Senate The 2nd Term of the Obama Administration: Facts, Opinions, and Discussions

Well you're entitled to hold an opinion; you'll forgive me if I afford it as much weight as it deserves, taking into consideration how informed by experience and research it is. Oh the machine's made it's calculation; since it was an opinion forged in the tepid, Bic-lighter flame of inexperience; with no reference to any primary or secondary texts, and with a self-interest denial of the biblical evidence in favour of a communal setting... It gets a zero.

Firstly, when was the last time you were in Europe? Secondly, when I pointed to those five nations, did you look at their economies? You talk of the economies of Europe and austerity, but none of those countries with strong social democratic traditions are in trouble and in Germany's case, they're financing the bailouts (more or less). The ones that are stacked with the laziness inherent in part of Europe play their part in economic destabilisation but remind me which nation, through unpardonable and un-Christian greed, crafted a financial product such as the mortgage backed security, where the mortgage was loaned to someone with little to no credit assessment?

What I hear from you is that:

* European economies should be treated as one because it's more convenient for my argument, and they're lazy and slothful
* It's better to be arrogant, reckless and indifferent to risk when selling "innovative" financial products than collapse the entire world into recession than it is to be lazy and slothful, and
* Despite overwhelming sentiment against money, capital, and private property the bible isn't a proto-socialist text?

Did you also know denial is a river in Egypt? And that increasing number of wealthy people are arguing in favour of higher tax and more of a safety net approach to welfare?

Astonishing!

Yeah and do you remember when the Republicans had the daughter of the head of their PR firm pretend to be a Kuwaiti who witnessed Iraqi soldiers stealing incubators from children's hospitals in Kuwait?

So brave!

J-Rod there is no evidence in this magical God you refer to. And if he did, which he doesn't and never has, then did he not also instill compassion in you?

Obviously not you specifically, but Christians as a whole?

Obviously not Christians as a whole, but you know... like 2 or 3 guys in the Salvation Army.

Oh look, a Mark Twain comment about Christianity just popped into my head! Unbidden! Hullo, quote!

You say that like the capricious c-word that is God gives you an actual choice. He doesn't. He compels you to bend the knee and sing his praises and if you don't, the best you can hope for is an eternal torment in Hell. The worst would be some act of genocide committed by God behalf before eternal torment.

And if he did create the universe (which would show a level of mastery of physics for which he is too modest, instead attributing the creation to magic) and man and is all knowing and all seeing, why are we worshiping him for doing what he seems to enjoy the most in life, which is being a narcissistic git?

Pfft. God. What a jerk joke.

It's actually referring to the value of keeping religion out of politics, J-Rod. So if you are quoting this, you agree religion should be kept the hell away from any place of power or authority, ever.

 

Oh, and on Reagan: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2004/06/not_even_a_hedgehog.html

 

Yeah, because fallout from the Cold War, the Loans crisis, and the Gulf War had nothing to with it............

 

This is where I'm losing you. The Bible says that it's good to give to poor people, and spiritually beneficial to give willingly. You point out that federal programs aren't necessarily willful giving. I can accept that. But all you lose is the spiritual benefit. It's still a good idea. How are you shifting a full 180 degrees from it being an excellent idea to a terrible one, instead of, at worst, something slightly less good?

This part is also strange. Your main objection is that there is no "choice" involved in government programs. But, as you point, out, citizens make the government. If they like stuff like Obamacare, they elect Barack Obama to create these programs. If they don't, they could elect a Republican Senate that would repeal it. They don't. They didn't. Given that we get a choice of some sort every 2 years, and a major choice every 4 years, how don't government policies represent a choice? And if they are in fact a choice, what is the point of your whole objection?

 

Most of what you said I'll let pass without comment, but this could use some context. The "increasing number" you're talking about comes down to one guy: Warren Buffet and people who jumped on his bandwagon.

Leaving aside the desire for higher tax and a safety net approach on welfare, he and his followers are enormous hypocrites when they call for higher taxes on the wealthy. I'm being cynical about it, of course, but I'd suspect there's far more PR involved and a desire not to be seen as part of the dishonest Wall Street system when and if the revolution comes. The main reasons for my cynicism on Buffet -- being rich while advocating to take from the rich -- are these:

- Warren Buffet, or indeed any of the people who back his idea, do not have to wait for an increase in tax rates in order to lead by example and effectively tax himself a higher rate for the purposes of the government. All he has to do is fill out one of these forms: https://www.pay.gov/paygov/forms/formInstance.html?agencyFormId=23779454 and pay as much "extra tax" as he wants to the government. I have yet to see any evidence he has donated a single dollar in "voluntary tax" to that end.

- He also demagogues tax law, claiming there are "extraordinary tax breaks for the superrich". There aren't. In particular Buffet never quotes any section of the relevant tax laws in support. It's the sort of misleading garbage that Robert Kiyosaki uses in his "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" books. What it comes down to differential tax rates for different types of income.

- Warren Buffet has been rather a beneficiary of low tax rates and an advocate for them for many decades, a hell of a lot longer than his sudden desire to make up some brownie points with Jesus before he goes to see him in person and has to explain the filthy lucre he's accumulated over the course of his life. As early as 1963, he wrote a letter to the investors in his hedge fund, The Buffett Partnership, Ltd., in which he laid out some of the fundamental tenets of his investment philosophy as it relates to taxation. One was the following: “I am an outspoken advocate of paying large amounts of income taxes – at low rates.” Scarcely a year later, the emerging star fund manager reported to his investors that the Buffett Partnership had sold some investments and thus would incur taxable realized gains (the quaint sum of $2,826,248.76 in total, as it turned out). But he assured them that virtually all of his gains qualified for long term tax treatment. “We make investment decisions based on our evaluation of the most profitable combination of probabilities. If this means paying taxes – fine – I’m glad the rates on long-term capital gains are as low as they are.” In 1990, he shared with his stockholders the sample of a letter he had sent to a business owner whose company was a prospective acquisition target for Berkshire Hathaway In it, Buffett explained to the potential seller why it was essential that the seller’s family retain a 20% interest in their business: “We need 80% to consolidate earnings for tax purposes, which is a step important to us.”

- It's not the first time he's been a hypocrite on a financial subject. Buffet also doesn't like to talk about his involvement with Moody's ahead of the subprime disaster. Remember, Buffet is a guy who preaches active investment, being an owner and manager rather than an investor, knowing as much as possible about your company before you buy shares in it. Buffet was the main shareholder of Moodys in the years leading right up to the subprime crash. Moodys was corrupt in giving subprime garbage AAA ratings. Buffet brushed off questions about this by saying he did not even know where the main office of Moody's was.

The most recent guy to suddenly start wearing the sackcloth and ashes without giving any of his money to the government to fix the problem is Bill Gross. He, at least, is a bit more honest in that he calls his sudden guilt a "Kennedy-esque" syndrome where he now feels guilt after's he made the billions and not during. Mainstream media has highlighted his guilt, but if you read his full letter to his investors it's pretty obvious there's a bit more to it than that, and in particular he criticises the approach of the government since 2008 to their management of the economy. In particular note that Gross says Obamacare should be well down the list of priorities. Indeed that may well be the unspoken, unspeakable reason none of these Golden Robin Hoods are giving any extra money to the government: because they know damn well the government is dysfunctional and any extra cash they hand over will actually be wasted.

 

You spend a lot of time around the wealthy, Saintheart?

 

I'm just pointing out Buffet's own comments over the years make him a hypocrite on this subject. I've not been raiding his diaries, the comments he's made as above are on the public record. And I've linked directly to Bill Gross's letter, so judge for yourself. It looks a lot more to me that he was firing both barrels -- one at the private sector, one at the public -- than playing a Frank Miller version of Oliver Queen.

 

There is certainly a growing awareness, as I said typically among GenX wealthy, that the current concentration of capital is unsustainable (the US' abysmal Gini coefficient would be a prime example here) and more redistribution through tax would be a good thing. Buffet or no.

 

Fairer tax across the board -- for rich and poor -- I can agree with, but at best it's only one half of the equation. If I'm going to notionally give the government more money, I surely have a right to expect it is not used in a wasteful manner, which is not infrequently the result. The US's present debt levels demonstrate that, so much so that the issue of higher tax is almost irrelevant. Paraphrasing Milton Friedman, taxes don't matter, only spending. Case in point: the US's present debt levels. If you gave in to the Occupy movement's wildest dreams and ripped the 1%'s entire wealth off them, it would literally only pay off about half the national debt, after which the 1% would relocate or organise their affairs according to the Laffer Curve, i.e. according to reality, i.e.e. the goose that lays the golden eggs would be dead as a doornail. Although to be fair, Occupy had one thing going for it: it drew attention to the fact corporate governance in the US is a frigging mess. Unfortunately, the rest of its points struck me as either dreadfully confused or about as ignorant, naive, and out-of-date as the economic policies discussed round the bongs at Woodstock.

 

This is the most roundly terrible argument about taxes I have ever heard. Think about what you are saying a moment. Warren Buffet's total net worth is estimated to be around $60 billion. The 2012 tax deal, which only repealed 18% of Bush's tax cuts, and was widely regarded as a bad deal among liberals, is slated to bring in $620 billion over the next ten years.

Can you grasp what that means? Literally one small change in tax policy will bring in annually the entirety of all the money Warren Buffet has amassed over his entire life span. This is the results of the world's fourth richest man. The combined wealth of the top ten richest people on Earth will only have brought in some 2/3rds of its five year total. That's why wealthy liberals argue for changes in tax rates. Individuals don't and can't possibly ever donate enough money to make a difference that meaningfully comparable than the collected tax receipts of an entire country.

But what is overwhelmingly favored, out of all proportion to any rational motive, and which economists agree has a distorting effect on market behavior, are the sort of income streams that are only meaningful for the super-rich. How doesn't that equate to an "extra-ordinary tax break" for them?

Finally, though, what is your point? Some people are hypocrites. What does that have to do with the validity of their arguments? Lt Colonel Krusinski of the US Air Force, who was in charge of directing efforts against sexual assault, was charged with sexual assault himself. He's a hypocrite much more obviously than your argument against Buffet. Does that mean that rape is somehow a good thing? Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act but still used the n-word. Does that mean he was wrong, and Jim Crow should have stayed around? People can have the correct principles, even when they fail to live up to them.

If you want to make some sycophantic defense of wealth inequality, please try harder than you have thus far.

 

The point stands, which is that Buffet and anyone earning the sort of cash he does and spouting the line he has is a hypocrite. If he thought the government was going to manage an increased tax take any better than it does the present tax take, he'd be freely dumping a percentage of his income stream into the Treasury, and he'd be shouting it from the rooftops. He doesn't produce any evidence he does, so the odds are on that he gives not one cent to the poor, benighted US government beyond what it orders him to do by law.

As to the pot of money that would be brought in: shrug of shoulders. As I said, tax rates are at best only half the solution, not all of it. The US's debt level still dwarfs those numbers, and Obama is still projecting deficits for the next 10 years, which is as far out as he's legally required to project, not that the deficit will disappear in year 11.

You haven't named which economists, not that it terribly matters since economics is (a) not a popularity contest and (b) economics is not like beloved old science where everyone agrees on the cause of a phenomenon because it's reproducible. "Distort" is a weasel word, because you haven't identified the baseline market behaviour you would like to see in place. Indeed virtually any tax rate or act by the government can "distort" the market in place, i.e. change it.

By the way, that same assertion also undermines your friend Warren Buffet, because he also says as a plank of his argument for higher taxes on the wealthy that tax implications of an investment won't change people's investment behaviour. That's been laughed out of existence because, again, Buffet's own record as an investor shows he regularly considers tax implications on his investments.

As to why it's not an extra-ordinary tax break for the superrich: because it amounts to differential rates on capital as opposed to labour, which is also available to anyone else who has an income-producing asset which they hold onto for more than 12 months. i.e. a house, i.e.e. capital gains tax rates. Much of the real estate sector is built on the differential between the tax rate on a capital-appreciating asset and income tax, and pretty well anyone who owns or has a house mortgaged is using that tax break. It's not an income stream that's only meaningful for the super-rich, unless you're qualifying anyone who owns and rents out a house as "super-rich". The term is demagoguery, not an objective look at the numbers.

If you want to insult me, please try harder than you have thus far. I've made no defence of wealth inequality: that's your own prejudices at fault there. If you think otherwise, kiss my ass.

EDIT: Huh, for some reason I took out part of my own post trying to fix formatting errors. In brief: a person's motives aren't always grounds to impugn the truth of what they're saying, but if, as with Buffet, they are being misleading on those facts, hypocrisy is a pretty important factor to place in how you take their words. As I said, Buffet's sudden desire to emulate St. Francis requires context, the context being that his actions do not match his words.

 

Oh I will defend wealth inequality as essential, but within limits that we're modestly in breach of.

And I'm not sure hypocrisy is grounds to get offended. Psychologists are convinced the only reason we give to charity is the feeling of good we get; not because we believe in the cause. In other words, it's not altruism, it's self-maximisation of utility. But if I give $50,000 to charity so I feel good inside, is that a bad thing?

 

This isn't the "give take offence" thread, Ender.

As to charity: depends on your reasons for giving to charity. If you give to charity, which might actually get something meaningful done with the money, as opposed to the government because you know the government won't do anything meaningful with the money even though the government arguably has more power to fix the problem than the charity, that's a powerful indictment against the government.

 

And back on track.

"I am sorry that they are finding themselves in this situation based on assurances they got from me," he told NBC News in an exclusive interview at the White House.

“Obviously we didn’t do a good enough job in terms of how we crafted the law," Obama said in the interview Thursday. "And, you know, that’s something I regret.

No kidding. Haven't I been saying that? Its a bad law.

And Ender, Your point on Germany is the only valid point you made. And I had to read through paragraph after paragraph of insults and empty words to find it. I'd call Germany the exception that proves the rule. Probably due to their great national pride. That aside you seem to only want to insult me and Christianity. You are, and always have been, the second least valuable contributor to debate here behind FID. Just a bigoted blowhard. Most points you make are buried deep inside of insults and your hatred of anyone who disagrees with you. It blinds people who might otherwise be swayed.

And to the rest, why don't you think I give to charity?!?! Of course I look out for my own, but I have an active charity schedule. But that doen't mean that I think the government should take so much from me that I can no longer take care of my family and give to charity. (Those who remember know that my family is taking a lot of my resources) I spend a disproportionate amount of my income on other people.

 

NM

 

Deferring to the mods, I'll be moving our ongoing discussion over to http://boards.theforce.net/threads/...u-s-causes-effects-solutions.31601361/page-22

 

So, it looks like we scrapped the best system on Earth for an uninsured populous that doesn't even want it.

 

J-Rod, technologically it might have been the best but it was incredibly expensive, inefficient, and created and protected statewide insurance rackets. There was very little free market about it.

That's why the GOP loves it so. They can pander to the ill-informed voters about loving free markets while coddling insurance lobbyists and their money. Hypocrisy.

 

Sure, it needs to be fixed. But this fix sounds like it has less competition that it had before. The regulations pretty much remove any flexability to come up with a better and/or cheaper plan than the next guy. Your plan is the same and costs the same as the next guy.

 

Actually, there are different tiers for coverage and cost in the exchanges. I'm not suggesting this plan is great. Far from it. A single payer would be better for a whole host of reasons, one is cost containment.

It's just interesting that the GOP will single out the ACA as this big bad socialist monster when it still allows private insurers to flourish. Was it socialism when the Heritage Foundation proposed it over a generation ago? It's not like the doctors are now employees of the state.

 

This is exactly why no one takes them seriously when it comes the ACA, because the majority people see through their fake outrage and realize this is about Obama and his legacy as a President and not the plan itself.

 

All of that is fine. But this law isn't the answer. Mark my words: One year from now most people will be paying more for insurance and there will be more people uninsured for all of our troubles.

 

Even Milton Friedman was an mandate advocate for all U.S. family units. He wanted to replace medicare and medicaid in exchange for universal health insurance coverage.

Universal health coverage through mandates, tax credits, and exchanges are all ideas that came from the right. That was their counter to the left's push for single-payer as the means to achieve universal coverage.