You challenged the existence of natural rights. You do not accept natural human rights. That’s kind of the end of everything I’d care to discuss with you. There is no common ground to build a discussion on.
Rights exist insofar as someone is willing to either protect them or take them away. Only the laws of physics and biology matter.
Brilliant. And wise.
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Yes it was.
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And might I say something radical - there was nothing in that inconsistent with being conservative. Bona fide conservatives have always placed social cohesion as an end worth pursuing and know action has be taken when the fabric of that cohesion starts to fray.
Edit: and I don’t worry a whole lot about ideological taxonomy these days, but what I wrote above is also why I think that a lot of people who identify as liberal are actually quite conservative, properly understood.
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I would really like to hear @zeb and @anon50325502 take on what he has to say because they seem to be of the opposite side.
I don’t have the time to watch the whole thing, but I think the first 4 minutes are spot on. I’ll watch the rest later.
Oldstyle:
I just wanted to emphasize some things from the video:
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It is CLEAR that a healthy, vibrant and economically strong Middle Class is what “drives” a Capitalistic Society…not simply rich people getting richer. (I’m not sure if the video indicated it; but small business owners are an extremely important part of the Middle Class).
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While the Henry Ford and Washington State examples were powerful arguments for a “Living Wage”; I think we have to be careful about a) how rapid such changes or instituted and b) be careful about making it an overall Federal mandate. I think States can be given “goals”; but ultimately it seems to me that the economics and business environment of each State need to be taken into account.
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He fully admits (much like Warren Buffet) that Capitalism will inherently always create “winners” and “losers”…but ever-increasing gaps simply is not sustainable.
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History has proven one of his basic premises; that larger and larger gaps in income ultimately lead to socioeconomic instability and unrest.
Again…great video…from a Conservative Billionaire…
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Agree with you small business is part of that middle class, he didn’t say it in the video, but he focused mainly on the ultra rich.
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Agree with you here too if there are hikes in minimum wage they shouldn’t be rapid. The only thing I would like out of a federal mandate for minimum wage is to keep up with inflation. I believe last I looked factoring in inflation from the 1960s it would be right around $10 something an hour. From there states and even cities could dictate what they feel would be a wage that wouldn’t collapse their economy, but would be fairer from a cost of living stand point.
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Yes it will, some smarts and a lot of luck. We are long past due for some sort of maintenance on the system is I believe what he is getting at. Because like you said it isn’t sustainable inequality is inevitable. I just wanted zebs and ucmccds take on it because they are both against a minimum wage and zeb seems very much against raising taxes on the ultra wealthy. I don’t see any other way to effectively close the gap. I see it more as maintenance on our system vs a redistribution of wealth. We already have a redistribution of wealth and its flowing up ward as the gap has grown to the greatest its been since the 1920s.
I’m only against a federal minimum wage. I believe it is a 10th Amendment issue. The Commerce clause is abused, imo. I think a minimum wage is a bad idea, economically, though.
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Just to this point in the thread, but I have to say an excellent and civil all-around discussion so far (hopefully I don’t jinx that).
I’d really like to reinforce this point above–negative self-defeating ideas are VERY common, and much like diet and fitness one needs to believe it is possible and also be willing to work hard and learn to do it (not necessarily learning in a school environment mind you).
One of the things I coach people is in how to change lifestyles to attain fitness. This has a LOT in common with wealth building and financials that people don’t really see. Most people truly are capable of leaning down, getting healthy, feeling better and looking better–even the “too busy” ones.
The crux is that until they want to or believe they can nothing will change. They lack the skill sets to do it in many cases, but the skills are relatively simple (not to be confused with easy, just like sound fiscal decisions)…and they won’t even begin to TRY learn the skill sets until they believe it possible.
These are things that have to be internalized.
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Just to repeat
One of the difficulties here though is that at this point you are talking pretty much about a “minimum wage”, and are thus subject to all the problems that come with it–namely price inflation. If everybody get UBI at X $, regardless of other income, then it effectively becomes Zero and has just biased the actual numbers higher. In other words, if a football game starts out at 14-14, it is no different than 0-0 except via inflation.
I understand the concern and think it’s valid. However, UBI would be paid for with existing money, rather than “printing” new, so risks of inflation should be low. Did a quick google search and ran across this (haven’t fully delved into it yet though):
EDIT: the quoting function on this site is all boggered up. I was responding to Aragon, not Mufasa (showed correctly when I first did it).
This 15 min video is well worth the watch:
Also people in the US eat on average 4k calories per day. So they won’t be all of the sudden demanding more food if they were paying for it with UBI instead of SNAP. Prices for other goods would rise potentially.
Is this a legit stat (genuinely curious)? I personally eat around 3.4k a day because I’m a skinny shit with a teenagers metabolism that refuses to die. I’m personally friends with a decent number of overweight individuals, and I would seriously doubt they’re coming anywhere close to that.
The thought of the average american consuming 4k a day seems insane to me
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I don’t have the study in front of me… but I think that was a CDC study. It might have been fat people eat 4,000 cals. Which would make more sense. Found a link from a UK paper showing 3770/day, which explains the healthcare crisis in Murika. But that’s victim blaming and obesity is a disease… so I’ve been told.
Wow. I guess I’ve never really cared enough to look into population numbers for eating, but dayum. I already feel pretty disgustingly full most of the day eating 3.4ish. I couldn’t imagine eating upwards of 4k without it being mostly fast food (which I imagine is the reality).
This reminds me of a discussion I had with an old college buddy a while back (for reference, he’s the type that believes anyone that gets a paycheck from a public entity is a mooch) where he suggested that we limit SNAP benefits to foods that fall into certain health criteria. I thought it would be a very interesting concept if you could get legit health professionals to be the ones evaluating the “quality” of the food instead of obese politicians.
It was around this time of my life that I had the epiphany that almost nobody in the entire world truly believes in the govt not telling people what to do, they just want the govt to tell people their version of “what to do.”
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