At least make it believable. You lost your credibility by implying that someone would consider doing that with Cruz, especially one that is attractive.bearister said:
Cruz was balling one of his attractive campaign people that later became the most absurd of all the tRump advocates on CNN.
Your suggestion that this problem is weighted toward GOP seems very useful and well reasoned. The best way to get people focused on societal cancers like sexual harassment and domestic violence is to politicize it. Great.Another Bear said:
It's not just Porter but the GOP have a domestic violence issue. Domestic violence plagues every demographic and political bend. That said, there sure seems to be an unusually heavy representation.
The White House's Domestic-Violence Problem
Ted also likes Russian Pee Parties?bearister said:
Ted Cruz is a player like tRump.
Your reading comprehension is off a bit there laddie. anything to get it out there. The most political thing I wrote was "there seems to be an unusually heavy representation".calbear93 said:Your suggestion that this problem is weighted toward GOP seems very useful and well reasoned. The best way to get people focused on societal cancers like sexual harassment and domestic violence is to politicize it. Great.Another Bear said:
It's not just Porter but the GOP have a domestic violence issue. Domestic violence plagues every demographic and political bend. That said, there sure seems to be an unusually heavy representation.
The White House's Domestic-Violence Problem
Another Bear said:Ted also likes Russian Pee Parties?bearister said:
Ted Cruz is a player like tRump.
My reading comprehension is off? The most political thing you wrote was "there seems to be an unusually heavy representation"?Another Bear said:Your reading comprehension is off a bit there laddie. anything to get it out there. The most political thing I wrote was "there seems to be an unusually heavy representation".calbear93 said:Your suggestion that this problem is weighted toward GOP seems very useful and well reasoned. The best way to get people focused on societal cancers like sexual harassment and domestic violence is to politicize it. Great.Another Bear said:
It's not just Porter but the GOP have a domestic violence issue. Domestic violence plagues every demographic and political bend. That said, there sure seems to be an unusually heavy representation.
The White House's Domestic-Violence Problem
Any way...anything to get the issue out there.
calbear93 said:My reading comprehension is off? The most political thing you wrote was "there seems to be an unusually heavy representation"?Another Bear said:Your reading comprehension is off a bit there laddie. anything to get it out there. The most political thing I wrote was "there seems to be an unusually heavy representation".calbear93 said:Your suggestion that this problem is weighted toward GOP seems very useful and well reasoned. The best way to get people focused on societal cancers like sexual harassment and domestic violence is to politicize it. Great.Another Bear said:
It's not just Porter but the GOP have a domestic violence issue. Domestic violence plagues every demographic and political bend. That said, there sure seems to be an unusually heavy representation.
The White House's Domestic-Violence Problem
Any way...anything to get the issue out there.
Let me introduce you to your phrase "the GOP have a domestic violence issue". You two may have met a sentence earlier but thought you two would get along.
Wow, you are really dumb. Which reference to "two" would you replace with "too"? This is too funny.Another Bear said:calbear93 said:My reading comprehension is off? The most political thing you wrote was "there seems to be an unusually heavy representation"?Another Bear said:Your reading comprehension is off a bit there laddie. anything to get it out there. The most political thing I wrote was "there seems to be an unusually heavy representation".calbear93 said:Your suggestion that this problem is weighted toward GOP seems very useful and well reasoned. The best way to get people focused on societal cancers like sexual harassment and domestic violence is to politicize it. Great.Another Bear said:
It's not just Porter but the GOP have a domestic violence issue. Domestic violence plagues every demographic and political bend. That said, there sure seems to be an unusually heavy representation.
The White House's Domestic-Violence Problem
Any way...anything to get the issue out there.
Let me introduce you to your phrase "the GOP have a domestic violence issue". You two may have met a sentence earlier but thought you two would get along.
Hey at least I know how "two" and "too" works in a sentence. So add grammar to the comprehension issue.
Hey dummy, I was introducing you to your phrase since you two were acting like strangers. "You two" refers to you and your phrase. Your brain needs an oil change.Another Bear said:
Serious?
Boy with those writing skills you should write for Trump! Geez, that's just confusing writing. Did you ever read Strunk and White, "The Elements of Style"? The definition of bad writing is having to explain it.calbear93 said:Hey dummy, I was introducing you to your phrase since you two were acting like strangers. "You two" refers to you and your phrase. Your brain needs an oil change.Another Bear said:
Serious?
To deal more-or-less seriously with an un-serious post:calbear93 said: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.mikecohen said: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.iwantwinners said: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.mikecohen said: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.iwantwinners said: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.sycasey said:
In terms of policy accomplishment, Trump has definitely been a standard establishment Republican. Cutting taxes and social services, that's their thing.
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.
Mike - just a simple question. Would you be willing to redistribute a part of your housing-wealth to the homeless? No need for a treatise. Just a yes or no.mikecohen said:To deal more-or-less seriously with an un-serious post:calbear93 said: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.mikecohen said: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.iwantwinners said: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.mikecohen said: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.iwantwinners said: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.sycasey said:
In terms of policy accomplishment, Trump has definitely been a standard establishment Republican. Cutting taxes and social services, that's their thing.
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.
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).
It would depend on the specific circumstances and the specifics of the programscalbear93 said:Mike - just a simple question. Would you be willing to redistribute a part of your housing-wealth to the homeless? No need for a treatise. Just a yes or no.mikecohen said:To deal more-or-less seriously with an un-serious post:calbear93 said: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.mikecohen said: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.iwantwinners said: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.mikecohen said: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.iwantwinners said: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.sycasey said:
In terms of policy accomplishment, Trump has definitely been a standard establishment Republican. Cutting taxes and social services, that's their thing.
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.
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).
Also, would you be willing to redistribute your income and your wealth to those below you until you hit the median? If not, why not? Why should you be above average?
OK, how about you sell your house and live in the same complex made by the government for all people so that everyone will have comparable housing and housing benefits are not hoarded by the fortunate.mikecohen said:It would depend on the specific circumstances and the specifics of the programscalbear93 said:Mike - just a simple question. Would you be willing to redistribute a part of your housing-wealth to the homeless? No need for a treatise. Just a yes or no.mikecohen said:To deal more-or-less seriously with an un-serious post:calbear93 said: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.mikecohen said: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.iwantwinners said: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.mikecohen said: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.iwantwinners said: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.sycasey said:
In terms of policy accomplishment, Trump has definitely been a standard establishment Republican. Cutting taxes and social services, that's their thing.
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.
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).
Also, would you be willing to redistribute your income and your wealth to those below you until you hit the median? If not, why not? Why should you be above average?
Would you allow 40% of your marginal income above $1M per year to go toward a government that provides a broad suite of domestic support services designed to combat inequality in this country and build appropriate infrastructure to support our economic and projected population growth, while being mindful of the ecological impact it will have on the world? Would you allow the government to spend less of your tax income on a huge and wasteful military that has no idea where it's spending its money?mikecohen said:
It would depend on the specific circumstances and the specifics of the programs
You keep throwing out absurd scenarios, which leave out endless numbers of other competing values, with the apparent lack of understanding that there are universes of possible scenarios that could accomplish any number of laudable goals your philosophy appears to believe, as a matter of faith, are impossible. In other words, you appear to confuse ends with means, in a profound way, so that you associate a given end with one sole abhorrent means, with the idea that no other means are possible, and therefore the end is bad - a kind of reverse Stalinism, which shares with Stalin, basically, an unforgivable narrowness.calbear93 said:OK, how about you sell your house and live in the same complex made by the government for all people so that everyone will have comparable housing and housing benefits are not hoarded by the fortunate.mikecohen said:It would depend on the specific circumstances and the specifics of the programscalbear93 said:Mike - just a simple question. Would you be willing to redistribute a part of your housing-wealth to the homeless? No need for a treatise. Just a yes or no.mikecohen said:To deal more-or-less seriously with an un-serious post:calbear93 said: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.mikecohen said: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.iwantwinners said: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.mikecohen said: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.iwantwinners said: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.sycasey said:
In terms of policy accomplishment, Trump has definitely been a standard establishment Republican. Cutting taxes and social services, that's their thing.
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.
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).
Also, would you be willing to redistribute your income and your wealth to those below you until you hit the median? If not, why not? Why should you be above average?
How about the government determines what the average income cap will be based on last year's results, and everything above that cap gets redistributed to those below the cap. Ultimate wealth redistribution. Would you be for that?
Isn't that the Socratic method? When someone proposes something like wealth redistribution or some arbitrary standard (1% or 10%) as worthy, you keep asking questions and take it to the extreme to show that it is not that black and white. Wealth redistribution in itself is not a worthy goal. Do we agree?mikecohen said:You keep throwing out absurd scenarios, which leave out endless numbers of other competing values, with the apparent lack of understanding that there are universes of possible scenarios that could accomplish any number of laudable goals your philosophy appears to believe, as a matter of faith, are impossible. In other words, you appear to confuse ends with means, in a profound way, so that you associate a given end with one sole abhorrent means, with the idea that no other means are possible, and therefore the end is bad - a kind of reverse Stalinism, which shares with Stalin, basically, an unforgivable narrowness.calbear93 said:OK, how about you sell your house and live in the same complex made by the government for all people so that everyone will have comparable housing and housing benefits are not hoarded by the fortunate.mikecohen said:It would depend on the specific circumstances and the specifics of the programscalbear93 said:Mike - just a simple question. Would you be willing to redistribute a part of your housing-wealth to the homeless? No need for a treatise. Just a yes or no.mikecohen said:To deal more-or-less seriously with an un-serious post:calbear93 said: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.mikecohen said: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.iwantwinners said: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.mikecohen said: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.iwantwinners said: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.sycasey said:
In terms of policy accomplishment, Trump has definitely been a standard establishment Republican. Cutting taxes and social services, that's their thing.
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.
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).
Also, would you be willing to redistribute your income and your wealth to those below you until you hit the median? If not, why not? Why should you be above average?
How about the government determines what the average income cap will be based on last year's results, and everything above that cap gets redistributed to those below the cap. Ultimate wealth redistribution. Would you be for that?
So, it is not about greed or selfishness. It is about different opinions on capital and asset allocation in a world with finite resources. We can use prejudicial, leading adjectives to indicate what one thinks should be the priority, but it comes down to different opinion on what would be best for the country. I mean someone could say would you rather spend money to help those who are not willing to help themselves or to spend money to protect your children and your grandchildren from those who would bomb your house and rape your children. It doesn't change the facts other than indicate your personal preferences.Unit2Sucks said:Would you allow 40% of your marginal income above $1M per year to go toward a government that provides a broad suite of domestic support services designed to combat inequality in this country and build appropriate infrastructure to support our economic and projected population growth, while being mindful of the ecological impact it will have on the world? Would you allow the government to spend less of your tax income on a huge and wasteful military that has no idea where it's spending its money?mikecohen said:
It would depend on the specific circumstances and the specifics of the programs
Why can't it be about both?calbear93 said:
So, it is not about greed or selfishness. It is about different opinions on capital and asset allocation in a world with finite resources.
Then it is both for both parties. I suppose folks like us in the coasts were not too happy about how we benefited less. We say we want more tax revenues but then complain when we don't get as big of a cut. We will only stand up for our principles as long as others will too.Unit2Sucks said:Why can't it be about both?calbear93 said:
So, it is not about greed or selfishness. It is about different opinions on capital and asset allocation in a world with finite resources.
We just awarded the wealthiest people in America a massive tax cut (largest in history according to the president) at a time when they least needed it. It's amazing to me that after all we've learned from the numerous economic cycles in the last century +, that at a time when the economy is nearing the end of a boom we combined a massive decrease in taxes with a massive increase in spending. I say it's amazing but not at all surprising since I said that this is exactly what would happen and I don't say that to take credit for by prescience but merely to indicate how utterly predictable it was. I don't know what it's going to take to save this country from itself but I have no faith in the current establishment to do it and even less faith in the anti-establishment populist types that appear to be the alternatives.
Why not put all the money in people's pockets? Why have any taxes at all?iwantwinners said: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.sycasey said:
In terms of policy accomplishment, Trump has definitely been a standard establishment Republican. Cutting taxes and social services, that's their thing.
When someone proposes an absurdly overgeneralized (and therefore meaningless) proposition or some arbitrary standard as worthy, the only meaningfully friendly thing to do is to request specifics.calbear93 said:Isn't that the Socratic method? When someone proposes something like wealth redistribution or some arbitrary standard (1% or 10%) as worthy, you keep asking questions and take it to the extreme to show that it is not that black and white. Wealth redistribution in itself is not a worthy goal. Do we agree?mikecohen said:You keep throwing out absurd scenarios, which leave out endless numbers of other competing values, with the apparent lack of understanding that there are universes of possible scenarios that could accomplish any number of laudable goals your philosophy appears to believe, as a matter of faith, are impossible. In other words, you appear to confuse ends with means, in a profound way, so that you associate a given end with one sole abhorrent means, with the idea that no other means are possible, and therefore the end is bad - a kind of reverse Stalinism, which shares with Stalin, basically, an unforgivable narrowness.calbear93 said:OK, how about you sell your house and live in the same complex made by the government for all people so that everyone will have comparable housing and housing benefits are not hoarded by the fortunate.mikecohen said:It would depend on the specific circumstances and the specifics of the programscalbear93 said:Mike - just a simple question. Would you be willing to redistribute a part of your housing-wealth to the homeless? No need for a treatise. Just a yes or no.mikecohen said:To deal more-or-less seriously with an un-serious post:calbear93 said: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.mikecohen said: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.iwantwinners said: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.mikecohen said: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.iwantwinners said: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.sycasey said:
In terms of policy accomplishment, Trump has definitely been a standard establishment Republican. Cutting taxes and social services, that's their thing.
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.
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).
Also, would you be willing to redistribute your income and your wealth to those below you until you hit the median? If not, why not? Why should you be above average?
How about the government determines what the average income cap will be based on last year's results, and everything above that cap gets redistributed to those below the cap. Ultimate wealth redistribution. Would you be for that?
Wealth redistribution is the single most important thing the government does. I could not disagree with you more.calbear93 said:Isn't that the Socratic method? When someone proposes something like wealth redistribution or some arbitrary standard (1% or 10%) as worthy, you keep asking questions and take it to the extreme to show that it is not that black and white. Wealth redistribution in itself is not a worthy goal. Do we agree?mikecohen said:You keep throwing out absurd scenarios, which leave out endless numbers of other competing values, with the apparent lack of understanding that there are universes of possible scenarios that could accomplish any number of laudable goals your philosophy appears to believe, as a matter of faith, are impossible. In other words, you appear to confuse ends with means, in a profound way, so that you associate a given end with one sole abhorrent means, with the idea that no other means are possible, and therefore the end is bad - a kind of reverse Stalinism, which shares with Stalin, basically, an unforgivable narrowness.calbear93 said:OK, how about you sell your house and live in the same complex made by the government for all people so that everyone will have comparable housing and housing benefits are not hoarded by the fortunate.mikecohen said:It would depend on the specific circumstances and the specifics of the programscalbear93 said:Mike - just a simple question. Would you be willing to redistribute a part of your housing-wealth to the homeless? No need for a treatise. Just a yes or no.mikecohen said:To deal more-or-less seriously with an un-serious post:calbear93 said: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.mikecohen said: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.iwantwinners said: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.mikecohen said: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.iwantwinners said: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.sycasey said:
In terms of policy accomplishment, Trump has definitely been a standard establishment Republican. Cutting taxes and social services, that's their thing.
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.
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).
Also, would you be willing to redistribute your income and your wealth to those below you until you hit the median? If not, why not? Why should you be above average?
How about the government determines what the average income cap will be based on last year's results, and everything above that cap gets redistributed to those below the cap. Ultimate wealth redistribution. Would you be for that?
It's anecdotal, but I know AT&T and Starbucks announced raised/bonuses for virtually all their employees when tax law was finalized. Surely it is partly PR for these companies to do this (and announce it) and most are probably not, but it illuminates how allowing corporations to keep more of their profits doesn't just enrich the bigwigs and stockholders, it can contribute to wage increases and/or free up capital for reinvestment, growing business that will always benefit the richest more in pure dollars than it's lower end employees. Forced added costs to business (taxes, raising wages) will almost always be passed on to the consumer. I reject the assumption that giving the government more earned income = helping the poor or middle class. The government can sustain poverty, but it cannot sustain the escape from poverty. In this society, only an individual's decisions can.Unit2Sucks said:Why can't it be about both?calbear93 said:
So, it is not about greed or selfishness. It is about different opinions on capital and asset allocation in a world with finite resources.
We just awarded the wealthiest people in America a massive tax cut (largest in history according to the president) at a time when they least needed it. It's amazing to me that after all we've learned from the numerous economic cycles in the last century +, that at a time when the economy is nearing the end of a boom we combined a massive decrease in taxes with a massive increase in spending. I say it's amazing but not at all surprising since I said that this is exactly what would happen and I don't say that to take credit for by prescience but merely to indicate how utterly predictable it was. I don't know what it's going to take to save this country from itself but I have no faith in the current establishment to do it and even less faith in the anti-establishment populist types that appear to be the alternatives.
Agree on the first point. The second is a bogus question, and I suspect you know it.drizzlybears brother said:
Wealth redistribution is the single most important thing the government does. I could not disagree with you more.
Separate question, how much of my paycheck did I earn all by myself?
what do you consider bogus about it?iwantwinners said:Agree on the first point. The second is a bogus question, and I suspect you know it.drizzlybears brother said:
Wealth redistribution is the single most important thing the government does. I could not disagree with you more.
Separate question, how much of my paycheck did I earn all by myself?
iwantwinners said:
What is the appropriate tax rate for each segment of earners in order for it to be "just" and "fair"? I want a number that I can hold you to so that when we hit that threshold, I can be assured you won't come back to me asking for more of my sh*t. Let's get to brass tax, since all I hear is that certain people are paying too much or too little. What is it like 40% of Americans -- the rich and the poor -- effective tax rate is zero or negative, they pay no taxes.
We agree on the idea that corporate taxes are simply a cost passed to consumers. But the examples of bonuses in response to the cuts actually prove the point that it's not taxes depressing wages. Look at the percentage of the windfall that went to labor compensation - a tiny fraction yet again. If it were real, what little did go to comp would have been permanent, not bonuses.iwantwinners said:It's anecdotal, but I know AT&T and Starbucks announced raised/bonuses for virtually all their employees when tax law was finalized. Surely it is partly PR for these companies to do this (and announce it) and most are probably not, but it illuminates how allowing corporations to keep more of their profits doesn't just enrich the bigwigs and stockholders, it can contribute to wage increases and/or free up capital for reinvestment, growing business that will always benefit the richest more in pure dollars than it's lower end employees. Forced added costs to business (taxes, raising wages) will almost always be passed on to the consumer. I reject the assumption that giving the government more earned income = helping the poor or middle class. The government can sustain poverty, but it cannot sustain the escape from poverty. In this society, only an individual's decisions can.Unit2Sucks said:Why can't it be about both?calbear93 said:
So, it is not about greed or selfishness. It is about different opinions on capital and asset allocation in a world with finite resources.
We just awarded the wealthiest people in America a massive tax cut (largest in history according to the president) at a time when they least needed it. It's amazing to me that after all we've learned from the numerous economic cycles in the last century +, that at a time when the economy is nearing the end of a boom we combined a massive decrease in taxes with a massive increase in spending. I say it's amazing but not at all surprising since I said that this is exactly what would happen and I don't say that to take credit for by prescience but merely to indicate how utterly predictable it was. I don't know what it's going to take to save this country from itself but I have no faith in the current establishment to do it and even less faith in the anti-establishment populist types that appear to be the alternatives.
