But then they wouldn't get "The best of the best" fish.

I'm really considering emailing my state congressmen about it but most of em seem pretty corrupt.  I mean you could pass a law that allows someone to salvage the overspill for food shelters and homeless shelters.

Suddenly the food shelters and homeless shelters would be overflowing with food.

Social liberal welfare states have the highest social mobility in the world. In the developed world, the US and the UK is at the bottom of the list. In the UK social mobility used to be much higher, but dropped like a rock during the 8 years of Margaret Thatcher's libertarian rule.

I hope you understand that by supporting right-wing libertarian politics you are making it much harder for people such as yourself to escape poverty in the future.

" Despite this formal opportunity for social mobility, recent research suggests that Britain and particularly the United States have less social mobility than the Nordic countries and Canada.^[10][11] These authors state that "the idea of the US as ‘the land of opportunity’ persists; and clearly seems misplaced." " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility

" Researchers at the London School of Economics found that Britain appeared to have one of the worst records for social mobility in the developed world.

The report focused on how education affected the life chances of British children compared with those in other countries. It put the UK and the US at the bottom of a social mobility league table of eight European and North American countries, with Norway at the top followed by Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Germany and Canada.

Family income in the childhood years does make a genuine difference to educational outcomes. Income inequality has risen at the same time as the gap between the educational attainments of the richest and poorest has grown." http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2005/apr/25/socialexclusion.accesstouniversity

" But for most of the poor, the United States is no longer the land of opportunity. Economic research in the past decade has found that upward mobility has faded; most of the children of rich parents stay rich and the children of the poor remain poor. "Economists in the past have underestimated the barriers to the children of the poor getting ahead," says Samuel Bowles, an economist at the Santa Fe Institute. " http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0127/p21s01-coop.html

I would prefer a harder clime to the top, with more reward. The key is not if it's hard or not, but if the government is stopping you from getting there.

No country in the world stops you less then the US. Who gives a shit if it's hard.

A couple of questions ...

If you have a country where the top 5% of earners makes $45,000 or more and the bottom 5% of earners makes $10,000 or less that has twice the "Social Mobility" than a country where the top 5% of earners makes $135,000 or more and the bottom 5% of earners makes $20,000 or less, in which country are the poor people worse off?

If you have a country where the debt to gdp ratio is growing by 2% per year which has a higher social mobility than a country where the debt to gdb ratio is shrinking by 2% per year, in which country are the citizens worse off?

There are no easy answers to this, but I wanted you to consider that a couple of years ago Iceland was one of the great examples of a social democracy.

Let's also remember that Iceland swerved to the left....and now, they are paying for it. I ask you, how can you get a job if the government is STEALING money for people who could have use it to pay you, and then giving it to unenployed people. how does that help anybody?

So I opened the history book....

So tyou mean that all you need to become a top power is have everyone else bomb their industries to hell and back, TWICE, and then accept all intellectual immigrants from such places? Without actually having to do shit and then taunt it as if they actually did something? Yeah I think that works pretty well. Another fail thread.

That's what I have been telling you...

The Government only needs to get out of the way, and let the people do what people do better then Government.

Thanks for proving my point :p

Why did they leave there country? There government. Why did they flourish in ours? The Government.

People in the US, thanks to little government, used to work a lot harder then the rest of the world, and it showed. Now we don't, and it shows.

That's fair. I'm not going to argue against that, except to say that I have absolutely no interest in living in your dream society. Nor do I understand why anyone would want more "reward" than they need in order to be happy. If you already have a 10 million dollar bank account, then I seriously doubt another 10 million dollars is going to make any difference to your happiness. But you may of course be a special case.

Anyway you're wrong about "No country in the world stops you less then the US". There's plenty of countries in the third world where the income gap between the rich and the poor is even larger than the US. And there's plenty of countries around the world with a lower income tax.

May I suggest you move to Mexico. I think you'd be a lot happier there (assuming you don't already live there).

I fail to see how those questions are relevant to the discussion. It's not like you have to choose one or the other. High levels of social mobility tend to go hand in hand with economic prosperity.

The US has been hit by the recession just as hard as Iceland, while most of the liberal welfare states around the world are doing much better. So what exactly is your point ?

In a typical industrialized nation the upper class recieves significant tax benefits when they invest their money into job creation. This is why many rich people hardly pay taxes at all. The working class recieves various benefits from the state (such as education), and the value of these benefits typically exceeds the tax money they pay. All of which means the middle class are the ones that ends up paying the welfare bill.

Now since the main function of the middle class is to offer society highly specialized academic skills (rather than create jobs), there are no economical reasons not to tax the middle class hard and give the money to the poor. And no, studies have shown that financial incentives are not needed in order to encourage people to get an education. The increased social status is incentive enough.

Giving a 100 dollar bill to a lawyer has no effect on his happiness. But give a 100 dollar bill to a beggar on the street and it *will* increase his happiness. This is why a certain re-distribution of wealth from the middle class to the poor will increase overall happiness in a society. And that is one of many reasons why welfare makes sense.

Of course you may oppose such re-distribution of wealth for moral/religious reasons, but then at least be honest about it. The government spending money on welfare isn't going to ruin the economy any more than spending money on property protection or defence.

And BTW Iceland has never "swerved to the left" anymore than the rest of western Europe/Canada/Australia.