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@PaulVerliane
While america has lots of injustice, it is nothing compared to China. Trump may not have gotten 51% of the population, but he got pretty close. Do you think Xi has the support of that much of China? There is no way to know because their internet is so censored.
There are isolated things to admire about china. But on the whole, they have way more problems than america.
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@Christen
That may be the author's opinion. But that does not seem like a very good definition.
Centrism is a copout. It is an attempt to not take sides on issues. If you believe in 8 left wing policies and 2 right wing policies, then you are left. and vice versa. Lots of people hold a few views from one side or the other. But there are extremely few people who honestly hold a 50/50 view. Most people who say they do simply don't want to engage. They don't care, they aren't intelligent/engaged enough with politics to know what the policies are.
Or alternatively, they are corrupt. Centrism often is used as a method of keeping things as they are. Alot of corrupt people love the way things are because they benefit from the current system. It has been modified for years to benefit specific people. Basically anyone at the top levels of republican or democratic parties would fall into this vein as well as most of their campaign contributors.
And maybe a 3rd category is people who are afraid. Centrism is very popular with old people. They lived their whole lives in the current system. They are afraid of changes being made to it. So they put their support behind centrist (corrupt) politicians who will fight to make sure no changes are made.
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@Greyparrot
1st world problems baby. Ask Venezuelans what they think of the Americans.
Saying that being left wing means you are like Venezuela is like saying that if you are right wing you are like absolutist monarchy France. It is a ridiculous argument. You can be left without being Venezuela. You can be on the right without being a monarchist. Unless you are advocating for trump being named King and ruling for life?
1st world problems baby. Ask Venezuelans what they think of the Americans.
I'd guess they think you are right wing imperialists who love meddling in south american countries so that you can profit off of their suffering and labor. And they would have good reason to think that.
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@Greyparrot
That is simply a failure of education/religious institutions. Nothing will ever be enough for those people.
Of course, it isn't the stagnant employee wages, the massive income inequalities, the rampant corruption, massive corporate handouts, or the fact that the economy has been structured to disproportionately benefit the rich and powerful. It is the education and religious institutions that are to blame. That must be it....
You know what, you might be right. Maybe it is. I mean jesus said "it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God" and "what you do to the least of these you do to me". So all christians should be disgusted by the american economy. A true christian would need to be left wing.
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@Greyparrot
Unskilled inexperienced labor is not a large part of America. Not even close. Less than 10% for sure.
80% of the american population lives paycheck to paycheck. They aren't all at minimum wage, but as I keep repeating, the minimum wage is too low to live on in a lot of places. If your message is that the economy is working well the way it is, then you are deluded. Trump won because he understood that people are not happy with the american economy. He sold himself as an outsider who would fix things. But he hasn't fundamentally fixed anything.
Pressure is going to continue to build because the economy is continuing to fail the majority of americans. That is why someone like Bernie sanders is a real contender.
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@bmdrocks21
Jobs pay little when the skill required to do it is little. Fry cooks don't make the company enough money to earn a living wage. How about, if you want to have enough money, you do something valuable
I also just wanted to add to my previous answer about this sentiment. This idea is an absolutely disastrous idea, both economically and politically. You are telling a large percentage of the american population to just shut up and suffer. That they are not worth a wage they can survive on. You are telling them that you have no intention of ever helping them and that you will never do anything to improve their lives. That if they work themselves to death a little bit harder then they will be rich, while a small percentage of the population make billions off of their labor. But people aren't that stupid.
That is a recipe for disaster. That is the same sort of message that french aristocrats would have been giving just before the french revolution. That sort of messaging caused the anger that lead to trump. And hopefully will lead to the election of Bernie sanders.
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This is just a funny example I came across. There was a poll in New Hampshire that shows Bernie Sanders in the lead. CNN wrote multiple stories about it but none of the headlines say that sanders is winning.
They wrote things like "TL;DR: Sanders and Warren lead a very messy New Hampshire primary". Even "Buttigieg in fourth, but a strong fourth".
They just cannot bring themselves to say that Sanders is winning. They have to phrase it as a tie with warren and that Buttigieg is "a strong fourth". If Buttigieg had been in 1st in that poll you can be certain their headlines would have read something like "Pistol Pete takes the lead!!"
The pistol pete thing was something Van Jones said just fyi.
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@bmdrocks21
Well, that survey was open to everyone. It wasn't concentrated and advertised to target people who made their own money.
Neither one of us knows how they recruited those people. And an open sign up is not a random sample. For example, if you put up a poll about whether trump is a great president on fox news' website and on MSNBC's website, you would get 2 completely different answers. They are both in a place where anyone can answer. Where you ask people, how you ask people, what information you give them before they sign up and many, many other things can seriously skew the results of a survey. Because they did not choose a random sample, their results are tainted and have no value.
Well, if you have no way of proving that rich people only get rich through connections, then I suggest that you stop pretending that it is a known fact.
It is a known fact that people do that. Just because it is impossible to determine the precise level to which they do that does not mean that people should pretend it doesn't happen.
If you invest in yourself and practice financial responsibility, I can't guarantee that you will become rich. I can guarantee that you can be decently successful. Living comfortably would be the result.
Then your guarantees are worthless. That is not how the american system works.
But I thought a progressive tax was about how much you benefit from the system. And what about medicare and social security? Rich people pay more money into those, but for medicare they get the same benefit.
They gain more from the social system as a whole. Having a work force that is healthy and productive is incredibly valuable for them. It means they don't have to provide insurance for their employees, which also saves them alot of money. Poor people get medical care for themselves, but that is the end of the benefit to them. Rich people get care for themselves and make more money from the system being in place. Why should they not pay more when they benefit more?
I don't see why it matters what percent they spend on what. They could be spending wastefully for all I know. Just because they are bad at making a budget doesn't excuse them from paying taxes. They are benefiting from roads after all, aren't they?
The fact that you don't care about the nuance of reality is kind of a problem. The fact is that you can charge 2 people the exact same tax rate and it can be a much more significant hardship on one of them than the other. For example, person A has 30 sandwiches, person B has 500. They need to live off these for a month. If you taxed them 50% person A now has only 15 sandwiches for a month so he can only eat every other day. Person B has 250 and can eat as much as he wants and have some left over. Its the same tax rate, but it is much harsher on the poor. Flat tax rates benefit those who have more wealth and hit those without wealth extremely hard.
There is no huge concentration of power that you pretended there was. My point stands.
But you just proved that there is. You don't need to own 99% of a market to have a huge amount of influence. If you can control 30% or 40% and the other 60% is made up of small companies, then you have massive influence over the market. You just proved that large firms have more than 50% control. That is extremely large influence. It is actually worse than I would have guessed.
And minimum wages aren't even meant to be lived on. Minimum wage jobs are for teenagers to get some real job experience.
That is just such obviously bullshit. There are tons of companies that rely on minimum wage (or slightly above minimum) to operate. Big companies like Walmart, most restaurants, etc cannot possibly survive with only teenagers. Yet they still only pay as little as possible. If companies were actually paying living wages to their employees then a minimum wouldn't be necessary. The only reason these laws are needed is because companies don't want to pay their employees enough for them to live off of.
Liberals flip shit when any job gets automated. That is Yang's entire shtick
You have clearly misunderstood. Yang's point isn't that we should stop automation so we can protect minimum wage jobs. His point is that society needs to be reshaped so that when those jobs are lost you don't bankrupt a large percentage of the american population. It is about helping the people, not protecting the job.
you will get every restaurant either shut down or have them excessively increase prices.
If a restaurant needs to pay it's employees wages they cannot survive on, then they do not have a viable business strategy. Why are you advocating for protecting bad businesses by allowing them to abuse their employees? If they cannot compete then they will go under and new, better designed businesses will replace them. That is how capitalism is supposed to work.
Jobs pay little when the skill required to do it is little. Fry cooks don't make the company enough money to earn a living wage. How about, if you want to have enough money, you do something valuable
Honestly stop and think about what you said here. you are saying fry cooks don't deserve to earn enough to live. Do you honestly believe america would be a better place if fry cooks were required to live in abject poverty until they found another job? You are describing a 3rd world country. Is that what you think america should be?
You can't just manipulate wages and expect there to be no decrease in hours worked or jobs available.
No one is talking about "manipulating wages" we are talking about setting a floor. A basic level that most people can't afford to live on anyway. If a business needs to pay poverty wages to run, then it is a poorly designed business that can only survive by economically abusing it's work force. I for one don't believe that businesses should be bailed out on the backs of their workers.
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@Greyparrot
This is a huge win for the trolling GOP.
The majority of americans support impeachment. The republicans trying to block investigation of someone we know has committed crimes is far more damaging.
Especially considering they were crying (and committing crimes in Mat Gates' case) to get this inquiry to be open. When the Dems vote to open it, they all vote against it. At least if they were consistent in their criticisms people might believe they are actually telling the truth. But moving the goal posts every week is only making it obvious to people that the president is guilty. If he weren't then they would actually have a consistent defense. They wouldn't need to move the goal posts every time more damning evidence comes out.
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I sort of disagree with both Greyparrot and Imabench. They knew that there would eventually be a vote and the evidence would become public. They never cared about that. They also don't care if there is a vote on it. They know that any vote on it in congress will pass. I don't think that was ever the point.
The point was to continue to feed nonsense news stories to groups like fox news. They want to bring up any kind of nonsense defense they can possibly come up with that doesn't require them to say that what trump did was good. They know trump did some really shady stuff. Many of them know what he did was illegal. So they don't want to come out and say that it wasn't or it might bite them in the ass later.
To me, it looks like the goal is to keep stoking conspiracy theories and denial so that as the evidence of trump's guilt continues to come out, a large chunk the country simply isn't listening. They heard all about how the dems were engaging is a super secret, anti constitutional, coup during their crazy communist takeover of democracy (or whatever lies fox feeds them) in this 1st phase of the inquiry. So it won't matter that trump gets proven to be guilty because trump's base will never believe it. Or even if they do believe the evidence, they will still think that whatever the dems did is worse than trump's crimes.
But I don't think this is likely to succeed. There is about 30% of the country this will definitely work on. They are so deep in trump land that he could murder their sister and they would cheer him on. But 50% already think he should be removed. And 15-20% are in touch with reality enough to see the evidence and understand he is a criminal. I don't think this is a strategy that will work. Assuming Pelosi doesn't screw it all up of course.
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@bmdrocks21
But this is all of the data we have on the matter. If the result was 88%, I doubt that the actual population parameter would be anything radically different.
Why would you think that? If i put up flyers at Harvard and asked what the financial background of your parents was, I would likely find that a very large percentage of american parents are wealthy. If I put up those flyers at a community college I would find the opposite. How you get your sample is critically important. The fact that they didn't take a random sample invalidates the results.
I have heard enough. I am going to have to ask for statistics proving your claims of rich people getting easy jobs that pay a ton of money. Prove they don't work for their money. I know it happens sometimes, but you are making some crazy generalizations here.
You are essentially asking me to prove something that few would ever admit to. I mean look at trump, if you asked him if he was self made millionaire he would say yes. But his father gave him millions and millions of dollars. Very few people would ever admit to someone else, many of them can't even admit to themselves, that their success was due to their name or connections. Therefore stats simply don't exist. You are asking for the impossible.
You don't have to start out rich, you just have to make good life decisions. If you wait to have kids until you're married, finish high school, and work full time, your chances of being impoverished go down astronomically. Then, you just have to save and invest that money instead of buying new cares, the newest iPhone, the newest Jordans, etc.
This is such a tired right wing talking point. That if you just avoid buying an iPhone, then you can be a millionaire making 30,000 a year. It is a ridiculous lie sold to poor people so that they ignore how incredibly unbalanced the american economy is. The truth is that a lifetime of hard work usually doesn't end in being wealthy.
I see no reason that you wouldn't support a flat tax. If they make more money, they pay more into the system. By taxing at a higher rate, you are saying they have less right to that money, although it is equally valuable to the economy.
Because flat taxes are inherently unfair. There are baseline costs that everyone has to pay. Food, housing, healthcare etc. For a poor person, this is going to take up a much higher percentage of your income that if you are rich. So a poor person might need 75% of their income just to cover the necessities of survival. For a rich person it is more like 5-10%. A rich person can afford to pay a higher percentage into the system without compromising their livelihood. A poor person cannot. A flat tax rate does not take any of the nuance into account. it therefore highly benefits rich people at the expense of the poor.
Ok, you are wrong. Business isn't run by a few individuals. 47.5% of private sector jobs are employed by small businesses.
So big businesses control the majority of all private jobs in america. Why do you think that is evidence that they aren't controlling business? Your own stats show that 52.5% of all jobs are controlled by large companies. A minority are controlled by a whole bunch of small companies with little influence. That shows just how much power those big companies have. This stat greatly undermines your point.
No, not everyone would get paid minimum wage. 2.3% of all wage earners get minimum wage or below minimum wage rates. That means 97.7% of all wage earners are making ABOVE the federally mandate wage.
So? Minimum wage isn't enough to survive on in many places. People would literally starve to death working full time on minimum wage in many cities. In some cities you could be making 50% over minimum wage and still be in poverty.
You are not supposed to raise a family at minimum wage. You have people who work at McDonald's for 15 years and complain about not making a living wage. Is it my fault that they refuse to make the effort to apply for other jobs or apply for manager positions? No.
If you work 40 hours a week, you should not be in poverty. Period. If a job is not worth enough to an employer to pay a living wage, then they need to find another way to do things. We should not allow any company to employ people at a wage so low they cannot afford to live.
You are also assuming that there are enough high paying jobs for everyone. There isn't. Some people are not going to be able to get better jobs because there aren't enough better jobs for everyone. If everyone is a manager, then there is no one to manage. You are basically saying that some people deserve to starve or be homeless because they can't find a management job. I personally find that opinion distasteful.
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@bmdrocks21
Yeah, from what I have seen, most people don't want to be welfare queens.
I reject the right wing propaganda of "welfare queens". It is a caricature created to demonize the poor. They want poor people to identify more with billionaires that don't give a crap about anyone else than with people struggling to survive.
They want to work, and for that, they need opportunity. Opportunity won't come by crowding out small businesses with high taxes and expensive regulation compliance costs.
You know what else they want? A wage they can actually survive and thrive on. It doesn't matter how many jobs are available, if they all pay minimum wage you are still going to be barely above the poverty line. Having lots of jobs to choose from is meaningless if no one is offering a decent wage. For the last few decades workers' wages have been stagnant while incomes for the top few percent have been skyrocketing. The american economy was modified to only help the rich. If people don't take action to change that, then things will continue to get worse.
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@Dr.Franklin
In a previous debate he engaged in a string of ad-hominem attacks. I am happy to debate with him as long as he is remaining civil. For the moment that is the case. If he were to return to his attacks I would stop communicating with him.Why does one block just to still communicate with him??
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@bmdrocks21
It was asking a variety of questions over twenty minutes from a third-party firm.
But the sample wasn't random. They recruited people into the study. If you know anything about polling or scientific studies, you know that for a study to be valid you need a representative or random sample. If you are recruiting the subjects then you are creating a bias in the study. Perhaps people who are self made millionaires want to show off more. Perhaps they have more respect for research, it could be any number of things. But if the sample isn't randomized, then the study is flawed and it's results are tainted. That is not a viable study.
It you have statistics proving this 88% number wrong, I encourage you to post them.
As far as I know, no reliable statistics about how many millionaires are self made exist. You are attempting to force the burden of proof onto me when you have not provided any reliable evidence.
The poor would benefit more for a huge variety of reasons for police patrols. It prevents crime.
A high percentage of crimes are property crimes, IE robbery, burglery etc. Who do you think is the most tempting target for these crimes? Poor people with little wealth or rich people with lots of wealth? The rich have much more to protect and therefore have much more to benefit from strongly enforced laws. but this was just 1 of the examples I was providing of social services they benefit from. So we can probably move on from this.
Who you know can have some bearing on getting a job. But you also have to be qualified. A company won't take some idiot just because he has a hard-working parent.
Again, no. I mean, is someone going to hire you as an accountant if you aren't qualified? no. Is someone going to put you into some high paid corner office kind of job because you are rich and connected? Absolutely. You take care of the son of someone connected, that someone connected will help take care of you. This is one of the ways the rich stay rich without being particularly intelligent or hard working.
They also work a shit-ton harder than me. I don't have the know-how to invest like them.
Again, no. Studies have shown that computer programs can do a better job than most people at investing. There are some that have a really good sense for it. But mostly it is just that if you have money, you will make more money. It doesn't require high intelligence. It just requires you to start out rich.
Just having more income doesn't make that investment any less valuable for the economy, so why should it be less valuable to the investor?
No one has ever said that it is less valuable. They have said that you are profiting more from the system and therefore should have to pay more into that system. It has nothing to do with the value of their investment, it has to do with their responsibility to pay back into a system they use to generate their profits.
I don't want the poor to be powerless and the rich to be powerful. I want equality of opportunity
But from what I can tell that is not what you are advocating for. You want the government to stay out of business. Business is run by a small number of extremely rich people. If elected officials (ie the advocates for the people) have little to no say over business, then those small number of extremely rich people have all the power.
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@bmdrocks21
88% of millionaires are self-made
Did you look into the details of that study? They recruited 1,367 people to do an online study. Of those, 601 had more that 1 million dollars in assets. Do you think a family legacy kind of millionaire is likely to sign up for an online survey? This study does not seem to be representative of the general population because the sample wasn't random. This survey suffers from selection bias and cannot be viewed as reliable when making conclusions about all millionaires.
Here is a link I found. The last slide has some details on how they did the study.
Ok, and when the police patrol poor, crime-ridden neighborhoods more often, the poor should pay more of that tax, right? They are certainly benefiting more. The problem with your assumption is that this cannot be quantified.
I don't see that as benefiting more. Poor people have less property and wealth to protect. The rich have a great deal of property and wealth to protect. If crime is prevented, it is the rich that benefit more from it. The poor have little to lose.
Our economy is generated as a meritocracy.
No, it really, really isn't. Who you know and what your family name is has HUGE impacts on who does well and who does not. If your dad knows an executive at a company, it is alot easier to get a high paying position than if you are some poor kid looking for a job.
Again, 88% of millionaires are self-made. So, it is more or less a strawman to define the rich as kids who inherited wealth.
The stat you provided is from a very flawed survey. It cannot be relied upon to draw that kind of conclusion.
I don't care about the effective tax rate. They pay hundreds of thousands more in taxes.
And they make hundreds of millions or billions more in revenue. They are gaining much more from the benefits of society than you are. It is only right that they pay more back into the system.
Sure, 90% could be considered a strawman. But under FDR, the nominal tax rate was 94%
During WW2 yes. But the effective tax rate was actually 69%. it is lower down in the same article you linked. So saying 90% is still a straw man because no one has ever paid a 90% effective tax rate and no one is advocating for one now.
The other mentality is get the government out of our lives and let us succeed or fail based on merit.
In that mentality, the poor essentially lose any power at all. If the government stays out of it, then the rich get to decide all the rules and the poor just have to suffer whatever the rich want. You are essentially advocating for an Oligarchy. This is pretty much the Russian system.
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@Imabench
The state voted 9 points for Romney over Obama in 2012 and 8 points for McCain over Obama in 2008, for there to be an almost 10% demographic shift in favor of the Democrats in under 10 years is just far-fetched for me to believe.
Fair enough. I think it is perfectly warranted to be skeptical. I suspect it is more about trump than about democrats or republicans. Trump is a repugnant man. In a state where 1/3rd of the population is Hispanic, that means that a very large percentage of the population is going to have a personal connection to Hispanic people. So calling Mexicans rapists and drumming up fears about a "caravan" might play well in some states. I don't think it does as well in Arizona.
If trump is on the ticket in the next election, then I think the state is a toss up. If trump for some reason weren't on the ticket, it would probably be leans republican.
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@Imabench
Arizona should be Leans Republican instead of Toss up
As you pointed out, in 2016 the dems were pretty close. The 2018 elections had the democrats winning the popular vote by almost 2 points, 50.37% to 48.66%.
Trumps approval rating is also slightly underwater, 50% disapproval, 47% approval.
This part I have little evidence to support, but since a charge chunk of their population (31%) is Hispanic, I don't think trump's racism plays as well as it does in other areas. If the republicans were running a generic presidential candidate it would likely be leans republicans. With Trump on the ticket, that seems much less clear.
Arizona is historically a republican area, but at the moment it is looking like it could be a toss up.
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@bmdrocks21
Yes, I agree that billionaires shouldn't have some inordinate amount of power over our politicians.
We seem to agree on this point. I think political donations from any organizations should be banned.
Give them a good environment to do business. That means no excessive taxes and regulations.
I agree, but we have very different definitions of a "good environment" and "no excessive taxes and regulations". The most critical detail to keep in mind is that corporations do not have the best interests of America or it's people at heart. That isn't what they exist for. They only care about their personal profit. And that is fine because that is what they are supposed to be doing. But if you don't have a strong government setting rules for how they should operate then they will act like assholes and do destructive, awful things in the pursuit of profit. Most people don't want to stop companies from earning money. But they need to be regulated to make sure they do it in constructive ways. They also need to be properly taxed so that the government can provide the services the country needs.
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@bmdrocks21
First off, these rich people are putting in a lot more effort than the average person.
What does that even mean? Do you think a guy who inherited millions from his parents then started a series of failed companies "puts in more effort" than soldiers, police, construction workers etc? Being rich does not mean you put in more effort. It just means you own stuff.
Second, you have no guarantee that their workers received public education, and more likely they didn't because our public school system is pitiful compared to private schools.
Here is a link showing that 90% of american children received a public education. So the vast majority of employees of virtually every company received a publicly funded education. But this is only 1 of the ways they benefit from society. Their property is defended by police and soldiers. They transport their goods on public roads. There are countless ways that the government subsidizes the wealth of the rich.
So, I support a flat tax. I say that, no matter how successful a person is, they have an equal right to their income. If they put in more work, they get to keep as much of it as anyone else.
Again, just because they are rich, does not prove they put in more work. It just means they are getting more benefit from their work and/or inherited lots of money. Poor people work hard too. But america's economy is not designed to reward work. it is designed to generate as much wealth as possible for those at the top.
If they make more(and according to you, they receive more benefit), they pay more.
But at the moment they don't. They are paying a lower effective tax rate than you are.
Rich is a completely relative term. If you take 90% of their income, they may be slightly more "rich" than other people. But at that point, you have to wonder if it is worth it to take years off of your life working 80 hours a week to just be moderately wealthy.
1st off, no one is suggesting a 90% effective tax rate, so that is a straw man. 2nd, if you take 90% of 10 million dollars per year income, they are still making 1 million dollars per year. They are not going to encounter economic hardship at 1 million a year. If you took 90% of the income of someone making 30,000 per year, they would go bankrupt. So the 2 scenario's are entirely different.
It isn't even that the poor person would starve to death. It is the mentality. That you think it is okay to take more from people just because they are successful.
What other mentality is there? We need X amount of money to run a country, 90% of the money is held by a tiny percentage of the population. There is no way you can possibly split the costs evenly when so much of the money is concentrated is so few hands. If they hold most of the money, they should pay most of the taxes. There is no other method that can possibly work.
Taxation is by definition theft.
No it is not. That is like saying killing someone is by definition murder. it is not. there are many cases where ending someone's life is not murder. There are many cases where taking money from someone is not theft.
Let us say you are in a room with five people. You have $100. They vote to rob you of your money. They give you a gum wrapper for your "benefit". That is what the government does.
Your analogy doesn't work on several levels. 1) your scenario is a 100% payment by 1 person and a 0% payment by everyone else. That is not how taxes work at all.
2) Rich people make their money off of everyone else. If those people didn't work for them, invest in their businesses, buy their stuff etc, they wouldn't be rich. Your scenario has none of that detail and just describes a robbery.
3) If you don't want to pay taxes you have the choice to leave to avoid taxation. People want to stay because they have all the benefits of being in America. Taxes are an agreed upon part of being an american. If you don't want to agree to the rules of being an american, then stop being an american. Objecting to taxes is like saying saying you really want all the benefits of having a job, but you don't want to do any of the work that comes with it. It is childish.
Their income tax rate is higher. The capital gains tax is low, which makes it "lower". But as I said in a previous thread, these are after tax dollars.
There is no such thing as an "after tax dollar". If you earn income, that income is taxed. Capitol gains is income, therefore it is taxed. The rich want to convince poor people that capitol gains is a super special kind of income they shouldn't pay taxes on. They do that because it would benefit them massively while benefiting the majority of Americans very little.
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@bmdrocks21
They are attacked because (1) they have a lot of money, so they can fund things.
Yes. If you have more wealth available to you, then you can afford to pay more for the common good. These people have disproportionately benefited from the system we have developed. for example they are profiting off of skilled labor trained at public expense. Since they are benefiting more than average from this system, they should be paying more than average back into that system. If they don't then the services the system can offer decline and we all suffer as a result.
2) because people are spiteful and jealous of the rich. If you took 90% of a rich person's income vs a poor person's, your reaction would be very different.
I don't disagree that people are spiteful and jealous. The difference is what the outcome would be. If you took 90% of a rich person's income, they would still be rich. They might not be able to afford as much luxury, but they would be rich. if you took 90% of a poor person's income they would starve to death. The outcomes are extremely different and therefore should not be treated as if they are the same.
Yet the amount you stole from the rich was significantly larger.
This is a very loaded statement. 1) taxation is not theft. They benefit significantly from government services, they should have to pay for those services.
2) recent studies have shown that the rich are actually paying a lower effective tax rate than the lower class. Their decades of lobbying have resulted in billionaires paying a lower effective tax rate than the people struggling to make ends meet.
And I am against lobbying. Some of your dem candidates are as well, but they still propose higher taxes on them.
What is your point? A billionaire is 1 person. They get one vote. What they want should not out way what a million poor people want. But in the current system what millionaires and billionaires want is far more important to most politicians than what their constituents want. The american electoral system requires massive amounts of money to run a campaign. So politicians spend a huge percentage of their time fundraising and sucking up to rich people. This is not what they were elected to do and has resulted in the system massively benefiting rich people at the expense of everyone else.
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@bmdrocks21
Yes, I see no good in attacking people just because they are wealthier than me. They are a popular target because they are a minority that many people aren't sympathetic towards.
This is a weird dynamic that I can't seem to understand. Rich people attack poor people all the time. But a large percentage of lower and middle class people argue there is no reason to attack rich people. The rich lobby the government to make rules and laws that benefit them at the expense of everyone else. Most of the rich don't give a shit about you except how they can use you to get more money. If your death would profit them, they would let you die.
People don't attack the rich because they are an easy target. They attack them because they are busy attacking everyone else. And they are very good at it.
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@Greyparrot
Even if you don't have retirement investments, chances are your boss does. Cheering a dip in the stock market is just asking to get laid off.
No one should cheer dips in the stock markets. In and of itself, that is not a good thing. However the stock market going up is not in and of itself a good thing for most people either. Stock prices go up when companies make more money, but it doesn't really matter how they make that money. If they engage is super abusive, shitty business practices that hurt a lot of people, but they make money at it, their stock price will go up. For most people, their stock price going up doesn't really help them. But the shitty business practices the company engaged in to make it go up will likely hurt them.
Unless you work for the government, attacking the 1% most productive is suicide.
Your point is fundamentally flawed. You are mistaking top 1% most wealthy with top 1% most productive. Having money does not mean you are productive. It just means you have money. There are alot of very productive people who do not get properly rewarded for their work, and lots of largely useless people who get very highly rewarded for their work.
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@Dr.Franklin
Trump will be relecetd
Do you have any facts to back up that claim? This topic started with a discussion of a document that would suggest he wont. I proved the document's descriptions were accurate. When presented with facts and statistics you appear to have just reverted to giving your opinion instead of actually engaging with what is going on in the US.
If you think Trump will win, and I am not discounting that possibility, then please provide evidence to support that opinion.
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@Greyparrot
stat from where? It just doesn't pass the smell test that 46% of all workers plan to retire on social security.
ummm what? I provided statistics and a source for those statistics. Your response is that you don't like it and therefore are going to pretend like it isn't real. If you can find evidence that this isn't true, then I am certainly willing to look at your evidence and we can further this discussion.
If you are not willing to bother to look, then you are rejecting reality because you don't like it. It will make it impossible to discuss the topic if you aren't willing to do basic research to try to support your assertion.
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I don't have much of an opinion of this one way or the other.
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@Greyparrot
no you don't. You need to have charisma and speak confidently. That is what trump does very well. He delivers his lies as if he believes them with all his heart. Everything he says and does is super exaggerated (everything is "the best", or "the greatest" etc). This is intended to convince people he really knows what he's talking about. And if you don't know much about the topic he is talking about, it often works.You have to be a lot smarter than your mark to be a con man.
But his lies are pretty transparent if you bother to look into them. If he were smart he would cover his tracks much better.
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@Dr.Franklin
I'm not sure what "T" means.
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@Greyparrot
Saying you want to kill your wife isn't attempted murder.
sort of. Saying "i wish my wife was dead" isn't attempted murder. Saying "I want you to help me kill my wife" is conspiracy to commit murder. Sometimes saying you want to commit a crime, is itself a crime.
But then trump did ask them for "a favor" to dig up dirt on biden. So it isn't even hypothetical. The crime was asking. he asked.
Saying you want a quid pro quo isn't a quid pro quo.
That depends on who you say it to. Telling your wife "I want ukraine to give me dirt on biden" is not a quid pro quo. Having the ambassador to the UN tell an aid of the president of Ukraine that they can't have military aid unless they get dirt on Biden, then on a call with the Ukrainian president tell him you want a favor, that is definitely a quid pro quo. And we now have sworn testimony that that is what happened. It's also worth noting we don't have the full transcript of the call, they cut out large chunks of the version they released. So it's possible the full version is even more damning.
Democrats are so hypervigilant, they won't allow Trump the time to actually commit a crime.
This sentence doesn't make sense. He committed 2 crimes in July. 1 when he asked for dirt on joe biden. 1 when he abused the power of his office to extort them into digging up that dirt. He committed those crimes 2 months before the impeachment inquiry began. That's like saying police are so hyper vigilant, they start investigating 2 months after a crime is committed.
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@PaulVerliane
instead of a reapresident we have a Btman villian , somebody pinch me
He isn't a batman villain. They are usually fairly intelligent in some way. He is a reasonably talented conman who only cares about money, power and respect/prestige. That causes him to do alot of terrible things. Not because he has some diabolical plan, but because he is an idiot flailing around in the most powerful office in the world.
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@Dynasty
And what does that mean to you? By Canadian standards, universal healthcare is a moderate, centrist view. So when you say centrist you need to explain what that actually means to you, because it will mean something very different to someone else.Having a moderate political view.
A "centrist" in the heart of republican territory would be very different than a "centrist" in NY district 14 (AOC's district).
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@Dr.Franklin
fake stats
If you mean the electoral stats, I gave the links. They are very real.
If you mean his approval/impeachment, here is a link showing support for trumps impeachment and removal at 51% and trumps job approval rating at 39%.
Here is a link to a fox news poll showing support for impeachment and removal at 51% and his job approval rating at 43%
The fact is that at this very moment, about half the country wants trump impeached. How many people are so far gone they will never connect with reality is a question without a firm answer. The floor for his approval has been about 33-35%. So I would say that is a good number for the amount of people who are such rabid supporters that they either can't acknowledge he is a criminal, or simply don't care.
That leaves about 15% of the population who neither want to impeach him yet, but aren't so disconnected that they will never look at the evidence of his guilt.
If you think part of that is fake, please be specific about what.
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@Greyparrot
Not to mention EVEN IF Zelinsky is lying through his teeth
I've already established that there is no benefit for zelinsky to say that trump pressured him. But there is a lot to lose. He is an unreliable witness. As trump currently has a significant amount of power over the well being of his entire country (and his career) you could even say he is under duress.
all the hearsay evidence was credible
The chief of staff admitted to the quid pro quo in a briefing. That isn't hearsay. A military officer who was on the call testified today. He was so disturbed by what trump said on the call he reported it to his superiors. That isn't hearsay. Why do you think witnesses are hearsay?
Zelensky has yet to uncover the slimy dirt from the Democraps
This is irrelevant. The 1st crime was trump asking for dirt. There is no requirement for him to actually receive the dirt for it to be a crime. The 2nd crime was holding back the funding to extort him to commit the 1st crime. That doesn't require that Zelensky provided info either. When he asked for dirt and held back the funding to get the dirt, he committed 2 crimes. Whether or not he got what he wanted is irrelevant.
Since there is no actual violation, even if you do somehow prove the Quid, the Quo has yet to happen.
I don't know where you got that from. I just explained, and have repeatedly explained, both crimes.
You don't prosecute almost crimes just like you don't send a husband to death row for saying he wants to kill his wife.
You are clearly not very familiar with the law. Attempted murder is an "almost crime" that you would very much go to jail for. And conspiracy to commit murder is also a crime. You don't have to get the thing you want in order to commit a crime. If you try to steal a car, try to rob a bank etc, you are going to jail. Trump committed the crimes the moment he asked for the dirt and the moment he held back the funding to get the dirt.
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@Dr.Franklin
So?
You claimed they were always red. I proved that isn't true. I also proved that at the moment they are leaning dem. This would seem to justify them being ruled as "leaning dem". I don't understand what you mean by "So?".
Talking about his appeal to blue collar
You think that blue collar people want an impeached criminal as their president? There is about 35% who are so far in his corner they will never be swayed. about 50% want him impeached and removed from office right now. the other 15% are open to being convinced. And there have been a couple of damning witnesses already with more to come.
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@Greyparrot
I find it kinda hard to believe 46% of people are planning to retire on social security.
Ok. I provided stats to back up my point and provided my source. If you don't think this is accurate then please provide a source which supports your opinion.
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@Dr.Franklin
I was just highlighting that they are not always red. They have voted majority democrat twice in recent history. But again, historical voting is much less important than recent voting, which is 11 point dem lead.Romney won the state, DUH 2008 was just a landslide, I mean fucking indiana voted blue that year
just the city turnouts, plus in 2020, trump is differenbt
I agree that trump is different. His approval is in the toilet. He is in the middle of getting impeached. I mean just today we heard from a senior military official who said that he was so concerned about trump's actions on that call that he reported it to his superiors. Trump got alot of support by claiming he would drain the swamp. To alot of people, he has proven that he is just as bad, if not worse, than everyone else in the swamp. To people who love trump this won't matter. But that is only about 35% of the country. To everyone else, it will matter.
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@Dr.Franklin
Theyre tossups because of 2016, NC has always been red
Dems got the majority of votes in NC in 2008 and in 2012.
But i'm not certain the history of the state that far back is all that relevant, they are leaning dem right now. Who they supported 10 years ago isn't all that important.
How did they flip two house seats then budddodoododd
The republicans won the 3 lowest population districts. The Dems won the 5 highest population districts.
The democrats also flipped 2 for a net change of 0. Meaning the dems control 5 of 8 districts.
But the fact that they got 11 points more support is a significant shift in their favor.
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@Dr.Franklin
The polling did not show trump winning in 2016 either, look at the better facts: 1.Hillary barely won,2. GOP gained house seats in minnesota, rare for a midterm
The most recent election has the republicans down by 11 points. That isn't a poll. That is an election. Those are solid indisputable numbers of who turned up to vote for each side. The republicans would need to do a fair bit better in this election than in the last one in order to be competitive. That certainly doesn't mean it is a lock for the dems. But the stats show it is leaning that way.
Which is a lean republican
2% is a tiny margin. If you think that should mean that we read that as leans one way, then Arizona should be leans dem, Pennsylvania should be leans dem, and wisconsin should be leans dem. They all had a wider spread than 2% for the dems in the 2018 election. If you want to put 3 more states in leans dem so you can have that one, sure i guess.
Who cares? Approval meaning doesnt mean anything if the democrats cant provide a democrat
1) it means half the state doesn't approve of what he is doing as president are are therefore likely to vote against him.
2) what does "if the democrats cant provide a democrat" mean? There will be a nominee. Has anyone suggested that there won't be?
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@Dr.Franklin
I took a look at the states you mentioned. If you disagree, please let me know why.
Minnesota should be a tossup.
Minnesota was a tight election in 2016. But in 2018 the democrats were up by over 11 points, 55.13% 43.68%.
Trump's polling numbers are pretty heavily underwater too. His job performance approval in Minnesota is around 41% while his disapproval rating is staying around 55%
The head to head polls suggest all of the democratic front runners would beat him by 9 to 17 points (9 being sanders, 17 being klobuchar)
The polling does not suggest that is is a tossup.
NC should be Lean Republican
In the 2018 election the republicans got 50.39%, the dems got 48.35%. That's a difference of about 2 points.
Trumps approval to disapproval seems to stay at pretty much 50/50.
That sounds like a toss up to me. The republicans don't seem to have much of an edge there at the moment.
NEw Mexico should be Likely Democratic, bush won it once so it could be competitive
In the 2018 election the dems got 58.25% to the republicans 38.20%. That is a difference of 20 points.
Trump's approval rating is about 41% to about 56% disapproval.
A 20 point lead for the dems in the latest election and trump being 15% underwater on approval rating seems like solid dem to me.
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@TheRealNihilist
We have our differences as well. I also think you are an overly... aggressive debtor and this also detracts from your ability to have a discussion. But at least you are capable of remaining mostly civil in your criticism. From my experience Imabench is not.
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@TheRealNihilist
So you blocked Imabench and not me? I am offended.
I have no objection to people strongly disagreeing with what I say. The reason I blocked Imabench was that in every single post he would ignore what I was saying and just go back to ad hominem attacks on me personally. This made it impossible to actually engage in any meaningful discussion.
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@Greyparrot
Or you could choose to not educate yourself. That works too. You've already demonstrated your amazing ability to voice your valuable opinion without watching any of the videos I link, or commenting on anything about them.
This is a website about debating. You are choosing to not debate. You are just spamming links to videos with no explanation of what they are about or why they are relevant. And in many cases they don't appear to be relevant at all. That is not how debate works.
Diversity of ideas is our strength, right?
Agreed, so tell me what your ideas are. Don't just throw out dozens of links and expect me to try to figure out what your point is.
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@Greyparrot
You can choose to educate yourself or not. Doesn't affect me at all.
This is a debate site. If you don't intend to debate then you have no reason to be here. Make an argument, support it with evidence. That is the whole point. Just spamming links is childish.
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@Greyparrot
If you don't actually make an argument you may as well not be here. I'm not going to watch a series of videos just because you link them. Make an argument. You can use the videos as evidence to support your argument. However, just throwing out links is not useful.
If you can't articulate why you think are correct, then why are you on a debating website?
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@Greyparrot
The public wouldn't support those businesses anyway.
That doesn't work any more. 50 years ago when alot of the companies you were dealing with were smaller that worked. Companies feared public backlash if they did something shitty. That simply isn't the case any more. Most companies are doing shitty things every single day. And when you have that many companies do that much shitty stuff, there simply isn't enough public attention to punish them. And even if they do get some negative publicity, it almost always goes away when the public gets distracted by some new outrage.
Only the government has the ability to keep companies in line. The public simply cannot police them. Nor should they have to. That is one of the reasons societies create governments.
In fact, we are one of the only countries in the world that have lowered CO2 emissions due mostly to public shaming and free-market businesses responding to their consumers.
There are lots of factors that helped with this including government regulations and shifts to renewable energy. Those renewable energy sources got huge boosts in tech from government grants and tax rebate programs. So government policy was a huge part of those reduced CO2 emissions.
What does destroy job creation is when the government decides what can be produced and what Americans must consume.
Other than things that are toxic or dangerous, who is trying to control what americans can produce or consume? That seems like straw man.
Also when they arbitrarily fix prices for labor and products.
They aren't fixing prices for products. They aren't particularly fixing prices for labor either, they are just setting a floor. You are free to pay your employees as much as you want, but you are not free to pay them so little they can't afford to survive. If a minimum wage didn't exist, alot of companies would pay their employees so little they would be driven into poverty.
Even if there is zero corruption in doing so <cough> it still destroys jobs and opportunities.
If your business "opportunity" requires you to pay someone so little that they would not be able to live, then your opportunity sucks. It does not destroy jobs or opportunities. It does prevent employers from pushing people into poverty.
It's also totalitarian and undemocratic. And Fascist.
You think that if an elected government passes laws to protect it's people that it is undemocratic, totalitarian and Fascist? I don't think you know what any of those words mean.
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@Greyparrot
Don't be silly. The government shouldn't be in the business of business. Leave it to the pros.
Of course government needs to be involved in business. What an odd thing to say. If they weren't involved they couldn't function as a government. A huge portion of the lives of people are dependent on the company they work for. If there are no laws around what those companies can and can't do then they effectively become the overlords of their employees. Corporations would become more powerful than the government.
Additionally, corporations do not have the good of the country, the people or the planet in mind when they make decisions. If dumping toxic waste into the water supply would make them money, they would do it. Lots of companies already have. The government is the only entity that exists to look after the good of the people and not to make the most money. If the government just sat back and let companies do whatever they want it would lead to catastrophe. And with the oncoming effects of global warming already being felt, it arguably already has.
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@Greyparrot
There isn't anything bad about green technology. When the government gets to pick winners and losers in the free market FDR style, the entire nation suffers.
Please don't just provide links. You need to actually say why the link is relevant and what you are arguing. The link should just be a reference for someone to go and check your source.
The government mandating how much wheat can be produced 90 years ago has nothing to do with incentivizing private businesses to develop green tech. If you think there is some relation, tell me why. Don't expect other people to do your research for you.
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@Greyparrot
Your 1st link is referencing work done by the Employment Policies Institute. This is a think tank whose "staff work for Berman and Company, which is a public affairs firm owned by Richard Berman, who lobbies for the restaurant, hotel, alcoholic beverage and tobacco industries."
Imagine that, a think tank that is almost entirely funded by a large business lobbyist thinks that paying workers enough for them to live on is a bad idea that will "cost jobs".
That last clip is interesting as it lays out how the minimum wage discriminates against the unskilled poor and minorities.
It in no way laid out how minimum wage discriminates against the unskilled poor and minorities. 2 guys said it does, but gave absolutely no reason or evidence that it is true. Why do you think that video is evidence of anything?
so easy.
You found an example of fraud. Do you have any idea how many cases of fraud happen in the private sector every day? I mean Trump, the man you trust to "drain the swamp", has been involved in lots of fraud cases. Why do you think that 1 case of fraud is evidence that all green technology is bad? If that is the case then every industry in the world is bad.
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@Greyparrot
Cute. Give me an example of legislation that stimulates private job creation.
Minimum wage increases create more demand and stimulate growth. Green energy tax incentives fosters growth and job creation in cutting edge technology.
What has trump done that fostered job creation? And no, giving a massive payday to billionaires did not create jobs.
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@bmdrocks21
Wasn't that the slowest recovery since the Great Depression?
So the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression had the slowest recovery since the Great Depression? I really don't know what your point is.
I of course judge Trump and Obama differently because one started their term during a recession and one didn't. But Trump has broken records in unemployment and has had huge growth, versus Obama's super slow recovery.
I wouldn't judge them the same either. One inherited an economy trashed by his republican predecessor. The other inherited a booming economy from his predecessor. Trump's economy has basically continued the upward trend that went through Obama's tenure.
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