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Korea (South)11583 Posts
On July 29 2008 13:40 Jibba wrote:
You definitely gained a lot of respect in my book for that post and it's a lot more clear what your intentions were early on. I agree with a lot of what you wrote and I misjudged you early on.
There's still a couple of points that I think are off. Even though it's easier to attend college, education inflation has increased dramatically over the past 40 years. In 1960 you could get your highschool diploma and immediately begin a factory career, living very comfortably and probably being upper middle class when you retire. Now a college degree is the norm, and most people who get one aren't going to live as well as that factory worker from 1960.
I think an important issue to tackle is the psychological discouragement that can easily occur if you grow up in that situation. Those things are rooted in education, poor services and a lot of other issues that need to be addressed. It becomes far more difficult to fight your way out of something when you become depressed, and that's still a serious issue in this country. That's a lot of what the Hope campaign is about. If you simply look at taxes and welfare plans, you're missing the big picture on how it's trying to improve society. Community building is a huge part of the campaign structure at the moment, and he's trying to encourage more community service and to simply create more visible opportunities so people understand how they can become independent.
It's skimming from the top, but the goal is that everyone benefits in other areas in the long run. And it's not simply bs, he takes a very academic point of view in many areas, especially those relating to social sciences.
I agree with what you are saying, however with Obama, and his viewpoint on getting more community services to build the community a better place. The majority of people who already don't help out in a community by helping out a canned food drive, or building houses, or even picking up trash at the local park, will continue to not help out.
I don't know his whole side of on this subject, but from what I can grasp from the bits and pieces of it, is that he is hoping that people are going to just up and out of the blue with a little persuasion join in at the local habitat for humanity center.
There are commercials all the time for just a dollar a week to help a starving child. That's $52 a year. For many people, less than a days work. If people aren't helping out by just sending in four quarters which they can use from the change they got when they bought their fast food item from the drive through, it is hard to see that they would be willing to actually get on their hands and knees and break a sweat for their community.
I don't know about where you live, but where I live, people are angry all the time. They hate waiting in traffic for an hour to get to work, they hate the weather for being too hot, too dry, too wet, to cold, too windy, not enough wind etc... They hate people who accidently bump into them in the elevator, or cross roads at an intersection, etc... People don't say their "please and thank you's" (my mom always told me to say that to my friends parents when i hung out).
It may spark a few people to join in on the cause, but the majority of people are just going to ignore it and continue on their lives not thinking about somone who is less fortunate about themselves. I personally have helped out at food drives and community shelters, and the number of people who do need help is eye opening. Then, the number of people who don't even know about it is jaw dropping. However, the thing that just makes me amazed, and nearly go overboard is the number of people who knows there is so many people, especially children and single mothers who need help, and couldn't give a rats ass.
This is why I don't think it really is practical, because people just don't care about anyone else except for themselves. I think it's a natural instinct, probably defensive to keep surviving and going for that American viewpoint of success. Who knows, but with the bitter taste people now get of even the word the president, it will be hard to see how people are going to be willing to help out others, if they never had done before, or even thought about it.
Maybe Obama is trying to get that idea different. But my viewpoint on his taxation is still a little -_-' to me. For reasons stated in my previous post.
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Bah. I can't tell if people are bringing up side issues, important issues, or deal-breakers. (Importance rated by them, of course - I have my own opinions.) Is the proposed tax policy change a deal breaker for everyone? How about the vote for retroactive telecom immunity?
BTW, CaucasianAsian brought up how a measly sum (negligible to us) can be lifesaving for others, but we still don't do it. I say it's because of the hassle of doing it, not because of the value of the donation. Make it easy to donate. Like, so easy that you can click on a big red button saying "Donate!" and be done, not fill out any forms, not click on another button afterwards. Unfortunately, very difficult to do.
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United States22883 Posts
The FISA crying is stupid. FISA needed to be updated and it wasn't perfect, but the telecom immunity was a small sideportion of the bill that got a lot of coverage. Bleeding heart liberals are as bad at understanding compromise as war hawk conservatives. The rest of FISA (the main part) was solid and it's simply not possible to get your own "perfect" bill.
CA, he's proposing a $4,000 college scholarship in exchange for 100 hours of community service. He estimates it'll cost 10 billion per year, but that number seems a bit low to me. I think there's also some incentive grants for teachers and doctors.
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Korea (South)11583 Posts
Oh, I see. That's like $40/hr, idk, I can see the government losing even more money than it already is by doing that.
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On July 29 2008 13:40 Jibba wrote:
You definitely gained a lot of respect in my book for that post and it's a lot more clear what your intentions were early on. I agree with a lot of what you wrote and I misjudged you early on.
There's still a couple of points that I think are off. Even though it's easier to attend college, education inflation has increased dramatically over the past 40 years. In 1960 you could get your highschool diploma and immediately begin a factory career, living very comfortably and probably being upper middle class when you retire. Now a college degree is the norm, and most people who get one aren't going to live as well as that factory worker from 1960.
I think an important issue to tackle is the psychological discouragement that can easily occur if you grow up in that situation. Those things are rooted in education, poor services and a lot of other issues that need to be addressed. It becomes far more difficult to fight your way out of something when you become depressed, and that's still a serious issue in this country. That's a lot of what the Hope campaign is about. If you simply look at taxes and welfare plans, you're missing the big picture on how it's trying to improve society. Community building is a huge part of the campaign structure at the moment, and he's trying to encourage more community service and to simply create more visible opportunities so people understand how they can become independent.
It's skimming from the top, but the goal is that everyone benefits in other areas in the long run. And it's not simply bs, he takes a very academic point of view in many areas, especially those relating to social sciences.
Yeah, my bad about before. What you initially stated came off as shitty.
I;ve gotta agree with Jibba about the psycological issue. While there's still plenty of people that can escape poverty or the low level incomes just above it (my dad, his brother and basically all his friends did this, but they have plenty of friends who still live in the hood.) that whole level doesn't have the upward mobility that say, an average middle class joe would have.
Yeah, there's a lot more opportunities now with cheap/free college and what not. But the thing is, when you're that poor, people are typically short sighted in nature. They don't have the luxury of thinking, 'if I put my self through school and some debt for four years, I can make $50k coming out' Instead, it turns into that $30k as a manager at McDonalds looks like an easy way to make a living and get a roof over my head. And the older you get and the more comfortable you get with getting a decent paycheck, the harder it is to get yourself back into school.
Plus, probably the biggest factor in being unable to move up is just that, typically, everyone around you is in the same shitty situation. Granted, people are able to escape. But think of it as someone who has an alcoholic in the family. You have a much higher chance of turning out like that as well.
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Korea (South)11583 Posts
I agree as well, of course psychological issues always are a factor. I recently read the book, "Brothers and Keepers" which is a nonfictional book about two brothers in the ghetto of Pittsburgh, and they go about different paths to escape poverty. One brother did it through school, got a good education, got a scholarship to harvard, and is now a college professor. The other brother loved being a black man in the ghetto and he wanted to get rich by selling drugs etc... He would eventually join a gang, and preform heists and he accidently killed a guy and is now in jail serving a life sentence.
How this takes place in the conversation is that even though there are tons of factors that are blocking your sight to escape poverty and the ghettos. However it all depends on your priorities and likes and dislikes, if you like getting high with ur buddies on heroin and crack and that is what you want to do, then just live how you are in poverty and you can do it all day. But, if you believe education or sports or what have you can get you where you want, then go for it. What I don't agree with is that if someone doesn't try to do what they want, and just sits on their ass and lets things take action all on themselves, then why should we help them?
I grew up in two different life styles. I have one house in pennsylvania on a farm, in a small city of about 900 people. There, everyone is poor, and so you didn't think much about getting that new nintendo game, or whatever. Then down in Northern Virginia, where the average income is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, people are worrying about the color of their brand new 60k car, where in pennsylvania, you would be lucky if your parents could afford to give you a 1990 honda accord with 250 thousand miles on it. So I was able to see the difference between the two people of my age.
In Pennsylvania, people my age who just graduated high school, they are either joining the military, working on the farm, or some other job such as a mechanic at the local gas station. Then in Northern Virginia, it really amazes people if you are going to even a community college. Everyone here goes to college, it's the norm. There is no question of, "What are you doing after high school?" Instead, "What college are you going to?" Even though I went to a public high school, people are very rich. It is normal to see parents buying $200 pants for their kid, just for the hell of it etc...where in Pennsylvania, if you got $5 pants from the local Salvation Army on christmas you are happy.
Life really is different based on who you live around. What I really noticed, is that people in the suburbs are a lot more on edge and full of anxiety, where as in my small town in pennsylvania, there is no rush to do anything. It's real laid back and just full of people relaxing. There, people are a lot more friendly which I have come to realize as well.
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United States20661 Posts
Where I live high school teachers make... 80-120k ish?
Average salary in Los Altos I actually have no idea about. I'd be surprised it it were less than a quarter of a million a year. I'd guess around half.
However, despite the fact that my neighborhood is objectively affluent, you can't buy shit with your money. A bloody shack with two bedrooms and two bathrooms ran for nearly 2 million a few months back.
That kind of income in most other parts of the country would allow you to live like a king. Here, you're just comfortably middle class.
A national tax rate in a country as diverse as the United States should be low; too high of a tax rate fails to consider different areas of the nation and fails as a result.
Furthermore I hate being in the highest tax bracket without actually feeling like a rich person. The highest tax bracket needs to be adjusted a couple hundred thousand dollars upwards to introduce some sort of equity in the system; right now the 250-750k/year crowd gets shafted.
p.s. the Taiwan tax thing is cute. People here [referring to Taiwan now] don't mind taxes because we get socialized healthcare and solid government programmes that do all sorts of shit. Highest tax bracket is two and a half percent more than the highest tax bracket in the United States was [before Bush's cuts] and its set at a lower equivalent dollar amount.
Sigh~
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United States22883 Posts
How much of that is because of California's income tax?
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it's both due to the higher standard of living in CA as well as its highest state tax of 9.3%. i suppose differences between government programs in CA and say in a state like TX which has no state tax is pretty apparent though.
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On July 31 2008 00:28 tiffany wrote:
it's both due to the higher standard of living in CA as well as its highest state tax of 9.3%. i suppose differences between government programs in CA and say in a state like TX which has no state tax is pretty apparent though.
you mean with electricity and water shortages and uncontrollable bushfires? right.
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United States20661 Posts
We have fucking Arnold. That's better than anything any other state has come up with. Ventura's got nothing on the Governator.
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CA, it is so incorrect to say that aside from the 37 million in poverty, the rest deserve their lot in life, saying that the opportunity to go to college and "make something" of yourself is readily available. This is where your ignorance about the middle class comes into play.
MIllions of working-class and middle class families, who are above the poverty line, cannot afford health care, cannot afford to live anything but the most basic of lifestyles, because health care is too expensive, wages are too low.
Now, you are telling a mother of 2 children, who works two full-time blue-collar type jobs just to support her kids and herself, and who cannot afford health insurance and who cannot afford to send her children to anything but their shitty zoned public schools in an urban area, that she should take an online course to make something of herself. Sorry, but she works two full-time jobs, and she has no time to get a degree in anything of worth while still being able to feed her children. This example is typical of the kinds of people who need help in this country. What I wrote is not an exaggeration.
And this is not mentioning the 37 million or whatever the fucking number actually is of the people who are below the poverty line.
Your uncle may be a salient figure in your life but his experience does not represent the millions of people in this country who need help.
And to get programs like a national affordable healthcare plan, urban development, and better funding for schools, you need tax money. Given that the people who need help are the poor, working and middle class, it would make more sense to tax the rich more than the poor. In fact, a tax break for the poor and working class, coupled with an increased tax rate for the rich, is exactly what this problem needs, and that's what Obama promises.
Not saying you have, but if you were to argue that supply side economics works just as well in dealing with the aforementioned problems, you would just be completely wrong.
And arguing that the rich deserve to keep more of their money because they worked for it is so ridiculous and ignorant I don't know where to begin. I know you have discussed this topic with some thoughtfulness but in the end, the message that comes across from you is that you believe in general people who aren't rich have chosen their path and thus deserve it. Take a look at the example I gave again. Would you hold true to this belief of yours if what I said was true? : that the example of the mother working two jobs to support her children exemplifies (note, not models) the situation of the plurality, if not the majority, of the "poor" people that we're talking about.
And just speaking in general, if you make 400k a year, and you want to vote your pocketbook and complain about the squeeze. ignoring the problems this country faces:
1) you have more than enough money to live comfortably
2) hey, that's your prerogative but you still end up as an undoubtedly selfish asshole
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i like how everyone thinks the middel class is somehow entitled to endless amounts of bail outs from rich people and then when the rich people arent giving enough, holy shit fuck those fat cats.
look, the problem is if you are below the poverty line somewhere along the timeline of your life you fucked up hard. do you deseve it? maybe. but we sure as hell dont tax the people who are pay 20%+ of the total federal income tax more.
how about telling the government to go fuck itself silly with its wasteful spending so maybe we can have some money left over for your social programs? government has failed, lets call in the rich fat cats (those bastards i hate them but i need them to pay for my government aid).
how about all you retards go ahead and think how middle class tax cuts will affect the government budget without taxing the upper class to high hell and substantially decreasing market investments in the process.
you cut a substantial amount of taxes from the largest income bracket in the US and your governemtn budget gets fucked and the middle class families gets what? 1k more per year? enough to make a difference, to increase consumer spending to drag us out of our approaching recession?
by the way, that mother of two children shouldnt have had children in the first place, or maybe she should hire some babysitter to take care of her kids while she goes to night school or something. impossible? only to you.
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On July 26 2008 14:27 mahnini wrote:
from the little that i know obama sounds like mccain except a he's black and a socialist
You need to shut the fuck up and get out of this thread because you readily admit you don't know shit, and you don't
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On July 31 2008 13:52 mahnini wrote:
how about telling the government to go fuck itself silly with its wasteful spending
Yeah, that's why I want Obama over Mccain
by the way, that mother of two children shouldnt have had children in the first place, or maybe she should hire some babysitter to take care of her kids while she goes to night school or something. impossible? only to you.
Babysitters cost money, and they still need to be fed. Moron.
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On July 31 2008 13:29 ahole-surprise wrote:
CA, it is so incorrect to say that aside from the 37 million in poverty, the rest deserve their lot in life, saying that the opportunity to go to college and "make something" of yourself is readily available. This is where your ignorance about the middle class comes into play.
MIllions of working-class and middle class families, who are above the poverty line, cannot afford health care, cannot afford to live anything but the most basic of lifestyles, because health care is too expensive, wages are too low.
Now, you are telling a mother of 2 children, who works two full-time blue-collar type jobs just to support her kids and herself, and who cannot afford health insurance and who cannot afford to send her children to anything but their shitty zoned public schools in an urban area, that she should take an online course to make something of herself. Sorry, but she works two full-time jobs, and she has no time to get a degree in anything of worth while still being able to feed her children. This example is typical of the kinds of people who need help in this country. What I wrote is not an exaggeration.
And this is not mentioning the 37 million or whatever the fucking number actually is of the people who are below the poverty line.
Your uncle may be a salient figure in your life but his experience does not represent the millions of people in this country who need help.
And to get programs like a national affordable healthcare plan, urban development, and better funding for schools, you need tax money. Given that the people who need help are the poor, working and middle class, it would make more sense to tax the rich more than the poor. In fact, a tax break for the poor and working class, coupled with an increased tax rate for the rich, is exactly what this problem needs, and that's what Obama promises.
Not saying you have, but if you were to argue that supply side economics works just as well in dealing with the aforementioned problems, you would just be completely wrong.
And arguing that the rich deserve to keep more of their money because they worked for it is so ridiculous and ignorant I don't know where to begin. I know you have discussed this topic with some thoughtfulness but in the end, the message that comes across from you is that you believe in general people who aren't rich have chosen their path and thus deserve it. Take a look at the example I gave again. Would you hold true to this belief of yours if what I said was true? : that the example of the mother working two jobs to support her children exemplifies (note, not models) the situation of the plurality, if not the majority, of the "poor" people that we're talking about.
And just speaking in general, if you make 400k a year, and you want to vote your pocketbook and complain about the squeeze. ignoring the problems this country faces:
1) you have more than enough money to live comfortably
2) hey, that's your prerogative but you still end up as an undoubtedly selfish asshole
I have a question
where is this particular mother working two jobs
can we see a picture of her
or is this just some "idealized" example of the people that we need to help america protect at the expense of those greedy rich people that steal from everybody and try to destroy the environment and make everybody else's lives miserable.
But that's a different topic for a different day.
Let's start with healthcare. There's a reason why healthcare is expensive. Insurance. Suppose you had someone that guaranteed that no matter how much money you lose in blackjack, they'll refund it to you in exchange for 10$50 a month. So naturally, regardless of how much you're betting (and losing) you would keep betting and betting and betting whenever you got the opportunity. That's the premise of insurance these days.
Now the problem with insurance is that nobody is checking how much doctors are charging for their fees. You might compare barbers and restaurants and gas prices and even supermarkets, for the dollar or two you might save, but when it comes to doctors you just drop your copay and pay your insurance premiums. There is no incentive for doctors to compete price wise, so they can jack it up to whatever price they want.
Now, why are insurance companies such a big part in this? Because the government forced all sorts of employers to have an HMO program for their employees. As such, everybody has insurance, nobody bothers to check prices anymore... healthcare costs go up.
But it's not the doctors' fault, either. They spend 8 years in school, and proceed to have 3 years of further training afterwards where they make no money. That schooling easily costs $500,000. Even upper middle-class people have trouble having that much money, especially after progressive taxes combined with inflation. Loans are about the only option, and those you have to pay back. Not to mention insurance costs, maintenance, rent, etc. etc. etc. and the average family doctor keeps about 41% of all the income. For a typical doctor, that would be $155,000 a year. Sounds great, until you deduct all sorts of taxes and loan interest and malpractice insurance/suits, in which case it gets quickly crushed to $50,000 a year. Why did you spend 11 years in school again? Why do I want to be a doctor anyway? (my parents ask me that question all the time and the answer gets harder)
Now why are medical costs so high? Inflation, for both costs and for doctors. How is inflation created? By printing money, which is what the government does when it spends more than it can take in. In other words, BIG government increases inflation, which means costs go up, which means the middle class and lower class get screwed even harder. You can "give them" a tax break and tax the "rich," but the really rich people aren't paying the 35% progressive tax. They're paying a 15% capital gains tax, if anything at all. The only people that get screwed by Obama's plan are upper-middle class people-which coincidentally are most of the youth that support Obama. So much for class mobility. At least in medieval times some merchants could become upper-class.
How are all these European and Scandivanian and Asian countries doing so well with their healthcare systems? Because they're homogenous. The income disparity between people is quite low in thoes countries, aside from the immigrants (Muslims in Europe, Chinese/Koreans in Japan) who generally don't qualify for the healthcare anyways. America, if anything, is not homogenous. There is high income disparity, due to a clever little thing called government kickbacks and big government. How else are politician families able to stay in power for so long? The Kennedys, for one, but even Obama is related to several former presidents.
One more thing.
And arguing that the rich deserve to keep more of their money because they worked for it is so ridiculous and ignorant I don't know where to begin.
So naturally, we should take all their money and give it to other more deserving people. Oppress one to save ten. Please tell me you don't know what happens when someone wins the lottery: they don't know what to do with all the money, and end up poorer than before.
And I'm pretty sure that the situation is not as horrific 1920's sweatshops as you make it seem it is. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair portrays people in a completely unregulated corrupt time, and they lived better than your "exemplified plurality," even without subsidized cable.
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EPT
