The Political & Philosophy Thread

[Dak]

I'm going to echo the notion that Republicans aren't all that fiscally responsible. It's one of the several reasons I don't bother to vote. However, if I were of a mind to vote, or were to retroactively vote in past elections, it'd most likely be straight ticket Republican, because I don't believe I've ever seen a Democrat with a good platform.

I guess the way to spin that would be at least the Dems don't lie about their tax&spend ways.....

Democrats always want to expand bureaucratic sprawl. Republicans just funnel more money to business and the military. I see the latter as a lesser of two evils.

 

[Einherjar86]

I'd love for someone to convince me I'm wrong here, and I welcome any left-leaning UMers to try (though I won't reply till tomorrow as it's my bedtime). I want help bullet-proofing a position like this, because I'll inevitably have people in my life calling me out on it over and over for the foreseeable future.

As long as Trump's in the White House, there's no way I can see a convincing argument to vote republican. Sorry, that's just my personal opinion. Republicans will bend over backwards to accommodate Trump in order to push their own agendas, which won't yield any clear reduction in deficit spending. And as it stands, the demagoguery and cult of personality that Trump promotes is more dangerous than deficit spending--that's my perspective, I know plenty of people here don't agree. On top of that, Trump himself is doing nothing to curtail deficit spending. He can claim his plan will lower the deficit all he wants, but that doesn't seem to be the consensus coming from the congressional budget office.

I don't see any reason to believe that the republicans will actually lower the deficit, and every reason to believe that they will continue to discriminate against people of color, using strategies that aren't only dangerous but financially draining. Being that I have friends here on visas, including friends who changed wedding plans so that partners could speed up the citizenship application process, and friends of Middle Eastern descent who can no longer visit family members overseas, I'm firmly opposed to supporting republicans simply because they advertise fiscal responsibility; in their next breath, they'll sign off on discriminatory programs that only add more zeroes. Congressional republicans may run on conservative platforms, but it's going to be a fiduciary bloodbath between them and a president whose ego runs higher than any deficit.

 

[Dak]

I'm interested in this purported overlap between the "financially draining strategies" and the "discriminatory strategies". Increasing the military budget and blocking transpersons is all that is coming to mind, and there isn't any direct connection there.

 

[Dak]

@zabu of nΩd

Here's the rock & hard place you're stuck between as a voter if fiscal prudence is your primary concern. Both articles written by the same economist who has worked for several (R) politicians/campaigns:

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/06/republican-spending-dysfunction-promised-trillions-in-cuts/

So there you have it. A party that brags about theoretically supporting $6,454,000 million in spending cuts balks at actually cutting $16 million. Earlier this year, the same party replaced its hard-fought discretionary-spending caps with a spending blowout that will likely cost $1.5 trillion over the decade. And then on Thursday, House Republicans voted to continue spending $20 billion annually on welfare for large agribusinesses. No net cuts at all.

However, it looks worse on the Blue side:

https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/20...-cost-medicare-college-sanders-deficits-taxes

Total cost: $42.5 trillion in new proposals over the next decade, on top of the $12.4 trillion baseline deficit.

To put this in perspective, Washington is currently projected to collect $44 trillion in revenues over the next decade. And the Republican tax cut, decried universally by Democrats as irresponsible (and by Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi as “Armageddon”) will cost less than $2 trillion over the decade.

The 30-year projected tab for these programs is even more staggering: new proposals costing $218 trillion, on top of an $84 trillion baseline deficit driven by Social Security, Medicare, and the resulting interest costs.

Two trains heading towards a fiscal cliff. One is just going noticeably slower and at least making a show of hand wringing.

 

[Einherjar86]

I'm interested in this purported overlap between the "financially draining strategies" and the "discriminatory strategies". Increasing the military budget and blocking transpersons is all that is coming to mind, and there isn't any direct connection there.

Building a wall.

But seriously, the monies diverted to ICE (they're already spending billions in order to identify undocumented immigrants), border patrol and maintaining immigration "tent cities," and funding deportations. Trump has said he wants to deport millions, and apparently it costs over $10,000 per deported individual. Who knows what will actually happen, but those aren't insignificant numbers.

Instead, we could let them live here, buy products and pay taxes (which they do).

 

[Dak]

Building a wall.

But seriously, the monies diverted to ICE (they're already spending billions in order to identify undocumented immigrants), border patrol and maintaining immigration "tent cities," and funding deportations. Trump has said he wants to deport millions, and apparently it costs over $10,000 per deported individual. Who knows what will actually happen, but those aren't insignificant numbers.

Instead, we could let them live here, buy products and pay taxes (which they do).

Well if by discriminatory you mean enforcing immigration laws then I'm not sure you're going to find much middle ground to be had.

As far as cost goes, the cost of deporting/detaining is increased quite a bit by those humane treatment requirements. We could start treating illegals like the traffickers they pay, and save some money. Or deploy the military to the border and treat them like enemy combatants. Save some money by combining border enforcement and training exercises. Maybe save lives in the long run as less die in the desert or in a trafficking vehicle because the perceived risk is finally high enough.

 

[CiG]

The cult of personality around Trump is no better or worse than the Obama dickriding fest that was 2008-2016.

 

[Einherjar86]

Well if by discriminatory you mean enforcing immigration laws then I'm not sure you're going to find much middle ground to be had.

As far as cost goes, the cost of deporting/detaining is increased quite a bit by those humane treatment requirements. We could start treating illegals like the traffickers they pay, and save some money. Or deploy the military to the border and treat them like enemy combatants. Save some money by combining border enforcement and training exercises. Maybe save lives in the long run as less die in the desert or in a trafficking vehicle because the perceived risk is finally high enough.

Or we could, as I said, let them live here, buy products and pay taxes.

 

[CiG]

Let the ones already in the U.S.A. stay and then tighten the borders properly, or let these ones stay and continue border control as usual?

Edit: the former is probably a concession many Trump voters would accept, the latter is basically just an open border policy.

 

[The Ozzman]

Let the ones already in the U.S.A. stay and then tighten the borders properly, or let these ones stay and continue border control as usual?

Edit: the former is probably a concession many Trump voters would accept, the latter is basically just an open border policy.

I would be fine with stopping the bleeding. Everyone gets what they (mostly) want

 

[arg]

Or we could, as I said, let them live here, buy products and pay taxes.

i would agree to let the productive ones who are already here do that. would you agree to deport the ones dependent on welfare?

 

[HamburgerBoy]

Or we could, as I said, let them live here, buy products and pay taxes.

The average public school student costs ~9k/yr. The average Hispanic woman in America has a fertility rate 20% higher than white women. The median Hispanic family earns $46k/yr, and illegal immigrants tend to start below the median (ones performing agricultural work are paid sub-minimum wage and basically only pay sales taxes).

They don't make a net tax contribution.

 

[zabu of nΩd]

I guess I created the impression that I was indiscriminately siding with the entire Republican Party over this issue. My real intention is to judge congresspeople on a case-by-case basis, and to support fiscal discipline regardless of party affiliation.

I expect that centrism will remain a key issue for me, and that I won't support Tea Party people like Paul, Rubio and Cruz just because they support balanced budget proposals (I consider their rigid anti-tax stance pretty antithetical to fiscal discipline, after all). There are other issues I care deeply about, but screening congresspeople by fiscal discipline and centrism already produces a very small subset, and it's obvious I can't expect to get everything I want from a politician.

Of all the reasons to vote Republican, that's the worst. Republicans grew the budget by almost 20% in 2017 over 2016. Full Republican control is what led to the extreme spending under W as well. They propose balanced budget bills all the time but they never pass them. The few Republicans that genuinely do support cutting spending are marginalized libertarians-light, e.g. Rand Paul. The 90s were so nice in part because Clinton and Gingrich kept cock-blocking each other.

Funny thing is that I voted for Johnson in a blue state in 2016 and wished Clinton won when Republicans took back Congress as well, for similar concerns, but at this point I believe one of two possibilities are real. One, deficit spending truly doesn't matter and the Keynesians and neoliberals are right about everything and there's no point worrying. Two, we're already long past the point of no return and things are going to get fucked at some indeterminate point in the future and there's no point worrying. As a result I'm going to vote Republican in 2018 and 2020.

Republicans are and always have been all bark when it comes to the deficit. Their base likes it and a few of the Austrian School knuckle-draggers sincerely believe it. But they never follow through with it when they're in power, and, more often than not, they choose to explode the deficit instead. You're better off voting progressive and hoping they find compromise with the moderates, because there are rather simple ways to reduce health care costs in the country and reduce the deficit, and they're things the Republicans would never enact--the most they might do is cut public services and throw the money in the war tank instead at the bank.

I rooted for Republicans to take the Senate in 2014 over the same concerns you're raising here. Look at how that worked out.

I'm going to echo the notion that Republicans aren't all that fiscally responsible. It's one of the several reasons I don't bother to vote. However, if I were of a mind to vote, or were to retroactively vote in past elections, it'd most likely be straight ticket Republican, because I don't believe I've ever seen a Democrat with a good platform.

I guess the way to spin that would be at least the Dems don't lie about their tax&spend ways.....

Democrats always want to expand bureaucratic sprawl. Republicans just funnel more money to business and the military. I see the latter as a lesser of two evils.

I think it's important not to overgeneralize here (even if I was guilty of that earlier). Yes, there's a motive for Republicans to exploit voters' deficit fears rhetorically without taking action, but I find it too conspiracy theory-ish to think they're all full of shit, or that the few who aren't full of shit are just pawns to the rest of congress.

You could use this kind of "it'll never happen" argument with minor parties too, but if both major parties are steering us toward our doom, there isn't necessarily anything to lose by supporting a minor party (or in my case, an oddball subset of congresspeople).

I realize that the odds of getting the debt under control are slim, but I'd rather speak out and try to make a difference than accept this disaster as inevitable. When the shit hits the fan, and I've booked my one-way plane ticket to New Zealand or wherever, I'd also like my conscience to be assuaged by the knowledge that I did my part to vote against the problem, and to warn people about it.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

"Rigid Tea Party" candidates are the only place you're going to find fiscal conservatism in the Republican party. Who are these specific congressman or senators you've screened? Two of the three guys that authored the bills you posted are Tea Party people. The other one is apparently retiring.

There's nothing conspiracy-theory about it. Politicians are put into power largely on the basis of what they promise, and to whom. What they promise is a juggling act between moderates and extremists, and in practice the overwhelming majority, at least on the federal level, do not deliver on promises of change. At most they engage in gridlock and refuse to budge; this is why evangelicals are still happy to vote Republican, even though Republicans have failed for almost 50 years to ban abortion (though on a local level there is some evangelical success). This is also why it's more productive to vote for an opposed congress and executive; Reps will refuse to endorse big pushes on medical/welfare spending, Dems will refuse to endorse big pushes on military spending.

 

[zabu of nΩd]

Who are these specific congressman or senators you've screened?

I started a spreadsheet today, lol... just to get a sense of how narrowly I can define my key issues without ruling out over 90% of congress. I've only looked at senators so far, because the house is 9x the work.

Manchin (D-WV) seems the closest to my model senator. He has a reputation as a "conservative Democrat", has some of the highest fiscal scores for Democrats among conservative institutions who publish such ratings (i.e. Americans for Prosperity), voted yea on this bill, and cosponsored this one, which is the only post-recession balanced budget bill I've seen with a bipartisan group of cosponsors.

McCaskill (D-MO), Tester (D-MT), Carper (D-DE) and Bennet (D-CO) also voted yea on the above bill and have decent fiscal scores from Americans for Prosperity or similar groups.

Heitkamp (D-ND) has a reputation as a moderate, high fiscal scores from conservative groups, made balancing the budget a campaign issue when she first ran for senate, and has cosponsored a dem-only balanced budget bill, but she hasn't voted yea on any of the bills I've seen that went to vote.

As for the bill Rand Paul introduced this year with deficit reduction measures, there are two Republicans who voted yea and are relatively close to the economic center in a National Journal ranking: Daines (R-MT) and Lankford (R-OK). Shelby (R-AL) has a similar National Journal ranking, and voted nay on a successful 2015 bill which allegedly ended the pay-as-you-go standard.

McCain of course has a reputation as a moderate. I haven't seen meaningful support from him on balanced budget proposals, but he was the only Republican not to vote for the 2017 tax cut (he abstained).

"Rigid Tea Party" candidates are the only place you're going to find fiscal conservatism in the Republican party. Who are these specific congressman or senators you've screened? Two of the three guys that authored the bills you posted are Tea Party people. The other one is apparently retiring.

There's nothing conspiracy-theory about it. Politicians are put into power largely on the basis of what they promise, and to whom. What they promise is a juggling act between moderates and extremists, and in practice the overwhelming majority, at least on the federal level, do not deliver on promises of change. At most they engage in gridlock and refuse to budge; this is why evangelicals are still happy to vote Republican, even though Republicans have failed for almost 50 years to ban abortion (though on a local level there is some evangelical success). This is also why it's more productive to vote for an opposed congress and executive; Reps will refuse to endorse big pushes on medical/welfare spending, Dems will refuse to endorse big pushes on military spending.

Good point about opposed congress and president, but I'm not convinced that the Tea Party senators are a bastion of GOP fiscal discipline, since they all voted in favor of the 2017 tax cut.

 

[The Ozzman]

i would agree to let the productive ones who are already here do that. would you agree to deport the ones dependent on welfare?

Liberals would rather talk about Trump putting ketchup on steak than actually being rational about things.

 

[CiG]

"Some of the limits of public support for freedom of the press are made stark with a quarter of Americans (26%) saying they agree “the president should have the authority to close news outlets engaged in bad behavior,” including a plurality of Republicans (43%)."
http://www.ipsos.com/en-us/news-polls/americans-views-media-2018-08-07

 

[HamburgerBoy]

@zabu of nΩd I'd be interested to see where your research takes you. Off the top of my head I know Manchin loves spending government money on pharmaceutical companies (just look into him and his daughter) and I don't think that bill addresses much when it provides an exception for defense spending during wartime and does nothing to address mandatory SS spending. Even if these politicians don't consciously deficit spend like crazy, most of them are too entrenched to make the tough cuts necessary.

Apparently a little old, but new to me and relevant to this page:

 

[CiG]

Apparently a little old, but new to me and relevant to this page:

View attachment 15506

Great example of: the left are so anti-racist that they're racist.

She didn't learn anything from Ozzy's dunce daughter on The View when she said "if you deport the illegals who's going to clean your toilets Trump" or something to that effect.

 

[Einherjar86]

The average public school student costs ~9k/yr. The average Hispanic woman in America has a fertility rate 20% higher than white women. The median Hispanic family earns $46k/yr, and illegal immigrants tend to start below the median (ones performing agricultural work are paid sub-minimum wage and basically only pay sales taxes).

They don't make a net tax contribution.

Thanks, I don't know all the specifics. I'm not sure these numbers make an argument for them being a drain, though.

I've read that more than half of undocumented immigrants file tax returns. Many pay taxes for programs they don't use. If most are working in agriculture, then that means they're assisting the performance of another sector, which translates into gains (i.e. more money than goes into its employees' pockets). I'm not only talking about taxes, but about buying products and working low wages.

The federal education budget has risen over the past decades but not enough to keep up with the number of students, far more of whom are white.

I'm not sure exactly how you can be so certain that they don't make a net contribution, but I'm certain they're not a total drain. That is, they do contribute to the economy, often in productive ways. Theoretically, deporting all of them would be like removing an organism from the ecosystem.