Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for November 21, 2011
November 20, 2011
November 22, 2011
Transcript:
Voices: #*#@! *$%! Assistant: Sharing your knowledge of basic economics, sir? Executive: Yes, I feel I owe it to the less fortunate. Assistant: You're a giver, sir. Executive: Yeah, it's a curse.
Wonder why they are not complaining to Congress about spending the money on Solyndra and letting Solyndra draw up the agreement so that when they go under the government does not get any of the money back?
“… it supports the idea that socialism (ala Comte and Marx) is Christian ethics minus God.”.Not exactly true, if we wanted to split theological hairs. In any case, I would suggest that anything minus God equals zero — at best.
@pschearerThe problem I have is not with the capitalists; they are doing what capitalists are supposed to do, maximize profits. Nor is it with capitalism, which is a very efficient system.
The problem is that capitalism without regulation is pretty much economic warfare, with a lot of collateral damage. We have learned the hard way that regulation is needed to protect the common good. EVERYONE (including the individual capitalist) is better off with proper regulation. (As a classic B-school example, look up “tragedy of the commons”.)
Regulation is imposed by government, specifically laws written by congress and enforced by the executive branch. The government is SUPPOSED to be acting on behalf of “the people” who vote them into office.
But here’s the problem with that theory. The electoral system today depends on reaching the voting populace through the media. That takes money; election campaigning becomes a spending race. The candidate’s message is almost less important than the ability to trumpet it as often and publicly as possible. So the politicians are beholden to the providers of campaign funds. Most of that money is coming from “the one percent” who have the money to spare. Result: the government has been paid off not to regulate.
How to tell if it is a Republican or Democrat: If he bought his own coffee then it is a Republican, if he used tax payer money to buy the coffee then it is a Democrat, but the Democrat will hire someone on the taxpayers dime to clean it up too, and call it job creation.
It is getting hard to tell the difference between them though.
That’s exactly how I came to be a democratic socialist as well. Jesus believed we should share our money with the poor and renounce material gain. I thought that fit better with socialism then with the “good-health-is-a-privilege, let-poor-people-die” Republican crowd.
“Jesus Christ was a man,who traveled through the land,A hard working man and brave.He said to the rich ‘Give your money to the poor’,so they laid Jesus Christ in his grave.”— Woody Guthrie
I guess it’s possible that you are actually TRYING to understand why people hold progressive views, and I’m sure that it’s impossible for you to put aside your prejudices long enough to actually hear what people are saying; but, I suspect that you are just sitting back in your aura of assumed superiority, and imagining that what you say has ultimate truth to it while the poor stupid people with progressive views of the world stumble around in a fog, adoring you and marveling at your wisdom. You would be wrong about that! We think you are selfish and small minded and blind to the suffering of others. We think that you are an evolutionary throw-back; one of the many who refuse to move ahead with history to the possibility of a peaceful and compassionate planet. I suppose you will never grow up, but I do wish you’d go away.
For me, it might have been the farm the banks got in Arkansaw when I was a kid. Or it might have been the time my dad got fired because he wouldn’t fire a newly returned Marine from Korea who was learning bulldozer operation and had made a couple of mistakes…everybody walked on that one, and our family lived mainly on what I made hoeing weeds out of an experimental alfalfa field that summer…start at five, quit at ten, nap till it cooled around three…work until sundown. Might have been fourteen.
Or maybe it was later: Green Beret, and then…to see the South in the 60’s…you have NO idea, think huts in Somalia. americans being treated like THAT, and we’re going to go free…who?
Or it might have been the nut bins for holding mentally disabled I worked at just before the sainted Ronnie R. privatized all that, and the investors his friends would throw up a shell warehouse, hire three nurses and some heavies to keep the nuts off the nurses, and take a couple of hundred recent humans and make bux from warehousing them…I got on a bike and rode to San Francisco in time for summer of Love…but even after all that, american to the core, I’ve helped my friends and done the capitalistic shtick myself…several times.Had a device me and my friends had worked on eight years…and sold examples, thirty, to LA, several to the US gov, etc…the device was STOLEN by Chrysler. Yup.
I’m not anti-capitalist. I’m just against the sonsof*******who can and have HURT me and my friends, and they are almost ALL of them better resourced than I am.
Get it? all you dud-dumbo so-called rightwing “conservatives” are just, to my ,mind, at least, the ones I’ve met, lots and lots, just COWARDS who want to blame and hurt people who are poorer or less well off or weaker than you are.
Hope you all go to Hell, and the sooner the better. Not speaking for anybody else, but most of you are pretty useless human beings.
That said, I used to have REpublican friends, but I don’t like Limbaugh and I don’t like unwarehoused stupid people running loose flapping their gums about stuff they ain’t got a clue about…the last smart repub I knew I left in California, and he had changed his party affiliation…
True “capitalism” is a LIBERAL concept, using new ideas, new ways of thinking, and intelligence to make a profit, for yourselves, your employees, and the nation as a whole.
“Conservatism” like “Patriot Act”, “Military Commissions Act”, no taxes on the wealthy or corporations, no benefits for the “average folk” is the most totalitarian accepting form of Feudalism since the 18th century! Spying on your every move, implemented by “conservative” administrations, along with petty or needless wars, IS repression!
That $8 cup of coffee he just threw out the window is not the symbol of “capitalism” or “conservatism”, it does represent all the evils of totalitarian thought, just like theocracy. Yes, “capitalism”, misinterpreted and misapplied, IS the religion of the “new right”. Caesar Nero would be proud.
I read today’s strip not as a comment on ‘trickle down economics’ and the “occupiers”, but as a commentary on the use of profanity. .There is no room for the use of profanity in any discourse, debate or protest. I walk away. I will not listen if all I hear is profanity.
So when will Wiley take a poke at the vacuity of the people at the receiving end of the coffee? .#OWS has one legitimate gripe – the bailouts – and it’s one shared by the Tea Party. But a lot of them call for socialism (yeah, let’s shift wealth concentration from the banks to the people who bailed them out!), a lot of them demand bailouts themselves (for student loans totaling $1 trillion), some of them are openly anti-Semitic (attracting David Duke’s endorsement), and a lot don’t really have any ideas – about policy, hygiene, or combating #OWS-generated violence.
Many good comments (and as a Libra, I see both sides) but like most (or all) I am into my own interests. I paid good money into SSA for all my life and did not ask for anything until I reached “retirement age” even though I took on extra jobs to support my 4 kids and make sure they went to college. And they continued my ethics and PAID student loans off if they had any. And I would still be working if construction were active here in my drafting (even though I accepted 1/2 the hourly I had on my previous salaried jobs for freelance after the last layoff). I see how the candidates who I chose (and vote for) lose because opposition had more TV ads and that makes me think that maybe the vote needs to return to some restrictions so that people need an interest in the country before they have that priviledge. Only land owners may be too extreme (from our distant past), but (OTT) even child bearing should probably have some restrictions based on recent cases I’ve observed. I think the “Not Gulty” in the Anthony case is already having repercussions, back to the plethora of children “falling from windows” back when I was much younger:-(
I agree. Some statements just don’t seem to have the same impact without a little swearing. But a little can go a long ways. A lot, turns people off. Which is unfortunate if you truly have a valid point.
hsawlrae about 13 years ago
Wouldn’t boiling oil work better?
pouncingtiger about 13 years ago
That’s all we can expect getting from the top 1% or Republicans.
rayannina about 13 years ago
“Trickle-down” economics in action.
landshark67 about 13 years ago
That’s all we can expect getting from the top 1% or Republicans
Never mind the 600 million missing from MF globa that was headed by liberal Jeff Corzine.
thirdguy about 13 years ago
He could at least throw down a few donuts too!!
AKHenderson Premium Member about 13 years ago
Does upscale coffee do anything for lice?
x_Tech about 13 years ago
Reminds me of Monty Python’sThe Architect Sketch
jreckard about 13 years ago
Looks like grounds for a lawsuit.
roctor about 13 years ago
Wheres the cake?
tripwire45 about 13 years ago
Look at it this way. He was sharing his coffee with the 99%. It’s cold outside. They could have used it to keep warm.
gfredrickson85 about 13 years ago
Wonder why they are not complaining to Congress about spending the money on Solyndra and letting Solyndra draw up the agreement so that when they go under the government does not get any of the money back?
beacat1955 about 13 years ago
Amen Brother, that’s all they deserve.
petepal55 about 13 years ago
At least they’re DOING something, talk is cheap.
walruscarver2000 about 13 years ago
Funny how many Right wingers are all for the Bible & Christ provided they don’t have to follow his teaching about charity/tolerance to others.
psychlady about 13 years ago
Oh, great – more politics!
CaptainKiddeo about 13 years ago
Step up and shake the handOf someone you can’t stand.You can tolerate him if you try.
Tom LehrerCaptainKiddeo about 13 years ago
Besides, tolerance is off-topic. Charity is on-topic. You’re a giver, sir.
PShaw0423 about 13 years ago
“… it supports the idea that socialism (ala Comte and Marx) is Christian ethics minus God.”.Not exactly true, if we wanted to split theological hairs. In any case, I would suggest that anything minus God equals zero — at best.
wicky about 13 years ago
Curses!
dtut about 13 years ago
@pschearerThe problem I have is not with the capitalists; they are doing what capitalists are supposed to do, maximize profits. Nor is it with capitalism, which is a very efficient system.
The problem is that capitalism without regulation is pretty much economic warfare, with a lot of collateral damage. We have learned the hard way that regulation is needed to protect the common good. EVERYONE (including the individual capitalist) is better off with proper regulation. (As a classic B-school example, look up “tragedy of the commons”.)
Regulation is imposed by government, specifically laws written by congress and enforced by the executive branch. The government is SUPPOSED to be acting on behalf of “the people” who vote them into office.
But here’s the problem with that theory. The electoral system today depends on reaching the voting populace through the media. That takes money; election campaigning becomes a spending race. The candidate’s message is almost less important than the ability to trumpet it as often and publicly as possible. So the politicians are beholden to the providers of campaign funds. Most of that money is coming from “the one percent” who have the money to spare. Result: the government has been paid off not to regulate.
APersonOfInterest about 13 years ago
Right on brother. BRAVO !!!
ImaginaryFriend about 13 years ago
How to tell if it is a Republican or Democrat: If he bought his own coffee then it is a Republican, if he used tax payer money to buy the coffee then it is a Democrat, but the Democrat will hire someone on the taxpayers dime to clean it up too, and call it job creation.
It is getting hard to tell the difference between them though.
jpsomebody about 13 years ago
Why waste good coffee, he should have just unzipped and gave them used coffee.
yohannbiimu about 13 years ago
Ahhh…Wiley finally has put his half-a-bit into the OWS. And…he SWINGS AND MISSES…just like 99% of the media.
TheSpanishInquisition about 13 years ago
That’s exactly how I came to be a democratic socialist as well. Jesus believed we should share our money with the poor and renounce material gain. I thought that fit better with socialism then with the “good-health-is-a-privilege, let-poor-people-die” Republican crowd.
TheSpanishInquisition about 13 years ago
“Jesus Christ was a man,who traveled through the land,A hard working man and brave.He said to the rich ‘Give your money to the poor’,so they laid Jesus Christ in his grave.”— Woody Guthrie
Can't Sleep about 13 years ago
Well said, Dogsniff!
Paladin39 about 13 years ago
“…Playboy Michael Moore…” bwahaha
Nelly55 about 13 years ago
that sums it up nicely, thanks
underwriter about 13 years ago
@dtut and TrustedMechanic et al – To sum it up, deregulation helps only bullies.
treered about 13 years ago
top 1% * OR * Republican…. pouncing did not say they were the SAME…
tcolkett about 13 years ago
I guess it’s possible that you are actually TRYING to understand why people hold progressive views, and I’m sure that it’s impossible for you to put aside your prejudices long enough to actually hear what people are saying; but, I suspect that you are just sitting back in your aura of assumed superiority, and imagining that what you say has ultimate truth to it while the poor stupid people with progressive views of the world stumble around in a fog, adoring you and marveling at your wisdom. You would be wrong about that! We think you are selfish and small minded and blind to the suffering of others. We think that you are an evolutionary throw-back; one of the many who refuse to move ahead with history to the possibility of a peaceful and compassionate planet. I suppose you will never grow up, but I do wish you’d go away.
tigre1 about 13 years ago
For me, it might have been the farm the banks got in Arkansaw when I was a kid. Or it might have been the time my dad got fired because he wouldn’t fire a newly returned Marine from Korea who was learning bulldozer operation and had made a couple of mistakes…everybody walked on that one, and our family lived mainly on what I made hoeing weeds out of an experimental alfalfa field that summer…start at five, quit at ten, nap till it cooled around three…work until sundown. Might have been fourteen.
Or maybe it was later: Green Beret, and then…to see the South in the 60’s…you have NO idea, think huts in Somalia. americans being treated like THAT, and we’re going to go free…who?
Or it might have been the nut bins for holding mentally disabled I worked at just before the sainted Ronnie R. privatized all that, and the investors his friends would throw up a shell warehouse, hire three nurses and some heavies to keep the nuts off the nurses, and take a couple of hundred recent humans and make bux from warehousing them…I got on a bike and rode to San Francisco in time for summer of Love…but even after all that, american to the core, I’ve helped my friends and done the capitalistic shtick myself…several times.Had a device me and my friends had worked on eight years…and sold examples, thirty, to LA, several to the US gov, etc…the device was STOLEN by Chrysler. Yup.
I’m not anti-capitalist. I’m just against the sonsof*******who can and have HURT me and my friends, and they are almost ALL of them better resourced than I am.
Get it? all you dud-dumbo so-called rightwing “conservatives” are just, to my ,mind, at least, the ones I’ve met, lots and lots, just COWARDS who want to blame and hurt people who are poorer or less well off or weaker than you are.
Hope you all go to Hell, and the sooner the better. Not speaking for anybody else, but most of you are pretty useless human beings.
That said, I used to have REpublican friends, but I don’t like Limbaugh and I don’t like unwarehoused stupid people running loose flapping their gums about stuff they ain’t got a clue about…the last smart repub I knew I left in California, and he had changed his party affiliation…
pswhitlark about 13 years ago
He’s ‘a giver’,,,, That’s the problem….
The Life I Draw Upon about 13 years ago
Keep the bailout. Throw him out the window.
Dtroutma about 13 years ago
True “capitalism” is a LIBERAL concept, using new ideas, new ways of thinking, and intelligence to make a profit, for yourselves, your employees, and the nation as a whole.
“Conservatism” like “Patriot Act”, “Military Commissions Act”, no taxes on the wealthy or corporations, no benefits for the “average folk” is the most totalitarian accepting form of Feudalism since the 18th century! Spying on your every move, implemented by “conservative” administrations, along with petty or needless wars, IS repression!
That $8 cup of coffee he just threw out the window is not the symbol of “capitalism” or “conservatism”, it does represent all the evils of totalitarian thought, just like theocracy. Yes, “capitalism”, misinterpreted and misapplied, IS the religion of the “new right”. Caesar Nero would be proud.
Hunter7 about 13 years ago
I read today’s strip not as a comment on ‘trickle down economics’ and the “occupiers”, but as a commentary on the use of profanity. .There is no room for the use of profanity in any discourse, debate or protest. I walk away. I will not listen if all I hear is profanity.
AKHenderson Premium Member about 13 years ago
So when will Wiley take a poke at the vacuity of the people at the receiving end of the coffee? .#OWS has one legitimate gripe – the bailouts – and it’s one shared by the Tea Party. But a lot of them call for socialism (yeah, let’s shift wealth concentration from the banks to the people who bailed them out!), a lot of them demand bailouts themselves (for student loans totaling $1 trillion), some of them are openly anti-Semitic (attracting David Duke’s endorsement), and a lot don’t really have any ideas – about policy, hygiene, or combating #OWS-generated violence.
Varnes about 13 years ago
gladiater, because they’re not stupid…..
DCWriter71 about 13 years ago
If he really meant to share his knowledge of economics, shouldn’t he have trickled the coffee on them instead of spilling the whole thing at once?
vldazzle about 13 years ago
Many good comments (and as a Libra, I see both sides) but like most (or all) I am into my own interests. I paid good money into SSA for all my life and did not ask for anything until I reached “retirement age” even though I took on extra jobs to support my 4 kids and make sure they went to college. And they continued my ethics and PAID student loans off if they had any. And I would still be working if construction were active here in my drafting (even though I accepted 1/2 the hourly I had on my previous salaried jobs for freelance after the last layoff). I see how the candidates who I chose (and vote for) lose because opposition had more TV ads and that makes me think that maybe the vote needs to return to some restrictions so that people need an interest in the country before they have that priviledge. Only land owners may be too extreme (from our distant past), but (OTT) even child bearing should probably have some restrictions based on recent cases I’ve observed. I think the “Not Gulty” in the Anthony case is already having repercussions, back to the plethora of children “falling from windows” back when I was much younger:-(
Hunter7 about 13 years ago
I agree. Some statements just don’t seem to have the same impact without a little swearing. But a little can go a long ways. A lot, turns people off. Which is unfortunate if you truly have a valid point.
grim509 about 13 years ago
for all those complaining about the top 1%…..
do you realize YOU are in the world’s top 1%???If you make over $34,000 a year, you are.
gorbag about 13 years ago
Remember the top 1% are mostly Demos. Keep the riff raft in their place by tossing them a bone once in a while. “let them have cake”…