Let me get this straight; collecting tariffs predominantly from the South, and spending them on railroads mostly in the North and West for the benefit of industrialists, does not qualify as income redistribution in your book?

Baloney, to put it mildly. Yes, you can have wealth/income redistribution without an income tax, and anyone moderately acquainted with the history of our country knows it. And yes, it’s welfare, as nobody would know the names of Leland Stanford and his cronies if we hadn’t.

Nothing confusing about it. I give one little piggy a block of cheese and a check. I give another little piggy a few thousand square miles of land and a check. Either way, it’s welfare.

Deal.with.it.

Either way, it’s welfare.

Wrong again. Your redefinition game makes discussion with you impossible.

I thought I’d share this …

CHANGES IN THE WORKPLACE
You small business owners out there are preparing for life under a Barack Obama presidency. One of our listeners sent us some new rules for small businesses based on Obama’s ideals of change and fairness:
As of November 5, 2008, when President Obama officially becomes president-elect, our company will instill a few new policies which are in keeping with his new, inspiring issues of change and fairness:
1. All salespeople will be pooling their sales and bonuses into a common pool that will be divided equally between all of you. This will serve to give those of you who are under-achieving a “fair shake”.

2. All low level workers will be pooling their wages, including overtime, into a common pool, dividing it equally amongst you. This will help those who are “too busy for overtime” to reap the rewards from those who have more spare time and can work extra hours.

3. All top management will now be referred to as “the government.” We will not participate in this “pooling” experience because the law doesn’t apply to us.

4. The “government” will give eloquent speeches to all employees every week, encouraging its workers to continue to work hard “for the good of all”.

5. The employees will be thrilled with these new policies because it’s “good to spread the wealth around”. Those of you who have underachieved will finally get an opportunity; those of you who have worked hard and had success will feel more “patriotic”.

6. The last few people who were hired should clean out their desks. Don’t feel bad, though, because President Obama will give you free healthcare, free handouts, free oil for heating your home, free food stamps, and he’ll let you stay in your home for as long as you want even if you can’t pay your mortgage. If you appeal directly to our democratic congress, you might even get a free flat screen TV and a coupon for free haircuts (shouldn’t all Americans be entitled to nice looking hair?)!!!

If for any reason you are not happy with the new policies, you may want to rethink your vote on November 4th

Well, at least you admit NOW that railroads were sucking at the public teat.

No. I stated it very clearly, and will repeat it as often as necessary, if you didn’t get it the first few times.

But no, there really isn’t a difference between ethanol and 19th century railroads.

Yes there is; a profound difference, which I have already explained, as well. You are welcome to your own opinions, but not to your own facts. Ethanol is an effort to “cure” global warming; are you really claiming that railroads were part of that effort? Ethanol is social engineering; railroads were not.
Again, profound differences.

Sorry you don’t get that.

Hey Bat. Thank you. I was addressing the part in Neiman’s post about voting.

This brings up one of my “hobby horses”, the concurrent passage in 1913 of both the 16th amendment (Allowing income taxes) and the 17th Amendment (direct election of Senators). I have not read a detailed study of debate and passage of these changes to the Constitution (I hope some can recommend one), but it seems to me that together, they fundamentally changed the nature of government in this country. The 16th amendment gave the Federal government unfettered access to collect taxes and the 17th amendment removed the last restraint of federalism on the central government. Before this, many State Legislatures used to appoint Senators which made them directly accountable to the State government.

This was probably the culmination of a process of centralization that started in the Civil War (see Gettysburg Address) but they only became possible with the strong Democrat (Progressive) majorities elected in 1912. It’s been nearly 100 years but the lessons about the size of change in a short period with a large majority should be a lesson for conservatives today.

It seems to me that the repeal of one or both of these amendments would do a lot to improve this country.

Does it matter? It seems that roughly half or more of Americans are not troubled by the redistribution of wealth, so it won’t deter anyone from voting Obama-Biden.

With all the ba ha ha aside, in this market, there is also an elephant that could “bear” a nip and tuck. Chin up, Quixote. At least one side of the equation has potential for long-term sustainability without crushing everything in its path. Still half full.

Obama’s first, second, and third priority is to get elected. If that means pandering to large numbers of unemployed, under employed, those on welfare, illegal aliens, and malcontents, he’ll be happy to throw them a few crumbs as a way to get their votes. He will also turn democracy and capitalism on it’s head, and villainize the affluent and successful in our society, in order to rally the masses behind him. With evangelical zeal Obama will convince his followers to replace reason with hope and belief … to blindly follow him … never challenge him … and embrace his words as gospel. In the real, and unforgiving world of economics however, when you immediately gratify everyone by feasting on the goose that lays the golden eggs, the economy looses it’s ability to continue generating growth and wealth. Obama is promising everyone a piece of the pie, whether they helped bake it, or not … but, only in a socialistic, or communist state do the non-contributors demand to share equally in the property that belongs to others. Immediate gratification is like a drug to the malcontents, but in the big picture, every farmer knows that you never eat your seed crop. If Obama gets elected, America will turn into a third world country, with massive government welfare programs, unable to generate jobs for it’s citizens, and unable to compete in the global markets. Keep America safe, free and strong … elect McCain/Palin on November 4th.

108, if they were doing just fine without help, please explain to me why every applicant for this help warns of the dire consequences of failing to help them? If the ViQueens don’t get help, they’ll leave for LA, if the MOA doesn’t get help, their business plan won’t work, if the railroad doesn’t get billions, we’ll get no coal……

Sorry, but the applicants for corporate welfare meet your definition; not being able to make it on their own.

The amount of private capital available in the 18th and 19th Centuries isn’t any sort of valid comparison to that available in the 21st Century, either. IMO, the generation and distribution of electric power also no longer needs to be in the public domain.

Old&Intheway, the reason it’s socialism is because Obama is not actually giving much tax relief, but is rather making the “tax cuts” apply even if the person owes no taxes.

In other words, for half the population, it’s not a tax cut, but is rather a welfare payment, and it rewards people for having low income. That is something that suggests socialism to me.

Ethanol would not even be a market without the govt subsidies; ditto wind and solar. The railroads were a market waiting for the necessary capital. No amount of govt subsidy will ever make ethanol, wind and solar profitable, as the demand for energy is well satisfied with the stored solar energy in oil, coal and natural gas.

So then the fact that ethanol makers and farmers are going broke is evidence that we aren’t subsidizing either of these? Wee little problem with your logic; subsidies don’t ensure economic success. Paleoconservatives would point out that the opposite is closer to the truth.

Sorry, reality is that railroads got large amounts of land and cash for building railroads. That’s why the UP and CP were building a lot of track parallel to each other near Promontory Point–you can still see the embankments that were built to try and get more land/money/government cheese.

The fact that some of the railroads went broke is evidence that your claim is untrue. I don’t think Wiki is accurate on this subject, btw. I have already described the nature of the “subsidies” for the railroads. It was certainly a jumpstart at a time when private capital was far less than it is today. Nevertheless, after that jumpstart, railroads had to compete in the free market, and some failed. Had they been GSEs, they would not have failed, as you should know.

Not just Amtrak. Keep in mind that the Union Pacific, Central Pacific, and a host of other railroads were subsidized in the 19th century and onward–bringing us (with the high tariffs need to fund the railroads) both the Civil War and the Indian wars, as well as numerous panics in the late 19th century.

And yeah, it’s welfare, as the CP never would have been started without the railroad lawyer’s promise of subsidies.

To be perfectly clear, railroads in America were destroyed by Unions and Democrat Party actions. Period. Full stop.

108, so you’re arguing that since the cockamamie argument for railroad welfare was different, that it is totally different from ethanol, which is supported by other cockamamie arguments?

Well, I guess that there is a difference between cow and steer manure, but that doesn’t change where it ought to go.

Well, at least you admit NOW that railroads were sucking at the public teat. That’s a start.

But no, there really isn’t a difference between ethanol and 19th century railroads. Despite massive fraud by the CP (that Leland Stanford used to build the college that bears his son’s name) and others, the massive subsidies for railroads failed to get them started right. Most pretty much were bankrupt except for the railroad acts passed by Congress in the late 1800s.

The cost of the second round of subsidies; labor strife that continues to this day, as people got used to payouts unrelated to their actual productivity.

The exception? The Great Northern, of course, which did not accept subsidies, and was virtually alone in being profitable at the time. J.P. Hill started by….

….buying a bankrupt railroad that had been started with government money. What did he get for his money?

….not even a functioning track. Just the right of way and very little rolling stock.

So please, let’s discard the myth that somehow railroad welfare was some sort of “good investment” or somehow “different” from subsidies for ethanol, the Mall of America, or other things. The pleas for more subsidies and bankruptcy filings by subsidized railroads are part of history.

Deal.with.it.

How much in corporate welfare has been spent in the last decade?

There is no such thing as “corporate welfare”; you have been deceived by lying leftie propaganda. Also, President Bush’s modest tax rate cuts were for everybody; anything else would be class warfare.

Again: you are drinking the leftie KoolAid.

2H9, exactly what is revisionist about pointing out the facts that:

1. In the mid to late 19th century, railroads were heavily subsidized?

2. That one of the reasons the South seceded was because of the tariffs that were to be charged to pay for the railroads?

3. That one of the reasons for the Indian wars of the late 1800s was that the railroads had brought a lot of people onto Indian lands?

These are all historical facts, and you can look up the laws by which they were subsidized, the secession documents of the Confederacy, and read histories of the West to understand the real tragedy of the UP/CP and other subsidized railroads.

Revisionist history, on the other hand, is to claim that

1. Railroads would not have eventually been built when the market was ready.

2. The taxes paid by the subsidized railroads exceed the costs, including the Civil and Indian wars, of subsidizing them.

My anti-American union advocacy? Say what?

You can look it up, 2H9. Reality is that many/most railroads were heavily subsidized in the 19th century, and that unionization was a response to the unholy alliance between government and big business.

Want to point a finger or two for the problems of railroads? Great. You gotta point at least one at the great railroad lawyer, Abraham Lincoln, if you want to be historically accurate.

I’m no advocate of unions, but I understand that they arose because government colluded with big business to more or less keep many workers as slaves with company scrip, company stores, and so on.

woofie, you are one of the assholes who told us all about how govmint had to subsidized ethanol cuz it is just so fucking necessary. So now you are admitting you are a lying fucking asshole?

BB, you are in support of killing the railroads? How Democrat of you.

I’m certainly in support of ending subsidies/welfare to railroads that cannot make it on their own, yes. On the other hand, profitable railroads like the Great Northern in its heyday are A-OK in my book.

So yeah, I do take that from the Democrats–those of over a century ago, when many of them still believed in liberty and states’ rights.

How about the Erie Canal? No tax revenue from it, either?

Government did not take money from citizens and give it to the builders of railroads, it expanded the base of taxes collect through population expansion resulting from the railroads. Prior to the RRs tax revenue from population west of the Mississippi was a haphazard endeavor, and what taxes were collected remained in the local region, as the Founding Fathers intended.

The Union/socialist line is that railroads were and are evil, they are the personification of Marx’s Capitalist Bourgeois.

2H9, given that railroads effectively paid no taxes until FDR (when corporate taxes were expanded to replace tariff and excise revenues as main sources of revenue), I’m having an awful difficult time believing your claim.

But even if it were correct, it doesn’t change the fact that yes, indeed, the government has been in the business of distributing cheese for an awfully long time. Moreover, it’s got some pretty horrific effects, as anyone who served under Lee, Grant, Sitting Bull, or Custer knew very well.

It’s still neither welfare nor redistribution, no matter how hard you try to make it so. Again, there was a scarcity of private capital then. We have public utilities today because of that fact, even though electricity could be privately owned and capitalized now, IMO. If we did that, we wouldn’t be facing shortages like we are today.

Two: The thrust of what the lefties are claiming here is that redistribution works, and BB is using the railroads as an example of that. Shakey ground. In fact, lefties always bash the “Railroad Barons”, while in reality they built the transportation infrastructure in this country in the 19th and early 20th Centuries. You can’t have it both ways; was it the govt redistribution that built the railroads, or was it the “robber barons”? That’s just playing the class envy card both ways.

Well if you want to pick nits about it, the first white people to cross the plains did so on foot and in canoes, but does that really change the fact that huge conflicts with the South, and with the Indians, really started when people started to make it easy to get there with railroads?

These welfare decisions have consequences, and just because the recipient is a little more respectable looking doesn’t mean that it’s not welfare. You open up the Plains, you get more sales for makers of rail stock, Deere & Company, Cyrus McCormick, and a bunch of other people who….

….did business in Lincoln’s home state of Illinois.

Sorry, babydoll. The US government made massive amounts of money FROM railroads, in several different ways. Keep spewing the revisionist history, it is funny as hell.

Wrong. It’s the reverse. The plains were crossed by covered wagons. It’s a matter of history. You’re trying real hard to stretch the facts to fit your predetermined position, but no dice.

BB: No income tax in the 19th Century, therefore no redistribution. Just a tiny flaw in your reasoning.

And you have yet to show or prove a single “welfare” payment to any railroad other than Amtrak. Why is that?

Created a lot of wealth? You have just wandered into a confrontation with Bastiat’s “that which is unseen.” Are we to seriously argue that the money spent on railroads would not have been spent on other, and profitable, enterprises? Are we to claim that the self-interest of Southerners is so misguided that, say, they wouldn’t have used their own money to build more of their own railroads?

And are we to seriously argue that western railroads would not have been built as people saw markets forming?

Sorry, 108, but the history of railroad welfare is one of squandered fortunes granted to lawless men, who in turn squandered it. It’s not that complicated; if AFDC was a disaster, and it was, so were welfare payments to railroads.

108, so you’re arguing that since the cockamamie argument for railroad welfare was different, that it is totally different from ethanol, which is supported by other cockamamie arguments?

Wrong again. I can see now that you simply ignore facts and logic that don’t agree with your position, since I have explained the clear differences several times already. Subsidies aren’t welfare, again.

Your manure analogy is very revealing of how you think.

And 2Hotel still has not proved the elinas said it. Not one piece of evidence. Deal with it.

And still not one single example of welfare other than Amtrak. Not. One. Deal. With. It.

In other words, for half the population, it’s not a tax cut, but is rather a welfare payment,

OK, Fair enough, I can definitely see your point with that…but I am still curious when you view it that way, why is there not more outrage for the deal that the Alaskan citizens receive and that Palin was loudly praised for increasing….I still get a sense of hypocrisy from the whole thing…

WaPo has always been in the forefront of history revisionism. Just read it sometime.

Subsidies and welfare are not the same thing. They’re both wrong, but for different reasons.

Ethanol subsidies

There is no such thing as “corporate welfare”