<p>Golani makes me want to alter my own cultural ethnicity.</p>
<p>Besides the pompousness, much of what he writes is just plain incorrect.</p>
<p>not really…UCLAri makes a point and i agree with him, however what Tarhunt says is simply not true, and allmusic do you know what the problem with you is. You are the same kind of jew that existed in western europe from 1870-1936. “A jew in the home and a man on the street” you are ashamed of your own identity, and good forbid you show your pride in it. What history teaches us is that WE will never assimiliate in society and be foreever known as the jew. I know exactly what kind of Jew you are. You wish to hide it because its not “cool” because you do not want to seem to have “dual loyalty” The same kind of jew who in germany thought they were more german than the germans themselves, until ofcourse hitler came along, for the sake of the 6 million that died 60 yrs ago of for the 119 that died this summer remember who you are and dont try to hide it. Be proud of being Jewish. Be pompouss about it because every other ethinicity, nationality,religion or whatever you want to call is sure as hell is pompous and there is nothing wrong with that</p>
<p>golani,</p>
<p>Watch the tone. It’s unnecessary. Allmusic probably shouldn’t have been so pointed, but you still need to cool it.</p>
<p>Tarhunt, however, is not incorrect. Not by a long shot. Many historians of early Jewish history actually contest whether or not Jews were monotheists or henotheists until the true rabbinic Judaism takes hold. Nonetheless, it’s not 100% certain which group holds claim to “first monotheists.”</p>
<p>golani89:</p>
<p>Please point out what it is I said that is untrue? Exactly.</p>
<p>Just a quick request… when you’re talking about red states and blue states, please separate out the people in each who actually vote the way of their state. States that are considered “solid” red or blue are often about 55% one way, 45% the other way, which leaves a really healthy minority of people in each state who vote contrary to their state’s designation. </p>
<p>As for the supposedly welfare red states… let’s please just examine the roots of this welfare. Social security is the largest gov’t expenditure, so retirees will correlate heavily with “welfare.” (Personally, I think this is fundamentally different from standard welfare, where you get money for not working although you are young and able-bodied. SS and disability covers the old and the incapable.) It’s cheaper to locate military bases in rural areas than in urban areas. Likewise, agriculture flourishes better in, say, upstate New York than in New York City. Rural areas tend to be much more conservative. Military personnel seem to be more conservative, although it’s hard to parse this out from gender differences. Also, women tend to congregate in cities, men in smaller towns.</p>
<p>My two cents.</p>
<p>ariesathena:</p>
<p>Good point about red states and blue states. BTW, “standard” welfare as you call it would be, for most people, AFDC and food stamps. AFDC is available only to those caring for children. While some of those people are able-bodied, there is often no place to care for the children at any sort of reasonable cost that would allow them to return to work. </p>
<p>The SS thing is more complex. I agreee that it’s a different issue than AFDC and food stamps, but it may not be as different as you think it is. SS is a very strongly progressive benefit. Those who earn the most over a lifetime max out on the benefit in such a way that, should they live a normal lifespan, they will not recover what they paid in (and forget earnings on what they paid in). Those who earn less receive a great deal more than they could have hoped to receive had they saved that money and had earnings on it. So, SS always has been a transfer payment both from workers to retirees and from the wealthy to the less wealthy.</p>
<p>In that sense, those who lived and worked in high-income states subsidize retirement and medical benefits (though no one has paid anything like the true cost of Medicare) for those who lived and worked in low income states. That would mean a general trend of wealth transfer payments from blue to red states. In the sense of wealth transfer, that could be considered “welfare” I think.</p>
<p>My earlier point was that red states do not have more retirees than blue states. However, it is certainly rational that red states have more agriculture (and agricultural subsidies) and mililiary bases. Plus the southern states have the highest teen birth rates in the nation. Plus southern Congress people have always been shrewd in getting a little more than there share of the pork and this was true even when the South was majority Democratric way back when. So there are a lot of reasons (not all that I agree with) why there should be a net transfer of tax dollars from the blue states to the red states. </p>
<p>But it’s also fair to say that life in certain parts would be a lot worse without these transfers. Are agricultural subsidies a good thing? Are the military bases really in the right places? </p>
<p>The first half of the OP was food for thought. The notion in the second half that the folks in the red states subsidize everyone else has it backwards.</p>
<p>
Yes, the loathsomely smug and sanctimonious belief expressed by this statement is, in fact, dead wrong. You can slice 'n dice the statistics various ways, but the bottom line is that the blue states, in the aggregate, pay more taxes to the federal government per capita than the feds spend in those states, and the red states are on the federal dole on a per capita basis.</p>
<p>This is a typical example of the kind of right wing propaganda which has, however, successfully implanted numerous equally false ideas in the minds of a lot of the general public which are equally dead wrong. As a lawyer, I’m painfully aware of the falsity of the common belief that there is an abundance of “liberal judges”, “frivolous litigation”, and the like. I’m sure teachers, pregnancy counsellors, and anyone who has ever had to share the responsibility for allocating or spending a governmental budget of any kind, from local school district on up, has a similar personal awareness of commonly believed falsehoods, widely and anonymously distributed. </p>
<p>Where do you suppose these things start? Who was the first person to start this particular collection of noisome nonsense flying through the cybersphere?</p>
<p>I think that it’s hard to say that SS transfers from blue to red. Don’t forget, people retire to low cost-of-living areas. In many ways, then, are they transferring wealth from blue to red, or just moving the money with the people?</p>
<p>In that case, Florida would have TONS of SS going to it.</p>
<p>Florida, Arizona, etc. Money was earned in blue states; people retire to red states. No inherent transfer of wealth… the “right” to the benefit attaches to the person, not the state.</p>
<p>Ariesathena, I think the figures we’re talking about do not include social security. See
<a href=“http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/show/347.html[/url]”>http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/show/347.html</a></p>
<p>Example: The federal government spends 79 cents in California for every tax dollar paid by Californians, and the same in New York, but $1.71 in Alabama for every tax dollar paid by Alabamans.</p>
<p>Sigh…</p>
<p>FL is the #1 state for population over 65. PA (a blue state) is #2. It’s an even split among the ten ten between blue and red (or 6-4 if WV is a blue state (I don’t remember), which, given that there are more red states than blue overall, means that the BLUE states have more at the top then you would expect if the results were random.</p>
<p>Unless the seniors in the red states have figured out how to game the system, SS transfers do not (or should not) explain the interstate transfer of federal tax dollars.</p>