American Politics VII: Virginia Reel

[Vassenor]

Just because someone is a "big meanie", that's not fascism. Was he perfect? No! However, his policies allowed us to be more free. Reduced taxes, drastically reduced regulations, didn't start any new wars, made progress on pulling the military back from the forward position in other nations, pressured those nations to pay more for their own defense, and let the states handle the lockdowns, mandates, etc.

Trump was objectively less authoritarian than both Bush and Obama. I didn't care for his brash, ego-centric personality, but I benefitted from his actions. Which is more important, a leader that doesn't "Tweet mean things", or one does good things? Competency helps also. Biden is basically a puppet at this point, and his handlers are both evil and incompetent.

So you have no issues with his extremely expansive claims of executive authority, active and continuing attempts to undermine democracy, hatred of media that isn’t entirely fawning of him (and attempts to undermine that), willingness to deploy the military in the domestic homeland, or any of the other things he did that served to undermine some aspect of a free society ruled by constitutional order?

No but you see he cut taxes on the super rich (and only the super rich) and thus can do no wrong ever.

[Lord Dominator]

Random billionaire pays the same tax rate on the first 9700 that I do, and the same rate on the amount between 9701 & 39475 as I do - and they pay the same rate on all their income over the first 510301 as everyone else who makes that much does. Everyone is paying the same %, it’s just that portions of income are taxed at different rates (and not as many people have the upper rates).

No, everyone is not paying the same %. There are an absurd amount of deductions and credits. Tax policy should be simple, difficult to evade, and have one purpose: to raise revenue. Taxes should not be used to influence peoples' behavior. Government shouldn't be "nudging" certain choices, but if it's going to happen, the right way is to pass a law. Both Democrats and Republicans use the tax code to their ends. The earned income tax credit, the child tax credit, the mortgage deduction, and the charitable deductions are all equally wrong.

I don’t disagree about there being too many deductions (though I will observe their use is by far more impactful for the wealthy), but I’m amused as ever that you immediately turn around and cite the ones (of the last three, I don’t know much about earned income) that have respectively measurably decreased child poverty, encourage home-ownership, and reward charitable giving. Like, at least cite some egregious ones, not the ones that are good in the abstract or practicals.

Also, not a refutation of my point about income tax rates relative to income.

[Alcala-Cordel]

Just because someone is a "big meanie", that's not fascism. Was he perfect? No! However, his policies allowed us to be more free. Reduced taxes, drastically reduced regulations, didn't start any new wars, made progress on pulling the military back from the forward position in other nations, pressured those nations to pay more for their own defense, and let the states handle the lockdowns, mandates, etc.

Trump was objectively less authoritarian than both Bush and Obama. I didn't care for his brash, ego-centric personality, but I benefitted from his actions. Which is more important, a leader that doesn't "Tweet mean things", or one does good things? Competency helps also. Biden is basically a puppet at this point, and his handlers are both evil and incompetent.

So you have no issues with his extremely expansive claims of executive authority, active and continuing attempts to undermine democracy, hatred of media that isn’t entirely fawning of him (and attempts to undermine that), willingness to deploy the military in the domestic homeland, or any of the other things he did that served to undermine some aspect of a free society ruled by constitutional order?

Concentration camps too

Also increased taxes on the lower classes

[Lord Dominator]

Marginal tax rates for the wealthy have been as high as 92% (under the Eisenhower administration). Those rates at 70% or above are not outliers, they have been done before. What are the outliers are the current marginal tax rates on the wealthy, started by Reagan's administration reducing that.

Doesn't matter what has been accepted as normal. What matters is what is just. It is wrong to have someone pay a higher rate, because of their success. Besides the immorality of it, it's foolish policy. When you punish achievement, you get less of it.

If achievement is the preferred form of wealth gathering, I presume you’re fine with massive inheritance taxes (say, any non-land or similar assets worth more than a few million)?

[The Black Forrest]

Marginal tax rates for the wealthy have been as high as 92% (under the Eisenhower administration). Those rates at 70% or above are not outliers, they have been done before. What are the outliers are the current marginal tax rates on the wealthy, started by Reagan's administration reducing that.

Doesn't matter what has been accepted as normal. What matters is what is just. It is wrong to have someone pay a higher rate, because of their success. Besides the immorality of it, it's foolish policy. When you punish achievement, you get less of it.

Nothing wrong with that. They still live their opulent lifestyle and get a better society from it.

[Outer Sparta]

Marginal tax rates for the wealthy have been as high as 92% (under the Eisenhower administration). Those rates at 70% or above are not outliers, they have been done before. What are the outliers are the current marginal tax rates on the wealthy, started by Reagan's administration reducing that.

Doesn't matter what has been accepted as normal. What matters is what is just. It is wrong to have someone pay a higher rate, because of their success. Besides the immorality of it, it's foolish policy. When you punish achievement, you get less of it.

Punish achievement? What if I were to be the son of a billionaire father and I inherit his riches by doing fuck all and just because I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth? Does that make me have an achievement even though I literally would have done nothing in my life in that scenario except be born in the top .01%?

[Alcala-Cordel]

Doesn't matter what has been accepted as normal. What matters is what is just. It is wrong to have someone pay a higher rate, because of their success. Besides the immorality of it, it's foolish policy. When you punish achievement, you get less of it.

Punish achievement? What if I were to be the son of a billionaire father and I inherit his riches by doing fuck all and just because I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth? Does that make me have an achievement even though I literally would have done nothing in my life in that scenario except be born in the top .01%?

^pretty much every rich person, ever, was born into some degree of wealth already being bourgeois is largely hereditary.

[Lord Dominator]

Tbh, I’d be rather willing to ease up on income tax the rich as much if we did really juice up inheritance tax to an insane degree, and closed off every unreasonable loophole we could find.

[Merrill]

https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Fascism.html:
"As an economic system, fascism is socialism with a capitalist veneer. The word derives from fasces, the Roman symbol of collectivism and power: a tied bundle of rods with a protruding ax. In its day (the 1920s and 1930s), fascism was seen as the happy medium between boom-and-bust-prone liberal capitalism, with its alleged class conflict, wasteful competition, and profit-oriented egoism, and revolutionary Marxism, with its violent and socially divisive persecution of the bourgeoisie. Fascism substituted the particularity of nationalism and racialism—“blood and soil”—for the internationalism of both classical liberalism and Marxism."

I’m very convinced by a Libertarian leaning site with an article on fascism that makes precisely one citation to any other text and has no discussion of any of the social aspects of either ideology. Some similarity in their economics is not convincing, what evidence do you have of their supposed similarity in philosophy, goals, and conceptions of power.

In many areas, you aren't free to shoot when you should be, for example if you are being attacked. Many progressive areas still have the absurd "duty to retreat" doctrine.

That’s a solid whooshing sound

There are many laws and regulations that do tell people exactly what they must do both personally, with their bodies, property, and with their remaining income.

Wrong, there are many laws telling them what they can’t do. Not all of them are ones I agree with, but they’re still not telling me what to do.

You must pay your employee a minimum wage. You must build a ramp for handicap access. There’s millions of pages of regulations across all levels of government if you have a business.

In the personal level, you must register your vehicle. In some places you must register your weapons (if you’re even allowed to have them). Most recently, you must wear a mask. You must put chemicals into your body.

Don’t say that laws and regulations are only must nots. That just isn’t true.

[The Black Forrest]

Doesn't matter what has been accepted as normal. What matters is what is just. It is wrong to have someone pay a higher rate, because of their success. Besides the immorality of it, it's foolish policy. When you punish achievement, you get less of it.

Punish achievement? What if I were to be the son of a billionaire father and I inherit his riches by doing fuck all and just because I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth? Does that make me have an achievement even though I literally would have done nothing in my life in that scenario except be born in the top .01%?

Indeed. I went to school with a few of those. My friend was born with a platinum spoon. He actually went on to do great things. Always and remained a cool dude. The others? Been in rehab a few times. Not really doing much. A couple did loose the family money.

One thing in common? A sense of superiority and you would think they made the money all by themselves.

My friend? You would never guess he was wealthy.

[Merrill]

Yes. Thomas Paine: "Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one."

Paine is certainly a wonderful person philosophically, but why should we follow his ideas on governance centuries after his death?

Why shouldn’t we? Did human nature change? Did truth?

[Genivaria]

Paine is certainly a wonderful person philosophically, but why should we follow his ideas on governance centuries after his death?

Why shouldn’t we? Did human nature change? Did truth?

'Human nature' is an extremely lazy argument. You can use it for anything.

[Lord Dominator]

I’m very convinced by a Libertarian leaning site with an article on fascism that makes precisely one citation to any other text and has no discussion of any of the social aspects of either ideology. Some similarity in their economics is not convincing, what evidence do you have of their supposed similarity in philosophy, goals, and conceptions of power.

That’s a solid whooshing sound

Wrong, there are many laws telling them what they can’t do. Not all of them are ones I agree with, but they’re still not telling me what to do.

You must pay your employee a minimum wage. You must build a ramp for handicap access. There’s millions of pages of regulations across all levels of government if you have a business.

In the personal level, you must register your vehicle. In some places you must register your weapons (if you’re even allowed to have them). Most recently, you must wear a mask. You must put chemicals into your body.

Don’t say that laws and regulations are only must nots. That just isn’t true.

Businesses aren’t people and don’t have nearly the same rights as a person.

And while I will concede the point about must nots, have you got better examples than what are largely about public safety (the gun one excepted) of must dos that are actually unreasonably restrictive?

[The Black Forrest]

Paine is certainly a wonderful person philosophically, but why should we follow his ideas on governance centuries after his death?

Why shouldn’t we? Did human nature change? Did truth?

Human nature especially in politics makes truth rather subjective.

[Genivaria]

Marginal tax rates for the wealthy have been as high as 92% (under the Eisenhower administration). Those rates at 70% or above are not outliers, they have been done before. What are the outliers are the current marginal tax rates on the wealthy, started by Reagan's administration reducing that.

Doesn't matter what has been accepted as normal. What matters is what is just. It is wrong to have someone pay a higher rate, because of their success. Besides the immorality of it, it's foolish policy. When you punish achievement, you get less of it.

Explain how 'being rich' is an achievement and not a moral failing.

[Merrill]

Oh, so the will of the majority determines morality? There's no objective truth, or standards? Welcome to postmodernism.

Government has no authority except what has been granted to it by the people. Therefore, it it is wrong for me to do it, it's wrong for the government.

If my neighbor is being attacked, it is morally right for me to use force to help him defend himself. Thus, the police have authority to intervene in assaults, theft, murder, etc. It is morally wrong for me to rob my neighbor just because I don't think he deserves what he has. Therefore, the government has no authority to do so also.

The will of the majority does determine many elements of morality in a democracy, yes - and when we’re talking about taxes, that’s generally a very large majority indeed.

No, morality is objective and absolute. The mob only determines what is acceptable to it, then imposes that on the minority by threat of force.

A dictator seizing property, and an elected president seizing property are equally wrong. If something is wrong for one person, it doesn’t magically become okay for many people.

[Lord Dominator]

Paine is certainly a wonderful person philosophically, but why should we follow his ideas on governance centuries after his death?

Why shouldn’t we? Did human nature change? Did truth?

Can you prove then that Paine is objectively correct in all times and circumstances?

That’s what you’re saying, if you’re holding that him being wrong means that truth must have changed.

[Genivaria]

Why shouldn’t we? Did human nature change? Did truth?

Can you prove then that Paine is objectively correct in all times and circumstances?

That’s what you’re saying, if you’re holding that him being wrong means that truth must have changed.

I mean I really don't know why he's bringing up Paine when Paine believed that the very land was the universal property of all, doesn't really fit with his ancap ideas.

[Lord Dominator]

The will of the majority does determine many elements of morality in a democracy, yes - and when we’re talking about taxes, that’s generally a very large majority indeed.

No, morality is objective and absolute.

According to who?

The mob only determines what is acceptable to it, then imposes that on the minority by threat of force.

Behold, the secret ingredient in all law, including the ones you agree with.

A dictator seizing property, and an elected president seizing property are equally wrong. If something is wrong for one person, it doesn’t magically become okay for many people.

One has a mandate of the people to use that force, the other has only that force. One has legal checks and the possibility of that power being removed or changed (at least in the US, where seizure of property is also entirely constitutional), the other has none. There are major differences, you just choose not to see them.

And again, the majority of people that comprise the ranks of those generally okay with income taxes and graduated income taxes are very large indeed - why does your tiny minority get to hold up the very large majority in this instance, when they can’t in other instances in a democracy?

[Lord Dominator]

Can you prove then that Paine is objectively correct in all times and circumstances?

That’s what you’re saying, if you’re holding that him being wrong means that truth must have changed.

I mean I really don't know why he's bringing up Paine when Paine believed that the very land was the universal property of all, doesn't really fit with his ancap ideas.

Quote mining the founders, framers, and philosophical inspirations for the US Constitution when it’s convenient.

[Alcala-Cordel]

Hell no, the Nazis were not socialists. They were openly far right, neo-Nazis are openly far-right, they have ties to other far right groups, and they targeted socialists and put them in concentration camps.

I could write a big thing on it, but it's suck a bad revisionist take that I'm not gonna bother. Historians say the Nazis were rightists, the Nazis say the Nazis were rightists, and your attempts to deny it are not just disingenuous, they're low.

[Genivaria]

Hell no, the
Nazis
were not socialists. They were openly far right, neo-Nazis are openly far-right, they have ties to other far right groups, and they targeted socialists and put them in concentration camps.

Are you responding to someone in particular?

[Alcala-Cordel]

Hell no, the
Nazis
were not socialists. They were openly far right, neo-Nazis are openly far-right, they have ties to other far right groups, and they targeted socialists and put them in concentration camps.

Are you responding to someone in particular?

Yeah, but there wasn't a good place to attatch this PSA to an existing chain

[Vassenor]

Hell no, the Nazis were not socialists. They were openly far right, neo-Nazis are openly far-right, they have ties to other far right groups, and they targeted socialists and put them in concentration camps.

I could write a big thing on it, but it's suck a bad revisionist take that I'm not gonna bother. Historians say the Nazis were rightists, the Nazis say the Nazis were rightists, and your attempts to deny it are not just disingenuous, they're low.

But they have Socialist in the name so they must be Socialists because names never lie. Like how North Korea is absolutely a democratic republic and not an absolute monarchy. After all it’s the Democratic People’s Republic Of Korea so it must be true.

[Merrill]

Just because someone is a "big meanie", that's not fascism. Was he perfect? No! However, his policies allowed us to be more free. Reduced taxes, drastically reduced regulations, didn't start any new wars, made progress on pulling the military back from the forward position in other nations, pressured those nations to pay more for their own defense, and let the states handle the lockdowns, mandates, etc.

Trump was objectively less authoritarian than both Bush and Obama. I didn't care for his brash, ego-centric personality, but I benefitted from his actions. Which is more important, a leader that doesn't "Tweet mean things", or one does good things? Competency helps also. Biden is basically a puppet at this point, and his handlers are both evil and incompetent.

So you have no issues with his extremely expansive claims of executive authority, active and continuing attempts to undermine democracy, hatred of media that isn’t entirely fawning of him (and attempts to undermine that), willingness to deploy the military in the domestic homeland, or any of the other things he did that served to undermine some aspect of a free society ruled by constitutional order?

Trump said a lot, but then didn’t do it. Please provide examples of actual executive actions greater than his predecessors. Sure, he hated the media. Did he jail any of them like Obama did? Define “undermining democracy”. Did he contest elections? Yes. Did he refuse to step down? No. When was the military deployed? At the border? Frankly, that’s where the military should be.

I get it. People don’t like Trump. Like many New Yorkers he blusters a lot. I care much, much more about his actions. Were they all good? No, definitely not. However, they were less authoritarian than previous Presidents. He wasn’t the closest to a dictator we ever had. Lincoln, Wilson, and FDR battle for that title.