Re: The record industry, RIAA and US law

[Ron Johnson <ron.l.johnson@cox.net>]

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On 05/16/07 20:26, gray wrote:
>>> Chris - you are right to ask this poster to check the facts.  I wonder
>>> if he was ever on welfare and if so - for how long?  Also I wonder how
>>> easy it actually is to qualify for this welfare.
>> I assume you're talking about me as the OP in this case, but it would
>> help if you would include the "Username posted on Date" so that it is
>> easier to follow.  I already replied to Chris' message.
> 
> Sorry Joe.  I didn't track your name back on that post as I was in a
> hurry.  As it turns out your original post was wayyy back...  Now I've
> found it I like the way you were sure to tag these points with
> <opinions>.  I'm also pleased that this wasn't part of a big 'welfare
> bludgers' rant as I feared.
> 
> So these points are not necessarily for you - whomever the cap fits...
> 
> People like to think welfare recipients get it easy.  The question
> is : compared to who?  Usually compared to minimum wage earners...
> Often people judge the laziness of welfare recipients on the thinnest
> of evidence.  Laziness can be a product of lifestyle as much as it can
> create lifestyle...  You would have to know someone pretty well to
> draw such a judgement - I'm not sure if I could even safely make such
> a judgement about a sister or borther.  Is there really a connection
> between how you earn a living and whether or not you're lazy?  So
> Gordon Gecko might say.

My mother runs a rural mail[*] route sees how the (*high* percentage
black) poor people on her route game/sponge the system, living off
the government dole.

To counterbalance that, and ensure that you understand that this
isn't racist talk, her daughter, my sister is also gaming the
system, pretending to be injured to get disability and Social
Security.  And my youngest sister who works in a near-by post
office, was *stunned* at the number of whites & blacks who came in
trying to get multiple addresses so that they could get multiple
Hurricane Katrina relief checks.

[*] And, conservative Christian and Republican that she is, is also
pro-Union and shop steward.

> Minimum wage workers are getting a very raw deal in most parts of the
> world at present as far as I can see.  It is interesting that Joe
> cites the US as a possible exception.  Most Australians (and I expect
> the rest of the world) have heard stories of the income received by
> WALMART attendants and other US minimum wagers.  Myself and my friends
> have also experienced first hand, as teenage workers, the union
> busting tactics of US multinationals such as McDonalds.

The minimum wage was never intended to be "enough to feed a family
on" wage.

>                                                         There is also
> the phenomenon of economic deprivation forcing people into the US army
> which I have heard about.

I'm pretty sure that there's *always* been some of that.

>                           Without broadening the Offtopic too much
> this is one of many reasons why the US is distrusted globally as a
> social and political system to emulate: if the US can't even treat its
> own citizens well...  Anyway I know this was a favourite topic of
> propaganda in the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War - but that does
> mean here and now that it is false.

As Roberto stated, the US doesn't assert the unalienable Right of
Happiness.

> Bob Dylan said 'and the poor white remains on the caboose of the
> train' when he was showing how the deprived white classes of America
> were groomed to hate the black rights movement.  They saw a class
> trying to rise past them and 'like a dog on a chain' they had been
> trained to guard that particular exit.  I think 'loose' comments about
> welfare recipients often work in a very similar way.  Except perhaps
> the poor white is now the middle class white.

There's two kinds of discrimination: irrational (beliefs without a
factual basis: put down niggers because drug-crazed black men will
rape white women), and rational (beliefs with some [semi-]hard
factual basis: distrust poor blacks because the amount of property
crime in your neighborhood exploded after the racial-economic makeup
of the apartment complexes a few blocks away shifted from poor
whites to poor blacks).

>> Interesting observation.  I agree that there are workers in the labor
>> market needed, and certain jobs are not desirable for educated people,
>> so one could argue that it is better to purposely not educate a certain
>> number of people so that the only benefit they will have for society is
>> their unskilled labor.  IMO, it's not a very attractive policy.
> 
> 'not attractive' is to put it a bit over-mildly I think.  Many of
> those certain jobs are not attractive regardless of education.

But if that's all the education you have...

>> The problem is not a simple one to solve, because everyone should have
>> the right to board and housing, but someone has to pay for it.
> 
> Empty slogan.  Not to say there is no content here but that is a VERY
> big topic.  The art of economics is precisely that and anyone who
> thinks it is a science has been brainwashed by one of the many camps
> of economists who claim to have found the 'true path'.  As my friend
> Bob Dylan ironised (now I really am sounding like an old hippy) 'If
> dogs run free then why can't we across the sweeping plains'.  He was

Wild dogs have a hard life.  Prey animals don't *want* to be prey,
and make wild dogs work as hard as possible for their food.

> referring, at least a bit, to the biblical parable about the lilies of
> the fields not needing to pay for their clothes.  The truth on this
> topic is hugely more complex than 'someone has to pay for it'.  With
> due respect.

Because that's just the way it is in any society more complex than a
few dozen people living in a village in the middle of the jungle.

>> I remember learning in my youth that "Nothing is free, somebody,
>> somewhere pays for what you get for nothing."  Even the air we breathe
>> costs money because there are people who monitor it, and that costs
>> money.  However, we don't individually have to pay for it (yet).
> 
> you should question what you learned in your youth.  Perhaps
> everything is paid for already.  I was taught in my youth that 'people
> only ever steal from greed - not from need'.  It took me a long time
> to see how ridiculous this statement is: the sort of bullshit fed to
> young-uns on a daily basis.  Perhaps if I was a catholic I would have
> been given 'the lilies of the field' instead.

Sure, question it.  And then realize that TANSTAAFL is a universal
truth.

- --
Ron Johnson, Jr.
Jefferson LA  USA

Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day.
Hit him with a fish, and he goes away for good!

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