US Politics

Silva said:
These facts don't ring true to the lower classes. They're lies propagated by status quo apologetics.
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Believe it or not people in the lower classes also have options. Only people who have an interest in ensuring they never rise out of the lower class would deny this.
 
Raoul said:
There will never be such a thing as ideal social mobility, but that doesn't mean that in the right system people can't rise through the ranks.
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That right system probably involves more red tape - that kind that might have strangled Amazon earlier. It definitely involved more taxes - and from wiki Bezos' key insight was understanding and taking advantage of a SC ruling regarding sales taxes for mailed items.
 
Eboue said:
For the record, I didn't vote for Jill Stein. It's just a lie that fishfingers has repeated often enough that people have started to believe it.

I voted straight dem ticket with the exception of President. I willingly threw my vote aside because as kaos said, so much of what she represents and what she would do is antithetical to my values. It was a protest vote borne out of deep dissatisfaction with the lack of a candidate who was against wars of empire and who wasn't beholden to corporate interests.
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I'm truly sorry, but going forward I'll reply with the 'vote for the dead gorilla'.
 
berbatrick said:
That right system probably involves more red tape - that kind that might have strangled Amazon earlier. It definitely involved more taxes - and from wiki Bezos' key insight was understanding and taking advantage of a SC ruling regarding sales taxes for mailed items.
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Good point. Bezos was krafty enough to know the precise location where regulations were most amenable to starting a company and drive cross country to set up shop there.
 
berbatrick said:
That right system probably involves more red tape - that kind that might have strangled Amazon earlier. It definitely involved more taxes - and from wiki Bezos' key insight was understanding and taking advantage of a SC ruling regarding sales taxes for mailed items.
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His key (initial) insight was that people wanted to go on a website (in 1994), order a book, enter their credit card info to pay, and then wait weeks to get it. Most people, but especially all the people who already sold books, thought it would never work.

Later insights include: people want to read books electronically as long as the interface is "right" (had been unsuccessfully tried before by others). Companies want on-demand server capacity (others had more servers). I need a built-to-spec logistics system for picking out individual items (tried to copy Walmart's, didn't work)... I could open the book and go on. My point is that you're not one tax break away from your trillion dollar business (maybe a million dollar one).
 
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Do we allow deregulated system to allow billionaires like Jeff Bezos to provide employment to thousands (with a fair percentage of them exploited) or create a regulated system that will prevent such situation but also may result in fewer employment opportunities? (Which again is the Socialist vs Capitalist debate, back to square effing one)
 
MTF said:
His key insight was that people wanted to go on a website (in 1994), order a book, enter their credit card info to pay, and then wait weeks to get it. Most people, but especially all the people who already sold books, thought it would never work.
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I remember thinking at the time how odd it was to put your credit card information into a web page and whether or not it would be stolen in transit. Seemed very risk at the time.
 
fishfingers15 said:
Do we allow deregulated system to allow billionaires like Jeff Bezos to provide employment to thousands (with a fair percentage of them exploited) or create a regulated system that will prevent such situation but also may result in fewer employment opportunities? (Which again is the Socialist vs Capitalist debate, back to square effing one)
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That's a good question and one that hasn't been resolved yet. The right answer is probably somewhere in the middle and closer to what Bill Clinton espoused in the 90s. He was a huge proponent of heavy investment in research and development, technology, and infrastructure (all drivers of both GDP growth and jobs) but also had a good finger on the pulse of social issues from health care to education to labor. That was (imo) the best example of a politician the US has ever had who was able to balance both capitalism and social safety net without one encroaching on the other.
 
fishfingers15 said:
Do we allow deregulated system to allow billionaires like Jeff Bezos to provide employment to thousands (with a fair percentage of them exploited) or create a regulated system that will prevent such situation but also may result in fewer employment opportunities? (Which again is the Socialist vs Capitalist debate, back to square effing one)
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The socialists reject the bolded part, which is why the choice seems obvious to them (and the more generous the regulations, the better. No trade-offs)
 
I've got up about 100K paid on the social security tax and I have very little hope of getting anything back. Especially with the MAGA shit and all that and I'll be most possibly living in India
 
fishfingers15 said:
I've got up about 100K paid on the social security tax and I have very little hope of getting anything back. Especially with the MAGA shit and all that and I'll be most possibly living in India
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I regret to inform you, but you're just paying the existing beneficiaries who ended up living more than predicted. Oops.
 
MTF said:
The socialists reject the bolded part, which is why the choice seems obvious to them (and the more generous the regulations, the better. No trade-offs)
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A lot of them live in denial about Govt's wastefulness and inefficiency due to red tape.
 
crappycraperson said:
A lot of them live in denial about Govt's wastefulness and inefficiency due to red tape.
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Or they recognise that whereas the inefficiency of one government can be fixed by another, more competent one that they're able to hold accountable, there isn't really any way for the average person to tackle the inefficiency of a private corporation.
 
Cheesy said:
Or they recognise that whereas the inefficiency of one government can be fixed by another, more competent one that they're able to hold accountable, there isn't really any way for the average person to tackle the inefficiency of a private corporation.
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Let's be fair, Private corporate or big bad government, both are corruptible entities which may replace one another with no real solution on the horizon.
 
fishfingers15 said:
Let's be fair, Private corporate or big bad government, both are corruptible entities which may replace one another with no real solution on the horizon.
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They both are and I'm under no illusions that government can often be inefficient but with elections etc there's at least an incentive for them to operate in a manner which will benefit the people they're elected to serve. Otherwise they'll potentially be out on their arse. Private corporations don't really have the same incentive and so can treat workers harshly or, say, cause terrible damage to the environment without major consequences. Obviously it'll vary from company to company but particularly big major corporations can get away with a lot of that so long as they provide a service people need.
 
A functioning market* is a good incentive for a corporation to be efficient* with regards to output and technological improvement.
A functioning democracy* is a good incentive for government to design policies that serve the majority*.

* Many markets aren't functioning in terms of competition
* Efficiency may mean doing corrupt things.
* These barely exist
* These might not be great



In short, everything sucks.
Will try and reply in more detail later.
 
Eboue said:
What if I object strongly to the status quo? What if maintaining the hollowing out of America so that Wyatt Koch can create more shirts is ruining the lives of millions? it's not theoretical. Tens of thousands of Americans die every year due to lack of health care. As such I refuse to vote for a candidate who just last year said "single payer will never ever happen". How many people have died in wars that Hillary supported and still hasn't learned the lesson from? How could I claim to care about that and vote for someone who still thinks Libyan intervention was a good idea?
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If you object strongly to the status quo then I'm right alongside you. But that STILL doesn't mean that there wasn't a choice to be made, and that one choice was demonstrably worse than the other. How many more tens of thousands of Ameicans are going to die if Obamacare gets repealed? It was 40-45,000 a year before Obamacare right? As for wars, the current administration is talking about a 'limited strike' on NK, that could potentially lead to WW3. Is that the same as whatever interventionism Hillary could have been expected to engage in?

I genuinely understand your anger and share it, but what we have now if worse than anything that has come before. If more supreme court justices die or retire, then we're talking potentially decades of hard right conservative direction for the US.
 
Kentonio said:
If you object strongly to the status quo then I'm right alongside you. But that STILL doesn't mean that there wasn't a choice to be made, and that one choice was demonstrably worse than the other. How many more tens of thousands of Ameicans are going to die if Obamacare gets repealed? It was 40-45,000 a year before Obamacare right? As for wars, the current administration is talking about a 'limited strike' on NK, that could potentially lead to WW3. Is that the same as whatever interventionism Hillary could have been expected to engage in?

I genuinely understand your anger and share it, but what we have now if worse than anything that has come before. If more supreme court justices die or retire, then we're talking potentially decades of hard right conservative direction for the US.
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It's not worse than anything that has come before, at least not yet. The Iraq war is worse than anything Trump has done.
 
Eboue said:
It's not worse than anything that has come before, at least not yet. The Iraq war is worse than anything Trump has done.
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I think the seeds that have been planted now are going to work out far worse. Time will tell though.
 
Eboue said:
It's not worse than anything that has come before, at least not yet. The Iraq war is worse than anything Trump has done.
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Trump's only been in for a year. He's got plenty of time to beat that considering the way he conducts himself diplomatically.
 
Cheesy said:
Trump's only been in for a year. He's got plenty of time to beat that considering the way he conducts himself diplomatically.
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Also, Trump despite his moaning about interventionism during previous administrations, would've likely dealt with the likes of Saddam, the Taliban, Qaddafi and others in similar or more in more violent ways then his predecessors did.
 
Raoul said:
Also, Trump despite his moaning about interventionism during previous administrations, would've likely dealt with the likes of Saddam, the Taliban, Qaddafi and others in similar or more in more violent ways then his predecessors did.
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Maybe, but on the other hand he might not have engaged in ridiculous 'nation-building' efforts and imposed elections on these broken states and societies, so the fallout may have been less violent, who knows?
 
2cents said:
Maybe, but on the other hand he might not have engaged in ridiculous 'nation-building' efforts and imposed elections on these broken states and societies, so the fallout may have been less violent, who knows?
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The fallout would've been more violent as he would've simply deposed whoever was in charge then walked away, so you would've seen far more sectarian violence from the get go. The only downside to the so called nation building was that it wasn't done sooner to avoid the problems. Unfortunately, the doctrine that the reconstruction model was based on was only written during the wars, which caused a delay in the implementation. Then of course you have the mistake of Bremer undoing the Iraqi Army and starting from scratch, which had significant repercussions.

As for Trump - he has already dropped a MOAB in eastern Afghanistan just to say hello as well as greeted Assad by trashing one of his airfields, so its safe to say he's willing to go for the throat before engaging in discussions.
 
And here I am, in a solidly red state, and though I didn’t like her, I still voted for Hillary because as much as she goes against what I like, Trump goes against it even more.

But yeah... throw your swing state vote away. Yippie.
 
Raoul said:
he would've simply deposed whoever was in charge then walked away
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He may have planned to find a friendly replacement while keeping the basic state structures intact.

Raoul said:
The only downside to the so called nation building was that it wasn't done sooner to avoid the problems
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I'd say the major downside was the US trying to impose its vision on societies which it barely understood, while lacking the stomach to commit the kinds of resources (primarily manpower) and time required to ensure basic security and stability.
 
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