*deep breath*

LOL LOL LOL LOL

Oh, Omega, you crack me up.

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Oh, fiddle faddle, everyone knows that our mutants have flippers. Oops, I've said too much.....
~C. Montgomery Burns

I do however love those grand know-it-all statements you make though.

But I might suggest to you Omega that there was more to your pithy previous post than your oversimplified discourse on the 80's economy.

Greed is not only the foundation of current American corporate society and ecomomy, but also the cornerstone on which this country was built. I can't think of finer synonyms for greed than the 1840's concept of Manifest Destiny or the 1890's crew of fine upstanding citizens known as the Robber Barons.

The accumulation of wealth, power, and materials, on the corporate and private level, supersedes just about everything else in this country. Not much has changed since the United States took the Southwest from Mexico; we have the largest ecological footprint in the world even though we have a small percentage of the world's population.

I can walk down Los Angeles Street, just a street or two over from here, and see the kindhearted system at work. Some folks over there have plastic for their cardboard houses to keep the rain out. Or how about decay in urban America as factories are closed, for non-greedy reasons to be sure, are closed and the work shiped away. Yup, those folks sure don't care about the stock deals and buyouts that the genial and compassionate CEO's have. I bet they sit around their TV watching Springer saying "let them have their millions, we can hunt rabbit for dinner."

But since you have pronounced yourself smarter then everyone else, I'll leave you with this to ponder...

Ozymandias

I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed.

And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

~Percy Bysshe Shelley

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Oh, fiddle faddle, everyone knows that our mutants have flippers. Oops, I've said too much.....
~C. Montgomery Burns

Jay:

Again, you miss the difference between greed and legitimate self-improvement and self-concern. Greed is taking your self-improvement to such a degree that it harms others (the government's high tax rates would be an example).

As for the homeless, you forget that we've been through this before. A majority simply don't want to be helped. A good number have mental disabilities, due to that little liberal bill that was passed a couple decades ago which disallowed the forced incarceration of mentally disabled people in mental hospitals. It's not that they can't find anyone willing to have compassion on them. It's that, in general, having true compassion on the mentally ill has been outlawed, and many of the rest simply don't want it. This has nothing to do with the supposed greed of the rest of the country.

This might be true IF a totalitarian dictator wasn't running the show. However, since a dictator is pulling the strings it stands to reason that any trade benefits would accrue to him and his cronies. As an example of this look at Iraq. Guess who takes a cut of the oil revenues? Yep, Saddam Hussein. Guess where the profits are funneled? Yep, Hussein's private bank accounts and/or into military spending. Little, if anything, benefits the common Iraqi citizen. Trade with Iraq, even on their current limited basis, has done nothing to "promote freedom" over there, and I would claim that the same thing would occur should trade be legalized with Cuba. The benefits would accrue to Fidel Castro, helping him remain in power. Appeasing dictators has historically generated the opposite effects than were intended. Trading with Cuba would not promote freedom there.

It's the one with the most toys attitude.

As for the homeless, I don't think that we ever went anything on them with each other. Perhaps you talked with DT about the issue. Perhaps in a different thread.

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Oh, fiddle faddle, everyone knows that our mutants have flippers. Oops, I've said too much.....
~C. Montgomery Burns

However I do love it when people trip themsevles up like this:
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Omega said: And our society is not based around greed. It's based around the desire to improve the conditions of yourself and your loved ones. The persuit of happiness, to coin a phrase. There's a big difference. Greed implies obtaining wealth to the detriment of others. But, to use the eighties as an example, individual prosperity led to higher levels of charitable giving.
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Now, on the face of it that statement may pass the scrutiny of a delirous camel. However old boy, you missed the most critical component of the current economic system. LIMITED RESOURCES. This means that there is only so much money, so much wheat, so much wood, or oil etc etc. Therefore, by increasing the amount of money you have, it is by default harming someone else. Sorry to bust your bubble, but that's the way it is. Greed is God.

Economics is not a zero-sum game.

Just because I gain doesn't mean someone else looses. I have a friend (who shall remain anonymous unless nesecary) who created his own contracting business. Used to be a preacher. Now he's living in a $300,000 home, which in Nashville is quite a bit of a house, especially when you live out in the sticks away from town like he does. So he's improved conditions for himself and his family by quite a bit. He's also created dozens of steady jobs, bettering standards for those around him. So tell me: who is harmed?

Wealth can be created and destroyed. It's created in the private sector, and destroyed by government. Look at MS, and at the sheer amount of wealth that has been destroyed by the government's unfounded lawsuit. As Rush is fond of saying, no country has ever taxed itself into prosperity. But when you let the private sector do it's thing, an amazing thing happens. Wealth is actually created. I believe Smith used the phrase "invisible hand" to describe the process.

Jay:

Sure greed exists, but I don't believe it dominates socitey, by any means.

And are you sure we haven't discussed this in another thread a while back? I could have sworn. But maybe it WAS with DT...

Or, to put it another way, I contribute to two mutual funds. I want to earn and save money for my retirement. Is that greedy? No, probably not. I just want to earn enough to live on and not be a detriment to society in my old age. I believe in individualism. If I screw up my finances, then its my fault, not society's or the government's (barring more bleeding heart tax hikes, that is!). My $100 a month goes toward supplying companies with capital so they can expand their businesses, conduct R & D, and put more people to work who otherwise might not have jobs. If I earn some dividends, then great. Everyone wins. If not, then I probably should have researched my potential investments better. In the end I control my future.

The problem with Cuba is that the people there don't have this simple opportunity to control their own economic destinies because Infidel Castro remains in power. I turned on MSNBC this morning and what did I see? Castro leading an anti-US rally protesting the current trade embargo. If the Cuban people really want to experience the joys of the free market then they should jettison the dictator who has kept them from prosperity for so long. Remember, Castro wasn't very vocal about protesting the trade embargo when Cuba was receiving an estimated one million dollars per day from the former USSR. Looks to me like he's just looking for another rich uncle to hit up for cash.

Omega: Uhh...wouldn't his former business competitors in contracting be harmed? In order for him to prosper, he had to steal (or "gain") customers from someone else.

Constellation: There's an interesting dilemma (paradox, idea...whatever.) The question is whether man creates history or if history creates the man. In other words, you can think of say Hitler "creating" the history that led up to WW2. But on the other hand, you can think of the history leading up to WW2 creating a "hole" for Hitler to rise to power.
In yet other words, if you took a time machine back to 1935 and killed Hitler, you might come back and find all of history exactly the same, except people might be asking you why you didn't kill Gobbels.

The question is whether the Cuban people even want to get rid of Castro, and if he magically disappeared, would the next person be just as bad? (or good, depending on your perspective)