2020- the election of who can give away the most free stuff

https://reason.com/video/stossel-free-stuff-2020/

Democrats, always doing what they can do to drastically increase the role of government in our lives.

Oh no not the government.

Link to sh*tty video with no exposition. What a compelling thread.

Meanwhile on planet Earth,

Which States Rely the Most on Federal Aid? (Red)

https://taxfoundation.org/federal-aid-reliance-rankings/

Where Government Is a Dirty Word, but Its Checks Pay the Bills

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/21/business/economy/harlan-county-republican-welfare.html

Federal Anti-Poverty Programs Primarily Help the GOP's Base

Republicans want to shrink government. But their core voters benefit from assistance, like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the most.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/02/gop-base-poverty-snap-social-security/516861/

You were saying?

Well, I would like to know a little better how we are going to pay for all these programs. Free health care and dental care, free college, subsidized housing, universal income, free child care, and guaranteed government jobs? That's going to require trillions and trillions of dollars to pay for all of that. I'm all for repealing the tax cuts and even a wealth tax, but I dont think that will come close to covering all that.

Beats the Republican administration selling out the country...….

@LJS9502_basic: Its almost cute that you think only republicans do this...

My thoughts exactly. Very boring thread.

Hard to see how OP is posting this in good faith.

Remove insurance cost/have it lowered by 90% and increase taxes. People will still spend less money and most will get better treatment.

Lets not forget that current set up favours large employers and makes smaller ones pay more.

What a disingenous thread.

Anyone who reads has looked at actual government spending knows that government spending has for most of the part been a big line upwards, regardless of whehter it was a democrat or a republican in office.

And yes it has increased under Trump too. Some of these programs like tuition free college would actually cost less than that military budget increase from 2017.

And stop with the free stuff strawman. Most people merely want results for the money they pay in taxes. Going into nation building overseas isnt going to impact your everyman's life. If the government is supposed to work for the people, the government has been doing a terrible job.

It stands in great contrast to the republicans mantra of giving away as many tax breaks as possible to the rich and oh yeah other people too, but mostly the rich.

I keep hearing this and it just isn't true. I'm not rich and I got a tax break... weird. In fact, there are some "rich" people who saw a federal tax increase.

So the factual correct thing to say is: everyone in the US got a federal tax break except for people who make over 200k, they use to be at a 33% rate and now they are at a 35%.

This is what happens when you use CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, etc. as factual sources.

And what did it cost you?

Was it free?

Forget the rich then, GOP constituents in general use by far the most federal assistance ("free stuff").

They sure love free stuff as long as it's just not "the other" getting it.

@zaryia: You'd be a fool to think that Republicans and Democrats have your best interests at hand.

I don't get it. What's wrong with socialism?

No it wasn't free (things in life rarely are). What the Trump administration did was they imposed tax cuts which I have no problems with, but they did not decrease federal spending, instead they increased so the tax cuts are actually now negatively affecting our deficient.

Free college, free housing, free this, free that- all of that cost has to come from somewhere and its going to come from us: the tax payer.

Democratic Socialism is fine. The GOP constituents sure as hell love it and use it the most. Until the other side asks for some.

The entire military is funded by government funding, and the right hates taxes to fund programs.

Therefore, the right hates the military.

That's a lengthy conversation, but first we need to establish what the definition of socialism is. Socialism is when the government "controls" the means of production. Self proclaimed socialists such as Bernie Sanders often refers to a pipe dream concept known as utopia, but Karl Marx said such a utopia could not be achieved until things such as personal freedoms (aka civil liberties), religion, personal choice, etc. no longer existed in society.

We tried the equity experiment which was socialism in the 19th century and we have 100 million corpses to prove that it does not work. True socialism has never worked and it will never work because it always leads to a dictatorship.

Not long ago Bernie Sanders was telling us how awesome Venezuela is and they are literally killing dogs and eating them in Valenzuela because there is no food. Socialism at its finest.

It's almost cute that you think whataboutims works...….

Elementary error but a common one. Via https://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-the-difference-between-socialism-and-communism.htm

As an economic system, socialism seeks to manage the economy through deliberate and collective social control. Communism, however, seeks to manage both the economy and the society by ensuring that property is owned collectively and that control over the distribution of resources is centralized to achieve both classlessness and statelessness. Under communism, all people are considered equal and are provided for equally, regardless of their contributions to the economy or to society. This is different from socialism, but both socialism and communism are similar in that they seek to prevent many of the ill effects that are sometimes associated with capitalism, such as economic inequality.

Edit: Intended to quote your entire post, I'm not just replying to that one line.

So if it wasn't free, was it all just borrowed?

If it wasn't, who then paid for it? What was lost or reduced so you could have your tax cut? SNAP benefits? Meals on wheels? Medicaid benefits? The Affordable Housing budget? Perhaps those who need help paying for electricity, or those who need disability benefits?

There's more things obviously, but no one says that the things democrats want to do are "free" at least democrats don't say that, but they usually want for the millionaires and billionaires to pay the majority of it. Republicans on the other hand want to help the millionaires and billionaires the most and make the poor and middle class pay for the majority of it.

If something like free healthcare would to happen in America, ALL tax payers would have to pay for it, not just the rich. It seems like both Republicans and Democrats lately have had nothing, but bad ideas.

So if I don't have kids, is it fair that I have to pay oodles of taxes for educating other peoples brats?

Why shouldn't just the people who have kids pay for schools? Because it's in all our best interest to educate the young, right?

Yet is it not also in our best interest to have a healthy population?

Well you didn't get your information from a factual source so I am going to disregard that.

The following is from Investopedia, a factual source:

What Is Socialism?

Socialism is a populist economic and political system based on public ownership (also known as collective or common ownership) of the means of production. Those means include the machinery, tools, and factories used to produce goods that aim to directly satisfy human needs. Communism and socialism are umbrella terms referring to two left-wing schools of economic thought; both oppose capitalism, but socialism predates the "Communist Manifesto," an 1848 pamphlet by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, by a few decades.

In a purely socialist system, all legal production and distribution decisions are made by the government, and individuals rely on the state for everything from food to healthcare. The government determines the output and pricing levels of these goods and services.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/socialism.asp

The second part is the one we need to focus on: "In a purely socialist system, all legal production and distribution decisions are made by the government". So what I said before was spot on.

@mighty-lu-bu: "If something like free healthcare would to happen in America, ALL tax payers would have to pay for it, not just the rich. It seems like both Republicans and Democrats lately have had nothing, but bad ideas."

Currently the system is, people get cancer and they go bankrupt.

I have a friend who's a nurse that this happened to recently. Unexpected medical bills meant losing her house, and she only in her 30s with a little girl of her own, and again, a nurse. Hospital employees lose their homes because of the hospitals they work at.

That's actually a good point. The problem is that government funds public education and that is not going to change anytime soon.

In a Communist state, there is no state. Everything is done via the local apparatus, thus the term COMMUNism from COMMUNITY.

Which of course means there have never been a Communist country. Junta, sure. But not Communist.

I bet you have to look Junta up.

They aren't dying though. In fact the US leads the world in some cancer survivability rates.

People falsely believe that people are dying in the streets and this simply is not happening.

Either way you look at it, free healthcare is not the answer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8Sf-Nmxkjo

Taxpayers fund education. Same thing can happen with healthcare.

Weird that we live in a society where owning a gun is a constitutional right but you're on your own if you get shot by the guy with the gun.

It's disgusting.

I never said anything about dying. I said that getting sick can often make people go broke.

Going bankrupt is not the same thing as going broke and declaring bankruptcy isn't the end all.

The problem is government involvement and I want government completely out of healthcare because I want the freedom to make my own medical decisions without having to cut bureaucratic red tape.

The last time the government got involved in healthcare it was a disaster (looking at you ACA); 4 million people lost their private insurance and medical insurance premiums have gone up by 60%. Now you want the government to be even more involved? We already know the government shouldn't be involved in healthcare and if you think otherwise then you should look at the government ran VA healthcare system which is abysmal.

Okay? But do you think that it should happen due to issues of one's health? Do you think people should lose their homes because they get sick?

Get a better job with better health care. People need to stop workign at mcdonalds expecting it to support their whole family.

Bunch of people sitting around waiting for everything to fall into their lap.

You didn't read did you? He said she was a NURSE.

Please notice my example of my friend who is a nurse. Not to mention a single working mother.

Who didn't have good insurance.

What ng4dd is saying isn't too far off. There is a lot of economic mobility here in the US and if you can't make it here, you can't make it anywhere. Most people actually have health insurance because they get health insurance through their workplace.

Sounds like she should have made better decisions.

She's a nurse. Stop making excuses. Our system sucks.

"Most people" doesn't include most of the first world countries with universal healthcare.

Indeed, she school for it, works more than 40 hours a week, and everything. Unexpected illness still screwed her.

If you want everyone to have healthcare fine, but if that involves me paying higher taxes or taking money away from my family than I will have no part of it, especially if it abolishes my private insurance which I get (and pay for) through my employer.

I remember when I decided not to get sick. That was a good day. Once in a while I will still decide to get sick because I'm silly like that. I remember the day my wife decided to get sick and needed surgery herself. What a silly goose.

Just admit that you're cool with people being in a system that says they could go bankrupt if they get sick. It's clearly your mindset, speak it loud and proud.

Again you keep acting like bankruptcy is the worse thing in the universe. Newsflash: it isn't.

So say it then. Just say, "It's cool with me that people go bankrupt and lose their homes because they get sick." You can even copy/paste.

Yea cmon it's fine, just ask the government for a bailout and you'll be in great shape!

In a non-rich person real world, being in huge debt and bankruptcy are terrible for credit and basically will crush your ability to pull loans, invest, or sign long term contracts, effectively ruining your ability to have any upwards income mobility for years, if not your entire life.