Like most fiscal conservatives I'd be more than happy to pay more taxes if I knew the government wasn't going to waste it. That's the problem, they do waste it... so I'd rather just not throw my money away if I don't have to. As an example, I'd much rather give the portion of my taxes that goes to food stamps to the Houston Food Bank than the government. Why? Because $.96 of every $1.00 given to them goes to actually helping those in need. Meanwhile, on average the Federal and State SNAP initiatives have about a 20% overhead. Why would I want to give more to the government's efforts? I have many government agencies as my clients and I've worked at the local and federal government levels during my career. The waste and apathy in government is astounding - and I'll fight tooth and nail to keep from giving them more of my money while they are inept with it. As far as your points go: Medicare for all - I agree with this one, the cat is out of the bag and we are stuck with socialized medicine, so we should make it the best we can make it rather than the money pit and train wreck that is Obamacare. Green New Deal - I feel that technology will always be the great equalizer, and the financial gains from green tech will be what drives us out of threat of disaster, not the government. I find it laughable that people who are shocked at how terrible the US government is with technology, thinks that they can help in any meaningful way with green technology, short of tax credits (I think green tax incentives are fine). larger minimum wage - Automation will make minimum wage jobs obsolete, and it already is. Want to speed up their obsolescence? Raise the minimum wage. Free tuition/Community college - Education is already free, you can enroll in classes online for free at places like Harvard, MIT and Stanford and sites like edX. A college degree guarantees nothing but debt. You still have to work for a job... until kids realize that getting $200k in debt for a liberal arts degree was a bad idea, we'll continue to have people who think the system is stacked against them. stop paying for unnecessary wars - The biggest of which is the failed war on drugs. Decriminalize, and treat rather than incarcerate. Pass federal legalization of recreational mar1juana, and tax the hell out of it - and use those funds and the funds from ending the war on drugs to revolutionize the primary education in America. With the ever increasing deficit, the house of cards that is Social Security, and the upcoming automation of entry level, and transportation jobs (which accounts for about 25% of all jobs) over the next two decades... we really need to get our **** together before 2040.
Not that it matters to me much, but you say people aren't in it for money and then 3 of the 5 points you make are directly related to giving people money.
I'm not saying college isn't important, but to think that giving people free college will fix anything is just wrong. Also, if you are poor in this country - junior college is basically free. I can't go a day without seeing 5-10 memes about millennials struggling to find jobs with a degree. The problem isn't college degrees, it is students getting degrees in the wrong fields. If you aren't going to be a teacher, or work for a non-profit - you should probably be going into an engineering, technology, finance and/or business field. Everything is is going to be automated, and the days of going to college and thinking that you're set are long gone. You must continue to learn, and never stop learning in today's business world. That's why sites like edX, and free education initiatives from technology companies like Microsoft are important. I've been in technology fields my whole life, so this is nothing knew to me - but people who don't continually evolve are going to fall to the wayside in the future workforce. In the technology sector, there are more jobs than there are qualified applicants - because US students do not go to school for it at a high enough rate to meet demand - and it has been that case for decades. I've been a hiring manager in IT for over 10 years, and during that time I've hired probably 10x as many immigrants than I have Americans. Why? Because in Asia and SE Asia, technology degrees are achieved at 4-5 times the rate per capita than in the US... and more than 20 times the rate per capita in females. The same goes for trade skills. It is going to cost you more for a skilled tradesman (welder, plumber, mechanic, builder) in the next 10-15 years than it will a doctor or lawyer. Why? Because current generations turn their noses up at potential six-figure blue collar incomes. The craziest part? Most of these positions don't even require school, just apprenticeships - where you still get paid middle class wages! Mike Rowe summed it up before Congress better than I can. Long story short, there are jobs, and there are opportunities to learn what you need to learn to get high paying six-figure jobs without getting in debt. The problem is Americans don't want to do that. They want to feel special and get a "college experience," financing be damned.
I've been barking about the need for a serious push in this direction for a long time. Not everyone should go to a university, and it would benefit our economy greatly if they took some time, learned a skill or 3, and then went to work.
If you don't already, I encourage you to follow and spread the word about the Mike Rowe Works efforts. Houston is one of the few places in the country where skilled tradesman aren't looked down upon, but there are still more jobs than people to fill them. This issue is also why as a conservative, I fully support immigration reform and streamlining the immigration process (besides the fact you know, we're all immigrants). Americans are too proud to do hard labor, so let's give those jobs to immigrants that want them. Just give them a Social Security card so that they can pay taxes and a path to citizenship. I have no doubt many of them will surpass most of our "woe is me" brethren in no-time.
Progressives aren't in it to line their own pockets at the expense of the American people. These ideas are to help everyone not just one portion of the country.
Oh hell, I've got master plumbers and welders and carpenters and mechanics etc... who make six-figures and they can't find enough qualified help, so they turn down jobs.
And Trump supporters are delusional? Their ideas are not to help everyone, their ideas are to pander to the ignorant masses that they help keep ignorant and downtrodden. Nearly the exact same thing that conservatives do with Christians. They pander to their ideals, only to increase their power. We can't pay for what "progressives" say they can do, that's how you know they are full of ****.
I feel like we are agreeing on a lot of this stuff. I do think you are ignoring a lot of these kids don't realize these opportunities exist. It isn't about feeling special or turning their noses up at a particular field, it's more about doing what they think they are supposed to do. How many times is in drummed into kid's heads that you go to college you get a job and that it? How often do we hear that you can make 6 figures being a plumber without going to college?
It's miraculous that immigrants can come here and seize opportunity by the literal truckload. You raise another point about the intellectual bubbles... they are their own worst enemy. The vastly progressive college world, fills kids heads full of what they "deserve" and does not prepare them for reality. They are going into insurmountable debt for "books smarts" but they aren't being taught "life smarts." Why? Because colleges and tenured professors are every bit as greedy and manipulative as Fortune 500 companies and executives. With all of that said, in the day and age of the internet the "they don't know" excuse is wearing very, very thin. And again, this is all echoed and compounded once more by the progressive left who tells them all, "you deserve a college degree and a great job!" You don't deserve a damn thing if you aren't willing to outwork the next guy. You don't get a participation trophy for life.
I can’t reply to with as much length and depth as you did. But I suppose I agree and disagree with (your I tail post at least, I need to read this one again). You haven’t addressed the debt issue. But then again when you connect it to someone amassing huge amounts of debt without much hope for a return on that investment you have a problem. I’ll reply to this later with an actual keyboard
I appreciate the candor. The only way we'll ever work our way out of this mess is with actual dialogue. I'm all for progressive ideals, they sound fantastic... but I'm also a realist and know when I am being sold a literal load of bullshit. Just like in my everyday job, and my every day life. When it comes to the government and their current and proposed policies and initiatives I do one thing... I follow the money. What is my return on investment? The government is about the worst thing one can invest in, in it's current state. We have decades of hard evidence that shows they don't have our best interests at heart, and that they can't spend our tax dollars wisely. If we all did that at our jobs, we'd have been fired within months, much less decades.
If you took all the money Americans and employers pay to provide private health insurance, took out the insurance executive salaries, lobbying costs, profits and spent it on single payer with national negotiating power, you would have an overall cheaper healthcare total and a better medical success rate. https://www.washingtonpost.com/busi...78b14e-9432-11e8-a679-b09212fb69c2_story.html Imagine if the Federal Government put out a Request For Bids to deliver 350 million doses of insulin over the course of 2021. Do you think the overall public expenditure for insulin would be more or less than the private expenditures for insulin? Would more people that need insulin get it, or less?
I think this is false/misleading. https://www.cbpp.org/research/policy-basics-the-supplemental-nutrition-assistance-program-snap 93% of SNAP funds go to benefits. 1% goes to federal overhead, and 6% goes to state overhead. That said, SNAP is going to have more overhead costs because it has more restrictions and provides a more flexible benefit structure. The Houston Food Bank doesn't go through detailed eligibility screenings/etc. They also don't serve everyone in need - just those that can find a way to get to their locations. The marginal amount of SNAP funding and Food Bank funding going to people in need should be pretty similar though at near 100%. I think the easiest way to encourage green energy from the private sector is to stop subsidizing oil/gas. That saves the federal government money and encourages private sector investment to shift to green energy. Right now, government policy strongly favors oil/gas. Also, invest more in university research - that's an area where government has proved very efficient in developing new technologies or the building blocks for it. People need to think outside of the box here. If we want to employ more people, we need to make it cheaper / more logical for businesses to employ people. Right now, due to health care costs and payroll taxes, it's much cheaper to hire one $100k employee than four $25k employees, so businesses tend to downsize and overwork their remaining people. Redesigning health care to get away from the employer-based coverage concept and broadening the payroll tax base while lowering the rate would help encourage more hiring. Also, over the last 30 years, we've repeated favored capital over labor (investing my money in a business is taxed at a lower rate than investing my labor) - this results in capital (automation) being preferred over labor. If we shifted taxes a bit on labor towards capital, you'd also see a shift towards more employment and quality employment.
Just the title of “most Americans don’t own stocks”. That’s a false statement. But I see you clarify that later on in your response to DD. For anyone that own any stock (slight majority of Americans), how much the stock market impact them depends on how much of their total financial worth is in stock vs non-stock. If they have a worth of $1k, $300 in the market is pretty impactful. I don’t have an idea of what that is for the bottom 80% of stock owners. How little the bottom 80% owns vs the top 20% show the disparity, but not necessary the impact to them.
Hey guys, brace yourselves for another major bloodbath in the markets next week. News is that Trump is considering firing Powell. That possibility, even worse than a government shutdown, will send markers further down. Selling begets selling.
