How many "Star" DUers currently have you on their ignore list?

[HughBeaumont]

487. Two star members, two non-star members.

This is a progressive board, not a "Praise Plutocrats" board. All four support the following pro-Republican economic tenets (specifically #7, #8 and #9), which is why they're in the Red-X Toilet:

1. The prime function of a business or corporation is to care for the shareholder's needs only, by which I mostly mean "major".

2. Business functions best as a "top down" model; hypothetically speaking, of course.

3. You CAN "feed the birds by giving the horse more oats".

4. That this country's economic problems have more to do with "high taxes", "high wages" and "strangling regulations" than wealth inequality and top-heavy greed.

5. It's absolutely not possible to pay workers a better wage and still be profitable (an idea that completely ignores the very real fact that Middle/Working/Poor wages haven't risen in real dollars since 1979 while income of the wealthy has outpaced inflation, productivity, their cost of living and lotteries).

6. The post-WWII boom cannot be replicated (no one's really saying it HAS to be; that doesn't mean we have no choice but to accept "Trickle-On" . . . there ARE happy mediums).

7. The Republican model of Free Trade, a zero-sum proposition that surmises because the price of tchotchkes are going down, the worker is better off . . . among other things (this ignores the very real fact that it's ever-increasing-in-price necessities (i.e. education, housing, health care, transportation, food, etc) that are killing the average American's pocketbooks).

8. The Republican model of Globalization, a zero-sum proposition that dictates (for all nations involved) environmental standards, worker rights, worker wages, worker morale, worker safety and business regulations must be destroyed in proportion to the enormous increase in company productivity on the BACKS of those strained workers, layoffs, profits, CEO/management salaries, perk packages, stock options, exit packages and, as we're tragically seeing, governmental influence.

9. The Republican model of offshore outsourcing, another zero-sum proposition that laughably states "While we ship low-skill work over THUR, it frees up better jobs fur the higher-skill 'Murkin workers over HERRR!" (yet again ignoring the fact that high-skilled work is ALSO being shipped overseas and companies are getting tax breaks to DO so).

10. Americans simply have to accept a lower standard of living adherent to their inevitably lower wages (There's never a discussion on how wages can keep up with the cost of living, productivity and inflation . . . only that we can't participate in a consumer-based economy by proxy, but the wealthy absolutely HAVE to have THEIR needs met first, foremost and often times, ONLY).