What is something you agree with the "other side" about?

[ecogen]

Our corporate tax rates were amongst the highest in the world. We lowered them, but they are still a scratch above the global average.

Statutory rate does not equal effective rate as others have mentioned, your tax code is full of loopholes, deductions and exceptions. Go look at corporate tax revenue as % of GDP and compare it to other countries.

Edit: Just saw your new post with that NPR link which basically says exactly what I said above. Welp.

 

[Moonbeam]

Dems are no better, don’t be dishonest. They didn’t cut spending sure, but the platform is free healthcare, free college, free stuff. Very fiscally irresponsible.

Looking at the country at this moment in time I see a cult leader who is a criminal supported by a criminal cult that will keep him in power regardless of that fact. I see this as a tremendous threat to the nation and I see massive damage being done all around as a result of insane cult beliefs. I see people like you, saying that democrats are no better to be, to be as fundamentally psychotic as a person being eaten by sharks as he tries to avoid being swallowed by a whale. You are simply insane, in my opinion, gripped with irrational fear. Your assessment of the state of reality is a delusion that has been inculcated by propaganda designed to prevent you from taking any personal responsibility that would lead to your unconscious feelings of guilt. To preserve a false sense of self importance you fail to act on logical moral principle. Basically, you are a moral coward who hides that fact with the delusional belief that 'both sides' vision makes you morally superior and morally courageous. Everybody knows 'both sides' but sanity is the effort to understand to what degree.

The bottom line that I see is an emotional need to stay close to your fears by putting on airs that will cause others to want to tell you to take your 'both sides' act and shove it up your ass. You need to hear that to feel false pride. What a man you are standing up to all that abuse. It might be better to wake up.

 

[UglyCasanova]

Edit: Just saw your new post with that NPR link which basically says exactly what I said above. W

Here is the average effective tax rate for U.S. corporations. The U.S. is still toward the top of the spectrum, but it's nowhere near the ultra-high level (relative to other countries) that the statutory rate is at.​

 

[fskimospy]

Even still it’s higher than most industrialized countries

https://www.npr.org/2017/08/07/5417...e-the-highest-corporate-tax-rate-in-the-world

From your own link corporate taxes in the US comprise 2.2% of GDP as compared to the OECD average of 2.8%. Our effective corporate tax rate was already below average before this bill.

 

[UglyCasanova]

Our effective corporate tax rate was already below average before this bill.

Lol

 

[ecogen]

Here is the average effective tax rate for U.S. corporations. The U.S. is still toward the top of the spectrum, but it's nowhere near the ultra-high level (relative to other countries) that the statutory rate is at.​

Might wanna read the rest of the article too.

 

[UglyCasanova]

I did home bruh. You can’t argue the corp tax rate effectively is t higher than most industrialized nations.

 

[K1052]

Lol

Uh no he's right. Pointing at the rates by themselves doesn't mean a lot, especially the statutory which nobody is really paying to begin with.

 

[ecogen]

I did home bruh. You can’t argue the corp tax rate effectively is t higher than most industrialized nations.

Did I argue that? You'll have to quote me on that.

Statutory rate does not equal effective rate as others have mentioned, your tax code is full of loopholes, deductions and exceptions. Go look at corporate tax revenue as % of GDP and compare it to other countries.

This is what I said, which the article corroborates 100%, am I wrong?

 

[UglyCasanova]

Uh no he's right. Pointing at the rates by themselves doesn't mean a lot, especially the statutory which nobody is really paying to begin with.

From NPR

Here is the average effective tax rate for U.S. corporations. The U.S. is still toward the top of the spectrum, but it's nowhere near the ultra-high level (relative to other countries) that the statutory rate is at.​

 

[fskimospy]

I did home bruh. You can’t argue the corp tax rate effectively is t higher than most industrialized nations.

Uhmmm, yes you can because it is lower. 2.2% of GDP is less than 2.8%. When you want to actually know which country has higher corporate taxes that’s what you compare.

Average effective tax rate means little if you aren’t adjusting for size. Say your corporation gets taxed at 50% on $10 billion in income. My corporation gets taxed at 90% on $10 of income. Our average tax rate is 70%. Does that seem like a useful number to you?

 

[boomerang]

I don't want higher taxes on the wealthy just because. I want higher taxes on the wealthy because I think we need socialized medicine and I'd rather the wealthy foot most of that bill. I also want to expand social safety nets, and I'd like to see the government invest more in science and technology, and in infrastructure. And I'd like to get rid of the deficit, or at least reduce it to a low amount (under $100 billion).

Your use of a single example to somehow prove that tax revenue gains would be minimal if we increased taxes on, say, everyone making over $250K a year, is laughable.

My support of socialized medicine alone puts me at least halfway into the "progressive" camp. Yet I don't agree with virtually anything on your list. Nor do any of the liberals I know IRL. Many of those things you can't support as being "progressive" with anything but anecdotes, which don't prove a thing.

The socialized medicine arguments have been going on for a long, long time. I just see so many failures of big government that I can't embrace it. I read a lot of arguments about this country and that country has socialized medicine but the scale is vastly different both in population and the size of the nation. It's a vastly different undertaking here. Wishing for it doesn't make it viable.

If we want to expand the social safety net we need to first stop providing that safety net to people that have broken our laws by not respecting our borders. Get that under control and then see where we are. If you think we're not supporting illegals through food, shelter, education, healthcare and the like then let me know and this will be my last response to you in this thread. Reality must be factored in just as true math must be accepted.

If my example is laughable show some simple math. Math can't be argued with. My example is for the nitwits we have among us in droves that think the rich man is the reason they're not driving a Tesla and living in a 4000 sq. ft. home.

Here's a hugely important point. How many people make over $250K a year and how many make less? Raising taxes on the minority nets the .gov some money. Raising taxes on those making less (the middle class which is huge) nets the .gov big money. Here's the followup and it's probably even more important. There are two way for the .gov to net out more from that huge group that will give them the most. They can raise taxes on them or they can put policies in place that raise their wages. This is where it's important to quit paying attention to what the media is saying and start paying attention elsewhere. The argument of course is that both methodologies are prone to failure and they will. Timing is everything.

As far as my list. The left with vast help from the media has created a caricature of conservatives that has been pretty widely accepted. My point is that the left has the same kind of aura surrounding them. If I had loads of time I could provide link after link after link after link supporting that list. Now, you may deny that they are in your camp and maybe you're correct but pal, they are as much the face of your party as the face the media has put on the Republicans. The lens I see the left through operates the same as the lens you see the right through. They're just pointed in different directions.

Which brings us back to the question posed by the OP initially. A question that has been lost in the fray.

But, still no takers on the Dem platform?

 

[K1052]

Uhmmm, yes you can because it is lower. 2.2% of GDP is less than 2.8%. When you want to actually know which country has higher corporate taxes that’s what you compare.

Average effective tax rate means little if you aren’t adjusting for size. Say your corporation gets taxed at 50% on $10 billion in income. My corporation gets taxed at 90% on $10 of income. Our average tax rate is 70%. Does that seem like a useful number to you?

This right here.

Also overall the US is near the bottom of total % of GDP paid in taxes for OECD nations.

 

[cfenton]

Abolish ICE
Higher taxes
Anti-energy production
Open borders
Anti-Semitism
Anti-Christian
Anti-male
Anti-white
Pro-Palestinian
Pro-Antifa
Pro-MS-13
Anti-military
Anti-law enforcement

I'm sure you could find someone who supports each of these positions, but they are hardly the official party line. These are just extreme caricatures of positions. I'm probably going to regret this, but here's my response to each point.

1. Abolish ICE- I'd bet the vast majority want to reform ICE, not abolish it. Or abolish it and replace it with something a little less extreme.

2. Higher taxes- I guess, but only to pay for social programs. No one wants higher taxes for its own sake.

3. Anti-energy production- Only of highly polluting energy sources like coal and oil. Most Democrats support solar, wind, and hydro expansion.

4. Open borders- Again, this is the extreme version held by a small minority. Most Democrats want more legal immigration, but very few want no border control at all.

5. Anti-Semitism- No idea where this is coming from. Some people criticize Israel?

6. Anti-Christian- Supporting and encouraging secularism is probably fair to attribute to Democrats, but most Democrats in office are still Christians.

7. Anti-male- Again, no idea where this is coming from. Men are still vastly over represented in all levels of government.

8. Anti-white- Ugh, this is getting tedious. The Democratic party is not anti-white, unless by that you mean they care about minorities.

9. Pro-Palestinian- Sure.

10. Pro-Antifa- Antifa is not even close to mainstream. The majority of Democrats don't support violence if that's what you're trying to get at.

11. Pro-MS-13- No one is in favor of promoting violent gang, that's just silly.

12. Anti-military- I'm not sure what this means. I guess Democrats are in favor of decreased military spending, but I don't see a lot of Democrats out there campaigning against the troops.

13. Anti-law enforcement- Democrats are against oppressive and extreme law enforcement. Violence should not be the first response to any minor threat.

EDIT:

To the OP's question, I think fiscal responsibility is a virtue of the Republican platform, even if it rarely comes to pass. The things I don't like about the Democrats platform has more to do with them not going far enough. I'd like to see a unified push for universal healthcare, for example.

 

[UglyCasanova]

Uhmmm, yes you can because it is lower. 2.2% of GDP is less than 2.8%. When you want to actually know which country has higher corporate taxes that’s what you compare.

Average effective tax rate means little if you aren’t adjusting for size. Say your corporation gets taxed at 50% on $10 billion in income. My corporation gets taxed at 90% on $10 of income. Our average tax rate is 70%. Does that seem like a useful number to you?

The rate the corporations pay is higher than most industrialized nations. If that’s a lower % of gdp so be it, I’m assuming that shows the other countries have a higher percent of incorporated companies than the us. End of the day for each Corp they care about the percent they pay, not what their contribution is to the tax/gdp ratio, they pay higher.

 

[fskimospy]

This right here.

Also overall the US is near the bottom of total % of GDP paid in taxes for OECD nations.

Yes. Long story short, the idea that our corporations were somehow overtaxed was nonsense.

Again, at one point Republicans claimed their goal was to create revenue neutral tax reform by lowering rates and eliminating deductions. Apparently that was too difficult though so they just fell back to the standard Republican position of debt financed tax cuts for rich people.

 

[vi edit]

I honestly struggle to think of well...anything. GOP has gone off the rails into full on looney land policies and antics. There is very little, if anything I can think of that is a major platform item or current legislative agenda for them I support.

As for stuff I disagree with on the Dems....ehhh...I'm not as anti-gun as the real progressive side of the party. I fully support a ban on assault style rifles, high capacity rifles/mods, and anything that modifies the fire rate of weapons. But beyond that I've got no issues with people owning reasonable hunting weapons and personal defense fire arms.

It's also a touchy topic but I'm not a huge fan of the identity politics that the Dems play. It's not so much that I'm against it in theory. I just don't think that in reality it's a winning solution for them. If you have a good platform you pull in people that way. Trying to cater to a specific demographic just ends up getting too hard of a needle to thread without alienating other groups.

 

[fskimospy]

The rate the corporations pay is higher than most industrialized nations. If that’s a lower % of gdp so be it, I’m assuming that shows the other countries have a higher percent of incorporated companies than the us.

What is your basis for this?

End of the day for each Corp they care about the percent they pay, not what their contribution is to the tax/gdp ratio, they pay higher.

They wouldn’t care about the average rate either, they would care about what they pay. Is there a reason why you did not address my point as to why average rate is less useful than corporate taxes as a percentage of GDP?

 

[cytg111]

Not the US, but for me it is immigration policy and at that not even that!
I believe we need to adapt to the times and require immigrants to adapt and adhere to the rule of law and fall into society as productive members, thats a problem today and it will be bigger tomorrow if we stay the course. The only problem is that how I want this done is massively different from how the right wants it done - and to be specific what the right is using this fear to leverage. Its idiotic cause it hinders us having a real discussion on the subject and solve it in an intelligent manner...

 

[vi edit]

I fully admit that immigration needs fixed and I am absolutely ignorant on how to do it. That's probably a "both sides" thing that neither has a good plan and we are too politicized at this point to come to a reasonable compromise.

 

[fskimospy]

I honestly struggle to think of well...anything. GOP has gone off the rails into full on looney land policies and antics. There is very little, if anything I can think of that is a major platform item or current legislative agenda for them I support.

As for stuff I disagree with on the Dems....ehhh...I'm not as anti-gun as the real progressive side of the party. I fully support a ban on assault style rifles, high capacity rifles/mods, and anything that modifies the fire rate of weapons. But beyond that I've got no issues with people owning reasonable hunting weapons and personal defense fire arms.

It's also a touchy topic but I'm not a huge fan of the identity politics that the Dems play. It's not so much that I'm against it in theory. I just don't think that in reality it's a winning solution for them. If you have a good platform you pull in people that way. Trying to cater to a specific demographic just ends up getting too hard of a needle to thread without alienating other groups.

I feel similarly, there are certainly plenty of policies I disagree with the Democrats on but at this point it’s really hard to think of affirmative policies the Republicans have that I support because the Republican Party has basically gone insane.

It’s also hard to know what the Republican Party even stands for anymore, other than tax cuts for rich people and white Christian identity politics.

 

[ecogen]

I fully admit that immigration needs fixed and I am absolutely ignorant on how to do it. That's probably a "both sides" thing that neither has a good plan and we are too politicized at this point to come to a reasonable compromise.

Unfortunately the only way to "truly" fix immigration is nation building. Which is really, really, really hard.

 

[fskimospy]

I fully admit that immigration needs fixed and I am absolutely ignorant on how to do it. That's probably a "both sides" thing that neither has a good plan and we are too politicized at this point to come to a reasonable compromise.

Are we really though, and is it really both sides?

Here’s a reasonable compromise that Republicans and Democrats in the Senate hammered out a few years back. Republicans in the House torpedoed it.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bor...ty,_and_Immigration_Modernization_Act_of_2013

 

[Moonbeam]

I believe that truth is a state of being that can only be experienced when one abandons ideology. Once that state is experienced one becomes free of attachment, free of the need for self respect based on identification with every tribe nation organization ism and identity people make. One isn't any longer a member of anything in the ordinary sense. In such a state of consciousness opposites collapse in a higher understanding, that very conscious state I refer to. In such a state one can feel the truth of anything because one is free of need. The one state of self that transcends all others is the state of being, it is whole and complete and nothing can be taken or given. To be is to transcend fear because fear is the lack of being. What it means for a human to be is to be what is human, what one truly is pre and post identification with ideological and all other forms of identification. It is to be all that humans can be, and to know what that is, one needs only look at the highest forms of projection, the loving God we have created or the ideals we impute to humanism.

To be is to know that life is good, that human beings at their root are good, and that all there is is to share that fact with others, to manifest love in the world. All that we seek, all that we long for, all that we strive to achieve is all there when you are what you really are. All the moral beliefs that men create seeking to be are but shadows of this. In every idealistic belief there is a truth and a dark side and this is true of Democratic and Republican ideology. Each is a longing to be accompanied by a desire to stay asleep, to progress while holding onto the ego.

 

[woolfe9998]

The socialized medicine arguments have been going on for a long, long time. I just see so many failures of big government that I can't embrace it. I read a lot of arguments about this country and that country has socialized medicine but the scale is vastly different both in population and the size of the nation. It's a vastly different undertaking here. Wishing for it doesn't make it viable.

The list of countries with socialized medicine contains over 30 countries, including every developed country in the world except the US. Every one of those countries has a different population and many other factors which are unique to them, but they all seem to make it work. You've presented no special reason socialized medicine can't work here. You seem to be claiming there is some kind of population cutoff. Well Japan is the most populous to have it, with 129,000,000 people. So somewhere between that number and the 310,000,000 we have in the US is where you think is the cutoff. What is the cutoff and why?

If we want to expand the social safety net we need to first stop providing that safety net to people that have broken our laws by not respecting our borders. Get that under control and then see where we are. If you think we're not supporting illegals through food, shelter, education, healthcare and the like then let me know and this will be my last response to you in this thread. Reality must be factored in just as true math must be accepted.

That would be an interesting argument, but I have zero confidence that should we stop all forms of public assistance to illegals, that you'd suddenly start supporting expanding the social safety net. Last I checked, conservative objections to it were more than just the fact that some illegals are getting it.

If my example is laughable show some simple math. Math can't be argued with. My example is for the nitwits we have among us in droves that think the rich man is the reason they're not driving a Tesla and living in a 4000 sq. ft. home.

Why do we need to do amateur math? NYT describing analysis done by the Tax Policy Center:

To get the most accurate picture possible, throw in all the scraps of income, from the most obvious (like wages, interest and dividends) to the least (like employer contributions to health plans, overseas earnings and growth in retirement accounts). According to that measure — used by the Tax Policy Center, a joint project of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution — the top 1 percent includes about 1.13 million households earning an average income of $2.1 million.

Raising their total tax burden to, say, 40 percent would generate about $157 billion in revenue the first year. Increasing it to 45 percent brings in a whopping $276 billion. Even taking account of state and local taxes, the average household in this group would still take home at least $1 million a year.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/17/business/putting-numbers-to-a-tax-increase-for-the-rich.html

Here's a hugely important point. How many people make over $250K a year and how many make less? Raising taxes on the minority nets the .gov some money. Raising taxes on those making less (the middle class which is huge) nets the .gov big money. Here's the followup and it's probably even more important. There are two way for the .gov to net out more from that huge group that will give them the most. They can raise taxes on them or they can put policies in place that raise their wages. This is where it's important to quit paying attention to what the media is saying and start paying attention elsewhere. The argument of course is that both methodologies are prone to failure and they will. Timing is everything.

I agree that boosting wages, and employing the unemployed, will increase tax revenue. I just don't agree that cutting taxes on the wealthy and corporations does that. However, if you expand social safety nets and fund it with increased taxes on the wealthy, you are in effect taking money from people who aren't spending it and putting it in the hands of people who will spend every penny on goods and services, increasing demand in various markets. That's what creates jobs and higher wages.

As far as my list. The left with vast help from the media has created a caricature of conservatives that has been pretty widely accepted. My point is that the left has the same kind of aura surrounding them. If I had loads of time I could provide link after link after link after link supporting that list. Now, you may deny that they are in your camp and maybe you're correct but pal, they are as much the face of your party as the face the media has put on the Republicans. The lens I see the left through operates the same as the lens you see the right through. They're just pointed in different directions.

I think there are about 100,000,000 people in the US who would self-describe as "liberal." Hence, you aren't going to prove anything about what "liberals" generally think with examples of what a few cranky college kids said when they got captured on video and put up on youtube. When people say stupid things, they may get exposure for it, particularly in this internet age. Yet no one gets put up on youtube for saying something perfectly rational and mundane.

That said, sometimes an individual's opinions can matter, if that person has a platform to influence large numbers of other people. How important may depend on how much reach the person in question has. Like how many people are listening to Alex Jones every day.

Opinion polls, though imperfect, are always a better way to measure the opinion of various sub-groups in the country than are anecdotes about this person or that saying this thing or that.

If you think conservatives are being unfairly characterized based on anecdotal evidence, then do what I do. Fight against the use of anecdotal evidence to prove generalizations about huge groups of people, because it's a fallacy. Don't commit the same fallacy.

Which brings us back to the question posed by the OP initially. A question that has been lost in the fray.

But, still no takers on the Dem platform?

The parties only update their platforms in presidential election years. So you have to go on the 2016 platform, for both parties.

http://s3.amazonaws.com/uploads.democrats.org/Downloads/2016_DNC_Platform.pdf