You two, Schod and eetmuffins, are so ignorant it's almost funny. Christianity is not about money, contribution, or compulsory giving. If it were how could the second letter to the Corinthians say, chapter 9 verse 7, "Let each man do according as he hath purposed in his heart: not grudgingly, or of necessity: for God loveth a cheerful giver." Doesn't look like anything compulsory to me!

NEVER lump Scientology with Christianity. It has nothing to do with Christianity, and is a religion created by L. Ron Hubbard "out of" a great number of religions, but primarily the Veda (ancient Hindu texts). If you knew anything of either religion, though Christianity is now a blanket term for a great many religions, you'll find that they're nothing alike. What little you can find contradicts everything taught in the Bible.

What you do have are offshoot churches and cults devoted to the collection of money and control of people. I could name a few. However for the sake of being nice I won't point fingers. You won't burn in hell for not contributing, or for missing helping someone accidentally, but you will burn in hell for something as simple as a lie or as serious as murder--both for obvious reasons.

While the myths about capitalism and revisionist history in Germany are both products of bullshit artists trying to get rid of reality, it's rather amusing that every one of these turns into a capitalism hating contest.

First point, being poor has dick all to do with success. Income mobility is tracked through tax returns, a study from 1996-2005 shows that such idiocy is pure falsehood propagated by the uneducated. They do such a study regularly and this isn't a new facet of our economy. The richest of the rich rapidly drop in majority numbers while half of the entire poor population ascend the economic ladder. Since you're too lazy to educate yourselves, a link to the study here.

Second point, the down trodden are a product of their own creation. There was no culture of destruction in black America before the civil rights movement destroyed it. The myth that they couldn't go anywhere because they weren't explicitly protected by law against racism was just that, a myth. Many of the great philosophers and thinkers of the day are black, and educated before the laws protecting them came into being. Thomas Sowell is such, quite possibly the greatest academic mind in existence. He predates the civil rights movement and graduated magna cum laude from Harvard without having finished highschool. That is a feat no one could accomplish now, thanks to the efforts of potentially well intentioned individuals. The true perpetrators of racial and economic inequality are the vocalist living off them. Welfare pimps, most of them black. When you're told from birth that big whitey is keeping you down and you'll need help to get anywhere, why bother?

Third point, and even a liberal arts college would have taught this if you were too thick to figure it out on your own by the time you got out of highschool, comparative advantage is not a zero sum game. When the wheel was invented, people didn't magically die of starvation because they were able to feed themselves more easily. The products of a capitalist economy are rapid advancement and growth, not poverty. The poor have never actually been poor here, even during the great depression they were driving to the unemployment offices. The exploited masses in third world countries aren't poor either, they are better off than they were before being exploited. Even the much reviled sweatshops are pretty damn nice when the alternative is working yourself to the bone in a hot field doing manual labor 18 hours a day to feed yourself. One can attempt some philosophical point to say technological progress isn't progress, but to say that people only get rich by making others poor is simply not true. When you invent the wheel, the entire world gets to feed itself with greater ease, you get rich.

Fourth and final point, for all you pinko commies.

Consider your source, and the argument you make. The liberal, socialist media is pessimistic on the economy, the poor black people don't go anywhere(a myth since most of them do, but we're ignoring this for the sake of argument and you'll pretend you never saw it regardless) because of the bombardment of pessimism and the lack of encouragement. Is there perhaps a logical fallacy in being anti-capitalist and discouraging the poor from lifting themselves up while saying you're the reason they don't?

I'm not particularly interested in this debate, too inept, but if someone is really interested in learning something instead of parroting some moron, read every article you can find by Thomas Sowell. He says it all far better than any moron here will ever manage. If you're still a socialist after such an education, you're beyond hope.

right on the first and the last, dead wrong on the second. Christianity is ALL about giving, Christ was the first out of the closet commie!

I'm christian. I'm not a great christian, but I can see where my religion is similar to an outright hoax
yes, I believe scientology is an outright hoax, but I'm arguing that Germany has no right to ban it regardless.

flea you are the one casting blanket accusations, spreading the rather tiny and finite point eets and I are making over the whole religion. I'm simply stating that christianity was a religion that has a LOT to do with currency, how do you think christianity spawned capitalism? either way what you need to recognize is that I am not, and have never lumped christianity in with other religions, but that doesnt mean other people deserve to lump ANY religion in with ANY other PERIOD. I'm a huge supporter of freedoms, and that includes religious ones.

aha, nice try but you're point is unsupported by this evidence
1) the only specific given in this study summary (screw you, I know you didnt read the whole thing) is that the top 1/100th percentile loses their income easily, good I say, and it makes sense. spoiled children and spoiled adults lose money easier
2) the motion is no better in the lower quintile than any other, while thats yay hooray good, it means nothing. if people drop into the lowest quintile that would pump people out of the lower percentile. additionally in the lower half of the income bracket education's effects become very diluted, so the idea of measuring the stability of education by income is a logical fallacy.

now you're hovering way off base, this has nothing to do with the "downtrodden", the poor can in many cases be just as happy as the rich. the difference is that they are happy in their current position, and thus see no real reason to work for something they see as vain and exploitative.
although I do agree with you, late bloomer activists do cause social decay.

hence what I meant by the "peta" comment, dogs are in fact better off because we exploit them. people who have the right to say "no" to exploitation follow the same rule: they are better off when we give them the chance to be exploited by us.

I dont underestimate their powers, but are poor kids going to have well motivated friends? In the end the main cause is the fact that everything in this government attempts to help the poor, but in the end helps the rich evade their taxes.

Oh well, Democra-see, Democra-do.

Oh and are you guys serioulsy going to start arguing over religious controversy?

you really think the government can ever help the poor? that is rediculously idealistic and sad. the proof is in the pudding, look at Russia, and all those other easterneuropean countries.

What of it?

Russias that way under a democracy, a democracy run by a madmen, but a democracy none the less.

So whats your point?

you're disregarding what matters in this argument: the general populace.

the general populace is doing much better nowadays, back in commie Russia the general populace (not you're golden age physcisist parents) were treated like shit, regardless of what the government does.
government aid in any form is far too general to ever be used in such tedius and desperate cases as the poor, its simply not an efficient method. capitalism (with rules) accomplishes caring for its poor much better.

Haha, oh how WRONG you are. The general populace enjoyed the stability, sure the feared the government and what it did to those who spoke out, so people just learned to not speak out publicly.

Even now the democracy days of 90s are already over for Russia. The fact that democracy allowed soo much money to be laundered away by politicians and the sudden free market unbalanced the labor market(we had people who were trained to be nurses working as garbage people), is already causing people to value matterial stability and financial gain above any rights or freedoms.

We're not in the Cold War anymore. There are countries between America and Russia, and most of them are using quite the welfare state ideology. Seems to work pretty well for them too, as their people are some of the healthiest and happiest in the world.



Cults tend to get dangerous at some point. Scientology has already got into this territory.

if cults cross into breaking REAL laws, then fine, break 'em up. but not a day until then are you allowed to deny them the right to practice their law.

I dont give a damn if god descended from heaven and told you to smite them, its against every belief I've ever held about freedom.

ah yes, the all infamous bank-states.

sorry, this example doesnt work well. its a nice counter but its talking of a few very itty bitty countries with special economies that haven't been running welfare for over a few dozen years.

again, we're getting this from a brainchild of the soviet union. sorry that I dont trust your rather devious testimony.

you really think it was democracy that caused this? *sigh* You are so naive...

The "Church" has borken several laws in dozens of countries, not to mention the fact that many of their rituals involve serius hypnotical overtones and could considered dangerous to mental health.



It was the democratic government that put the idiots in power. Forgive me for being skeptical, but since democracy Russia has become the only developed country where the death rate exceeds the birth rate.



Its not just my testimony, almost every single poll taken after 1995 reveals that Russians in general wanted a more controlled government. I'm not saying we will ever go back to communism, because of the monster it did spawn in our country, but in the end our country will revert to the strictness of Soviet rule, maybe not under the Soviet system though.

Sorry Schod, you lose that bet. You'd be a bit better at this if you read more than summaries, although the summary itself refutes you as well.

The summary:



There is fact and there is guessing.

Guessing is when you say there can't be many positive thinkers among the poor. Guessing is calling the poor the downtrodden. Since Shod appears to needs a definition, the downtrodden are that group of poor people that will always be poor because they are discouraged in life.

Fact is that half of the poor more than doubled their income in that ten year period. Fact is that only a small percentage of the poor people in 1996 remain as poor as they were then, and very few are more poor than before. Fact is that 3.6% of the bottom 20% are now in the top 20%. Fact is that the poor are not the downtrodden, the downtrodden are a myth of their own creation. There is no culture of despair amongst the poor because the majority of poor people do not remain stagnant in income.

Also, push polling from a country where the only news media is state run and the opposition parties are jailed regularly is hardly indicative of the general populace. If you call a thousand people and tell them they're being abused by someone they don't even know exists, most of them will tell you to what you wanted them to. A poll for adding water to the list of controlled substances is an excellent example of just how stupid and easily swayed the masses are when taking a survey. It's a greatly frowned upon tactic in this country for that very reason.

Well maybe we should just appoint a Department of Mental Hygiene! ./snigger

Wanted, or think in terms of?

Russians have an authority-oriented culture (top down) -- thats their major problem with democracy, when you get down to it

Its also a major reason for so much trouble between the US / Russia, our cultures have completely inverted "authority paradigms" as it were.

just like communism before it! who would have thought...

there is no one "the church" anywhere, even subchristian sects have multiple companies underneath them

see what I'm getting at?

oh please, show dont tell.
I have no faith in your wacky testimony and "facts"

again you're pulling downtrodden out of your ass, we never mentioned it as a criteria
its utterly completely irrelevant

as did, uh, everyone else.

again more of your bsed conjecture. 45% remained in the same income bracket, and that means that while money is extremely fluid, it still means that the poor remain in sedimentio

all nice and lovely, we dont consider "exceptions" in a general argument

my god I've gone over this
you invented the downtrodden argument, we've accepted it as completely out of scope of the debate for ages now. get with the program please.

amen.

Say what you will about Stalin, but he was not imcompitent, he was just crazy, murderous, and power hungry. Hey, when you rule the largest country in the world, things start to get to ya.



Fine, i'll find them for ya



The precentage he has given is quite a large exception.



Well, I would say everyone else probably tripled and quardrupled theirs, except for the rich, they probably increased their income by at least 100 times.



It proves my point anyways. The populace isn't crying out in rage over any of this. I mean even the federal republics have been influenced into being reorganized into 7 federal states almost completely under the presidents control. And this has so much happened without any major revolt or struggle from the populace. However this has increased stability and economic gain by making a more central sphere of influence.

A former KGB is in power, the Kremlin reigns again, its a deja vu moment, and not a very bright one. I feel like Russia was cheated. The US brought to us this one great thing the end to our revolution, and instead of finishing it, they just kinda dropped it and said "Good luck guys, I hope this complete economical flip doesn't do too much damage to your people". I mean seriously if I would ever claim victory from an Arm's Race i would rush into the country and make sure it never bothered me again. While in this scenario the US just kinda said "Meh, whats the worst that can happen?"

Even after I define it you don't recognize your own argument. What did you do, flunk debate class and form an inferiority complex? You're referencing the downtrodden as a result of peer pressure, TGE as a result of mass media. To the very last posts in the thread.

Being in the same income bracket doesn't mean horseshit either. Read the whole thing, those are even inflation adjusted. Yes, over half of them are still in the same income bracket(55%, not 45%, you didn't read far enough). Less than 10% of them are actually making the same amount of money.

Page 10, table 3. Educate thyself heathen, you needn't be this bloody stupid.

Um, yeah... I won't call the incompetent man incompetent.

Not really media, more like people. And their expectations of the poor.





Oh and I couldn't find the exact polls, but this Wiki article has many refrances to them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Putin

regarding the scientology thing: I'd say the deeper root here is a different understanding of the role of government. in most of continental europa people like a much stronger government, whereas I see oversees more of a liberal tendency. also, I think the general opinion deeply distrusts scientology amongst others and wouldnt be too unhappy to be protected from it by the government.

nazi symobls: yeah, its just that history has left a strong mark on germany and its little brother. you have whole different mindset relating to how you treat history and patriotism and showing anything nazi like in public will get you in heavy trouble. some might know that all the wolfenstein games were banned, because of their overly nazi content along with a whole bunch of others. it is indeed a very touchy subject over there.

oh, and saying germany is even remotely like a police state is one of the dumbest statements I have ever read.

in the words of the great and wise TGE "hah, you think wikipedia is a reliable source?"
unfortunately, this is one example where I would agree with you. wikipedia is a REALLY bad source when you're talking about a man who has a palace full of propogandists.

I'm NOT referencing the downtrodden whatsoever! stop reclassifying my argument so that its weaker than it actually is. we're talking intra cultural influences, not inter cultural influences.

whoa whoa whoa!!! you just quoted a source so you can discount it? are you absolutely nuts?

that strikes me as a rediculously huge amount, seeing as even in low paying jobs you get salary increases, benefits etc. after 10 years.
changing jobs doesnt even need to be explained.

because you're creating a completely NEW one you absolute twat!
although I admit, its a very well contrived logical fallacy. But that doesnt change that its still utterly and completely offtopic. if you ever want to be on par with my arguing skills than you need to start arguing with me, not you're own out-of-thin-air contrivation about people being repressed.

not really, considering that almost all of those are probably immediate college grads, oh did I forget to mention the college grads???

yay for capitalism!

I didnt say he was incompetant, but he took advantage of your people far more than any pencil pushing democracy ever has.

TGE and choak, I'm surprised you two aren't arguing against one another frankly...

Indeed I am ashamed of the fact that I used the wiki, but it has legitamet refrances at the bottom if you truely wish to bother looking up the info on which i base my responses.



Well they wouldn't be 'in' an income bracket as a college student because they contribute so little to the actual work force. Still 8% of over 30 million people is a lot of people.



Well at least for that aspect of it. I'm fond of Reaganomics you know.

3.something % ! its 3.something!% not 8.
and still, they are part of the income bracket, even if they dont make a lot (what makes you think otherwise?)

again, who exactly are we talking about?

Still skimming I see.

The cross section is of filing tax payers in both 1996 and 2005 between the ages of 25-64 in the span. College students huh? There are multiple stats given, absolute and relative quintile jumps, percentage changes in income, median, means, and the incomes themselves. Jumping into the next quintile is a substantial increase in income even if they were at the very edge of it in 1996. The range itself has vast improvement in the incomes of the people still in it, most of them are making more money, your fictitious pay raises that supposedly account for the half that doubled their incomes are in that group.

You should try actually learning things instead of just guessing. The bottom quintile is Mcdonalds and down. No college grads should be getting jobs that lousy to start with, you'd have known this if you read the entire thing. The technical appendix has the income ranges for the quintiles and percentiles. Even the second quintile is almost entirely comprised of people that don't pay out after credit offsets, and probably wont include many of your college grads. 25k for even an associate is the low end of the spectrum. If you can find a job that pays twice as much after inflation adjustment in ten years time I'd really like to know by the way. With a pay scale advancement that good I'd be retiring at about the same time. Assuming the company wasn't bankrupt first.

As for tge, not a lot to argue on, he hasn't attempted to refute my shooting the shit out of his side of your argument that I pulled out of my ass. He did however clarify his side it, you're just oblivious in addition to ignorant and combative. The combative part is good by the way, nice people are boring. I guess I could have gotten him for his idiotic statement that the rich probably gained a hundred times more, he either didn't read or skimmed as well, but you're doing such a good job that pointing out the loss in income for the wealthy is a moot point. It will simply be buried in your next idiotic rant using partial quotes on how you never mentioned the aforementioned anal dwelling argument.

if its a relative leap for everyone, that doesnt mean they're any less poor, or have better education.

fine, grad students, medical students, law students.

have I pointed out that what we're arguing about is pointless anyway? You cannot judge education accurately through income. not to mention a decade is a lot of time for new people to enter the economy, and old people to leave it.

seeing as its 10 pages of bullshit nonsense that would be useful if we were talking of any other thing no, I'm not gonna waste my precious time on it. I'm analyzing the measly amounts of data that you are calling on, telling you why you're assumptions in relation to the actual debate is far too off course

1) I'm not ignorant
2) I'm right, so I get to be combative

TGE has refuted you this whole time, you're just too focused on using out-of-context quoting from ONE survey to try and nullify my point, despite the fact that

NOTHING you have said here applies to the argument.

this is what he said, despite the fact that according to your survey the rich fall out of power very quickly, only a small minority remain in position etc.


let me make something clear choak, you have centered NOTHING to argue on, except saying that "poor being poor means no education". first off, thats not true. some poor children grow up to be VERY succesful despite the fact that they drop out of school, there are plenty of entrepreneurs created from the lower income brackets. second, you would need a survey that is designed to take relative income BETWEEN GENERATIONS, repeat: BETWEEN GENERATIONS. somebody getting a raise does not have anything to do with their education, especially as you pointed about, because the age range of this survey is "25-64", a bit OLD to be in senior year high school, or college. this age is very much post-postgrad, I would say. even if by some wing of a prair your random arguing nonsense can be applied the way you say it does (which it cannot, seeing as everyone has obviously gotten twice as rich in the past 10 years, thats an artifact of problems in the survey you obviously haven't caught onto) then hooray, you read a survey and quoted it. unfortunately, it means JACK SQUAT, because its not even remotely relevant to the argument.

no please, please psychoak. insult my ignorance for being right, insult me for noting that your survey has got some serious issues with the way YOU have been applying its data (the income of the poor, obviously this survey is T-E-R-R-I-B-L-E for these purposes, the survey is designed to look for INCOME MOBILITY, which means its going to take data and crunch it according to differences inbetween relative sets of people, making any conjectures about any one class completely irrelevant). go cry and flame all you want, but all you have accomplished here is to twist a survey that CANNOT be accurately used for your purposes. congradulations.


finally, let me simplify this down for you.
your point: poor people getting no good education would remain poor:
fallacy: thats blatantly a false allegation, and horrendus conjecture. but let us continue with the analysis of your errors

what survey do you use?: one used for basing RELATIVE income.
fallacy: while the data set could be misconstreud to be used in your analysis, the final product of THEIR analysis cannot, they've analyzed data without an eye towards education of inter-generational income changes, so its not going to be an accurate representation of such
fallacy: this data is taken in a 10 year span, not generationally (taking 30-40 year olds every 30 years, that would be far more appropriate) as a result we cannot possibly see the effects of education, let alone through the smog of their different data analysis
fallacy: whats completely wrong here, to sum up, is that you've mistaken the change in a bunch of people's incomes over a 10 year period (which would be say, jimmy down at McDs getting the assistant manager position) for people handing down jobs to their children (Joe who used to work at mcds is succeeded by the fortune 500 company CEO) thing is this data set isnt even laughably close to that. you've gone ahead and tried to dress up a horse like a donkey, a donkey like a horse. I can see right through that, sad no one else can.

theres more, but I'm too tired to type, and I'm afraid someone is going to ruin my lovely edit.

anyway, what you need is a survey that takes, like I said, something along the lines of the incomes of 35-45 year olds every 30 or so years. additionally that data set needs to keep track of lineage, so taht we can tell who lived under who when. even then I will continue to argue that, while education is a great representation of future income, income is a miserable representation of education. that point will be inswayable. So find a new survey, or find a new approach to attacking my point that has nothing to do with income.

that, my friend, is debate 101. You need some classes in it.