Is the Democrats or Republicans Better for Disabled Folks?

[Risottia]

Neither. Republicans and Democrats are two sides of the same coin. But as long as voters keep getting tricked into voting for them, they'll keep getting away with it.

Don't you just love the American political system? It's basically a single-party-state, with two different tastes - as they both vie to get the votes of the same interest groups, and voting for minor parties is like not voting at all anyway.

[The Nuclear Fist]

Neither. Republicans and Democrats are two sides of the same coin. But as long as voters keep getting tricked into voting for them, they'll keep getting away with it.

Don't you just love the American political system? It's basically a single-party-state, with two different tastes - as they both vie to get the votes of the same interest groups, and voting for minor parties is like not voting at all anyway.

Don't you just love political hipsterism?

[Downeistan]

It takes hard to make a country so rich and progressive that it has the structures to be perfectly disability-friendly, immigrant-friendly, etc.

It's called The Internets. Despite generally being regarded as evil, through commercial companies bringing their internets to every home, everyone is given an opportunity to participate in the labor market - as a freelance coder, web designer, artist or writer for hire, market analyst, jew banker, futures trader, actuary, tax assistant, or taking up a number of other jobs.

Some of them pay as well as office jobs, most don't, but hey, they're not supposed to pay as well as office jobs, since they don't require wasting tons of gas and a month of your time every year just to get there and back.

I'm sorry to threadjack, but care to explain 'jew banker'?

[Downeistan]

It's not like most people on welfare programs actually do work and are simply victims of a system designed to victimize them.

The United States has a minimum wage. At $7.25 it is higher than the average wage in most of the world.
Not just higher than the third world, but higher than the average wage in most of Eastern Europe like even Hungary.
The CoL in US is quite forgiving, with cheap gas, low-cost store chains and generally lower prices than across the EU.

So why would someone who receives a minimum wage from a full-time job and pays no or little taxes need welfare to live?

How about try it and then determine the simplicity of it.

[Hetalian Indie Rio de Janeiro]

Don't you just love the American political system? It's basically a single-party-state, with two different tastes - as they both vie to get the votes of the same interest groups, and voting for minor parties is like not voting at all anyway.

Don't you just love political hipsterism?

'Murrica, where Obama = their communist and our communists = baby-eating hipsters

[The Nuclear Fist]

Don't you just love political hipsterism?

'Murrica, where Obama = their communist and our communists = baby-eating hipsters

. . .

I meant more along the lines of the tired old horseshit about both American parties being 'the same'.

[Souseiseki]

'Murrica, where Obama = their communist and our communists = baby-eating hipsters

. . .

I meant more along the lines of the tired old horseshit about both American parties being 'the same'.

you're right

one is right-wing, and one is really right-wing

one is utter shit, and one is less shit

how could i have been so mistaken

[Saiwania]

So why would someone who receives a minimum wage from a full-time job and pays no or little taxes need welfare to live?

I just want to point out that $7.25 an hour is no longer enough to cover the cost of living in a lot of places in the US, as much as I am loathe to require businesses to pay high wages because I see it as a barrier to entry for small business. The US minimum wage isn't adjusted for inflation, congress has to decide to raise it periodically which hasn't happened since 2009.

[Vault 1]

I just want to point out that $7.25 an hour is no longer enough to cover the cost of living in a lot of places in the US, as much as I am loathe to require businesses to pay high wages because I see it as a barrier to entry for small business.

In very few places.
Specifically in New York City, where it's been calculated that $7.25 is equivalent to $4 elsewhere in the nation. It's a rare outlier with the closest followers, SF, LA, DC and Boston, sitting at $6 for $7.25 national.

But you know what?
In any other country, or not in any, but by far in most of the world's countries, it would never have occurred to someone who can only pull the minimum wage to go live in that country's most expensive city.

Yesterday's village farmers don't go live among skyscrapers. Shining megacities are regarded as glamorous luxuries places for the businesspeople and yuppies, with workers servicing them being paid from the gouged prices. It's arguable in itself whether everyone deserves the same standard of living, but everyone most definitely isn't entitled to meet that standard in every place they can pick on the map.

So maybe instead of calling for the nation to raise the minimum wage to accommodate for NYC's price-gouging enabled by its rich residents, we should look for the people to move where they can afford to live. To that end, BTW, I have no objections to individual cities and counties setting their own minimum wages (preferably, indeed, starting with N number of employees) as a means to promote the economic segments they're targeting.

Differentiate, cut out taxation on the poor (I'd really like to see a system where a state tax on aggregate yearly income above a set point is the only tax ever period), keep shelters and such survival minimum measures against extreme poverty running - and that's all that is needed; you don't have to micromanage everyone in the nation to have them find their place in it.

[Downeistan]

Once again, care to explain the 'jew banker' term Vault1?

[Saiwania]

In very few places.
Specifically in New York City, where it's been calculated that $7.25 is equivalent to $4 elsewhere in the nation. It's a rare outlier with the closest followers, SF, LA, DC and Boston, sitting at $6 for $7.25 national.

It isn't just in big urban areas where the minimum wage doesn't adequately cover the cost of living. The US federal minimum wage is just a lower limit, a lot of states have chosen to set a higher minimum wage than the federal. I'm not the biggest fan of minimum wage but it has to eventually be raised relative to inflation because the US doesn't have strong pro-labor laws or unions. A change to $9/hour wouldn't disrupt businesses that much.

[Sibirsky]

'Murrica, where Obama = their communist and our communists = baby-eating hipsters

. . .

I meant more along the lines of the tired old horseshit about both American parties being 'the same'.

They are the same. Any differences are just minor details.

[Byzantium Imperial]

Democrats=Massive welfare programs and entitlements that cost alot of money in the longrun and are probably unsustainable.

Republicans=minimal and more sustainable welfare programs that have quite a few holes.



Neither party is really good, unless your elderly, in which case the democrats provide the best bet (you dont have to bear the future economic burden)

It's not that much, it's completely sustainable, and it's all entirely necessary for the continuation and betterment of society.

You don't understand economics or politics and that's blatantly and painfully obvious from this post. Educate yourself.

In our current structure its unsustainable. Other countries have bigger programs that are sustainable, but they are structured far better then ours is (and they don have to worry about ridiculous medical costs or have their SS fund drained of funds to sustain other projects). I never criticized the need for it, i simply mocked the way we go about it.

Perhaps that didnt carry across well enough.

[Vault 1]

It isn't just in big urban areas where the minimum wage doesn't adequately cover the cost of living. The US federal minimum wage is just a lower limit, a lot of states have chosen to set a higher minimum wage than the federal. I'm not the biggest fan of minimum wage but it has to eventually be raised relative to inflation because the US doesn't have strong pro-labor laws or unions. A change to $9/hour wouldn't disrupt businesses that much.

The minimum wage should just cover the hard necessities. It's not supposed to be the wage a significant proportion of people actually earns, else the wage needs to be revised down to reflect the practice. The minimum wage just has be there to force a hard cutoff: it states that a citizen is not allowed to choose to work for a pay below what the society considers necessary for him not to be a threat to it.

Setting the minimum wage high promotes it as a practical wage, and eventually as the standard wage that masses are to be hired for. It is inevitable. Make no mistake, the extra wages paid when the minimum increases don't come from a magic tree and they don't come out of the CEO's pocket, they come from the wages of workers right above that minimum wage level.
There are big problems with that. To begin with, it erodes competition in the labor market. If every basic worker costs the same and every employer pays the same, the market commoditizes. Commoditization of goods has its good sides and its bad sides, but commoditization of people is just wrong on so many levels. They range from moral to strictly pragmatic.

One of the worse problems with the use of minimum wage as a practical wage and universal wage is that it's set per hour, not per month or year. Thus it assumes that exerting physical labor - that can't be sustained 8 hours a day, 5 days a week - is equal to the labor of an unarmed lobby guard who sits on a chair all day (and can even do a second job on his laptop). Then the hard laborer is forced to work an "every other day" schedule to physically handle it, while the lobby guard coasts along through his 12-hour shifts, and the latter ends up paid twice what the former is.

You know what happens next? What happens next is everyone wants the second job - since they all pay the same, shop by the least effort - and since it's got no qualifications, these jobs are reserved for relatives, then friends, then friends of relatives.
There's just too much damage you do, to the economy, to fairness, to human condition, when you set a minimum wage with intent for it to be a widespread, typical wage, rather than just a rarely approached minimum to cut off sweatshops.

A minimum wage is useful, but it needs to be cognizant of the realities of what the market actually pays and be set below that, not flatten the entire entry and working class job markets into one gray limbo where there's no incentives for productivity since you're paid the same anyway, and very little competition, be it between employees or between employers, just abstract job buckets and bulk workers filling them.

[Siaos]

. . .

I meant more along the lines of the tired old horseshit about both American parties being 'the same'.

They are the same. Any differences are just minor details.

They are only the same to those who are more extreme on the political scale. For example, a communist will generalize about the conservatives, Libertarians, and Anarchists being the same, with only minor the differences. They will see the difference between them and the socialists as massive.

The Right-wing does the same, only seeing the communists and the socialists the same, with only minor differences.

[Saiwania]

A minimum wage is useful, but it needs to be cognizant of the realities of what the market actually pays and be set below that, not flatten the entire entry and working class job markets into one gray limbo where there's no incentives for productivity since you're paid the same anyway, and very little competition, be it between employees or between employers, just abstract job buckets and bulk workers filling them.

I'm done discussing minimum wage in this topic after this, but I want to hammer in the fact that the private sector in the US would be more than capable of bearing a wage floor of $9/hour. Republicans who are opposed to raising the minimum wage are wrong because in the US case it is far too low, having one of the lowest minimum wages in the developed world. The minimum wage represents a pathetic 37% of what the average American worker is paid and wages in real terms have remained stagnant for the lower and middle classes for so long that it is a disgrace when that doesn't have to be. Most American workers have been plenty productive, yet haven't enjoyed wealth commensurate to that.

Speaking of high minimum wages, Australia's is the highest in the world at $16/hour but buys the equivalent of $9.77/hour because it is so expensive to live there. That is still slightly better off than the lowest paid American workers. I don't advocate for a high minimum wage, but do I think that it needs to be raised a few dollars from where it is now? Absolutely. I think it should be tied to inflation to equal half of what the average wage is in a given area.

[Liberated Dixieland]

Guess which party's senators voted against a United Nations Disability Treaty? That's right, the Republicans. What party unanimously supported said treaty? That's right, the Democrats. The Democratic Party has a bunch of neoliberal types and Blue Dogs and other right-wingers, but they are still a lot better for every group other than able, rich, white, heterosexual, healthy, Christian men.

[Norstal]

Neither. Republicans and Democrats are two sides of the same coin. But as long as voters keep getting tricked into voting for them, they'll keep getting away with it.

Don't you just love the American political system? It's basically a single-party-state, with two different tastes - as they both vie to get the votes of the same interest groups, and voting for minor parties is like not voting at all anyway.

Yeah, clearly we should have the multi-party system of Italy where people like Berlusconi cannot possibly rise in power and abuse the government.

[Especially Dirty Hippies]

Guess which party's senators voted against a United Nations Disability Treaty? That's right, the Republicans. What party unanimously supported said treaty? That's right, the Democrats. The Democratic Party has a bunch of neoliberal types and Blue Dogs and other right-wingers, but they are still a lot better for every group other than able, rich, white, heterosexual, healthy, Christian men.

Somewhere, Phylis Schlafly is reading that phrase and fapping furiously.

[Especially Dirty Hippies]

Yeah, clearly we should have the multi-party system of Italy where people like Berlusconi cannot possibly rise in power and abuse the government.

Heh, that Berlusconi guy, he made Clinton look like a celibate workaholic.

[The Nuclear Fist]

. . .

I meant more along the lines of the tired old horseshit about both American parties being 'the same'.

They are the same. Any differences are just minor details.

Unless the term 'same' means something different to the two of us, the fact that you just admitted there are minor differences is an admission to them not being the same.

So thanks for refuting your own point. I like that sort of efficiency in a person.

[Agymnum]

Democrats are better by default because Republicans are so shitty. I do wish we'd get a real left-wing or at least center-left party here, instead of picking between a center-right and extreme right party.

But at least the Democrats are making progress. Compared to Republicans, the speed at which the Democrats advance civil rights and protections for minorities approaches light speed.

[The United Colonies of Earth]

Guess which party's senators voted against a United Nations Disability Treaty? That's right, the Republicans. What party unanimously supported said treaty? That's right, the Democrats. The Democratic Party has a bunch of neoliberal types and Blue Dogs and other right-wingers, but they are still a lot better for every group other than able, rich, white, heterosexual, healthy, Christian men.

Somewhere, Phylis Schlafly is reading that phrase and fapping furiously.

It's not like most people on welfare programs actually do work and are simply victims of a system designed to victimize them.

The United States has a minimum wage. At $7.25 it is higher than the average wage in most of the world.
Not just higher than the third world, but higher than the average wage in most of Eastern Europe like even Hungary.
The CoL in US is quite forgiving, with cheap gas, low-cost store chains and generally lower prices than across the EU.

So why would someone who receives a minimum wage from a full-time job and pays no or little taxes need welfare to live?

Um, because food, fuel and taxes aren't the only expenses? There's medical expenses, which are getting worse, but thank God for the ACA...

[The Black Forrest]

. . .

I meant more along the lines of the tired old horseshit about both American parties being 'the same'.

They are the same. Any differences are just minor details.

All parties have similarities.

[Agymnum]

They are the same. Any differences are just minor details.

I didn't know that the party which opposed rights for any minority (except whites, because, you know, whites are a minority) and wants the US to become a Christian theocracy is the same as the rather vanilla right-wing Democrats.