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Tom Perez B/K/M? This poll is closed. |
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77 | 25.50% |
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160 | 52.98% |
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65 | 21.52% |
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Locked up for doing God's work ;(
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May 26, 2017 14:11
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ISIS CURES TROONS posted:Speaking of which, the college professor in Berkeley who thought it'd be a good idea to cave in 3 Trump supporter's skulls with a bike lock is currently locked up on 200 grand bail. Preaching political violence may play well with the D&D crowd, but out in the real world, stable normal people don't particularly care for it. Unless you're a Republican candidate battering a reporter
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May 26, 2017 14:15
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Troika we know you prefer apolitical, economic violence like evicting homeless people to political violence.
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May 26, 2017 14:31
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call to action posted:Unless you're a Republican candidate battering a reporter Everyone likes a fighter in their politicians. People dont like violence personally generally, but a leadership willing to crack heads is generally not seen as all that bad. Franken got elected after he attacked a heckler
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May 26, 2017 14:44
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ISIS CURES TROONS posted:"We?" The only thing you and this thread are capable of hunting is the next box of Nutra-Grains. (USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST)
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May 26, 2017 14:48
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SickZip posted:Everyone likes a fighter in their politicians. People dont like violence personally generally, but a leadership willing to crack heads is generally not seen as all that bad. Franken got elected after he attacked a heckler Now we just need to convince a Chechen MMA fighter to join the Bernie camp and start dropping arm bars Kilroy posted:I encourage the stereotype that all leftists know nothing about firearms. It makes it easier to take fuckers like you by surprise. Happy trails, dickface. https://www.gunbuyer.com/mossberg-590a1-w-xs-ghost-ring-sights-parkerized-12-ga-20-inch-9-rds-51771.html I want this one so bad, I already have a Mossy but this is the Milspec version that you could literally beat someone to death with. I like the ghost rings but a red dot could be nice too. call to action fucked around with this message at 14:56 on May 26, 2017 |
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May 26, 2017 14:54
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When did this become the thread for the people who didn't have the balls to shoot up their high school at 16 and still regret it? *Carves "This machine kills centrists" into a Mosin*
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May 26, 2017 16:05
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WampaLord posted:gently caress you, you disingenuous prick. Don't quote me out of context. It's exactly the same context you used it in, you moron. The EITC is just welfare for wage laborers. WampaLord posted:But impact on the deficit is a perfectly valid reason to complain about the EITC versus a minimum wage hike, MooselanderII posted:JC, ignoring that deficit derail for a second, do you support a means test free payroll payment from the federal government to everyone, or do you just envision the current EITC being spread out across the year, with its current means test qualifications largely still in place? Because other than that, it seems you have not provided any meaningful ways to tackle these issues. KwegiboHB posted:JeffersonClay, do you have any specific problem with Universal Basic Income? A UBI would be the best policy. It would also be the hardest one to actually pass, and means testing would probably make it easier, despite making it more complicated.
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May 26, 2017 16:36
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JeffersonClay posted:A UBI would be the best policy. It would also be the hardest one to actually pass, and means testing would probably make it easier, despite making it more complicated. Actually it might be easier since a lot more potential voters would benefit from it. More importantly though the fatal flaw of means testing is that it's FAR easier for conservatives to dismantle down the road because dismantling a universal program takes money from literally everyone. Which I suspect is why you're pushing for it. Also, I'm not sure you really know how UBI works. Means testing would undermine the purpose of having a basic income in the first place (shifting power away from businesses to people).
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May 26, 2017 16:56
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JC if you means test UBI it is not universal anymore. Just say you don't think we should hand out money to everyone for free.
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May 26, 2017 17:11
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JeffersonClay posted:All of this is probably true, although increased hiring only addresses a piece of the problem because many households don't earn wages due to disability and age rather than a lack of suitable employment. It's important to remember that while the overall effect is to transfer wealth from the rich to minimum wage workers, there's also a transfer from poor households without wage-earners to minimum wage workers, which is undesirable. The EITC doesn't have that problem, and neither does welfare generally, assuming they're not financed by taxing the poor. This is also true for literally all taxes that impact the poor, even if they're progressive. The EITC doesn't have that problem (though it does involve some level of wage transfers from the working class to the even-poorer working class), but it has its own problems that would require a significant restructuring of the program to fix (for example ensuring the wealth transfer is distributed over the course of the entire year, has a much higher wage cutoff, is much greater than it currently is, and is proportionally increased for single people without children), at which point I'm not sure if it even makes sense to refer to it as the same policy anymore. Basically your argument seems to boil down to "I'm against this policy because it doesn't help literally everyone", and while that's true and there are superior alternatives, you're basically arbitrarily taking the extreme non-pragmatic side of this argument. Like, when it's convenient you take the "we should settle for lesser policies to be pragmatic" view but then it flips when one of the things people are arguing for in this thread actually begins to become more plausible. I think most people in this thread would agree that the best solution is just to dramatically increase taxes on the wealthy and directly transfer that wealth to the poor, but there's no way in hell that's going to happen any time soon in our current political climate. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 17:27 on May 26, 2017 |
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May 26, 2017 17:14
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Kilroy posted:I encourage the stereotype that all leftists know nothing about firearms. It makes it easier to take fuckers like you by surprise. Happy trails, dickface. lol you fantasize about murdering people because they disagree with you about politics
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May 26, 2017 17:35
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ISIS CURES TROONS posted:lol you fantasize about murdering people because they disagree with you about politics Counterpoint: Would you be against using the guillotine on the rich?
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May 26, 2017 17:37
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Confounding Factor posted:Counterpoint: Would you be against using the guillotine on the rich? Yes. I don't believe that being rich inherently makes someone deserving of death to satisfy the petty bloodlust of armchair marxists. Or of anyone else.
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May 26, 2017 17:39
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Kilroy posted:I encourage the stereotype that all leftists know nothing about firearms. It makes it easier to take fuckers like you by surprise. Happy trails, dickface. An honest to god death threat? Seriously?
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May 26, 2017 17:45
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ISIS CURES TROONS posted:lol you fantasize about murdering people because they disagree with you about politics Hey at worse you had a four in five chance of surviving gulags.
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May 26, 2017 18:16
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we went from 15 dollar minwage to killing the rich.....guess the slippery slope argument has merit after all.........
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May 26, 2017 18:24
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Confounding Factor posted:Counterpoint: Would you be against using the guillotine on the rich? Yes. The death penalty is outdated and barbaric. Mass incarceration is the real answer here.
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May 26, 2017 18:24
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readingatwork posted:Yes. The death penalty is outdated and barbaric. Mass incarceration is the real answer here. Prisons today are already overcrowded and inhumane, we'd need a gentler design. Something with a lot of fresh air and exercise, and free classes in practical skills and societal reintegration.
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May 26, 2017 18:28
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Doc Hawkins posted:Prisons today are already overcrowded and inhumane, we'd need a gentler design. Something with a lot of fresh air and exercise, and free classes in practical skills and societal reintegration. Outside you say? I have the prefect place. These boreal bogs in Alaska, would be perfect for that. https://nsidc.org/sites/nsidc.org/files/images//Boreal_Forest_Thaw_lake_AK_small.JPG
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May 26, 2017 18:32
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Doc Hawkins posted:Prisons today are already overcrowded and inhumane, we'd need a gentler design. Something with a lot of fresh air and exercise, and free classes in practical skills and societal reintegration. I'd support that for most of the people in American prisons today, but in the case of mass incarceration for rich people we could just jam them all in one big underfunded nightmare mess of a prison like they do now to poor people. I'm not too concerned with treating them well. Of course the guillotine would be preferable.
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May 26, 2017 18:34
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Crowsbeak posted:Hey at worse you had a four in five chance of surviving gulags. Is that true?? Not too shabby!
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May 26, 2017 19:36
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ISIS CURES TROONS posted:lol you fantasize about murdering people because they disagree with you about politics Do you not? 
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May 26, 2017 20:10
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readingatwork posted:Actually it might be easier since a lot more potential voters would benefit from it. More importantly though the fatal flaw of means testing is that it's FAR easier for conservatives to dismantle down the road because dismantling a universal program takes money from literally everyone. Which I suspect is why you're pushing for it. If you means test a UBI it becomes a GMI. The purpose of a UBI, or a GMI, is to eliminate poverty. A UBI is vulnerable to arguments like "it taxes the middle class to give handouts to the wealthy." I really don't get why it's so important to give welfare to rich people. Ytlaya posted:This is also true for literally all taxes that impact the poor, even if they're progressive. The EITC doesn't have that problem (though it does involve some level of wage transfers from the working class to the even-poorer working class), but it has its own problems that would require a significant restructuring of the program to fix (for example ensuring the wealth transfer is distributed over the course of the entire year, has a much higher wage cutoff, is much greater than it currently is, and is proportionally increased for single people without children), at which point I'm not sure if it even makes sense to refer to it as the same policy anymore. No, the price increases from the minimum wage leave people out of the labor force strictly worse-off. It helps the majority of the poor, but hurts a minority. Whereas welfare programs funded by progressive taxes result in a net benefit for all poor people. That's an important distinction.
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May 26, 2017 20:26
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JeffersonClay posted:If you means test a UBI it becomes a GMI. The purpose of a UBI, or a GMI, is to eliminate poverty. Because means testing is vulnerable to neoliberal centrists like, say, the Clintons using it as a bludgeon to demolish the welfare state. UBI doesn't happen without progressive taxation anyway, so the rich are taking a gigantic net loss whether they get their UBI payments or not. edit: what am I talking about, there is no reasonable situation outside JC's fantasy world where a UBI would be implemented such that it's actually writing checks to rich people. If it's (let's say) $20K a year, the IRS would just pay out the difference in your tax liability until you owe more than that. It's not a complex idea. Dr. Fishopolis fucked around with this message at 21:09 on May 26, 2017 |
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May 26, 2017 20:38
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JeffersonClay posted:A UBI is vulnerable to arguments like "it taxes the middle class to give handouts to the wealthy." Only true if it did raise taxes on the middle class, which would be a poison pill to fight against. These programs can be funded by taxes on the wealthy. quote:I really don't get why it's so important to give welfare to rich people. Universality decreases administrative costs (as you've pointed out yourself) and avoids moral hazard. Several arguments you've made could be equally applied against universal health care. Does your opinion differ there?
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May 26, 2017 20:48
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ISIS CURES TROONS posted:lol you fantasize about murdering people because they disagree with you about politics Pfft, I do this when people smoke near me on the sidewalk; it's called frustration at the lack of a solution. You make yourself feel better, then move on.
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May 26, 2017 21:04
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JeffersonClay posted:If you means test a UBI it becomes a GMI. The purpose of a UBI, or a GMI, is to eliminate poverty. The purpose would be to eliminate/mitigate poverty, increase GDP growth, improve citizen health/happiness and decrease inequality. quote:A UBI is vulnerable to arguments like "it taxes the middle class to give handouts to the wealthy." I really don't get why it's so important to give welfare to rich people. "We'd lose money on overhead. Plus, they pay taxes, too."
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May 26, 2017 21:11
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JeffersonClay posted:If you means test a UBI it becomes a GMI. The purpose of a UBI, or a GMI, is to eliminate poverty. Any policy is going to be vulnerable to sabotage from opponents, that doesn't mean that you pre-loving compromise before the debate even begins. That's entire loving reason why we have Republican's in control of the government and the orange man-baby in the oval office. Because to avoid the having the GOP be able to attack our actual preferred option on healthcare (Single-payer) the Democrats pre-compromised and put out a flawed watered down program that was doomed to failure that they were then held responsible for rather than the actual preferred solution that would have actually loving worked (or at least if it had failed the criticisms would have been fair). Then predictably the Republican's did what Republican's always do and attacked it, undermined it and ran against it for 7 loving years anyway. Now we're in a position where the GOP has to put their own plan in place and even they are stuck because the ACA was the best option that adhered to conservative principles so now pretty much everyone who's not in the 1% of 1% are going to get dicked down hard by healthcare (or more precisely a lack there of). You can't negotiate with crazies, and the Republican party are a bunch of nutters. The left needs to run on it's actual policies rather than letting itself be held responsible for watered down conservative crap. This is the problem with Centrists you do half the work for the opposition before the battle is even joined. I swear if you were a general you'd start each battle by decimating your own forces before engaging the enemy. For the record I'm not against compromise, what I'm against pre-compromising before the negotiation even begins. UBI is the better option that is less vulnerable to arguments about fairness, it's simpler and less vulnerable to machinations to water it down. Now maybe once the left puts that one the table as it's policy some on the right may decided that they could get behind the idea if there is some means testing or whatever. At that point you open negotiations but they have to vote for the loving thing too. if they withdraw their support afterwards you withdraw their loving changes and go back to your preferred choice. We'd have been better off if the Democratic leadership from 2009 had said "gently caress it" when the GOP wouldn't sign onto a compromise and scrapped the bill and made GOP obstruction into the campaign issue of 2010. But no they cared more about getting some bill through regardless of how flawed and now everyone is paying for it. Skex fucked around with this message at 21:40 on May 26, 2017 |
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May 26, 2017 21:33
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JeffersonClay posted:If you means test a UBI it becomes a GMI. The purpose of a UBI, or a GMI, is to eliminate poverty. There are, as I understand it, three separate sets of arguments for the superiority of universal programs over means testing. First, running on universal programs offers electoral advantages over means tested ones. Because you can sum up the effects of a universal program in a few words, voters can understand how it affects their lives without having to wade through lengthy policy papers on your website. It seems to me that anytime a politicians proposal is more complicated than "build a wall" or "tuition free college," voters can't connect the dots and see which policies lead to which changes and, importantly, who's responsible. See: Kentucky voters praising Kynect or whatever the gently caress the state exchange was called while claiming to hate Obamacare. The second set of arguments are about implementation. For the government, means testing raises administrative costs. For citizens, the programs are harder to sign up for and, at least with our actually existing means tested programs, there are coverage gaps and cut-off points which create all sorts of distorted incentives. Third, it's argued that universal programs are less vulnerable to cuts. It seems to me that programs like social security and medicare have constituencies which are both sufficiently mobilized and large enough to push back anytime there's talk of cuts. I can't think of comparable case with any means tested policies.
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May 26, 2017 22:12
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Dr. Fishopolis posted:Because means testing is vulnerable to neoliberal centrists like, say, the Clintons using it as a bludgeon to demolish the welfare state. UBI doesn't happen without progressive taxation anyway, so the rich are taking a gigantic net loss whether they get their UBI payments or not. So we're just arguing about semantics then. You're still means-testing, but testing people's ability to pay taxes rather than their need for the transfer payments. There's no more complexity involved in administering a GMI through the tax code than administering a UBI. And both are equally vulnerable to republican or neoliberal chicanery. They could gently caress with the GMI by reducing benefits generally or by reducing the number of people who qualify. They could gently caress with a UBI by reducing benefits or by increasing the number of people who pay taxes into the system. It's a distinction without a difference. I guess there's a rhetorical difference between raising taxes and reducing beneficiaries, despite them being functionally identical. But at that point we need to consider the rhetorical problems with taxing the middle class to give benefits to the rich, even though it's a dumb argument.
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May 26, 2017 22:19
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JeffersonClay posted:So we're just arguing about semantics then. You're still means-testing, but testing people's ability to pay taxes rather than their need for the transfer payments. There's no more complexity involved in administering a GMI through the tax code than administering a UBI. And both are equally vulnerable to republican or neoliberal chicanery. They could gently caress with the GMI by reducing benefits generally or by reducing the number of people who qualify. They could gently caress with a UBI by reducing benefits or by increasing the number of people who pay taxes into the system. It's a distinction without a difference. Either you don't understand how welfare means testing works, or you're feigning ignorance for the sake of your argument. There is a huge difference between a progressive tax policy with a negative low end, and the rules that we use for bankruptcy means testing, which is what most means testing is based on in the US. Not to mention the horrific Clinton era work requirements that Obama rolled back. Tax brackets don't care how you use your money. Means testing requires calculating and reporting your disposable income to qualify for benefits. No reasonable society should ask poor people to prove they aren't having fun in order to be allowed to survive.
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May 26, 2017 22:40
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JC coming out strong for Herman Cain's 999 tax plan.
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May 26, 2017 22:48
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Seriously what the gently caress. https://twitter.com/IsaacDovere/status/868179588056326144 Democrats really do value politeness over actual results of any kind, not that her campaign was actually not angry.
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May 26, 2017 23:13
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Confounding Factor posted:Counterpoint: Would you be against using the guillotine on the rich? Well, to be fair, even I don't think the rich should die. I think the vast majority of their assets (depending upon how rich they are) should be seized and redistributed, but there's not really any purpose to getting overly draconian beyond that. I mean, on a personal level I don't really care if bad things happen to rich people, but that doesn't mean I actively want them to suffer. I think that rich people being bad isn't so much because rich people are inherently more evil than anyone else, but more because the act of being rich turns someone into bad person with little empathy towards "normal" people*. Which is why any system where the rich are simply replaced by a new powerful rich/ruling class is doomed to have a bunch of the same problems. *And I don't mean this in a mustache-twirling "mwahaha I will gently caress over the poor" sense, but more that rich people are generally incapable of comprehending the problems other people have, which ends up leading to them not caring as much about issues they aren't as personally exposed to, like poverty. Incidentally, I think this is part of why social justice issues have found some traction among the wealthy; a rich person (especially a younger one) is likely to grow up going to school or being friends with some minorities (and it's not like being rich makes people less likely to be gay or know gay people), but they're extremely unlikely to go to school or befriend any poor people (especially if they're super-rich). I have this one friend who is very rich (as in his family has at least tens of millions of dollars), and I'm literally the poorest person he closely knows, despite growing up in a middle class family myself (parents' combined income growing up was about 70-80k). JeffersonClay posted:No, the price increases from the minimum wage leave people out of the labor force strictly worse-off. Yeah, and this applies to literally any policy that is targeted at a subset of the poor (for example something like funding daycare for poor single mothers) while there is either non-zero taxation on the working class and/or all other existing welfare isn't being increased along with increases to the CPI (or whatever best approximates the inflation of the price of goods/services poor people tend to buy) to offset inflation. You would have a point if the net effect was harmful towards the poor (or a minority where harmed to a significant, noticeable degree), but that isn't the case. Also, while I imagine you're probably right about the net impact being slightly negative towards the unemployed poor, it isn't strictly, 100% negative. As I mentioned, increases in minimum wage are likely to result in more robust economies in many poorer areas, which would end up also resulting in increased employment (which would obviously help a certain portion of people not currently employed. I don't want to make this aspect a major aspect of my argument because it's so difficult to quantify/predict, but if you want to get really pedantic it isn't strictly true that increases in minimum wage would only hurt people who aren't currently employed. Anyways, this specific argument aside, do you really not realize how weird it is that you bend over backwards to defend status quo ideas, but use these weird, contorted "well even if the effect is super positive it isn't ideal" arguments against anything leftists/people in this thread are mentioning? Like, there's a huge double standard here and your standards for how you treat status quo policy vs. how you treat ideas for policy change are not even remotely the same. This obviously isn't to say that every new policy idea is superior to the status quo, but your specific arguments are applying a very disproportionate burden of proof to the former relative to the latter. Just for the sake honesty, I will completely admit I have some bias in favor of leftist policy ideas, and keeping that in mind and attempting to account for that ironically actually helps me to remain more unbiased than people who insist on their own lack of ideology or bias. Basically, people are generally biased due to their own life experiences (which includes the people they encounter, etc). So people who have seen or experienced the downside to the status quo tend to be biased against it and biased in favor of changes. In the same way, people who are comfortable in the status quo naturally tend to (often unconsciously) express more caution towards change because they have less to gain from change and more to potentially lose. This is also why it isn't remotely a coincidence that liberals who are actively against more radical leftism* tend to be financially secure themselves. *This obviously doesn't include everyone who voted for Clinton in the Democratic primaries. It's mainly referring to people who not only support more centrist/mainstream Democrats but are also actively against more radical/leftist politicians and ideas.
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May 26, 2017 23:45
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JeffersonClay posted:So we're just arguing about semantics then. You're still means-testing, but testing people's ability to pay taxes rather than their need for the transfer payments. There's no more complexity involved in administering a GMI through the tax code than administering a UBI. And both are equally vulnerable to republican or neoliberal chicanery. They could gently caress with the GMI by reducing benefits generally or by reducing the number of people who qualify. They could gently caress with a UBI by reducing benefits or by increasing the number of people who pay taxes into the system. It's a distinction without a difference. Didn't you say you work in money laundering forensics? Because you are showing some serious accounting ignorance in your first paragraph here. The whole point he was making was that a truly universal UBI would work in the same vein as an unqualified EITC. Everyone gets the benefit of it and either receives money or simply receives an offset for their tax liabilities, and obviously those with higher incomes and larger liabilities would benefit less. Absent a constitutional amendment, it is always subject to fuckery by politicians, that is a rather banal point on your part. But the point is to structure the program in a way that it becomes another third rail of American politics and politicians tinker with it at their own peril.
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May 26, 2017 23:53
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UBI does not "tax the middle class to give welfare to the rich"; that is mathematically impossible.
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May 27, 2017 01:06
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How is the liberal Clintonista anti-UBI argument somehow even dumber than the conservative Republican arguments? That is just loving impressive. Even conservatives are capable of doing arithmetic and noticing that to fund a livable basic income that money has to come from the rich and would therefore represent a wealth transfer from the rich to everyone else. They just think that's bad and have a bunch of stupid just-world arguments to justify their evil. But even they aren't dumb enough to reject all of mathematics, holy lol.
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May 27, 2017 01:20
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VitalSigns posted:How is the liberal Clintonista anti-UBI argument somehow even dumber than the conservative Republican arguments? That is just loving impressive. I'm sorry, but haven't you heard about this new thing called "Radical Centrism"? I hear all the kids are into it these days!
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May 27, 2017 01:23
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Rich people's assets being seized and redistributed is such a dumb, retarded fantasy. Doubly so because you expect US voters to go for it.
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May 27, 2017 01:42
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