Red herring (narrative), a technique used in literature to mislead the audience.
You provided two possibilities.... 1) we bailout the big 3 and save "millions" of jobs, or 2) we let them declare bankruptcy putting millions out of work.
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt about it being a red herring but its still a fallacy of
False Dilemma and an
Appeal to consequences.
You want to end welfare, but putting people out of work... will only increase out welfare burden.
More fallacies:
Appeal to probability,
Appeal to consequences,
False Dilemma and possibly an
Appeal to fear.
Its true.. I would like to see everyone of able body and mind off of welfare. However, I believe you are confusing Unemployment benefits, which are temporary, with Welfare, which can be indefinite. While both are forms of basic welfare, the fact that unemployment is temporary makes all the difference to me.
CAFE standards, you might be onto something there, but it is in our nation interest to use less foreign oil, and the CAFE standards do assist with that.
While I won't disagree we need to use less oil, I challenge the idea that we can use less "foreign" oil and emphatically disagree that oil conservation needs to be mandated by government at all, much less through CAFE.
My interest is the minimize those who lose thier jobs and investments. Again with a focus on not increasing our welfare burden.
I would argue we will spend less money on unemployment benefits than we would on bailouts... Have you thought about that? Take the number of people who would be unemployed and use that number to divide the amount of bailout money that would go the companies: Roughly 14 billion dollars divided by 250,000 (worst case scenario) = $56,000 each.
As for people who invested in the company... the stock market is a gamble and there are no guarantees. That said... If you keep the company stock after it plummets, then the company goes through bankruptcy re-organization and emerges as a sustainable, profitable business, the investor will come out ahead over time.
..there is a way to make it less painful for us as a country-abandonded neighborhoods-shut down factory towns-I understand it is heartbreaking.
Is this an appeal to emotion? Nothing could be less painful than allowing the free market to weed out unsustainable companies in order for the profitable ones to prosper and take their place.
Something for you to consider: Just over 2 million people lost their telemarketing jobs when the National Do-Not-Call list was put into effect... I don't recall anyone complaining about the loss of those jobs or talking about how painful or heartbreaking it would be... likely because its Non-Union work.
This is a failure of our two party system, we are left with only the viability in the choice of the lesser of two evils.
I reject this line of reasoning because it doesn't have to be this way. Personally, I'd like to see a shift from Left vs. Right to Statist vs. Non-Statist, so that's what I'm working to achieve.
that much spread of money does us zero good except to cause...inflation...investing it in some specific areas works to minimize the need for future welfare.
You need to explain how money going to the banks direct from the treasury limits inflation but the transfer of goods and services causes inflation, since the money you spend ends up in the same banks anyway.
When it comes to spending, I blame those in power and the person who signs the spending bills.
Unless you agree with the spending?
As for correcting incorrect statements from the left, you might want to see where I have told plenty of lefties around here where they are wrong.
That's cool but I was specifically referring to those who like to blame "Conservatives" for things like reckless spending, wars, recessions and all other problems that we face as a nation.
I get a kick out of beeing called a lefty honestly, I pride myself on being a pragmatist...
I didn't call you a 'Lefty', I said your leftist buddies... As far as being a pragmatist, I'm not sure how you qualify that and in some cases, I think pragmatism is more destructive than ideological adherence.
In comparison to other industrialized countries, we are hardly a "welfare" state.
I've already established that we are a welfare state... as far as equivocating to what degree.... Do you really think we are moving away from, and not towards, an expansion of the welfare state? Aside from that, when I was 18, and diagnosed with cancer, knowing that other people had worse cases gave me no solace. The only thing I found reassuring was that mine was operable. Thats the only thing that gives me hope for the future of America, we can still operate and remove the cancer before it kills us.
Why is it that much less powerful and wealthy countries are able to ensure some basic needs for thier citizens to be a part of a productive society but we cannot?
Name one truly comparable country... one that's got 300 million or more citizens and NOT hopelessly in debt as a result. Aside from that, I reject your premise that we don't afford "basic needs" to our citizenry.
Socialism works in plenty of places...
Where does it work?
Grouping socialism now into what socialism has been in modern times is hardly the case. You want socialism, check out the United Soviet Socialist Republic.
I don't follow, please explain.
Eliminate felonious crimes? Id like to hear more about this?
Those who are found guilty of committing a felony are not eligible to receive benefits.
I didn't mean to cast dispersions on your particular generation, only the line of thought that our constitution is flawed and the founders were shortsighted. That seems to be a common theme with most contemporary generations.
I have been saying we need to pay for it ourselves, and doing it without simply printing more money.
When will you go from saying to demanding? Hopefully before its too late... I'm already there.
Firstly, you dont have the right to property, but I am going to assume you are talking about your tax dollars.
If I specifically meant real estate, I would have used that term. Anytime I use the term "property", its a reference to any tangible, or intangible, possession which I own or control.
So would it be your opinion that I don't have a right to keep what I own, earn, produce, create or inherit, but others have a "right" to what I have earned, produced, created or inherited, simply because they have some need that's unfulfilled and the ability to grant government the power to take it from me?
Hardly tyranny in the traditional sense, but I do pay for it. I pay roughly %30 of my income to the federal government.
...experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
Where will you draw the line on taxation? 40%, 50%, 60%???
There are plenty of things that have become outdated and obsolete from what the founding fathers had in mind. There was no vision of the industrial revolution and a global economy.
We need a whole separate thread for this one... I'll sum it up by saying people are horribly ignorant of "what the founders had in mind"...
For the record I have voted in my life for quite a few more Republicans than I have Democrats. Both viable candidates would continue down the same path.
The path of Statism... Progressives on the Left and "Moderate" Republicans on the Right (Neo-Cons). That leaves the non-statist Liberals on the Left, Libertarians in the middle, and the Non-statist conservatives on the Right as natural allies against the statists in both parties.
I do listen to what you have to say...
Its stuff like missing the point about my theoretical welfare state eliminating felonious crimes that makes me think you don't really pay close attention to what I'm saying... or when you say that you "don't buy" that we are a welfare state, only to compare us to more extreme examples when you find that we are one.
I appreciate the way you want to discuss the issues in depth..
What I
don't want to do is have the typical Left vs. Right exchange. In that regard, I'm not trying to prove that one side is better than the other and your attitude seemed to be one that's common: "The Republicans are worse... so I'll support Democrats as the lesser of two evils" What I want, is to find people willing to scrutinize their own perceived party as harshly as they scrutinize the other... People like that are more likely to comprehend the idea of looking at politics from the perspective of Statist vs. Non-Statist terms. Once you look at politics from that perspective, you will see that the Non-Statists are always the "Good" who get overlooked and the Statists are the "Evil" from which we are stuck choosing between.
