Admin wrote: ↑Fri Aug 16, 2024 7:14 pm
You're against your government investing in young families and people's ability to own or rent a home?
Yes.
I'm not a strict large-L Libertarian when it comes to economic manipulation, but it takes a lot to convince me that giving away money for nothing is a good idea. Sometimes it is, but such tactics should be used sparingly, to say the least.
Also, I see she's removing some tax incentives,
When I wrote my post, that wasn't being reported. It was reported she was creating new ones. I'll check out and see if there's updates. If you are correct, then good on her. (Unless, of couse, they are tax incentives I use, in which case it is clearly equal to communism. Yes, I'm joking.)
I don't know when USA last ran a budget surplus,
2000
And you're also ignoring the trickle-up nature of the spending. If you give poorer people money, they spend it, creating taxes and jobs. The net effect of the policies is fuck all.
The Republicans says the same thing about tax cuts.
They're wrong, too.
There's no something for nothing. When you move money from one place to another, the same amount of money ends up getting spent, and the same amount of jobs are created and the same amount of taxes are generated.
Where it gets complicated is understanding the difference between money and wealth, and what sorts of government spending create wealth, versus destroying wealth. Both sorts of spending result in jobs and tax revenue, but only one of them is a good idea.
Meadmaker wrote: ↑Fri Aug 16, 2024 2:12 pm
Does she believe this nonsense, or is it pure pandering to idiots who vote? I'm sure that when I was a child, reality seemed important, or at least significant, to politicians. That seems to be a thing of the past.
If you want Harris to implement only funded options, you'd have some serious tax increases, which is political suicide.
So....pandering to idiots.
And sadly, the US electorate is mostly idiots, in a practical sense. As you note, it's political suicide to acknowledge that taxes have to be used to pay for spending. It's reality, but it's political suicide.
I blame Reagan, by the way. It was voodoo economics then. It's voodoo economics now. Republicans and Democrats have different flavors of voodoo.
Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich balanced the budget. How? Tax increases and spending cuts. And the economy soared during those years. (I don't think the fiscal policies caused the growth. Neither did they hinder the growth.)
The funny bit is you're echoing the official Republican line with argument against those policies.
Only half of the Republican line. The other half is that you should cut taxes without cutting spending. Well.....they always say they'll cut spending, but they almost never do. They are specific about their tax cuts. Vague about spending. They usually end up cutting or slowing the growth in social spending, and massively increasing military spending.
Meadmaker wrote: ↑Fri Aug 16, 2024 2:12 pm
I truly fear that this oft-cited quote is becoming reality:
Winston Churchill
No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all the others.
Indeed. What worries me is that it's coming to an end. I can't compare very well US politics to other "developed" countries, because I live in America and no one ever talks about what happens in the rest of the world, except for royal families. Maybe other countries all have that same "something for nothing" attitude that has gripped the US. Whoever it was that said the origianl quote, though, recognized that if the voters behaved the way he described, democratic government is unsustainable.
