Right Wing Terrorists Arrested In Kidnaping Plot Of Governor Whitmer

[SoCal Deek]

30 minutes ago, Tiberius said:

I want an end to the war on the poor. A serious look at the war on drugs to start. 

There’s a war on the poor?

How about we stop shipping middle class manufacturing jobs overseas? How about we make our own energy? How about we stop illegally importing cheap labor? How about we move to a flat tax so top earners aren’t incentivized to inflate their wages? Just a few suggestions off the top of my head. 

[Tiberius]

Just now, SoCal Deek said:

There’s a war on the poor?

How about we stop shipping middle class manufacturing jobs overseas? How about we make our own energy? How about we stop illegally importing cheap labor? How about we move to a flat tax so top earners aren’t incentivized to inflate their wages? Just a few suggestions off the top of my head. 

War on drugs is all about hurting poor people. Big Pharma making the drugs and money are laughing 

 

Manufacturing over seas means consumers pay less. 

 

Green energy is a great idea! Republicans are fighting to kill it, to kill energy independence 

 

Immigration makes us stronger 

 

Flat tax is dumb and regressive 

 

 

[HamSandwhich]

1 hour ago, Tiberius said:

I want an end to the war on the poor. A serious look at the war on drugs to start. 

 

With Texas turning blue I have no problem at all with the electoral college.  Love ❤️  it.! Pretty soon, we can start locking Republicans out of the WH using it. 

 

Again, BLM/Antifa have not tried kidnappings, massacres (like right wingers are doing) bomb plots or trying to undermine faith in our voting system, like the president is. 

I’ll believe Texas is blue when I see it. We can agree with socio-economic issues as long as you’re not trying to make it a race baiting issue. I will never agree with a socialist/communist approach to it.
 

Did you even see the video one of your so called “right wingers” posted about their dislike of all government, including his hatred of Dems and republicans? He was not right wing, he was all anarchy. 

BLM and Antifa are left wing antagonists and they do cause harm to others. BLM is going into neighborhoods, what is the next step. There will be escalations if we don’t stop it. Burning down buildings, shooting others point blank to protect their friends of color from a non-imminent threat is dangerous. Political violence is dangerous no matter what side. It’s coming from the left predominantly but anytime there is violence, the Dems and media want to do a slight of hand and say it’s right wing. It’s so easy to see through. 

[Tiberius]

14 minutes ago, HamSandwhich said:

I’ll believe Texas is blue when I see it. We can agree with socio-economic issues as long as you’re not trying to make it a race baiting issue. I will never agree with a socialist/communist approach to it.
 

Did you even see the video one of your so called “right wingers” posted about their dislike of all government, including his hatred of Dems and republicans? He was not right wing, he was all anarchy. 

BLM and Antifa are left wing antagonists and they do cause harm to others. BLM is going into neighborhoods, what is the next step. There will be escalations if we don’t stop it. Burning down buildings, shooting others point blank to protect their friends of color from a non-imminent threat is dangerous. Political violence is dangerous no matter what side. It’s coming from the left predominantly but anytime there is violence, the Dems and media want to do a slight of hand and say it’s right wing. It’s so easy to see through. 

Texas has the same demographics as California and changing more every day. Just a matter of time. 

 

The war on drugs is being prosecuted racially. Blacks and people of color and poor whites get arrested, incarcerated and given records at a much higher rate than the middle class, who use drugs just as much. 

 

This rioting you are talking about is way overstated. The bloody masssares have been carried out by bigots. 

[Teddy KGB]

2 minutes ago, Tiberius said:

Texas has the same demographics as California and changing more every day. Just a matter of time. 

 

The war on drugs is being prosecuted racially. Blacks and people of color and poor whites get arrested, incarcerated and given records at a much higher rate than the middle class, who use drugs just as much. 

 

This rioting you are talking about is way overstated. The bloody masssares have been carried out by bigots. 

It’s everyone else’s fault you chose to work at a laundromat.    
 

Now change your thread title. 

[Tiberius]

3 hours ago, Teddy KGB said:

It’s everyone else’s fault you chose to work at a laundromat.    
 

Now change your thread title. 

😂 

 

Request again denied 😂 

[leh-nerd skin-erd]

18 hours ago, WideNine said:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for the reply.  I read it, considered your thoughts and rejected most of it. 
 

1.  The disenfranchising doesn’t come from harsh attacks ads (old as time, predictable as the rain, existed long before Trump caused a bunch of knots in the backside portion of liberal underwear), it comes in this case from post election activity with the intent to unseat the president and nullify the vote. 
 

-My bottom line is simple—when you say the president is a lying treasonous scumbag, that’s one thing.  When you say that, a panel of sharks is installed with virtually unlimited power and resources, that’s another.  When you say, do that, and allow 3 years unrestricted access to just about everything, when all is said and done, you better knock him out and take him away in cuffs. John Brennan—keeper of secrets and burier of the suddenly dead—said they had the goods on Trump.  Mueller report ends with barely a whimper from a doddering old fool with nothing. 0. Zilch. 
 

The finger flippers don’t give a crap.  They keep saying I’m the deplorable. 
 

2. Trump on taxes.  The IRS figures that stuff out.  Get back to me on the tax evasion charges.  I’ll wait.  Now, as far as complaints by nitwits about taxes, that’s fair game and in my opinion doesn’t go in the finger flipper category.  
 

3. Trump on spending.  Again, fair game.  Say what you want, vote accordingly.  There was a time that mattered to me but since no political party seems intent in reconciling that particular issue, I don’t worry about it anymore. 
 

4. Global respect.  3 nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize based on peace keeping efforts across the globe.  Reorganization of priorities as it relates to NATO. Strengthens alliance with Israel. No new war efforts on a global level.  I suppose if global respect is earned by screwing up Benghazi and leaving Americans to die, well, I’m not down with that.  I’ve long believed amour respect internationally stretched as far as our dollars are lined up.  Be that as it may, if global respect from manscaped Frenchmen is a hit button issue, fair game. 
 

5. Sophomoric attacks.  Fair game, but only insofar as it takes an awful lot of hubris to completely and flatly disregard decades of political mudslinging and pretend that’s new to a Trump.  They called him all sorts of names and implied all sorts of things early on, he simply supersized in reply.  Hillary Clinton tossed the word racism around like her husband tossed clumpy albino salsa on interns.  This argument is weak.  
 

6. “Any deeper connections to Russia...I don’t know...but...”.  Look, we’re having a conversation and I appreciate the dialogue, but if you’ll permit me the following, said in the voice of an old friend you’ve got a great relationship with and who tells you the truth when you need it:  “Get the 🤬 outta here with that BS”.  There’s nothing there, there never was, and the reason you don’t know is because you’ve been bamboozled and your subconscious has not accepted it yet. This is finger flipping territory. 
 

7. 30 years of service was not Trump, it was Brett Kavanaugh.  If you believe the attempt to destroy him in front of the nation was fair and just, you’re a finger flipper.   If you think lining up to vote for Harris and Gropey Joe is a vote for civility and unity, you’re kidding yourself. 
 

8. I am a lifelong R but did not support the Clinton investigation.  I was a young man, viewed it as you did but as I look back now, I think Clinton is a classic predator.  He’s also one of the dumbest smart guys on the planet, and got himself into a pickle with his, uh, pickle.  I will point out, too, that all the fainting libs who stridently scream #ibelieveher seems extraordinarily cozy with the likes of a Bill Clinton and Joe Biden. 
 

9.  Joe Biden has moved far left based on his rhetoric and platform positions.  He’s not Venezuela left but he’s moving there. 
 

10. As I said earlier, the civil discourse argument is weak, soft and would require me to ignore decades of political hectoring to spend much time answering.  I think what people really want is to watch their guys pummel the other guy with racist.homophobic.xenophobic.bigoted characterizations and pretend to be offended when he replies thereafter like some societal norm has been violated. It hasn’t, it wasn’t and it will be that way forever. DJT is just spectacularly good at telling someone who trashed him to F off.  
 

You’ve been civil,  you seem to be consistently and I appreciate that.  I’d appreciate you and lib voters demanding accountability on the bogus Russia case that jammed up 3 years of my candidates time, but since that doesn’t happen, I just recognize that’s the way the game has to be played. 

 

 

 

 

[ComradeKayAdams]

On 10/11/2020 at 3:36 AM, Capco said:

 

 

Hi, Capco! Do you know the source and the date for that graphic? I’m surprised to see the Democratic Party positioned to the left of the Western world’s median party line. The voter base of the Democrats may be moving left, but the party leadership under Obama, Hillary, and Biden has been a continuation of the slow rightward drift since the 1990’s (at least on the meat-and-potatoes issues in economics, health care, environment, and foreign policy). On the European side of my surprise, I must be mentally stuck in the era before politicians like Marine Le Pen were considered serious political candidates. European politics shifted sharply to the right during the Syrian Civil War refugee crisis. Maybe I have been too slow to realize just how large and enduring the shift has been. What complicates this graphic are big policy issues that don’t fit so neatly into the simple left-right political spectrum anymore (namely economic nationalism versus free trade globalism). Also, some of the recent major losses for the European left (Jeremy Corbyn the most notable) can be attributed to candidate personality weaknesses and political strategy blunders more so than to unfavorable leftist policies.

 

I find myself agreeing with a lot of what you type, so I’m curious to know what you consider your political ideological orientation to be? My own is Revisionist Marxism, somewhere on that red “social democracy” rectangular region of the image you posted…somewhere between AOC and Tulsi Gabbard (who, incidentally, are now squabbling with each other over ballot harvesting voter fraud…I’m taking Tulsi’s side).

 

On 10/11/2020 at 2:28 PM, Cinga said:

I told you schools have been teaching wrong and you quote curriculum? The main problem is, some things really are as simple as a straight line. If you ant quotes on socialism and fascism, here you go:
https://libquotes.com/adolf-hitler/quotes/socialism

 

Cinga, I highlighted the text where I believe you went wrong in your thinking. A lot of important nuances are lost when you try to force the authoritarian/libertarian spectrum onto a one-dimensional line. Consider splitting public policy issues into two dimensions: all of the economic freedom ones and then all of the personal freedom ones. A common mistake people make when thinking along the traditional left-right 1-D spectrum is that they place too much weight on the economic freedom issues and overlook the civil liberties stuff. It’s a very understandable mistake because we Americans now take for granted the full list of civil rights victories that have been achieved for women, minorities, non-Christians, and LGBTQ over the past generation. But we can’t forget the unresolved left-wing libertarian issues like police brutality, protest/civil disobedience rights, immigrant human rights, drug legalization, animal rights, capital punishment, euthanasia, and whistleblower protections…or right-wing libertarian ones like gun rights and internet neutrality/censorship/first amendment stuff…or poorly defined ones like abortion and affirmative action.

 

So once we move from a 1-D line to a 2-D square, I hope the distinctions between socialism and fascism become a bit more clear. Socialism doesn’t technically address the personal freedoms, but it’s traditionally associated with a generally more libertarian perspective on these matters. Fascism is authoritarian on both the economic and personal freedoms, although the government’s economic intrusion is different in nature from that of socialism with respect to how ownership of the means of production is organized. When you apply these distinctions to Hitler’s historical “accomplishments” as a political leader, you will see that he ruled as a quintessential fascist and not at all like a socialist. In fact, Hitler thought of workers as inherently inferior to business owners and not to be trusted with large shares of responsibility. The use of the “socialist” label in the “Nazi” title was hollow, done solely for political strategic gain in Germany between 1918-1933. “Actions speak louder than words” is the apt maxim here. Hitler can say to historians that he is a socialist…just like I can say to TSW posters that I am everyone’s favorite GMFB host!!

 

My biggest frustration with modern American political discourse is how sloppy we all tend to be with political labels, including “socialism” and “fascism.” I’m guilty of this, too, from time to time! Words should have specific meanings and political labels should have specific definitions. Political labels should be applied with historical context in mind. Is Trump actually a fascist? Well he certainly dabbles in strongly worded law-and-order rhetoric and nebulous racial dog whistling, but compared to early twentieth century European politics? In practice, I’d say of course not! Political labels should also have well-understood demarcations among policy gradations. Much of what gets called “socialism” these days can be more accurately described as “mixed economies.” Referring to Biden, Harris, Pelosi, and Schumer as “socialists” is cringeworthy to me (they are “liberals”). Referring to AOC or Bernie as “socialists” is still problematic because they are proponents of mixed economies, but it’s acceptable enough to me because a nationalized health care industry would represent a significant chunk of our total economy.

 

For my final point before turning my attention to the Bills game, I encourage everyone to challenge the common association of authoritarianism with tyranny and libertarianism with freedom. With either authoritarianism or statism or totalitarianism, I’m referring to a simple definition of more government control, while with libertarianism I mean less government control. When you take that 1-D line of yours and keep moving from authoritarianism toward libertarianism, you will escape government tyranny but will then approach another type of tyrannical dystopia called “corporate tyranny.” The American libertarian movement (and therefore most of the PPP forum) aggressively denies the manifold losses of economic freedom under corporate tyranny (dissolution of unions, no minimum wage laws, no child labor laws, monopolies, crony capitalism, all types of market failures, etc.), so let’s focus on another type of freedom that is near and dear to my heart. Let’s try expanding that 1-D line into a 5-D hyperdimensional public policy cube (lol…all my wonderful readers are hating on me now…) featuring economic issues, personal/cultural freedom issues, foreign policy, political rights, and environmental issues. I’m very libertarian on the middle three, but the devilish little eco-socialist in me wants everyone to focus on that environmental “dimension.” More government control in this domain can irrationally limit economic growth, but it can also INCREASE our individual ENVIRONMENTAL freedoms from corporate tyranny by protecting our health and property and financial resources from all the negative economic externalities (i.e. pollution) that companies otherwise get away with under free-market capitalism. There are other types of tyranny besides the corporate one, of course, with which government can help rectify. Religious tyranny played a dominant role for much of recorded human history, but its effect has (mostly) receded for the West with the help of government (and scientific reasoning). I would also generalize the word “tyranny” a bit to include genetic tyranny, biological/physical limit tyranny, random life misfortune tyranny…government CAN have a positive role in some aspects of these domains, but yeah…it’s complicated…

[Capco]

23 hours ago, RealKayAdams said:

Hi, Capco! Do you know the source and the date for that graphic? I’m surprised to see the Democratic Party positioned to the left of the Western world’s median party line. The voter base of the Democrats may be moving left, but the party leadership under Obama, Hillary, and Biden has been a continuation of the slow rightward drift since the 1990’s (at least on the meat-and-potatoes issues in economics, health care, environment, and foreign policy). On the European side of my surprise, I must be mentally stuck in the era before politicians like Marine Le Pen were considered serious political candidates. European politics shifted sharply to the right during the Syrian Civil War refugee crisis. Maybe I have been too slow to realize just how large and enduring the shift has been. What complicates this graphic are big policy issues that don’t fit so neatly into the simple left-right political spectrum anymore (namely economic nationalism versus free trade globalism). Also, some of the recent major losses for the European left (Jeremy Corbyn the most notable) can be attributed to candidate personality weaknesses and political strategy blunders more so than to unfavorable leftist policies.

 

I find myself agreeing with a lot of what you type, so I’m curious to know what you consider your political ideological orientation to be? My own is Revisionist Marxism, somewhere on that red “social democracy” rectangular region of the image you posted…somewhere between AOC and Tulsi Gabbard (who, incidentally, are now squabbling with each other over ballot harvesting voter fraud…I’m taking Tulsi’s side).

 

Hi, RealKayAdams.  This is the original piece from June 26, 2019:  https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/26/opinion/sunday/republican-platform-far-right.html

 

I agree that the main weakness of many left leaning candidates is personality weakness and strategy blunders rather than policies.  It amazes me sometimes how they can't articulate what are genuinely good ideas.  

 

I think I'm very close to where you reside on the spectrum.  I like many Marxist principles but I'm not so far to the left (or so far authoritarian) that I would call myself a Marxist-Leninist.  I think in the (very) long run communism of some form will prevail, if only out of necessity.  Capitalism is fascinating in that it has sown the seeds of its very own destruction; it's only a matter of time.  

 

I'd like to write more but I have a Contracts midterm exam tomorrow that I need to study for.  I look forward to reading more of your posts!

 

EDIT:  I'm Polish too!

Edited October 14, 2020 by Capco

[Reality Check]

The real terrorism is the draconian response to the common cold. The business of fear never disappoints.

[Cinga]

On 10/13/2020 at 6:15 PM, RealKayAdams said:

Cinga, I highlighted the text where I believe you went wrong in your thinking. A lot of important nuances are lost when you try to force the authoritarian/libertarian spectrum onto a one-dimensional line. Consider splitting public policy issues into two dimensions: all of the economic freedom ones and then all of the personal freedom ones. A common mistake people make when thinking along the traditional left-right 1-D spectrum is that they place too much weight on the economic freedom issues and overlook the civil liberties stuff. It’s a very understandable mistake because we Americans now take for granted the full list of civil rights victories that have been achieved for women, minorities, non-Christians, and LGBTQ over the past generation. But we can’t forget the unresolved left-wing libertarian issues like police brutality, protest/civil disobedience rights, immigrant human rights, drug legalization, animal rights, capital punishment, euthanasia, and whistleblower protections…or right-wing libertarian ones like gun rights and internet neutrality/censorship/first amendment stuff…or poorly defined ones like abortion and affirmative action.

 

So once we move from a 1-D line to a 2-D square, I hope the distinctions between socialism and fascism become a bit more clear. Socialism doesn’t technically address the personal freedoms, but it’s traditionally associated with a generally more libertarian perspective on these matters. Fascism is authoritarian on both the economic and personal freedoms, although the government’s economic intrusion is different in nature from that of socialism with respect to how ownership of the means of production is organized. When you apply these distinctions to Hitler’s historical “accomplishments” as a political leader, you will see that he ruled as a quintessential fascist and not at all like a socialist. In fact, Hitler thought of workers as inherently inferior to business owners and not to be trusted with large shares of responsibility. The use of the “socialist” label in the “Nazi” title was hollow, done solely for political strategic gain in Germany between 1918-1933. “Actions speak louder than words” is the apt maxim here. Hitler can say to historians that he is a socialist…just like I can say to TSW posters that I am everyone’s favorite GMFB host!!

 

My biggest frustration with modern American political discourse is how sloppy we all tend to be with political labels, including “socialism” and “fascism.” I’m guilty of this, too, from time to time! Words should have specific meanings and political labels should have specific definitions. Political labels should be applied with historical context in mind. Is Trump actually a fascist? Well he certainly dabbles in strongly worded law-and-order rhetoric and nebulous racial dog whistling, but compared to early twentieth century European politics? In practice, I’d say of course not! Political labels should also have well-understood demarcations among policy gradations. Much of what gets called “socialism” these days can be more accurately described as “mixed economies.” Referring to Biden, Harris, Pelosi, and Schumer as “socialists” is cringeworthy to me (they are “liberals”). Referring to AOC or Bernie as “socialists” is still problematic because they are proponents of mixed economies, but it’s acceptable enough to me because a nationalized health care industry would represent a significant chunk of our total economy.

 

For my final point before turning my attention to the Bills game, I encourage everyone to challenge the common association of authoritarianism with tyranny and libertarianism with freedom. With either authoritarianism or statism or totalitarianism, I’m referring to a simple definition of more government control, while with libertarianism I mean less government control. When you take that 1-D line of yours and keep moving from authoritarianism toward libertarianism, you will escape government tyranny but will then approach another type of tyrannical dystopia called “corporate tyranny.” The American libertarian movement (and therefore most of the PPP forum) aggressively denies the manifold losses of economic freedom under corporate tyranny (dissolution of unions, no minimum wage laws, no child labor laws, monopolies, crony capitalism, all types of market failures, etc.), so let’s focus on another type of freedom that is near and dear to my heart. Let’s try expanding that 1-D line into a 5-D hyperdimensional public policy cube (lol…all my wonderful readers are hating on me now…) featuring economic issues, personal/cultural freedom issues, foreign policy, political rights, and environmental issues. I’m very libertarian on the middle three, but the devilish little eco-socialist in me wants everyone to focus on that environmental “dimension.” More government control in this domain can irrationally limit economic growth, but it can also INCREASE our individual ENVIRONMENTAL freedoms from corporate tyranny by protecting our health and property and financial resources from all the negative economic externalities (i.e. pollution) that companies otherwise get away with under free-market capitalism. There are other types of tyranny besides the corporate one, of course, with which government can help rectify. Religious tyranny played a dominant role for much of recorded human history, but its effect has (mostly) receded for the West with the help of government (and scientific reasoning). I would also generalize the word “tyranny” a bit to include genetic tyranny, biological/physical limit tyranny, random life misfortune tyranny…government CAN have a positive role in some aspects of these domains, but yeah…it’s complicated…

 

Tyranny is tyranny, whether it's from government or from the corporate world and belongs on the end along with your statism or totalitarianism. After al, aren't you just handing control over to another entity in both? And that entity is still taking away your freedoms, whether it is control over you directly, or control over your life through your work life. If to the extreme right you have anarchy, how in the world can there by corporate tyranny since anarchy is by definition the lack of government, ie and overseer of any kind. I'm with you in that also to that extreme, something or someone will greedily take over, probably by force. But you can also argue that in the other extreme, pure utopia will never happen either, because some will refuse to labor for the good of the many... 

 

So I am still going to argue to the left is control, to the right is liberty. Each extreme is wrong, be it total communal control, or total anarchy. 

[Backintheday544]

11 hours ago, Reality Check said:

The real terrorism is the draconian response to the common cold. The business of fear never disappoints.

 

Not going to lie, I've been wanting to say this for awhile. Post Hillary Republicans would say everything was...well that's why Hillary lose the election.

 

This right here. This idea. This is why Trump will lose the election. Polls show it. Trump was going to win prior to COVID.

[Capco]

On 10/15/2020 at 4:42 PM, Cinga said:

 

So I am still going to argue to the left is control, to the right is liberty. Each extreme is wrong, be it total communal control, or total anarchy. 

 

There's just no hope with you.

[All_Pro_Bills]

On 10/14/2020 at 5:29 PM, Capco said:

 

Hi, RealKayAdams.  This is the original piece from June 26, 2019:  https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/26/opinion/sunday/republican-platform-far-right.html

 

I agree that the main weakness of many left leaning candidates is personality weakness and strategy blunders rather than policies.  It amazes me sometimes how they can't articulate what are genuinely good ideas.  

 

I think I'm very close to where you reside on the spectrum.  I like many Marxist principles but I'm not so far to the left (or so far authoritarian) that I would call myself a Marxist-Leninist.  I think in the (very) long run communism of some form will prevail, if only out of necessity.  Capitalism is fascinating in that it has sown the seeds of its very own destruction; it's only a matter of time.  

 

I'd like to write more but I have a Contracts midterm exam tomorrow that I need to study for.  I look forward to reading more of your posts!

 

EDIT:  I'm Polish too!

The thing is generally everybody's for:

better education

better health care

eliminating poverty

less people in prison

eliminating racial bias

income equality

equal rights for everyone

eliminating hunger

a clean environment

solving student debt problems

good housing for everyone

good paying jobs for everyone

 

The contention is generated from differences in how to accomplish these goals.  So what are you willing to do in order to accomplish these objectives?   

  

Edited October 17, 2020 by All_Pro_Bills

[SDS]

4 minutes ago, All_Pro_Bills said:

The thing is generally everybody's for:

better education

better health care

eliminating poverty

less people in prison

eliminating racial bias

income equality

equal rights for everyone

eliminating hunger

a clean environment

solving student debt problems

good housing for everyone

good paying jobs for everyone

 

The contention is generated from differences in how to accomplish these goals.  So what are you willing to do in order to accomplish these objectives?   

  

Oh, I don’t think that list is common to people at all. 

[All_Pro_Bills]

1 minute ago, SDS said:

Oh, I don’t think that list is common to people at all. 

I said most people.  Do you see anyone campaigning for more poverty, or more hunger, or more bias?  If you have I'd like to see it.  The difference of opinion is how to achieve these things. 

Like the Green New Deal.  I'm all for it if you can support base load power requirements without interruption or variance in output at a cost that is competitive with current and conventional power generation sources.  But if you're going to tell me my power bill is going to be 4 times higher and we'll experience rolling blackouts every day then I'm against it.  Like all ideas and objectives the "devils in the details". 

[SDS]

1 minute ago, All_Pro_Bills said:

I said most people.  Do you see anyone campaigning for more poverty, or more hunger, or more bias?  If you have I'd like to see it.  The difference of opinion is how to achieve these things. 

Like the Green New Deal.  I'm all for it if you can support base load power requirements without interruption or variance in output at a cost that is competitive with current and conventional power generation sources.  But if you're going to tell me my power bill is going to be 4 times higher and we'll experience rolling blackouts every day then I'm against it.  Like all ideas and objectives the "devils in the details". 

no one uses those terms like more X, but the result is the same. Honestly, I suspect 35-40% to be hostile to most of the those goals. 🤷🏼‍♂️

[All_Pro_Bills]

4 minutes ago, SDS said:

no one uses those terms like more X, but the result is the same. Honestly, I suspect 35-40% to be hostile to most of the those goals. 🤷🏼‍♂️

35-40% seems very high to me.  But don't you think that estimate says more about your thought process than it does about the suspected 35-40 percenters? 

[SDS]

6 minutes ago, All_Pro_Bills said:

35-40% seems very high to me.  But don't you think that estimate says more about your thought process than it does about the suspected 35-40 percenters? 

I don’t follow. 😀

[Brueggs]

On 10/12/2020 at 8:51 AM, Tiberius said:

I want an end to the war on the poor. A serious look at the war on drugs to start. 

 

With Texas turning blue I have no problem at all with the electoral college.  Love ❤️  it.! Pretty soon, we can start locking Republicans out of the WH using it. 

 

Again, BLM/Antifa have not tried kidnappings, massacres (like right wingers are doing) bomb plots or trying to undermine faith in our voting system, like the president is. 

Interesting.  So you must be a fan of the border wall?  It helps the poor by not allowing ILLEGAL immigrants in who would occupy many of the jobs the poor could fill.  It would also help to curtail the influx of illegal drugs coming over the border. 

 

So,  you like the electoral college when it works for you, but when it doesn't you want to destroy it?  Change the rules as you go mentality?

 

You really don't think mail in voting is a plot to undermine the voting system?  OK.  

 

I guess its easier to understand how you come to your conclusions  when we see how conflicted you are...

 

[OldTimeAFLGuy]

17 minutes ago, Brueggs said:

Interesting.  So you must be a fan of the border wall?  It helps the poor by not allowing ILLEGAL immigrants in who would occupy many of the jobs the poor could fill.  It would also help to curtail the influx of illegal drugs coming over the border. 

 

So,  you like the electoral college when it works for you, but when it doesn't you want to destroy it?  Change the rules as you go mentality?

 

You really don't think mail in voting is a plot to undermine the voting system?  OK.  

 

I guess its easier to understand how you come to your conclusions  when we see how conflicted you are...

 

 

...LMAO......hire a shrink QUICKLY......then buy stock in Excedrin.......

[Capco]

5 hours ago, All_Pro_Bills said:

income equality

 

I don't think enough people fully understand how much this one factor alone impacts just about everything else you listed.  

 

If you have 5 minutes, please watch this.  It's a snippet from the documentary "Inequality for All" and articulates my points better than I can.  

 

 

"The wider the prosperity => the more people were included in that prosperity => the more that prosperity generated even more prosperity."

 

And compare that with the following 35 second clip from the same documentary that illustrates the opposite approach.  

 

 

When inequality grows, wages stagnate.  Stagnant wages means workers buy less than they would have with rising wages.  When workers buy less, companies downsize or cease growing.  When companies downsize and wages stagnate, tax revenues decrease.  Lower tax revenues means government must cut programs.  Many of these programs help lift people out of poverty, like funding of public education.  A lower educated workforce in a 21st century industrialized economy means there are fewer employable persons, and unemployment rises.  With even fewer people paying taxes and more people drawing on government programs because of higher poverty rates, deficits grow.  Higher deficits means the government can do even less to combat inequality and increase wages.  

[ComradeKayAdams]

On 10/14/2020 at 5:29 PM, Capco said:

Hi, RealKayAdams.  This is the original piece from June 26, 2019:  https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/26/opinion/sunday/republican-platform-far-right.html

 

I agree that the main weakness of many left leaning candidates is personality weakness and strategy blunders rather than policies.  It amazes me sometimes how they can't articulate what are genuinely good ideas.  

 

I think I'm very close to where you reside on the spectrum.  I like many Marxist principles but I'm not so far to the left (or so far authoritarian) that I would call myself a Marxist-Leninist.  I think in the (very) long run communism of some form will prevail, if only out of necessity.  Capitalism is fascinating in that it has sown the seeds of its very own destruction; it's only a matter of time.  

 

I'd like to write more but I have a Contracts midterm exam tomorrow that I need to study for.  I look forward to reading more of your posts!

 

EDIT:  I'm Polish too!

 

Yeah, I’m really only a Marxist in the sense that I think good ol’ Karl and Mr. Engels did an excellent job articulating the problems with laissez-faire capitalism. From the convenient vantage point of living in the early twenty-first century, however, I have to say that their nineteenth-century solutions to capitalism’s problems left a lot to be desired. With human nature having evolved into the current form that it did, I don’t think communism will work any time soon for complex social structures larger than a few hundred or so people. The classical liberal values of money, property, and socioeconomic stratification are here to stay…and that’s perfectly fine by me, really. I’m very much a pro-capitalism person. I just happen to believe that government has a significant role to play in saving capitalism from itself. So for the time being, I’ll proudly wear the scarlet letters, “S.D.,” in this country to identify myself as a social democrat. But I ultimately favor pragmatism and common sense over political and economic dogmatism, so who knows where my weird brain will be in, say, November 2024??

 

I hope you did well on your midterm exam?!

 

Yes, Polish people rock! That’s why Hitler invaded our homeland first. Unbridled JEALOUSY.

 

On 10/15/2020 at 4:42 PM, Cinga said:

 

Tyranny is tyranny, whether it's from government or from the corporate world and belongs on the end along with your statism or totalitarianism. After al, aren't you just handing control over to another entity in both? And that entity is still taking away your freedoms, whether it is control over you directly, or control over your life through your work life. If to the extreme right you have anarchy, how in the world can there by corporate tyranny since anarchy is by definition the lack of government, ie and overseer of any kind. I'm with you in that also to that extreme, something or someone will greedily take over, probably by force. But you can also argue that in the other extreme, pure utopia will never happen either, because some will refuse to labor for the good of the many... 

 

So I am still going to argue to the left is control, to the right is liberty. Each extreme is wrong, be it total communal control, or total anarchy. 

 

Cinga, I think we’re moving closer to a mutual understanding, but I need to make a few more clarifications. I’m defining tyranny simply as “any unreasonable and excessive control over an individual’s life.” That 1-D line you reference, as I understood it, is strictly a measure of the amount of GOVERNMENT control. Government control is distinct from corporate control in that a government can exercise its power to enforce law and order as well as its power to tax. One’s ability to escape government tyranny (leave country, vote for new politicians, peaceful activism/violent revolution) is quite different from one’s ability to escape corporate tyranny (leave job, boycott goods/services, use government to enforce regulations). I’m also defining corporate tyranny as the end state of either neoliberalism (companies hijacking a feeble government for the people) or of anarcho-capitalism (companies ruling in total absence of government restraint). These following three contentions undergird my definition of corporate tyranny: laissez-faire capitalism is terrible at resolving many market failures, it does not lead to anything close to optimal economic utility (i.e. well-being) at the aggregate (i.e. societal) level, and it is an amoral system frequently overrun with immoral sociopaths (as in…clinical diagnoses using DSM-5 criteria).

 

With all of that out of the way, I’ll now restate two important themes from my last post:

 

1. More government control does not necessarily equate to less individual freedom. Equivalently, less government control doesn’t necessarily mean more liberty. One easily understood thought experiment among so many: a black family driving through a desolate region of the Deep South, desperately searching for food and gasoline service during the Jim Crow era, before all that pesky government intervention (1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, 1964 Civil Rights Act, 1965 Voting Rights Act, etc.).

 

2. The Democratic Party, relative to the Republican Party on that 1-D line of yours, is not consistently about more government control over the individual’s life. A prominent example among multiple: the broad Christian Coalition platform embedded within the Republican Party.

 

On 10/17/2020 at 7:54 AM, All_Pro_Bills said:

The thing is generally everybody's for:

better education

better health care

eliminating poverty

less people in prison

eliminating racial bias

income equality

equal rights for everyone

eliminating hunger

a clean environment

solving student debt problems

good housing for everyone

good paying jobs for everyone

 

The contention is generated from differences in how to accomplish these goals.  So what are you willing to do in order to accomplish these objectives?   

  

 

Ok, so let’s parse through your list of 12 a little more. I assume by “income equality” you mean less extreme income inequality? The political right generally sees the extreme inequality as a feature and not a flaw of capitalism. Both sides may agree on 3 of these (eliminating racial bias, equal rights for everyone, a clean environment) in the abstract, but they often disagree greatly when you examine specific cases…to the point that the political left doesn’t believe the political right views these as legitimate societal problems to solve anymore. 7 of these that you list (better education, better health care, eliminating poverty, less people in prison, eliminating hunger, solving student debt problems, good housing for everyone) are often treated among the political right as individual moral failings (laziness, irresponsibility, hopeless incompetence) and not systemic problems for politicians to address. The right DOES make (valid) arguments that government intervention can make these 7 issues worse and that private charity can help redress them, but I always find these arguments partially adequate at best and willfully oblivious to the systemic flaws ingrained within capitalism. For the last one (good paying jobs for everyone), the political right simply has lower standards for what constitutes a “good paying job” at the lowest tiers of the wage scale.

 

On 10/17/2020 at 8:06 AM, All_Pro_Bills said:

I said most people.  Do you see anyone campaigning for more poverty, or more hunger, or more bias?  If you have I'd like to see it.  The difference of opinion is how to achieve these things. 

Like the Green New Deal.  I'm all for it if you can support base load power requirements without interruption or variance in output at a cost that is competitive with current and conventional power generation sources.  But if you're going to tell me my power bill is going to be 4 times higher and we'll experience rolling blackouts every day then I'm against it.  Like all ideas and objectives the "devils in the details". 

 

I encourage you to look into all of the advancements (energy transfer efficiencies, energy storage capabilities, materials engineering, etc.) that have been made in renewable energy technology within the past 5-10 years, compared to the first 10-15 years of this century (especially with solar!). Also, look into other countries around the world and examine how they have been transitioning their electric power infrastructures away from fossil fuels. Lots of quality academic research literature exists out there on electric power grid performances and costs using fully renewables, hybrid renewables with nuclear (my personal favorite!), and hybrid renewables that couple home/building energy systems with traditional fossil fuel power grids. The research is based on both international case studies and speculative ones for the future.

 

 

On 10/17/2020 at 2:20 PM, Capco said:

I don't think enough people fully understand how much this one factor alone impacts just about everything else you listed.  

 

If you have 5 minutes, please watch this.  It's a snippet from the documentary "Inequality for All" and articulates my points better than I can.  

 

"The wider the prosperity => the more people were included in that prosperity => the more that prosperity generated even more prosperity."

 

And compare that with the following 35 second clip from the same documentary that illustrates the opposite approach.  

 

When inequality grows, wages stagnate.  Stagnant wages means workers buy less than they would have with rising wages.  When workers buy less, companies downsize or cease growing.  When companies downsize and wages stagnate, tax revenues decrease.  Lower tax revenues means government must cut programs.  Many of these programs help lift people out of poverty, like funding of public education.  A lower educated workforce in a 21st century industrialized economy means there are fewer employable persons, and unemployment rises.  With even fewer people paying taxes and more people drawing on government programs because of higher poverty rates, deficits grow.  Higher deficits means the government can do even less to combat inequality and increase wages.  

 

This statement is worth exploring further: “When inequality grows, wages stagnate.” From a theoretical economics perspective, this doesn’t HAVE to be the case, but if often ends up being the case. Why exactly is that? Globalization, the destruction of unions, crony capitalism, and wealth-hoarding billionaires/multi-millionaires are 4 big reasons that I’m sure Robert Reich thoroughly covers in his “Inequality for All” documentary (oddly enough, I have yet to see it but eventually will!). By “wealth-hoarding” behavior, I specifically mean not investing money saved from marginal tax rate reductions back into society via domestic job-creating companies or social welfare programs like education.

 

There’s another possible reason that I’m not sure gets discussed much. If we focus on the histogram shape of wage frequency versus wage distribution across the total U.S. population and run it through time (say, from 1980 through 2020), we’ll notice a couple interesting things. The first is that the middle class has been hollowing out for sure. The second is that there’s still more than enough “thickness” on the approximate upper half of the histogram to sustain a healthy-enough economy! In other words…if you do enough back-of-the-envelope area-under-curve calculations on the histograms and make temporal comparisons between them all, you will easily see how you can quietly convert a macroeconomy into one that caters predominantly to the wealthier portion at the near exclusion of the less wealthy portion. So contrary to what economic libertarians often argue, wages at the lower end don’t necessarily NEED to be increased in accordance with all the extra wealth creation (as measured by GDP) in order to have enough people purchasing these extra goods and services. Also not surprisingly, there is a strong correlation between highest education level attained and wage tier.

 

So how have we allowed all this to happen? Simple: corporate media propaganda and voter suppression. I have sooo much more to say on wealth inequality and wage stagnation, but it kinda looks like we have kidnapped the thread topic like it’s a governor of Michigan…so I will talk about this stuff somewhere else and sometime after the election hysteria dies down. Look for a new thread of mine in November. Here are some working titles:

 

1. “Neoliberalism and the death of the American Dream.” Not bad, Kay, not bad…

2. “Reaganomics: the hideous love child of Barry (Goldwater) and Ayn (Rand).” Meh…

3. “A 40-year golden shower: what really trickled down from Art Laffer.” Ew.

4. “K-shaped recovery, economic depression, socialist revolution.” Oooh I like it! Provocative AND apropos of current events. I think I’ll go with this one!

[Tiberius]

On 10/17/2020 at 10:11 AM, Brueggs said:

Interesting.  So you must be a fan of the border wall?  It helps the poor by not allowing ILLEGAL immigrants in who would occupy many of the jobs the poor could fill.  It would also help to curtail the influx of illegal drugs coming over the border. 

 

So,  you like the electoral college when it works for you, but when it doesn't you want to destroy it?  Change the rules as you go mentality?

 

You really don't think mail in voting is a plot to undermine the voting system?  OK.  

 

I guess its easier to understand how you come to your conclusions  when we see how conflicted you are...

 

Immigrants create jobs. Learn a little economics, you won’t look so ignorant. And the wall won’t stop any drugs, that’s stupid 

[US Egg]

13 minutes ago, RealKayAdams said:

On 10/14/2020 at 5:29 PM, Capco said:

Hi, RealKayAdams.  This is the original piece from June 26, 2019:  https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/26/opinion/sunday/republican-platform-far-right.html

 

I agree that the main weakness of many left leaning candidates is personality weakness and strategy blunders rather than policies.  It amazes me sometimes how they can't articulate what are genuinely good ideas.  

 

I think I'm very close to where you reside on the spectrum.  I like many Marxist principles but I'm not so far to the left (or so far authoritarian) that I would call myself a Marxist-Leninist.  I think in the (very) long run communism of some form will prevail, if only out of necessity.  Capitalism is fascinating in that it has sown the seeds of its very own destruction; it's only a matter of time.  

 

I'd like to write more but I have a Contracts midterm exam tomorrow that I need to study for.  I look forward to reading more of your posts!

 

EDIT:  I'm Polish too!

 

Yeah, I’m really only a Marxist in the sense that I think good ol’ Karl and Mr. Engels did an excellent job articulating the problems with laissez-faire capitalism. From the convenient vantage point of living in the early twenty-first century, however, I have to say that their nineteenth-century solutions to capitalism’s problems left a lot to be desired. With human nature having evolved into the current form that it did, I don’t think communism will work any time soon for complex social structures larger than a few hundred or so people. The classical liberal values of money, property, and socioeconomic stratification are here to stay…and that’s perfectly fine by me, really. I’m very much a pro-capitalism person. I just happen to believe that government has a significant role to play in saving capitalism from itself. So for the time being, I’ll proudly wear the scarlet letters, “S.D.,” in this country to identify myself as a social democrat. But I ultimately favor pragmatism and common sense over political and economic dogmatism, so who knows where my weird brain will be in, say, November 2024??

 

I hope you did well on your midterm exam?!

 

Yes, Polish people rock! That’s why Hitler invaded our homeland first. Unbridled JEALOUSY.

 

On 10/15/2020 at 4:42 PM, Cinga said:

 

Tyranny is tyranny, whether it's from government or from the corporate world and belongs on the end along with your statism or totalitarianism. After al, aren't you just handing control over to another entity in both? And that entity is still taking away your freedoms, whether it is control over you directly, or control over your life through your work life. If to the extreme right you have anarchy, how in the world can there by corporate tyranny since anarchy is by definition the lack of government, ie and overseer of any kind. I'm with you in that also to that extreme, something or someone will greedily take over, probably by force. But you can also argue that in the other extreme, pure utopia will never happen either, because some will refuse to labor for the good of the many... 

 

So I am still going to argue to the left is control, to the right is liberty. Each extreme is wrong, be it total communal control, or total anarchy. 

 

Cinga, I think we’re moving closer to a mutual understanding, but I need to make a few more clarifications. I’m defining tyranny simply as “any unreasonable and excessive control over an individual’s life.” That 1-D line you reference, as I understood it, is strictly a measure of the amount of GOVERNMENT control. Government control is distinct from corporate control in that a government can exercise its power to enforce law and order as well as its power to tax. One’s ability to escape government tyranny (leave country, vote for new politicians, peaceful activism/violent revolution) is quite different from one’s ability to escape corporate tyranny (leave job, boycott goods/services, use government to enforce regulations). I’m also defining corporate tyranny as the end state of either neoliberalism (companies hijacking a feeble government for the people) or of anarcho-capitalism (companies ruling in total absence of government restraint). These following three contentions undergird my definition of corporate tyranny: laissez-faire capitalism is terrible at resolving many market failures, it does not lead to anything close to optimal economic utility (i.e. well-being) at the aggregate (i.e. societal) level, and it is an amoral system frequently overrun with immoral sociopaths (as in…clinical diagnoses using DSM-5 criteria).

 

With all of that out of the way, I’ll now restate two important themes from my last post:

 

1. More government control does not necessarily equate to less individual freedom. Equivalently, less government control doesn’t necessarily mean more liberty. One easily understood thought experiment among so many: a black family driving through a desolate region of the Deep South, desperately searching for food and gasoline service during the Jim Crow era, before all that pesky government intervention (1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, 1964 Civil Rights Act, 1965 Voting Rights Act, etc.).

 

2. The Democratic Party, relative to the Republican Party on that 1-D line of yours, is not consistently about more government control over the individual’s life. A prominent example among multiple: the broad Christian Coalition platform embedded within the Republican Party.

 

On 10/17/2020 at 7:54 AM, All_Pro_Bills said:

The thing is generally everybody's for:

better education

better health care

eliminating poverty

less people in prison

eliminating racial bias

income equality

equal rights for everyone

eliminating hunger

a clean environment

solving student debt problems

good housing for everyone

good paying jobs for everyone

 

The contention is generated from differences in how to accomplish these goals.  So what are you willing to do in order to accomplish these objectives?   

  

 

Ok, so let’s parse through your list of 12 a little more. I assume by “income equality” you mean less extreme income inequality? The political right generally sees the extreme inequality as a feature and not a flaw of capitalism. Both sides may agree on 3 of these (eliminating racial bias, equal rights for everyone, a clean environment) in the abstract, but they often disagree greatly when you examine specific cases…to the point that the political left doesn’t believe the political right views these as legitimate societal problems to solve anymore. 7 of these that you list (better education, better health care, eliminating poverty, less people in prison, eliminating hunger, solving student debt problems, good housing for everyone) are often treated among the political right as individual moral failings (laziness, irresponsibility, hopeless incompetence) and not systemic problems for politicians to address. The right DOES make (valid) arguments that government intervention can make these 7 issues worse and that private charity can help redress them, but I always find these arguments partially adequate at best and willfully oblivious to the systemic flaws ingrained within capitalism. For the last one (good paying jobs for everyone), the political right simply has lower standards for what constitutes a “good paying job” at the lowest tiers of the wage scale.

 

On 10/17/2020 at 8:06 AM, All_Pro_Bills said:

I said most people.  Do you see anyone campaigning for more poverty, or more hunger, or more bias?  If you have I'd like to see it.  The difference of opinion is how to achieve these things. 

Like the Green New Deal.  I'm all for it if you can support base load power requirements without interruption or variance in output at a cost that is competitive with current and conventional power generation sources.  But if you're going to tell me my power bill is going to be 4 times higher and we'll experience rolling blackouts every day then I'm against it.  Like all ideas and objectives the "devils in the details". 

 

I encourage you to look into all of the advancements (energy transfer efficiencies, energy storage capabilities, materials engineering, etc.) that have been made in renewable energy technology within the past 5-10 years, compared to the first 10-15 years of this century (especially with solar!). Also, look into other countries around the world and examine how they have been transitioning their electric power infrastructures away from fossil fuels. Lots of quality academic research literature exists out there on electric power grid performances and costs using fully renewables, hybrid renewables with nuclear (my personal favorite!), and hybrid renewables that couple home/building energy systems with traditional fossil fuel power grids. The research is based on both international case studies and speculative ones for the future.

 

 

On 10/17/2020 at 2:20 PM, Capco said:

I don't think enough people fully understand how much this one factor alone impacts just about everything else you listed.  

 

If you have 5 minutes, please watch this.  It's a snippet from the documentary "Inequality for All" and articulates my points better than I can.  

 

"The wider the prosperity => the more people were included in that prosperity => the more that prosperity generated even more prosperity."

 

And compare that with the following 35 second clip from the same documentary that illustrates the opposite approach.  

 

When inequality grows, wages stagnate.  Stagnant wages means workers buy less than they would have with rising wages.  When workers buy less, companies downsize or cease growing.  When companies downsize and wages stagnate, tax revenues decrease.  Lower tax revenues means government must cut programs.  Many of these programs help lift people out of poverty, like funding of public education.  A lower educated workforce in a 21st century industrialized economy means there are fewer employable persons, and unemployment rises.  With even fewer people paying taxes and more people drawing on government programs because of higher poverty rates, deficits grow.  Higher deficits means the government can do even less to combat inequality and increase wages.  

 

This statement is worth exploring further: “When inequality grows, wages stagnate.” From a theoretical economics perspective, this doesn’t HAVE to be the case, but if often ends up being the case. Why exactly is that? Globalization, the destruction of unions, crony capitalism, and wealth-hoarding billionaires/multi-millionaires are 4 big reasons that I’m sure Robert Reich thoroughly covers in his “Inequality for All” documentary (oddly enough, I have yet to see it but eventually will!). By “wealth-hoarding” behavior, I specifically mean not investing money saved from marginal tax rate reductions back into society via domestic job-creating companies or social welfare programs like education.

 

There’s another possible reason that I’m not sure gets discussed much. If we focus on the histogram shape of wage frequency versus wage distribution across the total U.S. population and run it through time (say, from 1980 through 2020), we’ll notice a couple interesting things. The first is that the middle class has been hollowing out for sure. The second is that there’s still more than enough “thickness” on the approximate upper half of the histogram to sustain a healthy-enough economy! In other words…if you do enough back-of-the-envelope area-under-curve calculations on the histograms and make temporal comparisons between them all, you will easily see how you can quietly convert a macroeconomy into one that caters predominantly to the wealthier portion at the near exclusion of the less wealthy portion. So contrary to what economic libertarians often argue, wages at the lower end don’t necessarily NEED to be increased in accordance with all the extra wealth creation (as measured by GDP) in order to have enough people purchasing these extra goods and services. Also not surprisingly, there is a strong correlation between highest education level attained and wage tier.

 

So how have we allowed all this to happen? Simple: corporate media propaganda and voter suppression. I have sooo much more to say on wealth inequality and wage stagnation, but it kinda looks like we have kidnapped the thread topic like it’s a governor of Michigan…so I will talk about this stuff somewhere else and sometime after the election hysteria dies down. Look for a new thread of mine in November. Here are some working titles:

 

1. “Neoliberalism and the death of the American Dream.” Not bad, Kay, not bad…

2. “Reaganomics: the hideous love child of Barry (Goldwater) and Ayn (Rand).” Meh…

3. “A 40-year golden shower: what really trickled down from Art Laffer.” Ew.

4. “K-shaped recovery, economic depression, socialist revolution.” Oooh I like it! Provocative AND apropos of current events. I think I’ll go with this one!

...... yeah, whatever.

Edited October 21, 2020 by I am the egg man

[Brueggs]

1 hour ago, Tiberius said:

Immigrants create jobs. Learn a little economics, you won’t look so ignorant. And the wall won’t stop any drugs, that’s stupid 

Did you see where I bolded the word ILLEGAL to help you differentiate between ILLEGAL immigrants and immigrants?  I thought that would help distinguish the difference for those who choose to ignore that very important point.  So, you are trying to tell us that illegal immigrants come over here and create jobs?  Do you mean fill jobs, or create illegal jobs?  Please expain. 

I think the wall will prevent some drugs from crossing over, but it will not stop drugs, nothing will.  I should have said it will greatly help reduce human trafficking and illegal crossings.  Better?   

[Tiberius]

5 minutes ago, Brueggs said:

Did you see where I bolded the word ILLEGAL to help you differentiate between ILLEGAL immigrants and immigrants?  I thought that would help distinguish the difference for those who choose to ignore that very important point.  So, you are trying to tell us that illegal immigrants come over here and create jobs?  Do you mean fill jobs, or create illegal jobs?  Please expain. 

I think the wall will prevent some drugs from crossing over, but it will not stop drugs, nothing will.  I should have said it will greatly help reduce human trafficking and illegal crossings.  Better?   

Makes no difference to the economic equation, and the stupid wall implies making an economic barrier which is really dumb 

[Brueggs]

4 minutes ago, Tiberius said:

Makes no difference to the economic equation, and the stupid wall implies making an economic barrier which is really dumb 

You keep giving your opinion with no explanation. 

Please explain how ILLEGAL immigrants create jobs?

Please explain how the wall is an economic barrier?  Except for mules of drugs and human trafficking...I will give you that...

 

[Tiberius]

10 minutes ago, Brueggs said:

You keep giving your opinion with no explanation. 

Please explain how ILLEGAL immigrants create jobs?

Please explain how the wall is an economic barrier?  Except for mules of drugs and human trafficking...I will give you that...

 

A factory can’t expand because it has no workers, it finds immigrants to fill the role, the factory then contracts out for goods and services which creates jobs down the line. Does that make sense? 

[Tiberius]

The wall is a barrier, economies do way better without artificial bottle necks 

[Brueggs]

25 minutes ago, Tiberius said:

A factory can’t expand because it has no workers, it finds immigrants to fill the role, the factory then contracts out for goods and services which creates jobs down the line. Does that make sense? 

So, they FILL jobs, not CREATE jobs as you previously stated?  Again, ILLEGAL immigrants cannot even LEGALLY fill jobs because a factory (which created the jobs) cannot LEGALLY pay them.  Does that make sense?  Can you distinguish the difference between legal and illegal?  It is significant.  

 

 

 

[Brueggs]

24 minutes ago, Tiberius said:

The wall is a barrier, economies do way better without artificial bottle necks 

Again with the emotional opinion with no basis to substantiate your claim.  I enjoy a good debate, but if you're not going to bring any substance to your argument, what is the point?  You sidestep the issues of ILLEGAL immigration, human trafficking and drug running and try to fabricate some economic disadvantage.  You are stuck in the middle of some type of ideology and cant rationalize your way out.  

[Tiberius]

17 minutes ago, Brueggs said:

So, they FILL jobs, not CREATE jobs as you previously stated?  Again, ILLEGAL immigrants cannot even LEGALLY fill jobs because a factory (which created the jobs) cannot LEGALLY pay them.  Does that make sense?  Can you distinguish the difference between legal and illegal?  It is significant.  

 

 

 

Which allows businesses to expand, buy more raw materials, rent trucking etc. 

 

Does that make sense? Do you get it? A business gets workers, so it can create more business, thus creating more jobs down the line? 

 

Not sure I can explain it any simpler, but if you still can't understand I'll write it another way 

12 minutes ago, Brueggs said:

Again with the emotional opinion with no basis to substantiate your claim.  I enjoy a good debate, but if you're not going to bring any substance to your argument, what is the point?  You sidestep the issues of ILLEGAL immigration, human trafficking and drug running and try to fabricate some economic disadvantage.  You are stuck in the middle of some type of ideology and cant rationalize your way out.  

The wall stops none of those bad things, very ineffective but it does put a barrier between buyers and sellers, which increases costs, Who pays? Consumers 

[Westside]

1 hour ago, Tiberius said:

Makes no difference to the economic equation, and the stupid wall implies making an economic barrier which is really dumb 

You're entitled to your opinion,  but you're not entitled to your own facts.

[Tiberius]

5 minutes ago, westside2 said:

You're entitled to your opinion,  but you're not entitled to your own facts.

Barriers to economic trade drive up costs, that's a fact 

[Capco]

3 hours ago, I am the egg man said:

...... yeah, whatever.

 

Riveting commentary.  Highly persuasive.  You've sold me on your point, even if I have no idea what it is.

 

/s

[Brueggs]

31 minutes ago, Tiberius said:

Which allows businesses to expand, buy more raw materials, rent trucking etc. 

 

Does that make sense? Do you get it? A business gets workers, so it can create more business, thus creating more jobs down the line? 

 

Not sure I can explain it any simpler, but if you still can't understand I'll write it another way 

The wall stops none of those bad things, very ineffective but it does put a barrier between buyers and sellers, which increases costs, Who pays? Consumers 

You literally said "immigrants create jobs", referring to illegals.  Do you understand the difference between creating jobs, and filling jobs?  You obviously don't.  Sorry bud, but you are just too far gone to continue...

[snafu]

7 hours ago, RealKayAdams said:

1. More government control does not necessarily equate to less individual freedom. Equivalently, less government control doesn’t necessarily mean more liberty. One easily understood thought experiment among so many: a black family driving through a desolate region of the Deep South, desperately searching for food and gasoline service during the Jim Crow era, before all that pesky government intervention (1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, 1964 Civil Rights Act, 1965 Voting Rights Act, etc.).

 

I get your point but your example is awful -- whether I agree with your point at all.

Jim Crow repressions were codified and implemented by more government intervention, not less.

 

To me, more government intervention is going to step on someone's toes.  Your example points that out nicely. Freedom is freedom, and you don't really have to agree with the freedom being sought.

 

 

 

[OldTimeAFLGuy]

7 hours ago, Brueggs said:

You keep giving your opinion with no explanation. 

Please explain how ILLEGAL immigrants create jobs?

Please explain how the wall is an economic barrier?  Except for mules of drugs and human trafficking...I will give you that...

 

 

...why the hell can't they be LEGAL and come through Ellis Island like my late grandparents did, coming from Italy?......what's changed?.....two families with one raising 9 children and the other raising 4 with NO public assistance or "gimmes"...no riots asking for "MORE"......worked as many jobs as possible to make ends meet.....

Edited October 21, 2020 by OldTimeAFLGuy

[Brueggs]

1 hour ago, OldTimeAFLGuy said:

 

...why the hell can't they be LEGAL and come through Ellis Island like my late grandparents did, coming from Italy?......what's changed?.....two families with one raising 9 children and the other raising 4 with NO public assistance or "gimmes"...no riots asking for "MORE"......worked as many jobs as possible to make ends meet.....

I wish I had the answer.  For some reason, we are the only country in the world where there is not an expectation not to protect our sovereignty