How would you define moochers?
How would you define moochers? This was a question recently put to Dr. David Kelley. Here was his answer...
I would define them as takers on any scale who regard taking as their right, or at least as a legitimate activity. The qualification is important.
In our current mixedeconomy, welfarestate society, all of us are de facto takers. When the government runs education, retirement, and most of health care—supported by taxes on our earnings—we have little choice but to send our kids to public schools, take Social Security and Medicare when we get old, and get healthcare through a system riddled with government controls. However, the real takers are those who claim a right to such benefits and lobby to increase them. Like AARP.
By the same token, a poor person who wants to make an honest living is prevented from doing so by local regulations that prevent him or her from driving a cab, braiding hair, and similar jobs. These people may be forced to rely on welfare as a result. They are moochers in fact but not in spirit, by contrast with those who claim a right to support.
At the other end of the spectrum, no business can avoid dealing with government controls and subsidies. Still, there’s a difference between those who aim to create goods or services and succeed through market competition, for whom the struggle to navigate the shoals of regulations and permissions is a sideline, and those for whom deals with politicians and bureaucrats are the essence of what they do. They are the crony capitalists—moochers on a par with the most irresponsible welfare mother.
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Read the full Dr. David Kelley interview here: http://www.galtsgulchonline.com/posts/31...
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I would define them as takers on any scale who regard taking as their right, or at least as a legitimate activity. The qualification is important.
In our current mixedeconomy, welfarestate society, all of us are de facto takers. When the government runs education, retirement, and most of health care—supported by taxes on our earnings—we have little choice but to send our kids to public schools, take Social Security and Medicare when we get old, and get healthcare through a system riddled with government controls. However, the real takers are those who claim a right to such benefits and lobby to increase them. Like AARP.
By the same token, a poor person who wants to make an honest living is prevented from doing so by local regulations that prevent him or her from driving a cab, braiding hair, and similar jobs. These people may be forced to rely on welfare as a result. They are moochers in fact but not in spirit, by contrast with those who claim a right to support.
At the other end of the spectrum, no business can avoid dealing with government controls and subsidies. Still, there’s a difference between those who aim to create goods or services and succeed through market competition, for whom the struggle to navigate the shoals of regulations and permissions is a sideline, and those for whom deals with politicians and bureaucrats are the essence of what they do. They are the crony capitalists—moochers on a par with the most irresponsible welfare mother.
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Read the full Dr. David Kelley interview here: http://www.galtsgulchonline.com/posts/31...
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There is nothing wrong with the man who wishes he could not take it, worked hard and tried to save and prepare but still has to take it.
its the man who just did not concern his mind with his later years and then takes SS when he gets there with no thought as to what that SS really cost him and what he could have had if he had been left to save and prepare for himself. That man is the moocher. Its a state of mind more than the act of taking the payment.
I personally do not want to talk it because I know that what I have paid in is gone. They blew my fathers money on nothing and now my money goes to pay his retirement and others and who knows what other wasteful things. The cycle will continue until a generation prepares for and says, no drop the tax we will do without it.
The reality is with taxes what they are (and I see SS as just another tax) its very hard for people to get by without it when they can no longer work. If we kept another 30% of our money we could easily save and prepare and have no need of SS. Its the fact that you are robbed by the government that makes you need the SS. The fact that you feel a bit of guilt is the very reason your justified to take it.
The idea of concentrating on the labor portion of production to the exclusion of all the other necessities of production is Marxist.
If I take it, I wont be moocher. I will do all I can not too, but the fact is I will likely be required to do so.
The fact that you state what you state, 256 to get back what they stole from you tells me you realize that it would be better had you dumped your money in a shoe box and kept it in your closet than to let them steal it, and you would much prefer to have done so.
While our system forces you, my dad and me eventually (probably) to be a moocher in practice you would never choose the system we have, and therefor you are not seeking an unearned reward at the cost of the effort of another.
I read into this that You would prefer to have saved your own money and pay for your own retirement. Me too. It the person that would not plan for their own retirement, preferring another to do it that is the moocher.
Jan, imaginative
I like a 'can of Rand'...
Jan
As this is the system I therefore see a "Moocher" as anyone who takes from the system with the attitude that it is their right. The "Entitlement Mentality" is the very essence of being a "Moocher."
-Pay for one movie ticket and stay for 2.
-Hide people in a vehicle to pay less at drive-in movie
-Delay working to continue to collect unemployment
-Falsify medical conditions to collect disability
-Do not gain new education to transition into different skill/career, but continue to use the excuse of disability
-Not take care of own health, then readily accept the social programs that provide for their misuse of stewardship
-Teen crowd...the constant beggar of change/food/favors with no intent to exchange value
-Drug addicts, self inflicted who eventually beg, steal, and spread their wave of destruction to all who surround them. They mooch for the next high.
-Use someone else's ID to gain entry to ski resort, amusement park.
-Many ways in a home that family members mooch from one another ("you want me to clear your plate after dinner?")
-Falsifying hours of employment.
-Stealing product from employers
-College students living off government housing and handouts without creatively and laboriously seeking ways to work and reduce feeding on social programs. (It's just easier to take the handouts than to juggle schedules, kids, work/school.) This is the demise of socialism...more people willing to take handouts than producers who create value. Socialism infects the producer mentality and transforms them into moochers.
-The takers of value with no intent to exchange value.
To me, a looter is someone who expects to profit from someone else's labor without doing any of his/her own.
That is because there is no incentive for them to do so. That is the primary problem with bureaucrats of all stripes - if they are not possessed of personal integrity enough to suppress a lust for power, they will inevitably seek for power at the expense of the people.
In business, it doesn't matter whether or not the businessman seeks for power, there is an inherent feedback mechanism in the market whereby only valuable goods and services maintain one's income. No such mechanism exists for bureaucrats, which is why a large government is so dangerous.
Robert Stadler was a consummate moocher. You can well understand why John Galt reserved his harshest blame for him. Especially since he lays his blame on Stadler after the Project X demonstration, not before.
Note to the producers of the upcoming TV show: be sure to give Robert Stadler his full measure of villainy ("low-life-ness"). The movies left Project X out. Someone needs to put that back in.
Mark's Definition
'm-oo-ch-er'
Noun
One who feels entitled to receive value, consideration or product they did not produce from others with no sense or personal expectation of providing value at any time.
They are those that see the world as existing as a pie, and that their membership in humanity is all that's necessary for them to have their piece of that pie.
They have no doubt of their rights and experience no guilt.
Anyone that has more of that pie than they do, must have stolen it out of greed or gotten it by enslaving those that don't have as big a piece of that pie.
They see that pie as never-ending (at least as long as they're alive).
They consider those that work as either fools or tools of the man (the guy who has more than them).
All resources of the earth, whether raw or finished belong equally to them.
They live in today with no regrets or lessons from the past and no outlook for the future.
They don't dream.
Don't JOIN the revolt. BE the revolt.
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