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Explain the Hillary Scare to a foreigner

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Posts

  • electricitylikesmeelectricitylikesme Registered User regular
    Irond Will wrote: »
    Yar wrote: »
    Irond Will wrote: »
    nexuscrawler wrote: »
    They need to change the tax law to not fuck you in the ass if you don't have kids
    You're still saving money. Because you don't have kids.
    For real. It's not like you save money by having kids. It's like people who pay more in interest on their homes than they have to, for the tax benefit. You're paying $100 more to a bank to avoid paying $10 more to the government, go you.
    I mean if I were all fiscal conservative asshole, I guess I could be all "but why am I subsidizing other peoples' bad decisions with my tax money if people want kids then dammit don't make me pay for it". But, really, parents by and large have a lot of expenses, troubles, and time commitments, and I don't mind cutting them a break.
    Depends how directly they feel they're subsidizing other people though, since I distinctly remember dismissing this type of argument when VSU came in in Australia - one of them was "student unions provide child support to single parents". Ok, except they do that by taking the money of other students to provide a service that they should be campaigning for the government to provide - except they don't, they're government campaigning was limited to "lol labor".

    People don't like feeling like they're directly paying for other people to be dumbasses or raise dysfunctional teens who will fall into the same demographic that tried to mug them last week, nor do they like feeling like they're being especially targeted for this duty unfairly - which let's face it, is how the American tax laws tend to shift cash around (by not taxing the rich etc.).

    Dis' wrote: »
    Cancer is when cells stop letting the body mooch off their hard work - clearly a community of like-minded cells should isolate themselves and do the best job each can do, even if the rest of the body collapses!
    • Agree Awesome
  • PicardathonPicardathon Registered User
    I'd rather fund that guy then make him mug me to get his drug fix.
    I don't understand the big deal either. Actually I don't think the crap that republicans give her is particularly special when compared to the venom they were spewing during her husband's administration, which I think is the problem. For some reason the word "Clinton" turns some republicans into crazed banshees and I don't think thats healthy for them or our political process.
    I'm for Obama, but thats just because he's awesome, and no ones found out about Rezko yet.

    Spoiler:
    • Agree Awesome
  • YarYar Registered User regular
    RedShell wrote: »
    HRC is not advocating government ownership in either Health Care or Energy. At all. She's proposing government programs related to those two topics, but the phrase 'government ownership' is pretty much an empty partisan smear that doesn't match up to reality very well. At least in those two cases.
    I don't see it that way.

    • Agree Awesome
  • LavaKnightLavaKnight Registered User regular
    Yar wrote: »
    RedShell wrote: »
    HRC is not advocating government ownership in either Health Care or Energy. At all. She's proposing government programs related to those two topics, but the phrase 'government ownership' is pretty much an empty partisan smear that doesn't match up to reality very well. At least in those two cases.
    I don't see it that way.

    Can you find us a quote or something? Like someone said earlier, Hillary's the last democratic candidate I would expect to nationalize, or absorb into government entire industries. Kucinich? Sure. Edwards? He seems pretty sincere about helping the lower social classes. Obama? I'm not sure, but he is more left than Hillary.

    But that's not to say I've heard any of them say anything aside from "healthcare needs to be fixed" etc...

    • Agree Awesome
  • Irond WillIrond Will Super Moderator, Moderator mod
    electricitylikesme wrote: »
    Depends how directly they feel they're subsidizing other people though, since I distinctly remember dismissing this type of argument when VSU came in in Australia - one of them was "student unions provide child support to single parents". Ok, except they do that by taking the money of other students to provide a service that they should be campaigning for the government to provide - except they don't, they're government campaigning was limited to "lol labor".

    People don't like feeling like they're directly paying for other people to be dumbasses or raise dysfunctional teens who will fall into the same demographic that tried to mug them last week, nor do they like feeling like they're being especially targeted for this duty unfairly - which let's face it, is how the American tax laws tend to shift cash around (by not taxing the rich etc.).
    Redistribution or unequal tax burdens aren't necessarily good, but I can get behind them when they help counterbalance the real economic needs and the real economic inequity in the country. I'm not a parent and don't really plan on being one, but I don't think that, in broad strokes, it's unreasonable to assume that parents need the money a little more urgently than non-parents.

    But, yeah, giving the rich byzantine workarounds to avoid paying any but a perfunctory level of taxation while soaking the middle class is horrible, as are laws aimed at raising taxes on the honest-to-god poor in order to "give them the dignity earned from knowing they're pulling their share" or whatever.

    • Agree Awesome
  • nexuscrawlernexuscrawler Registered User regular
    I just feel like it's designed to punish you for not living a standard lifestyle. I don't make much money, I own very little(no house or large assets) and I have no kids. By our current tax code I deserve to get anally raped by the government because of this.

    SC2 : nexuscrawler.381
    • Agree Awesome
  • ShintoShinto __BANNED USERS
    nexuscrawler wrote: »
    I just feel like it's designed to punish you for not living a standard lifestyle. I don't make much money, I own very little(no house or large assets) and I have no kids. By our current tax code I deserve to get anally raped by the government because of this.

    I very much doubt that if you don't make much money you are getting "anally raped" by taxes.

    • Agree Awesome
  • GorakGorak Registered User
    Savant wrote: »
    Gorak wrote: »
    Yar wrote: »
    Look, that is my surmisal of HRC. Maybe I'm wrong. But everything I've read or heard from her tells me that she is very, very, pro-government ownership, and that she tries to hide it to avoid a political backlash.

    What exactly is the problem with government ownership? If an industry is run by the government for the benefit of the people, then I don't see an inherent problem with that other than rich people can't use that industry to make themselves richer.

    Does anyone know of a theoretical reason why government ownership is an inherently bad thing?

    It's situational. The government has less motivation to be profitable, and less motivation to be efficient. More efficient and productive business benefits both sides of the equation. Which means the government is better suited for activities for which the market lacks a good solution or is disfunctional.

    There are problems that can result in the power structures of both, but they are slightly different. For political positions this means that a politician will have power based on their ability to secure politicial capital, for democracies this will be in large part their popularity. However, what's popular or bodes well with the power structure may not be what is most effective or efficient.

    For businesses, the motivation is to maximize the profit or at very least maximize how much you are getting paid. So there is the drive to be more effective and sucessful, but there is also a lack of care for externalities and motivations to cheat the system. This is why anarchistic capitalism is a bad idea.

    I agree there, but none of that says that government ownership is inherently bad. Having a government owned industry also doesn't preclude private ownership as well. For infrastructure as important as health or energy there is good reason to want a non-profit motivated group running it or at least providing a guaranteed minimum standard - particularly with something as important as health. You also have the benefit of it being headed by an elected official who has to answer to the public.
    Anyways, if someone suggests that everything should be government run or everything should be privately run, then it's almost assuredly a bad idea. Industries should only be government run if there is a strong compelling interest for that. And 'because some guys could get rich on it' is generally a pretty weak motivation by itself.

    Either of the extremes are going to be bad and I don't really have a problem with people getting rich - it was just the only definitive downside I could think of (a downside if you happen to be a rich industrialist). I only really asked because I normally hear the phrase "government ownership" thrown out as an argument that needs no justification - much like using socialist as a pejorative.

    • Agree Awesome
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