I couldn't even get past the preamble before I ran into pure unadulterated bull****.

This is a false and science denying statement. The others are equally hilarious (and actually make the case that the best thing to do is nothing ) but this one in particular encapsulates the level of anti-scientific hysteria and fact-free posturing these guys engage in.

Yes. I did after you implied we should. It is far worse that I thought, so thank you for that.
No. Universal health care has potential in as far as it enables the breaking of the corrupt health industry. I have zero confidence that that will be the outcome however.
Yes.
I'm not sure how bridges and roads contribute to energy efficiency. As for railways, they are already installed and planned where they make sense. The problem is the prohibitive cost that doesn't pay back for decades if that.
Good God no. The "created jobs" is a broken window myth. I could pave a rough, cheap potholed road in gold using high-priced midgets with platinum steamrollers, and it would create jobs, but it only very very very marignally improve the the economic throughput. "Crumbling" infrastructure is unfortunate but the economic impact is quite low. Rebuilding it is possibly even highly negative in a full employment world like we have now. I'd be open to the idea during an economic downturn. But Obama (the loser) sat on his hands like a cuck while the world burned, instead pumping out QE which went into stock returns for rich people and the effect of which fell far below projected job and economic improvement predictions.

So no to the above. But I might be in favor if another GFC happens and there's substantial labor underutilization.

Your only real viable claim is that energy cost savings from retrofitting would return more than the cost of said fitting over time. Perhaps. I'm sure there's literature on same and I'm sure the Ocasio-Cortez is too dumb to care. It's not a question I'm equipped to answer although I'm highly skeptical of that claim. Modifying existing structures is very expensive and disruptive and often returns less than the theoretical return even before the high cost. It's generally not done by climate change mitigating governments - only mandated in new constructions where it of course makes sense.

People are simply too stupid to understand exceptionalism and the pareto principle. They see luck and unfair privilege in what is incredible hard work (most billionaires are self made and a large percentage are entirely self made; the highest earners work FAR more hours and FAR more efficiently than the average earner). It's these exceptional people who move forward society and economies and we get them a big discount even after their accumulated wealth. It's a hard pill to swallow that some people are just far better on every level than you and your mediocre life, and deserving of their success. It's much easier to be envious and see a conspiracy than look at the overwhelming evidence that this is in fact the case.

The left wing tends to exploit this stupidity/lack of understanding among the working and "underprivileged" classes and turn it into envy and outrage, which is a useful and powerful political force and are the emotions that enabled Nazi (National Socialist) Party of Germany, Stalin's Russia, Mao's China and most of Latin America. They destroy whole economies and societies as a result.

The experiment has been done 1000 times. Any time you go after the "bourgeois rightists" and blame them for your ills and try to take more than 50% of their income, you get a range of net consequences from losing net revenue/economic growth to outright destruction of society and economies. Why the left cannot understand this is beyond me. "This time will be different!" What's the definition of madness?

Thinking about this some more, I think it ultimately comes down to a lack of understanding of ecology, which is so complex and recursive that you can't grasp it or analyze it intellectually - only sense it.

Highly intelligent and capable/conscientious people build around them ecologies of wealth creation, and take a small cut of the massive positive externalities they create in the process. I think this process is not well understood (ecology generally is horribly understood by academia - who tend left wing - as it doesn't fit with identifiably causal analysis or simplistic theories that are intellectually graspable).

It's also a reason why some societies thrive and some can't get out of the toilet. Top down societies squash decentralized growth of health ecologies. And if there is a low average IQ in a population, these seed individuals who create these ecologies simply don't exist in sufficient number.

One of the reasons I think Europe rose is the large number of self contained, defensible town and city states, partly due to natural features, which acted as local incubators for local diverse ecologies that could resist top-down control and persist through generations. One of the reasons individualism is so very powerful economically is also that it allows this to develop. One of the reason socialism and the top down control it creates is so toxic is that it kills this process.

yes you are the only one smart enough please tell us all how to act and think chosen one

here we go into toothsayer's inevitable racial IQ rants, like it's totally a bfi topic that should be rehashed as nauseam

All these "stick it to the non-rich plans" do take the consequences into consideration and lol at them because with a little propaganda all the righty rubes will buy it as being good for them.

You seem bitter at life. Something in that must have hit the mark. And the above is you/the left, not me. I'm just throwing out my ideas. I'm an individualist and the opposite of a bigot (I love to hear all ideas and don't believe I know the truth either practically or morally), not someone who is 100% certain of their position who wants to censor and control what people hear. You're the piece of **** here, not me. Own that, at least.

No one mentioned race except you.
You can't take the consequences of messing with complex ecologies into consideration. That's the whole point. That's the whole thing you don't get. It's what the Maoists didn't get. It's what Stalinists didn't.

You the think French didn't model their superwealth tax before they put it in? You think anyone who wanted to put it in correctly predicted that it would have negative returns on both tax revenue and the economy? You think the Maoists didn't have a model of the society they wanted to build from the top down by stealing from the "bourgeois rightists"? You think Obama didn't model QE before he put it in place? All the models were wrong. Comically, hilariously wrong. With as yet unknown consequences despite not even achieving their aims.

You can't model complex ecology and the dis-incentivizing of exceptionalism and individualism is a provably terrible idea that has always failed with horrible consequences. We've run the experiment hundreds of times on all levels from nations over generations to superwealth taxes. It always ends badly. How is this so hard for you?

Yeah man you really hit the mark on this 90th time posting the same drivel and calling everyone dumb and a POS (what a compelling argument!) who doesn't nod and smile. Congrats!

Anyone who thinks trump is wicked smart. Well...

Anyone who thinks Trump is wicked stupid. Well...

No they don't.

France under a left wing government Hollande tried a super income tax just a few years ago because it "polled" well amongst the low information population and "economists", and then had a to scrap it a few years later when it didn't bring in any excess revenue.

Its funny, because the real propaganda is the government convincing people that automatically paying more taxes is always a good thing.

Next time tax time comes around, just cut a check for everything extra you have to the government while you are at it.

I dont know about wicked dumb since he has enchanted many of those people. But he is dumb and its not just his age even. He was on Letterman and Stern so much to play the buffoon. He played it well.

Yeah. The most reliable outcome in the history of politics is that going after the successful capital accumulators (and merchants before that) ends in disaster. You straight up kill and discourage your economy's wealth creation nodes. That result is a constant across every culture, age and political doctrine. It's the single most true thing in politics.

Everything in it is aspirational BS that will cause more harm than good if it were forcibly implemented. Society advances by taking small steps forward, not great leaps forward.

More importantly this should've given any sane person pause:

"(E) to promote justice and equity by stopping current, preventing future, and repairing historic oppression of indigenous peoples, communities of color, migrant communities, deindustrialized communities, depopulated rural communities, the poor, low-income workers, women, the elderly, the unhoused, people with disabilities, and youth (referred to in this resolution as “frontline and vulnerable communities”);"

Not equality mind you; it was deliberately worded as equity. Basically outright saying that MLK is wrong.

Your position here hinges on everyone paying a similar tax rate. We can tax the filthy rich at a higher rate and tax (directly and indirectly) the rest less. But the filthy rich are powerful because bad stewardship has allowed money buy political influence and propaganda power resulting in takes like yours defending the filthy rich. I don't want to pay more taxes. I don't want you to pay more taxes. I want the filthy rich to pay more. Of course the standard hurr durr comeback is how that will ruin the economy despite historical evidence to the contrary.

This is the core of your conceited delusion. The filthy rich are by and large filthy rich because they're better than others at what they do and develop wealth generation ecosystems that create vast sums of wealth.

Look at the richest:

- Buffett (capitalized winning businesses better than others, creating wealth)
- Gates (wrote software that people wanted, creating wealth. Now giving all that wealth privately to improving the lives of the worst off)
- Apple shareholders (produced phones that people wanted)
- Walton family (greatly improved retail processes to bring lowest-price goods to the poor)
- Page and Brin (Did hard computer science work better than anyone, underlying the whole Internet, all given free to the masses)
- Zuckerberg (ok, he's a total cuck/lizard).

None of this is "political influence and propaganda". No one gets filthy rich that way in Western countries. They get filthy rich by getting people to voluntarily give them money because people like/want their economic output.

In the global scheme of things, you are the filthy rich. I propose we tax Max Cut at 90% and give it the poor of the world who don't even have money to eat. Think of the economic benefits as that money is redistributed to spenders. Does Max Cut really need his computer, for example, to type bull**** on the Internet when people are starving and don't have clean water or $0.70 vaccinations?

And besides, what you want doesn't work. France tried it and you see the results right there. Other countries tried it and destroyed their economies for generations. Why is that so hard for you to grasp?

Luck, what is it?

You should give those filthy rich a heads up about how much money they're wasting trying to buy political influence and propaganda when it doesn't help them.

You would feel like a loser believing all that. But you probably don't believe it. Just look at the inconsistency even in your own list.

Withered troll.

Oh and the wealth of the richest isn't even really wealth, it's control. Bill Gates isn't going around spending billions of dollars on food in a way that the poor get deprived of. Or housing. Nearly all of his capital is in Microsoft stock. And indeed, 99% of his wealth is now going back into highest-impact work for the most desperately poor, doing what governments with their trillions have failed to do. Who would you rather have sit on $100 billion?

Choice 1: Bill Gates, who's giving back 99% to the poorest and using his high intellect and amazing business skills to analyze the best cost-benefit for the global poor and destitute?

Choice 2: The US government, which has spent $2+ trillion on a pointless war with hundreds of thousands dead and disabled.

You in your infinite wisdom would choose #2 with your policies. In fact, choice 1 wouldn't even exist because you don't want anyone to accumulate that much wealth. This says everything that anyone needs to know about your wisdom, Max Cut.

This is the most idiotic kind of one dimensional analysis. And yes of course most of the wealthy earned their wealth and have far greater positive externalities. It's like you haven't thought about this stuff at all, or looked at the evidence. You just see the emotive stuff (that rent seeking privilege is unfair!*) and then lump most wealth into that. It's not even close to what reality looks like. Most wealth is earned and has positive externalities besides and there's a huge body of disparate evidence to support that.

*I agree by the way.

Uhhh? We already do that!


https://www.bankrate.com/financing/w...-pay-in-taxes/

Reading the GND is one thing…

(1) it is the duty of the Federal Government to provide… (O) all people of the United States with—(i) high-quality health care; (ii) affordable, safe, and adequate housing; (iii) economic security; and (iv) clean water, clean air, healthy and affordable food, and access to nature.

… but understanding what the term “duty” means and how used in such a context renders (i)-(iv) as positive rights, and understanding that the Federal Government can only “provide” to one what it can take from another, aren't exactly self-evident from a cursory read. Stripped of all the sparkly and emotional distractions, what the GND is advocating is very simple: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.

My hunch is that most of the people who either have read or do support the GND have absolutely no clue what it’s actually advocating.

You just want to tax them more because you have an emotional vitriol to the "filthy rich". And punishing them by all means necessary gives you emotional happiness. Pretty bad to turn perceptual emotional angst into policy.

I defend capitalism. Which means making it as easy as possible for capital to create wealth. Which everyone benefits by.

So if that means keeping the more valuable animals on the farm happy, that's good for me.

Why?

https://www8.gsb.columbia.edu/facult...hop/toptax.pdf
Taxing Top Incomes in a World of Ideas
Charles I. Jones∗
Stanford GSB and NBER
September 6, 2018 — Version 0.35

Abstract
This paper considers the taxation of top incomes when the following conditions apply: (i) new ideas drive economic growth, (ii) the reward for creating a successful innovation is a top income, and (iii) innovation cannot be perfectly targeted by a separate research subsidy — think about the business methods of Walmart, the creation of Uber, or the “idea” of Amazon.com. These conditions lead to a new term in the Saez (2001) formula for the optimal top tax rate: by slowing the creation of the new ideas that drive aggregate GDP, top income taxation reduces everyone’s income, not just the income at the top. When the creation of ideas is the ultimate source of economic growth, this force sharply constrains both revenue-maximizing and welfare-maximizing top tax rates. For example, for extreme parameter values, maximizing the welfare of the middle class requires a negative top tax rate: the higher income that results from the subsidy to innovation more than makes up for the lost redistribution. More generally, the calibrated model suggests that incorporating ideas and economic growth cuts the optimal top marginal tax rate substantially relative to the basic Saez calculation.

I don't think he realizes that the top 1% pays nearly 40% of all income taxes.

I guess moar taxes will turn that 40% into like 42% or 43%. Its just to emotionally assuage people living in angst.

okay infowars all day

Because I find it distasteful to make idol-heros out of variance winners while others suffer. It's inhumane. I do not want the filthy rich to suffer. They can still be lavishly comfortable while paying a more fare share. It worked before despite the lies and deception the propaganda mills put out.