Alexandira Ocasio-Cortez is a result of Trump

By the way, I heard AOC just got a multi-million dollar deal with Netflix. I wonder if she’s going to redistribute 70% of that to the “unwilling to work.”

I Doubt it.

 

I've never called myself a socialist, you imbecile

 

I'm sorry i called you a name, but damn .

 

The number one determining factor in a kids success is the income of their parents. No matter how much hard work there are chances there and not there if you have money. College is the biggest chance. It's for the better of society if everyone is educated. Making it some sort of free market game means people fail. They now have 60K in loans since they dared to go to school. Even in the 60's and 70's in peak Cold War times Americans were not tolerating this. The free market will eventually go to any length if you let it. Supply and demand. You need college and they control it. No one drops the price since it now lowers their brand and they do not have to.

It's a right and duty of a modern society to give it's youth education. It's not a bad thing. Your precious free market can exist in literally hundreds of other markets in America still even with "socialist" tax.

The concept of unwilling to work funding already exists in our public welfare. If someone wants to they can cheat the good will of a system. That's not really a social democrat ideal though. Like people are supposed to have jobs and ideally do not come to the state. But, if they do we take care of them for that short time. Countries like Norway and Sweden do have people who look into the unemployed to make sure they seek work and perhaps cut them off if it's found out they are lazy. It's not like they say "well we are socialist so we will just assume everyone is honest".

If she is paid a lot she might give some to charity. You don't know she seems like the type to me. If not I'm sure you will repeat whatever Fox says in 24 hours. And Fox will notice. Since she's a socialist she can't ever again have anything nice or not give 98% of her income to the state.

I mean I don't plan to admit I don't work anymore until after the guns are confiscated. But I know some Muslim Socialists plan to do it much sooner after President Mohamed may Allah protect him is 46th (and eternal) president.

 

70% talk

https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-p...e-taxed/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.bf9a4023e5b5

There are bad arguments, there are unconvincing arguments, and then there are arguments against the estate tax. Those deserve their own category of ignominy.


The best of them, after all, is based on what is largely a falsehood. That’s the idea that the estate tax is inherently unfair because it taxes money that’s already been taxed. You have to pay Uncle Sam, the story goes, first when you make your money, and then again when you leave it to your heirs (if, that is, you have more than the $22.4 million that’s exempt). Now, insofar as injustices go, this would certainly be far, far down the list, even if we were only talking about tax policy. But that’s assuming that it’s even true. It’s not, though, in a lot of cases. As the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities points out, 55 percent of the assets held by households worth $100 million or more haven’t actually been taxed before being subject to the estate tax.


Let’s repeat that for emphasis: If it weren’t for the estate tax, the majority of the super-rich’s money would never be taxed at all.


How is this possible? The answer has to do with how we do — and don’t — tax capital gains. Now, the first thing to understand is that any increase in the value of your stocks, bonds or real estate is only taxed when you sell them. But what if you don’t? What if you just hold on to them, and eventually pass them on to your kids instead? Well, in that case, you — or, more accurately, they — stand to benefit from one of the biggest loopholes in the entire tax code. The way it works is that it’s not your gains that are taxed, but rather theirs. So let’s say, for example, that you had stock that went from being worth $10 million when you bought it to $100 million by the time you left it to your children. Your heirs wouldn’t owe any capital gains tax on that original $90 million increase — which you also didn’t pay any on — but only on any subsequent increases. This is what’s known as “stepped-up basis,” and, as you could probably guess, it overwhelmingly benefits the rich. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, for its part, estimates that the top 1 percent receive 21 percent of its total money from it, with the next 9 percent getting 34 percent themselves.


This goes a long way toward explaining why the estate tax has become an object of such intense political conflict even though only 0.2 percent of households pay it. Indeed, despite what you may have heard about how it doesn’t really matter since the super-rich can just hire an army of lawyers and accountants to avoid it, the estate tax is actually the only one that a lot of these dynastically wealthy families do pay on the bulk of their fortunes — and so getting rid of it is their top priority. One Republican donor actually went so far as to call this “the linchpin of the conservative movement,” which is as depressing a commentary you’ll find on the influence of money in politics. All of which is to say that it should be no surprise that Republicans are once again proposing to eliminate the tax entirely. Of course, letting billionaires pass on most of their money without ever paying any taxes on it isn’t exactly the most popular of ideas, so Republicans tend to couch this as a matter of defending family farms from being broken up by the alleged depredations of Uncle Sam. Never mind that there were only 80 small farms or small businesses that owed any estate tax in 2017 — 1.4 percent of the total of everyone who did — for an average of just 6 percent of their respective values.


Now, it’s equally easy to see why Democrats want to go in the opposite direction and raise the estate tax quite a bit. Somewhere between 40 and 60 percent of private wealth is now inherited in this country, so taxing it some more seems like a good first place to start raising the revenue we need to pay for the government that voters want. Besides, it’s not like that’s going to change the incentive to be born into a billionaire’s family. Which is why Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), for one, has proposed raising the top estate tax rate for the Davos class from the 40 percent it is to the 77 percent it used to be. (Oligarchs of more modest means would pay a lower rate).


The difference between the parties really couldn’t be more stark. At a time when the costs of college, housing and health care are skyrocketing, middle-class incomes are stagnating, and average life spans are declining, Republicans are focused on . . . trying to make most inherited money be tax-free? Actually, yes. Democrats, meanwhile, want to tax the winners of our birth lottery like FDR did, both to help pay for the programs that people need and to try to prevent our society from turning into a rigid caste system. It’s the difference between a new Gilded Age and a new New Deal.


But that’s not the argument that Republicans, or President Trump in particular, want to have.

 

6

LOL - Yet did you know that many countries that have socialist elements within their society rank higher on the Economic Freedom Index than the US?

But seriously – your posts make it very clear you really don’t know very much about socialism beyond just hating it because you slavishly follow a right wing ideology that you have repeated failed to defend from criticism.

Corporatist economy - which is normally referred to as corporate capitalism – it might not be a form of capitalism you wish to be associated with ‘capitalism’ but isn’t that what you claim left wingers are doing with Venezuela. And as pointed out the form of capitalism that right wing libertarians seem to wish for would be far worse for the majority of people.

As explained to you before your thinking is often too simplistic and ill-informed, this is the reason why your ideas always wither under the least bit of scrutiny.

Again your lack of reading and knowledge on this subject shows, people on the left want equality of opportunity, but they want real equality of opportunity, not the stacked deck of an unequal system.

We have been through this many times and I’m willing to do so again but if you didn’t have the capacity to understand it the first few times is it worth doing again?

 

Oh Panic

Why so unwilling to answer my question?

- What in your view is ‘hard left’, what views make someone hard leftist?

Did you actually not think what you meant before posting and are now too embarrassed to admit you haven’t a clue what you meant?

 

Mel

LOL - Oh I think you can say that a clear definition of imbecilic behaviour is holding on to a viewpoint you cannot defend from criticism in any rational or reasonable way.

 

There are those on the right that wish to portray things like a 70% top rate of tax as somehow been un-capitalist but it has to be remembered that even when the US had an even higher top rate it was still seen as capitalist by the world and the majority of Americans.

Fall in top rate tax
1945 - 94%
1970 – 70%
1982 - 50%
1990 - 28%
2010 – 33%

It should be remembered that people in many nations fought for what could be seen as ‘socialist’ ideas - voting rights, social benefits, safer working conditions, progressive taxation, welfare systems and decent living wages but those things often came about in systems that were predominantly capitalist in nature .

It should also be remembered that the result of that ‘socialist’ movement was that the economic benefits of production were much more distributed. Many people saw their wages grow and there living standards improve for example in the US during the period between from the end of WWII and the 1970 many families gained middle class status.

The period when the top tax rates were highest

But from the 70’s onward a new idea was promoted in some of these nations (neo-liberalism) it was in many ways opposed to the ‘distributive’ system that had developed. One thing it promoted was economic globalisation, which basically allowed back some aspects of exploitative capitalism by promoting the moving of production to nations that had not developed the more distributive systems away from those nations that had.

In this way the long fought for distributive system has been undermined in those places where it had developed. Neo-liberals argue that to ‘compete’ in the global market the elements of the distributive system need to be dismantled what is needed they say is deregulation, the cutting of welfare, tax cuts that benefit the rich, lower wages, weak government oversight etc etc.

It has resulted in many middle and working class incomes and wealth stagnating or falling while those of a few have ballooned.

This has happened in a period when the top tax rates have been low.

Many of the right wing views promoted here are the soundbites of the wealth sponsored propaganda industry that wants to keep the tax cuts that favour them I just can’t work out this goes unquestioned by those right wingers pushing the views here.

 

The propaganda image of public assistance been lavished on work shy scroungers has a very long history, and has often been pushed by wealth sponsored individuals and groups in all that time.

It is the con game of the deserving and undeserving poor

The deserving being those that don’t ask for help and so don’t need any. And the undeserving being those who do ask for help thereby showing that they are scroungers and wasters who don’t deserve any help.

So it was plain - the propaganda went – that there was no need to give assistance to the disadvantaged and if anything welfare should be cut not enhanced so as to incentivise these lazy good for nothings and the public saving be given back to the ‘hard working’ and ‘decent’ in tax cuts (that favour the rich that promote the propaganda).

The problem was that the deserving and undeserving were often the same people but just at different stages of life or circumstance.

Those that were able to get by (from paycheque to paycheque) but could hit real hardship due to circumstance - economic downturns, a bout of unemployment, medical problems etc.

But it should also be remembered that many of the people receiving public assistance are working they just don't get a big enough paycheue to get by and so claim assistance to survive, so how would removing such help be incentivising them to get work?

 

Just an aside here

Many on the right seem to have this big thing about laziness, that they are the hard working ones and others are work sly moochers

But have people noticed how often here the right wingers seem to be the lazy ones that don’t put work into their arguments?

They don’t seem willing to do the reading or studying, some of them seem worn out after just posting a meme or blurting out some simplistic slogan

I mean some rise to a rant once and awhile but most of the time they haven’t put much through or effort into what they are saying so too often they end up lacking in all substance.

 

The thing is that the much of the right seems stuck in the 19th century which is incompatible with dealing with 21st century problems.

In relation to work for example they are basing there thinking on 19th century social and economic ideas (laissez-faire markets and Social Darwinism) and fighting the battles of the 20th century (opposing welfare and universal healthcare) while many what is needed is ideas to deal with 21st century problems like climate change and a post work society.

So it seems rather silly to be talking about forcing people to work by withdrawing public assistance when a lot of people are waking up to the possible dangers advances in technology might mean for the future of work.

Now I know that many on the right say that when certain work disappears other types of work will replace them but some economists are warning this change is unlikely to result in that.

 

Whoa! Stop the music! The Apocalypse must be near. You finally got it right. From now on, we should expect that you won't slip back into your old habits of using Socialism as an all purpose label for anything to the left of Ayn Rand. Mel? Not a Socialist. Obama? Not Socialist. Clinton? Not Socialist? Elizabeth Warren? Not Socialist. Hitler? Not Socialist. Keep up the good work!

 

What many people forget is that most regulations were enacted to prevent gross abuse of large numbers of people, their communities and the environment. Deregulation in the US has been an abysmal failure and exploited the many for the gain of the few. It is not some mysterious force that has caused the gut renching concentration of wealth in th US, but rather the systematic combination of deregulation, regressive taxation, and abandonment of any pretense of community interest. All carried out with unchecked purchase of political power and the myopic belief that it is only the individual interest that matters.

 

Right leaning states also tend to take more government welfare compared to left ones. There is a real disconnect between the tax dollars they get and what socialist tax is. So you get people like this.

 

They already push this idea in the media. A politician has to "earn" the right to suggest legislation. Election by the people is not earning. They did it with Sanders, Obama, and now AOC. The elite class asks what have they done for me and why are they here?!

And how do you do that? Usually with big business and lobbyists pleased. Since you greased the wheels of capitalism you are a good capitalist. Perfect for the ruling class since you can only pick from what they say. But of course they have money they are the ultimate American dream. Clearly this is hard work and needs respect not class warfare.

Social media has shown you don't need money now and the elite are concerned. Like in 1980 how do you tell people who you are? You need the TV networks to acknowledge you otherwise you are knocking on doors and hitting one or two small towns.

2 millionaire senators introduce plan to make sure Congress is only for the rich

 

Who gets public assistance in the US(2016)
45 Important Welfare Statistics for 2019

 

ocasio-cortez-cheers-as-amazon-scraps-nyc-headquarters

 

Amazon is a terrible employer. Similar to WalMart some people fall for the "we bring jobs" argument. Once they are in the community it's not good work. That is the real problem with the economy. While unemployment goes down think what kind of labor is offered. It is labor for the 1% and their benefit. Part time only, no benefits, toxic work culture.

All of these things are said about Amazon. They are trying to clean up their image since old Bezoo is seen as Mr. Burns from the Simpsons now. That does not change the past and what they will do again when they can.

AOC is smart to keep them out. A place like NYC will never be short of companies wanting a taste. Make these companies follow your rules. They need labor more than you need them.

 

Yeah I didn’t want them in Philly.