Moocher society

POSTED BY: Hardware
UPDATED: Sunday, October 26, 2025 16:48
VIEWED: 3183
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ANTHONYT

Wednesday, April 20, 2011 12:28 AM

Hello,

Did deeper, Dream. Not long ago I looked into this and the Tytler attribution is not as clear as I'd hoped. (I am a fan of the quote, if not always a fan of how it's used.)

--Anthony

_______________________________________________

“If you are not free to choose wrongly and irresponsibly, you are not free at all”

Jacob Hornberger

“Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err. It passes my comprehension how human beings, be they ever so experienced and able, can delight in depriving other human beings of that precious right.”

Mahatma Gandhi

DREAMTROVE

Wednesday, April 20, 2011 4:06 AM

Anthony, I just read a few random pages from the book, I didn't see the quote, but it certainly was in line with the ideas he was presenting.

Cycles tend to manifest in this manner. A causes B which causes C which causes A. This logical progression makes a sort of sense, and whether the idea was distilled by him or someone else paraphrasing, it seems to be his idea. A more thorough study would probably reveal a more complex model. It reminds me somewhat of the Kondratieff Wave.

I had actually just been thinking about democracy, and civilization, and how it tended to last just a couple centuries and then fall into chaos for millennia, and that chaos was a preferable state.

That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.

RIONAEIRE

Wednesday, April 20, 2011 5:36 AM

Oops, can't get it to delete. "A completely coherant River means writers don't deliver" KatTaya

DREAMTROVE

Wednesday, April 20, 2011 7:02 AM

Delete post was one of the functions suggested just now in the suggestion thread. I don't know if Haken slated it for the site. He did slate an app, and the merge-thread function.

That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.

DREAMTROVE

Wednesday, April 20, 2011 12:53 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Geezer:
It'd be interesting to see the ratio of taxes versus benefits graphed against household income, instead of lumping all households into one group. I'm betting that higher income households receive less benefits and pay more taxes.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

Is it the nature of charity, or the manner in which it is done. I would hope absent such a distribution system forced upon us, the economic redistribution would be similar.

I know I grew up hungry and we lost our house to taxes as did other families, while the kids we played with had parents with millions, even hundreds of millions, and never talked about money. You wouldn't have known from going from one person's house to another who was rich and who was poor. It was an incredibly unfair system, made no less so by the fact that almost the entirety of the wealth of all families was inherited.

We should have social values that encourage better treatment of ones neighbors. I've made it a life goal to never hide talking about finances, and I hope to some extent that this will shame those that do not. I know I now have it better off than some, probably a sad commentary for someone below poverty to say "than most" but it's probably true, as I know what the average savings both annual and total are. I don't feel that I should plunge back into destitution to help the first needy person who comes along, but I think I should help with whatever is well within my means.

I think that the middle of the graph represents a problem. Why should the govt. be keeping so much of our incomes?

Also, we have a system where it is not just our neighbors we are supporting, but whole other economies. I know that NY is paying in a tremendous amount of money to support red states. I'm not sure how I feel about that. I'm also pretty sure that most red staters are not fond of how that money is being spent. I think there's a larger issue here than just the redistribution of wealth, which, by itself, is not necessarily a bad thing.

If you have a situation where Joe and Sam live equal lives because Joe works his ass off and Sam is a lazy bum, and their incomes are redistributed, that's clearly the sign of a failed system.

However, if you have a situation where Joe lives like a king and Sam lives in the gutter because in another century Joe's ancestors killed Sams ancestors and took their money, that's also the sign of a failed system. Yet, with no corrective measure, such a system would punish the children of Sam to the benefit of the children of Joe in perpetuity.

I have seen how the very people who killed my great grandparents live.

That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.

SIGNYM

Wednesday, April 20, 2011 1:40 PM

Hardware, this graph is just.... weird. It doesn't really make any point that I can see. There are more sources of government income than household taxes, and more expenditures than just transfers of wealth to households. In addition, as Geezer said, it says nothing about the relative effect at various income levels, nor about the history of how we got here. For example, we COULD be looking at the net effect of wealthy households paying less taxes than before, and larger numbers of people on unemployment, which doesn't mean that we have all suddenly become "moochers".

For example, the article begins... "For the first time since the Great Depression". So, according to the article, households during the Great Depression received net transfers of wealth. To put some historical perspective on this, would you say now that the people "back then" were "moochers", or were they hardworking people who were experiencing an economic collapse not of their making?

Would you have said back then that people should lift themselves up by their bootstraps? If you would have, you wouldn't have been alone. There were MANY people "back then"... mostly the wealthy... calling for the abolition of "government charity".

If your view of the people during the Great depression is different from the people of today, why do you view them differently?

It's easy to be general, but If you want to make your point, you'll have to be a lot more specific.

HARDWARE

Wednesday, April 20, 2011 2:49 PM

Sig, read the article. It states that households receiving some form of benefits from the government outnumber households that do not. Given that there are arguably more voters receiving benefits than those that do not, where does their self-interest lay? Heinlein said that when you can identify someone's self interest in a proposal you can judge the proposal's worth.

Now, why would those voters endorse any movement to cut themselves off from the government tit? It's not in their self-interest to reduce their income. Sure, there may be some patriotic or self-sacrificing individuals who will recognize that it is best for the country for them to give up the government income. But I don't think that the majority will willingly give up unearned income.

If there are more households with government income, and that equates to more voters with government income, where is the stimulus to cut government handouts and subsidies to individuals?

The more I get to know people the more I like my dogs.

...and he that has no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one. Luke 22:36

SIGNYM

Friday, April 22, 2011 3:53 AM

HW, I read the article carefully. It just surprises me that you seemed to have missed the most salient points.

The article says

Quote:
Government transfers of income to households started to overtake personal taxes at the start of 2008

So, this trend began in 2008.

Did everyone suddenly decide stop working? Was there a mass decision to skate on government money? Did our nation's moral fiber suddenly unravel? In other words, did we suddenly and voluntarily become a nature of "moochers", as you suggest?

Or did this happen because of financial collapse, economic contraction, and massive unemployment?

SIGNYM

Friday, April 22, 2011 6:37 AM

Also, think about the inverse of the question:

Up until 2008, households were putting more money INTO the system than they were getting OUT. You didn't seem to notice that, or find it particularly remarkable.

So, let me ask: WHO was getting that "excess"money? And how come you're not labeling THEM "moochers"?

Anyway, I'll leave you with those two thoughts for now. Real life calls.

DREAMTROVE

Friday, April 22, 2011 7:16 PM

Sig,

The govt. The military in particular. Or the moochitary, perhaps. We also have a federal monetary, I mean moochetary (with an e) system which is leeching. Maybe collectively they're the moochatary

That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.

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