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Raise your hand if you saw this coming a light-year away
Raise your hand if you saw this coming a light-year away
#1
?‍♂️
Mitch McConnell Calls for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid Cuts After Passing Tax Cuts, Massive Defense Spending

Quote:"It’s disappointing, but it’s not a Republican problem," McConnell said of the deficit, which grew 17 percent to $779 billion in fiscal year 2018. McConnell explained to Bloomberg that "it’s a bipartisan problem: Unwillingness to address the real drivers of the debt by doing anything to adjust those programs to the demographics of America in the future." The deficit has increased 77 percent since McConnell became majority leader in 2015.

So the party of 'responsibility' avoids responsibility for creating the problem in the first place. And BTW, cutting those programs? going to do the square root of fuck-all to reduce the deficit.

This should be in a national ad: "Mitch McConnell wants to redistribute your Medicare and SS benefits to Fortune 100 corporations while you starve in cold, wintry streets."
“We can never undo what we have done. We can never go back in time. We write history with our decisions and our actions. But we also write history with our responses to those actions. We can leave the pain and the damage in our wake, unattended, or we can do the work of acknowledging and fixing, to whatever extent possible, the harm that we have caused.”

— On Repentance and Repair: Making Amends in an Unapologetic World by Danya Ruttenberg
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RE: Raise your hand if you saw this coming a light-year away
#2
I'll raise my hand.

Classic rightwing spending tactic. Run up a deficit as high as you can and blame it on 'wasteful' social security programs. Forgetting that in many ways, those social security programs are far cheaper in the long run than the alternatives. And that the deficit could've been avoided by proper financial stewardship rather than wasteful spending and dangerous tax cuts on the part of the rightwing politicians.
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RE: Raise your hand if you saw this coming a light-year away
#3
Raising a hand here, too.

Honestly, does the USA really need a military base in every state? You're duplicating a lot of swivel-chair positions that you don't need and sitting on a lot of high-value land that would be better sold to fund land purchases to expand the military bases that you actually do need. A fair chunk of that "military" spending is ideological in nature, not strategic.
--
Rob Kelk

Sticks and stones can break your bones,
But words can break your heart.
- unknown
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RE: Raise your hand if you saw this coming a light-year away
#4
(10-17-2018, 11:22 AM)robkelk Wrote: Honestly, does the USA really need a military base in every state? You're duplicating a lot of swivel-chair positions that you don't need and sitting on a lot of high-value land that would be better sold to fund land purchases to expand the military bases that you actually do need. A fair chunk of that "military" spending is ideological in nature, not strategic.

The Congresscreatures won't let us close down bases in their states.  Whatever state it is, a military base brings in cash for the surrounding communities, so if Senator Bedfellow or Representative Venal voted to close Fort Desolate in the great state of Jerkwater, Jerkwater's "good citizens" would vote Bedfellow and/or Venal out of D.C. in the very next election.  Austerity is something to be applied to a state other than wonderful Jerkwater, backbone of the United States.  NIMBY, y'know, except in this case it's "not out of my (profitable) back yard."
-----
"The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water, signifying by divine providence that this was some killer weed."
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RE: Raise your hand if you saw this coming a light-year away
#5
I expect that a state could generate as much cash by funding hospitals in the cities as it could by funding a military base outside one of the cities - and the benefits would be spread out across the entire state, not just the corner with a base in it.
--
Rob Kelk

Sticks and stones can break your bones,
But words can break your heart.
- unknown
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RE: Raise your hand if you saw this coming a light-year away
#6
But . . . . don't you realise how important it is for politicians to wrap themselves up in the flag and be seen supporting the troops? I mean, it makes good theatre for the political adverts.

Priorities, people.
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RE: Raise your hand if you saw this coming a light-year away
#7
If they must, then redirect some of that money to VA treatment centers.

EDIT: Or help low-income mothers buy ingredients for that quintessentially American food, apple pie.
--
Rob Kelk

Sticks and stones can break your bones,
But words can break your heart.
- unknown
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RE: Raise your hand if you saw this coming a light-year away
#8
(10-17-2018, 02:57 PM)DHBirr Wrote:
(10-17-2018, 11:22 AM)robkelk Wrote: Honestly, does the USA really need a military base in every state? You're duplicating a lot of swivel-chair positions that you don't need and sitting on a lot of high-value land that would be better sold to fund land purchases to expand the military bases that you actually do need. A fair chunk of that "military" spending is ideological in nature, not strategic.

The Congresscreatures won't let us close down bases in their states.  Whatever state it is, a military base brings in cash for the surrounding communities, so if Senator Bedfellow or Representative Venal voted to close Fort Desolate in the great state of Jerkwater, Jerkwater's "good citizens" would vote Bedfellow and/or Venal out of D.C. in the very next election.  Austerity is something to be applied to a state other than wonderful Jerkwater, backbone of the United States.  NIMBY, y'know, except in this case it's "not out of my (profitable) back yard."

Actually, it's mostly logistical support. You know, that thing that makes it so countries like China and Russia don't get too far carried away with their antics.

Trust me. If we did back down, they'd start up. Russia proved that this wasn't a concern for them with the events in Crimea. And China is going full-tilt with their artificial islands. The only reason why they don't go a-viking is because our military is camped out in conveniently close places like Japan and Turkey.

So pipe down about the military spending. Let's turn our sights towards the real enemy: the Rich Old White Men.

I would propose that paying actual living wages will nip both problems of income and expense in the bud. Income because only people that make living wages really pay taxes. And expense because if people are making living wages, then they have no need for social safety nets like food stamps and the like.

Income goes up. Expenses go down. Simple, ain't it?

What puzzles me is that there are some that feel that if people are suddenly making more money that they aren't gonna spend it.

I'm sorry, but Fordism worked for Henry Ford back in the 1920's, and it will work now.
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RE: Raise your hand if you saw this coming a light-year away
#9
Quote:I would propose that paying actual living wages will nip both problems of income and expense in the bud. Income because only people that make living wages really pay taxes. And expense because if people are making living wages, then they have no need for social safety nets like food stamps and the like.

People still need some safety nets, because emergencies happen, and people get fired/laid off/etc. But yes, there'd be much less need for them.

But the real key is simple: Who decides what constitutes a "living wage"? What expenses do we assume it should cover, at what level of quality? And how will the system adapt to the differences in cost of living between regions?

I've seen a lot of push for a universal minimum wage, which sounds good on the surface but is the absolute worst thing possible to do to address this very real need.

A living wage for a single person working in, say, the service industry, in New York City, is comparable to a family of four with a single earner at a mid-range professional position in Rochester -- in the same state! Trying to pay McDonalds' workers in Rochester at the same scale as a "living wage" in NYC would result in a rapid dearth of fast-food across the city.

A proper "living wage" is a good thing to have. It is not an EASY thing to guarantee, or to legislate.
Sucrose Octanitrate.

Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.
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RE: Raise your hand if you saw this coming a light-year away
#10
What you do in that case ECS, is declare that the minimum wage will be calculated per county, or per city with more than 10 000 inhabitants, and that the minimum wage will be equal to the minimum living costs of a family of four with a single earner working a fulltime job of maximum 40 hours a week on non-holiday weekdays.

In case companies want to have a smaller fulltime job than 40 hours a week they are entirely free to do so, but they are still paying as a fulltime job.

Cost of living will be regularly calculated by a non-partisan independent organisation like the Congressional Budget Office. The minimum wage will change as the cost of living does.
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RE: Raise your hand if you saw this coming a light-year away
#11
My solution might be slightly more workable, so to speak... the CEO of the company can only earn between 5 and 10 times what the LOWEST PAID employee/contractor earns. So if that CEO wants to even earn 150,000? They'd better be prepared to pay at least 30,000 (regardless of hours) to that lowest paid employee/contractor.

This would likely need to include all the CEO's income, including shit like earnings on investments. Anything past that? Gets taxed completely away.
"You know how parents tell you everything's going to fine, but you know they're lying to make you feel better? Everything's going to be fine." - The Doctor
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RE: Raise your hand if you saw this coming a light-year away
#12
Actually, that's even less workable than my idea. If nothing else, the CEO's will happily go basically anywhere else to dodge those taxes. I like the idea, mind you, but the only way it'll work is if there's a world government that can enforce it and can't be dodged.

Now, the idea I had?

That's kind of how it works in the Netherlands, but the Netherlands have the advantage that, well, we're one of the most densely populated countries in the world, and very small. So we can get away with a national minimum wage supplemented through things like targeted rent subsidies for the poor. But you don't have to update the minimum wage every year in my proposal. You can do a rolling recalculation for the minimum wage for 10 states every year, and once you've got the first 3 batches of data and can cross reference them with historical economical data it becomes possible to start predicting what wage increases are necessary in the future too.

It's a long term solution and it requires a lot of work to set up, which means that it will be expensive to start up, but after that you really don't need that much in the way of maintenance. You don't need expert statisticians to gather data, you just need some 50 officials crossing through the relevant states for a year or so knocking on doors and asking companies and citizens what the local prices are and enter them into a database.
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RE: Raise your hand if you saw this coming a light-year away
#13
(10-26-2018, 09:53 AM)hazard Wrote: Actually, that's even less workable than my idea. If nothing else, the CEO's will happily go basically anywhere else to dodge those taxes. I like the idea, mind you, but the only way it'll work is if there's a world government that can enforce it and can't be dodged.

Capital mobility is a problem but I don't think its an insurmountable one. It will require that we are smarter about how trade deals are done with enforceable international standards for workers and environment. This requires labor to organize globally as well to neuter the advantages afforded to corporations by the ease of mobility of operations. Another way would be to undercut the labor prison model which has become no different than slavery.

Just my two cents.
“We can never undo what we have done. We can never go back in time. We write history with our decisions and our actions. But we also write history with our responses to those actions. We can leave the pain and the damage in our wake, unattended, or we can do the work of acknowledging and fixing, to whatever extent possible, the harm that we have caused.”

— On Repentance and Repair: Making Amends in an Unapologetic World by Danya Ruttenberg
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RE: Raise your hand if you saw this coming a light-year away
#14
(10-26-2018, 10:33 AM)SilverFang01 Wrote:
(10-26-2018, 09:53 AM)hazard Wrote: Actually, that's even less workable than my idea. If nothing else, the CEO's will happily go basically anywhere else to dodge those taxes. I like the idea, mind you, but the only way it'll work is if there's a world government that can enforce it and can't be dodged.

Capital mobility is a problem but I don't think its an insurmountable one.

It's really not. Capital mobility only exists if you let it exist. If you declare that all of Jeff Bezos money, every red cent of it, belong to the US Government than Jeff Bezos can leave the US all he wants, but all his money stays in the US.

Rich people are not gods. They do not produce money by existing. If I stripped Jeff Bezos of all his possessions and dropped him in a virgin wilderness naked he would not found a multi-national internet based retailer. He would starve.

Jeff Bezos has exactly as much money as we allow him to have, no more and less. If you want to tax every cent he tries to transfer out of the country, you can. If you want to declare every property and item in America to no longer be his, you can.

The only difficulty is will. People won't vote for a party that does that, because a significant fraction of Americans are convinced that they are one lucky day away from being Jeff Bezos.
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RE: Raise your hand if you saw this coming a light-year away
#15
Quote:If you declare that all of Jeff Bezos money, every red cent of it, belong to the US Government than Jeff Bezos can leave the US all he wants, but all his money stays in the US.
And that would never happen because the people in power are rich people, and they wouldn't want any kind of precedent that allows the government to seize their money for any reason. If they permit seizure for one person and one reason, it becomes easier to permit it for other persons and other reasons. Simple self-interest and greed will keep that from happening.
-- Bob

I have been Roland, Beowulf, Achilles, Gilgamesh, Clark Kent, Mary Sue, DJ Croft, Skysaber.  I have been 
called a hundred names and will be called a thousand more before the sun grows dim and cold....
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RE: Raise your hand if you saw this coming a light-year away
#16
(10-26-2018, 11:23 AM)Epsilon Wrote: The only difficulty is will. People won't vote for a party that does that, because a significant fraction of Americans are convinced that they are one lucky day away from being Jeff Bezos.

Bullseye!
“We can never undo what we have done. We can never go back in time. We write history with our decisions and our actions. But we also write history with our responses to those actions. We can leave the pain and the damage in our wake, unattended, or we can do the work of acknowledging and fixing, to whatever extent possible, the harm that we have caused.”

— On Repentance and Repair: Making Amends in an Unapologetic World by Danya Ruttenberg
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RE: Raise your hand if you saw this coming a light-year away
#17
(10-26-2018, 04:47 AM)hazard Wrote: What you do in that case ECS, is declare that the minimum wage will be calculated per county, or per city with more than 10 000 inhabitants, and that the minimum wage will be equal to the minimum living costs of a family of four with a single earner working a fulltime job of maximum 40 hours a week on non-holiday weekdays.

In case companies want to have a smaller fulltime job than 40 hours a week they are entirely free to do so, but they are still paying as a fulltime job.

Cost of living will be regularly calculated by a non-partisan independent organisation like the Congressional Budget Office. The minimum wage will change as the cost of living does.

Yeah, sure, and the first thing that'll happen is you'll get people complaining about "Well it isn't fair that New Yorkers get fifteen dollars an hour while we Omaha people only get ten! We should get fifteen too!" And some politician hungry for Omaha votes will start pushing for it, and you'll get the same kind of emotionally-charged scaremongering that's driving the current minimum-wage campaigns, and the whole scheme will last about six months before someone upends it.

That, and you'll see even more immigration into the big cities, which puts even more pressure on jobs and prices there, which drives prices higher and wages lower....
Sucrose Octanitrate.

Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.
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RE: Raise your hand if you saw this coming a light-year away
#18
Possibly. Although companies will certainly be interested in establishing new facilities in Omaha and outside of New York because of the lower wages there, even if wages have been raised.

You'll see something similar with a nationally leveled minimum wage, but in that case it'll be the working class moving to Omaha and similar states to take advantage of the income disparity. It's just that that won't work and you'll see a rapid inflation of the economies of those states as costs and wages normalize.
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RE: Raise your hand if you saw this coming a light-year away
#19
Raising the minimum wage isn't a panacea - unfortunately. But lLinkling it to inflation makes sense.

Raising the supply of money generally has an inflationary effect on the economy as prices rise to match - but if you have enough people reliant on minimum-wage jobs to make day-to-day end';a meat that raising the minimum wage has an inflationary effect - or your business is so reliant on armies of people living beneasth the minimum wage to function - then perhaps there's something cripplingly wrong with the economy, or your business.

There is something structurally wrong with the economy in either case - and one wonders if this isn't because the externalities of either case are socialised. Society has to pay for the cost of people on povertyline wages, but the company still takes the profits of that. If the entity responsible for the problem is forced to pay towards the cost of the problem in some way, one wonders if having a financial interest in making it go away it might soon do so.

There's also a massive inflationary effect visible from the availability of easy credit. You can see what it did to the Irish economy in the runup to 2008 - credit was so cheap that it caused a runaway on prices, and ended up crippling the next decade. The same thing happened again in the first few months before a new reegulation kicked in that limited the avilability of credit to a multiple of a wage. Needless to say prices levelled off at exactly that regulated point - or thereabouts. (Although the actual rental market is now being crippled by chronic undersupply which means that rental prices are skyrocketing - partly due to AirBnB taking a lot of properties out of the market, and partly due to construction lags)

I love the smell of rotaries in the morning. You know one time, I got to work early, before the rush hour. I walked through the empty carpark, I didn't see one bloody Prius or Golf. And that smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole carpark, smelled like.... ....speed.

One day they're going to ban them.
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