US Gen. Election Thread V: The Hunt for Red October Surprise

[Freefall11111]

But California's effective tax rate is lower than Texas??

[Galloism]

Right. Any time anything is successful under a Republican it must be because of some other reason beyond right-wing politics. Yet anytime anything is successful under a Democratic administration then well that's obviously an example of how well liberal politics work.

Come talk to me when people stop fleeing California and New York. I know it sounds heretical, but maybe if the taxes weren't so assblastingly high then people wouldn't flee.

Texas is a shithole with crappy infrastructure, massive budget waste, poor management, and a shitty education system.

Texas was a weird place to go when I drove a truck. Other than Dallas, where they seem to be under continuous construction, the interstates were in excellent shape - smooth, flat, straight, minimal patching.

The moment you left the interstate, however, and went on to pretty much any secondary road, it felt like you were taking a tractor trailer down a wagon trail.

[Genivaria]

Right. Any time anything is successful under a Republican it must be because of some other reason beyond right-wing politics. Yet anytime anything is successful under a Democratic administration then well that's obviously an example of how well liberal politics work.

Come talk to me when people stop fleeing California and New York. I know it sounds heretical, but maybe if the taxes weren't so assblastingly high then people wouldn't flee.

Texas is a shithole with crappy infrastructure, massive budget waste, poor management, and a shitty education system.

There's a reason that every election every candidate mentions fixing our fucking roads.

[Soldati Senza Confini]

What "ever-present sense of guilt"? I honestly don't recall the United States ever feeling collective guilt about anything whatsoever.

Also, selling its sovereignty? Sorry, but I don't see how that's going on either.

Right, so the whole sense of guilt about taking land from Native Americans, slavery, segregation, all that jazz. There's no sense of guilt about that?

And yes, selling sovereignty to organizations such as the UN in the pursuit of some vague crap like global citizenship.

Oh you mean that guilt.

That guilt isn't really so much as "guilt", rather than a sense of not making people forget what happened. Considering there's still racists and people who want to go back to the segregation era, I am honestly unsurprised that this is talked about a lot still. Maybe if everyone could actually agree that segregation is a really shitty idea and not prop up idiots like Donald fucking Trump, then maybe, just maybe people would stop talking about it. Honestly, I've noticed a pattern of going "we shouldn't be doing this!" and the next second Americans prove themselves why doing THAT thing a faction of you were complaining about is actually useful.

Also, it's a good thing we haven't sold out our "sovereignty" to anyone, especially the United Nations, in the pursuit of global citizenship. Unless you're trying to say that our position since World War II has been nothing but a false narrative and instead we should just stop being the "world police". In which case I would like to hear your justifications, from a foreign policy perspective, as to why you think being isolationists is better in the long run for the United States in a globalized economy and political environment than being internationalists.

[Freefall11111]

But Texas is going to have a deficit??

[Soldati Senza Confini]

Texas is a shithole with crappy infrastructure, massive budget waste, poor management, and a shitty education system.

There's a reason that every election every candidate mentions fixing our fucking roads.

Thing is, to fix our road you'd have to raise the taxes that pay for the roads which are pegged to the price of gasoline.

And that's just not gonna happen. We love our 2 dollars a gallon gasoline in Texas.

[Kravanica]

Right, so the whole sense of guilt about taking land from Native Americans, slavery, segregation, all that jazz. There's no sense of guilt about that?

And yes, selling sovereignty to organizations such as the UN in the pursuit of some vague crap like global citizenship.

Oh you mean that guilt.

That guilt isn't really so much as "guilt", rather than a sense of not making people forget what happened. Considering there's still racists and people who want to go back to the segregation era, I am honestly unsurprised that this is talked about a lot still. Maybe if everyone could actually agree that segregation is a really shitty idea and not prop up idiots like Donald fucking Trump, then maybe, just maybe people would stop talking about it. Honestly, I've noticed a pattern of going "we shouldn't be doing this!" and the next second Americans prove themselves why doing THAT thing a faction of you were complaining about is actually useful.

Now, I can quite honestly agree that it's guilt. It's guilt ingrained in our culture. You literally can't even have a casual conversation about immigration without someone saying that you can't even place restrictions on it because we something something we took land from Native Americans something something white people. This conversation seems to be rather pointless though because we're both just basing our opinions on what constitutes guilt.

Also, it's a good thing we haven't sold out our "sovereignty" to anyone, especially the United Nations, in the pursuit of global citizenship. Unless you're trying to say that our position since World War II has been nothing but a false narrative and instead we should just stop being the "world police". In which case I would like to hear your justifications, from a foreign policy perspective, as to why you think being isolationists is better in the long run for the United States in a globalized economy and political environment than being internationalists.

I think there's a veritable difference between being involved internationally and between selling out your country's sovereignty.

[Genivaria]

Texas is a shithole with crappy infrastructure, massive budget waste, poor management, and a shitty education system.

Texas was a weird place to go when I drove a truck. Other than Dallas, where they seem to be under continuous construction, the interstates were in excellent shape - smooth, flat, straight, minimal patching.

The moment you left the interstate, however, and went on to pretty much any secondary road, it felt like you were taking a tractor trailer down a wagon trail.

That sounds like home alright.

[Conserative Morality]

New Jersey, too.

That was sarcasm. Using the top five states for tax burden and bottom five, there appears to be little correlation at first glance between tax burden and net migration.

I should know because it's my home state. 49th in taxes. One of the only states in the country that has both an inheritance tax and an estate tax (fuck you Christie for changing nothing). A solidly blue state aside from the shitty governor. Now the state's lost 18 billion in revenue thanks to people fleeing.

From your own source, and pretty early on in it too:

But the New Jersey Policy Perspective, a Trenton-based liberal think tank, said the figures for the lost adjusted gross income, while they appear large, have "little overall impact" on the state economy. In fact, the amount lost each year by outmigration is less than half a percent of the total amount of income generated in the state, said Jon Whiten deputy director of the organization.

He added that there is no evidence that these people left for tax reasons, only "myth and anecdote."

Indeed, the new report, like others before it, does not answer the question of why people left the state.

And then at the end:

The study also concluded that far more millennials, people aged 18 to 34, left New Jersey between 2007 and 2014, than moved into the state. A key reason is that college tuition is expensive in New Jersey, which prompts students to leave the state to get educated, many of whom don't come back, the study concluded. It said that as a result the state is suffering a "brain drain," in which the state loses highly educated workers.

But muh taxes

[The East Marches]

But California's effective tax rate is lower than Texas??

>Illinois on the bottom of the list

No surprise here. There is a reason people are fleeing here in droves too. Wisconsin has done a great job under Scott Walker getting businesses to move just over the border. Illinois is trying to make out of state businesses pay fees and shit to do business in state. Thankfully, it didn't go far.

[Freefall11111]

But New York and California are growing faster??

[IceBuddha]

Calling a whole state a shithole based on its politics is a bit much, don't you guys think?

I've never lived in Texas, but all of my experiences there have been mostly nice. I've lived in both NY and CA and they're definitely not "shitholes" either (though I got tired of several aspects of living in Southern California, mainly the urban sprawl, bad air quality and traffic).

[Cymrea]

Calling a whole state a shithole based on its politics is a bit much, don't you guys think?

I've never lived in Texas, but all of my experiences there have been mostly nice. I've lived in both NY and CA and they're definitely not "shitholes" either (though I got tired of several aspects of living in Southern California, mainly the urban sprawl, bad air quality and traffic).

I know several folks who've lived in Texas. None of them had anything particularly complimentary to say about it.

[Freefall11111]

But California has 130% more immigrants??

[Eol Sha]

Coal has no signs of ever coming back. The coal which remains profitable is in Wyoming (apparently it is too expensive to mine in any Appalachian state) and the industry is no longer labor intensive, only a dozen people at most can successfully mine a coal site. Machines started replacing miners in the 1960s and 70s. China is moving away from coal and is building a fleet of nuclear reactors which is equivalent to the number the US has. Demand for coal globally, is falling off a cliff. This is an industry which I see as in terminal decline towards non-existence.

West Virginia really has no choice but to find a different primary industry at this point. Cities such as Welch in McDowell County are almost certainly doomed. Trump's promises to bring coal back, are complete fantasy. It would mean getting subsidies to keep coal afloat (not fair to taxpayers, anti-free market) or getting rid of environmental regulations (will be a complete disaster in terms of health and quality of life). Neither of these approaches combined might save coal at this point simply because most of the entire world is moving beyond it. Donald Trump really is lying to them and they're falling for it.

Yet West Virginia will vote for Trump by a huge margin and yet the democrats look likely to keep the governorship. I dont understand that.

Tomblin isn't exactly representative of the modern Democratic Party. The term "Blue Dog" fits well, I think.

[The East Marches]

But California has 130% more immigrants??

Crook County is on your list. You aren't helping your argument any.

[Soldati Senza Confini]

Oh you mean that guilt.

That guilt isn't really so much as "guilt", rather than a sense of not making people forget what happened. Considering there's still racists and people who want to go back to the segregation era, I am honestly unsurprised that this is talked about a lot still. Maybe if everyone could actually agree that segregation is a really shitty idea and not prop up idiots like Donald fucking Trump, then maybe, just maybe people would stop talking about it. Honestly, I've noticed a pattern of going "we shouldn't be doing this!" and the next second Americans prove themselves why doing THAT thing a faction of you were complaining about is actually useful.

Now, I can quite honestly agree that it's guilt. It's guilt ingrained in our culture. You literally can't even have a casual conversation about immigration without someone saying that you can't even place restrictions on it because we something something we took land from Native Americans something something white people. This conversation seems to be rather pointless though because we're both just basing our opinions on what constitutes guilt.

Also, it's a good thing we haven't sold out our "sovereignty" to anyone, especially the United Nations, in the pursuit of global citizenship. Unless you're trying to say that our position since World War II has been nothing but a false narrative and instead we should just stop being the "world police". In which case I would like to hear your justifications, from a foreign policy perspective, as to why you think being isolationists is better in the long run for the United States in a globalized economy and political environment than being internationalists.

I think there's a veritable difference between being involved internationally and between selling out your country's sovereignty.

I think those people are idiots, honestly. I mean, I use that argument for shits and giggles, but to be more serious, I think our border security should be strengthened, and I will give that point to Republicans, that the border does need to be reinforced because we're not just gonna have a one-sided open borders deal with Mexico either. What I do not agree with is mass deportations, and I am not even talking about objecting entirely to deportations, but honestly there's plenty of people among illegal immigrants who are productive members of society, and I think we should prioritize our efforts into catching, processing, and deporting illegal immigrants who commit crimes in the United States and offer to relax Sanctuary City status to the main hubs like Dallas and Los Angeles but ICE should work even closer with the local police departments in order to enhance prioritization efforts. It is already bad enough as it is overall that our economy depends on illegal immigrants and we will have to offer legalization as it is as to add insult to injury the fact some of them commit crimes.

Now I understand a lot of people have other objections along humanitarian lines, but I really don't care about that. I care more about my pocket, and my pocket says that legalizing illegal immigrants who are not committing serious offenses other than parking/traffic tickets is not a bad idea. If it would hurt my pocket by legalizing them then perhaps I'd agree with people who are looking at mass deportations, but I don't see the benefit in getting illegal immigrants out of the country when our industries are going to suffer massive hits.

As for "selling out our sovereignty" you're gonna have to give an example of what you mean by that, then, when you say we're selling out to the UN. Because I don't see it.

[Freefall11111]

More immigrants, more growth, a surplus. Taxes are clearly ruining California, you can tell because a few people are moving to Texas.


Honestly, of all the things to complain about in California, the economy isn't one of them. If I were trying to convince someone California is a terrible state to live in, I'd point out that it's going to be hit by a humongous earthquake this century that will destroy an untold number of buildings and kill who knows how many people.

[Genivaria]

There's a reason that every election every candidate mentions fixing our fucking roads.

Thing is, to fix our road you'd have to raise the taxes that pay for the roads which are pegged to the price of gasoline.

And that's just not gonna happen. We love our 2 dollars a gallon gasoline in Texas.

Oh I'm more familiar with my 'beloved' state's issues.

[Lady Scylla]

Calling a whole state a shithole based on its politics is a bit much, don't you guys think?

I've never lived in Texas, but all of my experiences there have been mostly nice. I've lived in both NY and CA and they're definitely not "shitholes" either (though I got tired of several aspects of living in Southern California, mainly the urban sprawl, bad air quality and traffic).

I live here, I went to school here, Ive worked here. Its a shithole.

@Gallo: I-35 has always and will forever be under construction.

[Galloism]

But New York and California are growing faster??

I have been staring and staring at this map, but I'm not seeing any broad correlation with anything.

[Freefall11111]

But New York and California are growing faster??

I have been staring and staring at this map, but I'm not seeing any broad correlation with anything.

It's not taxes, I'll tell you that much.

[The East Marches]

More immigrants, more growth, a surplus. Taxes are clearly ruining California, you can tell because a few people are moving to Texas.


Honestly, of all the things to complain about in California, the economy isn't one of them. If I were trying to convince someone California is a terrible state to live in, I'd point out that it's going to be hit by a humongous earthquake this century that will destroy an untold number of buildings and kill who knows how many people.

The existence of my state proves your assertion about immigrants to be wrong. They haven't brought more growth or a surplus here. Quite the contrary actually, they are responsible for a gaping hole in the budget. The increased taxes are ruining my state and driving people out. Kravencia merely used the wrong state as an example as the data you showed appears that California's income tax isn't so bad.

[Freefall11111]

More immigrants, more growth, a surplus. Taxes are clearly ruining California, you can tell because a few people are moving to Texas.


Honestly, of all the things to complain about in California, the economy isn't one of them. If I were trying to convince someone California is a terrible state to live in, I'd point out that it's going to be hit by a humongous earthquake this century that will destroy an untold number of buildings and kill who knows how many people.

The existence of my state proves your assertion about immigrants to be wrong. They haven't brought more growth or a surplus here. Quite the contrary actually, they are responsible for a gaping hole in the budget. The increased taxes are ruining my state and driving people out. Kravencia merely used the wrong state as an example as the data you showed appears that California's income tax isn't so bad.

You've completely misunderstood my point. I'm not looking at what immigrants cause, I'm looking at the reverse.

[Galloism]

I have been staring and staring at this map, but I'm not seeing any broad correlation with anything.

It's not taxes, I'll tell you that much.

I compared tax rates. That wasn't it.

I tried governor party. That wasn't it.

I looked at Arkansas being up and Texas being down, and thought maybe it was Medicaid expansion (Arkansas took it), but that wasn't it either.

So... not sure.