The only reason the Proglibdyte left is such a fan of Ron Paul is because he is a non-interventionist. The liberal left's vision of the ideal world is the United States giving all its cash - no questions asked - to the United Nations. At that point the US is supposed to sit down, shut up, and do whatever the UN orders them to do. Then - in the minds of the left - we will have world peace. RP would do about 90% of that by just being an isolationist. He won't give the UN any money, but the left will settle for the US just shutting down all its involvement (especially military).

But American Exceptionalism is not jingoism or arrogance. It is a quick way to summarize the American spirit of enlightened self-interest combined with personal freedom and entrepreneurism. The liberal left hates to admit it, but the US Constitution, economy, and position in the world was no accident of chance or random luck. Our constitution was a model to the rest of the world. Our freedoms and way of life still make us the envy of just about everyone. People still want to come here in droves to escape oppression, poverty, and intolerance. America was innovating, inventing, testing, and producing when the rest of the Western world was literally standing still. This is not arrogance or snootiness. It is just fact. American Exceptionalism summarizes this - and apparently makes Proglibdyte leftists squeal like stuck pigs when they hear the words.

Adam is great...and like Cenk I agree with him on many issues....but it's not hard to believe that Adam doesn't really understand what OWS is really about. He doesn't study this stuff...he is a casual observer of the news and uses that to spin off on rants and stories. What he know about OWS is the general information the news media feeds us which is OWS is about rich vs poor, bums and slackers wanting everything for nothing, etc...>> ^ghark:

It's not above Adam Carolla's head unfortunately, people like this know exactly what they are doing, trying to make the people who are robbing entrepreneuring you look awesome.

It's not above Adam Carolla's head unfortunately, people like this know exactly what they are doing, trying to make the people who are robbing entrepreneuring you look awesome.

Inexplicably bitter upper-middle-class-raised community activist versus successful entrepreneur who came up from nothing.

Wish I could be proven wrong about liberal schemes in the best way: with low unemployment, prosperity and more, not less, freedom.

But freedom and vote-buyin' libs guaranteeing an equality of outcomes aren't compatible.


>> ^Boise_Lib:

>> ^quantumushroom:
Yeah, he did a poor job clarifying his personal beliefs, versus beliefs about what government should or shouldn't be allowed to do.
Of course, compared to the Kenyawaiian narcissist, Cain is a genius many times over, with actual business and life experience.

LOL...oh wait, you're serious?
Even bigger LOLs.

>> ^Lawdeedaw:

You have that wrong too @ChaosEngine
Smart, dedicated and ruthless people perhaps will become rich--yes. However, wealth breeds more wealth than actual personality and dedication...And, to be fair, it is (In America at least) a trait of the average citizen to be greedy and ruthless anyways...


I'm not saying that poor people are somehow more noble. Merely that the government is usually the easiest obstacle when it comes to getting rich.

Nor am I saying that all rich people are evil, or even smart.

I was simply refuting lantern53s point that the government exists to beat down people who would otherwise be wealthy entrepreneurs

Lyrics:



This one is for the boys with the boomin' system
Top down, AC with the coolin' system
When he come up in the club, he be blazin' up
Got stacks on deck like he savin' up

And he ill, he real, he might got a deal
He pop bottles and he got the right kind of build
He cold, he dope, he might sell coke
He always in the air, but he never fly coach

He a muthafuckin trip, trip, sailor of the ship, ship
When he make it drip, drip kiss him on the lip, lip
That's the kind of dude I was lookin' for
And yes you'll get slapped if you're lookin' ho

I said, excuse me you're a hell of a guy
I mean my, my, my, my you're like pelican fly
I mean, you're so shy and I'm loving your tie
You're like slicker than the guy with the thing on his eye, oh

Yes I did, yes I did
Somebody please tell him who the eff I is
I am Nicki Minaj, I mack them dudes up
Back coupes up, and chuck the deuce up

Boy you got my heartbeat runnin' away
Beating like a drum and it's coming your way
Can't you hear that boom, badoom, boom
Boom, badoom, boom bass?

He got that super bass
Boom, badoom, boom
Boom, badoom, boom bass
Yeah that's that super bass

Boom, badoom, boom
Boom, badoom, boom, he got that super bass
Boom, badoom, boom
Boom, badoom, boom, yeah that's that super bass

This one is for the boys in the Polos
Entrepreneur niggas in the moguls
He could ball with the crew, he could solo
But I think I like him better when he dolo

And I think I like him better with the fitted cap on
{ From: http://www.elyrics.net/read/n/nicki-minaj-lyrics/super-bass-lyrics.html }
He ain't even gotta try to put the mac on
He just gotta give me that look, when he give me that look
Then the panties comin' off, off, unh

Excuse me, you're a hell of a guy
You know I really got a thing for American guys
I mean, sigh, sickenin' eyes
I can tell that you're in touch with your feminine side, oh

Yes I did, yes I did
Somebody please tell him who the eff I is
I am Nicki Minaj, I mack them dudes up
Back coupes up, and chuck the deuce up

Boy you got my heartbeat runnin' away
Beating like a drum and it's coming your way
Can't you hear that boom, badoom, boom
Boom, badoom, boom bass?

He got that super bass
Boom, badoom, boom
Boom, badoom, boom bass
Yeah that's that super bass

Boom, badoom, boom
Boom, badoom, boom, he got that super bass
Boom, badoom, boom
Boom, badoom, boom, yeah that's that super bass

See I need you in my life for me to stay
No, no, no, no, no I know you'll stay
No, no, no, no, no don't go away

Boy you got my heartbeat runnin' away
Don't you hear that heartbeat comin' your way?
Oh it be like, boom, badoom, boom
Boom, badoom, boom bass
Can't you hear that boom, badoom, boom
Boom, badoom, boom bass?

Boy you got my heartbeat runnin' away
Beating like a drum and it's coming your way
Can't you hear that boom, badoom, boom
Boom, badoom, boom bass?

He got that super bass
Boom, badoom, boom
Boom, badoom, boom bass
Yeah that's that super bass

Boom, badoom, boom
Boom, badoom, boom, he got that super bass
Boom, badoom, boom
Boom, badoom, boom, yeah that's that super bass

I personally believe the only way to turn around this "new economy" is through innovation and entrepreneurship. Manufacturing is gone, we have to accept that. The service industry is hurting too, so we have to evolve.

As far as starting capital, I bootstrapped a business years ago with $2,000 and ramen noodles. It now employs 12 people. We pay better than market wages, provide excellent benefits, and generally treat each other like family. We found a niche and went for it.

Along my journey, I've met literally hundreds of young entrepreneurs that have similar success stories. It's not impossible, it just takes the willingness to work. You have to see problems as opportunities to make things better, and then take action. Sitting around talking about the problems doesn't do a whole lot of good. It's up to us to present solutions as well.

Just my $0.02.

Yeh, I don't think using this on envelopes will be cost effective for a very long time; and they'll all be stolen before it ever is.

T-Shirt entrepreneurs however, should be staging their fourth comeback since tie dye, cloth printing, and e-shops.

/me quickly patents the tweet-shirt

I admittedly can't find statistics on this. My google-fu must be tuned to much with finding tech related stuff too much now.

Consumption taxes cost the gov't a lot of money, not businesses per se. Most of what the stats I saw was due to consumption taxes actually being more prone to fraud. Granted, there's plenty of tax evasion with income tax, but it's actually less costly to find relevant info to detect and bust those people. It's easy to pull bank records, payroll info, etc.

If I find this data, I'll PM it to you or post in a relevant area.

If you're looking for a system that fits perfectly with ideals, you'll likely object to a progressive income tax. I'm not interested in what is philosophically ideal as much as I am in a system that works for the economy. I don't really care that I pay for other people's education, health care, etc. I care that as many people as possible are employed, that there's lower crime, that overall everyone is more prosperous on average, etc. That is far more important than me paying a few extra dollars in taxes for maybe even things I disagree with, and don't want to pay for. I didn't go around protesting that my tax dollars were being spent on the most recent Iraqi war, saying that their decision to go to Iraq inhibited my personal freedoms to do what I want with my money. It was for common defense, even if I disagreed with going in.

The individual freedom argument is oversimplifying the issue. Case in point, if a flat tax caused crime to go up, how is it a gain in personal freedom that you don't have to pay more taxes for things you object to if you're more prone to being robbed or murdered? If you're an entrepreneur, how are you more free if you don't have to pay for other people's education, but you can't make your business work because you can't find the skills necessary in your labor force?

It was progress for society to setup compulsory education for all people. You could argue it restricted people's freedom to not go to school, or parents to choose to not educate their kids. But that's frankly a ridiculous argument to say that progress at the cost of individual liberty isn't progress at all. Society progressed because the general population became literate through a compulsory requirement to become educated as children.

The truth is we have and should continue to make decisions like this based on what would benefit society, not what fits an ideology. Ideologies provide frameworks that help come up with new ideas, but those ideas should then be looked at with what the results would be, not lock us into only using ideas from that school of thought. Those discoveries that violate common ideologies eventually end up forcing us to change our ideologies in small ways or completely abandon ideologies altogether because they don't work anymore. But we should never do something only for the sake of ideological consistency.

I can't see how a flat consumption tax would help society. Objectively speaking, one issue our economy is facing right now is there is too much wealth concentration in the hands of the rich, so there's an incredibly weak market for purchasing goods and services business owners are producing. I'm not saying this to proclaim the rich are evil or anything of the sort; I'm just saying pragmatically the economy can't work for business owners nor the poor and middle class if consumers don't have money to buy goods and services the rich are producing. One way to remedy that is progressive taxation.

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:

I don't know where the 98% efficient is coming from. The compliance cost alone I have read is close to 5 billion hours or so. With computers, I would imagine the sales/consumption tax is nearly automatic. Hard to find examples that aren't in someones sphere of influence. As for the "not progressive enough", that isn't really in the spirit of compromise. If I don't want it at all, and you want it all, halfway seems like the only way it will end up. A consumption tax seems easy enough halfway point. If you find it lacking, then join a charity that subsidies it out of your own pocket. Stop trying to be fair with other peoples money. Maybe I don't want to give every single useless tom dick and harry a leg up in life, I only want to help people I know and trust. Unless we are trying to make being a reclusive shut in completely against the law now. Progress at the cost of individual liberty isn't really progress at all.
Edit: Here is a less new, but more exhaustive link on costs.
http://www.taxfoundation.org/files/sr138.pdf
Last edit I swear:
I know you might not trust this, but this is a little blurb from the "Fair Tax" http://www.fairtax.org/site/PageServer?pagename=about_faq_answers
It is progressive, which I don't like, but it is the best compromise I can find around. Seems reasonable enough.

The rich pay a higher percentage, and more taxes overall than the poor. Why do you think anyone is saying otherwise. And that's absolutely how it should be, for the good of everyone, rich included.

It's perfectly sensible to talk about why some people don't pay any taxes at all. I'm not even debating that. But the rich should still pay more, regardless. The US has been one of the strongest economies for most of the 20th and 21st centuries with a progressive income tax, and it's been a heck of a lot more progressive than it is now, and we were still very prosperous.

Showing fraud in some programs doesn't mean the program should be abolished. It can be reformed as well. There are plenty of ways to do that. We didn't abolish welfare in the 1990s. We reformed it. And no, it's not true that private businesses will always create the jobs when the economy is down. History has proven quite the opposite. Why would a business invest to make more goods and services if there's no market for it. A downturn in the economy breeds more economic decline. It's called a business cycle, and it's a natural occurrence. If you were a business owner, generally speaking, if you know less people out there have the money to buy your goods and services, would you increase production and hire more workers? Of course not. Does the average person put more money into the stock market or take money out when the market tanks? Takes money out, which drains money for investing. This is basic micro and macroeconomics.

Some force has to run counter to the natural tendencies of the market to force demand to increase, and of course this virtually always requires running a deficit. This is why slogans like "the gov't should be run like a business" are simplistic and wrong. The gov't should in those situations create jobs through various programs, thereby increasing income for the lower classes, which creates spending and demand, which then causes businesses to increase production, hire more workers, and that gets the economy back on track. You can site case study after case study in our history we've done this, and it worked. We ended the Great Depression via defense spending in the form of WWII in record levels as the most obvious exaggerated example. That historically was qm's worst nightmare - record deficits in raw amount at the time, and still to this day historic record deficits as a percentage of GDP during WWII, followed by a tax raise on the richest Americans to over 90%. And what calamity befell the US because of those policies? We ended the Great Depression, became an economic Superpower, and Americans enjoyed record prosperity it and the world had never seen before.

This is historical fact that simply can't be denied.

Here's what happened - Democrats deficit spent as they were supposed to (which is exactly what the GOP would have done had they been in power, because it was started by George W. Bush), which stopped the economic free fall. Moody's didn't downgrade the US debt. It was S&P. They sited math about the alarming deficits which contained a $2 trillion mistake on their part. They also sited political instability as the GOP was risking default to get their policies in place, which btw still include massive deficits.

The GOP couldn't stop the Democrats from spending all that money?! Laughable. The GOP started the freakin' bailouts and stimulus! What did the GOP do the last time there was a recession after 9/11? Deficit spent, then continued to deficit spend when the economy was strong. Dude, seriously, you have no factual basis for that kind of claim whatsoever.

>> ^quantumushroom:

this is what we've been trying to tell you QM, the system doesn't work when only a few contribute...the system works when ALL contribute based on what they can afford.
I totally agree, so why does the bottom 50% of Americans pay NO income tax? The wealthy already pay a disproportionately high percentage of all taxes and I have yet to find a liberalsifter who admits this.
I well understand that Scrooge McDuck won't miss a few more shovelfuls of gold coins swiped by federal bulldozers, but lets review reality:
1) The "extra" money attained by "soaking" Scrooge and Rich Uncle Pennybags (from the Monopoly game) will be pi$$ed away, like the 60 billion dollars EVERY YEAR lost to fraud, waste and abuse in Medicaid/Medicare. The federal mafia is composed of sh1tty stewards of our money.
2) The Hawaiian Dunce has spent 3 trillion in 3 years with little or nothing to show for it. So what magical number of dollars is going to make everything all right? A quadrillion?
3) When the socialists raise taxes, the wealthy of 2011 have their accountant press a few buttons on their computating machines, sending their $$$ overseas, invested in more stable markets. Apparently many already have, probably the moment they knew Obama was elected.
4) Liberal say, "Rich man not know difference he still rich." But there's now less money to invest and less money to create jobs. Now some liberalsifter will say, "This graph indicates that the rich don't create jobs with their ill-gotten gains."
BUT, if you're honest with yourselves, you'll know that one million dollars has a much better chance of creating jobs in the hands of entrepreneurs and investors than the government "Department of Creating Jobs" which probably spends that much just on office furniture.
5) The debt limit 'debate' is total BS, always has been. Here is what happened: taxocrats burned through tax money at an alarming rate and there weren't enough elected Republicans to stop them. THAT'S why Moody's got scared and US was downgraded. Republicans can't communicate for sh1t anyway, and so the socialists and their media lapdogs managed to blame the right for this mess.
6) Warren Buffoon likes to be liked, I get that, but he should still STFU and make a real gesture. Giving a symbolic billion dollars to the federal mafia should do it. He won't miss it.

this is what we've been trying to tell you QM, the system doesn't work when only a few contribute...the system works when ALL contribute based on what they can afford.

I totally agree, so why does the bottom 50% of Americans pay NO income tax? The wealthy already pay a disproportionately high percentage of all taxes and I have yet to find a liberalsifter who admits this.

I well understand that Scrooge McDuck won't miss a few more shovelfuls of gold coins swiped by federal bulldozers, but lets review reality:

1) The "extra" money attained by "soaking" Scrooge and Rich Uncle Pennybags (from the Monopoly game) will be pi$$ed away, like the 60 billion dollars EVERY YEAR lost to fraud, waste and abuse in Medicaid/Medicare. The federal mafia is composed of sh1tty stewards of our money.

2) The Hawaiian Dunce has spent 3 trillion in 3 years with little or nothing to show for it. So what magical number of dollars is going to make everything all right? A quadrillion?

3) When the socialists raise taxes, the wealthy of 2011 have their accountant press a few buttons on their computating machines, sending their $$$ overseas, invested in more stable markets. Apparently many already have, probably the moment they knew Obama was elected.

4) Liberal say, "Rich man not know difference he still rich." But there's now less money to invest and less money to create jobs. Now some liberalsifter will say, "This graph indicates that the rich don't create jobs with their ill-gotten gains."

BUT, if you're honest with yourselves, you'll know that one million dollars has a much better chance of creating jobs in the hands of entrepreneurs and investors than the government "Department of Creating Jobs" which probably spends that much just on office furniture.

5) The debt limit 'debate' is total BS, always has been. Here is what happened: taxocrats burned through tax money at an alarming rate and there weren't enough elected Republicans to stop them. THAT'S why Moody's got scared and US was downgraded. Republicans can't communicate for sh1t anyway, and so the socialists and their media lapdogs managed to blame the right for this mess.

6) Warren Buffoon likes to be liked, I get that, but he should still STFU and make a real gesture. Giving a symbolic billion dollars to the federal mafia should do it. He won't miss it.

I would have no problem with these jokers advocating a no additional revenues approach, if they'd be honest with the voters about what their cuts would do. Maybe we should have a constitutional amendment that in order to get on the ballot, you have to present a budget for the next 4 years and let the CBO score it.

I'm not sure that information would change the minds of these folks though. They have their own media that would convince them that the dismantlement of social security and medicare is a good thing. If they decide that's what they want, I'm past trying to "save" them from themselves.

I live in a state that would probably institute these social programs itself if the feds dropped the ball. States built highways and funded research institutions before the federal government ever did. You jerks in Kansas want a voucher instead of medicare, go for it. You want to starve your education and infrastructure? Great, you'll just be cheaper labor for the entrepreneurs who graduate from our functioning schools.

You still failed to define the sin at hand.>> ^ForgedReality:

>> ^MarineGunrock:
@shinyblurry, slamming your (clothed) breast is a sing? Which one would that be? Number 8? From the lost tablet?

You meant "sin," so just clearing that up for others.
Also, prostitutes, back when they were business entrepreneurs, wore a LOT more clothes than the prostitutes of today wear. They were still called sinners by religionists. The amount of clothing is inconsequential--the effect is the same.
But then I'm not religious, so...

>> ^MarineGunrock:

@shinyblurry, slamming your (clothed) breast is a sing? Which one would that be? Number 8? From the lost tablet?


You meant "sin," so just clearing that up for others.

Also, prostitutes, back when they were business entrepreneurs, wore a LOT more clothes than the prostitutes of today wear. They were still called sinners by religionists. The amount of clothing is inconsequential--the effect is the same.

But then I'm not religious, so...

@ Marbles

If it were the case that as you claim that 'taxes & regulations are there to help the goals of big business' and thus hurt the small business owner's, then this clearly goes against the libertarian ideology of 'people power' as the philosophy goes 'produce needed goods or services and the market will decide who succeeds & who fails'.

Maybe all the small business owner's looking to start a business should look to other places such as Canada or elsewhere in the world to set up their first business that are not as restrained by government regulations as you claim there is too much to make it ultimately successful & then return as a larger world player, & then help change the regulations for other entrepreneurs with your own lobbying power.

the libertarian viewpoint seems to be that without any regulations the world to be a perfect place, & the small business man would have equal chance against the world players such as Wal-mart, McDonald's, Cola-Cola Etc. when in reality it would be far worse, not just for other businesses but for the safety concerns of the entire country such as the salmonella scares a few years back with spinach & tomatoes, lead in toys for made from China & here is a list of 100 items recalled by the FDA from April to June 2011 due to the risk of danger proposed to the public http://www.fda.gov/Safety/Recalls/default.htm
before you endanger everyone else around you consider for a moment the efforts of organisations such as this and many others who in a very real way 'guard you while you sleep', and if the big business goliath's really could govern themselves effectively as many claim, then there would be no need for them.