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At 11/9/08 03:11 PM, n64kid wrote: It this pic appropriate?

You forgot America's beard.

At 11/9/08 05:50 AM, cellardoor6 wrote: We already have an enormously progressive tax code, in which the wealthy are already paying the vast majority of taxes. How Obama can know that, and I'm sure he does, and yet still want to raise taxes on the rich... it shows you what his motivation is. It is socialism. We already have socialism in a mild form, but Obama apparently isn't satisfied with it. He wants to take it to the extreme.

So increasing taxes on the upper quintile by 3-4% is "extreme" socialism? Also, you think that the US is already a socialism... because the rich pay more taxes than anyone else? I always figured socialism implied much more than that.

I don't know if that was intentional or not, but saying "low and middle class earners" kind of misses the point because even people who don't work and/or don't pay taxes are going to be given direct handouts from the government under Obama's policy. It's not just tax cuts and tax hikes, it's an actual handover of money from one segment of society to the other.

I think you're mistaken. I haven't seen anything to suggest that Obama is giving tax credits to those who don't work, or don't pay taxes. It's true that some of the recepients of Obama's tax credit don't pay income taxes, but they do pay payroll taxes.

At 11/8/08 10:57 PM, adrshepard wrote: What you're describing doesn't make any sense. Any growth in real income for the nation as a whole always means an increase in real GDP (a bigger pie). And yes, inflation does affect income and wealth through purchasing power, but inflation is essential to economic growth. When I've used the word "natural" before, I'm talking about a steady-state economy. At a growth rate of about 5%, there is no pressure for inflation to accelerate, instead allowing it to rise at a constant rate of around 3%. Inflation by itself does decrease wealth and purchasing power, but in times of growth it is always offset by increases in income.

An increase in GDP does not necessarily indicate an increase in total wealth. There is only a set amount of wealth in the world, and an increase in wealth would require a decrease in wealth elsewhere. Instead, virtually every country in the world experiences positive GDP growth annually. GDP growth (in the US today) for the most part represents the perfunctory spiral/wedge inflation that naturally occurs from year to year.

That's not the natural conclusion at all. There's a direct correlation between recessions and the unemployment rate, and recent increases are a possible indicator of a recession. This is all part of the business cycle, as I've said, and to simply look at a 30 year timeline, mark off presidential terms, and then jump to the conclusion that all the republicans did something wrong is simply foolish. The US economy is incredibly complex, and your analysis depends upon recessions and unemployment rates just barely falling around term dates.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/94300-un employment-rates-recession-periods-and-s tock-market-prices

Like I have said before, the first increase in unemployment preceded the effects of the recession by 4 years. If you look closely at the chart that you yourself linked to, you'll find that unemployment increases as an indicator of a recession usually precede the recession by less than a year. You cannot attribute the increase in unemployment peaking multiple times during Bush's presidency purely to the recession.

Economics is a great area of study, since even the best economists are surprised by economic developments, and the interconnectedness of markets and influences means that any one change could conceivably have any number of effects. What you're suggesting is technically possible but is wildly implausible and doesn't mesh with spending statistics. In your scenario (I'm guessing because, if you know what you are talking about, its the only reasonable series of events that comes to mind that would result in what you said) the rich would spend so much money on certain goods that their prices would rise dramatically enough to raise the cost of living for the rest of the population, but yet not so high as to justify investment in production to gain a competitive edge in pricing (the cost of expanding production outweighs predicted profits by decreasing prices and cost per unit). That doesn't sound like a very probable outcome to me, and a simple look at the
quintile expenditures is enough to show that the first four quintiles spend substantially more than the fifth, and of that the top quintile doesn't spend even closely the same amount on any homogenous good in the economy so as to raise prices for everyone.
I have never heard of the "crowding out" effect being applied to anything outside of investment markets, but it is a novel idea to look for it in consumption spending.

Alas, I was mistaken. It is true that spending from the top quintile did not cause any dramatic form of inflation. It was a rash assumption on my part, and I apologize. However, the fact remains that under Bush median household income saw drops while the wealthy saw gains. Bush may have cut taxes for everyone, but his promises of economic prosperity through trickle down economics fell short. Perhaps saying that supply side theory is engineered to benefit the rich is a rash assumption.. perhaps. However, the ultimate reality is that supply side theory has been empirically proven wrong twice in the last century. I would say that Obama supporters are completely justified in decrying these policies that have proven so disastrous for our country.

At 11/8/08 09:32 PM, cellardoor6 wrote: Economically you'd create a situation where people would be more vulnerable to and more dependent on the government. You'd create an incentive for people to leach off of the government, and you'd create a disincentive for people to create as much wealth as possible. This would harm the economy because being a welfare recipient would be more of an appealing option. Instead of striving and contributing to society, you'd be complacent with your little checks from the government. You'd have more and more people living off of what is essentially a newer, larger welfare system. You'd have more and more of the money being artificially moved around the country by the government instead of wealth being distributed naturally.

I guess I just don't see the correlation to Obama's actual policies. Is slashing taxes for the middle class and increasing taxes on the rich really equivalent to socialism? Low and middle class earners still have to work to earn the money, it's not like it's being handed to them.

At 11/8/08 09:14 PM, adrshepard wrote: I don't know why you focus the distribution when you have a case with the median income. Over time, we are talking about an ever-expanding pie. Whether or not each share is equivalent is irrelevant so long as the piece is bigger.

I explained the effect of Bush's tax policies, because you specifically asked me to connect the fall in median income to Bush's policies. Also, no, we are not talking about an ever expanding pie. Money has no natural value, all it does is represent value. To expand that even further, money does not simply represent a set amount of value, it represents a percentage of the total wealth. How much your money is worth is directly correlated to how much money is in circulation.

I don't think you know what you are saying. Unemployment always goes up above the natural rate when a recession is near, and there isn't anything presidents or even the government itself can do to stop it in a free market. It isn't valid evidence to use against Bush, unless you have some complex economic model to prove that if Bush hadn't done x, then unemployment would be lower.

The problem with your analysis is that unemployment was on the rise well before the recession. Unemployment also peaked at 6.1% in 2003, well before the effects of the recession were being felt. While I agree that in some respects the government has little control over the economy, there is nothing natural that can explain the sharp increases in unemployment that occurred not only under Bush, but under Bush Sr. and Reagan as well. The natural conclusion is that there's something wrong with the economic policy that these presidents used.

This argument has changed with every post. I thought we were talking about Bush's tax policy as a redistributive tool, which could only work if the game were "zero-sum." True, the 300$ figure says that the median income hasn't risen under Bush, but that's not quite what we were talking about. Taxes were cut for everyone, and the fact that the rich paid fewer of a percentage doesn't explain why there was a loss in median income.
To sum up:
Bush's tax policy resulted in real income gains on a relative basis for everyone.
Not everyone gained more real income in an absolute basis over the span of Bush's administration.

There actually wasn't a loss in median income before it was adjusted for inflation. I explained this earlier in the thread. Under Bush the median income rose by about 4k. The problem was that bush gave so much to the rich, that inflation caused devaluation of what the median household gained. So while taxes were cut for everyone, only the upper quintile gained any real wealth under Bush.

At 11/8/08 08:09 PM, cellardoor6 wrote: Heaven forbid that the government refrain from enacting an enormous redistribution in wealth by taking money away from the productive and hard-working and giving it to people who don't deserve it!

Ok, you have caught my intrigue. If I take your statement at face value and assume that Obama's tax plan can only be described as a massive redistribution of the wealth, could you explain to me what exactly is wrong with that? (Economically and socially speaking of course, I'm not interested in hearing the "moral" arguments against it.)

When exactly did tax relief for the middle class become "handouts"?

At 11/8/08 12:23 PM, adrshepard wrote: It is true that from 2000 to 2007, there is about a 1.2% increase in the poverty rate. But you still have not attempted to explain the relationship between Bush and this result. http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/h istpov/perindex.html (table 9)

Think of it this way. Lets say there are two men. One holds $4. the other holds $1. Lets assume for the sake of argument that the richer man represents the upper class, and the poorer man represents the lower class. Now a third man enters the room. This man represents the government. He decides that he wants to give $12 to the richer man. The poorer man gets upset about this, and claims that he'll beat up the government if the government gives all $12 to the richer man. The government thus decides to give $10 to the richer man and $2 to the poorer man. So now the richer man has $14, and the poorer man has $3.

Now at face value it would appear that both of the men gained wealth, but this is misleading because at first the wealth distribution was like this:

Rich Man: $4: 80% of the wealth
Poor Man: $1: 20% of the wealth

and now, the wealth distribution is like this:

Rich Man: $14: 82% of the wealth
Poor Man: $3: 18% of the wealth

When you adjust for inflation, the poor man actually lost money. Now this is a very simple example and it leaves out quite a few other factors, but it illustrates an important point. The only ones who really benefited from Bush's tax cuts were the rich, because ultimately, bush's policies put a larger percentage of the wealth into the hands of the rich then they did into the hands of the poor.

Not according to the economic data. ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/l f/aat1.txt The unemployment rate in 2007 was 4.6%, and over the course of Bush's term the average appears to be around 5%, the natural rate of unemployment.

The problem here is that you're reading unemployment statistics from mid 2007, while I'm reading statistics from late 2008. It is true that the unemployment rate was 4.6 in June of 2007, but it had already risen to 5.0 by December 2007. By October 2008, it had risen another 1.5% to 6.5% [1]. Also, while a 5% unemployment rate might be considered natural under most modern presidencies, a 2.6% increase in unemployment is not "natural", and is certainly not beneficial.

These two documents suggest to me that there is a real cyclical effect at work here. The graph in the second link shows about a ten-year gap between recessions and improvements in median income past the older level, and 2007 figures from the first link show that graph can be continued to over 50,000. Now, that link also mentions the 300 dollar decline, but that isn't suprising considering the other increases occur over greater time scales.

Your logic is faulty. Surprising or not, the $300 loss disproves your theory that everyone gained under Bush's policies. Now, I think I've been far too generous to your side of the argument thus far. Unless you have any legitimate evidence that the middle class actually made gains under Bush, I'm going to assume that you don't have any support for your argument.

Lol, what better reason to be skeptical of them!

Maybe, skepticism isn't necessarily a bad thing. But unless you can actually find justified flaws in the statistics, you'll just have to accept them. I think Drakim nailed it on the head in his last post. Thus far your commentary in this thread has reflected more of a vendetta against Obama than actual disapproval in his campaign tactics.

1. (2008), "Civilian Unemployment Rate", U.S. Department of Labor: Bureau of Labor Statistics, <http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/da ta/UNRATE.txt>

Whether or not those under the poverty line in the US (>$12,000 a year) are actually impoverished is not necessarily the point. The increase in poverty is an indicator that there is less wealth in the lower class, which in turn shows that the lower class has lost wealth under Bush.

Regarding unemployment statistics. You would have a point if there was a sharp increase in unemployment near the end of Bush's term when the crisis first began having effects on the economy. But this has been a steady trend since his inauguration in 2001, well before we entered the economic crisis we're experiencing today.

The difference in gains between the middle and upper class is actually very surprising given the promises made by supply side economics. The whole idea is that wealth is supposed to make it's way down to the other classes through investments, which the facts show was clearly not the case from 2000 to 2007. Instead, while upper class households were making gains in the hundreds of thousands, middle class houses were making losses. Don't understand? If you adjust the statistics from the 2007 Census Bureau to compensate for inflation, you'll find that the average household actually lost around $300 in annual income under Bush. If your adjust those numbers further to exclude anyone who isn't of working age, you'll find that the average household lost around $2000 in annual income under bush. From this perspective we can see clearly that the rich were the only ones who really benefited from Bush's tax structure.

Finally, I've never disagreed that Obama's campaign was an attack on Bush's policies, but he still didn't cross the lines that the McCain campaign did. He stuck, for the most part, to attacking the policies not the people. Furthermore, I think your accusations of populism are founded, and true to an extent (he wouldn't have talked so often about Bush if it didn't appeal to people), but if you payed close attention to the debates you'd notice that he did make specific references as to why he detested the Bush policies. In fact, many of the statistics I've presented in this thread have been presented by Obama in his debates with McCain at one point or another.

At 11/7/08 07:43 PM, adrshepard wrote: So what's so horrible that we need Obama to change it? Is it possible blind hatred of Bush clouded the reasoning of the Obama voters? I think so.

Well I wouldn't say that. Sure some people are undoubtedly influenced by blind partisanship on both sides, but you can't honestly believe that Bush's popularity plummeted as extravagantly as it did simply because of partisanship, can you?

Anyways, It's interesting that you would choose a statistic like income per capita to support your argument, since it only takes total income and divides it by the US population. The major problem with this is that you're trying to support the claim that middle class benefited from Bush's tax cuts, and your statistics include the income data from CEO's with multimillion dollar salaries which could easily distort a income per capita figure.

A much more valid statistic would be median household income, which under bush increased by about 9% (or $4,175) [1], which is decent but doesn't really compare to what the top 1% saw, which was an increase of about 40% (or $321,132) [2]. Plus you also have to factor in that since Bush entered office in 2001, poverty rates have increased from 11.3% to 12.5%, unemployment has increased from 3.9% to 6.5% [3], and the income inequality in the US has risen from 0.357 (as measured by the Gini Coefficient) to 0.381 [4].

So did Bush cut taxes for everyone? Yes. Did his tax plans significantly benefit anyone other than the upper class? Not significantly. Especially not when you adjust for inflation. I would say that most middle class workers have a right to be upset with the way that Bush's economic plans were structured, seeing as they basically got the shaft.

Besides all that, you're missing the larger picture. Obama wasn't attacking McCain or Bush as people. Obama wasn't comparing McCain to terrorists, or doing other silly things like that. Obama was attacking their policies. You can argue that Obama was skewing the facts, but you certainly can't argue that his tactics were comparable to the smear campaign McCain ran.

1. DeNavas, Carmen, Bern Proctor, Jessica Smith, (2007) "Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2007", US Census Bureau, Page 5, <http://www.census.gov/prod/2008pubs/p60 -235.pdf>

2. Stone, Chad, Chye-Ching Huang, (2007) "Income Concentration at Highest Level Since 1928, New Analysis Shows", Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, <http://www.cbpp.org/3-27-08tax2.htm>

3. (2008), "Civilian Unemployment Rate", U.S. Department of Labor: Bureau of Labor Statistics, <http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/da ta/UNRATE.txt>

4. (2006) "Growing Unequal?", Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, <http://www.researchrecap.com/index.php/
2008/10/21/income-inequality-in-us-incre ased-since-2000/>

At 11/6/08 03:25 AM, Zeistro wrote: And I believe you're both mistaken. The total military spending in proportional to what the government spends yearly is 4.06% GDP.

Are you talking about military spending proportional to GDP or military spending proportional to the rest of the budget? If you're talking about military spending proportional to the GDP then raising military spending to 12% would be ridiculous, seeing as our federal budget is proportionally only about 18% of our GDP. To raise it like that would either require a dramatic increase in taxes, or large cuts in other US government programs.

If you talking about military spending proportional to our federal budget, then we've already allocate about 21% of the budget towards the military. If you're talking about military spending proportional to how much taxpayer money is actually spent, then military spending is actually at about 29% (43% if you include past wars) of spent taxpayer dollars.

Total, in 2008, the total military spending has risen by 1% percent, hence why I would want to more than double it.

According to your own link, US military expenditure has increased 5.7% from 2008 to 2009.

Wow this is really sad. He was honestly my favorite writer. I loved Jurassic Park.

At 11/5/08 06:17 PM, cellardoor6 wrote: Of course he wouldn't have, but the last time I checked, he didn't use anywhere near as much of the empty, emotionally-charged rhetoric as Obama used. Last time I checked, people who supported McCain usually gave pragamtic reasons for doing so, while Obama supporters usually just say "He's black, hope, change, hope, change, change, he's black and therefore provides hope and change".

I think you've kind of heard what you wanted to hear. I met a McCain supporter the other day, and asked him why he supported McCain. His answer was "because I'm afraid that Obama isn't American". How is that a pragmatic? There are raving idiots on both sides of the spectrum.

At 11/4/08 09:35 PM, Elfer wrote: CNN has just called Ohio for Obama as well. I'm not sure that McCain can plausibly win any more.

Yeah Obama has 200 votes at the moment. Seeing as California and Oregon are pretty much in the bag, he can count on getting 60 more. If he wins anything else he's basically won.

Wow, Obama is absolutely wiping the floor with McCain so far. He's got like a 100 point lead.

At 11/4/08 04:25 PM, Dante-Son-Of-Sparda wrote: I just got back from the voting booth and voted mccain

No you didn't. You're not old enough to vote.

At 11/3/08 09:18 PM, cellardoor6 wrote: We shouldn't preserve it only because it's existed for thousands of years, but also because the criteria for marriage is applicable and logical today.

Well that's the whole debate. Is it applicable and logical? Obviously homosexuals argue that it's not because it gives preference to straight couples. I personally agree with them. Why should we give preference to straight couples?

I knew someone was going to say that.

Slavery actually deprived people of what we now consider to be their rights. I don't consider maintaining marriage, to be holding back gay people in the event that they can get civil unions. They'd be equal under law, it's just that civil unions would be tailor-made for gays, whereas marriages are tailor-made for straight couples.

But would they be equal under the law? Then why call one union a "marriage" and the other a "civil union"? Why not just let them both have "civil unions" and allow "marriage" to be a term used strictly by non-government organizations like the church?

Ahah!

Does that mean we are discriminating against people who want polygamy, even if the potential wives (or even husbands) give their full consent?

What is your argument against polygamy if there's no evidence that it will be dysfunctional or abusive? Is it because you consider marriage to only be between two people and not multiple people? By your logic, wouldn't you be depriving people of their rights based on your own prejudices?

If you support legalizing gay marriage by changing the criteria to allow for people with different persuasions, namely homosexuality, you'd also have to support legalizing polygamist marriages and multiple marriages, wouldn't you?

Well you got me there. Why isn't polygamy legal? I don't see any problem with it if the entire thing is consensual. Why shouldn't they be allowed to share their assets like a married couple do? There may be a legitimate argument against it that I'm not aware of, but I certainly am not against polygamy because I think it's a "mockery" of marriage.

Straw man.

Let me try that: Why are you so determined to destroy marriage, destroy families, and also kill innocent fluffy kitty cats??

Alright, let me rephrase that. Why are you so worried about granting homosexuals equality? Why aren't they allowed to call their union a "marriage" legally?

At 11/3/08 06:58 PM, cellardoor6 wrote: The fact that it would destroy an institution that has existed for thousands of years?

So? Why should we preserve something simply because it's existed for thousands of years? Slavery existed for thousands of years before we finally abolished it. I don't see you standing up for slavery. Besides, like Drakim said earlier in this thread, we've already changed the definition of marriage multiple times over the course of history. We no longer allow one man to be married to multiple women. We now allow divorce and interracial marriage. We've already crossed that line. Why are you so worried about allowing gay couples to have equal rights?

At 11/3/08 12:43 PM, Drakim wrote: I mean, isn't that communism, the evil totalitarian rule which controls people's lives, that we hear so often about? :o

It's actually closer to fascism. Something that conservatives seem to be increasingly synonymous with.

And to everyone linking to instances where a kid emulated something he saw on TV. Fuck off. These cases are few and far between. Most kids are smart enough to differentiate fantasy from reality. The ones that aren't? Just think of it as Darwin's theory in action.

At 11/3/08 11:39 AM, Proteas wrote: There is no legitimate reason for an 8 year to know what sex is as they are not physically capable of having it, and the changes of puberty that allow them to have sex do not occur for another few years, so they have no biological urge to do it.

Your turn.

There is a legitimate reason for an 8 year old to know what sex is. You see, there are these people called sexual predators. Informing kids about what sex is allows them to understand what's happening if a predator approaches them and asks them to do odd thing. It makes them more likely to run away.

Saying that a kid shouldn't know about sex because he's incapable of it is the same as saying that a quadriplegic shouldn't know about murder because he can't harm anyone.

To me there are 2 options:

1. Remove the legal definition of marriage all together and instead have civil unions for everyone. "Marriage" will then have purely religious merit and the individual churches can decide who they want to marry.

2. Edit the legal definition of Marriage to allow for homosexuals

Either way, the same rights and titles should distributed to both gay couples and straight couples. One of the US's core tenants is equal treatment and equal opportunity. To show favoritism to straight couples directly conflicts with basic American values.

Wow... just wow...

At 10/21/08 07:42 PM, hrb5711 wrote: Why is it such a big deal? They can't vote and I doubt they will always agree with their parents. There is that whole "teenage" phase we go through, or your still in. I think your making a big deal out of nothing. You're pissed because they are saying what their parents say? WE ALL DID THAT. Or maybe you when you were that age actually sat down and debated your parents on the economy or the war on terror.......

At the age of twelve I personally strayed away from subjects that I didn't have very much knowledge on. The issues that I did argue with my friends and parents were ones that I was actually somewhat knowledgeable in like god, abortion, etc.

I think it's great to see children that young excited about politics, even if they don't understand it. As they get older and wiser they will come to their own thoughts and ideas about politics. I mean my party choice has changed three times since I could vote. Just because they mimic their parents now doesn't mean they will do it later on.

I personally am not so excited to see kids being brainwashed and having bias planted into them at such a young age.

Do you get pissed when 12yr olds argue about who's dad can beat up the other one's dad?

I get annoyed yes. But kids are kids, they cant be held responsible for their stupidity at that age. It doesn't mean it doesn't annoy me when I see a bunch of 12 year old retards arguing over something they don't at all understand.

At 10/21/08 03:54 PM, Dante-Son-Of-Sparda wrote: because it fucks with your head!

Yes, my head. It's none of your fucking business what I put in my body.

I swear to god, drug abolitionist arguments are only second in stupidity to creationist arguments.

everyone thinks that bush is so bad. that he caused our tax problem. well bush isnt the one to blame. before bush president bill clinton lead our country he made many changes that took our country to where it is now. imagine how bush feels everyone is trashing him when he didnt do anything.do we realy have proof he did this just because hes prez now doesnt mean that the prez then didnt do this

12 year olds talking politics... wow.

Does anyone else find it funny that the CEO of diebold was quoted to have said that he'd "do anything to get George Bush re-elected"?

Just throwing that out there.

At 10/19/08 10:27 PM, Memorize wrote: You know, like when Obama dismisses his "associations" as "guilt by association", yet his entire campaign strategy has been to link McCain to Bush.

Yeah but linking McCain to Bush isn't as incredibly baseless as the accusations against Obama are. McCain actually has a history of voting with the Bush Administration.

Hey Radioactive Rabit, ever heard of the Lords Resistance Army? They're a bunch of real nice guys who spread the word of Jesus by kidnapping kids and forcing them to work as soldiers or sex slaves. Every religion carries a risk of being radicalized; that doesn't mean that the religion in itself is violent.

And another thing... The criticisms of Palin are mostly well deserved. That women has time after time demonstrated her incompetence to the nation. The fact that McCain can still claim "Country First" after choosing her as his running mate is telling of how much integrity he really has. She has no business running for Vice President.