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@dustryder
You guys are still going at it?
Just do a debate at this point.
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It was the Federal Reserve chairmen! They put them up to this!
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@sadolite
I completely agree that we need to make immigrants wait at least 5-10 years before qualifying for welfare. However, that only solves the economic issue of immigration. The other problem is that these immigrants aren't assimilating. We have these Mexican enclaves where they only speak Spanish and never really interact with Americans outside of there. We need to work on assimilating immigrants before we let more in since most don't share American values.
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@Greyparrot
None have his name in the title lol.
Why are they protecting the whistle blower's identity? Is he not credible or do they have to follow some sort of whistle blower protection bs?
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@Greyparrot
Eric Ciaramella is the whistleblower, correct?
I have heard that YouTube videos and Facebook posts with him in it are getting taken down and such.
What is going on with that?
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@disgusted
I find that explanations are very sparingly provided by the left.
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@disgusted
Selective enforcement is bad. It is really bad in Mexico. What is your point, exactly?
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@3RU7AL
Yeah, but then (without a real-estate tax) how would the government steal land from poor people?
Eminent domain, duh!
The SCOUTS ruled economic development is reasonable grounds. Just say you will send in rich people that will spend more, and you can steal those peasants' land likity split!
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@Dr.Franklin
*oof*
I'm from Indiana. Deep red here, my boy!
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@Dr.Franklin
You're from Massachusetts?
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@Dr.Franklin
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@Dr.Franklin
Like, the cognitive dissonance is astounding. Had Trump lied about his heritage to get into college, he'd have been crucified. But since she's a woman and liberal, it's fine.
Honk Honk :O)
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@Dr.Franklin
I'll add "doesn't understand biology/genetics" to the list
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@Dr.Franklin
She obviously doesn't understand politics very well. Or economics for that matter.
:^)
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Honestly, both sides are scummy and I recommend that we give money to neither, but c'mon, the Paletinians are definitely the ones keeping peace from happening between the two.
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"Obamacare is a right-wing plan"....?
In what way did Obamacare reduce government intrusion on the healthcare market and promote the free market through competition?
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@3RU7AL
What do you mean by "personal sovereignty" and "personal privacy"? Sounds like an abortion argument.
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@3RU7AL
Well, the whole benefit of having a free-market is the competition. So, you cannot allow monopolies that stifle competition.
I don't know enough about Microsoft and Amazon's market share to say if they should be "broken up" or exactly by how much.
You can't really stand up to international criminal organizations. They exist in the other countries, which makes it that country's responsibility. You can work with the other government on a joint initiative if you wish. But outside of that, invasion is the only way to solve that problem. I don't particularly like invasion, but to each his own.
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@3RU7AL
If you mean cartel in the business sense, I believe in anti-trust regulations.
If you mean it in the criminal sense, the role of the government is to fight crime.
I do believe that a government that stays out of our lives as much as possible and that enforces our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness would be preferable.
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@Alec
So labor union members are just slaves to whatever the Democrats say? Over 1/3 of them, 38.4%, voted for Trump. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/silver-bulletpoints-the-union-vote-could-swing-the-election/
That is 8% above what Romney got and Trump's main issue was immigration. Pretending that union households don't care about immigration because the Democrats don't is just plain incorrect. If you account for only white men in labor unions, over 50% voted for Trump.
Even if we assume the Bible supported immigration, and not only that but also uninhibited immigration, it never calls for a theocracy in which you force you religious views upon others in your country. Could you cite a quote about that in the New Testament in case I am unaware? The Bible guides individual action, not governmental policy insight. And treating them like you treat natives would refer to not being xenophobic rather than saying there should be no laws regarding to who can come into your country.
There are hiring caps based on the company's available capital. You are neglecting that there are diseconomies of scale. If you have too many people working on a task, it becomes less efficient. So, pretending that companies can hire whoever they want is wrong because it costs money to hire people. If a company wants to save money, they would hire the illegal worker over the native worker.
Let us assume you are right on the Latin America thing, you are just proving that if we allow any foreigners in, they will irreparably alter our culture. You would have to assume two outrageous things to say that these immigrants will assimilate like the old European immigrants: (1) that our political, social, economic, and cultural climate is exactly the same as it used to be when we took those European immigrants long ago (2) you must assume that their attitudes on policy are exactly the same as they used to be despite the political, social, economic, and cultural differences that their countries have experienced over the past century.
Latin American countries don't really have medicare for all. Medicare for essentially no one would better sum it up. If you consider that Hispanics vote 69% Democrat, I don't know how you think your Libertarian views will fly when you let in the entire third-world below our border. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/11/08/the-2018-midterm-vote-divisions-by-race-gender-education/
So, you admit that the Hispanics will vote Democrat, but say that Africans will vote Republican. You also are operating under the assumption that the individuals will pay to move here themselves. In your opinion, will more Hispanics be able to afford to cross our southern border or will more Africans be able to cross an entire ocean without any money?
They have a lot of economic and political freedom, as well.So does some of Latin America.
No, not really.
It´s because they think they need them. In order to alleviate poverty, I would show them how to get a better paying job that only requires a HS degree.
I don't think that poor people are poor simply because of their mindset. And when you inevitably drive down their wages by letting in tens of millions of low-wage immigrants that take all of the jobs that don't require a college degree......yeah. Not sustainable. Corporations benefit from hiring low-skill immigrants instead of natives. Immigrants get better jobs than they would in their home countries. The only people that get shafted are native workers who get worse working conditions and lower wages. You know, the people that the government has a responsibility to?
If I euthanize it so I could say, ¨I want to eliminate poverty through individual effort¨, and they point out that the war on poverty was a failure, then a bunch of Sanders supporters would not like the war on poverty because it is counterproductive to their goal of eliminating national poverty. They might vote for my proposal to eliminate poverty if it makes sense.
Hope you mean to say you would use a euphemism not "euthanize" lol. But you just said that union people vote based on what Democrats say, now you are saying people's minds can be changed regardless of party?
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@3RU7AL
You can have a reliable government with few regulations. The problem with corruption in Mexico is that there is selective enforcement. That and one of my source specifically discussed regulatory burden, which was higher in Mexico.
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@PressF4Respect
We should fully exonerate BillBatard and make him an honorary member of the HOF for his humanitarian contributions to everyone’s vote stats.
Don't forget win stats!
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I was actually OK with this ban, mostly from the perspective that he spammed debates and forum threads with low-quality garbage and made things much less enjoyable.
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@3RU7AL
According to the World Bank ease of doing business index, America is 6 th in the world, while Mexico is 60. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/ic.bus.ease.xq
We must be 10x more pro-business than them, right? ;)
In terms of regulations we have a better score than Mexico(less burden by government regulations). We have a 4.68(seven being the best) while Mexico has a 2.63.
I don't want all regulations to disappear, nor do I want anything drastic overnight. That would be a disaster.
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@3RU7AL
That would be where protectionism comes into play.
The government is corrupt af and gangs own most of the territories, so I would prefer not to do business from down there. Hardly Heaven on Earth.
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@3RU7AL
Isn't CHEAP LABOR the life-blood of the FREE-MARKET??
Screw the free market. I'm for Americans. I do like freer markets in terms of smaller regulations, less taxes, and no subsidies. I do not believe in letting people in who will destroy the livelihood of American citizens.
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@Alec
Back in the day, United Farm Workers attacked illegal immigrants.
How is open borders the Christian thing to do? I would think that a Christian would help people over there and improve their country by volunteering and donating. It wouldn't be very Christian to destroy your neighbor's way of life by having immigrants devalue his work.
They underpay the illegal immigrants. Assuming they could hire one worker, they would obviously choose the illegal. They are cheaper. Since they are underpaid, they still qualify for welfare benefits.
Could you perhaps mention how Latin American countries are Westernized? Except for a decent chunk of them being Christians, I see nothing. Even that is a downward trend. They don't share our values of liberty, as seen by their voting patterns.
Laws and culture are quite different. We are an anomaly in terms of gun laws here. They have rule of law in Europe, unlike Latin American countries. They have a lot of economic and political freedom, as well.
They seem pretty intent on getting their welfare benefits. They are fighting for more free things as we speak. Ever see what happens when a candidate runs on lowering benefits? He loses.
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@disgusted
What are you even talking about?Oh you can't be truthful or you will go to hell, that's hilarious
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@disgusted
Typical conservative government behaviour.
Theocratic government, actually. Certainly not American conservatism.
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@disgusted
I don't think you read the conversation, otherwise you would see that I am absolutely against slavery while my opponent thinks it can't be objectively wrong. I was showing how slavery is economically terrible and was showing how it held back the Confederacy's economy.
Nice try, chap! ^_^
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@3RU7AL
Yes, but had we not let in those immigrants who inevitably will have children, we wouldn't have to give welfare out at such high rates to their families.
Yes, that 51% includes all types of immigrants.
We are much less likely to be on welfare even including the fact that we are less likely to work. That means immigrants are taking low-paying jobs. Accepting those immigrants, who are willing to take less money and have worse work conditions causes something to happen: the sectors they work in begin paying less and having worse work conditions, which disincentivizes natives from working in those sectors. It is a rather vicious cycle.
I don't know why you are distinguishing between illegal and legal immigrants. My point is that when we allow people to come into our country, whether it be legally or illegally, they are disproportionately taking resources from natives who have undoubtedly paid into these systems more. We should focus on helping the people we do have before we accept more people that also need help. We need to make sure that when we do let people into our country legally that they won't be public charges. We need to be more swift in our enforcement against illegal immigrants and hastily send them back to their country of origin, so they can wait like everyone else. It is unfair to those who respect our laws if we don't do that.
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@3RU7AL
I agree, conservatives have a bunch of pansies who haven't decreased spending. George W Bush is an utter scum bad neo-con, though. Reagan was at least kind of conservative. His main spending increase was the military, but cut others. I often don't believe that "tax cuts pay for themselves". I think that is BS used to sell policies that I support. Raising taxes generally raises revenue. It just shifts spending to the public sector from the private and, in my opinion, slows economic growth in the long-run. It appears good in the short-run to increase spending and such via the government, which is all voters care about, unfortunately.
Nixon decimated the deficit, though! :)
He even increased welfare spending while doing so, oddly enough.
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@3RU7AL
And the issue is that the other side of the aisle seems intent on increasing all types of spending. It would perhaps make social security sustainable if we raised the retirement age. The issue is that the promises were given in the first place. Those people paid into it and saved less with the expectation that they would get these benefits. It was foolish of them, but it was a failure of government to create that expectation. Pension plans are also kinda ridiculous. "Pension bombs" will bankrupt us sooner or later.
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@3RU7AL
If you account for only debts owed to other countries, sure. But if you count the entitlements owed to citizens that we will have no way of paying for, then it gets a little hazy. "$82 trillion avalanche of Social Security and Medicare deficits that will come over the next three decades" https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2018/03/19/entitlement-spending-crisis-ignored-debt-looms/
We borrow tickets by selling bonds to other countries, who loan us tickets that we owe back plus interest.
They would more likely conquer us than destroy us if they were capable of it. I don't like the idea of our country getting extorted, though.
Greece is not all good. Their carnival is sub-par. No clowns or lions.
Boosting hype to raise stock value is how you get Enron. We don't want Enron.
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@Alec
You know that unions are actually very anti-immigration. The immigrants are willing to take less money, so companies replace native workers with the low-wage immigrant workers.
But we came from Europe. Americans have Western ideals. So, European immigrants have a culture that is more complementary to ours. I don't see any British-Americans saying "Make America Britain Again". I can't say the same about Mexican immigrants.
You're assuming that the poor people who come here can't/won't vote for welfare programs. How do you propose we ban welfare, considering over half of current immigrants are on some form of welfare? https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/09/01/immigrant-welfare-use-report/71517072/
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@3RU7AL
So we need to invent hoola hoops?
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@3RU7AL
But we borrow carnival tickets from other nations and have to pay interest on these ticket loans. When we continuously borrow tickets, the payments start snowballing and eventually we cannot pay back our ticket interest at all. Then the other carnivals are going to be very upset and might war with our carnival to get it back. Or we can print tons of tickets and everyone will lose faith in our ticket's value.
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@3RU7AL
I don't particularly like offshoring either. The companies make more profits, but that never decreases prices. It takes jobs away from our country/causes downward pressure on wages here.
Automation can be good as long as you have some plan for those people losing their jobs to get specialized in some other field where there are jobs.
Don't know too much about AI.
I'm a bit of an economic nationalist.
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@disgusted
I am sorry that you confuse self-reliance for selfishness.
I see that you conveniently didn't mention my statistics that completely disproved everything that you are saying.
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@3RU7AL
The bill for our debt will come eventually, likely in my lifetime, and it will be a very unpleasant one. I care about it, so I want to cut spending quite a bit and maybe raise taxes a little bit temporarily until we pay it off.
Yes, insurance does rob the healthy to pay the sick, and I would like to be able to opt out of some insurance. Car insurance is to pay for the other person's car in the case of a wreck, though. Health insurance is for yourself, and Obama made it illegal not to have health insurance. Kind of insane. And I can't opt out of many of those services anyway. If we didn't have insurance, costs would be much lower. Lasik eye surgery isn't covered by insurance and the price is driven down by competition.
Then whoever makes more money pays more, not based on costs. Private insurance companies should be able to cost-discriminate more.This would just exacerbate the "problem" you're complaining about. WHY SHOULD RICH PEOPLE BE PUNISHED? WHY SHOULD SMART RICH PEOPLE HELP POOR IDIOTS?
Think you mistook my point there. I was saying Medicare for all would tax the rich to pay much more for the exact same service. That isn't fair.
Glad we agree on patent/copyright reform.
That drug-industrial complex sounds corrupt as hell. You know, I absolutely hate Bernie Sanders except for I believe he is genuine and would actually go after special interests like that. It is unfortunate that I can't vote for him based on his fiscal policy and social policies.
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@Alec
It is only one of the reasons. Another is that it depresses the wages of native workers, destroys our culture, they cost us tons in welfare. I can get a full list of the reasons, but it will take a while.
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@Alec
I don't know if you enjoy reading political/economic books, but I am currently reading "We Wanted Workers". I would suggest it if you were interested. It goes into the details about why that isn't necessarily true. One main reason is that moving costs for those workers are incredibly high.
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@HistoryBuff
That link also showed that the ACA gave a perverse incentive for insurance companies to increase spending because they could make more in profits. The ACA required 80% of premiums to go towards medical costs, so they spend more, can bill more then, and then make larger profits.
Insurance companies have an incentive to compete. So, if they overcharge you or deny you service, you can go to another company. That is how it should work, but currently, in-state companies have oligopolies. We need to let insurance companies compete nation-wide so that there is real competition and prices do get driven down. The average amount of insurance companies per state is 4.0, of which many don't compete state-wide. https://www.kff.org/health-reform/issue-brief/insurer-participation-on-aca-marketplaces-2014-2019/
Price-fixing is illegal, so they won't all collude and double prices. Raise competition through allowing nation-wide competition. The cost of care is so high because some state require certain things such as hearing aids to be covered. If they don't have to, they can afford to lower prices and undercut their competition to get more customers.
You are assuming that the incompetent government will be able to reduce costs. When has it ever done that? The VA is utter garbage. https://observer.com/2019/04/veterans-affairs-troubles-trump-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-wrong/
And insurance companies do get lower prices to a degree. They don't pay the price charged to people without insurance. They are given discounts for sending patients to that hospital. To pay for the discounts, they raise prices.
43% of Canadians wait over 4 weeks to see a specialist compared to 10% in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_the_healthcare_systems_in_Canada_and_the_United_States#Wait_times We are much more efficient. Although a sizable amount of people unfortunately cannot afford care, going by percentages, it wouldn't make sense for wait times to grow at these levels (assuming we kept a privatized system). Government healthcare is obviously inefficient.
If companies would save so much money by reducing sick days, why don't they provide it already? If it would be valuable for them to increase productivity, they would pay for it, as many companies do.
This article discusses how medicare price controls have led to drug shortages https://www.heritage.org/health-care-reform/report/how-medicare-price-controls-have-contributed-drug-shortages
I'll look at your link for innovation. If government funding is doing most of the leg work, but a private company is actually just making slight adjustments and screwing us, I would have a problem with that. The government should sell a drug they invent and reduce my tax burden.
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@3RU7AL
Who pays taxes? Who has to make-up for the money dolled out in tax-credits? Tax-payers, that's who.
Nobody really pays for those tax credits. Have you seen our debt? Cut spending.
The old and chronically ill pay less-than-they-cost, and the young and healthy pay more-than-they-cost.
Yes, the old do pay less than they should and the young/healthy pay more than they should according to their costs. Now, how would universal healthcare plans by the government solve that? Then whoever makes more money pays more, not based on costs. Private insurance companies should be able to cost-discriminate more.
This is in part because companies have made those incremental improvements to insulin products, which has allowed them to keep their formulations under patent, and because older insulin formulations have fallen out of fashion.
I agree, we need some sort of patent reform that allows patents for innovative and new products, rather than slightly altered old drugs.
Pharmaceutical companies already spend more on marketing then they do on research. And most of their research is already subsidized by the government, and they're making record breaking profits anyway, so complaining about "the cost" is nonsensical.
If we are giving taxpayer money to private companies, that is a problem. There should be stricter rules on government-funded research with regard to patents, prices, etc. Without government aid, they should be able to charge however much they want, though.
Also, most of their "expensive research" is in service of defending their patent protection (they expire every 20 years unless they can reformulate it somehow and re-file for a new patent) and NOT in service of "creating more effective treatments".
Again, I do have a problem with companies exploiting how patents work. You would have to be super careful about how the patent reform is done, though. I want generic versions of products to enter the market at lower prices, as they are supposed to after 20 years.
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@dustryder
It isn't no-wage labor, though. You have to pay to feed and house the slaves. That is why they used low-paid Irish to do the more dangerous jobs because it would be more expensive to lose a slave.
I mean, unless you are evil, you want to make your country a good place for everyone. Reduce poverty and such. Generally you have the same goal, you just have different opinions on how to reach that goal. Some ideas are better than others for reaching that goal.
We have interfered in the Middle East, but they were by no means stable before that. They are always doing tribalistic warring.
Or maybe many of those Saudis are too poor to leave, who knows. Many of them may not know better because they aren't exposed to different ways of thinking. The governments there control information flows to their people. Non-corrupt countries where citizens know different points of view lean towards more westernized ways of thinking because we respect personal rights. I'm not applying western morals to compare to theirs. Just from any basic philosophical standpoint, you can tell that some things they do are abhorrent.
Not mention that economic and political freedom are linked to more wealth. Any way you look at it, really, you can see that how they run things are terrible.
The ground is the uterus? The soil isn't an organism or part of an organism, so it becomes disanalogous. The woman is the tree, which grows apples. The tree makes the apples. Your analogy would apply to test-tube babies maybe.
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@HistoryBuff
That is a lot of info. I'll get to it when I can.
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@3RU7AL
There are some good arguments for why you shouldn't pay for some of those things. I, for one, am okay with having them. If I pledged never to call the cops or use any service that required a road or call the fire fighters, hypothetically speaking, why should I have to pay for them? The cops deter crime, which helps me. The firefighters are there to save MY house. Roads are there for ME to get to work, the grocery, or to have things delivered to me. They took my money, but they are also directly impacting me in a beneficial way.
Hospitals actually get tax credits for when they take care of the uninsured in the emergency room, so not quite hitting the mark there. 10 to 100x what I should be paying? Are you saying if I didn't have insurance? Yes, the prices are inflated if you don't have insurance. You know why new drugs and procedures cost so damn much? Guess how long it takes to get a new drug...About 10 years. https://www.hiv.va.gov/patient/clinical-trials/drug-approval-process.asp They need to recover their costs, and we lead the world in innovation for not price fixing.
I do find it problematic that we have a bunch of people getting incarcerated. They aren't being productive citizens while in prison, and I have to pay for them. Now, you did something silly by saying that I want to lock up immigrants. I don't. Now, if you're talking about illegal aliens (big distinction), then I don't particularly want to incarcerate them, either. Ship them back to their home country immediately.
Imposing huge taxes and expensive regulations making it harder to find jobs and buy products for a decent price is one reason parents would be struggling. The homeless crisis in California is completely at the foot of your Democrat politicians.
Ok, so we agree the government does a lot of bad things that we don't want to pay for. Some, like the wars in the Middle East, we will both agree need to stop. Now, as far as I know, you don't support federalism. If states and local areas were given their rightful control over issues, you as a citizen could have more control over what you pay for. If you don't support it, you could leave the state. When you give so much power to the federal government, it is a lot harder to escape. Why can't medicare/medicaid be a state thing?
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@3RU7AL
I went on to say that a few of the services that you outlined I was okay with paying for. I said I was perfectly fine with roads, police, and the fire department. I was hesitant on some education and didn't see how healthcare for others helped me.
Now, paying for other people's food stamps and subsidizing single mothers who have 10 children is something that I would not support. That doesn't help me. If you want to contribute to those people, fine. Just don't force me to at gunpoint.
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