Discussion on:

To stay rich, stay open to risk

The slow 50 year growth of Johnsons Great Society war on poverty has only made things worse. The politics of poverty have breed generations of Americans to be dependent on the government and lose the will to acheive.

It needs to be noted that the largest sudden growth of the US middle class happened after Clintons welfare reform pushed millions of people off the dole and into jobs. Almost over night the middle class grew as income rose above that provided by welfare.

3 key indicators moved from that historic legislation being put into law. Average household income went up across all demographics, home ownership went up across all demographics and the long term unemployment rate fell.

Sadly almost all of those welfare changes were phased out during the Bush years as part of budget compromises with democrats to fund the wars in the Middle East.

The last remnant, the job requirement, was virtually eliminated by President Obama with an Executive Order allowing states to ask for waivers. Notorious welfare states like NY, Massachusetts and California quickly submitted requests for waivers with local politicians hoping to buy votes with benefits before the November elections.

You know HI, sometimes reading your posts is good for me because I laugh so much.

You say subsequent changes have castrated Clinton's welfare reform. Please document that as I haven't seen anything to support your claim..

Your rant on waivers is just a right wing talking point with little basis in reality. It's been debunked several times. The states are getting waivers so they can show their plans work even better than the existing welfare requirements and if they don't then they will lose their waivers.

There is nothing you can tell me about welfare that I cannot spot as truth or BS. I spent over 40 years in a city destroyed by the welfare state. I call BS.

You dont hear it on the evening news, but there is a city of 70,000 people in Massachusetts that has an unemployment rate of nearly 50% and the politicians are doing nothing about it.

In the best years for this country, under any president you can name since Johnson, unemployment in this city has NEVER gone under 20%. The lowest it ever got was 2001 as the Clinton welfare reforms hit the streets.

Since the Bush welfare reforms of 2004, linked to a war funding bill by democrats as pay off for their votes, the unemployment rate has climbed back up. If you had a clue you would know that an average 30% of the money in all WAR FUNDING bills under Bush was spent on domestic programs that had nothing to do with the wars. Like the $200 million Murtha airport in PA or the bridge to nowhere in Alaska.

Unemployment in this city stood at 30% in 2007 before the recession. Yet nothing was done to help because the largest employers in the city for the last 30 years have been the government support systems. Together with the recipients of those services they make up the largest voting block in the city at nearly 60% of all voters. Scare them into thinking their jobs and benefits are being threatened and they would vote for the devil himself if he promised to keep the status quo.

Do not waste my time with your political rhetoric. Your rant has no basis in reality. In my younger days I was a community organizer naively trying to fix things from within the system. Now I know the system itself is corrupt. Your BS is pointless to the discussion.

Judging by your reaction to my praise of Clinton and bashing of Bush I would say you had no clue how to make a rational argument in response. I crossed party lines in a manner you cannot deal with. So you lashed out like a scolded child.

What we call "poverty" today is nothing like the reality of poverty 50 years ago. Much of the problem is that we've made poverty not only survivable, but actually somewhat palatable for large segments of our population.

In fact, in more "progressive" countries, it's now possible to live what is arguably a first-world middle class existence entirely on the dole.

It's not just that the rich have gotten too comfortable. We all have.

Capitalist always argue that profit is the motivation that makes the engine of capitalism succeed beyond all other economic concepts. Yet, once those capitalist become wealthy, they no longer see profit as a systemic motivation - just a personal one. They see their wealth as something that runs off their table when they spill something and it trickles down. When enough of a nations wealth becomes tied up in this self-centered mindset sufficiently to prevent profits from being fairly shared, innovations from being developed, capitalism's profit motivation ceases to function and we end up with economic stagnation. The one-time capitalist who have now become nothing but common hoarders, destroy the capitalism that made their wealth by succumbing to risk paranoia, hoarding their wealth, placing it in inept investment banking and hedge funds and keeping it from circulating in the innovative small business engine at the heart of the healthy capitalistic market place. Sound familiar?

No point in creating if someone else can claim ownership to it, and you get to live at the same level of mediocrity anyway.

I think I'll follow Nancy Pelosi's advice and become a bad artist instead.

Good relevant article backed up with historical relevance at a macro level.

Now let's all calm down for a minute; there are no easy answers to complicated questions - one of the problems with ideologies.
So, given that wealthy people are not like the rest of us (the 99% for example) we need to try and assess their behavior - especially blind spots. This is conjecture, of course, but it could be useful.
Having wealth and power produces a zeitgeist or world view of privilege and self congratulations on being superior (morally and intellectually.) But then, a lot of the 99% people feel this way - what's the difference? It's a mental component that lusts for money as the top priority of existence (one could call it unmitigated greed,) even those who didn't do a lick of work for their wealth (like the Koch brothers) can have this variable.
A blind spot unavoidably appears that prevents the wealthy from seeing that their good times are the result of the rest of us having money to spend - so the 1% can vacuum it up; and they can do so in a never ending loop if they weren't so greedy (the special variable I aforementioned). The current tax structure and rates are the direct result of the uber-rich paying/owning the politicians who readily pass the regulations that give more and more to the few.
In our quaint olden days (1940s through the 1970s) that progressive tax structure would, if in effect today, eliminate all this balderdash about deficits and allow government programs to maintain and improve infrastructure (which incidentally increases employment, money in the pockets of the 99%, and even more money in the bank accounts of the 1%.) But those at the top of the pyramid just can't bring themselves to share with the other kids. And owning politicians at all levels will guarantee the stagnation of the economy, more concentration of wealth, and better funded "think tanks" to justify it all. And let's not forget the punishment of the American worker through the industrialization of the third world, brought to us of course, by our very own 1%.
Cheers.

Your first sentence admonishes others for what you call ideologies responding to complicated questions and you proceed to follow it with a sermon that appears to be cut and pasted from the Occupy Wall Street web site.

Bash the rich, punish the rich. Protect the 99%. So much for not forcing ideology on complicated problems.

"In our quaint olden days (1940s through the 1970s) that progressive tax structure would, if in effect today, eliminate all this balderdash about deficits and allow government programs to maintain and improve infrastructure (which incidentally increases employment, money in the pockets of the 99%, and even more money in the bank accounts of the 1%.)"

Referring to those days and trying to equate prosperity to progressive taxation is a non sequitur.

For one thing, back in those "quaint" days, America had a near monopoly on practically everything, at least until the rest of the industrialized world got back on its feet after WWII. We no longer enjoy monopoly power over capital, labor, or even technology. We now need to compete with the rest of the world. Merely competing on how high taxation can be isn't going to work.