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Aug. 30th, 2004 10:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
acroyearMy answers to a section of this post on what Kerry would do that supposedly would suck. (yes, its the Tron guy)
* He'd institute measures to stop sending jobs offshore without a single thought for the industries he'd destroy.
would those industries be destroyed anyways because so many americans were unemployed that they simply stopped buying cars, furnature, reasonable clothes...would the state and local governments be destroyed because by not having any residents with income, they would also therefore be without money to pay for schools so that the next generation might be able to actually get out of the dead-end town and maybe get their own job someday?
before it gets outsourced too?
* He'd abdicate critical decisions on our foreign policy to our putative allies, never caring that their interests are often at odds with our own.
since when are *our* interests the best for the world? Since when is *our* cheap oil (really, the only thing ANYBODY seems to be interested in) more important than anything else? It is a symbol of unbelievable arrogance to continue to feel, 60 years after WW2, that our actions alone define what is best for the world.
There's a REASON the rest of the world hates us, and you just reiterated it.
* He'd jack up taxes on the average American in order to buy votes by giving the money away to those who would not work for it.
So you're also of the belief that those on Hard Time are merely freeloaders, who are just collecting money off the hard working rich people (who, mind you, are rich people getting richer because they just outsourced the jobs of those who are now suddenly on Hard Time)?
People *WANT* to work. They really do. The tiny minority of freeloaders as been thrown incredibly out of proportion by propagandists over the decades. However, factory workers can't switch to jobs in WalMart or McDonalds. They simply can't. Similarly, they can't suddenly become super computer programmers, both because there aren't enough positions there, and because they lack the talent and education for it. And even so, *those* jobs are getting outsourced, too.
So where will they work? And in that (*long* -- my most recent unemployment lasted 5 months) period while looking for a new job that isn't there, how will they eat? How can they look for a job when they have to keep selling their clothes and their furnature just to keep the roof? And what happens when they lose that as well?
where's the "Compassionate Conservatism" in all of this?
Giving tax cuts to the rich.
again.
update: my reply to his reply is posted here in my comments. Best excerpt: In the end, the mounting costs of EVERYTHING the Bush administration has done will have my child indebted to this government FAR more than someone on Hard Time collecting a welfare check for a year.
* He'd institute measures to stop sending jobs offshore without a single thought for the industries he'd destroy.
would those industries be destroyed anyways because so many americans were unemployed that they simply stopped buying cars, furnature, reasonable clothes...would the state and local governments be destroyed because by not having any residents with income, they would also therefore be without money to pay for schools so that the next generation might be able to actually get out of the dead-end town and maybe get their own job someday?
before it gets outsourced too?
* He'd abdicate critical decisions on our foreign policy to our putative allies, never caring that their interests are often at odds with our own.
since when are *our* interests the best for the world? Since when is *our* cheap oil (really, the only thing ANYBODY seems to be interested in) more important than anything else? It is a symbol of unbelievable arrogance to continue to feel, 60 years after WW2, that our actions alone define what is best for the world.
There's a REASON the rest of the world hates us, and you just reiterated it.
* He'd jack up taxes on the average American in order to buy votes by giving the money away to those who would not work for it.
So you're also of the belief that those on Hard Time are merely freeloaders, who are just collecting money off the hard working rich people (who, mind you, are rich people getting richer because they just outsourced the jobs of those who are now suddenly on Hard Time)?
People *WANT* to work. They really do. The tiny minority of freeloaders as been thrown incredibly out of proportion by propagandists over the decades. However, factory workers can't switch to jobs in WalMart or McDonalds. They simply can't. Similarly, they can't suddenly become super computer programmers, both because there aren't enough positions there, and because they lack the talent and education for it. And even so, *those* jobs are getting outsourced, too.
So where will they work? And in that (*long* -- my most recent unemployment lasted 5 months) period while looking for a new job that isn't there, how will they eat? How can they look for a job when they have to keep selling their clothes and their furnature just to keep the roof? And what happens when they lose that as well?
where's the "Compassionate Conservatism" in all of this?
Giving tax cuts to the rich.
again.
update: my reply to his reply is posted here in my comments. Best excerpt: In the end, the mounting costs of EVERYTHING the Bush administration has done will have my child indebted to this government FAR more than someone on Hard Time collecting a welfare check for a year.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-08-30 08:17 pm (UTC)a followup by me...
The simple fact is that the American worker has priced himself out of the global market. This is as painful for me as it is for everyone else who's un- or underemployed, but it's no less a fact for being painful.
This much we agree on.
I don't believe that we should have allowed France to dictate US policy, which is exactly what those who call for deferring to the UN are really advocating, whether they know it or not.
Again, why is *our* policy more important than what the World feels is necessary, even post 9/11?
Particularly when our policy is based on just as many lies, just as shrewedly presented to the world, as France's policy?
As for Cheap Oil, you can talk to Georgie's best friends, our "allies" in Saudi Arabia, because they're the ones setting the price through OPEC controls. Don't like it? Ask George once again why he refused to tap the reserves? Ask him why, given the size of those reserves, why its more important to destroy Alaska's wilderness? Or, hell, ask him why our "allies" keep raising the prices and holding back production just before we hit our "busy season" of the summer months?
Where will people work? In industries that don't exist yet, or aren't very big yet. If government doesn't tax them into oblivion, they'll grow and create jobs. If, in the name of class warfare, taxes are jacked back up, they never will.
Industries can't come into existence spontaniously, nor can people survive while *waiting* for these industries to show up. Nor will any industry come along that can replace the factory jobs being outsourced. The next waves in technology (nano, biotech) currently require more training and education and research dollars at graduate school programs (dollars cut *dramatically* by this administration, and by state budgets having to account for other cuts made by this administration), meaning that next industry may not happen at all.
OR it needs freedom from repressive pro-corporation IP laws like the DMCA, current Patent office practices, and the Sonny Bono copyright extension (signed in order to keep Mickey Mouse from the Public Domain). Yes, those were signed/supported by Democrats, too. Its one aspect where I hate *both* sides, because in this respect *both* sides are ruled by corporatism.
But if you want to encourage creativity in a way that will create a new industry, you have to have breathing room to work in, and current Patent law and corporate practices, and government policy, are encouraging the opposite -- milking the current system for all it can give you and to hell with the future.
In the end, this country's biggest curse is its own short-sightedness, its inability to see the consequences of actions into the future, or to even have contingency plans for it. Add to that its arrogance in thinking our short-sightedness is the only way to see the world.
In the end, the mounting costs of EVERYTHING the Bush administration has done will have my child indebted to this government FAR more than someone on Hard Time collecting a welfare check for a year.
As for taxes on corporations? Corporations in their entreprenurial stages pay FAR less than established corporations. My company now is about 10 years old, and is paying more taxes (by percentage) now than they ever did during the Clinton administration, while they were starting up. They've been profitable almost since they started, not VC-investment driven.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-31 11:32 am (UTC)http://www.livejournal.com/community/angry_hippy/182341.html
i love it!