Why Is the Republican Field So Extreme? (Read 2137 times)

I cannot find anything wrong with what he wrote (he being the soon to be college graduate).

I don't believe that it's douchee, arrogant, or improper with his poster.

 

I believe that he was taught well, and I'd love to have my son (who'll be 18 next weekend) begin life with the same perspective as this young guy does.  (Wow, I just felt old writing that...).

 

I like the sacrifices he talks about (no iphone, ipad, ....).  

I like the fact that he doesn't have credit card debt.  

I like the fact that he's working 30 hours a week.

I like the fact that he studied hard (high school and college).

 

I hope that he can maintain sound decisions through life and that life challenges don't complicate things for him.

I think that what I find wrong with what he (the soon to be college graduate) is that he believes that his personal experience has any relevance to the discussion of a macroeconomic issue.  If he had actually studied hard in high school and college he would realize that there are ~307,000,000 people in America so he represents 0.0000003% of the data set.  The idea that you can draw any kind of conclusion from this sample size is simply idiotic.

I too studied hard in high school, went to college on a merit based scholarship, got exceptional grades, have no debt of any kind and have a very good job but I'm not enough of a douche to think that this indicates that my experience is typical or in anyway trivializes the concerns of anyone who is less fortunate than me.

I'm not saying that you shouldn't make sacrifices to improve your financial outlook but he shouldn't suggest that he is better than anyone out there on unemployment because a lot of them probably worked as hard or harder than him but then found out that the real world is harder than college.

I think that what I find wrong with what he (the soon to be college graduate) is that he believes that his personal experience has any relevance to the discussion of a macroeconomic issue.  If he had actually studied hard in high school and college he would realize that there are ~307,000,000 people in America so he represents 0.0000003% of the data set.  The idea that you can draw any kind of conclusion from this sample size is simply idiotic.

 

I too studied hard in high school, went to college on a merit based scholarship, got exceptional grades, have no debt of any kind and have a very good job but I'm not enough of a douche to think that this indicates that my experience is typical or in anyway trivializes the concerns of anyone who is less fortunate than me.

 

I'm not saying that you shouldn't make sacrifices to improve your financial outlook but he shouldn't suggest that he is better than anyone out there on unemployment because a lot of them probably worked as hard or harder than him but then found out that the real world is harder than college.

I'm not sure that any of the other posters and protesters personal experience (slanting to the other side) that have been seen by the media should have any relevance to the discussion of macroeconomics either.  Interestingly, though, this guy is saying that the others shouldn't have to "stand up" to the government, wall street, etc. for challenges in their life.

But, the word douche is probably not appropriate when talking about this guy.  I just don't get it.  He's being real to himself in his situation.

I've got issues with pure capitalism as well, and I tend to think that there are huge problems with corporations.  In fact, I think that this discussion is necessary and the concerns of Americans relating to this is appropriate (and I haven't said too much against those standing up within these protests).  

I think, however, that a bigger problem than corporation challenges relates to the consumer challenges and consumer abuses and misuses of the talents and money's that have been entrusted to "us".  And that's what I like about his post.

And, yes, I think that it is somewhat  appropriate to simply imply that he has been very responsible with his life to date.

Go Rangers!

Dang good team, and a great game tonight.

I hate it that I love politics.

I love it that I love sports.

Cheers,
Brian 

MTA: By the way, great job on your race today.  Saw your log.

I'm not sure that any of the other posters and protesters personal experience (slanting to the other side) that have been seen by the media should have any relevance to the discussion of macroeconomics either.  Interestingly, though, this guy is saying that the others shouldn't have to "stand up" to the government, wall street, etc. for challenges in their life.

 

But, the word douche is probably not appropriate when talking about this guy.  I just don't get it.  He's being real to himself in his situation. 

My appologies for continuing the use of the word douche in this thread; I'm not sure where it started but I should not have used it.  You are correct.

And yes, the individual experiences of the protesters are no more relevent to the discussion than the guy with the sign in the picture but you really hit my issue with the guy on the head with: "Interestingly, though, this guy is saying that the others shouldn't have to "stand up" to the government, wall street, etc. for challenges in their life."

He has the right to try to stand up to the government or corporations too if he wants to but I don't believe that anyone should be standing up against the right of other citizens to voice their grievances or saying that anyone else's problems don't matter because he doesn't share them.

Sure, your parents were hard working, responsible, and intelligent, as are you.  I didn't intend to imply otherwise.  I think, though, we need to be careful about thinking everyone can and should be just like ourselves.  Many people did not have the good fortune in their upbringing that we have had.  It's easy to paint with too broad brush about the traits of both the wealthy and the poor, but it seems to me that the gap is widening between the two, and that the moneyed interests can far too easily stack the deck in their own favor.

I wouldn't disagree.  My reaction was to your prior post chastizing this individual and basically implying that rich people are bad people and those that have financial issues are that way because they're the ones being good parents and giving of their time.  That seemed like the broad brush to me.

Of course there are reasons and history behind why people are the way they are...at some point, however, you must bring personal responsibility into play, otherwise they are always victims of circumstance.  That sets a dangerous incentive program in place.  IMHO no matter where one starts we should incentivize them to better themselves, not play the victim card.

I'm not thinking of the fifth-generation inner city poor when I've posted these things.  I'm thinking of coworkers and the people down the street who had every opportunity to know better but simply have/are making very poor financial decisions and blaming everyone but themselves for the results.

I don't understand why AP gets to rant without solution (blame everyone?), but if the protesters in Wall Street decide to rant, they are called whiners.

 

... Original at http://www.runningahead.com/forums/post/270ae6921c374c49b59f1630dca4a0eb#focus

(MTA: Linked to Jeff's instead of embedding it just to save space, b/c I have such a large pile of words below already.)

I generally agree with you, Jeff, (except the economic velocity reference was over my head), including your criticism of my rant - I thought about posting a line by line criticism of my rant, but was too busy to get back to it. I mean, I could do that without feeling hypocritical because I find I can buy into a lot of opposing arguments in some way or another. (Or you could interpret that to say I'm pretty wishy-washy, maybe.)

I don't know whether the Wall Street protests are a bunch of people out expressing all kinds of disharmonious anger simultaneously, or a semi-organized expression of discontent with serious structural problems in the relationship between the corporations, the wealthy class who tend to run them, and our society in general -- maybe both, and maybe all protests tend to attract some kids to come out and join them for fun. That was an aspect I assumed in the South Korean students' protests - that they naturally picked up kids more just out for a fun time throwing stuff than seriously invested in the protests. But what do I know.

I think the question of what motivates the protesters is perhaps obscure and difficult to determine, but I've seen just recently a couple interesting attempts to characterize it as a manifestation of serious discontent with imbalance in our social contract between corporations and society. These may be very misguided, um, ex-post-facto, interpretations which could reasonably be charged as propagandistic reinterpretation, but I don't care about that necessarily.

Here is something I saw recently, which I thought was interesting -- it was the conclusion of a post where the author said the Tea Party side tended to be good at picking populist talking points, and the Wall Street protesters seemed to suck at the same thing.

I see why everyone's mad at Wall Street though -- a lot of the reason that social contract went away in the first place is a constant demand for corporate earnings regardless of economic conditions.

 

If I were leading this thing, I think my simple, Tea Party-style talking points would be as follows:
1. Make everyone pay their fair share of taxes. Don't fall for executives' scare tactics about moving to China -- they're going to do that anyway.
2. To ensure this tax money gets spent wisely, limit corporate influence on the political system. It's amazing how quickly universal health insurance could be funded once some of these tax loopholes are removed.
3. Reduce the hyper-focus on the financial markets. Get individual retirement investors out of the market and into something safer like a pension or annuity. Let average people have a stable retirement, but encourage investment on their own if they want. Let companies breathe for a couple of quarters so they can actually plow money back into things that will produce results further down the road.

Note: This omits the bailouts, which I find emotionally triggering to me personally -- why did we bail out the S&Ls, the big banks, and the auto companies (under three different administrations) -- and I'd think some populist talking point ought to be found there, to trigger my same knee-jerk anger about that in others

All Romney had to say to Perry is "Jesus mows my lawn." Everything would have been cleared up.

Perry is really looking like an ass.  If that's his approach to dealing with the opposition, it's certainly not what we need right now.

Wasn't that the exact premise of this thread to begin with?

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