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Foreign Policy Shifts?

robav8r said:
JFC, of course, the VAQ mafia are the smartest people on the planet. You know, Elon could probably use your KSEs at SpaceX. If the world, and this country, especially the MAGA crowd are so incredibly f* ked up, you should help his team find a better, more palatable solution on another planet šŸ˜€
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pull your green ring man... take it to a PM if you want/must.
 
robav8r said:
This, right here ladies and gentlemen is why civil discourse is dying on this board, and frankly, many other places as well. Condescension, public shaming, Iā€™m ā€œfrom community Xā€ so I am automatically smarter and better then you. ā€œSomeā€ here, try and have rational, reasonable discussions. Unfortunately, everyone here knows the barriers to sharing alternate views is wide and deep.
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There were some outright wrong things in your post, like implying that property taxes are federally controlled and the complaint about borrowing against the SS trust fund.
 
robav8r said:
@ChuckMK23 can we start with the massive public assistance fraud running rampant just about EVERYWHERE? The Federal Government doesn't need more revenue, it needs an audit . . . .
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I don't believe the level of fraud you purport is the reality, but of course there is fraud. The greater good requires getting benefits to deserving people without creating such a high bar as to strangle access to programs that help the needy. Fraud is the cost of doing business. Getting benefits out to recipients is the goal. We can't allow the optics of zero defect compromise this

That said I do believe the justice system and our system of law enforcement does a pretty good job of uncovering, prosecuting, and punishing those who commit fraud at scale.
 
Spekkio said:
The federal deficit is $1.78 trillion.

If you rolled our tax code back to the Carter administration, you still would not pay for the deficit.

The elephant in the room is the Affordable Care Act, which accounts for over half of that deficit via corporate welfare tax credits. We are in a 16 year game of chicken where the GOP wants to bankrupt the government to force the Democrats to amend / repeal the ACA and Democrats want to 'tax the rich' but lost office before the TCJA expired. The ARRA under Obama plus ARP and IRA under Biden also dramatically increased mandatory spending.

Where I really hate the Democrats' dishonesty here is that they continuously pass tax code with strings-attached credits to fund their priorities, most of which only large business owners qualify for. Then they point at the GOP and shout "tax cuts for the rich" as their plea to make marginal income tax rates more progressive to make up for the difference. The end result is they squeeze America's professional class of workers (which includes military officers) and small business owners so that we can fund projects like going all-electric vehicles by 2037.

No one goes to a cardiologist and thinks to themselves "this mothafucka needs to pay his fair share." But apparently it was the end of the world in 2017 that he could no longer use the $60,000 a year he pays in taxes and interest on his $2 million primary residence as a tax deduction. Unlimited SALT deductions were so "popular" that it killed the build back better bill with Biden's own party.
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Weird that you haven't mentioned broken Republican promises like paying down the debt, sending out DOGE checks, or repealing the ACA. Also weird that you haven't mentioned the proposed $1.4T defense budget, which (ceteris paribus) will add about $800B of deficit spending a year. I'm sure it's just a coincedence?
 
robav8r said:
civil discourse is dying on this board
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Compared to a few years ago, civil discourse here is way up. Bad ideas deserve to be called out, as do those who purvey them. Pro tip for you Rob: Get better ideas, enjoy more civil discourse.

Rob breaking out "elitist" tropes in 3...2...1... :)
 
Brett327 said:
Compared to a few years ago, civil discourse here is way up. Bad ideas deserve to be called out, as do those who purvey them. Pro tip for you Rob: Get better ideas, enjoy more civil discourse.

Rob breaking out "elitist" tropes in 3...2...1... :)
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A few years ago, there was mud slinging from quite a few on both sides. Now the lack of decorum is confined to 1 vocal group only.
 
number9 said:
Weird that you haven't mentioned broken Republican promises like paying down the debt, sending out DOGE checks, or repealing the ACA. Also weird that you haven't mentioned the proposed $1.4T defense budget, which (ceteris paribus) will add about $800B of deficit spending a year. I'm sure it's just a coincedence?
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Well, paying down the debt would require repealing the ACA... and that requires bipartisan support that the GOP does not have. So it's all hot air. It's the GOP version of 'taxing the rich.' Sounds good on camera to give cranky old men an adrenaline rush, but isn't a serious policy because it doesn't survive first contact with the enemy.

As for the defense budget... building and maintaining a joint force that can outpace China costs money. Our defense budget, in percentage of GDP, fell to a low of 3-3.2% before Trump's $1.4 trillion budget proposal. We were (and are) violating our NATO treaty while pointing fingers at Europe to spend more on defense. If we were to follow NATO guidelines, the budget would be a minimum of $1.6T.

I do take issue with your accusation that strictly defense spending will add $800B to deficit spending. You could dial the defense budget to $0 and we would still have a $400B deficit.

The $800B additional deficit exists because the entire federal budget is greater than the income it receives. Part of that is the big beautiful bill (which has a lot of wtf are you doing provisions, IMO) and Trump's delusions that tariffs would pay the difference, part of that is defense spending, and part of that is uncontrollably rising health-insurance sharing costs.

If you were a Senator and I put forth a bill where we repealed ACA tax credits but kept the regulatory standards, eliminated the pass-through deduction, reinstate the progressive corporate tax schedule, eliminated clean energy credits, and changed the marginal income tax brackets as follows: the 22% bracket becomes 18%, the 32, 35, and 37% brackets become 35, 37, and 40, would you vote for it? Now what if you're Chuck Schumer and you're representing millions of New Yorkers who would see their taxes go up by a really large amount?
 
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ChuckMK23 said:
Funding a guaranteed minimum standard of housing, healthcare, childcare and nutrition with eligibility requiring nothing more than US Citizenship and being a human.
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Do you have an example where this actually works?

I think the key word / tricky phrase where this falls apart is the 'minimum standard.' You get into a lot of squishiness there. I think our current system of tax subsidies for your first $12,000 of income, deductions for child care and child tax credits, and health insurance tax credits along with medicare meets the intent of putting more money into people's pockets to spend on these necessities in the way that they see fit.

Anecdotally, I've only lived on base housing once in my career because the type of dwelling the military tells me is up to standard is not comparable to what I can obtain on the free market in town.
 
We could take Brett's idea and combine it with Spekkio's figgures and more or less break even for a year...

I think that would be a good start.
 
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