TrixR4kids posted:

I've seen boomers on facebook argue this or a slight variation asking Bernie to pay off their mortgage. Even though we know full well that they either inherited the property, or bought it when houses cost far less and the property appreciated in value ten fold even with the financial crisis.

quote:

This legislation would provide $47 billion per year to states to eliminate undergraduate tuition and fees at public colleges and universities.
Today, total tuition at public colleges and universities amounts to about $70 billion per year. Under the College for All Act, the federal government would cover 67% of this cost, while the states would be responsible for the remaining 33% of the cost.

quote:

The twelfth-largest tax expenditure is the exclusion of the first $250,000 of gains ($500,000 for joint filers) on sales of a principal residence ($36.3 billion). Homeowners also benefit from the home mortgage interest deduction ($33.9 billion in 2019).

BrandorKP posted:

No, I'm not. Autonomy of the individual, ie. freedom, is essential to voting.

Marxalot posted:

That's kind of shocking. Aren't those the pod save america weirds?

Majorian posted:

I don't often declare myself the winner of a debate, but...

Captain_Maclaine posted:

I think part of the problem is that people in general, and Brandor in particular, are projecting modern interpretations of terms backward onto their prior or original forms (and in Brandor's case once again trying to shoehorn universalist definitions into places they don't belong).

eviltastic posted:

The tax breaks we give to people who can afford to own houses could cover all undergraduate tuition at public colleges. And that's after the tax cuts and jobs act reduced the impact of the mortgage interest deduction.

mormonpartyboat posted:

it wasn't a debate. i said a true thing, and you said some dead dumb idiot has puppetmastered an incredibly broad ideological term for over 300 years after he died, which i laughed at

Shear Modulus posted:

the west wing and hazy half-remembered recollections of jfk also being youngish and saying that americans should do things for their country

Majorian posted:

What I did say is that the designers of liberalism never actually intended to protect the rights and liberties of more than a select few, and you think I'm wrong because....reasons, I guess?

Mellow Seas posted:

It's almost like they and their listeners don't consider Bernie and the rest of the party to be locked in mortal combat for the soul of America, and that's just something you guys do.

There are people who support Bernie and when you ask them why they'll say "he's the most liberal". I would guess a majority of his backers don't even believe in the abolition of free markets!

mormonpartyboat posted:

what i said was that it was not a unique mechanism within liberalism that does that, but rather it's just a property inherent to any political philosophy that presumes innate goodness in human beings

Heck Yes! Loam! posted:

Why hasn't anyone posted the ad?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPFNgzF32Ug

Majorian posted:

Right, and what I said was that you're giving the designers of liberalism too much credit by assuming that they gave a poo poo about anyone except for the narrow group of people that would benefit from their system.

mormonpartyboat posted:

which is not a thing i either assumed or posted

Heck Yes! Loam! posted:

Why hasn't anyone posted the ad?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPFNgzF32Ug

Punk da Bundo posted:

I like that the “joke” candidates , Gravel and Williamson, are 1000x better than anything Biden could ever be. What a country

Ytlaya posted:

There's no contradiction there;

Majorian posted:

It's what BrandorKP, I, and others were discussing

Majorian posted:

before you started taking really weird umbrage with me saying that the framers of liberalism didn't give a poo poo about the freedoms and liberties of anyone outside of a narrow group.

mormonpartyboat posted:

the obvious takeaway from the thing i posted is that the reason they felt free (and continue to feel free) to only care about the narrow group of people within their system was because the mechanism i described lets them feel like they're magnanimous. systems need inherent appeals to be maintained over generations, and that mechanism provides a nice source of warm fuzzies

Majorian posted:

And I'm saying you're projecting, because it's what you want to believe of the founders of liberalism. The more likely answer is that they just didn't care.

Pembroke Fuse posted:

Or... we own the means of production publicly and don't have credit.

Tibalt posted:

Well until the glorious revolution occurs I'd like to stick with the system that doesn't indenture farmers to the only local bank like 1920s sharecroppers.

BrandorKP posted:

Correct. I specifically said it wasn't a contradiction. It's a conflict between different interpretations.

BrandorKP posted:

That's the contradiction within liberalism. What it results in, is the negation of what it values and starts with. That is what breaks it and what the conservative elements in it push it towards (basically they try push it back to the feudalism it broke). If you look at his website Pete's thing is to try to reconcile that contradiction eg. "freedom means".

Ytlaya posted:

I think this whole thing can pretty easily be summed up as liberalism just being kind of dumb and clearly an ideology designed under the assumption that people already have all/most of their material needs provided for. It makes sense for someone's primary concerns to be things like monarchy and government oppression if you're some rich European/American, since those are the only things that really threaten you personally. But it turns out that some forms of freedom that are important for your average "well-off European landowner" (like the freedom to own property) actually end up reducing freedom for most other people.

Ruminahui posted:

Something like 12 American families can still be considered true “farmers” though, the rest of the farming is done by massive agricultural corporations.

wikipedia posted:

In 2012, the United States had 2,039,093 family farms (as defined by USDA), accounting for 97 percent of all farms and 89 percent of census farm area in the United States.
....

Ytlaya posted:

Pembroke Fuse posted:

I used to think this as well, however...


That whole section is interesting. Its mostly lots of small to medium-sized farms.

Pembroke Fuse posted:

I used to think this as well, however...


That whole section is interesting. Its mostly lots of small to medium-sized farms.

quote:

Mid-size and larger family farms account for 60 percent of US farm production and dominate US production of cotton, cash grain and hogs

quote:

The census makes the following useful distinctions among these family farms, based initially on their gross annual sales:

Very large family farms (101,265) gross over $500,000
Large family farms (86,551) gross between $250,000 and $500,000
Small family farms (1,925,799) gross under $250,000
Many people are surprised that farms are classified as small, large, and very large based on their annual sales rather than on their physical size. While a size-based measure seems intuitive, farm acreage can mean very different things in different places. An acre of non-irrigated land in a low rainfall area, such as southern Utah, is hard to compare to an acre of very fertile, high rainfall land in the Pelouse region of eastern Washington.

Most of the U.S. domestic production of food and fiber comes from relatively few large operations. Large and very large family farms produce over 63 percent of the value of all products sold, while non-family farms produce approximately 21 percent, and the nearly 2 million small farms and ranches (sales under $250,000) produce approximately 15 percent.

(https://nifa.usda.gov/family-farms)

Mellow Seas posted:

It's almost like they and their listeners don't consider Bernie and the rest of the party to be locked in mortal combat for the soul of America, and that's just something you guys do.

There are people who support Bernie and when you ask them why they'll say "he's the most liberal". I would guess a majority of his backers don't even believe in the abolition of free markets!

Trabisnikof posted:

You're completely wrong, most "family farms" are large or medium sized:

And this is the confusing thing about the statistics, if you look at size of farm, you'll see by number of farms they're mostly small farms, but if you look at acres managed they're by far mostly massively large farms.

There are 2 million farms in the US accounting for 900 million acres. There are only 85,127 farms larger than 2,000 acres, but they have 519 million acres. 4.2% of farms account for 57% of the acres.

quote:

Small family farms are defined as those with annual gross cash farm income (GCFI) of less than $350,000; in 2011, these accounted for 90 percent of all US farms. Because low net farm incomes tend to predominate on such farms, most farm families on small family farms are extremely dependent on off-farm income. Small family farms in which the principal operator was mostly employed off-farm accounted for 42 percent of all farms and 15 percent of total US farm area; median net farm income was $788. Retirement family farms were small farms accounting for 16 percent of all farms and 7 percent of total US farm area; median net farm income was $5,002.

The other small family farm categories are those in which farming occupies at least 50 percent of the principal operator’s working time. These are:

Low-sales small family farms (with GCFI less than $150,000); 26 percent of all US farms, 18 percent of total US farm area, median net farm income $3,579.

Moderate-sales small family farms (with GCFI of $150,000 to $349,999); 5.44 percent of all US farms, 13 percent of total US farm area, median net farm income $67,986.

Mid-size family farms (GCFI of $350,000 to $999,999); 6 percent of all US farms, 22 percent of total US farm area; median net farm income $154,538.

Large family farms (GCFI $1,000,000 to $4,999,999); 2 percent of all US farms, 14 percent of total US farm area; median net farm income $476,234.

Very large family farms (GCFI over $5,000,000); <1 percent of all US farms, 2 percent of total US farm area; median net farm income $1,910,454.[20]

Calibanibal posted:

Bernie's lack of interest in medical debt erasure is easily explainable -- this debt is primarily an issue for the elderly and women, who do not support Bernie. Contrast that with student debt erasure, which is mostly an issue for the youth. Bernie's positions dont come from a moral or ideological center --- they are simply cold, mercenary exchanges

Pembroke Fuse posted:

I was trying to actually figure out how much land was owned by each farm category. I guess the following stats are inaccurate then:


Counting non-primary small + retirement family farms + low-sales small + moderate-sales small + mid-sized farms (in terms of land area): 15% + 7% + 18% + 13% + 22% = 75% (with large and very large being 16% of total farm area). Now, does "farm area" not refer to percentage of total farm acreage?