Re: OT: Rating the President
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Umm... not really. Just because one person happened to be elected who had a father that was president doesn't mean the country is turning into a monarchy.</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Without debating whether they deserve it or not -1% of the people owning 70% of the wealth arguably constitutes an oligarchy if not a monarchy.

Re: OT: Rating the President
 

I am specops, but for the RA forum I believe. I couldnt delete anything, if I tried. (or maybe I can, but I doubt it)
Edit:
Ill probably regret this but...
As for the president, I must say that overall, he is not too bad, but he is definately good at bungling along. I mean, he is trying his best to allow religion into the government, which although well intentioned, not right. Once you let government and religion mix, who knows when the next zealot crusader will come out and start going bananas?
The tax cuts I feel are doing more harm to the national deficet than helping the US economy. Nearly every "Economic assistance or reform bill" in the past either had no effect or took so long to be passed that the economy had already recovered.
I read recently that Bush is saying that industry self regulation will help control pollution, which is just pure crap. Pollution controls are an added expense to business, and without much forcing them (public opinion is a factor, but public opinion is hardly the best tool Ill assure you) they won't do much. Ford Motor Co. though is doing a fairly good job at it, from what Ive heard.
As for the war on Iraq, I have no real opinion. I see the benefits of taking out Saddam, but we have totally wrecked any chance of help from our friends, other than like the UK and possibly Canada. However, we are already stretched out around the world, in Afghanistan, Bosnia (I think) and other places. The cost of a war is another deficet inducing problem, so it may end up hurting the economy more.

[ January 27, 2003, 22:08: Message edited by: Instar ]

Re: OT: Rating the President
 

Hey my post has disappeared too!!
I can't understand...was a very soft one http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif
The only thing I said was: <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Someone should explain what happened with this thread.

BTW Spain is a kingdom with a King, but power is only between 2 political parties, the PP and the PSOE. Simply pathetic (Spain suffered a fascist government more time than any other nation in the world, 1.939-1.975).

Re: OT: Rating the President
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Umm... not really. Just because one person happened to be elected who had a father that was president doesn't mean the country is turning into a monarchy.</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Without debating whether they deserve it or not -1% of the people owning 70% of the wealth arguably constitutes an oligarchy if not a monarchy.</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I always regarded it as more of a Plutocracy.
In Australia we're sort of a Neo-Colonial MeTooist.

Did I miss anything good before the delete? Anyone call me names? Bloody ISP went down with the SQL virus and didn't get up til an hour ago.

Askan

Re: OT: Rating the President
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Umm... not really. Just because one person happened to be elected who had a father that was president doesn't mean the country is turning into a monarchy.</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Without debating whether they deserve it or not -1% of the people owning 70% of the wealth arguably constitutes an oligarchy if not a monarchy.</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">No, I don't think it was that high. Do you still have that link to the IRS report?

Re: OT: Rating the President
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">No, I don't think it was that high. Do you still have that link to the IRS report?</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Sorry it's top 10% own 70% of the wealth.

http://www.ufenet.org/research/wealth_charts.html

You guys have sold me all those poor people aren't paying there fair share. Since everyone who earns less than 50k a year gets a free ride (according to the chart below) we should find a way to have them pay off all the free stuff they are getting like (police, use of roads, education, cheap food, fire department, etc.)

This is the tax chart.

http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/00in01rt.xls

[ January 28, 2003, 06:02: Message edited by: rextorres ]

Re: OT: Rating the President
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I never said that. I said that middle class and above pay too much taxes. Too much money is collected in taxes as it is.

Re: OT: Rating the President
 

I agree with you a 100%! We should privitize everything. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

[ January 28, 2003, 06:30: Message edited by: rextorres ]

Re: OT: Rating the President
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Eh?

Re: OT: Rating the President
 

Huh... I finally looked at this thread to see if there was anything interesting. Looks like there was one interesting thing, now there's another. A bit of a whodunnit. I would like to reply to the most recent comment by Instar on the president's performance. You can stop wondering why the prez keeps proposing stuff that's bad for the economy. We've seen it all before as Reagonomics. The plan is, you cut taxes, especially to the wealthiest (funny coincidence there). Then you explode defense spending. At this point a strange phenomenon called "no money for domestic spending" occurs. This has the "unintended" consequence of crashing social programs like welfare, education, civil rights monitoring, environmental regulation, etc., etc., etc. And there you have it! Calling your opponents names makes it all go down easier.

Oh, yeah, about the distribution of wealth thingy, 70 percent controlling ten percent sounds bad, but when you look at global wealth distribution, it doesn't seem like any big deal. And that's just dollars. There's no way to measure political control, but from where I sit, I'd guess that the distribution of political influence in America is a lot worse than the 70% for 10% split in money. Kinda creepy.