Warren, after explaining some of the reasons for the nation’s deep fiscal hole, pointed to a more sensible approach to economic policy in general. “I hear all this, you know, ‘Well, this is class warfare, this is whatever,’” she said. “No. There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody.I'm impressed by what I've read/heard about Elizabeth Warren. I'd appreciate feedback (positive or negative) re her in the comments.
“You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did.
“Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea? God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”
Via Political Animal and The Street.
I've never been able to understand the concept of a "social contract." Where's my signature on it?
ReplyDeleteWell, let's see Wayne...do you have a birth certificate? Or naturalization papers?
ReplyDeleteAyn Rand took Social Security and Medicaid payments. Even Ted Kaczynski relied on support from his family as he tried to become "autonomous". Even the folks most sadly lacking in mirror neurons are obligated to obey this societies laws, and only a sociopath would deny the value of the social contract.
I thought that Warren's comments were very insightful, and I wish leaders would talk more about the benefits that we all share in by choosing to live in a society, and this society in particular.
ReplyDeleteMy view is that the social contract is something we are all a part of until we choose to opt out of it. I lived in Alaska for many years, and there are lots of people up there who have done just that - chosen to opt out of society. They pay no taxes, and no one bothers them (unless they pose a threat to others). But they also don't receive the benefits the rest of us get by participating in society.
I think that many Americans view the safety, stability and wealth we have here as something that is just naturally occurring, whether we do anything about it or not. It takes work and shared sacrifice to make this happen (as Warren argues in the posted video).
This is an interesting view into what a liberal really is. She is nothing more than a Marxist who wants to punish the productive in order to sustain the parasitic. This is how democrats retain their voting block, by creating a nanny state that will continously vote for them so that the checks keep coming in the mail.
ReplyDeleteShe fails to understand that the person who created the factory has already been paying enormous taxes before, during, and after the creation of the factory. As a so called "rich" individual this person is molested by both the state and federal government every month just to keep their doors open.
Sorry, unknown, but progressive taxation is a cornerstone of capitalism. Your point about the wealthy being taxed to excess is just baseless. If there is class warfare today, The first salvo was fired well before 2008, for instance: when the middle class tax rates were made to be closer to what the wealthy are paying.
ReplyDeleteSomeone should clue in Elizabeth Warren that people pay taxes already, taxation isn't a new concept.
ReplyDeleteFunny thing about her little tirade there is it took place in an affluent home of a small affluent town.
Something that's not been addressed is just a personal theory of my own that I've been nurturing, that being that while there is indeed a need for taxation, there is not an absolute need for government.
ReplyDeleteTo that end, my personal feeling is that the honorable Miss Warren's concerns are not so much for maintaining an infrastructure, but for justifying her own existence as a public servant, along with the legion's of others from all parties. What all members of representative government pass under the guise of public good and leadership could just as easily be seen to by private industry and market forces. And less expensively, besides.
But- government is as inevitable as the tides...
'What all members of representative government pass under the guise of public good and leadership could just as easily be seen to by private industry and market forces. And less expensively, besides.'
ReplyDeleteWith fewer regulations to protect our natural resources and workers, too. I'm always amazed at the idea that if we just left everything to private industry, we'd all be better off. Has no one been paying attention? Big business can't see past the next quarter and thinks nothing of trashing our world and our people if it means more profit. Meanwhile, the rest of us who are not 'private industrialists' have suffer the environmental and social fallout of their bad decisions. I'll keep my representative government, thank you very much. At least with that system I have a fighting chance.
I *loved* this video. I wish more progressives were willing to stand up and say this. We all use the roads, we all benefit from national defense, we all use public transportation even if all we do is drive behind the buses. Go Elizabeth go!
ReplyDelete@Wayne Conrad - To continue the legal analogy, there are many kinds of contracts recognized in Western law. You are referring to an express written contract. But contracts can be oral agreements. No signature there. Contracts can be implied in fact based on the parties' respective actions signifying a loose agreement. No signature or even an oral expression of agreement there. Finally, contracts can be implied at law when one party receives a benefit from another and it would be unjust or unfair for that party to retain the benefit without paying fair compensation.
ReplyDeleteThe social contract is an implied contract that requires no signature. But if you don't like the terms that are implied, you are free to drop out of our society.
All of the tea partiers and libertarians should move to Somalia where they could experience the bliss of a lawless society.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, what ultimately separates tea party conservative thought, on one hand, from progressive thought, on the other, is the individual's view about how much personal credit/blame each of us deserves for our personal wealth.
ReplyDeleteA person in the there-but-the-grace-of-God-go-I camp is more likely to be sympathetic to the less "fortunate" and feel an obligation to promote sharing of wealth.
On the other hand, one who things that we all get what we "deserve," is more likely to think that we should keep all that we have deservedly earned and not share with other, less deserving people.
I am strongly in the former camp. All of my successes came from things beyond my control (my good parents, my good local school, my ability to think rationally (which some may dispute), my work ethic, such as it is, and just plain good luck). Having controlled neither (1) the time and place of my birth, (2) my genetic makeup, (3) the environment in which I was raised, nor (4) blind luck, I really can't take any personal credit for the money that I have "earned."
Therefore, I am not opposed to a government structure that helps the less fortunate. This does not make me a Marxist. I realize that we must keep an incentive in place for people to strive to create more wealth. And it is clear that such an incentive still exists in the United State. Nobody is talking about forcing equal outcomes. Even if we went back to the "oppressive" Clinton tax rates, it would still be WAY better to be rich than to be poor.
Progressives who want more people to be friendly to progressive views should be getting people to think about how much of their wealth is due to fortune.
I love the clip because Elizabeth Warren is making this kind of argument here. I wish more Democrats would do so.
Ms. Warren's comment is a refreshing change from the vitriol and extremism-as-virtue that is currently being thrown around. Don't get me wrong, I'm generally a libertarian at heart. I'd gladly vote for Ron Paul. But the way some people are talking right now, you'd think taxes are some infringement on basic human rights, not a necessary part of civilization. I'm a fan of anyone who will make reasonable, calm statements right now.
ReplyDeleteI just want to say, as a marxist, that cleary nobody around shouting "marxism!!!" have the slightest idea of what he or she is talking about, haven't clearly read a single line of Marx, nor tried to understand his thought. "Marxist" is a slang used by conservatives to blur discussions and attack liberals; Marx wasn't a liberal; his entire work was dedicated to abolish liberalism. This kind of ignorance is pitiful.
ReplyDeleteI've been watching Elizabeth Warren since she left her teaching job to bring some sanity and ethics to the banking industry. I am very impressed by her habit of speaking truth to power, her ability to make complicated concepts clear, and her wish to work for the average citizen rather than the rich and powerful. I was excited to hear that she was running for elected office, after the disappointment, but not surprise, that she would not be able to be confirmed to the top post in the agency she created. Her value to our country will not be as just another politician, but as a tireless voice of conscience and reason.
ReplyDeleteAmy, maybe you should pay more attention to what your government does. The federal government pollutes and wastes more than any American corporation, and they have the force of law behind their actions and decisions. And many of those terrible businesses wouldn't have gotten so big and powerful in the first place without government's help.
ReplyDeleteHere's the problem with the tirade Warren gave:
ReplyDeleteThe "You" and the "Rest of Us" does not include all of those in this country. 51% of the US population pays zero income taxes. The rest of us that paid for defense, roads, education, etc. also includes the "You Factory Owner" who pays their income taxes and pays for some of the benefits of their employee and taxes on the materials used to manufacture, etc. The "State" Ms. Warren wants that "Pays it forward" is the substitute for the independent businesses, churches and good will of the American people.
What we long for in this country is a return to that decency and innate kindness that has been inherent to the American people since the beginning of this country. Liberal or conservative we all can join together in finding our responsibility to our country, family and each other.
I for one reject Ms. Warren's ramped up and divisive speech as I would any conservative that yelped about pulling out of all social contracts with their fellow Americans that are unable to take care of themselves.
Kristina:
ReplyDelete1. Income tax is not the only tax.
2. What we long for in this country is a return to that decency and innate kindness that has been inherent to the American people since the beginning of this country.
Sure, when blacks and women were 2nd class citizens, everything was realllllly neighbourly for the white dudes.
3. At this point in time, we NEED to get divisive, because the sane are being drowned out by the tea party.
A common defense of the State holds that man is a “social animal,” that he must live in society, and that individualists and libertarians believe in the existence of “atomistic individuals” uninfluenced by and unrelated to their fellow men. But no libertarians have ever held individuals to be isolated atoms; on the contrary, all libertarians have recognized the necessity and the enormous advantages of living in society, and of participating in the social division of labor. The great non sequitur committed by defenders of the State, including classical Aristotelian and Thomist philosophers, is to leap from the necessity of society to the necessity of the State.5 On the contrary, as we have indicated, the State is an antisocial instrument, crippling voluntary interchange, individual creativity, and the division of labor. - Murray Rothbard.
ReplyDelete@032125 - An modern organized "society" without a "state" is a theoretical fantasy. The state is what results when our society functions through enforceable rules. If you think participation should be voluntary, then you are imagining an unnatural situation.
ReplyDeleteCan you give us an example of a society that exists without a state?
Indeed, participation in one's society is not voluntary. Thus one of the key elements of a contract--that it is entered into freely--does not exist.
ReplyDeleteI'm neither impugning or defending the state. My point is that the "social contract" as a justification for the state is a vacuous.
@Wayne Conrad
ReplyDeleteSociety without a state is not possible. But you might be able to avoid both by getting off the grid. Move to the backwoods of Alaska if you want out of society.
Or work to create a "libertarian mecca" someplace where all participation in collective activity is voluntary. I suspect that this vision could not exist in reality. Therefore, in the real world, some submission to the collective will of the majority rule-makers (who might decide to impose some requirement of sharing wealth) is a necessary aspect of life in society.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete@Paul, You might be able too indeed, but I don't want that. I don't think I said I did. That seems like a straw man in this discussion. So does libertarian mecca, tea party conservative thought, &c.
ReplyDeleteThe closest I know of to a working society without a state was that in medieval Iceland. David Friedman has written some interesting papers about it, if you're curious.
@Wayne - My point is that submission to collective rules is a necessary part of life in society. If moving off the grid (or returning to medievil Iceland) is not an option available to us, then maybe you are correct that the analogy to a legal "contract" is not exactly correct, but the underlying point being made by most who refer to the "social contract"--accurately or not--is valid: you have to give up some freedom in return for the benefits of being part of an organized society. It's an inherent "evil" in society that is outweighed by the good.
ReplyDelete(And to the extent that we have freedom to move from state to state or country to country and to have some say in what the governing rules will be, then there is at least some element of choice in our condition.)
A well-functioning world free of all mandatory government rules can exist only in the imagination of libertarians. It would fail in reality.
I live in a country where corporations are considered "persons," in a country where corporate welfare, government subsidies and the ability of the uber-rich to hide their profits in foreign banks and not pay taxes on any of it is all well and good. It is also all well and good for the citizens of this country to die a miserable death because they cannot afford routine medical attention.
ReplyDeleteRepublicans have always played to their base "of the haves and the have mores," as "W" himself put it so well in one of his pathetically few moments of clarity. Ms. Warren simply points out what happens when such skewed, misguided and pernicious governance is allowed to run amuck- like starting two wars while lowering taxes.
This country has become so deluged, so inundated with the daily, childlike, ideological right wing rantings of FOX and friends, that when an adult finally has the courage and common sense to speak... common sense, they are pilloried for making sense.
Ted -
ReplyDeleteOnly last night I was on the phone, talking to a lady friend, about what I was writing yesterday. I was writing about "structure" and "infrastructure" and how it is important to humans, from toddler-hood to Medicare and everywhere in between.
I will take up the thread of what I emailed her just now, after seeing this article on TYWKIWDBI, here...
"Wow. Where did I hear this before? Small freaking world...
I LOVE ELIZABETH WARREN. She should run for President some day.
I have only read two paragraphs. #1 kicks butt. #2 and #3 say this:
'You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did.'
“Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea? God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”
This is EXACTLY what I was going for, about the infrastructure, the structure. The go-it-alone GOP ****s who think of themselves as the Marlboro Man, alone out on the open range - it isn't real and these people need to wake up to that. There IS a social contract, and we DO need to have people realize that they DO owe something. Taxes is the way to pay what is owed. They look at taxes as thievery - that the government is holding them up at the point of a gun. AND THEY ARE WRONG. We ALL stand on the shoulders of others, even when we don't know it. We are so ignorant of what has gone in the past. We DO tend to believe that we are doing it all ourselves - until someone points out how much we depend on what went before, and what sewers and water and trains and oil refineries and teachers and lumber mills and nail factories and textile mills and pencil and wire factories, and road-side assistance and microwave towers and satellites and underwear plants and shoestring manufacturers and librarians and hod carriers and skyscraper riveters and county recorders and ministers we all count on - just to make it through the day. I only left out 99.99% of what we all DO lean on.
She doesn't even mention that those employees - they ALSO are REALLY the ones who built your freaking factory, you go-it-alone greedy sumbitch owners. All the owner did was pay for it and organize it. By himself, he isn't worth a hill of farting beans.
The real issue here is the selling job being done by the CORPORATE interests (not the imaginary sole owner, which is a thing of the past) and their paid-for politicians and paid-for media and paid-for P.R. These interests paint the owners as some sort of self-made adventurers, off in the wild blue yonder, looking into the sunset, all Indiana Jones or Charlton Heston-ish. In reality, it is a corporate board, its paid-for management team, and its lobbying for tax breaks, up the ying yang, from whatever local government will give them a free ride."
They live in a land of bull crap, and because they've bought the information sources, they have woven a web of b.s. from here to high heaven, just so they can convince us all that THEY deserve all the wealth created by the sweat of OUR brows. At this point they are winning.
I just hope that I live long enough to see the pendulum swing the other way.
To "unknown" - IT is very courageous of you to hide behind "unknown" as you stand up for the bastards who are selling our country out to the highest bidder.
ReplyDeleteWhen the Chinese own the entire country, I hope you choke on your cowardly Tea Party spit.
To Wayne Conrad:
ReplyDeleteYes, the old Libertarian/pseudo intellectual argument that the U.S> Constitution doesn't apply to you, because you didn't sign it.
That justifies all your ignoring the LAW OF THE LAND, which you all claim to stand so strongly for.
Make up your mind: Do you stand for law and order , or do you stand for people ignoring it all, as long as they call themselves "free marketeers?"
REAL conservatives are not anarchists.
KD Hansen -
ReplyDeleteYour "personal theory" - hahahahahaha - It is amazing how the Tea Parties can get you to think that YOU thought of that. Stand in line. And prepare to have your rights all taken away, after they've turned the whole country into a plantation. While you are picking cotton, you will have plenty of time for "personal theories."
What a joke! You thinking you invented that! Just because YOU never thought of it before, doesn't mean no one else had. Are you delusional?
BJN -
ReplyDelete"Only a sociopath would deny the value of the social contract."
Absolutely correct. These people ARE sociopaths.
Doublethinking sociopaths.
They are all "law and order" until their corporate masters tell them to disobey laws that the corporations don't agree with - like taxes and regulations and helping those in need (like unemployment). When they lose their jobs, let's not let them take any unemployment compensation, and then we will see how much they holler. And if they already are (I know many are), then they are just out and out hypocrites - it being okay for THEM to be on the dole, but not someone else (especially of a different color).
Amy -
ReplyDelete"'What all members of representative government pass under the guise of public good and leadership could just as easily be seen to by private industry and market forces. And less expensively, besides.'"
This is simply a lie that the Republicans have pushed on behalf of their corporate masters. The insurance industry fought long and hard on the National Health bill so that they could pay less than 80% in actual benefits. I believe they ended up at something between 15% and 20% that they could keep as "administrative costs."
And how much does Medicare keep as administrative costs? THREE PERCENT.
And as someone who has both been a temp for many years, working in over 30 companies, and who has also been a business owner, I can tell you that the image of corporations as efficient is a HUGE joke. They are comprised of people who - like government workers - try to get away with doing as little as possible, for the most income possible. And their organizations are all over the map. I've worked with exactly ONE company which was organized to a point I admired.
Corporate efficiency is a nearly total myth.
"...maybe you should pay more attention to what your government does. The federal government pollutes and wastes more than any American corporation, and they have the force of law behind their actions and decisions."
ReplyDeleteI somehow doubt that the FDA and OSHA pollute more than BP or any mining company.
"And many of those terrible businesses wouldn't have gotten so big and powerful in the first place without government's help."
If this is true (and I don't agree it is), I will still prefer to not let private enterprise have free rein: in a representational government, the elected officials have a responsibility to their constituents. Industry has no such responsibility. In fact, it is quite the opposite: they must always turn a profit, even at the expense of the health and welfare of their employees. If our government no longer represents us then it is our fault, not 'the government's.' We have let our system get this way because as a group we are short-sighted, lazy, mislead, poorly educated, over-worked and underfunded. We also tend to be captives to the American Dream and people who will never have a chance in hell of succeeding as our corporations have succeeded continue to think that someday, somehow, if they just work hard enough and smart enough, they too will be wealthy. This false belief allows big business to manipulate us with the lie of 'someday YOU will be in this position and will you want these kinds of restrictions then?' We agree, no! We want to be free to pursue our wealth and happiness! And big business rolls right over our air, our land, our water, our people and our rights and we stand and salute them.
@TravelerDiogenes said,
ReplyDelete"Yes, the old Libertarian/pseudo intellectual argument that the U.S Constitution doesn't apply to you, because you didn't sign it."
Straw man. This is not my position.
"That justifies all your ignoring the LAW OF THE LAND, which you all claim to stand so strongly for."
Straw man. I do not ignore the law. I simply cannot accept the "social contract" as a justification for it. That is all I have said, and I stand by it.
"Make up your mind: Do you stand for law and order , or do you stand for people ignoring it all, as long as they call themselves "free marketeers?""
False dichotomy. I stand for freedom, justice, liberty, and all that jazz.
"REAL conservatives are not anarchists."
Straw man. I am neither of these things. I especially object to being called a conservative. Please don't use such foul language.
I don't think I stand for the things you so strenuously object to. Have you got me mixed up with someone else?