One final lesson for all you do-gooders. Its a financial lesson in economics. Obviously you don't understand money, and that's what this issue is really all about.

We all know what barter is, right? Money is just a transportable form of barter.

Why do the prices of everything keep going up? Why, its inflation! What is inflation?

Inflation is an increase in the amount of money RELATIVE to the amount of goods and services produced.

So prices go up when the government prints more money than people produce goods and services. That's an inflation of the money supply. The extra cash makes its way through the economy, and people bid up the goods and services. Everything costs more.

But you can have inflation even if the government doesn't print any more money. You get it when the amount of goods and services produced decreases, with no decrease in the amount of money available. People still bid up the available goods and services, and prices increase. Everything costs more.

A quick example of inflation--Let's say you drop by the store on your way home from work, and buy a loaf of bread and a gallon of milk. It costs you $4. You get home, and find out you were ripped off! The milk jug is just painted white, with filthy water inside, and the loaf of bread is just rags wrapped in brown paper. Angry as hell, you go out again, and buy another gallon of milk and loaf of bread for $4. What once cost $4 has now cost $8. In essence, prices doubled. The cheat at the first store got paid for doing nothing. And now you are stuck with a doubling of your cost of food.

See, if you have enough cheats in your society, the amount of goods and services produced drops a lot, but unless the amount of money drops too, it causes inflation. Read the next sentence very carefully: PAYNG PEOPLE NOT TO WORK CAUSES MONETARY INFLATION AND A LOWERING OF THE STANDARD OF LIVING FOR EVERYONE. See, all your do-gooding hurts everybody, can't you understand that? What does inflation do to the working poor, the middle class? It doesn't touch the rich much. Your do-gooding is ruining the value of money FOR EVERYBODY. Money is a form of barter. When you give it to people for doing nothing, you ruin its value, or the value of barter, get it?

But wait, it gets even worse! See, americans don't live in a vaccuum. We now live in a global economy. If we pay someone here $20 an hour to perform a job, and take $10 of it and give it to the government who spends it buying votes from people who do no productive work, the company who hires said worker really only gets $10 worth of work for $20. What's to stop this company from seeing this and moving to a country that has no ridiculous welfare state, pays the worker there $10, and receives $10 worth of work? Answer: nothing! Why are the jobs hemorrhaging overseas? Why, its evil Big Business! No, wait, its evil Big Government and the welfare state!

We have spent 11 trillion dollars, and what do we have? Rotten schools filled with third-world dolts, a HUGE national debt, Tens of millions dependent for their survival on government, who have no savings due to high taxes, jobs rocketing overseas to cheaper labor, cities filled with minority drug gangs, illegal aliens, prisons bursting at the seams, a bankrupt Social Security and Medicare program, etc. The list goes on and on.

You leftists are responsible for RUINING this country! All your do-gooding schemes have failed, and now we are creeping closer and closer to a third-world, totalitarian nation, and one that will be dissolved into others, robbing us of our sovereignty. You have empowered a government which has and will take everything we own, from our rights, to our property, to even the value of the savings we have, robbed of value by inflation.

And all you can talk about is MORE giving money to people because they are failures and do-nothings! Free healthcare, government jobs, more welfare, more, more, more! Hyperinflation, totalitariaism, more, more, more!

You are all insane. And believe me, the blame will fall on you and all the other leftists, no matter what their stripe, once the rest of the public wakes up to what you have done to our country, our money, and our future.

Posted by: BIOH on May 18, 2007 12:05 AM

Chris White, do you have a blog? I've been trying to find out by using Google and have met a lot of very nice, quite reasonable and (egads) liberal people with that name, but none seem to be you.

As for "poverty" or any other category, it's clear that the definition is political rather than objective. I'm retired and living at twenty dollars a month over the "poverty line" which means I don't qualify for any help except SSI and Medicare. I own my little old house, so don't feel poor. Or didn't until my brother, who was living in his truck, had a major heart attack and I didn't have enough money to go to him before he died. Luckily my other brother had enough money to take care of the body and the truck. None of us has children. We're all college graduates. All white. All vote independent.

Prairie Mary

Posted by: Mary Scriver on May 18, 2007 2:03 AM

I am afraid that I do not have a blog. Dropping in on this one is about all the blogging I can manage. I should probably start to add comments to your blog, as I do visit it regularly. Here I get to engage in discourse with individuals whose views are often quite different then my own. Most of whom are rational and reasonable and make me think harder about my own views. The handful of rabid, over the top, types is modest enough in number that it adds some spice without killing my interest ...yet. [Yeah, I'm insane and my relationship with God is suspect because I didn't meet Jesus like Paul...]

Posted by: Chris White on May 18, 2007 9:09 AM

I'm sure Michael likes being a matchmaker and a social mixer.

It's easy to be rabid and over-the-top when speaking in generalities, which is why I injected the personal. The real definition of poverty is simply when one doesn't have enough.

I'm so pleased to know you're following my blog.

Prairie Mary

Posted by: Mary Scriver on May 18, 2007 12:45 PM

"The real definition of poverty is simply when one doesn't have enough."

I don't mean to be flip, but Donald Trump probably thinks he doesn't have enough casinos. Most struggling students are happy if they have enough money for rent and beer; twenty years later they have a lot more but many feel like they don't have enough.

The root of the argument on this thread is two-fold in my view:

- the question of whether alleviating US poverty, however it's defined, the responsibility of you and me; and

- the conservative faction's perception of a "you owe me/them" attitude on part of the liberal faction, to which a reasonable answer is "I work hard enough; I don't owe these dumbasses anything!"

To be frank, I see poor morons just about everyday. The drunks and drug users; the dopes who buy shiny new things with money they don't have; the grasshoppers who never gave a moment's thought to putting away for the winter; the borderline animals who produce offspring sired by a different primitive every year; and so on....

This isn't the 1930s, when family men stood in winding breadlines; this isn't Victor Hugo's Paris.

I'm all the way with BIOH on this and other topics. Although while I think his no-BS attitude is indispensable, at least here at 2BH I'm more inclined to give the libs the benefit of the doubt as to their good will and sincerity, no matter how wrong in fact they are.

Posted by: PA on May 18, 2007 1:43 PM

In a letter to the editors of the San Francisco Chronicle about a month ago, a communist sympathiser belly ached that "capitalism needs the poor."

Well I disagree. Liberal politicians need the poor more than anyone. Letting educated immigrants into our countries would irk the government workers, as any self sufficient, educated person will not be using, or asking for more government services.

Posted by: Miss Carnivorous on May 18, 2007 3:24 PM

I'm retired and living at twenty dollars a month over the "poverty line" which means I don't qualify for any help except SSI and Medicare. I own my little old house, so don't feel poor... None of us has children. We're all college graduates. All white.

Tell me, please, why you or your siblings has to qualify for ANY of our money, be it Medicare or SSI?

Somebody invested in you years of teaching (colleges). Why were you not able to be productive members of the community? You were working all your life - and all you can show for it is $20 a month above povert level - doesn't it make you feel you applied your talents in the wrong way? Where is your purely American snse of independence?

I can't believe an educated person will be so shameless as to flaunt her being a leach into our faces, as if it's something to be proud of - or even worse, as if it's OUR fault.

And to think this same person spent big chunk of her life COUNSELLING people, giving them guidance. What fools would take you as a role model?

Posted by: Tatyana on May 18, 2007 6:07 PM

Once again: There is no poverty in America. Everyone knows this. Some people have less than others and this is almost always the result of choices, decisions. If you pursue an acting career while I study law, why should I, years later, feel any guilt because you are $20 above the poverty line? I shouldn't and I don't. It's not even unfair.

Posted by: Nant. on May 19, 2007 1:47 PM

Anyone else notice how the entire issue of how economics intersects with religion, specifically sermons by a "minister of a liberal church" with injunctions that parishoners seek to eliminate poverty, presumably within the context of Christian charity, has disappeared? Now it's all denying poverty exists, arguing in favor of 'trickle down" economics and so on. I guess the operative quote comes, not from the Bible, but from the movies ... "Greed is good."

Posted by: Chris White on May 19, 2007 5:10 PM

Thank you for your helpful personal comments. I have downloaded them and will include them in my autobiography as objective evaluations from thoughtful people.

Prairie Mary

Posted by: Mary Scriver on May 19, 2007 11:25 PM

Excellent article..I strongly believe poverty could be demolish from the world but for that we have to reform our social practice..I'm not suggesting that Millionaires have to share their wealth with poor peoples,But We have to make sure that in every family should have one earning person with considerable salary..Employment is the only way to demolish poor..So our part is creating opportunity for poor people...

Posted by: sakthi on May 20, 2007 2:25 AM

Mary, don't forget to give us a link to your autobiography, so we can check if our comments really there.
Somehow I think there will be only self-pity and blaming the world for your misfortunes.

Posted by: Tat on May 20, 2007 9:14 AM

It's about definitions.
Poverty:You having less than you think you should have.
Greed: Me wanting more than you think I should have.

Posted by: nant. on May 20, 2007 10:19 AM

Actually,
it's about You, isn't it?

Posted by: nant. on May 20, 2007 12:46 PM

I agree poverty is relative and will always co-exist in a capitalist economy. While people are born into poverty, their personal drive and decisions will determine if they stay there. The only way to eliminate poverty is to eliminate competition and capitalism.

Posted by: mr. closet organizers on May 20, 2007 2:23 PM

"The only way to eliminate poverty is to eliminate competition and capitalism."
Worked like a charm in the U.S.S.R. and China.

Posted by: Nant. on May 20, 2007 4:41 PM

Hey Mr. Closet: Worked like a charm in the Soviet Union and China.

Posted by: Nant. on May 20, 2007 5:47 PM

I believe this one applies "Unless each man prodiuses more than he receives, increases his output, there will be less for him than all the others", doesn't it?

Posted by: Marquez Day on May 28, 2007 5:33 PM






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