Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[tryrar]

guys, can we calm down before toady has to level all around banhammers please?

[Mictlantecuhtli]

$1 trillion a year is negligible. That's funny. The sequester is $1.2 trillion over years 2013 and 2021. Spending cuts over eight years are not going to really solve $1 trillion each year.

And Defense alone is not going to be hit. Sequestration hits many departments. But that's what I was saying. The piggy bank is broken. You can't do the sequestration and talk of more goodies. It's dried up.

Not cutting the hell out of medicare and medicaid and food stamps is not "talking of more goodies."

The low hanging fruit is military spending, followed by the massive amounts of waste and overinflated costs involved in healthcare spending. Fixing those issues has nothing to do with cutting entitlements to normal people who pay into the programs, and advocating cutting those services from people [The parasites, in your words] is the exact opposite of American.

You seem to believe governing and financials [especially taxes] are an either/or proposition of hardline ideological stances, when it's not. Go one way too hard in either direction and you get a fucked up government for everyone involved.

[Trollheiming]

You continue to state the deficit without explaining how "liberalism" is causing it. Just that it "is" $16 Trillion. Also, given your constant use of straw men, accusing someone of using an emotional fallacy is ironic.

Entitlement spending is 60% of the total. That's New Deal liberalism. How can this be a strawman? You aren't using these terms in good faith.

I live in Australia. We have a significantly larger public health system, interest free student loans, and numerous things that would be considered "liberal" in America. Our debt is considerably smaller than America's (And is apparently expected to disappear in a year or 2 (how successful that will be is another question)). I have never quite understood why some people view things like Universal health care as the end of the economy.

Australia was riding a wave. Don't play dumb with me. I live in China and see Australian steel getting put up by cranes; I go to the store and buy Australian oats and Devondale milk. Iron ore has plunged. Australian mining companies are getting hit hard. Chinese are tightening their belts and buying fewer imported goods.The economic boom in China is going through an adjustment that has made the prices for your commodities return to normal levels.

I know why Australia, a small country, was able to finance its social model, but it can't be done here on a scale for 300 million the way you rode commodity highs to finance that lifestyle for 30 million.

[Trollheiming]

$1 trillion a year is negligible. That's funny. The sequester is $1.2 trillion over years 2013 and 2021. Spending cuts over eight years are not going to really solve $1 trillion each year.

And Defense alone is not going to be hit. Sequestration hits many departments. But that's what I was saying. The piggy bank is broken. You can't do the sequestration and talk of more goodies. It's dried up.

Not cutting the hell out of medicare and medicaid and food stamps is not "talking of more goodies."

The low hanging fruit is military spending, followed by the massive amounts of waste and overinflated costs involved in healthcare spending. Fixing those issues has nothing to do with cutting entitlements to normal people who pay into the programs, and advocating cutting those services from people [The parasites, in your words] is the exact opposite of American.

The yearly defense budget is not enough to solve the deficit, even if you totally dismantled the US Armed Forces root and branch. And then you're left with merely a deficit at zero. What I began by saying is that people wanted more goodies, like free education and free contraceptives. Can a narrowly-defined safety net for temporary assistance be sustained? Sure. But that's not what I'm hearing from victorious liberals. I'm hearing: more, more, more.

[Mictlantecuhtli]

But that's not what I'm hearing from victorious liberals. I'm hearing: more, more, more.

Prove your claim. I've yet to see anyone extolling the virtue of expanding the coverage of entitlement programs as haphazardly as you suggest [for little reason other than 'More'] so you've just gone and made another strawman to fight against.

And, tell me, what is bad about free education?

[Reelya]

@Trollheiming: The 'free' contraceptives issue wasn't even paid for by government, it was about private insurance bought by a company not being able to excluded paid for medicine to their employees, because they're your boss, not your dad or your owner.

In fact if you followed the story, it was mentioned that students turned to "free clinics" because their Catholic colleges refused to fund female reproductive medicine. And those "free clinics" are definitely paid for by the taxpayer. The idea behind this, and the private insurance mandate, is to leave less people slipping between the cracks and ending up being paid for by the government.

As for free education, you're a fool if you think not educating children is the road to economic prosperity, and college education is definitely NOT "free" in USA, and there are no plans by either party to make it free. And Romney supports private colleges which make 86% of their revenues from tax-payer funded student grants.

Since there just ain't no free college in USA, are you saying to abolish public schooling for under 18's? Public schooling is hardly an invention of the Obama administration.

[Trollheiming]

And, tell me, what is bad about free education?

Free education means more people take advantage of it. Well and good, eh?

That means more teachers. Teachers need pay, and if the education is to be meaningful, it has to be at a high price to recruit  dedicated and skilled teachers. In fact, if you want more of something at the same quality, it costs more per a unit. That's called the supply curve, which slopes upward as quantity increases. The more you want of something, the more you have to pay.

So now everyone is a trained lawyer. That's awesome. But wait, we only need so many lawyers! Oh, dear! We've got people with $100k sheepskins and no degree-specific jobs to give them. But we need buildings cleaned. Voila. Those free degrees all become $100k "janitorial engineering" degrees.

And the cost is picked up by the government. And the deficits grow. Free education destroys the value of the product, but not the costs.

[Reelya]

Yeah but you're not making sense since there are no free lawyer courses in America. Students end up $100'000s in debt. It couldn't be more of a strawman if you tried, because those free lawyer courses don't exist, and nobody is proposing them.

[Max White]

Free education destroys the value of the product, but not the costs.

I would like to see your citations for these claims.

[SalmonGod]

Yeah.  This doesn't even have anything to do with anything anymore.  It's just the guy living up to his name.  Insulting everyone based on his imaginary conceptions of what they believe.

[Trollheiming]

Free education destroys the value of the product, but not the costs.

I would like to see your citations for these claims.

On a board moving this fast, I'm not hunting citations. You can look at the easy money of the housing bubble, or the easy money in any irrational stock market boom. Wherever people get to buy things for free or with easy loans that they may or may not default upon, value is destroyed.

Know anyone who lost 40% of the value in his home after the easy money destroyed home values? That's your citation.

[SalmonGod]

Free education destroys the value of the product, but not the costs.

I would like to see your citations for these claims.

On a board moving this fast, I'm not hunting citations. You can look at the easy money of the housing bubble, or the easy money in any irrational stock market boom. Wherever people get to buy things for free or with easy loans that they may or may not default upon, value is destroyed.

Know anyone who lost 40% of the value in his home after the easy money destroyed home values? That's your citation.

Yeah.  People lost their homes.  Now we have 4x as many empty homes as homeless people for no practical reason beyond "the number game says so".  This is why everything you're saying just demonstrates to me how ridiculous our economic systems are.

[Ogdibus]

Yeah.  This doesn't even have anything to do with anything anymore.  It's just the guy living up to his name.  Insulting everyone based on his imaginary conceptions of what they believe.

I'm surprised you even bothered to get involved.  I thought this was fake from the start.  x3

[Trollheiming]

Yeah.  This doesn't even have anything to do with anything anymore.  It's just the guy living up to his name.  Insulting everyone based on his imaginary conceptions of what they believe.

I got people asking me for citations. Nary a citation from them.

I got people telling me I'm insulting them, while calling me "kid" and "deluded" and "imaginary" over a simple stark number like $16 trillion, that will still be there when you close your eyes and plug you ears and scream you aren't hearing this.

I got people accusing me of strawman to evade posting something on-point.

Good show, chaps. This is over.

[Max White]

On a board moving this fast, I'm not hunting citations. You can look at the easy money of the housing bubble, or the easy money in any irrational stock market boom. Wherever people get to buy things for free or with easy loans that they may or may not default upon, value is destroyed.

Know anyone who lost 40% of the value in his home after the easy money destroyed home values? That's your citation.

You do understand that there is a difference between buying a home and studying for a certification, right? The trade of goods isn't comparable with personal training. You can just buy a house if you have the money, but you can't just buy a degree, you need to be able to pass the tests. Further more, a house maintains value if you don't use it, a degree does not. A house can be resold, a degree can not.
They are conceptually very different things, and not economically interchangeable any way!