Romney loses election

[Ben Kenobi]

It's not a black and white 'those people get welfare while all those other people stand on their own feet'. The majority of people get some form of government help, the only question is usually how much and what form it takes. The nonsense you just referred to is part of a divisive republican campaign to try and get people to turn on each other and look down their noses at the poorest sections of society, despite the implicit hypocracy of it. It's also about as far away from christianity as you can get, so you should be deeply ashamed of spouting such garbage.

Be that as it may (that I'm a poor Christian), everything I said is true. It is a problem and it needs to be addressed. If being on welfare is more beneficial than many marginal jobs - these jobs are not going to get filled.

[kentonio]

Be that as it may (that I'm a poor Christian), everything I said is true. It is a problem and it needs to be addressed. If being on welfare is more beneficial than many marginal jobs - these jobs are not going to get filled.

It's not more beneficial, thats the point. The people who you talked about who work but don't get this welfare help are getting help in a host of other ways which makes them better off. The picture of welfare queens living in luxury while the poor working folk suffer with less is a myth and it's one which is spread in most countries not just America. When you dig down into the actual details you'll find it to be untrue.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Sad as it may be, like Americans deserved GWB for 8 years (and as a bonus for the rest of us - that was a funny guy), they deserve Romney... to be honest he is too good, like Obama in a different dress, they deserve Newt, or Santorum, or Palin or Bachmann... but all they will get is Romney this round. I bet they will get Santorum in a few years though, deservedly so as well .

[Ben Kenobi]

It's not more beneficial, thats the point.

How much money do you have to earn to make 30k after taxes in America? Everyone who makes less than this amount is worse off than the folks receiving 30k in benefits every year. That plus the opportunity cost of having to work.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

A question

I don't understand how the price of gas is a political issue people take into consideration when voting. It is the price of a commodity, like the price of soy, copper or wheat.

Do they want the State to subsidize gas? I must be missing something because many republicans talk about this and I dont think they want more subsidies.

While about 65% of the costs are tied to crude prices the remaining 35% are tied up in taxes, distribution and marketing costs, and refining costs. All of these costs to a certain extent are influenced by government in one form or the other.

Cost of crude - supply v. demand as Kenobi alludes to but also relative strength of the US dollar (although not yet observable, any government practices leading to inflation would apply here, hence natural chicken little reactions to Fed)



Taxes - Directly attributable to govenmental policy

Distribution and marketing - Shorten the supply lines lower the cost. Projects such as Keystone play a role here. Requirements to add oxygenated fuels read ethanol also play here as well.

Refining costs - See above blending of ethanol as well as better choice of crude stocks vis-a-vis larger overall supplies.


http://auto.howstuffworks.com/fuel-e...gas-price1.htm


Larger picture, aside from increasing supply of crude, is the development and increased implementation of technologies mature enough to be used in transportation (read CNG based transportation and the encouragement of fracking to increase nat gas supply). Course that would mean government actually has to develop an energy policy. Something that has been an Epic Fail since the 70s.

[giblets]

A question

I don't understand how the price of gas is a political issue people take into consideration when voting. It is the price of a commodity, like the price of soy, copper or wheat.

Do they want the State to subsidize gas? I must be missing something because many republicans talk about this and I dont think they want more subsidies.

Republicans like to make extravagant promises regarding gas prices for some reason and Mitt Romney even promised to make the US energy independent by 2020. They're hoping voters will be dumb enough to think that gas prices are only high because the federal government inexplicably decided to leave vast amounts of oil in the United States untouched.

edit: I looked it up and it looks like he's actually promising for North America to be energy independent by 2020. Because importing oil from Venezuela is a terrible, terrible thing for some reason.

[kentonio]

Well that's a turnup for the books, turns out that Mitt Romneys dad was one of those nasty welfare queens he hates so much.

George Romney’s “welfare relief”

Buzzfeed dug up this clip from a 1962 Romney for Governor informercial, in which Mitt Romney’s mother, Lenore, talks about his father being on “welfare relief” when he was younger.

“We’ve only owned our home for the last four years,” Lenore Romney says. “He was a refugee from Mexico. He was on relief – welfare relief – for the first years of his life. but this great country gave him opportunities.”

http://www.salon.com/2012/09/19/geor...elfare_relief/

[DinoDoc]

1. Entitlements is a ridiculous word which tries to paint recipients of government support as pathetic money grabbers.

Given the fact that is the word universally chosen to refer to programs such as that, what semantic word choice would make you feel better?

[DaShi]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/18/opinion/brooks-thurston-howell-romney.html?pagewanted=print

September 17, 2012
Thurston Howell Romney
By DAVID BROOKS
In 1980, about 30 percent of Americans received some form of government benefits. Today, as Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute has pointed out, about 49 percent do.

In 1960, government transfers to individuals totaled $24 billion. By 2010, that total was 100 times as large. Even after adjusting for inflation, entitlement transfers to individuals have grown by more than 700 percent over the last 50 years. This spending surge, Eberstadt notes, has increased faster under Republican administrations than Democratic ones.

There are sensible conclusions to be drawn from these facts. You could say that the entitlement state is growing at an unsustainable rate and will bankrupt the country. You could also say that America is spending way too much on health care for the elderly and way too little on young families and investments in the future.

But these are not the sensible arguments that Mitt Romney made at a fund-raiser earlier this year. Romney, who criticizes President Obama for dividing the nation, divided the nation into two groups: the makers and the moochers. Forty-seven percent of the country, he said, are people “who are dependent upon government, who believe they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to take care of them, who believe they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it.”

This comment suggests a few things. First, it suggests that he really doesn’t know much about the country he inhabits. Who are these freeloaders? Is it the Iraq war veteran who goes to the V.A.? Is it the student getting a loan to go to college? Is it the retiree on Social Security or Medicare?

It suggests that Romney doesn’t know much about the culture of America. Yes, the entitlement state has expanded, but America remains one of the hardest-working nations on earth. Americans work longer hours than just about anyone else. Americans believe in work more than almost any other people. Ninety-two percent say that hard work is the key to success, according to a 2009 Pew Research Survey.

It says that Romney doesn’t know much about the political culture. Americans haven’t become childlike worshipers of big government. On the contrary, trust in government has declined. The number of people who think government spending promotes social mobility has fallen.

The people who receive the disproportionate share of government spending are not big-government lovers. They are Republicans. They are senior citizens. They are white men with high school degrees. As Bill Galston of the Brookings Institution has noted, the people who have benefited from the entitlements explosion are middle-class workers, more so than the dependent poor.

Romney’s comments also reveal that he has lost any sense of the social compact. In 1987, during Ronald Reagan’s second term, 62 percent of Republicans believed that the government has a responsibility to help those who can’t help themselves. Now, according to the Pew Research Center, only 40 percent of Republicans believe that.

The Republican Party, and apparently Mitt Romney, too, has shifted over toward a much more hyperindividualistic and atomistic social view — from the Reaganesque language of common citizenship to the libertarian language of makers and takers. There’s no way the country will trust the Republican Party to reform the welfare state if that party doesn’t have a basic commitment to provide a safety net for those who suffer for no fault of their own.

The final thing the comment suggests is that Romney knows nothing about ambition and motivation. The formula he sketches is this: People who are forced to make it on their own have drive. People who receive benefits have dependency.

But, of course, no middle-class parent acts as if this is true. Middle-class parents don’t deprive their children of benefits so they can learn to struggle on their own. They shower benefits on their children to give them more opportunities — so they can play travel sports, go on foreign trips and develop more skills.

People are motivated when they feel competent. They are motivated when they have more opportunities. Ambition is fired by possibility, not by deprivation, as a tour through the world’s poorest regions makes clear.

Sure, there are some government programs that cultivate patterns of dependency in some people. I’d put federal disability payments and unemployment insurance in this category. But, as a description of America today, Romney’s comment is a country-club fantasy. It’s what self-satisfied millionaires say to each other. It reinforces every negative view people have about Romney.

Personally, I think he’s a kind, decent man who says stupid things because he is pretending to be something he is not — some sort of cartoonish government-hater. But it scarcely matters. He’s running a depressingly inept presidential campaign. Mr. Romney, your entitlement reform ideas are essential, but when will the incompetence stop?

Brooks states it nicely. Romney's comments were stupid, ignorant, and self-destructive. I'm finding it hard to believe that he was ever a competent manager. And given how many businesses work in America, I wouldn't be surprised to find his background extremely talked up.

[kentonio]

Given the fact that is the word universally chosen to refer to programs such as that, what semantic word choice would make you feel better?

The problem is that whereas the word was once harmless, it has become twisted (quite deliberately) by republican policy makers and politicians to warp its meaning. Instead of the original sense of something that people are entitled to as a right or due to their own contributions, it has been turned around to imply a sense of entitlement on the part of the receiver. The discourse has become that these people are leeches who believe they are entitled to having everything given to them for 'free'.

It's not the first time a word has been made toxic for political reasons and it won't be the last.

[DinoDoc]

I think were seeing a bit of projection on your part.

[rah]

It’s what self-satisfied millionaires say to each other. It reinforces every negative view people have about Romney.

Hmm, he was in a room full of rich donors saying what they wanted to hear under the impression that the room had been vetted for electronic recording equipment. I don't see that as ineptness on his part. Hopefully others will learn not to have complete trust in situations like this.

I do bet that if we had access to all of Obama's comments said off the record that we could find some dozzies also. (but I will give Obama credit for being a bit smarter about things like this.)

[pchang]

I know a lot of republicans who will vote for Romney on the grounds that Obama has and will continue to tax them too much. For the most part, their AGIs are less then $250,000 / yr. Obama's tax plans will only noticeably increase the taxes of people who have AGIs in excess of $280,000 / yr. My AGI is significantly more than that and yet I see that increased taxes on myself will be necessary to benefit the country as a whole. I really don't understand the reasoning of those whose AGIs are < $280,000 but think their taxes will be too high under Obama.

[snoopy369]

You do know that people largely believe what other people tell them to believe, right?

[Lorizael]

You do know that people largely believe what other people tell them to believe, right?

I do now!