From: bzs@ussr.std.com (Barry Shein)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.clinton,alt.politics.democrats.d,alt.politics.elections,ba.politics,co.politics,ne.politics,nj.politics,or.politics,ny.politics,talk.politics.misc
Subject: Re: VOTE, BABY, VOTE!
Date: 10 Nov 92 05:17:15 GMT
	<BZS.92Nov8151938@ussr.std.com>
	<1992Nov10.012225.627@ucsu.Colorado.EDU>
Organization: The World


From: fcrary@ucsu.Colorado.EDU (Frank Crary)
>>Reductio ad absurdum, straw-man argument.
>
>Hardly: He hasn't made "if they can afford it, they deserve to be taxed"
>logic any more extreme than it already is. If that is a valid justification
>to tax the rich, why isn't it also a valid reason to conficate most
>of their property?

Right, send one man to the moon and the next thing you know they'll
send us all to the moon...

>>The country is in trouble, thanks to the Reagan/Bush "put it on the
>>credit card" excesses.
>
>That odd: The Constitution says _Congress_ controls all spending and
>taxes. I don't recall this having been repealed. Perhaps we are
>in trouble, thanks to the liberal, Democratic Congress' "put it on
>credit" excesses.

When was the last time Congress approved a federal budget which wasn't
SMALLER than what Bush submitted?

I think you've got your demons all lined up and the facts be damned.

>>The wealthy industrialists benefitted most from
>>their policies, if for no other reason than it made and kept them
>>wealthy (that's self-evident)
>
>This could be said of _any_ policy that allowed the poor and 
>middle class to become rich. Nor did government _spending_
>contribute to the welfare of the rich

How do you figure? Where did that $1 trillion per year go?
Particularly in terms of largest *recipients* rather than largest
programs.

How many corporations received single contracts over $1B each? Over
$5B each? More than a few.

Now unless you are going to argue that those were non-profit
corporations or that their profits were mostly distributed to
Americans of average income...

Obviously this will go on in normal times, and is perfectly natural in
our system.

However, when the country is running $400B yearly deficits we've
basically created an inverse situation from what is at all healthy,
essentially robbing from the average guy to give to the wealthy.

Now what would be one way to correct that situation...?

>>...it's not absurd to now ask them to help
>>solve the resultant problems before they're dragged down by the
>>effects of the deficit even more than the average person...
>
>It might be clear, if you could conclusively and factually connect
>the well-being of the rich during the 1980s to deficit spending.

I don't have to. All I have to do is point out that the deficit is
there. That's a fact.

Trying desparately to blame it on people who can't possibly pay it
back (and making an absurd argument at that, since even you quote only
around $100B in poor people's payments which amounts to only 25% of
the *deficit*, let alone that it's single digit percentages of the
total budget) isn't going to fix the problem, right?

Even cutting your demonized poor entirely won't roll the DEFICIT back
to its 1990 levels.

So what's your point? They can't pay it back, cutting them off
entirely hardly helps. Obviously something else has to give.

You're the one who could use an argument. Thus far you don't have one,
other than that you don't like poor people so blame it on them.

>defecit spending in the 1980s. With equal validity you could 
>blame the poor for our current economic crisis. (I, personally,
>wouldn't: However we got into this mess, we're all in it together
>and should be trying, on an equal basis, to solve the problem;
>instead, it seems to be politically popular to point fingers and
>to try to get someone _else_ to foot the bill.)

Indeed, please give me your thumbnail figures for your "equal
validity" argument. I gave you mine.

>>No one is suggesting anything like you describe, I don't remember any
>>such shrill protests from the defense contractors when Reagan tripled
>>defense procurements. How come now they have a "right" to be left
>>alone? They certainly didn't want to be left alone when they were
>>sucking down those billions of dollars we were putting on the cuff.
>
>Defence contractors don't, as a rule, pocket the money the
>government gives them.

So you are stating categorically that General Dynamics, Lockheed,
Raytheon etc, none of them made a profit over the last decade?

I think you believe what you want to believe first and then make wild
statements to try to back it up as an afterthought. Corporations make
profits or they are not corporations very long. Or is this news to
you?

>By the way, they have a right to be left alone because
>_everyone_ has a right to be left alone (or at least treated 
>equally by the government.)

They didn't want to be left alone when they were sucking down those
billion dollar contracts.

I think your arguments just went belly-up.


--
        -Barry Shein

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