Gas Bandit's Political Thread V: The Vampire Likes Bats
- Thread starter GasBandit
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Yep realized it hence the deletion.
GasBandit
Staff member
But it's racist to give visa preference to skilled workers because minority ethnicities can't be expected to be anything other than unskilled drudge labor, perpetually locked in a manufactured victim status that democrats both further and exploit for political gain. Which isn't racist.
55,000 people is a drop in the bucket really. It does nothing to address the fundamental flaws in our immigration system.
IMO the fact that they need a better chance to stay here after receiving a degree is a pretty big flaw in the system. That said this starts to address that issue, which is certainly a good thing and a step in the right direction.
But one's by an ex-stripper, and the other by someone that has a say in how laws are made...
That's... really messed up.
Interestingly though, all the comments underneath are blaming the US government.
Well sure. They're not breaking the law, are they? What would differentiate them from someone on vacation and then unexpectedly giving birth?
I'm very sure there were cases of people using the last bit of their life savings to do it, $5000 isn't that much for the gains they got for coming over. Most of what they were advertising it for, was toward the poor (free Public School, Retirement Benefits etc)
The thing that sucks most about the whole "Anchor Baby" thing is what would happen to the kid if you did not give them citizenship. They'd literally have no citizenship for anywhere in the world. By my understanding, most countries give citizenship to whomever is born on their soil, and if a country started denying such, then you'd have people who literally have no countries. This has happened before under certain circumstances throughout history, and it can royally suck for those individuals. What's the overall solution? I dunno, but it is a really crappy situation. For the specific place, shutting it down, charging/deporting the owner is an option of course. But overall? I dunno.
Yes, but you have to take into account visa restrictions. It's not like they snuck over on a cargo container. It's not that easy to get into the US, which is why people do this kind of thing. They'd have to prove ownership of property, X amt in the bank account, etc. It's a pain in the ass, really. These are undoubtedly well-off middle-class Chinese.
This is called jus soli and it's actually practiced by a minority of countries. Among advanced nations, it's really only the US and Canada. It's much more prevalent among countries in the Western Hemisphere than elsewhere in the world.
Basically, most first world nations have moved beyond this crap by making it so at least one of your parents needs to be from a country for you to have any chance of claiming citizenship. The US hasn't done it mostly out of tradition.
We did it because of Jim Crow/Slavery. Since Slaves were not citizens, their children could not be citizens.
This is the entire reason why Guantanamo is still open. Even if we wanted to close shop and release the prisoners, their home countries have already said they don't want them back and won't let them within their borders. Without a place to send them, we're kind of stuck dealing with them.
The UN foresees this becoming a huge issue soon and is doing what it can to come up with a solution. Unfortunately, unless the member states play along, offer to host them or give up some sovereign territory for a settlement under UN control, it's really not going to happen.[DOUBLEPOST=1354641026][/DOUBLEPOST]
Did that only work for East Germans or did it apply to EVERYBODY?
GasBandit
Staff member
You know, I'm not sure. I had thought everybody, but I don't think I ever heard it explicitly stated as such. Was just an anecdote from german classes in high school.
He's just said the only thing he's not willing to budge on is letting the tax break for the wealthy expire. Not that they have to accept his entire proposal or else.
GasBandit
Staff member
And that's a stupid thing to be unbudge-able about, seeing as how even if you were somehow able to tax wealthy income at 100%, it wouldn't resolve the deficit.
America doesn't have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem.
That's fine, but it's not about taxing the rich more. It's about rolling back a temporary tax break. It seems like a good thing to be unbudge-able about. Notice he didn't say anything about not being willing to talk about spending cuts, etc. It was just about rolling back a temporary tax break.
GasBandit
Staff member
This has been the tax rate for over a decade. It's time to put the "roll back the temporary tax breaks" verbiage to rest. "Allowing the bush tax cuts to expire" is a de facto tax hike because the expectation has been set through repeated extensions that this was the nominal amount.
Furthermore, bullshit. It IS so VERY much about taxing the rich. Obama's entire mandate is derived from parasitic wealth envy from economically and politically ignorant americans who are sick and tired of being grownups. We're teetering on the edge of a double dip recession, when the so-called recovery from the first dip has been extremely anemic. This is not when you raise taxes, if you want any sort of recovery or job growth.
There is not and there has never been a definitive correlation between tax rates and GDP growth. Ever. It's time to put that verbiage to rest.
Source: Congressional Research Service
GasBandit
Staff member
Only a fool would assert that tax burdens don't figure into the future expenditures of business. Only a fool would assert that raising capital gains tax rates doesn't discourage investment.
There are, admittedly, a lot of fools around.
Heck, if there's no correlation between taxation and productivity, why don't we just raise the tax rate to 50, 75, 100% above 200k/year? The reason? Because it would hurt productivity, obviously, and would not generate enough revenue to run the government for 24 hours. There is nothing the government needs that extra money for that couldn't be better accomplished by the private sector.
Any discussion of "raising revenue" in the US at the federal level is an absolute joke and distraction when the sad truth of the matter is that we are incapable of cutting any spending at all. Seriously. They give agencies an 8% increase in funding instead of 10% increase and call it a drastic cut.
I'd be willing to entertain going back to Clinton-era tax rates if we also go back to Clinton-era spending rates. But apparently, even going back to Bush era spending rates (which were higher than Clinton, much much higher, even not counting the military) is tantamount to mass murder, throwing the sick and the poor into the street to get flushed down the gutter.
Just because the politicians have been to chicken shit to let them expire before, doesn't mean it shouldn't happen now. I don't get it. They were put in because we were doing good, so we gave them a break because we didn't need that income. Now that we're doing shitty we can't roll them back because we'll ruin the economy. When we're doing good again are we going to give them more tax breaks that we can't allow to expire again?
Call it whatever makes you happy. If they want to make it permanent, they can go ahead and vote on it as a permanent tax break. Otherwise let it expire like it's supposed to.
GasBandit
Staff member
... what??!
What the hell have you been smoking?! The bush tax cuts were instituted to help spur growth during the post 9/11 recession. Not because we were "doing so good." And the tax cuts were across the board. Not just for "the rich."
Furthermore, the concept that "we gave them a break because we didn't need that income" is so wrongheaded I don't even know where to start. There is no "we," you are not the federal government, the federal government doesn't consider you part of it. You are not the direct recipient of that tax income, nor do you dictate how it is spent. Additionally, it is not for the people to justify to the government why it needs to take less of their money, it is for the government to justify to the people why it needs to take what it does at all. The default ownership of income is not the government, it isn't that the government "lets you keep" some of your money. It's that we, as citizens of the nation, acknowledge that government is necessary and we agree to pay taxes to cover government expenses. But it's still our money that we are then paying a portion of to the government. Not a portion of the government's money that it is allowing the people to keep. That line of thinking is so dangerously collectivist it borders on the subhuman... something I'd expect more from the order of hymenoptera.
First of all, why are you conflating business expenditures into personal tax rates? How does increasing the personal tax rate affect productivity? It doesn't. How does increasing the personal tax rate impact business investment? It doesn't. Secondly, why is Norway the most productive country in the world and have those kinds of tax rates? Or Switzerland? Or Singapore?
Thirdly, you are aware that real spending growth has actually declined year over year since 2009, right? In fact total federal outlays for Obama's first budgetary year (2010) were actually lower than 2009 and has continued to be outpaced by inflation ever since.
You can argue that spending is too high, for sure, but you can't argue that it's the fault of the current government.
Is that a flat 39% on all capital gains? If so... you just made Canada look awesome for capital gains tax.
Canadians pay 50% of their income tax rate on capital gains income. So if I pay 43% income tax, I pay 21.5% on capital gains.
Americans pay 15% on capital gains (or 0% on capital gains for the lowest two income tax brackets)
Derp. I'll give you that, I was wrong.
I think I might have to keep using we when referring to the government. I think you blew a nut over that.