of course in many cases it helps but it cant be a prerequisite of an equal society that people should have to rely on being in a family unit to not be poor
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The Well-Mannered Politics Thread
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of course in many cases it helps but it cant be a prerequisite of an equal society that people should have to rely on being in a family unit to not be poor
flynismo
Practice Squad
No, lets not ignore that. Why do kids drop out of school exactly? Because you got pregnant? Because you got that girl pregnant and now need a job to support her and the child? Because you have drug, social, behavioral or mental problems? Because you aren't very smart and were flunking out anyway? Aside from the mental and possibly social issues, these are all the result of decisions you have made. (Even dumb people can graduate with enough effort, which is why I consider it a choice as well).
Oh, were you waiting for me to say "to help parents pay the bills"? I can't speak for other countries, but that is very rare here.
You obviously never heard of The Brookings Institution if you think they're some partisan hacks. But if anything, most consider them to be more left leaning than anything.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brookings_Institution
They're about as reliable and trustworthy as it comes, which is precisely why I quoted them in the first place.
There are many, many cultures around the world that disagrees with you about marriage or cohabitation.
What are these structural barriers that prevent kids from finishing high school?
Oldfaithful
Hall of Famer
I know a bunch of the people who work for Brookings and almost all of them are left leaning.
Charm City
Pro Bowler
So who would the burden fall on to endure that someone isn't poor and is doing the right things in life to succeed?
flynismo
Practice Squad
I know the majority are, but is it really that many of them?
Not that it matters to me, I trust them and their opinions.
Oldfaithful
Hall of Famer
Of the people I know. They’re huge in DC. I know a few conservatives there too. Think tanks like to have people from every ideology to keep balance
gtalk12
Ravens Ring of Honor
You know who is attempting to have programs seek out at risk kids and helping them enroll in colleges? The same person our President decided to call "dumb".
As a black man in America who believes that the answer is in education and in working within our own communities, this is a reality of mine.
Think about it. Black man goes back into the area, builds a school, HIRES teachers etc etc and makes sure that kids that actually need help GET help. Also, assisting parents with going back to school to help increase their earnings.
That is the man Trump decides to open his mouth about, why?
flynismo
Practice Squad
Yeah that's why I was asking; the imbalance seemed strange.
flynismo
Practice Squad
Don't take this the wrong way, I don't mean it as an insult, but in closing, you called for honesty, but some of your points lacked it themselves.
Those tax cuts weren't just for the super rich. The vast majority benefited from it. It wasn't just Apple and Google who saved money, it was that mom and pops corner store too. How can you say with a straight face that "the wealth disparity has only increased by virtue of the enormous tax breaks given to the supremely wealthy who have chosen to use those huge funds to just buy back their own stock and keeping their stock prices inflated." when it is well publicized how many of those companies gave their employees substantial bonuses as a direct result of those tax cuts? How can you call them "unwarranted trade wars" when the threat of those tariffs just resulted in a deal with Mexico to secure our southern border? Frankly, many people feel the war with China is long overdue, too.
Our turn is right now, now that we have a nationalist in office who has both the balls and power to make things happen for us. I can only speak for myself, but I know that I'm better off now than I was 2 1/2 years ago.
you're criticising him for lack of honesty by presenting arguments based on random un-substantiated "facts" without any evidence yourself...
what is not in doubt is that wealth inequality is huge and it gets regressively worse each year because trickle-down economics do not have any evidential success in providing improvements and opportunities to employees, tax breaks like the 2017 one disproportionately help the wealthy over the lower-income families to the extent that In 2013 wealth inequality in the U.S. was greater than in most developed countries, in 2011 the 400 wealthiest Americans have more wealth than half of all Americans combined (and that was 8 years ago)... According to a June 2017 report by the Boston Consulting Group, around 70% of the nation's wealth will be in the hands of millionaires and billionaires by 2021. In 2013 UNICEF data on the well-being of children in 35 developed nations ranked the United States at 34 out of 35 (Romania is the worst).
the best way to redistribute wealth is through taxes (especially those that target billionaires who's wealth is often under-taxed by virtue of it being used as a working asset etc. and therefore can avoid taxes on income) and by limiting stock buybacks
I defer to @Inqui on the trade war stuff because he knows way more about that stuff but i would suggest those trade wars might not necessarily be as successful as you think they are
and with specific regards to the trump tax breaks - you seem to like the brookings institution:
The Tax Policy Center (TPC) estimated that the bottom 80% of taxpayers (income under $149,400) would receive 35% of the benefit in 2018, 34% in 2025 and none of the benefit in 2027, with some groups incurring costs. TPC also estimated 72% of taxpayers would be adversely impacted in 2019 and beyond, if the tax cuts are paid for by spending cuts separate from the legislation, as most spending cuts would impact lower- to middle-income taxpayers and outweigh the benefits from the tax cuts.
and as far as i can see the tax cuts did not ultimately lead to bonuses or payrises to employees that needed it but instead... In 2018, companies spent a record-setting $1.1 trillion to buy back their own stock, and a majority of major firms (84%, as polled by the National Association for Business Economics) did not alter their hiring practice or their investment in their business in response to the tax cuts they received. This pattern was evident even in early 2018, when Bloomberg reported (based on an analysis of 51 S&P 500 companies) that an estimated 60% of corporate tax savings was going to shareholders, while 15% was going to employees.
Analysis of first-year results released by the Congressional Research Service in May 2019 found:
- "a relatively small (if any) first-year effect on the economy"
- "a feedback effect of 0.3% of GDP or less,” such that the tax cut did not pay for itself
- "pretax profits and economic depreciation (the price of capital) grew faster than wages,” meaning shareholders benefited more than workers
- inflation-adjusted wage growth “is smaller than overall growth in labor compensation and indicates that ordinary workers had very little growth in wage rates”
- "the evidence does not suggest a surge in investment from abroad in 2018”
- "While evidence does indicate significant repurchases of shares, either from tax cuts or repatriated revenues, relatively little was directed to paying worker bonuses"
Ellicottraven
Ravens Ring of Honor
Garbage media? CNN, NPR, Reuters, AP, NBC, ABC, CBS NYT, WaPo all garbage according to you? Who then according to you is real news? Murdoch's Fox News
Thanks @flynismo. In response all I can tell you is the mind is a powerful and potent weapon. It tends to believe what it wants to even when objective facts stare it down. You really believe that there was a deal struck with Mexico after the threat of tariffs? Or was it just theater by our President? Nobody wants a secure border more than myself, but I want Americans not to lose their humanity in the process. Locking and separating kids in the name of border security is more unAmerican than illegal aliens. We are a compassionate country and I don't want us to lose that in the name of nationalism. It is uninformed and petty led by someone so narcissistic that he'll make up anything to win the day or the hour. How can you possibly not see that it is harmful to the soul of this country? I respect your point of view but I vehemently disagree with it.
Willbacker
Ravens Ring of Honor
Basically this quote is the most misunderstood especially by the left. This statement was said well before all the social services and safety nets were created in this country. The left cant seem to get in the early days it was about individualism not dependence. What does an immigrant come here for? To make life better for themselves and their family. Is that true today? It is for a lot but also a lot come here for the benefits.
This is also what MAGA means. The recreation of individual independence.
Willbacker
Ravens Ring of Honor
Well the black man also called Trump racist which started all that but that's ok right. Trump never bashed his schools. Ever!!
gtalk12
Ravens Ring of Honor
The part that is being left out, or perhaps purposely ignored, is that the manner in which Trump was conducting himself lead to certain groups feeling empowered.
That part, no matter what we say, no matter what I say or have been through, will never be addressed. Bashing a man and his intelligence because he spoke out against you in regards to your self awareness and the effects you have with what you say and how you say it is distasteful.
Children, CHILDREN, chanting build a wall to fellow students during class is an example. That is also a reality that his supporters refuse to acknowledge.
flynismo
Practice Squad
Not at all. Fox is just as full of shit as CNN and MSNBC. Actually, I think they're slightly less full of it, but in the same way that Stalin was slightly less a piece of shit than Hitler.
No, I know full well that the "deal" was already agreed to a couple months ago. But at the end of the day, they reached an agreement because they know a tariff would destroy their economy, so now they are sending 6000 of their own troops to the southern border. Trump made that happen and Trump gets credit for that, even if the garbage media refuses to give it to him and belittle every single thing he has done since taking office.
Separating children is something we do to our very own citizens who violate our laws, so yes, it is very American of us to do the same to foreigners who violate our laws. We are supposed to be about justice for all, not just compassion. There is no justice to our citizens if we do not secure our borders.
I think you and I want all the same things, we just have different ideas on how to get there. And that's okay. I'm just happy we still have a country that allows us to talk about this and argue over it. The way the major media outlets are silencing major conservative voices, that may not be the case for much longer. And hell, some countries would have our heads for questioning them so openly like we are doing.
flynismo
Practice Squad
Nonsense. It is written in the very tax code that small businesses got the tax relief, not just the corporate giants. It was very well publicized how many companies gave out significant bonuses, I shouldn't even need to cite them in a political discussion. You not knowing these things does not make those facts unsubstantiated.
Of course ANY tax cut is going to favor people more and more as they make more money. Low income families have no tax burden at all. They pay during the year and then get a fat refund check early each year. Those rich guys that you seem to resent so much are the ones paying the lions share of taxes. The top 1% pays MORE THAN THE BOTTOM 90% combined!
https://taxfoundation.org/summary-latest-federal-income-tax-data-2018-update/
So...you want to steal even more money from those evil rich people who already pay more than their fair share, and give it to people who did nothing to earn it? That's very Robin Hood-ish; and I'm too old for fairy tales.
Furthermore, I don't see this so called "wealth inequality" as a problem, since after all, we live in a capitalist society.
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flynismo
Practice Squad
Very well said. It is about INDEPENDENCE. Not just national, but individual, independence.
Inqui
Pro Bowler
I appreciate the plaudits. The post I suspect you're thinking of was 3000 words (I just counted) and took the better part of a full day to write, and the immediate follow-up was another 800 words. If anyone still thinks the trade war is a good idea after all that (or is being executed well despite the varying levels of justification) any comment to the contrary is just pissing in the wind at this stage. I guess that's the tragedy of the two-party system. Wholesale opinion changing tends to be incremental and a system where two sides oppose each other almost for the sake of it doesn't leave much room for nuance.
I had another post about the economy at large typed up but only got halfway through before I got depressed (see above) and decided against finishing it. The TL;DR if anyone's interested is that I spend a lot of time around varying expert opinion through work, study and general interest and the expert consensus tends to agree with what @52520Andrew said - while there are a lot of things like low interest rates propping the economy up (or at least propping up the headline stats people think of when they think of the economy), those things are basically acting as short-term fixes and a recession's long overdue but no one has much of a feel for when exactly, at least in part because of said things propping the economy up.
Inqui
Pro Bowler
Also, unrelated but I meant to post this earlier.
@Lost_In_Translation this is why Jon Stewart's advice for people working for Congress is to (direct quote as best as I can remember) "not let the stink get on you". It's a bill getting funding for treatments for 9/11 first responders who got cancer because of what they had to breathe in while they were helping out on the scene. It's the most no-brainer of no-brainer bills and it's been stalling in Congress for years, so it's easy to see why he's gotten so cynical with the whole thing.
@Lost_In_Translation this is why Jon Stewart's advice for people working for Congress is to (direct quote as best as I can remember) "not let the stink get on you". It's a bill getting funding for treatments for 9/11 first responders who got cancer because of what they had to breathe in while they were helping out on the scene. It's the most no-brainer of no-brainer bills and it's been stalling in Congress for years, so it's easy to see why he's gotten so cynical with the whole thing.
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