US Politics Mega-thread - Page 1726

On July 31 2019 23:36 Gorsameth wrote:
And yet other countries work perfectly fine with federally backed students loans.
The problem with reverting intervention is that you then get (even) more class divide in education.

The solution to tuition fees isn't to limit University to only the rich, which is what would likely happen without federally backed student loans.

On July 31 2019 23:41 KwarK wrote:
Old white man who openly supported apartheid secretly racist? That’s surprising!

On July 31 2019 23:53 Mohdoo wrote:


Not surprising, but completely eliminates a source of pride for a lot of people, which gets 2 thumbs up from me.

On July 31 2019 23:45 Blitzkrieg0 wrote:


Nobody said to limit it only to the rich and you certainly don't need to spend 100k to get an education in the US. Allowing 18 year olds to make financial decisions that no bank would back makes absolutely no sense and is one of the major causes of the price of education rising to such ridiculous levels.

My only point is to say that addressing the rising cost of tuition makes a lot more sense than handing out free money to everyone. Address the root cause of the problem.

On August 01 2019 00:54 Simberto wrote:


But that would be the effect. If you cannot get a loan, you cannot study at a university. Thus, only the people who either can get a loan (because their parents are rich and stable enough) or who can pay for it directly (because their parents are rich enough) get to study at a university.

Maybe also those who can get a stipend of some sort. But that still means that every rich kid can go to university, while only the top of the poor ones can.

The problem that this also leads to tuition rising absurdly is another problem. But it is not solved by once again only allowing those who can afford it to go to university. A better solution is a government founded education and university system.

On August 01 2019 00:04 IyMoon wrote:


You clearly don't know people if you think this is going to stop them from loving Reagan

On August 01 2019 01:04 KwarK wrote:

This assumes lending for education is irrational. There must be some rate at which it makes sense to loan someone money to improve their job prospects, regardless of the wealth of them or their parents.

One could argue that the educations that would be limited by such a policy would be those leading to professions that the market does not value and that market forces in lending would lead to better allocation of resources. Let’s say there’s a shortage of doctors and anyone with a medical degree can make bank. Is it a bad thing that a lender might refuse to fund you for a Masters Degree in Library Science (a career that is woefully underpaid) but would loan you money to get a MD?

This kind of resource allocation problem is one of the few things the free market is pretty good at. The question of whether the increased earning potential justifies the up front investment is best answered by having a bunch of analysts do a shitton of research on graduation rates, hiring rates, projected salaries etc. because they’re motivated by having to decide whether to invest their own money. I doubt I’d have gotten many willing investors for my history undergraduate degree but my masters in accounting probably would have been fine. Had I been presented with vastly different interest rates on loans for each I suspect I’d have made the right choice the first time around.

On August 01 2019 03:22 Mohdoo wrote:


I know some totally decent people who see Reagan as some kind of a beacon of Republican dignity and sensibility. Since Reagan made them proud to be republicans, and now he's outed as a straight up racist beyond any "that's not what he meant!" excuses. It will definitely sting a lot of people.

On July 31 2019 23:39 Dromar wrote:


Hey, just wanted to pop in and say that there are actually people who would trade something like $1200 in disability benefits (or even more) for $1000 a month. There are a couple reasons for this.

First, much of the disability benefits are means-tested. In theory, this is to prevent abuse, as in, only people who need it get it. But in practice, it becomes a sort of poverty trap. "Only people who make less than $X get this" quickly turns into "If I make more than $X, I lose my benefits." "Only people without a job get this." ----> "If I get a job, I lose my benefits."
People are disincentivized from bettering their position, keeping them on disability. Some of these people would love to have $1000 /month with no strings attached so they can do other things and not be disqualified from the benefit. Even if it comes at a "loss" of turning the $1200 into $1000, for example. The freedom dividend is $1000 /month, no strings attached. No poverty trap.

A second reason is that, in fact, this already happens to some degree. There is a shocking amount of welfare fraud in the US, that takes many forms. From Wikipedia:



People don't report income because they want to work and better their position in life, but don't want to be punished for it. The freedom dividend would let them do this without committing fraud.

A more recent accounting from Lexington Law:



That's the more wholesome form of fraud I'd say. There's another form where welfare recipients use their food stamp money at the beginning of the month to buy things like soda, meat, etc. and then sell it to a guy (possibly even the shop owner if they are unscrupulous) for half price in cash. Free money for the buyer (they get the goods for half price), and the food stamp recipient converts their benefit to cash they can use on anything.


To your greater point, that there are people who would ultimately have less purchasing power if the freedom dividend and VAT were implemented, yes, that is true. I'd argue that it's a very small portion of the population. Further, it's a group of people who are receiving a significant amount of government assistance already. The usual logic is that those are the people most in need, but in truth, there are many people who need assistance just as much and are not getting it for any number of reasons. I see the freedom dividend as an expansion and modernization to the social safety net if anything. At the cost of "weakening" the benefits of those currently receiving significant benefits by (at most) 10%, we can set up a much cleaner infrastructure that benefits hundreds of millions of Americans.

So certainly there is a group of people who would be worse off from this, yes. That's true of any progressive plan (ex. Bernie's free college isn't really free. People who pay taxes and don't go to college are worse off). I just think that the people who would be worse off from the freedom dividend + VAT wouldn't be that much worse off, and would only be worse off because they are already receiving a significant amount of assistance. On the other hand, the freedom dividend would have a transformative effect on the lives of literally hundreds of millions of Americans.

On August 01 2019 03:52 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
There are those who would argue that there are subjects with benefits to society beyond that of merely monetary value and those subjects should be funded by the state.

On July 31 2019 23:09 Mohdoo wrote:
Nothing brightens my day quite like Reagan's bullshit legacy being revealed as horse shit.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49177034



With these tapes, his support for private prisons has a much more clear intention. Identifying with Reagan and his presidency now carries a great deal of shame. He was always a bad guy, but at least now it is more apparent to everyone and even his defenders will have to just swallow this. Rest in pieces, Reagan legacy.

On August 01 2019 04:53 KwarK wrote:
Why does the length of the phone call or the other party or the years before he became presidency change anything? It’s still a super racist thing to say. It’s super racist in a long phone call or a short one. It’s super racist whether you’re talking to Nixon or to a friend. You’re saying these things like they mitigate it but as far as I can see they do absolutely nothing to change the substance of the comment.

It’s not a bottom of the barrel political attack, Reagan is dead, nobody is trying to tank his ratings. It’s a quote. Quoting someone isn’t an attack, they’re showing themselves. If you quoted Hillary calling racist Trump supporters deplorables that wouldn’t be you attacking Hillary, that’d be Hillary showing what she thinks and people drawing their own conclusions.

As for bad news about Democrats, that’s just more “both sides” shit appealing to a tribalism that you wrongly believe excuses your side. Bring on the shitty Democrat quotes, let’s crucify the lot of them. You can’t defend your shittiness by attempting to point out shit on my side because that shit’s not mine and I think it stinks. You’d do well to cease this silly tribalism and join me in condemning racists on all sides.

On August 01 2019 04:58 Introvert wrote:



All those words on something I didnt say! Of course it was a racist comment. I make no defense of the comment itself, obviously. It is wholly condemnable.

On August 01 2019 05:02 micronesia wrote:
I interpreted your post the same way as Kwark, but I figured if I respond you'll claim you didn't say that, so I kept quiet. What was your point with the previous post, in summary?

On August 01 2019 05:06 Gorsameth wrote:
You spend a post talking about how the comment doesn't matter and didn't condemn it in any way, shape or form.

Its no wonder people (myself included) take it as such.

On August 01 2019 05:12 Introvert wrote:


Look again at Mohdoo's comment. Think of it as me defending Reagan's "legacy," if you will. I admit when I saw that story yesterday I was surprised-- Reagan's life, of which we now know a great deal, had nothing of this sort in it before. Certainly as leader of this nation such words, or anything approaching them never exiter his lips, in fact the opposite was constantly being said. As president he was very good, although imperfect. I don't think this phone call detracts from that.

The best I could do to defend this comment, If I wished to, would be to say that Reagan was cynically trying to appeal to Nixon. If you listen to the full call, the rest is entirely benign. Reagan is clearly pissed about what happened at the UN and calls to give Nixon some advice on how to respond. I say that now to point out what I could have said.

Debating Reagan's policies of course would take days and we already know the left thinks a central motivating factor in conservative policy is hatred and fear of dark-skinned people, so that is not really point here.