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Vertigo 7
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Re: Trump

Post by Vertigo 7 » Fri, 29. Nov 19, 17:08

Grim Lock wrote:
Fri, 29. Nov 19, 16:45
Myeah, i think your optimism is rather exactly that, optimism, as much as i respect that (it's a very American thing to do, you bunch of dreamers), this is likely one of those agree to disagree moments, although i'm very much looking forward to Trump beeing replaced, the ones primed to replace him are still elderly people that need to be in a retirement home, not a white house, on top of that, in general the more a group gets put under pressure the louder and more unreasonable they get. Also, when a democrat gets chosen, next year, it'll be right after the next recession has started, and that means they'll be blamed for it in the first place and then be blamed for not fixing it fast enough or not in the right way, either way, i predict only one term for the democrats and they will lose the house and the senate again in no time.

No imo it will take longer than i have left on this planet before the US will have crawled out of the pile of shit it's in. The only way Trumpians will go away is to educate them out of existence. Not just lord over them with a democrat.
If there was any possibility of educating them to begin with, it would have already been done. Darwinism will eliminate them, however.
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Re: Trump

Post by Grim Lock » Fri, 29. Nov 19, 18:01

:D So they get born stupid with no chance of redemption, now who is the pessimist! :P Anyway, i was talking more in terms of going forward and preventing new Trumpians from beeing created, i agree the current generation of Trumpians aren't likely to change, it's the basis of my reasoning why they won't be going away any time soon, and will be causing many problems in the time to come.
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Re: Trump

Post by Vertigo 7 » Sat, 30. Nov 19, 01:28

Grim Lock wrote:
Fri, 29. Nov 19, 18:01
:D So they get born stupid with no chance of redemption, now who is the pessimist! :P Anyway, i was talking more in terms of going forward and preventing new Trumpians from beeing created, i agree the current generation of Trumpians aren't likely to change, it's the basis of my reasoning why they won't be going away any time soon, and will be causing many problems in the time to come.
Nah, they weren't born stupid. They just choose to remain ignorant. It circles back to the whole fear of becoming a minority race. These white Trumpanzies are the same ones that fled inner cities en masse in the 70's and 80's when African Americans began buying properties in the neighborhoods that were largely occupied by white people. It was termed the "Great white flight" in the post Jim Crow era. I see the same attitudes out of my own father when he complains that his neighborhood is "getting dark" or makes some baseless claim about Hispanics getting social security benefits without having a social security number. I give him an ear full for his bs too.

Fortunately, that generation isn't much longer for this world. With Trump out of the way, the remaining turd gobblers will crawl back into their hidey holes and the rest of us can get on with the business of working for a better tomorrow.
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Re: Trump

Post by Masterbagger » Sat, 30. Nov 19, 02:29

Grim Lock wrote:
Fri, 29. Nov 19, 18:01
:D So they get born stupid with no chance of redemption, now who is the pessimist! :P Anyway, i was talking more in terms of going forward and preventing new Trumpians from beeing created, i agree the current generation of Trumpians aren't likely to change, it's the basis of my reasoning why they won't be going away any time soon, and will be causing many problems in the time to come.
Maybe not reduce the people who disagree with you to racists or uneducated persons and project that on them. No one who isn't those things likes being told that they are if they don't vote a certain way. I'm the same guy I was back in every previous election. No one hated me like this then. I may not be the problem here. I have not changed and the people I vote against have.

I want to go do work and keep more of the wage that I earn. My best choice is not a dem promising free stuff to everyone on the planet without a care how to pay for it and attacking the economy that creates work for someone like me. It is that simple. I don't want to pay for benefits for illegal aliens or someone's college debt for their underwater feminist interpretive dance degree while they work at Starbucks. Forget the emotional crap and get down to dollars. Our entire problem in America is that some of us operate on some kind of wavelength of feelings of righteousness and social justice and the rest of us don't. It is dollars and individual freedom that is the currency there. Dems are the enemy to both.
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Re: Trump

Post by Vertigo 7 » Sat, 30. Nov 19, 02:36

Masterbagger wrote:
Sat, 30. Nov 19, 02:29
Grim Lock wrote:
Fri, 29. Nov 19, 18:01
:D So they get born stupid with no chance of redemption, now who is the pessimist! :P Anyway, i was talking more in terms of going forward and preventing new Trumpians from beeing created, i agree the current generation of Trumpians aren't likely to change, it's the basis of my reasoning why they won't be going away any time soon, and will be causing many problems in the time to come.
Maybe not reduce the people who disagree with you to racists or uneducated persons and project that on them. No one who isn't those things likes being told that they are if they don't vote a certain way. I'm the same guy I was back in every previous election. No one hated me like this then. I may not be the problem here. I have not changed and the people I vote against have.

I want to go do work and keep more of the wage that I earn. My best choice is not a dem promising free stuff to everyone on the planet without a care how to pay for it and attacking the economy that creates work for someone like me. It is that simple. I don't want to pay for benefits for illegal aliens or someone's college debt for their underwater feminist interpretive dance degree while they work at Starbucks. Forget the emotional crap and get down to dollars. Our entire problem in America is that some of us operate on some kind of wavelength of feelings of righteousness and social justice and the rest of us don't. It is dollars and individual freedom that is the currency there. Dems are the enemy to both.
Right... because dems are the ones telling women what they can and can't do with their bodies. And dems are the ones that label non-white immigrants as "rapists and murders". Don't pretend you give a rats ass about anyone's freedoms other than your own. You're not fooling anyone.
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Re: Trump

Post by Masterbagger » Sat, 30. Nov 19, 03:29

Vertigo 7 wrote:
Sat, 30. Nov 19, 02:36

Right... because dems are the ones telling women what they can and can't do with their bodies. And dems are the ones that label non-white immigrants as "rapists and murders". Don't pretend you give a rats ass about anyone's freedoms other than your own. You're not fooling anyone.
There you go again.

Women's bodies? Did I mention that? No, I didnt. You did to have something to fling at me. You follow up by intentionally taking Trump's words out of context and twisting them into a racist attack. You have to know that he was referring to MS13 when he said that. I give you no slack here. You can't be so ignorant or mislead that you missed that. Those gang members truly are the scum of the Earth and undeniably are rapists and murderers. You know this and made a racist statement out of it anyway to sling at me. I don't respect that. You wield the race card as a weapon to serve your own ends. You don't care about race. You just want to attack.

You are completely wrong to do this. I disagree with you and I don't vote for your person. This is not a cause to crusade against me personally. I am not doing that to you. I am going to endure it until you stop. I already forgave you. Get better. Be an American that can stand next to me again. I didn't stray from my beliefs. You have put the distance between us.

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Re: Trump

Post by Olterin » Sat, 30. Nov 19, 09:28

Ok, so there are two things I don't quite get. Why do especially Americans insist on wanting "to keep more of their wage" if they then have to go spend that wage ... i.e. why is the focus on the money itself, not on what having that money allows you to do? And secondly, why oh why do people vote "against" something, not "for" something? That's going to be the death of Democracy if anything, I feel, people not voting for what they believe is the best party program/course of action/whathaveyou and rather against the other guys' party program/course of action/whathaveyou. Could someone explain why this seems to be so prevalent in America and to a lesser degree Britain?
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Re: Trump

Post by Grim Lock » Sat, 30. Nov 19, 12:46

Masterbagger wrote:
Sat, 30. Nov 19, 02:29
Grim Lock wrote:
Fri, 29. Nov 19, 18:01
:D So they get born stupid with no chance of redemption, now who is the pessimist! :P Anyway, i was talking more in terms of going forward and preventing new Trumpians from beeing created, i agree the current generation of Trumpians aren't likely to change, it's the basis of my reasoning why they won't be going away any time soon, and will be causing many problems in the time to come.
Maybe not reduce the people who disagree with you to racists or uneducated persons and project that on them. No one who isn't those things likes being told that they are if they don't vote a certain way. I'm the same guy I was back in every previous election. No one hated me like this then. I may not be the problem here. I have not changed and the people I vote against have.

I want to go do work and keep more of the wage that I earn. My best choice is not a dem promising free stuff to everyone on the planet without a care how to pay for it and attacking the economy that creates work for someone like me. It is that simple. I don't want to pay for benefits for illegal aliens or someone's college debt for their underwater feminist interpretive dance degree while they work at Starbucks. Forget the emotional crap and get down to dollars. Our entire problem in America is that some of us operate on some kind of wavelength of feelings of righteousness and social justice and the rest of us don't. It is dollars and individual freedom that is the currency there. Dems are the enemy to both.
Cry me a river. It's just so incredibly selfish that reasoning, it's just me me me me, as expected from Trumpians. It's so funny how Americans pound their chest, "richest country in the world" and yet you are so incredibly selfish, you can't even provide a proper healthcare-plan, can't even prevent crime and poverty, have piss poor infrastructure and yet you want to keep all your money to yourself. It's sad and stupid and the main reason you guys aren't actually leading on any thing that isn't related to your military or directly related to the amount of Americans there are. SAD! :D

And ofcourse you get disrespected for voting for someone like Trump he's a petty man that lies as much as he breathes and has turned your country into the laughing stock of the world, please don't go playing the victim please, you yourself have said the fact that Trump pissed of dems was one of the reasons you chose him. You got what you wanted.
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Re: Trump

Post by Vertigo 7 » Sat, 30. Nov 19, 13:42

Masterbagger wrote:
Sat, 30. Nov 19, 03:29
Vertigo 7 wrote:
Sat, 30. Nov 19, 02:36

Right... because dems are the ones telling women what they can and can't do with their bodies. And dems are the ones that label non-white immigrants as "rapists and murders". Don't pretend you give a rats ass about anyone's freedoms other than your own. You're not fooling anyone.
There you go again.

Women's bodies? Did I mention that? No, I didnt. You did to have something to fling at me. You follow up by intentionally taking Trump's words out of context and twisting them into a racist attack. You have to know that he was referring to MS13 when he said that. I give you no slack here. You can't be so ignorant or mislead that you missed that. Those gang members truly are the scum of the Earth and undeniably are rapists and murderers. You know this and made a racist statement out of it anyway to sling at me. I don't respect that. You wield the race card as a weapon to serve your own ends. You don't care about race. You just want to attack.

You are completely wrong to do this. I disagree with you and I don't vote for your person. This is not a cause to crusade against me personally. I am not doing that to you. I am going to endure it until you stop. I already forgave you. Get better. Be an American that can stand next to me again. I didn't stray from my beliefs. You have put the distance between us.

Go and tell your father you love him while you still can.
A) You know as well as I do that republicans have been on a crusade for decades to criminalize abortions. I'm just pointing out the hypocrisy of your statement of "individual freedoms".
B) MS13's activities have been exaggerated by Trump to the point of absurdity. According to FBI data, MS13 accounted for 1% of total gang activity in the US as of 2018. It has been so low, in fact, that the FBI hadn't been actively tracking their activities since 2009 where their presence in the US was estimated to be the same as it was in 2018. White people in this country have committed far more murders and rapes than MS13 has, I don't see him railing against that; in fact, I've seen him go out of his way to defend some of his white buddies that have been accused of rape. Lets not forget, Trump is also facing a few rape charges himself. Aside from that, his attacks on immigrants weren't limited to MS13. Any Hispanic, Muslim, African, Asian, basically any nationality other than predominately white has been intentionally and deliberately targeted by his immigration policies. You tell me again how that respects "individual freedoms". Hell, I had never heard of MS13 until one of their members made the news a few years ago for a murder case. I would even be willing to bet most of the country hadn't heard of them either.

You can sit here and pretend to be all high and mighty all you like. I'm not buying it and I highly doubt anyone else is either. It's clear that what you care about is you and only you. Maybe that's why you like Trump so much. You two think alike. Me me me me me me me... I've got news for you, you don't live here alone. We're all in this together. You can be part of the solution or be left behind. I told you, you dug your pit, I'm not going to help you get out of it or jump in it with you. You have to make the choice to be a better person, I can't do that for you. But I'm not going to stop opposing your self righteousness or bigotry, nor do I care if you like it or not.
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Re: Trump

Post by red assassin » Sat, 30. Nov 19, 14:02

I think the thing that confuses me about the "I'm just looking out for myself" pro-Trump argument is that it's manifestly not true. One might naively separate left and right wing supporters broadly into the following two categories:
a) I will accept some impact to my personal prosperity in order to make things better for the less fortunate; this is the fairest approach.
b) Policies which allow me to make the most use of what I have are the fairest.

I don't agree with position b), but I think it's a defensible and intellectually consistent position, and I think it's useful to have some people who will argue that position in society, for reasons I'll come onto presently. Trump and his ilk, however, represent a third position:
c) I will accept some impact to my personal prosperity in order to make things worse for people who are not like me.


We can apply the three categories to some major political issues:

Firstly, healthcare.
a) says "of course I'll pay more taxes to provide healthcare to everybody in society!"
b) says "I have to pay for health insurance regardless, because unless I'm Jeff Bezos, a serious health issue can bankrupt me. The US per capita healthcare spend is catastrophically higher than any other first-world nation, yet the quality of outcomes are middling at best. Therefore, I get better care for less money with some form of socialised medicine."
c) says "I'm happy to pay four times as much in health insurance as any other first world nation to make sure poor people keep on dying of preventable issues."

Secondly, immigration.
a) says "of course we should help immigrants!"
b) says "there's strong evidence that immigrants contribute significantly to GDP, pay more in taxes than they cost in government spending, commit as few or fewer crimes than existing residents, and integrate into their new home nations within a couple of generations. A stronger economy is good for me and there are no significant reasons not to."
c) says "I'll happily pay taxes to build a pointless symbolic wall and build and run concentration camps to stick immigrants in."


Now, I'm certainly cherry-picking issues where there's a persuasive self-interested argument for not doing what Trump et al are doing, but they're both major current issues where the divergence from rational self-interest in favour of harming other people at cost to oneself is significant and extremely hard to argue against in any sort of evidence-based manner. In both cases I think it's useful to have somebody make the self-interest argument, because the obvious counter argument to position a) - however persuasive I find that myself - is "but how can we afford it?", whereas position b) is "how can we afford not to?".


(In case anybody thinks I'm picking on the right here, I think a lot of current socialist parties are utterly terrible at picking policies that are actually effective interventions, versus ones that just sound good but support the status quo or make inequality worse, but that's a discussion for another thread.)
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Re: Trump

Post by Vertigo 7 » Sat, 30. Nov 19, 15:03

red assassin wrote:
Sat, 30. Nov 19, 14:02
I think the thing that confuses me about the "I'm just looking out for myself" pro-Trump argument is that it's manifestly not true. One might naively separate left and right wing supporters broadly into the following two categories:
a) I will accept some impact to my personal prosperity in order to make things better for the less fortunate; this is the fairest approach.
b) Policies which allow me to make the most use of what I have are the fairest.

I don't agree with position b), but I think it's a defensible and intellectually consistent position, and I think it's useful to have some people who will argue that position in society, for reasons I'll come onto presently. Trump and his ilk, however, represent a third position:
c) I will accept some impact to my personal prosperity in order to make things worse for people who are not like me.


Snip for space.
I'll pick on the two policies you mentioned.

Starting with healthcare, and I'll broaden that to insurance as a whole - including home owner's and auto insurance.

Insurance is a freaking joke. I get health insurance from my company through Blue Cross/Blue Shield. I pay roughly $40 every 2 weeks for my medical coverage and I have no idea what my employer pays but I know it's significant. So you think, hey, 40 bucks for insurance, that's great! Okay, well... when I go in for my annual physical I owe 20 bucks just to walk in the door, then for the blood tests I get hit with another $160. And then, my prescriptions I'm paying ~$45/mo. BC/BS is making thousands/year for my insurance, I would guess somewhere close to 10k if not more. That's just me. Now, my deductible before they'll 100% cover me is $5000. In addition to all the bi weekly payments that I and my employer make, I have to spend another $5000 out of my own pocket before they'll fully cover me. So yeah, if I get hit by a car I'm pretty well screwed. I'll have to rely on handouts to cover my medical costs or dip into my retirement savings.

Same goes for auto insurance. I've been with my insurance company since I was 17. I've payed them thousands upon thousands but I still have to meet a deductible before I can file a claim, and if I were to file a claim, my insurance cost goes up. Home owners insurance is the same as well.

All of the insurance deductibles reset annually. No matter how much I've spent in previous years, it starts over Jan 1.

If I were to make sure I had a deductible savings for all of my insurance plans, I would need roughly $20,000 cash just set aside for a worst case scenario. That's not realistic for the average American citizen to set aside that much cash. I live in an area that's prone for tornadoes so it's not outside the realm of possibility that I am presented with a scenario where I'll endure a simultaneous home/auto/personal injury.

It's an incredible financial burden that only goes up every year that goes by. The insurance companies, also, fight you every step of the way to cover a claim. They deliberately look for ways to get out of paying up on it and do as much as they can to shift the financial costs to the policy holder. It's greed, pure and simple.

So yeah, it needs to be checked. It's absolutely insane the amount of money that has to be coughed up for non-elective procedures. Insurance needs to be regulated, the companies that are making substantial profits off prescription drugs need to be scrutinized. The whole thing needs to be flipped upside down and changed to give people a basic quality of life.

And then immigration... oh dear god. My favorite argument I hear from republicans that has been immortalized by South Park, "Dey tuk err jerbs!". I love this one... I personally don't know anyone where they were displaced by an immigrant. But I have to wonder, how ****** do you have to be at your job to loose it to an individual that has no work experience in the US, likely doesn't speak English, though not always, and may not have any formal education? Is that the immigrant's fault these "people" lost their jobs to an immigrant?

And then the whole idea that the "big beautiful wall" is going to stop the flow of criminals and/or drugs from crossing into the country. I guess we need to put up a wall around Florida's coast too. What a monumental waste of money this wall will be. But people fleeing corrupt nations and the cartels... oh no, they must be stopped at all costs!

The lack of human compassion is beyond repugnant. Not to mention, the lack of foresight as to what injecting more people into the nation's labor force would do to boost production and economic gains. But oh no, our country that was founded by people escaping a tyrant and desiring freedom for themselves and future generations, we can't allow anyone else that wants the same things in! The horror!
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Re: Trump

Post by Observe » Sat, 30. Nov 19, 15:50

Masterbagger wrote:
Sat, 30. Nov 19, 02:29
I want to go do work and keep more of the wage that I earn. My best choice is not a dem promising free stuff to everyone on the planet...
No one including Democrats want to take your money.

Unless you are ultra wealthy, chances are you deserve MORE than you are currently getting. You should receive a slice of every Facebook and Google advertisement that uses YOUR data. Data is the new oil economy and your personal information is being mined to profit big data companies. If someone comes along and takes a pound of your flesh, shouldn't they have to pay you for it?

Amazon and other companies are leading the charge to close the local shopping malls where either you or your relatives used to work. Coal mining jobs will never come back. More and more jobs are being displaced by automation. Amazon pays no taxes so you are the one carrying the tax burden.

Wouldn't you rather that Amazon pays at least as much taxes as you do? Or would you rather the burden fall solely on you? The idea that all you need to do is work hard to afford your existence is no longer valid and it is becoming less so each year.

Keep your money and also accept what is due you by those who are using you. Is that so hard to grasp? If you are all about you, then why not support a trickle-up economy that puts you at the front of the food chain?

You lambast Socialism, yet you don't mind subsidizing people and companies who treat you like a side of beef to be auctioned off to the highest bidder.

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Re: Trump

Post by red assassin » Sat, 30. Nov 19, 16:00

Vertigo 7 wrote:
Sat, 30. Nov 19, 15:03
Insurance is a freaking joke. I get health insurance from my company through Blue Cross/Blue Shield. I pay roughly $40 every 2 weeks for my medical coverage and I have no idea what my employer pays but I know it's significant. So you think, hey, 40 bucks for insurance, that's great! Okay, well... when I go in for my annual physical I owe 20 bucks just to walk in the door, then for the blood tests I get hit with another $160. And then, my prescriptions I'm paying ~$45/mo. BC/BS is making thousands/year for my insurance, I would guess somewhere close to 10k if not more. That's just me. Now, my deductible before they'll 100% cover me is $5000. In addition to all the bi weekly payments that I and my employer make, I have to spend another $5000 out of my own pocket before they'll fully cover me. So yeah, if I get hit by a car I'm pretty well screwed. I'll have to rely on handouts to cover my medical costs or dip into my retirement savings.
Yes, and the US per capita spend on healthcare (i.e. combining personal, employer and government spending) is over $10k. By contrast, the UK spends a little over $4k. It's a little difficult to get an exact figure for how much I personally spend on healthcare here because I don't have an exact figure for my overall tax bill (I don't know exactly how much I've paid in sales tax, fuel duty, etc), but the UK government spends a little under 20% of its total budget on healthcare. That comes to about £2.3k per person per year. I earn over double the UK median household income and with some reasonable estimates of my sales tax bill etc my personal contribution to the NHS budget still only amounts to about £4.5k, and other than a £9 charge for collecting prescriptions, that's all I'll pay for healthcare, up to and including, say, the multiple brain surgeries my dad had a couple of years ago (he's fine!).
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Re: Trump

Post by RegisterMe » Sat, 30. Nov 19, 16:03

red assassin wrote:
Sat, 30. Nov 19, 14:02
One extremely good post
The thing that you didn't mention, and that never fails to surprise me, is that even those "c" people out there seem to delight in ignoring the open corruption and downright criminality of the Trump administration (I nearly type "regime" there). I find this particularly galling when they also claim to be "constitutionalists" - Trump and his administration having demonstrated more contempt for the Constitution than anybody else in history.

EDIT: To give him his due, whilst we're on the subject of healthcare, Trump actually seems to be taking on the hospitals, which consume more US private and public spending on healthcare than do drug prescriptions.
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Re: Trump

Post by Vertigo 7 » Sat, 30. Nov 19, 16:19

red assassin wrote:
Sat, 30. Nov 19, 16:00
Vertigo 7 wrote:
Sat, 30. Nov 19, 15:03
Insurance is a freaking joke. I get health insurance from my company through Blue Cross/Blue Shield. I pay roughly $40 every 2 weeks for my medical coverage and I have no idea what my employer pays but I know it's significant. So you think, hey, 40 bucks for insurance, that's great! Okay, well... when I go in for my annual physical I owe 20 bucks just to walk in the door, then for the blood tests I get hit with another $160. And then, my prescriptions I'm paying ~$45/mo. BC/BS is making thousands/year for my insurance, I would guess somewhere close to 10k if not more. That's just me. Now, my deductible before they'll 100% cover me is $5000. In addition to all the bi weekly payments that I and my employer make, I have to spend another $5000 out of my own pocket before they'll fully cover me. So yeah, if I get hit by a car I'm pretty well screwed. I'll have to rely on handouts to cover my medical costs or dip into my retirement savings.
Yes, and the US per capita spend on healthcare (i.e. combining personal, employer and government spending) is over $10k. By contrast, the UK spends a little over $4k. It's a little difficult to get an exact figure for how much I personally spend on healthcare here because I don't have an exact figure for my overall tax bill (I don't know exactly how much I've paid in sales tax, fuel duty, etc), but the UK government spends a little under 20% of its total budget on healthcare. That comes to about £2.3k per person per year. I earn over double the UK median household income and with some reasonable estimates of my sales tax bill etc my personal contribution to the NHS budget still only amounts to about £4.5k, and other than a £9 charge for collecting prescriptions, that's all I'll pay for healthcare, up to and including, say, the multiple brain surgeries my dad had a couple of years ago (he's fine!).
That's interesting. I'm not familiar with how UK taxes are levied. In the US, we get taxed on our income. Federal Gubment takes a slice that goes to medicare/medicade, social security, and then to the general fund. Not all states have an income tax, but the ones that do usually spread out their slice for whatever they feel like but they don't operate any state level health care. Fuel taxes generally go towards infrastructure, at least highway maintenance and the like. Sales tax both fed and state are general coffers, typically. And, lastly, property tax goes towards county services like public libraries, emergency services (fire and county police), and other county government run things. Cities mostly collect their taxes from what has been paid to the state to cover their services, usually. Some tack on an "occupational tax" to income, but that's not too common.

Honestly, it seems that the UK's and Canada's health plans have been largely successful. I'm sure they have their weak points but by in large, it seems that it's a far superior solution than to the corporate driven model here in the US.

*Edit
Just to add too, several states, especially the deep red ones, have to get subsidized from the federal government to remain functional. IE their spending exceeds their revenue collection. That's something republicans tend to ignore. They harass individuals that get government subsidies, but ignore the very fact that their own states have to operate on federal subsidies due to their inability to adequately produce goods and services to generate tax revenue, but they want to keep immigrants out that could help with that. :lol:
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Re: Trump

Post by red assassin » Sat, 30. Nov 19, 17:36

Vertigo 7 wrote:
Sat, 30. Nov 19, 16:19
That's interesting. I'm not familiar with how UK taxes are levied. In the US, we get taxed on our income. Federal Gubment takes a slice that goes to medicare/medicade, social security, and then to the general fund. Not all states have an income tax, but the ones that do usually spread out their slice for whatever they feel like but they don't operate any state level health care. Fuel taxes generally go towards infrastructure, at least highway maintenance and the like. Sales tax both fed and state are general coffers, typically. And, lastly, property tax goes towards county services like public libraries, emergency services (fire and county police), and other county government run things. Cities mostly collect their taxes from what has been paid to the state to cover their services, usually. Some tack on an "occupational tax" to income, but that's not too common.
In the UK I pay the following to the national government:
* Income tax and national insurance (which is functionally just income tax with different rates, for boring historical reasons) are deducted from my income at an income-dependent rate.
* Various forms of sales tax - the rate depends on what I'm buying. The "standard" VAT rate for goods and services is 20%, but most foods don't get taxed, there's significant additional fuel duty on petrol, etc etc. (This is the main reason I don't know exactly how much tax I've paid.)
* Vehicle tax on my car.
* Capital gains tax and savings interest tax, in theory, although in practice I'm not actually in a position to pay any of these.

To the local government, I pay:
* Council tax, which is a tax based on the value of my house.

Various things get tax relief offset against income tax, in particular:
* Pension contributions.
* Charitable donations.

This is all reasonably complicated in theory, but in practice most people don't actually have to think about any of this - income tax is automatically deducted at the correct rates from your paycheck, posted prices in stores include relevant taxes, etc etc. You only actually need to do tax calculations yourself if your tax situation is more complicated than the standard, e.g. you have a lot of income from investments or you're self-employed.

Certain taxes are theoretically "for" certain purposes, but in practice that's not how the government budget accounting actually works, so I'm not going to bother attempting to explain that. (Even paying certain taxes to the local rather than national government is less meaningful than it first appears, because local authorities also get some of their income from the national government, and what exactly falls into the responsibility of national vs local government is complicated.)

Ignoring sales tax, my overall tax rate is roughly 30% of my income, again, noting that I earn well over the median and that this is affected by how expensive my house and car are and my rate of pension contributions and charitable giving. A single person on the median household income pays about 20% in income taxes.
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Re: Trump

Post by Vertigo 7 » Sat, 30. Nov 19, 21:19

red assassin wrote:
Sat, 30. Nov 19, 17:36
Vertigo 7 wrote:
Sat, 30. Nov 19, 16:19
That's interesting. I'm not familiar with how UK taxes are levied. In the US, we get taxed on our income. Federal Gubment takes a slice that goes to medicare/medicade, social security, and then to the general fund. Not all states have an income tax, but the ones that do usually spread out their slice for whatever they feel like but they don't operate any state level health care. Fuel taxes generally go towards infrastructure, at least highway maintenance and the like. Sales tax both fed and state are general coffers, typically. And, lastly, property tax goes towards county services like public libraries, emergency services (fire and county police), and other county government run things. Cities mostly collect their taxes from what has been paid to the state to cover their services, usually. Some tack on an "occupational tax" to income, but that's not too common.
In the UK I pay the following to the national government:
* Income tax and national insurance (which is functionally just income tax with different rates, for boring historical reasons) are deducted from my income at an income-dependent rate.
* Various forms of sales tax - the rate depends on what I'm buying. The "standard" VAT rate for goods and services is 20%, but most foods don't get taxed, there's significant additional fuel duty on petrol, etc etc. (This is the main reason I don't know exactly how much tax I've paid.)
* Vehicle tax on my car.
* Capital gains tax and savings interest tax, in theory, although in practice I'm not actually in a position to pay any of these.

To the local government, I pay:
* Council tax, which is a tax based on the value of my house.

Various things get tax relief offset against income tax, in particular:
* Pension contributions.
* Charitable donations.

This is all reasonably complicated in theory, but in practice most people don't actually have to think about any of this - income tax is automatically deducted at the correct rates from your paycheck, posted prices in stores include relevant taxes, etc etc. You only actually need to do tax calculations yourself if your tax situation is more complicated than the standard, e.g. you have a lot of income from investments or you're self-employed.

Certain taxes are theoretically "for" certain purposes, but in practice that's not how the government budget accounting actually works, so I'm not going to bother attempting to explain that. (Even paying certain taxes to the local rather than national government is less meaningful than it first appears, because local authorities also get some of their income from the national government, and what exactly falls into the responsibility of national vs local government is complicated.)

Ignoring sales tax, my overall tax rate is roughly 30% of my income, again, noting that I earn well over the median and that this is affected by how expensive my house and car are and my rate of pension contributions and charitable giving. A single person on the median household income pays about 20% in income taxes.
It sounds a lot like tax here without the tacked on state income, though at an admittedly better rate. My current tax bracket puts me at 22% to the feds and 5% to the state. I'm well above the state median income and slightly above the national median, not that it really changes much. The only difference between us is I get to claim to reduce my tax liability is the interest payments on my mortgage and student loans, but its not enough to push me into a lower tax bracket. We have to file income taxes with the IRS annually, some have to quarterly if they're doing a lot of investing and what not. I could, theoretically, calculate out to the penny what I will owe for taxes and have that specific dollar amount withheld instead of the estimations, but most people just do the estimated withholding and figure it out when they file their taxes. The feds are good at getting refunds issued fairly quickly. My state, though, sucks at it. Often they wait until the last possible moment to issue refunds... sometime in August. After that, they owe interest on refunds as well.

The state, though, loves to try to come after me for whatever federal tax refund I got for the previous year. I still don't understand how that's legal because I'm pretty sure that money had already been taxed. I'm not overly fond of this dual income tax system here. 7 states have no income tax, but they recoup that through sales tax and the like. Property taxes are higher as well. But, even that is a bit simpler imo and is most likely a net wash.

Trumpypoo wants to make income tax fit on a post card. I wish him luck but I don't see that happening without making significant reductions in tax law. And if he is even able to pull it off, it'll end up being some thinly veiled attempt to further reduce his own tax liabilities.
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Re: Trump

Post by RegisterMe » Sat, 30. Nov 19, 23:32

Most, if not all (I'm not sure) states would be bankrupt were they operating under the same tax and financial rules / laws as corporations.

Just google "US state pension deficits" and do some reading :(.
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Re: Trump

Post by Vertigo 7 » Sun, 1. Dec 19, 00:06

Sadly, pensions are becoming a thing of the past. I think, in part, because of what these state pensions show, they end up costing more in the long run. I've noticed a concerted effort by financial institutions over the last 15 years to push for IRAs. Businesses have stopped offering pension plans in favor of 401k or 403b retirement plans where they match a certain % of the contributions you make instead of giving you money for the rest of your life.

It's a logical choice. I mean, take the US military for example. I understand they have a new retirement plan, but while I was active, they had what's called the "High 3" plan where they took the number of years you served, multiplied by the average of your highest 3 years of base pay (typically would be your last 3 unless you did a dumb) times 2.5%. You could retire at 20 years, or max it out at 30. Either way, do the math on that... enlist at 18 years old, retire at 38 or 48 years old, and get a damn good salary for the rest of your life. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the military service members that put in that amount of time don't deserve that, I'm just saying we're talking millions paid out over the remainder of these folk's life times thousands of individuals, if not more. It's not sustainable.

So instead of pension plans, businesses and even the military are shifting towards pushing individuals to plan for their own retirements instead which is far more sustainable in the long term.

This is something that I think needs to be pushed in the education system. Financial health isn't really focused on but it's just as important as the basics of math and science and the like. It could certainly go a long way towards helping individuals understand how to manage their own money and plan ahead.
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Re: Trump

Post by red assassin » Sun, 1. Dec 19, 00:19

We have the same issue with pensions in the UK, with the same remedy. The problem is that a) people are living longer and b) the population has stopped growing, so the net result is far more older people to support for longer from the same working population. Ironically, one of the remedies for this is to increase immigration; since immigrants tend to be younger and working, you're increasing the income base to support the expensive, ageing native population.
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