US Political Discussion: Biden/Harris Edition (Rules in OP)

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Spaced Out Ace

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It sucks right now because the ROI isn't all that great. For anyone.

If we actually got healthcare, better infrastructure, and a decent safety net/social security system I'd be happy to pay more.

Right now, a significant amount of my paycheck goes to most those things already.

Almost $200 of every one of my (weekly) paychecks goes to medical coverage that seems to get shittier every couple of years, and a 401k/IRA because who knows if I'll even be able to collect social security when I retire.

My tax bill each week is about $700, so they'd have to raise taxes by nearly 30% before I'd be at a net loss, and even then if there's healthcare included I'd be well ahead in general.
SS was never intended to do more than suck your paycheck and go bankrupt. The ACA (more like AHA) was terrible. So yeah, not really interested in giving either of those attempts from the government more money.
 

MaxOfMetal

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SS was never intended to do more than suck your paycheck and go bankrupt. The ACA (more like AHA) was terrible. So yeah, not really interested in giving either of those attempts from the government more money.

I completely agree.

We need single payer healthcare and guaranteed minimum income. None of this bush league bullshit.
 

Spaced Out Ace

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Lol wat. Just... seriously, wat? :rofl:

Let's break this down, shall we?

>Government uses a forced and/or fake financial crisis due to 20 years of failure from the "Federal" Reserve
>Government's answer? Pass "The New Deal" involving (but not limited to) taxes to fund SS
>Surely they handle money better than we do, despite the fact we allow an entity to print money for us at a cost to us, and eventually remove the item backing up the strength of said currency
>And yet, despite this, we do not think they mismanage money...
>It's only logical outcome is to eventually go bust (you know, because they're great at managing money)
>Quite obviously, the only conclusion is that despite the government going trillions in debt (because we are stupid enough to print money at a cost and not back it with fucking anything), devaluing the dollar beyond repair, and mismanaging money is to...

GIVE THEM MORE MONEY AND MORE PROGRAMS WITH WHICH TO MISMANAGE MONEY...!?

What's that definition of insanity again? Doing the same shit and expecting different outcomes?

Talk about bush league-in' it. That's definitely minor league type stuff, Max. If it were a small business, they'd be filing for bankruptcy and trying to protect their own asses while someone else holds the bag.

As for "guaranteed minimum incomes," (ie, $15/hr for serving people awful fast food) hmmm... Let's see:

Higher taxes (more out of pocket)
Higher prices (buy less for more money)
Less hours (if you aren't fired outright)
And drum roll, please...
I'd be almost willing to bet your housing costs go up, as well.
What would that accomplish? I mean besides ballooning the homeless population that is already out of control.

You need to -- and this is very important -- start thinking of these jack off politicians as drug addicts, but instead of snorting blow, they are blowing your cash on stupid stuff and/or flat out pocketing it. No higher taxes, and no bs government programs either, because they've made it quite clear over the past several decades they cannot handle or manage money. Do you think if I gave a drug addict an 8ball of meth, that baggy would last more than 4 hours?
 

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MaxOfMetal

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Lol wat. Just... seriously, wat? :rofl:

Let's break this down, shall we?

>Government uses a forced and/or fake financial crisis due to 20 years of failure from the "Federal" Reserve
>Government's answer? Pass "The New Deal" involving (but not limited to) taxes to fund SS
>Surely they handle money better than we do, despite the fact we allow an entity to print money for us at a cost to us, and eventually remove the item backing up the strength of said currency
>And yet, despite this, we do not think they mismanage money...
>It's only logical outcome is to eventually go bust (you know, because they're great at managing money)
>Quite obviously, the only conclusion is that despite the government going trillions in debt (because we are stupid enough to print money at a cost and not back it with fucking anything), devaluing the dollar beyond repair, and mismanaging money is to...

GIVE THEM MORE MONEY AND MORE PROGRAMS WITH WHICH TO MISMANAGE MONEY...!?

What's that definition of insanity again? Doing the same shit and expecting different outcomes?

Talk about bush league-in' it. That's definitely minor league type stuff, Max. If it were a small business, they'd be filing for bankruptcy and trying to protect their own asses while someone else holds the bag.

As for "guaranteed minimum incomes," (ie, $15/hr for serving people awful fast food) hmmm... Let's see:

Higher taxes (more out of pocket)
Higher prices (buy less for more money)
Less hours (if you aren't fired outright)
And drum roll, please...
I'd be almost willing to bet your housing costs go up, as well.
What would that accomplish? I mean besides ballooning the homeless population that is already out of control.

You need to -- and this is very important -- start thinking of these jack off politicians as drug addicts, but instead of snorting blow, they are blowing your cash on stupid stuff and/or flat out pocketing it. No higher taxes, and no bs government programs either, because they've made it quite clear over the past several decades they cannot handle or manage money. Do you think if I gave a drug addict an 8ball of meth, that baggy would last more than 4 hours?

We're the only first world nation without a national healthcare system to take care of its citizens.

It's not some pie in the sky utopian dream. It's the reality of numerous countries and has been for decades.

We can do better. The only reason we haven't is because career politicians get rich convincing the uneducated and uniformed that it just won't work because "reasons" that aren't concurrent with reality.

Also, GMI or UBI aren't a higher minimum wage. Those are different, at odds concepts. Perhaps look into that before responding.
 

Spaced Out Ace

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"How can we fuck up our financial system even worse than we already have?"
"Uh, raising minimum wage for low skilled jobs and giving people who can't manage money more of it to mismanage for a new program when the previous program falls out of favor and is a giant failure?"
 

MaxOfMetal

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"How can we fuck up our financial system even worse than we already have?"
"Uh, raising minimum wage for low skilled jobs and giving people who can't manage money more of it to mismanage for a new program when the previous program falls out of favor and is a giant failure?"

The heck are you talking about? :lol:

Right now we pay the most for the least, healthcare wise. We couldn't screw up the system more than if we actually tried to. Again, it's not like we have to invent some new system or concept from square one. There are literally dozens of systems in place that we can borrow from and make work over here.

Again, I'm not talking about minimum wage.

In a way we already have a GMI system, it's just poorly utilized and overly fragmented. What do you think welfare benefits to the employed are?
 

Xaios

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Right now we pay the most for the least, healthcare wise. We couldn't screw up the system more than if we actually tried to. Again, it's not like we have to invent some new system or concept from square one. There are literally dozens of systems in place that we can borrow from and make work over here.
Saying this as a non-American, I hope you're right, but honestly watching how things have played out for the US the past few years, it seems like the American government could institute a healthcare system that has proven to work as perfectly as humanly possible somewhere else despite more significant socioeconomic challenges, but still find a way to cock it up to the point of people rotting in the streets with leprosy.

Of course, a far more likely outcome is that a decent healthcare policy would be proposed, then it would be gutted by people with a vested interest in seeing it fail, people who would then go on to blame said failure on the system's originator despite the system in place bearing little-to-no resemblance to what was originally proposed.

...

Man, I just had the weirdest deja vu...
 

Flappydoodle

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You know, that's an important distinction I think you just drew, and I'll confess it wasn't one I was really making previously.

There is definitely a distinction, if subtle, between racism, the hatred of a race or ethnic group or groups, and xenophobia, the hatred of pretty much anyone who isn't the same as you. In the former you're making relative judgements of the merits of different races; in the latter, it's less about retlative judgement so much as you just want to be with your own culture.

I don't think xenophobia is any better than racism, exactly... But I think it's not at all controversial to argue that Trump's supporters are xenophobic. It's just evidently somewhat controversial to argue that race is what drives that xenophobia. I think in at least a very significant number of cases racism is the driving force behind that xenophobia, and Trump's talk about why we have to take immigrants from shithole countries like the Dominican Republic and why can't we take more Norwegian immigrants doesn't do him any favors... but it's probably a lower bar to argue xenophobia than racism.

I think people favouring their own culture is a normal human behaviour which isn't necessarily bad. I totally understand why immigrants group together. When I've lived abroad, it's so nice finding other Europeans or Americans because we can talk in English, enjoy a pint together, talk about things that the native population might not enjoy. Go to any major university and you see all the Chinese students grouped together, all the African students grouped together - because they share common interests, values and culture.

For immigration, a merit-based system seems like total common sense. On average, a Norwegian probably *is* going to be better educated, more adjusted to Western society etc than somebody from a shithole country.

Cut military
Tax Rich
Legalize pot

There ya go.

Not even close to solving the issues. Especially legalising pot. That's going to bring in fractions of 1%. The rich are already taxed quite highly in most ways, though I'm not an expert in the US tax system.

And "cut military" does have knock on effects. They don't just take the money and burn it up and get nothing in return. Most of it funds salaries, scientific research and development etc. Yes, weapons companies make profits, but they are employing a LOT of highly educated people and paying them well (engineers, physicists, computer programmers etc). Tons of technology with commercial value also comes from military investment. Plus, it's hard to place a value on the security of the country and the geopolitical clout that it gives.

In fact, I'd say that the US military is one of the most socialist things about America - it is run by the government, has set pay grades, generous pensions, subsidises industries etc.

I don't think "tax the rich" is a viable strategy. I think we need to broaden the tax base. Yeah, we need to have higher top marginal rates, but we don't need just one at incomes over $10mm or whatever, taxes need to come up across the board for ALL americans. What we DO need to do is drop this mindset that we want these things provided by our government, and we want other people to pay for it. Rather, we need to understand government differently, as a service provider, that we make payments to ("taxes"), and get services provided in return. There's a lot more accountability, for us and for the government, if we more directly link the concepts of taxation and government services.

The numbers don't add up for me. Everything in America seems to cost shitloads.
Spend more on education than any other country, but mediocre results
Spend more on healthcare than any other country (by miles), but horrible results

On that basis, I can't see that increasing taxes and putting in MORE money is going to fix anything. The capacity for ineffective spending is basically unlimited. So whatever extra funding goes in, it's just going to get wasted.

To be honest, if you look at most western countries, you have a small number of wealthy people and large companies carrying the whole economy. In the UK, you are a net drain on the system unless you earn around £38,000 per year. But the median income in the UK is only around £27,000 per year. So even average people (teacher, policeman, nurse etc) are net drains on the system financially.

In the UK, the top 1% of taxpayers pay 30% of all tax. Yes, they earn a lot more and that's fair, but it's also risky to have the entire system dependent on a few people. Your point about broadening the tax base is fair, but it's hard to make an argument that average earners should be paying more - especially when the vast majority are living month-to-month and have no savings.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance...he-state-in-tax-and-how-much-we-get-back.html

To me, the obvious viewpoint is that spending as a whole is absolutely out of control - both government and personal. It feels like an unsustainable, ticking time bomb. Baby boomers only have median savings of $24k... that's like 6 months of living costs, and they are all close to retirement now.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/28/how-much-money-americans-have-saved-at-every-age.html
 

Yul Brynner

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This is why I like newcomers such as AOC. She doesn't come from money so she isn't out of touch with how normal Americans live. Politicians had better start giving a damn about all of us peasants that prop them up.
 

bostjan

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I used to have great health insurance when I joined the workforce. Then I broke my arm. My employer fired me for having a broken arm (no, really), and then I found out that they cancelled my insurance policy when they fired me, worried that their premiums would go up, so I had to pay for my own surgery. I thought I could ask the hospital what it would cost, and get an honest answer. $1200-$1500, they said. Pfft I can swing that... then, $78,000 (yeah, that's not a typo), I was financially ruined, even though I went full time at my (much better paying) second job. But the insurance there was garbage, so I got a new second job and worked full time at two jobs to slowly crawl out of my medical debt and have insurance. About five years ago, my good insurance there was downgraded to okay insurance, and I paid the same for it somehow.

This year, they downgraded my insurance again. I now have a $5000 deductible and even then some medications and treatments aren't covered. And guess what the premium is. It's exactly the same!

If I were to relive my arm breaking, I'd be $5k out of pocket, plus pain meds that aren't covered (anesthesia seems to be a gray area, good luck explaining that to the guy who knocks you out and you never see again). So, maybe it doesn't sound so bad, compared to the price of a three bedroom house in New England, but this sort of thing would have made zero sense in the 1990's or even 2000's.

Meanwhile, you break an arm in Mexico, as a foreigner with no healthcare...under $1000. What?
 

MaxOfMetal

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I used to have great health insurance when I joined the workforce. Then I broke my arm. My employer fired me for having a broken arm (no, really), and then I found out that they cancelled my insurance policy when they fired me, worried that their premiums would go up, so I had to pay for my own surgery. I thought I could ask the hospital what it would cost, and get an honest answer. $1200-$1500, they said. Pfft I can swing that... then, $78,000 (yeah, that's not a typo), I was financially ruined, even though I went full time at my (much better paying) second job. But the insurance there was garbage, so I got a new second job and worked full time at two jobs to slowly crawl out of my medical debt and have insurance. About five years ago, my good insurance there was downgraded to okay insurance, and I paid the same for it somehow.

This year, they downgraded my insurance again. I now have a $5000 deductible and even then some medications and treatments aren't covered. And guess what the premium is. It's exactly the same!

If I were to relive my arm breaking, I'd be $5k out of pocket, plus pain meds that aren't covered (anesthesia seems to be a gray area, good luck explaining that to the guy who knocks you out and you never see again). So, maybe it doesn't sound so bad, compared to the price of a three bedroom house in New England, but this sort of thing would have made zero sense in the 1990's or even 2000's.

Meanwhile, you break an arm in Mexico, as a foreigner with no healthcare...under $1000. What?

This is why we need change.

I know the popular retort to public healthcare is "well, the government is just going to do a shitty job", but can anyone honestly say it can get much worse than this?
 

jaxadam

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I used to have great health insurance when I joined the workforce. Then I broke my arm. My employer fired me for having a broken arm (no, really), and then I found out that they cancelled my insurance policy when they fired me, worried that their premiums would go up, so I had to pay for my own surgery. I thought I could ask the hospital what it would cost, and get an honest answer. $1200-$1500, they said. Pfft I can swing that... then, $78,000 (yeah, that's not a typo), I was financially ruined, even though I went full time at my (much better paying) second job. But the insurance there was garbage, so I got a new second job and worked full time at two jobs to slowly crawl out of my medical debt and have insurance. About five years ago, my good insurance there was downgraded to okay insurance, and I paid the same for it somehow.

This year, they downgraded my insurance again. I now have a $5000 deductible and even then some medications and treatments aren't covered. And guess what the premium is. It's exactly the same!

If I were to relive my arm breaking, I'd be $5k out of pocket, plus pain meds that aren't covered (anesthesia seems to be a gray area, good luck explaining that to the guy who knocks you out and you never see again). So, maybe it doesn't sound so bad, compared to the price of a three bedroom house in New England, but this sort of thing would have made zero sense in the 1990's or even 2000's.

Meanwhile, you break an arm in Mexico, as a foreigner with no healthcare...under $1000. What?

When did you break your arm?
 

Xaios

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Raise taxes ONLY if it actually benefits us. I'm paying 250 in taxes a week, not counting my shitty healthcare. Until then, don't raise them any fucking more, especially since I'm only bringing home $530 a week with a disabled wife who cannot work.
Well, here's why it should benefit you: because I can honestly say that, up here in the icy socialist gulag of Canada, I pay less in taxes than you do. Obviously that's not the only factor, goods tend to be more expensive here and our currency is not the strongest, but whatever those differences might be, I can tell you from personal experience that a month-long hospital stay wouldn't be much more than an inconvenience regarding my finances.
 

Drew

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Yeah, because taxes aren't fucking the little guy hard enough yet, are they?
No. What's fucking the little guy are things like health care expenses and college tuition loans that most other first world nations cover, but we don't because we don't want to pay taxes.

We need progressive taxation, absolutely, and higher earners should pay higher rates because they have more to gain from citizenship. But, we can't JUST expect the rich to pay taxes, either, in a society where everyone, ultra rich to middle class to poor, benefits from the services they provide. If one large swath of society wants a small minority to pay for all of their benefits, that's a recipe for that minority to grow ever larger, and replacing one form of class warfare with another is a bad idea.

In the UK, the top 1% of taxpayers pay 30% of all tax. Yes, they earn a lot more and that's fair, but it's also risky to have the entire system dependent on a few people.
I'm leery of stats like this, by the way. In America that's similar, Google is telling me the top 1% pay 39% of all income taxes, and the right is fond of tossing that number around as proof taxes are too high. But, that's not the full picture - they also made more than 22% of income, nationally, so the tax code isn't nearly as top-heavy as it looks, at a glance, and instead the heavy skew in the data is due to a heavy earnings skew rather than radically progressive taxation. In reality, the top 1% are only paying about twice the taxes of the rest of the country, normalized by income, which is quite a bit less than a look at tax rates alone would suggest, with a lowest bracket of 10% and a highest of 37%.

Idunno. Really, the issue here is there's this attitude that taxes are taking something from you, but then in return things like passable roads, good public schools, national defense, first responders, social security income, all the things weve gotten from public funding of scientific research, etc etc etc are things that you're entitled to receive from the governent, and that these two views are disconnected. The reality is that yes, you are entitled to them, but only because you've "bought" them with your tax dollars. And in the long run, as a bleeding heart liberal, it's not sustainable to just expect people at some arbitrary threshold richer than you to pay for all the things you expect from your government, so you don't have to. We're all in this together, and while I'm a proponent of progressive taxation for how it helps address income inequality, I'm also a proponent of a broad tax base since we all benefit from government services.
 
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PunkBillCarson

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Well, here's why it should benefit you: because I can honestly say that, up here in the icy socialist gulag of Canada, I pay less in taxes than you do. Obviously that's not the only factor, goods tend to be more expensive here and our currency is not the strongest, but whatever those differences might be, I can tell you from personal experience that a month-long hospital stay wouldn't be much more than an inconvenience regarding my finances.

Right and if our healthcare was that good, I'd be fine with paying that little extra as long as better education also came with it. If I'm going to have 300 dollars withheld every single week, it had best be going towards something good other than a greedy CEO's pocket. Hell, I wouldn't even mind paying that much more just so everyone else could get a better education for it, even if that means I'm not going to use that.
 

tedtan

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This is why we need change.

I know the popular retort to public healthcare is "well, the government is just going to do a shitty job", but can anyone honestly say it can get much worse than this?

Actually, Medicare isn't bad at all; it's one of the few US government programs that that function pretty much as intended. And while it doesn't cover everything, adding supplemental coverage is cheap because Medicare covers the expensive things. It is currently only available to those 65 years old and older and those disabled for twenty four months or more, limiting it's efficiency, but expanding to cover everyone would increase it's economies of scale and it's negotiating power with health care providers, hospitals, drug companies, etc. and greatly reduce the costs of treatment for a given procedure over what they currently are.
 

spudmunkey

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...and even with a medicare expansion, there's still room for for-profit insurance companies and private hospitals to offer coverage with higher levels of service, for an additional cost.
 

Randy

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Right and if our healthcare was that good, I'd be fine with paying that little extra as long as better education also came with it. If I'm going to have 300 dollars withheld every single week, it had best be going towards something good other than a greedy CEO's pocket. Hell, I wouldn't even mind paying that much more just so everyone else could get a better education for it, even if that means I'm not going to use that.

Alright, now we're starting to speak the same language.

I feel like a fucking space alien debating politics half the time because of the cariactures of a dichotomy we have are either arguing "we need to pay NO taxes! Defund to zero! Privatize!", where we either lose services all together or it becomes corporate welfare where the money pays exorbidant salaries and minimal actual services, or the other party, and it's "We need a ton more taxes collected because the only problem with our current, flaccid programs are that they don't have enough money!", where all the money is pissed away on the classic "waste, fraud and abuse" chain.

And it's like... I think we're pretty good on the taxes we pay now across the board but we massively overspend on shit that doesn't help the bulk of people who 1.) need it 2.) are paying high volumes of our income to pay for it.
 

Mathemagician

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I would straight up pay 10% more in taxes immediately if it meant everyone could go to the doctor regardless of how much they make.

My assistant loses her job and her kid gets sick and she can just walk in and not worry about how she’s going to pay for the medicine? I’m down.

I don’t have/want kids either but I think the child tax credit should be higher. Them shits expensive.

Support the people whose work supports you.

I’m a capitalist but when single payer healthcare would be cheaper faster and more efficient I cannot see the downside aside from middle-man industries losing their cut.
 
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