US Politics Mega-thread - Page 3557

On March 22 2022 14:31 gobbledydook wrote:
Taelshin has raised two points which he feels have been poorly handled by Biden: war and inflation.

War: By all measures the Afghanistan retreat was a complete disaster and we can hardly forget the scenes of desperate Afghans falling off planes to their death trying to escape Kabul. It is quite disingenuous to blame Trump - it was under Biden's leadership that the retreat was planned and carried out and if he thought it wouldn't work he had the right and the duty to change course.

Inflation: It is not just the Republicans blaming Biden. Rattner, who worked for Obama, also pointed out how it is not supply chain issues, but rather general overstimulus that has caused the high inflation.Source from thehill.com
Its also quite ridiculous to claim that spending three trillion dollars won't increase inflation - it may be argued that it is justified spending, but it definitely is not free and definitely will push up prices.

As an aside I think the Democrats are being dishonest when they claim their spending bill is 3 trillion. They're deliberately funding everything for one or two years, and pushing the start dates way back to 2028 or something, while obviously expecting future Congress members to vote to continue the funding. This is just dishonest accounting: it's fine if you think that you need to fund all these priorities about climate change and education and stuff like that but then make your case about how much that will actually cost per year, how that compares to other spending, what benefit that would provide and so on.

On March 22 2022 18:53 Velr wrote:
His son seems to also have some stuff on some notebook that, as of recently, seems to exist and shows something that is bad and as such Biden is the worst president ever... ahm... yeah.

On March 22 2022 20:53 gobbledydook wrote:


Oh Biden is not the worst president ever. Far from it. I would argue that it doesn't make him a good president.
If "better than Trump" is the best argument Biden has, any remotely competent Republican nominee, I.e. not Trump, will crush him.

On March 22 2022 14:31 gobbledydook wrote:
Taelshin has raised two points which he feels have been poorly handled by Biden: war and inflation.

War: By all measures the Afghanistan retreat was a complete disaster and we can hardly forget the scenes of desperate Afghans falling off planes to their death trying to escape Kabul. It is quite disingenuous to blame Trump - it was under Biden's leadership that the retreat was planned and carried out and if he thought it wouldn't work he had the right and the duty to change course.

Inflation: It is not just the Republicans blaming Biden. Rattner, who worked for Obama, also pointed out how it is not supply chain issues, but rather general overstimulus that has caused the high inflation.Source from thehill.com
Its also quite ridiculous to claim that spending three trillion dollars won't increase inflation - it may be argued that it is justified spending, but it definitely is not free and definitely will push up prices.

As an aside I think the Democrats are being dishonest when they claim their spending bill is 3 trillion. They're deliberately funding everything for one or two years, and pushing the start dates way back to 2028 or something, while obviously expecting future Congress members to vote to continue the funding. This is just dishonest accounting: it's fine if you think that you need to fund all these priorities about climate change and education and stuff like that but then make your case about how much that will actually cost per year, how that compares to other spending, what benefit that would provide and so on.

On March 22 2022 23:04 KwarK wrote:

Would you like a reminder that the Trump era tax cuts (which were accompanied by large spending increases) represented the greatest increase in government borrowing since Bush?

There’s functionally very little difference between collecting $100, spending $120 on shit, and then giving the people you collected $100 from $50 back and collecting $50 then spending $120 on shit. In both cases you end up down $70. In both cases the taxpayers paid $50.

Trump is not an ideological conservative. He doesn’t believe in fiscal responsibility (or any other kind of responsibility). He’s a populist and someone told him people like both high government spending and large tax cuts.

The Democrats are, and always have been, the party of fiscal responsibility because they want to tax and spend and they get held accountable by the Republicans. The Republicans have always been the party of fiscal irresponsibility because they want to do tax cuts while increasing spending and the Democrats don’t really hold them accountable because everyone likes the spending.

On March 22 2022 23:36 gobbledydook wrote:


1. Tax cuts and entitlement increases are different, because they represent different philosophies about government. The left believes that the government is best placed to fairly provide services to citizens whereas the right believes that the government is prone to wasting money and people should pay less tax and decide what they want to do with that money instead. No one has been able to prove which is better which is why there are two parties on the opposite sides of the argument.

2. It's true that the last time the budget was balanced it was under Bill Clinton, a Democrat. Still I'd say the democrats of today are not the Bill Clinton democrats. They have moved further to the left.

3. My point about the democrats using a misleading accounting trick to obfuscate the true cost of their proposals still stands. If they were honest they'd be able to say how much it costs per year.