deskthority

Barack Obama suggests Scotland should stay in UK

Oh shit, I did not know that was his view on that, but of course he'll always go with the old ally.

Muirium wrote: Flat tax now? It just gets better!

Whats so bad about a flat tax rate? Everyone paying the same percentage of their income is bad? How?

I assume you're well off. If you weren't, you'd know why.

I live in a middle class family. My parents do not indulge me and encourage me to be independent.

Who do you think I am, Bill Gates son? Anyone can get a scholarship and go to college for free. All it takes it dedication and will.

EDIT: Please focus on the discussion at hand instead of implying I am an ignorant fool that knows nothing because I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth.

My parents have stated all throughout my life they will not let me become a leech once I finish high school. I will have to make my own way.

Try to imagine what's unfair about it. Hint: think about living costs like the price of food and utilities and indeed, in the US, healthcare. They don't scale with income. In fact, they dominate poorer people's budgets while wealthy folk don't even need to think about them.

Inequality becomes poverty when mismanaged by government.

You can live fine off minimum wage. As long as you don't eat crap like fast food and cook at home.

I have to finish a school assignment, but people are poor for a reason.

The reality of Bernie's tax plan is that low incomes and (especially, as always) the middle class will pay more tax. It will enrich the government and impover the middle class. The truly rich will move assets. I.e. Gates and Zuckerberg are trying to turn themselves into saints with their non-taxable charities owned by themselves. Gates was gonna give it all away. Here is his progress: http://time.com/money/4194163/bill-gate ... arth-2016/

The truly rich just bribe and like webwit said, move assets.

They may be greedy, but they are smart too. Part of the reason why they are rich. The corporations only care about profit, so huge taxes are not something they take kindly too.

Go on then Webwit, what would you do to taxes?

I'm a libertarian, so massively shrink the government and all taxes can do down and the disabled and elderly can be properly cared for.

That's a euphemism for leaving them in the street to die?

Where did you get that from?

Sounds like you want to enable poverty, not get rid of it.

Webwit likes to taunt, like a comedian, from a place where down is up and up is down. All European nations spend vastly more on their healthcare systems than they do their militaries. But if you're playing for libertarian laughs, fuck sense, and insist whatever you like.

And liberal views arent just for laughs?

To you, the world is but a joke. Maybe a bit of college life will open your eyes a bit. Or maybe you'll get big on Ayn Rand and join the republicans. Like Lou Reed once said: Whatever it takes to make life bearable in Texas.

Have you ever set foot in america, let alone Texas?

I really don't care for Ayn Rand, not sure where you are getting this stuff from.

Redmaus wrote: Have you ever set foot in america, let alone Texas?

Yes I lived in the US for 12 years, much of that time in Bethesda, MD. I really liked it. I still have friends there too.

@Muirium Ad hominems and other logical fallacies don't impress me, try counter argumentation. There's enough money to give single incomes, the sick and the elderly proper lives. But now one caste takes an enormous chunk and always wants more, while they piss it away.

Add up the salaries of the nurses, doctors, surgeons, consultants and cleaners in a health system. Then add the cost of the drugs and other materials. It's monumental. I know your instinct is to believe that everything is stolen by some vile "1%ers", but healthcare in particular is immensely laborious and costs an absolute fortune at scale. There's waste in every system — as conservatives forever bang on about, as though something only their magic spell can eradicate — but the great majority of the billions upon billions that we all collectively spend on it every year is going to pay the right people the right kind of wage. Indeed, over here, the real problem is we aren't paying our medical practitioners enough and the temptation is to emigrate for better pay abroad.

What is the relevance of what you posted?

We weren't talking about healthcare.

Tax…

Redmaus wrote: […] but people are poor for a reason.

I do hope I am misunderstanding this.
You don't mean that poor people have to blame only themselves for not being rich, do you?

Health care isn't a government tax but an insurance here. And we pay way too much, due to all the levels of management and because every specialist wants to be a millionaire.

Muirium wrote: I know your instinct is to believe that everything is stolen by some vile "1%ers", but healthcare in particular is immensely laborious and costs an absolute fortune at scale.

Fact not instinct: The richest 1% now have more wealth than the rest of the world combined.
https://www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/pres ... -rest-2016

A possible fix would be to tie the minimum wage to what the top person earns (and I don't mean the taxable $1) in a minimum ratio. In yesteryear's world one income of a simple job could provide for a family, a house in suburbia and a big ass car. Now two youngster cannot even buy a smaller house with two simple jobs.

kbdfr wrote:

Redmaus wrote: […] but people are poor for a reason.

I do hope I am misunderstanding this.
You don't mean that poor people have to blame only themselves for not being rich, do you?

Not all poor people of course. But you can't be so naive to think poor people are only poor off the greed of others.

Poor decision making and simple laziness play a much larger part.

Mostly the parents upon which the poor youth look up to.

@Webwit: Wealth isn't the same as earnings. People inherit vast fortunes (properties, companies, countries…) and despite my natural distaste for that, it doesn't affect the astronomical costs of governments. Setting aside healthcare, as Holland is apparently a rightwing hellhole, there's welfare, education and policing to consider. None of those are cheap. And none are something anyone wants to go without, either.


@Redmaus: Strange, isn't it, how so many african Americans are poor and rely on welfare. And quite how much of the jail population of your country is filled by them. Deserved? Or the legacy of their ancestors' enslavement?

Ooooh. I hadn't considered a ratio based minimum wage. I'm going to think about that more.

Redmaus wrote: people are poor for a reason.

Wow. I'm honestly speechless. I hope for your own sake that you're never unlucky enough in your clearly rather privileged life for it to happen to you, then.

Fuck this, let's get back to lego, please:

Redmaus wrote: Poor decision making and simple laziness play a much larger part.

Mostly the parents upon which the poor youth look up to.

Read "The Faith of the Fallen." It's a fantasy novel in the Confessor universe that I absolutely loved -- it strongly espouses capitalism and a bit of libertarianism. It will probably just make you even more right-wing, but whatever. We need right-wingers too. It isn't my job to moderate politics.

Holland is a corrupted cesspool where the government caste earns much better than the tax payers, spies on them, wages wars, and has one of the highest tax burdens in the world. Just received my energy bill, it's only 120% tax. I have to pay VAT over the tax for god's sake.