The Trump Presidency
- Thread starter The Tariff King
- Start date
sturg33
I
Can't recall the exact number. You seem obsessed with it so I go with whatever you remember.
I remember specifically posting the exact numbers on the board, from 2011 to 2012, what my premiums rose to.
But hey... mock away. Just don't post sob stories of people's rates going up in the next 4 years, mkay?
jpx7
Very Flirtatious, but Doubts What Love Is.
(i) Companies should shoulder a higher tax-burden than they often do. (ii) I assume you're referring to progressive income tax. The reason "some people have to pay more taxes than others, at higher rates" is because the impact wealth doesn't scale arithmetically: for instance, 40% of $10 million means a lot less to the person accruing $10 million per annum than 20% of $50,000 does to the person accruing $50,000 per annum. (iii) Because there are different types of wealth and wealth transfer. (iv) The same reason it's silly for a parent to ask, "Why can't I just opt out my child out of immunization for MMR (or Whooping Cough, et cetera). Against poverty, just like against disease, we depend on herd immunity.
On the broader note, I've consistently said I am very much in favor of tax reform—but "tax reform", to me, doesn't mean "tax abolition". I don't view taxes, per se, as the perfidious arch-evil theft that they represent to you.
It's neither a particularly novel idea, nor—in my view—any more dangerous than exposing folks to the deprivations of the unrestrained market.
jpx7
Very Flirtatious, but Doubts What Love Is.
Please elaborate on how Social Security, per se, is a "Ponzi Scheme". It depends upon "force and confiscation" to the extent any governmental apparatus does, and it's far from perfect—the fact that the federal government has long borrowed from current Social Security coffers without a clear mechanism to pay that back into the system later being a principal one. But the latter issue isn't an example of the program itself being either a failure or a "Ponzi Scheme"; it's an example of ill-guided (and largely bipartisan) implementation of the program.
57Brave
Well-known member
sob stories ?
Sahil KapurVerified account @sahilkapur
Ryan says the CBO's 22 million uninsured a "bogus number" because "people will choose not to buy" insurance. It's "not a credible number."
Greg SargentVerified account @ThePlumLineGS 10m10 minutes ago
Low income people will be *priced out* of coverage. Courageous ideological warrior Paul Ryan should defend calling this a choice.
VirginiaBrave
Well-known member
The more you have the higher taxes you should pay simple as that. Trickle down economics work for some but not for all. Cause there is nothing left by the time it gets to the bottom.
Nobody has thoughts on this? Do people support this language in America?
Taxing the rich and giving to the poor doesn't help the middle class either. So why is that ok?
And people with the most money pay the most taxes so your post doesn't make any sense.
jpx7
Very Flirtatious, but Doubts What Love Is.
I'm not a big Sarsour fan, but you're one to talk, bro—considering your frequent, violence-espousing, vitriolic "Holy War to Save the West" rhetoric.
Moreover, you're always harping on "Teh Left's" disquieting quieting of open discourse, but I see you jump off that bandwagon real quick when it's a Muslim voicing uncomfortable sentiments.
She is promoting violence. To equate that to what I say is being intellectually dishonest and you know that. Its rather insulting to compare that. I have never once espoused violence against anyone. I just want us to stop letting refugees in this country.
And its time to wake up. We are in the midst of a Holy war to save the west. This is coming from someone who hasn't done one religious thing in the last 20 years and disavows any ties to organized religion. I just happen to like the western culture.
sturg33
I
So a random entity can choose to confiscate more of my stuff because they feel like it.
Ok then.
jpx7
Very Flirtatious, but Doubts What Love Is.
I think saying that we "are in the midst of a Holy war to save the west" is rhetoric that promotes violence—especially anti-Muslim violence.
Meanwhile: I ****ing love the West. I've spent the better part of my life studying western culture—from the Great Books core curriculum at university, where I was a Classics minor and, as an English major, spent a great of my time specializing in authors (the so-called High Modernists) whose work largely concerned celebrating the Occidental Inheritance. But even one of its most skilled and ardent acolytes, T. S. Eliot, tellingly ends his masterwork (The Waste Land) with a Sanskrit invocation (Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata. / Shantih shantih shantih). Indeed, one of the things that makes what we denote "Western Culture" so great is that it is agglutinative, that it incorporates (if too often by violent or economic force) alterity into its greater whole, that it allows itself to be beneficially added to and modified by the other.
To think of "The West", and western culture, as a pure and unchanged/unchanging entity is to not only embrace a fiction, but to deny that culture its real power and appeal, to rob it of its greatest strength. The West's better nature, such as it is, will prevail how it has always prevailed: by a lot of adsorption and a little absorption.
jpx7
Very Flirtatious, but Doubts What Love Is.
It's no "a random entity", though; it's our elected government. It's fine to say you don't support democracy—there are plenty of flaws, across its various forms, and I'll be the first to admit that. But if the greater balance of people decide, and make manifest through elected representatives, that they prefer more services to less taxation, then the end result is neither random nor, institutionally speaking, theft.
sturg33
I
It's theft if they can't pass a budget with no deficit
jpx7
Very Flirtatious, but Doubts What Love Is.
Nothing irritates me more than someone masquerading as if wealth accrued by the holders of capital isn't done so on the backs of, and at the expense of, the workers who disproportionately don't see the benefits of their labor. That's why it's fair to redistribute.
But thanks for invoking the classic "loser" canard to discredit calls for stronger social supports. I simply cannot understand wanting to live in a world where everybody is reduced to "winners" and "losers", and winners are simply the rich (or rich-aspirant) amongst us. That's why I think capitalism is not only immoral, but suffocatingly short-sighted—to view human success as the capacity to produce fiat or commodity wealth, and accrue more to oneself than others can accrue to their selves, is about the most depressing worldview I can imagine.
Isn't the desire to want to take care of yourself without the assistance of others a good thing? Is that what you would expect a character trait of a "winner" be?
sturg33
I
I think someone who demands entitlements on the backs of others is a loser.
jpx7
Very Flirtatious, but Doubts What Love Is.
Neither of you read the post to which you're responding, obviously.
(I do have to say I like that sturg went from saying he "respect