Is the economy really this good?

In the space of months, the price of such rights on an acre has shot up to $30,000 from a few hundred dollars and is still climbing. Some very modest people, in a place where the Tough Steak Meat Market sits near the Triple J Motors car lot and the courthouse square is half boarded up, are becoming very wealthy, very quickly.

“These people are not college graduates,” said Reggie Roe, a parish official who has 987 acres and is looking at considerable enrichment himself. “Now they’re walking in with $2, 3 million. They don’t know what to do with it.

“What are these people going to do with all this money?”

So far, relative restraint — or perhaps bewilderment — reigns.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/29/us/29boom.html?ex=1217908800&en=c7785e2c265e3a5f&ei=5070&emc=eta1

How can you not love America?

Hi Ziggy,

It's a true saying that "not all bad news is bad for everyone." The price of gas is bad news for us but there are some winners there.

The housing bust made home prices more accessible for my wife and I as first time home buyers.

It's a true saying that "not all bad news is bad for everyone."

Exactly. And conversally, not all "good news" is good for everyone.

But aren't those that the good news isn't good for have a personal responsibility to make it good for them, if possible and it is not already good for them instead of dependence on an outside entity such as the government to make it good for them!!!

The government is not an outside entity. The government is us.

But that is not how the vast majority of receiptants of entitlement programs perceive the government. They perceive the 'government' as an entity put in place to provide for them whatever they feel they deserve.

But you didn’t answer the question. Doesn’t the individual have the personal responsibility of making what isn't good good instead of relying on others to do so for them!!!

ziggy wrote:

It's a true saying that "not all bad news is bad for everyone."

Exactly. And conversally, not all "good news" is good for everyone.

I argued that in the so-called booming 90s when safe housing became impossible to access in Chicago for anyone who worked for a living.

Aaron wrote:But that is not how the vast majority of receiptants of entitlement programs perceive the government. They perceive the 'government' as an entity put in place to provide for them whatever they feel they deserve.

But you didn’t answer the question. Doesn’t the individual have the personal responsibility of making what isn't good good instead of relying on others to do so for them!!!

And that is why we have government- to effect and make "good" our satety and happiness.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

http://www.ushistory.org/Declaration/document/index.htm

No Frank, the government doesn't have to make good on anything. You've taken this completely out of context. That is not a right guaranteed to anyone. You left the meat off the bones.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.

And then the Declaration goes on to list the 'injuries and usurpations by King George over the colonies. ~30 of them to be more precise.

This in no way absolves individuals of personal responsibility and places that responsibility on the government as you suggest.

And it's certainly not a guarantee of to happiness. There is only one guarantee in the Declaration regarding happiness and that is the PURSUIT thereof. It's not the governments, nor anyone else’s responsibility to ensure you're a happy camper. That’s all on you.

For some reason you're still avoiding the question about personal responsibility and 'good' news. Any particular reason why Frank?

For some reason you're still avoiding the question about personal responsibility and 'good' news. Any particular reason why Frank?

I have often commented here on the need to exercise personal responsibility on many fronts- and including the personal responsibility to vote and to vote responsibly. But, unlike you and Cato for example, I do not use "personal responsibility" as code words for letting people of less fortunate economic circumstances freeze to death in the dark. The U.S. economy is geared and managed to keep some 5 percent or so of people perpetually unemployed. Often we refer to an unemployment rate of less than 5 percent as "full employment". That is a farce- but a farce many buy into as a good way to conduct an economy. And they ease their conscience by suggesting that those unemployed or otherwise working at the lower rungs of the economic ladder somehow lack "personal responsibility", are "totally incompetant and useless", and thus deserve their immediate circumstance of misfortune.

"Man is capable of living in society, governing itself by laws self-imposed, and securing to its members the enjoyment of life, liberty, property, and peace." --Thomas Jefferson: Declaration and Protest of Virginia, 1825. ME 17:446

ziggy wrote:I do not use "personal responsibility" as code words for letting people of less fortunate economic circumstances freeze to death in the dark.

Forgive me but didn't you just have a debate with Stephanine saying pretty much the exact opposite, that the elderly and poor in NE deserved the consequences of high heating oil for not insulating their homes!!!

Can't you make up your mind!!!

ziggy wrote:The U.S. economy is geared and managed to keep some 5 percent or so of people perpetually unemployed. Often we refer to an unemployment rate of less than 5 percent as "full employment". That is a farce- but a farce many buy into as a good way to conduct an economy. And they ease their conscience by suggesting that those unemployed or otherwise working at the lower rungs of the economic ladder somehow lack "personal responsibility", are "totally incompetant and useless", and thus deserve their immediate circumstance of misfortune.

Based upon all of my experience depending on this level of society for employee's for my workforce, I belive with every fiber of my being that they are.

I know there is NOTHING in the constitution that says if someone is so lacking in personal responsibility, it is my duty to take care of them.

NOTHING.

Forgive me but didn't you just have a debate with Stephanine saying pretty much the exact opposite, that the elderly and poor in NE deserved the consequences of high heating oil for not insulating their homes!!!

And if you go back and look at that thread, I said it was a matter personal responsibility to look ahead far enough to realize that winter will be here again next year, and build, re-build or have built an abode that one can afford to live in.

Higher and higher oil product bills have been with us for 35 years and counting. Jimmy Carter told us it was coming. But he can't make us do anything about it.

Some people have paid attention. Others have stuck their head in the sand. Those who stuck their heads in the sand can expect to pay a larger percentage of their consumer spending on oil products.

Before you said if they froze, so be it, it was their own fault. It upset Stephanie and she said as much. Now you're saying don't let them freeze.

For Pete's sake, make up your mind Frank.

That is not what I said. Why can't you just go with what I did say?

I said that people have been freezing to death throughout human history, and that they will in the future.

Those who exercise personal responsibility by being foresightful about their places of abode are less apt to freeze to death- or less apt to spend unnecessary amounts on fuels to keep warm. It's not like we haven't seen this coming for nearly 4 decades now.

I know what you said because I was suprised a socialist like you actually said it. I'm not alone in that knowledge.

As I recall what I said was that there were people in New England and other areas of the country who would freeze to death because they couldn't afford the heating bills that are coming down the pike.

Ziggy did get me very upset by saying it was their fault for not insulating etc over the course of the last 30 years and that he had no sympathy for them.

I was stunned too. I still say he just is incapable of realizing how cold it gets in that part of the country and that there are a lot of working poor up there too.

I am at a complete and utter loss of words...

I don't know what to say...

you have left me speechless...

Unless I'm mistaken, you didn't say I was wrong.

You aren't wrong. Although I need to edit my prior post it doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

So then are you saying that people shouldn't be expected to exercise the responsibility to make their homes secure against the elements and unnecessarily expensive heating bills?

Again, we have had 35 years- nearly half a lifetime- to see this coming. If we had put into improving housing what we have put into Iraq in the past 5 1/2 years, no one in America would be freexing to death. And oil and other fuel consumption for heating homes would be significantly decreased. But all many of us have done is pray to the politicians to save us from our wastefullness and to keep oil products cheap.

ziggy wrote:So then are you saying that people shouldn't be expected to exercise the responsibility to make their homes secure against the elements and unnecessarily expensive heating bills?

Again, we have had 35 years- nearly half a lifetime- to see this coming. If we had put into improving housing what we have put into Iraq in the past 5 1/2 years, no one in America would be freexing to death. And oil and other fuel consumption for heating homes would be significantly decreased. But all many of us have done is pray to the politicians to save us from our wastefullness and to keep oil products cheap.

Ziggy,

Sure I believe in personal responsibility. I also know that some folks just aren't financially able to have new windows installed. Some folks don't own the structures they live in and that kind of financial investment isn't only unaffordable for them, but would be foolish.

You're saying the money "we" invested in Iraq ould have been better spend on improving housing and I won't argue that point. The money we've spent bombing and displacing people would have been far better spent on animal shelters or libraries or in the pockets of taxpayers.

My son, who rents an apartment in a 105 y/o house in Providence with his 22 y/o girlfriend, hasn't authorized one dime of money be spent on bullets or bombs or troops patrolling the streets of Bagdad or Tikrit. You're telling us it's acceptable that these two young adults, both working and attending college parttime, should go cold or hungry this winter because the government should provided his landlord with funds to replace the drafty windows?

You're telling us it's acceptable that these two young adults, both working and attending college parttime, should go cold or hungry this winter because the government should provided his landlord with funds to replace the drafty windows?

I am saying it would have been better to use that money for this purpose than to bomb and rebuild Iraq.

No, the government shouldn't be paying for a landlord to insulate and replace windows in his home, other then with a tax credit. There is no provision in the constitution for such payments.

And we should not be bombing and re-builkding Iraq, either.

But if we are going to spend the money on something, better to spend it on domestic housing improvements than on bombing and re-building Iraq.

The money shouldn't be spent on either. It should be returned to the tax payers where it rightfully belongs.