Man, I wish the poor would stop whining...Follow

I'm only doing it because I want to see rigorous justification of the ideas you're propounding. Either that, or because I felt like being an ***.

Also: INTERNET: BASTION OF LIBERALISM.



(I consider myself to be just right of center, personally.)

The wealthy who already pay a higher percentage of their income then the poor?



Opinion, not fact. I've argued many times that lowering taxes on the rich helps the economy.



Opinion, not fact. I've argued many times that the war in Iraq was the correct course of action.



Fought by an all volunteer military. Not all of whom are poor. Not by a long shot.




You could possibly make a point here, but this has nothing to do with GOP policies at all. I'd argue that the Dem agenda of labeling everyone based on their skin color and working hard to convince everyone to treat people differently based on those differences might just have something to do with this. Or are we forgetting which political party created Jim Crow?



I'm sorry. Are those standards today lower then they were say 30 years ago?

Or do you mean: "not raising them as high as I'd like"?

Um. And in any case, this has nothing to do with the assertion you're trying to argue.



You mean the ones that the Dems fought hard for? So that poor people could own homes too, despite being utterly unable to afford them?

The GOP has no interest in doing this. As you've pointed out, we believe that people ought to earn what they have and if you can't obtain it on your own, well that's just not our fault. It's the Dems who try really hard to give things to people who can't afford them on their own.



You're batting like zero here Smash. What's funny is that you've invented this idea of what the "evil republicans" stand for, and despite every single republican saying "That's not what we stand for", you continue to argue against those things as though by doing so, you're arguing against us. This whole thread is just another example of this.


At what point of ridiculousness do you start to realize you're just plain wrong?

I'm sorry. Could you point to me where on the GOP website "getting us into illegal wars", "stealing from poor people" and "oppressing minority groups" is written?

Unless that's the case, then those things are not "policies" of the GOP. You may believe that GOP policies will result in those things, but that's (as I said) a matter of opinion. I, and many other people happen to disagree with your opinion.



You said "fought by the poor". Nice stretch there...




Payroll taxes also benefit "the poor" vastly more then everyone else. A guy making an adjusted income between 25k and 30k his entire life will get vastly more out of social security and medicaid then he paid in. Someone making an adjusted income of 250k to 300k over his entire life will gain almost nothing back in relation to the payroll taxes he's paid.


Also, I thought we were talking about GOP policies? If I were to propose eliminating payroll taxes and the programs they fund, I'm quite sure that the only people agreeing with me would be conservatives, and the loudest opponents would be liberals like yourself. Funny how you bash *me* for advocating an unfair tax system, yet when asked to point to the most unfair part of it, you point to the very part that your own party holds most dear...


Funny, huh?

If I were to propose eliminating payroll taxes and the programs they fund, I'm quite sure that the only people agreeing with me would be conservatives, and the loudest opponents would be liberals like yourself. Funny how you bash *me* for advocating an unfair tax system, yet when asked to point to the most unfair part of it, you point to the very part that your own party holds most dear...


Right, because it's a binary situation. Either destroy the middle class with disproportionate tax burdens or they can get no services. It would be impossible to just tax wealth at a fixed rate to fund entitlements.

Stop making arguments Hannah could refute, please. It's embarrassing for all of us.

How about we just don't fund entitlements at all?


See how that suddenly eliminates the entire problem with regard to who pays what portion of the tax burden?

I said income taxes.

What are payroll taxes a tax on, fuckstick?


How about we just don't fund entitlements at all?

Sounds great. Advise the GOP to run on that and see how it goes.

I lol'd

I'm gonna play my Bakunin and Kropotkin cards. Do I win?

Or do I have to pull out the Aristotle?

It is accurate. Because there's a maximum amount of benefit you can recieve from social security no matter how much you've paid into the system over your lifetime. I seem to recall about 10 years ago, when I made around 45k/year, looking at the social security dohickey they send you, and noting that it indicated that at that pay rate I was considered "fully vested" (based on some assumed number of years working, like 20 or so), and would qualify for the highest rate of payout from social security when I retire (yay me!).


Um... So how much extra is someone making say 80k for 20 years paying in? Or someone making 200k? The point being that assuming you work most of your life, you're going to hit that maximum pay level far far far before you hit the point at which the payroll component becomes regressive (200k IIRC). So you pay the same percentage of your income between 50k and 100k, and the same between 100k and 150k, and the same between 150k and 200k, but all of those people most likely receive *zero* additional benefit for all the extra money they put in.


It would be kinda like if you, me, and smash went out to diner. You pay $5, Smash pays $10, and I pay $15. We order a single $30 dinner and I eat the whole thing, and then complain that you guys didn't pay as much as I did...


Silly, huh?


Social Security is even worse then that though. IIRC, the calculation I saw last was that pretty much anyone making more then about 25k/year would be better off taking the 3% of their income that is taken for SS and simply dropping it in a random mutual fund instead. So it's not just that people working 50k+ jobs for 20 years are screwed over, but pretty much anyone who isn't in the sub 20k salary range (for most of their life) is getting less then they could if the government simply didn't get involved in the first place.

Social Security is not a smart investment in your future. What it does is help those who'd otherwise not put any money away for their future at all. And all of the rest of us suffer for it.


I have been putting 20% of my income into investment for the last dozen years or so. Even if I made half of what I made, social security would be a waste of my time. I'm paying into it so that people who'd rather blow their entire salaries on fun stuff and not think about their future get some bonus for doing that. So yeah. It miffs me a bit when someone argues that payroll taxes are "regressive" and weigh more heavily on the poor...

Eat the poor.

The problem with this, of course, is that you're looking at it from the perspective of pure numbers. The reality of it is that there is an inequality there, and that's exactly what SS is there to help remedy. Its one of the few forms of redistribution of wealth that remains in the country.

As Smash would say, False. Qualifying for Medicaid before you reach the age of 65 and fall under the income guidelines, is extremely hard. The process for getting benefits for adults, takes being able to prove to SS without a doubt that one can't hold a job.

It took me over 5 years to qualify for SSI. Before then the only reason I had Medicaid was that my daughters were under the age of 18 and my doctors felt that I wasn't able to work. I would love to go back and earn the 5 credits I need to get SSDI instead, but have been told that as long as I can't guarantee I could work when schedule, I have to try to get by on SSI. Course if you're willing to give me a job as an IT tech with full health insurance that has Mental Heath Parity, I might be able to see about working on for a few hours a week

Since most people who post here are either young or have work for long enough to qualify for SSDI, they will get Medicare not Medicaid. Just have to check the amounts of credits, social Security sends each year when you ask to see which one you would get if suddenly unable to work due to a disability. I wouldn't wish becoming disable on anyone.

BTW gbaji, I describe you as someone, who give Pubbies a bad name to my daughter and she said that's really bad.

I find the notion of natural liberties laughable. We can say these "should" be our natural liberties but the fact is that we have no natural liberties. If we don't enforce these should-be liberties through government, then we don't get them, hence they're not very natural, are they?

Our only true natural liberty is to do whatever we want that we are physically able to do. For that right to actually be protected would require total anarchy.

We decide what our rights should be, not nature.

But I guess you're more or less right. We do give up our freedom so that the government can protect our other interests. So I guess all that's left is for you to explain how that means that taxation and government involvement is bad. Financial freedom outweighs the right to medical care and education, for example?

You don't have to answer. I wouldn't waste my time by speaking to you directly-- I'm being rhetorical.