So, ultimately, who's responsibility is it?

So, progressives have made EVERY excuse in the book as to why people are incapable of being successful including but not limited to:

race
gender
age
geography
upbringing
economic status
capitalism
exploitation
ad infinitum

Alright..... So let's get down to the bare basics here. WHO is responsible for your success?

A. The individual

B. Society/government

We've already seen how progressives think the government should be mommy and daddy providing food, clothing, cell phones, shelter, medical care ad infinitum to EVERYONE regardless of silly notions such as WHO is going to pay....... So, do they really think someone other than themselves is responsible for their success?

If you don't think you have any responsibility for yourself than please share with the board why someone else should be responsible for you if you don't think you should be responsible for yourself?

 

One needs to have a reasonable alternative of opportunities (i.e. things more realistic than expecting 5,000 people whose plant just shut down in Wichita to move to New York City because there are jobs in New York City). Once one has reasonable opportunities, it is up to the individual, so the answer to your poll is both A & B.

 

What's your excuse for being a failure? You can pick two from the list if you like.

 

DELL, Microsoft and H-P were all started in garages. Clearly people without a garage cannot succeed.

 

We have a reasonable alternative of opportunities unless you have no job skills or education which is of course, your fault.

- - - Updated - - -

You're attempt to avoid taking responsibility for yourself is duly noted.

- - - Updated - - -

 

We do not have reasonable alternative of opportunities. (I assume that ridiculous attempt at a phrase was intended to mean we have a lot of opportunities) Our intellectual property laws forbid us from the manufacture of modern products. Nor do we have access to raw materials at fair prices. You can point to businesses that started in garages decades ago but the fact is that those businesses grew and seized control over the market. They now forbid anyone from competing with them.

Why did so many of our businesses defect to communist China? Why weren't these "brilliant businessmen" able to make it here in the States? We've heard the defectors blame the tax laws, currency value, unions, pollution laws, and even the people who worked for them. Who is responsible for their treason?

You Red Party collectivists are always claiming that every problem the individual has is the fault of the individual but every problem faced by the almighty business collective is the fault of the individual.

 

I don't know who the "we" are but there are places in America where "we" do not have a reasonable amount of opportunity as NAFTA, GATT, WTO, et als have sent many people's jobs overseas and not brought many jobs to replace them. There are places with double digit unemployment that are not inner city black gang-ridden housing projects and when the government does induce people to come, they are jobs that require a skill set that keep hundreds of middle aged former factory workers from getting the comparative handful of new jobs like alternative energy research or software design or robotic engineering.

 

Can you rephrase the question?

I have responsibility for myself, and to other people, those who cannot cope etc. What am I missing?

 

It doesn't need to be rephrased. You're simply attempting to make excuses for other people. Cannot cope.....

 

Ok so WHO'S RESPONSIBILTY is it to get the education and skill set necessary to get those software design or robotic engineering jobs?

If a good job is 200 miles away, is it YOUR responsibility to move closer or should the business uproot itself and move into your neighborhood?

Did you guys not see that simpleton manual labor was going to be replaced with automation and technology a decade or so ago? So, it is YOUR responsibility to adapt? Or should society junk all their automation and computer equipment to provide you with a mind numbing simpleton manual labor job?

 

Treason.....

 

Someone who was educated in the 60's and 70's, started working in the 70's isn't going to have ever had the chance to learn code. Business will uproot themselves and move, even if it is an employer in your area or maybe your own employer, if the right package of incentives is offered to them. If you are not willing to create new opportunities, existing opportunities will just be sold to the highest bidder. It is why all your rust belt jobs are coming South. Capitalism is a two way street, and given your state's bond rating being the worst in the nation and your being home to one of the most violent cities in the US, I would say your state can ill afford to shed a single job.

 

Have anything relevant to the OP. I mean besides the excuses why it's ALWAYS someone else's responsibility.

 

Do you mean there are no people who cannot cope?

 

I mean your response has nothing to do with WHO'S responsibility it is to succeed. But now that you mention it..... coping is ALSO an individual responsibility. Do you wipe people's butts for them after they go poop too?

 

Socialists never take responsibility for their own actions. They are the very antithesis of personal accountability.

 

Well, I think we're finding out why too. They're incapable of succeeding. I actually had a progressive in another thread claim landowners was keeping him from succeeding.....

 

Answer is A- you are ultimately responsible for your own success

 

*ding *ding *ding *ding

We have a winner!

 

Amazingly simplistic OP. seems you have a rather binary perspective on the world.

Do you blame a person with suffering from fetal alchohol syndrome for their lack of education or social dysfunction?

Do you blame the person with the room temperature IQ for their lack of education or lack of job skills (floor mopping and burger flipping are not job skills).

Do you blame the person who succumbs to peer pressure in the absence of role models?

Do you blame the person who works full time and still needs food stamps to feed their family?

Seems there are a lot of reasons why people are impoverished, or find themselves the working poor.

Yet there are those that sit upon their high horses and look down upon those in order to make themselves feel much better about the level of mediocrity to which they have risen. By all means they should be proud of their achievement, but if that pride comes at the expense of denigration of those less fortunate it isn't pride, its misplaced arrogant conceit.

Sure there are a small % of society that will blame everyone else but themselves for their troubles. But that isn't an exclusive characteristic of the poor, its a characteristic of our human nature.

I too, have distain for those who feel entitled to a "free ride", but those people are a miniscule minority. And I for one an intellectually honest enough to recognize that fact and not attempt to paint all of them with the same brush.

Although it is tempting to paint misanthropic rightwing hypocrites with it, so I at least can glimpse their motivation while utterly rejecting it.

 

Well, you either believe it's the individuals responsibility to achieve success or you don't.

Does this somehow absolve them of their personal responsibility?

Does this somehow absolve them from their personal responsibility?

Does this somehow absolve them of their personal responsibility?

It's certainly not my fault nor my responsibility to take care of them through government force but that doesn't stop you from applying your morals to others now does it?

Sure. The difference between a successful person and an unsuccessful person is belief. Successful people believe they be successful regardless of what life throws at them. Unsuccessful people don't believe they'll be successful so they use what life throws at them as an excuse to be unsuccessful and not take responsibility for their lives.

High and mighty huh? When I was 19, I was homeless, kicked out of high school with a 1.6 GPA, kicked out of my parents house, went through 4 drug and alcohol treatment centers, had a 3 1/2 page juvenile record and a felony arrest for involuntary manslaughter due to a car accident in which my best friend died. You can't get much lower and still be alive.

You know what my problem was? I blamed EVERYONE ELSE for my lot in life and NEVER took responsibility for myself. It was my mom's fault for being an alcoholic and beating the (*)(*)(*)(*) out of me when I was a kid. It was my dad's fault for always working and never being home. It was the police's fault cause they were picking on me. It was the schools fault cause they are out to get me.

But.... spending 60 days in prison and getting out only to look to garbage cans for my next meal got me to thinking...... While maybe I wasn't responsible for EVERYTHING that life had handed me, maybe it was my life I was responsible for. Certainly, there was no one else on this earth who cared.

So, I made a decision to accept responsibility for my life and AMAZING things happened. While starting my sober career making $3.35 an hour, 35 hours a week and STILL paying ALL my bills without government "aid", I quickly moved up to management. Then I became a store manager. Eventually I moved onto another job where I worked all the way from the bottom to a 9 year stint as general manager.

Then I got laid off and replaced with the owners son. Since we had a lot of cash laying around from being fiscally responsible, I decided to take 3 1/2 years off an attain my BSN which I also paid cash for($70,000). I finished with a 3.94 GPA and class valedictorian. Was I the smartest in the class? Nope but I had all the tools necessary to be successful. The first being, take responsibility for my life.....

Been there, done that. If you aren't successful you have NO ONE to blame but yourself and NO ONE owes YOU anything.

Small percentage? Our entire culture is centered around blaming others.

They aren't a miniscule minority. They're almost half of the country. But you're intellectually dishonest enough to let them "slide" due to their poor poor life circumstances.

You're a typical enabling, codependent progressive who lives for "taking care" of others. All you're really doing is robbing them of the opportunity to do it themselves which is essential for their success.

Had I allowed people like you in my life at 19, I'd be dead face down in a ditch 26 years ago.

I became a RN BSN to REALLY help those less fortunate, the mentally ill. And I don't enable them with other people's money. I empower them to take responsibility for their life.

 

Oh good you have grasped the concept of a binary viewpoint.

No it merely creates real world limitations. Limitations that are an accident of birth.

No, it merely creates real world limitations. Limitations that are an accident of birth.

No it merely creates real world limitations. Limitations as a result of the accident of their environment.

Yes of course you have no social responsibility whatsoever.
funny how you can associate you fulfilling your obligation as a citizen and paying taxes to angrily rejecting you supporting the moochers, but when it comes to tens of millions of working poor people whose collective labor you are a beneficiary of, suddenly you reject personal association or involvement.

wow. well its a damn good thing you are not a psychiatrist or sociologist or economist.

You purport to be successful, but you seem to have an indepth knowledge of the thought processes of unsuccessful people.

But, you probably wont forgive me, but it sounds more like a platitude one would read on the wall of the public bathroom, than an insightful explanation of the complexities of human motivation and attainment.

this guy sure as hell doesn't agree with you and I'd venture he's a helluva lot more successful than you.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/19/opinion/sunday/for-the-love-of-money.html?_r=0

excellent story and one you should be damn proud of.

But in telling that story, where did your empathy for those that can't or couldn't do what you did (not wouldn't)? You realized that blaming others was a road to nowhere, but it took an epiphany that many just don't have the capacity to experience - which is my point.

For some reason you seem to think that if you did it, everyone should be able to do it or suffer the consequences.
I retract my accusation of arrogant conceit and replace it with arrogant distain. Apparently you cannot see how relatively rare your abilities and achievements actually are. I would wager that for everyone dealt the same sort of hand as you there are dozens that are entirely incapable of overcoming. The fact you are full of distain for them seems more a direct result of you getting out from under and them not.

A wonderfully sweeping declarative statement of no intellectual content. The entire culture? You realize that if that is the case you have no argument since everyone is doing exactly what the culture apparently demands of them.
Might I suggest the application of a tad more logic.

You do a lot of laughing at the most pitiful things. Tear off a lot of fly wings in your spare time?

The chronic moochers are a miniscule minority and while I don't like them, I am fully prepared to "let them slide" if that is what it takes to preserve the social programs for those they were actually intended to assist in the first place.

That nearly half the nation is taking advantage of the social safety net during a nasty recession and a slower than expected recovery, indicates that the safety net is WORKING as intended.

sad. truly sad.
How do you figure I am a) a co dependent and b) a progressive. I sure as hell don't live for taking care of others, unless you refer to my immediate family. And in my career, I have given literally hundreds of people opportunities to succeed.

what a truly stupid thing to say. You have no concept of who I am or what I have accomplished.

all to the good.

Of course Nurse Ratched also empowered her patients to take responsibility - and that worked out real well for a lot of them didnt' it.

 

So we'll mark you down as someone who thinks someone else is responsible for your success.

Oh ah.... real world limitations.... that MOST people never come close to.... Do you KNOW how many people are self actualized?????? About 3-5% and I think that's being overgenerous....

1. The FIRST SOCIAL OBLIGATION ANYONE HAS IS TO BECOME SELF SUFFICIENT......... Until you achieve the very basic in functioning, you're a TAKER, not a GIVER.

2. Ah you mean having my earnings FORCEFULLY REMOVED FROM ME THROUGH GOVERNMENT BECAUSE OF SOMEONE ELSE ATTEMPING TO FORCE THEIR MORALS ON ME? Guess what???? MOST of those taxes don't make it to the "needy". They get wasted on government fraud, greed, corruption, foreign wars, the murdering maiming and torturing of hundreds of thousands of humans worldwide. SPARE me your ridiculous moral argument for taxes.

3. Charity is by definition, VOLUNTARY and it's how I choose to help others. FORCING OTHER people to contribute to soothe your warped moral conscience doesn't cut it with me.

Do you know what a RN psych nurse does? Do you know what nurses study for a BSN. Human development....

I'm also going back to school to become a psychiatric nurse practitioner......

Proud of what? Finally accepting responsibility for my actions? Being self sufficient first and foremost so I CAN CONTRIBUTE to society??? That's what EVERY citizen SHOULD be doing.

And what part of handing them food stamps and section 8 housing is going to bring about that epiphany????? Oh wait...... It's going to PROLONGUE the epiphany because PAIN is a PRIMARY motivator for change-which is my point.

Pretty much. If a drug induced brain dead, felony drug addict can do it? ANYONE can.

Ah yes, I'm a rarity. Kind of like the 57% of income earners in America that CONTRIBUTE to SOCIETY instead of TAKE.

Your right. It's only the 43% that pay no federal income taxes. The "takers" instead of the responsible "givers".

I drink fresh puppy blood in my spare time. Sometimes fresh fetus blood if I can get ahold of it.

Actually, the numbers on state aid have been increasing since before the recession. Welfare ISN'T working unless your goal is to have MORE people dependent on it.

You mean you've enabled hundreds? Does this include advocating OTHER people pay taxes for said enabling?

Sure I do. You're codependent. It's basically the primary driver of liberals and progressives.

I'm a little gentler with an excellent bedside manner. My experience allows me to empower others, especially the mentally ill, drug addicted.

 

Its pointless to continue tit for tat. You have your entrenched misconceptions, I have mine.

I'l wager I have paid more in taxes than you have earned in your entire life, so yes I advocate that everyone fulfills their obligations under the law. The federal government determines who pays federal income tax and a very large % that dont' pay fed tax, pay state/municipal/sales/payroll/gas and the myriad of other revenue streams the government has designated.) Suddenly, the image of taker and giver starts to blur. The fact you blame those with low incomes for not paying federal income taxes is truly dumb.

As an aside, I never liked flies, I prefer kittie blood to puppy myself and fresh fetus blood is over rated.

 

I have disdain for people who cannot spell disdain.