maudlin27

Reply to Understanding elitism in Politics JoeUser Forums

[quote] Firstly if the government is not redistributing wealth then it is not more heavily taxing the poor, it is EQUALLY taxing the poor and the rich...Secondly...[if] someone argues against redistribution of wealth, it is a safe bet to assume he doesn't mean "even in cases where people are starving"[/quote] No, at the risk of repeating myself again, to tax people equally you should be taxing them equally on their DISPOSABLE income. If you tax them 'equally' on their total/gross/(wha

Reply to McCain Wins the Debate in Politics JoeUser Forums

Well if McCain wins (looking less likely based on the polls but still a possibility) I can't see the K...G...B comment doing much to enhance relations with Russia when he next meets Putin!

Reply to Which Girl Would You Have Chosen? in Politics JoeUser Forums

[quote] which girl would you have chosen? [/quote] Depends, what did they look like? [e digicons];)[/e] As to the more general issue, I'd partly agree - I don't think a baby should be aborted simply because they will be more difficult to care for or not have as high a quality of life as other children. However there is more of a case if it is believed the child will only have a short life of constant agony, forced to spend it attached to a machine, but that's straying into th

Reply to Extreme Medical Bills in Politics JoeUser Forums

[quote] First off you threw in a ringer--nicer house--like the old Reaganites ranted about the Welfare Queen as though they were in abundance, a cheap trick [/quote] I'm fascinated to know why it is that someone with a higher amount of income isn't on average likely to be living in a nicer house than someone on a lower amount of income. That is, if you have 2 identical people, earning the exact same amount, and one has health insurance and one doesn't, then the person who doesn't has

Reply to To be or not to be, or in this case to approve or not to approve in Politics JoeUser Forums

Don't bail out a bank automatically just because it is failing and/or affects lots of people, because that will just mean those banks know in the future they are likely to be bailed out if the same thing happens again. Instead, the justification for a bail out IMO should be one based on information - that is, that the government (with the information available to it) believes the banks assets are worth a certain amount. If others give in to speculative panic and end up making banks go

Reply to Smart Move, McCain in Politics JoeUser Forums

I thought it was a clever move by McCain myself - as it was he was haemorrhaging support in the polls the worse the financial crisis got, and so needed to try and do something to reverse the situation. It doesn't look like it's worked, but then not all gambles do.

Reply to Understanding elitism in Politics JoeUser Forums

[quote] nobody "funds" a tax break [/quote] Well the government has x amount of spending, which has to come from somewhere, i.e. taxes. If you hold spending (and borrowing) constant, and cut taxes for one group of people, then you're going to need to increase taxes elsewhere to make up the difference. Basically if you want to cut taxes on the top 1% of earners, you're going to either have to cut spending, increase taxes elsewhere, or increase borrowing (i.e. put off the problem for an

Reply to Dead horse buffet in Everything Else GalCiv2 Forums

Bear in mind $700bn is just the headline figure. In reality the cost of the 'bail-out' could make money for the government. That is, all of these loans have such an uncertain value they could drive a fairly hard bargain, get them really cheap, and then there's the possibility that they end up being worth a bit more over time as things settle down+confidence improves and the economy starts growing again. Once that happens they sell them on for a profit, and everyones happy. Not saying

Reply to Palin's Religious Rights in Politics JoeUser Forums

[quote] "However, we should not ban abortion completely because of those exceptions that I mentioned." And I disagree...no excpetions except the life of the mother....(at which point we can deliver the baby and try to keep it alive via medical services outside the womb). Can you justify why the innocent baby in the womb should pay the death penalty for the crime of his father? [/quote] Can you justify why the innocent mother

Reply to Extreme Medical Bills in Politics JoeUser Forums

[quote who="Smoothseas" reply="17" id="1883821"] What is financial disaster? Prior to the subprime crisis about half of home foreclosures were due to medical catastrophe.If you have seen people go through this you might better understand that it goes much further than your somewhat feeble attempt to trivialize the issue.[/quote] If they chose not to obtain insurance (which in turn helped to allow them to live in a nicer house), why shouldn't they be made to sell that house i

Reply to Things are not so bad after all in Politics JoeUser Forums

[quote] It was Europe that help make the twentieth century one of the darkest in modern history; it was they that start two world wars; it was they that put into place two of the most criminal regimes ever inflicted on the human race...I find it Ironic that the country that finds America the greatest threat to world peace is the country that allowed the likes of Hitler and Stalin to take power and did nothing about it. Then they cried to America to come help them [/quote] Um...Europe

Reply to Understanding elitism in Politics JoeUser Forums

[quote] It's called Communism and it doesn't work very well [/quote] No, communism and capitalism are pretty much polar opposites, not to mention that pure communism is impossible anyway. Within the framework I gave above, communism is basically saying you want to harmonize incomes regardless of the tradeoff on net income, which takes you to the corner case scenario of taxing everyone at 100% where it collapses completely. If you think I was advocating communism you need to re-read

Reply to Understanding elitism in Politics JoeUser Forums

[quote] So your view is that the Government should force other people to work so that eveyrone can have some undefined standard of living? [/quote] No, the government shouldn't force people to work (in the sense of sending them to jail/removing them from the country if they don't), but should provide sufficient incentives for them to work as opposed to being on benefits. Thus if someone is working as hard as they can, and is still not earning enough to feed themselves, the government

Reply to Casino Capitalism in Politics JoeUser Forums

[quote] The almost 800 billion dollars that has been thrown at the problem, will ultimately be paid for by U.S taxpayers [/quote] Well the final bill to taxpayers will be far below that, since it's effectively a loan. That is, the government is (from what I understand) offering up to 800 billion dollars to buy assets ('toxic' loans) from other companies. Then when things have stabilised presumably they'll look to sell them on.

Reply to We're All Communists Now! in Politics JoeUser Forums

It's a fairly understandable political reaction in some ways - the politicians like to benefit from the upside when things are going well, but as soon as they start going bad, they don't like it so much. A free/liquid financial system has advantages (prices are more accurate, adjust faster, etc.), but the downside is increased volatility (i.e. risks). Meanwhile you have the far more problematic political issue that you only have a short term horizon (~4 years) to think about, and so care more

Reply to Matching up the Tax plans in Politics JoeUser Forums

A good point raised about the power of spin+the media at distorting information. Both candidates are proposing tax cuts, but Obama's are aimed at the poorer, and funded via higher taxes on the rich, while relative to Obama's, McCains are aimed at the richer. The overal effect is that McCain is proposing a higher aggregate cut in taxes. However to listen to many republican extremists you could be forgiven for thinking that Obama is proposing tax hikes for the majority of Americans. It's someth

Reply to Lords of Capital in Politics JoeUser Forums

[quote] You miss my point of balance among the three components, not necessarily rigidly equal but surely the thread of justice and fairness should be intertwined. As soon as exploitation is used, enterprising persons get uptight and deny its existence. Excess profit motive thrives on cheap labor, low tax and lobbying for the treasury dollar [/quote] The problem with fairness though is that it is subjective, and hence is often different from person to person. For example take teachers

Reply to Big Labor in Politics JoeUser Forums

[quote] That's only because the other 75% of American workers are too cowardly to insist on unionization or at least decent paying jobs. [/quote] That's the point, if they all did that you would have even more unemployed, hence robbing from the poor to give to the rich - you inflict severe penalties on a few people (no income) so that you can get a slightly higher income. A decent paying job is one which pays the market wage, hence you don't need a union for it.

Reply to Governor Palin is proof the left is wrong in Politics JoeUser Forums

[quote] And what do you see as wrong with Governor Palin? [/quote] I never said I saw things wrong with Palin, I was referring to the motives for picking her. Namely it seems she was picked both because she was a woman (help improve republican's standing amongst women, and in particular appeal to disillusioned clinton supporters) and a staunch right-wing conservative (help shore up traditional republican support which was a bit dubious/lukewarm wrt McCain). In other words she was pick

Reply to Lords of Capital in Politics JoeUser Forums

[quote] What today’s capital, labor and governance do not grasp is that there be an interdependency of the three to ensure stable dynamics to the share of wealth, productivity and law. The free market upsets this balance by squeezing the shares in capital’s favor and the only way to do this is to exploit labor and governance [/quote] Huh? How does increasing the total amount of money mean that there is exploitation of labour and/or government? In fact what do you even mean

Reply to Palin's Religious Rights in Politics JoeUser Forums

[quote] "freedom of speech" and "right of religious epxpression". These are rights protected under the American Constitution. No one should be requirred by liberal news people, with no god, or any one else to justify their faith. [/quote] So if I believe in a religion that says that every first child born in a family should be sacrificed as an offering to the Gods of Despair, and I somehow get to run for VP, I shouldn't have to justif

Reply to Big Labor in Politics JoeUser Forums

IMO if you strike then you should be liable to lose your job, and unions should instead focus on lobbying government (if they believe health+safety laws are insufficient, for example), working with the employer to improve things for both sides, and being able to resort to 'work-by-rule' action as a method of applying pressure on the employer. Their existence distorts the market however by preventing firms from reducing wages (and in many cases forcing them to increase them at a certain percen

Reply to Another reason why Obama's supporters make me nervous in Politics JoeUser Forums

[quote] Just 11% of McCain supporters say judges should rule based on the judge’s sense of fairness, while nearly half (49%) of Obama supporters agree [/quote] The problem with the law though is that it so often isn't fair. Hence I don't think that either position is ideal - do you allow people to get off on technicalities, or do you allow judges subjective views on what's fair or not to hold sway, or do you try and have a compromise of the two?

Reply to Understanding elitism in Politics JoeUser Forums

[quote] We need to make sure all Americans are ensured a certain basic standard of living...why does the federal government have to be the means to make your belief a reality? Why not work through charities and volunteerism [/quote] You shouldn't need charities/volunteerism. The government's duty should IMO be to ensure that if someone is doing everything they can to survive and is still not able to, then the government will be there to help them out and ensure they don't die. So for

Reply to Extreme Medical Bills in Politics JoeUser Forums

[quote] How about we outlaw lawyers so malpractice goes down and then medical costs so as well? [/quote] Going from one extreme to the other would do no good - remove malpractice and you remove an incentive for doctors/hospitals to try and ensure they give the best treatment. Lawyers do have a role to play in the economy, even if it is likely much too large atm than it should be. As for the general issue of health, IMO there are several options. Firstly you could have compulso