It’s obvious that that isn’t a popular opinion around here.
So why would you bother commenting if you aren’t interested in convincing people about your views?
I mean, there are really only three reasons to communicate: to obtain information, to send information, and to elicit an emotional response.
If you were here to obtain information, you’d be asking more questions, so let’s rule that out. You say you’re not here to give us information, so that’s out too. The only emotional response you’re getting is annoyance, so:
If you don’t want to explain your reasoning, are you really just here to annoy us? Because that’s really not a productive use of anyone’s time.
It’s awesomely convenient! That’s the beauty of our system and how it works and grows and expands. The city government that was created long before I came along still has to listen to me and other business owners and private citizens on how to use our money for future growth. That’s why we vote and pay taxes.
If I wanted to, I could just go off grid somewhere and barter with others on some magical island or unrestricted land. But I choose to do business and live where I live and pay taxes and vote how and where those taxes should be used.
I actually genuinely was trying to converse about the original point I made regarding someone’s question about what was the point of the bill, but I predicted that it would get derailed (which it did) and that I didnt wish for it happen because it would result into name calling.
I guess you could say that I am only responding now out of annoyance due to other posters wanting to argue and politely trying to answer them. Thanks for asking.
I can see how you’d think it’s be just a clever trick, but if it passes (which I doubt it will), it’d give the people setting the laws a first-hand look at how degrading some of these practices of drug-testing people as a prerequisite for welfare money really are.
It’s hard to have empathy for someone when you don’t know what they’re going through; perhaps if these people knew how humiliating it is to have to prove you’re “worthy” before you get the money you need, they’d be less likely to think of these people as leeches on the system.
And I totally agree with you with regards to that. I have had friends who have had to do drug tests while on welfare and also while trying to get a job. It sucks and I agree it’s not really usefull.
I still think the bill comes across as a sort of “straw man argument” because I don’t think the drug testing itself has been put in place in order to “reduce the deficit”. The only person I could tell from the article making that argument was the woman trying to pass her bill. Her statements come across as “punishment” for the rich because of their deductions which are portrayed as a type of loophole. And when phrases like “leveling the playing field” are bandied about in the same article it just smacks of class warfare for the sake of class warfare. Lots of buzzwords like that stuck out in the article.
I just don’t see the two issues at all related. You could make arguments for removing the drug testing or reforming the program while separately making the argument that there needs to be less itemized deductions for “rich” people in order to reduce the deficit, but to try and conflate the two is a bit disingenuous.
Since I’m slightly drunk ( ) I’ll humor you. She knows it’s not going to be passed but she’s making a very clear point. Rich people are a larger percentage of the recreational-drug-using population and take more out of the system than poor people (in that rich people don’t contribute their fair portion). We punish poor people for drug use (and pay a lot of money to punish them) but reward rich people … and ignore their drug use.
It’s a deft illustration. It’s not Jonathan Swift and A Modest Proposal but it’ll do.
Newp. It doesn’t matter whether the “benefit” is SNAP or a tax rate that’s obscenely disproportionately beneficial to the extravagantly wealthy. It’s still a benefit.
I read it. You didn’t explain it.
You haven’t told us how the fabulously wealthy actually contributed their fair share toward making the roads (take that as metaphorically as you want) that allowed them to build their wealth. Nothing you’ve said here undermines even the reactionary restatement of Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s position.
??? Folk have not been rude to you. I get annoyance in general but what? How is that annoyance an argument?
Except rich people aren’t “taking” more out of the system. They are holding onto what is already theirs through legal means. Do they benefit from that? Sure! You categorizing that as obscene is completely a classist and skewed point of view. Redefining deductions as “expenditures” from the government system is really stretching what the meaning of an expenditure is. On the opposite end, welfare recipients literally are taking something from the system. And that’s fine as long as they aren’t abusing that system. And the same should go for wealthy people.
The “fabulously” wealthy (1%) contribute plenty of money. What is “fair” to you could mean anything. It’s like arguing what is “rich”. My parents went from being very poor to being upper middle class, but I wouldn’t classify my them as rich. I know others that would say my parents are extremely rich.
In my twenties I started out very poor and lived in some seriously dangerous neighborhoods in SoCal. I know what it means when all you can buy is ramen noodles, and you faint while cooking them cus your so hungry(first time I ever fainted). Now as I hit 40, I have worked my ass off to owning a moderately successful business, employing 10+ people, and for the first time ever earning close to six figures. I struggle to support my two sons and spouse while paying a shit ton in taxes. I live a modest life in an apartment with one car. The 20 year old me would look at the 40 year old me and go “holy shit you’re loaded!”, but to the 1% I’m a peasant.
I don’t begrudge any person trying to hold onto the money they have earned using perfectly legal means. Keeping more of my money in deductions helps me to invest in my company, equipment and expansion, while hiring more people every year (like the ones on welfare looking for work). Calling deductions for rich people obscene is just ludicrous. Are there rich people who are illegally gaming the taxman? Probably. But I can tell you the wealthy 1 percenters I have met pay a lot in taxes, and they aren’t sitting around scheming how to game the system. They are too busy trying to build their companies.
Also, like I said before… the congresswomans point isn’t about actually solving the problem , but rather to just stoke more class warfare in the name of “fairness” while claiming that her opposition is hurting the poor in the name of reducing the deficit. Nowhere in the article is anyone saying that but her. Whether or not the republicans are doing it for that reason I can’t say because it’s not clear at all.
If you want to separate the two issues, fine. But saying they are related in any way is ludicrous and she’s not solving anything.
I’m always rather amazed when people shout “class warfare!” when those who are ever more abused by the increasingly wealthy elite fight back. Such people never see the warfare that goes in the other direction.
As the classist elite hoard ever more and more of the wealth that they’ve extracted from those below them by bending and breaking rules, laws and codes of morality and fair play, that’s not seen by conservatives as classist “class warfare.” It’s just seen as energetic people getting what they “rightfully” deserve. And sitting on mountains of money so huge they could never hope to spend it all isn’t seen as a form of narcissistic, pathological hoarding. It’s instead touted as a sign of success that we should all aspire to, and have yet to attain because we’re just not working hard enough – never mind those barriers to access erected and maintained by the elite. Government that functions to enhance life for all hinders wealth accumulation by those who have already hoarded a lot of wealth, and so it’s broadly branded for the masses as inefficient, unfair, authoritarian, and just plain evil. As your mindset evinces, the “up is down” propaganda that constitutes this branding function is working very well these days.
So your business been around since before the American revolution? Impressive indeed! Glad you were there to form the very first tax base to build this country…
I don’t think we should have drug testing at all except in very limited, well-regulated, accountable ways. To the point of “we almost never do it but when we do, we know it’s not being applied abusively.”
But if we’re going to have drug testing mandated by a legislature, then by all means mandatory drug testing for the legislative body that enacted it.
I think you’re right there. Federal politicians get their own pensions, health care, and gold parachutes, while the rest of us have to get any of that. They are constantly allowed a better standard of living for the rest of their lives, just for going to capital hill for a few years, doing fuck all, and then retiring…
But I’m with @Ignatius on drug testing. I’m totally against pretty much anyone getting drug tested on a regular basis, especially as a condition of employment. But we need to end the war on drugs, once and for all. It’s expensive, destructive, and has not stopped people from using mind altering substances.
) I’ll humor you. She knows it’s not going to be passed but she’s making a very clear point. Rich people are a larger percentage of the recreational-drug-using population and take more out of the system than poor people (in that rich people don’t contribute their fair portion). We punish poor people for drug use (and pay a lot of money to punish them) but reward rich people … and ignore their drug use.