Teh middle class (forked from the other thread)

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Aabidano
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Teh middle class (forked from the other thread)

Post by Aabidano »

Kilmoll the Sexy wrote:The only way our system can work at all is for the private sector to be the creator of jobs. If we do not have wealthy people running companies, then there is no one to earn money to pay taxes for other people to work for the government. There is no money from taxes without a robust base of rich assholes hiring peons. I know that is tough for the tards to understand...but there is no magic money fairy creating shit to hand to the gubment for all the entitlement programs and government jobs. Sure those people pay taxes too, but those could not and would not exist without the rich creating the tax base in the first place.
The first sentence is spot on, the rest is where it all breaks down and in practice it isn't working. Plus the truly rich don't pay any or minimal taxes.

When you carry your logic through the "rich assholes" you're talking of aren't smart enough to realize that someone has to buy the goods in this chain someplace. Like WalMart, they all assume someone else will fix the problem, as long as they can keep making their shrinking margins on products made in even cheaper and more destitute areas.

They've been so busy maximizing profits with the short term view that keeps Wharton trained analysts happy that they've lost sight that the base of the pyramid is consumers, someplace. American consumers have the most money, which is why the housing & other credit scams of the last 15 years targeted them. Leveraging imaginary money out a stagnant market is far cheaper and easier than creating new value after all.

Medicare and SS are the current rallying cry, even though (AFIK) they're unrelated to general revenue and the deficit. Except for the unfunded borrowing our Govt has done against them and doesn't know how they'll pay back.
They keystone to this whole deal is a robust middle class. Once they finish destroying that it all comes apart.
Henry Ford understood this, the globalized current day Ford seems to, to an extent. Todays' GM & WalMart do not. Even the Chinese realize it, though it scares the crap out of them as it will be their eventual undoing.

US politicians & trade policies are just hanging on and allowing the ticks sucking all the value out of our economy to profit just a little longer. The tea party just being the latest and most flagrant iteration.

Using China as a for instance, only ~15% of the profit from any given transaction leaves China as cash. The rest has to leave as goods of some sort, which keeps that whole value chain in China as part of a China based subsidiary. And you wonder why they own our debt? Which as an aside gives us the only real leverage we really have against them. I've thought on and off that it was deliberate. I can't be argued the last two administrations knew the current mess was coming.
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Re: Teh middle class (forked from the other thread)

Post by kyoukan »

All in all China owns less than 10% of US debt. OPEC nations hold more than that. The majority of US debt is owed to Americans and American institutions.

The problem with your debt is that your politicians are too afraid to make any tough decisions like raising revenues to a level that is fair. Instead they provide almost as many services as a country with a much higher level of taxation and fund these huge orgies of money like like Medicare by just borrowing the cash to pay for it rather than raise revenues. Or they start trillion dollar+ wars in Iraq with absolutely no exit strategy and without the money to pay for it.

American politicians are too beholden to special interest groups and lobbies because it is super easy to get a bunch of fringe whackos like the tea party together an influence an election because hardly anyone votes. All you'd have to do is roll back the Bush tax cuts and your money problems would instantly vanish. 4 trillion dollars over 10 years is going straight into the pockets of millionaires and billionaires who are, to be frank, killing themselves laughing at the rest of the nation who are breaking their ass at the shitty jobs only to carry the majority of the burden for the rest of the country. It would be enough to start an armed revolution in any other country, but they have you so fucking confused and tricked that half your country actually supports living in a broke nation as long as your wealthiest continue to get out of paying their fair share in tax.
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Re: Teh middle class (forked from the other thread)

Post by Fairweather Pure »

Workers’ share of national income plummets to record low

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/wor ... 49508.html

The article above shows how stupid and short sighted Kilmoll is, but the one below should hopefully drive the point home.

http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/02 ... hart-graph

How many colorful graphs will it take to drive the point home? The rich are fucking the United States of America right up the ass. If these charts do not disgust you, I don't really know what else to say.

Tax breaks for the rich is the very worst thing that has has happened to our country in the past decade. It's worse than 9/11 and worse than any wars we have started. It's repercussions may actually lead to our upending as a nation. Obama should have called the Republican's bluff when it was up for renewal and let them expire, but they were holding tax cuts for the middle class hostage. Fuck it, take my tax breaks too. It's nothing compared to what we will get from the rich. America needs that money. It always has. I can't believe they were ever given in the first place. If it were his second term, I think Obama would've just let them expire, but he wants that second term.

My wife and I could retire at 54 if things keep going along well for us, with both of my girls having full rides through college. That's no reason to fuck the rest of the society we belong to.
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Re: Teh middle class (forked from the other thread)

Post by masteen »

As someone who used to be a true believer in supply-side economics and the trickle down effect, it's been a long journey to this point. As the past decade progressed, however, I've seen unambiguous empirical evidence that creation of supply does not, and more importantly, CANNOT create demand. The inverse is also true: no attempts to control supply can stop consumer demand, which is why the war on drugs is and will always be a failure.

I am, above all, a scientist. I do not mean to claim the kind of intellectual greatness of Hawking or Einstein, but I always try to follow the principles of scientific method. When your theory is proven wrong, in every experiment and trial, it MUST be abandoned in favor of a new theory that reflects the evidence.

What we're seeing in America right now is the collapse of the greatest source of demand the world has ever known: a wealthy and educated middle class. The talking heads refer to the financial industry or the producers of oil as the engine that drives the global economy, but that's simply not true. As countries like Sweden, Germany, and even Iceland prove, as long as there is demand from a large, monied middle class, economies function. The bankers are trying their best to punish Iceland for telling them to fuck off instead of paying for the bankers' gambling debts, but it hasn't worked thus far.
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Re: Teh middle class (forked from the other thread)

Post by Kilmoll the Sexy »

Your issue with this big proving of how wrong I am is that Obama's view of "rich" does not gibe with ANY of the data you are spewing. The small-medium businesses that drive the entire fucking economy do not have CEO's making $12-20 million a year. Many of those places have owners who are pulling way down on the low end of that "rich" moniker and would get absolutely raped by this shitclown's policies.

If you want to get me (and a huge chunk of the population) on board with heavier taxes, you can start by going a whole different route. I believe there should be a cap on salaries of any publicly traded company, or tax penalties on people who make a certain percentage above the median in those companies.
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Re: Teh middle class (forked from the other thread)

Post by Aabidano »

And then you come to medicare\SS and care for the elderly, the "families take care of them at home!" idiocy is echoed by a friend at work. I'm not sure which outlet they're parroting it from but it shows a complete lack of understanding of what it means to care for a not-so-rapidly decaying elderly person.

I've had numerous relatives slowly spiral down in our system so far, all relatively wealthy at the beginning of the process, all paupers at the end of it. The costs are astronomical and the quality of life, if you can call it that is dismal until they decay far enough not to be people any more.

Having watched it my folks have gone to lengths to shield their assets from it, many states make it hard to do so in an effective manner.

The poor just die, lack of lifelong care kills them off, the middle class takes the brunt of the issue.
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Re: Teh middle class (forked from the other thread)

Post by Aabidano »

Kilmoll the Sexy wrote:The small-medium businesses that drive the entire fucking economy do not have CEO's making $12-20 million a year. Many of those places have owners who are pulling way down on the low end of that "rich" moniker and would get absolutely raped by this shitclown's policies.
Mostly true, they may be the backbone of the economy but you're mistaken that they're the one driving the bus. They're just passengers getting screwed along with everyone else, it all rolls downhill. They don't have the Rupert Murdoch or Warren Buffet level clout that exists in the stratosphere. Your still looking too low on the totem pole.

Too lazy to look it up right now but they aren't the ones the taxes are aimed at either.
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Re: Teh middle class (forked from the other thread)

Post by Zaelath »

Kilmoll:

You might have to explain to me what Obama's view of rich is. However, retiring at 50 with just over 7 figures in the bank in what I'm guessing is 2020 (year) USD wouldn't make you rich in my opinion. If you're talking $5 mill plus, you're creeping into rich.

That said, anyone that can retire at 50 really shouldn't be too upset with the system that enabled them to, though perhaps if you are making $400k and have to pay an extra ~$8225 a year in tax without the Bush tax cuts that might mean you retire a couple of weeks late.

I've yet to see a small-medium business owner that was crippled by personal income tax. Business taxes sure, an economy crippled by government spending out of control while cutting tax and starting 2 wars, unemployment caused by a housing bubble encouraged by government to the benefit of their financiers, consumer confidence rent by a relentless fear driven media, but they don't close their business because they're paying an extra 2% in income tax between $28k and $312k.

Hell, the higher the income tax the better the incentive to keep the money in the business and build it rather than drawing it as salary, it would seem to argue against your point.

In conclusion, given your retirement plans, probably 20 years before the retirement age in a lot of 1st world contries by the time you get there, I have no reservation in saying you're a whining little bitch who needs to look a bit closer at where the "average" person is in your country and where their standard of living is heading, regardless of who's in government.
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Re: Teh middle class (forked from the other thread)

Post by Aabidano »

I"m not picking on the Chinese at all, it's our politicians' fault that the situation exists as it does now. Follow the money and you see greedy corporations (run by greedy, short sighted people) at the root of the problem. Who've paid very well to be deregulated to the point where they can screw us over almost at will.

Whenever I think of this topic I'm reminded by an old lady screaming at our CEO at a shareholders meeting that she wanted dividends paid instead of research funding, at a time where we were postponing lawn care as we couldn't afford to pay the bill.

I know a bunch of pre- 401k, etc.. folks who have had companies divest, split, etc... and make the retirement and medical benefits they'd been promised disappear. The money was there until corporate shenanigans made it go away. The execs shielded by various laws sucked up the money and walked away. My Dad was smart and cashed out, though he has taken a couple beatings (and recovered) in the market since he retired 20 years ago.

I continue to be thankful I work for a company not run by Americans or based in the US. A private business is different than a public company where you've an idiot CEO chasing the stock ticker and sucking up to analysts. That's a death spiral eventually and also is why a French company was able to buy the one I used to work for, cheap.
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Re: Teh middle class (forked from the other thread)

Post by Funkmasterr »

I think we need to find a way to harness Kyoukan's essence, and inject it directly into the United States government, and economy. Look at what it's done for the current events forum!

Really though, it's clear that absolutely nothing the government is doing is working, nor is the middle class taken into consideration at all, regardless of how much they tell us we are.

As far as taxation goes, I'm not as well read on the details as some of you guys are. The state of our government and media disgusts me to such a degree that I avoid reading much about it, which I'm working on. However, I'm all for a big overhaul in how we are taxed.

First off, getting the rich to pay their fair share of taxes is a lot more complicated than adjusting taxes on the middle class, imo. Dealing with the rich, a lot of laws regarding how money can be moved through businesses, etc would have to be adjusted to bring them in line. I'm fine with this, but I just don't see it happening because every person who could make a law like this reality would be directly effected by it. It's basically going to take the Jesus Christ of politics to come in, sacrifice himself for the good of the country, and help everyone see the light.

Regarding the middle class, I think the increase in taxes required of this group would be far less noticeable. I see how small business owners can have a knee jerk reaction about it effecting their business negatively, when they are potentially already hurting, but in reality it wouldn't be that bad. Like someone above said, if you truly care about your business, you shouldn't need a incentive to put as much back into your company as you can, but this would be a damn good reason, and eventually when you retire the money would be there, assuming something didn't go awry.

I think a big part of the problem with the middle class in general though is the way the companies they work for are run. If more companies started to realize how valuable their employees are, and put more back into them, it would have far reaching effects on many of this countries problems. When I say they should put more into their employees, I don't just mean what they pay them, although that's part of it. There are companies out there that are trying things like this, giving people REAL incentives to work harder, paying them better, etc. In most cases this is going to result in happier, more productive employees, which will result in more money for the company in the long run, so everyone wins. If most companies were run in a manner like this, people wouldn't be so disgusted by the corporations in this country, they'd likely spend more, jobs would be created by companies thriving.. I'm not saying it would fix all the problems but I think a little bit of an attitude change from a select few people would go a long ass way for this country right now.

I know I could've conveyed that a bit more clearly, but it was a long rough weekend and I'm running purely on Red Bull at this point.
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Re: Teh middle class (forked from the other thread)

Post by Avestan »

The old middle class is gone and will not come back. We can fake it for a while by subsidizing certain groups, but that will not work forever.

If we are lucky, the new middle class will be engineers and skilled professionals who have skills that translate into the economy of the next decade and beyond. Manual labor will continue to be replaced by technology and foreign markets with lower cost labor - you cannot fight this no matter what you do. We create massive amounts of waste by doing things like subsidizing steel and agriculture and it has to stop.

Free markets are not perfect, but they are the best we've got. Massive regulations only create massive loopholes and, eventually, massive economic bubbles that come crashing down upon our heads.

I believe that we are coming to an end of an age and that the US will eventually go the way of Western Europe. So be it. Could be worse. This recession will eventually cause us to either raise taxes to insanely high levels stifling growth (most likely scenario) leading to European style growth patterns - or we will actually slash spending on entitlements. I just do not see that happening.

All I know is that I have had a couple of great days on the stock market because I have had my investments parked in GLD

http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=GLD+ ... f;source=;

I have believed we are headed for the crapper for a long time now.
Last edited by Avestan on August 8, 2011, 10:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Teh middle class (forked from the other thread)

Post by miir »

Massive regulations only create massive loopholes and, eventually, massive economic bubbles that come crashing down upon our heads.
Don't think anyone is calling for massive regulation... sensible and logical regulation works in Canada
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Re: Teh middle class (forked from the other thread)

Post by Avestan »

Economically, Canada is basically a US state:

http://www.investingthesis.com/wp-conte ... states.jpg

Hard to draw real cause and effect from anything done there.
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Re: Teh middle class (forked from the other thread)

Post by miir »

We're in a fuck of a lot better shape than you guys...
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Re: Teh middle class (forked from the other thread)

Post by Avestan »

Not really. You are just a shitload smaller than we are and foreign economies care less because you do not control the reserve currency:

http://www.visualeconomics.com/gdp-vs-n ... y-country/
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Re: Teh middle class (forked from the other thread)

Post by miir »

I guess if you focus only on GDP and ignore everything else.
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Re: Teh middle class (forked from the other thread)

Post by Avestan »

GDP and debt. Those are germane to this discussion, right?

Looks like unemployment is at 7.2% which ain't great, but better than us. Pretty sure housing did not hit you guys as hard because your banks behaved better - probably due to fewer regulations and quotas put upon them.

I am not disputing that things are better in Canada than in the US overall, but I can also show you a ton of states in the US who are far outperforming Canada in terms of almost any metric we want to calculate. My point is that it is hard to draw conclusions about the US by looking at Canada because there is literally an order of magnitude difference in the scale of everything.

Policies that work to govern a small company, for example, are usually not sufficient when trying to manage a gigantic multinational corporation. I just believe that the same is true for our governments. We should look at Canada and learn where appropriate, but there are more differences than similarities, so we should also be careful not to learn the wrong things.
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Re: Teh middle class (forked from the other thread)

Post by masteen »

If unrestricted free markets are so awesome, how come the socialists are managing to simultaneously maintain internal manufacturing industries, strictly regulate corporate behavior, AND tax the living shit out of their wealthy while keeping their middle classes alive and well? Magic and wizardry?

You also talk like we're the only country that has large multi-national companies. Nothing could be farther from the truth, but it does bring up another point: How are these countries, less than 1/5 the size of the US, able to prevent their large corporations from moving jobs en mass to the 3rd world? More magic?

Finally, we managed to NOT have bubbles and busts for 40 years due to New Deal and Truman-era regulations. It was only when we repealed all those that the cycle began to happen again. First with Nixon's policies leading to stagflation in the late 70's, Reagan's recession that sunk Bush I, Clinton's tech bubble, and now Bush II's awesome housing/banking double dip. To claim that regulation doesn't work is 100% empirically false.
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Re: Teh middle class (forked from the other thread)

Post by Aabidano »

Avestan wrote:or we will actually slash spending on entitlements. I just do not see that happening.
The problem is not entitlements, it's "everything else". How are SS and Medicare funded? General revenue or from specific payroll taxes? Welfare (afik) is the only one funded from general revenue and it's cost and abuse actually aren't that bad overall.

Really cut back defense, rather than make the make believe cuts they've been doing since the mid 90s. They've cut troop size while shifting funding to use more contractors but the spend has increased. Which again over time impacts those who would be entering the middle class by cutting off an avenue to a skilled trade or college.
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Re: Teh middle class (forked from the other thread)

Post by Avestan »

If you really look at the numbers - it all has to be cut. Any one area does not do the trick. You can cut defense in half and you still need 40% cuts in all major entitlements to get close to a balanced budget.

Option 2 is to tax. I am guessing that we do not have the political balls for option 1, so I am expecting lots of taxes. As a result, my money is no longer in the US dollar or in the US equity markets. That has worked exceptionally well for me in the last year.

From the previous post - who are the socialist governments that are kicking economic ass? Pretty certain that as soon as I hear some names, I can tear that assertion a gigantic new asshole. Also - I am not a proponent of 100% free markets, we need regulation - just as little of it as possible.

The thing is - the US is simply too large to micromanage. If you try to govern by plugging holes where you see them, new holes will just appear and the government has no prayer to move as quickly as the private market and individuals trying to take advantage.

The free market may not be perfect, but it is the best we've got.
Aabidano wrote:
Avestan wrote:or we will actually slash spending on entitlements. I just do not see that happening.
The problem is not entitlements, it's "everything else". How are SS and Medicare funded? General revenue or from specific payroll taxes? Welfare (afik) is the only one funded from general revenue and it's cost and abuse actually aren't that bad overall.

Really cut back defense, rather than make the make believe cuts they've been doing since the mid 90s. They've cut troop size while shifting funding to use more contractors but the spend has increased. Which again over time impacts those who would be entering the middle class by cutting off an avenue to a skilled trade or college.
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Re: Teh middle class (forked from the other thread)

Post by kyoukan »

Avestan wrote:If you really look at the numbers - it all has to be cut. Any one area does not do the trick. You can cut defense in half and you still need 40% cuts in all major entitlements to get close to a balanced budget.
This is patently untrue. Clinton was running a surplus during his administration and he spent like crazy. The problem with debating economics with you righties is that you cannot make a statement without lying.
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Re: Teh middle class (forked from the other thread)

Post by Avestan »

It can definitely be done with greatly increased revenues - which Clinton had during the boom years.

The boom years are gone, so they would need to come from taxes - which is an option as I stated above. In fact, I said that we will almost assuredly have to increase taxes because there is no way that we will cut all those programs.

If you assume no new revenues - we absolutely would need to cut all those programs to balance the budget. In response to that assumption, I am moving my money the hell out of dodge. I am not the only one.

You can try to balance it here:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010 ... aphic.html

Worth noting that this is now a little dated and the situation now is significantly more dire and it is still extremely difficult to balance.

You can completely decimate the military and you end up only about 20% of where you need to be. It is all in social security and health care. Such is life.


ps. Kyoukan - you are my favorite lefty to debate - always have just the right amount of spit and venom to make it interesting. Good to have you back :)
Last edited by Avestan on August 9, 2011, 3:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Teh middle class (forked from the other thread)

Post by Kilmoll the Sexy »

You are too stupid to live. Watch the video and understand where our problems lie right now.

http://www.redstate.com/ben_domenech/20 ... restraint/


pay special attention to the part about private sector growth outpacing government growth....
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Re: Teh middle class (forked from the other thread)

Post by kyoukan »

A link from redstate.com of a movie from the center for freedom and prosperity? really? dude, you seriously do not belong in this thread and you are just humiliating yourself.

Clinton had boom years because the country was prospering because wealth was being more evenly distributed. People were happy and making lots of money and spending that money on cool shit. Those years are not gone by a long shot. They have just been buried under almost a decade of the Bush administration allowing wall street to ruin your economy by ignoring regulations and letting the SEC turn a blind eye to the ruination of your entire financial system by deliberately picking winners and losers. People do not appreciate how hideously wealthy the united states is. The second wealthiest nation in the world has like 10% of the USA's wealth. It is just that the majority wealth is possessed by a very small percentage of the population.
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Re: Teh middle class (forked from the other thread)

Post by Aabidano »

kyoukan wrote:...
Pretty much.

Clinton was the first to shoot the messengers of the apocalypse, the meltdown shouldn't have been a surprise to anyone who was looking\listening. Bush was a little more thorough and wide ranging about it, certainly made it much worse.

Which isn't to say Algore would have followed a path that would've lead us anyplace else.

Clinton also signed the papers allowing the changes to commodity trading, another source of our woes that had previously been illegal since the great depression. And that Fox News was screaming about the re-implementation of as it would "stifle growth". Growth of Goldman Sachs profits yes, that's about it.
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Re: Teh middle class (forked from the other thread)

Post by Kilmoll the Sexy »

kyoukan wrote:A link from redstate.com of a movie from the center for freedom and prosperity? really? dude, you seriously do not belong in this thread and you are just humiliating yourself.

Clinton had boom years because the country was prospering because wealth was being more evenly distributed. People were happy and making lots of money and spending that money on cool shit. Those years are not gone by a long shot. They have just been buried under almost a decade of the Bush administration allowing wall street to ruin your economy by ignoring regulations and letting the SEC turn a blind eye to the ruination of your entire financial system by deliberately picking winners and losers. People do not appreciate how hideously wealthy the united states is. The second wealthiest nation in the world has like 10% of the USA's wealth. It is just that the majority wealth is possessed by a very small percentage of the population.


Well no shit you fucking socialist turd. The problem with the government involvement is that they are spending like the boom is here and increasing. It is pretty fucking simple....you spend in relation to GDP. That does not mean spend 800 billion on health care reform or "stimulus" that is going to fund government special interest projects. It doesn't mean boosting the debt ceiling.
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Re: Teh middle class (forked from the other thread)

Post by miir »

I think it's fucking hilarious that the right now uses the word 'socialist' as an insult.
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Re: Teh middle class (forked from the other thread)

Post by Avestan »

Really simple folks.

1. Cut Spending a lot
2. Raise taxes. . .as little as possible, but probably a lot because we will fail at #1

Miir - not hard to see why Socialist is used as a bad word if you take a measured glance at history - especially inside the US. Be reasonable.

No one with any training in economics (free market or otherwise) can argue that taxes are a drain on economies (so are subsidies). To argue otherwise, you need to believe that a government entity can take $1 and turn it into $2 (or at least some ratio above 1:1). Maybe some of you believe that is true. I absolutely, wholeheartedly do not believe that is true, but if you do - then the tax argument is a good one.

No one's minds are going to change here, and you guys love to label me as a right winger, but I voted for Obama in 2008 and more recently voted for Jerry Brown here in California. I tend to vote about 70% Republican, but I bet I am the only one among all of you who has an ounce of independence in my voting record, and that is the real problem with this country (and with yours).
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Re: Teh middle class (forked from the other thread)

Post by miir »

Miir - not hard to see why Socialist is used as a bad word if you take a measured glance at history
It would be amusing to take away all things 'socialist' from American society and see how the right would react.
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Re: Teh middle class (forked from the other thread)

Post by Boogahz »

miir wrote:I think it's fucking hilarious that the right now uses the word 'socialist' as an insult.
It's been an insult for decades. I ran across a book from 1945 about how it was going to ruin America if it was allowed to continue seeping in from Europe. Downright silly stuff, but definitely not new.
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Re: Teh middle class (forked from the other thread)

Post by Avestan »

miir wrote:
Miir - not hard to see why Socialist is used as a bad word if you take a measured glance at history
It would be amusing to take away all things 'socialist' from American society and see how the right would react.

Just because a thing (medicare for example) benefits society, that does not make it uniquely socialist.

A strong capitalist argument can be made to support these policies as they help to stabalize society and as a result, allow free markets to exist despite non-market forces. A capitalist will argue that the only way to manage a large country is to allow markets to decide what is and what is not needed. Markets always move faster than governments and as a result can be far more effective at responding to needs of people.

If you remove too much individual incentive to work, people will not work and society eventually deteriorates into a far worse haves vs. have nots society than we have in the US today.

Socialism, at its core, relies on the goodness and internal motivations of people. Unfortunately, while you can achieve it in small groups - it quite simply does not scale - at all.
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Re: Teh middle class (forked from the other thread)

Post by Jice Virago »

Similarly, unfettered capitalism works well in smaller environments with a level playing field. Greed as God has pretty much dismantled this country as the last remaining super power. The fact is that lifting the regulations has brought back all of the chaos that they were placed to limit in the first place, except this time around information flows much faster, the numbers are of mind boggling size, and the financial system is global. A strong middle class is what put this country in control for the longest time. We were at our most dominant, in terms of economy, political clout, moral highground, and military supremecy, during the Eisenhour years when taxes on the wealthy were at their peak. And the rich did not exactly have a rough existance back then.

Socialism as an evil word is a propaganda tool of the far right and their wealthy extremists, both parroting it for their own selfish agendas. Its also hypocritical in the extreme. The market fucked tons of people out of their homes, retirement, and now jobs. The assholes in control pushed money into the political system until they got exactly what they wanted; a gamblers market free from any meaningful regulation (outside of the occasional small fry example aka Madoff). The end result? They damn near blew up the world and got bailed out for their fuckups. Meanwhile the average person is stuck with the bill and these fuckers don't even want to pay as much in taxes as the average joe? Yeah that system works so well.....
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Re: Teh middle class (forked from the other thread)

Post by Avestan »

The average person stuck with that bill agreed to pay it an then could not.

Regulations allowed them to get it in the first place - without regulations, they would have been renting the whole time.

More than anyone else here, I am a believer in compromise between social programs and capitalism. This is not, nor has it ever been, a black or white debate. People who try to make it that (most of you, frankly) are idiots. Without proper economic incentives, shit fails. Without proper social safety nets, shit fails.

We need to stop pretending that there is a single Utopian economic philosophy. Even if there was one for today, it would need to adapt in two years due to war or natural disaster or global warning or new technology or whateverthehellhappensnext.

We yell at our politicians for not compromising but all of your personal philosophies allow for zero give. It is your way or the highway and that is just stupid. Those attitudes are killing us - just because you are not a Senator does not mean that you do not contribute to the problem when you follow a doctrine instead of common sense.
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Re: Teh middle class (forked from the other thread)

Post by kyoukan »

I don't think a single person in here has called for a single, unwavering economic philosophy and has refused to compromise on it. I'm not sure why people like you are incapable of debating a point without completely making things up to argue against. I think you'll find if you really start trying to be truthful in your debate that you'll quickly run out of things to say that make sense. It's not just you specifically, but a pretty common problem among the right.
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Re: Teh middle class (forked from the other thread)

Post by Zaelath »

I've seen a lot of people advocate for unfettered capitalism (on the moderate right), but I've never seen anyone argue for complete socialism that weren't on the far "looney" left.

Most of the centre-left to moderate-left people want those things socialised that business clearly can NOT do at the right price, like health care, education, roads, etc. Though as a centre-lefty, I would advocate that all of those should be allowed to be sold at a premium to those that want it, private hospitals, private schools, toll roads, etc. What I get the shits with is that most of those "free markets" then cry for heavy public subsidies so they can "compete".

Some of the right wing policies make me laugh, our last ultra conservative PM wanted to get rid of all unions and collective bargaining and remove unfair dismissal laws because "that's what business needs to feel confident hiring people, and will create jobs." What happened is they generated an entire generation of people in part-time or fragile employment that has seen consumer sentiment tank and a lot of those business go to the wall because they lost customers a lot faster than employees.
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Re: Teh middle class (forked from the other thread)

Post by Avestan »

I think it is ironic that you chastise for making things up all the while making something up to try to make a point. What did I make up in this debate?

A few assertions I have made:

1. The boom years are gone
2. We need to raise taxes to balance the budget
3. We need to cut entitlements to balance he budget
4. People work harder when they have more incentive to do so
5. Canada and the US have roughly the same debt to GDP ratio

Newsflash: "righties" and "lefties" are the same. Neither holds any intellectual and ethical highground from where I am standing. To a moderate reader of these boards, you all look like idiots who have been brainwashed by an ideaology. My only proof point is that you never waiver from some party line. You are being told what to think and you take it hook, line, and sinker.
kyoukan wrote:I don't think a single person in here has called for a single, unwavering economic philosophy and has refused to compromise on it. I'm not sure why people like you are incapable of debating a point without completely making things up to argue against. I think you'll find if you really start trying to be truthful in your debate that you'll quickly run out of things to say that make sense. It's not just you specifically, but a pretty common problem among the right.
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Re: Teh middle class (forked from the other thread)

Post by Jice Virago »

I disagree. You, in fact, are the one who have embraced the talking points. You also conveniently ignored the obvious evidence and fall back on ad hominem attacks. Your vocabulary is more sophisticated than others with your viewpoint and you are clearly more educated, but you are regurgitating the same demonstrable falsehoods. To wit:
1. The boom years are gone
2. We need to raise taxes to balance the budget
3. We need to cut entitlements to balance he budget
4. People work harder when they have more incentive to do so
5. Canada and the US have roughly the same debt to GDP ratio
1. This is patently false, at least globally. Like every other boom, some new technology or industry will be milked by the banking industry for another bubble and bust cycle. This is the same sort of shit we avoided for four decades under the combined wisdom of FDR (arguably the most liberal and most socialist president in US history) and Eisenhower (the last true conservative president), while taxes were at an all time high and funding alll sorts of things like entitlements and the Marshal Plan. This massively long period of prosperity ended when Reagan began dismantling the financial industry regulations, but it really went downhill when Clinton let the betting parlor re-open on the commodities market again. Without these two key events and the Bubbles that accompanied them, GW Bush would not have been able to do nearly the carnage to our fiscal power that he did.
2. Obviously this is the case, but I noticed you omitted who should have the increased tax burden. Is it really that hard to acknowledge that the country would be better off if we taxed the uber wealthy to a larger degree like we did during the highly posperous 1950s? They are the primary benneficiaries of all the reckless fiscal choices we have made in this country, yet they pay less than anyone else (or in some cases we pay them, like GE and fucking Exxon Mobile), despite having some of the most dramatic increases of personal fortune in the history of the planet.
3. Again, patently false, as the policies of FDR and Ike proved for half a century. This is simply a target of revenue for the financial industry who want to privatize these things to create another boom and bust cycle that they can milk. If the Tea Baggers ever catch on to this, the GOP will be over and done. Fortunately, they are even more ignorant than the holy rollers that the far right milked for votes during the Reagan years, so this is not likely.
4. Your idea of incentive is "work or you will be homeless and I will find someone more desperate to takethe job" and amounts to blackmail. My idea of incentive is that instead of these MBA fuckups who run companies into the ground to pump short term stock options making 100s of times what the average empoyee rakes in, while getting bonuses for tanking the companies they work for, the grunts should make a comfortable wage with a safe pension. This gives them more discretionary money to spend on goods and services, which in turn fuels the entire economy. This system worked for half a century, before some really greedy people got their way.
5. Yet Canada manages to provide better health care and a higher standard of living than the US.

I don't have to be a commie leftist socialist atheist to know that the country was a lot more prosperous when the wealthy paid more taxes and financial regulation kept the bubble bust cycle from happening (not to mention the commodities markets and short selling wrecking businesses and entire national economies), I just have to have a knowledge of history prior to the propaganda rewrites of the late 70s and early 80s. We went from kicking everyone's ass, socially, economically, militarily, intellectually, and scientifically to a culture where we revere ignorance and worship greed and selfishness. The causes of this are debatable, whether it was orchestrated by some rich people still bitter about FDR's policies or simple social enui left over from the massive cluster fucks of the Korean and Viet Nam. But the fact is that we were much better off when capitalism was regulated and we had a progressive tax code in place. Hell, the T-Baggers would LOVE a return to the 1950s in this country, at least if they could keep the darkies down again.

The reality here is that YOU have coopted your party line here. You have bought into this lie that anyone can be like the richest 1% if they work hard enough and don't tax them because I might be one of those guys some day! Those guys are up there because they had enough money in their families to rig the system in their favor and now they are on a mission to dismantle anything that might be able to interfere with that domination again. This means that a well off and well educated middle class has to go, because that is the greatest obstacle to tyranical behavior and unchecked greed in any society. When you look at all of the self destructive policy choices made by the right wingers (and right leaning Dems) in the last couple decades, through this prism, they make a great deal more sense. Education is the worst its ever been, pensions were replaced with unsafe 401ks that have been plundered in various ways, and social programs designed to prevent/help people out of poverty are under relentless attack. Meanwhile, we fund several wars that are privatized enough for various entities to get obscenely wealthy off of and we actually pay tax incentives to these bloodsucking parasites for milking us dry while doing it.

One last thing:
Regulations allowed them to get it in the first place - without regulations, they would have been renting the whole time.
I could not agree more. The people who got those obviously doomed loans never should have been allowed to get them and should be lifetime renters. The average person is a complete idiot (and getting worse, thanks to the assault on education standards in this country) and cannot be trusted to avoid predatory lending on this level of sophistication. If the original lending regulations would have remained in place and/or the banking industry and the agencies that are supposed to regulate them did not have such an incestuous relationship, then this bullshit would have never occured. What you are arguing is that the drug addict is totally at fault here and the drug dealer is blameless, which is in keeping with a philosophy of unfettered capitalism. Unfortunately, the housing market bubble was (like the tech bubble before it) a clinical study in what happens with unfettered capitalism on a large scale. When someone gets enough influence to rig the field (aka too big to fail or Goldman Sachs having half the treasury on their fucking payroll), disaster occurs. This is the same shit that happened before the Great Depression, its just now the economy is global and reacts more rapidly/wildly due to the modern information age, so the consequences are much more drastic.

I am not advocating wholesale socialism, but look at actual examples for a moment, instead of think tank hypotheticals though up to match a desired policy. A strong, well educated, well fed, and well paid middle class is content and productive. It spends money which, in turn, makes money for the economy as goods and services are in constant circulation. This is especially true when the same society is involved in vast public works efforts, like improving the infastructure or massive projects like the Hoover Dam. The nations that have stuck to this overall philosophy have some of the highest standards of living and the rich are doing just fine there, too. Our country cannot continue, if the shuffling around of debt is its largest industry, instead of actual manufacturing and services. The poor have no fucking clue about this, because they have been conditioned to embrace ignorance. The middle class is slowly being eroded away, as a matter of policy. The pseudo rich don't want to rock the status quo, because they think they are next in line for the gravy train. The Ultra Rich don't give a shit, because they will take all of their money and move on to another country once they are done picking the carcasse of this one dry.
War is an option whose time has passed. Peace is the only option for the future. At present we occupy a treacherous no-man's-land between peace and war, a time of growing fear that our military might has expanded beyond our capacity to control it and our political differences widened beyond our ability to bridge them. . . .

Short of changing human nature, therefore, the only way to achieve a practical, livable peace in a world of competing nations is to take the profit out of war.
--RICHARD M. NIXON, "REAL PEACE" (1983)

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, represents, in the final analysis, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children."

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Re: Teh middle class (forked from the other thread)

Post by Jice Virago »

Double Post!
War is an option whose time has passed. Peace is the only option for the future. At present we occupy a treacherous no-man's-land between peace and war, a time of growing fear that our military might has expanded beyond our capacity to control it and our political differences widened beyond our ability to bridge them. . . .

Short of changing human nature, therefore, the only way to achieve a practical, livable peace in a world of competing nations is to take the profit out of war.
--RICHARD M. NIXON, "REAL PEACE" (1983)

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, represents, in the final analysis, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children."

Dwight Eisenhower
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Re: Teh middle class (forked from the other thread)

Post by Winnow »

You know, you can delete the last post in a thread for like 5 minutes after it's created as long as someone else doesn't post after it. Click the "X" button next to the edit button.

If you don't do that, I'd suggest making the second post the permanent one so the double post snafu is erased from the reader's mind instead of being the last thing they see.
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Re: Teh middle class (forked from the other thread)

Post by Avestan »

You make a lot of reasonable points here (or at least I will assume you did because there is no way I am going to read that much text). And maybe as this single issue is concerned, I do follow a Tea Partyish line, but here are others things I believe.

1. Pro Gay Marraige
2. Pro Choice
3. Pro Affirmative Action
4. Pro Reducing Size of Military
5. Pro Immigration Reform / Opening the borders
6. Pro Welfare
7. Anti Farm subsidies

I have yet to find the party that mixes my economic beliefs with any of those.

On what issues do you disagree with your party? Can you name one major issue?
Jice Virago wrote:I disagree. You, in fact, are the one who have embraced the talking points. You also conveniently ignored the obvious evidence and fall back on ad hominem attacks. Your vocabulary is more sophisticated than others with your viewpoint and you are clearly more educated, but you are regurgitating the same demonstrable falsehoods. To wit:
1. The boom years are gone
2. We need to raise taxes to balance the budget
3. We need to cut entitlements to balance he budget
4. People work harder when they have more incentive to do so
5. Canada and the US have roughly the same debt to GDP ratio
1. This is patently false, at least globally. Like every other boom, some new technology or industry will be milked by the banking industry for another bubble and bust cycle. This is the same sort of shit we avoided for four decades under the combined wisdom of FDR (arguably the most liberal and most socialist president in US history) and Eisenhower (the last true conservative president), while taxes were at an all time high and funding alll sorts of things like entitlements and the Marshal Plan. This massively long period of prosperity ended when Reagan began dismantling the financial industry regulations, but it really went downhill when Clinton let the betting parlor re-open on the commodities market again. Without these two key events and the Bubbles that accompanied them, GW Bush would not have been able to do nearly the carnage to our fiscal power that he did.
2. Obviously this is the case, but I noticed you omitted who should have the increased tax burden. Is it really that hard to acknowledge that the country would be better off if we taxed the uber wealthy to a larger degree like we did during the highly posperous 1950s? They are the primary benneficiaries of all the reckless fiscal choices we have made in this country, yet they pay less than anyone else (or in some cases we pay them, like GE and fucking Exxon Mobile), despite having some of the most dramatic increases of personal fortune in the history of the planet.
3. Again, patently false, as the policies of FDR and Ike proved for half a century. This is simply a target of revenue for the financial industry who want to privatize these things to create another boom and bust cycle that they can milk. If the Tea Baggers ever catch on to this, the GOP will be over and done. Fortunately, they are even more ignorant than the holy rollers that the far right milked for votes during the Reagan years, so this is not likely.
4. Your idea of incentive is "work or you will be homeless and I will find someone more desperate to takethe job" and amounts to blackmail. My idea of incentive is that instead of these MBA fuckups who run companies into the ground to pump short term stock options making 100s of times what the average empoyee rakes in, while getting bonuses for tanking the companies they work for, the grunts should make a comfortable wage with a safe pension. This gives them more discretionary money to spend on goods and services, which in turn fuels the entire economy. This system worked for half a century, before some really greedy people got their way.
5. Yet Canada manages to provide better health care and a higher standard of living than the US.

I don't have to be a commie leftist socialist atheist to know that the country was a lot more prosperous when the wealthy paid more taxes and financial regulation kept the bubble bust cycle from happening (not to mention the commodities markets and short selling wrecking businesses and entire national economies), I just have to have a knowledge of history prior to the propaganda rewrites of the late 70s and early 80s. We went from kicking everyone's ass, socially, economically, militarily, intellectually, and scientifically to a culture where we revere ignorance and worship greed and selfishness. The causes of this are debatable, whether it was orchestrated by some rich people still bitter about FDR's policies or simple social enui left over from the massive cluster fucks of the Korean and Viet Nam. But the fact is that we were much better off when capitalism was regulated and we had a progressive tax code in place. Hell, the T-Baggers would LOVE a return to the 1950s in this country, at least if they could keep the darkies down again.

The reality here is that YOU have coopted your party line here. You have bought into this lie that anyone can be like the richest 1% if they work hard enough and don't tax them because I might be one of those guys some day! Those guys are up there because they had enough money in their families to rig the system in their favor and now they are on a mission to dismantle anything that might be able to interfere with that domination again. This means that a well off and well educated middle class has to go, because that is the greatest obstacle to tyranical behavior and unchecked greed in any society. When you look at all of the self destructive policy choices made by the right wingers (and right leaning Dems) in the last couple decades, through this prism, they make a great deal more sense. Education is the worst its ever been, pensions were replaced with unsafe 401ks that have been plundered in various ways, and social programs designed to prevent/help people out of poverty are under relentless attack. Meanwhile, we fund several wars that are privatized enough for various entities to get obscenely wealthy off of and we actually pay tax incentives to these bloodsucking parasites for milking us dry while doing it.

One last thing:
Regulations allowed them to get it in the first place - without regulations, they would have been renting the whole time.
I could not agree more. The people who got those obviously doomed loans never should have been allowed to get them and should be lifetime renters. The average person is a complete idiot (and getting worse, thanks to the assault on education standards in this country) and cannot be trusted to avoid predatory lending on this level of sophistication. If the original lending regulations would have remained in place and/or the banking industry and the agencies that are supposed to regulate them did not have such an incestuous relationship, then this bullshit would have never occured. What you are arguing is that the drug addict is totally at fault here and the drug dealer is blameless, which is in keeping with a philosophy of unfettered capitalism. Unfortunately, the housing market bubble was (like the tech bubble before it) a clinical study in what happens with unfettered capitalism on a large scale. When someone gets enough influence to rig the field (aka too big to fail or Goldman Sachs having half the treasury on their fucking payroll), disaster occurs. This is the same shit that happened before the Great Depression, its just now the economy is global and reacts more rapidly/wildly due to the modern information age, so the consequences are much more drastic.

I am not advocating wholesale socialism, but look at actual examples for a moment, instead of think tank hypotheticals though up to match a desired policy. A strong, well educated, well fed, and well paid middle class is content and productive. It spends money which, in turn, makes money for the economy as goods and services are in constant circulation. This is especially true when the same society is involved in vast public works efforts, like improving the infastructure or massive projects like the Hoover Dam. The nations that have stuck to this overall philosophy have some of the highest standards of living and the rich are doing just fine there, too. Our country cannot continue, if the shuffling around of debt is its largest industry, instead of actual manufacturing and services. The poor have no fucking clue about this, because they have been conditioned to embrace ignorance. The middle class is slowly being eroded away, as a matter of policy. The pseudo rich don't want to rock the status quo, because they think they are next in line for the gravy train. The Ultra Rich don't give a shit, because they will take all of their money and move on to another country once they are done picking the carcasse of this one dry.
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Re: Teh middle class (forked from the other thread)

Post by *~*stragi*~* »

kyoukan wrote:All in all China owns less than 10% of US debt. OPEC nations hold more than that. The majority of US debt is owed to Americans and American institutions.

The problem with your debt is that your politicians are too afraid to make any tough decisions like raising revenues to a level that is fair. Instead they provide almost as many services as a country with a much higher level of taxation and fund these huge orgies of money like like Medicare by just borrowing the cash to pay for it rather than raise revenues. Or they start trillion dollar+ wars in Iraq with absolutely no exit strategy and without the money to pay for it.

American politicians are too beholden to special interest groups and lobbies because it is super easy to get a bunch of fringe whackos like the tea party together an influence an election because hardly anyone votes. All you'd have to do is roll back the Bush tax cuts and your money problems would instantly vanish. 4 trillion dollars over 10 years is going straight into the pockets of millionaires and billionaires who are, to be frank, killing themselves laughing at the rest of the nation who are breaking their ass at the shitty jobs only to carry the majority of the burden for the rest of the country. It would be enough to start an armed revolution in any other country, but they have you so fucking confused and tricked that half your country actually supports living in a broke nation as long as your wealthiest continue to get out of paying their fair share in tax.
Pretty much the most succinct summation I've seen yet. I don't have any hope of it getting better unless we somehow realize that we need to cull religious conservatives and tea party loons from our voting base.

but lol jesus gays mexicans welfare sharia law lol :roll:
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Re: Teh middle class (forked from the other thread)

Post by Chidoro »

This was an interesting rant regarding the debt issues and I agree with it all:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIcqb9hHQ3E


And this w/ a lot more detail w/out having to talk over the political "stratagists':

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bBQ6MAf ... re=related
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Re: Teh middle class (forked from the other thread)

Post by Jice Virago »

You make a lot of reasonable points here (or at least I will assume you did because there is no way I am going to read that much text). And maybe as this single issue is concerned, I do follow a Tea Partyish line, but here are others things I believe.

1. Pro Gay Marraige
2. Pro Choice
3. Pro Affirmative Action
4. Pro Reducing Size of Military
5. Pro Immigration Reform / Opening the borders
6. Pro Welfare
7. Anti Farm subsidies

I have yet to find the party that mixes my economic beliefs with any of those.

On what issues do you disagree with your party? Can you name one major issue?
I agree with all of those choices, aside from Affirmative action, which I think needs to be tempered somewhat. As far as "my own party", I don't really self identify as a Dem, but its the lesser of two evils at the moment. Where I disagree with the Dems:

1. Compromising with the GOP-
Seriously, fuck these guys. They have never given any indication that they can be trusted, let alone negotiated with in good faith. All they are concerned about is apeasing their rich masters and getting the White back in the White House. The sooner the Dems start growing some balls and fighting dirtier, the sooner real progress can begin.
2. TARP funding-
Instead of bailing out the billionaires, the money should have good directly into making the various mortgages solvant. If people had their homes bought and paid for, they would not be under duress and spending more money. This, in turn, would get the economy moving again. Instead, we are stagnant.
3. "Hate Crimes"-
If someone wants to identify their ignorance for all to see by yelling racist bullshit, let them do it. The freedom of speech is the most important element of our entire nation.
4. Funding Birth Control
If they fund anything, it should be sterilizing dipshits too stupid to avoid breeding like rabits and bringing down the social safety net, but that will never fly, especially with the Mormons and Catholics in the middle of a breeding war.
5. Imigration Reform-
No Amnesty. These people need to go through the system like all of the other honest natralized citizens. Any reform efforts should be directed at busting the fuckers who bennefit from all of the cheap labor, but that will never happen even though it would end the illegal imigrant problem virtually overnight.
6. Fuck Israel-
Seriously, this country has to be the worst ally ever and has gotten us into shitloads of trouble. We would have a stable middle east and be getting along with most of the rest of the Muslim world if we stopped letting these assholes get away with all of the bullshit they pull.

Thats off the top of my head, anyhow. I am sure there is more.
War is an option whose time has passed. Peace is the only option for the future. At present we occupy a treacherous no-man's-land between peace and war, a time of growing fear that our military might has expanded beyond our capacity to control it and our political differences widened beyond our ability to bridge them. . . .

Short of changing human nature, therefore, the only way to achieve a practical, livable peace in a world of competing nations is to take the profit out of war.
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Re: Teh middle class (forked from the other thread)

Post by Avestan »

The whole bailout mortgages thing is ridiculous to me. I rent despite being able to afford a home. I decided to rent back when banks offered me the money and I did not feel like I could afford it.

I did everything "right". Proposing that my tax dollars get spent to bailout the people who made bad decisions would be adding insult to injury because it would also serve to prop up home prices which I feel are still too high. I want to buy a house, but I will not do it until prices come down.

Tarp should be spent on promoting small business and tech in the united states. Give it to the folks who can actually create jobs in the form of tax breaks on new hires or payroll tax breaks for businesses under a certain revenue threshold. Let's not reward bad bahvior - we will only encourage people to do it again.

Raise taxes - cut entitlements. In polls, the American public supports balancing the budget based on 75% cuts and 25% taxes. Let's do that and call it a day. If we keep applying bandaids to the economy, we really will be Japan for the next decade.


ps. sold my gold this morning and bought TJX - I think the consumer confidence stuff is overblown! I think the market is up over the next month.
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Re: Teh middle class (forked from the other thread)

Post by Funkmasterr »

Avestan wrote:The whole bailout mortgages thing is ridiculous to me. I rent despite being able to afford a home. I decided to rent back when banks offered me the money and I did not feel like I could afford it.

I did everything "right". Proposing that my tax dollars get spent to bailout the people who made bad decisions would be adding insult to injury because it would also serve to prop up home prices which I feel are still too high. I want to buy a house, but I will not do it until prices come down.

Tarp should be spent on promoting small business and tech in the united states. Give it to the folks who can actually create jobs in the form of tax breaks on new hires or payroll tax breaks for businesses under a certain revenue threshold. Let's not reward bad bahvior - we will only encourage people to do it again.

Raise taxes - cut entitlements. In polls, the American public supports balancing the budget based on 75% cuts and 25% taxes. Let's do that and call it a day. If we keep applying bandaids to the economy, we really will be Japan for the next decade.


ps. sold my gold this morning and bought TJX - I think the consumer confidence stuff is overblown! I think the market is up over the next month.
I don't necessarily want to put words in your mouth, because you didn't say this explicitly.. But a lot of the people who lost their houses and would be included in any kind of hypothetical bailout on their mortgage didn't make bad decisions.. They lost their jobs when the economy went to shit because of the people who did make bad decisions, and a plethora of reasons that I won't bother listing because we're all very familiar with them at this point.

At any rate, what you were saying seemed lop-sided and I just wanted to point that out.
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Re: Teh middle class (forked from the other thread)

Post by Kilmoll the Sexy »

Jice Virago wrote:
1. Compromising with the GOP-
Seriously, fuck these guys. They have never given any indication that they can be trusted, let alone negotiated with in good faith. All they are concerned about is apeasing their rich masters and getting the White back in the White House. The sooner the Dems start growing some balls and fighting dirtier, the sooner real progress can begin.
2. TARP funding-
Instead of bailing out the billionaires, the money should have good directly into making the various mortgages solvant. If people had their homes bought and paid for, they would not be under duress and spending more money. This, in turn, would get the economy moving again. Instead, we are stagnant.
3. "Hate Crimes"-
If someone wants to identify their ignorance for all to see by yelling racist bullshit, let them do it. The freedom of speech is the most important element of our entire nation.
4. Funding Birth Control
If they fund anything, it should be sterilizing dipshits too stupid to avoid breeding like rabits and bringing down the social safety net, but that will never fly, especially with the Mormons and Catholics in the middle of a breeding war.
5. Imigration Reform-
No Amnesty. These people need to go through the system like all of the other honest natralized citizens. Any reform efforts should be directed at busting the fuckers who bennefit from all of the cheap labor, but that will never happen even though it would end the illegal imigrant problem virtually overnight.
6. Fuck Israel-
Seriously, this country has to be the worst ally ever and has gotten us into shitloads of trouble. We would have a stable middle east and be getting along with most of the rest of the Muslim world if we stopped letting these assholes get away with all of the bullshit they pull.

Thats off the top of my head, anyhow. I am sure there is more.
I am pretty much in line with you on everything except 1 and 6. I think both sides of the aisle need to get back to the middle and stop going overboard on their own agendas.

As for Israel, if we stopped siding with them, there would be all out war in the Middle East and it would end up bringing every military power into the area for WW 3. The UN should be off their ass and doing something about both sides of it and it should not be the US taking control.
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Re: Teh middle class (forked from the other thread)

Post by Aslanna »

Avestan wrote:You make a lot of reasonable points here (or at least I will assume you did because there is no way I am going to read that much text).
So your counter argument is that there's too much text to read? Astounding!
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Re: Teh middle class (forked from the other thread)

Post by Xatrei »

Avestan is a Herman Cain man, apparently.
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Re: Teh middle class (forked from the other thread)

Post by masteen »

In reality, fixing immigration needs two prongs, but one of the prongs does NOT need to be stuck up the Mexicans' asses. Wal-Mart, construction companies, and lawn services need to be hammered and fined, HARD. This would stop the DEMAND for their cheap, unregulated labor and help pay the bill for this shit. While I'm not in favor of another general amnesty, I am in favor of creating special visas for seasonal workers, and then taxing that ass.

Also, why, why, WHY IN THE FUCK are we spending billions of dollars every month enforcing the drug prohibition? Isn't it clear to everyone that the only people this benefits are the DEA and organized crime? I know the cops love it, because it lets them live their small-dick, roid-raging, tank-driving, door-busting fantasies, but does every town in the fucking country REALLY need a SWAT team and drug interdiction task force?
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Re: Teh middle class (forked from the other thread)

Post by Avestan »

Right now I am:

1. Romney
2. Obama
3. Ron Paul


Xatrei wrote:Avestan is a Herman Cain man, apparently.
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