Impending Minimum Wage hike causing restaurants to close

[Paprika]

Just fighting for the sake of fighting. Thanks for proving me right.

Some advice, little one: when you answer your own question in the same post and it is pointed out, wriggling away won't work.

And did these 'absolute monarchies' end up killing off their competition, at nearly the rates that their socialist rivals did (and some still do)? Stalin killed anybody and everybody that could even be remotely seen as a rival (in fact, his purges of the army, were a major factor with the Red Army taking the losses it took during WWII). You are aware of those pesky fact things, right? While the monarchies (this is including constitutional monarchies too) could be quite paranoid and murdered rivals too. Communist seemed to have taken it to new levels that make Queen Isabella's worst things, look small.

[lilpixieofterror]

blah blah blah...

Did somebody say something or did a child try to speak, before he read the thread? I suppose Starlight arguing for things like:

Government enforced economic equality
Government making everything 'fair' for everybody
Raising taxes higher and higher to 'cover' any government defects
Using the force of the government to 'spread the wealth'
Taking things from one group and giving it to another (while using the government to enforce this)

Etc, is not evidence enough for some to make the obvious conclusion that Starlight is arguing for further government power (IE Socialism) and arguing for lots of polices that come straight from the socialism handbook. Perhaps children should stop talking about things they clearly don't understand and let the adults handing the hard stuff they clearly don't understand.

[lilpixieofterror]

... blah blah blah...

Is the child trying to talk about things that go beyond his clearly limited mental capacity again? Call me when he says something, worth listening to...

[Sparko]

That's not moving the goalposts, that's declining to answer an irrelevant question: neither of us have claimed that everyone should be equally rich.

I never asked you if you claimed that. You were talking about successful socialist countries and I asked to name one that was successful and everyone was equally rich. Meaning equally well off, and not poor and suffering.

To which you still have not answered.

OK You are no longer welcome in my thread. Please do not post here again.


Have a day.

[Mountain Man]

That's not moving the goalposts, that's declining to answer an irrelevant question: neither of us have claimed that everyone should be equally rich.

Then what does "wealth equality" mean?

[Sparko]

Then what does "wealth equality" mean?

Don't post to him. I told him to leave this thread. He is just trying to pick fights again.

[Darth Executor]

This reminds me of an object lesson taught by a conservative journalist. By the way, this is a true story: In the run up to the Obama/McCain election, the journalist was at a restaurant where the waiter was proudly wearing an Obama pin. The journalist asked the waiter if he supported Obama's plan to "spread the wealth around", and the waiter enthusiastically expressed his approval. At the conclusion of the meal, the journalist said, "You've worked hard, so I was planning to leave you a generous tip. However, seeing as you support Obama, and in the spirit of spreading the wealth around, I'm sure you won't object if I take the tip you worked so hard for and gave it to that homeless man over there on the corner." The waiter, of course, became extremely angry and had a few choice words to say.

The point, of course, is that people who support wealth redistibution don't want their wealth being redistributed.

Link?

[Darth Executor]

Sorry if this has been covered, I don't feel like going through 40 pages.

Again, the debt forgiveness laws of Jubilee only applied to voluntary contracts, and it was expected that the borrower would diligently work to pay off as much of the debt as possible;

This is not true, they were not voluntary, they were required to lend to the poor and explicitly warned against not doing so on the grounds that Jubilee was near:

Deuteronomy 15
7If anyone is poor among your fellow Israelites in any of the towns of the land the Lord your God is giving you, do not be hardhearted or tightfisted toward them. Rather, be openhanded and freely lend them whatever they need. Be careful not to harbor this wicked thought: “The seventh year, the year for canceling debts, is near,” so that you do not show ill will toward the needy among your fellow Israelites and give them nothing.

Basically, God mandated that you give loans to poor people even if you knew you weren't getting them back.

similarly, leaving grain on the edges of fields wan't "redistribution" as much as it was giving the poor the opportunity to work for their food, a principle carried forward into the New Testament with Paul's declaration that those who don't work shouldn't eat.

Of course it was redistribution. The owner got nothing for it in return. God ordered him to leave some of his wealth to the poor. It's no different from welfare in that regard.

[Mountain Man]

Sorry if this has been covered, I don't feel like going through 40 pages.



This is not true, they were not voluntary, they were required to lend to the poor and explicitly warned against not doing so on the grounds that Jubilee was near:



Basically, God mandated that you give loans to poor people even if you knew you weren't getting them back.



Of course it was redistribution. The owner got nothing for it in return. God ordered him to leave some of his wealth to the poor. It's no different from welfare in that regard.

You were not allowed to use Jubilee as a reason to withhold a loan, but that doesn't mean they were required to give money to every person who asked. In other words, if there was a guy who squandered his money and was an irresponsible borrower, I do not believe it would have been seen as hardhearted or tightfisted to refuse to do business with him. Which is to say that it was voluntary transaction. At the same time, the borrower was cautioned that it was wicked to purposely not repay a loan, so due diligence was expected in paying off his debts.

[Darth Executor]

You were not allowed to use Jubilee as a reason to withhold a loan, but that doesn't mean they were required to give money to every person who asked. In other words, if there was a guy who squandered his money and was an irresponsible borrower, I do not believe it would have been seen as hardhearted or tightfisted to refuse to do business with him. Which is to say that it was voluntary transaction.

How do you get "it was voluntary" from "they did not have to give money to everybody". I never said they had to give money to everybody. They did have to lend money to the needy, and it was not voluntary, it was mandated.

At the same time, the borrower was cautioned that it was wicked to purposely not repay a loan, so due diligence was expected in paying off his debts.

It is the lender, not the borrower who is cautioned about jubilee:

Rather, be openhanded and freely lend them whatever they need. Be careful not to harbor this wicked thought: “The seventh year, the year for canceling debts, is near,” so that you do not show ill will toward the needy among your fellow Israelites and give them nothing.

The needy were the borrowers to which you were obligated to lend money.

[Mountain Man]

How do you get "it was voluntary" from "they did not have to give money to everybody". I never said they had to give money to everybody. They did have to lend money to the needy, and it was not voluntary, it was mandated.

It is the lender, not the borrower who is cautioned about jubilee:

The needy were the borrowers to which you were obligated to lend money.

Psalm 37:21, "It is wicked to borrow and not repay..."

The borrower was expected to make a good faith effort to pay off his debts. It wasn't like the "something for nothing" welfare state we have in America. Furthermore, if they were not obligated to give money to everybody who asked, as you concede, then it means they were allowed to use discernment about who they lent money to, meaning that it was a voluntary agreement between parties. The only stipulation is that they were cautioned against being stingy which is quite different from saying they were being forced to "redistribute" their wealth.

[Cow Poke]

Don't post to him. I told him to leave this thread. He is just trying to pick fights again.

[Darth Executor]

Psalm 37:21, "It is wicked to borrow and not repay..."

The borrower was expected to make a good faith effort to pay off his debts. It wasn't like the "something for nothing" welfare state we have in America.

The discussion was about whether it's redistribution of wealth. In that regard it is exactly like a welfare state. I have complaints against welfare states but "it's redistribution of wealth" is not one of them as redistribution of wealth is not inherently wrong.

Furthermore, if they were not obligated to give money to everybody who asked, as you concede, then it means they were allowed to use discernment about who they lent money to, meaning that it was a voluntary agreement between parties.

Where does it say you are "allowed to use discernment about who you lend money to"? It says lend to the poor, and even if you were allowed to use discernment it still says lend to the poor. It is in no way a voluntary agreement. If the state let you pick who to give tax dollars to it would not suddenly make taxation voluntary.

The only stipulation is that they were cautioned against being stingy which is quite different from saying they were being forced to "redistribute" their wealth.

They weren't "cautioned", they were commanded to lend money to the poor even if they would never see it back. That is redistribution of wealth.

[Mountain Man]

The discussion was about whether it's redistribution of wealth. In that regard it is exactly like a welfare state. I have complaints against welfare states but "it's redistribution of wealth" is not one of them as redistribution of wealth is not inherently wrong.

Where does it say you are "allowed to use discernment about who you lend money to"? It says lend to the poor, and even if you were allowed to use discernment it still says lend to the poor. It is in no way a voluntary agreement. If the state let you pick who to give tax dollars to it would not suddenly make taxation voluntary.

They weren't "cautioned", they were commanded to lend money to the poor even if they would never see it back. That is redistribution of wealth.

It's not "redistribution" in the sense that the modern liberal means it because the borrower was expected to make a good faith effort to repay his debt, and lending generously does not mean to lend indiscriminately.

[Starlight]

Hmm... it seems a few pages have happened here during my Easter holiday. So, addressing the general discussion...

I find it frustrating when trying to dialogue with right-wing Americans that your perception of politics is:
Communist Dictatorships versus America.
And under those categories, you place the USSR and China on the one side and America on the other, and say the first two didn't do very great, and America has done better. And as far as that level of hand-waving type analysis goes, I agree with you.

But, a rather important thing, is that you seem to like to leave out the rest of the Western world from such an analysis. And, funnily enough, when I see you leaving out my own country from your analysis, not to mention all of the European countries that seem to be doing really really well, I tend to think your spectrum is incomplete. In fact the spectrum looks something like:

Communist dictatorships <-----------> All the many and various European countries and the rest of the non-American democratic Western world for their entire histories, drifting left and right over various parts of this spectrum <-------------> The extremely right-wing position of America

I don't personally find 'socialism' a particularly useful label, so don't tend to bother to apply it to myself or anyone else. But if, in the US, you guys want to apply it to the "left-wing" of your political spectrum (and I use that term loosely, since the US is so far to the right of nearly everyone else that your left wing often seems to be to the right of our right-wing) and anybody further left than that (ie basically everyone), then fine, everybody else can be 'socialist' according to you. Or not, as you wish - lilpixieofterror seems to alternate between insisting I'm a total socialist and asserting that I'm not at all a socialist and that what I'm advocating is 'democratic socialism' which is apparently totally different. Again, I don't particularly care what it is or isn't labelled.

My general view is that:
1. The sane part of the political spectrum lies in that huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge middle-region that all of the non-American democratic West has occupied for the last 100 years.
2. Within that area of the political spectrum, I tend to personally favor quite left-wing views and stronger re-distributive policies of the sorts followed by many Western nations in the 1950s and which are most well-represented today in the Scandinavian countries. Because it seems to me that those policies and the countries that have them have proven to be the most successful. I tend to think that a lot of Western countries that have gone too far to the right since the 80s and they would be better served to swing back to the left a bit toward where they were around the 1950s and the 1960s. Again, because when I look at the empirical results, it is those countries with those policies that seem to have been the most successful.

To note the obvious: That sort of position isn't communism. I'm not advocating a communist dictatorship, so pointing to the USSR and China as examples to me is just irrelevant. Communism doesn't work. Dictatorships generally aren't great. I'm taking for granted that there should be a democracy, and should be free market capitalism: That's the basis on which the non-American West has operated for the past 100 years. The question is, within such a system, how high should taxes be, and how much redistribution should the state do, and how much control should it regulate business enterprises?

When I look at international comparisons of how different Western countries are doing in different ways, the ones topping the list are nearly always the ones that are the most 'socialist' in the sense of having some of the strongest re-distributive and regulatory policies within the Western world.

And Sparko, the points Paprika was making were highly relevant and largely what I would have said myself. You asked him a stupid question repeatedly and tried to make him defend a position he didn't hold, and predictably got no answer. Your fondness for kicking people off threads is childish.