Political Discussion
- Thread starter David A.
- Start date
I mentioned this to a co-worker who grew up in Tennessee. He's leans republican, as expected where he grew up.
His thoughts on this was "Fake News".
Sure, the Deficit could have been eliminated. But the recession would have hit much sooner and much harder and probably would have been worse than the Great Depression. The tax cuts are what kept our economy afloat longer and from crashing so badly.
What are all your thoughts on this one?
I think there's an awful lot of speculation in that number.
I also think that since most of our neoliberal policies of market deregulation and privatization of public services was already in full effect in the Clinton era, that this argument doesn't really hold water. I think that it didn't matter what tax structure was left afterward, because the damage was already being done. The 1980's ushered in a new era where money and politics were more and more incestuously aligned than ever before. We could have, and should have stopped it with anti-trust laws that were already on the books, but we obviously didn't learn from our history and robber barons, that it's a bad idea to have private industry and politics so buddy-buddy. I don't think we could have prevented the deficit by keeping a tax structure in place.
This is not the only reason we are in a lurch, but it's part of it. The other, and possibly bigger part of this is that since the government isn't really worried about workers rights, it was around this time (W's presidency) that white collar workers' wages went as static as blue collar workers wages went two decades before. I think it was the hit to middle class worker's wages that is really impacting us--probably more than keeping Clinton's taxes in place. We don't have a surplus, because neither does the American worker. You can't have a tax structure that relies only on the rich. Consider this:
The growth in income in recent decades has tilted to upper-income households. At the same time, the U.S. middle class, which once comprised the clear majority of Americans, is shrinking. Thus, a greater share of the nation’s aggregate income is now going to upper-income households and the share going to middle- and lower-income households is falling.9
The share of American adults who live in middle-income households has decreased from 61% in 1971 to 51% in 2019. This downsizing has proceeded slowly but surely since 1971, with each decade thereafter typically ending with a smaller share of adults living in middle-income households than at the beginning of the decade.
Trends in U.S. income and wealth inequality
Barely 10 years past the end of the Great Recession in 2009, the U.S. economy is doing well on several fronts. The labor market is on a job-creating
www.pewresearch.org
And Covid has pushed more Americans out of the middle class. If wages are artificially kept low because of monopolistic collusion on wages and less people are making a livable wage, this means lower tax revenues. In order to get back these lost tax dollars, we would have to drastically tax corporations and the rich who are benefiting from the monopolistic collusion on wages. Our politicians aren't ready to stand up for workers and against monopolies, so I don't think we'll be seeing anything but deficit.
David A.
Well-Known Member
Chucktshoes
Well-Known Member
Admittedly, none of that resonates with me regarding Biden. I don’t look at politicians in that way at all. Their personal myth building is all just meaningless noise to me because I know it is complete and total bullshit.
So I’m pretty incapable of weighing in on that because the idea that folks believe or connect with that is so foreign to me. I literally don’t understand how people feel personally connected to or invested in politicians. Then again, people become obsessed with and send love letters to serial killers too.
People are weird.
David A.
Well-Known Member
I acknowledge the personal losses Biden has endured, I acknowledge the warmth he exudes. I think Biden is a one-term president. His insistance on this arcane concept of bipartisanship is already impacting the lives of millions of Americans. This wait-and-see game regarding the filibuster, standing sheepishly on the side during a doomed impeachment proceeding, putting immigration reform on the backburner...
Democrats will keep losing election cycles because they want white voters back who split back in the 1970's.
yukbon
Well-Known Member
this goes back to @sarcasticfairyprincess 's post and the everyman appeal of some candidates. Part of the reason Bill Clinton won so readily was he had definitely suffered and that resonated with a lot of people; growing up poor and the child of a single mother. There was a reason why Toni Morrison called him America's first black president and it wasn't just because he played sax on Arsenio. In some ways, that was also part of Dubya's appeal -- most of white conservative and religious america looked at his past drug use and finding religion and sobriety and people underestimating him and saw some of themselves in him.
yukbon
Well-Known Member
...and because they either don't want to or just can't admit that those white voters left for a reason and left for good.
Chucktshoes
Well-Known Member
Yeah, I don’t know that I have anything actually constructive to add to this portion of the conversation. Everything I would have to say at this point is just varying versions of “Biden is a horrible person and we have 50 years of political record as evidence of that.”
As a father I have empathy for the pain he’s suffered but that doesn’t have any bearing on who he is as a person and a politician. Losing a child doesn’t magically make bad people into good people. Biden has decades on record showing exactly how much of a piece of shit he is. Sympathy plays fall flat with me.
Chucktshoes
Well-Known Member
Gotcha.
I don’t really think so. Other than the media who’s falling over themselves to prop Biden up in a nearly Pravda-like fashion, I don’t know anybody who even likes Biden. Even the folks I know who voted for him didn’t like or have any real faith in him. This last election was 100% about him being not Trump. I think the attempts to make Biden look good are just the rationalization of a terrible choice now that the post orgasmic bliss of defeating Trump is starting to fade. A lot like a someone trying to find good excuses for their actions the night before during the morning walk of shame home.
TenderLovingKiller®
Well-Known Member
What Biden provides that no president has provided for a long while, is for a good chunk of America the ability to now actively ignore the Presidency. I personally was quite fond of Obama as a President but acknowledged that he triggered vitriol on the Right that was unprecedented. Obviously Trump was a bit of a reaction to that combined with the Left deciding to run another extremely unlikable candidate in Hillary but he engendered much of the same vitriolic hatred from the Left. For your “Average American voter” they don’t love or hate Biden; they don’t think much about him at all and I think that is why he won the election and why his approval numbers are still on the positive side even in these highly polarized times.
Dtknuckles
Well-Known Member
I’m just racing to my accountant to get the appropriate income drop for this year.
Dental Insurance is the biggest joke ever. All it does is basically cover your yearly cleanings and nothing beyond that. At least mine that is. Luckily I'm young and my teeth are in good health.
We have MetLife from work, and MetLife has $2,000 coverage per year in-network or $1,000 a year coverage out-of-network plus yo have to pay 20% of the bill.
There isn't a singe dentists office within a 25 mile radius of me that is "in-network". So of course my dentist is out-of-network.
When I have talked to the dentist office about being in-network they said MetLife negotiated rates to too low. They aren't going to become part of the network unless MetLife budges and pays a reasonable rate.
My old small town father son dentist owned office was out-of-network as well. But they never charged the 20% co-pay. They always waived it. It's just something they always did and I never asked for. But out in Eastern Massachusetts, everything is part of a large Dental Group and charging that 20% is absolutely not negotiable.
I have heard of co-workers getting cavities filled and coming home with a $1400 bill.
We have MetLife from work, and MetLife has $2,000 coverage per year in-network or $1,000 a year coverage out-of-network plus yo have to pay 20% of the bill.
There isn't a singe dentists office within a 25 mile radius of me that is "in-network". So of course my dentist is out-of-network.
When I have talked to the dentist office about being in-network they said MetLife negotiated rates to too low. They aren't going to become part of the network unless MetLife budges and pays a reasonable rate.
My old small town father son dentist owned office was out-of-network as well. But they never charged the 20% co-pay. They always waived it. It's just something they always did and I never asked for. But out in Eastern Massachusetts, everything is part of a large Dental Group and charging that 20% is absolutely not negotiable.
I have heard of co-workers getting cavities filled and coming home with a $1400 bill.
David A.
Well-Known Member
I think Biden has the unenviable positions of trying to figure out how to deal with the 1/6 coup. I think he's afraid to seem too involved in the Justice Department's investigation and prosecution of the event. I think Joe Biden left Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer to clean up the mess and for the sake of political expediency, the trial was prematurely adjourned. And it's tragic. Because accountability doesn't matter.
The guy can't walk and chew gum at the same time.
Accountability in politics is like corporate social responsibility. Both are great concepts but I have yet to see them in practice.
David A.
Well-Known Member
Amen. And I think this comes back to precedent set by Gerald Ford. Americans love to use their sense of hospitality and kindness as reasons to ignore the shitty behavior of people who say racist/misognistic shit for the sake of civility and union. It's absurd. And the discourse gets dumber and our grasp on reality becomes more tenuous.
