Thread: Obama won re election

Originally Posted by DaveW

Guy #1: I'm going to give you someone else's money

Guy #2: I'm going to help you get a job so you can earn your own money

It's pretty hard for Guy #2 to beat Guy #1 when there are as many freeloaders as there are.

As Ben Franklin said:

"When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic. "

While there have been times going back and forth where we have thought it a good idea to ignore the idea that we actually have to produce something economically, and at the root of production is the idea that individuals actually have to get out of bed and have some drive, there has always been a calibrating president that at least made the idological standpoint that it is good to solve your own problems and take care of yourself.

I think we are at a point now where people who choose to do nothing have no chance of being hungry, and those days are over, and we will be worse off for it. A large percentage of the population will do nothing productive unless they have to to eat, and the rest of us will carry them, all the while listening to them whine about a pie in the sky reason that we supposedly got ahead by taking the shirt off their backs.

Last night's election was a demonstration that a majority of the voting population no longer has any interest in dealing with numerical reality or sense, and certainly derives no satisfaction from the drive that they will take care of themselves and their families to the best of their ability.

I think that's a pretty vast oversimplification of what this election was about. I have a job, I've had a job since I was fifteen and was the only white kid on a mowing crew which i was not so affectionately dubbed "pendejo" (i had no idea what that meant at the time)...so when I go to vote, I'm not looking to do nothing and get something for it...in fact, the percentage of this country that honestly truly does behave in that way is pretty small...certainly not enough of a percentage to be the deciding factor in a presidential election when the candidate wins both the electoral and popular vote.

Both candidates have plans on how to deal with "numerical reality" and reduce the deficit...it's a matter of how it's done. Honestly, I think this was the Republican Party's election to lose...but it's moved so far right that they made that more difficult for themselves than it should have been. Mitt the moderate probably would have trounced Pres. Obama had he not gone "severely conservative".

So. the majority of this country are freeloaders just because they disagree with you?

It seemed to me that the majority of people disagreed/did not trust Romney, more than they blindly agreed with all of Obama's plan.

The majority of the country has no interest in linking what they produce / do to what they consume. And the response when you bring that up is that there is a hidden group with unlimited wealth to make up the difference. That's freeloading. There are super-producing ideologues among that group, but it isn't the majority.

I see approximately $60,000 of debt added to each household after the last 4 years, and all I hear is about how we're not doing enough to help people. It makes no sense.

You can't even begin to discuss how you solve the problem of repaying the debt until you get to the point that you can stop accumulating it. Right now, it's getting serviced at what...1.5%? What do you do when it's 4% or 5%? You have to reissue debt as it matures, and suddenly the cost to service it will skyrocket.

In a situation where that kind of debt is incurred, and a very significant number of households are not paying taxes for anything other than pay-as-you go social programs (which themselves are adding to the debt, and projected to do more so in the future), how do you begin to have a realistic understanding of the assignment of that debt to households that actually produce more than they consume. Do you think they're going to continue to?

All I hear is that we're not giving enough money away and this politician or that politician doesn't identify with the poor. No presidential politican identifies with the poor. They pander to the poor.

I see no realistic solution to the numerical problem other than a genuine effort to incent people to create, invest and innovate, and the current structure incents exactly the opposite.

So the majority has kicked the can down the road a little bit longer, choosing to ignore reality.

Unfortunately for the Republicans Romney was a terrible candidate. Between his constant changes of position and major gaffes and lies about his background and accomplishments and a bunch of other stuff he was doomed from the start. Had someone like our friend from N.J run I think the outcome would have been very different. I think it's a miracle the election wasn't a total bust for them.

I also like to point out that the 'freeloader' argument is incorrect.

I live in a country that is way more socialist than what Obama is being accused of. Most of the people I know here are hard working people as well. We all work our jobs. We just like some stuff to be provided as cost efficient as possible.

Don't call people freeloaders just because they think that it is more important for society to have a working healthcare system than to make sure the insurance companies make double digit profits and their CEOs and their lawyers can buy a new yacht.

I was ok with either of the candidates and I think that's about the only time I have felt that - I'm almost 60. I don't think our problems are something that a president fixes, but he can certainly make them worse. I wish Obama the best.

TBS, I agree with you. What's strange, as a libertarian type of conservative, was all of the accusations that Romney was a far right conservative. And strange because I knew a lot about him before he ever ran for president. I thought "this guy is going to get in trouble because of the things about him that got him elected in massachusetts".

In our election system, you have to pretend to be something in the primary, and then pretend to be something else entirely in the general election. That is always going to lead to people either lying (romney pretending to be a solid middle-of-the-road conservative) or hiding something from the or past (Obama and his college legal philosophy work).

The primaries can be especially ridiculous due to the "i can prove i'm more conservativer than you" or "i can prove i'm more liberaler than you". Coming from where I am, and leaning more toward libertarian, but with the identification that the truly unfortunate (disabled and medically ill, etc) need to be taken care of, imagine how much consternation I would have with Rick Santorum getting as far as he did, simply because most people hand no clue about his history.

Anyone who makes it to the presidency pretty much needs to be an egomaniacal narcissist, a truly twisted individual in one way or another, because no honest person who had any concept of the rest of the world would be able to tolerate putting themselves at such a lying deceit fest that politics has become. And it is *shocking* that still such a large part of the majority thinks that "it's bad, but only the other guy is bad enough that it's a problem, my guy isn't as bad and he has good intentions".

Stock market is showing Love today for Mr O

Originally Posted by Bruno

Don't call people freeloaders just because they think that it is more important for society to have a working healthcare system than to make sure the insurance companies make double digit profits and their CEOs and their lawyers can buy a new yacht.

Well, I doubt that the majority of folks in the US would get better care anywhere else in the world. I don't think most insurers make "double digit profits", either, especially as a percent of revenue. We do have an issue with compensation packages and how we value some individuals, but even the dollar amounts they are getting wouldn't solve 1% of our problems if we magically added a multiplier limit to CEO salaries.

Fiscal irresponsibility in the US isn't due to lack of provided health care or how big of a boat someone 3 states away has, it exists at the individual level, and the monetary virtue and thrift that a lot of western europeans have (germany, belgium, etc) doesn't generally exist in the US. It is systemic here, and to pretend that it is a small structural matter and not the fault of individuals is disingenuous. It is more like greece on an individual level here for a large part of the population, and it is consumption driven, consumption without regard to production or means. Belgium, Germany, UK, etc, don't have middle class folks trying to outlive their standard of living at the same rate.

The fact that we've amassed $60,000 of debt per household over the last 4 years has very little to do with healthcare or CEOs. It is a convenient argument for western europeans to buy into, thinking that all we need is a political fix to be more like western europe, but the problem goes deeper at the individual level. If you told the average middle class household (I am middle class, and live below my means in a fairly small house) in the US that you would provide health care for them at a 50% effective tax rate, and that they had to live on the remainder, they just couldn't do it on average -few of them would forgo the things they feel that they're entitled to (two fairly new cars, a payment-based livestyle, financing every large-ticket item, one to two vacations a year, etc).

This thread makes me very happy for the IGNORE LIST feature.