Double_R

Not without committing theft. And as I said, unless you can prove these people got their wealth by stealing, you have no point. Whatever other points you bring up, luck, inheritance...ect. are irrelevant.

Why is this so difficult for you?

We’re not talking about ownership rights. We’re talking about the wealth disparity and whether that disparity matches to what people’s contributions to society are actually worth.

Theft has nothing to do with this conversation.

The central point of this debate is, how do you measure a person’s worth and how closely does that align with actual monetary compensation. That’s an entirely different discussion from whether they got their money “fair and square”.

You get rich in trade only if other people agree to give you their money.

The fact that someone agreed to give me their money is irrelevant to the question of whether my contributions to that trade are worth the money I made off of it.

If for example, the product I traded is one that I was only in control over because I inherited it, then clearly my personal contributions are worth far less than the amount I am benefiting from it.

So yes, inheritance, along with the other aspects of this I mentioned, are absolutely relevant here.

There is no luck there.

lol

Yeah, luck plays no role over how much money someone makes.

Ok bro.

There's no objective "real issue" except the one she says exists. That sounds oddly....undemocratic?

An author giving their opinion on what the issues are does not conflict in any way with democracy. You are really contorting yourself to hold onto this point.

How about, (wild thought) we leave such a decision to the people

We don’t get to decide whether it’s left to her or the people, she doesn’t get to decide whether it’s up to the people, because it is up to the people. That’s how democracy works.

The only time the issue of whether it’s up to the people is in question is when those threatening it hold positions of actual power. That power is held by politicians, not authors.

You are blaming trump because Americans are stupid?

No, I blame him for legitimizing stupidity.

I'm not denying there's always a political bias when addressing a protest. However, it's very common to hear from the left that the goverment shouldn't criminalize the violent protests. In Europe it's very common that…

If there’s a relevant point you intended to make here I missed it.

I believe that Trump should not be blamed for having appointed about 13 billionaires into his cabinet.

You just disparaged America as having been controlled by the wealthy and claimed Trump was the answer to that even though he’s the literal embodiment of the very thing you’re complaining about.

There is nothing inherently wrong with appointing billionaires to your cabinet, but you don’t get to complain about being controlled by the wealthy while supporting the first billionaire president appointing by far the wealthiest cabinet in history.

On the other side Trump will impose higher income taxes on the wealthy.

Trumps signature legislation so far is the bill he literally named the Big Beautiful Bill Act which cut taxes massively on the wealthy, and his signature legislative accomplishment in his first term was a massive tax cut to the wealthy. If you really believe what you just said you are either deeply delusional or you have no idea what’s going on.

Trump and his supporters are expecting that foreign investment will offer many opportunities for many American people to realize American Dreams among them.

Well then they are in for a rude awakening because none of that is happening. His tariffs are alienating everyone to the point that other countries are now realigning with China just to break away from the US.

I’m really sorry bro, but you’ve been conned. The sooner you realize that the better.

And mechanics can't function without engineers. That's the hierarchy of societal value. Society rewards those who multiply the productivity of others and that’s why innovation and design naturally sit above grunt labor in terms of economic value, even though both are necessary for civilization to run.

None of this refutes a word I’ve said.

An ant colony where everyone is a queen or a worker will die quickly.

No one is arguing for anything like this.

Every thriving species develops systems of evolved specialization where certain desirable fit traits or behaviors are rewarded and sustained because they enhance collective efficiency or survival odds. That's an observable fact.

Still waiting for you to write something that goes against anything I’ve said.

You cannot "remove the individual" from his skills and products without committing theft or worse.

You absolutely can remove an individual from a product. Ownership rights is an entirely different conversation. We’re talking about contributions to society, how we measure them, and how those contributions compare to societal rewards.

if people choose to buy my products for billions and make me rich, that is called trade.

Congratulations, that is what it’s called.

Unfortunately that’s not what we’re talking about. This is about how the rules work and whether those rules create an environment where people are rewarded for what they actually contributed.

What separates right wing thinking from left wing thinking is that right wingers like yourself think the free market in a capitalistic society is a self fulfilling prophecy. If you’re rich, then you contributed. If you’re poor, you didn’t. To you it’s just that simple.

But in reality, the situation is far more nuanced than that. First you have to start with the fact that most of the wealth in this country was inherited or built off of inheritances, so that right there refutes this thinking.

Then you have to take into account what connections people have. Stephen Miller’s wife just started a podcast and her first guest was the Vice President of the United States. She didn’t work her ass off to get there, it was handed to her, and it got millions of views just because of that.

You also have to factor luck. Some investments work out, some don’t. It’s not always because someone did their homework or didn’t, some things are not foreseeable or within our control.

Then there’s personal circumstances, like medical situations that can easily bankrupt someone, or having to care for a loved one. Again, these things are not easily controllable if at all.

And now after all that we can finally get to the conversation of how our ideas and efforts contribute to society. In most cases, the individual is irrelevant, the system is what matters. You get hired as a CEO and make millions of dollars. Do you really think you’re the only person who can do this job? You really think no one else could do it just as well? Of course not, that’s nonsense. There will always be someone else to fill your shoes.

You came up with a great idea, you think there weren’t hundreds if not thousands of other people who thought of it too? In a country of over 300 million people you’d have to be a clinical narcissist to believe that. You aren’t the only one to think of it, you’re just the first person to get it across the finish line.

And when that product hits the market and you rake in millions, you think you did that yourself? Of course not. Not only did it take an army, but you also stood on the shoulders of everyone before you who created the systems you used to make your money. The roads other people built to which you transported your product. The internet access to which you marketed your product, etc.

You didn’t contribute a as much as you think you did. This isn’t to say you didn’t do a great thing and deserve a huge reward for it, it’s a question of how much actually aligns with that contribution.

And the above is kind of a best case scenario since we’re talking about actual innovation and not someone who, for example made it big on the stock market. The fact is that most wealth is not a product of some great new idea.

The point of all of this is that it takes a village, but in this system the rewards flow disproportionately to the top. No one person is actually worth a billion dollars, and one percent of the population is definitely not worth more than the bottom half. Our economy is more like a game than an actual measure of worth, and we would all be better off if it were brought at least a little bit closer to worth than what more closely aligns with a lottery of birth.

I think this has to be one of most low IQ statements I ever read.

It’s because you don’t read, you just inject whatever you wanted to hear.

That's communist shtick. We're individual minds, my friend, but I understand trying prop up a Penn State academic.

Social psychology is a real thing. Really.

it was the American mind which gave us trump, not the other way around

The two play off of each other. Stupid people always existed, what Trump did was he brought those people into the mainstream. They looked at Trump saying all the stupid and ignorant things they were thinking and it legitimized them, so they became loyal to him, and voted for him. Then once he became the candidate and later the president he would command the biggest microphone on earth to continue spreading this nonsense.

Politics has long been problematic, but I do miss the days back when it was handled by adults. Trump ended that.

Great article, and something I’ve been saying for quite some time now - there are many reasons to despise what Trump is doing but the worst thing imho is what he’s doing to our collective IQ. Russia and other dictatorships world wide are laughing their assesses off at how stupid we’ve become and how preoccupied we’ve been with utter nonsense. It weakens us in every way far worse than anything they could have accomplished.

the mechanics will never be as useful to society as the engineers that create the machines for them to work on.

And yet a society cannot function without either of them.

Did they steal the wealth? If not, they obtained it through trade, and trade depends on how useful you are to others.

Wrong, trade depends on how useful the product which they control was to society. Remove the individual, and product remains just as useful.

In a capitalistic society, wealth begets wealth. To turn a thousand dollars into a million is difficult on par with winning the lottery. To turn a million dollars into two million, with proper discipline, is inevitable.

The more money you have the more powerful you are, thereby making it easier to attain more money. Walmart is a perfect example of this. The larger they got, the bigger purchaser they were to their suppliers. The bigger purchaser they became, the more they could squeeze their suppliers for cheaper product. The cheaper the product, the more they sold and the bigger they got. Mom and pop stores could no longer compete, and many closed down as a result, making Walmart even bigger.

That’s how capitalism works, and if left unfettered, it will continue to go in this direction until there is no middle class left at all.

So no, it is not an accident or coincidence that 1% of the population owns more wealth than the bottom 50%. That’s not a product of a small handful of individuals being so amazing in their hard work and innovation that they outpaced everyone else by miles. This is just how capitalism works. It’s not a system where we are rewarded for our efforts, it’s a system where we are rewarded for our circumstances that were largely out of our control.

And I haven’t even gotten to inheritances and nepo babies.

thats called good hard work. No one stops you from working and becoming wealthy.

Wealth isn’t attained through hard work, that gets you to making a living. When it’s not a product of inheritance or nepotism, wealth is attained through investments, financial or otherwise that have gone right. That’s a product of good ideas yes, but also of luck to a large degree, as well as who you know.

Living paycheck to paycheck meanwhile, can be the result of a lot of things. Medical bills for example, because in America poor health is one of the fastest and most predictable means of bankruptcy. Having to take care of loved ones, investments gone bad, etc. Not to mention lack of opportunity in the first place.

But arguing to steal money from people who actually were most useful to society, and giving it to people who are most useless

That’s the whole point and problem. You really think a person’s wealth is a direct product of how useful they were to society. You really think the guy sitting at the top of a multi billion dollar company is the one who was innovative and not the army of foot soldiers that actually built the product.

Do you really think 1% of the population is working harder than half the country combined? What are they working, 10,000 hours a day? Do you really think the bottom 80% of the country only makes 7% of the contributions to our economy? Of course not, that’s absurd.

Anyone can become wealthy, everyone cannot be. You can disparage any individual for not doing enough to make it all you want, but when you zoom out and look at what’s going on at the societal level, what’s happening has nothing to do with hard work, it is a predictable evolution of a capitalistic society.

Violent protests is a right according to the left

Still waiting for the part where you substantiate this ridiculous claim.

Remind me who pardoned the January 6th rioters who beat up 140 Capitol police officers?

People still want free meals. But there is no free meal. Someone else pays for it.

Less than 1% of the population controls more wealth in this country than the bottom 50%. I don’t have a problem with them funding programs that assist with basic survival needs.

If you want to be poor and hungry, you can.

7% of the wealth in this country is divided amongst 80% of the population. That’s not reflective of an economy where choices and skills are what drives people’s ability to make ends meet.

This is a perfect example of one of the most fundamental dividing lines between economic liberals vs economic conservatives. You guys really think income and wealth is just about choices and abilities, having little to nothing to do with circumstances that are in many cases beyond our control. The numbers cited above alone prove the later narrative false.

Studies have found that SNAP participants are more likely to be obese, have poorer dietary habits, and consume more "junk food," sugar-sweetened beverages, and high-fat dairy. So SNAP literally kills people before their time.

It’s because they can’t afford healthier food options genius.

Come back to me when you have done your due diligence on due process for civil infractions.

Translation: “I have no idea what I’m talking about and need an out”

No problem.

Direct quote from your first post in this string, #29. Seems I did take note, and you do "invoke Trump."

I can see I needed to be more specific.

What I said is that I responded without invoking Trump - as in I directly addressed your question in the abstract exactly as you apparently wanted.

*Afterwards*, I responded with your posts 14, 15, & 16 in mind where you started to pretend like this thread had nothing to do with Trump. Then your first post to me (#36) you ignored every point I made and proceeded to focus on whether this thread is about Trump, which goes to show how disingenuous all of this was. If you really wanted to have the abstract conversation maybe you would have focused on that.

Anyone reading your #42 with a modicum of English grammar skill is going to interpret your 42 as directed to me, not to my argument

No, all they would need is to understand the definition of “here”.

Your stupidity and unseriousness here is yet another example…

That is a direct reference to what you’ve been arguing in this thread.

There are no guarantees for anyone to have a criminal trial or any extra due process beyond what the law provides

If it goes beyond what the law provides then it is by definition, not due process.

Google the definition of “due”.

You really think you’re onto something with this “oversimplification” retort. It’s kind of amusing.

Deportation isn’t due process, that doesn’t make any sense at all.

Due process is what ensures that every person goes through the checks put in place to prevent the government from taking rights away from people who are supposed to be afforded to them.

The point I made which you don’t seem to want to touch with a ten foot pole, probably because you know I’m right, is that due process isn’t a right you can grant to some groups and not others, it’s an all or nothing proposition. So no, it’s not ok when the government violates due process only for illegals because due process is what ensures they’re illegal in the first place. Without that none of our rights are safe.

I never made Trump the featured president of my original post on this subject. Others did that

And if you took note, I responded to your original post without invoking Trump.

What I started responding to afterward was your silly denial of the fact that this subject is only meaningful and only relevant because the current president of the United States continues to flirt with the idea of a third term despite it being constitutionally barred. So you can decide that you want to have a conversation focused purely on the abstract notion of how a president could hypothetically get around this, but don’t sit here and pretend this topic applies to Obama or Bush just as easily as it does to Trump.

You may believe I am stupid all you wish if that floats your boat. But personal attack is always the losing argument

I wasn’t suggesting that you were stupid, I was calling your argument stupid as a way to show why it is so clearly disingenuous.

That isn’t what we’re talking about, but I get it, you have nothing left to say so you need to pretend you do. It’s cool.

Nope, I've identified 4 living 2-term presidents who are eligible to the conditions my original question poses.

Oh right… this is was just some generic abstract conversation that popped up out of no where and has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that the current president of the United States selling Trump 2028 hats.

Your stupidity and unseriousness here is yet another example of how perfectly you align with MAGA.

I have no confidence he’ll leave willingly, nothing he has ever shown us says he’s capable of that.

My bet is that he’ll declare some kind of emergency “until our leaders can figure out what the hell is going on”, which will take just as long as it did the last time.

That is the correct noun. "Americans" would be incorrect.

Wrong as usual. Many Americans have gotten caught up in these ice raids and illegally detained because ice officers decided they were guilty until proven innocent. I don’t know why right wingers have such a difficult time understanding this; due process isn’t something you can guarantee to some groups and not others. The whole point of affording it to everyone is so that those who are supposed to have certain rights are guaranteed to enjoy them. Without that it’s not a right, which means none of us get to enjoy them.

It's funny how you guys went from the most secure elections in history to the end of Democracy in less than 4 years. What a truly weak system your founders created.

Systems are only as good as the people running them. American democracy was secure while it was being run by adults, what Trump exposed is that there were a lot more morons among us than we first thought. His superpower was the ability to appeal to the people just as stupid and ignorant as he is, and once that happens institutional guardrails mean nothing, they’re just really big words “nobody ever heard of”.

Did I mention a president by name?

Why are you pretending we’re not having this conversation solely because of Trump? Has any other living president ever talked about serving a third term? Has there ever been a movement since the 22nd amendment to going a loophole around it other than for Trump?

I have never seen such an effort by the judicial system in all my life try so hard and repeatedly to try and take down a sitting President.

Because we’ve never before had a president so egregiously commit such serious and obvious crimes.

Does the Constitution limit the ability of a twice-before-elected President to serve as Vice-President?

The 22nd amendment is specific in certain respects but just vague enough where imaginary scenarios like this could be concocted and presented as reasonable work arounds.

So with regards to the very clear intent of the law, no, a twice elected President cannot serve as VP because the entire purpose of a VP is to be the back up President, thereby putting them in the position to take the very control sought to be avoided by the amendment in the first place.

But is it technically barred? No. So as usual with Trump, we now have to sit here and debate whether the technical definitions of words on a piece of paper matter more than the very clear intention of why those words were written in the first place.

This is what an assault on the rule of law looks like. What Trump supporters are either too stupid to understand or just don’t give a shit about is that laws are nothing but words on a piece of paper, what makes the rule of law an actual thing is us as a society deciding that they matter. Trumps entire MO is about finding ways to delegitimize every idea conveyed by those words so that he can do whatever he wants, the exact opposite of why we have laws at all.

We have never before seen a president who was a greater threat to the rule of law before.

Looks like he's bought you. Can't ignore him, can you? Try.

What a stupid post.

He’s the current president of the United States who is tearing up the constitution as he floods our cities with military and unmasked unidentifiable thugs who are whisking people away because they speak Spanish or look brown. No, we’re not going to ignore him.

Y^'all who reply to this string seem to think you know who my subject its. Have I even mentioned his name? 

You didn’t have to genius. He’s doing it ^^^ right now and is the only president who has ever treated the US military like his personal flying monkeys. To even pretend you’re talking about someone else would be grossly disingenuous and you know that.