New Hamspshire is rolling up

[Linzyhop]

well my prediction for the GOP was spot on, totally off on the democrat side thou....

my prediction:
i think McCain will take it for the GOP in NH. i think Romney will be about 5% or more behind. third will be Guiliani/Huckabee.

for the democrats, I think Obama will take it and i might even say Edwards will be second closely followed by Hillary. I think there will be about a 12% difference between Obama and Hillary.

real results:
71% IN: *CLINTON 39; OBAMA 36; EDWARDS 17; RICHARDSON 5; KUCINICH 1...

66% IN: *MCCAIN 36.68; ROMNEY 31.64; HUCKABEE 11.24; GIULIANI 8.53; PAUL 7.74; THOMPSON 1.18...

[thewise1]

Originally Posted by bheld

What is with all the moaning from free market purists? You guys are extremists just like socialists. You don't understand that Americans want to strike a balance between state control of the economy and free reign for the wealthy. It's worked for us and for Europe for a long time now. The only examples of your philosophy even being put into practice came through authoritarianism and ended in economic disaster.

Oh, I understand it quite well sir.

It took me a long time, for some reason I was under the impression that Americans didn't want to actually punish those who produce more by taxing them more, and they were merely misguided by lying politicians into doing so.

Because hey, it's the United States of America, right? The land of the free, the land of opportunity.

But I was wrong. The American people only want to have someone else pay for everything for them. They don't care who it is, as long as someone's doing it, and hey, the wealthy can afford it, right? For now, anyway.

[hsmith]

Originally Posted by garbagemanlb

Please don't act like the GOP is actually better in this regard. The past 6 years with a GOP controlled congress and white house showed absolutely no shrinking of social programs or spending.

Who says he didn't include the "Republicans" in the Democrat/Socialist statement? GWB is a fantastic liberal, he isn't a Republican or Conservative.

[thewise1]

This illustrates my point about the people of the United States just wanting handouts:

Katrina victim sues U.S. for $3 quadrillion - U.S. business - MSNBC.com

[hsmith]

Originally Posted by thewise1

This illustrates my point about the people of the United States just wanting handouts:

Katrina victim sues U.S. for $3 quadrillion - U.S. business - MSNBC.com

Quadrillion dollars

[lew]

Originally Posted by hsmith

Quadrillion dollars

[Thorgrim]

Negligence has a history going back to the founding fathers...and well before them

But I guess because some people are throwing out whacky numbers that were not set by any court...that means something

I should just pay an entity for services, and when I'm screwed over, I should just take it up the ass

next time i take my car for a tune up...and the mechanic puts a huge scratch on my door...when he tells me it was already there, I'll just tell him it was my fault anyway and move on

[thewise1]

Originally Posted by Thorgrim

Negligence has a history going back to the founding fathers...and well before them

But I guess because some people are throwing out whacky numbers that were not set by any court...that means something

I should just pay an entity for services, and when I'm screwed over, I should just take it up the ass

next time i take my car for a tune up...and the mechanic puts a huge scratch on my door...when he tells me it was already there, I'll just tell him it was my fault anyway and move on

You're in a particularly argumentative mood today aren't ya bro

[Thorgrim]

Originally Posted by thewise1

You're in a particularly argumentative mood today aren't ya bro

I haven't said anything remotely personal or borderline trolling?

However, this is obstructing my reading and I'll check this thread later

[thewise1]

wasn't accusing you of trolling at all bro, sorry for the misunderstanding

[DosEquis]

Originally Posted by thewise1

This illustrates my point about the people of the United States just wanting handouts:

Katrina victim sues U.S. for $3 quadrillion - U.S. business - MSNBC.com

[Scrum]

Originally Posted by thewise1

This illustrates my point about the people of the United States just wanting handouts:

Katrina victim sues U.S. for $3 quadrillion - U.S. business - MSNBC.com

And there are some people on the opposite side of the spectrum who think every cent they earn in this country should be theirs and theirs alone no matter what.


Would you say "most" people in the US want a handout, or maybe it's just a small percentage?

[thewise1]

Originally Posted by Scrum

And there are some people on the opposite side of the spectrum who think every cent they earn in this country should be theirs and theirs alone no matter what.


Would you say "most" people in the US want a handout, or maybe it's just a small percentage?

I think the majority is swinging to those who want a handout and/or to be "kept safe" from pretty much everything by the government.

[DosEquis]

Originally Posted by thewise1

Oh, I understand it quite well sir.

It took me a long time, for some reason I was under the impression that Americans didn't want to actually punish those who produce more by taxing them more, and they were merely misguided by lying politicians into doing so.

Because hey, it's the United States of America, right? The land of the free, the land of opportunity.

But I was wrong. The American people only want to have someone else pay for everything for them. They don't care who it is, as long as someone's doing it, and hey, the wealthy can afford it, right? For now, anyway.

Right now they are punishing the people who do the work. People like you and I are paying 30% of our income in some sort of tax, whether it be federal, state, or social security. The people who obtain their income via investing are only paying 15% on capital gains. The 3rd richest person in the world payed 17% last year, while his secretary paid nearly 32%.

The middle class is getting screwed. The poor aren't paying much and the rich (though 80% of the tax revenue does come from them) are not paying the same percentage as the middle class. From what i understand the general consensus for "fair" is the same percentage for everyone. I understand it takes money to support things like our ridiculous foreign policy, military industrial complex, and interest payments on our debt...the majority of which we can thank "conservative" republicans since 1980.

We need to quit giving billions in welfare money to people like israel, quit spending 500 billion dollars on the military, and billions maintaining our 'empire' around the world. Iraq will probably be a trillion dollars by the time we are considered 'done' there but i am sure there will be some residual costs. The debt is 9 trillion dollars and 7 of it came during a republican presidency.

[motivez]

Originally Posted by ballz2wallz

Really?

Yeah, modern polling is pretty good. The fact that none of them showed Hillary winning is amazing

[thewise1]

Originally Posted by DosEquis

Right now they are punishing the people who do the work. People like you and I are paying 30% of our income in some sort of tax, whether it be federal, state, or social security. The people who obtain their income via investing are only paying 15% on capital gains. The 3rd richest person in the world payed 17% last year, while his secretary paid nearly 32%.

The middle class is getting screwed. The poor aren't paying much and the rich (though 80% of the tax revenue does come from them) are not paying the same percentage as the middle class. From what i understand the general consensus for "fair" is the same percentage for everyone. I understand it takes money to support things like our ridiculous foreign policy, military industrial complex, and interest payments on our debt...the majority of which we can thank "conservative" republicans since 1980.

We need to quit giving billions in welfare money to people like israel, quit spending 500 billion dollars on the military, and billions maintaining our 'empire' around the world. Iraq will probably be a trillion dollars by the time we are considered 'done' there but i am sure there will be some residual costs. The debt is 9 trillion dollars and 7 of it came during a republican presidency.

Certainly agree with your last comment. The republicans are spending while the democrats are trying to pay for it (and their own spending). I hold no love for either of them.

If it were up to me, there would be no capital gains tax.

[bheld]

Originally Posted by thewise1

Oh, I understand it quite well sir.

It took me a long time, for some reason I was under the impression that Americans didn't want to actually punish those who produce more by taxing them more, and they were merely misguided by lying politicians into doing so.

Because hey, it's the United States of America, right? The land of the free, the land of opportunity.

But I was wrong. The American people only want to have someone else pay for everything for them. They don't care who it is, as long as someone's doing it, and hey, the wealthy can afford it, right? For now, anyway.

Hyperbole doesn't serve to counter reality. There simply isn't a logically grounded reason for free markets aside from the ideological belief that things will work perfectly if just given a chance. This makes it no different than the ideas of those promoting state control, which again work perfectly in theory but have also ended up as abysmal failures in real life and have also depended on torture, authoritarianism, and terrorism of the populace to even be enacted.

There's a yin and the yang to our economy and it's the balance of all interests. Income must be redistributed through fair means and then allowed to re-concentrate. This balance is what we need, not extremes. We've seen time and time again that markets do not do a good job of self-regulation nor is income naturally redistributed. There needs to be checks on the power of both but one cannot dominate the other.

[Ardentfrost]

I hate it when people make wide claims "there is no evidence it will work" without being specific. Please make specific claims which we can then counter as we have hundreds of times in the past. There is plenty of research out there for free market solutions to economic problems. Sometimes it can only be proving the ineffectiveness of the current socialist methods when it's something we haven't been without in a long time, but even then there are usually some good examples of a move toward a free market solution working better.

Anyhow, I'm not going to make a mega-post that shows how ever facet of the economy works better the freer it is using real examples, largely because I can't remember off the top of my head every facet of the economy. But if you'd like to say "what about X" then make a thread and let's talk about X.

[motivez]

Part of the issue is you guys have the luxury of generally speaking based on philosophy and theory, rather than actual practice when it comes to stuff like this.. while people who are more moderate talk about how stuff actually has worked once it's been put into practice.

When's the last time a society worked like it would in a libertarian's wet dream?

Some country in Africa that we talked about awhile back was close according to lew.. I wouldn't want to live in that country, doubt any of you guys are eager to give up your citizenship to move there to be free with the roving bands of militias and whatnot either

I also think there's an argument to be made for government vs good government. We haven't seen an especially good government for the last 8 years. I don't buy into the idea that just because something is funded by the public, it has to be bad or it has to work inefficiently.

There's also clearly a benefit for using the government to subsidize some programs, ie: NASA.. when there was at the time, no real market interest in going to the moon.. but out of that, we gained a shitload of technology (medical and otherwise) that have improved the quality of life for millions of people in this country and hundreds of millions around the planet, decades before the market would have ever been interested in a concerted effort to do some of the stuff.