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MooselanderII posted:What are they? I thought itemizing middle class people are hosed. The majority of taxpayers don't itemize. quote:According to the most recent IRS data, for the 2013 tax year,
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Dec 3, 2017 18:15
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botany posted:in your opinion, what is the problem? what makes a deficit potentially unsustainable? The deficit is the means by which we create debt. Debt is functionally a wealth distribution scheme that lets the state raise money in taxes for distribution to the holders of the debt, promised to them as a share of the future in exchange for their support in the present. This doesnt mean a deficit is inherently bad. But it does inherently do that bad thing. A sustainable deficit is one that does sufficient good long term things to balance out that bad thing - a deficit of any size that is spent solely on investments with benefits that outsize the debt repayments is obviously sustainable. A bad unsustainable deficit is the sort that has only the bad effect of redistribution of future wealth to the wealthy and which leads to debt payments being an ever greater portion of government income - a ballooning regressive redistribution program that eventually lands us in a situation where no investment can create wealth anymore to balance out the amount that is redistributed. Basically a bad deficit is the ones the Republicans intentionally create every time they get into office because the bad unsustainable outcomes are their explicit goal
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Dec 3, 2017 18:28
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This is a country that has had far far far worse circumstances than the present day. To argue that we're somehow going to plunge into some kind of bizarre Republican dominated oligarchy and never again be able to escape it doesn't make much sense when you look at how much worse things were in the Antebellum, The Gilded Age and the era of Jim Crow laws. Yes we are rolling back on a lot of the progress we've made, but progress isn't necessarily a linear path. We now have the benefit in that through nostalgia or otherwise there was once a time when things were "better" than they were now which provides fuel for discontent as everyone gradually becomes poor and miserable. The main challenges facing the budding left wing movement in the United States today is how you harness the pain, frustration and dissatisfaction the majority of this country's bottom 50% feel and channel it so that they support you. For this there's a couple of obstacles you need to overcome: 1. How to indoctrinate them to your point of view 2. How to build a bridge between poor whites and other minorities so that they fight for a common ground against the wealthy. The reason we are in this mess right now is because the moneyed classes have successfully managed to use race as a wedge issue to maintain their power. As long as you got people believing black people and Mexicans are the reason your $30 per hour supervisor job is now a $8.50 Wal-Mart job they will never rally in support of a left wing movement. Somehow you have to get them to look beyond what they see in front of them and understand that there's a bigger enemy that wants all of the poor to get hosed. I believe that racism is a fairly recent invention. Consider Ancient Rome and civilizations in Antiquity - there weren't racial stigmas. While undoubtedly a lot of blacks were enslaved back then- this wasn't unique to them but rather a feature of societies back then who accepted that slavery was a consequence of being conquered by an invading power. Ultimately blacks in Rome were not differentiated from other races, they held citizenship, joined the army, owned land and so on. Race is an issue in America because the wealthy classes of colonial North America needed a way to justify slavery to protect their bottom line. So they created a narrative that blacks were lesser beings, brutes, stupid etc. They came up with pseudoscience like measuring their skulls and using this to prove why they are subhuman and deserve to be enslaved. They created and used hate as a tool to protect their property (slaves) so they can continue to enrich themselves. I have no doubt that there's over a thousand years of pain, grievances and injustices that contribute to the division between blacks and whites in the US but the key to resolving these issues is understanding that capital, the wealthy, the investor class, the plantation owners etc are the real reason this is happening. They know poor whites and blacks would curb stomp them if they ever noticed that their collective misery is actually the fault of the wealthy rather than each other. My first issue with the American Left is that they are suburban, virtue signalling, limousine liberals. They already come from a point of privilege and do not understand the economic divisions that plague their country. The only concern these people have with politics are the visible social issues and whatever it is that is currently trending - like having a woman become president just because she's a woman and not because her policies actually make sense and are good for the country. They are the reason the Democrat party is the ineffectual neoliberal mess that it is now. They aren't true socialists. My second issue is that they alienate the people that are most marginalized by the class warfare the Republicans are engaging in now. They have allowed the Republicans to tar and feather words like "Class warfare", "Socialism", "Wealth Redistribution", "Taxation" etc so that the emotional response these words created in the minds of poor working class Americans is that their lives will get worse through left wing policies that these words describe. Then right after that you got white liberals who aggressively attack their working class brethren, demonizing them, treating them like they're stupid, calling them racists and just shouting them down because they support Donald Trump. There is absolutely no outreach and yet these are the people you need for a socialist movement and these are the people who would most benefit from socialism. Yet this urban hippie movement that cares more about platitudes and looking like they aren't racist is quick to cut these people loose and let the right wingers claim them because there's no places for them in polite democrat circles precisely because the class difference makes them reviled. Kraftwerk fucked around with this message at 19:30 on Dec 3, 2017 |
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Dec 3, 2017 19:19
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GlyphGryph posted:You know most anarchists are socialists right? I am, my comment was really more about how to sell the ideology than anything else.
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Dec 3, 2017 19:29
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MizPiz posted:I am, my comment was really more about how to sell the ideology than anything else. I mean, what is anarchism to you? How would you sell it to the mostly leftist crowd in this thread? That’s a start. I personally don’t think anarchism can succeed, and I think we need structure and governmental control to prevent abuse by the few against the many, but I’m legitimately interested to hear what you think of as an ideal to push for, for an organized left anarchist movement.
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Dec 3, 2017 19:31
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Lightning Knight posted:I mean, what is anarchism to you? How would you sell it to the mostly leftist crowd in this thread? That’s a start. We tried anarchy when we were just apes swinging through the trees and even then there were biologically enforced social structures. Anarchy doesn't work because it runs contrary to human nature. The whole concept of a social contract is you forfeit certain freedoms (kill whoever you want, take what you want, do whatever you want) so that you can pool resources together for protection, mutual prosperity and general survival. You might be a terrible hunter but you do a good job at building houses- hence you meet a hunter, build him a house and he provides you with some food in exchange. Now your chances of survival increase exponentially. To keep all of this running properly in case someone tries to take advantage of you, there are laws. You start with the basics like the Code of Hammurabi (Eye for an eye) and you build it up from there as social mores change with the times. We are social creatures- we depend on society and society depends on us. I think anarchist movements are more about destroying society as we understand it today due to a lack of faith in the system but I believe if they ever succeeded we'd eventually gravitate towards rebuilding a new society from that chaos. Case in point - the Roman order capitulated into anarchy and banditry only for us to rebuild society around feudal structures just because it got so far out of hand everyone needed protection and a system to keep them alive. As has already been mentioned if we established anarchy, the biggest, strongest and richest people would just use this power to subjugate everyone else and we would once again coalesce into a society of rules and power structures. Kraftwerk fucked around with this message at 19:45 on Dec 3, 2017 |
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Dec 3, 2017 19:41
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The best example of a working libertarian anarchist society in history is the early Icelandic Commonwealth; they even had privatized courts. After a couple centuries everyone agreed it was a bad idea and unanimously swore allegiance to the King of Norway just so they would have someone in charge.
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Dec 3, 2017 19:44
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Anarchism is not anarchy guy
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Dec 3, 2017 19:47
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WampaLord posted:The majority of taxpayers don't itemize. Well we're talking about middle class taxpayers, not all taxpayers generally. These are the property owning middle class people that lose bigly and I'm curious what bones were thrown to them as compensation.
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Dec 3, 2017 20:02
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GlyphGryph posted:You know most anarchists are socialists right? It's almost like they should call themselves socialists then.
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Dec 3, 2017 20:26
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Hobby Lobby’s CEO funded a propaganda museum for the Bible in DC its actually really good and they got real historians to work on it, shockingly enough
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Dec 3, 2017 20:53
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viral spiral posted:It's almost like they should call themselves socialists then. 
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Dec 3, 2017 20:58
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Lightning Knight posted:Hobby Lobby’s CEO funded a propaganda museum for the Bible in DC They also got a lot of stuff confiscated by customs (and paid millions of dollars in fines for doing so) because they've been smuggling looted tablets away from the middle east. Who knows where the money Green and co. spent to smuggle these things into the states ended up, too. https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/07/hobby-lobby-must-pay-3-million-for-smuggling-ancient-cuneiform-artifacts/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/07/hobby-lobby-smuggled-thousands-of-ancient-artifacts-out-of-iraq/532743/
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Dec 3, 2017 21:01
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kefkafloyd posted:They also got a lot of stuff confiscated by customs (and paid millions of dollars in fines for doing so) because they've been smuggling looted tablets away from the middle east. Who knows where the money Green and co. spent to smuggle these things into the states ended up, too. Yeah that part sucks, the article I posted touched briefly on it. I thought the history and stance taken by the museum was interesting otherwise though. 
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Dec 3, 2017 21:04
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MooselanderII posted:What are they? I thought itemizing middle class people are hosed. Some of them are (depending on their circumstance), but the bill also (temporarily) lowers rates for certain brackets, but they actually revert in 2025. It essentially means there is added political pressure to make the deficit worse in the future. As far as if things have been worse in this country, they obviously have, but it is more about trajectories than where you are at especially if you have the opportunity to look at least living abroad. I mean if you look at the current trajectory based on 1. our balance sheet, 2. our party politics and 3. just where our country is right now...there is a reason to be pessimistic. I would be less so if there was at least an opportunity to fight back, but in order to do so, the Democratic Party has to essentially be changed into fundamentally a different organization, one that would actually fight tooth and nail for the working class.
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Dec 3, 2017 21:11
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MooselanderII posted:Well we're talking about middle class taxpayers, not all taxpayers generally. These are the property owning middle class people that lose bigly and I'm curious what bones were thrown to them as compensation. What exactly are you considering the middle class here, income-wise? I think it's important to establish this first, since many people have kind of strange ideas of what constitutes middle class. From some quick research, it seems like fewer than half of taxpayers itemize unless they make more than $75k, which is significantly higher than the median income. Only about 20-25% itemize in the $25k to $50k range, which is what could most reasonably be considered middle class if you look at income distribution in the US.
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Dec 3, 2017 21:17
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Ardennes posted:Some of them are (depending on their circumstance), but the bill also (temporarily) lowers rates for certain brackets, but they actually revert in 2025. It essentially means there is added political pressure to make the deficit worse in the future. Gotcha, I didn't realize the Senate Bill had sunsetted rate adjustments. Ytlaya posted:What exactly are you considering the middle class here, income-wise? I think it's important to establish this first, since many people have kind of strange ideas of what constitutes middle class. It is not my intention to make some broad definition of what constitutes middle class taxpayers, only that real property owning middle class itemizers face a comparatively higher tax burden under this bill. Of course, they're not the only ones hosed. poo poo, I don't itemize and the student loan interest deduction elimination basically takes away from me 500 bucks and hands it to Sheldon Adelson and friends.
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Dec 3, 2017 21:53
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MooselanderII posted:Of course, they're not the only ones hosed. poo poo, I don't itemize and the student loan interest deduction elimination basically takes away from me 500 bucks and hands it to Sheldon Adelson and friends. I believe that was dropped from the senate bill. I'd bet 1001 pesos that's what we end up with since this is not going to get any more popular over time so they need to push it through quickly. If you want an example to use, I make $90k + like $5.5k in rental income, my girlfriend makes nothing and can't work (but we don't benefit from the medical exemption and probably shouldn't get married, long story. You could replace her with an ailing relative if you wanted for a better example.). I'm losing my personal exemption ($4050), the write-off for her ($4050), and SALT for PA/Allegheny county (3% and 3.07%). I keep mortgage interest but that's not going to push me over the $12k since I made the mistake of doing the responsible thing and buying a reasonable sized house in a low cost of living city instead of a McMansion somewhere trendy. Yeah I'll go into a 25% tax bracket from 28%, big whoop in comparison.
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Dec 4, 2017 05:01
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I feel like the notion that poo poo has been worse before because the Gilded Age eventually led into the into the Great Depression and we aren't there yet misses a really important point. The US climbed out of the poo poo hole it dug itself not only through FDR and the progressive policies of the New Deal, but because there was this thing called World War II that actively hosed up the infrastructure and industrial capacity of pretty much every relevant European power, and the US made crazy bank off of the aftermath. Simply electing progressive politicians after Great Depression II won't fix things once they're well and truly hosed.
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Dec 4, 2017 07:28
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GlyphGryph posted:The deficit is the means by which we create debt. Debt is functionally a wealth distribution scheme that lets the state raise money in taxes for distribution to the holders of the debt, promised to them as a share of the future in exchange for their support in the present. I disagree on a number of points. quote:The deficit is the means by which we create debt. Debt is functionally a wealth distribution scheme that lets the state raise money in taxes for distribution to the holders of the debt, promised to them as a share of the future in exchange for their support in the present. The deficit is the difference between federal spending and federal intake. By definition, a deficit (as opposed to a surplus) means that the government is putting more money into the economy than it is taking out via taxes. In other words, a deficit means a net increase in financial assets for the private sector. (I'm skipping over stuff like import/export balances here.) That's a good thing. Deficits inherently do a good thing. This makes public debt synonymous with private wealth. Obviously there's the question of how this private wealth is distributed, and if that's your concern I fully agree. But that doesn't have much to do with the deficit. When is public debt unsustainable? When the government's capability to service it is in question. This is a hard limit in asset-backed (non-fiat) currencies, either of the gold-standard variety or in mixed systems where the national currency is dependent on some other currency (the euro zone is a good example of this). The US is a currency sovereign country, so these limitations don't apply. Capability to service debt has less to do with overall debt level than with the political situation around the world and the USD's global reserve currency status. Taxation is not dependent on either deficit or debt. When the government spends, it creates financial assets. When it taxes, it destroys financial assets. It can do both of these things essentially as it wants (if we ignore politics for a minute). The government's goal should be sustainable growth of the economy, coupled with full employment. In order to achieve these goals it can make monetary decisions that affect return rates, inflation and bubbles. So taxation is a tool for taking money out of the economy to make sure that inflationary pressure doesn't build up beyond what is desirable to discourage hoarding, for instance. It doesn't require debt or a deficit to do that. To get back to the original question: Basically the only situation where a deficit is unsustainable in some way is if it is so huge that it would make bond holders cash in for fear that the government will no longer be able to service its debt. But that confidence is a lot more about political stability and world politics than strictly about monetary policy.
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Dec 4, 2017 07:47
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Kraftwerk posted:We tried anarchy when we were just apes swinging through the trees and even then there were biologically enforced social structures. Anarchism is not about the end of society or social enforcement, it's about an end to hierarchy. Your community would absolutely be able to tell you what to do (to what extent and what "your community" means depends on the flavor of anarchy), there just wouldn't be a person or committee that gets to decide that, it would actually have to be your peers who did it. Anarchy is very close to the actual for real democracy the West pretends to value, which is why elites have been trying very hard to paint it as chaos, which is what you're talking about. There's still arguments to be made that it might not be realistically achievable or stable, but it's definitely not anywhere near as dire as you suggest.
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Dec 4, 2017 13:28
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There are so many assumptions made by anarchists about how people will act, and how groups act that it completely falls apart if you put any actual thought into it. It's wishful thinking that defines itself as a political ideology.
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Dec 4, 2017 13:47
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Hobbes was right.
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Dec 4, 2017 14:05
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Han Fei Zi was right.
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Dec 4, 2017 14:29
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Karnegal posted:I feel like the notion that poo poo has been worse before because the Gilded Age eventually led into the into the Great Depression and we aren't there yet misses a really important point. The US climbed out of the poo poo hole it dug itself not only through FDR and the progressive policies of the New Deal, but because there was this thing called World War II that actively hosed up the infrastructure and industrial capacity of pretty much every relevant European power, and the US made crazy bank off of the aftermath. Simply electing progressive politicians after Great Depression II won't fix things once they're well and truly hosed. Don't forget the incredible amount of fuel we consumed at higher EROEI than we can get today, poo poo may have been worse before but it's not getting as great as fast ever again.
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Dec 4, 2017 14:45
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Savoring that piping hot "racism is a modern invention" take.
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Dec 4, 2017 15:22
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nwo hatchet man posted:Savoring that piping hot "racism is a modern invention" take. His point is sound, but should have been "racism as modern society defines it"
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Dec 4, 2017 16:56
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Are there any contingency plans should Bernie ever fall ill due to his advanced age? Does he have a protege waiting to take over? It seems awfully messed up if the only credible left wing voice in america is an old man in his 70s.
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Dec 4, 2017 17:33
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Kraftwerk posted:Are there any contingency plans should Bernie ever fall ill due to his advanced age? Does he have a protege waiting to take over? It seems awfully messed up if the only credible left wing voice in america is an old man in his 70s. We also have an old woman in her 60's who the right wing is BUSILY slathering in racial slurs
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Dec 4, 2017 17:36
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Kraftwerk posted:Are there any contingency plans should Bernie ever fall ill due to his advanced age? Does he have a protege waiting to take over? It seems awfully messed up if the only credible left wing voice in america is an old man in his 70s. Bernie isn’t the only credible left wing voice in America and it’s not necessary for other left wing leaders to be anointed by him as successor. Leftism is an ideological movement, not a religion.
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Dec 4, 2017 17:37
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Lightning Knight posted:Bernie isn’t the only credible left wing voice in America and it’s not necessary for other left wing leaders to be anointed by him as successor. Leftism is an ideological movement, not a religion. With this hammer I blesseth thine works; with this sickle I blesseth thine harvests; may the fruits of thine labors serve those around you, as those labors serve you. Amen.
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Dec 4, 2017 17:45
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:We also have an old woman in her 60's who the right wing is BUSILY slathering in racial slurs I don't want either of them to run for President. If Bernie Sanders were 20 years younger, I'd say "great, do it, I'm with you all the way" but we do not need an octogenarian President regardless of ideology. Elizabeth Warren does not, I believe, have the charisma for the national stage, nor does she have the foreign policy chops to salvage what's left of our reputation in the world. If we survive Trump I can only hope the rest of the world forgives us when his successor takes office. My other reason is selfish--I don't want a special election in MA that might cause Scott Brown to crawl out of his slime-covered hole and sniff the air hopefully. Right now I have no idea who I will vote for in 3 years, and that's how I like it.
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Dec 4, 2017 17:54
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Kraftwerk posted:Are there any contingency plans should Bernie ever fall ill due to his advanced age? Does he have a protege waiting to take over? It seems awfully messed up if the only credible left wing voice in america is an old man in his 70s. the contingency plan is to nominate somebody who didn't fail to even win the primary
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Dec 4, 2017 17:59
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botany posted:the contingency plan is to nominate somebody who didn't fail to even win the primary What point do you actually think you're making with this.
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Dec 4, 2017 18:05
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Alter Ego posted:
Warren showed more charisma in that one viral video of her from like 2011 than any other potential Democratic candidate I'm aware of has ever demonstrated, with the possible exceptions of Bernie and Booker. And I agree that Bernie is too old (and Booker is too Republican). There's a reason that the right wing media is busily busily busily slandering Warren. She looks a lot like the best available candidate right now. Whether she's good enough is secondary if there's no one better.
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Dec 4, 2017 18:05
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Oh Snapple! posted:What point do you actually think you're making with this. the point that the dems should nominate somebody who can win primaries.
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Dec 4, 2017 18:07
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I don’t really understand this “than any other potential candidate” or otherwise implying that our options are a handful of ancient Senators from New England. There are probably at least a dozen House members and a handful of Senators who would be fine, and who knows how many state or local people who could make a credible run. I mean gently caress, what was that one gay mayor guy who ran for DNC chair? I’d vote for him, and there’s tons and tons of people like him who could run. We live in a country of 350 million people lmao, Bernie and Warren are not the only two credible potential candidates for leftism.
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Dec 4, 2017 18:08
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I'll be old enough in 2020 if you guys want.
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Dec 4, 2017 18:10
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RuanGacho posted:I'll be old enough in 2020 if you guys want. How are your public speaking skills and what is your position on  ?
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Dec 4, 2017 18:12
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Lightning Knight posted:How are your public speaking skills and what is your position on I hate speaking and I believe anyone making more than three times their lowest paid employee is gulitine fodder. We elected the apprentice host I don't think speaking well matters 
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Dec 4, 2017 18:15
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