Obama on Chicago Public Radio: 2001, a sample of talk about redistributing wealth Options

[Hartmann]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iivL4c_3pck

Ignore the typing, just listen to the content.

It is not best for the courts to undertake the task of redistributing wealth, instead it is an act that should fall upon the lawmakers.

This is some seriously scary stuff, especially if he still has these views.

[cmac]

not sure where that came from.
i'm a web developer for CU

[Dogmeat]

not sure where that came from.
i'm a web developer for CU

So, you've got a government job and are supporting Obama ....

I rest my case

[Psykopath]

So, you've got a government job and are supporting Obama ....

I rest my case

so...people that have government jobs are bad in your book?
Only those working for private employers (and think like you) are A-OK?

[Dogmeat]

so...people that have government jobs are bad in your book?
Only those working for private employers (and think like you) are A-OK?

No, what I'm saying is this, and this comes from personal experience having a government tech job as well as a job that I actually have to work at ...

Just because you "have a job" does not mean you work hard. There are many people who seem to think it's their god given right to have a 6-figure job just because they show up to work every day. It's the mentality purveyed by unions, etc, that just showing up to collect a paycheck is enough. I have had roughly the same job he is speaking of, albeit with a state agency, and you are going to be very hard-pressed to convince me that working for a university requires even as much effort as my old job with the state of wyoming ... Government jobs, as best as I can tell, pretty well amount to welfare, at least the vast majority of them. It doesn't matter how hard you work, boom, here's your annual %1 raise, or how big of a complete fuckoff you are, boom, here's your annual %1 raise. You have quite literally got to kill somone to get fired from a government job. They are not hard, and they do _NOT_ require that much effort. They also don't pay very well, but to quite a few people, they pay adequatley for the amount and type of work required.

Now, let us examine typically what these government jobs pay ... they, at least in my experience, are like %10-15 less than what the average market value for the position is, depending on what your education and experience are. In other words, they are not the best paying jobs out there, but they also aren't really trying to attract the most ambitious people either ... let's face it, there's truth to the saying "good enough for government work" ..

Now, I will admit that I am forming a hypothesis based on my take on the subject here, but I would be willing to bet that if you did a study on what the average income levels are of most "typical" government employees are, state, federal, local, whatever ... the counterpart in the private sector, on average, is going to be more. There would be a lot of leeway here depending on what type of job you are talking about, but I think that generally this is true ...

So, why would anyone wanna work for the government if the private sector was gonna pay you %20+ more to do the same, or similar job?

It's pretty simple ... you really don't have to work that hard at all when you work for the government.

So, what I'm getting at here, is the "well since I'm not rich and Obama is only going to tax the rich let's hang those suckers" mentality is complete bullshit, because those of us who are in the upper tax brackets didn't get there by just showing up to collect a paycheck. I don't know a single person making over $100,000 a year working for the government, and the people I know making that much have been there 20+ years.

On the flip side, I don't know a single person making over $250,000 a year that doesn't work their fingers to the bone for it. So why in the FUCK should they effectivley be punished for being successful and working hard to get that money they're making? They are choosing to actually work for their money as opposed to just showing up to collect a paycheck, and you are dead wrong if you think the number of jobs out there that pay that well are just "show up and collect a paycheck" job. I don't care how much money your fathers cousins sisters brothers former room mate made selling flourescent thimbles on eBay, that type of shit is the anomaly. Not the norm.

This horse shit of "taxing the rich" is nothign but a bullshit political scam to scrape the bottom of the barrell for votes, which is primarily what the Democrats have been good at doing for the last 30+ years. And let's try to look at the math on this. If the top %1 of "wage earners" in the us are over $250,000 a year, how much money are you REALLY going to gain by taxing them? How much money, really, is in that top %1 when compared to the other %99 of that is below $250k? I would be willing to bet the split isn't near as much as they claim it is, but it's enough to get people to vote for them....which is what the whole "tax the rich" bullshit is all about anyways.

As best as I can tell, Obama's tax proposal is a direct swipe at the success that people working in the oil and gas industry have had in the Rocky Mountain region especially, but everywhere else as well, Texas, Alaska, basically every part of the country that isn't Union. Go figure. I'm sure that this isn't the only portion of the US economy where people would effectivley be punished for being successful, but it's the one I'm most familiiar with, so I use that as my example.

I dunno, I mean I guess if I was content in life to do nothing but show up and collect a paycheck and "work" a 40-hour week for average pay I wouldn't really have a preference, but for those of us with more ambition to be successful in life than that electing a socialist like Obama is a death sentence.