Only if they come from related (in one way or the other) and decent ranking sites. So getting a link from a site that only contains links could even be punished with a drop in ranking.
yes I know it's a old post and your point is ?Beg to differ - and you're replying to a rather old post.
Incoming links are important, the higher ranking they are, the better it is - not the other way round (spam links can be punished, but not the way you imagine it)
Submitting to so called link farms is a poor way to attempt to increase links to your site, and is strongly discouraged by Google Guidelines. "Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank.