His base thinks all inflation (which is global) is Biden’s fault. I just had some idiot stranger try to tell me this the other day. We’re so fucked, guys.
Democracy is failing, not because of fascism, but because Americans are too stupid, and too easily polarized towards abandoning all thought and logic in favor of a compelling (and false) narrative.
Democracy is failing, not because of fascism, but because Americans are too stupid, and too easily polarized towards abandoning all thought and logic in favor of a compelling (and false) narrative.
Not quite. America is reaching the final stages of Capitalism, it’s grasp on global hegemony is weakening and Imperialism is falling. Fascism is rising as an attempt to turn back the clock and retake America’s former position of absolute power, but we all know this will never happen.
And richer rich.
To be clear, that is also happening under Biden. Neither dominant party is moving against their donors.
Yeah, does make me laugh when I see people talk about Trump and Biden, or Starmer and Sunak, like they’re different people with radically different policies.
Honestly, the rich get rich because poor people make stupid decisions, such as buying brand new cars, for example. Or credit cards. Rich people love that credit cards exist.
I’m not going to down vote you, but I strongly disagree. Wealthy begets wealth. Poverty digs the hole deeper. This has been the pattern for longer than any of us have been alive.
You don’t have money? Congrats, you need to take out loans for any important purchase, and get terrible interest rates on those loans. You can live in a crappy apartment and drive a crappy car, but those still cost significant money when you have none. Work two or three jobs even. The minimum wage have been raised in 15 years, so what you earn is barely enough to scrape by, assuming you don’t have any health problems.
You come from money? Make investments, but rental properties, get your education without financially crippling you for years. You come from lots of money? Corner the market, influence Congress to pass bills that protect your assets and punish others.
You definitely have a point. Some people are definitely stuck in a vicious cycle, but others really do choose to put themselves their. I would say most people have the opportunity to live below their means and choose not to.
I’d recommend looking up the Vimes Boots Theory of Socioeconomic Unfairness. It costs a lot more money to be poor.
Taken seriously, it is misleading because it treats poverty and affluence like god-given eternal conditions. And considering Vimes ancestor being mentioned quite often, i’m pretty sure it was not to be taken seriously.
What? No it doesn’t.
The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. … A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. … But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
Where on the Disc did you get ‘god-given external conditions’ from that?
And knowing how Sir Terry stood on social issues, it was indeed supposed to be taken seriously. He often used his books to speak out about problems in society.
Where on the Disc did you get ‘god-given external conditions’ from that?
In the premise and in the presented alternative. As you noticed, the boots, while being literal in the story, are also a metaphor, but for a metaphor on the broad topic as poverty and affluence, it’s exremely reductive, especially for someone who is not a medieval cop with a meddle-age crisis of nihilism and rampant alcoholism (for whom it’s understandable) but a XXI century reader. It does not present anything else for you to make it an universal theory to proclaim with smugness. It’s also untrue because price don’t necessary, or even that much often, equal quality.
Also Vimes was a cop and a lib, regardless what he babbled to himself, his job and purpose was to keep the status quo. And Pratchet, however good his books are was also a lib and his thoughts about revolution never came even an inch further than the usual liberal propaganda about revolution eating its children, lesser evil is dope and status quo is good, what he promoted was a old bankrupted “capitalism with human face” and other liberal ideals. Just he was intelligent enough to place his stories in the medieval like world where the capitalism is only emerging and this is still undeniably progressive.
By “not to be taken seriously” i meant that Pratchet was not a 10 year old and even in his liberalism knew society, politics and economics are much more complcated than to make universal theory based on “price = quality”
Corporate propaganda and advertising pushing a narrative that being happy is having more shit than the people around you is hard to resist if your parents/role models don’t explain to you that the crap on the screens and on the paper is just there because it convinces people to spend money they don’t really have on shit they don’t really need.
No, the rich get rich because they own and control the Capital, and through it steal the Value created by Workers. Credit Cards are an example of Finance Capital at play, debt entrapment.
Cutting taxes doesnt slow the economy or fuel inflation.
Well he and congress at the time permanently cut taxes for the rich and raised them for the middle class and poor so does that speed up or slow down the economy and does it fuel or resist inflation?
Cause it’s pretty fuckin clear to me that taxing the rich less and the poor more isn’t a good strategy for a healthy society.
I am in favor of less taxes for everyone and thus less spending in the government. This goes to the idea of “trickle down” economics, which on a side note was never an actual thing. Less taxes are better on every level, but the question should be how much do we need for a functioning society.
Cable monster I think you’re debating in good faith and for that I thank you. But you’ve got a lot of deprogramming to do - your opinions seem very implanted instead of individually formed. I
once believed less taxes and less government spending was an inherently good thing because I was told those things. With a bit of independent research, growing up and leaving the house that watched daily conservative programming, I learned that trickle down economics don’t make any sense and that reducing taxes and government spending isn’t simply good or bad - it’s dependent on what services we feel we no longer need provided by the government.
So your statement of less taxes being better on every level is false from my understanding of the world. And just like you, I’ll provide no sources, because I’m matching your effort here. The reason you’re getting down votes and the reason I can confidently say you’re simply wrong in some of these elements, is because these ideas are easily disproven with a bit of thinking, a bit of research in the real world, and it can upset people when someone holds such wrong opinions attempts to share them on the Internet without first supporting their statements.
Idk if this helps but I’ll continue to respond as long as you continue to come off as not a bot or someone looking to simply stir the pot.
I understand what you are saying, but it is a fact that beyond basic safety and infrastructure, higher taxes equals less growth. Trickle down is not a thing and was never a thing, it was a propaganda term used to attack lower taxes. You can believe that we should have taxes for a variety of things (and I would agree) but the government just makes this less efficient by its strucutral nature.
The reason I am getting downvotes is because this place is full of people that are tribal and get mad when you disagree. I feel like I have a pretty good basis of knowledge for this; I worked for the government, I worked as a company that worked with the government, and now I am forced to follow their rules which literally makes my whole town worse and poorer.
That’s my point, higher taxes does not mean less growth - you have a flawed understanding of taxes and economic growth. The government could take your tax money and convert the overwhelming majority of it towards meaningful services that a private company would have no incentive to be efficient about. That’s what free market capitalism does, it finds services and then chokes out competition until the system is inefficient at using resources.
You can look at healthcare as a great example. The US spends more money on healthcare than most other countries and yet achieves worse results than the overwhelming majority of other countries. This is explicitly because healthcare is privatized in the US and prioritizes economic growth over providing a service. Other governments prioritize providing good healthcare and when government run provide better service and a cheaper price point. So if you live in the US you have worse living conditions because your government doesn’t tax you more.
This same concept applies to transportation, Internet service (and often other utilities), elder care, housing, food. The government’s “structural nature” doesn’t mean much, every company is structured and just as inefficient. The difference is companies have an express intent to make more money, not provide better products or services unless that guarantees more money. What we see in an unregulated economy, which would require taxes to prevent, is companies find it easier to monopolize their market than provide better products/services. Governments on the other hand have the express intent to govern by the will of the people with power. In a good system this is the vast majority of constituents and not just the top 1% of wealth owners.
Your experiences with working for government or company or small town are not invalid but you have to understand that your experience is miniscule compared to the number of experiences out there. This is called anecdotal evidence. You can have all the anecdotal evidence and experience you’d like, but it’s meaningless when compared with the whole world’s experience which can only be measured using real world data - scientific conclusions or at least ones relying on some methodology. Because most governments implore 10s of thousands of people over hundreds of departments and locations, you simply couldn’t experience a meaningful amount. So you have to build your opinions not based on your limited experiences but based on data.
I am in favor of less taxes for everyone and thus less spending in the government.
Why? Why are taxes bad? Why is government spending bad?
This goes to the idea of “trickle down” economics, which on a side note was never an actual thing.
Yes, Trickle Down Economics is just as false as a waterfall flowing upwards.
Less taxes are better on every level
Why? You left this claim open and unsupported.
but the question should be how much do we need for a functioning society.
Again, why? None of your claims are supported by anything, just opinions randomly ascribed.
Please humor me here and tell me how this braindead fucking crook’s systematic slashing of anything that would yield him or his cronies money would yield benefits for the nation. I want you to defend this scummy cunt with something substantive, because I’ve yet to see a single one of you do it. You can’t do it. You just make empty statements and skirt knowledge of reality and policy.
What stupid fuckin shit were you fed your whole life to wind up regurgitating this shit? Tell me about trickle down economics too you fucking clowns lol
You dont want a conversation, you just want to yell at the wind. But I am just telling you the fact that cutting taxes doesnt slow the economy or fuel inflation. The “experts” claim things, and its up to us to refute those claims. If you wish to yell about how trump kicked you puppy I dont give a shit.
Cutting taxes does slow the economy, if done improperly. Economic growth does not purely come from the Private Sector, but can come from public spending on infrastructure and other public utilities. Same with Inflation.
This is a misunderstanding of how Taxation works.
When people pay more taxes they have less money to spend and they avoid purchases that they would have made otherwise.
Edit I didn’t down vote you, I’m open to hearing your reasoning
I understand what you are saying, but it just reallocates the money to different organizations. I would say that tax cuts could be tending to more deflationary because it allows people to be more productive and create more products. Although I think it gets nuanced with how this all relates to the debt and bonds, but I would guess its all a wash with regards to inflation.
And I appreciate that you are not just another angry person that just wants to yell about trump and how me disagreeing with “experts” makes me a MAGA.
When you lower taxes for working class people they tend to spend more which contributes to inflation. Probably small businesses too. But if you lower taxes on the ultra wealthy and big business then I would agree that wouldn’t cause inflation because they would just keep that money and like you said that’s wealth redistribution, even if it is just making the rich richer.
I would disagree with this in that the rich and businesses dont just keep the money in a scrooge mcduck vault, they put it into a variety of things that is not direct consumption spending but is spending. I think there are too many variable to confidently say what would happen, but I dont think its a significant difference when it comes to inflation.
The fake it even if you never make it guy steers a countries economy…
Him and his mates will make a shit load though, then they’ll tell you how well the economy is doing.
“I’m an idiot who hates myself, and especially hates my real and potential kids and grandkids”
All trump voters interviewed as they leave the polls.
