Who Should Run For President on the Democratic Side?

[Bofferbrauer2]

Snoopy said:

Bofferbrauer2 said:

1. Yes Capitalism is the way to go - however not unrestricted, there need to be some rules and regulations in place to protect both people and small companies. @bolded: In nominal GDP, they do. Bring it up to purchase parity power and the US drops to the third spot, behind China and the EU. Main cause is the slow growth in Italy (1.2%), UK(1.4%), France (1.6%) and Germany (1.9%), which taken together form over 50% of the EU's economy. But the rest of Europe is growing much faster, and mostly faster than the US, too (eastern EU member states consistently grow by 4%+, as do Luxembourg, Malta and Ireland ) but they are yet too small to make a big impact in the total EU growth.

2. a. Yeah, but the US military is bloated to death. It could work just as efficiently with just a third of the expenses if they just limit the different equipments to one per kind instead of a dozen per kind. That alone would already help a lot.

b. They do, as it should be - but just barely. Also, if you look it from the income perspective, it's far from enough: while the total adjusted household income has been multiplied by 6 since 1980 (from 1.6 Trillions to 9.7 Trillions), the top 1% income rose from 138 Billions to 2 Trillions, so multiplied by 14.5 and thus much more than twice the mean value. In fact, it's them who push that value up to 6x in the first place, as the bottom 50% only rose by 3.8x, from 288B to 1.095T. In other words, they went from earning twice what the top 1% does to half of what the Top 1% gains. No wonder the Top 1% pays the most taxes if they earn much more money than half the population in the first place.

3. You missed the point. The Universities will continue jacking up the prices, as there will always be enough to pay for it, but never enough for their insatiable hunger for money, thus pricing higher and higher. you can see a similar thing happening in the Videogame industry already, with DLCs and Season passes that cost more than the base game itself.

4. I know Youtube videos and the like can teach you very much (i'm using Udemy btw, which works similarly). But again, you missed the point. The point was that you might learn everything there is to learn in a domain, but you get no diploma, no proof that at one point in your life you learnt all that stuff. If a company only looks at the diplomas and sees you appying for a job but miss the necessary diploma, chances are you get filtered out despite being the best for the job.

For example, my wife learnt everything there was for a Six Sigma Black Belt on Udemy. However, since you get no diploma or certification of any kind, her knowledge is useless unless her boss sponsors a black belt teaching session, which costs over 10000$, way too much for the company she's working for (that's more than her yearly income in the Philippines).

1. You're going to have to site CREDIBLE sources about "buying power". America dictates how the industry goes for the most part. Look at how AAA Video games are made to cater to western gamers for example. Also, most conservatives believe in some control regarding capitalism. Most of these "controlling factors" actually help businesses in the long run. 

2 A. Yes, there is unnecessary spending in every government agencies. My home city had a scandal where one of the education leaders was using tax money for a vacation. Pretty messed up. Glad he is going to jail. Which is why I prefer the private sector to take over most things.

2 B. It isn't "barely". The TOP 1 percent pays almost 40% of our taxes. Chances are our taxes won't pay for squat and we are not huge job creators.

3. DLC, Season pass are all optional. However, video games have actually gotten cheaper and have more value (IMO) than ever before. You can play games like Apex and Fortnite for free. Also, look at what Xbox game pass is doing. You are able to play relatively new/new games for 10 dollars a month. Recently I've played shadow of the tomb raider, Sea of thieves and crackdown 3 through game pass. Look at Netflix, for 5 dollars you can an insane amount of entertainment. That's what happens when the federal government gets their noses out of the industries.

4. You do have proof if you apply what you learn. Learning programming through youtube? Create a GitHub account and upload a portfolio. Learned how to cook food on youtube? Great! Cook the food and sell it (actually know someone doing this part-time). Curently, I am learning how to run a side landlord business and what homes are great investments.

 

Also, I did Udemy before. You do get a certification. Depending on the industry, it can be very useful.

1. @ bolded: Bad example, most games that sell well in Europe are either made there or in Japan. The movie industry would have been a much better example imo.

If most conservatives believe in some control, then why do they always cheer when even some of the most basic controls get removed? I fear most conservatives, at least elected ones (not necessary their voters) are more anarcho-capitalists economically speaking then you think.

2. Yes, the top 1% pay 40% of the taxes. They used to pay much more, though - and the economy was thriving. For instance, remember when AOC advocated for a 70% top tax for everybody who earns over 10M (and, just for those who don't fully understand it, it means only the part above 10M will be taxed at 70%, not all of it)? Well, under Eisenhower the Tax rate for an equivalent income  was actually 90%. And both the economy was booming and new businesses, small and large, sprung up during those times. The millionaires of today don't pay enough taxes, period. They accumulate more and more wealth while the bottom 75% are quickly getting poorer and poorer.

3. I can't hear that "it's just optional"bullcrap anymore. let's apply that to real life, shall we. You'll get a 30sqm studio with a single bad and table, a pinto as your car, and a 10$ a day salary without any insurance coverage. not good enough for you? It's just optional, you got what you need to live, so be happy! Of course, we can give you a sedan for the totally not overpriced $300.000 or an 70sqm condo unit for $5.000.000. Or just a new set of clothes for $10.000. Just ask your bank to wire us the money. This is how that "optional" works, it's just highly exploitative crap.  I'd rather buy a full game at 80 or 100$ than those chopped-up abominations from the AAA publishers for 15$ and having to work (not just play, not having fun, work!) hard just to get some locked-away content. they are made super grindy just to push you into the in-game stores and buy stuff so you can start actually having some fun with their games.

Also, Netflix for 5$? It just got raised to 14$. But in any case, that works against your case. Look what you get for that money and what you get today for a 60$ game. I'd rather pay 4 months for Netflix than for a AAA 60$ game, as even just one month of Netflix has vastly more, and much better, content.

Gamepass is only worth it if there are many games in there you like, play a lot of hours in those games and don't mind paying over and over even whenthere's not much anymore that you still play and don't mind that you are just  renting games, never owning them.

4. But many don't accept those proofs. Like I said, I'm using Udemy, (and skillshare and Alison courses by the way, and in all cases it the same problem) but I have yet to find an employer to accept their certificates. it's just worthless for them because they are not certified for teaching those (with certified I mean they delivered a proof to an authority that they can teach that) (and if you want to know what I'm learning, it's languages (Tagalog and Japanese) and programmation (Unity, CSS, SEO and Web developer).