How can billionaires be so stoopid?
Excuse me for taking license. You are proposing radical changes in the economy that seem to include taking the property of others, and greatly enhancing the centralization of power to the federal government.
Furthermore, you don't take issue when others are called "stoopid", even when those who make this claim can't seem to muster a coherent argument.
I'm shocked to hear you say that you have no solutions. I really am.
terp said:
Excuse me for taking license. You are proposing radical changes in the economy that seem to include taking the property of others, and greatly enhancing the centralization of power to the federal government. I'm shocked to hear you say that you have no solutions.
I'm not presumptuous enough to think my one little brain has the solution to this. And I didn't propose anything.
again, you seem to think anyone who disagrees with you is an idiot. I know for sure I'm not an idiot. But I'm also not a genius who can figure this stuff out alone.
ml1 said:
terp said:I'm not presumptuous enough to think my one little brain has the solution to this. And I didn't propose anything.
Excuse me for taking license. You are proposing radical changes in the economy that seem to include taking the property of others, and greatly enhancing the centralization of power to the federal government. I'm shocked to hear you say that you have no solutions.
again, you seem to think anyone who disagrees with you is an idiot. I know for sure I'm not an idiot. But I'm also not a genius who can figure this stuff out alone.
Now who's putting words in other's mouths?
terp said:
tom said: The sentence I wrote was longer. Please work on your reading skills, for now you get a "D."You did qualify, but your qualification seemed to indicate that you didn't support ownership even if the good was gained through gaming the system. Feel free to explain that, but I assume'd it to mean that you feel as the very wealthy gain their wealth by gaming the system. Which is fine, but it's not much of a qualification.
No, it didn't; don't assume, read.
terp said:
drummerboy said: Anyway, of course there is no "moral right to ownership". What does that even mean? A moral right defined by the exchange of money? What? There are rights given to us by our society, which includes limited, legal rights to ownership, not moral. But it's no more than that. And morality doesn't enter into it.Talk to tom. He brought it up. Taking what other people own is wrong. It has been codified in our culture for millennia.
Circular reasoning. Does a bank robber "own" what he takes out of the vault? Does a car thief "own" your car. Did Trump "own" a casino building even though he refused to pay his contractors or lenders? Anyway, define "own."
terp said:
Nobody is arguing that any kind of wealth concentration is optimal. I don't know what kind of wealth concentration is optimal. Nor do you. I am arguing that it is immoral to take people's property.
Yet you insist that the current system and rates represent the best we can do. Until the GOP manages to cut taxes for their wealthy contributor base again (repeal the estate tax, anyone?). And then that will be the best we can do.
But please define "property," allowing for the economic inputs from society that allow such a thing to exist in the first place, as well as whatever mechanisms exist that allow the data stored in a computer somewhere to have actual value.
ml1 said:this is why I avoid arguing with you. It almost always ends with you putting words in my mouth in order to discredit me. If I didn't write it, you probably should not assume I think it.
Yes. He claims the follow the tenets of libertarianism; but I've noticed that one of the "tells" of the movement conservative is taking a sentence fragment out of context, misinterpreting what's left, then waving it around like it proves something.
terp said: ...You are proposing radical changes in the economy that seem to include taking the property of others, and greatly enhancing the centralization of power to the federal government. ... I'm shocked to hear you say that you have no solutions. I really am.
Changing the top marginal tax bracket is not a radical change in the economy. Full stop.
If the power of the federal government is enhanced enough that it can repair roads and bridges, make higher education affordable, protect consumers from abuse, help everyone afford their healthcare and get the new Gateway tunnel built -- then I'm all for it.
ml1 said:
terp said: Excuse me for taking license. You are proposing radical changes in the economy that seem to include taking the property of others, and greatly enhancing the centralization of power to the federal government. I'm shocked to hear you say that you have no solutions.I'm not presumptuous enough to think my one little brain has the solution to this. And I didn't propose anything. again, you seem to think anyone who disagrees with you is an idiot. I know for sure I'm not an idiot. But I'm also not a genius who can figure this stuff out alone.
ml1 and I don't need to be the ones with the solutions. There are a lot of very smart people with PhDs, Nobel Prizes, prestigious professorships and best-selling economics studies that have proposed solutions, and they've shown their work.
Are they perfect this-will-solve-everything-forever solutions? Likely not; but neither is cutting the corporate tax rate and eliminating the estate tax. But I don't see you complaining about those proposals.
tom said:
terp said:No, it didn't; don't assume, read.
tom said: The sentence I wrote was longer. Please work on your reading skills, for now you get a "D."You did qualify, but your qualification seemed to indicate that you didn't support ownership even if the good was gained through gaming the system. Feel free to explain that, but I assume'd it to mean that you feel as the very wealthy gain their wealth by gaming the system. Which is fine, but it's not much of a qualification.
So, what did you mean when you said?
tom said: I do not accept the premise that someone has an moral right of ownership to something, even if it was gained by gaming the system.
You're reacting violently to how I interpreted it. I can read. Maybe you could have stated it more clearly. A little help?
tom said:
ml1 and I don't need to be the ones with the solutions. There are a lot of very smart people with PhDs, Nobel Prizes, prestigious professorships and best-selling economics studies that have proposed solutions, and they've shown their work.
Are they perfect this-will-solve-everything-forever solutions? Likely not; but neither is cutting the corporate tax rate and eliminating the estate tax. But I don't see you complaining about those proposals.
To answer ml1's earlier question. I am not an economist. That being said, I know that those people do not know how to manage the economy. Nobody is that smart. That person does not exist.
I don't care what kind of degree or award they've been given. Nobody is that smart.
terp said:
tom said:To answer ml1's earlier question. I am not an economist. That being said, I know that those people do not know how to manage the economy. Nobody is that smart. That person does not exist.
ml1 and I don't need to be the ones with the solutions. There are a lot of very smart people with PhDs, Nobel Prizes, prestigious professorships and best-selling economics studies that have proposed solutions, and they've shown their work.
Are they perfect this-will-solve-everything-forever solutions? Likely not; but neither is cutting the corporate tax rate and eliminating the estate tax. But I don't see you complaining about those proposals.
I don't care what kind of degree or award they've been given. Nobody is that smart.
Yet governments have to do their best. Doing nothing is not a political option.
terp said:
You're reacting violently to how I interpreted it. I can read. Maybe you could have stated it more clearly. A little help?
First tell me if your initial interpretation was careless, or deceitful.
tom said:
Yet there remains:
1) an economy;
2) the need to manage it.
Efforts to centrally manage an economy are doomed to failure.
tjohn said:
Yet governments have to do their best. Doing nothing is not a political option.
I would agree that populist approaches like this are good politics. Unfortunately, good politics is awful economics the vast majority of the time.
tom said:
terp said:First tell me if your initial interpretation was careless, or deceitful.
You're reacting violently to how I interpreted it. I can read. Maybe you could have stated it more clearly. A little help?
As you know tom, while I may question others, I'm fully earnest in these exchanges. If I was mistaken, I figured you'd correct me. So, please do.
terp said:tjohn said:I would agree that populist approaches like this are good politics. Unfortunately, good politics is awful economics the vast majority of the time.
Yet governments have to do their best. Doing nothing is not a political option.
Governments are going to work to manage national economies. Doing nothing is not an option, so the discussion needs to be on how to best muddle through.
terp said:
ml1 said:Now who's putting words in other's mouths?
terp said:I'm not presumptuous enough to think my one little brain has the solution to this. And I didn't propose anything.
Excuse me for taking license. You are proposing radical changes in the economy that seem to include taking the property of others, and greatly enhancing the centralization of power to the federal government. I'm shocked to hear you say that you have no solutions.
again, you seem to think anyone who disagrees with you is an idiot. I know for sure I'm not an idiot. But I'm also not a genius who can figure this stuff out alone.
are you telling me the tone you're taking with me isn't totally condescending?
ml1 said:
terp said:are you telling me the tone you're taking with me isn't totally condescending?
ml1 said:Now who's putting words in other's mouths?
terp said:I'm not presumptuous enough to think my one little brain has the solution to this. And I didn't propose anything.
Excuse me for taking license. You are proposing radical changes in the economy that seem to include taking the property of others, and greatly enhancing the centralization of power to the federal government. I'm shocked to hear you say that you have no solutions.
again, you seem to think anyone who disagrees with you is an idiot. I know for sure I'm not an idiot. But I'm also not a genius who can figure this stuff out alone.
It is not. I'm really shocked how cavalier you and others are being. The proposal seems to be to remake large parts of the economy and having others pay for it. Yet, there doesn't seem to be a grasp that any of this will even work. It really seems awfully cavalier.
When you don't have good answers, you tend to lash out at my tone. As if my tone is any different from others here.
terp said:
ml1 said:It is not. I'm really shocked how cavalier you and others are being. The proposal seems to be to remake large parts of the economy and having others pay for it. Yet, there doesn't seem to be a grasp that any of this will even work. It really seems awfully cavalier.
terp said:are you telling me the tone you're taking with me isn't totally condescending?
ml1 said:Now who's putting words in other's mouths?
terp said:I'm not presumptuous enough to think my one little brain has the solution to this. And I didn't propose anything.
Excuse me for taking license. You are proposing radical changes in the economy that seem to include taking the property of others, and greatly enhancing the centralization of power to the federal government. I'm shocked to hear you say that you have no solutions.
again, you seem to think anyone who disagrees with you is an idiot. I know for sure I'm not an idiot. But I'm also not a genius who can figure this stuff out alone.
When you don't have good answers, you tend to lash out at my tone. As if my tone is any different from others here.
How is it "lashing out"? Seriously, the tone I'm taking is pretty measured. No name calling, no insults, no caps, no exclamation points. I'm simply pointing out that you often a) make assumptions about my motives that almost always make me look stupid or corrupt and b) address me as if you believe you are considerably smarter and more insightful than me. And hey, maybe you are. I'm not claiming to be the smartest person around. But some advice -- if you are smarter than someone, it irritates them if you lord it over them. So indulge me. Let me think I'm not stupid.
And how am I being cavalier? To point out that Jeff Bezos has more money than a typical person can earn in a million years? You seem to be lumping me in with people who are saying stuff that I'm not.
terp said:
Taking what other people own is wrong. It has been codified in our culture for millennia.
I'm not sure whether you are saying that taking other people's property has been codified in our culture for millennia or the fact that it is wrong has been codified in our culture for millennia.
One could argue that both are true and that such hypocrisy is at the core of our culture.
If you live in the United States of America you live on land that was once occupied by aboriginal tribes that did not even have our concept of ownership. That land was taken over through violence against those people. If you live in certain parts of the Country you live on land that was taken first by violence by Europeans against native Americans than by one European Nation against another, and/or then by the USA against Mexico and/or then by the USA against the CSA.
We do not even have to get into the kidnapping and enslavement of Africans by Europeans.
So why is now the time for all this theft to stop? And why should those who benefited by the previous theft be entitled to keep the spoils?
Terp,
what I don't get is why you think that raising some taxes on the wealthiest Americans is some massive attempt to control the economy.
Seems like it's just some fine tuning, more than anything.
terp said:
It is not. I'm really shocked how cavalier you and others are being. The proposal seems to be to remake large parts of the economy and having others pay for it. Yet, there doesn't seem to be a grasp that any of this will even work. It really seems awfully cavalier.
When you don't have good answers, you tend to lash out at my tone. As if my tone is any different from others here.
That fact is, it does not remake large parts of the economy. It raises the top marginal rate on a fairly small number of people. And somebody has to pay for this stuff, the military doesn't work for free and highways don't build themselves.
Our grasp that will even work derives from the fact that in the past it actually did work.
Marginal tax rates were much higher than this in the 1950s and 1960s and it was a time of unparalleled improvement in the lives of the great majority of Americans. By contrast, the period since the Reagan tax breaks of 1981 have been a time of stagnation for the great majority of Americans.
tl;dr
When top rates were really high most people did really well.
When they were lowered most people didn't do as well.
Medicare for All would remake nearly one-fifth of the American economy.
2/3 of U.S. health care spending is already coming from government sources
https://www.wbur.org/commonhealth/2016/01/22/health-care-publicly-financed-single-payer
That would be pretty complicated now. But I imagine that everyone -- doctors, medical office administrators, PAs, benefits managers, patients -- would endorse a big change that would rid themselves of a mountain of red tape and paperwork. Probably everybody except the health insurance companies.
There's so much waste in a system that requires additional hires just to work with the insurers, submitting and re-submitting claims, contesting denials. Plus keeping track of who is in-network and who is out-of-network, and what's in insurer A's formulary today vs. what was in insurer A's formulary yesterday. And probably a ton of stuff I've never had the pleasure of dealing with.
All just to make sure that doctors and nurses get paid? The system is really a mess right now.
DaveSchmidt said:
Medicare for All would remake nearly one-fifth of the American economy.
"remake" is carrying quite a load in that sentence.
ml1 said:
2/3 of U.S. health care spending is already coming from government sources
https://www.wbur.org/commonhealth/2016/01/22/health-care-publicly-financed-single-payer
drummerboy said:
"remake" is carrying quite a load in that sentence.
I'm assuming even current government spending would have to be managed in new ways. It wouldn't be "Medicare, Medicaid and the V.A. remain as they are, and we just figure out a separate system for the rest."
Seems like a "remake" load to me.
I also still recommend the Vox article.
considering that there is no actual proposal for "Medicare for all," a person could plausibly argue that it would be a remake of the industry. Or just as plausibly argue that it won't be.
Here, it's all a coordinated approach to the industry, determined via federal govt policy and renegotiated annually with the States in the Heads of Govt meeting that retweaks the allocations each receives for the future financial year.
This approach lets all lobby groups collate data up to 6 months prior, and work for a political cycle 12 months ahead, whether State or federal (often they're concurrent).
Meanwhile the Bureau of Statistics is still collecting and collating data from constant tax, insurance and Medicare input (despite the ABS being drastically underfunded in a cynical Budget move some years ago), so we know how everyone's responding to this ghastly heatwave; how the month-long fires in Tasmania have affected health and wellbeing, in turn affecting future requirements for respiratory disease and mental health management (Tasmania doesn't usually burn like the mainland States); added to to health care budgets for WA, SA and Vic post-fire events.
Some of our richest people are in fact people who head health insurance companies, and health care facility owners. They're constantly lobbying govt on policy for Medicare, employment, financial policies, environmental management etc just so they get more $$$ and greater expansion with less scrutiny.
They don't want transparency or accountability in government, they don't care about vested interests if it goes their way. H'm. Doesn't sound like the way democracy is meant to work, to me.
terp said:tom said:As you know tom, while I may question others, I'm fully earnest in these exchanges. If I was mistaken, I figured you'd correct me. So, please do.
terp said:First tell me if your initial interpretation was careless, or deceitful.
You're reacting violently to how I interpreted it. I can read. Maybe you could have stated it more clearly. A little help?
Just a friendly reminder. I'm very curious and await your reply.
ml1 said:
How is it "lashing out"? Seriously, the tone I'm taking is pretty measured. No name calling, no insults, no caps, no exclamation points. I'm simply pointing out that you often a) make assumptions about my motives that almost always make me look stupid or corrupt and b) address me as if you believe you are considerably smarter and more insightful than me. And hey, maybe you are. I'm not claiming to be the smartest person around. But some advice -- if you are smarter than someone, it irritates them if you lord it over them. So indulge me. Let me think I'm not stupid.
And how am I being cavalier? To point out that Jeff Bezos has more money than a typical person can earn in a million years? You seem to be lumping me in with people who are saying stuff that I'm not.
Lashing out is probably not the best choice of words. But, every time you reference me, you always preface it with "I really don't like debating with you because you're kind of a dick" or what have you.
I think I've stated this many times in the past. I do not think you're stupid. In fact, quite the opposite. This is why I sometimes get frustrated. I know most of what you read is going to give you a specific POV and you will get that POV repeatedly, because you are hearing what is considered a very mainstream perspective.
I hear that perspective all the time. I am trying to show you(and others) a different perspective. However, it seems it is often dismissed without consideration.
Regarding the cavalier comment. I think there are 2 issues that are getting conflated at times in this thread.
First is the M4A issue. That is a major change to the economy, that IMO is not likely to end up anything like the promises(much like the ACA- hey you can keep your plan if you like your plan!) and is likely to do real harm to our healthcare system and our economy at large. I think people here are pretty light on the details while prescribing what I think is a very serious change.
Second is the movement to introduce confiscatory taxes on the wealthy. I don't think anyone should be subject to these types of tax levels. Jeff Bezos has configured resources in ways that nobody else has in history and he is being rewarded mightily for it. While, as of late, he has been on the receiving end of political favors, he has done a lot to add value to our lives. If one takes issue with some of his deals with government, I would approach that problem, I would not look to slap confiscatory rates in the form of extremely high income and/or wealth taxes.
Apologies if you haven't been arguing for either one of these. My impression is that you have been, but it is possible I am mistaken. If so, I apologize.
tom said:
That would be pretty complicated now. But I imagine that everyone -- doctors, medical office administrators, PAs, benefits managers, patients -- would endorse a big change that would rid themselves of a mountain of red tape and paperwork. Probably everybody except the health insurance companies.
There's so much waste in a system that requires additional hires just to work with the insurers, submitting and re-submitting claims, contesting denials. Plus keeping track of who is in-network and who is out-of-network, and what's in insurer A's formulary today vs. what was in insurer A's formulary yesterday. And probably a ton of stuff I've never had the pleasure of dealing with.
All just to make sure that doctors and nurses get paid? The system is really a mess right now.
Why wait for some major piece of legislation. Hospitals can do what these guys have done already. Again, they are offering services at 1/6 - 1/10 the price of "not for profit" hospitals.
LOST said:
terp said:I'm not sure whether you are saying that taking other people's property has been codified in our culture for millennia or the fact that it is wrong has been codified in our culture for millennia.
Taking what other people own is wrong. It has been codified in our culture for millennia.
One could argue that both are true and that such hypocrisy is at the core of our culture.
If you live in the United States of America you live on land that was once occupied by aboriginal tribes that did not even have our concept of ownership. That land was taken over through violence against those people. If you live in certain parts of the Country you live on land that was taken first by violence by Europeans against native Americans than by one European Nation against another, and/or then by the USA against Mexico and/or then by the USA against the CSA.
We do not even have to get into the kidnapping and enslavement of Africans by Europeans.
So why is now the time for all this theft to stop? And why should those who benefited by the previous theft be entitled to keep the spoils?
Unfortunately, it is difficult to go back generations and right the ledgers. You could play this game forever. We all have ancestors that were enslaved, were victims of violence, oppression, etc. You don't have to go very far back in my family tree where my ancestors were victims of this type of thing. In fact, some came here to flee the violence.
Now should always be time for the theft to stop. It is interesting that we live in a time and a place where people have enough leisure time to identify all of these wrongdoings and many are very vocal about them and ask for justice in a time where even those earning below average income have a top %1 quality of life on a historical scale.
I would say that a better question is why are we only idealists within the borders of this nation? After all, these borders are artificial. They are lines on a map. Completely conceptual and man made.
Why don't we try to cure poverty at the global level? Many of us live lives that the global poor couldn't even dream of. In fact, the global top 1% earns about $32,400. Earlier, someone posted that the average income in our 2 towns was $116,000. That is almost 4 times over this top 1% threshold. I would propose that instead of focusing on your half measures, we should tax all income over $32,400 at 70%. Perhaps we can all cure global poverty together. Who's with me?
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this is why I avoid arguing with you. It almost always ends with you putting words in my mouth in order to discredit me. If I didn't write it, you probably should not assume I think it.
I haven't said any of those things. I haven't proposed any solutions. And you're right, I'm not an economist and I don't have any solutions. Are you an economist?
All I do know, is that there are a lot of people with what should be good middle class jobs who live paycheck to paycheck. And there are a lot of fantastically wealthy people. That just seems like an imbalance that might have SOME solution.