ACA Repeal/Replace: Progressives Face Moral Dilemma

[Bob Butler 54]

(09-09-2017, 09:53 AM)Kinser79 Wrote:

(09-09-2017, 08:01 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(09-08-2017, 11:49 AM)Kinser79 Wrote:

(09-08-2017, 09:34 AM)David Horn Wrote: We aren't a tiny country poised on the edge of a wilderness in the late Agricultural Age -- not anymore.  Pretending we are is both stupid and dangerous.

We aren't an industrial power with limitless wealth and low debt either and pretending that we are is far more stupid and far more dangerous. Turning vast swaths over to the states is not only doable but the right thing to do.  The Constitution is best understood to be a compact for mutual trade and assistance rather than the formation of a unitary republic, for which even today the country is too large and too diverse to be.

The rest of your post is the usual liberal nonsense.

You fundamentally misunderstand how the economy works.  It's not a zero-sum game.  Economic activity creates more economic activity.  When the economy is slack, like it is at the moment, debt financed activity can start a righteous cycle of additional activity, but only if we actually do it.  40 years of GOP dominance in the economic sphere has created a systemic underperforming economic engine because Republicans refuse to accept the obvious: the private sector only works to its advantage.  Public sector investment is also needed and it's now critical. 

Feel free to pretend that your static view is correct, but answer this simple question: why did the US do so incredibly well for so long, when we exited WW-II with Federal debt equal to ~126% of GNP?  We're well below that now, and you are crying wolf.  

Yes, times are different.  Our population is stagnant now and it was expanding then.  This is a real issue, and more immigration will help with that, but waving the debt flag is both supercilious and flat wrong.  I notice it doesn't seem to apply to Defense spending or to huge tax breaks to the wealthy.  And handing things back to the states?  Really?  How do you think Jim Crow got going in the first place?

And you fundamentally misunderstand that taxation is at its most basic level theft.  But that isn't here nor there.  The fact remains that if you want to increase economic activity you have to decrease taxes, if you really want to accelerate economic activity you decrease taxes on those who produce wealth, which largely speaking means corporations.

Short of that the only real way to accelerate economic growth by government spending is to waste huge sums on a war.  I think we've been trying to blow that bubble back up for some time now--it isn't working out to well.

The GMs and Googles and the GEs don't really pay all that much in corporate taxes because they have and can afford to have armies of lawyers and accountants to reduce their tax burdens through the byzantine mess the tax code is.  So who gets slammed with the high corporate rate?  Smaller companies which actually employs most people.

Until you can demonstrate to me that you have a modicum of economic understanding of an average High School Student then perhaps we could have a reasonable conversation about the tax rate.  Unfortunately I highly doubt you have the intellect for such an understanding.  You can get back to me about corporate taxes when you've run a business.

What I'm seeing is less dummies asserting the facts 'wrong' than partisans asserting the assumptions required to get their extremes.  Look at the 'truths' being stated as assumptions.  While here it is heavily economics, in other places it is whether or not private guns assure freedom, whether the goal in health plans is to share risks and costs, or whatever the base is in a given issue.  Look twice with the premise that one's facts are assumptions, that the assumptions one makes exist at the values level, that agreement on such things is unlikely.

It is easier to assert than to prove such extreme assumptions.

One observation.  Those who have tend to be those who get as they can afford better lobbyists, lawyers, media, politicians, etc...  It doesn't have to be that way.  Drain the swamp, and maybe some trends that are assumed basic and unchanging will fade.   Note, that will not be easy.  However, that is the sort of cultural change a crisis can force.

Alas, the folks who make promises to drain the swamp tend to be alligators.