Why do Republicans suck?

Why do both main political parties suck a giant bag of dick's?? Power over you and more importantly your taxes. Libertarianism seems like a good idea the more I'm forced to swallow the fucking propaganda both parties are shoving down our throats
 
MisterKister said:
Why do both main political parties suck a giant bag of dick's?? Power over you and more importantly your taxes. Libertarianism seems like a good idea the more I'm forced to swallow the fucking propaganda both parties are shoving down our throats
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Libertarianism is an unworkable fantasy and rationalization of greed and antisocial behavior, it is contrary to human nature, humans form sharing communities that are hierarchically organized.

If libertarianism worked, how come nobody uses it? Not one country on the planet.
 
MisterKister said:
Why do both main political parties suck a giant bag of dick's?? Power over you and more importantly your taxes. Libertarianism seems like a good idea the more I'm forced to swallow the fucking propaganda both parties are shoving down our throats
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Are you sure it is not just propaganda being paid for by the Republicans that is designed to look like the 'both sides' troll makes sense? Because that is mostly what I have seen. A whole lot of 'both sides' trolling bullshit.
 
hanimmal said:
Are you sure it is not just propaganda being paid for by the Republicans that is designed to look like the 'both sides' troll makes sense? Because that is mostly what I have seen. A whole lot of 'both sides' trolling bullshit.
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Lol, freaking trump is going to become the new Hitler for philosophical questions since it makes such a dramatic contrast. Pre trump, there was a reasonable case to be made that the parties were fairly similar. Sure they paid lip service to different groups, but were the policies of Bush that different than Obama? I didn't think so. Working class people fall further behind under both dens and Republicans, both parties are beholden to corporate interest as elections cost a lot.

But well...lol, yeah not to hard to pick the correct position given the current reality.

Libertarians are great on paper but just trash bullshit anarcho capitalism in practice. We don't all start with a railroad ms Taggart.
 
HGCC said:
Lol, freaking trump is going to become the new Hitler for philosophical questions since it makes such a dramatic contrast. Pre trump, there was a reasonable case to be made that the parties were fairly similar. Sure they paid lip service to different groups, but were the policies of Bush that different than Obama? I didn't think so. Working class people fall further behind under both dens and Republicans, both parties are beholden to corporate interest as elections cost a lot.

But well...lol, yeah not to hard to pick the correct position given the current reality.

Libertarians are great on paper but just trash bullshit anarcho capitalism in practice. We don't all start with a railroad ms Taggart.
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Obamacare bringing us to over 90% mark for people insured sure beat what it was before.

Outside of that there was not much Obama could get done because after his first term the Republicans pulled out their 'socialist = Democrat' programming and manufactured the 'Tea Party' scam that continues to this day.

I don't buy the 'working class falls further behind' thing though. The middle class is still growing in America, as our population grows, more and more people are achieving middle class lifestyles.

https://journeys.dartmouth.edu/cens...mily-vacations-who-are-americas-middle-class/
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So basically between 1980 and 2010 the American middle class was joined by about 11 million people.

I don't disagree that the wealthiest are able to take bigger advantage of the economy since the 70's though.


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Mainly because the rich are able to vacuum up all those distresses properties, because they have the credit and assets to cash in on during the Republican led recessions. One of the things I think is interesting is that the Republicans are screaming about inflation, but I am thinking it is more because the rich were not able to buy up the distressed properties yet because of all the eviction moratoriums, and that 'inflation' is increasing home prices which means a lot of people will be able to not have to sell at distressed prices.

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I think that people in my generation got screwed by our dads/elder males telling us that we would be able to have a middle class life working with our hands/management and a lot of us bought that until Bush and the Republicans crashed the economy in 2008 and it showed how replaceable we all are if we don't get more specialized skills for the workplace.

But that doesn't mean that we are still not growing our middle class. I have a lot of hope once we are operating at 100% efficiency when all of our kids get a good opportunity to thrive in our society.
 
Perhaps we're mixing different axis of middle class. The redistribution of wealth chart might be an indicator of the ability for the middleclass to "get ahead". Different axis being the middle-class now(current income) vs middle-class tomorrow(ability to save for the future). I do think the ability of a low-earning couple to buy a home is significantly more difficult today than yesterday, and I think the ability of a mid-earning couple to save for tomorrow is more difficult today than yesterday, but I say that anecdotally.
 
mooray said:
Perhaps we're mixing different axis of middle class. The redistribution of wealth chart might be an indicator of the ability for the middleclass to "get ahead". Different axis being the middle-class now(current income) vs middle-class tomorrow(ability to save for the future). I do think the ability of a low-earning couple to buy a home is significantly more difficult today than yesterday, and I think the ability of a mid-earning couple to save for tomorrow is more difficult today than yesterday, but I say that anecdotally.
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When is yesterday to you I guess.

I posted the above just to show that our middle class is still growing. If you are talking about relative wealth of the middle class, I am not sure you would not have to have about 10 charts like homeownership to think about all the ways to measure wealth.

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Again, looking at 1970 that would be about 65% have a home, and at peak in 2020 before the Trump and Republican led recession 68%, we added about 91.7 million homes. (I should have looked up the 1980 numbers to be consistent with the above post I made, but I am not going to redo this lol)

I would say that there is no question that outside of current recession over the last year that our country is still doing better than it ever has before for our growing middle class.

It is just not enough, we can do better, it is just that for the last shit 100 years give or take, the Wealthy Melanin-lite Heterosexual Male Only agenda has had us operating at about 33% efficiency. This is why I am looking forward to what happens in 20-30 years.
 
But again, now meaning income and tomorrow meaning the ability to accumulate wealth. Said another way, homeownership is somewhat meaningless and could qualify for the now, whereas equity would be the measure for tomorrow.
 
mooray said:
But again, now meaning income and tomorrow meaning the ability to accumulate wealth. Said another way, homeownership is somewhat meaningless and could qualify for the now, whereas equity would be the measure for tomorrow.
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Im not trolling you, but I have no idea what this means.

Income is how much money you bring in, wealth is how much of that income is left over + whatever the stuff you have worth is.

I am not saying that we can't do better as a society, or arguing standard of living (I would rather live now than any other time in history even though we have a lot of pollution to clean up), just that our middle class is growing. And that the argument should be more that the Wealthiest in our nation were able to take the majority of the gains we have made as a nation over the last 60 years due to what is now the Republican party's shit economic policies.
 
That's okay, I don't know what the greater discussion is as I haven't read back at all, just hopping in here somewhat questioning the growth(or maybe "strength" is a better word..?) of the middle class. Since things don't usually change in a binary off/on kind of way, we see a degradation/appreciation over time. What I was questioning is the metric of being a homeowner as a significant metric. So let's say for example that in 1980 you have 50% of the 60yo population that has purchased a home and in 2020 you have 60% of the 60yo population that has purchased a home, that might make it seem like 10% growth, but what if the home equity of those purchases in 1980 is 75% and the equity of those in 2020 is 25%? That paints the entirely opposite picture. Unless the metric of "owning a home" means "free and clear"..? I don't think it usually does though.
 
Homes are weird, I consider them a leveraged investment. You borrow money to buy one, it can greatly increase your wealth since the asset can appreciate at a faster rate than what you are paying in interest (can go the other way as well). You have to live somewhere, paying towards a physical asset you own at the end rather than rent generates wealth. It's forced savings. It can be generational, it can be turned into a wealth generating thing if you rent it out and live cheaper.
 
HGCC said:
Homes are weird, I consider them a leveraged investment. You borrow money to buy one, it can greatly increase your wealth since the asset can appreciate at a faster rate than what you are paying in interest (can go the other way as well). You have to live somewhere, paying towards a physical asset you own at the end rather than rent generates wealth. It's forced savings. It can be generational, it can be turned into a wealth generating thing if you rent it out and live cheaper.
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My uncle used to say, buy the most expensive home you can afford, because you'll fight hard to keep your home, but you might not fight at all to build a 401k. It's worked well for them, though we definitely didn't go that route, too scurry for me.
 
mooray said:
That's okay, I don't know what the greater discussion is as I haven't read back at all, just hopping in here somewhat questioning the growth(or maybe "strength" is a better word..?) of the middle class. Since things don't usually change in a binary off/on kind of way, we see a degradation/appreciation over time. What I was questioning is the metric of being a homeowner as a significant metric.
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Sure everything degrades no question, but you are still having homes worth 100k easy that were bought at about 6k. And the people who sold and bought something a little further out have the same, but a little higher prices. So I am not sure why you wouldn't consider home ownership wealth.

mooray said:
So let's say for example that in 1980 you have 50% of the 60yo population that has purchased a home and in 2020 you have 60% of the 60yo population that has purchased a home, that might make it seem like 10% growth,
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Seem though. That would mean you didn't maybe take into account that the population increased quite a bit too, and that those are all people getting into a home that otherwise did not. And that is growing the middle class.

Again we added about 92 million homes since the 70's. That is real wealth that the middle class have.

That does not mean though that the wealthiest didn't get a larger cut by lending them the money to buy goods/services for those homes from them. But still means that the middle class is growing.

mooray said:
but what if the home equity of those purchases in 1980 is 75% and the equity of those in 2020 is 25%? That paints the entirely opposite picture. Unless the metric of "owning a home" means "free and clear"..? I don't think it usually does though.
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You might just be picking up on the people buying homes now that were not given equity by the government (all those white guys coming back from the war getting those cheap loans) or generational wealth being handed down and them having to pay for everything themselves.

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Everything is out of whack right now though I am not questioning that.

I know that I actually am a household that owes more in student debt thanb my house mortgage. Which is crazy to think about.
 
First, as always, I appreciate your well-though-out replies. :)

hanimmal said:
Sure everything degrades no question, but you are still having homes worth 100k easy that were bought at about 6k. And the people who sold and bought something a little further out have the same, but a little higher prices. So I am not sure why you wouldn't consider home ownership wealth.
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Just because it's too simplified for my liking. Building wealth has an important element to it, which is frailty(inverse of strength). So when you have a downturn, people that are in frail positions(i.e. low equity), are wiped out. And people that were in stronger positions(i.e. high equity) and able to lick their wounds and move forward, so they're both in the same category of "homeownership", but on different economic planets. My perception is that people are far more willing to extend themselves today and, if true, that reflects "wealth" very inaccurately.

hanimmal said:
Seem though. That would mean you didn't maybe take into account that the population increased quite a bit too, and that those are all people getting into a home that otherwise did not. And that is growing the middle class.

Again we added about 92 million homes since the 70's. That is real wealth that the middle class have.
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I definitely thought about it, which I thought my example covered the increase-but-maybe-not thing, so it still doesn't address "wealth", imo.

hanimmal said:
That does not mean though that the wealthiest didn't get a larger cut by lending them the money to buy goods/services for those homes from them. But still means that the middle class is growing.


You might just be picking up on the people buying homes now that were not given equity by the government (all those white guys coming back from the war getting those cheap loans) or generational wealth being handed down and them having to pay for everything themselves.

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Everything is out of whack right now though I am not questioning that.

I know that I actually am a household that owes more in student debt thanb my house mortgage. Which is crazy to think about.
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Curious what the connection was to student debt and mortgage?

Something I was thinking about that could bring us through the backdoor, npi, is...do we agree that wealth is mostly zero sum? Obviously not completely, but mostly, or a significant portion? If yes, then I'd ask, in regard to the first chart showing the decline of total wealth from the 50th-90th percentiles, where do we think that loss comes from? Income? Real estate? Savings/retirement/investments?
 
Rambled about home prices, but meant to say that yes, I look at that wealth distribution gap when saying they fall behind. You are right it's growing in absolute terms.
 
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