On Mar 15, 2016, at 6:10 PM, Jared Reeves <[address removed]> wrote:

Bo,

So you think congress is immoral but disagree with Don and Robert that all the wealthy are immoral, correct?

- Jared

On Tue, Mar 15, 2016 at 5:20 PM, Bo Matthew <[address removed]> wrote:

Excuse my interjection, but I think what he is trying to say is that the lawmakers, (Creators of the system), are mostly millionaires, therefore they rig the system in their own favor. Here is a direct quote from the highly reputable Time.com. 

"Congress is loaded, if you weren’t already aware.

The Center for Responsive Politics analyzed the personal financial disclosure data from 2012 of the 534 current members of Congress and found that, for the first time, more than half had an average net worth of $1 million or more: 268 to be exact, up from 257 the year earlier. The median for congressional Democrats was $1.04 million and, for Republicans, $1 million even."

http://time.com/373/congress-is-now-mostly-a-millionaires-club/

On Tue, Mar 15, 2016 at 5:13 PM, Jared Reeves <[address removed]> wrote:

Robert, so every person who is wealthy used that wealth to create a system to give then more wealth? No wealthy person is innocent?  Do you have evidence to support this position? 

On Mar 15,[masked]:32 PM, "Robert W Ahrens" <[address removed]> wrote:

But criticism of the system IS criticizing the morality of the wealthy, because they've set up the system specifically to redirect as much of the extra GDP of the country towards themselves as possible.  They've stacked the deck.

If you speak of EARNINGS, that's one thing, but when you stack the deck in favor of yourself, that's theft.

Sent from my iPad

On Mar 15, 2016, at 4:10 PM, Jared Reeves <[address removed]> wrote:

Robert,

Criticism of the system is different from Don's argument of the immorality of the rich.

Why do you think the rich don't earn their money?  Do they not take risks?  Do they not provided products and/or services that people value and are willing to pay for? How is this theft?

- Jared

On Tue, Mar 15, 2016 at 3:56 PM, Robert W Ahrens <[address removed]> wrote:

The issue isn't only inequality in wealth.  The main issue is that the current system is stacked to favor them to an amazing and totally unfair degree.

We're things less biased, we could live with it, if they were "earning" their income.  But they're not because what they have done is tantamount to theft in most peoples' eyes.

Sent from my iPad

On Mar 15, 2016, at 3:30 PM, Jared Reeves <[address removed]> wrote:

Ron,

Why is it profoundly immoral for the super rich to keep what they earned? You are super rich compared to many in this world.  Is it profoundly immoral for you not to give everything you can to those less well off?

Since there is no moral law giver, morality is a question of  preferences.  I could argue it is equally immoral to coerce people to give up what they earned, because someone else wants it more.  Who are we to decide how other people should spend their money?  That sounds very authoritarian.

- Jared

On Tue, Mar 15, 2016 at 1:44 PM, Don Wharton <[address removed]> wrote:

Obviously the discussion of political and ethical reality is far above average in quality compared to many that might exist elsewhere. However, it does leave me with a measure of despair. All of us including all of the candidates do all of their thinking with the organic cellular networks inherited from many millions of years of evolutionary honing. It is by design quite stupid in many ways.

Computer systems do not have this inbuilt flaw. The concept of a religious computer is so absurd that it underscores how such irrationality is almost inconceivable in a silicon based system.

Nothing is either true or false based on our perceived identities. Some of us in our various illusions of self ascribe such terms as libertarian, conservative, liberal, progressive, etc. Nothing is either true or false in the real world because of these identities.

Some people say that Bernie's plan is unworkable. Some parts do have problems. Bernie is a meat based cognitive system. Duh! A $15 minimum wage will create havoc in some circumstances. A financial transaction tax is in my opinion an absurdity. It is profoundly easy to just do the transactions elsewhere. We should just increase the taxes on the profits.

However, when people just say that we cannot meet our problems by just taxing the rich they are missing a very important point. It is profoundly immoral for the super rich to have $60 million homes that consume $15,000 in energy costs per month, with $10,000 waste baskets, multiple $200K super cars in the garage which get 8 miles to the gallon, while our children are going hungry, trying to learn in classroom with rain coming in through the roofs and either no books or inadequate books to learn from, with streets having pot holes which yield more damage to our vehicles per year than it would cost to repair them.

People do not understand the much of the energy of our society is wasted on systems and services for the super rich that give no value to our society. The waste does provide the function of class separation. They are better than the rest of us. They must be super good people because just look at how much they can waste with no concern for the rest of society. Bull feathers. Taxing the rich at higher rates creates a good by suppressing grossly stupid consumption that serve only to enhance particular types of other meat based cognitive dysfunctions.

The Koch brothers and their hundreds of super rich political donors actually think they are doing something good. This is ultimately just a war on the rest of humanity that needs to end. One of the Koch brothers was once on an NIH panel looking at formaldehyde as a carcinogen. He actually used this as an opportunity to try to tell the scientists that formaldehyde was not a carcinogen. Both brothers are strongly supporting this particular evil:

http://preventharm.org/the-koch-brothers-10-year-campaign-to-delay-action-on-formaldehyde-which-is-known-to-cause-cancer-in-humans/

Don

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