Sanders to raise taxes, destroy healthcare

[rainbow]

The prime example of Keynesian economics and it's abject failure is the Soviet Union. Game, set, match to me. You lose.

Keynes wasn't an authoritarian communist. Keynes was a capitalist. Soviet Union wasn't.

You keep on forgetting that in the special universe occupied by Seth, facts and logic don't apply.

[pErvinalia]

It's spectacular, isn't it?

[Seth]

Wealth doesn't get "consumed" unless you have negative gdp (i.e. recession).

Sure it does, as far as the person to whom the wealth belongs is concerned. That's the nuance you are unable to understand.

What you seem to have forgotten is that we are talking about total wealth in the economy.

Indeed.

You claim that wealth is disappearing and that's going to cause bankruptcy.

Well, it may be disappearing or it may simply be getting smaller in proportion to the population, which is to say it's stagnant and not growing because of socialist policies.

That's simply false, as wealth doesn't disappear from the economy unless you have a negative gdp growth rate.

Actually, it does. When someone takes their cash and stuffs it under a mattress to save it for a rainy day it's no longer available capital in the economy.

And, when a government can't collect enough tax money to support the welfare programs its promised to the proletarians and it goes out to another nation and borrows money that may artificially make the GDP look like it's not negative, but it is because those debt chickens will eventually come home to roost, which is what Greece found out.

And as I cited some time ago, Australia is mired in foreign debt to the eyeballs and is getting deeper every day, which means that any wealth created by the productive class eventually will end up in the pockets of foreign investors, causing the GDP of Australia to plummet and the economy to go bankrupt.

This is the basics of the basics, Seth. I cant believe you can't even understand this simple shit.

I do understand it. You don't.

Introducing morals into this is a moving the goal post fallacy.

Morals haven't been "introduced", they were always the primary concern of my arguments against socialism. You attempted to elide morality as a factor and I refuse to allow you to do so.

All I'm concerned with is refuting your failed economic understanding.

Yes, I know that. But I'm not going to play your game.

I'm not making any comment on your moral system (in this case).

Of course you won't, because you can't and never have done so because you know that your arguments are utterly morally indefensible, so you evade morality at all costs.

I'm not playing your game.

And the facts are, that the poor spend more of their money in the economy than the rich.

That's just a lie because the poor have to steal it from the rich first in order to spend it under your system, and they don't spend it in ways that increase their wealth or economic condition.

Facts, Seth. Inconvenient for you, I know.

rEv, you wouldn't know a fact if it was sucking your cock.

then the rational thing to do would be to simply seize all of the wealth of "the rich," redistribute it to "the poor" and bingo! the economy would be perfected, everybody would be wealthy, nobody would be poor and unicorns would fart rainbows everywhere.

Argument ad absurdum isn't a proper argument. No one is suggesting to do that. Again, the simple fact is that when taxes on the rich and corps were higher, we had higher economic growth rates.

Temporarily, always followed by economic recession and/or depression, the recovery from which always requires rejecting Keynesianism.

But what happens when you seize the wealth of the rich and redistribute it to the poor is that the companies that the rich did, or might in the future start with that capital vanish

Why on earth would they vanish?!? More of the capital will be fluid and available in the economy to be utilised in new ventures. This is basic stuff.

Not if nobody is willing to spend it on creating wealth because doing so means your profits are taxed away. Why do you think companies decided to sit on hundreds of billions of dollars of capital without spending it when Obama took office and taxes went up. They were NOT circulating their wealth, they were sequestering it until the tax rates went down.

and are never started because there is no venture capital available with which to do so, it being in the hands of the proletarian dependent class who will spend it on crack and Twinkies (which makes Twinkie stock rise, but nothing else).

You really don't understand how economies work, do you? Virtually ALL money owned by the poor enters the economy. It doesn't disappear from the economy. It is there available to be utilised straight away. This is basic stuff.

But WHAT do they spend it on? It ain't building factories and businesses that provide jobs.

You see, it's not just a moral issue of WHO gets to spend the wealth (which is important even to the economic calculus), it's ON WHAT that wealth gets spent. Nobody needs more Twinkies, but without their capital the recently-robbed "rich" will be unable to invest in anything that might actually grow the economy, so eventually we'll end up with Idiocracy and Twinkies.

"Economic growth" is not the be-all and end-all of a society, much less an economy. Criminals can grow their economy by stealing the wealth they need, but that's not an appropriate social model, or an economic one either because once the OPM has been stolen, the criminals have nobody left to rob and their "wealth" stagnates and becomes unavailable to the economy.

Goal post shift. We aren't discussing the morality of it (we've discussed that plenty of times before).

I am. I don't give a fuck how many times you want to try to evade morality, I will continue to bring it up because it's important.

The only thing, and I do mean only thing that socialized medicine provides is egalitarian death and misery for the proletarian masses.

Wrong. It provides a lower infant mortality and higher average life span here. Try again.

It might, at the moment, but when the OPM runs out life spans will shrink drastically and babies will be eaten by their parents.

It's been doing it since it's existence.

"Past performance is not a guarantee of future performance."

How is stating an unequivocal fact being "a dishonest fuck"? I entered the point into the conversation, so I get to deal with that parameter exactly as I stated.

You may do as you please, and I may do as I please, which includes entering the point of morality into the conversation.

which is obviously not the case. People don't want "cheap" healthcare, they want competent, quality healthcare that actually deals with the medical issues and fixes them. in critical, life-threatening situations they do not give a flying fuck what it's going to cost them because if they don't get absolutely the best, most advanced care that exists, THEY WILL BE DEAD.

Which we clearly get here, given we live longer that you lot.

Except for the ones who don't...because they couldn't get an MRI.

But clearly enough do, given we live longer than you.

Except for the ones that don't, about whom you give no fuck at all.

So when you said it involves cutting taxes, you were lying, again? I thought so.

When a government cuts spending it doesn't need to collect as much tax because it's not spending as much,

Of course it does. We are talking about structural deficits where spending is greater than tax receipts. So if you cut spending, you can't cut taxes as well. That defeats the purpose of cutting spending.

Only to a Marxist. If you cut spending the "structural deficit" disappears. It no longer exists. And therefore the justification for collecting taxes to make it disappear ceases to exist and taxes should be cut because they are no longer needed.

[Seth]

Goal post shift fallacy. The morality of Marxism isn't the debate here.

Of course it is. Any economic discussion between you and I has at its core a moral case against Marxism and its evil progeny.

The debate is what is factually better for economies and what is worse.

And Marxism and it's evil progeny are always worse, inevitably and as a matter of economic and mathematical fact.

I'm simply presenting facts to you.

I'm sure you'd like to think so, but you're wrong.

Now you can get all frothy about the morality of it, but that's not what we are debating here.

It's what I'm debating, and will always be debating with you when the word "economics" comes up.

And further, me presenting facts, says nothing at all about my ideological beliefs. Stop being disingenuous.

The "facts" (which are anything but facts) you present, and the manner in which you present them is classically Marxist. Therefore I judge that your ideological beliefs, which I have long experience viewing, are Marxist.

[Tyrannical]

Bernie reminds me of a Steely Dan song........

Only a Fool Would Say That
Steely Dan
A world become one
Of salads and sun
Only a fool would say that
A boy with a plan
A natural man
Wearing a white stetson hat
Unhand that gun begone
There's no one to fire upon
If he's holding it high
He's telling a lie
I heard it was you
Talkin' 'bout a world
Where all is free
It just couldn't be
And only a fool would say that
The man in the street
Draggin' his feet
Don't wanna hear the bad news
Imagine your face
There is his place
Standing inside his brown shoes
You do his nine to five
Drag yourself home half alive
And there on the screen
A man with a dream
I heard it was you
Talkin' 'bout a world
Where all is free
It just couldn't be
And only a fool would say that
Anybody on the street
Has murder in his eyes
You feel no pain
And you're younger
Then you realize

[JimC]

"A world where all is free" is a straw man which does not apply to a reasoned decision that a particularly vital human need for health care be something available to all at minimal cost.

Even I would not advocate free gin...

[pErvinalia]

Wealth doesn't get "consumed" unless you have negative gdp (i.e. recession).

Sure it does, as far as the person to whom the wealth belongs is concerned. That's the nuance you are unable to understand.

What you seem to have forgotten is that we are talking about total wealth in the economy.

Indeed.

"Indeed"?? Then what the fuck are you going on about personal wealth for then?!?

You claim that wealth is disappearing and that's going to cause bankruptcy.

Well, it may be disappearing or it may simply be getting smaller in proportion to the population, which is to say it's stagnant and not growing because of socialist policies.

Total bullshit, as I've already shown. Wealth addition was greater in the higher taxing more progressive (so, "socialist", in your retarded lexicon) decades. Wealth is not disappearing while ever growth rates are higher than inflation. The only sensible way to measure the likelihood of bankruptcy is debt load.

That's simply false, as wealth doesn't disappear from the economy unless you have a negative gdp growth rate.

Actually, it does. When someone takes their cash and stuffs it under a mattress to save it for a rainy day it's no longer available capital in the economy.

You think the poor stuff their cash under their mattress?!? WTF are you smoking?!?

And as I cited some time ago, Australia is mired in foreign debt to the eyeballs and is getting deeper every day,

Australia has WAY less foreign debt than the US. WTF are you smoking?!?

Introducing morals into this is a moving the goal post fallacy.

Morals haven't been "introduced", they were always the primary concern of my arguments against socialism.

Stop lying. You have been trying to counter my economic argument about structural deficits. When you found that you couldn't do that with economic facts and definitions, you switched to morality to deflect from the fact that you failed to answer the economic aspects.

All I'm concerned with is refuting your failed economic understanding.

Yes, I know that. But I'm not going to play your game.

Too late, champ. You've already played it. Your economic knowledge has been shown up to be shithouse. Hence why it's clear you are shifting the goal posts now.

I'm not making any comment on your moral system (in this case).

Of course you won't, because you can't and never have done so because you know that your arguments are utterly morally indefensible, so you evade morality at all costs.

No, I'm not commenting on it as it has nothing to do with the point I am making here. If you want to discuss morality, then ask specifically.

And the facts are, that the poor spend more of their money in the economy than the rich.

That's just a lie because the poor have to steal it from the rich first in order to spend it under your system, and they don't spend it in ways that increase their wealth or economic condition.

I'm sorry, Seth, you don't get to make up your own facts or your own retarded logical system. Poor people spend 100% of their money in the economy. Rich people spend more overseas and squirrel away collectively trillions in offshore tax havens. The economy doesn't care where the money comes from. As long as it is liquid it will be absorbed and used by the economy. To think otherwise is ridiculous in the extreme.

then the rational thing to do would be to simply seize all of the wealth of "the rich," redistribute it to "the poor" and bingo! the economy would be perfected, everybody would be wealthy, nobody would be poor and unicorns would fart rainbows everywhere.

Argument ad absurdum isn't a proper argument. No one is suggesting to do that. Again, the simple fact is that when taxes on the rich and corps were higher, we had higher economic growth rates.

Temporarily, always followed by economic recession and/or depression, the recovery from which always requires rejecting Keynesianism.

Opinion noted. The Scandinavians and Australia and Canada are economically more stable and strong than the US. FFS, Australia hasn't even had a recession for the last 25 years!! You simply don't have one clue what you are talking about.

But what happens when you seize the wealth of the rich and redistribute it to the poor is that the companies that the rich did, or might in the future start with that capital vanish

Why on earth would they vanish?!? More of the capital will be fluid and available in the economy to be utilised in new ventures. This is basic stuff.

Not if nobody is willing to spend it on creating wealth because doing so means your profits are taxed away. Why do you think companies decided to sit on hundreds of billions of dollars of capital without spending it when Obama took office and taxes went up. They were NOT circulating their wealth, they were sequestering it until the tax rates went down.

By your own stupid definition, wealth WASN'T seized.

and are never started because there is no venture capital available with which to do so, it being in the hands of the proletarian dependent class who will spend it on crack and Twinkies (which makes Twinkie stock rise, but nothing else).

You really don't understand how economies work, do you? Virtually ALL money owned by the poor enters the economy. It doesn't disappear from the economy. It is there available to be utilised straight away. This is basic stuff.

But WHAT do they spend it on? It ain't building factories and businesses that provide jobs.

It doesn't matter. As long as the wealth is liquid and real it can be secured against to invest with.

You see, it's not just a moral issue of WHO gets to spend the wealth (which is important even to the economic calculus), it's ON WHAT that wealth gets spent. Nobody needs more Twinkies, but without their capital the recently-robbed "rich" will be unable to invest in anything that might actually grow the economy, so eventually we'll end up with Idiocracy and Twinkies.

"Economic growth" is not the be-all and end-all of a society, much less an economy. Criminals can grow their economy by stealing the wealth they need, but that's not an appropriate social model, or an economic one either because once the OPM has been stolen, the criminals have nobody left to rob and their "wealth" stagnates and becomes unavailable to the economy.

Goal post shift. We aren't discussing the morality of it (we've discussed that plenty of times before).

I am. I don't give a fuck how many times you want to try to evade morality, I will continue to bring it up because it's important.

Knock yourself out then. I've got nothing to add to the morality question that I've answered hundreds of times over the last 8 years or so. I'm merely addressing your utterly spastic understanding of economics.

The only thing, and I do mean only thing that socialized medicine provides is egalitarian death and misery for the proletarian masses.

Wrong. It provides a lower infant mortality and higher average life span here. Try again.

It might, at the moment, but when the OPM runs out life spans will shrink drastically and babies will be eaten by their parents.

It's been doing it since it's existence.

"Past performance is not a guarantee of future performance."

Empty-Rhetoric Fallacy.

How is stating an unequivocal fact being "a dishonest fuck"? I entered the point into the conversation, so I get to deal with that parameter exactly as I stated.

You may do as you please, and I may do as I please, which includes entering the point of morality into the conversation.

And I'll ignore it until you address the failings in your economic "argument".

which is obviously not the case. People don't want "cheap" healthcare, they want competent, quality healthcare that actually deals with the medical issues and fixes them. in critical, life-threatening situations they do not give a flying fuck what it's going to cost them because if they don't get absolutely the best, most advanced care that exists, THEY WILL BE DEAD.

Which we clearly get here, given we live longer that you lot.

Except for the ones who don't...because they couldn't get an MRI.

But clearly enough do, given we live longer than you.

Except for the ones that don't, about whom you give no fuck at all.

You apparently don't understand how average works. On average, there will be more people per capita in your system dying younger than ours. Seriously, is there any discipline in which you have even a basic understanding of??

So when you said it involves cutting taxes, you were lying, again? I thought so.

When a government cuts spending it doesn't need to collect as much tax because it's not spending as much,

Of course it does. We are talking about structural deficits where spending is greater than tax receipts. So if you cut spending, you can't cut taxes as well. That defeats the purpose of cutting spending.

Only to a Marxist. If you cut spending the "structural deficit" disappears. It no longer exists. And therefore the justification for collecting taxes to make it disappear ceases to exist and taxes should be cut because they are no longer needed.

[/quote]

HOLY FUCK. If you get rid of a structural deficit, and then cut taxes, YOU GET A STRUCTURAL DEFICIT AGAIN!!

[Tyrannical]

"

Even I would not advocate free gin...

I pay about $15 for a half gallon of the cheap gin. I mix it with tonic and lime juice, so the cheapness gets covered.

[Cormac]

Yawn.


I see Seth is as devoid of logic and consistency in his diatribes as ever. Plus ca change, and all that.

[Feck]

Seth LMAO

[Seth]

"A world where all is free" is a straw man which does not apply to a reasoned decision that a particularly vital human need for health care be something available to all at minimal cost.

Even I would not advocate free gin...

The problem with "free" (or "minimal cost") anything is that it always costs something and the less you are willing to pay for it the more inferior the product will be because there is no profit motive to make it better.

[Seth]

Only to a Marxist. If you cut spending the "structural deficit" disappears. It no longer exists. And therefore the justification for collecting taxes to make it disappear ceases to exist and taxes should be cut because they are no longer needed.

HOLY FUCK. If you get rid of a structural deficit, and then cut taxes, YOU GET A STRUCTURAL DEFICIT AGAIN!!

Only if you continue to spend more than you take in. A "structural deficit" is caused by out-of-control government spending and nothing else. Stop the out-of-control spending and there is no need to try to collect taxes to fund that out-of-control spending, and therefore taxes intended to pay for that spending may be cut.

Your problem is that you think that ALL government spending is "necessary" and therefore MUST be funded no matter what, and that a failure to raise taxes to cover that spending creates a "structural deficit." This is cart-before-the-horseism at its finest. The proper way to run an economy is to never tax more than the economy can bear without causing "structural deficits." But the way governments run into "structural deficits" is based on the false a priori assumption that the spending must take place and that therefore the inability (or unwillingness) to raise (or collect, or pay) taxes to pay for that spending "creates" the deficit. This is exactly ass-backwards to rational economic policy which insists that there be NO government spending that has not already been paid for through tax collection before the spending begins.

That's the difference between "deficit spending" and "balanced budget" governments.

If you never spend on anything that you don't already have the money to pay for then you cannot create a "structural deficit" in the first place. "Deficit spending" is a credit Ponzi scheme that in effect says "Let's go ahead and spend so we can get the votes of those who benefit from that spending and only after we have achieved that goal will we try to impose a tax to pay for it and if people won't pay it or the opposing party won't approve the tax we'll blame them for "creating a structural deficit" rather than admitting that we shouldn't have spent the money in the first place because we didn't have it in the bank when we spent it."

[JimC]

"A world where all is free" is a straw man which does not apply to a reasoned decision that a particularly vital human need for health care be something available to all at minimal cost.

Even I would not advocate free gin...

The problem with "free" (or "minimal cost") anything is that it always costs something and the less you are willing to pay for it the more inferior the product will be because there is no profit motive to make it better.

The profit motive has its place, but it is not the be all and end all of the human condition.

At least in the civilised world...

[Seth]

"A world where all is free" is a straw man which does not apply to a reasoned decision that a particularly vital human need for health care be something available to all at minimal cost.

Even I would not advocate free gin...

The problem with "free" (or "minimal cost") anything is that it always costs something and the less you are willing to pay for it the more inferior the product will be because there is no profit motive to make it better.

The profit motive has its place, but it is not the be all and end all of the human condition.

At least in the civilised world...

Of course not, but the profit motive is what makes economies operate. When you remove the profit motive most individuals will cease to input labor, or will at least cease to input more than the minimum amount of labor necessary to avoid being sent to a gulag somewhere, and as a result both quantity produced and the quality of what is produced, suffers.

If you force doctors, who spend decades learning their craft, to take unprofitable wages, they will provide inferior care because in the end they are being forced into involuntary servitude to the public and it is simple human nature to rebel against involuntary servitude.

The same thing happens to the people who manufacture and distribute medical supplies. If you refuse to pay them what they think their labor is worth they will eventually withhold their labor rather than be forced into involuntary servitude to the needs of the NHS.

[JimC]

We have both public and private health systems. Doctors often work for both. It works for us, we have plenty of doctors...