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If this becomes reality I will move to another country. Immediately.

#1

Tress

Tress

The latest Republican primary poll has Donald Trump tied for first with 19%.

How is this happening? The vast majority of the Republicans I've met in my life are intelligent, rational people. Where are these morons that would vote for a reality show star coming from?


#2

MindDetective

MindDetective

If it is Trump vs. Obama, I think Obama wins it.


#3

Krisken

Krisken

To be honest, no one performing well in that list really seems like a contender.


#4

Tress

Tress

MindDetective said:
If it is Trump vs. Obama, I think Obama wins it.
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If it's Trump vs. a turnip, I think a turnip wins it.
Added at: 12:51
Krisken said:
To be honest, no one performing well in that list really seems like a contender.
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I know. Four years ago it seemed like a Giuliani vs. Clinton election was a lock. I'm just disheartened that Trump could get even a little bit of attention like this.


#5

SpecialKO

SpecialKO

I wouldn't get too concerned about it (yet). The poll sample size is tiny (385) and the sampling error is +-5%.


#6

Espy

Espy

Yeah, I don't think anyone honestly could see this guy as a real nomination.
Added at: 15:07
Tress said:
I know. Four years ago it seemed like a Giuliani vs. Clinton election was a lock. I'm just disheartened that Trump could get even a little bit of attention like this.
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He has a LOT of money and popularity. Getting attention is kind of what he's good at.


#7

@Li3n

@Li3n

Tress said:
The vast majority of the Republicans I've met in my life are intelligent, rational people. ?
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Pics or it didn't happen...

Where are these morons that would vote for a reality show star coming from
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YouTube comments section...


#8

Terrik

Terrik

@Li3n said:
Pics or it didn't happen...
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I know that's likely sarcasm (I hope), but that more or less highlights the reason why I've largely stopped discussing politics online anymore.


#9

Tress

Tress

Just... just stop. You're trying way too hard.


#10

@Li3n

@Li3n

Terrik said:
I know that's likely sarcasm (I hope), but that more or less highlights the reason why I've largely stopped discussing politics online anymore.
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No, i actually want you to post pictures of people you meet here so we can judge their character and intellect by their features... why yes, i am bringing the victorian era back...


#11

GasBandit

GasBandit

Tress said:
The latest Republican primary poll has Donald Trump tied for first with 19%.

How is this happening? The vast majority of the Republicans I've met in my life are intelligent, rational people. Where are these morons that would vote for a reality show star coming from?
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They've got nobody else to vote for, and are discouraged to have seen a celebritized, platitude-spewing empty suit elected last time. If these intelligent, rational republicans were really all that intelligent and rational, they'd be voting libertarian. The only things a republican politician values are his political power and his facade.


#12

Krisken

Krisken

"If they had any brains, they'd agree with me." Why doesn't this surprise me?


#13

Tress

Tress

Uh huh. One day I'm sure you'll say something that won't make you sound like a feeble-minded bitter crackpot. Keep trying.


#14

GasBandit

GasBandit

It's the truth, not only in general but specifically here as well. The only reason to be a Republican instead of a Libertarian is because you have an archaic hangup about gay marriage, abortion, or legal weed.


#15

Zappit

Zappit

He might beat Obama. He even said he has a good relationship "with the blacks".

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/04/14/trump-says-he-has-good-relationship-with-the-blacks/

Such a stupid, stupid man. That hairpiece must cut off the oxygen to his brain something awful.


#16

AshburnerX

AshburnerX

GasBandit said:
It's the truth, not only in general but specifically here as well. The only reason to be a Republican instead of a Libertarian is because you have an archaic hangup about gay marriage, abortion, or legal weed.
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See, I always thought the difference between Republicans and Libertarians was that Republicans actually got elected. :D

But to be serious, I doubt we'd ever see Trump elected and if he was, he'd be even more tightly controlled than Bush Jr. We have more than one recorded instance of him flipping out, he can barely control the actors/celebrities on his show, he's bankrupted a casino (seriously, how do you bankrupt a place people THROW MONEY into?) and his citizenship status is even more vague than Obama's.


#17

Mathias

Mathias

GasBandit said:
It's the truth, not only in general but specifically here as well. The only reason to be a Republican instead of a Libertarian is because you have an archaic hangup about gay marriage, abortion, or legal weed.
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Says the guy who's party nearly shut down the government due to hangups about funding shit like planned parenthood.
Added at: 22:23
GasBandit said:
They've got nobody else to vote for, and are discouraged to have seen a celebritized, platitude-spewing empty suit elected last time. If these intelligent, rational republicans were really all that intelligent and rational, they'd be voting libertarian. The only things a republican politician values are his political power and his facade.
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Just like in Somalia - the land of libertarian law!


#18

@Li3n

@Li3n

The funny thing is that GB is the closest to a intelligent republican conservative i have seen on the internet yet...


#19

Espy

Espy

:facepalm:


#20

Krisken

Krisken

Espy said:
:facepalm:
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I know, man. I know.


#21

Espy

Espy

Krisken said:
I know, man. I know.
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:awesome:


#22

GasBandit

GasBandit

Mathias said:
Says the guy who's party nearly shut down the government due to hangups about funding shit like planned parenthood.
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Reading comprehension for the win, cheezwoffel. I don't know how you read what I posted and somehow thought I was identifying myself as a republican.

Me: "Republicans bad. Libertarians good. Gay marriage good. Legalized marijuana good. Right to abortion good."
Waffle: "YOU REPUBLICANS HATE PLANNED PARENTHOOD"

:facepalm:


#23

Covar

Covar

Now I want some Waffles :(


#24

Krisken

Krisken

How many Libertarian Party people are in Congress? The House of Representatives? Excluding everyone who puts the big (R) before their name, that is.


#25

SpecialKO

SpecialKO

GasBandit said:
Reading comprehension for the win, cheezwoffel. I don't know how you read what I posted and somehow thought I was identifying myself as a republican.

Me: "Republicans bad. Libertarians good. Gay marriage good. Legalized marijuana good. Right to abortion good."
Waffle: "YOU REPUBLICANS HATE PLANNED PARENTHOOD"

:facepalm:
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I thought he was actually calling you a Tea Party supporter.


#26

Espy

Espy

SpecialKO said:
I thought he was actually calling you a Tea Party supporter.
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I thought he was just saying Gas liked to party.


#27

GasBandit

GasBandit

Krisken said:
How many Libertarian Party people are in Congress? The House of Representatives? Excluding everyone who puts the big (R) before their name, that is.
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Completely irrelevant. That idiocy is ubiquitous doesn't mean it ceases to be idiocy. I mean, after all... it's not just (R)s there in congress, even worse it's where all those lobotomized insane dipshits with (D)s by their name are, too.

But in all seriousness, the difference is, at least most democrat politicians actually follow some rough approximation of what they purport to stand for. They say they want more social programs, increased regulation, and to tax the rich, and when they get elected, they spend more (on social programs, increased regulation), and tax the rich. Republicans, on the other hand, claim they want to lower spending and reduce government intrusiveness... and when they get elected, they spend more (often ALSO on social programs and increased regulation).

The democrats are idiots with no connection to fiscal reality, but at least they come by their platform honestly. The republicans are just out-and-out charlatans.

And yes, I like to party.



#28

Covar

Covar

I'm surprised you didn't post one of your home videos...



#29

Krisken

Krisken

Gas, the time it would take to tear apart your entire post would be a futile waste. Just look back over the last 30 years and see who actually balanced the budget- the "fiscally irresponsible" Democrat President or the "fiscally responsible" Republican Presidents. I think everyone here already knows the answer to that. It's just a shame it took one idiot to completely ruin it and put us back in the hole.


#30

GasBandit

GasBandit

Krisken said:
Gas, the time it would take to tear apart your entire post would be a futile waste. Just look back over the last 30 years and see who actually balanced the budget- the "fiscally irresponsible" Democrat President or the "fiscally responsible" Republican Presidents. I think everyone here already knows the answer to that.
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I'd like you to point out where I said Republicans are fiscally responsible. As for the times the budget balanced under democrats, that's more like the fans in the bleachers taking credit for the win of the team.


#31

Adam

Adammon

Krisken said:
Gas, the time it would take to tear apart your entire post would be a futile waste. Just look back over the last 30 years and see who actually balanced the budget- the "fiscally irresponsible" Democrat President or the "fiscally responsible" Republican Presidents. I think everyone here already knows the answer to that. It's just a shame it took one idiot to completely ruin it and put us back in the hole.
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't Congress set budgets, not Presidents?


#32

GasBandit

GasBandit

Adammon said:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't Congress set budgets, not Presidents?
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The president often submits a budget, but when it comes right down to it, it's the House of Representatives that holds responsibility. But I really don't think either party can take responsibility for the times when they lucked into a less miserable economic situation. It's what happens under duress that defines men, and this latest little debacle illustrates excellently how little difference there is between the two - a controversy over whether to cut 6 billion or 38 billion (or even *gasp* one hundred billion!).... from a 9 trillion dollar budget, and then go on to argue about whether or not to raise our seventeen trillion (that's 17,000,000,000,000) dollar debt ceiling. We're just polishing doorknobs on the titanic at this point.

What's scary, is how our elected officials are acting now even makes Dubya and his republican majority, once criticized for "spending like drunken democrats," look fiscally reserved by comparison! We've gone into full blown clueless-idiot-insane mode here. We spend a huge chunk of our budget just paying off the interest on the debt we owe the chinese just so they can turn that money right around and lend it to us again. How people aren't charging up the capitol steps with a battering ram and guillotine as we speak, I can't explain.

Actually, I can. Bread and circuses... or in our case, stimulus checks and reality television.


#33

Adam

Adammon

The other side of it is: The economy is complex system. It's not like a temperature gauge - you can't turn it up or down and expect instant results. It can take many years, if not decades for decisions made today to really show in the system. The current recession, for example, is a result of changes to legislation that happened in the 80s, along with irrational consumer purchasing in the 90s. For anyone to say "This economy, good or bad, is as a result of the current President" is akin to saying the earth is only 4000 years old. It doesn't hold up to scrutiny.


#34

Krisken

Krisken

In that case, any economic argument regarding our economy and what will fix it is moot.

You can't have it both ways. Either the economic plans/regulations of the day have an impact on how our society fares in the global market, or it doesn't.


#35

GasBandit

GasBandit

What has an impact is sustained, deliberate responsibility and economic empowerment. What we have is wanton impulsive slothful, apathetic children with misplaced senses of entitlement pitching fits, and either, to borrow a phrase, voting themselves largesse from the public coffers... or attempting to legislate archaic morality.


#36

Adam

Adammon

Krisken said:
In that case, any economic argument regarding our economy and what will fix it is moot.

You can't have it both ways. Either the economic plans/regulations of the day have an impact on how our society fares in the global market, or it doesn't.
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I can have it both ways, watch me! Economic arguments are moot because the system is too complex to distill down to an exact science. (Economics is a social science, not a hard science - don't let anyone tell you differently!) And we have no way of knowing at a macroscopic level how plans/regulations will impact the greater economy.

We do know that if you raise the price of beer, less people will buy beer.
We don't know what will happen to the 'greater economy' if less people buy beer. Does the reproduction rate fall because less ugly people are having sex? Do medicare costs skyrocket because of an increase in stress-related injuries?

The two major schools of thought (Keynesian versus Austrian) are based on ideological differences. It's all philosophy. And philosophical economics is basically modern day politics.

My preference is to let the free market determine winners and losers with regulation providing a level playing ground for consumers and providers. That's neither Keynesian nor Austrian.

Keynes would say the best government is the government that regulates everything.

Von Mises would say that the best government is the government that does nothing.


#37

Krisken

Krisken

Archaic morality? Please, explain how morality is archaic. I find this fascinating. Which form of morality are you speaking of, Gas? Normative or descriptive? And how can morality not be factored into any equation that involves how economics will effect people?


#38

GasBandit

GasBandit

Krisken said:
Archaic morality? Please, explain how morality is archaic. I find this fascinating. Which form of morality are you speaking of, Gas? Normative or descriptive? And how can morality not be factored into any equation that involves how economics will effect people?
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I don't think you're quite understanding me.
ar·cha·ic/ärˈkāik/Adjective

1. Very old or old-fashioned.

The sentence in which I state:

GasBandit said:
... and either ... voting themselves largesse from the public coffers, or attempting to legislate archaic morality.
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Is comparing democrats to republicans while showing that while their true aims are disparate, they are equally futile and reprehensible. In this case, the archaic morality attempting to be legislated are the effort to ban same-sex marriage, block the availability of abortion procedures, and the continued legal demonization of marijuana when it's less harmful than some other legal substances and frankly none of it should be government's business anyway.

I'll rephrase to clarify the point: Democrats would like to pick your pocket, republicans would like to declare martial law on your bedroom, and neither actually display any real interest in the economic future of the country.


#39

Krisken

Krisken

I see now what you are trying to say, but I don't agree with the premise. You posit that Democrats are only interested in taking wealth with no regard for its use. I would put forth that our society would suffer without the programs that have been put in place and with government regulations.

Besides being overly simplistic generalizations, I find your end result flawed.


#40

Cajungal

Cajungal

You know, if he got elected, I could see the White House becoming a stage for a reality show. Every week, Trump stands before 3 celebrity judges, and they decide whether or not he's fired.


#41

Mathias

Mathias

More and more a reality...



#42

GasBandit

GasBandit

Krisken said:
I see now what you are trying to say, but I don't agree with the premise. You posit that Democrats are only interested in taking wealth with no regard for its use. I would put forth that our society would suffer without the programs that have been put in place and with government regulations.

Besides being overly simplistic generalizations, I find your end result flawed.
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I don't think they have no regard for its use, but this entire line of argument is irrelevant. We're going off on a tangent, one that could easily itself be an 80-page thread if only work would let me post as much as I used to again.

The statement was made that someone "knows many intelligent conservative republicans..." to which I had said if they were really so intelligent, they'd be libertarians. My point here is not that liberalism is bad (though I do make that point in other places, granted)... here, all I was trying to point out is that the republican party completely fails as a vehicle for conservatism. At least for those of us who do not define "conservatism" as homophobia, abortion clinic violence, and repeating the mistakes of 1920's prohibition all over again with marijuana.


#43

Tress

Tress

GasBandit said:
The statement was made that someone "knows many intelligent conservative republicans..." to which I had said if they were really so intelligent, they'd be libertarians. My point here is not that liberalism is bad (though I do make that point in other places, granted)... here, all I was trying to point out is that the republican party completely fails as a vehicle for conservatism. At least for those of us who do not define "conservatism" as homophobia, abortion clinic violence, and repeating the mistakes of 1920's prohibition all over again with marijuana.
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See, here's where you completely fucked this thread up. I said I knew many intelligent Republicans. I said nothing about them being conservative. Now, that's not to say that I think intelligence and conservatism are mutually exclusive. It just means that I didn't say anything about being conservative. You assumed that, and that's what lead to your rant about true conservatives.

Go make your own thread next time.


#44

GasBandit

GasBandit

Tress said:
See, here's where you completely fucked this thread up. I said I knew many intelligent Republicans. I said nothing about them being conservative. Now, that's not to say that I think intelligence and conservatism are mutually exclusive. It just means that I didn't say anything about being conservative. You assumed that, and that's what lead to your rant about true conservatives.

Go make your own thread next time.
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My assertion stands, even without the conservative qualifier. Unless they just so happen to be intelligent AND homophobic etc.


#45

Tress

Tress

GasBandit said:
My assertion stands, even without the conservative qualifier. Unless they just so happen to be intelligent AND homophobic etc.
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I find those traits to be mutually exclusive.

I'll give an example of one of the people I was talking about when I made that comment. One of my best friends is Republican. He likes the idea of smaller government and lower taxes, because he does believe that people do better with smaller governments. He dislikes the libertarian platform of incredibly small government. He supports the EPA because he believes that environmental policies are not only good for the planet but good for business in the long run, but he hates the idea of welfare. He supports legalizing gay marriage, but he is pro-life. He supports legalizing marijuana, but he believes that all other drugs have a serious "social cost" and should be limited. He thinks some social programs have value, but it depends entirely on their purpose and scope. All others he would love to see shut down.

So, he's definitely a Republican. He usually supports moderate Republican candidates. Is he conservative? That depends on your definition. Self-identified liberals often think of him as conservative, but those on the right typically find him to be too liberal. He's incredibly smart, and I don't see how he would be better off joining the Libertarian party.


#46

AshburnerX

AshburnerX

That's the main issue with the Libertarian party: They are too far away on the spectrum. Their sort of like what Commies are to Liberals.


#47

GasBandit

GasBandit

Tress said:
I find those traits to be mutually exclusive.

I'll give an example of one of the people I was talking about when I made that comment. One of my best friends is Republican. He likes the idea of smaller government and lower taxes, because he does believe that people do better with smaller governments. He dislikes the libertarian platform of incredibly small government. He supports the EPA because he believes that environmental policies are not only good for the planet but good for business in the long run, but he hates the idea of welfare. He supports legalizing gay marriage, but he is pro-life. He supports legalizing marijuana, but he believes that all other drugs have a serious "social cost" and should be limited. He thinks some social programs have value, but it depends entirely on their purpose and scope. All others he would love to see shut down.

So, he's definitely a Republican. He usually supports moderate Republican candidates. Is he conservative? That depends on your definition. Self-identified liberals often think of him as conservative, but those on the right typically find him to be too liberal. He's incredibly smart, and I don't see how he would be better off joining the Libertarian party.
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Well, frankly, everyone would be better off joining the Libertarian party ;)

But, snark aside, I think the word you were looking for is moderate. From there it only comes down to choosing which parts of his political belief system are most important to him, as none satisfies all of them obviously. But the main reason I denigrate the republican party is because the only part of their platform they staunchly, reliably pursue is their social agenda - IE, gays, drugs and abortion. They only start making noise about smaller government when it suits them, yet have no problem with the cognitive dissonance of growing government while talking about fiscal responsibility, as we've seen in the last decade-plus. The only time they start to walk the walk on their economic agenda is when tea party types hold a gun to their ballot box with the trigger cocked and safety off. Republicans presided over a huge increase in entitlement spending that was entirely conceived, produced, pushed and owned by them when they held sway in both the executive and legislative branches. Basically, it comes down to the track record of the republican party having more in common with the democrat party than the principles of conservatism, aforementioned social bugaboos aside.
Added at: 14:54
AshburnerX said:
That's the main issue with the Libertarian party: They are too far away on the spectrum. Their sort of like what Commies are to Liberals.
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We'll see what happens to that spectrum when the debt-meter rolls over.


#48

Tress

Tress

Yes, I know he's moderate. I intentionally left the word out of what I was saying. The issue here is your assertion that any smart Republican would switch to the Libertarian party because the Republican party is somehow only for archaic social conservatives who want to regulate everything from how you have sex to who you can marry. I was just showing that intelligent moderate Republicans may still feel more loyalty to the Republican party, and don't automatically see value in the Libertarian party.

Now can we stop arguing over semantics and get back to bashing Trump?


#49

@Li3n

@Li3n

GasBandit said:
How people aren't charging up the capitol steps with a battering ram and guillotine as we speak, I can't explain.

Actually, I can. Bread and circuses... or in our case, stimulus checks and reality television.
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No, it's cake...


#50

Terrik

Terrik

Battering rams and guillotines are expensive and I'm all out of money. Torches and pitchforks on the other hand...


#51

@Li3n

@Li3n

GasBandit said:
We'll see what happens to that spectrum when the debt-meter rolls over.
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It's funny when someone actually thinks the country with the biggest military and still the only actual superpower is going to have real trouble with it's debts... next thing i'll hear is about how all those medieval kings where going to have problems paying back all those jew bankers...


#52

Covar

Covar

@Li3n said:
It's funny when someone actually thinks the country with the biggest military and still the only actual superpower is going to have real trouble with it's debts... next thing i'll hear is about how all those medieval kings where going to have problems paying back all those jew bankers...
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I always laugh to myself when someone starts going on about China calling in their notes. As if we would pay.


#53

sixpackshaker

sixpackshaker

Like we would not dump China to go find another 3rd world nation to open our factories in... then dump them when their employees ask for a couple of rights.


#54

Espy

Espy

Man, why does everyone gotta want rights?


#55

SpecialKO

SpecialKO

China's not going to do it anyway if they can possibly help it. Too much of their economy is tied up in ours.


#56

Necronic

Necronic

I think my favorite thing about this thread is Adammons post outlying the naivete of oversimplified ideologically based politics (as he said, economic philosophy = modern politics), which is then followed by....

wait for it....

a bunch of oversimplified ideologically based politics.

Seriously, the only real problem with the political process is that the people most outwardly passionate about it structure it into a system of mutually exclusive binary/trinary sets of absolutist statements about complex issues in a desire to reduce the whole thing down into sports.

Parties are at best overly sharp definitions of highly diverse viewpoints that end up overlapping in enough places that it's often illogical to dileneate them. Southern democrats became southern republicans. Libertarians often run as republicans OR democrats. The Tea Party is an awkard blend of Goldwater era fiscal conservatism and Reagen/dubya-esque moral majority. Arlen Specter.

And we all feed into this spouting off fallacies of single cause and other oversimplifications of highly complex issues because in the end it is so much easier to believe that solutions are simple, and that if only they did X then Y would happen. These are arguments made for, and often by, weak minds who want easy answers when we all know in the back of our heads that such things are impossible.

Argument can exist without blind passion, in fact argument literally can not exist with it, but maybe it is too much to hope that politics can actually be a system founded in argument. I will admit that my own passions in politics only exist in playing the devil's advocate, attempting to force people to shore their arguments with dispassionate structure. Maybe we need the Joan of Arcs leading charges not on the knowledge that their position is right, but simply faith. Worked out well for her.


#57

AshburnerX

AshburnerX

Necronic said:
Libertarians often run as republicans OR democrats.
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That's because Libertarian philosophy is compatible with both parties, and because Left Libertarians are VASTLY different than Right ones on many key points of their aims. For instance, I know some Left ones advocate the abolishment of privatized property, while most Right ones (like Gas) want everything from the roads to the rivers to be privatized.

The main difference is that there are relatively few Left Libertarians even compared to the small number of Right Libertarian.


#58

Necronic

Necronic

AshburnerX said:
That's because Libertarian philosophy is compatible with both parties, and because Left Libertarians are VASTLY different than Right ones on many key points of their aims. For instance, I know some Left ones advocate the abolishment of privatized property, while most Right ones (like Gas) want everything from the roads to the rivers to be privatized.

The main difference is that there are relatively few Left Libertarians even compared to the small number of Right Libertarian.
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From where I stand it looks like you are adding granularity in an attempt to defend discreet political ideology. Gas for instance, doesn't strike me as a "right" libertarian. He completely rejects moralization in government, which many people who claim to be libertarians do not. Ron Paul is a great example of this, as he is a libertarian that runs on a Pro-Life platform (which as another side not of the continuous/amorphous true nature of ideology, is a seemingly contradictory statement which I can see arguments for rationalizing.)

Gas also strikes me as a utilitarian. I am pretty sure that if I could show him that at a certain level a social service system actually saves the state money then he would stand behind it. This is an untested premise of course, but I would be very surprised if he stood behind the abandonment of the Poison Control centers, and if he did he is only backing my point of people forcibly sticking to their conceptual understandings of ideology in the face of reality.

Anyways, I just don't get why people get all *hulk mad* about politics. It's such a complex sociological system that taking a stance of "this is clearly right" is ironically the fastest way to identify yourself as a complete moron.

Edit: Actually I will concede that last statement is a bit of hyperbole. There are times when the tree of liberty needs to be refreshed with the blood of patriots/whatever, but we haven't seen an instance of that in our own country since McCarthy, and even then it turned out that one of the best responses was 'give him enough rope and he'll hang himself' which he ended up doing.


#59

AshburnerX

AshburnerX

Necronic said:
Gas also strikes me as a utilitarian. I am pretty sure that if I could show him that at a certain level a social service system actually saves the state money then he would stand behind it. This is an untested premise of course, but I would be very surprised if he stood behind the abandonment of the Poison Control centers, and if he did he is only backing my point of people forcibly sticking to their conceptual understandings of ideology in the face of reality.
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But your taking a similar stance in that very statement. You've essentially said "Gas would see the light of reason, or he is simply proving my point!" Isn't that an all or nothing position as well, merely because your precluding the option that your simply wrong to begin with?

I only commented on your position with Libertarians because they are a complex beast all of there own. It's not many groups that you could stick both free market absolutists -and- Ghandi into.


#60

Necronic

Necronic

AshburnerX said:
I only commented on your position with Libertarians because they are a complex beast all of there own. It's not many groups that you could stick both free market absolutists -and- Ghandi into.
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Ah, ok, I must have misunderstood your point, because that's what I was arguing. But not just for libertarians, pretty much any political identity is highly complex.


#61

Espy

Espy

Necronic said:
Anyways, I just don't get why people get all *hulk mad* about politics. It's such a complex sociological system that taking a stance of "this is clearly right" is ironically the fastest way to identify yourself as a complete moron.
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The same reason people get mad when someone buys a Ford instead of a Chevy, or someone buys a mac instead of a Dell, or someone likes the Steelers instead of the Cowboys. Humanity needs someone to hate or look down on. When get so caught up in being on "our side" that when we perceive someone is on "the other side" we project all of the junk we associate with "the other side" on to them, which of course forces us to make a (probably) unconscious decision to ignore the complexities of a person and instead see our own pre-defined set of things we associate with someone "on the other side".
At least thats how I see it.


#62

Krisken

Krisken

Espy said:
The same reason people get mad when someone buys a Ford instead of a Chevy, or someone buys a mac instead of a Dell, or someone likes the Steelers instead of the Cowboys. Humanity needs someone to hate or look down on. When get so caught up in being on "our side" that when we perceive someone is on "the other side" we project all of the junk we associate with "the other side" on to them, which of course forces us to make a (probably) unconscious decision to ignore the complexities of a person and instead see our own pre-defined set of things we associate with someone "on the other side".
At least thats how I see it.
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I was trying to make this same argument on FB the other day with a Tea Partier. Not sure he really got what I was trying to say since he lumped me in as a "Dear Leader Worshiper", or something along those lines.


#63

GasBandit

GasBandit

Man, you guys always have the BEST discussions right when shit hits the fan at work and I can't even read, much less post >_<

I suppose you can say there are left libertarians and right libertarians, but you also have to remember that a lot of misconceptions are prevalent about libertarians in general. A lot of people think we want to privatize EVERYTHING, and are basically just capitalist-anarchists with a different name. That's not the case. We do not want the government abolished, we realize that there are certain services only government can provide... we just think that list is a HELL of a lot shorter than what government is doing right now. Poison control centers, good. Police stations, fire departments, sewage treatment, good. Most of what goes on at the local, or even the state level, not so bad (but not all of it. Don't get me started on the Texas ATF). Mostly we rail against the excesses of the federal government.


#64

Espy

Espy

Stop wanting to privatize everything Gas. JEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEZE.


#65

Krisken

Krisken

I'd like a list of the things that 'need privatizing' and is ok to have the government do.


#66

Espy

Espy

Krisken said:
I'd like a list of the things that 'need privatizing' and is ok to have the government do.
Click to expand...
Ice Cream - Clearly a privatized commodity.
Frozen Yogurt - So boring only the government could handle it.

BOOM. DONE.


#67

GasBandit

GasBandit

Krisken said:
I'd like a list of the things that 'need privatizing' and is ok to have the government do.
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It's not so much that there's a list of things that "need privatizing" so much as there's a great deal of things that nobody has business doing at all. There's also a list of things that need delegating, as in to the states or to local government. The department of education, for one. Then there's the list of things the government is doing that would be cause for multiple lifetime jail sentences if it were not done under the auspices of government, such as fannie/freddie, social security, etc.

We're now spending more than triple on the federal level than what we were in 1990. Have our woes decreased by 66%? Have they even gone down at all? Or have they either remained constant or gotten worse, while the bureaucracy expanded to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy?

Overall, it's a need for a shift in the thought process of problem solving in our country, where government intervention/regulation is the last resort instead of the first.


#68

Krisken

Krisken

See, and I feel that education on a state level is a massive failure. Having different regulations and requirements in each state causes a lot of the confusion and problems we encounter when applying to colleges. It's the same problem with health care- too many different regulations in each state makes oversight and cross state dealings more difficult, which in all business translates into more costly.


#69

GasBandit

GasBandit

Krisken said:
See, and I feel that education on a state level is a massive failure. Having different regulations and requirements in each state causes a lot of the confusion and problems we encounter when applying to colleges. It's the same problem with health care- too many different regulations in each state makes oversight and cross state dealings more difficult, which in all business translates into more costly.
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One regulation does not fit all, is the problem. Remember NCLB? But I will also grant that different regulations in different areas can also impede productivity, such as in the umpteen-bajillion different fuel blends that gasoline refiners must produce for different areas.

But the problem of federal involvement is the intrinsic level of detachment and bureaucracy involved. We're spending more and more and more on education while the results are getting worse and worse and worse. Yet the only acceptable solution is "throw more money at it." Education is definitely an area where increased privatization would be a benefit. Note I said increased, not total. This is not a binary toggle, and shifting into reverse while driving over 60 won't do anybody any favors. The key here is to make a decision every day... do we want more government or less? Do we increase, or decrease?

Of course, it's almost a moot point since our government has never, EVER actually "decreased" in any identifiable trend with statistical significance. Government only ever gets bigger. Not only are we spending 3x as much, we're also collecting 3x as much in taxes (which speaks to the "we don't have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem" sound byte being tossed around so much these days). The simplest way I can think of to start tamping down spending is to not pick and choose what can go and what must stay, at least at first. Call it a 5% cut on everything. Then, next year, another cut on everything. And once we gradually start to change momentum, we can start looking at deeper cuts into agencies that don't produce results or aren't necessary.

But until we acknowledge the problem and come to the decision to reduce every day, reduce every week, every month, every year... the line on that graph will continue to always only every go up. It goes up under republicans just as much (and in some cases, even more) as it does under democrats.


#70

Krisken

Krisken

Except that's not what really happens, now is it? The people who suffer will be the poorest and the weakest who rely on those programs which get labeled as wasteful.

Simply cutting funding for programs across the board doesn't adequately weed out wasteful spending, especially when the biggest spenders are often taken 'off the table'.


#71

Necronic

Necronic

Personally I think the waste comes from a couple of areas

1) Redundant government agencies: I was talking with someone who used to work with the ATF down in Columbia fighting FARK, and I asked him straight out "dude wtf? Isn't that what the DEA is supposed to be doing?", his response was "Don't get me started". There are way too many redundant agencies. NSA vs CIA vs Homeland Security. Agriculture Dept vs National Institute of Food and Agriculture. NIST (which does research) vs National Science Foundation. Bureau of Land Management vs Fish and Wildlife Services vs National Park Service vs USDA Forest Service

Not all of these are fully overlapping, in fact few are, but all of them overlap significantly enough that you are seeing double digit percentages in wasted or duplicated efforts. This is WHOLLY UNACCEPTABLE. It's almost like the opposite of a merger, where two groups come together and eliminate redundancies, here we have a single group that creates redundancies.

2) Information Technology/data logistics: It's not enough that the US government has byzantine recordkeeping across redundant departments, we also have to have terrible data management tools. The entire tax system seems founded on an inability to automate data management. This issue has gotten me close to striking a couple of government employees before where they ask me to give them information that there is absolutely no reason for them not to have already.

Think what this could do for Medicare/Medicaid. This could also vastly improve our national security as intelligence could be simultaneously more accessible and more secure. And hell, since this data would be publicaly available through FOIA you would be empowering legions of analysts to go through and to research for you.

But this can't effectively happen without first cleaning up #1 above. If each of these agencies independently develops an IT solution they will be putting in much more work than is necessary, and if they are eventually brought together they will have to spend a lot more money putting it all together.

3) Too much change too fast: There are logistical consequences of legislation, and these have price tags. The national healthcare bill had a significant price tag simply in the logistical aspects of it. Setting up offices, developing metrics, informing the populace of the system. And all of this is wasted effort when 3 years later the senate shouts "Shut it down".

A proper business operates on a 5-10 year launch cycle for major projects. There is a commitment involved. The government is more ADD though, starting something, getting 1/2 way through it then getting interested in the new shiny.

------------

A lot of this is OUR fault, by being people that are looking for the new shiny as the solution instead of the boring practical and entirely non-partisan solutions in business efficiency. Fiscal conservatives claim this as their goal but that is a completely fatuous statement that amounts to cutting off your n


#72

GasBandit

GasBandit

Krisken said:
Except that's not what really happens, now is it? The people who suffer will be the poorest and the weakest who rely on those programs which get labeled as wasteful.

Simply cutting funding for programs across the board doesn't adequately weed out wasteful spending, especially when the biggest spenders are often taken 'off the table'.
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By "biggest spenders," you mean social security and medicare?

What your argument fails to address however, is that the "poorest and weakest" are not starving in the streets. But they're also not any better off than they were when we were spending one third as much. Money spent by the government doesn't equate to better lives for the poor. Most often, it just equates to bigger government. Otherwise, I don't know how I could have missed seeing the corpses of the indigent piling up in the streets during the 80s, 90s, and early 00's. Heck, some of the 80s even had sub-trillion dollar outlays.

Personally, I'd prefer we NOT cultivate a permanent underclass of mendicants entirely dependent upon the government for their subsistence, but maybe that's just me.


#73

Krisken

Krisken

I was talking about medicare and medicaid along with the defense budget, but thanks for assuming I wasn't.

And yes, people are starving and living in the street. Just because you don't hear about them, doesn't mean they aren't there. Imagine all the medicare/medicaid recipients suddenly not getting the help they do.

Personally, I prefer not to be the person who says to the millions (many of which are the elderly and military veterans) who depend on these programs that the richest in the nation should get a bigger tax cut instead. But maybe that's just me.


#74

GasBandit

GasBandit

Krisken said:
I was talking about medicare and medicaid along with the defense budget, but thanks for assuming I wasn't.

And yes, people are starving and living in the street. Just because you don't hear about them, doesn't mean they aren't there. Imagine all the medicare/medicaid recipients suddenly not getting the help they do.

Personally, I prefer not to be the person who says to the millions (many of which are the elderly and military veterans) who depend on these programs that the richest in the nation should get a bigger tax cut instead. But maybe that's just me.
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We don't have a revenue problem. The federal government is collecting 2.5 plus trillion dollars in revenue. People often talk about how Reagan put us into such bad debt, but he never spent more than 1 trillion. Even George Dubya's budgets, ludicrously bloated as they seemed at the time, are now seeming more reasonable.

Yes, there are homeless. There always have been, there always will be, tripling our expenditure did not solve the problem and even tripling it again won't either. There is no such thing as a society without poverty or homelessness. But remember too, that those deemed "poor" in the united states are also actually more wealthy than the middle class of many European nations.

And the fact of the matter is we're broke. Again, not because of revenue problems, but because of spending problems. The government will never make enough money, nor spend enough money, to eliminate poverty and homelessness. We can't afford to persist in throwing ever-increasing amounts of money into a bureaucratic thresher to assuage our aching consciences, increasing taxes perpetually on those who create jobs, thus retarding job creation and subsequently making more people poor. In the long run, compassionate liberalism hurts most those who it purports to help and it's silly to talk about "tax cuts for the rich" when the poor aren't paying taxes at all... in fact, they're getting nauseatingly socialist "refund" checks for credits on taxes they aren't required to pay due to exemptions.


#75

sixpackshaker

sixpackshaker

"Reagan put us into such bad debt, but he never spent more than 1 trillion..."

You do know that today's dollar is roughly half of a 1980 dollar.


#76

Krisken

Krisken

I just can't do this anymore. Good luck with it, really. I feel like we've been over and over the same ground, and no one is really listening to what the other is saying. Blah blah "we're broke" blah blah "our taxes are too high". Just another shock doctrine to push for bad policy, nevermind who gets hurt.


#77

MindDetective

MindDetective

The short of the problem is this: Things can be done better. The best method of determining the best solution is not to try and reason about it. People are inherently biased. We may need to streamline bureaucracy or outsource programs to charities or revise assessments. There are many potential solutions and the best way to figure out which ones work the best are to empirically test them in small scale tests and then scale them up and apply them. The social sciences are developing a solid understanding of human behavior in groups and as single decision-makers. Why are we implementing dramatic policy changes because the sound right? Yes, experts only to give an opinion on theoretical outcomes. This is stupid. We don't put a drug on the market until it has been vetted to a certain degree. Why do we enforce policies across the population based on an educated guess?

I don't believe for a second that an empirical approach is unfeasible. We can use towns, big cities, counties and states as test-beds for reasonable policy changes. We can even fast-track empirical tests to find solutions to immediate problems. I'm okay cutting spending. I'm okay cutting programs. I'm okay reducing taxes. But these actions should be supported by quality evidence and more than just historical trends or theoretical predictions from models. Otherwise, we end up with circular rhetoric.


#78

Mathias

Mathias

GasBandit said:
We don't have a revenue problem. The federal government is collecting 2.5 plus trillion dollars in revenue. People often talk about how Reagan put us into such bad debt, but he never spent more than 1 trillion. Even George Dubya's budgets, ludicrously bloated as they seemed at the time, are now seeming more reasonable.

Yes, there are homeless. There always have been, there always will be, tripling our expenditure did not solve the problem and even tripling it again won't either. There is no such thing as a society without poverty or homelessness. But remember too, that those deemed "poor" in the united states are also actually more wealthy than the middle class of many European nations.

And the fact of the matter is we're broke. Again, not because of revenue problems, but because of spending problems. The government will never make enough money, nor spend enough money, to eliminate poverty and homelessness. We can't afford to persist in throwing ever-increasing amounts of money into a bureaucratic thresher to assuage our aching consciences, increasing taxes perpetually on those who create jobs, thus retarding job creation and subsequently making more people poor. In the long run, compassionate liberalism hurts most those who it purports to help and it's silly to talk about "tax cuts for the rich" when the poor aren't paying taxes at all... in fact, they're getting nauseatingly socialist "refund" checks for credits on taxes they aren't required to pay due to exemptions.
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Time to draw it in crayon for Gas.



The problem is a revenue one as well as spending. If you're not making more money than what you want to spend on, you become broke. The problem with the budget is the foucus on who gets the money. The military budget is BLOATED. Shave off just 10% of the billions that the military budget receives and it'll help a ton in the long run. The military can live without an extra Hummer or two at the expense of programs like medicare.

http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2011/0...flows-mallory-factor-real-defense-budget.html


#79

SpecialKO

SpecialKO

There was an article that I linked in a previous thread about how Gates really wants to boot out R&D contractors who don't produce, and he felt that the DoD had wasted over $100 B in 3 years on projects that never became ready for anything past the on-paper stage.


#80

GasBandit

GasBandit

Mathias said:
Time to draw it in crayon for Gas.



The problem is a revenue one as well as spending. If you're not making more money than what you want to spend on, you become broke. The problem with the budget is the foucus on who gets the money. The military budget is BLOATED. Shave off just 10% of the billions that the military budget receives and it'll help a ton in the long run. The military can live without an extra Hummer or two at the expense of programs like medicare.

http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2011/0...flows-mallory-factor-real-defense-budget.html
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When I said cut everything, I meant everything, including the military budget. But that alone won't be enough. I'd also like to see the date and supporting data on that graph, but as its URL originates from moveon.org, I somehow don't have high hopes for it. But let's look at it. Yes, Gee Dubya was a horrible spender. He was an embarrassment to the republican party and probably was the biggest factor in the shellackings they took in 06 and 08. But that's only part of the story. The rest of the story is that the submitted fiscal plans for the future dwarf that entire graph. That's what the argument is about. The budgets proposed for the future are even worse than dubya. And that doesn't show up on a chart that only looks backwards.

Krisken said:
I just can't do this anymore. Good luck with it, really. I feel like we've been over and over the same ground, and no one is really listening to what the other is saying. Blah blah "we're broke" blah blah "our taxes are too high". Just another shock doctrine to push for bad policy, nevermind who gets hurt.
Click to expand...
The real problem here is that you're stuck in a mentality for which the only possible answer is to spend more money on societal ills. That no cuts are acceptable, ever, lest the indigent suffer. At some point, that hits the fiscal brick wall of reality and something's gotta give.


I like what MindDetective says about empirical testing, but we have precedent that it gets disregarded by Washington. There have been places in the US that have experimented successfully with, for example, privatizing social security (Galveston, TX)... but despite its apparent success, not only has DC not adopted any of its lessons, not tested their methods in other places, but some have even tried to squash it and force Galveston back into the federal SS fold. The problem here is that once the federal government gets a power, it doesn't give it up.


#81

Krisken

Krisken

Whatever you say man. Have fun.


#82

MindDetective

MindDetective

GasBandit said:
When I said cut everything, I meant everything, including the military budget. But that alone won't be enough. I'd also like to see the date and supporting data on that graph, but as its URL originates from moveon.org, I somehow don't have high hopes for it. But let's look at it. Yes, Gee Dubya was a horrible spender. He was an embarrassment to the republican party and probably was the biggest factor in the shellackings they took in 06 and 08. But that's only part of the story. The rest of the story is that the submitted fiscal plans for the future dwarf that entire graph. That's what the argument is about. The budgets proposed for the future are even worse than dubya. And that doesn't show up on a chart that only looks backwards.


The real problem here is that you're stuck in a mentality for which the only possible answer is to spend more money on societal ills. That no cuts are acceptable, ever, lest the indigent suffer. At some point, that hits the fiscal brick wall of reality and something's gotta give.


I like what MindDetective says about empirical testing, but we have precedent that it gets disregarded by Washington. There have been places in the US that have experimented successfully with, for example, privatizing social security (Galveston, TX)... but despite its apparent success, not only has DC not adopted any of its lessons, not tested their methods in other places, but some have even tried to squash it and force Galveston back into the federal SS fold. The problem here is that once the federal government gets a power, it doesn't give it up.
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Washington hates science. Not just Republicans either.


#83

DarkAudit

DarkAudit

The question is: which is the bigger lie, Trump's hair, or his financial statements?

According to this Washington Post op-ed, Trump has one monumental hurdle he won't be able to overcome. The Ethics in Government Act. He has to provide a sworn accounting of his finances. How many bankruptcies is that now, Donald? Five? Six?


#84

Mathias

Mathias

http://scienceblogs.com/effectmeasure/2007/11/stuffing_the_right_turkeys.php





#85

SpecialKO

SpecialKO

WaPo post on debt problem is excellent.



#86

Mathias

Mathias

So what you're saying is that if Al Gore had won (well he technically did), this country would be sailing smooth. Color me surprised!


#87

SpecialKO

SpecialKO

Mathias said:
So what you're saying is that if Al Gore had won (well he technically did), this country would be sailing smooth. Color me surprised!
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Er, not quite. More that the programs and tax cuts that GWB actually put in place contributed far more to our debt problem than the current right-leaning rhetoric would have us believe.


#88

@Li3n

@Li3n

Yeah, it's funny how tax cuts that help drive up income for the people that are getting the cuts don't increase the amount of actual money the government gets...


#89

SpecialKO

SpecialKO

Oops, we're on the wrong side of the Laffer curve. Our bad! :rolleyes:


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