You are not logged in. Please register or login.
- Topics: Active | Unanswered
Re: 2016 Presidential Election Thread
misterID wrote:buzzsaw wrote:Raising taxes doesn't help the middle class. Good jobs help the middle class. Higher paying good jobs. Every other solution does not help the middle class.
Bernie has the luxury of being from Vermont. He never had to fight in an election. He never had to defend or make an important vote with consequences, where his career was on the line. He's never had the responsibility of diplomacy or working across the isle. He's never had to fight. He's never had to deal with real problems. He's had the luxury of being the outsider who could do, vote or say whatever he wanted to the point of calling himself an independent socialist (he was never even a democrat) and his district would vote for him because he's Bernie the mascot. And making college free means shit when so many kids are born at a disadvantage of being poor, with bad school programs and undiagnosed learning problems where they'll never have a real shot at a university, but they will be left paying for privlaged kids to go to a school they could actually afford themselves.
It's kinda messed up to assume poor kids don't have a shot at University. You're also overlooking the middle class children that are saddled with crushing debt because they have to take out tens of thousands of dollars in loans (or 100,000+ if they want to go to grad school). Free college would save middle class youth a ton of money which would go back into the economy as they could afford to purchase homes and cars. That's the other part of Bernie's platform that gets overlooked. The money saved from the "free stuff" would get pumped back into the economy (because let's face it we're a nation of consumers) and would create more jobs. Millions of young people would benefit from free college which would outweigh the privileged few who could afford it outright.
It's not messed up, poor kids are victims of having bad schools that aren't properly readying them for SATs or even learning disabilities that will go undiagnosed, not to mention a lot of these kids HAVE to work, they have to quit HS or directly go to work after graduation. As for college being too expensive, do something about it. The professors who preach socialism aren't taking pay cuts, aren't protesting or boycotting. The universities aren't cutting prices when they can. They can help, but they're not. Fix the pre college schools first.
Re: 2016 Presidential Election Thread
James Lofton wrote:Bernie isn't getting any landslides anywhere. Those coin tosses tell us all we need to know about which direction the dem primary season is going.
I predict Sanders will win NH by a wide margin (20-ish points, if not more).
So yeah, I think I can safely say I nailed this prediction 
(although I was completely wrong regarding Trump...).
Re: 2016 Presidential Election Thread
I'm in the oil industry and hope like hell the GOP wins just as a way to make sure my industry is left alone, but I admire Sanders' stance on corruption in the political system. I just strongly dislike his radical environmentalist agenda. Hillary also very bad on this topic.
Would a Bernie presidency really be that bad for the oil industry? I mean,
1. Oil has proven to be inelastic, so even if it's made more expensive by additional taxes, people are still going to buy it, because there still isn't a viable alternative.
2. Even if he blocks areas of expansion, the industry still has room to drill, expand and make money. And any blocks on expansion could very well be temporary depending on need for energy and the availability of alternatives.
The industry is going to be fine, and it's going to be fine for a long time. I think the alarmism we're seeing now from the industry is just driven by the balance sheet and maximizing profits in the short term.
Also, I'm not criticizing you for voting on your best interests, because that's exactly what we should all be doing, but I would like to point out that while your job is very important, so is the environment that you live in and that you will be leaving behind to future generations. I hope you're considering that as well.
Re: 2016 Presidential Election Thread
http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/201 … -election/
Interactive chart for electorate votes by demographic. Shows you Trump can win if enough stay home voters decide to turnout for him. The latino and asian vote will be irrelevant and the black turnout will drop, so his main battle area is college educated and non college educated white votes. If he can get a 5-10% boost from the latter while maintaining the rest it would get serious.
Re: 2016 Presidential Election Thread
Single payer is not the answer. I've yet to hear of a country anywhere near our size with socialized health care that likes it.
Everybody on the right in America says that. Those with socialized healthcare that actually reside in those countries, say much differently.
Re: 2016 Presidential Election Thread
I just don't understand the "'Murica is too big" excuse, at all...
The bigger the pool of insured, the lower the overall insured risk, the cheaper the insurance. This is economics 101.
The EU (all member countries have socialized medicine) is much more populous than the US, and it works across the board. The vast majority of Europeans balk at the half-assed system the US uses and would never support fully privatized medicine. I.e.: they like the system.
There is absolutely no reason why you can't organize this by state, if you're really scared of the size of the thing. Just create federal legislation that defines the rules, and let the states organizes the practicalities
Socialized medicine is not what the average right-winger thinks it is. You will still get to choose your doctors and hospitals of choice, doctors will still earn a metric shit-ton of money, you will pay less for all parts of your healthcare needs and you will get better overall quality healthcare. This is what healthcare in Europe, Canada, Australia, etc... looks like, not the rundown hospitals, referral requirements, assigned doctors, half-assed medical treatments, ... that you associate with communism or third world countries.
And if you're a rich-ass motherfucker that's afraid that he can't get preferential treatment anymore, think again. You have private hospitals all over Europe, and they will pamper you as much as you're willing to spend. The basic access to the core medical treatment is the same for everyone though.
The most innovative pharmaceutical companies are in Europe (Germany, Switzerland, Belgium ...) because of socialized medicine. Because Hospitals are either ran by non-profit organizations that abide by the same rules, you will see a lot of hospitals sharing (top of the line) facilities with big (tuition free, or limited tuition) universities with the goal of having the access to the latest research and tools. This symbiotic relationship is responsible for some of the brightest minds in medicine.
Stop trying to come up with ways that it wouldn't work. Think about the benefits and start thinking about how you can actually make it work. Fucking uninformed negativism gets me mad as hell...
Re: 2016 Presidential Election Thread
This concept that it's uninformed is bullshit. I have forgotten more about health care than most of you have ever known. But even forgetting about that, the gov't couldn't even enroll people in Obama care and that's a small fraction of what singe payer would be. There's zero chance they don't fuck it up. Zero.
