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Jill Stein FTW. Obama is just Republican lite at this point anyway.

Brawlsack

Taking an extended hiatus from gaming

This is a racist argument. The underlying premise is, blacks (and that's what we're talking about, blacks) are poor because they deserve to be. After all, if they could make it on their own, then why haven't they?

More black people are poor because of the long history of oppression and racism. Black family life, or the absence thereof, is also a product of that history - white people made a point of destroying the black family structure to facilitate slavery. While white people today don't necessarily inherit responsibility for that, it is a social problem that we as a country need to work together to fix.

Whether you're black or white, escaping poverty is extraordinarily difficult and beyond the means of any but the most fortunate or remarkable individuals. No one can "make it on their own". If you have nothing then what you have is nothing. You're not going to "hard work" your way to prosperity without land, education, or a job that pays more than enough to scrape by each day.

People who need help should get it. Black or white. And the only reason that Americans refuse to understand this is because of the noxious influence of personal vanity in political discourse.

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.

This is why you get lumped in with "all those other right wing loonies".

I asked you:


I asked why you believe this and that and you didn't answer but just spewed more Koolaid from the boob tube you lazily get your views from (including the delusion of false duality promulgated by the media).

Why do you believe Obama is killing job growth? In what way is he doing so? Where did you get this idea? How do you think job creation should be facilitated?

Can you justify what you believe or can't you?
If you can't, then isn't it logical to conclude you've been brainwashed?

(inb4 complaining that "this isn't fair because when I say something wrong you say I'm wrong so I can never win without changing my beliefs so they become correct")

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.

So let me get this straight.

Because I feel both parties are to blame for the shitty situation our country is in(crippling unemployment, 16 trillion and counting debt), I'm a right wing looney?

That wasn't what you said. You said Obama was to blame.

If you think both parties are to blame why blame Obama? What has he, personally, done to make the problem worse? What do you think should be done?



1+1=3
Obama/Dems + Blame = Both parties are to blame

No, you're a right wing looney because you spew knee-jerk cliches that fail at the most basic logic checks and have no basis in fact. Go back and answer the question - why do you believe those things?

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.

Show me where I said Obama is to blame.

Alright, fair enough, you did say Paul/Romney are to blame as well - but what do you believe Obama has done to make the problem worse? What would your solution be? And can you justify your other claims?

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.

Brawlsack

Taking an extended hiatus from gaming

I'm actually not dropping the blame on any one candidate/president. I blame the entirety of washington. I think the ridiculous deficits these last two presidencies especially go a long way in hurting us as a nation. if you spend more than you take in, you're gonna have problems that last beyond just getting out of debt. The credit rating downgrade and the resulting interest rates difference is another serious problem that has to be dealt with. Unemployment is at what, between 8-10%? 16 trillion or more debt, trillion dollar deficits on the horizon? C'mon. That's not the fault of only one party.

Cut foreign aid, get the fuck out of iraq/afganistan and stop playing world police, cut the military budget, cut entitlement programs, cut fucking everything. Tax more of companies that have their manufacturing overseas. Tax breaks to companies that have manufacturing here.

Loosen regulations on businesses that lost jobs due to those regulations. Coal plants come to mind, for example.

Unfortunately none of that will ever happen because no one in washington will vote themselves out of a job or vote to lighten their paycheck or vote to cut their pet projects.



And hey tard thats cute, because only republicans are rich.

Do go on. /popcorn


Ah, yes. Providing the disadvantaged with the means to live (and in many cases prosper) is equivalent to "buying" their vote as a bloc. Clearly conservatives are the ones deserving of the minority vote, no? After all, look at all the wonderful minority-friendly policies implemented by the Republican Party in recent years: state voter ID laws, the Florida voter roll purge, the weakening of voter registration organizations... the list goes on and on! It's almost as if Republicans are trying to buy the black and Hispanic vote at this point.


The first major federal Affirmative Action program was implemented by Richard Nixon. You know, the hardline conservative and user of the Southern strategy. Just saying.


What, might I ask, do you think caused such a huge disparity between "us whites" and "them minorities" in the first place? I'd wager that in regard to blacks, there's that whole slavery/Jim Crow thing. In regard to Hispanics, you can blame mass migration and lax regulations on hiring practices --- conservative economic practices have allowed major corporations to dig many an under-the-table pitfall for incoming (typically illegal) immigrants. Native Americans' economic woes, at least where casinos aren't concerned, are self-explanatory.

As Aestu said, the entitlement program argument is in this case moot given that conservatives have watered down any attempts for comprehensive social welfare reform. So where's your answer?


Agreed.

Racism has nothing to do with party affiliation.

I can agree with most of that. There are three things you don't realize though.

First off, job losses are the direct result of increased productivity and the big winners taking their gains out of the economy. Reducing regulation doesn't change that, in fact it makes it worse, because it means businesses can keep more gains while increasing efficiency, putting even more people out of work.

By the same token, entitlement programs don't cost jobs - they create jobs - because taxation is, at least in theory, progressive (meaning the rich pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes) and all entitlement spending gets pumped directly back into the economy. Entitlement spending results in money going back into the economy at a higher rate than letting the rich keep their gains because the savings rate on entitlement spending is basically zero (because those people live hand-to-mouth) and the rich by and large just sit on their holdings, or plow them into unproductive speculation.

So "regulation" - raising taxes and paying them back out in the form of make-work - would take some money from the very wealthy and trigger economic growth across all brackets, as the money would re-enter the economy and go into the hands of those selling products and services - not the fat cats.

......

Second off, loosening environmental regulations won't create jobs, because (productivity * available workforce) > demand. What that means is, productivity is so high, industrial capacity equal to only a fraction the available workforce is sufficient to meet the world's industrial needs.

So, what that means is, businesses will simply move where they can pay the least, and pollute the most. And because global labor supply grossly exceeds demand, the only way businesses would move here would be $1/hr labor and "freedom" to dump toxins into the environment.

The only way out of this bind is...regulation. Make it illegal to sell products produced in violation of US law (no matter where) and mandate harsh environmental restrictions.

So what would that accomplish, employment wise? Well, simply put, it would mean China would lose its competitive advantage. They would no longer be able to undercut the US on labor or environment. It would also dramatically increase employment because of the Trinity of Economics.

The Trinity of Economics is:
LAND - LABOR - CAPITAL

All production is a product of those three factors. When one factor becomes more scarce and therefore expensive, the other two factors become more competitive.

So say we implement harsh environmental and labor laws. Land - pollution - is now more expensive, so businesses have to invest more on labor and capital to eke out the same level of productivity. And labor is more expensive now, too - so capital becomes the most attractive option.

Capital, in this context, refers to things like clean power, recycling, and RnD. All of which require...employment. So increasing regulation, you see, actually would bring employment up.

Let me give you a hypothetical model:
Consider the economic inputs for a hypothetical coal-fired power plant.
LAND - Coal mines ($10/mine) (productivity/unit: 10) (units: 10)
LABOR - Coal miners and plant workers ($10/worker) (productivity/unit: 10) (units: 10)
CAPITAL - Rent and maintenance on coal-fired power plant ($10/plant) (productivity/unit: 10) (units: 10)
Total cost: $300/mWh
Total productivity / mWh: 100*100*100 = 1m/mWh

Now, consider that same coal-fired power plant, under the burden of onerous government regulation:
LAND - Coal mines ($10/mWh) + environmental regulations ($10/mWh) (productivity/unit: 10) (units: 10)
LABOR - Coal miners and plant workers ($10/mWh) + health and safety regulations, wage laws ($10/mWh) (productivity/unit: 10) (units: 10)
CAPITAL - Rent and maintenance on coal-fired power plant ($10/mWh) (productivity/unit: 10) (units: 10)

So the businessman running the plant now has a choice. He can continue with the previous cost structure, hiring 10 workers at each of his plants, running 10 mines, and running 10 plants, or he can double his spending on infrastructure, fire half his workforce and halve his mining activities, so he can eke out the same amount of power production and profit with way more expensive land and labor.

Let us assume that national energy demand is 1000mW. Previously, 1000mW had a cost of $300,000, with inputs for land, labor and capital amounting to $10,000 each. But now land and labor are twice as expensive.

So the new optimal cost structure is:
LAND - Carefully managed coal mines ($20/mWh) (productivity/unit: 10) (units: 5)
LABOR - Unionized and pensioned coal workers ($20/mWh) (productivity/unit: 10) (units: 5)
CAPITAL - Scrubber plant with steam taps ($10/mWh) (productivity/unit: 10) (units: 40)
Total cost: $600/mWh
Total productivity / mWh: 50*50*400 = 1m/mWh

So what about those workers who got fired? Well, like I said, the businessman is spending more on capital now. The plant manufacturer previously had demand for $10,000 of coal plants a year. But now suddenly demand for new plants equipment - scrubbers and steam taps - has quadrupled, to $40,000 a year. So what's he going to do? Hire more workers to build the scrubbers and steam taps...and to build factories for building scrubbers and steam taps...increasing demand for labor and bringing wages up. That extra $300/mWh simply re-enters the economy.

Thus: More employment is the inevitable result of environmental and labor protection.

The figures are hypothetical but the overall model is not. Go read any macroeconomics textbook. The first thing any textbook will describe is the Trinity of Economics and how they relate.

The point is that you see environmental regulation as opposed to job growth when in reality the truth is the opposite.

....................

The third thing you don't realize is that the interest thing is simply a scam. The interest rate is an arbitrary number on a page. All that raising that number means is that they've decided the government should pay more for its loans.

What if the govt doesn't want to, find another bank? Well, all the banks are "unionized" and none will operate independently of their umbrella organizations (the interest rate review firms they are all members of). Funny enough the same banks that oppose unionization of labor don't seem to oppose unionization of capital. And the only way to break them up would be...regulation.

So you see, all these anti-regulation arguments are bullshit by wealthy interests that want to profit at the expense of workers, government, and the environment.

Make sense now?

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.

I fully realize that Usd won't read that long segue about how economics actually works, but the overall point, that the anti-regulation argument is bunk, stands.

Regulation equates to more growth for reasons I have proven but most are too lazy to read or internalize.



Some sellout's biased remarks about Reconstruction are obsolete and irrelevant since JFK and LBJ. They set the Dems firmly against Jim Crow, the GOP settled on the other side of the fence, and that's where things have been ever since.

The GOP no longer preaches explicit racism, but its policies appeal to delusional white people who refuse to understand anyone might not have it so easy.

As the economy crumbles and poverty spreads, the divide becomes less between blacks and whites and more between progressives and the fat cats/useful idiots. Bigotry being used to keep useful idiots in support of fat cats is absolutely nothing new in history, and I could name half a dozen examples off the top of my head.

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.

I actually never said I was anti regulation. I know that I don't know enough about the minutiae of the business world to pick and choose which regulations are bad and which are good, but I also know that over regulation can be just as disastrous as zero regulation.

Would you agree that not all regulation is good? Perhaps some regulations cost more jobs and money than it creates/allows to be created?

How many topics are in this thread or are the all somehow related?