Biden to Propose New Minimum Tax on Wealthiest Americans

[LittleDixie]

That ain't this platform.

Oh, is Biden about to end the War on Drugs and no one told me? Oh, he's not? Not at all? Okay, so, business as usual, but they are going to talk about how important it is?

It is past time to end the failed “War on Drugs,” which has imprisoned millions of Americans—disproportionately Black people and Latinos—and hasn’t been effective in reducing drug use.
https://democrats.org/where-we-stand/party-platform/

Let me know when they actually do something - until then they can cram their empty talk.

 

[Gorgoroth]

Neoliberalism = economic libertarianism.

Not any more than social liberalism = economic libertarianism.

Words mean things peck, and you don't get to redefine words for the convenience of your lies.

Neo-liberal =/= libertarian....sell that 2+2=9 bullshit to someone ignorant enough to buy.

That ain't this platform.

I didn't say it was.

Doesn't change the fact that the (D)'eez official platform, leadership and most prominent bills/activism all advocate a federally controlled economy.... especially and specifically the financial, media, agriculture, housing and energy markets.

That makes them definitively socialist.

 

[pecksniff]

Not any more than social liberalism = economic libertarianism.

Words mean things peck, and you don't get to redefine words for the convenience of your lies.

That is what the word means. Neoliberalism:

Neoliberalism, or neo-liberalism,[1] is a term used to describe the 20th-century resurgence of 19th-century ideas associated with free-market liberal democracy.[2]: 7 [3] A significant factor in the rise of liberal, conservative and libertarian organizations, political parties, and think tanks, and predominately advocated by them,[4][5] it is generally associated with policies of economic liberalization, including privatization, deregulation, globalization, free trade, austerity and reductions in government spending in order to increase the role of the private sector in the economy and society;[6][14] however, the defining features of neoliberalism in both thought and practice have been the subject of substantial scholarly debate.[15][16]

I didn't say it was.

Doesn't change the fact that the (D)'eez official platform advocated a federally controlled economy for the sake of social and economic equity

I linked the platform.

That is why Democrats commit to forging a new social and economic contract with the American people—a contract that invests in the people and promotes shared prosperity, not one that benefits only big corporations and the wealthiest few. One that affirms housing is a right and not a privilege, and which makes a commitment that no one will be homeless or go hungry in the richest country on earth. A new economic contract that raises wages and restores workers’ rights to organize, join a union, and collectively bargain. One that at last supports working families and the middle class by securing equal pay for women and paid family leave for all. A new economic contract that provides access for all to reliable and affordable banking and financial services. A new social and economic contract that at last grapples honestly with America’s long and ongoing history of racism and disenfranchisement, of segregation and discrimination, and invests instead in building equity and mobility for the people of color who have been left out and left behind for generations.

Democrats stand ready to take immediate, decisive action to pull the economy out of President Trump’s recession by investing in infrastructure, care work, clean energy, and small businesses to put Americans to work in good-paying jobs; shoring up state and local budgets to save jobs and protect public health in the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic; and enacting fundamental reforms to address structural and systemic racism and entrenched income and wealth inequality in our economy and our banking system.

That ain't "a federally controlled economy." It's only an updated New Deal.

 

[pecksniff]

Oh, is Biden about to end the War on Drugs and no one told me? Oh, he's not? Not at all? Okay, so, business as usual, but they are going to talk about how important it is?


Let me know when they actually do something - until then they can cram their empty talk.

We were discussing the party platform. It's always a statement of ideal goals -- and at least the Dems have one. The Pubs don't.

 

[Gorgoroth]

That is what the word means. Neoliberalism:

YES... thank you for proving my point. Neoliberalism is NOT libertarianism.... words mean things.

I linked the platform.


That ain't "a federally controlled economy." It's only an updated New Deal.

That's "updated" to gives federal government control over the primary markets of the economy.

You can put any shade of lipstick on that pig you want, Democrats anti-free commerce/capitalism, seeking to end private property and pro-collective control over the means and markets.... that's what makes them DEFINATIVELY socialist.

The original New Deal looks so radically liberal by comparison most modern democrats would consider it libertoonian/vulgar libertarianism.

 

[Gorgoroth]

Oh, is Biden about to end the War on Drugs and no one told me?

LOL, that would be like actually doing UHC, if they did it what would they campaign on????

Can't let the useful idiots ACTUALLY get that carrot they've been dangling for the last 50 years.

 

[pecksniff]

YES... thank you for proving my point. Neoliberalism is NOT libertarianism.... words mean things.

What I quoted from Wikipedia is a description of economic libertarianism.

 

[pecksniff]

That's "updated" to gives federal government control over the primary markets of the economy.

It doesn't say that.

 

[The_Trouvere]

I don't know much of anything about the poliics in that time or how it all played out, you seem to know much much more than I do on that.

The point I was trying to make was that Ayn Rand lived through that. She was there and her family felt the weight of it. She experienced first hand some of the arguments that she brings up in her books. In Atlas Shrugged, she takes great pains to give the antagonists a fair hearing - they have motives and an internal logic, even if the reader can see how they have come to the wrong conclusion. She is definitely setting things up to make her points, but she is taking her life experience and dramatizing it to show the conclusions she has come to.

Isn't that the same kind of thing you do?

I try to respect opinions based on experiences I have not had.

I haven't read Atlas Shrugged. I have read that she distorts the arguments of her adversaries in order to make them easy to refute. That is called "the Straw Man Fallacy."

Edmund Burke is the founder of modern conservatism. His book Reflections on the French Revolution was his criticism of the French Revolution. I read every political thinker for insight, rather than doctrine. That requires me to evaluate the thinker at the thinker's own level. Most people like what the political thinker has to say, and agree with all of it, or they dislike it, and reject it all. I believe that Burke unrealistically idealized the absolute monarchy and the aristocracy that existed in France prior to the Revolution. I agree with what follows:

"An absurd theory on one side of a question forms no justification for alleging a false fact, or promulgating mischievous maxims on the other."

Marxist Leninism is an absurd theory on one side of a question. It does not mean that we should restore the economic situation that prevailed in the United States from the end of Reconstruction in 1876 to the beginning of the Progressive Era in 1902. That is what Ayn Rand wants us to do.

During the last quarter of the nineteenth century millions of Americans worked twelve hours a day, six days a week in dangerous factories and mines for subsistence wages. Factories pumped their untreated pollution into the air and near by rivers. Food and medicine was often contaminated by bacteria and dangerous chemicals. That is what happens when the government is as weak and minimal as Ayn Rand wants it to be.

I also share Burke's pessimism about human nature and human potential. I think there is often wisdom in tradition.

 

[Gorgoroth]

What I quoted from Wikipedia is a description of economic libertarianism.

No, it's not.

This is like the 1,000th time you've demonstrated you have no fucking clue what libertarianism is or how it differs from classical or neo liberalism.

You only recognize social liberalism (regularly conflating it with social democracy and democratic socialism) and then regularly conflate/confuse all other varieties of liberalism with each other.

Words mean things peck.... you don't get to redefine them for the convenience of your lies and or ignorance.

It doesn't say that.

Not those exact words, but it describes exactly that.

Also there is the "no shit Sherlock" obvious realities of the (D) platform and programs like the new green deal.....

Without centralized authority and control we just give you the finger and you get NOTHING.

You can't have any of the "progress" and equity you want without that federal authority and control to force it at gunpoint.

 

[LittleDixie]

I try to respect opinions based on experiences I have not had.

I haven't read Atlas Shrugged. I have read that she distorts the arguments of her adversaries in order to make them easy to refute. That is called "the Straw Man Fallacy."

So, what Ayn Rand have you read? Surely you're not the type of person who would judge something based off of a third party's opinion and not the thing itself.

During the last quarter of the nineteenth century millions of Americans worked twelve hours a day, six days a week in dangerous factories and mines for subsistence wages. Factories pumped their untreated pollution into the air and near by rivers. Food and medicine was often contaminated by bacteria and dangerous chemicals. That is what happens when the government is as weak and minimal as Ayn Rand wants it to be.

I would argue that you could say the same levels of backbreaking work, danger, poverty and contamination existed throughout history under Kings, Emperors and Roman dictators.

 

[JohnnySavage]

Another decent thread that spiraled into the shit-hole of cut and paste intellects.

 

[Champakian]

Another decent thread that spiraled into the shit-hole of cut and paste intellects.

Don't they all...

The "armies" are more entrenched that WWI.
__________________________________________
Democrat born. Democrat bred. Libertarian led (by Democrats).

 

[Chobham]

In the end I seriously doubt that the bill would make it through the Senate.

 

[Champakian]

They all share the same donor pool...

 

[The_Trouvere]

So, what Ayn Rand have you read? Surely you're not the type of person who would judge something based off of a third party's opinion and not the thing itself.

I have read The Virtue of Selfishness. I saw it as the amorality of a CEO who orchestrates a raise for himself after firing twenty percent of his work force, and requiring the survivors to work twenty percent harder with no pay raises.

 

[The_Trouvere]

I would argue that you could say the same levels of backbreaking work, danger, poverty and contamination existed throughout history under Kings, Emperors and Roman dictators.

Those conditions would still exist for millions of Americans if it was not for the economic reforms of the Democratic Party, and especially of President Franklin Rosevelt.

 

[pecksniff]

So, what Ayn Rand have you read?

The Fountainhead. Clearly a product of a diseased mind. But at least with a clear message: Leftist politics is not about poverty vs. wealth, but about mediocrity vs. excellence -- Toohey embodies that; he patronizes mediocre artists, and wages a vendetta on Roarke because Roarke has real talent.

In this book Rand's Alienated Genius is not a businesscritter or inventor but an artist -- and it is significant that architecture is the artistic field she chose for the story, because that is the art on which the public has the greatest claim. A mediocre book or ugly painting can be put away and forgotten, but everybody has to live with a building. Her message is, that doesn't matter, it's still all about the artist's vision, and nobody else has any business saying you can't do that that way. One gets the impression Roarke would get just as much satisfaction out of designing a building to be built in a desert where nobody will ever see it or use it.

Despite Rand's extreme-libertarian politics, to the extent Roarke's buildings are described, they seem like something Hitler's architect Albert Speer would have done to glorify the State. Not at all like the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, on whom Roarke's character is usually assumed to be based.

 

[LittleDixie]

Those conditions would still exist for millions of Americans if it was not for the economic reforms of the Democratic Party, and especially of President Franklin Rosevelt.

Counterfactual. I don't think that is the case.

 

[LittleDixie]

The Fountainhead. Clearly a product of a diseased mind. But at least with a clear message: Leftist politics is not about poverty vs. wealth, but about mediocrity vs. excellence -- Toohey embodies that; he patronizes mediocre artists, and wages a vendetta on Roarke because Roarke has real talent.

In this book Rand's Alienated Genius is not a businesscritter or inventor but an artist -- and it is significant that architecture is the artistic field she chose for the story, because that is the art on which the public has the greatest claim. A mediocre book or ugly painting can be put away and forgotten, but everybody has to live with a building. Her message is, that doesn't matter, it's still all about the artist's vision, and nobody else has any business saying you can't do that that way. One gets the impression Roarke would get just as much satisfaction out of designing a building to be built in a desert where nobody will ever see it or use it.

Despite Rand's extreme-libertarian politics, to the extent Roarke's buildings are described, they seem like something Hitler's architect Albert Speer would have done to glorify the State. Not at all like the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, on whom Roarke's character is usually assumed to be based.

You keep jumping in the middle of my convo with someone else.

I haven't read the Fountainhead yet. Sounds like I should.

 

[pecksniff]

Counterfactual. I don't think that is the case.

What, you never heard of the New Deal?

 

[LittleDixie]

Peck, are you and The_Trouvere the same person?

I have heard of the New Deal. It is still a counterfactual to argue that things would have been this way or that were it not for this or that. It's an assertion, but it's not a fact.