Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:clear and present danger (Score 1) 800

Wow, that was an incredibly long list of FUD distortions. Let's tackle this one at a time, shall we?

1.His reform doesn't involve government taking over healthcare, it fines people who don't buy health care insurance. People still buy from private insurance providers. Having young, healthy people buy insurance is solves the problem ensures that young, healthy people won't freeload off the of system by buying insurance only when they get sick. Having everybody insured also reduces uninsured people freeloading by getting their healthcare in the emergency room, subsidized by other taxpayers.

2. His executive orders are for stricter enforcement of existing gun laws, something well within his power to do.

3. He doesn't want children to be killed by guns, and he doesn't want victims of rape and incest to carry their attackers' babies? That's just fine with me.

4. Taxes are the price of civilization. They ensure I have a military to protect my country, that the roads stay safe, that police and fire departments are there to protect, that snake oil stays out of the pharmacy, that the food I buy is free of melamine, and that I can drink water safely out of any tap in the country. It sure does matter to who they were raised on. Romney paid less taxes on his millions, using the carried interest loophole to count his commissions as dividends, than his janitor or secretary did. The janitor or secretary are far more likely to spend money on daily necessities, than to transfer gains off to the Cayman Islands. Oh, and during the period of our country's greatest economic boom following WW2, the top marginal tax rate was 90%.

5. Take out the big bailouts which passed under the Bush administration but took effect under Obama, and he's the most frugal spender since Eisenhower. Citation: http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2012/05/24/who-is-the-smallest-government-spender-since-eisenhower-would-you-believe-its-barack-obama/

6. The stimulus saved the car industry and brought it back to life. As for temporary jobs, it keeps people working and prevents them from joining the ranks of the "takers". If I had the choice between either losing my house and going out into the streets, or taking a temp job, I'd do the latter. I suppose you'd rather have the unemployed out in the streets (with no health care), because they're all just "takers" anyway.

7.If you don't believe economic theory, feel free to move to Europe where they're basically slashing government spending during a recession, and places like Spain have 20% unemployment among young people joining the workforce.

8. Energy prices grew under the Bush administration but remained stable during the current one. Citation: http://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cfm?t=epmt_5_3

9. The number of food stamp recipients grew by 14.7 million under the Bush administration, more than under the Obama. And part of the reason it grew under Obama is that the administration expanded the number of households able to receive the benefit, while decreasing the benefit per household. Now, certain poor working families can continue qualify for food stamps, with ramping down benefits, which makes sense, as those people have an incentive to keep working to increase their personal income, rather than having the perverse incentive to not find a job to avoid losing benefits. As a result, unemployment has been steadily decreasing under the administration. Citation: http://www.nbcnews.com/business/report-15-americans-food-stamps-980690

Comment Re:Civilization removes natural selection. (Score 1) 637

Just be because someone wouldn't survive against a saber tooth tiger doesn't mean we're interfering with natural selection or that it reduces our survival rates. If we discarded our "weak" the way primitive societies did, we wouldn't have discovered people like Stephen Hawking and John Nash. Our species' altruism and shared survival gives us a much greater pool of potential skill, labor, and creativity to draw from, and these potential contributions help each member of our species as a whole survive better as a result. Just as we didn't know a millennia ago that one day Einsteins might be of more worth to our society than skilled hunters, we can't necessarily foresee what might help us in the future. What if the 'retards' you want to cull from our species turn out to be the only ones with genetic resistance to a future epidemic, for example?

Comment Re:Squeezed for cash? (Score 1) 316

Read the original post. A cap on profits, not wealth. Profits can be reduced by reinvesting it in the company with hiring and capital spending, which is more useful than being paid out as dividends which get taxed at 15% rates to the rich and then sit in Cayman Island bank accounts.

Comment Re:Don't worry, Romney... (Score 1) 836

Mitt paid 15% using the "carried interest" loophole, meaning he takes a percentage cut of his clients' gains and that gets taxed at 15%. In other words, it's not his invested money that he initially earned but his clients'. Regular salesmen at the local mall pay taxes on their commissions at the same rates their base pay, but Mitt (and other investment bankers) don't.

Slashdot Top Deals

A rolling disk gathers no MOS.

Working...