Why

[hazelf1]

Why is it spending cuts never hit the red tape and pc brigade.

All the extra ministers and depts created in the last few years why not cut the big boys the fat cats on big money dealing in lies and cheating fidling expenses.

The bank top people who are inept and incompetent.

This never happens always the indians and not the chiefs syndrome.

The rank and file are sacrificed and cut.

The super stores hikeing their prices year after year at xmas, why not a price cut on basic foods or a price freeze.

Petrol is a classic, record profits year after year but the person in the streeet always pays, when it comes to cuts, am i missing a point here.

I am talking uk here but i bet the usa isn't that different perhaps it is, tell me what you think and i.am not a communist i run a small family firm, just ticks over at present, but luckier than most.

 

[Relent<]

The reason is simple; who do you think makes the decisions about cuts in the first place? It comes down to not wanting to alter the life you yourself have become accustomed to.
Its like, "there are bullets in this gun, and someone in this room has to die. How about him? No one will miss him." And then some random mail room guy gets shafted, but now everyone else has to go to the post office themselves. The fat cat holds the gun, but will seldom point the barrel at his own head. Why should he? If anything, the gun gives him more power than he had before, and some half-assed justification behind using it. Not only can the fat cat now terminate anyone at any time, but he can make the living entities squirm under that threat. He can make them take more hours, for less money, etc, and all this time there are no adverse effects to his own lifestyle.
Thats the savagery of the business world, I guess.

 

[the_jimmy_james]

Why?

Because that's the way it works. It's the reality of the natural world, only abstracted out to using numbers rather than actual ability to hunt. Does that mean we should be any less bitter? No.

And why shouldn't we? Because we're not living in nature. There actually is enough to go around now.

Oh well. Socialism, capitalism, fuck 'em all. It all sucks. Just be angry, bitter, and do the best you can to fuck the bad guys and reward the good guys. Vote with your wallet.

 

[Bator]

It,s all about profit and the bottom line and they don,t care about anything or anyone else. If people are homeless, die because they don,t have proper healthcare or go to fight in some insane war that can never be won, too bad. You will never see any of their children coming home in body bags, living on the street, going without or dying because they can,t afford treatment and that is just the way they like it. The sad part is that most people believe that their governments and big business have their best interest at heart when in fact nothing could be further from the truth.

 

[Relent<]

My you're fun to disagree with lately XD
There seems to be this notion that big business and government are synonymous lately, and that just isn't true. Granted, they are more intertwined than they probably should be, but think about it: do you really think the white house or even wall street wants the population of poor people to thin out? Of course not. Why? Because without someone to push around, who's going to do their heavy lifting? their landscaping? their fruit picking?
And thats only from the capitalist perspective. In terms of actual government, if all the poor were completely dependent of government assistance and aid, the country would be bankrupt; we can't afford to not work. Some people, whether through lethargy and abuse or genuine handicap, cannot or will not work. Our government has enough to support them, within reason, but what would happen if our country was actually stupid enough to do something like--say--outsource every possible job overseas. Then what would the be the government be of? A bunch of broke ass beggars, which they would then have put a majority of their profits into feeding rather than, as you imply, "suiting their own interest."
No one wants to be a county's babysitter.

 

[Bator]

Many poor are already dependant on the government and it has worked out very well hasn,t it? Bale out business with tax payers money and screw the tax payer. Big business are the ones responsible for outsourcing of jobs, not their employees. Why pay someone minimum wage when they get people from a third world country to do the same job for pennies and while they are at it, why not move their main office to another country as well to avoid taxes, but that would never happen😉. This is fun isn,t it?

 

[Relent<]

Well, in the third world countries, where labor cost practically nothing people have no rights. So you'd be moving your office from the USA where your assets are protected to, say, Bangkok, where the government, on a whim, could show up and take your shit.
Thats why the corporate offices and assets are here, and the labor is over there.
And to answer your previous question, no. The people living off of government subsidies and food stamps are not doing all that great. And even with the growing number of people dependent on those programs due to the outsourcing of labor, and various economic collapses, its still a rather vast minority of the entire population.
Also, banks are important, so we have to keep them from collapsing; rather, we bale them out, wait for them to fuck up, then seize their assets. Because when a bank fails, the banks owners tend to disappear with a shit ton of our life-savings, but if they're still on the grid (which is to say above water) we can track them and their expenditures. And yes, what AIG did was criminal, thats why we're passing legislation against that kind of conduct. But if we just said "fuck banks, shut them all down. No more free enterprise." this wouldn't be america. It'd be Bangkok.
Tax payer money is actually intended for the maintainence of these sorts of institutions. Banks, hospitals, roads, schools. Even if it is WAY too much, politicians receive on a very small fraction of the total tax dollars in their salaries every year. The reason we pay them though is so the big businesses, as you call them, don't get their hooks in them and start influencing politics to the point of oligarchy. Granted, the shift toward this has...increased in say the last...10 years or so; but thats the only thing that needs correcting really. The only people who can fix the government, really, is the government. And sure, we have our say about it in a democracy, but there are some positions (like Senate seats apparently) that can be bought, or appointed based on the favoritism of current party loyalties, like the head of the federal trade commission, etc.

Sure, poor people would do just fine without rich people, but look at it this way; the poor would have never been able to globalize trade in the way that this nation has, without educations or any sort of business sense, or even an understanding of the world beyond our own country. Sure globalization has its drawbacks, but i'll call your attention back to pre-civil war america, where all we had was our shit. Someone was bound to get shafted, ie the slaves, ie the southern plantation owners, ie the confederate states. but thats only displays a fault of capitalism in its entirety that we should be aiming to correct. That slave/ plantation/ lesser country system of economics hasn't changed for hundreds of years. Hence Bangkok, they're unpaid child laborers, etc.
(this is a more proper location, fyi) 😛

 

[Bator]

I think business,s are more intelligent and coniving than that, they know where to set up office in order to pay the least amount of taxes and not worry about their products being confiscated. I,m not saying that we should shut down banks and other lending firms but they should be investigated and if criminals are found and they will be, they should be prosecuted and jailed. There are also plenty of educated people without jobs or suddenly find themselves out of work due to outsourcing or cutbacks. Politicians in the last year of the Bush administration gave themselves a raise while refusing to increase the minimum wage and tax payers were powerless to stop them even though it was their money. Wouldn,t you like to have the power to increase your income with someone elses money whenever you decide to have a vote? Up until recently the military didn,t have to account for how much money they received, where they spent it or what they spent it on. The south didn,t care about using poor black people as beasts of burden, they didn,t even consider them to be human beings{they were beaten and lynched, the women were raped}and you think that the plantation owners and the south got shafted? There are still plenty of rich southerners who got their riches through slavery. America,s infrastructure is falling apart, roads, railways, schools, sewers etc. If taxes are meant to pay for these necessities then why aren,t these problems being addressed. America was once the leader in technology, now it,s Germany, Japan and even Korea. Your argument doesn,t stand up at all.

 

[Relent<]

You act as if all it takes to change the government is a vote. Its really a contrived process. Especially where money is involved. Besides that you're missing the point. And dude; I'm black. I'm not defending southern plantation owners in the slightest. You're missing the entire analogy.
What i'm saying is that it takes time; radical change can't occur over night. Our democratic systems are constructed almost exclusively to prevent that, so every tom, dick, and harry elected to office can't flip the entire system on its back on a whim. The errors were made hundreds of years ago, and they are still things that we're trying to change, but there's always going to be old and new money, and old money tends to fear change. They're the ones saying "things are fine the way they are" whereas the people that have managed through whatever manner of loophole to become successful are advocating change. But the point of this thread is to discuss why it is that the rich stay rich, and the poor stay poor, and the people with money keep firing them.
And yes, we all know the Bush administration was ass-backwards, no one's defending them. The reason that particular administration screwed us is due to their failed imperialistic ventures in the middle east since, about the gulf war. Those things took money, and there was profit to be made but their eggs were in the wrong basket so they raised some extra revenue to insulate the financial shock to their own assets. Which is wrong. No one's debating that. The war itself was a racket. All they needed was an excuse.
i say that to introduce this point: with globalism, there are going to be the drawbacks of other countries' socioeconomic systems. Socioeconomy is the tie that was forged between money and politics. It was unavoidable. However, we're taking great strides to limit it's influences on common decency. We as a country I mean; I'm not a politician. But the "we're fine" and the "no we're not" debate tends to constipate the entire process a bit. But the people sitting on the sidelines poking the combatants with sticks saying "go faster!" aren't particularly helping the situation. Its why useless things come up in the media so often. Gay marriage for example in the middle of the Iraq war's decline. They're going to draw on stupid insecurities like that, because the ignorant masses are easily motivated that way to engage their energy elsewhere when confronted with things they don't fully understand.
I'm not looking to the government for morality or compassion or understanding; I'm looking to them to uphold the constitution, and keep the free-world as insulated from stupidity as it can.

 

[Bator]

I,m afraid that the only answer may be for the people to revolt and start demanding instead of asking, they have the guns but we have the numbers. I believe that we can still have social programs inside of a democracy, free hospitalization, nursing homes and pharmaceuticals for the elderly, sick, poor and needy. Food, shelter and clothing for those who require it. Free education. Basic human rights and equality for people of all races, genders and sexual orientations. Wouldn,t this be a more intelligent, worry free, better and happier society? Aren,t the Police, Fire Dept, Military and even Penitentiaries forms of social programs? Imagine if your house was on fire and you called the FD and were informed that it would cost $10,000 to put the fire out, or if someone in your family had been vitimized and you were required to pay up front for the crime to be investigated and more for the perpetrator to be prosecuted. Why shouldn,t the companies responsible for polluting our soil, water, air, not using bio-degradable materials, those selling tobacco or any products containing carcinogens or any other chemicals, preservatives or materials which are hazardous to our health, caffiene, fast food, firearms, alcohol, huge oil companies etc. not pay for these programs, they will still sell their products anyway and what better advertisement could they possibly have? Why couldn,t a hospital, homeless shelter or food bank have a Ford, Standard Oil, Budweiser, Marlboro or McDonalds sign on the outside and treat those who need them for free? It would only be a drop in the bucket compared to the revenue that they would continue to make and that isn,t taking into account the tax write-offs for sponsoring these programs.

 

[kopfhorer1]

Where is Karl Marx now that we need him?

 

[Bator]

I think that his ideals and philosophy still live on in some of us, thank God. I don,t agree with everything but the man definitely believed in the welfare of the masses.

 

[likeasong1]

A couple more reasons:

1) lobbyists.
2) gridlock... sometimes pork barrel concessions are the only way to get bills through Congress
3) gov't is a growth industry. Just think about how many people are employed by the government in one capacity to another... just go out to your mailbox, and it'll hit you (well, not today since it's Veteran's Day here in the U.S./Remembrance Day in Canada). Cut spending and the unemployment rate's going to shift to another sector.

 

[Rox_My_Sox1]

Karl Marx

It's probably for the best that good ol'Marx doesn't come back. He might not like hearing about the millions upon millions of people killed by the governments that attempted to embody the ideas he espoused.

 

[Bator]

What bothers me is the fact that the people who would benefit from some of his ideals are the same people who fight the hardest against them. It doesn,t make any sense.

 

[Rox_My_Sox1]

I find it ironic if not downright sad that every single time a GOP member has been elected there's been a tax cut that's primarily benefited the wealthy elite of our nation as well as massive government handouts to the oil industry as well as other industries too. Oh, also there's the tiny fact that the last two GOP affiliated presidents have started wars that have not only cost this nation trillions but also the lives of thousands of American men and women in uniform.

 

[Rox_My_Sox1]

What bothers me is the fact that the people who would benefit from some of his ideals are the same people who fight the hardest against them. It doesn't make any sense.

To be fair huh, a good deal of his ideas had one crucial flaw...they involved the complete taking of any power away from independent and commercial business interests and giving it all to a central governmental authority. I'm not saying that a strong government isn't good. On the contrary, it's excellent however it's important that the private sector not be completely taken over by it.

After all, as the famous phrase goes, in all things, balance!