Why are we a divided Nation?

It illustrates about the federal budget what I claimed for it.

The graph is about the federal budget.

Nothing has changed about my point--SS outlays will be a stable budget item.

It's not an investment, so it can't be a Ponzi scheme, period.

SS is income transfer to senior citizens paid for by a payroll tax on business and workers.

 

I didn't know that you knew the reason why my ancestors came to America.

But you are wrong, they didn't leave what would become a united Germany for a better life but because they were defeated on the battlefield when their revolution against a German monarch failed.

And on my mother side, her ancestors left Germany a couple of decades later when they didn't see things the same way Otto von Bismarck did.

 

Racism is one of the dumber things people do.

 

Gaslighting Alert!

 

That tends to track with economic freedom. Countries that have more economic freedom (i.e., more capitalistic) have more upward mobility. We need to improve our economic freedom to shake up things at the top. As I previously pointed out, the 1% didn't change very much during the economically repressive 1970s, but it changed drastically with the economically liberated 1980s.

That's a problem of politics, not economics. That happens at every level of society... lawyers impose heavy restrictions on who can be a lawyer to protect lawyers from competition; school teachers push for heavy restrictions on who can be a teacher to protect them from competition; plumbers push for heavy restrictions on who can be a plumber to protect them from competition. The wealthy are no different in this regard. It requires wisdom to keep rules in place that don't protect people from competition but encourages it instead.

We have substantial rules in place to punish predatory behavior, collusion to fix prices, etc. We also have a very busy court system looking after the interests of consumers. Using the tax rate to punish corporations is both too vague and too heavy to modify anti-social behavior on the part of companies.

If they need help, we shouldn't allow them to immigrate here. We should be taking in people who are going to contribute to the country, not drag it down.

There's still a lot of people not working.

"Here's the breakdown of the 95 million Americans who weren't working, according to the latest figures from the Atlanta Federal Reserve, which conducted a review based on figures through September:

-- 94.6 million people above the age of 16 were out of the workforce.

Of those:

-- 44.5 million were retired.
-- 14.5 million were in school or job training.
-- 12.8 million were taking care of a loved one.
-- 15.3 million weren't working because of an illness or disability.

In all, of the 94.6 million not working, 87.1 million were retired, in school, taking care of a loved one or physically unable to work.

That leaves 7.5 million people. What about them?

Of those, 1.6 million had looked for a job in the past year or wanted a job but had given up searching for more than a year. And 5.9 million workers listed "other" as a reason for not wanting or having a job. We don't know much about these workers.

https://money.cnn.com/2018/01/10/news/economy/95-million-out-of-workforce/index.html

Most economists are liberals. Only about 10% belong to the Chicago or Austrian schools. Here is von Mises on wealth inequality: https://mises.org/library/inequality-wealth-and-incomes

EarthSky was advocating a top rate of 75%. That is confiscatory.

What Boulder can afford and what Detroit can afford are very very different.

 

We've been helping and that's why we don't have many immigrants?

Most immigrants want to assimilate. I don't know where you get this idea.

I don't see the point of not helping a likely future citizen. If you're unwilling to help, don't give them a Green Card.

 

Left to their own devices, what would conservative pols do with Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security?

 

I don't think that word means what you think it means.

 

How ironic, being that liberals are completely incapable of understanding people who think differently than they do. It is why they are drivers of the cancel culture. It is why you hear things like protesting the Harvard newspaper simply because the paper asked Ice for a response to an immigration protest. It is why so many liberals unfriend/follow etc others who don't think the same way they do. It is why students protest people speaking on campus when they don't espouse their beliefs. Liberals have moved so far to the extreme left that they can't handle dissenting thought.

 

We've already seen what happens to those programs when the Democrats are left to their own devices. $34 trillion unfunded liability for SS and Medicare will become insolvent in less than 7 years.

 

Salon...truthout...lol. What, no sources from the Chinese government while we are at it? The left wing would like people to believe this so that they can continue to pretend they are protesting fascism when in reality they are protesting anyone who has the gall to think differently than they do. The far left isn't too keen on anyone not goose stepping in line with their beliefs.

 

Ice protestors and Occupy protestors make them look like the highest tier of humanity in comparison. It's impossible to find lower dredges of society than your average Ice and Occupy protestor.

 

Consider...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility

I strongly disagree. One of the more serious problems with our system is the inadequate regulation of business.

Courts looking after consumers? Ho, ho, ho...

Relevance?

 

Probably. It won't matter in 20 years when significant numbers of workers will no longer be needed by the economy and we'll be wondering what to do with millions of unemployed workers.

 

They've stolen plenty from you.

 

At lest ICE and Occupy protesters have the innate ability to think of someone other than themselves. Trump supporters are the absolute pinnacle of selfish reasoning, displayed by the absolute horrific character flaws they display. There is a reason every white nationalist group supports Trump.

 

He meant outward emigrants. No one is leaving anymore because of our overly generous welfare programs for immigrants.

Why should American Muslims have to assimilate?
http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015/1/should-american-muslims-have-to-assimilate.html

Somalian Immigrants: ‘We Don’t Want To Assimilate!
https://breakthematrix.com/blog/somalian-immigrants-say-theyre-who-make-maine-great/

Mexican, Central American immigrants lag behind at assimilating into U.S. culture
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/sep/21/mexican-central-american-immigrants-slower-to-assi/

Good thinking. Better still, if they are going to end up on the dole, don't give them a green card.

Other conservative pols would probably means test Medicare and Social Security to put them more on a welfare basis and bring down the unfunded liability problem. Personally, I would privatize both of them.

Looks like we're doing pretty well there. Bring down taxes and regulations and we could improve that number quite a bit.

By the way, there's an IQ connection there that cannot be fixed. IQ is about 60% inheritable, and the correlation between IQ and earnings is a weak but positive .23. The smarter you are, the more money you are likely to make, and smart fathers tend to have smart sons, and dumb fathers tend to have dumb sons. This is why generational poverty is a thing.

https://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp-con...-analytic-review-of-longitudinal-research.pdf

The only deadly business out there is the medical profession. "Medical misadventure" is the #9 killer of Americans. What regulations do you think we need that we don't have already?

Go stand inside the doors of the Daley Building in Chicago for half an hour if you doubt it. I'd never seen so many crippled and disabled people in one place before working there, and I've spent time in hospitals and nursing homes as a visitor.

A right wing economist who would agree with me.

*looks around* Nope, not missing a thing.

 

I first heard about it from the "New Left" and President Jimmy Carter.

In the early 1970's the "New Left" adopted cultural-marxism.
Assimilation was bad and politically incorrect and diversity and the balkanization of America was good and politically correct.

A few years later President Jimmy Carter publically told immigrants to hold on to their ethnic names, culture, customs, traditions and language.

 

You denying the obvious, even after being shown the facts...

http://www.politicalforum.com/index...divided-nation.562512/page-38#post-1071093400​

... is your effort to gaslight the forum.

 

You "heard" it at least 40 years ago and this is why you think immigrants don't want to assimilate? And who the hell are the "New Left" you talk about? Would they be the really old left now?

Total BS. No one ever said assimilation is bad.

So, don't vote for Jimmy.

 

Liberals are more likely to accept divergent thinking. Get a clue.

Lemme guess. Some liberals unfriended you because they got tired of you telling them what they think?

Who said these people are liberals?

 

Non-responsive. What would conservative pols do with entitlements if it was their call?

How about you? Would you reduce or get rid of them?

 

Anecdotal evidence from the Usual Suspects.

 

I think corrupt institutions contribute to this divide. FBI acts more like the KGB these days.

Also one party wants a deluge of non-assimilateable people to pour in; and the other wants secure boarders. Very divisive.

 

The "New Left," those burned out hippie liberals and marxists from their 60's are still in charge of the DNC.



>"No one would have called Hayden or Jerry Rubin or the other leaders of the old radicals “snowflakes.” They wanted to oppose the macroagressions of a society that, in their view, had lost its way amid racism and the existential threats of the Bomb and the Cold War. They wanted to change society, not retreat from it. What happened to the New Left’s passionate idealism?"<