From 2018:
“The loose connections some voters have with policy preferences has become apparent in recent years. Donald Trump managed to flip a party from support of free trade to opposition to it by merely taking the opposite side of the issue. Democrats, meanwhile, mocked Mitt Romney in 2012 for calling Russia the greatest geopolitical adversary of the United States, but now have flipped and see Russia as exactly that. Regarding health care, the structure of the Affordable Care Act was initially devised by the conservative Heritage Foundation and implemented in Massachusetts as “Romneycare.” Once it became Obamacare, the Republican team leaders deemed it bad, and thus it became bad.
Mason believes the implications of such shallow divisions between people could make the work of democracy harder. If your goal in politics is not based around policy but just defeating your perceived enemies, what exactly are you working toward? (Is it any surprise there is an entire genre of campus activism dedicated to simply upsetting your perceived political opponents?)
“The fact that even this thing’s that supposed to be about reason and thoughtfulness and what we want the government to do, the fact that even that is largely identity-powered, that’s a problem for debate and compromise and the basic functioning of democratic government. Because even if our policy attitudes are not actually about what we want the government to do but instead about who wins, then nobody cares what actually happens in the government,” Mason said. “We just care about who’s winning in a given day. And that’s a really dangerous thing for trying to run a democratic government.”
https://theintercept.com/2018/04/03/poli...epublican/
one has to understand the enemy first....most don't have a clue....
they're finding out right now in the overinflated urban centers....
@welcome2hadesUstupidFkbags
Ive said for a while that TV is driving that. They cover politics like a rivalry football game rather than as issues we need to solve. Politics has replaced sports for some--perhaps because at some level politics actually affects us personally and we (through our vote or donation) can have some affect on politics. As an example---that's different from sports since I personally have no way of affecting anything the Astro's or Texans do. Im strictly a spectator when it comes to pro sports.
Yup did my team "win", not whether or not its a good idea.
Donald Trump is not opposed to free trade.
He simply exposed "free trade" for the farce that it is. Free trade for them, managed trade for us.
He is all for free trade if it is free for both sides. But that is not reality.
But IMO (and offering this as opinion, to be clear) the elephant in the room is the consumption tax. Every other developed country has a consumption tax in the 20% or range. They collect it on all imports. It does not count as a tariff under WTO rules. They also rebate consumption taxes paid on component parts when a completed item is exported.
For those reasons, we can't have free trade with a level playing field until we enact a national consumption tax.
It also provides 20-30% of the tax revenues in those countries, which allows them to support huge welfare states without resorting to the kinds of confiscatory tax rates that democrats are proposing for corporations and the "wealthy" (generally high-income, but the wealth tax proposals would hit truly wealthy people). Until the Tump tax cuts, our corporate rate was the highest in the developed world, and it's still higher than average. With the democrat proposals, it would again be the highest in the world. On the individual side, our top rate been above the OECD average since the late 1990s, and will be even higher under democrat proposals. One does not have to be a genius to figure out that the obvious impact will be increased offshoring of income and wealth.
To paraphrase the late Mouse Davis's quote about his run-and-shoot football offense, the "wealthy" and corporations "get the chalk last." Whatever rules and policies government enacts, they get to respond. How do you think they will respond to the democrats' tax and regulatory proposals?
U - S - A !!
U - S - A !!
U - S - A !!
(12-17-2020 03:23 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote: [ -> ]But IMO (and offering this as opinion, to be clear) the elephant in the room is the consumption tax. Every other developed country has a consumption tax in the 20% or range. They collect it on all imports. It does not count as a tariff under WTO rules. They also rebate consumption taxes paid on component parts when a completed item is exported.
For those reasons, we can't have free trade with a level playing field until we enact a national consumption tax.
It also provides 20-30% of the tax revenues in those countries, which allows them to support huge welfare states without resorting to the kinds of confiscatory tax rates that democrats are proposing for corporations and the "wealthy" (generally high-income, but the wealth tax proposals would hit truly wealthy people). Until the Tump tax cuts, our corporate rate was the highest in the developed world, and it's still higher than average. With the democrat proposals, it would again be the highest in the world. On the individual side, our top rate been above the OECD average since the late 1990s, and will be even higher under democrat proposals. One does not have to be a genius to figure out that the obvious impact will be increased offshoring of income and wealth.
To paraphrase the late Mouse Davis's quote about his run-and-shoot football offense, the "wealthy" and corporations "get the chalk last." Whatever rules and policies government enacts, they get to respond. How do you think they will respond to the democrats' tax and regulatory proposals?
This but unsure if you can get the beltway to agree on VAT AND reduce the other taxes.
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(12-17-2020 05:09 PM)fsquid Wrote: [ -> ] (12-17-2020 03:23 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote: [ -> ]But IMO (and offering this as opinion, to be clear) the elephant in the room is the consumption tax. Every other developed country has a consumption tax in the 20% or range. They collect it on all imports. It does not count as a tariff under WTO rules. They also rebate consumption taxes paid on component parts when a completed item is exported.
For those reasons, we can't have free trade with a level playing field until we enact a national consumption tax.
It also provides 20-30% of the tax revenues in those countries, which allows them to support huge welfare states without resorting to the kinds of confiscatory tax rates that democrats are proposing for corporations and the "wealthy" (generally high-income, but the wealth tax proposals would hit truly wealthy people). Until the Tump tax cuts, our corporate rate was the highest in the developed world, and it's still higher than average. With the democrat proposals, it would again be the highest in the world. On the individual side, our top rate been above the OECD average since the late 1990s, and will be even higher under democrat proposals. One does not have to be a genius to figure out that the obvious impact will be increased offshoring of income and wealth.
To paraphrase the late Mouse Davis's quote about his run-and-shoot football offense, the "wealthy" and corporations "get the chalk last." Whatever rules and policies government enacts, they get to respond. How do you think they will respond to the democrats' tax and regulatory proposals?
This but unsure if you can get the beltway to agree on VAT AND reduce the other taxes.
My thought has always been that the way to build support is to publish comparative data about what Europe does. If the word gets out that most of "socialist" (they're not really) Europe has lower income tax rates than we do, I think some sensible things would become salable.
All I know is when it comes to the land masses and countries that encompass them on this planet?...Im all the fck in on America..FIRST. I expect the same patriotism is the norm all over the world. Its nothing to be ashamed of. In fact?...It should be celebrated. This mentality has ZERO with wanting to have good relationships with others and to somehow try and make that case is inherently absurd. What we do NOT need however is to somehow want "everyone to be the same". That is impossible simply due to the cultural differences between us. Trying to FORCE some type of utopian world order is a recipe for its destruction.
(12-17-2020 09:20 PM)Fo Shizzle Wrote: [ -> ]All I know is when it comes to the land masses and countries that encompass them on this planet?...Im all the fck in on America..FIRST. I expect the same patriotism is the norm all over the world. Its nothing to be ashamed of. In fact?...It should be celebrated. This mentality has ZERO with wanting to have good relationships with others and to somehow try and make that case is inherently absurd. What we do NOT need however is to somehow want "everyone to be the same". That is impossible simply due to the cultural differences between us. Trying to FORCE some type of utopian world order is a recipe for its destruction.
Patriotism is NOT the norm all over the world.
It is some places. The French, Irish, and Chinese are patriotic. Britons (other than Londoners) are patriotic to their 4 constituent countries.
But Germans and inhabitants of the Low Countries are not patriotic. Germans associate patriotism with losing wars and the Holocaust. Belgium is a tri-ethnic country where the most widely understood language is probably English. The Netherlands is Dutch, but they've always viewed themselves as a pan-national melting pot (I think that's why they put the capital of the EU in the Netherlands). Most Africans I've known are not patriotic. Italians and Greeks love their people and their culture, but hate their countries.
(12-18-2020 11:43 AM)Captain Bearcat Wrote: [ -> ]Patriotism is NOT the norm all over the world.
It is some places. The French, Irish, and Chinese are patriotic. Britons (other than Londoners) are patriotic to their 4 constituent countries.
But Germans and inhabitants of the Low Countries are not patriotic. Germans associate patriotism with losing wars and the Holocaust. Belgium is a tri-ethnic country where the most widely understood language is probably English. The Netherlands is Dutch, but they've always viewed themselves as a pan-national melting pot (I think that's why they put the capital of the EU in the Netherlands). Most Africans I've known are not patriotic. Italians and Greeks love their people and their culture, but hate their countries.
A few observations from having served in or around NATO.
Brit military personnel are extremely patriotic, more so than ours. Belgium was kind of an afterthought country, and they don't really know who the heck they are; northern Belgians are probably more loyal to Holland, and southern Belgians to France. The Dutch I've known are fiercely patriotic. Part of the pan-national view is that they were historically a dominant commercial (if not military) power, and lots of Dutch businesspeople seem to think they still are. Agree on Italians and Greeks; then again, if you had their governments, you might feel the same way.
I recall a NATO mine-sweeping conference. These were never fun, because the Germans, Dutch, and Belgians argued constantly about who was responsible for mine countermeasures in the mouths of the Rhine. The Belgians could be particularly obstinate (without having much to be obstinate about), apparently because since we were meeting in Brussels, they thought we should do everything their way. There was this one Belgian who had been especially obnoxious all day. Finally this Brit Navy captain who had reached the limits of is patience said, "Jean-Francois, please refresh my memory. How many wars have Belgium won?"
The one place that you really see European patriotism is international football (soccer and rugby) matches. One difference that I've noticed is that we have all these rules about not profaning our flag, but many Europeans see wearing their flags as the highest sign of patriotism. I tend to agree with them. I also wonder if it might inspire more patriotism here if we played more sports in international competition. As an Aussie friend once said to me, "You yanks are world champions of every sport that you are the only country that plays."