[Professor S]

Originally Posted by Xantar

Sure I can. A general election poll shows Edwards beating Giuliana. Of course, a poll this far away from Election Day is meaningless, but it shows that such a result is within the realm of possibility. Here's another poll showing Obama beating McCain in a general election. Again, it's totally meaningless as far as predicting what will actually happen. But it's not inconceivable at this point.

Xantar, I have plenty of links to polls that show both McCain and Guiliani beating Obama and Clinton in the general election, and I'm sure you've seen them. It depends on the pollster and the poll taken. To isolate on only those that back your opinion is dishonest.

The minimum wage was a nice issue for the Democrats in the last election, and I didn't oppose raising it. Nor would I necessarily oppose raising it even more. But both you and Strangler overestimate its effect. Less than 1% of the total work population actually works at the federal minimum wage. Many states have mandatory minimum wages higher than the federal one anyway. To have a really big effect one way or another, you would have to jack the federal minimum wage up to something like $12/hour.

All that raising the minimum wage will do is eliminate those 1% who have those jobs. Why pay a clerk $12 an hour when you could just have a touch screen instead? The only reason why those positions are available (mainly for students and retired) is because its cost effective. Remove the cost effectiveness, and kiss those low skilled jobs goodbye. It changes nothing except eliminating jobs for those that need them to supplement income or create expendable income. Raising the minimum wage is an issue that has no business being an issue, because it solves NOTHING.

What we need is a better education system and a healthcare system that's affordable for all (I happen to think universal health care will do it, but that's a whole other issue).

Our education system is only as good as those that are in it. We keep on saying how out schools are now garbage, yet I can't see anything that we have removed from them? We've added course after course, we've expanded curricilum, changed it constantly to keep up with the latest and greatest fields, and yet it is failing.

So what is the REAL problem?

This is why I can't buy into the leftist view of the world, because I feel they have everything upside down. Government is the cure-all, when increasing its size has only wasted money and fixed NOTHING. The war on poverty? Failure. The war on drugs? Failure. The IRS? A failure that has turned into a an intimidating gestapo-like agency.

In the past, many European countries have moved to policies like the one's mentioned above, and they have also been massive failures. France just elected a CONSERVATIVE, PRO AMERICAN president. YES, FRANCE. Germany did the same years earlier. There is a reason why the rest of the world is slowly moving away from socialist policies.

The reason... failure (and in France, riots and self-hatred).

The answers are not in our stars, or in the government, they're in ourselves. We all have every opportunity in the world to succeed, even though some have an admittedly haarder time than others. The opportunity is still there because so far no one can stop us from pushing ahead but our own doubt and fear. Until we stop pointing fingers at everyone else for our own inadequacies, no amount of government involvement will fix anything. In fact, it will just enable our own addiction to apathy and blame.