing left at all except “big boys”.
@johngalt, #20:
While the pool of wealth may expand or contract, it always was and always will be finite at any given point in time.
In addition, the average person can become poorer even as that finite pool expands. All that’s required is for population growth to outpace the overall expansion of wealth, or for wealth to be concentrating into some defined population sector that the average person doesn’t inhabit.
Distribution actually does matter. A relatively small percentage of the population having enormously disproportionate shares of total wealth obviously has implications for everyone else. Particularly when the power to accumulate even more correlates closely with how much a person already has to work with.
The extremely wealthy can even influence the rules of the game in their own advantage. The tools that they’re using to do that are politicians and propaganda. This explains the animosity many on the left feel toward people such as the Koch brothers, or Mr. Rush Limbaugh. They simply don’t buy the notion that such people are looking out for the best interests of the common man.
@Aye:
Aye, something Greg also fails to understand is that somewhere along the way, all of those “big boys” sprouted from small-time businesses.
It makes me wonder if the reason Greg, along all of the liberal/progressives, want to knock down those “big boys” is so that they can “erase” evidence that some-one, or group, can actually make it to the top. That they want to erase evidence of any success not specifically directed, or allowed, by government in order to “prove” their point. I wouldn’t be surprised.
@Greg:
I am actually tired of explaining to you idiots exactly why you are wrong, only to have you come back a week, a month, two months, later and spout off the same false ideas, the same misleading statements, that you did before.
In the case of your #24, I almost don’t know where to start it’s so full of stupidity.
I’ll just address this one, as it is such a misleading statement it angers the hell out of me.
You talk as if only the right, or right-leaning businesses or entities are involved in influence-peddling. How soon you forget the mega-millions the unions, or the millions companies like GE, GM, and others pass out to Democrats attempting to influence elections, bill passages and signings, or simple enforcement policies. You deliberately leave out such things as it doesn’t fit the narrative you and your liberal/progressive friends are trying to write.
Why do you do that, Greg? Never mind answering, I already know.
As for the rest, if you knew anything about economics at all, you’d understand how screwed up your assumptions and statements really are.
@Greg:This makes no sense:
You couldn’t be more wrong. The pool of wealth is infinite. Via the division of labor and the specialization society can continually increase it’s wealth, even given the same amount of raw materials. The iPhone has in six years increased not only the wealth of Apple shareholders, it has increased the overall wealth of the citizenry by improving their lives. My bank account may not be greater as a result, but my life is because of the new tools at my disposal as well as the savings of time I’ve been given. With that saved time I can do other things. Therefore I am wealthier as a result of the iPhone although I own no shares. Multiply that times the millions of simple and complex innovations and inventions at our disposal and we are all much wealthier, even if there is a disparity in our checking accounts. Facebook… How much time has that saved you from writing letters or Christmas cards. Google – How much time has that saved you from becoming lost on a trip? Plastic… Imagine going through your day where the water bottles or computers or cars were made out of only wood or metal or glass.
Wealth is not measured by the amount of money in the bank but the quality of life of the people in a society. Ours has improved dramatically in a short period of time, whether you look at 180 years since Cyrus McCormick invented the reaper, in the 100 years since Leo Baekeland invented synthetic plastic or the 15 years since Amazon revolutionized retailing.
Give free people the opportunity to innovate and benefit from doing so and you will find that they are able to create wealth not only for themselves but for the wider public as well. That’s how free markets work. The opportunities are literally endless, not at all finite.
@vince:
Exactly, Vince. Liberal/progressives, however, either mindlessly remove the opportunities in the name of “fairness”, or willfully and deliberately remove them as a matter of control over the citizenry.
So greg, when are you going to give back what you stole? If you really are worth 400k, you got it by being a sleazeball (per your way of thinking).
@Greg:
You’re talking about the wealth having influence and the big corporations that they are behind. You mean the big boys that took away small businesses like these:
Barnes & Noble – liberal
Ben & Jerry ice cream – liberal
Costco Wholesale Corporation – liberal
Foot Locker – liberal
Gap – way past liberal
General Electric – liberal
Goldman Sachs – liberal
Progressive Insurance – liberal
Starbucks – liberal (how many mom and pop coffee stands did this liberal group put out of business Greg?)
By the way, I agree with Aye’s #23. I generally go to the independently owned Ace Hardware in my town. I won’t lie, I love going into Lowe’s and Home Depot. Going to Lowe’s or Home Depot for most men is the equivalent of a woman walking into a shoe warehouse. 🙂
And speaking of Home Depot, Arthur Blank has a huge number of charities. You are just one success-hating individual. No wonder you like Obama so much. He must be the single greatest thing that ever happened to you politically.
@Hard Right:
You need to understand that progressives (Boxer, Feinstein, Pelosi, Reid, Obama, et al) never want to redistribute their own wealth to acheive fiscal equality for all, they only want to redistribute other people’s wealth. If progressives (see above) truely believed what they preach, they would take only that money that allowed them to live like any middle class family and take only the average American income per year, giving the rest of it away. Obama, who seemingly made millions from his two books, would have divided that money up among the editors, the publishers, the book printers, the warehouse workers who packaged the books for shipment, the truck drivers who delivered the books and the book store clerk who sold the books. Instead, he took that money, invested it and parlayed it into even greater wealth.
Dictators all have one thing in common as they steal from the populace and try to convince the useful idiots that the benefits of fiscal equality are many; they all lived in the lap of luxury compared to those they were oppressing.
That absurd statement seems to have become an of article of the faith, rendering it impervious to logical analysis. I don’t know if that should blamed on the New Age movement, Prosperity Theology, or Ayn Rand.
Greg, seeing as how you made the intial claim about the pool wealth being finite, how about backing it up with something other than hot air?
BTW, have you cut a check to the govt. for extra taxes?
@Hard Right, #33:
The assertion that wealth is infinite is totally ridiculous. You don’t need evidence to establish that; you only need logic.
At any given point in time, there are only so many useful and desirable things in the world. Their number is finite. That number can be increased, but there will always be a limited number. As pointed out earlier, whether an increase benefits any given person depends upon whether or not the total of useful and desirable things expands more rapidly than the population wanting them expands, and on whether or not the resultant increase of wealth is distributed across the entire population or is concentrated only into a small segment.
Maybe you should talk to Mitt. I accumulated my wealth by exchanging productive hours of work for money, and was subject to a 25% federal income tax rate while doing so. Mr. Romney–who needless to say had earnings that were enormously more each year–has apparently had a tax rate of less than 15%. Whether or not he actually worked for all of his money is open to debate.
@Greg:
No, Greg, it’s not “limited”. Prior to Apple and Steve Jobs coming out with the Iphone, all of that silica and metals were worth considerably less than the cost of an Iphone. Since that time, an enormous amount of wealth was created, by Jobs and Apple, in marketing and selling their pile of silica and metal turned cell-phone.
And that is only one example, Greg. It takes ingenuity, hard work, perseverance, but nearly anyone can create wealth if they put their mind to it. Whether it’s cell-phones, a novel idea for a new store, innovative tools, or just plain hard work improving the property one owns, everyone can do it and it doesn’t take government to allow, or “help”, in creating that wealth.
And those new ideas, business ventures, products, land improvements, services happen daily, creating wealth where none, or little, was before.
To claim that wealth is “limited” is just asinine and shows that your understanding of economics, again, is woefully inept.
@Greg: Really? How do you define wealth? I would suggest that a washing machine is of immeasurable value to a woman who previously had to walk miles to wash the clothes in the river. I’d suggest that a computer is almost invaluable to the millions who would be retyping their reports, term papers or blog posts if we were still using computers. Oh, wait, there wouldn’t really have been blogs. How much wealthier are you because you have a cell phone than you were just 20 years ago when you had to be tethered to a wall in order to communicate with your loved ones in an emergency?
JD Rockefeller was at one point the richest man in the world. Nonetheless, most people would consider their lives infinitely better than his was, regardless of how much money they have in the bank. From computers to medicine to television, to cell phones to the Internet to Velcro to Ziploc bags to the potential to travel into space and eventually beyond earth… The potential wealth that can be created is indeed infinite and is limited only by those who can’t imagine the possibilities.
“Wealth” is only limited by how productive each person is.
There is no single pie of wealth whereby I have to get less for you to get more.
Sure, there is limited STUFF, but there is NOT limited wealth!
For instance, let’s say we have a swimming pool.
99.999% of the folks in the pool use it for recreation, exercise, socializing, etc.
Then there is that one guy who is using it to TRAIN himself for competition.
He may win or he may lose.
But IF he wins he has turned that same pool everyone else used for no gain into the means to make himself a great deal of money.
Ever go to a paint store?
99.999% of the folks who do use the paint for mundane things, painting walls, buildings, boats, even garage floors.
Then there’s that one with the spark to be creative.
He or she uses that same paint as an art form.
Makes millions….IF it sells.
Get the point?
It isn’t the STUFF you have access to, it is how you chose to use the stuff you had access to.
And there is RISK.
Notice the use of the word, “IF.”
@vince:
My point above in a far simpler format. I like it, vince.
@Nan G:
That’s the problem with liberal/progressives, Nan. They cannot conceive of the idea of risk being involved, therefore, there is no “if” it sells.
Liberal/progressives believe that simply by doing, no matter how much, or how little, one does, even if it is nothing, that they “deserve” a piece of the pie, so to speak. And all that does is breed laziness in people. And the ones who actually do go out and pour their heart and soul into whatever it is they do get demonized by liberal/progressives and raped for their success. They get accused of the very things the liberal/progressives are promulgating throughout society, and people like Greg lap it up with gusto and then come here and tell us how bad we conservatives are for not “giving” more, or being willing to “give” more.
What’s being demonstrated here is a willful failure to understand a rather obvious point, I think. I suspect the less obvious reason for doing that might be this: Asserting that wealth is infinite renders the fact that a very small percentage of the population controls a very large portion of the current total more acceptable. Those at the top of the pyramid can tell themselves that they’re simply more effective wealth creators; that anyone doing as they have done can enjoy an equal bounty, and that the same opportunity to do that exists for all.
People will of course immediately equate that observation with a denial that hard work and focus on positive goals pays off. Which it is not.
@Greg:
No, Greg, the same opportunity doesn’t exist for all. But that is exactly what conservatives want for our country. Liberal/progressives, on the other hand, and that obviously includes you, want an equal result.
You all expect that someone who doesn’t put in the work should be given the same as those who do. Hell, the President basically said as much during the 2008 campaign, and keeps reiterating that idea throughout his presidency. That is why he stated that no successful person got their on their own. Of course, if he had stopped at that, most of us conservatives could have agreed with it. But he didn’t. Obama intimated that it was solely due to government that successful people were successful. That is the problem we had with his attack on business, Greg.
Equal opportunity does not mean equal result, Greg. Some people take the opportunity given them and build something magnificent with it. Others who have their opportunity squander it in favor of living in the present. Or do not even get off the couch in order to recognize the opportunity given them.
You say it is a “willful failure to understand a point”. I say it is a refutation of your point, in that it doesn’t fit with reality. And even if it did, it wouldn’t matter one little bit as the wealth at any one given moment changes the next moment for all manner of reason, including industrious people making the most of the opportunities given them. Steve Jobs didn’t stop and give up when Bill Gates’ Microsoft had the world by the tail, did he? No, he kept plugging away, even delving into another area of technology and now Apple is a giant, up there with Microsoft, or higher, depending on your perspective.
The point is that anyone can take their idea and make something of it. And when they do, they create wealth.
Someone sitting on their couch grasping at the meager handouts given by government, lamenting their own failure and blaming it on someone else is a participant in the destruction of wealth.
Given human history, governments rise and fall while individuals keep on building and innovating… Government didn’t help Issac Newton discovery of the theories of physics that we now deem scientific laws and government tried to hinder Nikola Tessla’s work and designs for decades… And now independent firms are being told their patent ideas or business models were made possible by the very federal government that’s taken a hostile approach to such firms?
In fact every Socalist state and communist state has tried to hinder ot punish innovations in ideas, technology, or research that can not be controlled by the State. It is the major reason a lot of western European engineers came to the States in the 70’s to even now to work in aerospace, semiconductor research, or software design (western seaboard being major concentration of euro engineers working for various tech firms.). To be successful takes team work and people who want the product, labor or service and Governments do not supply any if that successfully. Central planned economies dictate what the citizen consumes and it leads to ruin.
@Mr. Irons, #42:
GM destroyed over 1,000 leased EV1s, although many owners wanted to buy and keep them. The Western States Petroleum Association financed a successful campaign to kill utility company plans to build electric car recharging stations. Chevron bought critical patents for the advanced Ovonics nickel metal hydride electric car battery and prevented its commercialization.
So what’s all that an example of? The forces of a free marketplace at work?
You fail to point that GM purchased back before destruction of goods… So your point being? And ontop if this I’ve already detailed the flaws and ineffective reliability of li-ion batteries for highway use or has your rich so called layman brain gotten lazy?
And if you studied, well before GM, chemical battery cars were the first models in the road but couldn’t last long enough for basic city to city travel. Combustion engines from a usable joules stand point in energy reliance is still a cheaper and reliable means of logistics transportation. Until semi trailers are hauled by battery rigs, your argument is flawed.
@Greg:
You fail to mention, of course, that Chevron, originally Texaco when the patent rights were purchased, purchased those patent rights from GM, who purchased the rights from one Stanford Ovshinsky, the inventor and original owner of the patent.
GM bought the patent rights in 1994, presumably in concert with their attempt at a modern electric vehicle, the EV1. However, GM failed for 7 years to truly advance the technology of the NiMH battery tech, most likely because the technology was fairly mature at the time anyways.
Texaco purchased the patent rights in 2000, which a week later became part of Chevron. Chevron happens to be a major player in alternative energy sources, including biomass fuels and solar energy. They also happen to be a partnership with another major oil company in coal gasification, which produces a cleaner burning and more environmentally friendly energy source than natural gas.
Chevron formed Cobasys as a subsidiary company to manufacture and supply these NiMH batteries to OEM companies such as GM, Toyota and others. The unfortunate aspect of doing this was that in order to make an acceptable profit (most likely the typical 3-5%), Cobasys required the OEM companies to make large purchases, which was never done, even by Toyota who by that time was well into building EV and hybrids.
Cobasys now is not owned by Chevron, but rather, a partnership of Bosch and Samsung, who created SB LiMotive. However, that company is primarily involved with the Li-Ion batteries and NiMH batteries will probably never make it into vehicles as a large scale production alternative.
Your conspiracy theory about Chevron buying up the patent rights and sitting on them is about as believable as any of the rest of your liberal/progressive unicorn and rainbow theories.