US Politics Mega-thread - Page 9179

On November 09 2017 01:26 Plansix wrote:
I’m having a tough time dealing with the idea that 20K isn’t just living in poverty.

On November 08 2017 16:36 mozoku wrote:
Sort of jumping back a page here, but I'm struggling to understand how this tax bill is supposed to be a "tax cuts for the rich"? There's literally no interpretation of this bill where this makes any sense, and the fact that anyone believes it is a testament to how thoroughly the left has brainwashed a large part of it's base--it's Fox News-level nonsense dogma.

Corporate tax cuts are happening everywhere in the world... because the world has realized that it's more efficient to tax people than corporations. When you tax a corporation, the tax is pushed on to consumers, employees, and shareholders in hard-to-measure amounts. When you repeal it, the largest portion does go to shareholders but the US has to lower nominal corporate taxes rates to maintain the real tax rate in the new bill due to loophole closures. Finally, sure, this part of the bill is the most regressive portion (the GOP generally values growth over income equality after all), but that's made up for by the fact that the vast majority of the individual tax cuts are going to the middle class.

Furthermore, the marginal rates on high earners are generally higher now, so the individual tax rates are more progressive in that sense. Sure, many high earners pay less overall but so does just about everyone else as well. It's not really tax reform, it's a tax cut.

Finally, the top 1% of earners pays literally 50% of the total tax bill. Good lord, I understand the "but they can afford to pay more" argument but 50%? If that's not progressive enough for you, you might as well just straight up ask for a free ride through life. If you think your tax bill is too high, maybe you should consider looking where we can trim expenses instead of trying to pay more of your expenses with someone else's money. I'm not sure when our reference point for "not progressive enough" became the status quo instead of absolute reality.

For the record, I'm not even a really a fan of this tax bill (even though I'd likely reluctantly vote for it). I'm a fan of small government in principle, but this bill feels more like Trump populist handouts then growth-minded reform. And before I'm accused of being irrationally scared of government (as is the usual knee-jerk reaction I get when I post), I'll restate for the 100th time that I'd rather have single payer than the current healthcare mess (though I'm somewhat uncomfortable with it in principle) and that I believe corporations may be underregulated in certain industries (though overregulated in others).

On November 09 2017 01:26 Plansix wrote:
I’m having a tough time dealing with the idea that 20K isn’t just living in poverty.

On November 09 2017 01:30 GreenHorizons wrote:


I mean at $200k a year I could pay 3 people $20k and still have near 2x the income of them combined, but we're both supposed to be considered middle class? That doesn't make any sense.

On November 08 2017 15:55 IgnE wrote:
I appreciate your taking the time to read and think about what I wrote and acknowledge a certain open-mindedness on your part.

That being said my opinion here is that you are thinking about sovereignty and "the social contract" in the wrongs ways. Let me get around to reading Leviathan before I try and flesh out exactly why that is, though. Sovereignty is a tricky thing. I'm still trying to work it out.

I will note two things that caught my eye as needing immediate correction.

1) You said that both fascism and communism were totalitarian. It is true that both Fascism and Communism were totalitarian. But those were only historically contingent political formations. I would argue that only one social structure necessarily tends towards the herd instinct, and the desire to have someone else legislate life. A communistic social structure demands active participation in the political sphere, in the truly Greek sense, as action among equals. What the revolutionary communists of the 20th century carried with them was the fascizing elements carried by the man of ressentiment.

2) You say that "values" are often at issue in American politics, and choose abortion, as the exemplary "value" issue. On the one hand, there is some sense in this. The religious fervor of the pro-life crowd does not seem directly tied to economics as disciplinarized by the university. On the other hand, however, state intrusion into abortion is a prime example of the exercise of sovereign power on "bare life." It is police power (broadly conceived here as the networks of institutions, laws, social codes, and actual policemen) exercised in the matter of abortion/birth control that is one of the most clear examples of state biopower, dictating what individuals can and can't do with their bodies, how they are to conduct their sexual lives, and to whom or to what they owe certain kinds of legal obligations. Keep in mind here that economics comes from oikos (household) and nemein/nomos (distribute, dwell, possess, law). Abortion is a biopolitical issue in the sense that it's the intrusion of sovereign power into private household ways of life, and it is an economic issue, in the Arendtian Greek sense, in that it is the expansion of a private household issue that would have been prepolitical into the public realm, where administration of the national household (demographic control, birth rates, ensuring a female population of caretakers) has subsumed the properly political.

On November 09 2017 00:13 farvacola wrote:

You shouldn't "bank" on upholding the use of an oftentimes inaccurate label in place of admitting that this line we've drawn between "capitalist" and "socialist" is mostly bullshit utilized by pundits and fear mongers in service of outrage in lieu of actual understanding. We can and must do better.