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Forums - General - PoliCHARTZ - Thread of U.S. Politics & the Presidential Election

Final-Fan on 23 October 2008

No, I think that once many people get into terrorism, the hate is self-sustaining, even if they were fairly normal people before they went crazy. Social pressure could probably get them to quit violence but it would still be in their hearts IMO. But I'm totally speculating since I don't know anything about that psychology.

No, it's not terrorists who will stop hating us, but the regular people who will stop looking the other way when they see pro-terrorist things.

On the other hand, I wonder what you mean by "just stop interfering". Certainly the US has done an awful lot of stupid meddling in the region, but we can't be totally hands-off when it's so important to us. What pissed bin Laden off in the first place IIRC was military bases in Saudi Arabia which doesn't seem unreasonable to me (for the US to have with Saudi permission).



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fkusumot on 23 October 2008
bigjon said:
If you raise taxes on the rich they will have less money, and then fire one of there middle class workers. Then you will have a huge tax break for middle class seeing as you will have no income and be getting a check from the gov on unemployment.

Really. Show me how that worked the last time Bush Sr. and Clinton raised taxes. Specifically, how the raising of taxes on the rich effected employment rates.

The corollary would be that tax cuts for the rich would lower the unemployment rate. Let me know how that's done since you've been alive.



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The Ghost of RubangB on 23 October 2008

bigjon, I don't need a rich person to give me a job. I don't plan on making a career out of sucking up to the rich. A middle class tax cut would be better for me as an individual and for most people I know, because we're broke as hell, and our bosses aren't the richest 5% of the country.



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akuma587 on 23 October 2008
fkusumot said:
bigjon said:
If you raise taxes on the rich they will have less money, and then fire one of there middle class workers. Then you will have a huge tax break for middle class seeing as you will have no income and be getting a check from the gov on unemployment.

Really. Show me how that worked the last time Bush Sr. and Clinton raised taxes. Specifically, how the raising of taxes on the rich effected employment rates.

The corollary would be that tax cuts for the rich would lower the unemployment rate. Let me know how that's done since you've been alive.

Indeed, if people make a claim of this nature without numbers to back them up (and unemployment numbers are pretty easy to get, just google or wikipedia for them), then it is pretty hard to believe them.

 



We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls.  The only thing that really worried me was the ether.  There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke

It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...."  Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson

fkusumot on 23 October 2008
akuma587 said:
fkusumot said:
bigjon said:
If you raise taxes on the rich they will have less money, and then fire one of there middle class workers. Then you will have a huge tax break for middle class seeing as you will have no income and be getting a check from the gov on unemployment.

Really. Show me how that worked the last time Bush Sr. and Clinton raised taxes. Specifically, how the raising of taxes on the rich effected employment rates.

The corollary would be that tax cuts for the rich would lower the unemployment rate. Let me know how that's done since you've been alive.

Indeed, if people make a claim of this nature without numbers to back them up (and unemployment numbers are pretty easy to get, just google or wikipedia for them), then it is pretty hard to believe them.

 

I believe he might have been spouting a faux talking point. That would be sad to believe. bigjon has always been very good with the numbers and I would expect him to have them this time to unequivocally back him up. He's a smart guy and goes to a good school. I'm sure he won't let us down.



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fkusumot on 23 October 2008

In other news Alan Greenspan did the unthinkable today:

... Greenspan put the fucking nail in fiscal Libertarianism today. He still can't admit he fucked up, but he's shocked that banks fucked up so badly when left to their own devices (because they're not supposed to fuck up, they're supposed to return value to their stockholders). In so many words the greatest and most powerful fiscal libertarian to ever rule the world admitted today that fiscal libertarianism turned out to not work. When asked he somewhat begrudginly admitted that banks  need oversight by the GOVERNMENT. I would also like to thank Greenspan for finally and definitively telling us (in front of congress) that we're all fucked now because there wasn't enough government oversight. That's a 180 for him. Perhaps he's trying to salvage something of his legacy.

 



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Kasz216 on 23 October 2008
The Ghost of RubangB said:
The Obamanation shall have their revenge on Reaganomics!


You guys see that recent article that said our wage gap has been increasing since the 80's and is now the 3rd largest? We have the richest rich and the poorest poor here, and it's not only killing our poor, it's killing our economy.

Since the 80's?  How about since WW2.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Gini_since_WWII.gif

Except not.

Last Years Gini CoEfficent was down to Clinton era levels.

Oddly enough Bush has been the best Gini Coefficient president since WW2.

 



The Ghost of RubangB on 23 October 2008

Greenspan was "shocked" that there was "one flaw in his ideology," which led to a "credit tsunami."



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The Ghost of RubangB on 23 October 2008
Kasz216 said:
The Ghost of RubangB said:
The Obamanation shall have their revenge on Reaganomics!


You guys see that recent article that said our wage gap has been increasing since the 80's and is now the 3rd largest? We have the richest rich and the poorest poor here, and it's not only killing our poor, it's killing our economy.

Since the 80's? How about since WW2.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Gini_since_WWII.gif

Except not.

Last Years Gini CoEfficent was down to Clinton era levels.

Oddly enough Bush has been the best Gini Coefficient president since WW2.

 

In that picture it looks like it was going up and down for a while, and had a drop at the beginning of the 80s and then skyrocketed for 20 years.

 

Here's the article I was talking about.  I started a thread for it 2 days ago, but nobody but Jackson responded, so it faded away.

http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7012734983

 



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HappySqurriel on 23 October 2008

I just have one thing I wanted to add in relation to the Gini index ...

Back in University there was a discussion of the Gini index in one of my economics classes where it was brought up that (generally speaking) higher economic growth and higher inequality were directly related. The reason for this is that financial gain offers huge incentive for people to take on large risks in exchange for massive rewards.

In other words, it is difficult to balance fairness with economic growth and any benefit in one direction can have a negative impact in the other.