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[Mictlantecuhtli]

See: Me & Troll.

Who is conservative and who is republican? I came in a little late...

Liberal in everything but fiscal and governmental matters. SalmonGod can tell you I believe in rule of law first and foremost; the Constitution especially. Working for the government and being an ex-Jew can do that. It's not as easy to pin down as you'd think, I've voted Bush-Clinton-Gore-Obama since I've been voting; mostly because Republicanism in the US now is a hodgepodge of the worst the right has to offer [especially legislator-wise, dear god ugh] and we have no other options to pick from for someone with views like mine. Democratic party may not be perfect, but they're not so anti-American. I'd appreciate a moderate social Liberal Repulicrat Unity-party.

But, I just violently disagree with this hands-off 'let the trash be trash' attitude towards our fellow humans, let alone as Americans. There was a time when we'd call someone who advocates Randian positions greedy and selfish, but those people call themselves Republicans now.

[Dragor23]

I want to know what Romney told his three wives after he conceded.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

That was a bad joke. Sorry.

But I'm glad that Obama is president.

[Max White]

Yea, US is first past the post.
Australia has Labor (Kinda not bad) and Liberal + Nationals (Evil) as the big two, then Greens as balance of power (Good guys) and Katter as his own party (Nutter)
Then we have a massive shitton of parties for state and local government, including The Shooters and Fishers Party, Help End Marijuana Prohibition (HEMP) Party, and The Australian Sex Party.

[ISP]

Neither is evil, but neither is good, noone likes the 2 party system, but noone votes for the 3rd party lobbyists in any amount that matters.

I personally dont like either party, but knowing a 3rd party will never win in this enviroment means I'd rather not vote then vote for the people I dislike less.

Either way your left with the same people running the government and having no strong influence one way or the other, its only considered better then a monarcy or dictatorship because the guys in charge cannot agree enough to do very much harm, and we can civilly remove them from control if they fuck up (nixon)... otherwise its captalism and who can make the most money and not look like a rich asshole, while actually wanting to be in a position that is more or less USA's personal representation to the rest of the world... because beside the president and diplomats who else do foreigners know from the United States Government? Senators? bah Americans dont even know the senators unless its from their own state.

[USEC_OFFICER]

I keep hearing that the US is in massive debt. Anybody know who your in debt to?

I'll see if I can dig up a chart or something, but as far as I can remember it's mostly fellow Americans and some financial institutions. Maybe a department of the US government owns part of the debt for some economic reason.

Spoiler: Fake-Edit (click to show/hide)

The chart seems reasonably accurate for something that I pulled off the internet. So the US is mostly in debt to itself and its government (especially social security), along with a few other countries that it decided to borrow from.

See: Me & Troll.

Who is conservative and who is republican? I came in a little late...

Liberal in everything but fiscal and governmental matters. SalmonGod can tell you I believe in rule of law first and foremost; the Constitution especially. Working for the government and being an ex-Jew can do that. It's not as easy to pin down as you'd think, I've voted Bush-Clinton-Gore-Obama since I've been voting; mostly because Republicanism in the US now is a hodgepodge of the worst the right has to offer [especially legislator-wise, dear god ugh].

But, I just violently disagree with this hands-off 'let the trash be trash' attitude towards our fellow humans, let alone as Americans. There was a time when we'd call someone who advocates Randian positions greedy and selfish, but those people call themselves Republicans now.

Is... is there even an opposing side to fiscal conservatism? I can't imagine somebody who would want to willingly increase the deficit spending.

[Trollheiming]

When a guy accuses me of being a parasite in a country that I don't live in, I should just nod and pretend I live in America? I've got an IP Address and mods have tracert so do it. How insane that you've made my location into a big deal.

I'm not the one who used it what, 3-4 times without anyone asking? You act as if you're the only one who knows anything about the world, because, why, you lives in the chinas and is practically the CEO of the chinas! Hurp-dee-doo! Strawman strawman, indignance, derision!

Of course, the irony of living in one of the last remaining communist states (if you actually do, don't really care either way) and saying that the USA should fix its problems by dragging its bloated, heaving carcass further to the right and replicating nothing of the incredible economic success of said communist country is a brilliant arguing position.

You don't understand much about China, bud. China has no social welfare model to speak of. If you're poor, the government gives you just enough to buy rice for a month. About 50 yuan for a month, and a good professional makes 6000-12000 a month. So yeah, once you know China, it is a good point that China has avoided the trap that America and Europe are in right now. But if you don't know China, but want to appear undeservingly derisive of people that do know more than you, then you snark and sneer without facts.

While you're just plain ignorant about China, on rereading my posts, I think "parasites" was an emotional mistake at the tail-end of a decent point. The point is that too much is going out of the social funds. We can't pay for more outflows, but people have been promised things like help with education expenses to get more youth votes. It gets people to the polls, but any system that has more outflow than inflow is being fed off by people that aren't adequately putting in. By necessity. Calling these people parasites obscured the overall point with heated emotion. They're free-riders, though. It was just after the election and I'm exhausted.

[mainiac]

Yeah, China really avoided that trap of having a decent society.

Troll, do you by any chance live in Shanghai or Hong Kong?

[Aqizzar]

I suppose it was too much to hope for that nobody would get banned over the whole life of the thread, but at least it's after the election.

And lest anyone forget to bring it up, a slight reduction in military spending and raising most tax rates back to where they were in the economically roaring 1990s would mathematically all but eliminate the deficit.  Given the changes in Congress, I wouldn't be surprised to see a platform like this becoming the center of the debate very quickly.

[SalmonGod]

If you're poor, the government gives you just enough to buy rice for a month. About 50 yuan for a month, and a good professional makes 6000-12000 a month.

Welfare in America is hardly more than this, and qualifying is notorious for being difficult and designed to humiliate.  I also don't know anyone who is getting a free education.

[USEC_OFFICER]

\While you're just plain ignorant about China, on rereading my posts, I think "parasites" was an emotional mistake at the tail-end of a decent point. The point is that too much is going out of the social funds. We can't pay for more outflows, but people have been promised things like help with education expenses to get more youth votes. It gets people to the polls, but any system that has more outflow than inflow is being fed off by people that aren't adequately putting in.  By necessity. Calling these people parasites obscured the overall point with heated emotion. They're free-riders, though. It was just after the election and I'm exhausted.

I don't see how those people are parasites. Well, I kinda do, but they're just acting like human beings and want nice/free things. To me it seems like the problem is with the politicians and people in power promising more social services than they can reasonably pay, but nobody really cares about politics anymore so the politicians get away with it.

[Trollheiming]

Yeah, China really avoided that trap of having a decent society.

Troll, do you by any chance live in Shanghai or Hong Kong?

I have lived in Shanghai. Xi'an right now.

[GlyphGryph]

Or we could just raise more money - it's not like we are anywhere near the laffer curve, after all. I think we could pretty safely raise taxes back to the rate Reagen wanted (roughly twice what they are now for those who have the money we need) without issue.

I also wouldn't really call Social Security parasitism - would you? I mean, that's one of those things we are all supposed to pay into. And veteran benefits are kind of perks?

And the DoD at 20% is kind of a big deal, especially since that's not the total amount of military spending (a decent chunk of the remaining mandatory spending that isn't medicare/medicaid and social security is still military, just not DoD)

I mean, your big things seems to be with welfare, medicaid, and medicare, right?

But cutting the DoD is nothing to scoff at - there's no real cost to many of those cuts, and every cut gets us closer to a balanced deficit. I actually think some benefits should be cut as well, but I'm not foolish enough to think our government would be able to handle it's money just because it stopped paying out entitlements.

Come on, you KNOW they would find something to spend it on, or cut taxes, and we'd be back in the same place within a decade.

[Mictlantecuhtli]

Is... is there even an opposing side to fiscal conservatism? I can't imagine somebody who would want to willingly increase the deficit spending.

See: Modern Republican party.

Cut taxes [mostly for the rich], raise spending [mostly on the military-industrial complex], if there's a chance cut a good 9% or 10% from those pesky New Deal programs. Leading to more hardship, to lead to more excuses to cut into the programs.

They have no plan, no tactic for the future. It's blind greed and posteuring [I'd call it plain stupid] in the face of the contrary, their policies since the Reagan years have always been disastrous.

Hey, Troll, about that inflow v outflow problem, it'd be fixed in one year by allowing sequestration to kick in and barely changing the overall tax rate on upper income earners; even IF you add in a nice 250+ billion dollar pot of money to entice repatriation of foreign-shipped factories, which would start a trend of moving the jobs back instead of enticing them to leave like we do now [see: You in China right now!].

I'd even argue for more tariffs. Even an entire shakeup of the payroll taxes and overlapping taxes to make it simpler and also get more out of it.

There's lots of ways for America to get out of the minor deficit she's in. None of them require cutting money to people who are taking it right now, and anyone who claims otherwise has an agenda against the program or is simply uninformed on how those programs to affect the country as a whole and blah blah blah zzz. I shouldn't even have to explain a simple goddamn thing like this.

[majikero]

So it's going to be down hill within the next few decades then.

Well, time to earn as much money as I can and ship back to my homeland.

[Agdune]

But if you don't know China, but want to appear undeservingly derisive of people that do know more than you, then you snark and sneer without facts.

Of course, this statement is basically exactly my point; you're obviously the leading expert of all things, both China and otherwise, because you've said so (of course, your say-so being ALL THE PROOF NEEDED), so you're acting like an arrogant, naive, trolling asshole who obviously knows how to solve all the problems of the world if only the damn whiners would stop whining when you insult them. Y'know, because evidently you've got a doctorate in awesomeology, and we should accept your unsubstantiated crap.

(edit: cut things down a bit. No point dragging out the argument. Also kinda hypocritical for lambasting someone for insulting someone while in a bad mood when I'm essentially doing the same :p)