A serious question for liberals/progressives/socialists/leftists

[KrazyHorse]

How does that contradict my point that the longer you are in school, the more likely you are to be Democrat? Thanks for playing.

It contradicts it because it says something completely different. You ****ing moron.

[KrazyHorse]

BTW, Kitty

You don't get to call me Kitty.

[Kidlicious]

Conversely, ladening the current system with so much debt only makes it more difficult to switch to a system of universally affordable health care, unless it's accompanied by debt forgiveness.

Huh? Do you think it's easier to carry debt in the current system or a system where everyone has complete coverage?

Besides, being the non-douchy person I am, if it turns out the expensive and ultimately useless medical help failed, at least I won't be passing that debt onto my family.

In what country is your debt passed on to your family?

[Q Classic]

It's easier to carry debt in a system where everyone has complete coverage, as the costs are spread out to more people.

And in the United States, surprisingly enough, when your parents are cosigned to your loans. Or if there are any heirs. And since my family is listed as a beneficiary for my retirement fund, should I pass on...

[Kidlicious]

It's easier to carry debt in a system where everyone has complete coverage, as the costs are spread out to more people.

And in the United States, surprisingly enough, when your parents are cosigned to your loans. Or if there are any heirs. And since my family is listed as a beneficiary for my retirement fund, should I pass on...

So you're going to die so that your parents can pay off your student loans? I'm not even going to bother telling you what else is wrong with all of what you're saying. There's no point if you aren't going to use your brain.

[Q Classic]

The student loans are, at this point, less expensive than spending a night in the ICU.

[Elok]

This is a joke troll, right? Seeing as it was the fairly Godly Bible that said something about being our brothers' keepers...

Well, yes and no. God asks Cain where Abel is (after Cain had murdered him). Cain replies, "am I my brother's keeper?" It doesn't actually say anything one way or another about that specific concept, unless you count Cain denigrating it as a vote for it. Now, the NT contains plenty of injunctions about loving thy neighbor, and I'm sure we can get into some swell arguments whether loving thy neighbor is an individual act or a collective one. I'd say there are some arguments for both...

[Dinner]

I liked Crazy Kitty better then Crazy Horse.

[Kidlicious]

I liked Crazy Kitty better then Crazy Horse.

[Solomwi]

It's easier to carry debt in a system where everyone has complete coverage, as the costs are spread out to more people.

And in the United States, surprisingly enough, when your parents are cosigned to your loans. Or if there are any heirs. And since my family is listed as a beneficiary for my retirement fund, should I pass on...

Absolutely on the cosigning situation, regardless of relation, but, just for clarity's sake, remember that your heirs won't actually take on your debt by virtue of being your heirs. Debts you leave will be satisfied out of your estate, to whatever extent that's possible, but anything an heir owned before you shuffled off won't be available to your creditors.

[Thoth]

c'mon Thoth, you know that "those people" don't count. You're not a real American unless you can swindle at least a cool mil, and then not pay taxes on it!



-=Vel=-

*sigh* I know, it's the "government of the corporations, by the corporations, for the corporations". But sometimes when I'm drunk I have to say something.

[RGBVideo]

In fact, people with bachelor's degrees are more likely to vote Republican in national elections than are people with more advanced degrees OR without a college education. This is robust over the last few election cycles.

Ben, you're like a machine which can be consulted whenever you want an answer which is precisely opposite of the real answer.

Instead of constantly exposing your own ignorance, you should take the time to research crap before you say it. ****.

I was wondering when someone would bother to google it instead of blathering their own prejudices about it, but then someone who presumably had researched the subject before this thread was created came along.

A big from me to you for standing up for reality.

[Straybow]

[Q=Zkribbler;5571237]True. I went into college as a Goldwater Republican and came out as a McGovern liberal...

Today, I'm still more in tune with liberal viewpoints:

(1) Single-payor health care, which isn't socialized medicine. It's privatized medicine being paid for by government rather than by insurance companies. Health insurance is a unique American invention, and it's given us the highest costing healthcare in the world, the shortest lifespans in the industrialized world and the highest infant-mortality in the industrialized world. [/q] I'd challenge whether the latter two can be tied to private health insurance. The last is very firmly correlated to lack of education and poverty. We know how well the 40 year "war on poverty" has succeeded; let's not do the same for health care.

As for the first, the US has the highest health care cost because we don't ration it based on government budget constraints. It's easy to keep costs down when the payer can simply decide not to pay. In the US we don't have people waiting in line for ages because the Health Ministry allows only 423 operations of this type per month.

People who think single-payer is going to solve problems forget that single-payer will create as many problems as it solves, but worse, there will be fewer alternative avenues for treatment. In Europe the one saving factor was that some people could travel cheaply to other countries for treatments unavailable in their home country. In Canada they come to the US. If the US goes single-payer the only alternative affordable to the middle class in North America will be Mexico.

(2) Social liberties and equality, including gay marriage, which I see not as a "gay right" but as an equal right.

A right to something that has never existed before, in the recorded history of mankind? Well, let's just say the point is "debatable" and leave it at that.

(3) Progressive tax rates. For the past 30 years, more and more tax breaks have been given to the richest of the rich, meaning a greater and greater share of taxes falls on the middle- and lower- classes.

So why is it that the middle class is still paying the same small percentage of federal income tax revenues? What really happened is that the highest tax brackets were lowered, therefore the marginal benefit of sheltering income in those brackets was lowered, and so less income was sheltered and federal revenue percentage from those brackets did not fall.

It also meant more spending on stuff that employs us middle-classers, which is one reason the US has half the unemployment rate of every other industrialized nation except Germany and Japan.

(4) Unions -- When unions were strong; the American middle-class grew and florished. But for the last 30 years, unions have been declining, and the middle class has at-best remained economically stagnant and has been shrinking in size.

Now let's account for the fact that the US economy was the only one not ravaged by WW2, and as the ROTW caught up the easy money dried up. The business sectors in which the unions were relevant are the same sectors with the strongest competition in the ROTW. The unions failed to recognize that modest sacrifices might actually end up strengthening both their own positions and their business sectors.

(5) Universal free higher education. When I was going to UCLA, then-Governor Reagan instituted the first tuition on UC students. This began the trend of ever-higher economic hurdles for those trying to better themselves through education.

Another statistical fallacy. Back in the '40s and '50s many who went to college were subsidized by the GI Bill, and had money saved from a period of employment before going to college. Furthermore, the percentage of HS graduates who went on to college was relatively low. State schools could afford to foot the bill.

Now the percentage of HS grads going to college is higher, and the percentage going to state schools is higher, and neither the federal nor state government can afford to pay for "universal" higher education. We can't even pay for our primary and secondary schools, but if we did primary and secondary education right we would have HS graduates who could be employed without higher education. That's the one point that Europeans seems to have done well.

In short, I am of the middle-class. The middle-class is the economic engine of the nation. Liberals aid the middle-class more than conservative do. And so, I'm a liberal.

But do they? Really? Michelle Obama scoffed at the 2008 $600 rebate and now the liberals call the $400 rebate the greatest thing the government has ever done for the middle class. Puhlease.

[Straybow]

[Q=Ben Kenobi;5571720]How does that contradict my point that the longer you are in school, the more likely you are to be Democrat? Thanks for playing.

50 48 28
58 40 17

I would love to see the breakdown for Masters/PhD, rather then just 'postgraduate study', which can be anything from 1 masters course to multiple PhDs.

BTW, Kitty, I've done research on this particular effect wrt to Gallup polls on liberal/conservative issues, and it's a very strong correlation, at least here in Canada. I haven't done the American numbers.[/Q]

[Q=KrazyHorse;5571788]It contradicts it because it says something completely different. You ****ing moron.[/Q] Perhaps you should actually process the information instead of looking at the part that isn't relevant to his point and claim it contradicts him. OK, he should have said "The longer one stays in post secondary education the more likely to vote Dem."

On behalf of BK, I apologize for not being specific enough in his internet post where all matters are settled with finality in a three word quip. You happy now?

[DirtyMartini]

I've always looked at it this way --

Liberals are those who retain some hope that government can successfully fulfill its main function of protecting citizens. They may tend to define "protect" rather broadly.

Conservatives think that government is wasteful and inefficient, if not outright useless. Since government sucks, they might just well keep their tax dollars. (The older I get, the harder it is to argue otherwise.)

Neoconservatives are morally bankrupt thugs.