The New American Politics thread

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by MattyC

No, what you're saying is that it would be very difficult, even a nightmare, to do within their system. Translating in my mind to "too hard, so no." Which is never an excuse I find acceptable personally. "pipedream" "can't just overhaul it" yes it is a pipedream, but yes they CAN just overhaul it (this is a democracy right?) and yes it IS possible. They can allocate funding to different things than they currently do.

We really are sort of talking past each other - my point wasn't that it would be impossible in theory (though I think it would likely be practically impossible for a President Sanders to accomplish).

It would also be theoretically possible to alter their political structure to turn the whole country's system into a clone of England's. But it's not the least bit realistic. If you were to try to do this, given the current state of affairs, it would cause huge budgetary problems. This is why I consider it a crackpot pipe dream and not a realistic proposal. Just about anything is possible. Again, I compared it to the 10% flat tax proposed by Ben Carson. That, too "IS possible", which doesn't make it less absurd a proposal by someone running for president. They really are equivalent - "free college for all" is pretty much the left wing daydream equivalent of "spectacularly low equal tax rate for all" on the tea party side of things.

Comment is snarky, but it's true. The public school system in the US is an embarrassment when compared to it's world status.

*Its

... Now THAT was snarky.

[Coach]

I agree with you.

However I would say that, while public post- secondary education is highly improbable, it and the 10% flat-tax are ridiculous for very different reasons.

One is ridiculous due to the significant roadblocks to get there. One is ridiculous because it's just an awful, awful idea.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by MattyC

One is ridiculous due to the significant roadblocks to get there. One is ridiculous because it's just an awful, awful idea.

Sure, from the standpoint of your political ideology it is. But I'm pretty sure this is just bias. I suspect that intelligent people versed in tax policy and educational policy and a dozen other relevant fields of thought could disagree about the relative merits of having universal access to post-secondary, and altering the structure of government spending such that it could run on a skeleton budget.

Both likely have benefits and drawbacks. You might be right that the flat tax proposal has fewer benefits and more drawbacks; I really don't know. It's fairly academic to discuss that, though, because as I said... pipe dreams of the left and right respectively.

[Itse]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

Free public post-secondary for all is basically just as ridiculous as a 10% flat income tax in terms of budgetary discipline.

And yet many countries manage the first thing just fine without going bankrupt, yet no industrialized country has even tried the second. So not even in the ballpark of being the same.

From what I've read, Sanders mostly wants to run the US like a Nordic country, while the GOP wants to run it like an African country.

[DuffMan]

The problem in the states is people absolutely loathe seeing other people getting something they perceive as free, because they are paying for it. see 38 ACA repeals. education is no different.

As far as the possibility of Trump being elected goes, here's something I came across that made it seem more likely.

"Jimmy Morales, a former TV comedian who has never held office, swept to power in Guatemala's presidential election on Sunday after milking public anger over a corruption scandal that deepened distrust of the country's political establishment.

The 46-year-old Morales overwhelmingly beat center-left rival and former first lady Sandra Torres in a run-off vote despite his lack of government experience and some policy ideas that strike many as eccentric."

[Coach]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

Sure, from the standpoint of your political ideology it is. But I'm pretty sure this is just bias. I suspect that intelligent people versed in tax policy and educational policy and a dozen other relevant fields of thought could disagree about the relative merits of having universal access to post-secondary, and altering the structure of government spending such that it could run on a skeleton budget.

Both likely have benefits and drawbacks. You might be right that the flat tax proposal has fewer benefits and more drawbacks; I really don't know. It's fairly academic to discuss that, though, because as I said... pipe dreams of the left and right respectively.

You're first point assumes that providing education to everyone is more expensive than whatever they replace it with in the budget, and that the government would subsequently have to run on a "skeleton budget" which is just not true. Again, it depends on what the nation's people value. Granted, US citizens don't value socialized anything, but it could be argued quite easily that it is to their detriment. They overspend on military to the point that police depts are getting freaking tanks, because they have nowhere else to put them. Talk about a poor allocation of resources.

The flat tax is just bad economics. 10% off of a 50K salary is a whole hell of a lot more significant than 10% off 100K much less 1 mil+. All it does is widen the wealth gap further and further under the guise of "trickle-down economics" which has show to just straight up not work. Because the trickle-down effect assumes that all profits are redistributed back into the business in the form of capital investment, employee wages, and R&D. Business are great at the former and latter, and not so good at the in-between. It assumes no greed, which is weird because econ models usually assume people will act in their own self interest. But in economics, corporations aren't considered "people" like they are legally. They are assumed to distribute profit evenly/effectively across the business (again, including employee wages). Sometimes that DOES happen, but which employees get the profit distribution is more disturbingly skewed than it is in the overall economy. Trickle-down is complete and utter BS.

My personal perspective is that an educated workforce is the greatest boom you can give your economy. And while it doesn't make me an authority on anything at all, I do have an economics degree, so I can and do discuss this stuff academically. I have my own ideologies for sure, but if there's one thing that ticks me off more than anything, it's that when you are a socialist, people assume you don't understand economics, which is obviously not true at all. A different perspective =/= lack of understanding. Many countries have instituted these types of policies and get along just fine. People look at the USSR and act like it was the only version of a socialized/centralized system and equate any talk about socialization to the failed Soviet Union, and cite it like it's some proof that a socialized system can't work. Does the global debt bubble need to burst into all out war and country invasions before people realize that *GASP* capitalism isn't exactly working either.

Republican politicians have done a great job of convincing the lowest common denominator of their faction that anything that sounds like communism is evil, and that the government is coming for their money. Leaving out the fact that these poor, uneducated right wingers would benefit greatly from socialized medicine, education, child care programs, etc. like it somehow impacts their ability to make it "to the top".

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by MattyC

You're first point assumes that providing education to everyone is more expensive than whatever they replace it with in the budget, and that the government would subsequently have to run on a "skeleton budget" which is just not true.

You've misunderstood me completely - I'm suggesting that the natural conservative progression on the 10% flat tax idea is that expenditures would have to drop, thereby shrinking the role of government in society. A tea partier's wet dream, more or less. That didn't connect to the free college idea.

The flat tax is just bad economics. 10% off of a 50K salary is a whole hell of a lot more significant than 10% off 100K much less 1 mil+. All it does is widen the wealth gap further and further under the guise of "trickle-down economics" which has show to just straight up not work.

This isn't bad economics, though it's at least arguably bad tax policy. It doesn't necessarily connect to trickle-down economics. I don't necessarily disagree with you that it's bad policy or would have bad effects, though.

My personal perspective is that an educated workforce is the greatest boom you can give your economy.

I'm just not at all sure this would be the result, nor am I sure that you've considered negative results or that such results are easily predictable. But like I say, this strikes me as an academic debate on the whole.

Republican politicians have done a great job of convincing the lowest common denominator of their faction that anything that sounds like communism is evil, and that the government is coming for their money. Leaving out the fact that these poor, uneducated right wingers would benefit greatly from socialized medicine, education, child care programs, etc. like it somehow impacts their ability to make it "to the top".

Absolutely agree, but to some extent at least and hopefully to a lesser degree, some element of the political left has convinced people that for example bankers are evil, corporations are evil, that anything to do with oil is evil, that intellectually sincere criticisms of you-name-it are covertly racist, sexist or otherwise bigoted, and so on and so forth. Many of these are irrational criticisms of industries or people that on balance contribute overwhelmingly positively to the USA and allow them to maintain the quality of life they enjoy as residents of a first world nation. I hear a bit of that paranoia in Sanders's railing against wall street.

[Senator Clay Davis]

So dumbass extraordinaire Ben Carson decided he wanted to show a map of where refugees are being refused entry in the US. Here's the map



And if you can't see the obvious issue with it, here's the problem with the map



I think he's truly proud to be this stupid and ignorant. Probably why the GOP base has embraced him so much

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...e-wrong-place/

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

How does that even happen?!

[Flash Walken]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

How does that even happen?!

It's a conscious decision, it's not an accident.

You don't accidentally alter a map for publication.

[Coach]

But the alteration is so meaningless. Unless I'm missing something he's just smushed Vermont and Delaware(?)together into one blue space, while inexplicably moving the maritimes north...for no reason.

[Displaced Flames fan]

It amazes me how many people think the US is just going to let the first random 10,000 Syrian refugees come on in.

[Thor]

Why, its not like they are not screened?

[Caged Great]

Got to find it amusing that the Americans are all up in arms that 10 000 are being brought in, yet Canada's bringing in 26 000 with likely more afterwards, and there is not nearly the same outrage.

[Itse]

Yeah the 'Muricans are being adorable again.

For comparison Finland (population 5M) forecasts 50,000 refugees and asylum seekers arriving from Iraq and Syria by the end of the year. And we don't get to screen them either.

It's really no wonder the local far right is going insane. (Well, more insane than you have to be in order to qualify as far right in the first place.)

[billybob123]

Originally Posted by MattyC

But the alteration is so meaningless. Unless I'm missing something he's just smushed Vermont and Delaware(?)together into one blue space, while inexplicably moving the maritimes north...for no reason.

It looks like Vermont has been somehow moved south and merged with Connecticut. The secret to removing two blue states? Combine them?

[ernie]

Refugee act of 1980(?) in the US prevents any state from refusing a refugee. It federal government jurisdiction.

Always easy to have big balls when you know ahead of time that you are just blowing smoke.

Also, despite the constant barrage in the media the identified attackers were all European nationals with valid passports. Not Refugees or guys who came in with the refugee wave. But I guarantee a very large proportion of the anti-refugee crowd doesn't know that or is ignoring it. If a big attack happened elsewhere you can all but guarantee it'll be a homegrown guy that has been in place for quite some time.

Trump is saying he isn't opposed to a Muslim database. The racism and intolerance is getting beyond stupid in republican circles.

[Senator Clay Davis]

But, but...I thought the problem with Mexican illegals was out of control?

For the first time in more than four decades, more Mexican immigrants are returning to their home country than coming to the United States, according to a report released Thursday.

From 2009 to 2014, an estimated 870,000 Mexicans came to the United States while 1 million returned home, a net loss for the United States of 130,000, according to the report from the Pew Research Center. That historic shift comes at a time when immigration has become a contentious focal point in the 2016 presidential race, as Republicans and Democrats argue over how best to modernize the nation's immigration system.

Mark Hugo Lopez, director of Hispanic research at the center, said the net decline in Mexicans was driven by the Great Recession in the United States that made it harder to find jobs, an improving economy in Mexico and tighter border security.

In coming years, he said, the number of Mexicans may increase again if the U.S. economy continues to improve. But steady growth of Mexico's economy and tighter controls along the southwest border mean the United States won't see another massive wave of legal and illegal immigration like it did in recent decades, when the number of Mexican-born immigrants ballooned from 3 million to nearly 13 million, he said.

"The nature of immigration itself is beginning to change," Lopez said. "It looks like Mexican migration is at an end."

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/w...ates/76013230/

[CroFlames]

Originally Posted by Senator Clay Davis

But, but...I thought the problem with Mexican illegals was out of control?



http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/w...ates/76013230/

Trump is going to continue chest thumping about building a wall.

I don't get it though, there already is a wall. Miles and miles of it. I've seen it with my own eyes.

Are they planning on building a double wall or something?

[Fire of the Phoenix]

Originally Posted by CroFlames

Trump is going to continue chest thumping about building a wall.

I don't get it though, there already is a wall. Miles and miles of it. I've seen it with my own eyes.

Are they planning on building a double wall or something?

The new wall is going to be 700 feet tall and made of ice.