Political Discussion
- Thread starter David A.
- Start date
I I hear one more person retweet/facebook "Everyone who voted for Biden owes me gas money" I am going to go crazy.
No, Joe Biden is not responsible for the average price of gas increases by ¢50 since taking office. It's the rising demand for gas as we return to normal now that there is a vaccine.
No, Joe Biden is not responsible for the average price of gas increases by ¢50 since taking office. It's the rising demand for gas as we return to normal now that there is a vaccine.
wokeupnew
Well-Known Member
Gas prices always seemed like such an arbitrary metric for people to hang onto with politics. I don't do a lot of driving even before lockdown so maybe it doesn't impact me that much. But maybe consider rising costs for healthcare, medicine, electricity, heat, cost of living, and countless others that regular people should be upset about instead of gas prices.
debianlinux
Well-Known Member
Rising gas prices are going to be one of the primary measn to get the average joe to accept alternative energy. Bring it on.
Dtknuckles
Well-Known Member
And ice cream causes shark attacks.
Joe Mac
Well-Known Member
The whole ice cream industry is a Elasmobranch conspiracy to fatten up humans to make them more delicious.
You heard it here first...
Dtknuckles
Well-Known Member
What about gelato?
debianlinux
Well-Known Member
Works well phonetically with sharknado.
There's also this:
First, the amount of economic advantage passed down from one generation to the next is much higher in the US. Approximately 50% of a father’s income position is inherited by his son. In contrast, the amount in Norway or Canada is less than 20%.
What about rising from rags to riches? In the US, 8% of children raised in the bottom 20% of the income distribution are able to climb to the top 20% as adults, while the figure in Denmark is nearly double at 15%.
Equality of opportunity is also much less viable in the US than in other OECD countries. American life expectancy varies by up to 20 years depending on the zip code of residence. Quality of education also differs widely depending on the wealth of the neighborhood that families reside in. And the chances of being victimized by a crime, exposed to environmental toxins or having unmet healthcare needs is far greater for America’s poor than those impoverished in all other OECD countries.
One of the reasons for lower US mobility is that the ladder of opportunity has become much harder to climb – because the rungs of the ladder have grown further apart. This is evidenced by the rising levels of income and wealth inequality. Currently, those in the top 20% of the income distribution earn nearly nine times more than those in the bottom 20%. This difference is far greater than in the European Union or the United Kingdom. Wealth inequality is even more skewed. In the United States, the top 5% of the population own three-quarters of the entire financial wealth of the country, while the bottom 60% possess less than 1%.
The 'American Dream' of upward mobility is broken. Look at the numbers | Mark R Rank and Lawrence M Eppard
The US has far less mobility and equality of opportunity today than almost the entire European Union
www.theguardian.com
We are no longer a land of opportunities.
Yes socialism is "evil" and would instill the end of the "American dream"
Go figure. I hate that you can get people to agree that things are not great in America, but they firmly believe "it could be worse if we had socialism".
Go figure. I hate that you can get people to agree that things are not great in America, but they firmly believe "it could be worse if we had socialism".
Jan
Well-Known Member
As much as I agree to lots of his points I do find his random comparisons with rankings to countries from Angola to Serbia pandering to the same feeling of American exceptionalism as the "USA" cheering crowd. I know that gets a laugh but that is also based on the assumption that being behind countries like Angola, Serbia or Russia, that are regarded as inferior to the US, is an embarrassment. But a comparison to a single country in a ranking does not say much if you are not an expert into the socio-economic struof said country. So what do we know about police brutality in Angola so that the comparison to the US teaches us anything. This comparison just pandering our prejudices against African countries.
So, regardless of where Biden stands on student loan repayment, democrat think tanks are trying to figure out how to get borrowers to start paying again.
A COALITION OF liberal think tanks and nonprofits has released a memo advising the White House on how to “successfully transition” student loan borrowers back onto repayment plans when the Biden administration’s Covid-19 pause ends September 30.
On his first day in office, President Joe Biden extended a moratorium on federal student loan payments first put in place by the Trump administration. On January 22, Biden said his administration may need to look even beyond that September date.
Instead, the March 15 memo — from the Center for American Progress, New America, the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, the Institute for College Access and Success, and the Pew Charitable Trusts — spells out steps for recollecting payments from tens of millions of borrowers. Antoinette Flores, managing director for postsecondary education at the Center for American Progress, told The Intercept their recommendations were “not intended to encourage starting repayment.” Flores pointed to other approaches CAP has advocated for including debt cancellation of at least $10,000.
The memo was not requested by the Biden administration, but James Kvaal, the president of the Institute for College Access and Success — one of the groups behind the memo — was nominated last month to serve as the undersecretary of education, the highest-ranking higher education official in the Biden administration.
theintercept.com
Y'all remember CAP because that's the org where Neera was taking hand outs from big banks.
A COALITION OF liberal think tanks and nonprofits has released a memo advising the White House on how to “successfully transition” student loan borrowers back onto repayment plans when the Biden administration’s Covid-19 pause ends September 30.
On his first day in office, President Joe Biden extended a moratorium on federal student loan payments first put in place by the Trump administration. On January 22, Biden said his administration may need to look even beyond that September date.
Instead, the March 15 memo — from the Center for American Progress, New America, the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, the Institute for College Access and Success, and the Pew Charitable Trusts — spells out steps for recollecting payments from tens of millions of borrowers. Antoinette Flores, managing director for postsecondary education at the Center for American Progress, told The Intercept their recommendations were “not intended to encourage starting repayment.” Flores pointed to other approaches CAP has advocated for including debt cancellation of at least $10,000.
The memo was not requested by the Biden administration, but James Kvaal, the president of the Institute for College Access and Success — one of the groups behind the memo — was nominated last month to serve as the undersecretary of education, the highest-ranking higher education official in the Biden administration.
Liberal Think Tanks Outline Steps to Resuming Student Loan Payments in September
But Biden had expressed openness to extending the payment moratorium beyond that point.
theintercept.com
Y'all remember CAP because that's the org where Neera was taking hand outs from big banks.
debianlinux
Well-Known Member
I think this is largely because it would be a radical shift. I mean that as benignly and apolitically as possible. Essentially how things work would substantially change forever with no recourse. There are far too many people who profit off the way things are to let that happen so a culture is developed to maintain and protect that.
I despise the fact that that socialism is considered radical.
Other than for the well connected and ultra wealthy, how is socialism going to have an impact on anyones lives and wealth other than having a positive effect?
Why does the majority of our society believe the extremists who want socialism rate as high as terrorist.
When it comes to workers right, my step father who is in Construction (which is typically a heavily unionized industry) is straight up against unions. He works for a small family owned outfit that isn't unionized.
Why? Because union dues are evil. He rather have more money today and not have them take out union dues than have great healthcare and retirement plans.
I think it's sad that you think and need the higher payments now rather than benefits. It shows our system is broken.
Jobless claims are still higher than during the Great Recession a year after the pandemic started
A year after the pandemic shut down the US economy, America's workers are still hurting. For the past 12 months, first-time claims for jobless benefits have been higher than during the worst moments of the Great Recession.
www.cnn.com
The sad thing is, the focus is not on all the jobless people, but on the economy.
Policies to deal with this are heavily skewed to wealthy people and corporations. And continues looting from the poor and working class.
Joe Mac
Well-Known Member
Don’t join the Union and pay the fees then.
Most countries that I know of with a constitutional right to associate have had a corollary to disassociate. It’s every bit as illegal here to force your staff to join a Union as it is to bar them from joining one.