Paul Ryan imagines "Cindy," a hypothetical beneficiary of his tax plan, doesn't realize she and her child are starving to death

I don’t have kids and live by myself and an extra $58 per month is laughable. That doesn’t even cover my electric bill, or a single trip to the grocery store. If i had kids that $58 extra a month would likely mean even less.

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Follow up: In fact, a single mom would likely get major help from being able to afford something as simple as day care. Depending on where they live day care can be ridiculously expensive, no tax plan would even begin to touch that cost and the societal problem we’re talking about is much larger than what idiotic tax cuts for the rich can solve.

An example:

The average cost of center-based daycare in the United States is $11,666 per year ($972 a month), but prices range from $3,582 to $18,773 a year ($300 to $1,564 monthly), according to the National Association of Child Care Resource & Referral Agencies.

*source

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About as much as the $300 I got from Shrub.

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There is a good chance that this “Cindy” voted for this - as millions did. Tax cuts for the rich, Obamacare will be eliminated, coal-powered economy, build a wall, science will be ignored, environment and immigrants will be attacked. I mean the GOP ran their entire 2016 election on that platform! There was no deception. How is it that the GOP doesn’t lose every election 99% to 1% as they would if everyone objectively voted for their own best interests?

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Seven and a half cents doesn’t buy a hell of a lot

I checked an inflation calculator, and the 7.5 cents from The Pajama Game works out to near $0.70 today. So being unionized (admittedly in fiction, in the 1950s) is worth twice what Paul Ryan is offering

ETA: I just realized that this reference is perhaps somewhat obscure. I saw the Pajama Game musical in highschool, and it’s been occupying prime mental real-estate ever since. Here’s the song, complete with Paul Ryan-level claims about what one might do with a small raise.

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Remember, this $58 a month is supposed to be saved, and Ryan is actually selling himself short: if Cindy lets the bank “hold” her money, she’ll actually have amassed around $7035!

After ten years of waiting Cindy can basically buy her family a fast-food meal just from the interest. Then she can send one child to community college for one semester!

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Hey come on, now, be fair. After only saving for 100 years, she’ll have $70,000. That’s, um, a good start when you’re saving money. Oh, but wait, the tax credit expires after a few years, reducing her savings, so it’ll actually take her about 350 years to save that much. Well, still, after a few millennia, we’ll be talking some real savings.

It’s turtles shit all the way down.

I wish, but with gerrymandering and voter suppression, I don’t see that happening.

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They vote for “screw that other guy”, instead. Right up until they become the “other guy” and get deported or lose their health care or whatever.

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“Many men of course became extremely rich, but this was perfectly natural and nothing to be ashamed of because no one was really poor – at least no one worth speaking of.”

― Douglas Adams, The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

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He may be targeting a “significant” bracket of voters who – given their dire conditions – would be desperate for even the $700 per year and call it all-good.

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Yeah the good old technique of encouraging the idiot peasants fight for scraps among themselves. Countless Kings and Emperors stayed in power over the centuries by doing that.

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That’s assuming that she can keep the account from dropping to the point that she has to pay fees for a low balance. In that case she could end up being in arrears to the bank for several thousand dollars.

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Ryan is living Rand’s life in reverse. She railed against welfare for years and then drew Social Security and Medicare until she died. Ryan went to college on a government assistance program, and now spends his days trying to make sure that nobody else can do the same.

Fuck him.

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Roger That!

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For their own best interests? That’s the sea change that keeps not happening. Most Americans have been thoroughly conditioned to vote for whoever we hate slightly less from the two major parties, and it’s pretty clear neither of those two is going to act in our best interests.

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I agree that $15/hour does tend to distract from other living wage discussions. This is, however, the internet, so of course I’m going to argue with you anyway.

If we’re giving Cindy a 40 hour work week (unlikely as that may be), that’s got her clocking in at $14.42 an hour. In which case, a $15 base wage would up her annual salary to $31,200, a better increase than what Ryan is offering here. So there’s the pedantry, for which I do apologize.

Outside of that distraction is the idea that Ryan wants this fictional person to actually save the money, instead of doing the sensible American thing and dutifully plugging it back into the economy so that his fuzzy numbers can work off the backs of people living within, at best, 185% of the federal poverty level.

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The entire GOP party are nothing but cartoon villains. They’re not even trying to hide it anymore.

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Paul Ryan should sue go into forced arbitration with the surgeon who did his spine removal procedure. Clearly, a significant chunk of the cortex was removed, as well.

In all seriousness, there is evidence that Paul Ryan has brain damage.

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no eats alot! :frowning: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_D_Z-D2tzi14/S8TRIo4br3I/AAAAAAAACv4/Zh7_GcMlRKo/s400/ALOT.png

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This notion that both parties are equally bad is fraudulent. It’s a lie repeated enough times that the elections swing back and forth. It’s like saying the democrats are kleptocrats stealing MILLIONS from the public treasury while still attempting to run government in a manner that allows them to have millions to steal so I’m voting republican! Never mind they’re kleptocrats who are stealing trillions and intent on destroying the government in the process because, we’re all gonna die someday so who cares? Yeah two sides of the same coin.

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