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Walter posted:They still are in many parts of the world. Multi-generational households actually reinforce "traditional" values. I suppose we could argue about whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, but whatever it is, bitching about "boomerang" kids is a relatively new thing. But the problem is that the stereotypical nuclear family that looked like "Leave it to Beaver" is perceived as the way responsible white people in America should live, whereas those multigenerational homes are the way smelly brown immigrants live. Also, blaming increases in multigenerational homes upon liberals, irresponsible sexually active teens, and other comon conservative scapegoats allows conservatives to deflect criticism away from the real causes for these problems, e.g. the economy they ruined with deregulation, tax cuts, and runaway spending; insufficient resources to care for the elderly (which they are now in the process of cutting); the lovely social welfare system that at best warehouses drug users and the mentally ill rather than helping them and their families, etc. Shalebridge Cradle posted:Yep So, he tortured people and walked away scot-free, only to be elected to Congress by a bunch of right wing fascists that think torture is a good thing? Bruce Leroy fucked around with this message at 01:07 on Jul 30, 2011 |
# ? Jul 29, 2011 23:46 |
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# ? Mar 29, 2024 09:20 |
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Bruce Leroy posted:He's a war criminal? He tortured an innocent man on a random rumor from an intel buddy and is completely unrepentant about it. He used this bit of history to show he can "make tough decisions when it counts" in his campaign.
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# ? Jul 30, 2011 02:58 |
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zeroprime posted:Texas had it's own nation shaking massacre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Whitman I'm as bothered as you by the, "If only they had more guns," argument, and I'm pro-gun. However, this incident isn't one you want to use. Armed citizens were credited with pinning Whitman down with their own returned fire and a quickly deputized and armed citizen who knew the layout of the tower helped police get to and kill Whitman. quote:I wonder how many people he could have taken out if he had an assault rifle Almost certainly fewer. Assault rifles have shorter range than the guns he was using. Some of the kills were well out of an AK-47's effective range, and at the edge of the M-16's. For the type of killing that Whitman did, hunting rifles are the most effective, which is what he had. Whitman had a lifetime of gun handling and Marine training. Put that together with his methamphetamine and alcohol abuse, failure in school, and possibly the brain tumor he had, and the availability of hunting rifles seems far down the list of causes for what happened. There are many countries with gun control far stricter than ours that allow hunting rifles. None of the major gun control groups here have ever moved to ban them.
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# ? Jul 30, 2011 03:25 |
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Bruce Leroy posted:That's some pretty classic fearmongering, including the oft-mentioned conservative trope that the UN is trying to ban private gun ownership. Non-insane gun enthusiasts have been trying to swat this one down for years. I've lost count of how many times I've tried to debunk it in various gun forums. You need 67 votes in the Senate to ratify a treaty, and at no time during Obama's presidency could you get 67 votes declaring the sky blue. And even granting the virtual impossibility of it passing, the treaty explicitly says that nations retain control of their internal gun laws. Hell, Obama signed a bill (the big consumer credit protection act) with a pro-gun amendment ending Reagan's ban on firearms in national parks. Obama obviously wouldn't have signed it if he had a choice, but he didn't think it was a big enough deal to veto the thing.
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# ? Jul 30, 2011 03:36 |
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Mr. Funny Pants posted:Non-insane gun enthusiasts have been trying to swat this one down for years. I've lost count of how many times I've tried to debunk it in various gun forums. You need 67 votes in the Senate to ratify a treaty, and at no time during Obama's presidency could you get 67 votes declaring the sky blue. And even granting the virtual impossibility of it passing, the treaty explicitly says that nations retain control of their internal gun laws. Exactly. I think guns are awesome, which sometimes puts me at odds with other lefties with whom I otherwise find much in common. That said, there are plenty of gun owners/enthusiasts who are just so militant (for lack of a better word) about guns that any restrictions whatsoever on guns are anathema to them, which just makes all gun owners/enthusiasts look like a bunch of irrational and unreasonable nutjobs. For example, I've personally known people who think that background checks and gun registrations are unconstitutional and tyrannical, yet they are usually the same people complaining about violent crime (without actually acknowledging that violent crime is at 30 year lows). Even more ironic is when they fearmonger about the Mexican cartels, while also complaining about politicians trying to close the gun show loopholes that allow the cartels to get so many weapons.
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# ? Jul 30, 2011 06:35 |
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Bruce Leroy posted:
Yep. And oh yah, he doesn't pay his bills or taxes and rides with bikers gangs and thinks Muslims are violent jihadists we have to pacify. But he totally talks down to people and that makes him a truth teller to the right.
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# ? Jul 30, 2011 16:12 |
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Mooseontheloose posted:Yep. And oh yah, he doesn't pay his bills or taxes and rides with bikers gangs and thinks Muslims are violent jihadists we have to pacify. Wow, any sources for that stuff? I'd love to read more about him being an rear end in a top hat after the whole torture thing.
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# ? Jul 31, 2011 04:09 |
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Mr. Funny Pants posted:Non-insane gun enthusiasts have been trying to swat this one down for years. I've lost count of how many times I've tried to debunk it in various gun forums. You need 67 votes in the Senate to ratify a treaty, and at no time during Obama's presidency could you get 67 votes declaring the sky blue. And even granting the virtual impossibility of it passing, the treaty explicitly says that nations retain control of their internal gun laws. The fearmongering is the only way that some of the big gun groups can get money anymore. The NRA, GOA, and other sundry groups won the anti-gun argument at a national level. They've been reduced to swatting down laws at a municipal level and working to get reciprocity for concealed carry.
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# ? Aug 2, 2011 16:22 |
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A few days old but still good:quote:Surprise: 58 percent support Obama’s deficit reduction “plan” and 60 percent are dependent on government
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# ? Aug 2, 2011 21:09 |
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Well he got the average intellect thing about right.
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# ? Aug 3, 2011 01:19 |
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Dr. Tough posted:A few days old but still good: “Mencken’s Ghost” posted:The 60 percent live in households where the primary household income comes from welfare, entitlements, subsidies, a government job, or a private-sector job that depends on the regulatory state. What the gently caress does "a private-sector job that depends on the regulatory state" mean? Is that just someone who works a job that is regulated by the federal government, e.g. working at a pharmaceutical company regulated by the FDA, or is this just some ambiguous catchall that allows this douche to artificially inflate his alleged numbers to 60%? Doesn't nearly every American "depend on the regulatory state" just by virtue of living in the US, even if their jobs don't involve regular contact with federal regulators? “Mencken’s Ghost” posted:It also has a horrible feature: It proposes the elimination of the tax deferral on investment income earned on savings. From an economics perspective, this is nutty, for it will remove an incentive to save money and thus deprive the nation of needed investment capital. From a moral perspective, it is nuttier yet, for it will tax income twice: once when earned and once when saved. I'm not an expert on finance, investing, or taxes, but isn't this just lowering or removing the cap on capital gains taxes? Regardless, the money that is taxed is only the money made on top of the principle investment, not the principle itself, so it's not double taxation, it's simply taxing new income made from investments, right? “Mencken’s Ghost” posted:Speaking of morals, I’ve been studying the writings of the great moral philosophers all of my adult life, searching for the moral justification for the country’s social and tax policies. There is no moral justification. It simply isn’t moral for half of adults to pay no income taxes and to mooch off the other half, especially when at least two-thirds of the moochers are able-bodied and able-minded. Someone is "mooching" from Ayn Rand. “Mencken’s Ghost” posted:lose the moral argument to the collectivists and neo-Marxists in Congress Do ANY conservatives know what words like "collectivism," "Marxism," "communism," or "socialism" mean or is it simply just a grab-bag of general pejoratives they toss into their speech and writing for effect? “Mencken’s Ghost” posted:“Mencken’s Ghost” is the nom de plume of an Arizona writer Is it just me or does that explain a lot?
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# ? Aug 3, 2011 09:15 |
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I'm guessing his published "research" consisted of a poll on FreeRepublic and what he heard a caller on Rush Limbaugh say one time when he was driving. And the idea you could "Morally Justify" further sticking it to the most vulnerable in a country that already treats the less fortunate like poo poo is pure The mental gymnastics people like this must perform to be able to sleep at night must be staggering Cool Web Paige fucked around with this message at 09:30 on Aug 3, 2011 |
# ? Aug 3, 2011 09:22 |
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Orange Devil posted:Well he got the average intellect thing about right. He sounds old. "Kids these days and their backwards caps!
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# ? Aug 3, 2011 13:33 |
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Bruce Leroy posted:What the gently caress does "a private-sector job that depends on the regulatory state" mean? I assume he means tax preparers and associated legal proffesions based on the rest of the stuff written. I'm not sure how you reconcile this with the prevailing attitude that the government never creates jobs, but contradictions seem to have lost all meaning anyway.
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# ? Aug 3, 2011 15:02 |
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Bruce Leroy posted:Do ANY conservatives know what words like "collectivism," "Marxism," "communism," or "socialism" mean or is it simply just a grab-bag of general pejoratives they toss into their speech and writing for effect? I had a conservative argue with me that school lunch programs are communism and if we continued them then the government would "clench their fist on our children". So, no, they don't. When applied to Obama it is just a placeholder for a racial slur.
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# ? Aug 3, 2011 15:55 |
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This letter to the editor is a thing of beautyquote:I follow C-SPAN daily and have for sometime. I hear a lot about the TEA party. As I see it they want to slow down the spending in this country that has gotten us into the mess we are in. Everyone agrees we spend more than we make and that it will have to stop or sooner or later nobody is going to lend us anymore money.
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# ? Aug 3, 2011 18:05 |
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Saint Sputnik posted:Oh! says the nurse... and the blood bank wants their blood back with interest doctor. Not to worry nurse we'll just take it from someone else. I do hate tax and spend doctors with their interest charging blood banks I don't know what the hell this even means.
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# ? Aug 3, 2011 18:32 |
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Bruce Leroy posted:Wow, any sources for that stuff? I'd love to read more about him being an rear end in a top hat after the whole torture thing. Allen West talks down to someone from CAIR after being called out on his lack of knowledge of the Quran Allen West and Biker Gangs and other stuff Allen West thinks he has a higher security clearance than the President. The man is insane.
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# ? Aug 3, 2011 18:50 |
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I'm still giggling about the "Needed Investment Capital" phrase.
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# ? Aug 3, 2011 19:03 |
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Saint Sputnik posted:This letter to the editor is a thing of beauty I don't really know an actual tea baggers, but I'd like to know if anyone ever asked them where the gently caress they were from 2001 to 2009, when Republicans in the executive and legislative branches were running up trillions in debts. Honestly, all this stuff about the Tea Party movement being grassroots and having legitimate outrage against runaway spending and government overreach really rings hollow when none of these people said poo poo about Republicans doing all the same crap that they criticize Democrats for doing. It really just seems like they didn't give two shits about these issues until a black Democrat became president. Suddenly all these people went from complacent morons to firebrand deficit and small government hawks right around the time a black democrat got into office. Taerkar posted:I'm still giggling about the "Needed Investment Capital" phrase. Yeah, it's quite the knee-slapper. It's incredibly frustrating to see/hear people regurgitate talking points from rich conservatives and corporations without actually paying attention to facts like banks and private businesses sitting on trillions of dollars in cash while the rest of the nation suffers. Bruce Leroy fucked around with this message at 00:52 on Aug 4, 2011 |
# ? Aug 4, 2011 00:49 |
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Bruce Leroy posted:It really just seems like they didn't give two shits about these issues until a black Democrat became president. Suddenly all these people went from complacent morons to firebrand deficit and small government hawks right around the time a black democrat got into office. Ask one what they think about Detroit sometime.
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# ? Aug 4, 2011 15:54 |
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Bruce Leroy posted:I don't really know an actual tea baggers, but I'd like to know if anyone ever asked them where the gently caress they were from 2001 to 2009, when Republicans in the executive and legislative branches were running up trillions in debts. The line I've typically heard is something like "We didn't like that either. Don't you remember how unpopular Bush was?" and then some nonsense about Obama's election being the last straw which made them become more vocal. Which, of course, is basically total horseshit and a bad attempt at revisionist history, but I imagine that's the response you'd get.
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# ? Aug 4, 2011 18:39 |
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thefncrow posted:The line I've typically heard is something like "We didn't like that either. Don't you remember how unpopular Bush was?" and then some nonsense about Obama's election being the last straw which made them become more vocal. It's more or less true because Obama is a continuation of Bush's corporate-sponsored presidency. Bush was disliked, Obama is a continuation of disliked policy (also, he's black).
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# ? Aug 4, 2011 18:44 |
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babies havin rabies posted:It's more or less true because Obama is a continuation of Bush's corporate-sponsored presidency. Bush was disliked, Obama is a continuation of disliked policy (also, he's black). It's really not true, although Obama's presidency being largely the continuation of Bush is pretty much right on. It's strange because they've constructed this faux rationale that would be dead on the money except that what they've missed is a fundamental thing that makes the whole thing hilariously off the mark.
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# ? Aug 4, 2011 18:59 |
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thefncrow posted:It's strange because they've constructed this faux rationale that would be dead on the money except that what they've missed is a fundamental thing that makes the whole thing hilariously off the mark. The only problem with them protesting Obama is that they only do it to put a Republican in his place. It won't accomplish anything. The Tea Party (and, in fact, the two party system in the US) is simply a corporate-sponsored misdirection which creates a spillover outlet for rage. It is, simply put, an investment in being able to continue business. It is to class consciousness what a pacifier is to an infant.
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# ? Aug 4, 2011 19:13 |
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babies havin rabies posted:The only problem with them protesting Obama is that they only do it to put a Republican in his place. It won't accomplish anything. The Tea Party (and, in fact, the two party system in the US) is simply a corporate-sponsored misdirection which creates a spillover outlet for rage. It is, simply put, an investment in being able to continue business. It is to class consciousness what a pacifier is to an infant. That's because the tea party movement is simply astroturf. It was begun by the conservative elites to whip the public into a frenzy against Obama on the chance that McCain lost in 2008. This is why many of the website urls for the tea party were purchased and reserved in August and September of 2008, well before the election even took place. The Tea Party is directed at putting more Republicans into office, not at any real, substantial change that would actually alleviate any of our problems.
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# ? Aug 5, 2011 05:51 |
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Response to an article about school vouchers:quote:As Americans we should be free to use our money to educate our kids at whatever school we want. Families shouldn't be forced to fund a public system that they don't use.
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# ? Aug 5, 2011 22:25 |
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Bruce Leroy posted:That's because the tea party movement is simply astroturf. It was begun by the conservative elites to whip the public into a frenzy against Obama on the chance that McCain lost in 2008. This is why many of the website urls for the tea party were purchased and reserved in August and September of 2008, well before the election even took place. Technically, the Tea Party started as a grassroots libertarian movement that was co-opted by conservative elites into the movement that it is now. As far as I understand the history, anyway.
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# ? Aug 5, 2011 22:43 |
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Dr. Tough posted:Response to an article about school vouchers: I guess if you truly believe that everyone is a rational actor this is the only way to reconcile the obvious contradictions that poverty poses. Still doesn't make any god damned sense. I'm sure people go to sleep freezing in the winter because welfare gives them more money or something.
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# ? Aug 5, 2011 23:38 |
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Shalebridge Cradle posted:I guess if you truly believe that everyone is a rational actor this is the only way to reconcile the obvious contradictions that poverty poses. Still doesn't make any god damned sense. I'm sure people go to sleep freezing in the winter because welfare gives them more money or something. It always seems like the people who believe those things about the "professional poor" or "welfare queens" are people who have never been poor and don't personally know anyone who is poor. They just hear these apocryphal anecdotes about poor people with iphones, new SUVs, etc. and think that these stories are not only true but represent how the typical poor person lives. It really doesn't seem to matter how much demonstrable evidence you offer them about poor people freezing in the winter because they can't afford to heat their homes, children going hungry in the summer months because they aren't getting free school lunches, etc. They just parrot the same talking points they get from chain emails and right-wing talk radio about how "50% of the country pays no taxes and top 10% pays 90% of the taxes!!!!!" All this probably stems from severe just-world fallacies so that these people can continue their right-wing, pro-capitalism beliefs with no cognitive dissonance. Darth Windu posted:Technically, the Tea Party started as a grassroots libertarian movement that was co-opted by conservative elites into the movement that it is now. As far as I understand the history, anyway. The tea party began as astroturf from right-wing elites that created a contingency plan in case Obama got elected. They've just rewritten the history of the tea party movement to make it seem like it had grassroots, populist beginnings, kind of like how they've rewritten the history of the term "tea bagger."
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# ? Aug 6, 2011 00:24 |
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Bruce Leroy posted:They just parrot the same talking points they get from chain emails and right-wing talk radio about how "50% of the country pays no taxes and top 10% pays 90% of the taxes!!!!!" This has always been my favorite statistic, because ignoring the fact that the bottom 50% of people still pay sales and local taxes this proves basically the opposite of what they claim. Yes the richest 10% pay about 70% of the taxes because this country is a plutocracy and income inequality is this country is some of the worst in the western world.
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# ? Aug 6, 2011 02:09 |
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The whole "48% of the population pays no taxes" is a lie made up by notorious piece of poo poo Lou Dobbs. Please stop repeating it.
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# ? Aug 6, 2011 09:18 |
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Pope Guilty posted:The whole "48% of the population pays no taxes" is a lie made up by notorious piece of poo poo Lou Dobbs. Please stop repeating it. But even if it's a not lie (it is a lie), the assholes who parrot it don't understand it. The whole reason those people wouldn't be paying taxes, especially federal income taxes, is because they are quite poor and barely make enough money to survive, let alone pay income taxes. The conservatives that use this talking point have a really twisted notion of fairness. To them, fairness is not having people pay taxes proportional to how much money they make (i.e. progressive income taxation), fairness is everyone paying, even if they don't really have any money, and not taxing the very ewalthy much more than everyone else. It's basically this giant just-world fallacy, whereby those who have massive amounts of wealth must be good people because, in their world, bad people shouldn't receive such great rewards. Conversely, poor people aren't poor because of socioeconomic conditions, discrimination, he actions of the wealthy, and the insane difficulty of escaping poverty. They are poor because they are lazy, immoral, and otherwise bad people who are unwilling to do the work to make themselves incredibly rich. They basically fetishize capitalism like they do Christianity. "Who cares if millions upon millions of people are harmed by capitalism, those are the terms of following free market capitalism to the letter and that's the way it should be?" Similarly, "Who cares if those fags get beaten up and discriminated against, that's what happens when you go against the Bible?"
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# ? Aug 6, 2011 21:21 |
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Also feel free to point out that the group paying 70% of income taxes holds 83% of the financial wealth in America and their financial wealth continues to grow while those below them either stagnate or shrink.
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# ? Aug 7, 2011 06:16 |
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zeroprime posted:Also feel free to point out that the group paying 70% of income taxes holds 83% of the financial wealth in America and their financial wealth continues to grow while those below them either stagnate or shrink. That doesn't really matter to conservatives, as many of them actually think that's a good thing because those people deserve to be rich. It's this Randian obsession with capitalism and rich people, as if they are all these singular geniuses to whom we owe everything, so we need to revere them and remove any onerous government action that infringes on their greatness. This is why these wealth fetishizing and corporatist conservatives blame the government for corporate outsourcing instead of the businesses themselves. You generally hear a lot of "if only corporate taxes weren't so high and there weren't so many regulations, all those companies would bring the jobs back to the US." It doesn't really matter how detached from reality these beliefs and arguments are, e.g. it doesn't matter how low taxes are or how deregulated the US economy is, there's no way a business is going to move to the US when they can pay Chinese and Indian workers pennies on the dollar for what they would have to pay American workers. Things like facts, statistics, and empiricism don't mean poo poo to these kinds of conservatives, because they will just find some way of weaseling out of responsibility and cognitive dissonance when their bullshit is proven wrong. So, when taxes get reduced to their lowest levels in 50 years and there still isn't measurable economic gain despite the massive increase to the national debt, conservatives claim that taxes just aren't low enough.
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# ? Aug 8, 2011 03:36 |
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Bruce Leroy posted:That doesn't really matter to conservatives, as many of them actually think that's a good thing because those people deserve to be rich. It's this Randian obsession with capitalism and rich people, as if they are all these singular geniuses to whom we owe everything, so we need to revere them and remove any onerous government action that infringes on their greatness. The amusing part is increased Government regulation and Tariffs on Trade would actually bring more jobs back to America. But of course that would be UnAmerican And the interests of the CEOs and shareholders must be protected at all costs!
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# ? Aug 8, 2011 04:17 |
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vxskud posted:The amusing part is increased Government regulation and Tariffs on Trade would actually bring more jobs back to America. It's pretty amusing that all these conservatives justify their economic positions by thinking that they'll be millionaires some day, too, so we shouldn't put any tax increases or regulations into place now because it will affect them when they get rich in the future. It's basically a child's conception of how capitalism works. "If I work as hard as I possibly can, I'll be rich some day, so I don't want to help put any policies into place that would take away any of my future, hypothetical riches." The other great part is that many of these people are Christians, so they basically have to ignore huge swaths of the New Testament about how being rich is sinful and un-Christian, like Matthew 19:21. Or, if you're Andy Schlafly, you can just rewrite the Bible so those passages don't exist.
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# ? Aug 8, 2011 06:06 |
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vxskud posted:The amusing part is increased Government regulation and Tariffs on Trade would actually bring more jobs back to America. Corporate tax also incentivises employment where it is levied. Cost of employee = wages + payroll - corporate tax, roughly
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# ? Aug 8, 2011 17:46 |
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Cahal posted:Corporate tax also incentivises employment where it is levied. It incentivizes pretty much any reinvestment into one's own business, whether that investment be new employees, new technology, expanded services and/or production, etc. Taxes are incredibly low and businesses are sitting upon trillions of dollars in cash while the rest of America suffers, but somehow more tax cuts will make things better and spur economic growth.
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# ? Aug 9, 2011 03:31 |
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# ? Mar 29, 2024 09:20 |
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For some new content, here's a crazy and loving stupid editorial from Charles Krauthammer.Charles Krauthammer posted:Conventional wisdom holds that the congressional super-committee established by the debt-ceiling deal to propose further deficit reduction will go nowhere. I'm not so sure. There is a grand compromise to be had. It does, however, require precise sequencing. To succeed it must proceed in three stages: So, massively cut taxes now and later on we'll decide if we can compromise to tax increases to rates significantly lower than current levels. Oh, and don't forget wasting any revenue gains from closing tax loopholes by requiring that all the money gained from the ending of those loopholes be frittered away on more tax cuts. Honestly, is there any conservative economic plan that isn't basically just "cut taxes and social programs"? How many times do tax cuts have to fail at providing economic growth until they understand that tax cuts don't work and are just handouts to the wealthy and corporations?
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# ? Aug 9, 2011 03:42 |