Whats up faggots.

[kthx]

Sorry, but I'll go ahead and shortcut the education/healthcare thing: politician after politician have used the funding originally slated towards education/healthcare to subsidize tax cuts. It allows them to cut taxes, but how do you pay for vital stuff? Raid education, raid the highway fund, raid healthcare, let 'em worry about it years down the road.

So it's frustrating to hear these same politicians turn around and say these things were always fucked when the fact of the matter is, they were deliberately crippled slowly and over time, and now these dudes are telling us they're bad because socialism?

Let's rewind to before Medicare. Why do we have it? The free market existed before we regulated it. Why did it need regulation? Could it be that... the market didn't function as you think it would?

You can't whine about education cuts and then compare America to ww2 Germany for not letting every dickhead immigrant come in. I am sure education could probably save a few billion a year if we didn't have to make every single fucking document, book, and posted in English and Spanish, or have entire schools devoted to spanish, or ESL classes, or the historically high free lunch program use these students are on.

[kthx]

The reason this line is being fed to you is because the Citizens United decision allowed basically unlimited money to flow to candidates from two sources: PACs and unions. Theoretically the only thing standing in the way of Koch/Mercer/etc-funded PACs from outright buying elections is the capability of unions to oppose them, so naturally the next step is demonizing unions. What's scott walker been doing up in wisconsin, again?

It's absolutely true that there are shitty unions in this country, but once again I think it's pretty dumb to take one bad example to demonize the rest. Well... I'd be ok with that actually, since all i'd have to do is find one bad cop and then I could say "policing sucks, theyre all crooks, get rid of cops"

Rehabilitating unions and the shitty people who run them is going to take a long time but that's what is so exciting about 2017. I've been knee-deep in local organizing efforts for various groups and orgs and to see laborers taking power back into their own hands after years of being asleep at the wheel is refreshing. I absolutely see this as a long-term project and I don't think we're on the brink of anything radical now but the key here is training people to be ready when the time comes.

You keep saying I have been force fed information like I am sitting here watching Fox News (controlled opposition) or some stupid shit like this all day, you do realize I am smart enough to form my own opinion based on actual facts right?

[Jerome Scuggs]

Sorry, but I'll go ahead and shortcut the education/healthcare thing: politician after politician have used the funding originally slated towards education/healthcare to subsidize tax cuts. It allows them to cut taxes, but how do you pay for vital stuff? Raid education, raid the highway fund, raid healthcare, let 'em worry about it years down the road.

So it's frustrating to hear these same politicians turn around and say these things were always fucked when the fact of the matter is, they were deliberately crippled slowly and over time, and now these dudes are telling us they're bad because socialism?

Let's rewind to before Medicare. Why do we have it? The free market existed before we regulated it. Why did it need regulation? Could it be that... the market didn't function as you think it would?

[kthx]

"But Kthx you have been trained to think bad things about Unions with your feeble right wing indoctrinated mind"

Unions are still just butt hurt from Reagan busting them when they tried to fuck over the country by striking on Christmas Eve at the airport. All unions are these days are voting blocs for the democrats with ties to organized crime. Anyone in a union with a still functioning brain realizes that Trump pretty much saved local manufacturing and plant work when he won the election.

[Jerome Scuggs]

Unions have their purposes, but the hilarious thing is that many of them are just as corrupt as the government they constantly complain about, they are in bed with the democrats, and you end up paying your "taxes" to them for shit you don't want to do. A union is basically a small micro chasm of the government that you hate, but now you love it for some reason?

The reason this line is being fed to you is because the Citizens United decision allowed basically unlimited money to flow to candidates from two sources: PACs and unions. Theoretically the only thing standing in the way of Koch/Mercer/etc-funded PACs from outright buying elections is the capability of unions to oppose them, so naturally the next step is demonizing unions. What's scott walker been doing up in wisconsin, again?

It's absolutely true that there are shitty unions in this country, but once again I think it's pretty dumb to take one bad example to demonize the rest. Well... I'd be ok with that actually, since all i'd have to do is find one bad cop and then I could say "policing sucks, theyre all crooks, get rid of cops"

Rehabilitating unions and the shitty people who run them is going to take a long time but that's what is so exciting about 2017. I've been knee-deep in local organizing efforts for various groups and orgs and to see laborers taking power back into their own hands after years of being asleep at the wheel is refreshing. I absolutely see this as a long-term project and I don't think we're on the brink of anything radical now but the key here is training people to be ready when the time comes.

[Ephemeral]

Socialize medicine, without competitive market forces, is based upon the minimum amount of care they can get away with. This is not how medicine gets better, it is how you stagnate the entire industry. Same of the stupid US education system; every single, state uses the ‘minimum amount of days’ for the school year. Using the minimum amount of schools days get us posts like we see in this thread. If we had school system which used the maximum amount of school days and then only cut back once the students and teachers were excelling, or made dialysis companies use the maximum number of healthcare providers on the floor each day until patients were cared for correctly, then things would get better.

The leftist media is feeding the lemmings and the lemmings are heading for the cliff. USA is one of the best countries in the world, this is why people want to come here. If folks like socialism then please move to Venezuela or Finland or something. This bit about the ‘big bad corporations’ is a fucking myth. (Of course there are some huge mindless companies like Exxon, but these are NOT what makes up the vast majority of US corporations.) The over whelming type of corporations in US are ‘mom and pop’ type companies, with less than 100 people. These are the backbone of the country, most are not run by millionaires who screw the workers, they are run by people who struggle by pouring every dime back into the company to get it to grow. But everyone loves to hate the 'big bad corporations'.

Our government has a simple purpose, to provide us the rights in the Bill of Rights and to protect us from outside invaders. Period. But for some reason the current generation seems to thinks the governments purpose is to provide social services for everyone. The social programs were developed strictly by politicians who were seeking reelection and perpetuation of their careers. Want to fix Washington? Implement strict term limits, you do your public service and then go get a real job and career. And a job that has no association with any favors you did for people while you served (like Trump has implemented). What we now have is a fucking Department of Agriculture with more employees than we have farmers in this country. Good job.

If you wanted to ‘give back’ to society which is better; go donate some time at local soup kitchen or give some money to Washington and let the politicians distribute 5 cents on the dollar it to the needy? Jerome railed on about middlemen in the insurance industry but then turns around and argues that making the government the middleman is better. WTF? If you do not agree with middlemen then be consistent; the Feds are by FAR much worse a middleman than any company ever was.

I grew up in the 1960s when we had real ‘bring down the man’ causes. You know back when having a tat was a sign of a real man, not like today when every fucking 15 year girl has one. As an old hippie I can tell you that to be radical today is to be a Trump supporter, not one of these snowflakes media brain washed leftists. I voted for Trump for one reason, to tear the corrupt Washington machine down. Of course he is an asshole. But when I needed someone to save my life, I used the very best cancer surgeon on the East Coast. He was an arrogant egotistical asshole too. I did not care, I was not marrying him, I only needed to operate on me and do it right.
Eph

[kthx]

Unions have their purposes, but the hilarious thing is that many of them are just as corrupt as the government they constantly complain about, they are in bed with the democrats, and you end up paying your "taxes" to them for shit you don't want to do. A union is basically a small micro chasm of the government that you hate, but now you love it for some reason?

[kthx]

-Knowing there's too many people, sentiments turn inward and nationalist, with hostilities being directed at foreigners. Sound familiar?

...?

Ok I understand what you are trying to say but correct me if I am wrong here, but we do not live in a POST SCARCITY ECONOMY nor will we for quite some time. Until that time comes, we can't just let people have shit for free. People that work harder or are smarter SHOULD have access to the better things in life.

[Jerome Scuggs]

For real Jerome, people like you make me want my kids to pick up a trade instead of going to college. That is such a fucking shitty pessimistic view of life. And I see lots of people getting out of school with it. This country has been the best thing to ever happen to this planet we live in.

I'm not gonna deny that we had a hell of a ~200-year run, but it's foolish to think our economy is functioning like it did even twenty, thirty years ago

I suggest you teach your kids a trade, as picking one up myself is what opened my eyes to what unions did for this country, as opposed to the narrative being spun about them. IWW Trade Local 520 union member reporting in!!

[Jerome Scuggs]

2. holy fuck you are a really bad leftist now, you want to compare the rise of Trump to the rise of Hitler in part 3 there my god LOL. Securing your own border against ILLEGAL immigrants isn't what trump did, we aren't folding in upon ourselves as a nation, we are trying to stop the bleeding from a flood of ridiculously expensive to care for individuals. If anything Merkel is more likely to be the next Hitler, considering her love of muslims and knowing that Hitler wished that his army were made of Muslims. Also trying to push around other sovereign nations to do the UN's bidding.

I'm about to go to work so I can't answer everything immediately but I thought I would drill down on this

I don't think I ever hinted at anything close to this, and I suspect you're confusing my views/statements with the narrative that you're instinctively trained to apply to leftists or whatever

I was merely pointing out that the rise of anti-immigrant rhetoric rose sharply with the immediate aftermath of the 1970's: companies found they no longer needed labor. They had enough people for the jobs available. At the same time alot of these corporations chose to move production overseas, where they could continue to pay foreign labor pennies on the dollar at factories with no sort of legal oversight guaranteeing worker safety, et cetera. And here, in our own country, with zero desire to raise wages, they found it cheaper to hire illegal immigrants willing to work for lower wages to do the same jobs.

So this explains in part the rise of rhetoric such as "they took'er jerbs!", and if you're trying to say that this is a recent, trump-centered phenomenon.... buddy, you gotta watch south park

But yeah, it's interesting because let's apply profit motive here. You'd think if we ACTUALLY wanted to decrease illegal immigration, we'd remove to profit motive. Humans are naturally greedy, you say, so naturally no law or border is going to stop a greedy mexican from getting a job here.

So why don't we punish the COMPANIES that HIRE illegals? If companies don't hire them, they won't find it profitable to illegally immigrate. Companies have addresses, we know where to find them. This is pure economics here: the best way to reduce illegal immigration is to remove the economic reason for coming over here. Hiring illegals is AGAINST the LAW and enforcing this law would be hella cheaper and far more effective than a... lol.... 'border wall'.

[kthx]

For real Jerome, people like you make me want my kids to pick up a trade instead of going to college. That is such a fucking shitty pessimistic view of life. And I see lots of people getting out of school with it. This country has been the best thing to ever happen to this planet we live in.

[kthx]

I would argue that it very much has everything to do with insurance companies. It's a massive industry that makes massive profits, and all it is is basically a middle man. Look at specific regulatory and legal pushes, and every step of the way you will see insurance lobbyists interfering. They don't give a shit about anything but their bottom line, and if ruining healthcare improves profits, so be it. In particular the "obamacare repeal" would have seen some ~10 or 20million Americans kicked off their insurance, but also included in the bill were tax cuts and kickbacks totalling some half-billion dollars to the insurance companies. They literally don't give a shit about anything but being paid.

Obamacare repeal is going to do the same thing as not repealing Obamacare, it is purposefully shitty to implode upon itself to create a single payer system of health insurance for America, it was designed to fail purposefully, which is why it ended up making a majority of people pay MORE for it. You can't force a company to randomly start giving a cancer patient insured chemo medicine when they haven't paid into the company for it for the last 6 months or 20 years. Obamacare was a disaster, and there are plenty of people who WANT to not have to pay for insurance because they are young and healthy. The obamacare mandate made them pay into it for the old people. It was a disaster and your numbers are ridiculously skewed.

[kthx]

But I think this leads to something deeper: for a long time, "profit motive" has been associated with "improving peoples' lives." IE yeah these companies are greedy, but historically we've seen that businesses have done great things for people in the name of profit.

I would argue this is no longer the case. Businesses no longer have to improve lives to make money. Hell, they barely even have to produce. Does Uber produce/provide the cars their employees drive? Does AirBnB produce/provide the houses people rent out? Hell no, they've found ways to insert themselves between a person and their own capital to grift a little off the top. We're reaching the sort of advanced, late-stage capitalism that Marx wrote about, and we all laughed at him for quite some time because until recently, the grifting was never so blatantly obvious and in our face.

How exactly is it airbnb or lyfts fault that they created a service that a person who offers something and someone who wants something together, that isn't late stage capitalism or anything Marx talked about it is a modern marketplace.

[kthx]

1. Well the answer is obvious but you can't see it. Space exploration, colonization, asteroid mining etc is the next step.

2. holy fuck you are a really bad leftist now, you want to compare the rise of Trump to the rise of Hitler in part 3 there my god LOL. Securing your own border against ILLEGAL immigrants isn't what trump did, we aren't folding in upon ourselves as a nation, we are trying to stop the bleeding from a flood of ridiculously expensive to care for individuals. If anything Merkel is more likely to be the next Hitler, considering her love of muslims and knowing that Hitler wished that his army were made of Muslims. Also trying to push around other sovereign nations to do the UN's bidding.

3. You are basically trying to say this is late stage capitalism but what you don't see is what you already said. Anyone born here has the ability in themselves to do whatever they want, a serf wouldn't become a lord most likely, but even someone born in the ghetto can change his own life if he wants. That is what this country is founded on, self determination. That will never die.

[Jerome Scuggs]

But I think this leads to something deeper: for a long time, "profit motive" has been associated with "improving peoples' lives." IE yeah these companies are greedy, but historically we've seen that businesses have done great things for people in the name of profit.

I would argue this is no longer the case. Businesses no longer have to improve lives to make money. Hell, they barely even have to produce. Does Uber produce/provide the cars their employees drive? Does AirBnB produce/provide the houses people rent out? Hell no, they've found ways to insert themselves between a person and their own capital to grift a little off the top. We're reaching the sort of advanced, late-stage capitalism that Marx wrote about, and we all laughed at him for quite some time because until recently, the grifting was never so blatantly obvious and in our face.