President Trump

But why should it be more? The wealthy have averaged about 40-45% tax since 1913, and sometimes average a higher tax percentage than all the other classes combined so again, why should it be more?

 

If three people hold more wealth than the bottom 50% of Americans, it's clear they just worked harder and earned every penny.

If the bottom 163 million weren't so lazy... they could be one of those three people

Oh wait, there's not enough money for everyone to be Bezos

If you want to believe the message sold by corporate America, carry on.

Everything is fine... this is the best of all possible worlds.

America... we're number 37
we're number 37
we're number 37!

Unless we are talking about sports... then we have a problem.

 

I happen to be on the side of ending pointless wars and getting out of countries and letting them do their thing. I agree with a lot of your points if not all. I believe we can cut the funding in half (to 400B or so) and still have the best military. I believe our military should be used to defend our country. The key word being “our”, meaning the contiguous United States, not Europe, Africa, Asia, etc.

I also believe if we took a more independent neutral approach in the world (minding our own business), the way the world views us would change into a more positive tone.

What’s going on right now with the impeachment hearings is so hypocritical and disingenuous imo. The government is crying about election interference in our politics, but we have been interfering in elections and foreign governments for at least the past 100 years.

 

Yeah.

I wouldn’t word it that way, but yeah.

This is such a wrong assumption. What do you think, there is a pool of money and that it’ll eventually dwindle down to zero the richer people get. Have you learned or taught yourself to understand basic economics? Seriously, you wouldn’t be saying this if you did.

It’s not a message, lol, it’s the results and evidence of the thing that has proven to be successful over the past 100+ years... Capitalism. How can you believe or call that propaganda when the evidence is their to see?

Not sure what you mean by this.

Yes, I’ve acknowledged that we are #37. Not sure why you keep bringing it up? You don’t solve our #37 ranking by implementing a Universal Healthcare. There are too many cons for it even to be a real option. And again the issue is not the sicknesses and healthcare issues, these are just the effects of the true problem. I bring you back to the #1 country Japan according to your own list. Japan has about 50% of our population and leads all countries in life expectancy. Again why do you think that is?

 

Lakeshow, I appreciate that you have an open mind
A lot of what I say is sarcastic.
What I meant is that one of my Republican cousins told me that she believes her kid could become the next Bezos.
This isn't a Horatio Alger story where there's enough money for everyone to become rich.
What was rich in 1900 is middle class/bourgeois in 2020
The tech industry is so hyper efficient that there is no need for huge amounts of middlemen.
The good part obviously is convenience of shopping, better prices at first... the bad part is the economy is controlled by monopolies that render competition irrelevant.
That's where Yang came up with his Universal Basic Income principle...
I don't agree with Yang overall, but I like that he's articulately identified a problem and has a creative way to fix it.
If you are going to displace enormous amounts of workers... (and you aren't going to retrain 50 year old truck drivers to code in C++)
at least give them some dignity and also provide some economic stimulus.
Otherwise the only option is euthanasia or letting a lot of unskilled workers die a slow painful death or lead a miserable life.
The problem isn't people like you that obviously try to look at things fairly.
The problem is the majority who believe the garbage they have been brainwashed with since childhood.
The wealthy are the problem... and I'm not speaking about people making six or seven figures... they are the new middle class.
I'm talking about the hyper rich who find amusement conquering their sim city that is the American State.
Even if we elect a Bernie, they still will ultimately win because they are not only smarter, but they also have the money to keep recruiting every intelligent kid out of Caltech, MIT, Stanford to perpetuate their monopoly.
But maybe we can slow it down,
It's hard though as there are more stupid people than intelligent ones and we do live in a democracy, even though people don't realize their votes are controlled by the wealthy who control all the advertising media which renders the country a plutocracy by proxy from said stupid people.

 

Yang brings up some great points. I have a Yang bumper in my car. My issue with Yang is his numbers are funky. Everyone coming out with a tax proposal is overly optimistic about the results and anyone coming out with a budget, well, we all know what happens here. The price ends up being much higher than projected because the markets move towards a different direction.

What we agree on:
Tax rates should be higher. Not extraordinarily high (91% is a joke). I'm in favor of a marginal tax rate of 45% for those earning above $500,000-$1,000,000 and a 50% tax rate for those earning above $1,000,000.
Capital gains tax rate should be higher for those whose main source of income is through capital investments. 30% is very fair considering someone earning above $160,000 are getting taxed 32%.
The healthcare system in the United States is corrupt and inefficient. We spend more than any other developed country so it isn't always about pumping more money into the system.
We could decrease funding for the military but we would need to see other countries take more of a role in that regard. There are many NATO countries who aren't properly hitting their funding requirement. But until then, the military will always be our greatest safeguard towards disobedient countries looking to cause ruckus.
AI is a huge issue. I'm glad Yang is the only candidate speaking out about it but the majority of candidates seem contempt letting it ride on until it becomes reality. This is where I think our educational system needs to be revamped. No one needs to take a year of chemistry/geography/history/music/language class to get a proper education for what they want to do in life. This should be the parents job. We shouldn't be paying $12,000-$14,000 per student every year (average cost for K-12 education) to learn about stuff that they will forget in a year. The majority of these kids would rather be playing Fortnite at home than learning about these things. Our educational system is simply outdated and needs to be focused on preparing these individuals for the tech boom that will soon take over. That means we need to emphasize technology over everything else. My little cousin goes to High School in NYC and he tells me that at least half the students treat High School as a place to socialize with friends rather than learning. It simply isn't effective any longer.

With that being said, America is still the best country by far and while we have our issues, seriously, we have 300 million people in this country. Of course there are going to be problems. Let's be realistic.

 

We don't need more taxes. We need less spending.

Nobody spends as much on military spending as we do. Not even close. In fact we spend more on our military than the next 7 countries below us combined. We don't need to be the world police. If Japan, Germany, Saudi Arabia, and these other countries want American forces to provide protection, then they need to pay for it.

When social security was established in 1935, the average age of death was 63 years old. When a social security recipient applied for full benefits at 65, they were already living two years beyond the average age of death. The average age of death right now is 78. If we were to change the social security requirements today to match 1935, we'd be giving out full benefits at the age of 80. The Social Security system wasn't designed for this aging boomer population. Yet when libertarians and conservatives suggest raising the full benefit age to 70, leftists and liberals go crazy.

Medicare is artificially keeping health care costs high. Medical procedures that were pioneered 30 years ago and cost $5000 30 years ago still cost $5000 30 years later despite being older and less technologically advanced. In a free market, these procedures wouldn't cost $5000 today. The problem is that medicare still covers these procedures for $5000 30 years later, and hasn't changed the coverage. Taxpayers are paying for it.

Government shouldn't be in the business of student loans. Banks and private lending institutions would never loan $90,000 to a student majoring in philosophy. That student wouldn't immediately land the high paying job necessary to pay off the loan. Yet our government does, and these students end up owning thousands of dollars that they can't pay back for years. You can point the finger at the student, and say they are responsible, but these students are going to college to prepare for the real world. They're not in a position to know what kind of education is required to pay back a loan. Once government gets out of the loan business, private institutions will take over and these students will receive a reality check they desperately need.

 

When I first went to UCLA back in the eighties, I noticed many credit card/banks handing out credit like they were candy.
As a young freshman, I thought gee how nice they are helping students... then I soon realized it was a scam designed to get kids from a fairly safe demographic deep into debt with 20% interest by the time they finished college.

It's evil and predatory and it's gotten much worse as tuitions have increased ten fold since I went there.

Liberals might not go crazy at raising the Medicare or Social Security age if income inequality didn't continue to expand and money falls into fewer and fewer hands... while we've spent trillions at perpetual war that has only exacerbated a threat rather than quell it.

If you are billionaire then I totally get and respect your position.

If you are making five or even six figures... I'm dumbfounded how you'd support policies that will only benefit the superwealthy.

It's incredible to me the way people support a group that there is a 99.999% chance never be a part of.

It's like watching a film about feudalism where the serfs, peasants, and slaves cheer on the kings and dukes on the off chance they become one.

 

Who are these 99.999%? Defense contractors who benefit from the non-stop wars? Members and ex-members of congress who receive millions in donations to their charities (Clinton Foundation, McCaine Institute)? Companies who benefit from regulatory boards who are staffed by former executives (Monsanto)? Banks that are bailed out when they malinvest? It's easy to hand out credit cards like candy when the government will bail you out.

When do you realize that government spending and government interference is responsible for creating these elites?

 

stay away from mainstream media

 

Where I think some of us can agree is that the Clintons were also corrupt. I didn't vote for Hillary, I voted for Stein because I couldn't stand either of them.

Even if you believe in some of Trump's principles, surely you can't support his blatant dishonesty and lack of integrity.

If you are to expect a Democrat to reject Hillary, then as a Republican or conservative you should reject Trump as well.

 

I'm seeing more blatant dishonesty and lack of integrity from the Democrats than I'm seeing from Trump right now. Trump's flaws have more to do with his poor choice of words, embarrassing tweets, and impulsive need to respond to every person who says something bad about him. But these flaws are also why so many voted for him. He's not a typical standard politician.

 

The amount of blatant dishonesty from Democrats has been shocking, as has been the voters willingness to believe everything their party says. It's pretty embarrassing actually that it's happening in our country. Politics has become something so unattractive that I have very little respect for anyone involved in it. And it's supposed to be the exact opposite. They are supposed to be the best of the best, and last election we put forth Trump and Hillary Clinton as our country's finest options?



shameful

Trump has actually accomplished some good things. It's too bad he's wrapped in such an unattractive package of a person.

 

got that right

 

The guy is hilarious. The fact he won is a testimony of how much people dislike politicians in general. Trump shouldn't have ever won nor had a chance. But as soon as he attacked Jeb Bush (firmly in a lead of the Republican nominee), Jeb dropped like a dead fly. Politicians have to wake up because more candidates from other industries will soon become the norm due to the incompetent politicians.

 

This.

If the liberals and progressives understood and accepted that he is a troll, then they wouldn’t even respond to his tweets or the things he says, but they are so elementary and childish in their thinking that they are constantly baited into being outraged at anything and everything he says.

I look at politics as a parody show. (Dave Chapelle, Key & Peele, In Living Color/SNL,etc.). I take nothing that is said by anyone seriously. They are words and historically have shown to be empty.

The real issues that effect normal everyday citizens aren’t really being taken care of (homelessness, poor communities, mental health, healthcare, education, infrastructure, etc.). So I say to the liberals/progressives on here. Democrats and Liberals have not dealt with these real issues successfully and there is neither less of it nor more of a handle on it under Democratic leadership, so I believe you can kick rocks. If both sides have failed to solve the real issues that effect us as Americans then how can anyone point the finger at anyone. You might as well enjoy it like I do and see what new sketch they come up with day by day.

 

Harvard estimated that 45,000 people die annually because of lacking health insurance which is a fairly conservative institution.
Even if you think that's inflated... let's say that 30,000 die each year.

So every two years you have the equivalent of The Vietnam War's entire death toll happening.

When 9/11 happened we were rightfully outraged but 3000 people died.

We spent 5 trillion in war since that attack.

Meanwhile we lost 30,000 X 19 years or 570,000 Americans since 9/11 due to lack of health insurance.

We could have saved so many more lives had that money been applied to healthcare instead of bombing poor Arabs who mostly have zero idea what the f*ck is going on and are only trying to eek out a meager living.

The moderate Dems are just as corrupt as the Republicans... and yes Obama, Clinton and Biden are moderates but the progressive wing has some decent human beings. If you get past the mocking and listen to them, I think you will see their thoughts aren't as pie and the sky as the media would have you believe.

 

A fairly conservative institution? You must have never visited Harvard. It’s definitely not “fairly conservative”. It’s more like overly liberal. But that’s not even important to the study you highlighted. I searched up the article, which of course is 10 years old. A quote stood out to me “We doctors have many new ways to prevent deaths from hypertension, diabetes, and heart disease — but only if patients can get into our offices and afford their medications.”

So according to these doctors, the way to prevent these deaths is to have people “pay for insurance” so they can “buy medicine”. This seems like an article with an agenda, an agenda to highlight how important the doctors are and how their research is really helping people. That’ll be a hard pass from me.

Still not sure why you keep highlighting this healthcare thing. Being covered with health insurance is not gonna prevent people from dying, it just allows them to get seen by doctors and “pays for their medicine” that doesn’t heal them at all. What about the healthy people that don’t necessarily need health insurance or need very little?

I don’t know how to solve the issue of healthcare because there are a few major problems:

1) tracking or finding health issues in people that are hereditary. (sometimes doesn’t show up until later on in life, by then it could be too late.)

2) the intake of unhealthy foods and substances of the majority of the US population.

3) the food and substance industry that is profitable due to the intake of unhealthy foods and substances of the majority of the US population.

4) the corruption of the healthcare industry where making money trumps healing people.

Liberals would have people believe that universal healthcare/free healthcare or voting for this or that candidate will be the solution to this problem. Imo it’s gonna be way harder than that. It’s a nice thought, but its unrealistic in process.

 

We rank 37th in life expectancy. That's shameful for a nation with our wealth and educational institutions.

You can try to spin it anyway you want but that is a terrible outcome.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy

If we were losing Americans to terrorism, we'd do something about it... but evidently we are helpless to implement programs that every other developed nation has been able to do.

I don't like my taxes spent bombing people and radicalizing more terrorists.

You don't want your taxes spent on medical care for immigrants and the poor.

But keep recycling those talking points because well, at least you're recycling something that way.

 

Your point has nothing to do with this thread at least not in the way you brought it up. That life expectancy study was done in 2015, during Obama’s/Democratic leadership. If you tried to make it seem like it’s Trump’s fault for the ranking then that is clearly false and a failed point.

There is no spin. Sure it’s my opinion, but I don’t form my opinions by what the media and politicians tell me, I form them by doing my own research and homework on the topic. If I can only find one side to a story then I refrain from having an opinion on it. You might want to try that out.

You assume a lot about me without even asking? How do you know I don’t want to pay for the medical care of immigrants and the poor? Did you ask me that? How do you know I like paying for the bombing of people and radicalizing terrorists? Did you ask me? Or did you just assume?

So when I challenge your points you simply wave the white flag and cry foul? Come on, you’ve seemed a bit better than that on these boards. Don’t run away.