Guccifer casts out Hillary

[kandrathe]

Except, no one said anything about "entitlement" in this situation. Entitlement is just another buzz-word anyway, much like the words "freedom" or "democracy" are in the context of the current order of things.

Not a "buzz word" -- it's a real word, like freedom, or democracy.

entitlement
noun en·ti·tle·ment \-ˈtī-təl-mənt\
: the condition of having a right to have, do, or get something
: the feeling or belief that you deserve to be given something (such as special privileges)
: a type of financial help provided by the government for members of a particular group

A "Buzzword" is a made up word used to impress people, like freakonomics, or stagflation, or lolbertarian.

However, it is libertarians who are usually the ones that seem to appeal to "freedom". Although in most cases, when they say freedom, they mean freedom for THEMSELVES or their privileged position in society, rather than "freedom" for others.

You claim here is entirely speculative, and unsubstantiated. It is your opinion. You claim to be a political scientist. Where is the science? Where is your evidence? 4 out of 5 dentists prefer freedom, over slavery. Nelson Mandela spoke, and wrote much about "Freedom", and as I recall he was head of the ANC. It seems "Leftists" also appeal to freedom in the face of fascist tyranny. When libertarians appeal to freedom, it is in the same context of being coerced to do things against their will by a powerful government that uses the threat of imprisonment, force, or death. You might laugh at the notion of "death" as extreme, but consider that our government is killing citizen "enemies" and alleged "traitors" mostly without trial. As with all our recent "wars", the first casualty is truth, and the second is freedom. Really, I believe our main disagreement is only that of collective versus the individual.

You are absolutely right...

Thanks. I'm opposed to all the piglets who are needlessly suckling off the teats of a bloated government beast whether they be General Electric, generals in the military, or the general public.

Yet the people who demand the basic necessities of life in order to both survive and have a decent quality of life - food, shelter, water, education, and access to decent health care are the somehow the ones who are entitled.

That is why it is called "the pursuit of happiness", or in other words the needs and wants that alleviate your suffering. You don't have the right to have all your needs(and wants) relieved by the toil of others. You might want to read Galbraith's “The Affluent Society.”

The Theory of Social Balance -- The final problem of the affluent society is the balance of goods it produces. Private goods: TVs, cars, cigarettes, drugs and alcohol are overproduced; public goods: education, healthcare, police services, park provision, mass transport and refuse disposal are underproduced. The consequences are extremely severe for the wellbeing of society. The balance between private and public consumption will be referred to as 'the social balance'. The main reason for this imbalance is relatively straightforward. The forces we have identified which increase consumer demand as production rises (advertising and emulation) act almost entirely on the private sector.

My belief is that we need government sufficient to maintain social order. That does include the equitable use of law, and law enforcement, and the defense of peoples constitutionally guaranteed rights. I also see some limited need to address (possibly by the government) the social balance issues addressed by Galbraith above. Where possible, I feel it is best for government at appropriate levels to instigate, then relinquish much of the controls for these services to the private sector to allow competition to drive down price, provide innovation, and increase quality.

If I had a dollar for every right-winger or Baby boomer that said my generation or the one after was part of the "entitlement generation", I would be able to purchase a house in the market that THEIR generation ruined and crashed in 2008. How ironic. My generation has and will have a lower standard of living than the Baby boomers, yet somehow we are the "entitlement generation". Really now?

Your statement is nonsense. If the housing market crashed, then values would be lower, enabling you to purchase a home. What has changed are the government regulations on the banks on the amount of reserve they need on hand to cover risk of default. This has resulted in more stringent credit requirements. It is the government who has made it harder for you to buy a house when they were affordable, and it has been the federal government doing everything they can to re-inflate the housing market (negating the capital losses of the economic downturn on home owners). The Capitalists want you to be able to afford to buy a home, take out a loan, and pay interest on the loan for 20+ years. It is hard to tell what is going on in the housing market really; owners aren't selling, builders aren't building, and lenders aren't lending. Thus, the lack of a housing supply results in price increases, for those that meet the high qualifications for loans.

Greed, by some large players negotiating in risk laden derivatives (CDS), did cause the crash, but a root cause is also due to pressure by people in government to offer loans to some people who cannot afford them. The two components needed were the availability of a derivative product capable of bearing the risk, and then the accumulation (a snow ball actually) of risks that were sensitive to a falling market. That is, as the market fell, the number and accumulated impact of the risks increased. What is worse, is that the government regulators have done very little to prevent the exact same scenario from repeating itself. A simple analogy would be the regulation of the number of inches of snow a roof can bear. It really depends on the density of the snow. This it is with credit defaults, which increase in number and size in a declining market, thus increasing the load beyond sustainable insurance (ala AIG), or recovery (reserve assets) by the financial products owner. Banks in general have the same issue when they can treat a portion of every loan recursively as an asset. Actually, the fed could do more in helping to define what an asset really is, because EBITDA is often misleading, to deceptive.

I am not being intellectually dishonest.

You twisted an anecdote into an advocacy of your deeply held beliefs without objectivity, or for that matter any corroborating evidence.

I don't know, I guess I'm just tired of people in the first world bitching about trivial first world problems, (like picking seats in a movie theater), when there are so many bigger problems in the world, especially the 3rd world where most people are lucky to get the food they need to survive let alone go to a movie theater. *shrugs*

That statement is an honest assessment of the theater situation. It has nothing to do with politics.