calbear93 said:
mikecohen said:
iwantwinners said:
mikecohen said:
iwantwinners said:
sycasey said:
In terms of policy accomplishment, Trump has definitely been a standard establishment Republican. Cutting taxes and social services, that's their thing.
why is putting more of people's money in their pocket bad again? It's only controversial, from a policy and economic standpoint now, when juxtaposed with our debt, and the government's spending priorities. Democrats do it, just with a different narrative.
WRONG! At the end of the Clinton Presidency, there were not only a solid history of budget surpluses, but endless surpluses projected for the foreseeable future, all of which were immediately destroyed and reversed by the Bush Tax Cut for the Rich, and the neocons' drunken spending on the totally un-necessary and meaningless Iraq War, the worst part of which was NOT its near total absorption of American blood, treasure and standing in the world, but the tens of millions of people, murdered, maimed, displaced, forced into abject poverty and victimized by various kinds of crime, including eventually oppression, including murder and torture, by both ISIS and Al Assad. Finally, if you think that the government should have any funding, then stop resorting to cant cliches, and discuss the actual pros and cons of the various things that government spends money on, and make a case, for example, against public education, or public health, or public safety, or support for scientific research that no other source of funding supports, such that, without government support, much of the modern world would simply not exist. Maybe you think that the utterly profligate waste on the Iraq War, or the tax support for the oil industry, long after it became the most profitable business in history to that point in time, are all better than the aforementioned governmental functions.
I don't think you understood my post, or better yet I didn't articulate well enough my point of view. I'm saying Democrats do it too -- i.e., they've cut taxes before. Yes, Clinton had a surplus. Obama did not when he cut (or rather extended the lifespan of Bush's cuts). Both parties love to overspend (it's easy because it's not theirs, and everybody, rich and poor, wants to suck from the government teet of handouts) and their base of all socioeconomic stripes benefit. Actually cutting benefits to people is not popular. So parties demonize spending over here and spend like crazy over there on something that benefits them politically.
The problem with Bush's tax cuts is he didn't balance the budget by cutting spending to accommodate those cuts. Throw in the war and medicare prescriptions, and you've got a drunken sailor as an accountant.
It sounds like you think cutting taxes, in principle, is bad politics AND economics. Correct me if I'm wrong. So, at 37% or so, what is the appropriate and moral top individual tax rate and why?
We might agree on most of the rest. The easiest, simplest, and least impactful segment to cut spending is defense, IMO.
I know neither the economy nor the budget well enough to get into the weeds to the degree necessary to answer your questions definitively; however I do think that: (1) What has really made this country great over the years is the distribution of wealth downward and broadly, by means of both governmental and private action; (2) The current grotesquely maldistributed wealth, where the top 1% of the population control 99% of the wealth (and vice-versa) speaks the most clearly about what is wrong with the country, so that the most massive tax cut in history going almost entirely to that top 1%, along with Ryan & the R's idea of paying for it by massively cutting most of what supports opportunity for socioeconomic advancement, while, in practice, favoring higher unemployment in order to support higher profits (without any plan for investing those higher profits outside the mantra of trickle down, which has never work in history - especially since the Fed bailed out the oligarchs from the Great Recession by giving them free money, precious little of which went to improve employment, education, health care, small business, R&D, or any of the other things which so massively improved the lives of the masses of Americans from the 1930s forward) is one of the worst ideas since national socialism. No, increasing taxes on the top 1% (who are unlikely to be meaningfully wounded by that) is immediately more beneficial than cutting military spending, although it does occur to me that careful examination of the military budget, and global exigencies, could yield greater efficacy AND real national security.
I am not saying that there isn't merit to some sharing of wealth, but why would you limit the redistribution to income and why just to 1%. For example, most people in the Bay Area are house-rich and food-rich (and not just the 1%). Shouldn't those top 50% in Bay Area share their house wealth by being forced to rent at minimal, nominal rent a portion of their house to someone who is house-poor? Wouldn't that stimulate the economy by allowing those who may not otherwise get a job because they are homeless also participate in the workforce? And all of the focus on organic food by the top 50% in the Bay Area while the bottom 50% are forced to eat genetically modified food seems unfair and is damaging the life expectancy and health of those who may otherwise be able to work for much longer. Wouldn't it better for our economy if those in the Bay Area were rationed the organic food with most of the remainder of food they are allowed to consume be genetically modified? Why should the top 50% be unfairly healthy at the expense of the bottom 50%? Just wondering how far we are willing to take with redistribution of wealth, and why we won't go further.
To deal more-or-less seriously with an un-serious post:
The main Republican spiritual point seems to be against the government forcing people to do or not do something or another - a basic tenet which stems inalterably from the defeat of the South in the Civil War, and the subsequent war carried on by the South's spiritual children since then, with its victories (Jim Crow) and its defeats (Civil Rights Legislation and the rise into the middle and higher classes of more and more people of color), and the numerous further destructive backlashes, which the current white house has ridden to power.
The reason why that point is basically meaningless is that its only real conclusion is anarchy, i.e., no law, no enforcement, no police, fire, military, etc., just for starters - not to mention representation (which wouldn't be necessary without taxes).
So, unless one just doesn't believe in the rule of law (and certainly the right, above all people, have no alternative for it), there's no alternative to conjuring with every point, no matter how jokily the right wants to put it in order to avoid the substance of the issue.
Truly (especially from a right-wing perspective) everything the government does re-distributes wealth; and the costs of all those things are always meaningful issues in deciding on a given program or institution.
For example, is there a cost-effective way for government to effectively encourage and/or create housing for people priced out of a given market such that the only meaningful employment for such displaced people is 50 miles from anywhere they can afford to live, or, in some cases (like in the rust belt) no such employment for some displaced workers maybe even within their own state, or region, or nation?
Private enterprise DOES create these horror scenarios for masses of people, without any solutions coming from private enterprise. That's why my grandfather, a prosperous merchant in Fall River Massachusetts when the mill owners, in concert, essentially overnight, moved the entire industry to the South, decided to move to Detroit, because he'd heard that Ford was paying $5/day to its workers - only to find out that Ford didn't hire Jews.
Does the "Freedom Caucus" propose to deal with such people, by, maybe allowing private citizens to kill them all with NRA-supplied guns?
Certainly the "Freedom Caucus" doesn't want the government to do that, or to otherwise try to help such people with taxpayer money.
Also, should we leave up to private industry, who have created in this country the most deadly pollution and unhealthy food in the history of the world, the cleaning up of such poison?, or even the identification of it?
A great example of the debate over particulars is the subject of the Great Wall that Trump wants to build.
Is there a single not-factually-deprived person who believes either:
(a) that such would be even close to increasing national security, either in blocking dangerous immigration or in any other way?, or
(b) that the cost of it would be even close to the best way of spending the money it would cost either for national security or for anything else?
I humbly believe that such a case is actually impossible to make, that is, if one cares a whit about what is true (as opposed to what is false).