Speakeasy forum: Like it or not, I think there's some truth here

He added that as a candidate for the White House, "my job is not to worry about those people."

There are whole generations of ONE family who know nothing else, JP

In my mind a generation is at least 25 years.....Obama has been in for 4 years, GW Bush for 8 years, Clinton for 8 years, HW Bush for 4, and 8 Reagan years. Lords knows Reagan wouldn't give them a buck.

Since you consider Dems to be the "freeloaders".

How did they survive "the lean 8 years of GW Bush"? and 12 years of Reps (Bush and Reagan).

They didn't spend what they got? They invested it and put it in offshore accounts?

They had help from both parties?...Will you admit that? No party is worse than the other, except in YOUR mind?

I'm getting better, at least some of my post was worthy of a response from the Omnipotent Toni.

You need to keep separate tax rates, investment tax rates, and total of the types. The tax rate paid on most investment income is 15%. Both Romney and the $20,000 earner pay that percentage.
With earned Income, the bracket you dealt with was in tn the worst case scenario, Single taxpayer:
15% rate from $8,701 - $35,350

from my link........it's actually HISTORY in case you are wondering and not something I made up as a rant.......nor did it come from Fox News. Follow your own advice........"At least do yourself a favor and actually READ something....you may actually be enlightened"

>>>>The concepts of Welfare and pension were put into practice in the early Islamic law of the Caliphate as forms of Zakat (charity), one of the Five Pillars of Islam, since the time of the Rashidun caliph Umar in the 7th century. The taxes (including Zakat and Jizya) collected in the treasury of an Islamic government were used to provide income for the needy, including the poor, elderly, orphans, widows, and the disabled. According to the Islamic jurist Al-Ghazali (Algazel, 1058-1111), the government was also expected to store up food supplies in every region in case a disaster or famine occurred.

it was about selfishness and they weren't sharing at all. Instead of a potluck dinner, each brought and ate his own, not sharing any with those who had none. So, they sat eating in front of those who were hungry, even starving.

That's when it began to decline. The people wanted more and more for free or at great discounts through the govt. Rome raped outer provinces to keep all the dead beats at home happy. Eventually it lead to their collapse under the weight of the rotten welfare state.

"All things atrocious and shameless flock from all parts to Rome."

by Tacitus

(he should visit DC in today's world!)

"The
budget should be balanced. Public debt should be reduced. The arrogance
of officialdom should be tempered, and assistance to foreign lands
should be curtailed, lest Rome become bankrupt." Marcus Tullius Cicero

http://ancienthistory.about.com/cs/romefallarticles/a/fallofrome_3.htm

In this article, Grempel says the other side of Roman decadence was the dole. Millions were spent on bread (including pork, by the end of the second century) and circuses for the non-working poor. Barbarians ruled Rome and even when a Roman, Diocletian, regained control, he was influenced by the East. With Constantine came a barbaric Christianity and the move of capital from Rome to Constantinople.

LINK to increasing welfare state, tax the rich, imbalance in trade,...

There was the cost of repairing and maintaining the temples, public baths, and the like. There were also heavy expenditures for civic sacrifices, religious processions, feasts and for the games necessary to amuse the proletariat. The wealthy citizens of the municipalities who were, in effect, the middle-class, began to grow weary of the load: especially since the constantly rising taxation rates were shearing them closer and closer. Furthermore, they were expected to help their communities out of debt by voluntary loans. By the middle of the second century, there were cases where compulsion had to be used to fill the local magistracies. There were other cases, beginning with Hadrian, where, when municipalities got into financial difficulties, imperial curators were pat in change and the cities lost their independence. The people did not seem to mind. As often happens today, they were quite willing to resign their control of affairs and to let the government take care of them.

This extension of paternalism was accompanied by a tremendous increase in the personnel of the imperial civil service. Each bureau expanded its field and new bureaux were constantly being created. By the time of Antoninus Pius, who ruled from 138 to 161 AD, the Roman bureaucracy was as all-embracing as that of modern times. Naturally, too, as benevolent paternalism and bureaucracy took over, personal freedom tended to disappear. By the third century, to quote the historian Trever, "the relentless system of taxation, requisition, and compulsory labor was administered by an army of military bureaucrats. . . .Everywhere . . .were the ubiquitous personal agents of the emperors to spy out any remotest case of attempted strikes or evasion of taxes." To the cost of the bureaucracy was added the expense of the dole.

Originally, this was passed out once a month. By the time of Marcus Aurelius, there was a daily distribution of pork, oil, and bread to the proletariat. Meanwhile, the expenditure on the public spectacles kept mounting. A hundred million dollars a year is a moderate estimate of what was poured out on the games. There was likewise an attempt to combine subsidy to Italian farmers with charity to needy children. This was called the alimenta and was instituted by Nerva, who reigned from 96 to 98 AD. His system was to lend money at five per cent instead of twelve per cent to farmers with the proviso that the interest should be used to support needy children. Boys received seventy cents a day, girls sixty. And then there was the army. The army was essential to the security of the empire. The cost of it, though, more than doubled between 96 and 180 AD.

All these expenditures had to be recovered from the taxpayer. To compound the difficulties, there was an adverse balance of trade. Roman currency, for example, poured into India and the East to pay for luxuries. Even in the time of Nero, Seneca estimated that it cost Rome five million dollars a year to import its luxuries from the East. In a word, though seemingly prosperous, in the second century AD the Roman empire was overspending to such an extent that it was moving to an economic crisis. When in 167 AD Marcus Aurelius was faced by the attack of the Germanic Marcomanni and Quadi, he was forced to sell, is it were, the crown jewels as well as the household furnishing of his palace to finance the war.

or the importation of games to pacify the people, he was talking about the luxury goods being imported for the wealthy to buy, silks and spices mostly.

Where welfare comes in was the importation of grain from Sicily and Libya (the granary of the Empire, my how things change) in order to make bread which was given out free to the part of the Roman population in order to keep them from revolting, same thing with The Roman Circus, hence the term Bread and Circuses. The population of Rome in the Second Century was about 2 to 2.5 million, roughly half of which may have qualified for the Public Distribution of Bread and passes to the Circus. When you consider the size of the empire and the taxes brought in, that's pretty trivial.

Now former Senators and Consuls were sent to the provinces as Governors for a year, and that is where much of the taxation from the province went, into the Governor's pocket, they also looted art treasures which are still being found on the sea bed. Twenty years ago there were about 4 original Greek Bronze statues remaining in museums. There are now more than double that number, and there is at least one being worked on off the Dalmatian coast of Croatia which was found last year.

Rome declined for a host of reasons, not least of which were the employment of Foederati; troops from the other side of the border paid to defend the border. In the 5th Century, Atilla The Hun, a Mongol and his Golden Horde pushed huge numbers of refugees into the Roman empire. The Goths, who started off in Sweden (remember the Olympic winter Games in Gothenburg?) and split into the West Visi, and the East Ostro Goths took over Spain and Italy, but still it was called the Roman Empire. The Vandals ended up in North Africa. Rome was also attacked by the Eastern Empire and severely damaged in the 5th and 6th Centuries under Belisarius (The White Chieftain, Beli Tsar) who was acting at the behest of Emperor Justinian?. And as beautiful as the churches of Ravenna are today, moving the capital into a mosquito swamp, which is what it was at the time, wasn't a smart move.

The Eastern Roman Empire based on Constantinople lasted far longer. and didn't collapse until it had been looted by their trade rivals, the Venetians, in 1417? and then finally attacked by the Ottoman Turks in 1453? (Sorry, it's been 25 years since I needed to know the dates.)

So, briefly, to credit "Welfare" for a tiny restricted minority of the Empire's inhabitants for the collapse of something which persisted more than 200 years longer, and even then only half was not centrally administered any longer, is a fiction worthy of Star Wars.

Rob

Again with that Toni?

I think it was about 2 weeks ago.

Don't you recall when you asked If any Republican President ever did that, and I provided a link showing GW Bush did it, BANG!!!! I tell ya' it's like shooting fish in a barrel. You hummed and hawed and said Well yeah, but Obama is doing it worse.

Tsk,tsk, tsk...shaking my head in disbelief.

It's more "still"

About the only thing you haven't mentioned lately is "kitchen sink"...you even had that in one of your posts, I wish I saved the link and the search engine in Speakeasy isn't as good as the old search.

Associating Obama and the kitchen sink....I don't know how you did it, but you did, at least in your mind.

Toni's head exploding may register on the Richter scale.

and any other aside comments. Then say whether or not the statement is largely valid that those who rely on government support for their well being are more likely to vote for Obama than for Romney.