(03-02-2020 09:05 AM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  That's what OO struggled with when differing in his opinion of the exact same statement. It's rather annoying to have someone both agree and disagree with a basic statement, such as the goals of a program.

Do you understand that there is a significant difference between the goals and the specifics of how to achieve them? I realize that I am speaking somewhat for OO, but I think I see both your and his viewpoints with enough clarity to shed some light.

Speaking in broad platitudes about goals is very tiresome. It is a rhetorical device used all too frequently--almost exclusively by the left--to say here are our goals, and these are the things we must do to achieve them, and if you don't agree exactly with this specific plan, then you obviously oppose those goals. It's used on subjects like climate change--if you don't think we need to abandon oil totally today, and shift to some non-existent green replacement technology, then you are obviously a science denier. How about I believe in science but I think most of the proposed solutions are nonsense, because I also believe in math?

You provided a fairly platitudinous statement about goals (continuing with your subsequent "equitable" references). What I provided was a fairly detailed (in one post, don't remember the exact sequence, although that doesn't really matter because I've expressed it before and OO is, I'm sure, familiar with it) plan of how to do it without the current welfare plantation and with a tax structure that is decidedly not "progressive." I really get those ideas from Europe, by the way, because that's how the European social democracies--which are decidedly not socialist, unlike Bernie--do it.

I think what OO was applauding was not the goals per se (on which I think, as you correctly state, there is some general agreement), but rather that I had devised a specific approach to achieving them while at the same time having pro-growth tax policies (which will, IMO, do more long-term good for the poor and working classes than anything else). I would infer from OO's multiple prior comments that what he was thanking me for is proposing a decidedly pro-growth way to get there.

So the difference between objecting to yours and applauding mine is that I provided what you didn't--a path to get there, and in particular a path that rejects most of the leftist rhetoric on the subject.

As I said above, I'm kinda putting words in OO's mouth here, and I specifically ask him to correct me if I'm wrong.

One more thing, unless OO disagrees with my characterization of his views, I think we are done.