Is there a libertarian approach to poverty that *doesn't* come down to "just stop being poor"?

[boedicca]

I've dealt with these arguments no less than four times today. Every time it was with a libertarian. Every time their main points were that we need to abolish the minimum wage and child labor laws, that being poor and being unemployed are synonymous, and that we can therefore fight poverty by employing as many people as possible at $4.50/hour. In other words, if you're poor then it's because you're unemployed, you're unemployed because you're too lazy to look for work, and if you didn't enjoy being poor and eating steak and lobster on your annual Caribbean cruise on our dime then you would go get a job and earn your own money.

You are cognitively impaired.

That is not even remotely what Libertarians advocate.

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

I've dealt with these arguments no less than four times today. Every time it was with a libertarian. Every time their main points were that we need to abolish the minimum wage and child labor laws, that being poor and being unemployed are synonymous, and that we can therefore fight poverty by employing as many people as possible at $4.50/hour. In other words, if you're poor then it's because you're unemployed, you're unemployed because you're too lazy to look for work, and if you didn't enjoy being poor and eating steak and lobster on your annual Caribbean cruise on our dime then you would go get a job and earn your own money.

dear, you lack the IQ to be here,sorry. The pure beauty of capitalism is that it forces you to provide the best jobs and products in the entire world to raise our standard of living at the fastest possible rate.

Simple to understand, but not for a liberal.

No it doesn't.

no??? so tell us why or admit you lack the IQ to be here. Thanks

 

[Pedro de San Patricio]

dear, a huge factory can make things 1000 times cheaper so what you propose would make us all 1000 times poorer and would need to be imposed by a Nazi like regime.

Do you understand?

That's kind of the point. What we have now is a system where the factory owner pays his workers as little as possible to crank out as much of the cheapest shit as possible so he can maximize his profits. His workers have to go on welfare (which he's paying part of those profits to end). Smaller factories can't compete and go out of business. With the lack of regulation you want there's nothing to stop him from continuing this pattern exponentially. Eventually you get to the libertarian wet dream of a few oligarchs running everything for themselves and everyone else breaking their bodies to support their masters' profligate lifestyle in return for just barely enough trickle down scraps to survive.

What I want is a system of strongly regulated yet widespread small business capitalism where that respects inherent human dignity and social obligation. The craftsman pays his help a fair wage to produce goods sold at a fair price. His employees can afford to feed and educate their children. His neighbor, a fellow craftsman in the same field, is a respected associate often called upon to collaborate in harder jobs. The asshole who fucks everyone else over for the sake of his own self interest fails and may end up with legal repercussions depending on what he does. Once he gains enough money and influence to start gaming the system then it's all over. We start slipping into the first scenario.

I've stated this several times now. I can only assume you're either not reading my explanations or not understanding them.

I've dealt with these arguments no less than four times today. Every time it was with a libertarian. Every time their main points were that we need to abolish the minimum wage and child labor laws, that being poor and being unemployed are synonymous, and that we can therefore fight poverty by employing as many people as possible at $4.50/hour. In other words, if you're poor then it's because you're unemployed, you're unemployed because you're too lazy to look for work, and if you didn't enjoy being poor and eating steak and lobster on your annual Caribbean cruise on our dime then you would go get a job and earn your own money.

You are cognitively impaired.

That is not even remotely what Libertarians advocate.

I've never seen one to say anything else. Are they not the ones talking about the minimum wage as an unnecessary burden on business owners? Is there another group that regularly insists we can end poverty by maximizing employment by any means?

 

[BULLDOG]

They think that everybody could be just like them if they only tried,

great theory!! so they don't have to try because they may not succeed!! And so we should but them all on welfare? 100% stupid and liberal as always!!!!

See why our founders tried to make liberalism illegal? Its too stupid for words!!!

God you're stupid.

 

[Pedro de San Patricio]

They think that everybody could be just like them if they only tried,

great theory!! so they don't have to try because they may not succeed!! And so we should but them all on welfare? 100% stupid and liberal as always!!!!

See why our founders tried to make liberalism illegal? Its too stupid for words!!!

God you're stupid.

Why do you think "dear, you lack the IQ to be here" is his catch phrase?

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

They think that everybody could be just like them if they only tried,

great theory!! so they don't have to try because they may not succeed!! And so we should but them all on welfare? 100% stupid and liberal as always!!!!

See why our founders tried to make liberalism illegal? Its too stupid for words!!!

God you're stupid.

great theory!! so they don't have to try because they may not succeed!! And so we should but them all on welfare? 100% stupid and liberal as always!!!!

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

. What we have now is a system where the factory owner pays his workers as little as possible?

dear, you lack the IQ to understand economics. Under capitalism you have to pay the most possible to your workers and have the best products possible in the entire world just to survive the world wide competition.

Do you understand?? Sorry to rock your world but this is Econ 101 which you have not taken!!

 

[Pedro de San Patricio]

. What we have now is a system where the factory owner pays his workers as little as possible?

dear, you lack the IQ to understand economics. Under capitalism you have to pay the most possible and have the best products possible in the world just to survive the world wide competition.

Do you understand?? Sorry to rock your world but this is Econ 101 which you have not taken!!

That's totally why companies have all of their manufacturing done here and compensate their employees well. I mean, it would be crazy if we lived in a world where you're wrong. Just imagine what that would be like. We'd see widespread working poverty, business leaders manipulating politics to further their personal economic interests, small business becoming increasingly non-viable in the face of overwhelming competition by a few major players, and all the factories relocated to Communist Asia where they don't have silly things like a minimum wage or workers' rights.

 

[Mr Natural]

dear, you lack the IQ to understand economics. Under capitalism you have to pay the most possible and have the best products possible in the world just to survive the world wide competition.

Do you understand?? Sorry to rock your world but this is Econ 101 which you have not taken!!

No, dum-dum. You have to pay the most YOU HAVE TO not the most possible.

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

That's totally why companies have all of their manufacturing done here and compensate their employees well..

dear about 22% of the worlds manufacturing is done here and most Americans have smart phones at $130 /month so are paid extremely well and are the richest in the world.

Do you understand now?

Remember the golden rule: under Republican capitalism you must offer the best products and jobs to survive. If you doubt it go into business for yourself!!

Do you understand now?

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

. You have to pay the most YOU HAVE TO not the most possible.

dear, you have to pay the most possible and if you don't your competitor will and you'll lose all your best employees. And, if you don't have the best product possible your competitor will and again you'll go bankrupt.

Do you have the IQ to understand Econ 101??

 

[Pedro de San Patricio]

That's totally why companies have all of their manufacturing done here and compensate their employees well..

dear about 22% of the worlds manufacturing is done here and most Americans have smart phones at $130 /month so are paid extremely well and are the richest in the world.

Do you understand now?

Remember the golden rule: under Republican capitalism you must offer the best products and jobs to survive. If you doubt it go into business for yourself!!

Do you understand now?

Why do you just ignore every point I make that you can't refute?

1. We used to be the world's industrial leader. That changed a little after the business leaders convinced the ignorant poor that slashing their taxes would enable them to trickle that money down and raise wages and create jobs. All the ignorant poor voted to slash their taxes. Suddenly the jobs all belong to the ChiComs and the only raises being given are going to shareholders and CEOs. The ignorant poor mostly still refuse to accept that they fell for an obvious scam.
2. "most Americans have smart phones at $130 /month so are paid extremely well and are the richest in the world." Are you serious with that shit? Really?
3. Republican capitalism is the name for what happened in point 1: trick the stupid and desperate into giving you a higher paycheck, then use it to make even more while fucking them over. If they complain then just tell them it's all the government's fault for taxing you and do it all over again.

 

[Jomama]

if we redistributed all the wealth in America evenly amongst everyone, it would end up back in the same hands within a generation. Guys like me would hustle like heck to accumulate wealth and others would buy lotto tickets and smokes.

I'm curious about this part. I understand having a good work ethic. I understand wanting a comfortable life. What is it that would drive you to unbalance an economy like that to gain even more though? Even you say most people would work as much as they had to and spend the rest of their time enjoying their lives. Why would you continue to want an ever larger piece of the wealth?.

Because I was poor once and won't ever be again, because some dumbass doesn't care if his kids go to college but I care if mine do, because I want to make sure my wife is taken car of if I die young. because I want to help my sister who has had a tough life.

I can see how some fat lazy slob would say he wants to live in a distributist society because he knows secretly that he would consume more than he creates and it would be good deal for him. And that someone who is truly average would want live in a truly average world. But how can you ever get the 49% who either think, dream or do above average to ever buy into this silliness?


.

 

[ChrisL]

if we redistributed all the wealth in America evenly amongst everyone, it would end up back in the same hands within a generation. Guys like me would hustle like heck to accumulate wealth and others would buy lotto tickets and smokes.

I'm curious about this part. I understand having a good work ethic. I understand wanting a comfortable life. What is it that would drive you to unbalance an economy like that to gain even more though? Even you say most people would work as much as they had to and spend the rest of their time enjoying their lives. Why would you continue to want an ever larger piece of the wealth?.

Because I was poor once and won't ever be again, because some dumbass doesn't care if his kids go to college but I care if mine do, because I want to make sure my wife is taken car of if I die young. because I want to help my sister who has had a tough life.

I can see how some fat lazy slob would say he wants to live in a distributist society because he knows secretly that he would consume more than he creates and it would be good deal for him. And that someone who is truly average would want live in a truly average world. But how can you ever get the 49% who either think, dream or do above average to ever buy into this silliness?


.

There aren't enough good jobs for all of them. They end up taking some crappy paying job and making do.

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

Why do you just ignore every point I make that you can't refute?

1. We used to be the world's industrial leader. .

Dear, you lack the IQ to be here:
1) if you want more industry why do liberals give us highest corporate tax in world so companies are in effect paid to go off shore???
2) why did our idiotic liberal unions drive 30 million jobs off shore with the highest wages in the world?
3) why do we run huge deficits so China can buy our deficits not our manufactured goods

Do you have the IQ to understand how liberals drove jobs off shore?

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

2. "most Americans have smart phones at $130 /month so are paid extremely well and are the richest in the world." Are you serious with that shit? Really?
.

dear if most Americans can afford the very latest most expensive technology it is hard to argue they are down trodden!! Do you have the IQ to understand?



You don't need to be an economist to see how rich the middle class got by looking at all the new inventions they could suddenly afford in the last 10 years: suddenly we had plasma TV's, LCD TV's, DLP-TV's, iPods, iphones, CD's and CD players, DVDs and DVD players, Blue Ray and Blue Ray players, PCs, desk top PCs, DVRs, color printers, satellite radio, Advantium ovens, HD-TV, Playstations, X-Boxes, X-box live, X-box Konnect, broadband, satellite TV, cell/camera/video phones, digital cameras, OnStar, palm corders, Blackberries, smart phones, home theaters, SUVs, big houses, more houses per capita, TiVo, 3D movies and TV's, built in wine coolers, granite counter tops, $200 sneakers, Go Pro Cameras, GPS navigation, consumer drones, color matched front loader washing machines, internet Facebook, Pandora, LTE-U, run flat tires, matching washer dryer combinations, McMansions, 4K TV, Iphone 6+, burner commercial ranges, Sub Zero refridgerators, Tesla cars, private space flight, more cars than drivers, a $1 billion ring tone industry, a pet industry that just doubled to $34 billion, 10's of millions lining up to buy Apple's I-tablet, Wii, Fit bits, Apple watches, Netflix boxes, jet skis, induction cooking, low profile tires, aluminum/titanium rims, Harley Davidson and Japanese motorcycles. $700 Billion spent Christmas 2010, $10.5 billion movies 2010, 10 million ocean crusies, 44 million taking plane flights over 2012 holiday, $500 billion spent on Christmas 2012.


The list goes on and on. I hope that helps you realize you can't just parrot the communist press and expect to make sense? They have other objectives and are merely using you to promote their point of view.

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

There aren't enough good jobs for all of them. They end up taking some crappy paying job and making do.

great liberal thinking !! so we'll put them all on welfare!!! Odd how there are no good jobs for the millions who drop out of HS

 

[Pedro de San Patricio]

I can see how some fat lazy slob would say he wants to live in a distributist society because he knows secretly that he would consume more than he creates and it would be good deal for him. And that someone who is truly average would want live in a truly average world. But how can you ever get the 49% who either think, dream or do above average to ever buy into this silliness?

I think the name is throwing people off more than anything. Distributism is not redistributionism. I've made the difference clear a few times now. I've linked to "WTF is Distributism?" websites a couple times. I can only assume you've skipped over these for whatever reason. Basically what Distributism envisions is an economic system comprised of small business owners, professional tradesmen, and a strong safety net for the poor. Economic activity isn't done for its own sake but is for providing a livelihood and benefiting the community.

Distributism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Distributism Basics: Distributism vs. Capitalism - Ethika Politika
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/markshea/2013/09/what-is-distributism.html
Distributism - RationalWiki

From the first link:
"According to distributists, property ownership is a fundamental right, and the means of production should be spread as widely as possible, rather than being centralized under the control of the state (state socialism), a few individuals (plutocracy), or corporations (corporatocracy). Distributism, therefore, advocates a society marked by widespread property ownership. Co-operative economist Race Matthews argues that such a system is key to bringing about a just social order.

Distributism has often been described in opposition to both socialism and capitalism, which distributists see as equally flawed and exploitive. Thomas Storck argues: "both socialism and capitalism are products of the European Enlightenment and are thus modernizing and anti-traditional forces. Further, some distributists argue that socialism is the logical conclusion of capitalism as capitalism's concentrated powers eventually capture the state, resulting in a form of socialism. In contrast, distributism seeks to subordinate economic activity to human life as a whole, to our spiritual life, our intellectual life, our family life".

Some have seen it more as an aspiration, which has been successfully realised in the short term by commitment to the principles of subsidiary and solidarity (these being built into financially independent local cooperatives and small family businesses), though proponents also cite such periods as the Middle Ages as examples of the historical long-term viability of distributism. Particularly influential in the development of distributist theory were Catholic authors G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc, the Chesterbelloc, two of distributism's earliest and strongest proponents."

From the second link:
“Distributism is just like capitalism, except that we differ on the nature of man, the purpose of economic activity, usury, the maximization of token wealth, the role and legitimate exercise of the state, empirical economics, the meaning of subsidiarity, subordination of economics to the higher sciences, our ends, our means, what money is, what wealth is, what a free market is, production and consumption, regulation, free trade, the moral and divine law in the social and economic order, and, yes, what liberty means.” — Richard Aleman

From the third link:
"Distributism is the wild idea that property, power, and wealth should not be concentrated in the hands of a few tyrants running the State, nor in the hands of a few oligarchs running a corporation, but should instead be owned by all human beings, who have a natural right to private property, work and the fruit of the labors supplying their needs and the needs of their families. It is hostile to both communism (the concentration of wealth, power and property in the hands of the State) and capitalism (the concentration of wealth, power and property in the hands of a few oligarchs). It is in favor of the ordinary person being able to use his gifts and talent to create goods and exploit resources for human flourishing. It favors private property, freedom, and human dignity that puts the person before Mammon. It prefers the small over the ginormous, the local over the multinational corporation, the family over the economic machine."

 

[Pedro de San Patricio]

Why do you just ignore every point I make that you can't refute?

1. We used to be the world's industrial leader. .

Dear, you lack the IQ to be here:
1) if you want more industry why do liberals give us highest corporate tax in world so companies are in effect paid to go off shore???
2) why did our idiotic liberal unions drive 30 million jobs off shore with the highest wages in the world?
3) why do we run huge deficits so China can buy our deficits not our manufactured goods

Do you have the IQ to understand how liberals drove jobs off shore?

1. We (Americans) just want large corporations and their owners to pay their fucking taxes. A high rate means nothing when they can (and pretty much all do) move overseas and dodge them altogether.
2. Do you even fact check all of your "in the world' claims, or are you just hoping that nobody else will?*
3. China makes their own manufactured goods with the help of the multinat corporations that moved all their factories over there. Now Americans' source of income is peddling Chinese crap, China gets to peddle its crap as "American", and the business leaders get to pocket all the extra money by using Communist slave labor that in a hostile nation that doesn't require them to provide a livable wage let along health and safety standards.

*Real minimum wages
Minimum Wage By Country - Data from Quandl

 

[EdwardBaiamonte]

A high rate means nothing when they can (and pretty much all do) move overseas and dodge them altogether.

100% stupid and liberal!! A high rate means they have to move off shore and take 30 million American jobs with them!! Does 30 million jobs mean nothing???

Notice how you get everything backwards as a typical liberal?