The Politics Thread (PLAY NICELY!)

An empty stomach. It's a thing.

Let's break this down. You're claiming that the productive in our societies do not give their goods away to people who cannot afford them, and that this is oppression. You're hilariously wrong. The producers do not work for free - no-one does. They require compensation for their work, or they would not undertake said work. They do not work for the betterment of society as a whole. They work for the compensation for milking the cow, bottling it, and selling it to the consumer. If the poor cannot afford basic necessities, they need to get a job or talk to their family and friends. It is not their right because it imposes a duty on someone else. The government, consequently, does not have the right to impose taxes on those who produce more than others (the rich) in order to support those who produce nothing at all (the poor).

The poor should be cared for by private charities and voluntary donations, not forced tax increases on the producers.

How is this factually incorrect? Parents care for their children - logically, they will not intentionally send them into harm's way for weeks and months on end when there are better options available. What is so hard to understand about this? Are you trolling me here?

Also, I guess people forgot about Google. Here's a link to help, with all the charts you will need:
http://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-poverty/historical-poverty-people.html

Can't tell if sarcasm, but I have the sudden urge to use a meme.

mered4, this logic keeps changing.

We were discussing the Industrial Revolution. You did not use the qualifier of "when there were better options available". You changed your argument.

Parents sent their childrens to the sweatshops so that the family wouldn't starve. As per your reply to colin, your logic is predicated on the inability to give something to those who need it to live, for no monetary compensation. You seemingly don't understand this principle, which is very odd (well, it isn't given the whole indoctrination of anti-socialist policy that's happened since the Cold War in the USA) given how not everyone who has money deserved it.

You're throwing out a bunch of badly-formatted Excel links to do . . . what, exactly? I'm not here to do your homework for you. You need to prove that irrespective of inflation and further rises in living costs (independent of inflation) that poor people are better off. You need to prove the definition of "poverty" hasn't changed in this time, and that the concept of said poverty line hasn't been re-adjusted for the sake of government metrics (which has happened here the UK, so it's hardly a conspiracy theory).

People are forced to get a job. I'm glad you finally agree. Therefore, if people are forced to obtain jobs to obtain that precious money that you deem a necessity in order to not starve to death (regardless of disabilities or barriers that prevent work from being obtained), people will force themselves to work in situations that actively harm them.

Like parents sending their childrens to sweatshops in the Industrial Revolution. It happened.

Anyhow, let's have another link on bad things the new American government are doing:

www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2017/01/19/trump_s_planned_elimination_of_violence_against_women_grants_is_pure_cruelty.html

Wait a second. Because a person is forced to get a job, they are forced to choose one that harms them? That's not how it worked in the Industrial Revolution, with the NOTABLE exception of the political entrepreneurs like Stanford, the governor of California who used his position to set up a railroad monopoly.

That's not how it works now. Ignoring people with disabilities that prevent them from working (because private charities and donations have them covered), no on is forced to work in conditions that are harmful to them. If they cannot find work in this day and age, with all the tools available to them, it is not the fault of the producers.

When you say that not everyone who has money deserved it, you are talking about the political entrepreneurs who use their political power and influence to steal wealth from the producers. The way to stop said people from having money they did not rightfully earn is to deregulate the markets and actively curtail corruption within government.

Give me a few minutes to grab the proper statistics for the poor metrics. I find it difficult to believe that you don't already know this as a stated fact, but I'll go grab em.

Why the actual **** would there not be better options available? You should logically draw that conclusion from my statement, this isn't rocket science. Jesus Christ do we have to lead you guys through every little logical flaming hoop? This is BASIC.

Alright. Got some numbers. I pulled them from a biased liberal source, so I'm sure you'll believe them (maybe).
http://www.adaction.org/media/ADAIncome&Inequality2012-3.pdf
Table 3 is my primary pull here, but the other data supports my point. The income of the poor from 1950 to 2010 rose by 140%, which is more than that of every other category.

The cost of living is a variable number that is heavily dependent on where you live. I've seen a few different metrics for this on a national scale, and I won't present any of them here because I don't believe them to be accurate or trustworthy sources. On average, however, they do agree that buying a house or a new car is more difficult than it was in the 50s on a poor man's income - which makes sense.

Anti-Socialist propoganda, Gorbles? Really? Free market principles based on the sweat of a man's brow are based in logic and historical facts. Socialism and communism is a pipe dream used by politicians to squeeze more money out of their constituents and consolidate power federally. They then use that money to enrich their friends in the regulated marketplace by giving them regulations that benefit their businesses.

Socialism is about making people feel good in the short term and forcing them to perform duties at the behest of the government.

Capitalism is about empowering the common man with the freedom to choose his destiny. He can be poor or he can be rich. He can have a large family on a farm or he can own skyscrapers in a large city. He can build rockets or he can build cars. There is no limit to what the entrepreneurs can do.

Tell that to the parents of these children.

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2015/10/kids-coal-mines-lewis-hines-photos

The poor should be cared for by the people who are rich, because without the poor there are no rich people as well. You can't have only rich people by definition really.

How much money did the owners of those coal mines make? How much of those, most likely substantial profits, did they share with the people who worked for them in those mines?
Without those people working the mines the owners of the coal mines are nothing, so why were the working conditions so bad then? Should the owners of the mines not pay more to the people who make them rich? They don't pay more because people were so poor they have no choice but to work under whatever conditions were presented to them.

You should one day go and visit some slum somewhere and tell those people they're stupid for not getting better work.
I am sure they will like you.

The result of worker unions fighting for better rights perhaps?
And anyway, what was the point of "look the income went up". The income of all sorts of people in all sorts of places (the US, Germany, China, ...) went up like crazy over the last 50 years or so.

Sure if your starting conditions are great. But if your starting conditions are "you worked from age 10 to 20 in a coal mine. Now you are rather sick as well as uneducated" you'll not have that many options, except for letting the people who own the coal mine continue to plunder you.

Massive indoctrination is the only explanation for why you'd ignore reality as hard as you do.

These are good causes, and as with all good causes, you do not need to forcefully tax people to fund them. These kind of things come from cultural shifts. For example gay rights didn't become largely accepted in American society because of any action of government as much as Will and Grace. The abolition movement likewise stemmed from cultural shifts. In Britain it came from Christian ideology and in America it also came from free market economic development in the North that out competed slavery, thereby strengthening the moral dimension.

If you are really concerned about violence against women in the western world where women already have equality under the law, your battle if anything is in society, not legislation or the court system.

You make it sound like Trump wants violence against women. Cruelty is a rather loaded word. Should one infer cruelty against men by the absence of grant programs that work to reduce violence against men? Lest you forget which gender is significantly more likely to be the victim of violence. And let me remind you that Obama bombed many women and children in the middle east, ironically where there is very real oppression against women. Yet not a peep from the liberal media.

Everytime I read one of these type of articles I can't help but think that the left has forgotten the parable of the boy who cried wolf. One day Trump really is going to screw up and no-one will believe you.

Personally, I think the real show is in analysing his economic policy. It's one thing to say you're going to bring back manufacturing and make america great again, it's another thing to critically analyse how he's going to go about doing it.

If you don't force people to do things that they're uncomfortable with, a lot of things wouldn't get done. Please don't bother responding to this with a slippery slope fallacy.

And you don't need to sell the flaws of Obama's tenure to me. I'm well aware of them. Problem is, their existence doesn't magically make the problems of other Presidents go away.

Providing statistics on one but not the other is an incredibly transparent attempt to weight the appearance of your posts.

You already said you provided a "biased liberal source", so why not provide a few more? That was rhetorical, I'll answer for you:

You dress down the source you provide as being biased and / or liberal (good assumption on my ideological base there), insulting my base in this argument twice in the process (the second insult was when you said I'd "maybe" believe them).

You defend a lack of sources on living cost by saying they're variable on location. Which is true. But that also affects job availability, industry conditions and hey, guess what, income and poverty.

So you provide statistics on one despite it being dependent on location, but you refuse to provide statistics on the latter because the variables involve make you unsure of their accuracy. Unsure of their accuracy despite the only source you've provided is one you're accusing of bias.

i.e. one you're accusing of not being accurate. Biased statistics by definition being statistics people logically cannot trust (assuming you stating the truth, of course, instead of you disagreeing with them based on your own personal ideological biases that, like most conservatives and libertarians I encounter, you pretend don't exist).

//

The economy is fixed, America is great again!
Just like he had more people visit his inauguration, despite visual evidence

You ever think, maybe he didn't have more people at his inauguration, because liberals are threatening property and life? Just like they didn't show up to rallies, preliminary polls, or anywhere else, until they had the opportunity to vote anonymously on the day of the election? Thinking like this, only hurts any chance to win an election against it in the future. Keep thinking the numbers are down, they can run Hillary again and she'll win, go ahead, I double-dog dare them to be that dumb again.

Note, I didn't say "all", but if they are threatening Trump supporters, why relatively the **** would they be conservative, moderate, or third party????????? They're thus, liberals, not the entirely of the liberal people, but a very bad image of the group as a whole, even if a very minor percent.

Otherwise, meme me an answer as to how he ******* won an election? Somebody showed up to give him votes, end of. Arbitrary **** measuring contests are invalid, maybe you elect politicians by letting them whip it out and measuring side-by-side, but we count votes, including introverts who may be afraid of protests roughing them up and may not show up for public venues. They aren't at the mercy of a loud and small fraction of some other people, equal vote.

Actually, people showed up to give the candidates votes, and a combination of segregated voting districts (gerrymandering, affects both parties, I know), voter ID laws and the Electoral College ensured that Trump won.

The people that actually voted, voted overwhelmingly in favour of the other candidate.

I'm not saying that this hasn't happened before, but it's important to recognise the fallacy of claiming "people voted for him end of".

That's not the point.
The Trump administration lied about something silly like the inauguration numbers.
The reason why it's so low doesn't matter, it's just the warping of the truth. If you can't rely on the truth of the government who can you trust (which is something republicans feel strongly about don't they).

Can't believe you just said that. Please think about what you are saying.

There exist people in the world that are uncomfortable with the idea that they shouldn't kill other people.

Please think about what you are saying. As usual, the truth is somewhere between two extremes. Nobody is proposing a government-mandated mind-control device to force you to do things you don't want to, and likewise people aren't (well, this is a charitable presumption) telling me that we should let all murderers do as they please.

Less fallacies, less feigned horror, less attempts to paint me as someone who isn't thinking about the arguments that I make.

Start debating in good faith, lest people call you rude names again.

@Gorbles It's just that your arguments are plain bad and most make no sense. The people who agree with you, debate in good faith, the rest don't. And you think it's justified that the people dabating in good faith call the others rude names!!!

In US you have an electoral system based on the idea that the most populated states shouldn't dominate completely the presidential election. That way the smaller states (the minorities) are better represented. I'm not saying that's the best system but those are the rules. So Trump won, you can't protest against that, that's stupid. You can protest aginst the electoral system to change it for the next elections or against Trumps policies when he announces them.

Trump lying it's nothing new, politicians lying is as old as the profession. Politicians have to gain/keep voters support and they all know that lying is better that telling unpleasant truths to the voters. I'm not saying that this shouldn't change but it's not a Trump specific problem.