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PoliGAF 2012 |OT4|: Your job is not to worry about 47% of these posts.
- Thread starter Amir0x
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speculawyer
Member
Wow. Now that is a ground game.
Affirmative action is, almost by definition, discrimination. That doesn't mean that it's bad, but if it weren't discriminatory, it wouldn't be anything at all.
RustyNails
Member
My man. I used to live near the OSU campus. I miss C-bus.
There's no reason CNN had to get as worthless across the board as they've become---hell just inject more of CNN International if nothing else and all would be swell. If they need to copy somebody so desperately, BBC America or Al Jazeera English are certainly better than others.
CNN pretty much just went to shit after Turner lost control in 2001.
CNN shit? Holo-Will disagrees.
Damn, never knew he was a performer, I always just thought he was an Obama Supporter..
Yay, a conservative.
So you're essentially saying the economy will boom if we just cut more taxes? I think the Bush tax cuts proved this wrong. The problem is that the economy isn't booming because them middle class and lower has nothing. They're not paying a ton in taxes (again, because they have nothing), so a bit of a tax break isn't going to help them a whole helluva lot. Those in the upper rungs of the ladder don't spend as consistently as those on the bottom. They save a lot. If you want stimulus you need money at the bottom, and you do that much better through government spending.
I don't think anyone on the left has this misconception. Taxes shouldn't really have a huge effect on laying people off, as demonstrated by Chichikov in another thread:
Why exactly does the government have to get away from running Medicare? They have lower administrative costs than private insurance. The government is running it fine.
Kind of odd for a conservative to be arguing for government as a great regulator, but whatever. I can agree with you that a government should be there to regulate the market. I personally think they should step in in cases that the free market absolutely doesn't work, like health care.
So you're essentially saying the economy will boom if we just cut more taxes? I think the Bush tax cuts proved this wrong. The problem is that the economy isn't booming because them middle class and lower has nothing. They're not paying a ton in taxes (again, because they have nothing), so a bit of a tax break isn't going to help them a whole helluva lot. Those in the upper rungs of the ladder don't spend as consistently as those on the bottom. They save a lot. If you want stimulus you need money at the bottom, and you do that much better through government spending.
I don't think anyone on the left has this misconception. Taxes shouldn't really have a huge effect on laying people off, as demonstrated by Chichikov in another thread:
Why exactly does the government have to get away from running Medicare? They have lower administrative costs than private insurance. The government is running it fine.
Kind of odd for a conservative to be arguing for government as a great regulator, but whatever. I can agree with you that a government should be there to regulate the market. I personally think they should step in in cases that the free market absolutely doesn't work, like health care.
RustyNails
Member
LOL
Is anyone watching AC 360?
Lady: "I don't believe any of the polls..the liberal media is in the tank for Obama. There was a poll that said polls were wrong. A poll that said polls were wrong!"
Reporter: "A poll that said polls are wrong?"
Lady: "I DONT BELIEVE IN ANY OF IT!"
Is anyone watching AC 360?
Lady: "I don't believe any of the polls..the liberal media is in the tank for Obama. There was a poll that said polls were wrong. A poll that said polls were wrong!"
Reporter: "A poll that said polls are wrong?"
Lady: "I DONT BELIEVE IN ANY OF IT!"
eBay Huckster
Member
Did you get one of those leaflets? I'm newly registered in Columbus and have no idea who I should be voting for below the federal House race
I remember watching CNN when I was younger before I went to college. It had a completely different feel to it then it does now. I wouldn't be surprised if the reason why CNN International was removed from it (used to come on around noon for a two or three hours) because it made the problems with CNN proper all the more obvious. It was so easy to see how inferior CNN was compared to International.
What happens if you unskew the poll that said polls were wrongOHGODMYEYESHAVECROSSED
RiccochetJ
Gold Member
Yes, they absolutely do.
I'm going to have to make a second post because RDreamer has a lot I have to respond to
Yeah, it's unusual for Jackson in that the only word that might send anyone to the dictionary was vicissitudes. "Tempered my certitude" sounds like a pretty pretentious phrase, but unlike with many Jackson phrases, I can't think of a great way to express this one with more basic words while preserving the same meaning. So I'll third this A+ grade.
Edit: You could say, "These are the reasons why I still expect Obama to win," and retain 90% of the meaning while sounding like 100% less of an asshole. Grade is revised to an A-.
RustyNails
Member
We will reach Singularity.
Bam Bam Baklava
Member
Who polls the pollsters?
Yes, they absolutely do.
I'm going to have to make a second post because RDreamer has a lot I have to respond to
This article might be helpful for you:
http://www.slate.com/articles/busin...are_not_affected_by_obama_tax_proposals_.html
Only pass-through corporations pay taxes at the individual rate, in the sense that their owners, shareholders, etc., have their earnings "passed through" and are taxed as individuals. If an individual owner or shareholder receives more than $250k profit (not income, but profit) in a given year, then they are doing very well and can afford to pay a marginally higher rate on the portion of their profits (not income, but profits) above 250k that year. The bush tax cuts were supposed to be temporary, and are killing the deficit.
Doc Holliday
SPOILER: Columbus finds America
They really need to get rid of the electoral college. I live in california and I feel like my vote is just a symbolic gesture :/ Ohio and Florida get all the love.
eBay Huckster
Member
They were, and then PD stopped posting, and now we've got another conservative (who appears to be sane at first glance!) posting in here so for once the thread isn't fixated on who can panic the hardest
RiccochetJ, for the love of God, keep posting
RiccochetJ
Gold Member
Yay me!
Not saying that the economy will suddenly boom with more tax cuts. What I'm saying is that companies will have more income to invest in growing if they're so inclined. Growth means that they will be hiring more people. More people means that they will be entering our tax system instead of sitting on the sidelines.
Chichikov said it perfectly though. The question is if that person can in the long term bring that ROI. There's a huge investment when you hire someone and you better be damned sure that they will do what you think they'll do. It's a huge investment and a huge commitment. Taxes play a significant part in all that.
They're not and either you haven't run into it yet or you're just being willfully ignorant. Way too many pencil pushers instead of hiring the experts who can do the job properly. I want the gov job to be lucrative not because it's a vacation... I want them to be the best who will fuck you over if you're providing sub par care. And they will know. The money we get from firing all the administrative shit should go towards hiring the best.
As a conservative, I want my government to properly regulate that I can have the best life I can of my own personal choices . In that, I believe that the government's role is to provide that service instead of having a whole bunch of different offices my application has to go through.
I believe that we have an obligation to make sure that all of our citizens can survive without starving or dying on a street corner. I believe a government has a role in that. I have a distinct problem when people say "Well let the church handle that". Mostly because the people might not be Christian.
My god, I apparently have a lot to say
If they have lower administrative costs than private insurance (which is true), then where are the experts you're asking for? Clearly they don't work in private industry, at least not in that field.
Also, see my post above on taxes.
Manmademan
Member
A common misconception is that if you lower taxes for corporations, they'll just hire more people, because hey! more money, right? Not really. businesses hire exactly as many employees as they need to meet demand. cutting taxes to business that does not dramatically benefit the middle class (as the bush tax cuts did) doesn't cause business to hire. Hiring remained flat or fell after those cuts took place. In a global economy, business simply sent that cash overseas where they gained the greatest investment on it, paid it to shareholders who did the same thing, or in some cases (Apple was guilty of this) simply sat on it and did nothing.
The global marketplace absolutely destroys the argument that cutting taxes for business has anything to do with hiring. On the flip side, giving more disposable income to the middle and lower class DOES cause them to spend that extra income, not globally but locally, directly stimulating demand and growing the economy where the government has an interest in it growing, instead of in india, china, what have you.
Frank the Great
Banned
if a company starts hiring people they do not need simply because their income increased due to tax relief, the shareholders would probably sue.
companies exist to make profit, not hire people. employees are only hired when necessary to meet demand. otherwise, shareholders happily pocket the profits and request more tax relief to enrich themselves.
companies exist to make profit, not hire people. employees are only hired when necessary to meet demand. otherwise, shareholders happily pocket the profits and request more tax relief to enrich themselves.
Black Mamba
Member
It doesn't play out and this and most exonomi. Theory doesn't conform to his belief. On my phone now but I can post how poorly he bush tAx cuts performed as well other stuff later.
Will give two quick mentions.
First is that two low taxes can hurt investment. Why invest if you keep most of the money?
Second is most businesses invest cuz of demand and will borrow to do it. Borrowing is super cheap right now. No way a tax cut on such small rates will tip from not willing to borrow to willing to borrow to invert. Most small businesses won't get enough of a cut to have any effect on investment among them too
Please excuse phone typing lol
RiccochetJ
Gold Member
Yes, they'll hire exactly they amount of people they need to expand. Expansion creates more jobs. More jobs creates competition. More competition means that companies pay more to acquire your services. Less taxes means more money in their coffers so that they're willing to invest in a person.
And we are in a global economy now. I'm not refuting that. How do we still make sure that our population isn't worth outsourcing?
RustyNails
Member
We've seen time and again that if you give company a tax break, the top executives just reward themselves with extra money. I don't know why people think corporations are benevolent entities that will do right by the world if you do right by them. They wont. They'll have their cake and eat it too. Right now some mega corporations pay zero taxes, and some of them get tax rebates, and many corporations are sitting on billions of dollars of capital despite tax rates being historically low.
By focusing on jobs that aren't easily outsourced -- service industries. This is why America has been transitioning to a service economy, and why providing support to that service industry is so important. Attempting to focus on manufacturing is bad for them -- it actually raises the price of goods for the American consumer.
"If they're so inclined" is the interesting line there. Realistically, though, a company will grow if there's an opportunity for it to make more money. I.e. if demand is high, they will grow. So, if their store is full of customers for weeks on end and they don't have enough people on the counter to help them, they'll grow. That's pretty much the simple example, but I don't think it's that inherently different in more complex situations.
Taxes do play a significant part, but I'm still unconvinced. Companies don't usually gamble with their money. I'm really not sure where this risk think is coming from. Most companies, especially small businesses don't hire someone and hope they'll get profits off it. They hire someone because they know they have a job to do. They know they have enough demands to make that hire. They try to max out the work and max out the dollars they already have, and as a last resort they'll hire.
In fact, you could also make a reverse argument to yours. If the government is going to take a large portion of your profits you have two options: You can reinvest in innovative ideas in order to try and make more money in the long run, or you can forfeit that money to the government.
Also, you have to think about business in this sense: hiring is a last resort option. Paying money to do anything is a last resort option. Companies don't want to spend money. They will do everything they can to not hire. With this in mind, having extra money in their pockets will not make them hire. Only increased demand for their product or service will.
Administrative costs for medicare is pretty low. Now, I realize there's an argument that expressing it as a percentage of benefit makes it very very low because elderly need a helluva lot more benefits. That's fine. Still, the administrative costs on medicare are just fine.
So, do you believe in a single payer system of healthcare, or is something like Obamacare closer to what you'd like?
The problem is that right now, they don't need to expand. They have record amounts of money on the sidelines, earning meager interest, because demand is down. If demand improved, they'd happily forgo meager interest AND the potential additional tax burden to expand. Cutting their potential tax burden, even to zero, would not move them to expand without demand. The same can largely be said for upper income earners. They don't buy enough to make up for many that can't.
The proven best ways to recover demand are unemployment benefits, because broke people spend all their money and save little, and infrastructure spending, because their construction employs people directly, and after they're built roads/bridges/etc make existing commerce easier/safer and invite new commerce.
Manmademan
Member
Except this is the exact OPPOSITE of what happened after the bush tax cuts were enacted. Taxes were cut drastically, mostly for the wealthy and corporations. There was no expansion. there was no hiring. There were no jobs. The only gains in the economy came on the back of massive financial fraud that funded the real estate bubble.
Expansion only occurs when demand increases, not when business has excess cash. Again, when business found themselves with a surplus of cash in this very recession it was parked in accounts and nothing was done with it. They didn't hire with it, and didn't invest with it. And that's not counting the billions that are currently parked overseas in an attempt to avoid taxes, hoping for another tax forgiveness holiday. Take a minute, google what promises were made and what actually happened the LAST time business asked for and was given a tax holiday on overseas cash. The promises were that it would stimulate hiring, as conservatives are fond of saying, and instead that money was paid out as bonuses and dividends, and those companies LAID OFF staff.
That theory no longer holds water. history has proven it false many times over.
RiccochetJ
Gold Member
It's a common theme to go after the multi billion dollar companies which I also have an issue with. I'm arguing for the smaller companies that the tax cut would help.
And I'm getting a lot of responses again. Let me digest them and I'll respond soon.
SouthernDragon
Member
RiccochetJ, thank you for posting in this thread.
ErasureAcer
Banned
Where are the Romney flip-flop ads? There's only 4 weeks left and he's flip-flopped on everything that you could make 30 ads with different flops yet I don't think I've seen one.
Al-ibn Kermit
Junior Member
I just want to say I love how the last week has made this thread go from back-patting to shoulder-rubbing.
And at this point, Diablos's pessimism is just sickeningly adorable.
And at this point, Diablos's pessimism is just sickeningly adorable.
Once again, this is not really true at all.
You're going to get a lot of responses here, we want to engage you and see if you understand the data behind what you say you believe.
Please don't be put off by our eagerness, we need more of you guys. Preaching to the choir gets really old.
Manmademan
Member
True. I can get agressive, but I aint yellin atcha
Have you worked for or been a part of a small company? This is almost especially not true with them. They'll work people to the bone until demand forces them to hire someone. They hire and expand to what they need. More tax cuts aren't going to get them to hire if they don't need to already.
Also, this 65 year study found tax cuts don't lead to economic growth
empty vessel
Member
Have you ever given any serious thought to these stances? Think about your objection to Medicare, for example. All this program is is an insurance program. Meaning, a health care provider sends a bill, and the insurer pays it if it is covered. You say that you do not want the government "running it" but are okay with "strict regulations" with "extreme consequences" on private insurers. Why? It amounts to the same thing, except your version has a lot more waste and inefficiency. If the government is making the rules anyway ("strict regulations" with "extreme consequences"), why not just have the government administer it? What is it about government that makes you think it should set the rules but is incapable of administering the rules? The post office seems to deliver mail pretty well.
Manmademan
Member
You should probably clarify why exactly the post office is losing money hand over fist despite it's efficiency before using it as a talking point.
Not that most of us don't know, but it might be helpful.
I read about Obama's strategy on this front as the GOP primaries concluded. His team found it was more effective to make Romeny own the positions he took during the primaries than to contrast them with positions he's held in the past. Calling out his past positions just reminded people he was once a moderate; they wanted to define him as an extremist.
RiccochetJ
Gold Member
Some companies are happy where they are. It's a huge reason why some don't go public. It's a investment to hire on someone full time. And in that as the owner you have to have the expectation that this trend will continue. Otherwise you're spending money and keeping someone on payroll needlessly. Sucks but that's the truth.
And here's our focal point of our debate! I believe that tax cuts will embolden companies to grow. More money to burn will mean that they can invest in growth. You think it's stagnant. I think you're correct in some instances.
In fact, you could also make a reverse argument to yours. If the government is going to take a large portion of your profits you have two options: You can reinvest in innovative ideas in order to try and make more money in the long run, or you can forfeit that money to the government.
And I think that gov oversight could be better. My brother has had to tell people that he can't treat them anymore because their medicare has run out. Why is this happening?
So, do you believe in a single payer system of healthcare, or is something like Obamacare closer to what you'd like?[/QUOTE]
Half and half
Member
Heh, agree. This is better than most of the previous 10 pages.
SouthernDragon
Member
Informed, civil, and thoughtful disagreement is very, very welcome.
Just remember that he is one man. Perhaps we could focus on one topic at a time and, when that is exhausted, switch to a new one?
Just remember that he is one man. Perhaps we could focus on one topic at a time and, when that is exhausted, switch to a new one?
speculawyer
Member
That is the really depressing thing . . . . science and objective evidence just don't matter any more on the right.
Evolution? More like Evilution! Teach the controversy!
Climate change? It's a hoax! Rush told me so! Inhofe says that god wouldn't do that to us.
Gays exist naturally? No, they are not praying hard enough! They are making an ungodly 'lifestyle choice'!
I'd like to believe such a study would have an effect on politics. But at this point, facts & evidence don't matter. Politics has become religion . . . it is a matter of blind-faith.
When I think about it, we should thank our lucky-stars that there actually was a backlash against Akin with his nutty magical rape contraception system statement. The doctor that provided that great scientific knowledge to Akin was a surrogate for the Romney campaign in 2008! Huckabee still stands behind Akin and that nuttiness!
RiccochetJ
Gold Member
The Librarian
Banned
This tweet did so much to improve my mood:
Also, don't miss Chait's profile on the disappearing (extinction?) of the moderate Republican.
Also, don't miss Chait's profile on the disappearing (extinction?) of the moderate Republican.
speculawyer
Member
I think they had to decide whether to paint Mitt Romney as a right-winger or paint Romney as a flip-flopper and they chose the former. Otherwise, you are pushing an inconsistent message. Perhaps they'll switch to the latter strategy but for now they are sticking with the former.
And once again it really would.
Snce you seem to have missed it the first time:
http://m.neogaf.com/showpost.php?p=43034899
(this is about your original point that the individual tax rate hikes would impact 'most small and mid sized businesses''... Which they wouldn't, regardless of how many "nuh uhs" you give me.)
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