I think fear is to blame. What each person fears depends on his or her viewpoint.
“and someone toting a snowball isn’t proof of, or against, anything.”
The Senator toting the snowball into the chamber believed it was proof of something.
“no-one’s ever cared as to the name of the VP after the election,”
They don’t? I certainly do in that the VP might become POTUS. It’s happened 8 times in our history and will likely happen again.
Not sure what to make of the self-interest comment because the drug dealer, the doctor, the hedge fund manager, and the teenager who just got his first job are all operating in their own self-interest. Who the heck blames anyone for trying to improve his lot?
The flaw in trying to make self-interest a negative is no one could improve himself (from his vantage point) and be his best without acting in his own self-interest. There are those who understand that the value of America lies in the freedom to make choices and to act in one’s self-interest.
The argument could be made that the problem is not self-interest, but the understanding what freedom actually is and what it affords. Who is more free, the family living at the poverty line where each adult in the household has a job or the family living at the poverty line where the family lives on welfare?
The family with working adults (and better yet, working teenagers also) has the ability and freedom to improve itself by acting in its self-interest by changing jobs, moving etc. Even though it is a difficult road, and choices may be limited, that family can improve itself. No one promised easy to anyone, just the opportunity.
In contrast, the welfare family does not have the freedom to act in its own self-interest, as others make their choices for them, e.g., where they live, what type of foods to buy etc. The welfare family is almost most certainly doomed to that lifestyle of poverty because its ability to act in its own self-interest has been taken away.
And this is why the poorest immigrants from many countries do so well in America, i.e., they do things to retain the freedom to act in their own self-interest and thus rise and improve themselves very rapidly.
Selfishness is too big an issue to tackle here and is outside the scope of this thread anyway.
The damages caused by self-interest are easily found in the upper echelons. Self-interest is not only an attribute of an individual but it’s also an attribute of a group and the later one causes more bad consequences.
…
Sounds like another liberal talking point designed to mollify the less successful by blaming others who are more successful. This post really is just a Rorschach test where people fill in the blanks with what they want.
You may have a valid points that I have not thought of, but it would be a lot easier to understand what you are saying if you are more specific, as to the damages you allude to and how those damages are caused by the upper echelons, whoever the upper echelons are that you are defining.
It would very helpful if you: 1) define the damages, 2) define the upper echelon, and 3) define the bad consequences. You speak very vague.
I think you are confusing self-interest with selfishness. After all, the word selfish by definition is:
Emphasis there on the word “only”. Whereas that same source has self-interest defined as follows:
So not as absolute as the way selfish is defined. Selfishness is an extreme form of self-interest and isn’t what most people mean when they use that term in normal conversation. If they mean extreme self-interest, they should say selfish, not just self-interest. Anyway, in the end you two are arguing because you are using different definitions of self-interest. IMO @awcntdb is using it correctly, but no matter. Arguments that have different definitions of the word being argued about at their core can never be solved.
Besides, @coolweather, I find your statement about groups acting on self-interest as a negative quite interesting, especially on this particular day of July 4. Don’t you think the Founding Fathers and the Congressional Congress had self-interest as a motive when they broke away from England? And in general, what do you call it when you make decisions in the best interest of your family, such as accepting a promotion and raise even though that costs another person and their family that same access to greater benefits? Isn’t that self-interest? Or even if I am single and I take that promotion and raise over someone that has a family and could really use it. Am I wrong for taking into account my own interests for the longer term? I might get married and have a family in a few years and that money would help then, if not as much now. Isn’t that in my own best interest, i.e. self-interest? Is the owner of that company wrong for giving me the promotion because he thought I would do a better job and thus help the company more, thus making him more money, even though he knows I am not married and the other person is and has two kids? As the owner of the company, he is acting solely in his best interest. Is that really wrong?
This thread will be closed if I give specific examples.
I read arguments similar to post 82 after the financial crisis. Oh. The unemployment rate is double digits. People don’t want to work. They are lazy bums. Taking advantage of taxpayer generosity.
Then the economy starts recovering and 10 million more people are employed in the private sector. The unemployment rate drops to 5.3 percent. 10 million people are no longer lazy bums. 
The way the government taxes and spends has changed dramatically over the last few decades. The way the economy distributes revenues has shifted. This has an effect on households, the economy.
Fortune 500 largest companies…how many of these companies don’t pay a corporate income tax?
We read that 47 percent of Americans or whatever it is don’t pay income taxes. The top 1 percent pay a disproportionate share of the income tax…
Of course, there are other taxes besides income taxes. The earned income tax credit was pushed by Milton Friedman. Milton Friedman believed in a negative income tax. Maybe, that’s a problem. Isn’t Boeing’s corporate federal income tax negative over a ten year period?
I love this from @awcntdb…
That quote is really important, isn’t it? If the true power brokers don’t pay taxes…then everybody else is going to pay with either higher taxes, or fewer services.
Is this the country we want? A country where the true power brokers do not pay taxes? Are people aware of this?
Sheldon Adelson used a legal tax dodge, a tax dodge that does not do anything for 999 out of 1,000 people, to shield $7 billion of his wealth from the inheritance tax. One guy. That’s a lot of welfare, isn’t it?
Agree, and the politicians who stoke the fear for (short term) political advantage.
Fair enough, but that should tell you it is not self-interest then that bothers you. It is the outcome of others’ actions and their goals which bothers you. Their goals simply differ from yours. The thread would be closed because your issues are personal, not based on statistics, economics, or the actual objective analysis of what another is doing or has done.
The distinction that you are not making between self-interest and selfishness is self-interest is done specifically with regards to others.
Self-interest is when dad and mom work long hours to make sure their kid lives in a good neighborhood and goes to a good school and sacrifice new cars and the like. Ergo, the entire family is better off.
Selfish is when dad and mom work long hours and instead buy new cars every five years and buy designer clothes while their kid goes to a crummy school and the house is in disrepair, i.e, the family itself is not better off, only a couple individuals are.
Self-interest for the wealthy works the same except they apply it to different goals; same for selfish.
"That quote is really important, isn’t it? If the true power brokers don’t pay taxes…then everybody else is going to pay with either higher taxes, or fewer services.
Is this the country we want? A country where the true power brokers do not pay taxes? Are people aware of this?"
Most certainly people are aware of this. However, there is nothing they can do about it. The politicians can get them riled up by railing against the one percent (as if those people are to blame), but they do nothing about changing the tax dodges that allow the truly wealthy power brokers to pay little taxes. A lot of talk, but in the end, they don’t want to touch their donors.
It’s the same for business. Big businesses get massive tax breaks, small businesses have no representation, and they pay far higher taxes.
“Then the economy starts recovering and 10 million more people are employed in the private sector. The unemployment rate drops to 5.3 percent. 10 million people are no longer lazy bums”
The unemployment rate looks really great if you just stop counting the people who have given up looking for work. Stop counting the people (almost 5 percent of workers) that are now on disability instead of working, causing the government to project that they won’t be able to fund all claims in 2016. What was that quote about statistics?
“Then the economy starts recovering and 10 million more people are employed in the private sector. The unemployment rate drops to 5.3 percent. 10 million people are no longer lazy bums.”
No. there are still 10 million lazy bums. You need to “unskew” the numbers. BLS cooking the books, all part time jobs, liberal media, Benghazi. 
I have a lot of experience with disabilty
programs and people on disability programs and I have found it is silly for me to argue about people on disability programs.
A shrinking a labor pool does affect the unemployment rate.
We have an aging population which is a factor in our labor pool. Ten million more people are employed in the private sector than several years ago.
“I have a lot of experience with disabilty
programs and people on disability programs and I have found it is silly for me to argue about people on disability programs.”
One case of complete bureaucratic incompetence does not mean that everyone experiences this. There are people that should be fired for the difficulties that you have endured. I am not knocking people on disability, however, my point is that it is far easier to get disability (for most people) than it has been in the past. Many people would be unemployed, and in the ranks of the jobseekers, if they were not getting a disability check. You get a job, you lose your check. I am talking numbers, not arguing about whether people should get it or not.
Busdriver11, one case? I have been involved with the disabilty comminity for 14 years. lol
I know there is quite a bit written. A lot of nonsense.
Busdriver11, you don’t know what you are talking about. Have fun.
You’re right, I don’t know what I’m talking about. Which is why I’m not trying to argue about why people are on disability and if they should be. However, your experiences in all those years, do not translate to every other person, in every other state. The point that I am trying to make, and the ONLY point, is that there has been a massive increase in the number of people receiving disability. Is that arguable, or is that fact? And that many of those people, had they not been receiving disability payments, would either be in the workforce, or looking for a job. People, whether in pain, whether they have something that causes a disability, still have to eat. Is that arguable?
I have already discussed this issue with you.
I told you why.
I had this conversation with YOU!
Try to think why…
I am with my parents now.
Bye.
You are not getting my point. I am purely talking about why I think the unemployment numbers aren’t accurate. It’s not a particularly important point anyways.
If I have already discussed this exact point with you, and not some other related point, perhaps I should be one of the people filing a dementia related disability claim. 
Have a good time with your parents.
Whether numbers are accurate or not, whether statistics are specious or not, is not particular to one administration, one political party. It’s naive to believe so. When looking at numbers like unemployment numbers, its best to look at trends rather than nitpicking about very specific numbers. They are always getting revised anyway. Bottom line, our country’s employment situation is much better than it was in 2008 due to a variety of reasons.