I need help folks!

[Soviet era]

How would you respond to the following letter?.......

Point me to anything in the Constitution, any court rulings or prevailing thought from elected officials prior to the mid to late 30's that supports your position that Pursuit of Happiness includes receiving monetary benefits from the Gov. Second question, please define what FAIR SHARE is? It's a term many on the left use but never define. How can one support equality under the law and then support a small percentage of the population carrying the vast majority of the financial load?

It is clear that the framers had a very limited roll for the Fed Government. You can find it in the 9th and 10th amendments, and you'll find the Fed Gov roll clearly defined in Article 1 Sec 8. What you advocate is NOT there.

To help you define what is a fair share, look at the link below. You will note the source of the data used in the charts came from the IRS & Treasury Dept. What is fair about the top 1% that earn 19% of the income paying 37% of the Fed income tax. Same for top 10% earning 44% of the income and paying 68% of the taxes. Please don't give me "they can afford it" stuff. Can you name anything you are anyone else buys that the price paid is based on your income?


One other thing I'd like to ask of anyone. How did this country get by for the first 175 or so yrs without all the so called entitlement programs? I think even FDR would have a hard time going along with where the DEM's have taken the country on the road to socialism. As I've said it before, you either live off the fruit of your own labor or else the fruit of other's labor. I can't go along with living off the fruit of other's labor, the taking and redistribution of other's wealth.

Thank you for any input. :D

[Soviet era]

Okay, thanks everyone. :)

[ВАЛТЕР]

Yeah, you're not going to find anyone here that is going to support some liberal "wealth redistribution" program. Socialism isn't about "fairly distributing the wealth" It is about seizing the means of production, abolishing the private ownership over it, and destroying class division in a society. "Redistribution of wealth" is nothing but an empty term thrown about by the bourgeois liberals in order to try and quell the masses by tossing them scraps from the table.

[Blake's Baby]

Capitalism is the legal expropriation of the producers by the owners of property. It is quite literally 'living off another's labour'.

Socialists would argue however that wealth is produced socially and should be distributed socially. Yes, that means that those who work should support those who cannot - the elderly, the sick, children etc. There's no way round that. It's necessary for the continuance of the species that some humans work more than they'd need to for their own needs, in order to fulfill the needs of those who can't fulfill them themselves.

But looking at the question like that is flawed anyway, because a single human being is not a viable unit of survivial. Even if you imagine that Robinson Crusoe arrives on his island (with no Man Friday turning up) he'd have to be naked and totally amnesiac to fulfill the conditions of an hypothetical 'lone individual'. Society (his parents, his extended family, his community, the Board of Governers at the orphanage, his municipal Edication Board, whatever) has already given Crusoe an education, and fed and clothed him until the time he can arrive at the state of being a free autonomous individual. In other words, there is no such thing as the free autonomous individual that the question pre-supposes, we are all products of our society.

So looking at it from that point of view - society produces, society disposes. Not every member of society contributes the same labour to the productive process at the same time, but that doesn't matter; everyone gets what they need from society. When a worker was a child, they got what they needed, but didn't work; when they were adult, they worked harder than just 'for themselves', because society needed to support other children, the sick and the elderly; when the worker got old, they still got what the needed, because younger people in the prime of life were producing beyond their own needs to support the elderly, the sick and children... etc etc.

[Zealot]

How would you respond to the following letter?.......

Point me to anything in the Constitution, any court rulings or prevailing thought from elected officials prior to the mid to late 30's that supports your position that Pursuit of Happiness includes receiving monetary benefits from the Gov.

Such things weren't needed until the economic breakdown of capitalism during the 1930s. Workers had steadily increasing wages since America's founding and older people relied on their children to provide for them, as many still do in developing countries. Of course, the Great Depression completely damaged this arrangement.


Second question, please define what FAIR SHARE is? It's a term many on the left use but never define. How can one support equality under the law and then support a small percentage of the population carrying the vast majority of the financial load?

In socialism that "small percentage of the population carrying the vast majority of the financial load" wouldn't exist; they would be expropriated. We don't want a "fair share", we want a radical reorganisation of production that completely abolishes the class of the bourgeoisie or the "small percentage" as he/she called them.


It is clear that the framers had a very limited roll for the Fed Government. You can find it in the 9th and 10th amendments, and you'll find the Fed Gov roll clearly defined in Article 1 Sec 8. What you advocate is NOT there.

Not sure of the context for this question.


One other thing I'd like to ask of anyone. How did this country get by for the first 175 or so yrs without all the so called entitlement programs?

Wages kept increasing until around the 1970s. After that they either decreased or stagnated because capitalists couldn't maintain the profitability levels of the post-WWII period and were forced to stop wage increases, demand tax cuts and deregulations, etc., etc. (Sound familiar? It should, because it became known as neoliberalism). Meanwhile, productivity kept on rising (in other words, workers were working more for the same amount of pay) but their stagnant wages meant they couldn't afford the middle class living that they had come to expect. This led to a huge borrowing binge and ultimately the 2008 financial crisis.


I think even FDR would have a hard time going along with where the DEM's have taken the country on the road to socialism.

This is just so stupid I don't know where to begin. Firstly, America is anything but Socialism. Secondly, it was FDR who introduced Social Security, unemployment compensations and government employment in the midst of a Great Depression. In fact, during his presidency income taxes on the highest earners were 96% I believe. The democrats haven't done anything even close to the sort of path that FDR took. FDR would be denounced as a radical Marxist if he were in power right now (which some have accused Obama of being, so god knows what they would call FDR).


As I've said it before, you either live off the fruit of your own labor or else the fruit of other's labor. I can't go along with living off the fruit of other's labor, the taking and redistribution of other's wealth.

Except, the bourgeoisie live off the fruits of the labour of others every single day! They force people to make them huge profits and pay workers a pittance for their labour.

[Jimmie Higgins]

How would you respond to the following letter?.......

Point me to anything in the Constitution, any court rulings or prevailing thought from elected officials prior to the mid to late 30's that supports your position that Pursuit of Happiness includes receiving monetary benefits from the Gov.I'd respond that this is pretty abstract. Happiness for who? Surely the persuit of happiness for slave owners and slaves can't exist at the same time.

Anyway, first the constitution, despite the myths, has always been interpreted based on the needs of the US ruling class at a given time (even if sometimes those needs are to bend to popular anger or demands - more on that in the next paragraph). Free Speech right? Well they wrote that and then several years later many of the same exact "framers" were saying it was totally consitutional to restrict Jacobean publications and restrict the rights of French people in the US.

So rights in the US or any society are not the result of words written with magic ink on magic documents. This doesn't mean our rulers just dictate things all the time - sometimes people can force them to give up some rights. And so rights are based on the balence of class forces and the results of social and political struggles. How is "Jim Crow" consistant with "the persuit of happiness"? It's not, but it doesn't matter because it was totally consitutional for 100 years until it wasn't. Same "consititution" but different social and historical situation.

I frankly don't care about the consitution, the rights we have and can count on in this country are the ones people have been able to organize and fight for: women's sufferage, voting rights, the right to unionize etc. All come from struggle and the effects on struggle, not some piece of paper or lawyers or politicians.


Second question, please define what FAIR SHARE is? It's a term many on the left use but never define. How can one support equality under the law and then support a small percentage of the population carrying the vast majority of the financial load?Fair share for workers in my view? 100%. I think people should run their jobs and production in society democractically.


It is clear that the framers had a very limited roll for the Fed Government. You can find it in the 9th and 10th amendments, and you'll find the Fed Gov roll clearly defined in Article 1 Sec 8. What you advocate is NOT there.OK, but I wasn't looking for what I advocate to be there, in a document that would have been pro-slavery at the time of the 9th and 10th amendement. Why should I look for slave-owners to point the way for liberation? Why should I care what they considered fair or not because what they thought of as fair and the proper role of government was pretty fucked up. Unless you are older and the owner of your own plantation or farm, this document wasn't written for you either - you would have had no political say among the people who created this document.


To help you define what is a fair share, look at the link below. You will note the source of the data used in the charts came from the IRS & Treasury Dept. What is fair about the top 1% that earn 19% of the income paying 37% of the Fed income tax. Same for top 10% earning 44% of the income and paying 68% of the taxes. Please don't give me "they can afford it" stuff. Can you name anything you are anyone else buys that the price paid is based on your income?This is slight of hand. The top 1% may earn 19% of wages but wages tell us nothing of the actual wealth distribution of the US.


In the United States, wealth is highly concentrated in a relatively few hands. As of 2010, the top 1% of households (the upper class) owned 35.4% of all privately held wealth, and the next 19% (the managerial, professional, and small business stratum) had 53.5%, which means that just 20% of the people owned a remarkable 89%, leaving only 11% of the wealth for the bottom 80% (wage and salary workers). In terms of financial wealth (total net worth minus the value of one's home), the top 1% of households had an even greater share: 42.1%. Table 1 and Figure 1 present further details, drawn from the careful work of economist Edward N. Wolff at New York University (2012).


One other thing I'd like to ask of anyone. How did this country get by for the first 175 or so yrs without all the so called entitlement programs?12 hour workdays, child labor, slavery, and the entitlements of giving away stolen land really cheaply.

Do you mean how did the country get by without a modern welfare state? Well I don't know how do you think you'd get by working in a mill in 1890? Not very well.


I think even FDR would have a hard time going along with where the DEM's have taken the country on the road to socialism. As I've said it before, you either live off the fruit of your own labor or else the fruit of other's labor. I can't go along with living off the fruit of other's labor, the taking and redistribution of other's wealth.
FDR said he was "the best friend the profit system ever had" because he was not steering the country "toward socialism" but attempting to divert massive anger at the capitalist system and labor struggles from becoming a revolutionary movement. In the mid-centrury the official policy of the US was Keynsian which is what right-wing trolls call "socialism" but it mearly a way of managing capitalism just as neo-liberalism is the model today. The Democrats and Republicans agreed to this perspective until the 1970s when neoliberalism became the favored way for our rulers to manage the economy. The Democrats have very much been a part of this process and are as "socialist" as the Republicans. Bill Clinton got rid of welfare, eliminated any assistance for life to anyone who has ever been arrested. Obama has redistributed wealth though - by taking money and giving directly to the rich.

[Prometeo liberado]

your position that Pursuit of Happiness includes receiving monetary benefits from the Gov
If this is the basis of your argument than I'm afraid that you're standing on shaky ground here. I'm pretty sure that there are legal rulings in regards to the legality of certain portions of welfare, or even the existence of the welfare itself. But PoH is simply just flowery language meant to pacify the people.