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income inequality debate

It is pointless to argue with libertroll over the definition of charity. The larger point is that incomes and upward mobility have stalled out in America, and the top 5% of earners are reaping the entire benefit of economic growth. Worse, our political system seems to have reached the end of its useful life and will be locked in partisan sniping to win the 24-hour news cycle for the foreseeable future.

I believe that the role of government should be to maximize liberty for the maximum number of people. The current Republican definition appears to be entirely focused on maximizing the liberty of a small minority of Americans to pay as little in taxes as possible. It is not liberty to be locked in poverty and want with little chance of setting your children on an upward trajectory. It isn't liberty to have your local school defunded and allowed to decay on assurances that you can have "school choice", but only if you have the means to transport your child to that school. It isn't liberty when your best chance of improving your lot in life, a college education, is increasingly priced out of your reach. It's not liberty when you can't afford health insurance and can't get the health care you need to be a productive member of society. It's not liberty to be told you can't marry who you want to marry.

The Democrats haven't done a great job either. They love regulation, as a party are captured by a million special interests, and continually find ways to create more causes of action for plaintiff's lawyers. That greatly decreases the liberty of people to start and succeed in small business and tends to protect large businesses with lobbyists and compliance departments. It has also created an environment where there are so many laws that all of us are breaking some of them at any given time, and it's up the discretion (or bias or vendetta) of the police and prosecutors to decide who gets prosecuted.

Democrats and Republicans are both responsible for creating a loophole-ridden monstrosity of a tax code that imposes huge unproductive costs on American businesses and citizens but still doesn't raise the revenue needed to run the government. They're both responsible for the hugely counter-productive war on drugs. They're both responsible for gerrymandering our congressional districts, guarantying that many of our votes just don't count and our elected representatives don't have to be responsive to sizable portions of their constituents. They're both responsible for cheapening our politics to an endless series of ad hominem attacks and gotcha moments.

I agree with many libertarian critiques of our current system. A thorough reform is needed. Where I differ from most libertrolls is my hope for the outcome of reform; I don't think we need a government-free armed to the teeth Darwinian Ayn Rand utopia. I think we need a government that is actually responsive to the people it is elected to serve, and that is able to act more quickly and decisively to the rapidly changing conditions that characterize a modern global economy. That government needs to have the ability to redistribute income and wealth effectively, so that initiative and hard work are rewarded (and not only to management and shareholders, but also to workers), while those left behind by changing economy or stricken with sickness and disability are supported and enabled to participate in the national economy for the good of all.
 
I'm not sure if Republicans don't understand market driven economies or that they just don't care and want to create a banana republic. Market driven from the bottom up and the middle up and out. This is what creates the massive wealth for the top.

It's insane to believe that trickle down could ever work in a market driven economy. It can never work. The only thing that can happen by concentrating so much wealth at the top is an inevitable revolution as the middle disappears.
 
Most Republicans refuse to accept the basic tenets of statistics yet we somehow think they will make a good faith effort to understand nuances in the market-driven economy? Yeah I don't think so.
 
It is pointless to argue with libertroll over the definition of charity. The larger point is that incomes and upward mobility have stalled out in America, and the top 5% of earners are reaping the entire benefit of economic growth. Worse, our political system seems to have reached the end of its useful life and will be locked in partisan sniping to win the 24-hour news cycle for the foreseeable future.

I believe that the role of government should be to maximize liberty for the maximum number of people. The current Republican definition appears to be entirely focused on maximizing the liberty of a small minority of Americans to pay as little in taxes as possible. It is not liberty to be locked in poverty and want with little chance of setting your children on an upward trajectory. It isn't liberty to have your local school defunded and allowed to decay on assurances that you can have "school choice", but only if you have the means to transport your child to that school. It isn't liberty when your best chance of improving your lot in life, a college education, is increasingly priced out of your reach. It's not liberty when you can't afford health insurance and can't get the health care you need to be a productive member of society. It's not liberty to be told you can't marry who you want to marry.

The Democrats haven't done a great job either. They love regulation, as a party are captured by a million special interests, and continually find ways to create more causes of action for plaintiff's lawyers. That greatly decreases the liberty of people to start and succeed in small business and tends to protect large businesses with lobbyists and compliance departments. It has also created an environment where there are so many laws that all of us are breaking some of them at any given time, and it's up the discretion (or bias or vendetta) of the police and prosecutors to decide who gets prosecuted.

Democrats and Republicans are both responsible for creating a loophole-ridden monstrosity of a tax code that imposes huge unproductive costs on American businesses and citizens but still doesn't raise the revenue needed to run the government. They're both responsible for the hugely counter-productive war on drugs. They're both responsible for gerrymandering our congressional districts, guarantying that many of our votes just don't count and our elected representatives don't have to be responsive to sizable portions of their constituents. They're both responsible for cheapening our politics to an endless series of ad hominem attacks and gotcha moments.

I agree with many libertarian critiques of our current system. A thorough reform is needed. Where I differ from most libertrolls is my hope for the outcome of reform; I don't think we need a government-free armed to the teeth Darwinian Ayn Rand utopia. I think we need a government that is actually responsive to the people it is elected to serve, and that is able to act more quickly and decisively to the rapidly changing conditions that characterize a modern global economy. That government needs to have the ability to redistribute income and wealth effectively, so that initiative and hard work are rewarded (and not only to management and shareholders, but also to workers), while those left behind by changing economy or stricken with sickness and disability are supported and enabled to participate in the national economy for the good of all.

Do you think you should make me pay for your college education?
 
Why would you rather pay for someone to go to prison than to go to school or college?
 
Do you think you should make me pay for your college education?

You and I and all other taxpayers should contribute to the education of all Americans at all levels. Education and increased technical skills and technology are the only way economies grow in the long term, and increasing education levels of a population is the only way for that population to remain competitive in a global, interconnected market. Collective action organized by government is the best way to accomplish that. I would welcome the opportunity to pay higher taxes to provide more and better education to my fellow citizens, and I think it is in the public interest to impose those taxes on you, too, if your means are sufficient.
 
Do you think you should make me pay for your college education?

Nope because I'm sure you donate enough money to charitable foundations that provide scholarships and financial aid to plenty of other people already....

America and yourself will definitely prosper with an uneducated generation of children resulting in a labor force that can't do anything skillful, and then you will have a reason to piss and moan about it because they taking all of your hard earned money...at gun point...
 
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Smart guy makes comprehensive, thoughtful, reasoned, and informed post.

Dumb guy makes knee-jerk, myopic, tangential, and uninformed rebuttal.


Love these threads

'Murica
 
My life will only be better if more Americans have a good education. The only downside comes from greed in the markets making education too expensive.
 
My life will only be better if more Americans have a good education. The only downside comes from greed in the markets making education too expensive.

So would most college professors volunteer to take a pay cut to make education more affordable for their students?
 
So would most college professors volunteer to take a pay cut to make education more affordable for their students?

most college professors haven't had a raise in real terms in the past 20 years, just like all other middle class Americans. The administrators, however, are another story altogether. Anybody that knows anything about college knows that tuition inflation is not funding professor salaries, it's funding lavish dorms, student fitness centers, more and more student service employees, and ever-increasing administrative bloat.
 
Smart guy makes comprehensive, thoughtful, reasoned, and informed post.

Dumb guy makes knee-jerk, myopic, tangential, and uninformed rebuttal.


Love these threads

'Murica

Kind of a microcosm of society right here. The problem is in this country the latter outnumber the former by a lot.
 
You and I and all other taxpayers should contribute to the education of all Americans at all levels. Education and increased technical skills and technology are the only way economies grow in the long term, and increasing education levels of a population is the only way for that population to remain competitive in a global, interconnected market. Collective action organized by government is the best way to accomplish that. I would welcome the opportunity to pay higher taxes to provide more and better education to my fellow citizens, and I think it is in the public interest to impose those taxes on you, too, if your means are sufficient.

Forcing one person to pay for another person's college expenses is not a better way to achieve education of the populace than freedom. Force will just cause prices to rise out of the range of the non rich and cause students who should not be college to enroll.
 
most college professors haven't had a raise in real terms in the past 20 years, just like all other middle class Americans. The administrators, however, are another story altogether. Anybody that knows anything about college knows that tuition inflation is not funding professor salaries, it's funding lavish dorms, student fitness centers, more and more student service employees, and ever-increasing administrative bloat.

What he said. And I've paid my salary several times over through the 49.5% cut the university takes off the top of my federal grants.
 
Forcing one person to pay for another person's college expenses is not a better way to achieve education of the populace than freedom. Force will just cause prices to rise out of the range of the non rich and cause students who should not be college to enroll.

using your bizarro logic, if I don't want to pay for putting FBI in Idaho or NC, I shouldn't have to.

Your concept of "force' is all about irrational greed and a complete misunderstanding of how a modern society works.
 
Forcing one person to pay for another person's college expenses is not a better way to achieve education of the populace than freedom. Force will just cause prices to rise out of the range of the non rich and cause students who should not be college to enroll.

You are entitled to your opinion. However what we see in other advanced economies is that government takes on much more of the financing role, not less, keeping higher education affordable for all, not just a few. Those governments pay for the education and they also control what they're paying for. I'm guessing - without research - that those governments don't spend nearly as much money on luxury dorms and spas and student support centers and climbing walls and so forth and so on as American schools.

The American method of a hybrid system using subsidized loans puts the liability for payment on the government but the decision on what is bought with that payment with students, institutions, and to some degree parents. It's not surprising to me that when someone else is paying for a meal the people selecting the menu items pick the filet and lobster instead of the chicken and broccoli.

Sounds kind of familiar... sort of like, hm, I don't know, our healthcare system?
 
You are entitled to your opinion. However what we see in other advanced economies is that government takes on much more of the financing role, not less, keeping higher education affordable for all, not just a few. Those governments pay for the education and they also control what they're paying for. I'm guessing - without research - that those governments don't spend nearly as much money on luxury dorms and spas and student support centers and climbing walls and so forth and so on as American schools.

The American method of a hybrid system using subsidized loans puts the liability for payment on the government but the decision on what is bought with that payment with students, institutions, and to some degree parents. It's not surprising to me that when someone else is paying for a meal the people selecting the menu items pick the filet and lobster instead of the chicken and broccoli.

Sounds kind of familiar... sort of like, hm, I don't know, our healthcare system?

Fixing the problems government intervention has caused with more government intervention will not help.
 
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