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Bernie Sanders, Presidential Candidate and H-1B Skeptic
Presto Vivace writes: The H-1B visa issue rarely surfaces during presidential races, and that's what makes the entrance by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) into the 2016 presidential race so interesting. ... ...Sanders is very skeptical of the H-1B program, and has lambasted tech firms for hiring visa workers at the same time they're cutting staff. He's especially critical of the visa's use in offshore outsourcing.
Contrary to popular belief, the president has no power at all to deal with the national debt. Our country's finances have always been the fault of the congress and its creature, the Federal Reserve.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
While he calls himself a democratic socialist, I'd think more in the vein of Scandinavia and less of a Marxist dictatorship (ie, in Soviet Russia...). He's not anti-capitalistic, but he is anti-crony capitalistic. The difference is important-- he thinks that without government maintaining a fair playing field, those who have economic and political advantages will further tip the scales against those who don't.
To say he's not a capitalist though is misleading. He wants a free market, but one that works for all and isn't consistently being rigged by those who accumulate more power/wealth in a feedback loop of wealth leads to power leads to advantage leads to wealth leads to power leads to advantage leads to wealth ad infinitum as we have in our current U.S. system.
but then goes for batshit insane politics that would push us back to the worst part of the soviet experiment.
Examples?
I looked him up to see what was so crazy, and all I found was:
None of that seems all that crazy or dangerous to me
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Obama has cut the budget deficit in half since 2008. (Bush left it at $1.5 trillion per year, and now it's about $750 billion). Since $750 billion is still greater than zero, the national debt continues to rise, at about half the rate that it did during the Bush administration- when, if you recall, no one seemed to be complaining about it at all.
And what has Obama done with the national debt? Hmmmm?
I don't recall bringing Obama into this but since you have done that for me he is not what I'd call a competent president. However, ham-handed Obama may be he is also saddled with the legacy of what is arguably the biggest incompetent among a long sequence of incompentents evert to take up residence in the White House: Nixon, the blessed Saint Ronal Reagan, Bush the elder, Clinton, Bush the younger and now Obama. The last president the USA had that was worth his salt was Dwight D. Eisenhower. Bush Jr. not only doubled the national debt he violated one of the longest standing axioms of US foreign policy 'never fight a land war in Asia' (and did not do it once, he did that twice), went on record as saying God had told him to do it and openly referred to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as crusades. That man is probably the biggest gift radical militant Islam has ever gotten. A man really has to be a special kind of moron to accomplish all that in his first term of office.
Paying for them is a simple matter of raising taxes on wealthy people.
You think we can't afford to pay for health care? We're paying for it now through a combination of taxes and premiums, just in a less efficient system than what Sanders wants.
What other thing is it you think we can't afford that Sanders wants?
Who would say we're worse off today than in the 1930s?
You are welcome on my lawn.
Unfortunately, the period you're referring to was an inherently unsustainable one caused by the fact that the US emerged as a victor from a World War, and coincidentally the only one of the major powers in that war whose population and infrastructure were not seriously ravaged by it. Even among the victors - Britain, China, France, let's not even mention the Soviets - all paid a heavy price on their home territory. The losers received economic support from the magnanimous Western powers, but that was cold comfort to a populace largely bombed into ruins.
So the US got to live in a bubble for a decade or two where the rest of the world didn't have the technology or the infrastructure to compete with us in any meaningful economic area.
And you'd be right on that if you weren't so wrong. I understand, it's a common talking meme of people who never learned the recent history of countries other than the US, but.....
The Marshall Plan helped reconstruction for most of western Europe (including West Germany) and by the time funding for the plan ended in 1952, the economies of all 18 countries had surpassed pre-war levels. 1951 was more than 1/3 better than 1938 for all countries involved. This idea that the US was the only ones around doing anything is not only absurd, but incredibly wrong.
The poster you replied to had it right.... our growth in the 50's and 60's also had 90% top marginal tax rates attached to them. People didn't "gain" as much wealth by pulling it out of companies then, because so much of it was consumed by taxes. It was better to reinvest it into the business to avoid those high taxes, and play the long game by growing the business. As soon as it became less of a tax burden to remove money (profits) from businesses, that's what owners did.. preferring the get-rich-right-now approach instead of actually growing businesses.
Higher tax rates made reinvesting profit into the businesses preferred, the GI bill was turning out hundreds of thousands of higher educated individuals, that damn socialized national roadways thing the commie lover Eisenhower pushed seemed to explode the growth potential of pretty much everything (other than horse and buggy sales), and then that other socialist kid Kennedy said "lets go to the moon," which helped do a number on pretty much every piece of solid state electronics EVER (and we just happened to have hundreds of thousands of highly educated people hanging around just looking to do something.... odd how that worked out).
But all that growth for those decades had dick to do with western Europe rebuilding, because that took a lot less time than most realize.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
This is an outright lie. You probably don't even realize it's a lie because you've bought into the propaganda. Every person who hold a job pays taxes including those on income. Social security and medicare taxes are NOT exempt-able and they ARE income taxes. The only way to not pay social security and medicare/medicaid taxes is to not have income, something the wealthy are remarkably good at not paying for. On top of this they pay their state taxes, including income, cigarette, alcohol, gas, sales and property along with all the other miscellaneous taxes and fees. In fact as a percentage of their income the poorest among us pay the highest proportion of their income in taxes than anyone else.
The nugget of truth that makes your lie so insidious is that the poorest among us don't pay FEDERAL income tax but they still pay taxes and they still pay income taxes. This little lie and deception allows you to paint entire segments of our society as non-contributing freeloaders and it's NOT TRUE.
All your bullshit numbers are based solely on federal income tax. They disregard all the other taxes entirely as if they don't exist and it's complete and utter horseshit. The most important fact, the one you completely ignore is that the poorest among us pay something like 50% of their income in various federal, state and local taxes. As a percentage of income they are the highest taxed individuals in this country.
Personally I'm a big believer that those people who have benefited the most from the system and have the means to support it should be the ones that have the highest burden in paying for it. That is NOT asking a lot.