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On October 08 2024 09:35 Introvert wrote:Show nested quote +On October 08 2024 08:43 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On October 08 2024 08:33 Introvert wrote:On October 08 2024 06:21 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On October 08 2024 06:05 GreenHorizons wrote:On October 08 2024 05:29 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On October 08 2024 05:19 GreenHorizons wrote:On October 08 2024 05:10 BlackJack wrote:On October 08 2024 05:08 NewSunshine wrote:
Biden obviously made a joke. Don't talk about Smithsonian-level anything when you let an obvious joke fly clear over your head. You haven't reached that level yet. Come back when you understand what a joke is. Good lord. The joke didn't fly over his head. He's intentionally and sarcastically pretending that Biden wasn't making a joke to illustrate how absurd it is that people are pretending that Trump thinks Kamala murdered someone on a hiking trail in Maryland. This is electric sharks all over again and really probably a big reason they might lose ground over the next month. Baiting themselves into these absurdly petty bickering matches over the stupidest aspects of the serious issues they distract from is incredibly repellant to people that can be persuaded to show up and vote for Democrats. What are you talking about? People can discuss serious issues *and* call out Trump for saying stupid shit also. (I'm also not quite sure I agree with your premise that a presidential candidate saying alarmingly stupid shit isn't its own serious issue.) Harris and Walz and Democratic supporters haven't suddenly stopped talking about their plans for the economy, or women's rights, or other important topics. And it's extremely hypocritical when Republicans almost never talk about substance, but god forbid Democrats pause for a second from the issues, to point out Trump's gaslighting or fearmongering or lying. I mean they can, but that's not what gets the engagement. You can see a microcosm of it play out here in the difference between the level of engagement on anything that isn't bickering with BJ and oBlade about the most inane shit. The national version (that also played out here) was how Democrats lost a week that was supposed to be about Amber Thurman and how "Women are bleeding out in parking lots, turned away from emergency rooms, losing their ability to ever have children again. Survivors of rape and incest are being told they cannot make decisions about what happens next to their bodies. And now women are dying. These are the consequences of Donald Trump’s actions.” (sounds a lot like Trump's bit about Harris killing someone) apnews.comInstead Dems, the media, and posters here basically spent the week arguing pet eating with people whose primary objective is simply to get Dems, media, and posters like yourself to spend that engagement arguing about whatever bullshit stupid bait argument is the flavor of the day instead of the Amber Thurman of the day. You guys fall for it basically every time. You can't help yourselves. It was pretty well-established, even among the Republicans, that Trump's "they're eating the dogs" meltdown during the debate was an embarrassment. There's nothing wrong with milking that for all it's worth, and - again - that's not stopping the rallies and interviews and other points being made. It doesn't hurt to occasionally remind the voters of the mistakes your opponent makes. And yes, bickering with BJ* and oBlade does happen a lot, but it's not like there are conservatives on this forum proposing great, substantive ideas for policy. (I would imagine it's because the leader of the Republican party doesn't have many of those either.) There are still discussions about other important issues, and "important" is subjective; I'm sure a lot of people roll their eyes when we end up having yet another "GH vs. Capitalism" conversation that goes on for several pages, even if some people consider it a legitimately useful topic. *BJ spent multiple posts denying that Trump meant "murder", even though he said "murder", only to eventually concede that Trump probably only meant "second-degree murder" and that the metaphor stops it from technically being first-degree murder, so it does indeed appear to have been a fruitless discussion about semantics with him: On October 08 2024 06:07 BlackJack wrote:On October 08 2024 05:43 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On October 08 2024 05:17 BlackJack wrote:On October 08 2024 05:12 NewSunshine wrote:On October 08 2024 05:05 BlackJack wrote:On October 08 2024 04:57 WombaT wrote:
[quote]
What on unearthly fuck are you talking about? He's clearly satirizing people's eagerness to take Trump literally that Kamala murdered someone while dismissing Biden's statement as being unserious. Apparently you get to pick and choose when to take something literally and when to ignore the context that someone is not speaking literally. You want to explain to me how "she killed her like she had a gun in her hand" somehow isn't ascribing responsibility to Harris for killing that person? Fuck me, that's two people who refuse to understand tone and the meaning of words based on tone. What's in the water today? He IS ascribing responsibility to Kamala for Rachel Morin's death. He's not saying Kamala was literally the one that murdered her. "Gun in her hand" is a metaphor. He's not saying Kamala literally had a gun in her hand and used it to murder that woman on a hiking trail in Maryland. Pretending like we don't know what metaphors are just to attack Trump on something is just really bizarre. That's my point. On October 08 2024 05:27 BlackJack wrote:On October 08 2024 05:19 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On October 08 2024 05:10 BlackJack wrote:On October 08 2024 05:08 NewSunshine wrote:
Biden obviously made a joke. Don't talk about Smithsonian-level anything when you let an obvious joke fly clear over your head. You haven't reached that level yet. Come back when you understand what a joke is. Good lord. The joke didn't fly over his head. He's intentionally and sarcastically pretending that Biden wasn't making a joke to illustrate how absurd it is that people are pretending that Trump thinks Kamala murdered someone on a hiking trail in Maryland. Trump wasn't joking. I could see someone hand-waving away Trump's statement, with something like "Yeah, that's just Trump making stupid claims again; what else is new," and then a discussion could be had about whether it's okay or not to dismiss Trump's dangerous accusations. But to think Biden's joke is comparable to Trump saying his usual bullshit is ridiculous. You were already giving Trump way too much credit, but it's doubly weird to see you trying to die on the absurd "oBlade Knows What's He's Talking About" hill. I didn't say Trump was joking. I said he wasn't speaking literally. The quote is "Kamala let the savage in that murdered Rachel Morin. Kamala murdered her."
How do you interpret that? That Kamala murdered Rachel Morin? But he just said the savage murdered her. Did he forget in the faction of a second that he already said the savage murdered her? Was it a double murder? Did the savage rape her and then Kamala finished the job with the butt end of her metaphorical gun? It's just really weird having to explain this. It's obvious he is saying that the savage is the one that killed Rachel Morin but Kamala is culpable for her death because she is the one that allowed the savage in. If you delete the context and narrow in one the one sentence "Kamala murdered her" then of course it looks like he is actually accusing Kamala of murdering someone. Just like if you delete the context of Joe Biden grinning and people laughing then it looks like he is "back in" the 2024 race. The point is it's stupid to delete context to win stupid arguments. So Trump is saying that Harris is responsible for the victim's murder, but he also used a metaphor about the wrong cause of death. And that means "not murder". Does Trump think that Harris should only be convicted of manslaughter instead of murder? Please tell us the name of the crime, since Trump said "murder" but you know he meant "not murder". If your ace in the hole is that two people can't be convicted of the same murder, then I think that's something you need to flesh out in more detail. I thought such a thing was possible, but I could be wrong. You and oBlade are comparing a joke to a serious statement (part of which, at best, might contain a metaphor). These are not the same things though. oBlade might sincerely not understand this, but you're working really hard to try to make these things equal, even though I suspect you know they aren't. I'm guessing it would be 2nd degree murder unless Trump thinks there was pre-meditation before Kamala bashed someone's skull in with her metaphorical gun. Neat. I'm satisfied. Actually this back and forth is a good reason why people who don't agree with dem policy positions don't really post about them. Sure, it's time consuming and can be less fun, but as we see here, some people are simply incapable of giving their opponents even the slightly benefit of the doubt or believing that they hold their positions in good faith. If a right-leaning poster argues for, say, a way to reduce debt that doesn't address every progressives wishlist item then really that person is just a shill who wants billionaires to run everything and believe that everyone who is poor deserves to be poor and powerless. And something like the debt, when taken as a topic by itself, is about the most boring thing you can talk about. Now imagine trying to talk about healthcare, the middle east, or anything else. You seem to think that discussing policy would be less rancorous, but given the way the left views policy disagreements (as moral failures) it can be even worse. We can literally test this right now  Please explain what you believe would be the best way to reduce our national debt, and why you think it would be effective. From what I read the first thing that needs to happen is to simply stabilize debt as a percentage of GDP. We can theoretically never have a balanced budget (and even have an always increasing debt) but still be ok so long as the portion of the economy that it takes up remains constant. There can be modest tax hikes, but for deficits of the size we are running now (and what types of spending are going to be main debt drivers in the future) it simply is not possible to tax your way out, and it has diminishing returns. The big elephants in the room is Social Security and Medicare (this is where things get controversial). But first the government needs to rein in spending during the normal part of the cycle where is should be giving itself a cushion for hard times. Unfortunately, neither major party nominee has a *serious* plan to fix this. Federal spending exploded during COVID... not just in one time expenditures, but almost every department had its regular, baseline budget significantly increased. COVID is over, but the government spends a higher percentage of GDP now then it did before. In 2018 it was ~19%. During COVID it was 30%, even now it's 22% (after the 2009 crisis it was 24%). And both parties have plans to spend even more. So that's the main problem, the exact dollar amount isn't as concerning as the trendline, interest payments, and the crowding out effect. Edit: Those are net outlays btw, numbers are slightly different gross. looks a little better actually, or more accurately it's barely changed since the end of the financial crisis ~34%). However *debt* as a % of GDP is going up like crazy. Maybe I should have led with that lol
Thanks for taking the time to write out your thoughts. I'm not very well versed on our national debt / federal spending, so I'd like to ask for some clarity.
"From what I read the first thing that needs to happen is to simply stabilize debt as a percentage of GDP."
That makes sense to me. Is there a target percent in mind that we ought to stabilize at? I found a site that's mapped out that data from 1948 onward: https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/national-debt/ It's one of the gray graphs - the one with the title "Federal Debt Trends Over Time, FY 1948 – 2023; Debt to Gross Domestic Product (GDP)".
"The big elephants in the room is Social Security and Medicare (this is where things get controversial)."
Those definitely appear to be two of the biggest elephants, yeah. I found a source that says that the top six biggest costs are Social Security (21%), Medicare (14%), net interest (14%), health (13%), national defense (13%), and income security (10%). It's a gray table found here: https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/federal-spending/
In order to reduce the debt-to-GDP ratio, we could cut spending and/or we could find ways to increase our annual GDP, right? Do you think that increasing our GDP through economic growth alone isn't viable or consistent enough to stabilize the debt-to-GDP ratio? So therefore, we have to cut spending from somewhere? How do we decide what gets cut and what doesn't get cut? I feel like there are probably arguments for/against cutting from everywhere lol; how do we decide?
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Change the pricing that medicare pays, not the coverage. Thats a start, especially prescription drugs. That could reduce cost. Go to single payer and get rid of private insurance. Boost the tax rate to 3x what we currently taxed for medicare and wed still come out way ahead. The healthcare industry is a huge weight on our country. Its time we got costs in line and stop letting ourselves be gouged.
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On October 08 2024 11:52 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On October 08 2024 09:35 Introvert wrote:On October 08 2024 08:43 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On October 08 2024 08:33 Introvert wrote:On October 08 2024 06:21 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On October 08 2024 06:05 GreenHorizons wrote:On October 08 2024 05:29 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On October 08 2024 05:19 GreenHorizons wrote:On October 08 2024 05:10 BlackJack wrote:On October 08 2024 05:08 NewSunshine wrote:
Biden obviously made a joke. Don't talk about Smithsonian-level anything when you let an obvious joke fly clear over your head. You haven't reached that level yet. Come back when you understand what a joke is. Good lord. The joke didn't fly over his head. He's intentionally and sarcastically pretending that Biden wasn't making a joke to illustrate how absurd it is that people are pretending that Trump thinks Kamala murdered someone on a hiking trail in Maryland. This is electric sharks all over again and really probably a big reason they might lose ground over the next month. Baiting themselves into these absurdly petty bickering matches over the stupidest aspects of the serious issues they distract from is incredibly repellant to people that can be persuaded to show up and vote for Democrats. What are you talking about? People can discuss serious issues *and* call out Trump for saying stupid shit also. (I'm also not quite sure I agree with your premise that a presidential candidate saying alarmingly stupid shit isn't its own serious issue.) Harris and Walz and Democratic supporters haven't suddenly stopped talking about their plans for the economy, or women's rights, or other important topics. And it's extremely hypocritical when Republicans almost never talk about substance, but god forbid Democrats pause for a second from the issues, to point out Trump's gaslighting or fearmongering or lying. I mean they can, but that's not what gets the engagement. You can see a microcosm of it play out here in the difference between the level of engagement on anything that isn't bickering with BJ and oBlade about the most inane shit. The national version (that also played out here) was how Democrats lost a week that was supposed to be about Amber Thurman and how "Women are bleeding out in parking lots, turned away from emergency rooms, losing their ability to ever have children again. Survivors of rape and incest are being told they cannot make decisions about what happens next to their bodies. And now women are dying. These are the consequences of Donald Trump’s actions.” (sounds a lot like Trump's bit about Harris killing someone) apnews.comInstead Dems, the media, and posters here basically spent the week arguing pet eating with people whose primary objective is simply to get Dems, media, and posters like yourself to spend that engagement arguing about whatever bullshit stupid bait argument is the flavor of the day instead of the Amber Thurman of the day. You guys fall for it basically every time. You can't help yourselves. It was pretty well-established, even among the Republicans, that Trump's "they're eating the dogs" meltdown during the debate was an embarrassment. There's nothing wrong with milking that for all it's worth, and - again - that's not stopping the rallies and interviews and other points being made. It doesn't hurt to occasionally remind the voters of the mistakes your opponent makes. And yes, bickering with BJ* and oBlade does happen a lot, but it's not like there are conservatives on this forum proposing great, substantive ideas for policy. (I would imagine it's because the leader of the Republican party doesn't have many of those either.) There are still discussions about other important issues, and "important" is subjective; I'm sure a lot of people roll their eyes when we end up having yet another "GH vs. Capitalism" conversation that goes on for several pages, even if some people consider it a legitimately useful topic. *BJ spent multiple posts denying that Trump meant "murder", even though he said "murder", only to eventually concede that Trump probably only meant "second-degree murder" and that the metaphor stops it from technically being first-degree murder, so it does indeed appear to have been a fruitless discussion about semantics with him: On October 08 2024 06:07 BlackJack wrote:On October 08 2024 05:43 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On October 08 2024 05:17 BlackJack wrote:On October 08 2024 05:12 NewSunshine wrote:On October 08 2024 05:05 BlackJack wrote:
[quote]
He's clearly satirizing people's eagerness to take Trump literally that Kamala murdered someone while dismissing Biden's statement as being unserious. Apparently you get to pick and choose when to take something literally and when to ignore the context that someone is not speaking literally. You want to explain to me how "she killed her like she had a gun in her hand" somehow isn't ascribing responsibility to Harris for killing that person? Fuck me, that's two people who refuse to understand tone and the meaning of words based on tone. What's in the water today? He IS ascribing responsibility to Kamala for Rachel Morin's death. He's not saying Kamala was literally the one that murdered her. "Gun in her hand" is a metaphor. He's not saying Kamala literally had a gun in her hand and used it to murder that woman on a hiking trail in Maryland. Pretending like we don't know what metaphors are just to attack Trump on something is just really bizarre. That's my point. On October 08 2024 05:27 BlackJack wrote:On October 08 2024 05:19 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On October 08 2024 05:10 BlackJack wrote:
[quote]
Good lord. The joke didn't fly over his head. He's intentionally and sarcastically pretending that Biden wasn't making a joke to illustrate how absurd it is that people are pretending that Trump thinks Kamala murdered someone on a hiking trail in Maryland.
Trump wasn't joking. I could see someone hand-waving away Trump's statement, with something like "Yeah, that's just Trump making stupid claims again; what else is new," and then a discussion could be had about whether it's okay or not to dismiss Trump's dangerous accusations. But to think Biden's joke is comparable to Trump saying his usual bullshit is ridiculous. You were already giving Trump way too much credit, but it's doubly weird to see you trying to die on the absurd "oBlade Knows What's He's Talking About" hill. I didn't say Trump was joking. I said he wasn't speaking literally. The quote is "Kamala let the savage in that murdered Rachel Morin. Kamala murdered her."
How do you interpret that? That Kamala murdered Rachel Morin? But he just said the savage murdered her. Did he forget in the faction of a second that he already said the savage murdered her? Was it a double murder? Did the savage rape her and then Kamala finished the job with the butt end of her metaphorical gun? It's just really weird having to explain this. It's obvious he is saying that the savage is the one that killed Rachel Morin but Kamala is culpable for her death because she is the one that allowed the savage in. If you delete the context and narrow in one the one sentence "Kamala murdered her" then of course it looks like he is actually accusing Kamala of murdering someone. Just like if you delete the context of Joe Biden grinning and people laughing then it looks like he is "back in" the 2024 race. The point is it's stupid to delete context to win stupid arguments. So Trump is saying that Harris is responsible for the victim's murder, but he also used a metaphor about the wrong cause of death. And that means "not murder". Does Trump think that Harris should only be convicted of manslaughter instead of murder? Please tell us the name of the crime, since Trump said "murder" but you know he meant "not murder". If your ace in the hole is that two people can't be convicted of the same murder, then I think that's something you need to flesh out in more detail. I thought such a thing was possible, but I could be wrong. You and oBlade are comparing a joke to a serious statement (part of which, at best, might contain a metaphor). These are not the same things though. oBlade might sincerely not understand this, but you're working really hard to try to make these things equal, even though I suspect you know they aren't. I'm guessing it would be 2nd degree murder unless Trump thinks there was pre-meditation before Kamala bashed someone's skull in with her metaphorical gun. Neat. I'm satisfied. Actually this back and forth is a good reason why people who don't agree with dem policy positions don't really post about them. Sure, it's time consuming and can be less fun, but as we see here, some people are simply incapable of giving their opponents even the slightly benefit of the doubt or believing that they hold their positions in good faith. If a right-leaning poster argues for, say, a way to reduce debt that doesn't address every progressives wishlist item then really that person is just a shill who wants billionaires to run everything and believe that everyone who is poor deserves to be poor and powerless. And something like the debt, when taken as a topic by itself, is about the most boring thing you can talk about. Now imagine trying to talk about healthcare, the middle east, or anything else. You seem to think that discussing policy would be less rancorous, but given the way the left views policy disagreements (as moral failures) it can be even worse. We can literally test this right now Please explain what you believe would be the best way to reduce our national debt, and why you think it would be effective. From what I read the first thing that needs to happen is to simply stabilize debt as a percentage of GDP. We can theoretically never have a balanced budget (and even have an always increasing debt) but still be ok so long as the portion of the economy that it takes up remains constant. There can be modest tax hikes, but for deficits of the size we are running now (and what types of spending are going to be main debt drivers in the future) it simply is not possible to tax your way out, and it has diminishing returns. The big elephants in the room is Social Security and Medicare (this is where things get controversial). But first the government needs to rein in spending during the normal part of the cycle where is should be giving itself a cushion for hard times. Unfortunately, neither major party nominee has a *serious* plan to fix this. Federal spending exploded during COVID... not just in one time expenditures, but almost every department had its regular, baseline budget significantly increased. COVID is over, but the government spends a higher percentage of GDP now then it did before. In 2018 it was ~19%. During COVID it was 30%, even now it's 22% (after the 2009 crisis it was 24%). And both parties have plans to spend even more. So that's the main problem, the exact dollar amount isn't as concerning as the trendline, interest payments, and the crowding out effect. Edit: Those are net outlays btw, numbers are slightly different gross. looks a little better actually, or more accurately it's barely changed since the end of the financial crisis ~34%). However *debt* as a % of GDP is going up like crazy. Maybe I should have led with that lol Thanks for taking the time to write out your thoughts. I'm not very well versed on our national debt / federal spending, so I'd like to ask for some clarity. "From what I read the first thing that needs to happen is to simply stabilize debt as a percentage of GDP." That makes sense to me. Is there a target percent in mind that we ought to stabilize at? I found a site that's mapped out that data from 1948 onward: https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/national-debt/ It's one of the gray graphs - the one with the title "Federal Debt Trends Over Time, FY 1948 – 2023; Debt to Gross Domestic Product (GDP)". "The big elephants in the room is Social Security and Medicare (this is where things get controversial)." Those definitely appear to be two of the biggest elephants, yeah. I found a source that says that the top six biggest costs are Social Security (21%), Medicare (14%), net interest (14%), health (13%), national defense (13%), and income security (10%). It's a gray table found here: https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/federal-spending/ In order to reduce the debt-to-GDP ratio, we could cut spending and/or we could find ways to increase our annual GDP, right? Do you think that increasing our GDP through economic growth alone isn't viable or consistent enough to stabilize the debt-to-GDP ratio? So therefore, we have to cut spending from somewhere? How do we decide what gets cut and what doesn't get cut? I feel like there are probably arguments for/against cutting from everywhere lol; how do we decide?
To the first question, I don't know, people argue about such things. Some people seem to think the US can get to 150-200% debt-to-GDP before things go south. No one really knows for sure though. As for what amount of GDP can government spend before the ill effects add up, I don't know. Memory says people estimate about 30%, but I could be making that number up and confusing it with something else.
The second paragraph shows why so many of the budget fights we have now are fake. Non-defense discretionary spending is all of 14% of total federal spending, and yet that's what Congress spends most of its time arguing about. Republicans are very proud that they were able to get a not-insignificant-but-still-small cut in the growth of spending while still spending more than pre-pandemic. All very silly.
It took a while, but we are finally at the point where left-of-center economists are getting worried about the debt load.
Again not an economic historian but the days of explosive growth seem long gone, pick your favorite reason why. But if the economy can't grow faster than the debt does then obviously you can't catch up that way. But that's where choices have to be made. The "cut everywhere" idea is one of Rand Paul's I think, but not a single Democrat or even most Republicans would go for it, though for different reasons. Dems are constantly talking about what government "should" be doing for everyone and it's hard to talk that way while advocating for for cuts. As the party of the state and bureaucracy, they will never go for it. I'm convinced neither party will go for it until a crisis forces compromise. Me? I'd cut most department budgets, but even so, probably more important is to reform how government functions. American bureaucracy is a mishmash of different agencies and rules. A lot of it was created to fulfill political needs. some Senator needs some money or federal help for something he wants (logrolling), or in response to a crisis (e.g. New Deal agencies, of which many mercifully are no longer with us, but its legacy remains in many places). Our administrative apparatus is unwieldly, and while some blame federalism for that, I disagree. More like, much of the Democrat created state suffers from what Ezra Klein calls "everything bagel liberalism" where the state has no capacity to deal with any particular problem because it tries to deal with every problem.
I’ve come to think of this as the problem of everything-bagel liberalism. Everything bagels are, of course, the best bagels. But that is because they add just enough to the bagel and no more. Add too much — as memorably imagined in the Oscar-winning “Everything Everywhere All at Once” — and it becomes a black hole from which nothing, least of all government’s ability to solve hard problems, can escape. And one problem liberals are facing at every level where they govern is that they often add too much. They do so with good intentions and then lament their poor results. (Conservatives, I should say, are not immune from piling on procedure and stricture, but they often do so in a purposeful attempt to make government work poorly, and so failure and inefficiency become a kind of success.)
For the record that last part is wrong, what conservatives will do, which is what every does, is try to get government out of the way when they think government is doing something it shouldn't. No one actually wants the DMV to be slow and annoying to deal with.
That's kind of a tangent though, even moderate reforms to our major entitlement programs would do wonders for our government's money situation. But any suggestion that calls for cuts or changes to systems implemented when people didn't live so many decades beyond retirement is considered cruel by Democrats. Even now Kamala says he plan to deal with debt is to tax the rich, but if you look at projected outlays you see that you can't sustain these programs without European level taxes on the middle class (or even with them IIRC), which NO ONE in America wants. Americans want government smaller in many ways but they also like all the goodies (who wouldn't?). This is why Republicans lose if voters think they will touch entitlements and Democrats lose if voters think their taxes are going up. I think nothing will happen until these crisis moments arise. But as for me, I would reform our biggest spending programs, massively reform how government operates and grants money (this is needed for more reasons that just cash problems). As a political concession I'd allow a tax increase, even though that really would be a small part of fixing the problem.
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Hurricane Milton looking like a monster, hopefully any Florida-based TL'ers have evacuated already.
Probably gonna be a historic amount of damage, I look forward to seeing Florida's totally strong and capable leadership in the aftermath.
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Resources are finite and the important thing is to spend them well. We should redirect resources away from bad expenditures and towards good ones. For example, for-profit health insurance is a huge ripoff. It's wildly inefficient compared to single payer, let alone compared to publicly-run healthcare.
On the other hand, the government spends trillions on bullshit weapons we'll never use or should never use, and on murdering foreigners overseas for no good reason. We can save a ton of resources by not doing that.
There's mountains of government waste and private waste to clean up, and often they're intertwined (such as government subsidies --> 'food' full of corn syrup). Unfortunately, waste often funnels lots of resources to people who shouldn't have received those resources, and who will use those resources to make sure they keep getting funneled those resources. Shit's hard to fix.
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The more people you have, the more money you spend on them, which is why a key Republican proposal this cycle is to liquidate 50% or 75% of federal employees randomly, for example by odd/even social security numbers. Such a way to deal with government bloat is not even tenable for consideration among the Democrats, because government workers are one of their large tent voting coalition of people whose livelihoods depend on the government's perpetual expansion of itself.
You can work on both the numerator and denominator, so in addition to cutting spending, you can get higher revenue with lower taxes if you are taxing a larger base. So Drumpf's plan dropping business tax to 15% conditionally on products being made in America, plus getting revenue into the coffers from something other than income tax, like tariffs, is a good start. Not a single chance of anything ever getting cut by the Democrats except police budgets.
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How stupid does someone need to be to think a Republican, be it Trump or anyone else, would ever deliver a balanced budget, let alone one that actually results in a surplus.
But when you are at "firing employes randomly"... Well I guess, rock bottom is hovering far above you.
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On October 08 2024 15:41 Velr wrote:
How stupid does someone need to be to think a Republican, be it Trump or anyone else, would ever deliver a balanced budget, let alone one that actually results in a surplus.
But when you are at "firing employes randomly"... Well I guess, rock bottom is hovering far above you.
Congress passes budgets in the US. Firing them randomly, for example by social security number, or by birthday like we do with selective service, is fairer and more legal than for example firing all the ones that are registered Democrats on the assumption they are the least efficient.
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It has been done before so it can't be retarded is your argument? Really?
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I have no idea what your problem is. Selective service means the draft, it doesn't refer to a history of firing federal employees - however, yes, federal employees have been fired before. No, firing people is not an inherently retarded or stupid act. Obviously. I didn't think I needed to disprove that. Show me how it's retarded first. Seems to me spending $10 trillion on a government that doesn't work would qualify as retarded more.
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this cycle is to liquidate 50% or 75% of federal employees randomly
is the issue (aside from the fact that 50-75% seem ridiculous).
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So not "defund the police" but "defund the government"?
If the argument is that the government is too much government and we should fire most of them, I do think "fire most of them randomly" is not a great approach. Surely some kind of thought or reason would result in a better course of action, rather than the vibes-based "Nope, too much government, we should just employment-Thanos 75% of them".
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On October 08 2024 16:12 oBlade wrote:
I have no idea what your problem is. Selective service means the draft, it doesn't refer to a history of firing federal employees - however, yes, federal employees have been fired before. No, firing people is not an inherently retarded or stupid act. Obviously. I didn't think I needed to disprove that. Show me how it's retarded first. Seems to me spending $10 trillion on a government that doesn't work would qualify as retarded more.
If your company were to need to fire people, do you think it would be better to (a) fire those with a track record of bad performance and keep the good employees? Or (b) fire people at random?
Now let's repeat that exercise but instead, your company decides it no longer wants to be in both business A and B, but would rather focus on just A. Does it make sense to (a) fire most people in business B (maybe keeping some of the top performers and transitioning them to A), or (b) fire people at random and then transition everybody left into new teams focused on A?
I am assuming you'd say (a) to both cases, so please explain why random firings make sense in government?
E: and yes, I am generously accepting the premise that the government is too big by 1-300%, and thus needs a mass culling. I don't agree with it, but let's start with the really stupid part of your post first before moving on to what parts of government actually are too big. Although I suspect the reason you came up with the "random firing" is because you don't know what parts of government are actually underperforming and are too lazy to find out, so just fire people at random and pray the smaller government can now do more with less... or something.
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There’s gotta be a better way to shrink government bloat that doesn’t result in half of Americans no longer getting their mail because their mailman or mailwoman or mailthem was Thanos snapped out of a job.
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On October 08 2024 15:35 oBlade wrote:
more people have, more money on them, which is why a key cycle is to liquidate % or 75 of federal randomly, example odd/even social bloat is even tenable for among government are one large tent coalition depend on the government
You work both numerator, addition spending, you can get higher if you are taxing. Drumpf's dropping % conditionally being America, getting into the coffers other than tariffs start. a chance anything ever cut the except budgets.
I think you are right, here I demonstrate the soundness of your fair method by quoting you with every even/odd word randomly removed /s
And in it I find the truths that I wanted to find which is that "government are one large tent coalition depend on the government" regardless of position.
You are also on the mark saying people in power "can get high" when they are taxing.
I don't know you and your preferences whether you are a Republican party or Trump supporter but 8 years ago I listened to a lot of "draining the swamp" Did you see them succeed on that? Do you think based on that memory, they are going to go through with it? If you have trust in them based on their previous work then I do not mean no harm. If you don't even (self-)reflect then I do mean ill will.
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On October 08 2024 14:38 Zambrah wrote:
Hurricane Milton looking like a monster, hopefully any Florida-based TL'ers have evacuated already.
Probably gonna be a historic amount of damage, I look forward to seeing Florida's totally strong and capable leadership in the aftermath.
My wife and I were going to fly from NJ to FL tomorrow, for a long weekend at Disney. We are definitely changing our plans.
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I have nothing but respect for the country that gave us Liszt and Erdos and the only country in Europe smart enough to write their family names first, but I can't make heads or tails of whatever translator that post has been through.
If your challenge is "politicians don't always do what they say they do," that's true, but it's a separate issue from "what should politicians do," like you have to be right about the latter before you can hold them to account for not following through on something that everybody "knew" wasn't real anyway.
On October 08 2024 16:58 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On October 08 2024 16:12 oBlade wrote:
I have no idea what your problem is. Selective service means the draft, it doesn't refer to a history of firing federal employees - however, yes, federal employees have been fired before. No, firing people is not an inherently retarded or stupid act. Obviously. I didn't think I needed to disprove that. Show me how it's retarded first. Seems to me spending $10 trillion on a government that doesn't work would qualify as retarded more. If your company were to need to fire people, do you think it would be better to (a) fire those with a track record of bad performance and keep the good employees? Or (b) fire people at random? Now let's repeat that exercise but instead, your company decides it no longer wants to be in both business A and B, but would rather focus on just A. Does it make sense to (a) fire most people in business B (maybe keeping some of the top performers and transitioning them to A), or (b) fire people at random and then transition everybody left into new teams focused on A? I am assuming you'd say (a) to both cases, so please explain why random firings make sense in government? E: and yes, I am generously accepting the premise that the government is too big by 1-300%, and thus needs a mass culling. I don't agree with it, but let's start with the really stupid part of your post first before moving on to what parts of government actually are too big. Although I suspect the reason you came up with the "random firing" is because you don't know what parts of government are actually underperforming and are too lazy to find out, so just fire people at random and pray the smaller government can now do more with less... or something.
1) You can do both. The whole challenge is an unnecessary either/or bifurcation.
You're correct I don't have a 100% perfectly measured picture of what parts of the government are underperforming. Neither does the government itself. That's part of the problem. Let's compromise, cut it in half immediately to start. Have the survivors audit each other.
2) I didn't come up with it. Someone else did. That's why I wrote "Republican proposal" in the post. Vivek and others have brought it up. Drumpf usually puts it at 50% I think, so Vivek turboed it to 75%. People who follow politics have encountered what both sides are up to and talking about before.
The US Postal Service? Come on, don't be absurd. I had a family member not get mail for 2 weeks. They called the post office. "Oh yeah, your mailman retired 2 weeks ago." You have a government agency that is the sole legal way to deliver certain things, their workers also have a union, and that union endorsed a candidate in a postal election.
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On October 08 2024 18:07 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On October 08 2024 14:38 Zambrah wrote:
Hurricane Milton looking like a monster, hopefully any Florida-based TL'ers have evacuated already.
Probably gonna be a historic amount of damage, I look forward to seeing Florida's totally strong and capable leadership in the aftermath. My wife and I were going to fly from NJ to FL tomorrow, for a long weekend at Disney. We are definitely changing our plans.
But think of how short the queues would be
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On October 08 2024 08:22 BlackJack wrote:
Kamala's not just doing "Call Her Daddy" Podcast. She's also going to be on Howard Stern, The View, and Late Nite with Stephen Colbert. Of course there are lots of serious journalists that would love an opportunity to interview Kamala. It would be nice if she gave as much attention to answering questions from the press as she does to giving softball interviews with podcasters that are happy to cheerlead for her. Why are you acting like America gives a shit about serious interviews from the press?
If the voting public gave a shit then the Republican party as it is today wouldn't exist. She is giving softball interviews to podcasters who cheerlead because serious interviews with the press have shown not to do anything.
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Is this going to be one of those things where the budget is cut for a particular service in the name of finding efficiencies, then the service just becomes shittier and shittier until you end up with something that is no longer fit for purpose so you end up ushering in a more expensive alternative because you have no recourse? A bit like how the NHS in the UK is in the process of blowing up and they had to bring in locums at an eyewatering ~£837/h to cover shortfalls in service?
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EPT
