[Winder]

The point is that 2/3 of the members of a major party still believe the untrue statement ten years later even after it has been admitted to be untrue by the person who told it, and after it has been proven to be untrue by costly inspections and an occupation. You won't find 2/3 of any party still believing that President Clinton "never had sex with that woman."

And people will continue to believe it because they have blind faith in a political ideology and the people that represent it. This is not exclusive to any one party or even to politics. People always remember the initial allegations, but seem to lose track of the end result. Besides the American people only judge government by its good intentions, not by the results.

[Winder]

In the 2008 campaign several pollsters swapped the political agendas of McCain and Obama and presented them to supporter of each group. It had no impact on the opinions of the majority of the people that they polled. They presented McCain's platform to a group of Obama supports under the pretense that it was Obama's platform. Because they thought it was Obama's they argued for it and justified it, while arguing against Obama's actual platform.

The Kennedy v. Nixon debate that was televised is a classic example of people hearing what they want to hear. Polling numbers from the TV viewers were significantly different from those who heard it on the radio. It changed politics.

"Never underestimate the difficulty of changing false beliefs by facts," the economist Henry Rosovsky.

[GeneV]

And people will continue to believe it because they have blind faith in a political ideology and the people that represent it. This is not exclusive to any one party or even to politics.

Just curious, but can you think of a recent, comparable statistic to this in which Democrats or Independents hung on to a falsehood this tenaciously? A substantial proportion of Republicans still believe the President was born outside the country and/or he is a muslim. At the run-up to the Iraq war, 70% of the U.S. believed that Saddam was involved in 9/11. The belief was spread fairly evenly between Republicans, Democrats and Independents. By 2007 that was down to 33%, but, again, far more of those were Republicans. It does seem that one group hangs on to its myths much more strongly.

[jeffkrol]

By 2007 that was down to 33%, but, again, far more of those were Republicans. It does seem that one group hangs on to its myths much more strongly.

OR so recent studies show.........

This was my first encounter with what I now like to call the “smart idiots” effect: The fact that politically sophisticated or knowledgeable people are often more biased, and less persuadable, than the ignorant. It’s a reality that generates endless frustration for many scientists—and indeed, for many well-educated, reasonable people.
And most of all, for many liberals.
Let’s face it: We liberals and progressives are absolutely outraged by partisan misinformation. Lies about “death panels.” People seriously thinking that President Obama is a Muslim, not born in the United States. Climate-change denial. Debt ceiling denial. These things drive us crazy, in large part because we can’t comprehend how such intellectual abominations could possibly exist.
..............No less than President Obama’s science adviser John Holdren (a man whom I greatly admire, but disagree with in this instance) has stated, when asked how to get Republicans in Congress to accept our mainstream scientific understanding of climate change, that it’s an “education problem.”

But the facts, the scientific data, say otherwise.

Indeed, the rapidly growing social scientific literature on the resistance to global warming (see for examples here and here) says so pretty unequivocally. Again and again, Republicans or conservatives who say they know more about the topic, or are more educated, are shown to be more in denial, and often more sure of themselves as well—and are confident they don’t need any more information on the issue.......................indeed, if we believe in evidence then we should also welcome the evidence showing its limited power to persuade--especially in politicized areas where deep emotions are involved. Before you start off your next argument with a fact, then, first think about what the facts say about that strategy. If you’re a liberal who is emotionally wedded to the idea that rationality wins the day—well, then, it’s high time to listen to reason.

The Republican Brain: Why Even Educated Conservatives Deny Science -- and Reality | Tea Party and the Right | AlterNet

sorry, just have to throw this in....

Political opinions are considered choices, and in Western democracies the right to choose one’s opinions — freedom of conscience — is considered sacrosanct.
But recent studies suggest that our brains and genes may be a major determining factor in the views we hold.
A study at University College London in the UK has found that conservatives’ brains have larger amygdalas than the brains of liberals. Amygdalas are responsible for fear and other r “primitive” emotions. At the same time, conservatives’ brains were also found to have a smaller anterior cingulate — the part of the brain responsible for courage and optimism.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/12/28/conservatives-fear-center-brain/

---

Last edited by jeffkrol; 06-27-2012 at 06:30 AM.

[Winder]

In the 1970's we saw global temperatures drop and the scientists warned that falling temperatures would lead to reduced agricultural output and global famine. Newsweek ran the following article: http://denisdutton.com/newsweek_coolingworld.pdf

I assume everyone is familiar with the Malthusian theory and the Neo-Malthusian scientist who predicted the worlds population explosion would lead to the disaster by the 1990's at the latest.

How many times has the US Geological Survey predicted that we would run out of oil? The first report I read was 1867, and every couple of years they revise the prediction. In 1982 they predicted we would be out of oil in 28 years.... which was 2010 I believe, at which time they reported we have more oil now than we had in 1982. Reserves have risen every year at a pace faster than consumption.

How many times did the Neo-Keynesian economists predict the Soviet Union's superior economic system would surpass the USA?
In the 1989 13th edition of Economics -- Samuelson opined that "contrary to what many skeptics had earlier believed": "The Soviet economy is proof that ... a socialist command economy can function and even thrive." The father of Neo-Keynesian Economics theory Paul Samuelson, and uncle to current idiot Larry Summers. Samuelson wrote more college macro textbooks than any man in the world. For 30+ years his textbook was standard. And for 40+ years he predicted that the superior Soviet Socialist economy would surpass the USA. He defended oppression in Eastern Block countries and argued that the oppression "should be weighed against the benefits of living in a planned economy".

I grew up with White Sands Missile Range in my backyard. We had nuclear war drills (like fire drills) at my school. It was not a question of what to do IF we had a nuclear war. It was what to do WHEN we have a nuclear war. The experts and scientists were convinced. There was no question about it.

The older people who have lived through many economic cycles, many political disasters, and seen many a scientific crisis predicted with great certainty. Eventually, people stop caring what the academics and political talking heads have to say. There is an awful lot of money in creating a crisis and convincing the population to invest billions to avert it. I promise that there are many academics working on the creating a new crisis that only they have the academic knowledge to solve. There is always a "crisis" that some politician has made the cornerstone of his campaign. "Never let a good crisis go to waste".....

I think people have lost faith in sciences ability to predict anything. It is the "predictive" sciences that people have lost faith in. Not science in general. It is the younger generation that is rebelling against medical science and vaccines right now. It is the younger generation that is fighting science on food genetics research. These are not predictive sciences. If science wants to regain the trust of the American people, they could start by actually getting something right occasionally.

[Winder]

Just curious, but can you think of a recent, comparable statistic to this in which Democrats or Independents hung on to a falsehood this tenaciously? A substantial proportion of Republicans still believe the President was born outside the country and/or he is a muslim. At the run-up to the Iraq war, 70% of the U.S. believed that Saddam was involved in 9/11. The belief was spread fairly evenly between Republicans, Democrats and Independents. By 2007 that was down to 33%, but, again, far more of those were Republicans. It does seem that one group hangs on to its myths much more strongly.

No I can't, but I am having a hard time coming up with an event where we had this level of exposure. Kennedy never publicly admitted that the missile gap was false. It came out a few years later after it was declassified. People said that he was "privately embarrassed". If Bush himself had come forward and given a speech informing the public of the error, then the people who he represents would have accepted it. To my knowledge Bush never publicly spoke about the issue. Unless he personally makes a statement people who believed in him will not change their belief.

People blindly believe. People blindly believed in Clinton until he publicly admitted to the affair (first with Flowers and then Lewinsky). People want to believe and the passion is so high that if people are not slapped in the face with the truth they wont allow themselves to believe.

There is a good book that just came out called:
Amazon.com: The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies (New Edition) (9780691138732): Bryan Caplan: Books

"The greatest obstacle to sound economic policy is not entrenched special interests or rampant lobbying, but the popular misconceptions, irrational beliefs, and personal biases held by ordinary voters. This is economist Bryan Caplan's sobering assessment in this provocative and eye-opening book. Caplan argues that voters continually elect politicians who either share their biases or else pretend to, resulting in bad policies winning again and again by popular demand."

You probably wont agree with his assessments, but the historical data that he compiles is pretty broad and he does not pull many punches when it comes to criticizing either party.

[les3547]

In the 1970's we saw global temperatures drop and the scientists warned that falling temperatures would lead to reduced agricultural output and global famine. Newsweek ran the following article: http://denisdutton.com/newsweek_coolingworld.pdf

I assume everyone is familiar with the Malthusian theory and the Neo-Malthusian scientist who predicted the worlds population explosion would lead to the disaster by the 1990's at the latest.

How many times has the US Geological Survey predicted that we would run out of oil? The first report I read was 1867, and every couple of years they revise the prediction. In 1982 they predicted we would be out of oil in 28 years.... which was 2010 I believe, at which time they reported we have more oil now than we had in 1982. Reserves have risen every year at a pace faster than consumption.

How many times did the Neo-Keynesian economists predict the Soviet Union's superior economic system would surpass the USA?
In the 1989 13th edition of Economics -- Samuelson opined that "contrary to what many skeptics had earlier believed": "The Soviet economy is proof that ... a socialist command economy can function and even thrive." The father of Neo-Keynesian Economics theory Paul Samuelson, and uncle to current idiot Larry Summers. Samuelson wrote more college macro textbooks than any man in the world. For 30+ years his textbook was standard. And for 40+ years he predicted that the superior Soviet Socialist economy would surpass the USA. He defended oppression in Eastern Block countries and argued that the oppression "should be weighed against the benefits of living in a planned economy".

I grew up with White Sands Missile Range in my backyard. We had nuclear war drills (like fire drills) at my school. It was not a question of what to do IF we had a nuclear war. It was what to do WHEN we have a nuclear war. The experts and scientists were convinced. There was no question about it.

The older people who have lived through many economic cycles, many political disasters, and seen many a scientific crisis predicted with great certainty. Eventually, people stop caring what the academics and political talking heads have to say. There is an awful lot of money in creating a crisis and convincing the population to invest billions to avert it. I promise that there are many academics working on the creating a new crisis that only they have the academic knowledge to solve. There is always a "crisis" that some politician has made the cornerstone of his campaign. "Never let a good crisis go to waste".....

I think people have lost faith in sciences ability to predict anything. It is the "predictive" sciences that people have lost faith in. Not science in general. It is the younger generation that is rebelling against medical science and vaccines right now. It is the younger generation that is fighting science on food genetics research. These are not predictive sciences. If science wants to regain the trust of the American people, they could start by actually getting something right occasionally.

Well, I think you are merely reinforcing the hypothesis that there is a block of Americans who either ignore facts, or rationalize away facts that indicate they need to change. Produce a few examples of where someone in science hasn't been on target, and now you are fully justified in ignoring any science you find inconvenient. Of course, you have to also ignore just how many times science predictions get it right (prediction and confirmation are the basis of the scientific method, and all one must do is look around to see how many times that technique has been succcessful). In this case, we aren't talking about a few paranoid meteorologists, but most of the science community (who aren't working for oil companies).

An Astrophysicist Looks at Global Warming

The scientific basis, in theory and experiment, underlying greenhouse gas warming is as robust as any aspect of modern science. A good analogy can be found in our understanding and application of the laws of motion and the law of gravity. Few would question the efficacy of the basic mathematical laws of motion and the inverse square law of gravitation in computing the trajectories of artillery shells, orbiting satellites, and interplanetary spacecraft. Classical Newtonian laws can be used to determine the trajectory of an artillery shell to a high degree of accuracy. Given the velocity of the artillery projectile, wind, and the effects of gravity, the point of impact can be located with great precision. Of course, there are uncertainties that must be considered. But “uncertainty” or “error” is not meant to imply that the laws of physics are incorrect. Unfortunately, the latter seems to be the interpretation of “uncertainty” held by much of the general public in the context of global warming discussions. . . .

. . . In summary, many criticisms of global warming models are specious and fail to reflect an understanding of the basic science behind the models and the extensive history of the development of radiation transfer codes in modeling planetary and stellar atmospheres. Some contrarians engage in arguments that the warming observed is due to “natural” mechanisms that have been in play for millions of years. Such proposals should be required not only to identify the specific natural mechanisms in question, but quantify them and present observational or experimental evidence that the mechanisms play a role on a time scale of the past 150 years. Such proposals also ignore the fact that proxy geochemical data show strong support for the conclusion that CO2 increases have played the largest role in explaining these past intervals of global warmth!

Most important, contrarians must show why the scientific basis of greenhouse gas warming is incorrect. It remains unfortunate that the opinions of a handful of contrarians should be given the same weight in the press and the popular media as the studied conclusions of thousands of scientists. This reinforces the general perception that the “science” of global warming is uncertain, and provides fodder for some (but by no means all) business and political factions to question the reality of anthropogenic global warming.

But really, isn't resistance to change what today's conservatism is all about? Those who've learned to survive in the old system have a corresponding set of skills, and they aren't sure how they'll do if the system changes. Their attempts to avoid change is paranoia and, in some cases, cowardice. It doesn't matter to them how many go without health care, how much the world suffocates, how many live below the poverty line . . . as long as they can continue to work the current system to their own advantage, they will fight change until the world smashes us all and forces the issue (and if the conservative response to the Wall Street-banking debacle is any indication, one good smash won't be enough).

[GeneV]

"The greatest obstacle to sound economic policy is not entrenched special interests or rampant lobbying, but the popular misconceptions, irrational beliefs, and personal biases held by ordinary voters. This is economist Bryan Caplan's sobering assessment in this provocative and eye-opening book. Caplan argues that voters continually elect politicians who either share their biases or else pretend to, resulting in bad policies winning again and again by popular demand."

You probably wont agree with his assessments..

You would probably not agree with Caplan's assessment of Rothbard and Austrian economics, but that is for another thread.

The rest about Clinton is really not even remotely comparable. Some people believed him innocent of adultery until proven guilty, but that is actually reasonable. You won't find two thirds of Democrats believing, after all the facts came out, that he did not have sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky.

[Winder]

You would probably not agree with Caplan's assessment of Rothbard and Austrian economics, but that is for another thread.

The rest about Clinton is really not even remotely comparable. Some people believed him innocent of adultery until proven guilty, but that is actually reasonable. You won't find two thirds of Democrats believing, after all the facts came out, that he did not have sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky.

This is true, and the bias of Republican voters is probably the most sever I can think of.

I have read two of Caplan's books and heard his assessments. He makes many valid points concerning Rothbard and Austrian economics. Like I said. He does not pull any punches.

[Winder]

Well, I think you are merely reinforcing the hypothesis that there is a block of Americans who either ignore facts, or rationalize away facts that indicate they need to change. Produce a few examples of where someone in science hasn't been on target, and now you are fully justified in ignoring any science you find inconvenient. Of course, you have to also ignore just how many times science predictions get it right (prediction and confirmation are the basis of the scientific method, and all one must do is look around to see how many times that technique has been succcessful). In this case, we aren't talking about a few paranoid meteorologists, but most of the science community (who aren't working for oil companies).

I get the feeling what you are say is that regardless of the examples I give you, you are sticking to your own ideology. Kind of like those Republicans.

Which predictions did science get right that you would to point out? Missing the ones on global cooling, global famine, population explosion, depleted oil reserves, nuclear war & global economic collapse are not small "whoops" kind of things. Maybe you have some bigger, more important issues to give as examples.

But really, isn't resistance to change what today's conservatism is all about? Those who've learned to survive in the old system have a corresponding set of skills, and they aren't sure how they'll do if the system changes. Their attempts to avoid change is paranoia and, in some cases, cowardice. It doesn't matter to them how many go without health care, how much the world suffocates, how many live below the poverty line . . . as long as they can continue to work the current system to their own advantage, they will fight change until the world smashes us all and forces the issue (and if the conservative response to the Wall Street-banking debacle is any indication, one good smash won't be enough).

When Welfare reform was being undertaken under Clinton in the 1990. An economist who is by no means a conservative (name escapes me) pointed out that the federal government spent enough money on anti-poverty programs every year to give every person below the poverty line $34,000 (I don't remember the exact number), but at the end of the year there were still 20 million people living in poverty. Today I think that number has doubled.

If results actually mattered to the modern liberal they would look at the total failures of the war on drugs and the war on poverty and realize just how much of a failure the system is.
America's War On Poverty Has Been A Failure, But The Government Won't Stop Spending - Investors.com

If the programs worked there would be no debate. We would have clear signs of progress. We would see a reduction in drug use and poverty. The answer has always been the same.... We need to give the government more power, and piss away a few billion dollars more.

If you think resistance to change is what it is about then you really don't understand the conversation. We have spent the last 40 years pissing away trillions of dollars and watching the results get worse and worse. I'm all for some major changes.

[les3547]

I get the feeling what you are say is that regardless of the examples I give you, you are sticking to your own ideology. Kind of like those Republicans.

What ideology is that? I simply think conservative-capitalist-anti-government ideology sucks, I haven’t revealed my own ideology yet (at least to you).

However, your examples are false examples, and so is the logic of your inferences from those examples.

Which predictions did science get right that you would to point out? Missing the ones on global cooling, global famine, population explosion, depleted oil reserves, nuclear war & global economic collapse are not small "whoops" kind of things. Maybe you have some bigger, more important issues to give as examples.

What science gets right is when they hypothesize something is true or will work, and then an experiment shows it does. That’s what I am referring to. Like when they predicted an atomic clock taken up in a jet would register time slower than its sister clock on the ground (and it did). The immense success of science can be observed in every technological advance you benefit from.

Predictions about something as big as the entire Earth, involving something as complex as climate, is far more complicated, but there is strong science behind the prediction. That's rather unlike your hyperbolic examples which have little to do with legitimate, established science. For example, did “science” predict global cooling? The actual facts:

Global cooling was a conjecture during the 1970s of imminent cooling of the Earth's surface and atmosphere along with a posited commencement of glaciation. This hypothesis had little support in the scientific community, but gained temporary popular attention due to a combination of a slight downward trend of temperatures from the 1940s to the early 1970s and press reports that did not accurately reflect the scientific understanding of ice age cycles. In contrast to the global cooling conjecture, the current scientific opinion on climate change is that the Earth has not durably cooled, but undergone global warming throughout the twentieth century.

Did “science” predict population explosion and famine, or did Paul Ehrlich get the debate going with his book “The Population Bomb,” and because he is a biologist, you now blame the whole scientific community? It seems you have trouble distinguishing between media-hyped science conjecture and actual science.

Regarding nuclear war, the scientific community wasn’t wrong about the threat of that, it’s just that the world has been slowly coming to its senses (quite possibly because of the voices of scientists). And we really don’t know about how oil is going to last, but as far as the scientific community goes, they’ve not reached consensus about that. They have said there is reason for concern.

Now, that's a fair presentation of what's gone on with science, yet you present it as a "not small 'whoops' kind of things," trying to make us think your inapt examples really gives us reason to doubt science.

When Welfare reform was being undertaken under Clinton in the 1990. An economist who is by no means a conservative (name escapes me) pointed out that the federal government spent enough money on anti-poverty programs every year to give every person below the poverty line $34,000 (I don't remember the exact number), but at the end of the year there were still 20 million people living in poverty. Today I think that number has doubled.

If results actually mattered to the modern liberal they would look at the total failures of the war on drugs and the war on poverty and realize just how much of a failure the system is.
America's War On Poverty Has Been A Failure, But The Government Won't Stop Spending - Investors.com

If the programs worked there would be no debate. We would have clear signs of progress. We would see a reduction in drug use and poverty. The answer has always been the same.... We need to give the government more power, and piss away a few billion dollars more.

I don’t think either mindlessly funding welfare or not taking care of fellow human beings is the answer.

Top on the list of what I think we need is a system that educates children properly so they can learn take care of themselves. Because there is so much poverty, and extremely poor support systems for children in such areas, they and their families do need extra help to get on their feet. But right now US education is deplorable and it will get a lot worse if the far right has its way.

If the uber-liberal just wants to throw money at problems and take care of everybody without figuring out how we can pay for it, the modern conservative mistakenly concludes that government is the problem or public resources are the problem, and so want to shut down funding for everything. Yet it's bad government, bad public funding that’s the problem. So I see the extremes of both the liberal and the conservative as off the mark.

Like I said to you before, study Scandinavian systems if you want to see how government can play a strong role in public education and welfare without breaking the bank or creating citizens permanently on the dole.

If you think resistance to change is what it is about then you really don't understand the conversation. We have spent the last 40 years pissing away trillions of dollars and watching the results get worse and worse. I'm all for some major changes.

What changes? You mean like what’s recommended in the article you linked:

“The best defense against poverty is a healthy, growing economy that is allowed to flourish without government intervention — and the ultimate removal of programs that destroy the incentives to work and produce. This is a simple truth, but until it's accepted by lawmakers, we'll continue to suffer poverty and an underperforming economy.”

That’s not a change, that is just a swing from the liberal welfare attitude to the tight-fisted trickle-down conservative attitude. There’s nothing new there. And talk about what’s been proven not to work . . . apparently the author hasn’t noticed what unregulated capitalism does to a nation, or the growing gap between rich and poor, or how many are living below the poverty line, or who can’t get health care.

[GeneV]

What changes? You mean like what’s recommended in the article you linked:

“The best defense against poverty is a healthy, growing economy that is allowed to flourish without government intervention — and the ultimate removal of programs that destroy the incentives to work and produce. This is a simple truth, but until it's accepted by lawmakers, we'll continue to suffer poverty and an underperforming economy.”

That’s not a change, that is just a swing from the liberal welfare attitude to the tight-fisted trickle-down conservative attitude. There’s nothing new there. And talk about what’s been proven not to work . . . apparently the author hasn’t noticed what unregulated capitalism does to a nation, or the growing gap between rich and poor, or how many are living below the poverty line, or who can’t get health care.

Excellent post.

The biggest impediment to healthy change IMHO is the black and white attitude of many--these days mostly on the far right. ALL problems are not caused by government/business/carbon/Keynes/Mises, or any other single thing. All people who don't buy complete Laissez Faire economics are not ultra liberal or even all that liberal in historic terms. Some of us just see different problems in a complex world requiring different solutions, and we don't have blind faith in a single system or idea which cures all ills.

[Nesster]

and we don't have blind faith in a single system or idea which cures all ills.

...which in addition, when things go inevitably wrong, always comes down to the problem being an 'imperfect' or 'impure' implementation. I don't think there is any example from politics or government that ever implements some ideology or philosophy in a pure form.

"Politics is the art of the possible." - Otto von Bismarck

[jeffkrol]

shining example of your "unfettered" world..... ????

On a few occasions, some traders even made entries in electronic calendars to remind themselves what requests to make of Barclays' Libor submitters the next day.

One trader would shout across the desk to make sure other traders had no conflicting preference to ask the Libor submitters.

"The traders were barking orders like they were at a fast food drive-through and the submitters were so accommodating that they might as well have said, 'do you want fries with that'," said Bart Chilton, a commissioner at the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which led the settlement agreement.

Some 257 requests were made to rate submitters from at least 14 Barclays derivatives traders over four years. Traders at other banks also tried to influence Barclays' rate, while Barclays' traders put pressure on the rates offered by others.

Most of the world's biggest banks are under investigation as regulators from Europe, North America and Japan attempt to prove banks rigged rates. Barclays is the first to settle.

"This is the way you pull off deals like this chicken, don't talk about it too much, 2 months of preparation... the trick is you do not do this alone ... this is between you and me but really don't tell ANYBODY," a Barclays trader told a trader at another bank.

Investigators said Barclays derivatives traders got the bank to submit inaccurate rates between 2005 and 2008 so they could profit. The bank also submitted artificially low rates from September 2007 to May 2009 to ease fears it faced funding problems during the financial crisis.

Judging by the messages, Barclays was not alone in having an interest in lowering their submitted rates during the crisis to avoid signaling to markets their distress.

On one occasion, a manager said if Barclays submitted its correct rate, "It's going to cause a @!$%# storm," and the bank submitted a lower rate.

'Done ... for you big boy;' How emails nailed Barclays - Bottom Line

Suuurrreeee the "markets" will "adjust" on "reality"...........

I'll be waiting for the spin on how this is big gov's fault..........
Also remember , though they thought it was some sort of large monopoly game THERE ARE lives attached to the end of things..........and not just "big peoples" lives..

[Winder]

That’s not a change, that is just a swing from the liberal welfare attitude to the tight-fisted trickle-down conservative attitude. There’s nothing new there. And talk about what’s been proven not to work . . . apparently the author hasn’t noticed what unregulated capitalism does to a nation, or the growing gap between rich and poor, or how many are living below the poverty line, or who can’t get health care.

We have not had unregulated capitalism in this country in over 100 years at best.

I just left a small business meeting tonight were one of the members has moved all former employees over to 1099 contract workers. She has less than 25, but she was just tired of all the cost and paperwork in managing that part of the business. No more workers comp, no more unemployment insurance to pay, no more vacation, no more medical. Her sales staff has always been 1099, but last year she moved her fabrication and installation staff over to 1099.

Has the gap between rich & poor gotten smaller with more government regulation? Banking, healthcare, & insurance are the most heavily regulated industries in this country and they just seem to be getting richer.

These social programs don't fix anything. Has public education improved since Carter? Have we seen a decline in the number of people living below the poverty line? Has the war on Drugs reduced our drug problem? Has minimum done anything other than force the least skilled workers out of the job market and on to welfare rolls?

People who emigrate to this country start at the bottom. Almost every kid who moves out on his own starts at the bottom. I spent 10 years working and going to school as I could afford it, and I promise I was in the bottom 20% with no insurance the entire time.

http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~saez/kopczuk-saez-songQJE10mobility.pdf
“long-term mobility has increased significantly over the last five decades.”
http://www.pewtrusts.org/uploadedFiles/wwwpewtrustsorg/Reports/Economic_Mobi...%20EM%2014.pdf
....confirms that American children from low income homes with high test scores have extraordinary high income mobility.

Neither of these studies were done by a right-wing think tank. Both of them show rising income mobility. The second fails to look at Asian and Hispanic populations, which is too bad since those are the two fastest growing groups. There is no systemic problem that is forcing poverty on anyone. Just because Bill Gates got richer than me over the last 10 years does not mean Mr. Gates owes me anything. It doesn't mean that the deck was stacked against me. It doesn't mean that Mr. Gates is more responsible to society or that he should be treated any differently. I commend Mr. Gates for donating his money to help people. Investing your time, resources, and money to help those is need is compassion, it's honorable, it's respectable. Using governments power of coercion to force people to support your ideas is not compassion. It is not honorable or respectable.